Căn nhà được bà mua, đặt trả 500 000 nkr cho ngân hàng, và trả thêm vào trong 4 năm qua là 400000 nkr. Nay ngân hàng và chính phủ tước đoạt lại (foreclosure). Một thí dụ điển hình của "di sản lãnh thổ tiền nhân"!
Bà Ingunn Sigurdsdatter cùng gia đình đồng nỗ lực vượt thoát hệ thống nhà nước bằng cách tự chủ, làm chả cuốn (spring roles) trao đổi với dân chúng. Nhưng bị ủy ban nhà nước đến sách nhiểu (xin xem đoạn phim trong bài trước).
Sự kiện tuyên bố căn nhà này thành NICELAND, chỉ với mục tiêu là hành động đầu tiên mở đầu cho cao trào tự do chủ quyền con người tự trị đối kháng định chế nhà nước (the state) tại Nauy. Quan điểm trọng tâm của bà trong tuyên bố này là KHÔNG AI LÀM CHỦ QUẢ ĐIẠ CẦU NÀY, nó là của chung, không ai được quyền chiếm hữu hay mua bán nó như tập đoàn định chế nhà nước các nơi đang nhân danh và thực hiện! Khi sinh ra, tự nhiên mỗi cá nhân có quyền tự do sinh sống trên một mảnh đất mà không cần mua lại hay xin phép của ai hết, cũng như quyền tự do trao đổi tương tác với mọi cá nhân bình đẳng đặt trên nền tảng tương trọng và hỗ trợ nhau, và không cần một ai cai trị điều khiển.
Hành động và tuyên ngôn táo bạo của bà, dù đơn độc nhỏ bé, nhưng Dám nghĩ, dám nói và dám thực hiện này sẽ là tiếng nói mở đầu cho các cao trào chủ quyền tự trị tự do sau này!
Bà v Ingunn Sigurdsdatter gửi kháng thư chống việc chiếm cứ Niceland của nhà nước Nauy
Căn nhà này vào Ngày 28-10-2014, nhà nước Nauy quyết định dùng bạo lực nhà nước đến chiếm đóng NICELAND,
Theo ký giả chuyên ngành Trung Đông Pepe Escobar trong bài phóng sự The Kobani riddle
và ký giả của tờ The Guardian tựa đề "Tại sao thế giới tảng lờ cuộc cách mạng tại Kurds Syria" "Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria? - thì các cộng đồng tại khu vực đang bị chiến tranh quyền lực Mỹ xâu xé cũng đang đồng thuận xây dựng một xã hội tương đồng với nguyên lý dân chủ trực tiếp này, và cũng đang bị Mỹ, Nga, Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ, Arab Saudi tìm cách phá hoại tiêu diệt.
Đại đa số quần chúng bị nhồi sọ rằng định chế xã hội họ đang có nền dân chủ xã hội gián tiếp, dù đang băng hoại gây chiến tranh, bất công và lũng đoạn, là tốt nhất và cuối cùng!!!
Họ bỏ quên Thụy Sĩ, và hôm nay cố tình tảng lờ dân cư KOBANI đang cả gan thực hiện điều cấm kỵ: DÁM ĂN TRÁI CẤM CHÍNH TRỊ độc lập tản quyền tự trị phi chính phủ nhà nước (the state). Dĩ nhiên không phải là họ hoang tưởng không thể thực hiện, mà chính bọn nhà nước quyền chính đương đại KHÔNG THỂ ĐỂ CHO HỌ THỰC HIỆN. Vì nó có cơ hội trở thành gương "xấu" cho các nơi, với khả năng dẫn đến sự tuyệt chủng của định chế quốc gia nhà nước (nation state) hiện nay đang tung hoành khắp toàn cầu.
nhanchu
==
The main purpose of the event is: to establish a solid precedence and show an example of how to take your sovereign powers back, being the divine essence and creator force that we are. Being heard, being loud enough, loving enough, clear enough and transparent enough. The event will be broadcast far and wide, and the Norwegian government will receive a delegation from Niceland after the ceremony offering peaceful settlement and an invitation to co-create on the terms that are in accordance with respect for the sovereign principle of the earth, sky, all of nature animals, humans.
BẢN TUYÊN CÁO THÀNH LẬP CHỦ QUYỀN DÂN CƯ NICELAND
=======
 |
All rights preserved without prejudice
Every word and spellings within this document, shall be interpreted according to my intention and will alone and are not subject to assumptions or presumptions of any kind that interfere with my free will.
Niceland on the 22.02.2014 AD
RECORD OF ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SOVEREIGN ESTATE OF NICELAND
Declaration of Peace and Record of the Establishment of the Estate of Niceland on the 22.02.2014 AD
I, Ingunn Sigurdsdatter, being of sound mind, over the age of 21 years, have first hand knowledge of the facts stated herein. I was born on the land of Lørenskog, Norge, a Kingdom established as a nation after winning Independence from Denmark and Sweden. I am not a created entity, a corporation, or a subject to any imposed jurisdiction or legal entity. I, Ingunn Sigurdsdatter am eternal essence sprung forth from the Creation and as such part of it. While a sojourner on this earth, I am an inhabitant of a piece of land commonly known as SKIPPERGT 13, 3732 SKIEN which used to be incorporated into the “MUNICIPALITY OF SKIEN” and which was REGISTERED by the TITLENR..... in the “STATE REGISTRY” ( Statens Kartverk). The REGISTRATION was cancelled on the 28.02.2014. My birthday, from what I gather from hearsay, is on the 22nd of April, the Earths Day, and the act of establishing Niceland is my contribution towards honoring the earth and reinstating her as sovereign.
The piece of land formerly known as SKIPPERGT 13, 3732 SKIEN is hereby established as a sovereign estate by the new name of NICELAND. I am part of the Creator source who created all land and I derive my sovereign right to pronounce my home a sovereign estate from this mere fact, and from the inherent right of all creator beings to live in peaceful co-creation on planet earth, respecting the equal right of all other living beings, including the earth in all its manifestations, human beings and animals of all kinds. I do not claim ownership since no-one can own the earth we live upon.
I also derive my sovereign right to establish this piece of land as a sovereign estate in answer to the acts of aggression and the fraud perpetrated upon us, the people, the animals and Mother Earth through the systems of slavery run by corporate forces carrying many names, but represented among others by the entity masquerading as the representative of the people ,“THE KINGDOM OF NORWAY” in collaboration with corporate private banking systems and other entities, both national and foreign. The acts of collusion and fraud constitute per se a breach of any eventual trust, and collapse of legitimate, if not lawful claim. The estate of Niceland is firmely established on land, and no maritime jurisdiction can ever be applied to it.
Niceland and all of the estates inhabitants, hereby declares its peace with all of the men, women and all animals on our planet earth, and its intention of honoring all other living creatures equal rights to finding a peaceful abode on the planet.
I hereby declare that any claims against the estate of Niceland are cancelled by this act of declaring Niceland a sovereign estate. All previous claims directed against the previous SKIPPERGT 13 were fraudulent and based on the modus operandi and assumptions of the slavery system operated by the banks and the governments, primarily, as shown by the attached affadavit/record of events. The fraud also consisted in the creation of a split title to SKIPPERGT 13, where the alloidal title was assigned to the“MUNICIPALITY OF SKIEN”/”THE KINGDOM OF NORWAY” and became manifest through the imposition of property taxes and the assumed right to foreclose upon the property if any discord would arise between the “MUNICIPALITY OF SKIEN”/“KINGDOM OF NORWAY” and the former holder of the equity title/INGUNN RØISELAND. These facts were never revealed to the general public and indicate an intention to deceive.
My claim to this particular estate is founded in the fact that we have been living four years on this piece of land. Upon the purchase of SKIPPERGT 13, I gave the bank 500 000 nkr. Since then we have invested 400 000 nkr in the property, which represents many thousand hours of work,-this meaning that I cannot make a stronger claim to another piece of land than to this one. So the claim is based on our right to live peacefully on a piece of land in my country of birth. But, by establishing Niceland, we also dedicate half of the land and the property to activities which are beneficial for community-building, and we will always have 50% of the area available for others to live and to join in active co-creation to lift ourselves and the earth from millenias of abuse.
The inhabitants of Niceland are the families of Ingunn Sigurdsdatter and Michael, as well as other men and women seeking peaceful abode.
We establish the sovereign estate of Niceland with the intention of promoting peace, prosperity and happiness for every living being on this planet earth, and we will never participate in causing harm against our fellow brothers and sisters, accepting full liability in all areas of life.
Any acts of aggression against Niceland or its inhabitants will be considered as against all of the universal laws, with special mention to the law of free will, and the natural living man or woman will be made liable for the harm without the corporate protection, as stated by our sovereign will.
Furthermore, the inhabitants of Niceland retain their birthright to travel across and engage in commerce or any contractual or other relation with any inhabitant in any region of our planet earth.
Page 3: RECORD OF ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SOVEREIGN ESTATE OF NICELAND
The inhabitants of Niceland bid you our peace, respect and deepfelt gratitude for sharing the experience as human inbodyments on the earth at this time.
In Lak'ech
Duly signed and represented on the date of 22.02.2014, Niceland
All rights reserved without prejudice, nunc pro tunc, praetera
==
THE ROVING EYE
The Kobani riddle
By Pepe Escobar
The brave women of Kobani - where Syrian Kurds are desperately fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh - are about to be betrayed by the "international community". These women warriors, apart from Caliph Ibrahim's goons, are also fighting treacherous agendas by the US, Turkey and the administration of Iraqi Kurdistan. So what's the real deal in Kobani?
Let's start by talking about Rojava. The full meaning of Rojava - the three mostly Kurdish provinces of northern Syria - is conveyed in this editorial (in Turkish) published by jailed activist Kenan Kirkaya. He argues that Rojava is the home of a "revolutionary model" that no less than challenges "the hegemony of the
capitalist, nation-state system" - way beyond its regional "meaning for Kurds, or for Syrians or Kurdistan."
Kobani - an agricultural region - happens to be at the epicenter of this non-violent experiment in democracy, made possible by an arrangement early on during the Syrian tragedy between Damascus and Rojava (you don't go for regime change against us, we leave you alone). Here, for instance, it's argued that "even if only a single aspect of true socialism were able to survive there, millions of discontented people would be drawn to Kobani."
In Rojava, decision-making is via popular assemblies - multicultural and multi-religious. The top three officers in each municipality are a Kurd, an Arab and an Assyrian or Armenian Christian; and at least one of these three must be a woman. Non-Kurd minorities have their own institutions and speak their own languages.
Among a myriad of women's and youth councils, there is also an increasingly famous feminist army, the YJA Star militia ("Union of Free Women", with the "star" symbolizing Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar).
The symbolism could not be more graphic; think of the forces of Ishtar (Mesopotamia) fighting the forces of ISIS (originally an Egyptian goddess), now transmogrified into an intolerant Caliphate. In the young 21st century, it's the female barricades of Kobani that are in the forefront fighting fascism.
Inevitably there should be quite a few points of intersection between the International Brigades fighting fascism in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, as stressed by one of the very few articles about it published in Western mainstream media.
If these components were not enough to drive crazy deeply intolerant Wahhabis and Takfiris (and their powerful Gulf petrodollar backers) then there's the overall political set up.
The fight in Rojava is essentially led by the PYD, which is the Syrian branch of the Turkish PKK, the Marxist guerrillas at war against Ankara since the 1970s. Washington, Brussels and NATO - under relentless Turkish pressure - have always officially ranked both PYD and PKK as "terrorists".
Careful examination of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan's must-read book Democratic Confederalism reveals this terrorist/Stalinist equation as bogus (Ocalan has been confined to the island-prison of Imrali since 1999.)
What the PKK - and the PYD - are striving for is "libertarian municipalism". In fact that's exactly what Rojava has been attempting; self-governing communities applying direct democracy, using as pillars councils, popular assemblies, cooperatives managed by workers - and defended by popular militias. Thus the positioning of Rojava in the vanguard of a worldwide cooperative economics/democracy movement whose ultimate target would be to bypass the concept of a nation-state.
Not only this experiment is taking place politically across northern Syria; in military terms, it was the PKK and the PYD who actually managed to rescue those tens of thousands of Yazidis corralled by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in Mount Sinjar, and not American bombs, as the spin went. And now, as PYD co-president Asya Abdullah details, what's needed is a "corridor" to break the encirclement of Kobani by Caliph Ibrahim's goons.
Sultan Erdogan's power play
Ankara, meanwhile, seems intent to prolong a policy of "lots of problems with our neighbors."
For Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, "the main cause of ISIS is the Syrian regime". And Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - who invented the now defunct "zero problems with our neighbors" doctrine in the first place - has repeatedly stressed Ankara will only intervene with boots on the ground in Kobani to defend the Kurds if Washington presents a "post-Assad plan".
And then there's that larger than life character; Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, aka Sultan Erdogan.
Sultan Erdogan's edicts are well known. Syrian Kurds should fight against Damascus under the command of that lousy fiction, the reconstituted (and to be trained, of all places, in Saudi Arabia) Free Syrian Army; they should forget about any sort of autonomy; they should meekly accept Turkey's request for Washington to create a no-fly zone over Syria and also a "secured" border on Syrian territory. No wonder both the PYD and Washington have rejected these demands.
Sultan Erdogan has his eyes set on rebooting the peace process with the PKK; and he wants to lead it in a position of force. So far his only concession has been to allow Iraqi Kurd peshmergas to enter northern Syria to counter-balance the PYD-PKK militias, and thus prevent the strengthening of an anti-Turkish Kurdish axis.
At the same time Sultan Erdogan knows ISIS/ISIL/Daesh has already recruited up to 1,000 Turkish passport holders - and counting. His supplemental nightmare is that the toxic brew laying waste to "Syraq" will sooner rather than later mightily overspill inside Turkish borders.
Watch those barbarians at the gates
Caliph Ibrahim's goons have already telegraphed their intention to massacre and/or enslave the entire civilian population of Kobani. And yet Kobani, per se, has no strategic value for ISIS/ISIL/Daesh (that's what US Secretary of State John Kerry himself said last week; but then, predictably, he reversed himself). This very persuasive PYD commander though is very much aware of the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh threat.
Kobani is not essential compared to Deir ez-Zor (which has an airport supplying the Syrian Arab Army) or Hasakah (which has oil fields controlled by Kurds helped by the Syrian Arab Army). Kobani boasts no airport and no oil fields.
On the other hand, the fall of Kobani would generate immensely positive extra PR for the already very slick Caliph enterprise - widening the perception of a winning army especially among new, potential, EU passport holder recruits, as well as establishing a solid base very close to the Turkish border.
Essentially, what Sultan Erdogan is doing is to fight both Damascus (long-term) and the Kurds (medium term) while actually giving a free pass (short-term) to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. And yet, further on down the road, Turkish journalist Fehim Tastekin is right; training non-existent "moderate" Syrian rebels in oh-so-democratic Saudi Arabia will only lead to the Pakistanization of Turkey. A remix - once again - of the scenario played out during the 1980s Afghan jihad.
As if this was not muddled enough, in a game changer - and reversing its "terrorist" dogma - Washington is now maintaining an entente cordiale with the PYD. And that poses an extra headache for Sultan Erdogan.
This give-and-take between Washington and the PYD is still up for grabs. Yet some facts on the ground spell it all out; more US bombing, more US air drops (including major fail air drops, where the freshly weaponized end up being The Caliph's goons).
A key fact should not be overlooked. As soon as the PYD was more or less "recognized" by Washington, PYD head Saleh Muslim went to meet the wily Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Masoud Barzani. That's when the PYD promised a "power sharing" with Barzani's peshmergas on running Rojava.
Syrian Kurds who were forced to abandon Kobani and exile themselves in Turkey, and who support the PYD, cannot return to Syria; but Iraqi Kurds can go back and forth. This dodgy deal was brokered by the KRG's intel chief, Lahur Talabani. The KRG, crucially, gets along very well with Ankara.
That sheds further light on Erdogan's game; he wants the peshmerga - who are fierce enemies of the PKK - to become the vanguard against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and thus undermine the PYD/PKK alliance. Once again, Turkey is pitting Kurds against Kurds.
Washington for its part is manipulating Kobani to completely legitimize - on a "humanitarian", R2P vein - its crusade against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. It's never enough to remember this whole thing started with a barrage of Washington spin about the bogus, ghostly Khorasan group preparing a new 9-11. Khorasan, predictably, entirely vanished from the news cycle.
In the long run, the American power play is a serious threat to the direct democracy experiment in Rojava, which Washington cannot but interpret as - God forbid! - a return of communism.
So Kobani is now a crucial pawn in a pitiless game manipulated by Washington, Ankara and Irbil. None of these actors want the direct democracy experiment in Kobani and Rojava to bloom, expand and start to be noticed all across the Global South. The women of Kobani are in mortal danger of being, if not enslaved, bitterly betrayed.
And it gets even more ominous when the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh play on Kobani is seen essentially for what it is; a diversionary tactic, a trap for the Obama administration. What The Caliph's goons are really aiming at is Anbar province in Iraq - which they already largely control - and the crucial Baghdad belt. The barbarians are at the gates - not only Kobani's but also Baghdad's.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2014 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria?
Amid the Syrian warzone a democratic experiment is being stamped into the ground by Isis. That the wider world is unaware is a scandal
In 1937, my father volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic. A would-be fascist coup had been temporarily halted by a worker’s uprising, spearheaded by anarchists and socialists, and in much of Spain a genuine social revolution ensued, leading to whole cities under directly democratic management, industries under worker control, and the radical empowerment of women.
Spanish revolutionaries hoped to create a vision of a free society that the entire world might follow. Instead, world powers declared a policy of “non-intervention” and maintained a rigorous blockade on the republic, even after Hitler and Mussolini, ostensible signatories, began pouring in troops and weapons to reinforce the fascist side. The result was years of civil war that ended with the suppression of the revolution and some of a bloody century’s bloodiest massacres.
I never thought I would, in my own lifetime, see the same thing happen again. Obviously, no historical event ever really happens twice. There are a thousand differences between what happened in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, the three largely Kurdish provinces of northern Syria, today. But some of the similarities are so striking, and so distressing, that I feel it’s incumbent on me, as someone who grew up in a family whose politics were in many ways defined by the Spanish revolution, to say: we cannot let it end the same way again.
The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution. Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours, Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies, councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a woman), there are women’s and youth councils, and, in a remarkable echo of the armed Mujeres Libres (Free Women) of Spain, a feminist army, the “YJA Star” militia (the “Union of Free Women”, the star here referring to the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar), that has carried out a large proportion of the combat operations against the forces of Islamic State.
How can something like this happen and still be almost entirely ignored by the international community, even, largely, by the International left? Mainly, it seems, because the Rojavan revolutionary party, the PYD, works in alliance with Turkey’s Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), a Marxist guerilla movement that has since the 1970s been engaged in a long war against the Turkish state. Nato, the US and EU officially classify them as a “terrorist” organisation. Meanwhile, leftists largely write them off as Stalinists.
But, in fact, the PKK itself is no longer anything remotely like the old, top-down Leninist party it once was. Its own internal evolution, and the intellectual conversion of its own founder, Abdullah Ocalan, held in a Turkish island prison since 1999, have led it to entirely change its aims and tactics.
The PKK has declared that it no longer even seeks to create a Kurdish state. Instead, inspired in part by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray Bookchin, it has adopted the vision of “libertarian municipalism”, calling for Kurds to create free, self-governing communities, based on principles of direct democracy, that would then come together across national borders – that it is hoped would over time become increasingly meaningless. In this way, they proposed, the Kurdish struggle could become a model for a wordwide movement towards genuine democracy, co-operative economy, and the gradual dissolution of the bureaucratic nation-state.
Since 2005 the PKK, inspired by the strategy of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, declared a unilateral ceasefire with the Turkish state and began concentrating their efforts in developing democratic structures in the territories they already controlled. Some have questioned how serious all this really is. Clearly, authoritarian elements remain. But what has happened in Rojava, where the Syrian revolution gave Kurdish radicals the chance to carry out such experiments in a large, contiguous territory, suggests this is anything but window dressing. Councils, assemblies and popular militias have been formed, regime property has been turned over to worker-managed co-operatives – and all despite continual attacks by the extreme rightwing forces of Isis. The results meet any definition of a social revolution. In the Middle East, at least, these efforts have been noticed: particularly after PKK and Rojava forces intervened to successfully fight their way through Isis territory in Iraq to rescue thousands of Yezidi refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar after the local peshmerga fled the field. These actions were widely celebrated in the region, but remarkably received almost no notice in the European or North American press.
Now, Isis has returned, with scores of US-made tanks and heavy artillery taken from Iraqi forces, to take revenge against many of those same revolutionary militias in Kobane, declaring their intention to massacre and enslave – yes, literally enslave – the entire civilian population. Meanwhile, the Turkish army stands at the border preventing reinforcements or ammunition from reaching the defenders, and US planes buzz overhead making occasional, symbolic, pinprick strikes – apparently, just to be able to say that it did not do nothing as a group it claims to be at war with crushes defenders of one of the world’s great democratic experiments.
If there is a parallel today to Franco’s superficially devout, murderous Falangists, who would it be but Isis? If there is a parallel to the Mujeres Libres of Spain, who could it be but the courageous women defending the barricades in Kobane? Is the world – and this time most scandalously of all, the international left – really going to be complicit in letting history repeat itself?
Spanish revolutionaries hoped to create a vision of a free society that the entire world might follow. Instead, world powers declared a policy of “non-intervention” and maintained a rigorous blockade on the republic, even after Hitler and Mussolini, ostensible signatories, began pouring in troops and weapons to reinforce the fascist side. The result was years of civil war that ended with the suppression of the revolution and some of a bloody century’s bloodiest massacres.
I never thought I would, in my own lifetime, see the same thing happen again. Obviously, no historical event ever really happens twice. There are a thousand differences between what happened in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, the three largely Kurdish provinces of northern Syria, today. But some of the similarities are so striking, and so distressing, that I feel it’s incumbent on me, as someone who grew up in a family whose politics were in many ways defined by the Spanish revolution, to say: we cannot let it end the same way again.
The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution. Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours, Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies, councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a woman), there are women’s and youth councils, and, in a remarkable echo of the armed Mujeres Libres (Free Women) of Spain, a feminist army, the “YJA Star” militia (the “Union of Free Women”, the star here referring to the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar), that has carried out a large proportion of the combat operations against the forces of Islamic State.
How can something like this happen and still be almost entirely ignored by the international community, even, largely, by the International left? Mainly, it seems, because the Rojavan revolutionary party, the PYD, works in alliance with Turkey’s Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), a Marxist guerilla movement that has since the 1970s been engaged in a long war against the Turkish state. Nato, the US and EU officially classify them as a “terrorist” organisation. Meanwhile, leftists largely write them off as Stalinists.
But, in fact, the PKK itself is no longer anything remotely like the old, top-down Leninist party it once was. Its own internal evolution, and the intellectual conversion of its own founder, Abdullah Ocalan, held in a Turkish island prison since 1999, have led it to entirely change its aims and tactics.
The PKK has declared that it no longer even seeks to create a Kurdish state. Instead, inspired in part by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray Bookchin, it has adopted the vision of “libertarian municipalism”, calling for Kurds to create free, self-governing communities, based on principles of direct democracy, that would then come together across national borders – that it is hoped would over time become increasingly meaningless. In this way, they proposed, the Kurdish struggle could become a model for a wordwide movement towards genuine democracy, co-operative economy, and the gradual dissolution of the bureaucratic nation-state.
Since 2005 the PKK, inspired by the strategy of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, declared a unilateral ceasefire with the Turkish state and began concentrating their efforts in developing democratic structures in the territories they already controlled. Some have questioned how serious all this really is. Clearly, authoritarian elements remain. But what has happened in Rojava, where the Syrian revolution gave Kurdish radicals the chance to carry out such experiments in a large, contiguous territory, suggests this is anything but window dressing. Councils, assemblies and popular militias have been formed, regime property has been turned over to worker-managed co-operatives – and all despite continual attacks by the extreme rightwing forces of Isis. The results meet any definition of a social revolution. In the Middle East, at least, these efforts have been noticed: particularly after PKK and Rojava forces intervened to successfully fight their way through Isis territory in Iraq to rescue thousands of Yezidi refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar after the local peshmerga fled the field. These actions were widely celebrated in the region, but remarkably received almost no notice in the European or North American press.
Now, Isis has returned, with scores of US-made tanks and heavy artillery taken from Iraqi forces, to take revenge against many of those same revolutionary militias in Kobane, declaring their intention to massacre and enslave – yes, literally enslave – the entire civilian population. Meanwhile, the Turkish army stands at the border preventing reinforcements or ammunition from reaching the defenders, and US planes buzz overhead making occasional, symbolic, pinprick strikes – apparently, just to be able to say that it did not do nothing as a group it claims to be at war with crushes defenders of one of the world’s great democratic experiments.
If there is a parallel today to Franco’s superficially devout, murderous Falangists, who would it be but Isis? If there is a parallel to the Mujeres Libres of Spain, who could it be but the courageous women defending the barricades in Kobane? Is the world – and this time most scandalously of all, the international left – really going to be complicit in letting history repeat itself?
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