Interesting about the oil. Odd how much that finds its way into
everything in one way or another.

Happy new year, all.

- -O

Amir Taaki:
> 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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>>
>>
>>
>>>
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