We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, April 23, 2017

'The Kurds': Internationalists or Narrow Nationalists?

Click here to access article by Marcel Cartier (see also this and this) from TeleSur.

This article is an excellent followup of another article (by the same author) which I posted on the 14th of April with my commentary (please read my commentary if you are not familiar with it). In that article I discussed my confusion about the goals of the Syrian Kurds based in Rojava, Syria and referred to by various names (Kurdish Freedom Movement or KCK,  Democratic Union Party or PYD, the Kurdish People's Protection Units or YPG). They are oriented around the ideas promoted by Abdullah Ocalan who, in turn, has been strongly influenced by the libertarian socialist ideology of American Murray Bookchin.

In this current article Cartier does not deal with the confusion that I mentioned in my commentary to my earlier post regarding US military installations on territory under the control of Syrian Kurds, however he declares from a visit to the region and interviews with many Syrian Kurds that their orientation differs radically from Iraqi Kurds led by Masoud Barzani who have managed with the help of the US to carve out a mostly independent region in northern Iraq. Cartier declares that the Syrian Kurds have no intention of playing along with the plans by the Empire and associates to dismember Syria.

From viewing the second video (produced by "Films for Action") of the three included in the article, you will learn that Turkey's policies under Erdogan are actively supporting ISIS to carry out his obsessive concern to suppress any kind of Kurdish independence. This corroborates the many articles I posted several years ago that documented Turkey's support for the ISIS terrorists and their collaboration with NATO, Saudi Arabia (and their feudal Arab allies), and Israel to dismember Syria. As you can see, there is an complex stew of motives of the various actors participating in the project to dismember Syria arrayed against the forces of the Syrian government, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.