Sacramento Wobbly and German volunteer murdered by Turkish state.


Turkish airstrike kills two Western SDF fighters near Manbij – ARA News15267954_2052476088312105_3074493215761876110_n.jpg

8 hours ago –Manbij – Michael Israel from California and Anton Leschek from Bielefeld were killed in a Turkish airstrike on November 24. The two men were foreign volunteers, serving in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
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 Anton Leschek adopted the nom de guerre Zana Ciwan after leaving Germany. Upon joining the SDF, he declared that “here people neither surrender to tyranny nor to terror; I will support this democratic revolution to the end.”

dorsetiww's avatarIndustrial Workers of the World Dorset

Michael Israel.Michael Israel.

With great sadness we learn that on 29th of November 2016, Fellow Worker Michael Israel, a founder member of Sacramento IWW, and six other people, were killed in a bombing raid by Turkish air force north of Raqqa, Syria. Michael was serving his second tour as a volunteer with the YPG.

In his own words:

“I am back in Rojava again and will be here for the next several months to do my part in defending the revolution.

The Rojava struggle is the most dynamic and ground breaking revolutionary movement of our time. I am determined that it is the job of leftist allies and internationalists to rally behind this movement, to help build it up and learn from it. Things that we may have only dreamed of in theoretical writing are acted upon in Rojava, modified and adapted to their struggle and made real. Rojava is doing…

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Dreaming Beyond Capitalism: A Culture Without Fear

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George Monbiot lists 13 world catastrophes in his Guardian column this week, starting with the granting of absolute power to a man who appears to possess no capacity for restraint, balance or empathy, but a bottomless capacity for revenge and vindictiveness.

High on his list is runaway climate change which has a trajectory way beyond that envisaged by the Paris agreement.

Equally alarming are the red lights flashing for Economic Collapse, possibly kicked off next week with the fall of Italian banks and the Brexit mess.

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Then there is the falling apart of the European Union, takeovers by far right governments in the pay of capitalist corporations, legitimation of sexism and racism, not to mention spreading permanent war as well as longer term emergencies such as the UN declaring that at current rates of soil loss we have 60 years of harvests left, and of course the extinction crisis which  appears, if anything, to be accelerating.

With the world in such a mess it’s a good moment to remind each other that it NEED NOT BE SO… Reaffirming long term goals can inspire us to stronger daily resistance.

 Dreaming Beyond Capitalism: A Culture Without Fear

By Martin Winiecki, .. shared with thanks

In the 1990s an unusual encounter took place in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In plant rituals, shamans of the Achuar, a tribe living in pristine forest that had never been in touch with Western civilization, received the warning that the “white man” would try to invade their lands, cut down the forest and exploit the resources. Deeply shaken, they called out to the Spirits for help. Continue reading “Dreaming Beyond Capitalism: A Culture Without Fear”