Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Part III: Killing the dominant male

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

Monday, February 9, 2015

Part III: Killing the dominant male

Click here to access article by Tanja Nijmeijer from FARC-EP/Columbia.

I was astonished to find this article from a FARC website about my favorite revolutionary organization, PKK, a Kurdish revolutionary party in control of a Kurdish region (Rojava) in northern Syria. (See my previous posts here, here, and here.) The article, and the series, features a representative from FARC interviewing two women from PKK. The links to the previous installments of the interview are included in this post. I'm not sure which of the parts are of most importance--I strongly recommend all three.

PKK, the Workers Party of Kurdistán: many people know their name, few really know what their struggle is about. [FARC-EP/Columbia] had the opportunity to speak with two representatives of the PKK's women's organization - PAJK, Zelal Dersim and Asia Dicle, about the situation in the Middle-East, IS, the role of the United States, the peace process with the Turkish government and, last but not least, the PKK struggle for freedom. This is the third part of the interview.

There is quite an alphabet soup of abbreviations and other references made in the articles, most of which are identified. Here are two which are not: HWP and Abdullah Öcalan

I was particularly interested in their views of ISIS (identified as "IS" in the article) which was presented in part II. Here is the start of this discussion:

Why do you think the US is fighting against IS now?

Zelal: First of all, we know that the US, when they said they had bombed IS, what they were really bombing was desert. They know perfectly well where the central command posts of IS are located so there is no way of talking about mistakes here. There has never been any US attack against IS. All the terrorists of IS travel freely between Turkey (where there are some of their camps) and Syria. They go to the hospital in Turkey when they are wounded and travel to Syria again without any problem. Turkey also supports them.

Why are they holding up the facade of combating IS then?