If 'Life Must Go On,' say Groups, France Must Lift Ban on Climate Protests

Written by John Queally and first published at Common Dreams

'We must not suspend democracy and freedom while proclaiming our commitment to democracy and freedom,' declares letter sent to French president.

Ahead of international climate talks which are about to begin in Paris, an international coalition of NGOs, political figures, and civil society groups on Thursday demanded French President François Hollande lift the ban on protests and marches and said officials, despite recent violence, cannot proclaim a "commitment to democracy and freedom" while simultaneously suspending "democracy and freedom."

In a letter addressed to Hollande, which has also taken the form of an online petition that anyone can sign, the climate justice leaders expressed understanding for how the recent violence in Paris—also mirrored in attacks in Beirut, Ankara, Bamako, and over the skies of Egypt—has made the security situation tense, but indicated the effort to shut down large scale protests is both short-sighted and counter-productive.

"People from all over the world are flocking to Paris to have their voices heard on one of the most urgent challenges of our lifetime – the threat of climate change," said Nick Dearden, head of the UK-based Global Justice Now, which is spearheading the effort to lift the imposed ban.  "It is essential that there is robust participation from civil society during the climate talks and that world leaders are held accountable for how they engage with the issue."

As the letter to Hollande states plainly: "We urge you to reconsider the decision to prohibit the demonstrations in Paris. We understand the need to keep citizens safe, including those mobilising on climate change. It must be possible to find a way to do this short of banning our demonstrations. Many other mass events and gatherings continue to happen in Paris on a daily basis."

Dearden continued by saying that one of the clear aims of terrorists who "carrying out atrocities like we have seen in Paris is to attempt to disrupt and derail how ordinary people go about their lives."  Given the absolute urgency of addressing the global climate crisis, the letter sent to Hollande suggests the stakes are simply too high to submit political space during these crucial international talks.

"The French authorities have said that 'life must go one' with regards to public occasions like football matches," continued Dearden, "and we call on President Hollande to use similar logic in standing strong against these attacks by allowing people the fundamental right to protest on crucially important issues like climate change during the UN talks."

Following the announcement that major protests would be significantly curbed or cancelled—including a large march and demonstration planned for Sunday, November 29— the largest environmental groups and event organizers have been scrambling to adjust their plans. Though almost all groups have expressed desire and willingness to incorporate changes to ensure the safety of all participants, it has been hard for many to shake the suspicion that officials in France have used the opportunity of the Paris attacks to squelch the participation of civil society during the UN Conference of the Parties (COP21) talks.

"The French authorities are using the shock of the 13 November killings to cancel demonstrations throughout the country, even in small cities where no terrorist threat is plausible," said Thomas Coutrot, a spokesperson for Attac France, one of the key organizinations planning the Paris demonstrations. "Do they want to keep us silent in the face of the results of COP 21, and its probable failure to tackle effectively climate change? Attac and its partners will be pushing hard to ensure our voices are not silenced."

In an op-ed last week by Naomi Klein, who also signed Thursday letter to Hollande, the Canadian author and activist explain the multiple reasons why the banning of protests in Paris is so disturbing. In addition to the overt silencing of the very people who are threatened most by climate change, namely the poor and the powerless of the global south, Klein argues that the symbolism of banning protest is also key:

Climate change is a moral crisis because every time governments of wealthy nations fail to act, it sends a message that we in the global north are putting our immediate comfort and economic security ahead of the suffering and survival of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. The decision to ban the most important spaces where the voices of climate-impacted people would have been heard is a dramatic expression of this profoundly unethical abuse of power: once again, a wealthy western country is putting security for elites ahead of the interests of those fighting for survival. Once again, the message is: our security is non-negotiable, yours is up for grabs.

As many have argued in recent weeks, the effort to battle human-caused climate change is deeply linked with the violence and desperation that has become so pervasive in the world. And as the letter states, "A peaceful world can only be built on equality, solidarity and sustainability. We must be able to say this in Paris."

And its underlying message: The more the better. The louder the better.

The full letter sent to Hollande on Thursday as well as the original signatories follows:

Dear Mr President

We want to express our sympathy with the French people for the terrorist attacks that took place last weekend. The barbaric attacks on civilians in Paris, Ankara, Bamako and Beirut in recent weeks are the latest terrible symptoms of a world economy experiencing multiple crises.

One of those crises is climate change. As you will be aware, we have driven our planet to the verge of environmental catastrophe. The impacts are being felt everywhere to a greater or lesser degree. Indeed the conflict in Syria was partly fuelled by climatic events. And unless we start enacting very different policies, climate change will increasingly fuel war, migration, poverty and dispossession.

That's why many of us are coming to Paris in the next fortnight - to demand world leaders begin the radical transformation to a low carbon economy, with serious financing to assist less industrialised countries to build societies without resort to fossil fuels. We understand that the challenge is huge. It isn't possible for politicians to carry out the changes needed without massive movements and mobilisations creating political space and will.

For this reason we are deeply concerned by the decision of your government to prohibit the mobilisations in Paris during COP21. This will make it extremely difficult for ordinary citizens of the world to make their voices heard and to create the political space necessary to build a brighter future. We believe this strips the COP process of its legitimacy. 

We urge you to reconsider the decision to prohibit the demonstrations in Paris. We understand the need to keep citizens safe, including those mobilising on climate change.

It must be possible to find a way to do this short of banning our demonstrations. Many other mass events and gatherings continue to happen in Paris on a daily basis. We would also like to ensure that the police treat us with dignity and that you send a clear message that our civil liberties be respected.  

We must not suspend democracy and freedom while proclaiming our commitment to democracy and freedom. A peaceful world can only be built on equality, solidarity and sustainability. We must be able to say this in Paris.

Yours,

Naomi Klein, writer
Avi Lewis, filmmaker
Shalmali Guttal, researcher and writer
Susan George, writer
Global Justice Now, UK 
Bolivian Platform on Climate Change
Focus on the Global South
Fondacion Solon, Bolivia
Friends of the Earth, Scotland
Ecologistas en Acción (Spain)
Ekoloji Kolektifi / Ecology Collective Association, Turkey
Iniciativa Construyendo Puentes - Redes de Latinoamerica frente al cambio climatico
Campaign against Climate Change, UK
Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha, India
Public & Commercial & Service Union, UK
Attac Japan
Transnational Institute
Engajamundo, Brazil
Beyond Copenhagen collective, India
End Ecocide on Earth
Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development
Our Rivers, Our Life (OROL) – Philippines
Corporate Europe Observatory
IBON International
Philippine Movement for Climate Justice
Friends of the Earth Sweden
Public Advocacy Initiatives for Rights & Values in India (PAIRVI)
Energy and Climate Policy Institute for Just Transition, Korea
UK Tar Sands Network
Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (SENTRO), Phillipines
Platform, UK
Sanlakas,  Philippines
Planet Defenders, Brazil
DeSmog, UK
Labor/Community Strategy Center, USA
WomanHealth, Phillipines
New Internationalist, UK
Institute for Policy Studies, Climate Policy Program, USA
York Climate Action, UK
Ecological Society of the Philippine

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How to Deal with IS – Planes, Frigates and Nuclear Submarines?

The government announced in the strategic and security review yesterday, that spending on defence will be increased by £12bn to £178bn over the next decade. The bulk of this money will be spent on four new Trident nuclear submarines, 28 new fighter bomber aeroplanes and 8 new frigate class warships. (Two new aircraft carriers have previously been announced).

The Trident system, which was estimated to cost £20bn to buy nine years ago, is now estimated at a cost of £31bn, and seeing the trend for this amount to rise further, the government will also keep £10bn as a contingency, in case the cost rises again, which seems probable. Maintenance and running costs over the lifetime of the Trident system, could run to an extra £100bn or more.

The 28 new Boeing F-35 aeroplanes will cost a combined total of nearly £3bn and the eight frigates will cost (although I can find no official cost estimates) around £1bn each.

There is more money for ground and special forces, for aerial drones and other reconnaissance type aircraft, which is at least more in keeping with the defence challenges that the nation faces today. 

This is of course, from jihadist terror groups, mainly located in Iraq and Syria, and more importantly with cells in the UK and other Western countries.

The list of military hardware above only has a defensive capability in a nation against nation war, a relic of the cold war years, or as an offensive force with even older imperialist ambitions.

What use are warships and planes against a well dug in adversary on the ground, in civilian areas, or the domestic terrorists who reside within our own countries? 

By this thinking, since the Paris attacks were launched from Belgium, the French should presumably nuke Brussels in retaliation? This is clearly ridiculous, but the whole strategy is ridiculous in itself. 

The Trident system cannot be targeted without US satellite guidance assistance, so if the Americans don’t want us to use it, then we can’t. But it may be unusable anyway if it was cyber attacked, and we know that IS is trying to perfect hacking of Western military computer systems. Even if we are able to execute a submarine attack with nuclear missiles, who will we aim them at? Civilian areas in Syria that IS controls? That would be a war crime of massive proportions, and would no doubt lead to an increase in recruitment for IS or whatever grouping replaced it.

The government will no doubt say something like 'if we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them here at home’, but this just rhetoric. Attacking them ‘over there’ actually means we are more likely to be attacked at home.

So we have a useless nuclear system and an ineffective military which will cost a fortune, when financial belt tightening characterises the rest of our public realm. This is beyond stupid, it is a wilful act of negligence on the part of the British government, who surely know that this spending will not make the British public one bit safer, quite the reverse, it will increase the danger to our citizens. It is a cynical attempt to justify this spending at a time when the public are nervous and more open to extra military expenditure.

All of this at time when police forces are being cut to the bone, when the best defence we can have against home grown terrorism is by the police gaining the trust of Muslim communities and working with them to foil attacks before they can be launched. Reduced police numbers will inevitably make this more difficult to achieve. Senior police officers and community leaders are already making this point. They might as well be pissing in the wind though, as this government clearly wants to carry on with the failed policies of recent years, in spite of all reason.

Energy Revolution Is Possible... And It Would Only Take 782 Rich People To Pay For It

Written by Deirdre Fulton and first published at Common Dreams

Less than 800 of the world's wealthiest people could power half the world with 100 percent renewable energy within 15 years, says forthcoming report

The personal fortunes of just 782 of the world's wealthiest people could power half the world—Africa, Latin America, and "most of Asia"—with 100 percent renewable energy within 15 years, according to a new report to be published Monday.

Broken down by continent, it would take the wealth of just 53 rich people to power all of Africa, and a mere 32 prosperous people could plug in the vast majority of Latin America.

Though the analysis from Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), a copy of which was shared with Common Dreams ahead of its release next week, does not argue "that the wealth of these particular individuals can or should be directly used to drive the needed energy transformation," the figures do reveal "a gross injustice" when it comes to global inequality that should serve as "a shocking and stark reminder that the finance for an energy transformation is certainly available."

However, the report points out: "The political will to drive the transformation is, on the other hand, shockingly absent," as evidenced by "weak pledges of emission reductions" issued ahead of COP21 climate change negotiations scheduled to begin later this month.

"This report is a wake up call for policy makers and governments," said FOEI program coordinator Sam Cossar-Gilbert. "Our world faces two destructive and entwined crises—growing inequality and climate change. The time has come to address them together."

A recent UN assessment found that emissions pledges made by member nations for the upcoming COP21 climate talks in Paris represent just half of what they need to be to keep warming under the 2°C threshold.

But groups including Greenpeace and Oxfam, as well as individual governments , are trumpeting the power of renewables to help reach global targets. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency recently announced that renewable energy comprised nearly half of the world's power generation capacity in 2014, marking what it called a "clear sign that an energy transition is underway."

Yet the call from FOEI "involves not just changing the energy source from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but a deeper transformation including democratic ownership of renewable energy resources."

As Dipti Bhatnagar, FOEI climate justice and energy coordinator, declared: "Business as usual is now longer an option. We need an energy revolution."

For example, the report suggests that "many parts of the world can and should leapfrog large transmission grids altogether, opting for energy independence with local renewable generation and storage in micro-grids."

As John Farrell wrote for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance earlier this year, "[t]his approach works best not only because it marries authority and responsibility, leaving communities in charge of their own fate, but because it is a political strategy that builds a movement for more ambitious and rapid change in the energy economy."

And it's a way to combat both global warming and worldwide inequality, crises that FOEI sees as deeply intertwined.

"Climate change is a symptom of the dysfunction of the current system, especially the way that we produce, distribute, and consume energy," the report reads. "An energy system that fails to provide for billions of people now is clearly a major cause of catastrophic climate change and sky-high levels of inequality, all at the same time."

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British Woman Jailed for Trying to Join Fight Against IS – Free Silhan Özçelik

An 18 year old woman from north London has been sentenced to 21 months in a young offender institution for ‘intending to join’ a proscribed terrorist organisation,  the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who are fighting Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Silhan Özçelik who is of Kurdish origin became a supporter of the PKK at age 13 and had tried join the party, but who was rejected as too young to join at 16.

She left home last year leaving letters and videos saying that she had gone to fight with the PKK in Syria against IS. She said at her trial that this was to make her parents feel less ashamed, when in fact she was travelling to Belgium to kindle a romantic liaison with a man. She was arrested in Germany.

There are many troubling issues raised by this case. It is accepted that she never actually joined, or even got very close to joining the PKK, but intention is enough under the law. Young people say all sorts of things which they really don’t mean to do, so to be convicted of this type of ‘thought crime’ seems to me to be overly draconian, and lacking in real evidence.

That the PKK is on the proscribed terrorist organisation list is mainly at the behest of Turkey who has fought a war with the PKK in Kurdish areas of Turkey for many years, after their lands were effectively swallowed up by the Ottoman Empire and later colonial occupation as in Iraq. The PKK is not a jihadist organisation and recently have altered their philosophy to one very close to ecosocialism. They have followed the writings of Murray Bookchin, the founder of Social Ecology, which is very similar to ecosocialism, in northern Syria especially. There they have formed three autonomous cantons, which are run by people’s councils, which have equal representation for all religions and both genders.    

The organisation fighting to defend these cantons is actually separate from the PKK and known as the YPG (Kurdish People's Protection Unit) although they have been helped by PKK fighters, as far I know the YPG is not a proscribed terrorist organisation. Indeed, the Daily Mail, of all newspapers, reported in June this year, in heroic tribute, that eight ex British army soldiers (all male), were intending to join the YPG. Referring to them as the ‘ISIS Hunting Club’, the paper reported:

An eight strong volunteer unit of former British servicemen are preparing to travel to Syria to fight against militants from the Islamic State terrorist organisation, it has been claimed.

The ex-soldiers - some of whom have Special Forces training - call themselves the International Volunteer Force and will fight alongside the Kurdish resistance in the north of the country.

Images posted on social media purportedly show the men taking part in special training exercises in Europe ahead of their journey to Syria, where they join an estimated 100 other Western volunteers to have joined the Kurdish peshmerga and YPG armies in the fight against ISIS terrorists.

There was no attempt, as far as I can tell, to arrest these men on ‘intention’ to join the fight, despite the matter getting national media attention, on the contrary, they were lauded for their courage and moral standing. How is this any different from what Silhan Özçelik tried to do, if this was her true intention?

The YPG is clearly not the same type of organisation as IS, notice that the PKK refused to allow her to volunteer to fight when she was 16, would IS have done that? I very much doubt it. And here was a young woman, offering to put herself in grave danger, to fight an outfit that is public enemy number one in European countries, and being jailed for her trouble.

It may not have been the most sensible thing to do, but what crime has she committed with her intention to fight to those psychopaths? The law is an ass, she should be freed from custody immediately.

British Public Sceptical of Bombing IS in Syria

As British government ministers start to make the case to MPs for the Royal Air Force to bomb Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria, opinion polls suggest that the British public are wary of the benefits of such action.

A poll by Survation, where 1546 people were surveyed (and on Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union), shows the public to be less than enthusiastic, to say the least, about extending air strikes on IS in Syria. The poll was conducted in the aftermath of the Paris atrocities on 16 and 17 November.

56% say that the bombing of IS so far has made the UK less safe, with only 18% saying that the action had made the country safer.

When asked which option the public believe would be the best way to combat the threat posed by IS, only 15% believe that the UK, like France should independently launch airstrikes on IS targets immediately, only slightly higher than those (13%) who say the UK should stay away from the situation completely. A majority (52%) would support a more measured, multilateral response, military or otherwise, backed by a UN resolution.

These figures indicate that if MPs do go along with the government’s desire to engage in air strikes in Syria, they will not be supported by a large section of the public. It could well be that the British people are understandably nervous in the wake of the Paris attacks, but they have also witnessed the counter productive nature of recent similar interventions in Iraq and Libya.

Another opinion poll by BMG Research for the London Evening Standard again after the Paris attacks found a significant shift in favour of bombing raids in Syria though, but still showed an even 50/50 split over the proposed action.

Half the public thought the bombing raids being carried out in Iraq should be extended to IS heartlands in Syria. The same proportion did not. Opposition was higher among women (56 per cent) and those aged 18 to 24 (64 per cent). The momentum though is towards backing the air strikes say BMG.

MPs are believed to be coming around as well, to authorising bombing raids in Syria, after failing to endorse the move in 2014 (when the Assad regime would have been the target).

The Labour leadership will probably oppose extending the campaign into Syria, but many Labour MPs are said to be supportive of the government and there are not many Tory MP dissenters. The Scottish National Party and Democratic Unionists Party MPs have also said they will consider exactly what the government puts forward in an open minded way.     

What seems to have changed MP’s mind is not just the scale and horror of the Paris attacks but that because one of our closest allies has been attacked on its home soil, a response would be more like self defence from Britain’s point of view.

Air raids on IS are not going to bring about its demise, which will need ground forces to dislodge them from the land they hold at the moment. This I think, would not be popular at all with the public or MPs, if British forces were to be deployed in this way.

But even if IS was driven out of the parts of Syria and Iraq that it now controls, the problem of Islamic terrorism would not go away. It would rise in another form somewhere else in the world, and the problem of domestic support for Islamic terror in Britain and other western countries would remain.

Dropping a lot of bombs on Syria will not be solve our problems, even if it does allow people to think that ‘something is being done.’ The regional powers who are easily strong enough to deal with IS, need to take control of any ground operations in Syria and we need to develop our intelligence domestically as well as internationally to cope with any possible attacks on the UK. 

   

The Paris Attacks and Paranoia

The shocking and horrific actions of Friday night in Paris, where people enjoying end of the working week entertainment in bars and restaurants or sporting and musical events, were slaughtered by terrorists, the ramifications are still sinking in.  With 129 people killed and over 350 injured, many critically, the sheer scale of the attack is difficult to fully take in. Investigations are ongoing and information seeps out bit by bit, but it does appear certain that the Islamic State (IS) terror group had a role in the atrocity of some sort.

It has brought back memories for me of the London transport system bombings of ten years ago. There was a very strange feeling about in London in the days after the attack where 52 people and the 4 bombers were killed. Travelling on the London Underground was a scary experience, everyone was nervous, but there was also a kind of camaraderie present among the commuters. People with rucksacks and bags left them wide open so all could see what was inside of them.

There was also a highly visible police presence in central London. I took a bus along Oxford Street a few days after the attack and two police officers boarded the bus and started searching everyone’s bags, including mine. It did occur to me at the time, that if I was a suicide bomber, this would the moment I would detonate the device taking a couple of ‘bobbies’ with me. It was a public relations exercise of course from the police, and I guess it did reassure some people. It took quite few weeks to get back to a normal feeling in the city.

The Paris attack comes only ten months after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices and a Jewish supermarket, but from listening to the news reports it seems that the people of Paris have not by and large, taken Friday’s attack quite so stoically. The Charlie Hebdo incident was clearly an attack on one publication and a wider attack on the freedom of speech. Friday night was indiscriminate, anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time was caught up in it and it is clear that the terrorist’s intention was to kill as many as possible.

Two of the seven or eight perpetrators are said to have been French nationals and the French security forces believe that there are many sleeper cells in the country. But another report quickly surfaced in the media suggesting that one or maybe two of the assailants were Syrian, having entered Europe through Greece.

The worry now is that right wing politicians in France and elsewhere will want to bar further refugees from Syria and the surrounding countries from entering Europe. Indeed the new Polish governing party Law and Justice have already made this point. Will the Front National in France increase its support amongst the French people? Situations like this often lead to extreme politicians being listened to and the often simplistic solutions they make gaining popularity.

There will be renewed calls for stepping up military action from the West in Syria, which again will probably be received well by a nervous public. The fact that the Americans estimate that they have killed 20,000 members of IS since they started bombing Syria, but estimate that IS have recruited 50,000 over the same period is a sobering thought. The more IS is attacked, the stronger it gets.  

There will also be calls in the UK particularly for increasing surveillance of internet users, with the so called ‘Snoopers Charter’ about to be debated in Parliament. Governments always use atrocities like Paris to force through draconian anti civil liberties legislation. That these type of freedoms are what we are supposed to be fighting to protect, often gets lost in the general paranoia.

It is a sad fact that before Western countries got involved in wars in Iraq and the region, IS did not exist, and we must accept that our foreign policy has had an impact on what happens in our own countries. If we are to defeat IS and similar groups we need to, as George Galloway has put it, (not someone I’m a huge fan of), ‘drain the swamp.’ We need to stop making IS an attractive organisation to our citizens so they do not want to join the group, and we need intelligence on the ground in Muslim communities, so events like Paris are foiled before they can be launched.      

This one small book explains the Inspiring Rojava Revolution

Written by Steve Rushton and first published at Bella Caledonia

Rojava’s social revolution deserves more global attention and solidarity. The Kurdish autonomous region in Northern Syria is a working experiment creating a society based on direct democracy, with women’s empowerment central in that model. It is being organized beyond and outside a state-centric capitalist system; mutual aid and cooperation are challenging structural exploitation and inequality. Remarkably, all of this emerges out of the Syrian crisis where the predominantly Kurdish Rojava experiment continues despite an existential fight against ISIS, the fascist and genocidal caliphate.

How has all this happened? The book A Small Key Can Open A Large Door: The Rojava Revolution sheds light on the phenomenal story. Edited by a collective known as Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, the book’s introduction gives a sharp, concise and thorough overview of Kurdish history before exploring Rojava through a series of essays, communiques, diary entries and other writings. Authored by those on the ground, including visitors to the region, the book is a fragmented composition whose different powerful voices thread tightly together.

At its core, A Small Key Can Open a Large Door puts in context why people in Rojava have rejected the nation state and Western capitalism after years of oppression from both. The Kurds come from autonomous roots. They lived mainly peacefully and autonomously as tribal clans inside the Ottoman Empire, from the 16th to the early 19th centuries. But from the 1800s onward, they experienced suppression at the hands of imperialist and capitalist forces. After World War I, the Kurdish diaspora spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The book details how a common story emerges of repression, ethnic cleansing and genocide – often ignored and regularly supported by the Western powers.

“Over and over again, foreign powers intervene for a brief period of time, encouraging Kurdish rebellion just to withdraw support at crucial points and sacrificing the Kurds when they are no longer needed,” state the anonymously authors of the book, who suggest that this history, which repeated itself throughout the 20th century, forced the Kurds to realize they needed to fight for their own freedom.

To understand Rojava today, one must return to the founding of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, in Turkey in 1978 as a seminal moment in that story. The party began as a militant Marxist organization fighting against the Turkish state, replete with bombing campaigns and armed insurgency. From 1984 to 2013, the PKK fought a never-ending guerrilla war.

However, the PKK found itself in crisis in 1999, which became another turning point for the movement. Its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured by the Turkish military, and its tactics of suicide bombings and other attacks were no longer succeeding. People in the West were also confusing them with emerging Jihadist groups.

From prison, Ocalan led the PKK through a transformation, adopting the ideas of the Zapatistas in Chiapas and the work of Murray Bookchin, the anarchist thinker who advocates democratic confederalism; that is, a democratic system without a state. To commemorate Bookchin’s death, in 2006 the PKK council announced its aim to realize those ideas in practice.

In Syria’s ongoing civil war since 2011, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces steadily withdrew from controlling the north of the country. This gave the people of Rojava, who inhabit three geographically disconnected areas, a chance to reimagine their society. Inspired by the PKK’s shift to democratic confederalism, Rojava has turned what seemed to many to be political science fiction into reality.

A Small Key Can Open A Large Door explains the process by which Rojava created direct democracy governance without a state, built on local assemblies. Unlike other political systems, the popular base retains its power. People send representatives, who change on a revolving basis, to larger councils. But crucially, all decisions return back to the smaller councils for endorsement.

Also, instead of police, the Kurdish non-state keeps the peace with Asayish (security in Turkish). Both these forces and the militias fighting against ISIS are answerable to the local assemblies. In one fascinating segment, the book describes how the Kurdish region has used power-to-the-people principles to reimagine an economic system beyond capitalism. It also emphasizes that Rojava isn’t only a Kurdish non-state solution – that direct democracy is open to all religions and races, and the Rojava regions are showing this through their embrace of thousands of refugees displaced from Syria.

Feminism, too, is central within the Rojava revolution. All administrative duties are co-chaired by men and women; all councils must have over 40% of each sex represented. There are female-only Asayish-J, (non-statist police) to deal with crimes against females and children as well as hate crimes. There are also all-female safe houses in each town.

On the battlefield, women-only and co-ed fighting units are another feature of life in Rojava. As the book explains, the Kurdish women are fighting the embodiment of women’s oppression in the form of ISIS: a group that uses rape and sells women into sex slavery. But women in Rojava aren’t only assuming political, policing and military responsibilities; they’re also challenging sexism, fighting against forced marriage, domestic abuse and the oppression of women across all aspects of Rojava society. The Rojava Revolution is first and foremost a revolution for women by women.

The book offers a bridge for people in the West to understand and appreciate what democratic revolution actually means in the 21st century. Western media have been criticized for ignoring on the whole the social revolution that is sweeping Rojava, and instead focused on the glamour of the region’s fighting women. A Small Key Can Open A Large Door breaks down barriers and dispels myths as it paints an accurate, stirring portrait of the life Rojava’s people are actively imagining and creating. For anyone who wonders whether another world is possible, this book is essential reading.