FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS CONTINUE

"To suppress the revolts quickly, the Turkish Republic set up a "village guard" system. This type of citizen's defense force has been used by the U.S. army in Vietnam. So a militia of about 50,000 armed men was established, as well as a special unit of 12,000 men. And in addition, the state moved an army of 300,000 soldiers against the Kurds. Nobody knows what else has been mobilized. But the most horrific creation was the "contra guerrilla" under the command of the Turkish army."
~ Yaşar Kemal.

Wow, that's really something, that massacre outside of Mardin yesterday. A bunch of guys masked, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, who go to a wedding and murder 44 people. How many "blood feuds" have we ever heard of that were handled like that? How about zero?

DTP Diyarbakır parliamentarian Gültan Kışanak finds it odd that there's a military garrison located some five minutes from the massacre site but that it took them two hours to arrive on scene. Villagers ran to the garrison to notify the village guards there of what had happened. The village guards, in turn, notified the security forces. The security forces told the guards that if they wanted to go, they could go, but security forces would not go.

Why? Because Turkish security forces knew what was going on. They wanted the attackers to get away.

DTP Şırnak parliamentarian Hasip Kaplan tells it like it is. It's not an honor massacre but The System's massacre. The TSK has 800,000 to 1,000,000 members. The Turkish police are thousands more. Yet these servants of the state have been incapable of protecting the population--citizens of the state--for decades.

Why? The state and the state's security forces are unwilling to protect the population because the state is the one perpetrating the crimes against the population.

Then there is the fact that the village guard system was created not to do the job of state security forces in protecting the population, but to arm Kurds in order to fight Kurds. It's a simple case of the old "divide and conquer."

After all, how many "blood feuds" have you heard of that have gone down like this one did?

The Murderer Erdoğan had to say something:

"The incident is not a terrorist attack but the result of a hostility between families. The detained have the same surname as most of the dead. No tradition and understanding can justify this action at all."

So did the Murderer Gül:

"Such primitive and violent acts that cause deep suffering can never be justified."

What they're saying here is that this massacre occured because Kurds were involved. That's what the Murderer Erdoğan means when he talked about "a negative understanding of tradition". See? They want us to believe that Kurds don't even know their own tradition.

It's never been "tradition" to conduct a "blood feud" murder by getting together a bunch of guys who could pass as a commando team, arm them like a commando team, and then have them commit the act of a commando team. Kurds just don't handle "blood feuds" this way.

But the remarks of the Murderer Erdoğan and the Murderer Gül are simply examples of the racist claims of the "civilized" ethnicity in Turkey.

I'm not the only one who notices that this is an odd way of handling a "blood feud". So does some guy at Dicle University:

"What happened in Mazıdağı, Mardin, is a massacre. It is not amenable to customs and rules of clans and blood feuds," Associate Professor Rüstem Erkan, head of Diyarbakır Dicle University’s sociology department, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

Erkan said contrary to outsiders’ perceptions, blood feuds, despite the despicable results, have rules everyone obeys. "According to customs, you cannot do something like this at funerals or weddings. This region has never seen such a thing. They did not regard the rules when they did this. They did not pay attention to who they killed," he said. Erkan, who has extensively studied the region’s socioeconomic structure, said this case was not a classic blood feud case. "This is a slaughter. It is not a classic blood feud case," he said.

I don't agree with his conclusions, but he's definitely got a point in saying that this was no "blood feud".

Three years ago, HRW petitioned AKP's interior minister at the time, Abdülkadir Aksu, to abolish the village guard system. HRW's letter contained a summary of the human rights violations reports that the organization had received for almost twenty years--violations and abuses committed by village guards.

The AKP government disregarded the call for abolition of the village guard system but this was after the Amed Serhildan, during which the Murderer Erdoğan gave security forces the order to murder indiscriminately women and children.

So what is it with this massacre? It was another state-sponsored massacre of Kurds but it went badly because there were survivor witnesses. If the state's assassins had killed everyone, as one survivor heard one of the assassins tell the others, the state would have blamed this black operation on PKK, just as the Ankara regime has done so many times in the past.

And if you don't believe that, then you tell me when you've ever heard of a "blood feud" carried out like this.

CEASEFIRES AND STATE TERRORISM

"These enemies of humanity who believe that the state authority has weakened and turned their guns on our innocent citizens will definitely drown in the hole that they have fallen into. Such attacks which are against the existence of the Turkish Republic prove how just we are in the struggle against terrorism."
~ Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller on the Güçlükonak Massacre.

Well, we all know Ergenekon goes east of the Fırat. Now they are finding out. From Özgür Gündem:

Ekmen confessed it: The Güçlükonak massacre was conducted by the state


The former state minister responsible for human rights, Adnan Ekmen, had important statements about the Güçlükonak massacre. These statements shed light on the reasons for leaving the Kurdish question unresolved and point out the who provoked, and why, the declared ceasefire.

The confession came after 13 years

The minister responsible for human rights in the 52nd government, in which Tansu Çiller was prime minister and Deniz Baykal was foreign minister, Adnan Ekmen made statements to Yeni Aktüel magazine by saying, "My conscience makes me uncomfortable": "Although we knew the background of the event, unfortunately we could not explain it to the public. According to the hearings from the region and from the relatives of the people who were killed, we realized that the situation was not the same as the security forces were talking about. The event that took place was in a location where the security forces had full control anyway; It was impossible for PKK to conduct an operation. Yet the ID cards of the murdered were in the hands of the security forces, people were burned; however, somehow, their ID cards were never damaged. Apparently the people who burned them took their ID cards before burning them. To me, this was the point that exposed them.

"We sat and talked about what we could do together with the ministry's bureaucrats. I called a village guard chief and tribal leader who I trusted, and told him what I had heard. He said to me, 'I cannot lie to you; whatever you heard is true. The official statement ofthe security forces does not reflect the truth.' I asked him whether he would be willing to tell us the truth if we went to Güçlükonak; 'This is not possible. If we tell the truth we cannot protect ourselves, and neither can you,' he said. After he said that we changed our minds about going to Güçlükonak.

"I offered Deniz Baykal the things that I knew, to tell Prime Minister Çiller. When he said 'It is up to you, but the Prime Minister is very busy nowadays,' I changed my mind."

"I told the event to the chairman of CHP, of which I was a member, and I told him that I wanted to share what I heard with the public. He asked me why they were putting the blame on PKK. In Europe there would be a very important vote about the Kurds. By blaming this incident on PKK, I said to him that they might want it to give a message to the association which would hold the election."

First ceasefire, first provocation

Özal wanted it, a ceasefire was declared.

President Turgut Özal conveyed his ceasefire demand to PKK through the PUK leader Celal Talabani. The Kurdish people's leader, Abdullah Öcalan, responded to Özal's demand positively. On 17 March 1993 in Lebanon's Bar Eliyas town, Öcalan and PUK leader Celal Talabani, as mediator, came out in front of the press and declared a 25-day ceasefire.

Özal expressed his satisfaction to Talabani, who visited him after the ceasefire, by saying: "For ten years it is the very first time I slept peacefully." After Özal's positive reaction, one day after the limited ceasefire, on 16 April, in Bar Eliyas, Öcalan came out in front of the press one more time and declared that they had extended the unilateral ceasefire indefinitely.

Özal's suspicious death and the 33 soldiers incident

Özal, who had sympathy for most of the demands that were mentioned in the ceasefire, including a general amnesty, died suddenly, one day after the indefinite ceasefire, on 17 April 1993. It was stated that Özal suffered a heart attack. However, many people, primarily his family, and including Öcalan, said "Özal was murdered". On 24 May 1993, the news of the massacre came. Şemdin Sakık, who blocked the Bingöl-Elazığ highway and killed 33 unarmed soldiers, declared the end of the first ceasefire. Öcalan said that incident of the murder of 33 soldiers was not related to them [PKK] and he refused to take responsibility. Öcalan mentioned this truth many times on İmralı and he called for the enlightenment of this incident.

Second ceasefire, second provocation

This time Çiller wanted it

After Özal's death, Süleyman Demirel became president and Tansu Çiller became prime minister. Çiller sent a letter to Öcalan, again through Talabani, and wanted Öcalan to declare a ceasefire. After that, PKK declared the second unilateral ceasefire on 15 December 1995.

11 villagers were raked with gunfire and burned

One month after the ceasefire, on 16 January 1996, this time the news came from Şırnak's town, Güçlükonak. The Koçyurdu minibus, which contained 11 villagers, was raked with gunfire and the corpses were then burned. The general staff and government officials declared the operation was conducted by PKK. PKK, on the other hand, defined the incident as "provocation through state-related contra groups" and despite this incident, declared the "continuation of the ceasefire". However, for the very first time the general staff took journalists, including foreign journalists, to the scene and made anti-PKK statements. However, the general staff did not let the journalists talk to the villagers.

Intellectuals blamed the state

The Together for Peace Working Group members, intellectuals, and journalists, went to the scene twice and found clues. They focused on the fact that the incident was related to the state. They sued, however not only did they receive no result, but also they were countersued by the charge of "insulting the army" and were convicted to ten years in prison.

Two days after the massacre, the EU parliament would assemble for a ceasefire

During the Güçlükonak incident, the European parliament had assembled for an important agenda. Turkey conducted its military operation despite the PKK's unilateral ceasefire. However, the ceasefire issue became a hot debate in the international arena. The European parliament called PKK and Turkey for a democratic solution to the Kurdish question on 13 December 1995. The ceasefire decision was given as a response to this call. In fact, a proposition related to Turkey was accepted unanimously during the 18 January 1996 session. One of the articles in the proposal was about the ceasefire: "The European parliament greets the unilateral ceasefire declared by Öcalan and accepts this initiative as a positive response to the European parliament's decision on 13 December 1995. At the same time it [the European parliament] hopes Turkey considers this gesture as a step towards a peaceful solution and accepts it as an opportunity to initiate a national-level dialog to overcome the problem in the Eastern Anatolian Region." Just two days before the meeting at which this decision was made, the Güçlükonak massacre took place.

Villagers were detained

It was revealed that some of the villagers who were murdered were detained and were held in the Taşkonak Jandarma Battalion, and some of them were taken from their homes on the day of the incident. Among the people who were killed, Halit Kaya's daughter from Yatağankaya village, Ramazan Oruç's son, and Ali Nas's nephew from Çevrimli village had previously joined the PKK guerrillas.

Third ceasefire, third provocation

Everyone wanted a ceasefire

Prime minister Erdoğan made moderate statements related to the Kurdish question in 2005 and showed attempts to make PKK declare a ceasefire. Many parties, including the US, the EU, KDP, PUK, AKP and DTP, made various attempts toward this issue. On 1 October 2006, PKK declared a ceasefire. However no improvement was made after the ceasefire.

Massacre in the first year of the ceasefire

One year passed and the ceasefire was still in effect. On 29 September 2007, the news of the massacre came from Şırnak's Beytüşşebap. Twelve people in a minibus going to Beşağaç (Hemkan) village were ambushed. The general staff and the government made a statement that "PKK did it" about the massacre, which resembled the Guclukonak incident. PKK on the other hand declared that "the massacre was committed by JITEM, which is linked to the army". Villagers also said that the incident was conducted by village guards and JITEM; the information received confirmed this claim. After this date, not only did the hope for a solution to the Kurdish question weaken but it was also the start of the cross-border operations. Thus the policies of violence entered a new stage.

Kaplan: The state prosecutor must act

DTP's Şırnak parliamentarian Hasip Kaplan expressed his views regarding the statements made by the former minister responsible for human rights at that time, Adnan Ekmen, and wanted the state prosecutor to take action. Kaplan said, "The investigation and evidence previously found by the intellectuals and the NGOs is today confirmed one more time by the statements of someone who has been at the ministry level. The prosecutor must immediately begin an investigation, listen to Minister Ekmen, the intellectuals, and the NGOs who have previously made such investigations. Because this is a massacre case, a case of provocation, the case must be reopened." Mentioning that they would take this issue to the parliament's attention, Kaplan said: "Previously we had given question and investigation proposals to the parliament regarding extrajudicial murders and massacres. We are going to keep a close eye on these. We will bring up this incident too."

Now tell me again, who are the real terrorists? Who are the real "enemies of humanity", as Çiller so boldly put it? What is this bullshit "struggle against terrorism" really all about?

BIOWARFARE UNACCOUNTABILITY AND THE WAR ON TERROR, INC.

"In vast laboratories in the Ministry of Peace, and in experimental stations, teams of experts are indefatigably at work searching for new and deadlier gases; or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents; or for breeds of disease germs immunised against all possible antibodies."
~ George Orwell, 1984.

Not because it's related to Kurds--at least, not yet--but because it may indicate an interesting turn in the War On Terror, Inc., from nj.com:

The frozen remains of two lab mice infected with deadly strains of plague were lost at a bio-terror research facility at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark -- the same high security lab where three infected mice went missing four years ago.

The latest incident, which led to an FBI investigation, occurred in December but was never disclosed to the public.

University officials said there was no health threat.

The remains of the dead mice were contained in a red hazardous waste bag being stored in a locked freezer, according to the researchers. But an animal care supervisor could not account for them while preparing to sterilize and incinerate them.

In September 2005, the same lab discovered three live mice infected with plague missing from multiple cages. Officials then said the animals had likely died.

University officials Friday said they immediately contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI and state health officials in December upon learning of the missing remains in December, but withheld information from the public until The Star-Ledger began asking questions. They subsequently released a report about the matter in a mass e-mailing to the university community, saying they did not want employees, students and professors to read about the incident in the newspaper.

FBI officials confirmed the December incident.

"As a matter of protocol in this type of matter, the FBI was called in to investigate and we determined there was no nexus to terrorism or risk to public health," said Bryan Travers, a spokesman for the FBI office in Newark.

The state Department of Health and Senior Services said it had also been notified of the situation, "and we are very confident that the appropriate authorities are investigating," said spokeswoman Donna Leusner.

University officials defended their decision to keep the matter confidential.

"If this were a public health risk, we couldn't afford to keep it a secret," said Diane Weathers, UMDNJ's senior vice president for university advancement and communications. "Plague sounds like it is Black Death. It would have been irresponsible to raise concerns."

The whole thing sounds irresponsible to me. Keep in mind that this lab has a government contract to run experiments for a biowarfare program, and it has this kind of unaccountability? Also keep in mind that this is not the first time contaminated rodents have gone missing from this lab.

Bubonic plague "kills about 50% of infected patients in 4-7 days without treatment" according to Wikipedia. Pneumonic plague, a much more virulent form of plague, requires antibiotic treatment within 24 hours of infection and without this, can cause death within four days.

What makes this new story on missing plague mice particularly interesting is that last month the Black Death, also known as bubonic plague, which is caused by Yersinia pestis--the bacteria with which the missing mice were infected--allegedly killed a number of al-Qaeda operatives in Algeria:

The disease, which struck Europe in the Middle Ages killing more than 25 million people, has swept through a training camp for insurgents in Algeria.

The arrival of the plague was discovered when security forces found the body of a dead terrorist by a roadside, the Sun reports.

The victim belonged to the large al-Qaeda network AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb).

[ . . . ]

The new epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers, the Sun reports.

The group, led by wanted terror figure Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee.

The group now fears the highly-infectious disease could have spread to other al-Qaeda training camps or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the paper said.

A source said: "The emirs (leaders) fear surviving terrorists will surrender to escape a horrible death."

Some, like the ultra-right-wing, fascist Washington Times, suggest that al-Q met with a mishap of their own making:

Al Qaeda is believed by U.S. and Western experts to have been pursuing biological weapons since at least the late 1990s. A 2005 report on unconventional weapons drafted by a commission led by former Sen. Charles Robb, Virginia Democrat, and federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman concluded that al Qaeda's biological weapons program "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11" terror attacks in the U.S.

Another report from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation, released in December, warned that "terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon."

Let me translate for you: "State-sponsors of terror are more likely to use a biological weapon in their next black operation."

Given that contaminated mice, both live and dead, are missing from a lab that contracts government bio-defense projects, it seems more likely that al-Q was targeted. The UN, those paragons of virtue, deny that there was any plague outbreak in Algeria at all.

Let's not forget the Anthrax Mystery, which is unsolved to this day, almost eight years after anthrax-laced letters were mailed in the US. Here's what American constitutional and civil rights lawyer Glenn Greenwald has to say about that on Democracy Now, from last August:

It’s hard to have any reaction to anything that the government and the FBI say about the anthrax investigation other than extreme skepticism. In light of the fact that everything that they’ve done and said over the past seven years, by all accounts, has been either completely inept or, worse, deliberately misguided away from the true source of the anthrax. And so, all of these news accounts over the past several days that have suggested that Bruce Ivins is the person behind the anthrax attacks are lacking one critical ingredient, and that’s any evidence whatsoever that those claims are true.

You can watch the anthrax segment from the 4 August, 2008, edition of Democracy Now at LiveVideo. The discussion on anthrax and the suicide of Dr. Bruce Ivins begins about 15 minutes into the program and runs about 30 minutes.

Just as something rotten was going on with the Anthrax Mystery, so, too, something rotten is going on with the plague mice. Don't forget: false flag operations have been predicted by VP Joe Biden, Colin Powell, and Madeleine Albright last October and biowarfare was discussed at that time.

Better make sure your vaccinations are up-to-date.

TORTURING "DEMOCRACY"

"Congress cannot look the other way; it must demand an independent investigation and independent prosecutor. Congress is duty-bound by the Constitution not only to hold the President, Vice President and all civil officers to account, but it must also send a message to future presidents that it will use its constitutional powers to prevent illegal, and immoral conduct."
~ Caroline Fredrickson, ACLU.

Here's a Sunday evening documentary for you, titled "Torturing Democracy". There's a website for the documentary, hosted at George Washington University. The website also contains an annotated transcript which is available in .pdf.

As you watch the video, remember that the US has not been at war since the Second World War and it is not at war now. Only Congress has the power to declare war and it has not done so since 11 December 1941 (see Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution for more).

Run time just over an hour.

All three parts here.

Compare with PKK's treatment of its prisoners:

"THE PKK WAY"

"TURKISH POWS RETURN HOME"

"HPG HANDOVER OF TURKISH POWS"

FALSE FLAG OPERATION PLANNED FOR 2009

"I personally think that everyone - journalists, professors, politicians - must think about the implications of the strategy if tension and the false flag. Here we are, indeed, in presence of phenomena that escape from every kind of agreement. That is why, every time that there are terrorist attacks, we must ask questions and try to understand what that implies."
~ Daniele Ganser.

It sounds to me like the Washington regime is planning another, major, false flag operation like it did seven years ago to initiate the corporate-friendly "Global War on Terror, Inc."

From 20 October:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

From Colin "Saddam-Has-Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction" Powell:

From Madeleine "One-Million-Dead-Iraqi-Kids-Are-Definitely-Worth-It" Allbright:

Coincidentally, or not, the Pentagon and its consultants are all ready to act:

Veteran Pentagon consultant Michael Bayer, chairman of the Defense Business Board, told his fellow panelists that the new president's inner circle should "set aside time in transition to identify the planning, gravitas and interagency process necessary to respond to a likely first-270-day crisis."

Because the PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act weren't enough, Congress is looking into creating a domestic "intelligence" agency:

The United Kingdom has MI-5, which roots out spies and terrorists in the British Isles.

Canada has CSIS -- the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Now Congress is asking: Should the U.S. have its own domestic intelligence agency?

On Monday, at the request of Congress, the RAND Corporation outlined the pros and cons of establishing a domestic intelligence agency. It also discussed different ways to organize a new entity, either as part of an existing department or as a new agency.

Also--again because the PATRIOT Act and Military Commissions Act weren't enough--NORTHCOM became operational on 1 October:

On October 1, the Pentagon, for the first time ever, dedicated an Army force specifically to NorthCom, which is in charge of securing not some foreign region but the United States of America.

The unit it assigned is the 3rd Infantry, First Brigade Combat Team, which has spent three of the last five years in Iraq. It was one of the first units to get to Baghdad, and it was active in retaking and patrolling Fallujah. One of its specialties is counterinsurgency.

This marks a change for NorthCom, which was established on October 1, 2002. Its website still says it “has few permanently assigned forces,” and that “the command is assigned forces whenever necessary to execute missions, as ordered by the President and the Secretary of Defense.”

Leahy “asked for a briefing from his staff” on this development and “wants to monitor the situation,” an aide to Leahy said.

Leahy was instrumental in getting Congress to repeal the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act. The rider authorized the President to have troops patrol our streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite.

Meanwhile, can it be that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have already been coordinating the upcoming false flag operation with the general staffs of other nations?

Will that upcoming false flag operation have anything to do with biowarfare? Were the recent anthrax-wannabe mailings a dry-run for all of this?

Just in case, the Department of Homeland Security will be opening a new bio-"defense" lab in Maryland.

Inquiring minds want to know.

WALL STREET AND CHICKEN FEED

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
~ Benito Mussolini.

The best commentary on Führers Hank Paulson (US Treasury Secretary) and Ben Bernanke (US Federal Reserve Chairman) I've seen. From Cryptogon:

In a sane world, these monsters would be torn limb from limb and shredded into maggot food—a role in which they could actually do some good.

Drill holes around the base of a bucket. Place some banker parts in the bucket with a bit of straw and hang it a couple of feet above your chickens. After a few days (during warm weather), the maggots will spill out onto the ground. The chickens will gather below the bucket, waiting for the protein packed morsels to fall from above.

Oh, please; oh, please; oh please. . .

GÜNGÖREN AS OPPORTUNITY

"To open the Susurluk file means challenging the system. Neither Erdogan nor Baykal have such a concern."
~ Fikri Sağlar, former Parliament Susurluk Investigation Commission member.

HPG issued a statement today on the Güngören bombing:

HPG: We have nothing to do with the attack in Güngören

A statement came from HPG regarding the explosion in Istanbul Güngören against civilians which resulted in 18 casualties.

In the statement, from HPG Headquarters Command, titled "To our people and public", HPG stated that it does not have anything to do with the attack in Güngören."

KCK also issued a denial and condemnation:

KCK: Baykal is trying to conceal the attackers

KCK condemned the attack against civilians in Istanbul Güngören, gave their condolences to the relatives of the dead, and wished a speedy recovery to the wounded. KCK mentioned that the attacks were the work of hidden forces. Quoting from CHP chairman Deniz Baykal, "more than likely PKK did it," KCK said: "Baykal is trying to conceal the real perpetrators by this quote."

[ . . . ]

"One of the strategic goals of the Kurdish Freedom Movement is not being only Kurdistan's social movement but at the same time, it aims to gain the Turkish people and create living conditions based on the peoples' brotherhood and equality. In this respect, it is impossible for us to implement such an attack in Güngören given the fact that our goal is to gain the hearts of the Turkish people. Our movement never targeted civilians directly. In addition, our movement refused all kinds of violence that exceeds our right to self-defense and see such violence as counter-productive and terrorism."

Of course, there's a very good reason why Baykal is so hot to blame PKK for the Güngören bombings. Today, Baykal is calling for protests from all people as a reaction to the bombings. But why is Baykal calling for protest against this incident but never called for protests against the Şemdinli bombing?

One week ago, on 19 July, the Turkish general staff released a statement in the finest tradition of e-coups. In their statement, they said: "It is a natural expectation for the Turkish people to show their legal and democratic reaction to the unlawful attacks against the TSK". The Ergenekon investigation revealed that active duty TSK lieutenants were involved in forming a terrorist organization within the state. The paşas didn't like this exposure of the truth, so they urged the people to demonstrate in favor of them. Unfortunately for the paşas, the people did no such thing.

In order to conjure an excuse to make people take to the streets in defense of the very helpless TSK, they needed an incident: Güngören. This is why Baykal now takes the opportunity to whip the people into a frenzy and, in addition to drumming up support for TSK, he would also like to see a street mob out against AKP.

The icing on the cake can be found in a video at Fethullah Gülen's Zaman. The home video was filmed from a balcony by a resident of Güngören.

In the video, the first bomb has already gone off and a crowd continues to gather. According to reports, there was about a 10 minute delay between the first bomb and the detonation of the second bomb. However, as you watch the video you will see something very unusual for Turkey. There has been an explosion some ten minutes earlier, and there are no police present. There are no police vehicles, no flashing lights, no one securing the crime scene. The police station is a five minute walk from the scene of the bombings; less by police vehicle. So why are no police there?

You see the second bomb explode in the video and still there are no police on the scene. Why? Where were your police, Celalettin Cerrah? They were all over Istanbul on May Day, yet they couldn't manage to show up to secure a crime scene that is within easy walking distance of their own station?

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. After all, it was a former Istanbul deputy police chief who was found dead in a Mercedes in Susurluk with a state's assassin and police collaborator dead at his side.

By the way, now that all the "experts" are pontificating, RDX is a component of common military explosives. That would most likely include the plastic explosive used in the Güngören bombing as well as in the grenades found in the Ergenekon cache in Ümraniye, which came from Şemdinli.

KURDISH EXECUTIONS AND FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS

"Iran holds the deplorable distinction of leading the world in juvenile executions, and the authorities should end this practice at once."
~ Clarisa Bencomo, Human Rights Watch.

Here's something I've been holding for a few days until I could get to it: excerpts from Yeni Özgür Politika's report on the execution of five Kurds by the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Iran executed five more Kurds

Being helpless against PJAK guerrillas, Iran began executions in order to suppress the Kurdish freedom struggle and the people's support.


Iran, which executed Hasan Hikmet Demir while he was wounded, this time executed five Kurds, one of whom was a fifteen-year-old child, for helping PJAK. The spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran judiciary forces, Ali Rıza Cemşidi, just one month ago had a statement in front of cameras that they were not executing people under the age of 18. However, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which thinks the Kurds deserve the dirtiest methods, convicted five East Kurdistanis under the charge of helping PJAK. Five people, one of whom was a fifteen-year-old boy, were executed in an open field in Tebriz. Iran disregarded the condition in Islam which bans the execution of people before reaching adulthood when it came to the fifteen-year-old Kurdish boy.

Wounded Demir executed

PJAK member Hasan Hikmet Demir was also executed on 20 February 2007, where he was held in the city of Xoy, Elendi region. Code-named Agıt, Hasan Hikmet Demir was arrested last year while he was implementing political activities for the people. Demir escaped from prison and was caught in the Kelareş area, where his feet were frostbitten from snow. For a long time he was kept in a cell and was subjected to torture. Amnesty International began an emergency action campaign on Demir's behalf. Iranian state forces wounded Demir and forcefully executed him while he was bleeding.

Children are being executed

Regarding Iran's human rights, Amnesty International campaigns mentioned that they do not know whether Iran executes children because of its closed system. [?] One of the campaign's spokesmen, Hadi Ghaemi, "Iran is the only country where children are punished with the death penalty." He continued: "This barbaric method is being justified by Islamic law; however, these laws are being debated by several religious scholars." The campaigners mentioned that in the last ten years, 177 children were sentenced to the death penalty; At least 34 of these children were executed and 114 are awaiting execution. Ghaemi said, "It is a shame for Iran to increase the number of children that it executes while the whole world is abolishing the death penalty."

Iran is the first

According to a report from Human Rights Watch, children were executed only in Iran, Sudan, China, and Pakistan since 2004. When compared to the population, Iran is number one [in child executions].

In spite of its international commitment

There are two main international agreements that ban the execution of children: Children's Rights Agreement [of the UN General Assembly] and the [International Covenant on] Civil and Political Rights. Iran had approved both. Iran's executions of children is expected to be brought up in a report in the UN General Assembly in September.

Meanwhile last week in Teheran, it seems that the pasdars got what was coming to them:

Details are only now starting to reach the outside world, and it looks increasingly like sabotage was responsible for devastating a military convoy as it travelled through Khavarshahar. The company responsible for moving the equipment, LTK, is owned by the Revolutionary Guards and is suspected of being involved in shipping arms to Lebanon’s Hizbollah Shia Muslim militia, which is trained and funded by Tehran.

The Revolutionary Guards’ arms shipments to Lebanon and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are usually shrouded in such secrecy that only a few senior members of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government are briefed in advance. As the international crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme deepens, the Revolutionary Guards have intensified their efforts to supply regional allies with military hardware so that, in the event of Tehran becoming involved in an armed confrontation with the West, Iran can respond by opening a number of fronts in the Middle East and beyond.

The need to keep the arms build-up secret would explain the Revolutionary Guards’ decision to ban the Iranian media from reporting the explosion, even though it was heard throughout the capital. But what really concerns Iran’s leadership is that the incident is the latest in a long line of unexplained explosions.

Shipping weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon? But PKK knew that last May when Iran was shipping weapons to Hezbollah via Turkey.

Someone also set off a double bombing in Istanbul today. Reports say that at least 16 are dead and some 150 wounded. I'm surprised anyone can still find trash cans in Istanbul.

Contrary to what the NYTimes claims, I didn't see any mention of a PKK connection to this bombing in Turkish media so far. It's only been the international press that's mentioned PKK.

It may or may not be connected, but AKP's closure case enters deliberations tomorrow

And it looks like someone is promising that the summer Olympics will go off with a bang:

A MILITANT Islamic group has threatened to attack the Beijing Olympics with suicide bombers and biological weapons and has claimed responsibility for a string of fatal bombings and explosions in China over recent weeks.

In a video released by IntelCenter, a terrorism monitoring group, a bearded man identified as “Commander Seyfullah” is seen reading a declaration of jihad against the Olympics and warns athletes and spectators, “especially Muslims”, to stay away.

It was issued by a group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic party. The group may be allied with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – designated a terrorist organisation by the US, China and several other countries – which seeks independence for the Muslim Uighur people of China’s far west province of Xinjiang, which Uighur separatists call East Turkestan.

“Commander Seyfullah” said the group was responsible for three bombs last week on buses in the city of Kunming, which killed two people, and for two bus bombings on May 21 in Shanghai, which killed three.

Now, East Turkistan is recognized by only one other country in the world, the US. The prime minister of East Turkistan can be found in Sibel Edmonds' gallery of rogues, as noted by Luke Ryland in a recent article. Luke writes:

Another player from Sibel's Gallery is Enver Yusuf Turani - Prime Minister of East Turkistan, a 'country' recognized by only one country, the United States. East Turkistan, aka Xinjiang, is officially a part of China, and home to the Uyghur people and the "Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement," a UN-nominated terrorist organization "funded mainly by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and received training, support and personnel from both the al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan." In fact, the Uyghurs constitute a significant percentage of detainees - at least 22 - at Guantanamo Bay since 2001. Five of those have been set free, and were eventually sent to Albania, amid much controversy.

Now that the Tibet thing seems to have fizzled out, who do you think is really behind the bombings in China?

STRATEGY OF TENSION IN ISTANBUL

"I was quite surprised to learn that by far the most extensive and destructive stay-behind operations were those carried out in Turkey under the code name Counter-Guerrilla."
~ Tim Howells, "How Our Governments Use Terrorism To Control Us".

There was a minor incident in Istanbul today when three armed gunmen attacked the police at the entrance to the American consulate compound. The NYTimes is as good a rag as any to give you the basic rundown. The media lapdogs are dutifully echoing the straw man of the US embassy in Ankara, Ross "If I Only Had A Brain" Wilson, in blaming this little shoot-out on Al-Qaeda.

However, an item from the AP tells me that something else entirely is going on and it doesn't have too much to do with Al-Q:

NTV television and Dogan news agency identified the attackers as Erkan Kargin, 26, and Raif Topcil, 20, from the southeastern city of Bitlis and Bulent Cinar, 23, from the eastern city of Igdir. Police would not confirm their identities, but Interior Minister Besir Atalay said two of the assailants had criminal records.

Why, oh why do I smell Turkish Hezbollah? Could it be because the gunmen were recruited from The Southeast, where the AKP has been attempting to resurrect the Turkish Hezbollah? Turkish media is proposing that the gunmen were members of the IBDA-C (İslami Büyükdoğu Akıncılar Cephesi; Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front) and I wasted too much time reading various articles with headlines that were too promising compared to what information was actually delivered. Basically, there are suggestions of a similar ideology between IBDA-C and Al-Q but nothing that substantially, well, substantiates a deeper relationship that would justify equating IBDA-C with Al-Q. It does, however, make great propaganda copy for the lapdog media.

There has also been linkage in Turkish media with IBDA-C and the series of bombings in Istanbul in 2003 which included attacks on the British consulate in Istanbul, the HSBC bank, and two synagogues. Here's something on that, from the BBC:

In 2003, the group claimed responsibility for devastating bombings of the British consulate in Istanbul, the local headquarters of the HSBC bank and two synagogues, which together which left 58 dead, including British Consul General Roger Short.

Although last year saw the jailing of 48 people for their roles in the bombings - seven of them for life - their connection with IBDA-C is still unclear.

Turkish officials have always maintained that the bombings were the work of a separate group with direct links to al-Qaeda, known as the "Warriors for Islam" and that IBDA-C lacked the organisational ability to launch such a complex operation.

If the perpetrators of the latest attack are found to be members of IBDA-C and the reports of their recent return from Afghanistan prove to be true, the Turkish police may be forced to rethink their opinion of the group.

But, Turkish Hezbollah was more widely recognized as having carried out those bombings.

It's also widely recognized that the Ankara regime created Turkish Hezbollah.

As the Ankara regime tried to use Turkish Hezbollah to attempt to crush the PKK and then forgot about it until a shoot-out in Istanbul in 2000, so now it seems to have forgotten about its creation again until the shoot-out today. Could it be that the Ankara regime took a page out of the CIA's playbook, thinking it would be a very easy thing to control its creature, Turkish Hezbollah, even as the CIA thought it would be a very easy thing to control its own creature, Al-Q?

It's also widely recognized that other Islamist groups use Turkey, particularly Istanbul, as a staging ground, in cahoots with the Gray Wolves, and that these groups move freely across the borders. Other groups, such as Nizam-i Alem are involved with the Ergenekon gang.

Now ask yourself: Why was the attack carried out the way it was? Why go up to the entrance to the consulate compound and try to blast your way in with guns? The area around the consulate is wooded; it would be easy to use an RPG to blast it under cover. Why do it the stupid way instead? I suspect this attack is yet another act in the show known as the Strategy of Tension, as the Deep State reorganizes itself according to agreements reached between the AKP and the TSK.

Fırat News is awaiting a statement from HPG about the seizure of three German climbers. Of one thing, we can be guaranteed: These Germans will receive much better treatment from HPG than Kurds receive from German authorities. Remember the PKK way In the meantime, Hevallo opines.

Also check out Gordon Taylor's recent post--which I've been meaning to mention for a few days now--on the spread of HPG's areas of operation.

1 MAY 2008

"The finger of the counter-guerrillas was in the May 1 incidents."
~ Bülent Ecevit

May Day 2008 in Istanbul:
























Why are May Day celebrations the only celebrations that are forbidden in Taksim Square? Because of the Taksim Square Massacre--perpetrated by the state, naturally. From WSWS:

The Revolutionary Confederation of Labor Unions (DISK) organized a May Day demonstration in Taksim Square in Istanbul. Demonstrators filled the square, and the crowds flowed into the surrounding area. In Besiktas, hundreds of thousands of people had gathered in the early morning hours to march to the rally. By the time DISK General Chairman Kemal Turkler delivered his his May Day speech, all the roads leading into the area were still full of people marching. It was nearly 7 p.m. before the last contingents were able to reach the Taksim area.

The DISK general chairman was about to finish his speech when three gunshots sounded. First there was stillness, and then a deadly pandemonium broke out. The crowd of 500,000 dispersed in panic.

People who had been lying in ambush inside buildings in the vicinity of the meeting area, in the Intercontinental Hotel (now The Marmara Istanbul) and in the Water Authority building, rained bullets down on the crowd with automatic weapons. As the firing spread, armored personnel carriers went into action. Noise bombs and the firing of the automatic weapons suddenly turned the meeting area into a battlefield. Thousands of people lay down where they were, while others running to escape were shoved into corners and crushed by the armored vehicles.

[ . . . ]

While some characterized the incident as a provocation of the Nationalist Front [the right-wing government coalition] carried out under the management of the CIA, a portion of the police and bourgeois press advanced the idea that the firing was started by extreme leftists.

However, evidence presented in court opened the curtain of reality, even if only a crack. Police charged 98 people arrested at random with responsibility for the massacre. None of them were involved, and all were acquitted. While the judge called upon the authorities to renew the investigation and prosecute those genuinely responsible, successive military-dominated regimes suppressed the case.

During the trial, Oleyis [the hotel workers union] Branch Chairman Ali Kocaman had the information which he had received from hotel personnel placed in the minutes: “Three days earlier, the third, fourth and fifth floors of the Intercontinental Hotel were emptied and no one was allowed on the floors, which were under police control. Americans had come and stayed on the floors which the personnel were not allowed to enter. After the incident, these people checked out of the hotel.”

[ . . . ]

On May 7, 1977, Bulent Ecevit, later to become prime minister, attracted little attention with his statement at an Izmir meeting, “The finger of the counter-guerrillas was in the May 1 incidents.”

According to Article 102 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), the case expired due to the statute of limitations after 20 years had elapsed. And according to lawyer Rasim Oz, who witnessed the bloody May Day of 1977, “The case was deliberately brought to a point where it would be closed due to the statute of limitations.”

At least the state, including the Islamist AKP government, is consistent.

NO CONSPIRACIES HERE

"Although the institute calls itself a "non-partisan policy research organization," scholars at Hudson consistently reveal an ideological agenda in their work."
~ Hudson Institute entry at Right Web.

Hevallo brings up a good point to remember about the recent Amed bombing and the development of the situation in North Kurdistan in the last few months:

Remember the Hudson Institute 'Scenarios'?

Where the Turkish military was exposed going through all sorts of different 'scenarios' in the right wing 'think tank' in the US earlier in the year. And the leaked reports about US/Turkish 'special operations' in South Kurdistan.

My guess is that all these 'scenarios' that have so far been carried out, Beytussebap, bombings of Qandil and now this Diyarbakir bomb are all pieces of pre planned campaign, to justify not only the severe repression of the Kurdish Freedom Movement in Turkey, that is at its strongest in history but also to gain support for and justify a military invasion of South Kurdistan.

At the beginning of the year it sounded like a conspiracy theory, Turkey and the US plotting to invade Kurdistan and grab Kurdish oil. But now it seems all too plausible.

Who was sitting with the Paşas and the same Americans who faked all the "intelligence" for the Iraq War and now attempt to bullshit their way to a war in Iran? Qubad Talabanî, whose father lectures Northern Kurds to support the AKP. So you have to ask yourself what kind of deal the Southern Kurdish leadership has cut with both the Americans and the Turks at the expense of the Kurdish people.

Believe me, they ain't doing it out of the goodness of their little black hearts.

If you take the time to actually read the Hudson Institute entry at Right Web, you'll see names that repeat over and over in neocon circles, such as Norman Podhoretz, Meyrav Wurmser, Elliot Abrams, Francis Fukuyama, Richard Perle, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Center for Security Policy, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and the RAND Corporation--filth all.

Goran at Zanetî has something new up about the US-Turkey relationship. Among other facts, he mentions that which very few bother to mention:

The complicity of the United States and NATO in the oppressive policies of the Turkish State may come as a surprise to many. The moral support or even the billions of dollars worth of weapons during the Cold War era are not the only things that were provided to Turkey. The U.S. military through the hundreds of their advisors actively trained the same Turkish military, Special Forces and intelligence services that carried out the vast array of human rights abuses that continue to this day. In more recent times, the U.S. continues to extend their support through Joint Combined Exchange Training led by U.S. Special Forces. The human rights abuses including the “numerous violations of the laws of war, including village destruction, indiscriminate fire, and ‘disappearances’" carried out by the Turkish Special Forces - trained by the U.S. forces - have been carefully documented by various groups such as the Human Rights Watch (HRW).(11) The serious war crimes, which could be questionably labeled as acts of genocide, committed by these U.S.-backed Turkish forces have been condemned by the HRW and reports recommend that such forces should not be deployed in Kurdish civilian regions.

Now think about that in light of Hevallo's point about the planning that went on at the Hudson Institute.

Nor is Hevallo alone in wondering if there are "any journalists or editors left in this world that have enquiring minds"; so does Axin Arbili at The Conservative Voice:

Despite all the deceptions and lies spread by Turkish and Western governments, and by so-called independent journalists or political analysts, the truth and reality is quite different: The Turkish army is not fighting terrorism, it is bombing the Kurdish resistance against Turkish tyranny and oppression.

[ . . . ]

The West prefers to believe in a friendly Turkey and supports it financially and militarily. Turkey is, after Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the third-largest recipient of US military aid. US tax monies finance Turkey in its dirty war against a defenceless people.

The Kurdish resistance and liberation leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was captured by the US secret services and handed over to the Turks. How strange that at the same time, the West supports two million Muslims in seceding from Serbia and establishing a second Albania.

Even more outrageous is the West's support of the Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, in establishing a 23rd Arab state; notwithstanding that it is to be carved out of ancestral and biblical Jewish territory. The injustices done to the Kurds, whose history and legitimate claims to an independent, sovereign state infinitely transcends those of the so-called Palestinian Arabs. But Kurdish aspirations are ignored.

If Kurdish aspirations are ignored, then it's high time for a little in-your-face resistance to spread like wildfire . . . from Turkey, to Europe and beyond.

Serkeftin!

BLACK OPERATIONS IN THE KURDISH CAPITAL

"A good Kurd is a dead Kurd."
~ Türk İntikam Tugayı, 12 September 2006.

The last bombing in Amed (Diyarbakır), carried out on 12 September 2006, was the work of Turkish state forces, in particular Türk Intikam Tugayı (Turkish Revenge Brigade--TİT). At the time, TİT claimed the bombing on their website (quickly pulled from the Internet shortly thereafter):

"To the great Turkish people. In the recent period in many areas of our country, the bloody PKK terrorist organization has martyred our soldiers, police officers and our youth. We, as the Turkish Revenge Brigade, swear on our flag colored red with the blood of our martyrs, that for every Turk that PKK kills in [western Turkey], we will kill 10 Kurds in Diyarbakir. [ . . .] Here are photos taken during the preparation for the operation on September 12, 2006, dedicated to Private Ali Balikci who was martyred during duty by the PKK terrorist organization in the Eruh district of Siirt [ . . . ] A good Kurd is a dead Kurd."

DozaMe captured the photos for posterity from TİT's website and can be viewed at the .pdf link given above.

It looks like TİT has carried out another bombing in Amed today, again detonating the blast with a remote-control device:

A bomb exploded near a shopping mall in the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey on Thursday, killing five people and wounding more than 60, in the largest attack on a Turkish city in months, the authorities said.

The bomb was placed in a parked car and detonated by remote control shortly before 5 p.m., just as a shuttle bus carrying military personnel passed, Turkish officials said.

At this point, unfortunately, Turkish soldiers only appear to have been wounded and reports indicate that TİT's blast only managed to kill civilians--school kids.

You should ask yourself who it is that can pack a car full of explosives, park it next to a Turkish military compound in The Southeast, and blow it up? Remember how the attempted assassination of Beytuşşebap's DTP mayor was set up? Does anyone honestly think that PKK sympathizers who set cars on fire with molotov cocktails could possibly drive around in The Southeast with that much explosives and not be stopped?

Or, if someone wants to believe that PKK sneaked so much explosives across the border from Iraq, how could they get it passed the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the region? How could they drive it through OHAL areas without being stopped?

No. Only the Ankara regime could carry out such an attack in the world's largest Kurdish city.

The Turkish education minister tried to fudge his way around the bombing by saying, "I deeply condemn this blast if it is the result of a terrorist attack," which means that he's not condemning it because, in his view, it was not a terrorist attack. It was an attack by the Turkish Republic, and is, therefore, acceptable to the regime.

Let's note one other piece of trivia, shall we? The date of the Ankara regime's last bombing of Amed was significant as the date of the beginning of the current war against the Kurdish people--12 September 1980. In addition, 12 September 2006 was the day that Lockheed Martin's "PKK coordinator" Joseph Ralston arrived in Ankara on his first official mission as "PKK coordinator":

It is no coincidence that this most recent attack against the Kurdish people happened on the same day that "special envoy" Joseph Ralston arrived in Ankara. The US is backing Turkey in its renewal of the Dirty War, and the bombing in Amed is one more sign that "psychological operations," a special kind of warfare for which the US trained Turkish security forces, are being resurrected.

It's also no coincidence that this recent attack by the racist Ankara regime takes place just days before Abdullah Gül's 6 January visit to the US. I mean, he has to come with a reason to beg and I guess he couldn't find any Saudis to fly commercial jet aircraft into the Dedeman Hotel, so he has to settle for a TİT bomb.

AMED IS BOMBED AGAIN

Vehicles burn after an explosion in Diyarbakir, south eastern Turkey, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008. A car bomb exploded in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Thursday, wounding at least 20 people, including some military personnel, news reports said. (AP Photo/Ibrahim Yakut, Anatolia)

Vehicles are engulfed by flames following an explosion in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, January 3, 2008. REUTERS

Turkish police officers inspect the wreckage of a military bus following an explosion in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir January 3, 2008. At least three people were killed in an explosion on Thursday that wrecked a military vehicle in the southeast Turkish city of Diyarbakir, NTV television quoted police sources as saying. REUTERS/Anatolian

Police inspect the area of an explosion in Diyarbakir. A powerful car bomb exploded Thursday near a military base in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, killing five people, hospital officials said. (AFP)

THE RESURRECTION OF THE CONTRA-GUERRILLAS

"We struggle in Kurdistan not only for the rights of our people but also for the rights of ethnic Armenians, Assyrians, and Suryani-Chaldeans who also face a reign of terror. Yes, we have a problem of terrorism in our country, but it is Turkish state terrorism."
~ Abdullah Ocalan.

By now, most people should have heard that NATO's second largest army is going to end the use of conscripts to fight in Turkey's internal colony Kurdistan. The Paşas have decided to pollute Kurdistan with commandos instead of conscripts.

These commandos were established as part of the US program for psychological operations against the Kurdish people--a fact sold publicly as part of the Cold War's fight against Communist "aggression" in the region. But the reality was something else, as Desmond Fernandes has documented:

By 1969, moreover, Turkish "commandos, who had been trained by American specialists in counter-insurgency," were despatched into Kurdish regions "under the pretext of a general 'arms search'" to terrorise the population.39 These commando actions "rapidly became associated with arbitrary brutality and torture that had marked the suppression of Kurdistan four decades earlier."40

According to the journal Devrim, one commando report which focused upon its anti-Kurdish psychological warfare operations, ran along the following lines:

"Since the end of January, special military units have undertaken a land war in the (Kurdish) regions of Diyarbakir, Mardin, Siirt and Hakkari under the guise of hunting bandits. Every village is surrounded at a certain hour, its inhabitants rounded up. Troops assemble men and women separately, and demand the men to surrender their weapons. They beat those who deny possessing any or make other villagers jump on them. They strip men and women naked and violate the latter. Many have died in these operations, some have committed suicide. Naked men and women have cold water thrown over them, and they are whipped. Sometimes women are forced to tie a rope around the penis of their husband and then to lead him around the village. Women are likewise made to parade naked around the village. Troops demand villagers to provide women for their pleasure and the entire village is beaten if the request is met with refusal."41

As Fernandes goes on to show, this is the established pattern of the American Empire and the pattern is strictly adhered to by America's fascist client states, such as Turkey, and that similar atrocities were perpetrated by the Ankara regime even through the relatively "peaceful" 1970s. The murder after surrender of HPG şehîd Fatıh Ekmekçi is the most recent example of this same kind of atrocity, proving that the Ankara regime remains dedicated to the employment of terrorism against the Kurdish people.

According to an article in Zaman, the commandos will take over full duties for committing new atrocities against the Kurdish people in 2009 and this brings up a question: If commando operations will formally begin in 2009, how long will the current OHAL remain in place for the Sêrt, Culemêrg, and Şirnex regions? Will the OHAL continue until 2009 and beyond?

The author claims that "none can complain that the Eğirdir announcement did not constitute a positive step," but she's not counting the opinion of Kurds; in fact, if true to form and history, she's never bothered to ask Kurds what they think about the extended presence of more of these US-trained Turkish barbarians in "The Region". What she's really concerned about are Turks:

But the real question is how much longer Turkish people can live with the PKK terror problem and its impact on their daily existence instead of enjoying a more normal life.

No, the real question is how much longer the Kurdish people can live with the Ankara regime terror problem. Its brutality is something that has been well-documented by human rights organizations and the European Court of Human Rights. After all, nobody pays fines to the ECHR like the Ankara regime does. Yet there's an easy answer to end the trauma of the Turkish people which has been offered for many years and it's one that Ocalan proposed in 1994, as documented by Lord Avebury, the chairman of the UK Parliamentary Human Rights Group:

It should be noted that in March 1994, the PKK Leader Abdullah Ocalan said he would stop all armed activity if a basis was established for a political solution, based on dialogue within a democratic framework. He suggested a cease-fire under international supervision, and discussion of various alternatives, including federation. (He has given even more prominence to the concept of federation in subsequent pronouncements).

It should be noted, too, that Lord Avebury's paper documenting the atrocities and politics of the 1990s was presented in the US.

Ocalan's statement that all armed activity would stop if dialog toward a political solution within a democratic framework were established and a ceasefire were supervised by international observers. This is the very same offer that was made beginning last August with the proposal of a democratic solution by the PKK, a solution that was rejected not only by the Ankara regime, but by the corporatocracy which poses as a government in the US.

It's not enough that the author is concerned simply with Turks. What is worse is that the author is more concerned for any psychological problems that the commandos may suffer as a result of the atrocities they will commit against Kurdish civilians. What about the psychological effects on those Kurds who've lived through Ankara's Dirty War? Where are the battalions of psychiatrists to assist torture victims or those who've been forcibly displaced from their homes, or who've had loved ones "disappeared?"

On the other hand, it's appropriate indeed that the author's brought up the subject of Abu Ghraib:

A Western diplomat told me recently that Turkey has one of the best treatment centers -- the Ankara-based Gülhane Hospital -- for those injured in combat with the PKK. But he noted that what Turkey was really lacking was psychiatric care for those badly wounded in military operations.

He then recalled the Abu Ghraib Prison abuse scandal perpetrated by US soldiers, some of whom have been sentenced or are still awaiting trial for the brutal treatment -- including alleged torture, and even rape, in some cases -- of prisoners held there.

Those Abu Ghraib incidents took place despite the fact that US soldiers -- all professionals -- had received adequate training in the fight against insurgents and terrorists, as well as psychological training, the same diplomat stressed.

"Those professionals who are fighting against mainly irregular groups are, in other words, assassins. They kill people. This has a serious psychological impact on those soldiers. For example, when they get leave and see the world and are no longer killing people, they wonder what they were doing as assassins," said the diplomat.

Yeah, let's not worry about the "serious psychological impact" on the victims. Let's only worry about the guilty.

The author adds, in a brilliant stroke of deadpan:

I am sure, based on such experience, the TSK will consider a psychological training program for their professionals in the fight against terror.

Would there be any American soldiers in prison awaiting trial for their performance at Abu Ghraib if there had not been a huge scandal and outcry against it in the US and around the world? Does anyone honestly believe that there will be a similar scandal and outcry against the atrocities committed against the Kurdish people which the Ankara regime has enslaved for the last 84 years, either in Turkey or around the world?

Based on experience, I can guarantee you that there won't be, because there never has been any such outcry by anyone throughout the history of the Ankara regime's repression of the Kurdish people. There are no Mehmetçiks or other Turkish security forces sitting in prison awaiting trials for their crimes, and Amnesty International agrees with me. Not even the author of the Zaman piece bothered to mention the atrocities that the Kurdish people under Turkish occupation have suffered, much less did she raise a hue and cry about it.

The piece closes with references to the rule of law in Turkey and the need to "restore" it. What an absurdity! Which law should be "restored?" The law which permits anyone to murder Kurds without fear of punishment? The law which forbids the use of certain letters of the alphabet because they're "Kurdish" letters? The law which forbids Kurdish to be used for political purposes? The law which removed a Kurdish mayor and Kurdish municipality for supplying local services in other languages in addition to Turkish? The law which permitted state assassins to walk free after a show trial in a kangaroo court for murdering a Kurdish father and his son in cold blood? The law which cultivates impunity among state assassins? The law which allows prosecutors to be fired and disbarred for attempting to investigate the Chief of the Turkish General Staff for belonging to the armed gang that goes around throwing grenades into bookshops?

The rule of law does not need to be "restored" in Turkish occupied Kurdistan because it's already functioning there in the form of the new Turkish Penal Code, the new Anti-Terror Law, the Paşas' constitution, and the military law of the new OHAL.

And with all of this, who in the hell needs the rule of law?

In the meantime, check out a terrific article from The Nation on "The Other War" in Iraq. It's eleven pages long and definitely worth the read. In it, you will get an idea of the utter lawlessness of indiscriminate violence against civilians and even animals, and the desecration and mockery of the dead. Why?

Spc. Patrick Resta, 29, a National Guardsman from Philadelphia, served in Jalula, where there was a small prison camp at his base. He was with the 252nd Armor, First Infantry Division, for nine months beginning in March 2004. He recalled his supervisor telling his platoon point-blank, "The Geneva Conventions don't exist at all in Iraq, and that's in writing if you want to see it."

I guess what's good for Guantanamo is good for Iraq, too.

And to prepare yourself for the next false flag operation in the US, brought to you by the corporatocracy that's turning the world into a fascist planet, check these links:


"West Needs More Terror to Save Doomed Foreign Policy"--from America's good neighbor, Canada.

"Praying for a Terrorist Strike"--America's politicians laying down the propaganda just so they can say, "We told you so."

"Chertoff Has 'Gut Feeling' about More Terror"--I'm relieved to know it's his "gut feeling" and not his Magic 8-Ball.