#Syrian Democratic Council

[dougielombax]

Just leaving this here.

A statement from the REAL Syrian opposition marking 10 years since the Yazidi genocide by Isis.

Feel free to reblog.

[crynwr-drwg]

The thing that honestly put me off of anarchists is they seem to think everyone is equally qualified to do anything. Accessibility ramps built by hobbyists, building codes set by Minecraft girlies, etc. And when this inevitably blows up in someone’s face and hurts someone? How do you hold anyone accountable in an anarchist society? How do you have OSHA in one?

My head is killing me today, so apologies if any of this is worded poorly.

I can see where you'd get this idea, and where you're coming from, but I can assure you that these things are very much accounted for. A good example of this is in the Autonmous Administration of North and East Syria, where I can speak first hand that professionall schooled and trained engineers arein charge of rebuilding infrastructure. There is also equally trained and qualified people in most other risky-professional roles, like medicine and such.

There absolutely are anarchists that either go "idk lol" or say that nothing is needed. I hate doign this, because it makes me look like one too, but I would just recommend to ignore a lot fo these types, because they usually end up just liking Aanrchism as a "vibes" thing rather than as a mode of structure and organising.

It's hard to give many examples of it all in action, since most anarchist communtiies are small (which is part of the point) but that's also why AANES is a great example for a lot of this in action/

If any of this didn't answer your question, let me know and I'd be happy to rephrase or answer it better. I'm shite at words, haha.

[matan4il]

Update post:

The US has publicly stated that it has not found Israel to be violating International Humanitarian Law (IHL), in terms of how it uses its weapons, and not blocking humanitarian aid.

Yet for some reason, that doesn't seem to matter when it comes to how the US is currently treating Israel. At the UN Security Council, for the first time since the start of the war, the US has not used its veto to block a resolution that's anti-Israel. This resolution calls for an immedaite ceasefire in Gaza for the rest of Ramadan (half of this month has passed already), and while it does call for an immediate release for the Israeli hostages, it does NOT make that a CONDITION for the ceasefire. The operation in Rafah, since it hasn't happened yet, is not likely to happen during Ramadan, so the main thing this resolution is calling to stop, is the on going lower intensity fighting in places like the Shifa hospital, where at least 500 confirmed Hamas and PIJ terrorists have been arrested by Israel. In essence, this is a pro-terrorist reolution. The US did abstain, showing it knows this resolution is wrong. It's also meaningful that just a few days earlier, a similar resolution submitted by the US itself, which did make the release of the hostages a condition for the ceasefire, was vetoed by those great beacons of democracy, Russia and China.

Did I mention Hamas praised the passing of this anti-Israel UN resolution? I can't stress this enough, but if a genocidal, antisemitic, Islamist tererorist organization is glad this resolution passed, that should be upsetting to EVERY person who values life out there.

Right after praising the resolution, Hamas also rejected the hostage deal compromise suggested by the US, that Israel had agreed to, which would have seen 40 Israeli hostages freed, in exchange for about 800 convicted Palestinian terrorists let go. Hamas might have said no anyway, but we'll never know for sure what their answer would have been, had this resolution not been passed.

Maybe the most troubling part is that the US insists this UNSC resolution is non-binding, meaning it will have no real effect on Israel's ability to continue fighting during Ramadan. That means, the US abstaining from using its veto wasn't done for the sake of a real chance to help Palestinians. It was a symbolic anti-Israel step, a bone thrown to Israel haters. That's how Israelis understand it, that's how every political player in the international arena (including the overjoyed Hamas) understands it, that's how political analysts understand it, and it should be troubling to everyone, that the US can treat a democratic, self defending, IHL abiding ally this way.

In fact, at least one country is already using this resolution to put pressure on Israel. The President of Colombia has said that unless Israel complies with the resolution and accepts an immediate ceasefire, his country will cut off its diplomatic ties with it.

Just one more thing. This is resolution did not include a condemnation of Hamas and the massacre it perpetrated on Oct 7, and yet the US allowed it to pass. The other day, the UNSC immediately condemned the ISIS terrorist attack in Moscow, which left 137 Russians murdered. Nobody suggested that "context" should be brought into it, like that Russia has itself attacked Ukraine (which Putin has implied is behind the attack), or like that ISIS' animosity originates in Russia's protection of the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, including many ISIS terrorists. In sharp contrast to this, almost 6 months into this war, the UNSC has not yet adopted a single resolution condemning the Hamas massacre in which over 1,200 people in Israel were butchered, many raped, and over 250 were kidnapped and are still held captive in Gaza. This discrimination was called out by Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan. He pointed to another example of such discrimination, by reading the resolution that was passed in 2014, when Boko Haram (another Islamist terrorist group) kidnapped Nigerian girls.

This is 65 years old Rami Shani.

He's a journalist, working for an Israeli radio station. On Oct 7, he happened to be covering a bicycle event taking place in Israel's south, which is why he was already awake and there at 5:30 in the morning. At 6:30, the Hamas attack started. As Rami started getting information about the massacre at the Nova music festival, he abandoned his original task, and started driving in there and getting people out in his car. He said everyone he managed to get out of there was wounded, having been shot in their arms or legs, one woman was shot in the stomach. One of the people he saved was an Israeli Bedouin Muslim Arab, who worked at the party, and was crying as he had been shot in both his arms and legs. In one case, he managed to evacuate 8 young people from the scene while seeing a terrorist squad progressing in his direction. He kept going, until security forces wouldn't allow him to go back in. He saved a total of about 40 people, and has been visiting them in hospitals around the country since then. Whenever you hear anyone arguing that journalists at the scene of a disaster can just keep covering the news, without doing anything to aid the victims, please remember Rami.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[mariacallous]

BERLIN — For the first time since the Nazi era, a far-right party in Germany has won the largest piece of the electoral pie in a state election.

Mainstream politicians and Jewish leaders are expressing alarm following Sunday’s elections, in which the anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic and pro-Russia Alternative for Germany party came out on top in the state of Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote.

The 11-year-old party also earned second place to the traditional conservative Christian Democratic Union party in the neighboring state of Saxony. Both states are in the former East Germany.

“No one can brush this off as a ‘protest’ vote anymore,” Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, said in a statement late Sunday.

“Exactly 85 years after the start of World War II, Germany is in danger of becoming a different country again: more unstable, colder and poorer, less secure, less worth living in,” said Knobloch, a former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany who herself survived the Holocaust in hiding.

The election came just over a week since a Syrian refugee was arrested after a deadly stabbing spree at a festival in the city of Solingen, and only days after Germany resumed its program of deporting refugees convicted of crimes. The knife attack, in which three people were killed, reignited popular anxiety about social unrest connected with the more than 1 million refugees admitted to Germany since 2015.

AfD stresses isolationism, takes an anti-EU and pro-Russian stance, and is accused of fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment. Some of its most extreme representatives have also belittled the Holocaust, saying that Germany has paid enough penance for the sins of an older generation.

Mass protests against the party took place earlier this year following revelations that the party had held a secret meeting at a lakeside villa to discuss plans to deport foreigners, including those who had become German citizens. Prominent neo-Nazis attended the meeting, according to the news organization that broke the story, inducing painful echoes of the gathering of Nazi leaders at nearby Wannsee in 1942 to devise a plan to deport and then murder Jews.

But while support for the AfD dipped in polls at the time, it soon rebounded and then accelerated. Now, it has achieved breakthrough results in state elections and raised concerns for next year’s national elections.

The party — whose Thuringen leader, Bjoern Hoecke, has been convicted twice of using a Nazi slogan to boost his party — is unlikely to form a ruling coalition in either state, since it is shunned by other parties. Still, it will have additional seats in the state legislatures and will have the numbers, particularly in Thuringia, to interfere with some governing decisions.

A far-left party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance or BSW, also produced notable results, coming in third in Thuringia with 15.8% of the vote. Last month, the current head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, warned that the party, which has accused Israel of genocide in its war in Gaza, was “fueling hatred of Israel in Germany.”

The new election results bode ill for Germany’s future, Schuster said on Sunday.

“Can we recover from this hit?” Schuster wrote in a column in the Bild newspaper. “Our free society must not fall, especially in the face of Islamist terror. Unvarnished truths — honesty and sincerity — are needed, not populist pseudo-answers from radical parties.”

In Thuringia, the mainstream Social Democratic Party barely squeaked in, with 6.1%. Several parties, including the Greens and Free Democratic Party, received so few votes that they will not have any seats at all.

BSW also came in third in Saxony, with 11.8% of the vote, following the AfD with 30.6% and the CDU with a narrow win at 31.9%.

Younger voters overwhelmingly favored the AfD in this week’s elections, according to an NTV-Infratest exit poll.

“The survivors are asking themselves: ‘Didn’t we do enough to teach, to tell, to show?” Christoph Heubner of the International Auschwitz Committee, told the Guardian.

Some Jewish leaders say German politicians would do well to address the concerns apparently expressed by voters this weekend.

“The election results in the German federal states of Thuringia and Saxony are a clear wake-up call to the centrist parties in Germany to listen to the real concerns and fears of the people,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement. “When half the population votes for parties on the extreme fringes, their problems must be addressed openly and honestly.”

Sunday was an “insanely sad” election day, German Jewish journalist Samira Lazarovic wrote on Facebook. She said her 96-year-old father compared the outcome to the opening salvo of World War II, exactly 85 years ago.

Lazarovic said it was is urgent to reach out to younger voters. “It’s not that we know better than they; but we should shape the future together.”

Obviously, it wasn’t enough to take to the streets and protest against the far right, she added: “Populists all over the world have one thing in common. They mean exactly what they say and do everything they can to turn their words to deeds.”

[blueiscoool]

A U.K. Museum Claims Roman Emperor Elagabalus Was Transgender

The North Hertfordshire Museum will refer to the 3rd-century ruler using she/her pronouns.

Third century C.E. Roman Emperor Elagabalus was transgender, says the North Hertfordshire Museum in the U.K., which will be referring to the ruler with she/her pronouns.

The change is in keeping with museum policy that states that pronouns used in its displays will be those “the individual in question might have used themselves” or whatever pronoun is “in retrospect, appropriate,” according to a report in the Telegraph.

The museum owns a coin minted in the reign of Elagabalus, who ruled Rome from 218 to 222 C.E., when the emperor was assassinated at age 18. It has been used in LGBTQ-themed displays. According to the museum, it consults with Stonewall, an LGBTQ+ charity, and trade union Unison’s LGBT wing for best display practices.

“Elagabalus most definitely preferred the she pronoun, and as such this is something we reflect when discussing her in contemporary times,” Keith Hoskins, Liberal Democrat councillor and executive member for arts at the Liberal Democrat and Labour coalition-run North Herts Council, told the Telegraph.

“We try to be sensitive to identifying pronouns for people in the past, as we are for people in the present,” he said. “It is only polite and respectful. We know that Elagabalus identified as a woman and was explicit about which pronouns to use, which shows that pronouns are not a new thing.”

Cassius Dio, who chronicled the history of Rome, wrote that Elagabalus was “termed wife, mistress, and queen,” telling one lover, “Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady.” Elagabalus even reportedly asked to have female genitalia fashioned for her.

There is some disagreement among historians about the meaning of the classical texts in which Elagabalus asks to be called “lady,” however, according to the Telegraph, with some deeming it an attempt at character assassination. Dio served the reign of emperor Severus Alexander, who succeeded Elagabalus, and used such behavior as justification for the assassination.

“The Romans didn’t have our idea of ‘trans’ as a category,” Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, a Cambridge classics professor, told the Telegraph, adding that “they used accusations of sexual behavior ‘as a woman’ as one of the worst insults against men.” Wallace-Hadrill also indicates that racism may have played a part, since Elagabalus was Syrian and not Roman.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (c. 204 – 11/12 March 222), better known by his nicknames Elagabalus and Heliogabalus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222, while he was still a teenager. His short reign was notorious for sex scandals and religious controversy. A close relative to the Severan dynasty, he came from a prominent Arab family in Emesa (Homs), Syria, where since his early youth he served as head priest of the sun god Elagabal. After the death of his cousin, the emperor Caracalla, Elagabalus was raised to the principate at 14 years of age in an army revolt instigated by his grandmother Julia Maesa against Caracalla's short-lived successor, Macrinus. He only posthumously became known by the Latinised name of his god.

Later historians suggest Elagabalus showed a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos. He replaced the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the deity Elagabal, of whom he had been high priest. He forced leading members of Rome's government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity, presiding over them in person. He married four women, including a Vestal Virgin, in addition to lavishing favours on male courtiers thought to have been his lovers. He was also reported to have prostituted himself. His behavior estranged the Praetorian Guard, the Senate and the common people alike. Amidst growing opposition, at just 18 years of age he was assassinated and replaced by his cousin Severus Alexander in March 222. The assassination plot against Elagabalus was devised by Julia Maesa and carried out by disaffected members of the Praetorian Guard.

Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence, zealotry and sexual promiscuity. This tradition has persisted; among writers of the early modern age he endured one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors. Edward Gibbon, notably, wrote that Elagabalus "abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury". According to Barthold Georg Niebuhr, "the name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others" because of his "unspeakably disgusting life". An example of a modern historian's assessment is Adrian Goldsworthy's: "Elagabalus was not a tyrant, but he was an incompetent, probably the least able emperor Rome had ever had." Despite near-universal condemnation of his reign, some scholars write warmly about his religious innovations, including the 6th-century Byzantine chronicler John Malalas, as well as Warwick Ball, a modern historian who described him as "a tragic enigma lost behind centuries of prejudice".

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava Rosaries and rifles: Syria Christians take on IS in Raqa [UPDATES]

An ivory-coloured rosary swings from the rearview mirror of Abboud Seryan's pickup truck as he speeds through Syria's Raqa, inspecting the positions of fellow Christian fighters taking on the Islamic State group…

RELATED UPDATE: Seven Days, a Gun, and a Prayer: The Pentagon’s Plan to Pacify Raqqa

RELATED UPDATE: American foreign fighter says he can't cross Iraqi border to come home due to Iranian-backed militias

RELATED UPDATE: Turkey conducts first airstrikes against Efrin in Syria after Russia withdraws troops

RELATED UPDATE: Syriac Military Council plans imminent deployment to defend “our democratic project” in Efrin

RELATED UPDATE: Syriacs celebrate Martyrs' Day in Tirbespiyê

RELATED UPDATE: Syriac Military Council: We are ready to protect our land

RELATED UPDATE: Turkish army and allied mercenaries carried out 91 attacks on Efrin-Shehba in April

RELATED UPDATE: Escalating violations in Syria’s Afrin – 2024 update

FURTHER READING:

[thomasthetankieengine]

In the midst of ranting about the pagers attack, enarei:

1. refers to members of Hezbollah as just "supporters"

2. seems to be unaware that members of paramilitary organizations often have other jobs and are often not full-time professional soldiers

3. fails to realize that Hezbollah is also designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Argentina, France, Germany, Honduras , the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, and Guatemala and is commonly seen in much of the Arab world (except Syria and Lebanon) as pawns of Iran.

4. ignores or is not aware that Hezbollah has lost prestige and popularity in some parts of the Arab World because of its actions in the Syrian Civil War on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, the hereditary dictator of Syria.

5. seems to forgets that the attack in Lebanon was not orchestrated by the United States.

Now, there's a VERY good argument to be made that Israel crossed a serious line by violating international laws against mines, booby-traps, and other devices, but arguing that members of a paramilitary organization are civilians or characterizing them as civilian supporters is just pure idiocy.

I have no idea why Tumblr users who are horrified by the pagers attack aren't pointing out the booby-trap angle (which is what most serious journalists and experts on international law are actually focusing on), though if I had to guess, I would say it's because they don't read the news much and just want to opine based on vibes.

In any case, here are some articles about this attack and laws on booby-traps:

[miqdadsworld]

🚨🛑

It's crucial to recognize that any organization backed by the United States is likely to be a terrorist group. The U.S. has established and supported separatist factions aiming to create a Kurdish nation in northeastern Syria, providing them with weapons and protection in exchange for access to abundant oil resources.

Currently, the Syrian Democratic Council, through its military wing known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, is enforcing a suffocating blockade on Al-Hasakah. They are preventing food and even water from reaching residents, despite temperatures soaring above 47°C.

We must raise awareness about the dire situation in Al-Hasakah. The U.S. is complicit in these crimes.

[libertariantaoist]

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news-roundup/news-roundup-9-27-2023/

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 9/27/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

Senator Robert Menendez denied the allegations levied against him by the Department of Justice. Last week, a grand jury indicted the powerful Senator on bribery charges. Investigators found hundreds of thousands of dollars said to be payments to access the Senator’s influence. The Institute 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the US would increase its military ties with Kenya. Washington agreed to provide additional security assistance to Kenya after Nairobi agreed to lead a UN mission to Haiti. The Institute

Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that the first batch of US-made Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine, which are armed with toxic depleted uranium (DU) ammunition. AWC

The Biden administration on Monday announced a $2 billion loan for Poland that will go toward modernizing Warsaw’s military. AWC

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Budapest was ending support for Kiev on international issues due to a 2017 Ukrainian law that limits the rights of Hungarians. The announcement comes as Ukraine’s support in Eastern Europe wanes, with Poland halting all weapons transfers to Kiev after President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Warsaw. The Institute

Four American advanced fighter jets arrived in Romania and will begin conducting patrols over the Black Sea region, according to NATO. The deployment comes as Washington wages a proxy war against Moscow in Ukraine that has stretched into the Black Sea. The Institute

The commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet attended a Russian Defense Ministry video conference on Tuesday, a day after Ukraine claimed he was killed in a September 22 missile strike on the fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea. AWC

A senior US official told The Washington Post that the Biden administration is not pressuring Ukraine to hold elections, while some Western officials do want to see a wartime vote. AWC

A report from 60 Minutes that aired Sunday detailed how US taxpayer dollars are not only funding weapons in Ukraine but are also subsidizing small businesses and paying first responders salaries, among other things. AWC

Senate leaders on Tuesday announced they reached a deal on a stopgap funding bill that needs to be passed by September 30 to avert a partial government shutdown. The bill includes $6.2 billion for Ukraine and $6 billion for natural disasters. AWC

On Tuesday, the Kremlin said US-provided Abrams tanks in Ukraine will not impact Russia’s operations and will “burn” like other Western armored vehicles. AWC

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that the Turkish parliament will ratify Sweden’s NATO membership as long as the US follows through on its plans to sell Turkey F-16 fighter jets. AWC

China

President Biden is hosting Pacific Island leaders for a second annual summit in Washington that’s part of his administration’s strategy to counter China in the Asia Pacific. AWC

The Philippines is taking steps to retake Scarborough Shoal, a disputed chain of rocks and reefs in the South China Sea that has been effectively controlled by China since 2012. AWC

Middle East

Israeli Tourism Minister Haim Katz arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a UN conference, making him the first senior Israeli official to publicly visit the Kingdom, which comes as the US is pushing for a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal. AWC

After weeks of clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Arab tribesman aligned with Deir Ezzor Military Council (DEMC), the SDF has imposed a curfew following a resumption of fighting on Monday. These ethnic tensions are boiling over in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, illegally occupied by the US and its SDF partners, as the Arab majority resists Kurdish rule. The Institute

Read More

[beardedmrbean]

It wasn't the usual end to a day out walking in the countryside.

On Thursday, journalist Riham Alkousaa was on a hiking holiday, walking with a group through the mountainous wooded region of Saxon Switzerland, in the eastern German state of Saxony.

But when she got back to her hostel, she found that police officers were waiting for them.

Someone had called the police, saying that "a group of foreigners" had been spotted.

The caller reported them as migrants who were supposedly trying to cross the border from nearby Czechia illegally.

But Ms Alkousaa was out walking with a registered German hiking club whose members are mostly Syrians living in Germany.

She is an award-winning journalist who works for Reuters. Originally from Syria, she is a German citizen, who graduated from Columbia University in New York. For the past 10 years she has worked for many German and American publications.

The Syrians she was hiking with all work or study in Germany legally.

Saxony police told the BBC that a German citizen contacted regional police on Germany's emergency number 110, having spotted the hiking group near the border, and suspecting that the group might be being smuggled across the border.

Regional police then passed on the information to the federal police force who sent officers to the region to patrol, where they found the hikers.

Having checked the hiking group's documents which proved the whole group was in Germany legally, police said they ended the operation.

Ms Alkousaa's post about the incident on X, formerly known as Twitter, has provoked a storm of reaction on social media.

Police said Ms Alkousaa had not contacted them directly and no complaint has been lodged.

Many of the reactions to the post express support for her, but some of the comments are racist. Others approve of the police's response.

The incident points to growing concerns in Germany about whether minorities are welcome in areas where the anti-migrant far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is surging.

Saxon Switzerland is one of Germany's most beautiful regions. Its spectacular mountainous terrain is portrayed in the works of 18th and 19th century Romantic painters, such as Caspar David Friedrich. The landscape has a special place in German culture and is popular with tourists.

But the state of Saxony is also a place where the far-right does well in elections.

In polls the AfD is either the most popular party, with around a third of the votes, or neck-and-neck with the incumbent conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Next year three German regions, including Saxony, will elect new regional parliaments. At the moment it's unlikely that the AfD will get into power because no other party will form a coalition with it.

But if the far-right wins the most votes, it could make it impossible for mainstream parties to form a stable governing coalition.

Over the past few months Germany has been embroiled in a ferocious debate about rising numbers of asylum seekers. So far this year around 290,000 people have applied for asylum, which is more than in 2022.

The numbers are much lower than in 2015 and 2016, when 1.5 million migrants and refugees came to Germany.

But some local councils are struggling logistically because the current influx comes on top of large numbers of Ukrainians. Germany has taken in 1.5 million Ukrainians since Russia's full invasion last year.

The increasingly fractious mood over migration is a boon for the AfD, which is fiercely anti-migrant.

Over the past decade its rhetoric has morphed from anti-euro populism to nativist far-right radicalism. Nationally the AfD typically polls over 20%, second only to the opposition conservatives.

Conservative politicians have also been adding pressure on the government. Angela Merkel's centrist so-called Willkommenskultur, or welcome culture, appears to have vanished from the debate. The new conservative leader Friedrich Merz is more hard-line with his rhetoric and is pushing the government to toughen up borders.

As a result, chancellor Olaf Scholz's left-leaning coalition has introduced spot checks on eastern borders with Poland and Czechia, where some migrants cross into Germany.

Officials say the aim is to target people smugglers. But critics suspect that when they are faced with the rise of the AfD, the move is more about cosmetic political action in the run-up to key elections across eastern Germany next year.

As Germany struggles with labour shortages in many sectors, local business leaders regularly express concern that the rise of the AfD may be harming eastern Germany's economic prospects.

They fear that potential workers from abroad might be reluctant to work in regions where the far-right is popular. Judging from reactions to Riham Alkousaa's experience, some international tourists may be put off too.

[theculturedmarxist]

In 2013 the CIA was handing out TOW anti-tank missiles to 'moderate rebel' groups who were fighting the government in Syria. These groups were allegedly 'vetted' before they receive money and weapons. Unfortunately 'vetting' was something the CIA had never been good at.

One of the groups that received such support was the Hamza Division:

Hamza Division (Forqat al-Hamza – فرقة الحمزة): An FSA-banner group composed of six substituent brigades that operate mostly in the environs of Inkhil, Daraa. The Hamza Division has received TOW ATGMs and it works under the supervision of the Daraa Military Council. They receives foreign support from Western and Arab state backers and are a member of the Southern Front coalition. The Southern Front has stated their commitment to a civil state, and have released a comprehensive political program in support of democratic reform. The Division came together with the Syria Revolutionaries Front and the 1st Artillery Regiment to create the 1st Army, which later disbanded. The Hamza Division continues using the 1st Army imagery alongside its own while the other former substituents do not. Social Media: YouTube; YouTube (older channel)

Hamza was later also supported by the Pentagon. Without such support the group would never have become a viable entity. Things got a bit complicated when militias armed by the Pentagon started to fight those armed by the CIA.

Later Hamza was sponsored by the Turkish state. This again made things a bit complicated:

Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai - 17:39 · Oct 16, 2019 Do you remember when the #US spent $500 million to train/arm Al-Hamza Division? Well the US-trained "Moderate rebels" are fighting - under a NATO flagged country (#Turkey) - the US-trained Kurdish YPG in the area occupied by the #US. I'll make it even easier: A few minutes ago, #US Prsdt @realDonaldTrump said the "PKK is far more dangerous than #ISIS (The Islamic State)". The US trained & armed Syrian Kurds proxies, the YPG, are the Syrian branch of the PKK that Trump considers far more dangerous than ISIS.

Ten years after being 'vetted' the Hamza division is again receiving U.S. attention. This time from the Department of the Treasuries:

Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating two Syria-based armed militias and three members of the groups’ leadership structures in connection with serious human rights abuses against those residing in the Afrin region of northern Syria. An auto sales company owned by the leader of one of the armed groups is also being designated. ... The Hamza Division, another armed opposition group operating in northern Syria, has been involved in abductions, theft of property, and torture. The division also operates detention facilities in which it houses those it has abducted for extended periods of time. During their imprisonment, victims are held for ransom, often suffering sexual abuse at the hands of Hamza Division fighters. The Suleiman Shah Brigade and the Hamza Division are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13894 for being responsible for or complicit in, or for having directly or indirectly engaged in, the commission of serious human rights abuses against the Syrian people. ... Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr is the leader of the Hamza Division and its public face, appearing in numerous propaganda videos produced by the Hamza Division. While Abu Bakr has been commander, the Hamza Division has been accused of brutal repression of the local population, including kidnapping Kurdish women and severely abusing prisoners, at times leading to their death. Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13894 for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Hamza Division.

The AP report about the new sanctions does not mention any Pentagon or CIA support the groups had previously received.

One wonders how long it will take until the U.S. will sanction the fascists militia it has and is now arming and sponsoring in Ukraine.

[dougielombax]

Just leaving this here.

Feel free to reblog.

Fuck Erdogan and his cronies for this shit!

Feel free to reblog.

[wuerkaixii]

Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria?

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?

[melikemordemjaponi]

✽La Présidente kurde du Comité Exécutif du Conseil Démocratique Syrien, Elham Ahmad félicite les combattantes de Syrie, gardiennes de la révolution féministe du Rojava, à l'occasion de 8 mars.

#femmesvieliberté

#JinJiyanAzadi

#womenlifefreedom

#8adar

#8Mars

#8march

Kurdistan au féminin Sur Twitter (+video)

✽The Kurdish President of the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council, Elham Ahmad congratulates the fighters of Syria, guardians of the feminist revolution of Rojava, on the occasion of March 8.

Kurdistan au féminin on Twitter (+video)

✽Suriye Demokratik Konseyi Yürütme Komitesi Kürt Başkanı Elham Ahmad, Rojava'nın feminist devriminin koruyucuları olan Suriye savaşçılarını 8 Mart vesilesiyle kutluyor.

Twitter üzerinden Kurdistan au féminin (+video)

✽シリア民主評議会執行委員会のクルド人議長であるエルハム・アフマド氏は、3月8日の国際婦人デーに寄せて、シリアの戦士たち、ロジャヴァのフェミニスト革命の守護者たちに祝辞を述べた。

Twitter/Kurdistan au fémininさんより(動画とも)

[mariacallous]

Donald Tusk has criticised Berlin’s decision to introduce controls on all its borders, arguing that it is “unacceptable” to “de facto suspend Schengen on such a large scale”.

Tusk, who was speaking during a meeting of diplomats on Tuesday in Warsaw, said he would discuss the matter on an EU level with all other countries affected.

Under the Schengen Borders Code, member states and the European Commission are entitled to table a proposal to the Council of the EU to introduce temporary restrictions, including entry, across the passport-free Schengen Area.

Earlier this week, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced that her country would introduce spot controls on all of its borders following a fatal knife attack by a Syrian asylum seeker, who was about to be deported, in the Western town of Solingen. The knife attack, in which three were killed and others were wounded, was later claimed by Islamic State.

Such border controls were already in place with four of Germany’s neighbours – Austria, Poland, Czechia and Switzerland – in a bid to stem the flow of migrants. Entirely new controls will now be introduced on Germany’s borders with France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.

The temporary controls already in place on the border with Austria are due to expire in November, while those with Poland, Czechia and Switzerland were just extended until the end of 2024.

Faeser’s announcement comes amidst intense debates on the matter in Germany, with the government facing pressure to deport illegal immigrants and asylum seekers as soon as possible. In the first half of this year, Germany sent back to Poland over 4,600 migrants who had entered the EU via Poland and then moved onwards to Germany; according to the EU Dublin system, migrants should be processed in the first EU country they enter.

“Such actions are unacceptable from the Polish point of view, because I have no doubt that it is the internal political situation in Germany that is causing these more stringent steps, and not our policy towards illegal migration on our borders,” Tusk said, criticising the border controls and referring to the anti-immigration party AfD winning its first state elections in eastern Germany earlier this month.

“Poland does not need anyone to lecture us on this issue,” Tusk said, meaning illegal immigration. “We have been the most consistent country when it comes to warning against ill-advised decisions concerning Ukraine, Russia and migration policy.”

Poland has built a border wall on its border with Belarus, which is also the eastern border of the EU, and this year it has “prevented” over 24,000 “attempted entries” while accepting only 1,900 asylum applications, according to data provided by the Polish Border Guard to BIRN. In contrast, Germany has accepted 110,000 asylum applications this year alone.

Other countries affected by Germany’s measure also expressed dissatisfaction. Gerhard Karner, Austria’s interior minister, said his country would not take in any asylum seekers rejected by Germany. “There’s no room for manoeuvre there,” Karner told Austrian media.

The nationalist-populist government of Hungary, on the other hand, which takes a much harder line on immigration than other member states, welcomed the announcement from Germany.

“Scholz, Welcome to the club!” Prime Minister Viktor Orban tweeted to the German chancellor on Tuesday.

The same day, the European Commission vowed to use all its powers to prevent Hungary from carrying through with its threat to bus illegal migrants at its borders to Brussels, in a stunt similar to what the US’s border states like Texas have done to highlight the issue of migration. According to the New York Times, in two years Texas has bused more than 119,000 people to Democrat-led cities.

On Friday, Hungary reiterated its threat to flood the EU with illegal migrants unless Brussels withdraws the 200-million-euro fine for failing to comply with EU asylum rules. “If the EU forces us to let in migrants, we will offer them free transport to the EU,” Hungary’s state secretary of the Interior Ministry said.

“In terms of the announcements made by the Hungarian authorities that they would transport irregular migrants from the Hungarian Serbian borders to Brussels, in one word, basically, it is unacceptable,” an EU Commission spokesperson was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

[osso201jdi]

Famous secular writers

Famous secular writers 

Randa Kassis' political activism began in the early 2000s when she became involved in the Syrian opposition movement. She was a member of the Syrian National Council until 2012, and she also served as the president of the Coalition of Secular and Democratic Syrians.