AIN'T GOT NO RESPECT

What you want
Baby, I got
What you need
Do you know I got it?
All I'm askin'
Is for a little respect . . .

Written by Otis Redding; best performed by Aretha Franklin.

What the hell is going on in South Kurdistan? The last couple of weeks have been one disaster after another.

A journalist was detained for three days in Zaxo for posting articles on the internet. People are tortured in prisons in Hewlêr, all of which is hidden from the International Red Cross. Again from Hewlêr, there's some weird stuff going on with cell phones and sex videos, leading to murder. Is this a result of Islamsts? Inquiring minds want to know.

Protestors were arrested in Kifri because they had the nerve to demonstrate against crappy public services. Then PUK pêşmerge shot at them, "over their heads," just like they did at Helebçe in March. The next day, 4,000 people demonstrated in Çemçemel, again to protest crappy public services and to demonstrate their objection to "corruption. . . abuse of power, nepotism, and misuse of public funds."

Do you think the people got that corruption idea and all the rest from the fact that pêşmerge are being employed as oppressors of Kurds instead of liberators?

The Kurdish Globe (formerly The Hewlêr Globe) has a big front page photo of the Tasluja cement factory outside of Silêmanî, and has a short story on the shooting of workers there on page 8. Apparently, the workers had met to speak to the director of the factory about their grievances, including the firing of 180 other workers. The Egyptian company that's running Tasluja had raised production rates but cut workers' salaries several times. In other words, the Egyptians treat Kurdish workers as if they were slave labor.

What does the Kurdish governor of Silêmanî province, Dana Ahmed Majid, have to say about this unjust shooting of Kurdish workers? "Kurds should be THANKFUL!" Dude, grow a pair! You're supposed to be a Kurd, and here you are, sounding like Erdogan.

How much does anyone want to bet that old Dana is a PUK guy? Pretty ironic, isn't it, that a party that has Marxist roots is now defending a pack of Egyptian bloodsuckers and their hired guns against Kurds.

Let me ask you something, old Dana, old buddy, old pal, why are these Egyptians permitted to run factories in Kurdistan when Egypt still has not issued a public apology to the Kurdish people for their complicity in Anfal, for their purchase of Kurdish girls from Saddam for their whorehouses? How much did the Egyptians pay you to be their PR man, Dana? When people are paid for like you are, what are they called?

Some of us don't forget so easily, and we certainly don't forgive.

I guess this is just one example of how wonderful, marvelous, fabulous, and downright ducky it will be to have foreign investment in Kurdistan. Yeehaw! I can't wait to see what happens when that stupid 10-year free-for-all of an investment law kicks in and we see every ordinary Kurd in South Kurdistan walking around in chains, sleeping in hovels, eating a bread-and-water diet, all in abject slavery to their foreign masters. Does anybody think they'll be selling Kurdish girls again? At what profit? Gelek sipas to their Kurdish collaborator elites.

After reading a week of this kind of news, is it any wonder that it should all be topped off with news that young Kurds are fleeing this thriving democracy in hordes?

As they say, every cloud has a silver lining; just so, there's a certain beauty buried in all of this trouble, a beauty which manifests itself in the demonstrations. Kurds will take so much because Kurds are a patient people--too patient. But there will come a day when all the pressure built up from the suppression of legitimate demands meets a massive roadblock on the political avenue. On that day we will see a new serhildan and it will be justified.

In the meantime, come on up to Qandîl and sit a while, young Başurî. After all, it's so nice and cool in the mountains at this time of year and you'll have some sympathetic ears to listen to your troubles.