e. e. cummings: teers of wonder

A message from e. e. cummings, no longer whinnying with us, yet  with us still:

'pity this busy monster, manunkind' pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness --- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself.                           A world of made is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go

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If you haven't read cummings' The Enormous Room, do it.  Now.

                                                            or don't.

And if you read The Enormous Room it'll show.  It will be reflected in your face.

A new sympathy for the one in your crowd mist picked on in will shine out from your eyes;

 and a new glow of awe when the bullied sings like an angel, when the room is quiet and one is listening

You'll love your world more than you already do.

If you want an objective reason why this blog opposes the US support of the Saudi theocratic dictatorship and it's genocide in Yemen (and if that isn't enough reason for you), see

The facts — and a few myths — about Saudi Arabia and human rights

published in the newly neoconic Washington Post so it is safe for those few who still respect Bushco to read.  Indeed, the Post's views on the Saudi is the same as my own.

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Yemen inages of Saudi bombing post on google images in the last 24 hours.

Global wealth inequality: what comes next

Pierre Rosanvallon is the author of the article below.  Professor Posanvallon is a significant contributor to theories about how the Would should be reformed.

Many agree that the current economic and political formation of the World will not last.  Billionaires control an increasingly large share of the World's income and wealth, they are politically not accountable to any nation or group of nations, and the plight of the poor is not acceptable.  The World will not long last in its current form; and bloody revolution is, well, bloody.

Some theoreticians attempt to help shape its new forms.  Pierre Rosanvallon is one.    Murray Bookchin is another, influential among the anarchist New Yorkers and at least one Hawaiian;  and Turkish Revolutionary Kurds.  Those of you  more scholarly that I will want to compare the writings of the two.  For example, compare Bookchin's What is Communalism?? withRosanvallon's Commonality, described in the Foreign Affairs article printed in this post.

My take on it:

There isn't yet a generally recognized revolutionary slogan directed at inequality.  One of the reason is be that some billionaires are good folks, and it wouldn't be kindly to chop off their heads, as the French did in their Bloody Revolution.  I emphasize "some."

Another part of the reason is that when individuals have accumulated or inherited lots of money, their armies of accountants and lawyers invest their wealth prudently.

Prudent investment has been the gold standard of  lawyers, accountants, and economists for ever.  Prudence will no longer serve.  Prudence has become imprudent, feeding the festering wound to the public psyche.  

Bloody revolution is a response to continued prudence, and a likely one if the Wold continues on its present path; and it isn't needed, to make necessary change.  Congress can make it with a small change in trust and corporate law and in the Internal Revenue Code. for the US, if it will.

Vote to help Congress or your own legislative body  require all investments not needed for sustenance serve a public interest, clearly defined.

[And I can already hear a chorus of  lawyers eager to define "public interest" in a way that protects their wealthy clients.  There is likely no way to avoid bloody revolution.  I wish I thought there were.]

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Foreign Affairs,published by the Council on Foreign Relations

COMMENT January/February 2016 Issue Economics Economic Development 

How to Create a Society of Equals

Overcoming Today’s Crisis of Inequality

By Pierre Rosanvallon

There has been much discussion of rising economic inequality in the developed world recently, along with a generalized sense that the problem has grown to intolerable proportions. But at the same time, there has been little movement to address the situation; instead, there is tacit acceptance of many specific forms of inequality and the processes that produce it. The result is widespread discontent together with practical passivity.

One might call this a Bossuet paradox, after the seventeenth-century theologian Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, who said, “God laughs at men who complain of the consequences while cherishing the causes.” Today, people deplore inequality in general, appalled by broad social statistics or extreme examples of wealth and poverty, but often consent to it in particular, regarding smaller variations in life outcomes as the result of presumptively legitimate individual choices and circumstances. A recent survey conducted in France on the “perception of inequality and feelings of injustice,” for example, found that nearly 90 percent of respondents thought income disparities should be reduced, and an even larger percentage felt that a just society ought to guarantee the fulfillment of everyone’s basic needs (for education, food, health care, and shelter). Yet 57 percent also felt that income inequalities were inevitable in a dynamic economy, and 85 percent said that income differences were acceptable when they rewarded individual merits.

This situation is the product of a strong general moral revulsion at excessive inequality combined with a weak consensus on the theoretical grounds for acting to reduce it. Some might think the latter means that nothing can or will be done about the problem. But during the early and middle decades of the twentieth century, Western governments managed to reduce inequality dramatically, even without a shared vision on the need to do so. They were driven by three objective factors instead: fear that lack of reform would cause social and political turmoil, the practical impacts of the two world wars, and a decline in the belief in individual responsibility for people’s destinies. Together, these led to policies such as social insurance, a minimum wage, a strong welfare state, and a progressive income tax, all of which helped make economies and societies more egalitarian.

In recent decades, however, all these objective factors have disappeared, and with them, the support for egalitarian public policy. Those concerned with combating rising inequality today, therefore, have to start at the theoretical level first, formulating a conceptual framework that justifies such efforts on their own merits.

WHAT DROVE THE AGE OF EQUALITY

The growth of workers’ movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, together with the advent of universal suffrage, presented Western elites with a difficult choice: accept a fiscal revolution or risk a social one. 
In the most famous example, the conservative chancellor Otto von Bismarck pioneered the modern welfare state in imperial Germany, trying to counter the spread of socialist ideas by showing government concern for the working class. After 1918, fears of revolution increased, thanks to the communist seizure of power in Russia and the spread of copycat uprisings across Europe. The ravages of the Great Depression only contributed to the problem, as did the persistent fear of communism in the decades after World War II. The result was a reformism of fear, with reduction in inequality becoming a major government priority.

The experience of World War I also produced a new vision of the social bond tying countries together. In a sense, the war “nationalized” people’s lives. Just as it threatened everyone’s existence, so it fostered the idea everyone owed a debt to the broader community. Millions of deaths across the European continent, moreover, compelled people to think in new ways about what united them. “If the war didn’t happen to kill you it was bound to start you thinking,” George Orwell put it. Of course, the soldier’s lot was the hardest. Each combatant learned in the mud of the trenches that his life was just as vulnerable as that of his comrade. As one of them wrote, “The consciousness of a community of nature gave rise to a very vivid and comforting sentiment of equality.” And the war contributed to the growth of common national identities. As the German writer Robert Musil remarked, “Many German soldiers felt for the first time the exalting sense of having something in common with all other Germans. One suddenly became a simple, humble particle in an event that transcended the personal. Subsumed in the nation, one could almost feel it.”

Even the United States emerged from the war profoundly changed. The experience revolutionized American attitudes toward taxation and redistribution. When the War Revenue Act of 1917 was passed, there was talk of “conscription of income” and “conscription of wealth” at a time when young men were enlisting en masse. “Let their dollars die for their country too,” one congressman said. The call for fiscal patriotism helped legitimate the progressive income tax in the United States, and by 1944, the top marginal rate had risen as high as 94 percent.

The experience of World War I produced a new vision of the social bond tying countries together.

In the United Kingdom and continental Europe, meanwhile, an intellectual and moral revolution helped make redistribution possible: the economy and society were “de-individualized” by thinkers who rejected older views of individual responsibility and talent. The idea of a society composed of sovereign, self-sufficient individuals gave way to an approach based on interdependence. “The isolated man does not exist,” argued the French politician Léon Bourgeois, and the British philosopher L. T. Hobhouse argued similarly that every individual was shaped by the “social atmosphere” around him.

In this new context, the notions of right and duty, merit and responsibility, and autonomy and solidarity were completely redefined. During the nineteenth century, the core of the social question had focused on personal responsibility. The key activity of the state and charitable institutions was considered to be distinguishing the “deserving poor,” whose condition derived from purely external circumstances, from the “undeserving poor,” whose problems were caused by their own misconduct and bad habits. The former should be supported, it was thought, but the latter had to be punished (say, by being put in a workhouse) or simply abandoned to their fate.

By the middle decades of the twentieth century, in contrast, individual behavior was no longer seen as the driver of social outcomes; rather, the reverse was believed to be true. Poverty was the consequence, rather than the cause, of social dysfunctions, and the welfare state acted universally, behind a “veil of ignorance.” From unemployment to disease or disability, the problems of citizens were seen as risks largely beyond individual control, with governments required to step in and manage those risks collectively through broad programs of social insurance.

These changed attitudes about individual responsibility were accompanied by a new approach to economic performance. Instead of celebrating entrepreneurs and innovation as the factors driving economic growth, mid-twentieth-century intellectuals emphasized the roles of managers and organizations. Writers such as Peter Drucker, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Andrew Shonfield exemplified in their work a new and influential approach to corporations. “In the mature enterprise,” Galbraith wrote in 1967, “. . . power has passed, inevitably and irrevocably, from the individual to the group. That is because only the group has the information that decision requires.” Schumpeter was passé: “The entrepreneur no longer exists as an individual person in the mature industrial enterprise”; he had been replaced by the “technostructure,” a collective mind. Success depended more on the quality of a firm’s organization and the efficiency of its management than on the exceptional talents of particular individuals, even at the top of the corporate pyramid: “Retirement, death and replacement [of a CEO] . . . have no perceptible effect on the performance of General Motors or IBM.”

Within such an economic paradigm, economic efficiency was seen as a collective achievement. No one could claim the accomplishments of a company as his own. Executives were better paid than workers, but only within the framework of a functional hierarchy of skills. The management guru Drucker argued that the pay ratio between the top executive and the humblest worker in a company should be no greater than 20 to 1.

THE CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE

The combination of these trends created a political and intellectual basis for policies that redistributed wealth and reduced economic inequality across the advanced industrial democracies throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century, even without any theoretical consensus about justice or equality. Over the past few decades, however, each of these trends has been reversed.

After the collapse of communism, there was no longer a need for a reformism of fear. The era of revolutions, in the classical sense of the term, is now over. Social fears still exist, but they concern such things as immigration, security, and terrorism. They appeal to an authoritarian state, not a solidaristic one. Most of the countries heavily involved in the two world wars, meanwhile, have long since entered a period of peace, and their senses of a national community as an expression of a mutual debt and common destiny have been weakened. Welfare states have entered a period of deep crisis, both for financial reasons and because the notion of social risk has been eroded by a renewed belief in individual responsibility as a constitutive element of social life. And a new kind of capitalism has replaced the style of firms described by Drucker and Galbraith. Schumpe­terian entrepreneurs and innovators have roared back to the fore of economic life, with individual performance and personal responsibility celebrated everywhere as central to success and efficiency.

What this means is that there are no longer strong exogenous factors driving developed countries toward policies that keep inequality in check—and unsurprisingly, in the absence of those factors, such policies have eroded, contributing to the rise in inequality everyone has noticed. If inequality is to be reduced once more, therefore, the effort will have to be grounded in a solid, shared conception of what equality involves and why it is worth promoting.

Welfare states have entered a period of deep crisis, for financial reasons and because the notion of social risk has been eroded by a renewed belief in individual responsibility.

There are two main contenders today for such a conception. One, the populist option, redefines equality as social identity or homogeneity. The other, the social-liberal option, emphasizes equality of opportunity. Both have flaws.

The populist option was first developed in Europe during the late nineteenth century, in an earlier era of intensive globalization. It could also be labeled as “national protectionism,” and it should be understood as a solidaristic alternative to unbridled capitalism. It is sustained by a purely negative definition of equality, forming a community of some by excluding others. The French activist Maurice Barrès put it bluntly: “The idea of ‘fatherland’ implies a kind of inequality, but to the detriment of foreigners.” In a new era of intensive globalization, with economic stagnation among the middle and lower classes in developed countries and the welfare state in crisis, such xenophobic views are returning on both sides of the Atlantic as a powerful political force, with outsiders—foreigners, immigrants, refugees—portrayed as enemies exploiting and undermining existing national communities.

French workers protest against unemployment in Marseille

Employees of the National Agency for Employment demonstrate in Marseille, November 2009. The banner reads "Strike".

JEAN-PAUL PELISSIER / REUTERS

The social-liberal option, in contrast, seeks to update and extend the traditional liberal notion of equality of opportunity, going beyond the classical negative definition of it (the elimination of barriers to upward mobility) to incorporate broader positive efforts to achieve the same underlying goal. Different avenues for activism have been suggested, linked by their common desire to block the mechanisms through which economic, social, and cultural inequalities are reproduced from generation to generation. They generally involve some sort of redistribution—of cash, of goods, of privilege, of social capital, and so forth. They all seek to equalize the conditions in which individuals compete in a fair contest for meritocratic rewards.

The vigorous implementation of 
all these positive variants of equality of opportunity, however, raises problems. To be treated as true equals, individuals would need to be “desocialized”—separated from their families, their inheritances, and their personal contexts. That implementation could also lead to a hierarchical and depressing society, one in which everyone’s life outcome would be determined, following his desocialization, soley by his personal attributes and efforts. Such a meritocracy could well be a harsh and unforgiving society, one in which individuals must internalize their despair over any problems they encounter.

The populist vision of equality, in short, is more about exclusion than inclusion and has little attractive positive content. And although the social-liberal vision lays the basis for a number of valuable practical policies, it is unsuitable for establishing a general and universal social theory of equality, since it focuses exclusively on individuals. So something more is needed, a positive theory into which the politics of equality of opportunity could be embedded.

THREE PRINCIPLES FOR DEMOCRATIC EQUALITY

These days, equality is usually defined mathematically, as a comparison of the economic positions of individuals or segments of the population. This notion has its uses. But equality should also, and perhaps primarily, be defined socially, as a measure of the communal bond. A theory of equality needs to focus on the structure of society. It should rest on three principles: a recognition of people’s singularity (as opposed to individualism), the organization of reciprocity (in the relation of citizens to one another), and the constitution of commonality (for the community as a whole).

The classic modern revolutionary idea has been to abolish privilege and create a world of similar, and similarly situated, people (best expressed by the French word semblable). But similarity does not require sameness, nor does it mean lack of individuality or autonomy. Each individual can stand out by virtue of the unique qualities that he or she alone possesses, with diversity becoming the standard of equality. Each individual seeks his or her own path and control over his or her history. Everyone is similar by dint of being singular and incomparable.

Equality based on singularity requires a type of society grounded in neither abstract universalism nor identity-based communitarianism but rather the dynamic construction and recognition of specificities. Singularity is not a sign of withdrawal from society (individualism as retreat or separation). Rather, it signals an expectation of reciprocity, of mutual recognition. This marks the advent of a fully democratic age: the basis of society lies not in nature but solely in a shared philosophy of equality. Democracy as a type of political regime is mirrored by democracy as a form of society.

As for the relationships that singular individuals maintain with one another, Tocqueville argued that selfishness is “to societies what rust is to metal.” And today, the most important source of corrosion is the absence of reciprocity. Many studies have shown that political commitment is conditional: people are more likely to contribute efforts or funds if they believe that other citizens will do the same. Conversely, any perceived disruption of reciprocity can lead to withdrawal in one form or another. Inequality is felt most acutely when citizens believe that the rules apply differently to different people. They resent double standards and those who manage to manipulate the game to their own advantage. Such sentiments are a crucial source of social distrust, which in turn undermines the legitimacy of the welfare state, fosters aversion to taxes, legitimizes various forms of self-dealing (as justifiable compensation for others’ transgressions), and erodes public spirit.

A general sense that reciprocity has broken down in recent decades has fed frustrations that have been exploited by extremist political movements in many developed countries—groups that direct their fire at privileged elites and poor immigrants, both of whom are assumed to be taking advantage of the supposedly hard-working and exploited middle and working classes. Restoring reciprocity, accordingly, is a crucial first step toward creating a society of equals. Equality as reciprocity means above all equality of treatment and involvement. Abuse of the welfare and tax systems must be vigorously opposed in order to maintain confidence in these institutions, as must the provision of favors to special interests and any lack of equality or transparency in the operations of the state more generally.

People walk past a homeless man in Manila, Philippines, 2014 

Walk on: in Manila, Philippines, January 2014 

GETTY IMAGES / AFP / NOEL CELIS

The third element required for a society of equals is the development of some sense of community for society as a whole. Civil citizenship and the notion of human rights that goes along with it have reshaped the very idea of the individual. But citizenship is also a social form. The citizen is not merely an individual endowed with certain rights; he is also defined by his relation to others, his fellow citizens. What the French linguist Émile Benveniste tells us about the etymology of the word civis is especially enlightening in this regard. The Latin civis, he argued, was originally a term applied to people who shared the same habitat. Implicit in the meaning of the word was a certain idea of reciprocity. It was thus a term of relative order, as can be seen by a comparison with the root of the Sanskrit and Germanic words for “friend,” “relative,” and “ally.” The civis was a person who joined with his peers in the construction of a civitas, a common society. I propose the term “commonality” as a name for this dimension of citizenship, citizenship as a social form, as distinct from its legal definition.

Commonality is today under serious attack thanks to various forms of social separation and withdrawal. The secession of the rich into their own private havens is the most visible and shameful of these, but it is not the only one; regional separa­tism, for example, is also on the rise. The response to such withdrawals, moreover, is often an equally destructive quest for homogeneity and identity politics, the driving force behind many populist movements. What democracy needs instead is a more active, creative concept, a more complex understanding of what elements of life and experience can and should be held and lived in common.

Without objective factors driving support for egalitarian policies, the only way to combat economic inequality today is to frame the quest within a broader project to create a society of equals. Neither the populist alternative of searching for comfort in a homogeneous band that excludes outsiders nor the social-liberal project of trying to achieve equality of opportunity can offer what is needed. Only a more robust vision of democratic equality—based on the singularity of individuals, reciprocal relations among them, and a social commonality—can provide the foundation for broadly accepted public policies that can attack the trends toward inequality that are hollowing out contemporary economies and polities. And only such a vision can provide guidance on how to make the necessary redistributive policies just: by seeing them as a way not simply to redress economic inequalities but also to build a society that engenders social peace and cooperation.

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Here are images of  some unacceptable inequality, taken from google's images:

The consequences of economic inequality Seven Pillars Institute

Politicians Fail to Face Up to U.S. Income Inequality | Portside

Distribution of wealth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Four single-family homes:

Villa Leopolda, Villefranche-sur-mer, France - In Photos: The World's Most Expensive Billionaire Homes - Forbes

45 Surprising Facts About Extreme Poverty Around the World You May Not Have Realized

Spelling Mansion Sells For $85 Million - Business Insider

HONG KONG, one of the world’s wealthiest but the poor live like CAGED DOGS | Robert Chaen

Turkey, PKK, and the Black Panather Movement

Compare and contrast Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

 and  Efkan Ala, head of the The Ministry of the Interior (Turkish: İçişleri Bakanlığı) and formerly  Governor of  the primarily Kurdish province of Diyarbakır

 with the United States president in the 1970s, Richard Mulhouse ("I am not a crook") Nixon

 a and his shadow  self, John Edgar Hoover . . .

. . . not, in this image, wearing a dress.

 Erdoğan, after many false starts, faces a rebellion by the large, mistreated Kurdish population in Turkey.  Nixon faced, what he proclaimed as a rebellion of Black in the zuS.

 Nixon and Hoover

supervised an extensive program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and drain the organization of resources and manpower.

They won a temporary victory.  History suggests tht t multi-ethnic USA will emerge in spite of the best efforts of a ruling elite.

 Erdoğan's path to temporary victory is more difficult:  Kurds have powerful kin in the neighborhood, armed and influential; he has Russia to contend with; and the Kurdish minority is accustomed to his tricks.

Posted December 18, 2015

A Turkish Attack and Tactical Reconnaissance Helicopter performs a maneuver during a ceremony marking the 93rd anniversary of Victory Day in Ankara, Turkey, Aug. 30, 2015.  (photo by REUTERS/Umit Bektas)

Will Turkey end up stuck between Kurds, Russia?

An old Turkish proverb says, “You can’t carry two watermelons under one arm,” meaning that two big tasks should not be tackled at the same time. These days, the Ankara regime seems to be attempting exactly that. At home, it is waging a war on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and regionally, it is sliding into a cold war with Russia that carries the risk of heated confrontation. As a natural outcome, these two wars could draw Russia and the PKK together, creating a tough challenge for Turkey.

The first frost in the cold war with Russia came Nov. 24 when Turkey downed a Russian warplane on grounds it violated Turkish airspace at the border with Syria, where Russia is intervening militarily to prop up the Damascus regime and Turkey is backing opposition forces. A brief recollection of the past would explain why the PKK should not be overlooked in this cold war.

In the 1980s, Syria — the Soviet Union’s ally in the Middle East — offered safe haven and military and logistic support to the PKK in a bid to destabilize NATO’s flank country, Turkey, among other objectives. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Russian Federation — irked by the pan-Turkist winds blowing in Turkey and the support Chechen separatists enjoyed there — allowed the PKK to operate legally on its soil. The group was even allocated a "culture and education camp" near Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow. No wonder Russia became the first country where PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan — now jailed on a prison island in the Sea of Marmara — sought refuge in 1998 after leaving his longtime safe haven in Syria, under Turkish pressure.

The PKK is again part of the Syrian equation today, though in a different form. The PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), has emerged as the undisputed, dominant power in Rojava (the term Kurds use to refer to western Kurdistan in Syria), and a well-proven force in the fight against the Islamic State (IS). Ankara, however, sees the PYD as a threat, wary that the Kurdish autonomy in Rojava threatens Turkey’s territorial integrity.

In this context, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov’s remarks on Dec. 16 suggest Moscow is already showing the tip of “the Kurdish card” to Ankara. “Turkey's actions — and on the contrary, its inaction on certain issues — pose a real threat” to Russian security, Meshkov told Russia's state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. “The Kurds, of course, should not be excluded from this process [of peace talks on Syria], as well as from collective efforts against [IS] and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, where they play a significant role in countering the terrorist threat.” It is important to note that the PKK has been on the forefront of the fight against IS in Iraq. Thus, Meshkov’s comments reflect political support for the PKK as well.

His reference to Turkey’s “actions” and “inactions” describes Ankara’s Syria policy. If Turkey’s support for jihadis is the action Russia sees as a threat, then Turkey’s failure to do its part against IS must be the inaction Russia rebukes. This very policy is the core reason for the cold war between the two.

Turkey has refused to change its Syria policy, while at the same time piling pressure on the PKK by escalating the war in the Kurdish-majority southeast. The more the pressure grows, the higher the possibility of the PKK gravitating toward Russia.

The frontline in the new war with the PKK has shifted to urban areas in the southeast, leading to extensive destruction and collective punishment of civilian populations. Take, for instance, the Sur district of Diyarbakir, the region’s largest city, where police have been battling PKK militants entrenched in residential areas. The historical district last week emerged devastated after a nine-day, round-the-clock curfew, lifted for only 17 hours, drawing comparisons to Middle Eastern cities ravaged by civil war — and rightfully so. According to a tally by journalist Celal Baslangic, who closely follows the southeast, 40 curfews covering a total of 130 days were imposed on 18 districts in the region from Aug. 16 to Dec. 8.

What brought about fighting in the urban areas is the sociopolitical transformation that Turkey’s Kurdish movement has undergone in recent years. As the Kurdish question became highly politicized, the Kurdish movement grew into a popular movement with broad and vibrant bases in cities and towns. The security crackdowns were launched after the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), dominated by young PKK militants, assumed the role of a policing force in neighborhoods with strong pro-PKK bases as an alternative to state authority. The security operations, which began in July, were met with armed resistance on the local level, with militants digging trenches and erecting barricades in residential areas. According to statistics compiled by Turkey’s Human Rights Association and revealed Dec. 10 on the international Human Rights Day, 157 civilians have been killed in the clashes since July, in addition to 195 PKK militants and 171 members of the security forces.

On Dec. 15, the government ordered the army into action as the special police forces, which had led the operations so far, failed to break the resistance at flashpoints in the provinces of Diyarbakir, Mardin and Sirnak. Backed by tanks and armored vehicles, 10,000 troops have since launched operations in Sirnak’s towns of Cizre and Silopi, where armed PKK militants have been holding out for months behind barricades and trenches.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps repeating that the fight against the PKK will continue as long as it takes. Yet a more reliable measure exists to guess how far the fight could go. Erdogan’s war on the PKK has become an indispensable vessel of his unyielding ambition for a shift to a presidential system, and it has already brought his party victory in the Nov. 1 elections. Thus, the regime will be compelled to carry on the war as long as it takes to secure the larger nationalist vote that any future referendum on a constitutional amendment will require.

Meanwhile, the regime’s mounting military pressure on the PKK is likely to make the group open to external support. Ending the cold war with Russia is thus imperative in terms of Turkey’s domestic stability as well. Yet normalization has become virtually impossible, with Russia demanding an apology and compensation for the downed jet as a precondition to mend fences. Agreeing to these demands would amount to a humiliating defeat for Erdogan, given that Ankara has said that the jet was downed for violating Turkish airspace and that it will never apologize for that.

In sum, the framework of a cold war enables Russia to increase military and political pressure on Ankara to deter it from backing jihadis. It remains to be seen how long Ankara will be able to sustain the cold war with Russia and the heated conflict with the PKK without letting its two adversaries link up.

  December 21, 2015

A boy walks past burning tires during a protest against the curfew in Sur district, in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, Dec. 14, 2015. (photo by REUTERS/Sertac Kayar)

The PKK's 'child terrorists'

The number of child convicts in Turkish prisons has increased fivefold since 2009, reaching 7,595 in 2014. In 2014 alone, the number increased 23.8% over the previous year. In terms of age groups, 13.5% (1,028) of imprisoned child convicts were 12-14 years old, while the remaining 86.5% (6,567) were 15-17, according to figures from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK).

hese numbers could rise even higher this year, as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) recruits children for its fight against security forces. The battles have been escalating since July.

Minors under the age of 18 made up 29.4% (22.8 million) of Turkey’s population of nearly 77.7 million as of December 2014, according to TUIK. In the predominantly Kurdish southeast, the rate was even higher — about 50% — meaning that one of every two people is a child.

In addition to those convicted, there are tens of thousands of minors being held in penal institutions under supervision or arrest, a criminal lawyer who wished to remain anonymous told Al-Monitor.

Turkish law defines minors as “individuals who have not turned 18,” while Article 31 of the Turkish Penal Code divides them into three groups in terms of criminal liability. Children who are younger than 12 when they commit an offense are exempt from liability. With children aged 12-14, officials consider an offender's capacity to understand the crime and control his or her behavior. Minors in the third group — those who have turned 15 — are considered to have criminal liability but are subject to a policy of reduced penalties.

Yet when it comes to “terror offenses,” minors are not that lucky. Under Article 2 of the stern Anti-Terror Law, those who are not members of terrorist organizations but commit offenses on their behalf are equally deemed to be “terror offenders.” The law does not distinguish between adults and minors regarding these offenses. In other words, a person who does not officially belong to a terrorist organization but is caught perpetrating an act of terror is automatically arrested as a terror offender, regardless of whether he or she is a minor or an adult.

Article 5 of the same law stipulates longer sentences for terror offenses — up to six years in jail if the offense is perpetrated individually and up to nine years if it is perpetrated collectively. Though the penal code stipulates reduced sentences for minors, it's questionable whether that is considered in terror cases.

The same lawyer told Al-Monitor that Kurdish minors aged 12-17 make up the vast majority of suspects who have been temporarily detained or arrested pending trial for terror offenses since the clashes between the security forces and the PKK resumed in the southeast in July. Most of them, the lawyer said, belong to the 15-17 age group. It follows that the same age group will make up the majority of Kurds being arrested and put on trial for “terror offenses” in a recent operation that security forces launched to overcome resistance in six urban centers in the southeast. The operation began Dec. 17 and is likely to continue for at least 10 more days.

To determine the criminal liability of these minors, called "child terrorists" in Turkey, a meticulous investigation is required. However, in conflict zones, where the abnormal has become the norm, escalating clashes mean local security forces and the judiciary lack both the means and the time to conduct such investigations. When it comes to terrorism, the need to protect minors, especially those who have been “dragged into crime,” is inevitably reduced to secondary importance.

And what is the logic leading the PKK to push untrained and inexperienced minors to the forefront of the clashes? To start with, these children are residents of the cities and neighborhoods where the clashes take place. By using these minors, the PKK is able to turn local sentiment against the security forces.

Similarly, the deaths and funerals of the minors are instrumental in keeping popular pro-PKK mobilization alive.

Furthermore, when most of the PKK’s experienced fighters are deployed in Syria, using minors in urban clashes in the southeast allows the PKK to wage the conflict in Turkey in a manner that is less costly, less risky and more efficient.

Finally, once these children have criminal records, the PKK is able to tear them away from society and recruit them at a relatively low cost.

The PKK nowadays is creating “urban guerrilla” units, combining experienced “staffer terrorists” and “accidental child terrorists.” The children take to the streets as casually as they would to a neighborhood soccer match — perhaps out of curiosity and youthful excitement, peer pressure and/or ideological convictions.

The Turkish General Staff said Dec. 17 that 69 terrorists had been killed in operations launched by army troops in the southeast. How many of those killed were staffers and how many were accidental child terrorists is unknown. Yet one thing is clear: The more the urban clashes intensify, the more they amplify the problem of child terrorists facing Turkey’s security forces and judiciary.

Judging by their actions, decision-makers in Ankara seem concerned mainly with the “terrorist” aspect of the problem, ignoring the “child” aspect. And this perfectly serves the PKK’s aim to enlist popular support in neighborhoods and towns through the deaths and arrests of the local youngsters it drives to the forefront of the unrest. Regardless of whether the child terrorists are apprehended or killed, the PKK wins in both cases.

Black Panther Party

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Black Panther Party or BPP (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization[1][2] active in the United States from 1966 until 1982, with its only international chapter operating in Algeria from 1969 until 1972.[3]

At its inception on October 15,[4] 1966, the Black Panther Party's core practice was its armed citizens' patrols to monitor the behavior of police officers and challenge police brutality in Oakland, California. In 1969, community social programs became a core activity of party members.[5] The Black Panther Party instituted a variety of community social programs, most extensively the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, and community health clinics.[6][7][8]

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover called the party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country",[9] and he supervised an extensive program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and drain the organization of resources and manpower. The program was also accused of using assassination against Black Panther members.[10][11][12][13]

Government oppression initially contributed to the growth of the party as killings and arrests of Panthers increased support for the party within the black community and on the broad political left, both of whom valued the Panthers as powerful force opposed to de facto segregation and the military draft. Black Panther Party membership reached a peak in 1970, with offices in 68 cities and thousands of members, then suffered a series of contractions. After being vilified by the mainstream press, public support for the party waned, and the group became more isolated.[14] In-fighting among Party leadership, caused largely by the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, led to expulsions and defections that decimated the membership.[15] Popular support for the Party declined further after reports appeared detailing the group's involvement in illegal activities such as drug dealing and extortion schemes directed against Oakland merchants.[16] By 1972 most Panther activity centered on the national headquarters and a school in Oakland, where the party continued to influence local politics. Party contractions continued throughout the 1970s. By 1980 the Black Panther Party had just 27 members.[17]

GET THE US OUT OF YEMEN!!!

DAMS AND BLAST!!  OBAMA, GET THE US OUT OF YEMEN!!!

MIDDLE EAST

The New York Times

Yemen Peace Talks End With No End to Conflict

By KAREEM FAHIM and SAEED AL-BATATIDEC. 20, 2015

Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi, Yemen's foreign minister, left, and Ezzaldin al-Asbahi, the human rights minister, in Switzerland on Sunday. Credit Ruben Sprich/Reuters

CAIRO — Days of negotiations in Switzerland to halt the war in Yemen ended on Sunday with no sign of a resolution to the conflict and with the combatants engaged in some of their fiercest fighting in months, according to negotiators and diplomats.

The United Nations-brokered talks, which began on Tuesday, were aimed at ending the nine-month war between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.  As the talks began, there were reasons for optimism:  After several previous attempts to hold negotiations failed, the combatants sat down together for the first time during the conflict, and even agreed publicly to a cease-fire.

At the same time, international pressure has been mounting for a resolution to the war, which has left nearly 6,000 people dead and the country crippled by a severe humanitarian crisis.

Tribal fighters on the outskirts of Taiz, Yemen, taking up a position against Houthi rebels on Wednesday.Yemeni Sides Agree to Prisoner Swap, as Peace Talks Begin in SwitzerlandDEC. 16, 2015

Tribesmen supporting President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen prepared ammunition in Sirwa on Monday, before the cease-fire with Houthi rebels.Yemen Agrees to Cease-Fire With Rebels as Peace Talks BeginDEC. 15, 2015

But despite making what the United Nations called “serious progress” in the discussions, repeated violations of the cease-fire appeared to have doomed the current round, according to a statement issued by Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the United Nations special envoy to Yemen.  He said that the negotiations would resume in mid-January. 

But as a new deadline approached, the hostilities appeared to be accelerating. Political leaders have appeared unwilling to stop the fighting — perhaps hoping to tip the negotiations in their favor — or lacking any influence over the multitude of armed groups that have sprung up during the war. 

In recent days, anti-Houthi fighters have mounted a broad offensive across several northern provinces, and captured new territory, including a provincial capital.  The anti-Houthi forces are backed by a Saudi-led military coalition that has been conducting an aerial campaign against the rebels since March. Human rights groups say that bombing by the coalition is responsible for the majority of civilian deaths during the war.

The Saudi-led coalition carried out airstrikes in Sana and other areas on Saturday and Sunday.  And the Houthis, who have been making increasingly bold military incursions across the border into Saudi Arabia, have fired ballistic missiles at the Saudi-backed forces in the past few days, according to Yemeni military officials. 

Despite the continuing fighting, one diplomat said there had been a “palpable warming on a personal level between the two delegations over the course of the week.”  The diplomat, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that the issue of prisoner releases appeared to be one of the most difficult to resolve.

Abdul Wahab al-Humigani, a government negotiator writing on Facebook, blamed the collapse of the talks on the Houthis’ “intransigence,” including on the issue of releasing prisoners. 

Nasser Bagazgooz, who was part of the Houthi delegation, asserted that his side had made “big” concessions, including agreeing to withdraw Houthi forces from cities and from government institutions, and to hand over weapons. 

The Houthis had asked for the formation of a new government “from across the political spectrum,” and elections within a year, he added. 

Kareem Fahim reported from Cairo, and Saeed al-Batati from Al Mukalla, Yemen. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva, and Shuaib Almosawa from Sana, Yemen.

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In the past 24 hours GOOGLE IMAGES . . .

And see Yemen Crisis: One More Reason to Re-evaluate the Toxic U.S.-Saudi Alliance | Medea Benjamin

SENATORS MAZIE HERONO AND BRIAN SCHULZ:  

MOVE CONGRESS TO GET THE US OUT OF THE YEMEN HOLOCAUST!!!!

Turkey, Kurds, Ferguson, and the West's Conundrum

A House Foreign Affairs Committee bill would provide giving Iraqi Kurdistan, directly, anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, armored vehicles, long-range artillery, crew-served weapons and ammunition, secure command and communications equipment, body armor, helmets, logistics equipment, excess defense articles and other military assistance that the President determines to be appropriate.   In fact, whatever Turkey's Kurds need to establish an autonomous Kurdistan in Turkey.

A Senate bill co-sponsored by  some Democrats and by Republican presidential candidates Rand Paul (Ky.), Marco Rubio (Fla.). Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) provides for directly arming to the Kurds, rather than arming them through Bagdad.


President Obama objects.  The stated basis of  the objection is that arming Kurds directly would further weaken the Shiite-controlled national Iraqi government in Bagdad.

An unstated but more compelling objection is that it would trouble a NATO partner, Turkey.  For background, see

Part 2: Opportunities and dangers in West Asia 

Kurds and Turkey are at war.

Turkey has good reason to fear arming Kurds.  Kurds are the best fighters around, and Turkey treated its Kurds abominably until it decided it wanted to join the European Union, which ha high standards of treating its peoples.  Now that desire is fading and Turkey is looking eastward, to the Turkic Union, and is again treating Kueds badly.


From the West's point of view, Kurds are the best fighters around against the Islamic State; [IS] and Kurds were the best allies the West had in the Bushco's Iraq War.  The West has good reason to arm the Kurds.

How to support the Kurds and Turkey and end IS at the same time?  Certainly not with bluster,as the Republicans propose, but cautiously, deliberately, and with careful diplomacy.  That approach doesn't make good sound bites; it does make good sense.

Here is some useful information about unrest in Turkey, more organized than in any other Western country, for now.  (Turkey is Western, though Islamic -- for now.)

December 15, 2015

Demonstrators remove security barriers during a protest against the curfew in the Sur district of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, Dec. 14, 2015. (photo by REUTERS/Sertac Kayar)

 Ocalan silent as Kurds' fight for self-rule rages on

The cobbled alleys of Diyarbakir’s ancient Sur district are filled with shell casings and shattered glass. Black-masked teenagers touting Kalashnikovs and hand grenades mill around sandbag fortifications.

“We will defend our neighborhood till the last drop of our blood, till the revolution in Kurdistan is complete,” one of the youths told an Al-Monitor correspondent in Sur. That was on Dec. 11, when the Turkish authorities briefly eased a curfew that was slapped on six neighborhoods in Sur almost two weeks ago, allowing trapped residents to flee with the few possessions they managed to grab. “We are caught in the war. What else can we do? All we pray for now is peace,” said Remziye Kaya, a mother of six, as she hurried away with a small electrical stove.

Peace seems an increasingly elusive goal ever since a two-year cease-fire between Turkey’s Islamist government and rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) collapsed in the wake of a deadly suicide bomb attack carried out by the Islamic State (IS) in the town of Suruc. Some 33 peace activists, many of them Kurds, were killed.

The PKK has long claimed that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has used IS to sabotage the Syrian Kurds’ experiment with self-rule in the steadily expanding band of territory they control along the Turkish border they call Rojava.

Conspiracy theories abound as to who reignited the 31-year conflict — the government or the PKK — and why. At this point it hardly matters; the war is swiftly escalating, and the Kurds have raised the stakes like never before.

In a clutch of towns and cities across Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, armed youngsters loyal to Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, and calling themselves the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), have seized control of entire streets and neighborhoods, erecting barriers and declaring autonomy. The spirit of rebellion has permeated Sur, where pro-PKK slogans and posters of the mustachioed Ocalan cover bullet-riddled walls. Several young fighters interviewed by Al-Monitor all said that they would end their revolt only if ordered to do so by Ocalan. But since April 6, the Turkish authorities have not allowed any of his regular visitors, including the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers who used to carry messages from him, to meet with Ocalan in his island prison.

The resulting vacuum has been filled by Cemil Bayik, the hard-line PKK commander who says he supports the YDG-H’s moves.

“This is a first, and the unrest could spread to the rest of the country,” warned Ahmet Sumbul, the managing editor of Mucadele, an independent local daily. “Don’t forget there are 5 million Kurds in Istanbul alone and most are young, unemployed and alienated, too,” he told Al-Monitor. Many are the children of the 1.5 million or so Kurds who were forced to flee their villages in the 1990s as a result of the scorched-earth campaign against the Kurds.

Martin van Bruinessen, a respected Dutch scholar and the author of several groundbreaking books on the Kurds, noted in an interview with Al-Monitor, “A few years ago, they were throwing stones at the police; now, a few years older, they carry firearms.” Local sources told Al-Monitor that these weapons are mostly being funneled by the PKK. The YDG-H “don't seem to be particularly afraid of being killed. The current level of state violence is likely to radicalize them even further. Unless the state is willing to kill large numbers of them, this is a war the state cannot win. And it will not be easy to stop the escalation,” van Bruinessen added.

While few believe that the YDG-H can hold the areas under its control indefinitely, its actions are piling pressure on the AKP, which became the first Turkish government to openly negotiate with the PKK and Ocalan. But the government’s refusal to grant the Kurds' demands for political autonomy enshrined in a brand-new constitution lies at the heart of the current deadlock.

Arzu Yilmaz, an Ankara-based academic who studies the Kurds, told Al-Monitor, “The Kurds want to be formally acknowledged as self-governing equal partners and for this new arrangement to be constitutionally guaranteed.”

Her views are widely echoed by PKK commanders and the HDP alike. Hishyar Ozsoy, an HDP lawmaker from Bingol, whose great grandfather, the legendary Sheikh Said, led one of the earliest Kurdish rebellions in 1925, said in an interview with Al-Monitor, “This is not about human rights. This is about collective rights, and nothing short of self-rule will satisfy the Kurds.”

“But the government is stuffing its ears,” he added.

To be sure, the government is growing more hawkish by the day. Round-the-clock curfews are being repeatedly imposed over traditionally restive towns like Silvan, Nusaybin and Cizre.

Some 22 mayors from the pro-Kurdish HDP have been locked up on thinly supported terrorism charges. “Special” police and military teams backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers have laid siege to the “liberated” zones and engaged in bloody street battles in a bid to flush and starve the youths out. They seem to be switching tactics.

“When the state temporarily lifts the curfews, it’s so that civilians can leave,” explained Gultan Kisanak, the fiery co-mayor of Diyarbakir in an interview with Al-Monitor. “The immediate purpose is to have a free hand to crush the youths. The larger goal is to scatter the Kurds, just as they did in the ’90s.”

Her reasoning may well be true and is repeated in public by fellow HDP officials. This in turn places huge moral pressure on ordinary Kurds caught in the crossfire to risk their lives and stay.

“The breakdown of the peace process and willingness of the Turkish government and PKK to bring war to the cities is taking a terrible toll on the Kurdish population,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, a senior Turkey researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Credible allegations of police ill-treatment are on the rise. The enormous hardships people face under curfews with armed clashes raging — no water, no electricity, no food, no schooling, no medical treatment — mean that people are being driven out of the affected neighborhoods,” she noted in an email exchange with Al-Monitor.

Figures vary, but at least 150 people are said to have died since the violence flared in June. Muharrem Erbey, a respected human rights lawyer and member of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party, an HDP affiliate, believes that the security forces are responsible for most of the deaths. Reports of torture under police detention are also on the rise. “One of my clients had a truncheon repeatedly jammed up against his anus in a police van. He can barely walk,” Erbey told Al-Monitor in an interview.

The government may be calculating that the endless self-sacrifice being demanded of ordinary Kurds will turn them against the PKK. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared that the security forces would go “door to door” to root the “terrorists” out.

In Sur alone, thousands of businesses have been shut down. “Sur is the commercial heart not only of Diyarbakir but of the entire southeast,” said Shah Ismail Bedirhanoglu, who presides over the Southeastern Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association. He told Al-Monitor, “We are ruined, but it is poor people who are paying the highest price.”

Some HDP officials agree that popular anger is rising. “If there were an election today, the HDP would not make it into the parliament,” Imam Tascier, an HDP lawmaker from Diyarbakir, told Al-Monitor. Yet Tascier insists that the government is to blame for the current impasse, and like the youths in Sur, he believes Ocalan needs to be brought out of his isolation. Bedirhanoglu agrees.

“Ocalan’s silence is sowing confusion in the minds of the HDP and the PKK,” he said. “Above all, the Turkish state has to recognize the Kurds' demands for self-rule. The alternative, Allah forbid, is an all-out civil war,” Bedirhanoglu concluded.

Amberin Zaman

Columnist 

Amberin Zaman is an Istanbul-based writer who has covered Turkey for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Voice of America. A frequent commentator on Turkish television, she is currently Turkey correspondent for The Economist, a position she has retained since 1999. She is a columnist for Al-Monitor's Turkey Pulse. On Twitter: @amberinzaman

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Abdullah Öcalan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

❊    ❊    ❊

Abandoning his precapture policy, which involved violence targeting civilians as well as military personnel, Öcalan has advocated a relatively peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict inside the borders of Turkey.[55][56][57][58][59] Öcalan called for the foundation of a "Truth and Justice Commission" by Kurdish institutions in order to investigate war crimes committed by the PKK and Turkish security forces; a parallel structure began functioning in May 2006.[60] In March 2005, Abdullah Öcalan issued the Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan[61] calling for a border-free confederation between the Kurdish regions of Eastern Turkey (called "Northern Kurdistan" by Kurds[62]), East Syria ("Western Kurdistan"), Northern Iraq ("South Kurdistan"), and West of Iran ("East Kurdistan"). In this zone, three bodies of law would be implemented: EU law, Turkish/Syrian/Iraqi/Iranian law and Kurdish law. This perspective was included in the PKK programme following the "Refoundation Congress" in April 2005.[63]

Since his incarceration, Öcalan has significantly changed his ideology, reading Western social theorists such as Murray Bookchin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel,[64] fashioned his ideal society as "Democratic Confederalism" (drawing heavily on Bookchin's Communalism),[65] [see Part 2, Opportunities and Dangers in Wet Asia, supra] and refers to Friedrich Nietzsche as "a prophet".[66] He also wrote books[67] and articles[68] on the history of pre-capitalist Mesopotamia and Abrahamic religions.

Öcalan had his lawyer, Ibrahim Bilmez,[69] release a statement 28 September 2006, calling on the PKK to declare a ceasefire and seek peace with Turkey. Öcalan's statement said, "The PKK should not use weapons unless it is attacked with the aim of annihilation," and that it is "very important to build a democratic union between Turks and Kurds. With this process, the way to democratic dialogue will be also opened".[70] He made another such declaration in March 2013.

On 31 May 2010, however, Öcalan said he was abandoning an ongoing dialogue between him and Turkey saying that "this process is no longer meaningful or useful". Turkey ignored his three protocols for negotiation that included (a) his terms of health and security (b) his release and (c) a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey. Though the Turkish government received these protocols, they were never published. Öcalan stated that he would leave the top PKK commanders in charge of the conflict. However, he also said that his comments should not be misinterpreted as a call for the PKK to intensify its armed conflict with the Turkish state.[71][72]

More recently, Öcalan has shown renewed cooperation with the Turkish government and hope for a peaceful resolution to three decades of conflict. On 21 March 2013, Öcalan declared a ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish state. Öcalan's statement was read to hundreds of thousands of Kurds gathered to celebrate the Kurdish New Year and it states, "Let guns be silenced and politics dominate... a new door is being opened from the process of armed conflict to democratization and democratic politics. It's not the end. It's the start of a new era." Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the statement and hope for a peaceful settlement has been raised on both sides.

Soon after Öcalan's declaration was read, the functional head of the PKK, Murat Karayılan responded by promising to implement the ceasefire, stating, "Everyone should know the PKK is as ready for peace as it is for war".

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Recent images of Kurdish unrest in Western Turkey:

Kurdish leader calls for 'honourable resistance' after Turkish forces kill 55 http://ow.ly/W5akZ

A picture made avaliable 18 August 2015, Members of Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H) youth organization of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), guard in Silvan district, near city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, 17 August 2015. EPA/STR

After killing of Diyarbakır Bar President Tahir Elçi, curfew has been declared second time in Turkey’s southeastern Sur district of Diyarbakır province

Clashes have erupted in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır province after police refused to permit a rally protesting an ongoing curfew. Two people were killed and two others were wounded in the violence

Demonstrators gesture during a protest against the curfew in Sur district in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır on Dec. 14

Walled city of Sur, Turkey

turkey-august-27th-2015-turkey-istanbul-members-of-the-patriotic-revolutionary-F160DR

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       Oh the folks will rise 

With the sleep still in their eyes

And they’ll jerk from their beds and think they’re’
But they’ll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it’s for real
The hour when the ship comes in 

Then they’ll raise their hands
Sayin’ we’ll meet all your demands
But we’ll shout from the bow your days are numbered
And like Pharoah’s tribe
They’ll be drownded in the tide
And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered

                                        Bob Dylan, in an early incarnation, when he still trusted the people . . . .