BYZANTINE ARMS SHIPMENTS

"byzantine a. Of, relating to, or characterized by intrigue; scheming or devious. b. Highly complicated; intricate and involved."
~ American Heritage Dictionary.

Okay, so a number of articles have come out in the worldwide mainstream media on the Iranian rockets on the train derailed by Halkımın Umudu. I'll let you do a Google search for all that news.

However, I would like to point out one article that Hevallo posted yesterday from Al-Jazeera. The Al-Jazeera article mentions nothing about how the train managed to cross into Turkey without Turkish officials knowing exactly what was inside the train cars.

(Hevallo also has a post about Turkish psy-ops with must-read links)

Maybe someone could explain to me exactly how such a thing could happen, because, as Srusht comments on yesterday's post:

Turkey is such a fascist state that a small car cannot pass its borders without the knowledge of the Turkish intelligence apparatus of what ii is carrying let alone a train load. I have no doubt that the fascisto-kemalists are knowingly facilitating the Iranian weapon trade with the Arab and Islamist terrorists.

Naturally, Srusht is absolutely correct, and anyone who's ever passed through the Habur border crossing, and has seen the lines of commercial trucks stretching for kilometers on both sides of the border, knows exactly what Srusht is saying. Anyone who's crossed through Habur and has been inspected by Mehmetçik, knows that Mehmetçik goes through everything.

But we are expected to believe, from the media, that--OOPS!--Iran just slipped a few hundred rockets and other arms into Turkey with a total lack of awareness on the part of the Paşas?

I guess the media thinks that we're all pretty stupid.

I've also noticed that in recent days the media has worked itself into a frenzy (or at least what passes for a frenzy by those who really don't give a shit what happens to Kurds) about the massing of TSK along the South Kurdisan border. Mehmetçik has been camped out there since Condoleeza Rice gave the green light for their deployment late last April.

It is very interesting, however, that the big, bad Gray Wolf is huffing and puffing so madly at this particular point in time, when security of South Kurdistan has been officially handed over to the KRG. Has Condi given another green light to Yaşar Paşa? Did Yaşar Paşa make sure his quartermasters have enough body bags?

I mean, this is how stupid the ruling elites of Turkey are. How many times has TSK invaded South Kurdistan? A number of times. How many times has it been successful? Never. Will it be successful now? No. Do the ruling elites of Turkey give a damn about how many Mehmetçiks die in any future invasion? No. After all, military service is not a place where you take it easy.

Oh, there was one especially ridiculous item at Kurdish Aspect earlier in the week. Parts of it went something like this:

I believe 100% in the originally stated aims of PKK but I think the organisation has lost sight of those aims and ended up blindly following a miguided path that leads to the coronation of Abdullah Ocellan. This coronation will never happen.

In other words, this guy is just as eager as Yaşar Paşa to send people off to die in order to secure an independent Kurdish state in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan . . . only this guy is willing to send Kurds to die. Not only that, but he proceeds to contradict himself a paragraph later:

Even Ocelan's most recent statements are sounding like like he knows the answer is political not military.

Ocalan has known that from the beginning.

Just as the IRA realised it would never defeat the British army, would it be any disgrace for all of those PKK fighters in the Qandil Mountains to put down their weapons and return to their homes or to settle in Southern Kurdistan if they would have problems in the North of YOUR country?

In other words, Kurds in Turkish-occupied Kurdstan should give up their ancient lands in the North to Turkey, and self-ethnically cleanse their way to South Kurdistan. And about that laying down of arms thing . . . what in the hell does the writer think a fifth unilateral ceasefire is? Why isn't the writer severely criticizing Turkey and the US for their outright refusal to recognize and work with the ceasefire? We all remember that Lockheed Martin's "special envoy" to "coordinate the PKK for Turkey," Joseph Ralston rejected the ceasefire. And Ralston rejected that whole IRA-model thing as well.

Don't forget the rejection of KKK's Democratic Resolution to the situation in the North.

All of which leads to a ridiculous conclusion:

I just know the time is now right for talking not fighting.

Tell it to Lockheed Martin. We should all take a long moment of silence to contemplate the effectiveness of pacifist movements--effective for the state, anyway.

Speaking of the state, TDN is acting as the official media apologist for Bilderberg 2007 in Istanbul as the fascist ruling global elites all sit around and decide our future.


Where's a defective gas canister when you most need one?

TURKEY TRANSPORTS ROCKETS FOR IRAN

NEWSFLASH: The huge news today is that Turkey is shipping American-made rockets from Iran to Syria, a fact exposed by HPG's derailing last week of the train carrying the rockets.

You can read everything at DozaMe, including the story as it broke in Turkish media through Hürriyet.

In fact, I think I'll copy and paste that whole Hürriyet piece into my private archives because this kind of news has the very nasty habit of mysteriously disappearing a few hours after publication.

At the DozaMe link, note the reference to the news first--published by DozaMe last summer--that the Turkish Red Crescent was transporting arms from Iran to Syria during the Lebanon war. There's more on that, too, from Rastî, last August.

And let me be crystal clear: This sabotage and exposure of the Ankara regime's assistance to Iran is the direct result of our armed patriots and friends in the mountains of Kurdistan--the HPG.

Yeah, baby . . . HPG, doing what everyone else dreams about doing.

Sweet.


BIJÎN GERÎLAYÊN ME!

BIJÎN HEVALÊN ME!

BIJÎ SEROK APO!

BÊ SEROK JIYAN NABE!

YAŞASIN RÊBER APO!

YAŞASIN APOCU ÇİZGİDE ZAFERE YÜRÜYEN HPG!

KAHROLSUN İŞBİRLİKÇİLİK-TESLİMİYET VE İHANET!

BRAWLING IN THE TBMM

"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary."
~ Robert Louis Stevenson.

Turkish "democracy" descended to a brawl yesterday in the Turkish parliament over constitutional changes that President Sezer had previously vetoed, with details from Zaman:

But a scuffle, in which about a dozen legislators were involved, broke out when independent deputy Ümmet Kandoğan accused Sezer of harboring “hatred” against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He displayed a newspaper photo showing Erdoğan and Sezer sitting next to each other during a military exercise in the Aegean province of İzmir on Friday, during which they did not exchange a single word.

Here are independent deputy Ümmet Kandoğan's words:

“The justification for his veto shows signs of fear, worry, panic, contradiction and false expectations. The reason he is afraid is that when the president is elected by ordinary citizens, some groups will lose their influence in the presidential election process. They claim the regime will be in trouble. They should explain what kind of trouble this will be. He [Sezer] says that the president should represent the nation. With this photo, I want to ask whether he himself represents the nation. Look at his hatred toward the prime minister,” he said.

The Zaman report continues:

Then, a fight broke out when Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputies protested him, shouting and arguing that this amounted to an insult to the head of state. Blows were exchanged between the opposition and ruling party members. Parliament adjourned proceedings briefly, after which CHP parliamentary group deputy chairman Ali Topuz said, “The speaker who insulted the president must immediately apologize and withdraw his remarks, or they must be stricken from the minutes.”

The state-run TRT station stopped its live broadcast from the assembly after the scuffle broke out.

Although TRT ended it's live broadcast, it didn't do so quickly enough because the fight is all over Youtube, and here's a sampling:

WAR GAMES

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes."
~ Justice Felix Frankfurter.

The news is just breaking on an incident which happened last Thursday. Apparently, two American F-16 fighter aircraft based in Iraq broached Turkish airspace over Turkish-occupied Kurdistan for a period of four minutes. News of the incident was first released on the Turkish general staff website late yesterday. From Bloomberg:

U.S. jet fighters from Iraq crossed into Turkey in an area where the Turkish military is building up forces in preparation for a possible attack on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

Two U.S. F-16 combat aircraft flew over the southeastern province of Hakkari for four minutes on May 24 in a violation of Turkish airspace, Turkey's army said in a statement on its Web site late yesterday.

[ . . . ]

Turkey, with the second-biggest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has threatened to enter northern Iraq without the approval of the U.S., saying the U.S. has failed to stop militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, from using Iraq as a base from which to attack Turkey. The deaths of six people in a May 22 suicide bombing in the Turkish capital, Ankara, blamed on the PKK, has increased pressure on the government to order an attack.

Turkey has sent tens of thousands of troops to the region bordering Iraq in the last month, saying the operation is to prevent PKK rebels from entering Turkey. Hundreds of tanks are being deployed to reinforce the troops, the Sabah newspaper reported today without saying where it got the information.

I have long wanted to see NATO's two largest militaries go head-to-head. Figuring that they both have about the same military hardware, it would be interesting to see how well US hardware stands up to US hardware. It would all boil down to which of the two forces are better trained, I imagine but, still, the results of a hot war game between the US and Turkey would be something that the engineers in the US military-industrial complex would like to know. Imagine all the new bells and whistles that they could come up with to jazz up their products.

How can the war industry properly design a product when the product is always used against unarmed civilian populations? What if there actually existed a real threat to US interests and, most importantly, US credibility? Such as, oh, I don't know . . . a Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan which would lead to Turkish control of Northern Iraqi oilfields?

Imagine the blow to American "credibility" if such a thing were to happen?

Why is it that Turkey has amassed more Mehmetçiks along the border that divides Kurdistan into north and south than the US has in all of Iraq? Really think about that, now, and ask yourself if it makes any sense at all that it takes hundreds of thousands of Mehmetçiks to fight several thousand lightly armed Kurdish gerîlas.

It only makes sense if Mehmet is a truly, incredibly, astoundingly crappy soldier, which is the message that the fabulously noble Paşas (and ultra-nationalistic Turkish population) are sending the world by their military buildup along the border with South Kurdistan, not to mention the excruciatingly intense and paranoiac pontifications that the Paşas continually disseminate through Turkish media.

Obviously, the entire Turkish general staff, as well as most of the Turkish population should be investigated, prosecuted, and convicted of "insulting Turkishness" under Article 301 of the TCK. But no, as it stands, the Turkish general staff, supported by the lapdog Turkish government and the lapdog Turkish media, is allowed impunity to insult Turkishness in this manner. It simply boggles the mind.

While the US is claiming that the broach of airspace was "inadvertent", and the US claims that the matter is being looked into, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the broach was a deliberate reply to the Paşas' threats of invasion, including the Turkish breach of Iraqi (specifically, South Kurdistani) airspace. Coincidentally that event also took place last Thursday, along with Turkish artillery bombardment of Kurdish villages.

So,the complaint of US violation of Turkish airspace by the Turkish general staff is nothing more than a case of "Kick Me". Turkey violated Iraqi airspace as a provocation, but then cries like an overgrown baby when the US retaliates.

Crybabies.

It appears that Lockheed Martin is deploying its forces to bring Turkey into the war industry's latest scam--the missile defense shield. To that end, a pack of Lockheed Martin vermin were in Ankara last week at the war industy show (Inernational Defense Industry Fair) to push their wares. More from Zaman.

Unfortunately, no Lockheed vermin were blasted to bits at the conference by the Turkish state's black operative and suicide bomber, Güven Akkuş.

Recently, Frieda Berrigan, a senior researcher for the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center penned a nice little collection of facts on the world's Number 1 exporter of arms--the US. Ms. Berrigan lists a number of first place winners for the US war industry, including first place in surface-to-air missiles, warships, war training, and mercenaries. Then Ms. Berrigan goes on to criticize Lockheed Martin's sales of tactical fighter aircraft to Turkey (and we all know that Lockheed Martin's PKK "coordinator" Joseph Ralston was the middleman for that):

In order to remain number one in the competitive jet field, Lockheed Martin, for example, does far more than just sell airplanes. TAI -- Turkey's aerospace corporation -- will receive a boost with this sale, because Lockheed Martin is handing over responsibility for parts of production, assembly, and testing to Turkish workers. The Turkish Air Force already has 215 F-16 fighter planes and plans to buy 100 of Lockheed Martin's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well, in a deal estimated at $10.7 billion over the next 15 years.

$10.7 billion on fighter planes for a country that ranks 94th on the United Nations' Human Development Index, below Lebanon, Colombia, and Grenada, and far below all the European nations that Ankara is courting as it seeks to join the European Union -- now that's a real American sales job for you!

You're absolutely correct, Ms. Berrigan, and let's all give a big round of applause to Joseph Ralston, The Cohen Group's lobbyist for Lockheed Martin tactical fighter aircraft, for a job well done.

Ms. Berrigan concludes:

Why does Turkey, which already has 215 fighter planes, need 100 extras in an even higher-tech version? It doesn't… but Lockheed Martin, working the Pentagon, made them think they did.

We don't need stronger arms control laws, we need a global sobriety coach -- and some kind of 12-step program for the dealer-nation as well.

Of course, as Ms. Berrigan knows well, arms control laws are a huge joke. There are millions of ways around them and those ways are exploited to the benefit of the ruling elites.

Speaking of elites, word is going around that the infamous Bilderberg Conference will be held in Istanbul this year. If you're unaware of the Bilderberg Group, you can check out some information from Wikipedia's entry on them. The Bilderberg Group is the target of criticism and conspiracy theories because, as Wiki notes, they undermine the game of democracy by planning global policy in secrecy. If democracy were a reality, then the fact that the elites plan everything in secret would certainly be a worry. For those of us who know that democracy is a fantasy, the Bilderbergers are a manifestation of the normal order of things.

Everything that you could want to know about this year's Istanbul conference can be read here, including an article by Turkish journalist and Bilderberg 2007 attendee, Cengiz Çandar.

Spooky is as spooky does.


By the way, besides being Memorial Day in the States, you might also say that it's Independence Day for Armenia. For more on that, check out Heval Vahe's post on Hyelog. Bijî Ermenistan û Serkeftin!

THE WOMEN OF THE PKK, 2

"Any part of society will enjoy freedom and equality to the same degree that women achieve freedom and equality. Women's participation in society will be decisive in establishing a permanent democracy."
~ Abdullah Öcalan, Prison Writings.

Misto left a little calling card in the comments of a recent post, which led to this post, so thanks to Heval Misto for that.

What follows are a series of videos that comprise an entire film, and it's a bit of a multilingual affair. The film is about the women of the PKK, who properly belong to the women's gerîla organization, YJA-STAR (Yekîtiyên Jinên Azad STAR). However, at the time of the making of the film, the women's organization was called PJA (Partiya Jina Azad).

It is generally taken for granted that once one leaves for the mountains there is no return, and while this is true for the male gerîlas of HPG, it is doubly so for the women of the PKK. They are not able to return to their homes and families in the same sense as the males, because they are regarded as "terrorists" by the "civilized" world. In the case of the women gerîlas, they have been liberated by the mountains and by virtue of the fact that they carry weapons for the sake of the Kurdish people. For them to return to a regular Kurdish woman's life in villages, towns, and even cities where they would be considered as less than second-class citizens would be an unthinkable act for them.

For the free women of Kurdistan, returning to an intensely patriarchal, restrictive society would be like trying to force the genie back into the bottle, or recapturing everything Pandora let loose from her box.

Such would be the case even if these free women returned to homes and family in Diaspora--in the Western, "civilized" world, for even there, there is little real freedom for women.

Having breathed free in the mountains of Kurdistan, anything less would be suffocation.

Now--thanks to Heval Misto--more on the women of the PKK:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

DOING WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DREAMS OF

"We made tactical mistakes. Our political leadership did not play its role. These shortcomings were caused by faults in the Kurdish character: its individualism, its lack of foresight, its incapacity for collective action, its narrow minded vision."

~ Abdullah Öcalan.

There have been some clashes between PJAK's HRK gerîlas and Iranian pasdarans near Haci Ümran, in which 6 pasdarans were killed. There was also some Iranian mortar fire launched around villages in the area. That from Firat News.

All other organizations, governments, groups, etc., who are dreaming of regime change in Tehran can read that and weep.

Also from Firat, HPG's gerîlas killed 8 Mehmetçiks at Gabar Mountain and wounded an additional 10 earlier this week from an attack against a TSK convoy. Additionally, the Turkish military used some Cobra gunships to bomb some of the valleys near Mt. Ararat.

Hevallo is back online from a too-long absence, and he has recently posted the last interview with Öcalan, in Rome, 1999. Hevallo notes that it's interesting reading given the current situation.

Meanwhile, it appears that Leyla Zana will not be running as a candidate (DTP, independent, or otherwise) in this year's parliamentary elections. That's the news from Yeni Özgür Politika. No reason is yet given for Leyla's withdrawal. However, at the same link you can read a list of candidates and the cities for which they are running.

In honor of PKK's body count, here are a couple of videos from Youtube with classic PKK music. The first is one of my personal favorites, Halkimin Umudu, and the second is a close runner-up, Lexin Gerîla.

Enjoy!

Halkimin Umudu.

Lexin Gerîla.

By the way, there's a snazzy website in which you can strip the MP3 from a video and save it to your computer. You simply cut-and-paste the video URL, put it in the box, choose which format you want to convert to--such as "MP3 (audio only)"--and awaaaaaay you go.

Thanks to a very dear heval for that link.

"EXPERTS," RATS, AND AVOIDING MILITARY SERVICE

“[M]ilitary service is not a place where you just take it easy.”
~ R. Tayyip Erdoğan.

There's some funny stuff in the news. Check out this one, from the Middle East Times, which quotes Vatan:

"It's no surprise. The special forces of the PKK, the TAK, have staged attacks in metropolises and tourist places in the past," said Rusen Cakir from the Vatan newspaper who has written an acclaimed book on the Kurdish question.

"It's pointless for them to attack security forces because they can't beat them so they choose other targets," he said, especially in spring and summer when the number of visitors peak.

Okay . . . now, there is a “special forces” in PKK, but it's not TAK, and this Çakır guy is supposed to be an “expert” who wrote a book? And the part about it being pointless to attack TSK is very amusing, but only because PKK is so great. I mean, who else has successfully stood up to NATO's second largest army for over twenty years with little more than small arms, a few RPG's and mines, and sheer balls?

Yeah, Çakır sounds like an “expert” to me.

Another amusing set of comments in that article comes from Cumhuriyet's Mehmat Faraç, another self-proclaimed “expert”:

Mehmet Farac, an expert on the Kurdish question and a journalist at the center-right Cumhuriyet daily, said that the attack was linked to Turkey's sacking of a special envoy tasked with coordinating the fight against armed Kurdish rebels.

Ankara Monday dropped retired general Edip Baser for saying that a consultation process with the United States was not working, saying that his remarks could "adversely affect" the joint US-Turkish struggle to stamp out rebel bases in northern Iraq.

"The PKK is very worried at the idea that the sacking of Edip Baser could pave the way for a program of annihilation," he said in an article published Wednesday.

I can't imagine anything that would cause PKK greater worry than Mr. Nobody himself, Edip Başer. Geez, what a stupid comment.

TDN provided better information, even quoting the Ankara governor as admitting that police still aren't sure what the connections the bomber actually had:

“The type of explosive used and the method of the attack tally with those of the separatist terror organization,” Önal said, referring to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). However, police are yet to determine whether Akkuş, who has an arrest record and served two years in jail, was a member of the PKK, Önal said. “Our findings so far show that he acted alone, but we are pursuing the investigation," he added.

So Önal admits that no one really knows anything and that the facts so far indicate the bomber acted alone. Of course, everyone appears to be coming up with all kinds of creative excuses why PKK did the bombing, but no one seems to mention the fact that an Industrial Defense Exhibition was being held in Ankara. That means that there was a war industry show going on, and that's why Pakistani military types were injured in the bombing.

Maybe Akkuş was simply pissed off about the worldwide war industry and its phony War on Terror, Inc.

Going back to Önal's statement, compare his claim about PKK's “methods” with a pretty good analysis from Stratfor, as carried by the hevals at KurdishInfo:

The bomber probably was not directly linked to the core PKK, though the perpetrator could have been linked to a smaller group. The PKK has not claimed responsibility for the attack, and has not carried out a suicide bombing in eight years. Moreover, when the PKK has staged suicide attacks, the targets were different, such as security forces, police and the Turkish government, not civilians.

I might add that Stratfor is not necessarily Kurd-friendly, and it is certainly not PKK-friendly. Therefore the fact that it's making this kind of statement about PKK is significant . . . or at least it means that Stratfor's “experts” are better qualified than anyone closely connected to the Ankara regime. There's more in the article about why the regime is not blaming Islamist militants, along with a bit of a discussion about how this bombing is being used for the Turkish domestic political agenda.

In other news, I'd like to point out that a long-time supporter of the Armenian Genocide Resolution in the US Congress has been purchased by the Ankara regime. Former Congressman Dick Gephardt is now a foreign agent for the Ankara regime, working for infamous lobby/legal firm, DLA Piper. As such, Gephardt now earns excellent bucks working to oppose the Armenian Genocide Resolution in Congress.

I should also point out that DLA Piper is the legal firm for The Cohen Group, which provides job security to some of the worst rodents on the planet, under the guidance of Deep Staters William Cohen, Marc Grossman, and Lockheed Martin's PKK coordinator, Joseph Ralston.

Furthermore, it was DLA Piper that was in on the Australian Wheat Board's (AWB)UN Oil-for-Food scam, a scam that was facilitated by none other than Willam Cohen and the legal vermin at DLA Piper. Oh, yeah . . . Ahmed Chalabi was in on that, too.

For more on that, see this Rastî post from last November.

By the way, Erdoğan's son got a waiver from having to do his compulsory service with the Turkish military. Previously, it was reported that this was a medical waiver on the claim that Kerdoğan Junior had testicular cancer. Now some Paşa is claiming that it's on some other medical grounds however, for the sake of patient privacy, he won't say on which medical grounds exactly the waiver has been issued.

Sounds to me like Daddy Kerdoğan made a monetary donation to TSK. After all, “[M]ilitary service is not a place where you just take it easy,” is it, Mr. Erdoğan?

PKK IS INNOCENT

"I hear much of people’s calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent."
~ Daniel Defoe.

There's lots more on the Ankara bombing today, including the following, from the WaPo:

Ankara Gov. Kemal Onal identified Tuesday's suicide attacker as Guven Akkus, a 28-year-old man who had spent two years in prison for hanging illegal posters and resisting police. Onal did not say what kind of posters they were or if Akkus was affiliated with the separatist Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

"The type of the explosives and equipment used is similar to those used by the separatist group," Onal said.

First of all, the type of explosive was mentioned yesterday as "plastic explosive." If PKK uses plastic explosives, then so does everyone else, so this is not news. Secondly, if the Ankara regime knew for a fact that Güven Akkuş was linked to PKK--and this after the guy spent two years in a Turkish prison--then they would have shrieked the news from the housetops. If the Ankara regime knew for a fact that the posters Guven Akkus had allegedly hung were PKK posters, again, the regime would be shrieking the news.

So there are two possibilities here. The first is that the Ankara regime doesn't know shit about Guven Akkus. The second is that the Ankara regime knows about Guven Akkus very well and they don't want his connections to be broadcast because his connections would look very bad . . . especially for the regime and the Turkish general staff.

Of course, while the WaPo article mentions bombings by TAK and Turkish Hezbollah, it mentions absolutely nothing about the regime's own black operation bombings. It mentions nothing about the fact that the Deep State (i.e. Turkish military) bombed Şemdinli in 2005 or Amed last year. It mentions nothing about the regime's own assassins, like Yeşil or Abdullah Çatlı, or Ogün Samast or Alparslan Arslan.

The NYTimes propagates the lie that PKK bombed Amed last September when it was TİT that did that bombing. The NYTimes notes the following:

In Turkey, Kurdish groups are the most common users of violence against civilian targets. Islamists and leftists also stage attacks, though less frequently.

Wrong. The Ankara regime itself is the most common user of violence against civilian targets in Turkey. A perusal of human rights reports is more than enough proof of the regime's violence against its own citizens.

Reuters provides a timeline of recent bombings in Turkey. Another article by Reuters refers to PKK's denial of having committed the bombing, and quotes Ankara's governor, who is again making stupid comments:

"It is understood the incident was caused by the explosion of a plastic (explosives) bomb on this person's body and the incident's style matches the methods of the separatist organization," Kemal Onal told reporters.

The incident's "style" does not match PKK's methods. It doesn't even match TAK's methods, but then, Kemal Onal is brainwashed, so I can't expect him to make other than stupid comments.

Reuters also makes the following claim:

The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, ended a unilateral ceasefire on May 18 and security experts had expected attacks to escalate.

There has not yet been an end to the unilateral ceasefire. There were rumors last week that the end of the ceasefire would come on May 18, but it did not happen. This statement by Reuters is a total lie.

Akşam is reporting that Güven Akkuş was a member of the Turkish Rebellion Communist Union (TİKB), was born in Istanbul but his birth registration was Sivas. There is a lot of bullshit in the article about PKK that is repeated in the English-language media, but the information on Akkuş's background can be contrasted with the information from the WaPo at the beginning of this post. The TİKB is a very obscure organization and the regime probably doesn't know much about it.

Milliyet is reporting similar information.

Whether or not the information from the Turkish media is accurate is something that will have to be determined in coming days. At this point, the bottom line is that PKK is innocent of the propagandistic charges against it from both Turkish and Western media, and the purpose of the propaganda is to create a "green light" for a TSK invasion of South Kurdistan--nothing more.

TURKEY, DEMOCRACY, GAMBLING

"If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time."
~ Chinese Proverb.

What are all those Turkish troops doing as they are deployed to the border with South Kurdistan?

Source: Özgür Gündem; Caption: "Soldiers, at ease! We're going to vote now!"

Maybe they're getting ready to register to vote in "The Southeast." As Özgür Gündem reports, a TSK major collected some 400 ID cards from Turkish troops of the Bolu commandos, showed up at the Sırnak city muhtar's door and demanded that the troops be registered in Şırnak to vote. There's one minor problem with this scenario, however, and that is that it is illegal for Turkish soldiers to vote. The Şırnak muhtar had the good sense to refuse the major, but unfortunately, the TSK has been screwing around with voter registration all over "The Southeast," so that at this point 13,000 Mehmetçiks are registered to vote there.

Besides in Şırnak city, attempts to register Mehmetçiks have taken place in Uludere and Beytüşşebap, Hakkari Çukurca, and Yüksekova. The Turkish Higher Election Board (YSK) forbids voting by soldiers.

Undoubtedly this is an attempt by the TSK to disqualify whole lists of voters from "The Southeast," a scheme which is matched by the civilian politicians in Ankara who have changed the way in which votes for independent candidates are cast. Previously, independent candidates had separate paper ballots, but the AKP/CHP alliance has pushed for independent candidates to be listed with all other candidates, making it difficult for illiterate voters to select the names of independents from long lists of candidates. With the highest illiteracy rate in "The Southeast," the measure was purposely aimed at Kurdish voters and DTP.

Paşa Edip Başer was removed by AKP as the Turkish "special envoy" to coordinate the PKK after an argument with Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül. Well, okay, they're not saying it was because of the argument because they're pretending to be civilized, but we all know better. Add to that the little stunt the Paşas pulled with Gül's presidential vote in the TBMM, and the removal of Başer and his replacement by AKP's Rafet Akgünay becomes an obvious tit=for-tat political move by AKP. This doesn't change any attitudes or approaches to the Kurdish issue, PKK, or Lockheed Martin's cynical and dirty business deals. It's strictly a matter of domestic Turkish politics.

On that note, don't hold your breath that the US will replace it's very cynical appointment of Lockheed Martin director, Joseph Ralston, as it's "special envoy" to "coordinate" the PKK for Turkey. After all, the Americans want to sell more weapons systems, this time upgrading Turkish Patriot missile systems (manufactured by Lockheed Martin) as part of their latest advertising gimmick that would create a "missile defense shield" in the region. Lockheed has even thrown in a little technology transfer to sweeten the deal.

In other news, there was a bomb blast at an Ankara shopping mall today and, naturally, the blame is laid at the door of PKK, as if PKK were the only organization on the planet that uses plastic explosives or as if bombings in Turkey were the solely in the domain of PKK. I guess these jackass journalists can't remember as far back as Şemdinli.

Even Yaşar Paşa had something to say about the matter, from the AP as carried on IHT:

"Who feeds terrorist groups? Who's behind them? That's what we need to look at," said Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military. He did not rule out further attacks, saying: "They could carry out such things in major cities."

Who feeds terrorist groups? That's a very pertinent question, especially given the prevalence of Gladio forces that have traditionally operated in Turkey. Of course, Yaşar Paşa is the one to know about these things because he's in charge of them. He knows from experience that those involved in black operations are "good boys."

Perhaps the biggest line of bullshit in that IHT article is found at the end, when reference is made of the Amed bombing last September 12 (the anniversary of the 1980 coup and the first visit of the Lockheed Martin's "PKK coordinator" to Turkey):

In September, suspected Kurdish rebels set off a bomb at a bus stop in Turkey's largest majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, killing 10 people.

Everyone knows that the ultra-nationalist TİT (Türk İntikam Tugayı) immediately claimed responsibility for the Amed bombing, and TİT has long been associated with the Deep State (read: Turkish military). For more on the Amed bombing and the infor that TİT posted on a website before it was pulled down by perpetrators unknown, see this page. also check out DozaMe, which captured the information from TİT's website for posterity.

IHT continues:

A month earlier, a hard-line Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for a bus bombing in the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris that injured 20 people, including 10 Britons.

The "hardline" group in question was Teyrebazên Azadiya Kurdistan (TAK). As mentioned in the comments of the previous post:

...and by the why, they talk about PKK for the entire article to confuse the reader and to make them think this was the work of the PKK

with media like this, what's the point in being good little boys and girls?

Actually, there is no point in being good little boys and girls, because being good little boys and girls never got anyone anywhere, as was described by Peter Gelderloos in the recent edition of Utne magazine. Instead, as Gelderloos contends, nonviolent movements do nothing more than serve the state. So it has been with the Kurdish movement in Turkey and that is why groups like TAK have sprung up. It is also why whatever miniscule concessions have been made to the Kurdish people in Turkey are strictly the fruits of the blood of PKK's şehids.

Democracy is like gambling in Vegas; the house (or in political terms, the state) always enjoys the advantage. It is a game in which ordinary people lose.

For TAK, it's long past quitting time. It needs to be so for everyone else as well.

ENOUGH OF THIS STUPID GAME

"Nonviolence is fine as long as it works."
~ Malcom X.

According to Radikal, there is bad news for DTP. The chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, Nuri Ok, has determined that Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan, Selim Sadak, must be removed from DTP membership and that they cannot run as parliamentary candidates.

The interesting thing about this is that Ok re-examined the former DEP parliamentarians' file during his last three days in office. Ok is ideologically allied with the Paşas, so it should come as no surprise that he's facilitating the current military coup by attempting to remove from candidacy some of the most valuable and important candidates--the former DEP parliamentarians--that DTP can field.

In addition to Leyla Zana and her prison comrades, Ok ordered the removal of 112 other DTP candidates. At this point, that makes a total of 116 DTP parliamentary candidates that the Ankara regime is attempting to ban from the upcoming elections. If DTP ignores Ok's scheme to keep 116 candidates from the elections, then the Court of Appeals will apply to the Constitutional Court to send a warning to DTP.

While in Erzurum last week, Erdogan and Gul went crying to AKP constituents that the Paşas were silencing the voice of the people by opposing Gul's candidacy. Yet in the case of DTP candidates, AKP and CHP continue their alliance in order to prevent the election of Kurdish parliamentarians from "The Southeast."

The Turkish president, Ahmet N. Sezer, has also approved another AKP-CHP initiative against DTP, one that will require all independent candidates to be listed by name on ballots. This move that targets illiterate voters (most of whom are in "The Southeast") in order to confuse them from voting for DTP candidates. Here we have a case of the Ankara regime not only targeting DTP candidates, but DTP's constituency as well.

At this point, it appears that DTP will refuse Ok's order. Orhan Dogan explains that the restrictions on his political rights, and those of his former DEP comrades, ended in 2001. Therefore, the attempt to restrict the former parliamentarians now is strictly a political move rather than a legitimate aspect of Turkish law. Dogan explains:

The first thing is that our trial is still ongoing. The conviction after retrial, which was 7 years, 6 months, has not passed through the Court of Appeals yet. Secondly, the conviction of 15 years was overturned by the Court of Appeals 9th punishment department. For that reason, there is no certain decision for us. In addition, even if there had been a certain decision for us, according to the TCK, the civil rights restrictions are equal to the duration of the conviction and punishment. In other words, 7 years and 6 months coincides with October, 2001. For that reason, we will apply for our candidacy.

In spite of the attempts of the Ankara regime to eliminate the candidacies of DTP politicians, at least in the case of Zana, Dicle, Dogan, and Sadak, they will proceed as planned.

Other democracy games are being played with disenfranchising Kurds in Turkish-dominated cities of Turkey. At least that's the case in Serik, a town in Antalya. Kurdish voters were removed from voting registration lists because the governor of the region, and--Surpise, Surprise!--the military, informed the Higher Election Board that the Kurds in question did not live in the town. However, the Kurds in question had voted in previous elections in the same town, and are still living there.

OOPS!

No, but seriously, they really meant to do it. Democracy games.

Meanwhile, back in the States, the case of Ibrahim Parlak takes another turn in his democracy game. Apparently, Ibrahim's brother, Huseyin, was deported without notice while he was making a required interview with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Detroit. The entire disgusting story can be read at Ibrahim's site.

The deportation of Huseyin Parlak is the most recent of a number of examples of Turkish-inspired Western attacks against peaceful Kurds. In February, there were widespread attacks against Northern Kurdish political and intellectual leaders in Europe. In spite of Western claims of the "sanctity" of free speech, Kurdish websites have been ordered closed by the fascist US Treasury, Office of Foreign Asset Control.

The game of democracy is null for Kurds, with the rules of the game changing constantly in order to enforce anti-Kurdish repression. Therefore, unless Kurds back up their participation in the "democratic" process with violence, continued repression of the Kurdish people will be the continued response of the so-called civilized democracies.

Let us not be deceived by idiotic notions of "democratic" processes or, even worse, pacifism. These are notions that only serve state repression. At least, that's the point argued by Peter Gelderloos in the current issue of Utne magazine. After reviewing Spain's cooperation in the Global War on Terror®, and the non-violent anti-war movement there, Gelderloos makes the following observation:

On March 11, 2004, just days before the voting booths opened, multiple bombs planted by an al-Qaida-linked cell exploded on Madrid trains, killing 191 people and injuring 1,755. Directly because of this, Aznar and his party lost in the polls, and the Socialists, the major party with an antiwar platform, were elected to power. The U.S.-led coalition shrunk with the loss of the Spanish troops. Whereas millions of peaceful activists voting in the streets like good sheep have not weakened the brutal occupation in any measurable way, a few dozen terrorists willing to slaughter noncombatants were able to cause the withdrawal of more than a thousand occupation troops.

So much for the victories of pacifism.

The Madrid bombings do not present an example for action, but rather, an important paradox: Do people who stick to nonviolent tactics that have not proved effective in ending the war against Iraq really care more for human life than the Madrid terrorists? From India to Birmingham, nonviolence has failed to sufficiently empower its practitioners, whereas the use of a diversity of tactics got results. Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system that is based on centralized coercion and violence.

Time and again, people struggling not for some token reform but for complete liberation -- the reclamation of control over our own lives and the power to negotiate our own relationships with the people and the world around us -- will find that nonviolence does not work, that we face a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative.

Obviously, the recent worldwide repression of the Kurdish people is the finest example of Kurds facing "a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative."

There is no longer any luxury, or hope of success, for Kurds to play this game.

A BOMBING, A DEAD SIKORSKY, AND A PROTEST

"European states that criticize Guantanamo risk credibility by closing their eyes to Ocalan, who is deprived of his legal rights in isolation at Imrali Island."
~ MEP Feleknas Uca.

A suicide bomb targeted KDP and PUK offices in Maxmur on Sunday. This is the second suicide bombing against Southern Kurds in four days. From the AFP, carried on Khaleej Times:

A suicide bomber killed 32 people on Sunday when he ploughed his explosives-laden SUV into local administrative offices in the northern Iraqi town of Mahmur, officials said.

“All the dead are men, but there are women and children among the 115 wounded, and ten of those are grieviously wounded,” Kurdish regional health minister Zirian Abdel Rahman told reporters.

Police said the bomber hit a compound housing Mahmur’s local administration and the offices of two Kurdish political parties.

“We were holding a meeting in my office when there was an explosion outside, which smashed the windows,” said Abdel Rahman Bilaf, the mayor of Makhmur, which lies 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of Baghdad.

There's more there about the absolutely piss-poor security. You would think that if someone's gonna go and defend Baghdad for the largest army in NATO, they'd figure they might get some seriously unwanted attention from the filthy Ansarî. And if you figure that, you should also figure that while your pêşmerge are tied up fighting for NATO's largest army in Baghdad, you might have a problem with security if you're not careful.


But I guess American interests are far more important to certain people than the security of Kurdistan. Oh well, once an Uncle Tom, always an Uncle Tom.

. . . . But try to explain that to the families.

Her bijin to the hevals in HPG for their downing of a Sikorsky over the weekend.

From Strassbourg comes the sight of 70,000 Kurds protesting to demand a medical examination of Ocalan by an independent medical team. Photos from Yeni Özgür Politika (click on "Fotoğraflar İçin Tıklayın"--middle of the page--for more):

LINING UP CANDIDATES

"The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win."
~ Leonid Brezhnev.

According to Milliyet, Rakel Dink, Akin Birdal, and Gencay Gursoy will be offered the opportunity to run as independent candidates by the Kurdish DTP. According to the same report, famed Kurdish singer Ferhat Tunc has already applied with DTP to become an independent candidate from Dersim.

Rakel Dink is the widow of Hrant Dink, who was murdered by the Deep State in January of this year. Akin Birdal, who survived an assassination attempt by the Deep State in 1998, has long been in the fight for human rights in Turkey, having served many years as the Istanbul IHD head. Gencay Gursoy is the chief of the Turkish Doctor's Union.

And so the elections become much more interesting as DTP begins to make its moves. We should know more by next week, when all shall be revealed.

See also something from English-language Sabah, from the hevals at KurdishInfo. They also have another item about AKP's efforts to limit the votes of illiterate voters--and this piece of legislation was aimed specifically voters in "The Southeast."

That's democracy, right?

HEWLÊR BOMBING, DEEP STATE, AND INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES

"We have decided to run in the elections with independent candidates."
~ Ahmet Turk, DTP Chairman.

The last time that there was a bombing in Hewlêr was May 4, 2005 which killed 60 people. That was the last time until today, from the AP and carried by the hevals at KurdishInfo:

A suicide truck bomb ripped through the Interior Ministry in the relatively peaceful Kurdish city of Irbil on Wednesday morning, killing at least 19 people and wounding 80, officials said. Kurdish officials blamed al-Qaida linked insurgents for the devastating attack.

[ . . . ]

Zariyan Othman, the Kurdish health minister, said 19 people were killed and 80 were wounded, including five who were in serious condition. Hamza Ahmed, a spokesman for the Irbil governor's office, said the dead and wounded included police and civilians.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman blamed the attack on Ansar al-Sunnah, a Sunni Arab insurgent group, and Ansar al-Islam, a mostly Kurdish militant group with ties to al-Qaida in Iraq. Ansar al-Islam has been blamed for a number of attacks, including attempts to assassinate Kurdish officials.

Othman said authorities learned that insurgents were planning a large attack a week ago when police arrested a militant cell in the town of Sulaimaniyah.

"During questioning they confessed that were getting training lessons in a neighboring country and that was Iran," he said.

The AP gets the date wrong on the last suicide bombing in Hewlêr, citing the deadly attack of February 1, 2004 as the most recent. So, we shall see what comes of this. Since Turkey and Iran have conducted recent operations together against PKK, it's possible that they are coordinating suicide bombings together.

There have been more commentary on the murder of Doa Khalil Aswad, one from The Muslim Woman and another from Dr. Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany at Iraqi Kurdistan. The Muslim Woman has the following observation:

While the Kurdish authorities introduced legal reforms to address ‘honour killings’ they have, however, failed to investigate and prosecute those responsible for such crimes.

The Kurdistan government, who originally did nothing in reaction to this event, have now stated – after their dirty little secrets were exposed to the world via the internet – that these men will be punished. Hmm… we’ll see!

Indeed, we'll see. Of course, there will probably be a load of legal wrangling since the murder was committed outside of the KRG's area of authority. Still, The Muslim Woman's observation is consistent with many of the things Kurdish women's rights activists like Houzan Mahmoud have stated. You can check out more of what Houzan has to say at her blog, Houzan Mahmoud.

Kurdish MEP Feleknas Uca is sponsoring a petition on the poisoning of Ocalan, calling for an independent medical team to go to Imrali and conduct a proper examination of the island prison's only inmate. For more on that, head over to DozaMe.

For an update on Sibel Edmonds' case, check Lukery at Wot Is It Good 4. He's running the same post at DKOS and Democratic Underground and you can catch a read of what others are saying about the situation. It can be pretty interesting, but I haven't noticed any pro-TC trolls today, but then again they might be out protesting for the Paşas.

Lukery also picked up on another take on America's Deep State from an op/ed piece at the WaPo on former CIA chief George Tenet's latest apologia pro poor-little-me. In other words, Tenet's new book/whitewash of his involvement with 9/11. Lukery read it all so I didn't have to (and neither do you), and in doing so, he pulled out a very interesting observation:

I'm more fascinated, though, with the collateral damage of his claim: Even in a country like the United States, even with a country that is so seemingly transparent, Tenet is saying that there is great ambiguity associated with what the "state" is, who speaks for it, what the agenda is, what the truth is, even from the highest government officials, who may or may not be speaking from a position of truth or facts or based upon access to, or knowledge of, the ultimate decision-maker.

[]

Without a shred of irony, George Tenet would have us believe that the "they" are someone else, that the decision was -- and is -- the doing of secret, informal, unauthorized, incompetent officials and infiltrators. Not some otherwise innocent entity called the government."

Exactly.

The Middle East Times, out of Egypt, is reporting that DTP is going to run independent candidates in the Turkish election and speculates that Leyla Zana will be one of the candidates.

Maybe this answers something that Ilnur Cevik was crying about the other day, when he whined about knowing DTP's intentions. According to him, if DTP runs independent candidates, they could possibly win between 20 to 30 seats in the TBMM.

What's more interesting is the rest of Ilnur's opinion, especially if one keeps in mind that Ilnur is the representative of the Turkish ruling elites. He calls for KDP/PUK support for AKP because AKP is just so very Kurd-friendly and, besides, Turkey's future is on the line and Ankara would like it's clients to lend a hand in Turkey's future. Of course, Ilnur means KDP/PUK, not those 20 million Kurds of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. Those millions live in the huge void that is Turkey's own internal colony and they have no hand in Turkey's future or Turkey's stability . . . according to Ilnur, anyway. He may have a point on that since Kurds have no political rights within the TC, unless Kurds prove themselves momentarily useful by voting for Turkish parties like AKP.

The question is this: Will KDP/PUK stab DTP in the back by continuing to support the Ankara regime as Ilnur Cevik calls for? After all, KDP/PUK has enjoyed warm ties with Ankara for quite a while. Now that Ankara's business interests own most of South Kurdistan and Gulen's Islamist schools are springing up in South Kurdistan like mushrooms on manure, we'll be sure to note just exactly where KDP/PUK's loyalties ultimately lie.

Yep, there will be some heavy karma going down this year. For good or for bad remains to be seen.


Update: According to Zaman, Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Doğan, and Selim Sadak are definitely running for the Turkish parliament. Osman Baydemir and other DTP mayors will not run. For more, see Zaman. Similar news is available from Ozgur Gundem, with the added info that PKK's ceasefire is suspected to end on May 18. However, Ozgur Gundem specifies that Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Doğan, and Selim Sadak will make a final determination to run at a party council to be held at a later date. The same council will determine which other independent candidates will run.

Undoubtedly time is getting short on this, so we should expect an announcement sooner rather than later. Ditto for an announcement of the end of the ceasefire.

CHEAP LIES, BLAME, AND OIL

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
~ Mark Twain.

I was thinking about that oil article by Michael Schwartz that I posted yesterday from TomDispatch, particularly this:

Knowledge of this level of [Iraqi oil] underproduction was certainly one factor in Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's pre-war prediction that the administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq would pay for itself; he hoped for a quick postwar increase in production to 3.5 million barrels per day or, at the $30 per barrel price of oil at that time, close to $40 billion per year in revenues. An expected expansion in production levels (once the oil giants were brought into the mix) to perhaps 6.5 million barrels, through the development of new oil fields or more efficient exploitation of existing fields, had the potential to more than cover the expected American short-term military costs and leave the new Iraqi government flush as well.

And then, this, from a link within the Schwartz article:

The economic restructuring of Iraq to benefit foreign investors was most likely one of the main motivations for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq – or at least a highly profitable windfall. The fact that Paul Wolfowitz, the newly appointed president of the World Bank, was one of the major architects of the invasion only heightens the probability of a conscious plan on the part of the Bush administration. With the goal of maintaining U.S. control over the resources of Iraq after the occupation, installing Wolfowitz – a leading member of the Project for a New American Century and already on record as an advocate of expanding U.S. influence and dedicating foreign policy to the service of U.S. interests – at the head of the World Bank makes perfect sense.

It is clear that the consequences of the U.S. occupation, and of the subsequent economic occupation and restructuring of the country in the interests of foreign investors by the IMF and World Bank, will last well after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Getting US troops out of Iraq, while an important first step towards winning self-determination for Iraq, is exactly that – a first step. If the U.S. anti-war movement is serious about standing in solidarity with the people of Iraq, and challenging the deep-rooted economic motivations of an interventionist U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and around the world, then it needs to make resistance to the neoliberal economic agenda of so-called international institutions a central plank of its campaign.

Note that Kurdish workers' unions have signed the statement at the bottom of that page.

What made me think about these things was a piece of news today about the threat of the loss of credibility--what little there is, anyway--of the World Bank, from the WaPo, carried on MSNBC:

The sense of turmoil surrounding the bank intensified yesterday with the resignation of a senior Wolfowitz aide, Kevin Kellems.

[ . . . ]

Kellems previously worked for Wolfowitz as a special adviser at the Pentagon during planning for the Iraq war. He later served as communications director for Vice President Cheney and was one of a handful of senior advisers Wolfowitz brought to the World Bank, provoking complaints among staff that the new president was using the institution to further the Bush administration's agenda.

As they say, "Where there's smoke, there's fire." By the end of the day, the ethics panel that had been investigating Wolfowitz and his girlfriend found him guilty of a conflict of interest. The roar of "Resignation!" grew louder as European leaders moved toward open revolt, demanding Wolfowitz's resignation. Looks like Germany's leading the charge and that the orders are coming from Angela Merkel herself.

Iraqi unions plan to strike on Thursday against the oil law; I think they are right to do so and I hope the Kurdish unions will join in the strike.

I'm wondering how much of the "insurgency" is a result of the American and British administrations' efforts to claim Iraqi and Kurdish oil for multinational corporations? Certainly there are other issues among the ethnic groups of Iraq, but how easily could compromises be reached if the threat of Western oil-thieving were nixed from the equation?

I'm also wondering about the manufactured hysteria over Iran, and how much that has to do with American and British desires to "privatize" Iranian oil, as both the US and Britain have done in the past.

GOOD KURDS/BAD KURDS V.2

"The "Bad Kurds" are those who harbor freedom notions for their long-suffering people and show signs of doing something to realize Kurdish dreams of freedom and independence. In the front ranks of the Kurds who have refused to become stepínífetchits for the imperial elite is the heroic PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), a genuine national liberation movement which has been taking on Turkey and its sponsors on the Potomac in an all-out popular guerrilla war for over 16 years."
~ Huseyin al-Kurdi.

There's an interview with Michael Totten's sidekick at sidekick's site. Aside from the usual propaganda we've come to expect from Totten, there was something very interesting that I noticed from sidekick, who goes by the name of Patrick Lasswell. To set this up, check out the following:

Have you also been in other parts of Kurdistan then Iraqi-Kurdistan? And what do you think about it?

Iran and Syria are blocked to me. They are distinctly unkind to sailors in Iran, despite what the British hostages said with guns to their heads. Syria is also a problem because I have a military security clearance I'd like to keep intact and they might hand me over to Iran. Is it hubris to think of yourself as worth at least a truckload of Katyusha's? Eastern Turkey is arguably less attractive than Kirkuk in a variety of dimensions, and the time to go there hasn't been available in the trips I've taken. I have talked extensively with Iranian Kurds and found them to be charming.

The guy is American military. The guy hasn't been to Rojhelat or Rojava. The guy hasn't spent any time to speak of in Bakûr, so he doesn't have a clue about Bakûrî. He doesn't know the people; he doesn't know the situation--or at least as an American military type, pretends to not know about the situation--and he doesn't know the history. Yet, in spite of all this ignorance, he's an expert on PKK. Read on:

I do not consider the PKK a political party. I see it as a criminal conspiracy to extort funds from Kurds in Europe and anyone else who will pay for violence. Their influence in Iraqi Kurdistan is pernicious, but not dominant. I much prefer the social democrat Iranian Komala to the Turkish PKK. There is a reason that the dissident Iranian Komala is easy to reach, with a sign out front, from Suliamaniya and the PKK hides in some of the most rugged and inaccessible terrain in Central Asia. The PKK works to oppress and control decent people. The Iranian Komala works to liberate decent people.

Odd, isn't it, considering that PKK is not Turkish? Sure, there are Turks in PKK; there always have been. But it's a Kurdish organization, hence the name: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan. Oh, and PKK doesn't consider itself a party either, at least not in its official expression, which is Koma Komalên Kurdistan.

Odd, too, that Lasswell doesn't like the fact that PKK doesn't post huge signs on the roads to give directions to PKK's Qendîl location . . . even though hundreds of other journalists have easily found their way to that location. Remember when the ceasefire was called? There were oodles of foreign journalists at Qendîl for that. Everyone goes up and down Qendîl to talk to PKK, even the CIA, but Lasswell can't seem to find Qendîl nor does he seem to know anyone who does know the way to Qendîl.

It's also odd that this American military type is singing the praises of a Rojhelatî organization (he wrongly calls Komala "Iranian") from Iran, yet cannot dis Bakûrî or PKK enough. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the US is still pissed off at Iran for taking over the US embassy in Teheran way back in 1979? I wonder if that's because the American Deep Staters who run the American government are still itching to nuke Iran? I wonder if that's because the American Deep Staters are so closely allied with the Turkish Deep Staters? I wonder if it's because Turkey is America's second ally in the region, second only after Israel (which is also deep into the deep shit of the Deep State).

I guess KOMALA has agreed to work for the Americans and PKK hasn't. What a shock.

But there's more:

There is no need to crater the runway at Erbil International Airport in order to control the PKK. If Turkey is serious about controlling the PKK, they'd be better off interdicting the Frankfurt airport, Dubai banks, or just shooting heroin dealers in Paris. The PKK is a persistent problem because they are exceptionally well funded through extortion and other criminal activities taking place in Europe. There are also indications that other Central Asian powers are providing the PKK with support as a distraction for Turkey.

Our smart American military boy really displays his ignorance here. If Turkey is serious about anything, especially its internal stability and wider, regional stability, as it always claims, then Turkey needs to sit down and go over the political solution that PKK has offered. And if it does, it will also sit down with DTP, while ending the persecution of this legal Kurdish political party. In addition, we'd all be interested to see the hard evidence of the other claims made here by the guy who's never talked to PKK or never spent any time among the Bakûrî--the very same people our American military boy has helped Turkey to genocide.

(As a reminder, it was years ago that Ocalan himself said that it was not necessary that he sit down personally and negotiate a peace with the TC. For him, it is enough that a peace be negotiated.)

But, of course, such hard evidence will never be forthcoming because it's all a Turkish pipedream. I mean, it has been over twenty years that Turkey and its American ally have been making these claims and they've never produced a shred of hard evidence for them. Just as Turkey has been making similar claims of RojTV, yet the Danish government has yet to receive any hard evidence of any Turkish claims.

Finally:

I have no love of the PKK. Their supporters sound just like Hezbollah stooges and they have lied about my friends. I suspect the PKK of all kinds of villainy and vice and know that they have used terror on a regular basis. I also understand why my Iraqi Kurdish friends are sympathetic to the oppressed Kurds of Turkey. What most of my Iraqi Kurdish friends don't know is the reason why their sympathies are not divided is that the PKK attacks rival and divergent groups with much greater vigor than they ever attack the Turkish state. The PKK has a monopoly on Kurdish insurrection in Turkey and they murderously suppress anyone who tries to compete with them. What kind of government do you think they will make if they are ever put in charge...or even allowed a seat at the table?

Now we come to the heart of the matter. Military boy is upset because he alleges that PKK has lied about his friends. He suspects everything evil of PKK for this reason and for the reason that he's well-versed in Deep State propaganda. You can forget that part about his understanding why his Başûrî friends "are sympathetic to the oppressed Kurds of Turkey," because this is your typical American who really doesn't give a damn about any kind of Kurd. He's looking out for the interests of his American bosses and Kurds are just pawns in their games.

By the way, if PKK is so ruthless, why has DTP been around for so long? After all, we all know DTP's had previous incarnations. If HPG can kill JITEM scum at will in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, wouldn't it be that much easier to pick off, oh, say 54 DTP mayors at will? But that hasn't happend, has it? The only threats to DTP is the Ankara regime and its allies. They're the only ones who've been charging, investigating, prosecuting, detaining, arresting, imprisoning, and threatening DTP.

And military boy's claim that PKK enforces Bakûrî unity is pure bullshit. Which gerîla was holding a gun to Leyla Zana's head during her Newroz speech? Which gerîlas were holding guns to the heads of 54 DTP mayors to enforce their support for RojTV or to call for an independent medical examination of Ocalan? Which gerîlas hold guns to the heads of ordinary Bakûrî, other Kurds, and other non-Kurds who do find their ways to Qendîl?

Our American military boy refuses to admit that it is, in fact, the Ankara regime that is ruthless in its brutality against the Bakûrî, and not PKK. What we have here is a rehash of McKiernan's "good" Kurd/"bad" Kurd dichotomy, a dichotomy which even extends into Kurdish society and manifests as intra-Kurdish racism.

But, stirring all this up, perpetuating the dichotomy, and conquest by division, well, that's how a propagandist works. Just like Michael Rubin.

For more on American designs on Iraq and South Kurdistan, check out a fabulous article on "The Prize of Iraqi Oil," from TomDispatch.com. After you've read that, you might be interested to read about the "Soft Bigotry of the NYTimes" and how anxious these lapdogs are to ram the oil law down the throats of Iraqis and Başûrî, thus effectively robbing them of their most valuable resource.

Who said it wasn't about the control of oil?

For a pretty good analysis of what's going on politically in the Turkish elections, check out Shiraz Socialist. There are a lot of little details in that post that I'm certain a lot of people have forgotten about or never knew, especially if they read only Western media.

KERKUK AND CONVENIENT INSTABILITY

"Some officials believed that the Turkish security remained incapable of eliminating the PKK supporters as long as [the security forces] functioned within legal means. Thus, they arrived at the conclusion that the PKK could have been fought only through extra-legal methods."
~ Hanefi Avci, deputy intelligence department chief of Turkish Security, in testimony before the TBMM.

Bianet reports on this year's Press Freedom Day in Turkey. They have a Press Freedom Day? That's hilarious! I guess, though, that you would expect a fascist state to have something called "Press Freedom Day." Totally Orwellian.

Naturally, Press Freedom Day in Turkey followed the indiscriminate beatings of journalists during the May Day events in Istanbul last week. That'll teach them to go out an attempt to report on stuff that actually happens, instead of sitting around in their offices and rewriting the bullshit the state gives them for publication. Does anyone think that this would give American journalists a clue?

Goran from Zanetî has a great article on Kerkuk which got picked up by ZNet. The article does an excellent job of summing up the situation of Kerkuk, including mentions of arabization, the recent efforts to de-arabize the city, and the influence of foreign provocateurs who have increasingly exerted themselves to make life in the city as unbearable as life in Baghdad:

Until now, violence in Kirkuk has been blamed primarily on Sunni and Shiite insurgents. Several Shiite armed groups such as the Mehdi Army, loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, began moving into the Kirkuk province mid-last year. U.S. officials declared such Shiite armed groups, reportedly backed by Iran, as the deadliest threats to the security in the region. Local residents say their presence is marked by bomb explosions and murders.

However much the threat of these armed groups as well as Iran’s alleged influence in the region, Iraqi officials recently claimed to have found links between the ongoing violence in Kirkuk and other foreign forces. Recently, an Iraqi Kurdish official in Kirkuk, Nejat Hassan, asserted that Iraqi Security Forces obtained enough evidence to prove that Turkey’s Intelligence Agency has been carefully conducting much of the terrorist activity in Kirkuk, targeting both Iraqi government officials as well as civilians.

Goran also notes the unilateral nature of Kurdish attempts to discuss Kerkuk with the Turkish state, with Turkey's rejection-by-silence. Is this a reflection of Turkey's unstated official policy toward the Kurdish people? I think so, especially in light of the Ankara regime's rejection of a democratic solution to the untenable situation of the Kurdish people under Turkish occupation in North Kurdistan, which was offered by PKK last August, as well as the regime's rejection of PKK's fifth unilateral ceasefire from the beginning of last October.

While "[M]any Kurds feel uncomfortable with the Americans’ silent stance on this issue and believe their reasons are in order to avoid embarrassment with their Turkish ally," this may simply be a matter of vastly misplaced politeness (aka diplomacy) on the part of the KRG. The fact is that the US war industry makes a lot of money for their executives and members of their boards of directors, such as Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston who, coincidentally or not, is the American "special envoy" to "coordinate" the PKK for the Ankara regime. On behalf of the Washington regime, Ralston has rejected PKK's ceasefire, has completely ignored PKK's democratic solution, and has lied to Congress about the nature of Kurdish refugees from Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. There most recent long-term residence has been the Maxmur refugee camp, just outside and to the west of Hewlêr Governorate.

It's not in the interests of the US to see a stable Turkey in the region, just as it may not be in the interests of the US to see a stable Iraq. As long as the Washington and Ankara regimes collaborate in the maintenance of a low-intensity conflict in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, their Deep Staters will continue to maintain control of the region and its highly coveted energy resources, as well as to turn a few billion bucks through Deep State corporations . . . like Lockheed Martin.

The Washington/Ankara collaboration would appear to be working, given the instability that began with the November, 2005, Semdinli bombing; the provocations that led to the Amed Serhildan; the Amed bombing of September 12 (a significant date since it is the anniversary of the 1980 coup as well as the day of the first arrival in Ankara of the US "special envoy"); the persecution of Turkey's only Kurdish party, DTP; and the poisoning, and recent severe isolation punishment, of the Kurdish people's leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

The instability has also severely affected other ethnic or religious minority groups within Turkey, such as was highlighted with the Ankara regime's murder of Armenian activist and editor, Hrant Dink, and the recent murders of Christians in Trabzon and Malatya.

Then, too, we have the fact of Turkish mercenaries, based in the US, and operating in Kerkuk. Funny thing . . . that mercenary company is run by people who were involved with the 2003 assassination plot of the Kerkuk governor.

It's a small world, isn't it?

While the Washington regime presents a united front when the subject is the genocide of the Kurdish people (or the Armenian people, for that matter), it talks out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to other areas of political instability, thereby helping to maintain instability. For instance, US propagandists from the State Department feign concern for the non-existent democratic process in Turkey while at the same time cultivate the deep and abiding "friendship" of the Deep State, controlled by the Turkish military. Witness the US response to the recent "e-coup" of the Paşas.

Other, non-official propagandists, such as Michael Rubin and the AEI, continue to deny that any US-backed atrocities have been inflicted on the Kurdish people by America's Ankara allies. American lies about the Turkish genocide of Kurds can be found most recently, and in such inocuous pieces of writing as book reviews, like Rubin's latest:

Such balance, however, does not extend to the Turkish Kurds. McKiernan's account oozes with antipathy toward Turkey. He wrongly calls Kurds "second class citizens" in Turkey, ignoring that presidents, foreign ministers, and scores of parliamentarians have been Kurdish. Lack of education and urban-rural divide better explain the social differences in Turkey than ethnicity. Too often McKiernan uncritically accepts the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) narrative, though many Kurds consider it a terrorist group.

Maybe "many Kurds" consider PKK a "terrorist group," but those "many" would not be found in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan; they would be found outside of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan and, therefore, are not familiar with the real terrorist group of The Region--the TSK. It would also be more credible if an "expert" like Rubin would bother to provide statistics to help us define what he considers "many" to mean.

Rubin is clearly also pushing the lie that "presidents, foreign ministers, and scores of parliamentarians" have been Kurdish. Nothing could be further from the truth and the "presidents, foreign ministers, and scores of parliamentarians" would no doubt have Rubin detained and tortured, if not extrajudicially murdered, for suggesting that they were "Kurd," since those "Kurds" had long abandoned and denied any Kurdish roots they may have had. The only Kurdish parliamentarians that ever truly earned the title, were charged, prosecuted, and imprisoned for years for their temerity in having spoken their mother language inside the venerable halls of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Those parliamentarians were Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak.

There have been no other Kurdish parliamentarians in the history of the TC. None.

The "expert," Rubin, fails to explain how the "[L]ack of education and urban-rural divide" were forced, official policies of the Ankara regime that date back to the very foundation of the regime. It's also interesting to note that Rubin denies the second-class citizen status of the Kurdish people under Turkish occupation, even though this status has been proven and documented time and time again by such PKK-sponsored organizations as IHD, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Kurdish Human Rights Project, among others.

Then again, it is the Deep State which has pushed the lie that human rights organizations are PKK-sponsored, and that is one of the reasons why the Ankara regime began a campaign of hate against a former IHD head, Akin Birdal. Turkish media's collusion in that campaign very nearly cost Birdal his life, when a state assassin pumped six bullets into him while he was in the Istanbul IHD office in 1998. Remember, too, that a similar media hatred campaign was attempted last year against another former IHD head, Eren Keskin.

Too bad Rubin the "expert" is thoroughly unacquainted with the facts of the Kurdish struggle. Of course, the Kurdish struggle simply does not serve the script continually written by the US-Turkey-Israel war triangle of the neocon-Deep State playwrights like Rubin.

For more "analysis" on the Ankara regime's insistence on invasion of South Kurdistan for control of Kerkuk's oil, check out the Turkish propagandist at World Politics Watch. Notice how in the first couple of paragraphs we're supposed to feel sorry for the families of TSK terrorists that are killed by HPG gerîlas, but there's no mention whatsoever for families like the Kaymaz family, whose father and 12-year-old son were gunned down in cold blood by Ankara state terrorists in front of their home in November, 2004. The state murderers were acquitted by the regime last month.

That's business as usual in a state-sponsor of terror like Turkey, and I should be concerned with their dead? BOO-EFFING-HOOOOO.

You should also notice how the propagandist of that piece engages in the usual Turkish BS. Turkey just wants to "move on," maybe even "find closure," but the US won't go take care of PKK for Turkey, like it did with the help of its Israeli friends in Kenya. But that conspiracy didn't end PKK at all, did it? Yet that's what the Ankara regime thought back then.

For the Turkish propagandist, the Kurdish "problem" is all the fault of the Americans. The official policy is to blame everyone else, just like adolescents do. There is no acceptance by the Ankara regime for having pushed the Kurdish people into legitimate armed resistance against 80 years of atrocities and no acceptance of the fact that a military solution will never solve the situation.

Then again, I doubt whether the regime really wants to solve the situation. It would be so much more lucrative to simply invade South Kurdistan in order to control energy resources in Mûsil and Kerkuk.

Remember, it's better to die on your feet than to die on your knees.