Category Archives: Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

UPDATE II: The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (‘The Turkish Problem’)

Feminism, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Middle East, Socialism, States' Rights

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is often dismissed as Marxist–Leninist, or as “a fusion of revolutionary socialism and Kurdish nationalism.” CNN’s Arwa Damon describes the PKK’s ideology as “an idealistic philosophy, one that combines Kurdish nationalism with certain communist goals, such as equality and communal ownership of property.”

As the movement’s salient ideological features, Wikipedia lists Kurdish nationalism, libertarian socialism, communalism, feminism and democratic confederalism. Still imprisoned by the Turks, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan is said to have “abandoned Leninism, leading the party to adopt his new political platform of “Democratic Confederalism” (influenced strongly by the libertarian socialist philosophy of communalism).”

Öcalan himself described the PKK’s idea of governance as follows:

The democratic confederalism of Kurdistan is not a State system, it is the democratic system of a people without a State… It takes its power from the people and adopts to reach self sufficiency in every field including economy.

The PKK, it would appear, leans towards a matriarchy.

You have to be a tinny libertarian automaton not to hope this cohesive people is able, one day, to form a peaceful community of their choosing.

UPDATE I: About “the Turkish problem,” Patrick Cockburn writes this:

… US planes attacking Isis forces in Kobani had to fly 1200 miles from their bases in the Gulf because Turkey wouldn’t allow the use of its airbase at Incirlik, just a hundred miles from Kobani. By not preventing reinforcements, weapons and ammunition from reaching Isis in Kobani, Ankara was showing that it would prefer Isis to hold the town: anything was better than the PYD. Turkey’s position had been clear since July 2012, when the Syrian army, under pressure from rebels elsewhere, pulled out of the main Kurdish areas. The Syrian Kurds, long persecuted by Damascus and politically marginal, suddenly won de facto autonomy under increasing PKK authority. Living mostly along the border with Turkey, a strategically important area to Isis, the Kurds unexpectedly became players in the struggle for power in a disintegrating Syria. This was an unwelcome development for the Turks. The dominant political and military organisations of the Syrian Kurds were branches of the PKK and obeyed instructions from Ocalan and the military leadership in Qandil. The PKK insurgents, who had fought for so long for some form of self-rule in Turkey, now ruled a quasi-state in Syria centred on the cities of Qamishli, Kobani and Afrin. Much of the Syrian border region was likely to remain in Kurdish hands, since the Syrian government and its opponents were both too weak to do anything about it. Ankara may not be the master chess player collaborating with Isis to break Kurdish power, as conspiracy theorists believe, but it saw the advantage to itself of allowing Isis to weaken the Syrian Kurds. It was never a very far-sighted policy: if Isis succeeded in taking Kobani, and thus humiliating the US, the Americans’ supposed ally Turkey would be seen as partly responsible, after sealing off the town. In the event, the Turkish change of course was embarrassingly speedy. Within hours of Erdo?an saying that Turkey wouldn’t help the PYD terrorists, permission was being given for Iraqi Kurds to reinforce the PYD fighters at Kobani.

Interesting analysis.

UPDATE II: A column I wrote on 10/19/2007, fingered Bush for betraying the Kurds. While he doesn’t veer into opinion, Cockburn illustrated a similar dynamic, also in 2007:

… There are 100,000 Turkish troops just across the northern Iraqi border preparing to launch an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan in the hope of eliminating the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The US has labelled the PKK ‘terrorists’ and the Iraqi government – despite the arguments of its Kurdish members – has told the guerrillas to disarm or leave its territory. Iran has denounced the Iranian wing of the PKK as a pawn of Israel and the US, and intermittently shells its camps in the Kandil mountains. The PKK, which led the failed rebellion of the Turkish Kurds between 1984 and 1999 and had been largely forgotten by the outside world, is suddenly at the centre of a new crisis in Iraq. President Bush is due to talk to the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Washington on 5 November to discuss how to deal with the PKK without a Turkish invasion of Iraq being launched. The US army in Baghdad is worried that its supply lines through northern Iraq will be cut if the Turks declare an economic embargo or launch a military attack. …

Nurse Diesel Despises Ordinary America. What About Her Defender?

Ethics, Healthcare, Individual Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism

Just back from treating Ebola-afflicted patients in Sierra Leone, Nurse Diesel, aka Kaci Hickox—contempt dripping from every word disgorged—threatened: “If the restrictions placed on me by the state of Maine are not lifted by Thursday morning, I will go to court to fight for my freedom.” (Taken from this week’s column.)

One doesn’t expect such gaping vacuity from Judge Andrew Napolitano (although he exemplifies left-libertarianism). The Judge told Megyn Kelly:

“We don’t have group guilt in America. We don’t have group punishment in America.”

Wow. That’s a serious logical mistake, as the clever Kelly pointed out:

“… this isn’t an attack on a group, but individuals who meet very specific criteria. In Hickox’s case, not only was she was working with Ebola patients in West Africa, but she showed a fever at the airport.”

There is no guilt or conviction here, Judge, only the right to exercise rights until these are brought up sharp against the rights of others. Think of someone who might be carrying Ebola as an individual strapped with invisible explosives. If asymptomatic, you can’t see the explosives, but they could go off in the future.

At WND, Dawg_em counters the Judge’s equally confused presumption-of-liberty column, writing:

It appears the good Judge failed to apply the principle that your rights are inviolable until you violate the rights of others. And her freedom to wonder to and fro certainly places many others at risk. I would think a simple solution would be to require all those seeking to help in the hot zones be told up front they will not be permitted re-entry into the US until a satisfactory quarantine period has elapsed.

Nurse Diesel:

Democrat-Rigged ‘Democracy’

Democracy, Democrats, GUNS, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

“Make sure it doesn’t happen in your state next,” warns Michelle Malkin, in “Rocky Mountain Heist,” a documentary in which the columnist puts her trademark shoe-leather journalistic sleuthing to work in exposing the Democrat-rigged “democracy” of Colorado, where a “group of wealthy liberals overtook Colorado. They used every scheme possible to impose a backward agenda and they transformed the place [she] love[s] into a testing ground for their liberal ideology.”

Malkin, who once resided in our state, might already know that the dice are loaded against decent people in Washington State too. I-594 is, by Rachel Alexander’s telling, “the only gun-control measure on the ballot this fall anywhere across the country.” It “is being bankrolled by billionaires on the left in favor of gun control, including anti-gun activist and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as former wealthy Microsoft execs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.”

Let us not forget Paul Allen, also a billionaire and also of Microsoft. He and the other bastards—who no doubt have security details guarding their abodes—“have raised more than $6 million” to make it more difficult for ordinary folks to defend life and property.

In 2011, another unfathomably wealthy individual got behind an effort to bilk business men and women of modest means. The Service Employees International Union (state and national locals), the National Education Association, and Washington teachers union locals all united to champion a new income tax, the poster boy for which was William H. Gates Sr., father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Ashoka (And Mother) Mukpo’s Quest For Exotica

Africa, Canada, Critique, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism

OK, I’ll say it. He’s a lily white Canadian-American with the name Ashoka Mukpo. Mr. Mukpo loves Liberia almost more than life itself. This is how his family aggrandized Ashoka’s Liberian pursuits:

Mukpo was a researcher for the Sustainable Development Institute, a Liberia-based nonprofit shining light on concerns of workers in mining camps outside Monrovia. And “was into the culture. … He seemed to have a lot of passion for it.”

(CBC)

Days before his infection with Ebola became public, Mukpo was hired by NBC as a cameraman in that country. (Wasn’t he a “researcher” of sorts?)

Instead of assuming the name of his “birth father, a prominent Rhode Island doctor,” Ashoka and brother “took the name of his mother’s first husband, who founded the Shambhala Buddhism community”—upon a cursory read of this Wiki entry, Shambhala seems like a cult of sort, primed to ensnare a certain type of westerner.

The quest for exotica trumps honoring thy father.

Throughout the interview this married couple gave Sean Hannity, Mother Mukpo came across as pretentious, uppity and worse. Ashoka’s stepfather, Mitchell Levy, seemed perfectly nice; an affable fellow.

Still, Ashoka’s mother was referred to as Diana Mukpo, and not Diana Levy. The infected cameraman’s sullen mom clearly preferred to take on the name of her former husband than assume the name of the man at her side: Dr. Levy, “director of intensive care at Rhode Island Hospital.”

Oh, Ashoka Mukpo is said by the faithful to be “a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist master teacher.”

“Ashoka Mukpo (center) with his mother, Diana (third from left) and birth father Mitchell Levy (far right) during a visit to Tibet in 2002. (Konchok.org)”