 Some of his experiences were also about what's going on there, the ideas that underpin this revolution, this anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal and ecological revolution, democratic revolution. And yeah, and just to share a bit on this course about, yeah, your talk was titled Hacking Democratic Modernity. Hackers in democratic democracy, how to live and what to do. How to live and what to do, great questions to start with. Nice, so welcome there. Yeah, thanks really much for having me and for the invite. Yeah, just to the beginning, I want to give the talk, not in the name of, but in the meaning of, I want to remember. Stop, my Zoom left. You're on air, Julio. Okay, I think maybe it's the battery or something, I don't know. Okay, on a great life. Okay, then I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt you because my Zoom stopped and I didn't know what was happening. Yeah, because it's like tradition and I think a really good one in the Kurdish movement, that's also worldwide. Yeah, I want to give this talk kind of in the name of Anna Kampel, an internationalist, out of internationalist women, out of the UK, who died in the 15th of March, 20, 2018 in Africa in the struggle against the Turkish fascist proxies and the Turkish army. And also, because this is happening right now, I want to remember the five comrades who died yesterday in the fight against the Turkish proxy army in Ayniza, which they attack at the moment. So, yeah, this is at the beginning. Which means martyrs never die. And, yeah, so first a little bit about me and I'm coming out of East Germany. I'm part of the anti-fascist autonomous movement a long time and got in contact 2015 with the Kurdish movement via the struggle in Kobano. And, yeah, so out of this also some time go on, I was, yeah, made the decision to go there, to see the fight because this is like really, to go to Rojava because this is like really a hope beacon in this world and to learn there what makes this revolution and what prices also to see the values and so on. I'm also feeling really connected to the, and because of that it's cool that I could can be here, feel really connected to the ideas of like cyberpunk. And I read a lot of William Gibson and so on. And the idea of, yeah, fighting actually also. I'm just taking a cardiac system from within with like all this stuff. So this is like also like influenced me a lot. And so I'm also like an IT professional and so this was like my two persons like on the one hand. I'm like anti-fascist kind of anarchist guy and on the other hand I'm like I really like to play with the internet to to go deep and to find the beauty there but also like see the really big dangers who lie there and so this was my perspective of going to Rojava. And yeah, so like to start with I maybe should explain some, yeah some of the rules are using and the first thing is I want to explain what is a hacker and because I think this is for me hacking is not something which has to do so much what you, with what you hack. So hacking is not something just IT people do or hacking is not something you have to be, you have to know how to program or so. Hacking is for me more like a view on the world. It's more like to see something and the system tells you for example this is an umbrella. The Gevillea in the Kurdish mountains sees this umbrella as a cape to hide them from from the drones. So for them it's not an umbrella in the capitalist modernity for them it's like it's like a tool to protect themselves and that is hacking to me. And so there are a lot of other examples of hacking especially in the struggles in the global south but also here so it's more like how you approach the world, how you see the world and yeah how to ask questions actually. Like how to repurpose the meaning of an object into I don't know a revolutionary purpose. Yes and I think there we come actually to a quite interesting point because it's like everything like capitalist modernity and democratic modernity is as I like to to terms with Öcalan. Ocalan being Abdullah Ocalan one of the leaders of the Kurdish movement that started the movement years ago. Yes and he envisioned these terms in his book I don't want to go too deep because I'm also not too safe to do this and but for me this there connected to hacking because it's also like you know everything around us is built by capitalist modernity every tool we have like also handy it's the internet everything it's like it's like it's like built by the capitalist modernity but the beauty is within that there is the democratic modernity resistance yeah there is a resistance like there couldn't be planet or a society where there's just capitalists that it's like there wouldn't be a planet actually there would maybe be a coin flying around in space I'm not sure probably really ugly coin but so like in everything you see around you and also this is awesome about us like everything what we are we have like this capitalist side and we have like the democratic modernity side and hacking for me is like to also a way of freeing this and like find like the beauty in like really ugly things for example there what there there is like these internet sticks you use to get internet and then people were looking at it and were like no this is not an internet stick this is actually a device which you can use to transfer a lot of you can use it for free and so so they were hacking it and we're like seeing the full potential and I think this is what capitalist modernity is doing with us they they they say we can just go one way they say that we just can do like in like really bipolar way and actually there are so many ways and so many possibilities and so yeah I hope it's kind of getting clear the idea of like how sometimes capitalism homogenizes reality and like this and as an opposite you were talking about this democratic impulse that exists in life in everything that is kind of a reflection of the diversity and differentiation and how one object can be used for many different purposes for example yes and and this you so and in this way when I was going to whatever I saw like a lot of hacker that's happening there as like on the one hand you have like you have like really the problematic situation that you don't have so much tools or not so much resources to get so so like people are getting really creative but on the other hand like you have this strong ideology you know this strong knowledge actually how to live because they giving the answer there and how to live something we don't have here and and so combined with like this all creativity there's actually like a big force but the problem there is that and then we need to talk about colonialism a little bit more is that what like how how if you listen and colonialism is working is actually to take like the resources from the colonized people and put it all in the center and me as I'm coming from center for me it's like I have had like all these resources you know I have the knowledge I had like I have like a PC and really early stages so I could learn a lot and also like approach these technologies which are used to suppress people right but I could have my own approach but in Roger you often find people who had not these access so you have actually like great hackers there but unfortunately they're missing some crucial tools to defend themselves against yeah against democratic against capitalist modernity and these tools are here that these tools are laying in the centers and then you actually get to the point where you come to like okay this is like the point where you get internationalists because then you realize okay we um so movements like in Rojava but also like you it's also like happening in in Mexico for example with the Separatists or if you look at with South America it's happening all over yeah and I think we also had like a talk about Guatemala and burning uh some uh some nice congress it's a congress there it's also happening there and so you start to realize okay to really overcome this um we need to work together and we need to connect and I think this is like one of them yeah main main learn from me and on their walls okay um they have in Rojava you learn to live in a way because I never really learned it in that way and we also talked before a little bit more about how hard it is to come back in this reality here because as an internationalist who went to Rojava come back you know yeah yeah and uh because then you then you actually have the knowledge about okay what how could you live and then you need to kind of fit in this reality over here again and which attacks you and so yeah this the point is to connect and and I think this is like a thing for like hacker communities uh and yeah in the in the central uh places of this world and Berlin and Germany for sure is one of these central places uh and I think there is a really need uh to to connect uh to these places and that means to go there to learn um as an equal as as equal yeah as comrades as comrades for sure and actually you go there and you need to listen a lot because we used to know we used who are talking and thinking okay we we you know we are at the forefront which is not true and the people uh in Rojava and the people in in Schiapas they are actually at the forefront of the fight against capitalist modernity so they have some crucial answers and we need to find our world in this and our world is listen there because this is like because when we do it the other way around we are being imperialist again but then come back and start to build up here with this knowledge and build equal connections and how to build a commune in Berlin and do this with this approach but also have in mind okay we need to share like knowledge for example so there is this great um hacker space movement around Europe and the US and I think it's also slowly spreading in the global south but I'm not 100% sure but this is like a thing we need to do more why is there are other people going to Rojava and build up hacker spaces this is like a thing where you know where you transfer the knowledge and um like this is a really uh yeah because when you when you are there you are like me on of a technology perspective I was there and was expecting okay let's see Freifunk and okay and uh you you actually uh having like the control over your infrastructure let's build the infrastructure which is not capitalist and then you realize okay no the knowledge is not there and the infrastructure uh is difficult to run without uh uh is difficult to run without this knowledge and but to run this infrastructure this is the need of the society you need resources you need uh knowledge and you need the support of others who can help to mediate that right because there is a embargo yes right so there are no resources that's one of the for the context for people who know Rojava what isn't an embargo from uh well the Syrian regime but also Turkey uh is attacking them and so they're kind of like enclosed right uh yeah so so the cameras over there need to make like deals with with people who they actually don't want to deal with but they need to run the infrastructure so um and then you you come back to Germany and then you see all these nice talks about people who actually have like ideas about that and then you think okay this needs to connect because otherwise uh how's this gonna work when we we need to share this knowledge we need we need to go there and actually also I think this is another part it's like to also see because when we're now in the world it's like we are at the brink like also with this whole corona thing it's it's like burning more and uh I think we soon will be at the point where we like the Western world where we need to make a decision and uh and we need to also also we need allies uh to fight and we need places to go uh when stuff goes really weird and bad here and doesn't look really well so for our resistance we also need Rojava and this is the same way around you know there is no uh yeah it's it's you you need to look at it in a holistic way and uh it's not going without anything and a problem I really see uh in like this hacker communities here is like really they you know they look at solutions which is fine they look at solutions of problems they have but these problems are not necessary problems as a struggle in the global south yeah exactly and oftentimes what often happens is that uh technologies try to build uh technical solutions for political problems and it should be the other way around it should be we should look at the world the political problem is and then think about you know what sort of technological infrastructure can we be able to solve like to to support that process right politically yeah yeah no but but this is also like this is another big point in which you also see like in uh in Rojava there you know there's it's like different around you know as uh as a group uh the people decide and like the needs of the people are the other thing which needs to find new solutions it's not the other way around that you you you say okay we uh this is your needs now like how we have it top down top down it's like how we have it here it's like you see all this propaganda and telling you you need to buy something huh this this corona thing is a good thing like before christmas there was a saying that it's like the patriotic thing you have to buy now and this is actually not the need of the society at all it's the need of the uh of of corporate yeah corporate powers corporate how how do how do people decide and locally uh communally from the bottom of Rojava can you tell us a bit more about this process um i can try um i actually was myself not so much involved in uh in this uh in these local community works i did others that are works but um what for what i'm know and what i saw and what i heard from comrades who were actually in these works it's like really you have like you have to like every street uh every like small um neighborhood um has like uh they meet and then they discuss problems and they have like uh these um these greater structure um so like a council or an assembly or something yes uh we are then these problems are discussed and there is this strong uh notion that like problems which can solve uh in the community itself it will be solved there should be solved by the way yeah and for sure should be so so far where you can see it really good is like um uh the self um the self defense units uh which kind of everybody has it like their own self defense units it's you you got a little bit confused by the time because they're also changing names often for whatever reasons but um so you have like in every every like community the christian community has like the self defense unit and there are like the woman's self defense unit and so on and so on and they are controlled by the local people uh in uh in this sense because they come from there there are other parts of um of self defense which are then more like on another stage like this is more this is a different kind of self defense because they are fighting against isis or like the turkish um uh the turkish army and so this is not like controlled directly by the local people because that wouldn't make sense uh but like for the local self defense or for like the demonstrations this is like this so interesting because it means that in in this society um what we would call the police is actually controlled by people they they they don't even police they just they just are um in direct or uh yeah like the people basically they respond to the people instead of to some bureaucrat of the politician or how it happens here right so that's very interesting i'm not actually sure because i'm allowed to share the story but i don't share it anyway uh because there is like one story i really like to um which for me like brings brings like the understanding of police and so on because this is like a contradiction also because like it like in 2011 uh it changed but for example people who were police before uh were in a kind of also in these policing positions after they're like in different kind of after the revolution after the revolution in uh in different kind of structures not all of them but so the mentality of like being the police being in charge and telling the people is sometimes still there so and so there was um but there are also like this local self defense for for example demonstrations there's not police there are these uh uh happy self defense units yeah the the self defense units of the people so when you make a demonstration then the self defense units of the people are around and not like uh like a broader policing unit which called as a ish and so there were like demonstrations i think it was about sugar or something i'm not sure um and and it was like big demonstration and people were really angry and so these as a ish forces came and were like because they still had like the kind of the old mindset where like oh you are not allowed to do these demonstrations here and this is like dangerous three forbids the demonstration but luckily there was this local self defense forces which say well you want to forbid this demonstration so now we lock you up yeah but i think it was in kamish low and so the self defense unit of the people uh locked up these other each forces who actually wanted to forbid uh this demonstration and then i think it was like going a lot of chaos around and in the end it was all solved but this shows um a little bit uh the democracy autonomy of people to the side or yeah so because there was a police unit who actually was still like oh no we we can decide and then but yeah when you have like your own self defense uh you can actually do something about it and not not being like uh like it's often over here and beyond self defense there's also like food competitive there's also like different types of organizations that are all about managing life right so this structure of bottom up decision happens in everything right they try to implement it you know they are like there are parts where where this is not implemented in this way yet and i'm actually like i'm two years here now i'm not 100% sure there is the roger the information center which have like some great resources and uh they have like a pdf big i really recommend looking up roger the information center for that because they are much more deeper knowledge they make a lot of interviews with people and so on so so yeah this is not really my expertise and but yeah you you have like a lot of cooperatives around especially woman cooperatives because this is like the main value of this like the friends over there also like it's the woman's revolution and there you see the progress the most and the women's are on the forefront of the fights and i think this is also like really an important part that there are only also only women groups right apart from the mixed groups right there are only women groups that decided to have autonomy over many decisions yes that's that's like there is an autonomous structure of women which uh which is completely autonomous uh and there is this system of uh co-chair so it means like positions that also is always like 50-50 like you have like you have not just one head of a city or something you have like a woman's head and like a co-president yes yeah co-president and that's everyone and this is like a principle you know you see every structure and i think this is like bringing um yeah this shows really how this is going and you actually see the the structures and the cooperatives who which have like most developed in the sense are like women structures and women cooperatives that is so interesting and can you maybe tell us a bit about uh like the everyday life there when you were there you said you were there eight months right yes so every day like how was the how is daily life there you know you were in the international miscommunity uh doing work about how does what does that look like about every day though well like my everyday life is not like the everyday life of the people in Washington to make this clear i'm i'm like uh in the international commune so i'm so so you have like different stages of being there and um like but normally you you sleep like together like in communal places and you have like a communal life so you sleep together you wake up and it depends on where you are scheduled uh you may be responsible for the for the day this is like the hardest job to rotate the cooking yeah it's a cooking but every day someone is responsible for cooking and then you have to cook this all the day long and this is but and so you wake up and you make uh spots together you clean together then you eat together and then you have like a meeting where you share its work like it's about who is doing what uh what kind of work needs to be done in the community yeah and and then there are like different works like there are for example in the commune we had like the environmental works where it was all about the garden but also it was like there were works with the society where people were teaching boxing lessons or something and uh there are also like media works or writing something or making like like a lot and um uh so you're doing these works and come together in the evening again and then you have like smaller groups uh it's called technical where you uh yeah kind of reflect over the day and not in a really long way it's more like in a way of you because often when you go there you had like some educations and uh there you learn to like see for example patriarchal behavior or like individualist behavior and a lot and you in these segments you are you need to reflect okay where do I have this over the day or where do I see it in my cameras and uh so therefore there you have the technique and uh technique is called technique yeah the critique and self-critique session something yes but it's actually like there's misunderstandings techniques are really short so it's like um and this is also a critique we often got in the commune that our techniques went like for an hour and so and cameras can say hey taking it for five minutes so um so you see also the different mentalities so but and and this is kind of like the daily structure and in the commune and this is like also the communal life and so these structures you find like how to live uh in this way you find in a lot of places where you go but this is working within uh within the movement like for families or so structures are different and they live the normal family life in a way but uh these these principles are carried out everywhere you you find these principles also like in the military structures but also like in uh yeah in the cooperative structures when you're like working the corporators you're also there you have taken me and you're also there try to see this and you also try to in a common way uh like share the work and so on so interesting because I even heard that um the army or the the sort of the fence forces are even democratic so but I don't know how true that is but I heard that they sort of kind of have this technique and then decide who is actually the leader no this is the way this way no this is the way and this is the urban this uh I think uh it's nice or uh anarchist perspective but um no uh they have techniques and it's really encouraged to criticize uh and uh like there's often the story told where like a small girl in kubana criticized actually uh the um uh the leader the leitung um the reverie it's called yeah yeah the the leader or the commander the commander of the forces in kubana with a really deep criticizing so so this is happening uh but uh it doesn't mean um like like who to command uh this is a different story I just not like in in this democratic way decided because that isn't working as a reality there and yeah you need structures to fight the fight and you also need to understand you know this is not like the perfect society also it's like it's a revolution ongoing so when you also can't uh can't just give everything away and say well you are now a free society without and then you have actually like war bands going around because like patriarchy behaviors so we need to control this because of that it's not a really good idea of when you decide to have like an army kind of structure out of a political reason uh to to give them to to have so this is an urban myth okay don't don't don't fall don't fall for this myth lovely lovely lovely um so we have uh about 20 more minutes I'm going to check if there are any questions um around here on the chat uh to see what people have said uh no no you don't have any questions but I welcome questions from the audience if they want to uh ask anything um I have many questions but I think you have you will have something else to say no yeah I have some ideas because the talk was actually like how to live and I think we we did that we did that a lot and but there was also the part what to do it's a very important one what to do ccc this is for you Hakesh yeah what to do um and so just you know they're like one big problems are actually uh and I also experiences it's like as a terror with which on the society is come from like drone strikes which happening with drone strikes yeah which happening not just in Rojava it's actually a big problem and so actually the trends sometimes use uh these two flight radars which was also coming out of of hacking community and so like an idea which is around but they have legs of knowledge and also it's actually to implement a way of drone drone 20 24 7 like like a page where you can see the movement of the drones oh wow and uh that would be actually a kind of really useful tool it's not useful for us here because we don't have drone strikes but if you feel the terror which these drone strikes have and and this appearance of the drones alone have on your everyday life this is like a really big need actually in like so like basically how to create a back end that allows you to detect drones that are flying and yeah so to some satellite or how would that work yeah how do you imagine that working I think like detecting drones is actually not that hard because they're not so so so I actually think there would be also technical ways to detect drones with and like cheap Raspberry Pi device kind of things but the other way would be to give like people access to like just say hey here's the drone and so like have like some channels uh where you have like trusted contacts with can uh yeah and and so that this kind of threats so then actually that had like two positive things that one positive thing is like people in the region could see you over there's a drone there's a drone but the other thing is you could show the world how much drones are actually flying around and terrorizing the people because the one thing is the drones try but the other thing is that these things are constantly over your head and you feel like okay it could happen any time and you just don't know and this is like I think this is like a project if somebody feels feels to do something stuff this is a project to go in and the other thing I mentioned it already is like to go there yeah experience experiences but also learn there and but bring your potential also there like bring your knowledge there and transfer the knowledge and this can be done uh like in many ways I think this is like um yeah and the other thing is do stuff here yeah and and really good examples is like to look at uh like there is a hacker like she's called Phineas Fisher uh look at look her up with she Phineas Fisher uh she did some great hacking and of banks and so on and uh and and her last uh her last announcement is really a good one and read this and another good example which also came out of the ccc actually this theater comics I think they don't exist anymore but they had during the hour of spring like in Egypt through uh that for in also in Syria I think in Syria they elated a lot of surveillance data and in Egypt I think they uh provided internet when the government shut down the internet so these are good examples to follow up like alternative uh just media those infrastructures of resistance yes but also like see what is our responsibility here because you know we this resource transfer will not happen like fast yeah so uh so we also need to do with our knowledge with our resources we need to do good stuff if there are any hackers out there who would like to support this idea of building this map for the drones and stuff how can they get in touch who can they contact this is a good idea I didn't talk about this um but they probably could get in contact with internationalist community on facebook and they're they're actually on facebook but also like they have like email addresses and so on uh with pgp and everything yeah um yeah and uh yeah on some way or another you will probably get then also in contact with me because they also know me and so on so like we say in contact yeah I think that would be actually also with any other crazy ideas you have you can you can go contact the internationalist community because they're also used to uh used to uh to like internationalists this is also another thing in an approach because uh for like other structures on rojava for example it's it's a little bit hard to have like us with our mentality coming there and you know sometimes they say we don't want to move uh deal with your mentality and more and just go to the internationalist community and know how to deal with you because you know you you come there and you think you know everything and this is a problem yeah of course and especially a problem if you would like and like this take kind of thing because then you think you know everything and you know how to do stuff and it's actually not working there like this yeah the reality is different yes we always have to look at your reality and where you are and to deciding the side and factor are the people and not you know here you can go to like some government and try to argue with them and sometimes they will listen to you if you are a hacker but this there you have to go to the people and argue with them because they will tell you what to do and you not just kind of go there and say hey we do it like this yeah of course because me and my european mind is telling you this is the right way they will really fast tell you this is democracy brother yeah this is also a lesson you need to learn there so the teaming values uh to replica of the revolution especially understand is democracy women's liberation and ecology yes and actually this and actually um like like the woman's revolution as a youth uh structure is also uh uh independent in a way so the youth the youth uh uh the youngsters the young so because they are also like um it's just important so just to mention that uh that uh that the youth uh has like an autonomous world also an autonomous world to play there and yeah but ecology uh women's liberation and uh like these autonomous uh things yeah this and this you also find here you find there but i think it might be really possible to also find it here too no this this is the dialectic way uh because for sure it's here also it's also like how we are like kind of capitalist persons but within us there's also like the democratic side and we need also to find this but this is something where you get really help in rojava because they have like a lot of knowledge about this yeah and how to build this democratic confederation of you know yeah but also like how to how to approach this you know this take me as this communal life um so this is all stuff you you it's it's really hard to build here you need you need these spaces which are liberated from capitalist uh to really go deeper with that because over here like i from for myself it was like being there for eight months i made in like just my personal uh approach on how to fight how to live uh i made i think over here i would need five years to to get there and there it was like okay in some months uh i i actually uh yeah learned so much so so because of that you need these these free free spaces and this is like the value and because of that we need to protect also like this is also our fight yeah because without these places we will have a powerful time so yeah and this is also why um this protection uh because this is also a question i often get asked like you say well you you you fighting here and so what what does what are you bringing to us for example and so on and i would always answer well if there would be water or places like sabbatistas or whatever uh there there wouldn't be hope like what was our hope for me yeah and the friends the comrades over there this is like hope that brings me up also towards the sabbatista you know they're coming i think next year we're organizing they're coming here to Europe as i think uh this is hope you know they they're this are like the beacons of hope in this in this world which uh which is like in the total group of this capitalist minority and so they are and because of that we need to fight yeah we need to fight we need to weave all these uh revolutionary imaginaries of the world right so they become stronger together yes you know and and this it will just go together yeah there and this is like the internationalist perspective you know you it doesn't really matter where you fight but uh you need to connect with each other and then with that force we we were overthrows us yeah uh but yeah you just don't divide so much no we're we're beyond dividing yeah we need to go dividing we did like the last hundred years or five hundred or five thousand yeah yeah do you have anything else you would like to share uh no actually yeah well no i i'm not doing this uh no greetings to all of my friends greetings to everybody who sees um and maybe there's a question somebody asked just now actually what are you organizing next year that's a good question but i think that's not a question to me or but maybe maybe it was related to the zapatistas ah yeah maybe this i i'm not that you can probably tell you know the zapatistas uh which is uh another revolutionary group uh in the south of Mexico in Chiapas uh they are coming not just to Europe actually but to other parts of the world uh yeah to to to come and spread their knowledge and to share also there with the with the local experiences of resistance here so watch out for that i think you will be here around september maybe yeah yeah and yeah with many migrant groups and collectives around berlin we are also helping to organize they're coming to berlin because they're also going to lasagna i think in france and also many other parts made autonomous places all over europe uh so so watch out for that and of course if there is an opportunity to connect them to internationalists and uh to the Kurdish movement that should also happen i guess i think that's already that's already happening exactly i'm i'm really sure i wrote something that's a woman movement uh is connecting there yeah exactly no no of course yeah this is all happening behind no not in the screen no yeah and then like my last word would be uh that i wish you all a really uh big success in your fights and your hate and whatever you do to to destroy this capitalist modernity and uh hopefully we see us uh somewhere on the way because it's a joint way so yes sir captain we say and that's the Kurdish word for success sir captain sir captain and that's you always say when you leave somebody because you always wish your camera a lot of success cool i wish you a lot of success too brother yes sir captain nice to meet you back so my name is Julio uh this was bear uh coming to you live from berlin um thank you so much