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This blog is an edited version of an angry response I made to an anarchist turned marxist-lenist making gulg jokes and then trying to defend them on the basis that most sent to gulags were fascists. 

There were very few ‘fascists’ in the gulags with the exception of the German POW system which I wouldn’t consider part of the gulags. Unless everyone who fell out with the Stalin era CP became a fascist by default.

Saturday 21st January saw 1000s take part in a Women’s March against Trump in Dublin, a local solidarity march with the Women’s March on Washington. It’s estimated that 1% of the US population took to the streets to protest the Trump presidency that day with solidarity protests in dozens of cities around the world including Belfast.

Farah recently visited Istanbul and Northern Kurdistan around Amed / Diyarbakir to interview feminist and Kurdish activists.  In this interview on her return to Ireland we talk about the massive repression against the left and Kurdish movement that has seen tens of thousands fired from their jobs and thousands including many of the HDP MPs jailed. 

And a happy new year for everyone. Better late than never. While 2016 personally was great, globally it was a bit of a bummer. Not least Carrie Fisher at the year’s end. George Michael’s was sad: never was a big Wham! fan (or, indeed, any sort of fan as a lot of the early stuff was terrible) but musically some of his songs were good and he had an excellent voice (the only person I could see replacing Freddie in front of Queen – as shown by "Somebody to Love"). However, post his "little incident" (and "Outside" is a great disco song), I became more of a fan — not least for his concerts for NHS staff, general acts of kindness and his anti-war comments (never expected to utter the words "if only the Prime Minister had listened to the lead-singer of Wham! things would be a lot better"). Which shows you why liberty and equality is so important – people should not be forced to hide who they are. So Xmas could have been better…

 In the immediate aftermath of Trumps electoral victory I saw a number of left individuals in Ireland come close to welcoming the result because they saw it as a blow to feminist and other anti-oppression movements that they think ‘divide the left’. Essentially they embraced the talking points that in essence said that women, trans people and people of colour had become too demanding, had gone too far and that this had resulted in a ‘white working class’ backlash bringing Trump to power.

Revolution in Rojava” is an eye-witness account on the experience of creating a bottom up social order which actively challenges all forms of oppression and exploitation. The struggle in Rojava (a mostly Kurdish region north of Syria), despite the extent of counterrevolutionary and imperialist forces aligned against it, continues to nurture an autonomous, grassroots resistance across its multiply ethno-religious communities.

The small town of Ballaghaderreen recently found out that it would be welcoming some 82 refugees in the near future. About half of these are minors and most of those are under 12 including 13 under the age of 4. There were the predictable attempts by neo-nazis to whip up hate online and someone even distributed about 80 British fascist leaflets in the town. But rather than hate taking hold the town held a standing room only welcoming meeting last Thursday. We asked one of the organisers, Jessamine O Connor, to tell us how this happened.

The wave of repression unleashed by the Turkish state against the left and the Kurdish freedom movement that has seen tens of thousands fired from their jobs and thousands jailed, including many HDP MPs,has also hit the anarchist movement there. We heard last night that Hüseyin Civan has been sentenced to 15 months for editing the anarchist paper Meydan Gazetesi.

Well, not blogged for a while. Sorry, but as John Lennon said, “life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”. So a few words on “union bosses”, progress on Modern Science and Anarchy and a summary of the meetings from October – before the all-important wishing everyone a happy winter solstice and a better 2017!