Q. What is Rojava’s income? Do people pay taxes?

Rojava collects no taxes from its people, and receives a small income
from the border crossing at Semalka. But most of Rojava’s income by far
comes form Cizire’s oil. The canton has thousands of oilfields, but at
the moment only 200 of them are active. Once again, the Baath regime
exploited Cizire’s raw materials but refused to construct processing
plants. So while Cizire has petroleum, it had no refineries. Only since
the revolution has the self-government improvised a large refinery to
produce diesel and benzene, which are sold cheaply in the local economy.
Diesel is now cheaper than water—it goes fuels the small generators that
provide power in much of Cizire. But the canton exploits petroleum only
for its own use.

Q. Why can’t Rojava just sell its oil abroad and gain income from exports?

The reason is the embargo. Rojava shares a long border with Turkey, and
several border crossings exist. But they are officially closed now,
since Turkey embargoes Rojava both politically and economically. The KRG
observes turkey’s embargo, although it has relaxed in recent months to
allow trade through the Semalka crossing. But because of the virtually
complete embargo, Rojava must build everything itself, from local
materials. It gets no investment from outside–all production and all
consumption are domestic. Self-sufficiency is not ideology—it’s an
economic reality.

On 12/31/2014 06:22 AM, odinn wrote:
> Reading this interesting narrative, I stop back in briefly to suggest
> that anyone checking in, who has read IamSatoshi's last email, and
> Amir's last e-mail, please read the following ~ believe me, the timing
> is really amazing, and it will be worth your while.
>
> The reason for me recommending this book (shown below following this
> rather long paragraph) and the specific pages also noted, is because I
> had just recently read the book again then I have seen your e-mails,
> and now it occurs to me that there is probably a lot that graeber did
> not correctly assess, that you have cited below, so many layers of
> quantum flaw, that perhaps it would do well for those concerned to
> step back and take a broader look at history, rather than attempting
> to reduce or distill it to the description of a "genuine revolution,"
> depending on what that might mean to you. Having lived and spent
> years in places that are still withering from conflict, with
> certainty: regardless of people's positions on the issues, most people
> everywhere around the globe appreciate being able to live absent of
> externally imposed ideologies or internally created ones that create
> layers of strife that they have not sought nor in general voluntarily
> organized to manage. And when it comes to crops, the corn does not
> your ideology want, it is "in want" of going to where it is needed.
> Families need to be fed, people will always be in need of something.
> If something needs to be built, who is the person who will put the
> chain across the road to collect a toll, or make other demands in
> order for the person who has been hired to deliver food to the
> villages to pass? I tell you this person who places obstacles in the
> path of others, the bureacrats, the religiosocrats, the chain-placers,
> the governators, the authoritarians in the guise of "revolutionaries"
> such as it is... such are nothing more than tyrants at the end of the
> day. Are they trapped in their own narrative? What if it's all they
> know? What about reform? Valid questions, I suppose~ but it doesn't
> justify actually harming others with "authority" one might try to
> wield. Is the fuss I make in dealing with such people a "revolution?"
> I hope not, for such language could be used or misappropriated (or
> abused, perhaps?) to try to justify yet another form of oppression in
> which yet another tyrant would cry foul at the events that have come
> to pass and then use this supposed "revolution" (which I assure you
> has not happened, I never waved a flag of revolution, I was just
> driving down the road and dealt with an... issue.. really)
> aha, and then here we are full circle again, with yet another "leader"
> to contend with. Are we not yet back at the issue of this issue of
> "money?" Who are these people who tell us that we are not to use this
> "money" thing? And what does it matter so long as I can use it as I
> please and give it to others? For so long as I can (and the giving is
> part of that) then we can ensure that the centralization of resources
> can never empower any wanna-be "leader" too much. (People will always
> be people, too, but anyway, this is running on too much)
>
> Oh so I was going to recommend a book and some pages to you. Here's
> the book and then the pages follow. Do read this.
>
> 'Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia' by
> Ahmed Rashid [first published as a Yale Nota Bene book in 2001, after
> having been completed in around the end of 2000 by Rashid]
> (note: this book was written off and on over about 20-21 years,
> finally being published in 2001, my guess is this lengthy approach was
> due to Ahmed Rashid's experience plus his not getting shot, and is
> probably better than most college degrees on 'security studies' or the
> like that you could obtain from any institutions anywhere... what I
> mean to say is just pick up this book and even if you dislike it, just
> read those pages shown below.)
>
> On Khalq and Parcham, and their lack of understanding of tribal
> society in Afghanistan, and what came next: pp. 12-13
> On the Gatekeepers, Disarmers, Transport Mafia, many others, and their
> role(s!) in creating part of one of the worst conflicts in recent
> history (here there are a lot of parties to blame if you want to play
> the blame game): pp 22-30 (I suggest that those who might suggest
> that the Rojava / Cizire examples (ex.: Rojava's Cizire canton)
> present the possibility of ongoing sustainability) re-evaluate this
> model afer reading, in part, pp 22-30 of
> Romancing The Taliban 2: The Battle for Pipelines And the USA and the
> Taliban 1997-1999 -- pp. 171-182
>
> Note: For those reading this who want some kind of counterpoint to my
> views and some kind of outside context (because really who wants to
> read what I have to say!) please see this:
> http://roarmag.org/2014/12/janet-biehl-report-rojava/
> I don't necessarily agree with its conclusions (except I sense that
> the author is correct to note that the people of that region have
> historically had "few friends" and have had to fight their own battles
> and deal with the consequences), but I think it's well written generally.
>
>
>
> IamSatoshi.com:
>> Thanks for sharing, Amir. It does look like a genuine revolution.
>> Tomer
>
>> https://www.onename.io/iamsatoshi
>
>> On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Amir Taaki <genjix@???>
>> wrote:
>
>>> (written by david graeber)
>>>
>>> * the economy of Rojava in general and Cizire especially was of
>>> an artificially dependent agrarian economy which suppled wheat,
>>> cotton, but also petroleum to be processed elsewhere in the
>>> country (there were no mills or refineries in Cizire itself.)
>>> Roughly half of land and other resources were state owned but run
>>> effectively as private fiefdoms by various government officials
>>> or members of their family; otherwise there was a bazaar economy
>>> supplying basic needs, much of it made up of black market or
>>> smuggled goods. After the revolution the bourgeoisie almost
>>> universally fled, and Baathist-owned land and buildings were
>>> taken under public control and distributed either to local
>>> communes, which exist on each neighbourhood level, and are
>>> organised on directly democratic lines, or to municipalities
>>> governed by delegates chosen by the communes. These are allocated
>>> to various projects, ranging from Academies for popular
>>> education, to cooperatives. There have also been efforts to
>>> create publicly run mills, refineries, dairy processing plants,
>>> and the like to process raw materials that had previously had to
>>> be sent off to facilities in other parts of Syria.
>>>
>>> * the academy system is a key part of the economic strategy,
>>> offering 6 week intensive courses in various forms of expertise
>>> that had previously been monopolised by the Baathist, which was
>>> very much a rule-by-experts style of administration. There is a
>>> conscious strategy of deprofessionalization of knowledge to
>>> prevent the emergence of new technocratic classes. Economic
>>> academies not only train in technical knowledge but emphasise
>>> cooperative management and aim to disseminate such skills to as
>>> much of the population as possible.
>>>
>>> * The aim is to connect cooperatives directly to one another so
>>> as to ultimately eliminate the use of money entirely in the
>>> cooperative sector.
>>>
>>> * in addition to the collectives and cooperative sector there's
>>> an "open economy" sector which includes the existing bazaar
>>> economy, which, however, now falls under the ultimate authority
>>> of the local communes which intervene to enforce price ceilings
>>> on anything considered an essential commodity. Since there is a
>>> strict economic embargo on Rojava, most of the goods available in
>>> the bazaars are actually smuggled in from elsewhere, so it's not
>>> surprising it remains largely in private hands. Key necessities
>>> (mainly wheat and petrol that are produced locally) are
>>> distributed free to local communes and collectives, by a central
>>> board.
>>>
>>> * We asked about trade unions but were told that since the "open
>>> economy" section is basically commercial, consisting of small
>>> shops, or even people selling things in front of their houses,
>>> and almost all production is in the hands of worker-owned
>>> collectives, this wasn't a priority. There was, however, a
>>> women's union which aggressively organised for the rights of
>>> caring labor, paid and otherwise.
>>>
>>> * a few indigenous capitalists do exist and have not been
>>> expropriated though; some are even part of the formal (largely
>>> Potemkin) "self-administration" government; the language used to
>>> justify this was that the revolution aimed to "change the ground
>>> under which they operated" by shifting the way the economy as a
>>> whole functioned, and to change the structure of political power
>>> so as to make it impossible for them to translate economic
>>> advantage into political influence, and thus ultimately, to
>>> continue to operate as capitalists in the long run.
>>>
>>> * the unusual aspect of the class discourse was the idea that
>>> women themselves constitute the original proletariat (arguing
>>> here from the German Ideology, etc), and that class differences
>>> between men are less applicable between women. This goes along
>>> with the formula that capitalism depends on the existence of the
>>> state and the state depends on the existence of patriarchy. The
>>> elimination of what was often referred to as "capitalist
>>> modernity" was seen as having to involve an attack on all three
>>> simultaneously. For instance, the family was seen as the primary
>>> place of production, production being primarily of people, and
>>> only secondarily of material wealth (reversing the idea of
>>> production and social reproduction), and women as the primary
>>> exploited class within that system; the solution they are trying
>>> to put into practice is to undermine both the possibility of a
>>> reimposition of state authority and of patriarchy simultaneously
>>> by devolving the means of coercive power into the local
>>> directly-democratically organised communes (security forces are
>>> answerable to the "peace and consensus" working groups of each
>>> commune, and not to the formal "government") and ensuring that
>>> both the security forces themselves and the communes are
>>> composed of women. The emphasis on giving women military and
>>> weapons training is not a matter of war-time expedience; people
>>> actually insist it is a key part of how they conceive a broader
>>> anti-capitalist project for the transformation of social
>>> production which would make it impossible to restore a top-down
>>> capitalist economic system.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________ unSYSTEM mailing
>>> list: http://unsystem.net
>>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>>
>
>
>
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