Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club, Club Club Clear Club.
Speaker 3: Yay.
Speaker 2: The reason that that's a fun bit is that when
Speaker 2: there's more than one person is that you can't synchronize
Speaker 2: things like chanting over the zoom.
Speaker 3: It's actually genetically built into me from years of watching
Speaker 3: football matches to synchronize. But I have to say a
Speaker 3: couple of words that unfortunately we cannot broadcast.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cools One Media book Club, the
Speaker 2: only book club where you don't have to do the
Speaker 2: reading because James Stout does it for you. I am
Speaker 2: your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today. As you
Speaker 2: might have guessed by hearing his voice and the fact
Speaker 2: that I just said his name, is my colleague, my
Speaker 2: frequent collaborator, and my dear friend, James Stout.
Speaker 3: Hi, Hi, Margaret. It's nice to be doing a podcast again.
Speaker 3: Last time we were on the floor of the bedroom
Speaker 3: of an Airbnb and instruction at midnight, completely delirious. Yeah,
Speaker 3: absolutely exhausted and having recovered from being locked out of
Speaker 3: said airbnb and like, my.
Speaker 2: God, I forgot about that. Yeah, we got locked yep.
Speaker 2: You'll probably heard us talk about this a bunch of times,
Speaker 2: but we sure got locked out. Of an airbnb and
Speaker 2: temperatures that are absolutely dangerous.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's good times.
Speaker 2: Well, James, we are here today so that I can
Speaker 2: be the book club where I don't have to do
Speaker 2: the reading because you, James, are going to do it
Speaker 2: for me. I heard you have a book.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: I heard that because I've well, I blurbed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your name's on the back of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What's this book.
Speaker 3: It's called Against the State. It's about anarchists at war,
Speaker 3: and it draws on the time I spent with revolutionaries
Speaker 3: in Mianma and Rajava, which is part of Kurdistan, as
Speaker 3: well as my historical research into the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 3: It looks at how people have organized themselves horizontally during
Speaker 3: what's obviously a pretty stressful and difficult time for organizing,
Speaker 3: and what we can learn from that for our own,
Speaker 3: hopefully peaceable and much less dangerous organizing.
Speaker 2: I think it's fascinating for a lot of reasons. One
Speaker 2: because we live in a real uncertain world and I'm
Speaker 2: with you on the sure hoping all of our organism
Speaker 2: will get to be peaceful, but I'm certainly not certain
Speaker 2: of that. And yeah, specifically, that's what always people have said,
Speaker 2: is like, ah, but you know you need hierarchy, And
Speaker 2: that's a delicate and careful an important question where you're like,
Speaker 2: war absolutely is kind of the most authoritarian. It's sort
Speaker 2: of like like, there's kind of nothing more authoritarian than
Speaker 2: killing someone, right.
Speaker 3: But there's also nothing more egalitarian than everyone having the
Speaker 3: ability to kill someone, right, Totally. If you're in charge
Speaker 3: and you keep fucking up, any of the people you're
Speaker 3: in charge of can just kill you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Guns have that kind of equalizing effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a you know, we're capable of doing terrible
Speaker 2: things to each other with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. One thing I want to push back on
Speaker 3: is that, like I don't like violence. I don't attend
Speaker 3: wars because I think it's cool to kill people or
Speaker 3: bomb people or any of that stuff. And find that
Speaker 3: stuff horrible. I think the moment you stop feeling that
Speaker 3: it's time for you to move along. Yeah, as a
Speaker 3: conflict reporter, like some of the stuff I've witness has
Speaker 3: been horrific, but also I think it's beautiful that people
Speaker 3: are willing to go through those horrors to liberate themselves
Speaker 3: and other people. So I want to record that.
Speaker 2: I think that's great and it's a great book and
Speaker 2: we're going to read some of it, or you're going
Speaker 2: to read some of it and I'm going to go
Speaker 2: oh oh and other reactions. Okay, cool here, But for
Speaker 2: someone to apologize to the audience, your book isn't fiction,
Speaker 2: you are both known is what you call nonfiction because
Speaker 2: normally if like truth and then non truth like lies,
Speaker 2: is like kind of the opposite of truth. I like
Speaker 2: that nonfiction is the one that's marked like fiction is
Speaker 2: the default of a story. Yeah, nonfiction the real one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like the negative.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But this book club will always be mostly will
Speaker 2: probably be continue to be mostly fiction. But we do
Speaker 2: try to also say, like there's things worth reading and
Speaker 2: paying attention to, and we think James's book is one
Speaker 2: of them. And I also want to say that on
Speaker 2: April nineteenth, the day that this is released, it is
Speaker 2: a sad anniversary. It is the three year anniversary of
Speaker 2: the death of three anarchist comrades who are killed in
Speaker 2: Ukraine fighting to defend the Road of Life, which is
Speaker 2: a road in Bakhmut that carried humanitarian aid into the city.
Speaker 2: And you've probably if you listen to my podcast Cool
Speaker 2: People Who Did Cool stuff. I have talked about these
Speaker 2: three anarchists, both in their own episodes a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, year or so ago, and then recently I
Speaker 2: also talked about it again a lot in my episode
Speaker 2: about Russian partisans. So if you want to hear more
Speaker 2: about it, but I just want to take a moment
Speaker 2: to remember Cooper Andrews from Cleveland Heights, a Black autonomous
Speaker 2: who died, Finn bar Kafarki and Irish anarchists from the
Speaker 2: Galtech on the west coast of Ireland. And Dmitri Petrov,
Speaker 2: who was a Russian who spent his entire life as
Speaker 2: adult life fighting against Putin by organizing by midnight arson
Speaker 2: and eventually by fleeing the country and joining an army
Speaker 2: that opposed the government that was the dictatorship that he
Speaker 2: grew up under. And so the three of them died
Speaker 2: on April nineteenth, I believe, twenty twenty three. That's how
Speaker 2: math works. It's the three universary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I'll just add that a friend of mine, Pierre,
Speaker 3: he was an anarchist too fighting in Ukraine, died in
Speaker 3: June of last year. One of the things he sent
Speaker 3: me from Ukraine before he passed was a mural of
Speaker 3: these three that he'd gone to visit to pay his
Speaker 3: respects to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anarchists are dying in that war, unfortunately, quite a lot,
Speaker 2: because when you live somewhere and someone invades it, you
Speaker 2: try to stop them. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess you don't get to always fight the
Speaker 3: war you want. Sometimes the war comes to you, and
Speaker 3: they're fighting for a more free world than they would
Speaker 3: experience if they were colonized by Russia. And often they
Speaker 3: die and heralded, and like they don't get their respect
Speaker 3: they deserve, especially from the anarchist community, because like the
Speaker 3: war itself is not an anarchist struggle, but these people
Speaker 3: are building their little beautiful worlds as they fight, right,
Speaker 3: like people who are organizing horizontally, even in a military
Speaker 3: which itself it's not horizontally organized. Yeah, they're fighting their
Speaker 3: own little struggle and like as they do so, they're
Speaker 3: trying to build the world that they want to live in.
Speaker 3: We should respect that.
Speaker 2: No, I really like the way you phrased it, where
Speaker 2: it's like you don't always get to pick the war
Speaker 2: that you fight, because overall, like you probably shouldn't fight
Speaker 2: wars unless you have to, and that usually means because
Speaker 2: someone has brought war to you. And my favorite Tolkien quote,
Speaker 2: I'll say a different quote every single time I say
Speaker 2: that sentence. But those without swords can still die upon
Speaker 2: them is honestly at the end of the day, like
Speaker 2: I mean, it's why I trained with firearms, is that
Speaker 2: there are people wanted to hurt me. You know, those
Speaker 2: of that swords can still die upon them, And so
Speaker 2: that's you can be anti war all you want, but
Speaker 2: there's a war there.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, and you can't argue with it, right,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter if you are correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the working class shouldn't shoot each other, but they're
Speaker 2: trying to kill you in your family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, at some point you have to deal with
Speaker 3: that in a non ricorbical sinse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and if people want to hear a little
Speaker 2: bit more also about those three particular fighters, but also
Speaker 2: there are a lot of other anarchist fighters. It's just
Speaker 2: three people died in one day, and you know, so
Speaker 2: often those are those are some of the ones that
Speaker 2: we write about the most. But if you go to
Speaker 2: Anarchist Federation dot net, there's a tribute written to them,
Speaker 2: and yeah, but today that's not the struggle we'll be
Speaker 2: talking about, but we will be talking about Anarchist at War.
Speaker 2: We're going to read what what are we.
Speaker 3: Reading's first chapter of my book. It's called Mountains. As
Speaker 3: you'll hear. It draws on some of Jim Scott's ideas.
Speaker 3: James C. Scott has influenced my work very much. He
Speaker 3: sadly passed away a couple of years ago. He was
Speaker 3: one of the founding members of Mutual Aid ME and
Speaker 3: MO as well, and it asked people to donate to
Speaker 3: the revolution in Memma in lieu of sending flowers after
Speaker 3: he passed.
Speaker 2: This is the anthropologist. Yes, I didn't know that he
Speaker 2: was Wait, nope, now I do I remember it now? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I always forget what I know.
Speaker 3: He did his field work there.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I knew about that part. Yeah, I'd forgotten
Speaker 2: that he stayed involved in Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much so, and often had and at the
Speaker 3: time his passing had been graduate students. I know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was very involved in the struggle. Okay, are you ready?
Speaker 2: I am ready?
Speaker 3: All right, let's go against the state. Anarchists and comrades
Speaker 3: that war in Spain, Mia and Ma Java by James Stout,
Speaker 3: Chapter one mountains. Ethnicity and tribe begin by definition where
Speaker 3: sovereignty and taxes ended. The ethnic zone was feared and
Speaker 3: stigmatized by state rhetoric precisely because it was beyond its
Speaker 3: grasp and therefore an example of defiance and an ever
Speaker 3: present temptation to those who might wish to evade the state.
Speaker 3: James C. Scott the art of not being dubbed. There
Speaker 3: isn't much to fachekable. A few single story flat buildings,
Speaker 3: a dusty courtyard, a small taxi rank, and a giant
Speaker 3: flag for anyone who has failed to notice that although
Speaker 3: the Tigris River runs through Kurdistan, the Iraqi Autonomous Reading
Speaker 3: of Kurdistan and the Autonomous Administration of North and East
Speaker 3: Syria an ees better known as for a Java and
Speaker 3: not an agreement about very much. On the eastern side
Speaker 3: of the border, two intelligence officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government,
Speaker 3: a more neoliberally aligned government that controls an area of
Speaker 3: for ruck as practically a separate country and has deep
Speaker 3: ideological differences with Rashaba, quizzed me for more than an
Speaker 3: hour about my intentions in Rajaba. All the areas you're
Speaker 3: going to are under heavy bombardment. One of them told me,
Speaker 3: I advise you not to go. It was surreal to
Speaker 3: hear about the bombing from a very smartly dressed man
Speaker 3: relaxing on a leather sofa while I sat across the
Speaker 3: room trying to squeeze my six foot three frame into
Speaker 3: a comically small chair. And the time since I'd boarded
Speaker 3: the first to a series of flights, buses and cars
Speaker 3: that had carried me from California to the bank of
Speaker 3: the Tigris River, Turkey's drones had struck dozens of targets
Speaker 3: inside AA and E S territory. Those targets were not
Speaker 3: military facilities, but civilian different structure in the middle of cities.
Speaker 3: Power stations, oil wells, and a cooking gas bottling facility
Speaker 3: had all been bombed in the quiet of the night
Speaker 3: when fell from the dark sky with no warning. Electricity
Speaker 3: was intermittent and water wasn't running in some cities. This
Speaker 3: happens every autumn. Turkey steps up its assaults on the
Speaker 3: independent Kurdish region that it sees as a threat to
Speaker 3: its ability to control Kurds within the Turkish borders. It's
Speaker 3: a concerted effort on the part of the Turkish state
Speaker 3: to make sure that democratic confederates experiment in Rasjava ends
Speaker 3: in failure. Despite this and other difficulties, Rasjava still exists
Speaker 3: as a society trying to build democracy without the state.
Speaker 3: That's why I was there. I suspected the intelligence agents
Speaker 3: knew that I already knew what was going on in Risjava,
Speaker 3: and that it was part of why I was going there.
Speaker 3: But I knew it was their job to tell me
Speaker 3: not to go. They weren't wrong. It was dangerous. As
Speaker 3: far as I could tell. I was entering at the
Speaker 3: same time as a handful of other journalists working in
Speaker 3: the region were leaving. Kurdish people are remarkably hospitable, so
Speaker 3: in addition to asking me probing questions about my past,
Speaker 3: the agent's also invited me for lunch and offered me
Speaker 3: the Wi FI code. While they debated whether they would
Speaker 3: allow me across the floating bridge over the Tigris, I
Speaker 3: politely declined the offer of lunch. I had no desire
Speaker 3: to lay my trip and drive in Syria after nightfall,
Speaker 3: especially if we were going through regions and along roads
Speaker 3: where people had been killed in drone strikes the night before.
Speaker 3: But I gladly accepted the Wi Fi code, booted up
Speaker 3: my tour browser and tried to work out if my
Speaker 3: hotel was close to any power stations. Looking out the
Speaker 3: window and across the river, I thought about how much
Speaker 3: I wanted to visit Rajava and breathe the air in
Speaker 3: a society that was trying to do away with the state.
Speaker 3: In the eleven years since the Kurdish majority cities Norse
Speaker 3: and Eassyria managed to expel most regime forces in a
Speaker 3: bloodless show of force, the conflict in a region more
Speaker 3: from one about the character of the state in Syria
Speaker 3: to the existence of the state in Syria. In this conflict,
Speaker 3: the embattled Bathist regime, the increasingly authoritarian Turkish regime, the
Speaker 3: remains of the so called Islamic State, and Iranian proxy
Speaker 3: militias in Syria have all found themselves at war with
Speaker 3: one another, but united in opposition to the projects in
Speaker 3: Rojava and elsewhere in Syria that seek to redistribute power
Speaker 3: away from the state and toward the people. It was
Speaker 3: these people who had managed to emerge from the fire
Speaker 3: of a burning country and the darkness of the so
Speaker 3: called Islamic State to secure their liberty, autonomy, and equality
Speaker 3: that I wanted to visit, but first they had to
Speaker 3: persuade it. Two intelligence officers who were scrolling my Facebook
Speaker 3: page that they wasn't off to join the Islamic State.
Speaker 3: While I pondered if I had wasted my entire book advance,
Speaker 3: the intelligence agents called for a round of chai, a
Speaker 3: cinnamon of hues black tea served in tulip shaped glass
Speaker 3: with a generous helping of sugar, a drink that seems
Speaker 3: as critical to human existence as oxygen in this part
Speaker 3: of the world. Iraqi, Kurdistan's tea houses served as public
Speaker 3: spaces where, even under the oppressive bath regime of Saddam Hussein,
Speaker 3: Kurds could gather and share their stories. Later, they became
Speaker 3: places where the pesh merger a term that is translated
Speaker 3: as those who faced death, the much revered fighters of
Speaker 3: Iraqi Kurdist Dan could gather, plan and even recruit The
Speaker 3: intelligence opposite at the border was no tea house. It
Speaker 3: didn't even have the requisite domino table, but the intelligence
Speaker 3: officers still shared their stories as we sipped our tea.
Speaker 3: Soon enough, I was looking at polaroid photos that had
Speaker 3: been immortalized through the miracle of social media. One aged's
Speaker 3: uncle was a Peshmerger leader famous for his abilities with
Speaker 3: a rocket propelled grenade. I briefly considered offering the Kermanji
Speaker 3: word for the weapon as you search for the English one.
Speaker 3: I make a habit of learning as much as the
Speaker 3: language as I can before I travel. And I had
Speaker 3: been particularly charmed by the word bigsfing, which Syrian Curds
Speaker 3: used for the rocket propelled grenade. But my grandmother had
Speaker 3: been arrested entering Syria half a century before, and I
Speaker 3: decided that showing too much knowledge of weapons systems would
Speaker 3: be risking the same result. The other agent's grandfather had
Speaker 3: fought for years as a gorilla against Sabbathis, bravely holding
Speaker 3: out when the world had left the Kurds to die
Speaker 3: in and there thousands at that time, the agent said
Speaker 3: to me as he leaned across the sofa, to emphasize
Speaker 3: the point, our only friends with the mountains these days.
Speaker 3: The more state is conception of Kurdish identity that's predominant
Speaker 3: in the Kurdish automenous for region of Iraq has descended
Speaker 3: from the mountains and resides in the giant villas and
Speaker 3: skyscrapers of fuel the region's capital, which is called a
Speaker 3: Bill in Arabic. The government and its friends have built
Speaker 3: skyscrapers in the city with corporate logos that light up
Speaker 3: the sky at night, just like the drone bonds that
Speaker 3: up the sky and Rashava. However, the mountains of southern
Speaker 3: Turkey and north in Iraq have remained home to the
Speaker 3: Curdisdown Workers' Party, better known by its initials in Kurdish
Speaker 3: the PKK or Partier Karakeren Kurda Dastani for decades. In
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four, the group began insurgency against the Turkish
Speaker 3: state in an attempt to establish their own However, over time,
Speaker 3: the group and its leader, Abdullah Shin have moved beyond
Speaker 3: the state based conception of ESTRA and instead have an
Speaker 3: embraced in ideology of radical feminism, environmentalism they called democratic
Speaker 3: and federalism. It was this ideology that had board about
Speaker 3: the revolution and eventually the self administration of a huge
Speaker 3: chunk of Syria. This way of thinking had come down
Speaker 3: from the mountains, swept across the plains and defeated the
Speaker 3: Islamic state. Now having gained so much, it was being
Speaker 3: bombed so heavily that its future was in down, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to see the only multi ethnic democratic project
Speaker 3: in the Middle East before its adherents had to retreat
Speaker 3: to the jagged peaks that I could see through a dusty
Speaker 3: afternoon Offeshka War. Eventually, after a prolonged conversation about the
Speaker 3: care and breeding of sheep, including questions from the agent's
Speaker 3: family members who are now attending my interrogation remotely via WhatsApp,
Speaker 3: I was allowed to cross into a shava. Growing up
Speaker 3: with livestock didn't seem abnormal or that useful to me
Speaker 3: as a child, but I've been pleasantly surprised with its
Speaker 3: ability to open doors in the most unlikely places. My
Speaker 3: interview completed, I began a circuit of small offices where
Speaker 3: people would stare at me for a few seconds, look
Speaker 3: at my past, read something down, and then send me
Speaker 3: forth to another official who would do exactly the same thing.
Speaker 3: It felt like an unconscious parody of the state's capacity
Speaker 3: to turn every action into an office visit and a
Speaker 3: form to be filled out. Eventually, I was sent to
Speaker 3: a small waiting room and then to a long suffering
Speaker 3: bus that had just dropped a full load of people
Speaker 3: from Rojava on the eastern bank of the Tigris on
Speaker 3: its return journey, I was the only passenger. The driver
Speaker 3: pointed across the river and I nodded. He took a
Speaker 3: huge drawer on a terrible cigarette and set off across
Speaker 3: the shaky bridge that floats on oil drums and spans
Speaker 3: the Tigris. From Rajava, my fixer, her Butt, and her
Speaker 3: brother Deirre greeted me with smiles, and as is often
Speaker 3: the case, I remark about my height. We showed my
Speaker 3: passport to an official who smiled and addressed me in
Speaker 3: English to welcome you to Rajava and sent me to
Speaker 3: the immigration office, where I'd be given a sort of
Speaker 3: permission slip that allowed me to travel freely throughout the region.
Speaker 3: The road of the border officials in Rojava, it's not
Speaker 3: so much to check for visas and the payment of
Speaker 3: import taxes as sure that those entering are not a
Speaker 3: threat to the community, in a manner not so different
Speaker 3: to Cattle, an anarchist militiamen who sees border checkpoints between
Speaker 3: Spain and France. In nineteen thirty six, the Ajavre officials
Speaker 3: permission slip also asked other group in the areas to
Speaker 3: accept their assessment that I was safe and should be
Speaker 3: treated as a guest because I was entering a country
Speaker 3: that is not recognized by other countries. Nobody stamped my
Speaker 3: passport after offering me a cigarette. The man across a
Speaker 3: death from me politely answered my questions about the half
Speaker 3: dozen yellow and green frame portraits and laminated little cards
Speaker 3: hanging from a tree in his office. All friends, he
Speaker 3: told me, All Shahed, Shahed, I soon learn means martyr.
Speaker 3: You can't come to a Java and not learn that word.
Speaker 3: Fifteen thousand people, some of whom had come down for
Speaker 3: the mountains in twenty eleven to join a Syrian revolution
Speaker 3: or in twenty fourteen to take on the task of
Speaker 3: riding the world of the Islamic State, had lost their
Speaker 3: lives in the process. Camislo the capital of the AA,
Speaker 3: and e Yes Shahidah everywhere. Their portraits yellow back for
Speaker 3: men and green back for women, smile at you from
Speaker 3: billboards on every roundabout, reminding you that many of the
Speaker 3: people who died to rid the world of the Islamic
Speaker 3: State would be too young to get a drink in
Speaker 3: a bar in the United States, lined up in neat
Speaker 3: little rows in the March's grave lad in Commissieu. They
Speaker 3: remind you that there is no such thing as a
Speaker 3: surgical strike, and the grandmothers and children of the region
Speaker 3: paid with their lives for the crime of living near
Speaker 3: a power plant or being in the street at the
Speaker 3: same time as a recognizable military leader.
Speaker 2: Well, James, there they have something that's everywhere, but here
Speaker 2: in the West we have capitalism.
Speaker 3: We put different shit on billboards.
Speaker 2: There's a different thing that comes that you can see everywhere, everywhere, everywhere,
Speaker 2: and that is advertisements.
Speaker 3: And we're back. I spent the next few days in
Speaker 3: Jabe hearing martyr's stories from their friends. I met leaders
Speaker 3: in places where they thought they might be safe from bombing,
Speaker 3: and then nervously waited to hear if they made at
Speaker 3: home safely. I sat in my hotel at night, wondering
Speaker 3: if the bangs and flashes were bombs in the distance
Speaker 3: or street lights blowing their bulbs. I got up every
Speaker 3: morning with the fighter of prayer, reminding us all that
Speaker 3: we'd made through another night and now had to start
Speaker 3: another day that would inevitably begin with news of the
Speaker 3: people we were not waking up this morning. Every morning
Speaker 3: before Herbarton arrived. I'd walked through the market, ducking down
Speaker 3: the canopies that were too low for my head. As
Speaker 3: if I needed a reminder I wasn't from here. But
Speaker 3: despite standing out like a man with two heads, I
Speaker 3: felt welcome by everyone. Every morning, I shared cups of
Speaker 3: tea and stories with strangers, and faced to pot quiz
Speaker 3: from merchants who seemed to have taken on the in
Speaker 3: s a morble burden of improving my comandji Kurdish via
Speaker 3: a pedagogical medium of pointing at vegetables and shouting their names.
Speaker 3: Later in the day, Harbaton de Wa sat with me
Speaker 3: for hours as we sipped tea and shared our stories,
Speaker 3: hopes and fears with her Button deer Are conducted interviews
Speaker 3: across re Java. In Comischlah, we heard a mother cry
Speaker 3: as she told me about how her fifteen year old
Speaker 3: son had been a promising goalkeeper on his local football
Speaker 3: team until a missile from a drone landed next to
Speaker 3: the garage where he was repairing his motorcycle. Now he
Speaker 3: was another martyr, Another grave in the cemetery, another yellow
Speaker 3: backed photograph, and a grieving mother's war. In the mountains,
Speaker 3: there are caves and tunnels, places where you can look
Speaker 3: out the world without anyone looking down on you. In
Speaker 3: the city, there are houses, plazas, markets and shops, places
Speaker 3: where people sit at night with no idea if they'll
Speaker 3: wake up tomorrow. After ten years of war, it's normal now.
Speaker 3: But sitting in my hotel room listening to new friends
Speaker 3: play old songs on the tambour traditional string instrument, I
Speaker 3: was struck by the sadness of it all. The one
Speaker 3: thing most people hear and met wanted was a better
Speaker 3: world for their children and a chance to influence their
Speaker 3: own futures. Having been attacked by the Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian
Speaker 3: and Turkish states, they no longer wanted a state at all.
Speaker 3: Because they had reached this very reasonable conclusion, the states
Speaker 3: of the world wouldn't trust them with anti aircraft missiles,
Speaker 3: the only tools with which they could prevent the slow
Speaker 3: destruction of their infrastructure. Instead, they were to be left
Speaker 3: alone to freeze or die as the drones they were
Speaker 3: powerless to stop, bomb their power stations and picked off
Speaker 3: their children one by one. After several days in Rajava,
Speaker 3: at the urging of colleagues and family had departed. It
Speaker 3: was sad to be leaving this hopeful, friendly and hard
Speaker 3: won place. A friend who fought against the Islamic state
Speaker 3: in Rajaba told me that Rajavre is special because it's real.
Speaker 3: He was right, of course. The fact that Rajava is
Speaker 3: not just a utopian dream in the mountains or an
Speaker 3: idea in a book, but a daily reality for millions
Speaker 3: of people is remarkable. That Rajava has held on to
Speaker 3: its gain rather than retreat into the mountains is admirable.
Speaker 3: As a young leftist, anarchism existed for me only in
Speaker 3: history books, in mutue groups in the woods, and in
Speaker 3: the moments when we stood in the street and saw
Speaker 3: the police back away. Now young leftists around the world
Speaker 3: compack their bags and come and see for themselves the
Speaker 3: gains and incredible struggles of organizing without the state. Long
Speaker 3: before the Kurdish Freedom Movement took up arms in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, the mountains are an ally of anyone looking
Speaker 3: to escape the state. In his two thousand and nine
Speaker 3: book The Art of Not Being Governed, James C. Scott,
Speaker 3: one of Anchism's fhew defenders and academy, developed the idea
Speaker 3: of uplands as areas that are inherently harder for the
Speaker 3: state to exercise control over, and where people can go
Speaker 3: to choose a life without the state, States, Scott argues,
Speaker 3: spread out from urban centers into areas that didn't impede
Speaker 3: their roads and railways, and they left the upland areas
Speaker 3: relatively untouched until much later in their consolidation. These areas
Speaker 3: were harder to generate revenue from and harder to make
Speaker 3: legible for the state in terms it understood, like grain
Speaker 3: sent to granaries, taxes extracted from people, or soldiers drafted
Speaker 3: into armies. The state, as he argues in Seeing Like
Speaker 3: a state, might seek to make these areas more legible,
Speaker 3: but it beats resistance from free people who reject the
Speaker 3: need for fixed family names, units of measurement, and documented
Speaker 3: landownership in favor of their free association according to mutually
Speaker 3: agreed upon norms. This slower and incomplete state expansion into
Speaker 3: the mountains at times met with the active resistance of
Speaker 3: free people, allowed for what's God called shatter zones to
Speaker 3: emerge where people could seek refuge from the controller and
Speaker 3: coercion of states. In two Cheers for anarchism, Scott argues
Speaker 3: that these people people need not and often did not
Speaker 3: identify as anarchists, but that through the use of an
Speaker 3: anarchist squint, we can understand their actions and worldview in
Speaker 3: a way that explains the much better than the state perspective,
Speaker 3: which simply sees these people as backwards, unruly, or, as
Speaker 3: one Burmese guerrilla commander put it to me, wild. In
Speaker 3: states and in histories that consider the state inevitable in
Speaker 3: the final form of human society, the free people who
Speaker 3: resist the state's attempts to make the uplands into legible
Speaker 3: areas are cast as a domain of barbarians or unruly
Speaker 3: hill tribes. These descriptors are applied as readily to the
Speaker 3: Picts and Scots the United Kingdom as to the Karen
Speaker 3: of Burma or the fictional peoples of George R. Martin's
Speaker 3: Game of Thrones. If we start from the assumption that
Speaker 3: the state is the final form of human organization, it
Speaker 3: follows that people outside the state are behind the people
Speaker 3: inside it. Scott argues that if we view the state
Speaker 3: as a choice, we can see the people outside it
Speaker 3: as having chosen to avoid the state and instead to
Speaker 3: make their lives in the freedom offered by the terrain
Speaker 3: that is less capable of what the state sees as
Speaker 3: quantifiable production terrain, where they can often exist outside the
Speaker 3: states of monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. It
Speaker 3: was in just such a mountain range, one that remains
Speaker 3: beyond the control of the state to this day, that
Speaker 3: the ideals I had traveled so far to than about
Speaker 3: were born. Sitting on a wobbly table in a town
Speaker 3: in Kurdistan, in the shadow of the mountains where the
Speaker 3: k CK, the Kormo sivake in Kordistani or Kurdistan Communities Union,
Speaker 3: still maintains its strongholds. Dagros Hiwa, the group's spokesman, told
Speaker 3: me that he'd taken a long and risky journey from
Speaker 3: the group's basis to meet me. The region had been
Speaker 3: hammered by Turkish drone strikes against k c K affiliated
Speaker 3: leaders all month. The KCK is an umbrella organization that
Speaker 3: brings together the various armed and political groups dedicated to
Speaker 3: implementing their leader, abdelah Ausgelen's ideology of democratic and federalism,
Speaker 3: making the CASEYKS representatives high value targets for the movement's enemies.
Speaker 3: I smuggled myself at a town here, told me because
Speaker 3: coming to my place would be too risky. Hua and
Speaker 3: the friend who accompanied him sat across a little wrought
Speaker 3: iron table from me, all of us seated on those
Speaker 3: small metal chairs that seemed custom made to make me
Speaker 3: look as awkward as a giraffe limbo dancing. Both he
Speaker 3: and his friend seemed aware the situation was high risk
Speaker 3: for them, and our conversation was marked with pauses as
Speaker 3: cars or pedestrians passed by. Every time a shopp and
Speaker 3: near us, we fell silent, and our conversations picked up
Speaker 3: again only once they've gone on their way. Cars, parking,
Speaker 3: or any movement above were met with furtive glances. Such
Speaker 3: was a degree of concern that we were even escuing
Speaker 3: the Chinda's time. When it's safer, he will, promised, I'll
Speaker 3: be able to come and meet in the mountains. We
Speaker 3: talked for an hour about gender, the state, the French
Speaker 3: and Spanish revolutions, a situation that was unfolding in Gaza
Speaker 3: at the time. When in the insights you'll find out
Speaker 3: the chapters of this book came from that hour in
Speaker 3: which he was seemed to weigh every word against the
Speaker 3: risk he'd taken to join me, and his years of
Speaker 3: experience in the Kurdish freedom struggle. He was glad I
Speaker 3: had come to Rushava because it was important for me
Speaker 3: to see the proof that people could exist without the
Speaker 3: control of the state, even in places that had once
Speaker 3: been subject to it. Before we parted ways, he passed
Speaker 3: on a recommendation for a museum that I should visit
Speaker 3: on my travels, one with exhibits on the genocidal campaigns
Speaker 3: pursued by the Batists Iraqi state against the Kurdish people
Speaker 3: following the Iran Iraq War. A few days later, I
Speaker 3: found myself at loose ends and decided to travel to Slamani,
Speaker 3: one of the largest Kurdish cities and certainly one of
Speaker 3: the more charming, to visit the museum he'd recommend on entry.
Speaker 3: After walking through a hall filled with thousands of pieces
Speaker 3: broken mirrors, each one representing a life cut short by
Speaker 3: state violence, I walked to the pesh Merga Museum. The
Speaker 3: first room simply houses a black and white photo of
Speaker 3: the snowcap peaks, and my driver had insisted on taking
Speaker 3: me to see on the drive to slam Money on
Speaker 3: the woom. Next to the photo, a museum label repeats
Speaker 3: in English and Serauni Kurdish what the intelligence officer had
Speaker 3: remarked on those days when we had no friends but
Speaker 3: the mountains.
Speaker 2: But you and I have friends, friends that hold us close,
Speaker 2: friends that interrupt us, and friends that we don't consider friends.
Speaker 2: We have sponsors, lucky us. Yeah, and I'm sure they
Speaker 2: know what we're Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm sure the people with the gambling website, yeah, mattresses, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they love this shit. They're all about it.
Speaker 2: The last capitalist will sell us the rope, dang him,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure they're going to be distributing my book
Speaker 3: for free for people who lose one thousand dollars gambling
Speaker 3: on the internet. Fruit machines.
Speaker 2: Now, that'll be a book called how to burn down
Speaker 2: or ware have Anyway, here's advertisements, and we're back.
Speaker 3: Over years of reporting on revolution and war, I've made
Speaker 3: a lot of friends in the mountains and often reflected
Speaker 3: on Scott's theories. I was particularly excited to visit Meanma,
Speaker 3: where Scott had worked extensively as an anthropologist, and to
Speaker 3: see the revolution he supported until his passing. When Scott
Speaker 3: published the Art of Not Being Governed in two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine, many of the freedom fighters in Miamma who
Speaker 3: I spoke with on trip there in twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: would have still been in middle school. Even if they'd
Speaker 3: been older then or especially precocious, it would have been
Speaker 3: very hard for them to read Scott's work, because access
Speaker 3: to the Internet and literature was heavily controlled by the
Speaker 3: military government. Twelve years later, in twenty twenty one, they
Speaker 3: would find themselves in one of the very shatter zones
Speaker 3: that Scott had been talking about. The hills at the
Speaker 3: Thai Burmese border where I met these freedom fighters arch
Speaker 3: up from the Moay River that divides the two countries.
Speaker 3: The steep and densely wooded slopes are hard to farm,
Speaker 3: harder to pave, and harder yet to control. They stand
Speaker 3: in sharp contrast to the seven lane motorways giant pagodas
Speaker 3: of Napitau, the capital city that the military began building
Speaker 3: in two thousand and two to create an impenetrable fortress
Speaker 3: in the country's arid central plains. After the coup, young
Speaker 3: people seeking to escape the reach of the state fled
Speaker 3: near Maa cities for these mountains and jungles, places where
Speaker 3: the Burmese state never really enjoyed the monopoly on the
Speaker 3: listimate use of violence that characterizes the avariant state following
Speaker 3: the coup and the bloody repression of the US demands
Speaker 3: for democracy. It was from Yangon, Mandalay and Nepitor the
Speaker 3: young Bamar people, the majority ethnicity that has long done
Speaker 3: dominated the military and governments of the country, fled, and
Speaker 3: it was in these mountains that they found safety and
Speaker 3: refuge from the state. On a zoom call was Saya Montine,
Speaker 3: a leader in the Mandalay People's Defense Force, an armed
Speaker 3: revolutionary popular front formed after the coup to fight for
Speaker 3: a genuine, bottom up, substantive democracy for all of me
Speaker 3: and math ethnic groups. He wanted to make very clear
Speaker 3: to me that they were not quote wild people. This,
Speaker 3: he said, has been a constant refrain from the military
Speaker 3: hunter they took up arms against. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: the young city dwelling Bamar people had come to the
Speaker 3: mountains where the state had told them while people lived,
Speaker 3: because they wanted human rights and democracy. Ironically, these things
Speaker 3: that are supposed to be guaranteed by the state were
Speaker 3: only available to them because of the assistance of the
Speaker 3: people the state deemed ungovernable. When the Bama City dwellers
Speaker 3: arrived in the mountains. They had been warmly received by
Speaker 3: their Tang National Liberation Army, whom they had been long
Speaker 3: told hated Bama people. When Montenay left Mandalay, he was nervous.
Speaker 3: Quote he expected some problems because of the different races.
Speaker 3: His translator nine nine told me they'd been told most
Speaker 3: of the ethnic minority groups in miamm I hate the
Speaker 3: Bamar people quote. But when he actually reaches it to
Speaker 3: Aung region, he found out that there is no hatred
Speaker 3: for the Burmese people nine nine said. Instead, he found
Speaker 3: that TNLA was a quote well formed military and that
Speaker 3: they were also following a code of conduct. Montinnae found
Speaker 3: that the TNLA was happy to stand shoulder and shoulder
Speaker 3: with him in his battle for a form of democracy
Speaker 3: based on bottom up community empowerment, noxtrict majoritarianism, and the
Speaker 3: appearance of elections. And to his great surprise quote, most
Speaker 3: of the leaders from the TNLA have liberal ideas and
Speaker 3: they also want to welcome the young leaders from their revolution.
Speaker 3: He did run into one problem though, quote that the
Speaker 3: Young region is very cold for people from the Mandlay region.
Speaker 3: So we're still having problems with the weather, but now
Speaker 3: we're getting used to it. Montinay's assumption that the Bamar
Speaker 3: people will be discriminated against was typical. Andy, my fixer
Speaker 3: owned friend who seemingly never tired of my asking him
Speaker 3: to explain the complexities of race, language, and identity in Burma,
Speaker 3: told me he'd had similar ideas growing up. He says
Speaker 3: the hate he was taught eventually had a way of
Speaker 3: making itself manifest even though it has no basis in reality. Quote,
Speaker 3: it was a really harsh reality for them, the minority ethnicities.
Speaker 3: And he told me it's not just a Burmer military,
Speaker 3: it's also Burmer's people that didn't care or do anything
Speaker 3: while they're the minority ethnic groups being killed. So they
Speaker 3: have this hate against Berman people, which is very understandable
Speaker 3: at first, and he didn't question where the hate came from,
Speaker 3: and he assumed ustilities ethnic groups were natural. He said
Speaker 3: he began to question this in seventeen. Quote, there were
Speaker 3: hina thing happened in twenty seventeen. I was seventeen. I
Speaker 3: started getting phone calls from my friends in western countries, Westerners.
Speaker 3: They would be like, Hey, what's happening in your country?
Speaker 3: Why are you killing all the Muslims. I'm in Masoon, Thailand,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I know what you're talking about. I've
Speaker 3: never heard anything like that, right, And then I tried
Speaker 3: to learn a little bit more, but everyone had such
Speaker 3: intense opinions about it that at some point I'm like, ah, fuck,
Speaker 3: I don't know anymore. Because the military was still in
Speaker 3: control at that time, so they controlled the news, they
Speaker 3: controlled the media. It wasn't until Andy experienced repression himself
Speaker 3: that he realized that, just like he was, many of
Speaker 3: the minority ethnic groups were victims of state violence, misrepresented
Speaker 3: in state propaganda. Quote, you're a kid. You're trying to
Speaker 3: get by day to day because she didn't really think
Speaker 3: about it. And for me, that went on for a
Speaker 3: long time until the military coup happened in Myanmar, and
Speaker 3: he said, in reconsidering his politics, and he also reconsidered
Speaker 3: his own identity, spent much of his childhood in a
Speaker 3: refugee camp just across to me and my Thailand border,
Speaker 3: where most of the refugees were Karenne. I'm half Bama,
Speaker 3: half Karenne, he said, I don't identify myself as Karene
Speaker 3: anymore because when we're in the refugee camp. We got
Speaker 3: so much shit for being half Bama. So that was
Speaker 3: the time when I was like, fuck Korente people. In
Speaker 3: changing his view of ethnicity, he has also changed his
Speaker 3: view of politics and of the ones revered Bahmark do Angsansuchi.
Speaker 3: She's not really a part of this revolution anymore. I think,
Speaker 3: especially for US, people will say different things. If you
Speaker 3: ask someone else about their opinions about her or the
Speaker 3: NLT the nug they would say something different. But for me,
Speaker 3: I focus more on the ethnic groups. I tried to
Speaker 3: speak more about how they feel, on what they feel,
Speaker 3: and I speak for them when I speak In Maysot.
Speaker 3: I met Andy and his brothers every night after long,
Speaker 3: hot days of heart renting interviews, somewhat clandestine meetups, and
Speaker 3: the occasional carbon we'd meet to eat street food in
Speaker 3: tiny plastic chairs and drink cheap beer that was pretty
Speaker 3: good and cheap whiskey that was pretty awful. Our last night,
Speaker 3: after being systematically humiliated at both pool and karaoke, we
Speaker 3: talked about politics. I told Andy I don't vote often
Speaker 3: and that I'd rather spend my time doing something with
Speaker 3: my hands, and I see voting as more of a
Speaker 3: harm reduction cool than a meaningful chance of political expression.
Speaker 3: My explanation of anarchism wasn't my best work, but perhaps
Speaker 3: a young man who has experienced so much state violence
Speaker 3: is well placed to understand it through his own life experience.
Speaker 3: A few months later he asked me for some books
Speaker 3: to read. A few months after that, I saw him
Speaker 3: on social media, engaging with friends in Rashava. It wasn't
Speaker 3: until I was waking up to the call to pray
Speaker 3: and commichelo. More than a year after I'd met Andie,
Speaker 3: they realized how much is thinking on the state had evolved.
Speaker 3: With eyes blurry from lack of sleep and a faint
Speaker 3: buzz puncturing the half light that might have been a
Speaker 3: drone or just a half dead air conditioning making a
Speaker 3: valiant effort to defeat the desert heat. I saw an
Speaker 3: unusual number of encrypted messages on my phone and he
Speaker 3: had sent a video, and I rushed over to the
Speaker 3: chair in the corner of the room, but had to
Speaker 3: stand on to get good Wi Fi signal. As a
Speaker 3: video loaded, I saw the young men and women of
Speaker 3: the Krini Nationalities Defense Forces, a unit formed after the
Speaker 3: coup to fight against the junta and for the people.
Speaker 3: One of them stepped forward. I began reading a speech which,
Speaker 3: to my great surprise, expressed the solidarity with the people
Speaker 3: of a Java. From a world apart and without the
Speaker 3: help or recognition of the Community of States, these two
Speaker 3: groups had found one another. Soon I was suggesting readings
Speaker 3: on Myanmar to interest a friends in Java. My reading
Speaker 3: is on democratic confederalism to teenage guerialism the Burmese Jungle.
Speaker 3: After so many years, so many lies from the US
Speaker 3: and other allies whould have bandoned them after they stopped
Speaker 3: being useful, the people who are Java had finally found
Speaker 3: a friend other than the mountains.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a good uplifting end to that chapter too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I need to leave them feeling a little bit hopeful,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, you know what's funny is like, there's so
Speaker 2: many thoughts about this, But there's thoughts I just have
Speaker 2: about the entire book and the stuff that you've written
Speaker 2: in it, and it talks about these two revolutions, and
Speaker 2: it compares them, or it puts them in position alongside
Speaker 2: of the nineteen thirty six revolution in Spain, the more
Speaker 2: explicitly anarchist revolution, and I don't know, there's just I
Speaker 2: actually have too much to say to do a book
Speaker 2: club about one chapter. I just I think the shit
Speaker 2: is so important. I think it's so important to understand
Speaker 2: ourselves placed in this large history that continues to this day.
Speaker 2: And also specifically that like things that don't necessarily call
Speaker 2: themselves anarchist, but are often influenced by anarchism. But that's
Speaker 2: not even what's important, because we are also influenced by them,
Speaker 2: And how it feels so modern and true to be
Speaker 2: anti state in this way. And I love the way
Speaker 2: that you're talking about these two communities of people who
Speaker 2: are just have realized that they're like, oh, this state
Speaker 2: thing is not working out for us, and it it
Speaker 2: feels like in such a contrast to the way that
Speaker 2: the twentieth century and the nineteenth century like talked about revolution.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like revolution was seen and it's still understood by
Speaker 3: many people, right, including many people on the left, as
Speaker 3: like a national liberation. Right then the way that the
Speaker 3: nation liberated itself was by coligning itself with a state.
Speaker 3: That is not the way that these people understand revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's specific multi ethnic, and like I love
Speaker 2: understanding that internationalism is like, well, this is going to
Speaker 2: come across awkwardly because nationalism has lots of meanings, but
Speaker 2: it's like nationalism plus and I mean nationalism in the
Speaker 2: very old fashioned sense of like national liberation, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, a colonized people who don't want to be
Speaker 2: colonized anymore. And I just I really like the idea
Speaker 2: of like, you know, how are you talking about like
Speaker 2: this leftist revolution where you're hanging out and you're still
Speaker 2: woking up by the call to prayer because like people
Speaker 2: are still having lots of cultures there. I don't know
Speaker 2: where I'm going with us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I remember sitting in my little bedroom in
Speaker 3: Russia Bay there, like sometimes it's hard to sleep, you know,
Speaker 3: when travel a lot, and then you know that people
Speaker 3: are dying and tomorrow you'll probably drive past the place
Speaker 3: where they're dying, and that they're like doing a call
Speaker 3: for blood at the hospital because they've run out. So
Speaker 3: I struggled to sleep, and I could sit in my
Speaker 3: bedroom and look out and I could hear the call
Speaker 3: to prayer and at the same time look at a church,
Speaker 3: and then I could go out of my bedroom and
Speaker 3: almost any time there would be some new CD people
Speaker 3: you see the people's faith is closer to Zoroastrianism. Right.
Speaker 3: They have a peacock angel, which I respect the fuck
Speaker 3: out of. Yeah. Yeah, you see a peacock for the
Speaker 3: first time, You're like, that's dio. Fine.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, it even has lots of eyes. Oh fuck,
Speaker 2: Like would you not? Yeah, yeah, this absolutely slaps Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would spend a lot of time with them, right.
Speaker 2: They would sing me their their songs, and then I
Speaker 2: did the Little Chumber one but for them, I played
Speaker 2: them seven Nation Army because you can do that on
Speaker 2: one string.
Speaker 3: I think it really wasn't a fair exchange. Like here's a.
Speaker 2: Thousand years of culture and I'm like, we got Chumber
Speaker 2: one but seven Nation Army.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like.
Speaker 3: They were very complimentary anyway, which is kind of him.
Speaker 3: But like it made me think that, Like I think
Speaker 3: sometimes people think anarchism is this doctrinal thing, right, and
Speaker 3: we do things this way because anarchists do them that way.
Speaker 3: I think we do it because we want a world
Speaker 3: where many worlds can exist. And like the core of
Speaker 3: anarchism to me say this a lot in my book
Speaker 3: is that we need to create ways to take care
Speaker 3: of each other. Then I'm not reinforcing ways to control
Speaker 3: each other. Yeah, fuck yeah, And that was the beautiful
Speaker 3: thing I saw in both of these places that like,
Speaker 3: it is not about a doctrine, it's not about something
Speaker 3: that like, and I think there are some great things
Speaker 3: we can learn from theory. But like, people aren't doing
Speaker 3: this because a dead Russian dude with a beard said
Speaker 3: it was the right thing to do, totally, that doing
Speaker 3: it because they want to be nice to each other
Speaker 3: and they're sick of people being shitty to them. Like
Speaker 3: that is a much more powerful motivation actually for these
Speaker 3: people anyway, And I think it's a much more beautiful
Speaker 3: thing that it came inherently from their desire to be
Speaker 3: free and to see others liberated.
Speaker 2: To Well, you have a book out. You just read
Speaker 2: a chapter of it. It's called as the State and
Speaker 2: it's by James Stout. And where can people.
Speaker 3: Get it anywhere? I think where good books are sold.
Speaker 3: Akpress dot orgs Slash against the State. That's the publisher.
Speaker 3: So you can buy it from them and they'll send
Speaker 3: it to you and sometimes you get nice stickers when
Speaker 3: that happens. You can buy it from your local bookshop.
Speaker 3: You should support your local bookshop. Especially if it's a
Speaker 3: progressive space where people can go and enjoy books. Sure,
Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos will sell it to you if that's how
Speaker 3: you roll.
Speaker 2: Also, people can get it from another worker on cooperative,
Speaker 2: which is Firestorm Books. Oh yeah in Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 2: If you're like I want to buy it from a
Speaker 2: local bookstore, but I don't have a local bookstore, Firestorm
Speaker 2: Books will sell it to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, buying from Firestorm Yeah, I bought a book from
Speaker 3: them that so long ago. Got some cool stickers they
Speaker 3: sell that protect trans Kids shirt with the bowie knife
Speaker 3: as well. You could really stack up. Yeah, you can
Speaker 3: buy from any of those places. Doesn't bother me. It
Speaker 3: is in paperback, so you don't have to wait for that.
Speaker 3: You can read mark it's very nice blurb at the back.
Speaker 3: You can also buy an e book. I'd encourage you
Speaker 3: to buy the paper book because there's some beautiful photographs
Speaker 3: on the front and I really like the cover design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a good cover. You got anything else do
Speaker 2: you want to plug do? Anywhere? Else? Do you do writing?
Speaker 3: I do a lot of writing. You can find me
Speaker 3: on substack or a Patreon just by searching my name,
Speaker 3: My subjects officially called the Future is Unwritten, so you
Speaker 3: can look for that as well. It's a Joyce Drummer quote.
Speaker 3: I think Joyce Strummer is one of the more important
Speaker 3: theorists of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: I used to have that written on the door of
Speaker 2: my squat, the door of my bedroom within a squat
Speaker 2: was our future is Unwritten. And I knew it as
Speaker 2: a crime thing quote, not a Joe Drummer quote. And
Speaker 2: I feel like kind of a weird poser for that,
Speaker 2: even though I have what song is that from?
Speaker 3: I don't remember. Actually now I don't think it is.
Speaker 3: I think it might be for an interview. Oh shit, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: I have to check my clash sourcing and I will
Speaker 3: plug another thing that I didn't make. The podcast that
Speaker 3: Chuck d made about the Clash is the single best
Speaker 3: podcast to anyone who's ever made.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I try and listen to it at least once a year.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, my anecdote was also about the Clash.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the video of people realizing that
Speaker 2: paper planes was a sample by am I A?
Speaker 3: Really? The people didn't know that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's like people who are like starting to
Speaker 2: listen to Straight to Hell, which is my favorite clash song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Like yeah exactly, They're like, what the fuck this is weird?
Speaker 2: What's happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah. The main hook from MIA's paper Planes was written
Speaker 2: by people who held on to better politics than Mia
Speaker 2: eventually did. I like that song paper Planes a lot.
Speaker 3: It's a good sound. But there's a good video of
Speaker 3: Joe Strummer stealing pillows from hotels when they're on tour
Speaker 3: as well. It's ano they're made eventually getting in trouble
Speaker 3: with the cops rin because he just consistently steals pillows.
Speaker 2: All right, that's it for whatever the show is. It's
Speaker 2: not cool. We will did a cool Stuff Cool Zone
Speaker 2: Media book Club. That is it for Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: book Club. We will see you next week, probably with
Speaker 2: more fiction. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. I also am
Speaker 2: on the substack, and I have another podcast that is
Speaker 2: called cool People Did Cool Stuff. And you have another
Speaker 2: podcast called It Could Happen Here.
Speaker 3: Yep, listen to that one.
Speaker 2: Everyone who's listening probably already knows that, but maybe this
Speaker 2: is the first thing you've listened to, in which case
Speaker 2: now you know. And yep. Until next time. Buck Ice
Speaker 2: Free Palestine take care of each other and all the
Speaker 2: other stuff.
Speaker 3: Do good things. Yeah, be nice, fye.
Speaker 1: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.