 But I wanted to start with, I suppose, a bit of an introduction to the struggle in Rajava, especially from your perspective. You've been someone who's been following this for a while now. A few years. Yeah. So I wonder if you could explain, I suppose, to the audience, why you've been so interested in what's going on there and a bit of background to, I suppose, why, why do the left follow what's going on there? Well, I mean, this is one of the most exciting political experiments really since the anarchists in Spain in the 1930s is one of the few occasions when people have actually had an extensive stretch of territory in which to try to see if libertarian socialist ideas can really be put into practice and actually work on the ground with a lot of really startling success, to be honest. I first found out about the revolution in Rajava when people there contacted me and, you know, at first, I think everyone reacted of a certain degree of incredulity. I mean, is this really true? Could this be happening? Could all of this been happening for all these years? And I'd never heard about it, but, you know, the more I learned, the more I was really struck by how profound an historical experiment it really was. In what way? So what's that mean? I mean, what we're talking about is really something that started within the PKK, which is the guerrilla movement. And it's a larger political movement within Turkey, which is originally a separate Marxist Leninist separatist movement. Over time, it has evolved. And often this is attributed almost exclusively to the personality of one person or the head of the PKK, Abdullah Ojalon, although in fact, a lot of what happened within the PKK was the result of internal struggle, especially women's struggle within the organization itself. What Ojalon has to be, his credit is that he was open to it, which for the most part, these sort of old patriarchal Marxist Leninist types are not. And gradually over time, PKK transformed from relatively traditional national liberation struggle to was pushing for a separate Kurdish state to something really different. A group whose major planks are social ecology, a lot of it inspired by Murray Bookchin, although they have their own version of democratic and federalism that they've developed, partly based on their own experience, partly on Kurdish traditions and partly based on anarchist theory. And so you have social ecology, direct democracy and women's liberation being sort of primary planks of a social struggle, which no longer actually desires a separate state at all. In fact, sees itself as an essential opposition to the very idea of a state. This is something which we haven't seen anything really like it happen in many years, and there's a Zapatistas, some closest parallel one can think of. But even the Zapatistas don't really control a contiguous territory, whereas these people actually do. And there's been, I suppose, what could seem a somewhat bizarre or strange or unlikely alliance between this movement in Rajava, liberation, libertarian socialist and the United States. So it was the combination of those two forces that was capable of defeating ISIS since 2014, and it is protection from the United States. From the United States, it's protected Rajava from other enemies from Turkey, which is what we'll get on to in a moment. If you want me to do the background, I can. Oh, there's a PKK originally that had this profound transformation. What happened in Syria was PYD. It was a political party with very similar ideology. Also follows the writings of Ojalana whatnot. They are not directly connected. But during the Syrian Revolution, essentially the Syrian government pulled out of that area. It had been very strongly organized, the Kurdish parts of Syria. And negotiations ensued, and they basically talked to Syrian forces into just pulling out and leaving people there to handle their own affairs. I mean, they took everything when they left. I mean, down to the light bulbs, you know, I mean, all government offices were stripped of everything, the Syrian government, essentially, and the sort of lackeys and flunkies and sort of magnates who had privatized all the stuff and sort of crony capitalists all took off too. So they were an incredibly advantageous situation. All the government buildings had nothing in them, but they were empty. And they suddenly had the situation where they were actually able to put the things they'd been working out and discussing in theory for 20 years into effect. Now, at first, basically, nobody noticed them. Then there were several attacks from various jihadists, largely seemed to have been funded, if not direct, absolutely directed by the Turkish secret police. But gradually, the Kurdish region ended up in a conflict with ISIS. ISIS, well, the origins of ISIS still remain obscure, but it's very clear that Turkish intelligence along with various Gulf state intelligence had a lot to do with putting them together, and they seem to have coordinated quite well with Turkish authorities of various kinds. They were trading with Turkey. For example, during the height of ISIS, the caliphate was openly trading oil. We have Turkey while the Kurdish region was under total embargo. They couldn't bring in Sun and Law was involved. Yes, he was. He was, I believe, minister of energy or something. Yeah, I mean, it was it was pretty it's one of these situations where everyone in the region knows what's going on, but you're not allowed to say it on TV outside of, you know, in Europe or America. I mean, they constantly find high ranking ISIS officers when they kill them, you know, with Turkish intelligence ID in their pockets. I mean, really blatant stuff like that, but still somehow it was like, how could you possibly suggest that a NATO ally is dealing with ISIS here? We're all not supposed to talk about it. But so ISIS, which is essentially acting as a Turkish proxy, was trying to take out the Kurdish region of North Syria to consolidate their power there and especially to consolidate the border with Turkey, which is where they're getting their supplies. They went after Kobane, which is the flattest area and the easiest to attack. And it turned into this epic struggle in which essentially the U.S. was forced for various reasons to align themselves with people who are basically very close to a bunch of anarchists. It's a very weird historical situation. But they were caught in the middle and eventually an alliance of convenience followed. I always emphasize this was a military alliance and not a political alliance. For example, the American government has never supported Rojava being part of the peace process in Syria. They don't have a place at the table at all, even though these tiny little political parties basically represent nobody on the ground. Do Russia actually supports Rojava being in the peace process? And America doesn't. Most people don't know that. There was a military alliance simply because they both have the same enemy. And as a result, there have been certain attachments, particularly personal attachments. You know, a lot of the Americans who were down there ended up feeling well, these guys are our friends are the only people who we can actually trust and feel very strongly that they shouldn't be thrown to the wolves. There's also a practical matter. A lot of the American officers say, well, look, if we ally with someone and then allow them to be completely wiped out the moment, they're no longer convenient to us by our own allies. Well, no one's ever going to rely with us again.