Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Kurds Are Playing A Dangerous Game

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

Friday, June 16, 2017

The Kurds Are Playing A Dangerous Game

Click here to access article by Paul Mansfield and Mary Woodward from BSNews.

The British authors are obviously referring to the Syrian Kurds that I learned in past reports have distanced themselves from the Iraqi Kurds who are much more conservative. I have been trying for the last several years to understand why they were playing such a dangerous game, and the authors are as perplexed as I am.

I was also initially taken in by articles from ROAR (around 2014) that described the Syrian Kurds as an epitome of advanced revolutionary thinking, but then I began to read reports about their collusion with US forces and allowing the latter to have military bases on their territory. Still, more recently I've read a report in which a TeleSur reporter asked them if they were seeking an independent state, and the answer was a firm "no". This is the same answer that they gave in some article I read in 2014.