Showing posts with label Kurds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kurds. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

 To the Enemies of Humankind

…and for the Kurdish people in Rojava, Occupied Kurdistan

.../for the Palestinian people in Occupied Palestine

and for those resisting, under paramilitary siege, in the Occupied Cities of the U.S.

“Our choice is clear; victory or victory.”

YPJ Commander Raya Mihemed (Hasakah, Rojava):

 1

Me? i’ve fought this radio to a homicidal truce

where it hides beneath its bunker of books,

the ones i’ve torn pages from,

instead of letting them argue their lies to

my illiterate children, down all these years

living as a slave.

 

i’ve fought the ghosts of enemies

i misunderstood in their sentry posts

on the walls of Immorality

and so they bombed my shelters,

slaughtered my dreams,

imprisoned every single one of my

demands in dungeons and despair

 

and all my wretched howling was

to no avail.

 

Now i am an old man in the midst

of endless war.

My stomach hurts,

my bones ache, my eyes

bleed daily

with the countless casualties

inflicted on us

for believing in a better world.

 

And still it rains here,

constantly.

 

2

All this water must soon

swiftly flee

to find its way from

the river to the sea

 

and bring with it both

the bodies of the dead,

slaughtered for spite and

the butchers’ greed

as well as these lies that tell me

“thank you for your attention”

…as if this will always be the way

things are…

 

Fuck all that.

 

3

i am, an old man with a grudge.

i am an old man with a grudge i

am proud of.

 

i’ve slept in doorways

cursing the rain.

i’ve bitten the hand that

refused to feed me.

By now, my enemies should

have all died before me

just so i could dance

on their graves,

this pathetic dance of the

drunkard i longed to be

and even failed, too frequently

at that task.

 

4

But now i look all around me

and all i see are these humanless humanoids,

these brainless brutes with their bankroll

as big as their toothless mouths

with their vicious brains and their fucking bombs

their militias, presidents, spies,

their assassins, warships, artillery and airbases

and always, always, their greedy twisted tongues

telling me to bow and scrape and serve

to this servile religion of slavery and servitude

 

and i know today for sure

what i was told as a child

 

Oh, let this “sleeping beast” sleep

for if it wakes it will shake

the whole wide world”.

 

5

And so i surely know

this “sleeping beast”

must be the human heart,

this one right here being

torn in two

 

and no motherfucking shiteating

murdering fascist

in all the thieves’ dens

in all the bars and brothels of a world

already sold to these bankers

and billionaires

 

will

stop

it…

 

not all the “sick beings” in

their broken world

can stop our insurgent and

uprising war.

 

6

So, please, go search,

go out and search

for Her,

i tell you now

 

this heart,

this human heart,

insubordinate,

seditious,

subversive

 

insurrected!

[22 january – 27 january, 2026]

 Poem, Links & References

... and... still ... ongoing...
 ...while in the U.S
One of the many videos of the murder of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse,
shot dead by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis ...
...and Rojava, NE Syria
 
 Prof. Dr. Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna, Italy):

“I am following with anger and anxiety the military attacks on the multi-ethnic and democratic self-administration of the Rojava Revolution. Since 2012, the name Rojava has mobilized people in and beyond the region, opening up new horizons for a revolutionary politics of liberation. To stand up and defend Rojava is a duty for anybody committed to freedom and equality. In an age of war and genocide, struggling for Rojava means struggling for a different world, built upon the ecological, feminist, and democratic principles that the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria has turned into a lived reality over the last years. Biji Rojava…” [23, january, 2026]

The Attack on Rojava – is an Attack on Hope – ANF English (23 Jan 2026)

#MakeAntiFascismGreatAgain

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

 (Our) HISTORY (is Theirs)

(Their) STORY (is Ours)

for all refugees and those who seek asylum

Global Rights 

 

1

 

There is this thin line called

the corpus callosum.

It transects both the geography

and blind terror

of a displaced mind.

 

There is, also,  Citizen,

this imaginary place

called East and West.

 

Here your patience must wait

for a future condemned

to be force-fed

on the futile fear of the mindless,

mediated now between the meridians

of thought and thoughtlessness.

 

If you woke alone in

this no-man's-land

it would hiss hatred

at your presence

like an angry snake

disturbed by its own

selfish sleep.

 

Here

we must all seek rest

somewhere between memory

and trauma

and the strange yet familiar

sound of screeching voices,

where nothing spoken will ever

make much sense.

 

Somehow here, mein Führer,

all our words are taken

hostage.

 

Our Being, already mute with the

chatter of speechlessness,

is now made unbearable with

the lobotomy of borders... (contd.)

"Refugees" Morris Topchevsky (1939-1940)
 
 

Louis Guglielmi - Refugees (1939)


Thursday, September 10, 2020

These are Words

Hung by the Neck

 Here are words

must have been

hung

by the neck,

beaten

tarred and feathered

scandalised,

force-fed on hunger strike

against

the dumb motherfucking

stupidity of humans...

https://www.dirittiglobali.it/2019/12/these-are-words-hung-by-the-neck/ 

 

Thursday, November 14, 2019

For  Ahmet Altan – in a Turkish  prison

"These are the things they took away..."

Ahmet Hüsrev Altan, the Turkish writer and journalist, was rearrested on 12 November, 2019, just a week after his release from prison over alleged links to the failed 2016 coup. He had earlier been serving an aggravated life sentence in prison for the bizarre charges of “sending subliminal messages to coup conspirators” (via  a TV interview) on the eve of the July 2016 failed coup in Turkey.

Wounds are so deep and painful in these countries that in order to clean those wounds you have to use your pen like a scalpel. We are forced to go outside literature and write directly political pieces. Writing becomes engulfed by politics.”   (Ahmet Altan, Times Literary Supplement)

Ahmet Altan released his memoir of his arrest and detention in March 2019: I Will Never See the World Again. In reality, his arrest at dawn, like that of his own father 45 years previously, is a result of his courageous criticism of the now-oppressive Erdoğan-AKP regime in Turkey as well his outspoken defense of the rights of Kurds, Armenians and ‘Free Speech’.

 

Monday, November 4, 2019

Truly We Live in Dark Times
 

"To UNICEF, to United Nations, to Trump
I am Eva from Rojava, from Kobanî, Afrin, Qamishli,
and all Kurdistan

I am a stolen child I am a forgotten child
I have never held a weapon
I just have a wide heart
(I)  send it (to) all the world

will you give me peace..?
 Will you give me my childhood?

…And this is my message:
Please, please,
stop this war!”

(Eva from Rojava (below)
to Kurdistan 24  interviewer on
Turkey’s military invasion of Rojava,

Thursday, April 18, 2019

FREEDOM POEMS FOR OCALAN

 
  
The poems collected in this volume are presented to Abdullah Ocalan on his 70th birthday on 4 April 2019.


They are each a gesture of solidarity and token of friendship for Ocalan himself and for the Kurdish people from whom he is inseparable.

Each poem is an expression of admiration for the spirit of the Kurds, inspired by their resilience, resistance and belief in the joy of life. The remarkable awakening of the consciousness and political activism of the Kurdish people in recent years has been engendered by the remarkable leadership and writings of Abdullah Ocalan. Despite enduring decades of incarceration removed entirely from the world, his people and denied all human contacts, Ocalan still communicates through his words and as a living example of the essential strength of the Kurdish spirit. He will not and cannot be silenced.

The immediate context for the publication of this book is the mass hunger strike waged by Kurds within Turkey and the diaspora for the freedom of Ocalan. There is also, at the time of going to press, the mounting political crisis within Turkey reflected in the dramatic collapse in support for Erdogan’s party, the AKP, in the recent elections. That poll result is a welcome sign that change is on its way and it is about time too.

But this volume looks forward to a time when Abdullah Ocalan himself will be able to read the poems contained in its pages at leisure and in freedom. That will be an important milestone in the liberation of the Kurds as a whole and only then will our task have been achieved.

We hope these poems will move you and inspire you into taking action in support of the Kurdish people.

Peace in Kurdistan Campaign
Campaign for a political solution of the Kurdish Question


Saturday, January 26, 2019


ONLY IN ROJAVA
séamas carraher

photographs
from kobanê
by
orsola casagrande,
september, 2018

"This place is Rojava, the Federation of Northern and Eastern Syria, where Kurds, together with Armenians, Yazidi, Circassians, Christians, Turkmens, Arabs, Assyrians are dreaming boldly, and, equally boldly, are trying to make these dreams come true."   [Orsola Casagrande]

downloadable e-chapbook

“We have work to do”

 "This is what Only in Rojava is, a statement from the heart.
And from the hearts of those men and women trying to build a new world, against all odds."
(Orsola Casagrande)

Read Online