IS and The Kurdish Revolution: Ideas on the Ground!

While IS continue to gain ground in the Middle East it is vital that we all get our heads around who the Kurds are, where they came from, and what they aspire to. Humanity's future is tied up in theirs and they map possibilities we can learn from. 

Political maps have a horrid habit of dividing people for the sake of governing over them. Or as a flat-mate of mine used to say "Borders are imaginary lines separating one group of people's imaginary rights from those of another". 

The Kurdish ethnic communities, Indo-European in descent and speaking various languages; Iranian, by and large but represented in bordering Iraq, Syria and Turkey are a classic example of the top-down statist nastiness that is 'border control'. And by 'border control' I mean the control of peoples using borders. 

A Brief Dystory* of the Kurdish People

As an ethnic group the Kurdish people are a huge melting pot, forming as a people in a place that is such an important geographical axis in world history. It makes them rich in legend, culture, language and diversity. but also disparate and subject to oppression by their many neighbours and - not having a state to represent them - ignored, by and large, by world powers. 

Kurdistan, as an entity, came into its own in the medieval period as a series of related but autonomous emirates organised under a shah. In the sixteenth century the Ottoman empire put and end to this with their occupation and centralisation of power, leading to the first organised Kurdish resistance and fight for self-rule, leading to a fully-formed Kurdish nationalism after World War 1 as the western powers carved up the map for their own greedy gain. So a conspiracy of Turkish, Iraqi, British and other European agencies have all but put an end to Kurdish hopes of a nation state to call home - free from persecution; safe from within their borders: their own 'Holy Land' as it were. 

Iraq and the KRG

There is, today (since 2006) a Kurdish regional government in Iraq (KRG) with its own Prime Minister, flag, and so on. But the majority of Kurds are resident of Turkey. 

Syria and the YPG

The "People's Protection Units" (YPG) are a stateless militia operating in Syria to protect Syrian Kurds from attack with the city of Kobane (a.k.a Ayn al-Arab) in norther Syria being a particular flashpoint and strategic area in the concept of a Kurdish Syria. 

Turkey and the PKK

The "Kurdish Workers Party" (PKK) founded way back in 1978, is another armed struggle of resistance against state repression of Kurds: this time in Turkey. The PKK was founded by Abdullah Öcalan "Apo" and is, according to NATO, a terrorist organisation. However, since the PKK are not known to attack unarmed civilians and are busy resisting IS, international politicos may change their mind on this. 

Apo was a Leninist organisation at first but has abandoned this agenda for a fluid and contextual form of anarchism, influenced greatly by Mikhail Bakunin and by Murray Bookchin: "Democratic Confederalism". 

Today, amidst the chaos of the middle east conflict, aided and abetted by a confused and avaricious Saudi-Western oil pact, the PKK are on the move and on the grow, These are, of course, precarious and unstable times. 

Roarmag puts it like this: "The Kurdish struggle, however, is anything but narrowly nationalistic. In the mountains above Erbil, in the ancient heartland of Kurdistan winding across the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, a social revolution has been born." 

The PKK have taken to this Democratic Confederalism and their ecologically-minded and feminist egalitarianism is capturing the imaginations of Kurdish people in Turkey. 

Like any organisation there is a shadowy side and many unanswered questions. The PKK is committed to violence as a means to a just end and inevitably this leads to internal contradictions between liberty and authoritarianism. 

But what they demonstrate - and this is the exciting bit - is that people can have and do want stateless autonomy. We saw it in Spain in the 1930s and in Korea in the early 20th Century. In both cases it wasn't the unworkability of anarchism that destroyed it but the insatiability of the state from without, imposing its "protection" on otherwise self-organising people. 

You won't read much about the PKK, or the YPG in the mainstream press - the revolution will be relativised rather than televised - but keep your radical ear to the ground because change and resistance doesn't mean rockets from drones or 'boots on the ground' it means power from the people building a new world in the shell of the old. 

HT: @RevdRay and @AnotherGreen

*Dystory - A History of how it all went wrong! 

Assange and the Farce of British Justice

Today, according to Ecuadorian officials, the UK government has threatened to remove Julian Assange from their embassy by force. Julian Assange stands accused -but not charged - of rape and sexual assault in Sweden. He is also charged - but in secret and without evidence or trial - of crimes against the state in the USA.

The USA want Julian Assange and their client kings in Sweden and the UK are willing to lose face to hand him over. Just as they were willing to lose credibility over the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, the sort of atrocities committed by UK and US troops in Iraq, revealed by Assange's Wikileaks may still be going on around the world. Indeed Barack Obama continues to fund armed drones to assassinate civilians in other countries without trial or evidence. 

In medieval Britain, if someone was accused of a crime they could seek sanctuary in particular churches and often were given the opportunity to forfeit any rights and citizenship in order to be exiled from the country.

The Church was an appropriate place for this right of exit from the excesses of the realm: it was seen as a place of citizenship elsewhere - citizenship in heaven - so it was beyond the jurisdiction of any ruler.

Since the "Wars of Religions" the honour given to ideas of God have been transferred to the state. Naturally this means that the role of offering sanctuary and asylum now falls with Embassies rather than Churches.

Julian Assange, after being under house-arrest for nearly two years, which followed voluntarily remaining in Sweden to help police with their investigations, is now in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

British government officials have offered assurances that, were Assange to be extradited to Sweden, he would not be then passed on the USA, without due process. Ahem! But how can we trust a government or even a judiciary who have pursued one man with such enthusiasm despite the fact that he has never even been charged with anything, let alone found guilty.

Now, the UK government have threatened to force their way into the Ecuadorian embassy in order to arrest a man who has not been charged with any crime. And yet they still claim there is no political motivation for hounding him? Who are they kidding?

Our government took us to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq based on the lies and promises of the US government. Now they are chasing the leader of the only news agency worthy of the name because freedom of speech and information threatens the licentious violence of governments and corporations.

Today the UK government has shown its full hand. There is little pretence of either justice or goodness in the actions of a government who would rather risk the integrity of every embassy in Britain to secure the arrest of a man of peace than allow justice to be seen to be done. 

ASBO Activist Calls Time On War

ASBO Activist Calls Time on War

ASBO to ban anti-war activist from City of Westminster for 10 years

Chris Cole, (Right) at Downing Street in October. 

A Christian peace activist has been served notice by the Metropolitan Police that they are seeking an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) to exclude him from the City of Westminster for ten years.   

Chris Cole (48) from Cowley, Oxford was served with papers as he attended a pre-trial hearing following a demonstration at Downing Street on October 7^th to mark the 10^th anniversary of the Afghanistan War.  

Cole, along with Catholic Priest Fr Martin Newell face charges of criminal damage following the pouring of paint on the Downing Street pavement.

The ASBO seek  to ban Cole from being in the City of Westminster except while passing through as a passenger on the London Underground;  being in possession of any can of spray paint, tin of paint, marker pen, chalk or charcoal in any place outside the city of Oxford or being in possession of bolt croppers in any place outside the city of Oxford.   

The application for the ASBO sites fourteen occasions over the past twenty-one years that Cole has been arrested at anti-war protests involving spray paint or bolt croppers.

Chris Cole said “Waging war is the great anti-social behaviour of our time.  Thousands of people have been killed and injured in the great follies of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, while billions have been wasted on preparations for nuclear war and arms companies continue to make vast profits from hawking  weaponry around the globe.  Rather than spraying bullets in Iraq or spilling blood in Afghanistan, I have spilled paint on the Downing Street pavement and sprayed paint on the MoD walls.  In all honesty, which is the real anti-social behaviour here?”  

The application for the ASBO on Cole will take place at the end of his trial for the protest at Downing Street, a date for which is yet to be set. In 2005, a District Judge refused to impose an ASBO on anti-war activist Lindis Percy. District Judge Anderson said: "I am firmly of the view courts ought not to allow anti-social behaviour orders to be used as a club to beat down the expression of legitimate comment and the dissemination of views of matters of public concern."

Tony Blair: "The West is too apologetic and not egocentric enough"

In his response to the Chilcot enquiry Tony Blair - consummate politician - threw in the usual vagaries and emotive rhetoric to disguise his complete inability to grasp, or at least confess, what's going on. Over the years I've come to think that Blair really does believe the stuff he says.

Today he claims 'the west' should stop apologising and being wretched about the situation in Iran; it's not Britain's fault. We didn't create an unstable middle-east. We didn't?! Did they close down Tony's public library first? Does he know nothing of the history of Iraq and Iran. Britain has always been directly involved in shaping the territories and politics of Iraq/Iran/Kuwait/Palestine. Since British Petroleum was in short trousers we've been in their up to our arses in Arab blood and oil and doing very well out of it, thank you very much.

But no! Not for Tony Blair who seems to be the only one who knows what's really going on and has to patiently explain it to the rest of us thick-heads. Poor dear. Tony Blair claims that Iranian foreign policy is based on their unexplainable, irrational, and aimless dislike of 'our way of life'. This rhetoric was all the rage when W. Bush was US President - it was stupid then and it's stupid now.

In Tony-Blair-Land Britain is an innocent victim of a psychotic bullying Islamic Orient that - no matter how lovely he is - doesn't like him. He's terribly hurt. Blair is like the school yard bully who hits other children then complains to the dinner lady that no one will play with him. .... Except Blair could do it with tanks and rockets and whole 'kin countries.

That man needs a strong sedative and a quiet, soft-walled room.