AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER: CENTRAL ASIA

"This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam."
~ Sibel Edmonds.

Luke Ryland has done it again:

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained 'intimate relations' with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, "all the way until that day of September 11."

These 'intimate relations' included using Bin Laden for 'operations' in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These 'operations' involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner "as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict," that is, fighting 'enemies' via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from 'actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia') as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Control of Central Asia

The goals of the American 'statesmen' directing these activities included control of Central Asia's vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.

In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)

According to Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

Uighurs

Sibel was recently asked to write about the recent situation with the Uighurs in Xinjiang, but she declined, apart from saying that "our fingerprint is all over it."

Of course, Sibel isn't the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001:

"were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China."

And also that:

"Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia."

In a separate interview, Margolis said:

"That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this."

Read the whole piece at Against All Enemies.

The comment I have is to urge everyone to read The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski. The entire book is available for download here.

Brzezinski's thesis in the book would appear to be:

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."--p. 38 of the online version.

Here's some reinforcement:

"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." --p. 148.

"Global community" means the corporate world and vermin like those at Goldman Sachs, naturally.

Then there are these interesting items:

"Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold."--p. 124.

"The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." --p. 125.

Or how about this:

"In fact, an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia - is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and hence infidel - control." -- p. 133.

And abetted from the outside by the US, too. Instead of "infidel control", simply put a Turkish proxy in there like, say, Gülen schools, to educate the children of the upper classes so that they'll be good Muslims sufficiently under the control of the US.


Brzezinski's ideas about Uzbekistan are interesting:

"Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia." --p. 130.

Why?

"Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures." --p. 121.

Could control over Uzbekistan have been the reason for linking the Fethullahçı to the assassination attempt of Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov in 1999?

I wonder, too, if, at the time of writing this book, Brzezinski was anticipating the next "Pearl Harbor" in order to make an outright move to control an area he obviously believes is crucial to maintain US hegemony:

"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. -- p. 24-25.

In light of the shock effect of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is this statement merely a coincidence?

Is it also coincidence that Brzezinski so glowingly endorsed Obama and that Obama now continues the war in Afghanistan and expands it to Pakistan?

And why did Obama lie about his relationship with Brzezinski?

Change you can believe in, all the way back to the Carter administration:

The CIA’s proposal [to "slow down Soviet progress in Afghanistan but also help deflect some of the energy of Middle Eastern Muslims, inspired by the Iranian revolution"] found a sponsor in Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish émigré and fierce anticommunist hawk. Brzezinski, an academic who had done work for the CIA, believed the Afghan situation offered the United States a rare opportunity to frustrate the Soviet’s expansionist goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He recommended covert assistance to the Islamic fighters. On July 3, 1979, President Carter signed a directive authorizing nonlethal support. On that same day, Brzezinski said he sent a note the president saying his actions would result in direct military intervention by the Soviets.

And it did.

Another thing . . . it's not just the Turks in Central Asia who are helping to achieve US domination of that vast region. Check the activities of MASHAV, including Israeli military activity, in Central Asia and you will see that the Iron Triangle--the US, Turkey, and Israel--is alive and well in the heart of the Eurasian landmass.



On a separate note, I'm happy to announce that I have been invited by Sibel Edmonds to contribute from time to time at her blog. But Sibel has the details on that and there should be something coming up fairly soon. I'll keep you posted.

GOING AFTER THE WORTHLESS AMERICAN MEDIA

"Yes, we will be naming names -- myself included."
~ Sibel Edmonds.

Sibel Edmonds has a new article about the swindling of the American voter:

Despite all the promises Mr. Obama made during his campaign, especially on those issues that were absolutely central to those whose support he garnered, so far the President of Change has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor. Not only that, his administration has made it clear that they intend to continue this trend. Some call it a major betrayal. Can we go so far as to call it a ‘swindling of the voters’?

She goes on to enumerate the Obama flip-flops on NSA warantless wiretapping, accountability on torture, teh revival of the military commission, and the continuation of war--also known as democracy by force--and more. Take a look for more change you can believe in.

She also remarks on the self-censorship of journalists with regard to her case, although she refers to it as "fear-induced censorship":

Yes, I am going to begin with the issue of State Secrets Privilege; because I was the first recipient of this ‘privilege’ during the now gone Administration; because long before it became ‘a popular’ topic among the ‘progressive experts,’ during the time when these same experts avoided writing or speaking about it; when many constitutional attorneys had no idea we even had this "law" - similar to and based on the British ‘Official Secret Act; when many journalists did not dare to question this draconian abuse of Executive Power; I was out there, writing, speaking, making the rounds in Congress, and fighting this ‘privilege’ in the courts. And because in 2004 I stood up in front of the Federal Court building in DC, turned to less than a handful of reporters, and said, ‘This, my case, is setting a precedent, and you are letting this happen by your fear-induced censorship. Now that they have gotten away with this, now that you have let them get away, we’ll be seeing this ‘privilege’ invoked in case after case involving government criminal deeds in need of cover up.’ Unfortunately I was proven right.

Now it looks like she will be leading the charge in exposing the worthless American media with a new project, the Project Expose MSM:

We all have been tirelessly screaming about issues related to Congressional leaders abdicating their main responsibility of 'oversight.' We have been outraged for way too long at seeing 'no' accountability whatsoever in many known cases of extreme wrongdoing. I, and many of you, believe that the biggest reason for this was, and still is, the lack of true journalism and media coverage -- which acts as the necessary pressure and catalyst for those spineless politicians on the Hill and in the Executive branch. Or, at least it's supposed to. So, in our book, the MSM has been the main culprit.

Well, here is a chance to turn the tables.

At my new blog, 123 Real Change, I'm happy to present an experimental project, Project Expose MSM, created to provide readers with specific mainstream media blackout and/or misinformation cases based on the documented and credible first-hand experiences of legitimate sources and whistleblowers.123 Real Change is inviting all members of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), other active (covert or overt) government whistleblowers, and even reporters themselves, to publish their experiences in regard to their own first-hand dealings with the media, where their legit disclosures were either intentionally censored, blacked out or tainted.

Yes, we will be naming names -- myself included.

For an initial example of naming names, check the rest of her post.

Recently there has been much crying and hand-wringing, mainly from journalists, who worry about the fact that newspapers in the US are folding. The problem that these journalists fail to acknowledge is that they are the main cause of their own demise for many of the very reasons that Sibel discusses in her post. It boils down to a betrayal of public trust. They do not investigate to expose corruption and alert the public to the wrongdoing of those the public have elected. The death of professional journalism as we know it in the US is richly deserved.

Here are the comments of an old-school American journalist on the problem:

. . . Unfortunately, a few huge corporations now dominate the media landscape. And the news business is at war with journalism. Virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the company's share price. One of the best newspaper groups, Knight Ridder - whose reporters were on to the truth about Iraq early on - was recently sold and broken up because a tiny handful of investors wanted more per share than they were getting.

Almost all the networks carried by most cable systems are owned by one of the major media conglomerates. Two-thirds of today's newspaper markets are monopolies, and they're dumbing down. As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace. And those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content.

[ , , , ]

At the same time we have seen the rise of an ideological partisan press that is contemptuous of reality, serves up right-wing propaganda as fact, and attempts to demonize anyone who says otherwise. Its embodiment is Rush Limbaugh. Millions heard him take journalists to task for their reporting on the torture at Abu Ghraib, which he attempted to dismiss as a little necessary sport for soldiers under stress. He said: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation. . . . You ever heard of people [who] need to blow some steam off?"

So we can't make the case today that the dominant institutions of the press are guardians of democracy. They actually work to keep reality from us, whether it's the truth of money in politics, the social costs of "free trade," growing inequality, the resegregation of our public schools, or the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation. It's as if we are living on a huge plantation in a story told by the boss man.

There is no difference between right-wing propaganda and so-called left-wing propaganda in the US, despite the fact that there are those who ignorantly refer to Obama and his administration as "socialist"; there is no left wing in the American political arena.

In these issues of the media and the one-party system lie the two main differences between the US and the old Soviet Union: in the Soviet Union, there was dissent and everyone knew that the state lied to them. Not so in the US, not so.

SOLIDARITY WITH DTP

"Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results."
~ Eugene V. Debs, American Socialist.

First of all, go over to Hevallo's place and read his post on how "Barack Obama Gives Green Light for Suppression of Kurdish Civil Rights".

The next item is from email:

Declaration by Francis Wurtz, President of the GUE/NGL group



On the situation in Turkey after recent local elections: Yes to political struggle - No to political oppression!

Brussels, 15/04/09

According to recent information, the Turkish police have undertaken a large-scale raid against the leaders, activists and offices of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Turkey, particularly in the south-eastern part of the country. More than 70 people, including three of the party's Vice-Presidents have been arrested. The police action was also directed against a TV station and the headquarters of the Union of South-East municipalities, which were searched.

This political move by the Turkish police follows the impressive results of the DTP in the local elections on 29 March 2009, in which the party almost doubled the number of municipalities it won (from 56 to 98). In ten provinces of the East and South-East of Turkey, the DTP obtained the highest popular support, meaning it has developed into the strongest political force there.

Immediately after these results were made public, a number of problematic statements were made by representatives of the Turkish government and the security forces, for example regarding the success of the DTP, which they considered a matter of concern and even a threat to the national security!

Against this background, the police action can only be seen as politically motivated. We therefore call on the Turkish authorities to respect the will of the people, expressed in the recent local elections, and to guarantee citizens their rights, especially freedom of activity for political parties in Turkey, in this instance the DTP, of other regional organisations, such as the Union of South-East municipalities, and of the media.

The European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group in the European Parliament calls for the immediate release of all those who have been arrested as well as the re-opening of the TV station.

GUE/NGL press officer - Gianfranco Battistini + 32 475 646628 gbattistini@europarl.eu.int

The European Peace Parliament stands in support of DTP:

In it's statement, the European Peace Parliament condemned the operation against DTP and said, "We ask those people who are responsible for the operation against DTP, primarily the AKP government, for the immediate release of the DTP administrators."

Turkish ESP (Platform for the Socialist Oppressed) stands in support of DTP:

The Platform for the Socialist Oppressed (ESP) has issued a statement in support of DTP:

"The Kurdish people's strong declaration of the recognition of DTP in the 29 March local elections, especially in Kurdish provinces, becoming the only party position in the region, discomforts the dominant powers and AKP government. Thus they brought their intolerance to the election results and their attack policies into play.

"As a result of the protest regarding the election results in Ağrı, tens of people were wounded and many were arrested as a result of the brutal attacks of the police. Two people were murdered by state forces at the celebration for Abdullah Öcalan's birthday in Amara. With today's ongoing detention terrorism, DTP's policy-making as a just, democratic, and honorable peace demand for the Kurdish question is being hindered. The attacks against DTP, after the US President Barack Obama's visit to Turkey, is a dirty bargain of bourgeois solution-seeking which excludes DTP in the Kurdish question.

"We call all revolutionaries, pioneers, and all of society's opposition segments to have solidarity with the Kurdish people and their political representative, DTP, to raise the motto of the brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish people."

The Turkish Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP) stands in support of DTP:

ÖDP: A Lynch Attempt Against DTP Is Being Implemented

ÖDP's Deputy General Chairman Haydar İlker reacted to the operation against DTP and said that a lynch attempt against DTP is being implemented with the detentions.

The Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP) Deputy General Chairman Haydar İlker, made a statement about the detention of DTP Deputy General Chairmen, parliamentary executive committee members (MYK), lawyers, and deputy mayors. Evaluating the operations that occured a short time after local elections as "a lynch attempt against a political party which has a group in parliament and won municipality elections in several provinces with the votes of the people," İlker said: "The Freedom and Solidarity Party, which supports a democratic solution to the Kurdish question, condemns this anti-democratic implementation and declares that we are on the side of the Democratic Society Party. Those detained must be immediately released."

The Turkish Democratic Socialist Party (SDP) stands in support of DTP:

"SDP, either because of our belief in the internationalist struggle and the prerequisite of our strategic alliance with the Kurdish freedom movement, today we defend a democratic solution to the Kurdish question as we defended yesterday. We repeat one more time that we will stand against all forms of annihilation and denial against the Kurdish people. We will continue to stand in complete alliance and solidarity with DTP."

The Turkish Labor Party (EMEP) stands in support of DTP:

EMEP: There is nothing acceptable

EMEP Deputy General Chairman Kamil Tekin Sürek, said that there is nothing acceptable about the operations. Related to the subject, Sürek released a written statement, "Such an operation against DTP is not acceptable in a time when PKK declared a ceasefire and a Kurdish conference assembly was announced, and an era when peaceful methods and approaches are discussed instead of armed clashes." Sürek announced, "The AKP government does not hesitate to apply fascist methods," and demanded an immediate end to the operation.

Do you see a pattern here?

Needless to say, Rastî always stands in support of DTP.

VIDEO OF TURKISH STATE TERROR IN AMARA

"I don’t think that a point of view that considers the Kurds as zero will be able to provide peace in the Middle East."
~ Osman Baydemir.

Here is the Turkish state terror, the state-sponsored violence, so heartily supported by the new American president:

That was Mustafa Dağ's blood spilling out on the ground after he had been hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired by brutal Turkish security forces. Let me add that Turkish security forces learned everything they know from the Americans, from NATO. This is their so-called War on Terror.

As is obvious from the video, they themselves are the agents of terror. So Obama did speak the truth when he said that the US and Turkey can build a "model partnership" based on ideals and values. Truer words were never spoken! The same ideals and values form the basis for both nations: Murder, repression, terror.

And so the values are spread. DTP parliamentarian Ayla Akat Ata was beat by nightstick-weilding AKP police as she attempted to gather information about the murders of Mustafa Dağ and Dicle University student Mahsum Karaoğlan at Birecik state hospital. Source: http://www.kurdish-info.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12894

Now, this is an elected parliamentarian, a woman who stands for her people, represents them in the parliament, and who went to seek information about the murders of two of her people. And she is beaten by the ruling party's police forces? Ah, well, there's democracy in action, for you, coming straight from America's "Model of Democracy" for the Middle East.

Certainly Obama is working to "transform the US-Turkish relationship into a well-oiled machine"--a machine well-oiled by Kurdish blood is what they mean.

Yet Obama--who himself does not have the courage of Ayla Akat Ata, or Leyla Zana, or Emine Ayna, or DTP's women mayors, or PKK's women guerrillas--has the balls to lecture Ahmet Türk about violence or armed stuggle not being the means to solve the Kurdish situation? Well it's clear that a political solution does not exist, nor does an avenue toward a political solution exist. America's boy, Katil Erdoğan, still refuses to meet with DTP officials, much less will he sit down with them to lay the groundwork for a political solution. The US was the one to refuse PKK's most recent (2006) ceasefire so that it could sell more Lockheed product to Turkey. The US is providing targets for TSK to bomb Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq.

Change you can believe in!

Even the recent elections have suffered the same, old corrupt electoral practices that the Ankara regime has used since Day 1. A German delegation of election observers in Ağrı are lending their support to the people of Ağrı, based on the "irregularities" that they witnessed in that town:

As an observer delegation, we agree with the claim of the residents of Agri after elections. We urge the international press, to pursue the events in Agri and publicize them. International public opinion is the best protection for their democratic rights to citizens struggling in Agri.

Another item that no one in Obama's press entourage bothered to cover . . . 88 vehicles have been burned in two days throughout throughout Turkey in protest against Turkish state terror in Amara and Ağrı. Eighty-five of those vehicles were in Istanbul in the following areas: Sultangazi, Maltepe, Sancaktepe, Sultanbeyli, Ümraniye, Küçükçekmece, Ataşehir, Çekmeköy, Yeşilpınar and Kadıköy. Vehicles were also burned in Diyarbakır and Silvan. The vehicle burned in Diyarbakır was associated with a Fethullahcı business, while the two burned in Silvan belonged to professional soldiers and not conscripts. In addition, ten Fethullahçı-affiliated stores in Istanbul were burned. A Sabançı İş Bank office was burned in Diyarbakır.


What do you expect when every political avenue has a road block?


Addendum: For those who wish to help spread the video, particularly by embedding it in your own blog, check this link. You'll need a Youtube account to access the video and its embed script, since the video is restricted to 18 years or older on Youtube. Spread it far and wide, comrades!

I TOLD YOU SO

"We have made the Reich by propaganda."
~ Joesph Goebbels.

Same shit. Different day.

CHALLENGING DEMOCRACY

"Democracy is on trial in the world, on a more colossal scale than ever before."
~ Charles Fletcher Dole.

Roj TV's Sunday evening news showed scenes of anger at Turkish state terror that was directed against those holding birthday celebrations in Öcalan's hometown of Amara as well as video footage of Turkish state terror directed against DTP supporters in Ağır, where the democratic Ankara regime voided 3,000 DTP ballots so that AKP could insert itself as the winner of the election.

Sounds like Florida in 2000.

Roj TV aired disturbing video footage of Mustafa Dağ, who was targeted by the jandarma and deliberately shot in the head with a riot control gas canister. Dağ later died of this wound at a local state hospital. Last month, an American was severely wounded by the IDF when he was shot in the head by a high-velocity tear gas canister initially deployed by the IDF in December 2008. So far, the American remains in better condition than Mustafa Dağ. Roj TV stated that the other young Kurd murdered by the jandarma, Mahsum Karaoğlan, was in his third year at Dicle University and would have graduated next year.

People did not gather at Amara in protest but in celebration and had been planting trees, which is what Öcalan requested as a fitting celebration for his sixtieth birthday. Those gathered at Amara had been there for two days when the jandarma forces of the fascist Ankara regime intervened violently. This fact was brought up in a press conference held by DTP's Urfa provincial chairman İbrahim Ayhan, DTP's Urfa parliamentarian İbrahim Binici, and DTP's Batman parliamentarian, Ayla Akat Ata. The bottom line? AKP is now expressing its intolerance of DTP's success.

What struck me as I listened to the DTP politicians during the press conference was that their remarks would never be covered in Turkish media, not even on that highly-vaunted, regime-controlled TRT 6. The only broadcast media organization to freely air the remarks of DTP or KCK on these matters is Roj TV. And that's the only reason that the Ankara regime is currently pressuring NATO to close the channel.

Protests against state terrorism in both Ağır and Amara broke out in İstanbul, Mersin, Adana and İzmir. Masked demonstrators threw stones and molotov cocktails.

On a happier note, there were birthday celebrations for the Kurdish people's leader in Qendil, Maxmur, and Aleppo. The Kurds of Aleppo even had proper birthday cakes at their celebrations which were cut by children.

In the meantime, Obama has arrived in Turkey for his visit, and since it is already the morning of 6 April as I write this, the show should be getting on the road at any time now. Obama is scheduled to address the TBMM Monday afternoon and most of the Turkish media early last week announced that he would speak for approximately 45 minutes--in an "unknown language", of course. Naturally, Turkish media didn't say that he would speak in the TBMM in an "unknown language", but since the guy doesn't speak a lick of Turkish, I know he's going to speak in an "unknown language". I wonder if Meclis TV is going to cut him off? I'll be waiting to see Ankara's chief prosecutor initiate an investigation.

Obama is scheduled to begin his tour of Turkey with a moment of worship at Anıtkabir, the temple of modern Islamist Turkey's founder. Obama is also scheduled to meet with opposition party leaders, but since there is only one opposition party in Turkey, the only meeting that will really count will be Obama's meeting with Ahmet Türk.

By tomorrow morning, US time, we should have some indication of the contents of the meeting with Türk and his sense of how it went. I hope Türk brings up the subject of Ağrı, which should be an intro to the wider issue of democracy--or the lack thereof--in Turkey, and that he brings up the matter of the "Kurdish" summit.

I don't hold out much hope for change we can believe in because Obama's administration is heavily Clintonite and the previous Clinton administration murdered at least as many Kurds as the Turks did at Dersim. AKP are America's "boys", and the Americans--along with the Israelis--are giving the Turks the targets for their bombing campaign against Kurdish villages in South Kurdistan.

And so it goes.

Until then, make sure to check out a couple of timely posts at Zerkesorg, the first being an argument against Abdullah Gül and the second being a discussion of how Kurds have no right to protest against election corruption. Azadixwaz has a long-awaited post in which he helps to spread the DTP joy. And Hevallo wonders if hope is melting with the snow.

CAPITALISTS, MERCENARIES, AND THE SAME STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE

"Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class."
~ Al Capone.

What? The financial "elites" siphoning money out of the US? Illegally sucking capital out of the US? Using "privatization" to steal assets? Why, those dirty parasites wouldn't kill their own host like that, would they?

I described a meeting that had occurred in April 1997 . . . I had given a presentation to a distinguished group of U.S. pension fund leaders on the extraordinary opportunity to reengineer the U.S. federal budget. I presented our estimate that the prior year’s federal investment in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area had a negative return on investment.

We presented that it was possible to finance places with private equity and reengineer the government investment to a positive return and, as a result, generate significant capital gains. Hence, it was possible to use U.S. pension funds to significantly increase retirees’ retirement security by successfully investing in American communities, small business and farms — all in a manner that would reduce debt, improve skills, and create jobs.

The response from the pension fund investors to this analysis was quite positive until the President of the CalPERS pension fund — the largest in the country — said, “You don’t understand. It’s too late. They have given up on the country. They are moving all the money out in the fall [of 1997]. They are moving it to Asia.”

Sure enough, that fall, significant amounts of moneys started leaving the US, including illegally. Over $4 trillion went missing from the US government. No one seemed to notice. Misled into thinking we were in a boom economy by a fraudulent debt bubble engineered with force and intention from the highest levels of the financial system, Americans were engaging in an orgy of consumption that was liquidating the real financial equity we needed urgently to reposition ourselves for the times ahead.

Read the whole thing.

Engels was right. Capitalism is eating itself. I guess that's why his associate was on the cover of the European edition of TIME magazine this month. I guess that's also why copies of Das Kapital began to fly off German bookstore shelves last October.

Blackwater, the infamous mercenary company who murdered a bunch of civilians in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, two years ago has changed its name to Xe and beefed up its aviation "support" in order to assist with global narcotics trafficking. Now that the global financial parasites have sucked legitimate capital dry, they need to kick the infusion of illegal capital into high gear in order to save their own asses.

Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering if Sibel Edmonds might have a chance at justice with the new administration . . .

Members of the US Congress re-introduced bipartisan "state secrets" legislation on Wednesday, aimed at protecting executive privilege while ensuring judicial review.

The introduction of the bill comes as Obama administration lawyers on Monday urged a federal appeals court in San Francisco to continue the policy of the previous White House and invoke state secrets privilege in a case about CIA clandestine detentions and rendition.

"The State Secrets Protection Act will help guide the courts to balance the government's interests in secrecy with accountability and the rights of citizens to seek judicial redress," Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.

And let me remind you that, once upon a time, that worthless Leahy was one of those senators who "publicly support[ed] Edmonds and [ . . . ] pushed the Justice Department to declassify at least some of its investigation into her dismissal."

Now that's all change you can believe in!

Let me also add that Gordon Taylor has an updated post on Noah's ark and Cudi Dağı that makes for very interesting reading, so go have a look.

A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT

"You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig."
~ Barack Obama.

From KNCNA:

Kurdish National Congress of North America
P.O. Box 90823, Nashville, TN 37209
www.kncna.org

President Barack Obama,
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500

February 3, 2009


Honorable President Obama:

In your inauguration speech, you stated that America will have a better approach with the rest of the world in terms of cooperation, mutual understanding and respect. You also appeared to promise that you would review and correct America’s unsuccessful policies especially in regard to the Middle East.

A received wisdom of various US administrations is that Turkey plays a vital role in the Middle Eastern stability and promoting America’s agenda in the region. Indeed Turkey is poised to become a prominent nation not only for the region but also to play a larger role in Asia and Europe. But this can only happen if Turkey bases its stability on the premise of democracy and a guarantee of human rights for its citizens. It appears that this can only happen if, with the encouragement of the US, the Turks amend their constitution where every citizen of Turkey is guaranteed respect and equality before the law. Turkey cannot remain prosperous and use slogans of democracy as a lapel pin rather than adhering to democracy’s deepest principles -- principles that should be reflected in the conduct of the Turkish state.

It’s inconceivable for a nation to proclaim its democratic image while it callously engages in the oppression of more than 20 million Kurds. It appears that Turkish authorities think they can continue this policy since they have been supported by America’s “Good Kurds - Bad Kurds” policies for the last few decades. This policy of demonizing the Kurds is possible because the US has accepted a Faustian bargain in which they allow the suppression of a people in exchange for geopolitical gains – and this by a nation that calls itself the ‘beacon of democracy.’

Because Turkey finds inconvenient the desire of the ethnic Kurds to speak their language and sustain their culture, they have used the PKK as a pretext to suppress this ancient people. Even the ‘new’ Kurdish TV station that has been allowed in response to pressure from the EU only broadcast state-approved propaganda – it just happens to be in Kurdish – and do not reflect the true political claims of Kurds who are living under the Turkish flag. As long as Turkey can sense the compliance of the Western world, particularly of America, they will continue to press chauvinistic claims that Turkish society is monoethnic and deny basic human rights to all other non-Turks who live in Turkey. We call upon you Mr. President to end this exclusionary, divisive and cruel policy.

The Kurdish people, as one of the world’s largest ethnic groups, have always been a scapegoat of the Western colonial policies in the region. The division of Kurdistan could not have happened without callous Western policies. As a result, the Kurds found themselves in four merciless nation states in which each of the governments tried to force assimilation in their own national melting pots. When assimilation was not possible, suppression and genocide followed.

It is hard to conceive that the Kurds are treated in such a harsh way as a result of America’s compliance in their suppression where history can testify to their loyalty to the west and particularly to America. This is especially true in countries such as Turkey where America can influence democratic changes.

However, every time after superficial promises to the Kurds (beginning with Woodrow Wilson’s promise for the Kurds and Armenians to have their own homelands in the Treaty of Sevres) the West has turned its back on them. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which bowed to Turkish nationalist policies supplanted the guarantees of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, and consigned Kurds to the yoke of a proto nationalist Turkish state. America and the West were indifferent when the Turks called the Kurds “mountain Turks” and even the words “Kurd” and “Kurdistan” were abolished and the act of speaking Kurdish in public became an offense to Turkish honor, punishable by a prison sentence.

It’s ironic that America would support regimes or governments that oppress their citizens in the name of protecting its interests, not thinking of consequences that jeopardize America’s interest, image and ability to claim itself as an advocate of democracy in the long run. Therefore, we encourage you to end this morally bankrupt policy of “Good Kurds - Bad Kurds” and pressure the Turks to end their suppression against the Kurds, acknowledge and respect their cultural and democratic rights.


Sincerely yours,

Kirmanj Gundi
President