[DemolitionRed]

Just thought I'd share this link, seeing as the New York Times would appear to have finally latched onto the Rojava story...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor..._leftists.html

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by DemolitionRed

Just thought I'd share this link, seeing as the New York Times would appear to have finally latched onto the Rojava story... http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/25/roj…

Just showing an error message there red

[DemolitionRed]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Just showing an error message there red

Ty Kizzy. Its fixed now.

[Kizzy]

Thanks Red I have a theory, I don't think anything that humanises Syrians of any faith or political persuasion is advocated while the war machine is being cranked up.

n 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.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...rds-syria-isis

[DemolitionRed]

I agree Kizzy but I also believe the West, at least up until recently, have given us all a very strange perception of them; in fact most of us don't know they even exist.

One has to ask, have we not armed these people because Turkey is part of NATO or because our western governments see Rojava as anarchism in action (a peasants revolt) that works?

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by DemolitionRed

I agree Kizzy but I also believe the West, at least up until recently, have given us all a very strange perception of them; in fact most of us don't know they even exist.

One has to ask, have we not armed these people because Turkey is part of NATO or because our western governments see Rojava as anarchism in action (a peasants revolt) that works?

Maybe a bit of both, it's strange to see that in the midst of such a despotic regime this is allowed to flourish.... Here it would've been crushed instantly, you know... because we're such a progressive society, civilised and ting :/

[lostalex]

if there is some kind of oasis of democracy in the middle east (like israel) a stable democracy, we should not be trying to pull them into this war. we should do everything we can to protect them, and show arab people that we are not against muslims, we will support any true democracy(that respects human rights) and we shouldn't expect them to have to go to war, we should provide them cover.

I've honestly never heard of this little enclave called Rojava, but i like the sound of it!