He mentioned his father, whom I looked up - he's clearly from an extremely political family.

Hussein al-Sharaa was an Arab nationalist student activist for the Nasserists in Syria. He was imprisoned by Syrian neo-Ba'athists during the anti-Nasserist purges initiated after the 1961 and 1963 coup d'états, which broke up the United Arab Republic and propelled the Arab Socialist Ba'ath party to power.[5] Al-Sharaa later escaped prison to complete his higher studies in Iraq in 1971. During this period, he travelled to Jordan to co-operate with the Palestinian fedayeen of the Palestine Liberation Organization. After returning to Syria in the 1970s, then under Hafez al-Assad's rule, he was again imprisoned before being released and finding asylum in Saudi Arabia.

Another bit of the interview has Rory Stewart asking him what he learned in prison, he spent some time in abu Ghraib, then other prisons.

He has a very hard position, competing armed factions, damaged infrastructure. At least there's natural gas. Someone who sounds reasonable coming out of a daesh faction is an unimaginably good outcome after Russia's successful elimination of so many. Good thing Russian foreign policy is universally recognized as a cyniical murderous failure.

It would be really nice if they could be helped along instead of being hindered by Israeli and Turkish occupations of Syrian territory and Assad era US sanctions.

he mentioned Brazil and Rwanda among countries whose transitions he had learned about
One of these cases is not like the other.

His informants all told the same story: the first RPF soldiers they saw were nice and cheerful and there was no problem with them. But a day or two later other soldiers came. These, obviously selected killer teams, assembled the people for a "peace and reconciliation meeting," which they attended without fear and during which they were indiscriminately slaughtered. Gersony's conclusion was that between early April and mid-September 1994 the RPF had killed between 25,000 and 45,000 people, including Tutsi.

Good thing Russian foreign policy is universally recognized as a cyniical murderous failure.

In the White House, Russian foreign policy is regarded as a cynical and murderous success.

Maybe the original statement was sarcasm?

"Are you being ironic?"

"I don't even know anymore."

5: Or at least it could be with a little help from some newfound friends.

I just got back from trying to hear our Oregon senator Ron Wyden today at the Hillsboro middle school auditorium. The place was at capacity, and we got turned away along with a couple hundred other people. There is another one this afternoon at Scappoose that we are going to try to attend.