CREATING PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY IN KERKUK

"One clear reason for military invasion by Turkey would be their old ambition to re-annex Mosul 'Vilayet' (province) to its territory. They are still thinking in terms of the old Ottoman empire."
~ Ata Qaradakhi.

It appears that Turkey was indeed attempting to assassinate the governor of Kerkuk back in July 2003, from a little item on TNA:

The US may have been too harsh in its response to its ally Turkey in the July 2003 "sack crisis" in Sulaimaniyah, northern Iraq, but it had "good reasons," according to the account of a U.S. official published Friday.

The crisis took place when 11 Turkish Special Forces soldiers were arrested by U.S. troops and sacks were put over their heads.

The Turks were released after two days, but their arrest unleashed a torrent of criticism in a country where the military is a revered institution. Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, Turkey's former chief of staff, said the arrests had "led to the biggest crisis of confidence ever between Turkish and U.S. forces."

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European affairs Matt Bryza, in a interview with Sabah daily, stated that the relationship between Turkey and U.S. continues to go on the right path.

When asked about former State Department official Henry Barkey's statement that the Turkish Special Forces troops detained by the U.S. were plotting to kill the governor of Kirkuk, a city whose status is in dispute, he replied, "He's a smart man. Maybe the U.S. was too harsh in its response to its ally Turkey in the sack crisis, but we had good reasons."

When asked why the 11 Turkish soldiers were treated "like al-Qaeda militants," he said, "As I said, he's a smart man. But we had good reasons. Is there any reason to antagonize one of our most important allies in Iraq, as well as in the world, Turkey?"

He also stressed that the U.S administration would continue to block the so-called Armenian genocide resolution, adding that Washington knows it would damage Turkish- U.S relations.

There were two events in 2003 which involved Turkish state efforts at creating instability in Kerkuk with the first in April 2003. Here's a refresher from TIME:

Even as the U.S. works to stabilize a postwar Iraq, Turkey is setting out to create a footprint of its own in the Kurdish areas of the country. In the days after U.S. forces captured Saddam's powerbase in Tikrit, a dozen Turkish Special Forces troops were dispatched south from Turkey. Their target: the northern oil city of Kirkuk, now controlled by the U.S. 173rd Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade. Using the pretext of accompanying humanitarian aid the elite soldiers passed through the northern city of Arbil on Tuesday. They wore civilian clothes, their vehicles lagging behind a legitimate aid convoy. They'd hoped to pass unnoticed. But at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk they ran into trouble. "We were waiting for them," says a U.S. paratroop officer.

The Turkish Special Forces team put up no resistance though a mean arsenal was discovered in their cars, including a variety of AK-47s, M4s, grenades, body armor and night vision goggles. "They did not come here with a pure heart," says U.S. brigade commander Col. Bill Mayville. "Their objective is to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk."

The second widely reported incident was in July 2003, from the Christian Science Monitor:

More than a week has passed since the US-led arrest and release of a Turkish special-forces team in northern Iraq. But with no US explanation yet, Ankara's still seething.

[ . . . ]

Washington has so far offered only vague justifications for the July 4 arrests. According to unconfirmed Iraqi Kurdish intelligence claims, the 11 men taken into US custody were part of a plot to assassinate the new Kurdish governor of Kirkuk.

Absolute nonsense, say officials in Ankara. Improbable, says the Kurdish governor himself. While far-fetched, the allegations tie in with one of the more inflammatory aspects of Turkey's foreign policy: its support for pro-Ankara elements among Iraq's Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority.

Turkey long feared war in Iraq could lead to an independent Kurdish state in the north of Iraq, with incalculable effects on its own restive Kurdish minority. For years it supported Baghdad as a guarantee of Iraq's territorial integrity. Faced with growing US determination to end Saddam Hussein's regime, though, it deepened relations with the Iraqi Turkoman Front, who were also raided by the US Friday.

Ankara insists its concern for the Turkmens is no different from its support in the 1980s of Bulgarian Turks oppressed under Communism. Patrick Clawson of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, doesn't buy it. "What did Turkey do for Turkoman affected by Saddam's Arabization campaigns around Kirkuk and Mosul in the '80s and '90s? Zip. This is purely political."

Absolute nonsense? Really? Yet the State Department's Matt Bryza not only refuses to deny the claim in TNA's article, he stresses that one of those who initially made the claim was "a smart man." Why is the US admitting the Turkish assassination attempt now? It most likely has to do with US support for the Kerkuk referendum coming up in December. Additionally, the US is not going to relinquish control of Kerkuk's oil to Turkey when State Department policy denies Kurdish control over Kurdish oil in "undisputed" Kurdish territory.

As Col. Mayville observed in April 2003, Turkey's objective was "to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk." That remains Turkey's objective today. It is also the reason that a WINEP--no friend of Kurds--spokesman points to Turkey's total lack of concern for attacks against Turkmen by Saddam's regime. The fact is that for Turkey, the Turkmen card is, in reality, a red herring, as is the PKK card. Turkey's goal is the oil of Kerkuk and Mûsil.

While State Department flunkies like Bryza are content to admit the truth when it serves US interests, the use of political assassination by Turkey as a foreign policy tool with which to violate the "territorial integrity" of its neighbors is not considered objectionable by the US government per se. Nor is it objectionable for the US government that Turkey conducts false flag operations within South Kurdistan and Kerkuk. If such operations were to clash with US interests, surely the US would forbid Turkish mercenaries operating from US territory.

But Turkish mercenaries, former Special Team members (Ozel Timler), are in the process of conducting "security" operations from Silopî in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, a few short yards from the Habur border crossing into South Kurdistan. One of the major shareholders in Black Hawk Security, Inc., is retired Turkish general Koksal Karabay, who happened to be the officer in charge of the Special Team that was "bagged" by US forces on July 4, 2003, according to a report by Yeni Ozgur Politika from July of last year. The former special teams-turned-mercenaries hope to have everything completed at their Silopî base this year, just in time to create trouble in Kerkuk in the months running up to the referendum.

Additionally, Washington-based Black Hawk Security plans to create bases of operations for its mercenaries in Zaxo and Kerkuk, meaning that they have permission to do so from the KRG. Whether the KRG has willingly agreed to this arrangement as part of its efforts to encourage "foreign investment" or whether they have acceded to US demands for a Turkish mercenary presence in South Kurdistan remains to be discovered.

Regardless of the role of the KRG, the presence of Black Hawk Security in the region provides plausible deniability for the Ankara regime "to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk" and all of South Kurdistan, effectively recreating the old Ottoman Mosul Vilayet.


Sunday evening reading assignment: There's a fascinating analysis by Chalmers Johnson, a specialist on East Asia, at Harper's. It begins with an abstract:

The United States remains, for the moment, the most powerful nation in history, but it faces a violent contradiction between its long republican tradition and its more recent imperial ambitions.

The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

Several factors, however, indicate that this course will be a brief one, which most likely will end in economic and political collapse.

Military Keynesianism: The imperial project is expensive. The flow of the nation's wealth—from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back to the taxpayers—has created a form of “military Keynesianism,” in which the domestic economy requires sustained military ambition in order to avoid recession or collapse.

The Unitary Presidency: Sustained military ambition is inherently anti-republican, in that it tends to concentrate power in the executive branch. In the United States, President George W. Bush subscribes to an esoteric interpretation of the Constitution called the theory of the unitary executive, which holds, in effect, that the president has the authority to ignore the separation of powers written into the Constitution, creating a feedback loop in which permanent war and the unitary presidency are mutually reinforcing.

Failed Checks on Executive Ambition: The U.S. legislature and judiciary appear to be incapable of restraining the president and therefore restraining imperial ambition. Direct opposition from the people, in the form of democratic action or violent uprising, is unlikely because the television and print media have by and large found it unprofitable to inform the public about the actions of the country's leaders. Nor is it likely that the military will attempt to take over the executive branch by way of a coup.

Bankruptcy and Collapse: Confronted by the limits of its own vast but nonetheless finite financial resources and lacking the political check on spending provided by a functioning democracy, the United States will within a very short time face financial or even political collapse at home and a significantly diminished ability to project force abroad.

For the meat of the article, scroll down to read the Discussion. You might want to keep in mind the news on Lockheed Martin and the rest of the war industry that you've read about here on Rastî, from Sibel Edmonds, and from Richard Cummings.

ASSAULT ON KURDS IN EUROPE

"The subsequent court appearance of Ocalan reinforced the image of the totalitarian nature of the trial. Ocalan's testimony was an exact replica of the Turkish regime's virulent propaganda against the Kurdish movement, and the person of Ocalan. His "confession" to being a "terrorist" and "murderer" of the Turkish people, his "admission" to receiving military aid from Turkey's enemies (Greece, Syria, Iraq) was essentially a propaganda exercise orchestrated by the Turkish intelligence agencies. The political purpose of the trial was to defend the Turkish regime's bloody repression of 15 million and to "justify" its denial of elementary cultural and political rights of all minorities."
~ James Petras.

Strasbourg, 10 February 2007 (REUTERS/Vincent Kessler).

From a State Department press release on Friday, 9 February, with Daniel Fried:

Assistant Secretary Fried: [ . . . ]

And yes, of course we discussed the issue of the PKK, a terrorist organization which we believe should be eliminated and the threat to Turkey reduced to zero. In that context I was delighted to learn that European officials, French officials have arrested a large number of PKK operatives. This does, as has been reported, follow some close cooperation between the United States and Turkey. This cooperation is continuing. It will continue, and our cooperation is not limited to Western Europe, let me put it that way.

[ . . . ]

So it was a good visit. We appreciate this dialogue. Our dialogue with Turkey is intense. Under Secretary Burns was recently in Ankara. General Ralston has been traveling to the region. He's our envoy for countering and combating the PKK. Our Economic Partnership Commission is taking place this week in Turkey. Policy planning talks will be held later. Our dialogue with Turkey is very rich and there is a lot to talk about.

Media: Mr. Fried, my name is Hilal from Radikal daily. Actually I'd like to ask a question about combating the PKK in Northern Iraq, but also nowadays in Central Europe, in Belgium, in France there are some operations, and members and leaders of the PKK have been captured through this. Is there any direct link between these operations and that visit, Mr. Gul's visit United States? Just how do you evaluate this issue? How do you see these operations [inaudible]? Thank you.

Assistant Secretary Fried: I doubt that the French police arrested PKK terrorists to help the atmospherics around the visit of the Turkish Foreign Minister in Washington. We appreciate our French friends' efforts, but the timing is clearly a coincidence.

But it is true that the United States and Turkey have been working with our West European friends about the problem of the PKK. And it is true that West European governments understand the nature of the problem, and these arrests have been made. This is good news. These aren't the first arrests; I doubt they will be the last arrests.

But you are also correct when you suggest that the problem of the PKK is obviously not confined to Western Europe. It's also a problem in Northern Iraq. We are cooperating with Turkey to deal with that problem.

Solving it will require cooperation between Turkey and Iraq, both the Iraqi central government and the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government and I think this cooperation is moving forward.

We are working together on projects like the closing of the Makhmour camp which had become, frankly, very heavily infiltrated by the PKK. This process is underway now. There are other things which might be done, but they are of a nature that should not be discussed with the media openly.

[ . . . ]

Media: Zeynep Gurcanli from Vatan Daily Newspapers. You said in your opening remarks that the Western European operation towards PKK was not limited to Western Europe. So can we expect also a new operation in Northern Iraq? And also what is the U.S. government position for a possible cross-border operation, military operation, of Turkey towards PKK in Northern Iraq?

Assistant Secretary Fried: To state the obvious but to start from it, of course there is a problem of the PKK presence in Northern Iraq. Of course this problem has to be dealt with. We are discussing with Turkey and our Iraqi friends this problem. I'm not going to say any more in this channel about it.

I understand in the press there has been speculation about unilateral Turkish cross-border operations. I understand perfectly Turkish frustration with the PKK bases and camps in Northern Iraq. This is understandable. But the responsibility for the outcomes of such an operation is something Turkey needs to think about.

Of course this week's assault against Kurds in Europe has nothing to do with Gul's visit to the US. Nor does it have anything to do with the upcoming anniversary (15 February) of the international community's betrayal of the Kurdish people's suffering under a brutal Turkish occupation as symbolized by the joint US-Turkish-Israeli capture of Ocalan. Instead, the current assault on Kurdish leaders and intellectuals in Europe has everything to do with Apo's application to the European Court of Human Rights for having received a completely unjust trial.



The ECHR first ruled in 2003 that Ocalan received an unjust trial from the Ankara regime with a second and final ruling coming in 2005. Human Rights Watch noted the flagrant violations of the right to a just trial in 1999:

When Ocalan was brought to Turkey after his abduction from Kenya in February, he was held in incommunicado police detention for nine days - far in excess of international standards, and even of the limits imposed by Turkish domestic law. Sugden therefore disagreed with observers from the Council of Europe, who said on June 21 that "the trial . . . has been correct and in accordance with the applicable Turkish law."

Meanwhile, Ocalan has been permitted only limited access to legal counsel. During meetings with his lawyers, which were restricted in frequency and duration, one or more security force members was present and within hearing. During the initial stage of the investigation, lawyers were not permitted to bring notes to interviews with their client.

Sugden noted also that once the process reached the courts, there were other reminders of common State Security Court practice: the judges refused to hear any of the witnesses proposed by the defense, and barred at least one piece of their evidence from being read to the court on the grounds that it was "propaganda".

HRW also has a backgrounder on the nature of the Ankara regime's State Security Courts. The State Security Courts represented a legal system very similar to the one that is now in place in the US by virtue of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.


The events this last week in Europe, with the arrests of ordinary Kurds in France, the detentions of Kurdish political leaders, and the destruction of the Ahmet Kaya Kurdish Cultural Center by French state security forces, reaffirms that the international conspiracy to bury the Turkish genocide of the Kurdish people, with the full backing of the United States, is alive and well.

A retrial of Ocalan's case and the wider implications of an international debate over the Ankara regime's butchery of the Kurdish people would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the West--and the US in particular--has benefited financially. The most recent example of financial benefit is alluded to in the State Department's press conference by the mention of Lockheed Martin's "special envoy" for "countering and combatting the PKK," Joseph Ralston. Without so much as taking a breath, Fried then notes that their "Economic Partnership Commission," will be held in the coming week. No doubt the American war industry will take a prominent role in the commission.

The use of silence and the manufacturing of a phony War on Terror to further joint US-Turkish business interests can be seen elsewhere, for instance in Fried's statement that the Washington regime will oppose a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus and subsequent military occupation of that European country, repeated Turkish invasions of South Kurdistan--thus violating the "Iraqi" territorial integrity for which Abdullah Gul falsely expresses so much concern--the labeling of Kurdish resistance to genocide as "terrorism", the rejection of the fifth PKK unilateral ceasefire by both the Ankara and Washington regimes along with the rejection of of the possibility of a negotiated political settlement for the Kurdish people under Turkish brutality are more subjects which a retrial of Ocalan would inconveniently bring to light.

As a result of a condemnation of the assault on Kurds in Europe and calls for protest against the attacks earlier in the week by Murat Karayilan, a massive protest took place in Strasbourg to show support for Ocalan and to condemn the recent unjust attacks against the Kurdish people by Europe. Other protests have been planned in Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, and Sweden.


In spite of the fact that American raids of the Maxmur Camp reveal not a single bullet, and that a UN census showed the camp to be civilian in nature, the US State Department continues to perpetuate the Turkish lies about the Kurdish refugees:

We are working together on projects like the closing of the Makhmour camp which had become, frankly, very heavily infiltrated by the PKK. This process is underway now.

There are other things which might be done, but they are of a nature that should not be discussed with the media openly.

Certainly, but it's not good for American image--euphemistically referred to generally as "US credibility"--to simply bomb the refugee camp at Maxmur for hours like the US did to a PUK checkpoint yesterday. Massive bombing of Kurdish women and children by the US simply wouldn't look good if such an incident leaked out to the press, but former State Department mass murderer Richard Holbrooke's visit this week to Maxmur indicates that the US is looking for an easier way to rid the world of the Maxmur refugees. Like the case of Ocalan, the stories these Kurds could tell of Turkish atrocities would further tarnish Turkish and US "credibility."

In the meantime, there is a spot of good news in the Kurdish world today: One hero of the Kurdish cause, Dr. Kristiina Koivunen of Finland, has a new blog on the Kurdish situation in English, called Kurdish Question and a permanent link to her blog has been added to Rastî's blog list.

Pîroz be û Serkeftin, Dr. Kristiina!


Note: All photos of the Strasbourg demonstration are from 10 February 2007 by Vincent Kessler/REUTERS. Murat Karayilan photo courtesy of RojTV via TECAK.

MORE "FRIENDLY" FIRE

With Tuesday's post in mind, this from the AP on Yahoo:

U.S. helicopters targeting insurgents mistakenly killed at least five allied Kurdish militiamen in the northern city of Mosul early Friday. The military also reported three more American soldiers killed in combat, pushing the U.S. death toll to 33 in the first eight days of the month.

Officials said the Kurds were killed about midnight as they guarded a branch of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a political party led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a key supporter of U.S. efforts in Iraq.

The U.S. military said the strike was launched after American ground forces spotted armed men in a bunker near a building they thought was being used to make bombs for al-Qaida in Iraq. The troops called out in Arabic and Kurdish telling the men to put down their weapons and also fired warning shots before the helicopters opened fire, the military said.

Five men later determined to be Kurdish police officers were killed and nine others were detained, the U.S. military said, offering condolences to the families of those who died. Kurdish officials put the casualty toll at eight killed and six wounded.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman denounced the airstrike. "This is not a good sign for the new security plan that they (U.S. forces) have started," he said.

However, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Azad Jundiyan, said the party realized the airstrike was a mistake. "We are allied with the coalition; it was a friendly fire incident, not an intentionally hostile act," he said.

Jundiyan identified the dead as peshmerga — Kurdish militiamen who once battled Saddam Hussein's regime. Many peshmerga have been incorporated into the Iraqi army since the U.S.-led invasion.

The incident far from Baghdad underlined a rise in violence in northern Iraq, where it is feared some insurgents are fleeing to avoid the security crackdown in the capital.

U.S. and British forces also face mounting casualties as they step up their presence to shore up Iraqi forces.

So, the cowboys continue to fire up their "allies."


UPDATE: From the NYTimes:

An American military helicopter killed as many as nine Kurdish militia fighters early Friday in the northern city of Mosul when the aircraft mistakenly attacked a guard post.

The guard post protected the local offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani. The attack stunned Patriotic Union officials, whose leadership and militia are close allies of United States forces. They said their base and the surrounding guard posts were well known to the American military in Mosul.

“Everybody knows that it is a P.U.K. base and is used for protecting the main road between Mosul and Erbil,” said Kabir Goran, a senior Patriotic Union official, who added that the guard post was less than a mile from the party offices. “We have daily contacts with the Americans and they have been to the base.”

An aide to Mr. Talabani said he had asked the American military for information about the mistake.

The United States command in Baghdad said American troops erroneously believed that they had identified insurgents near the hide-out of a bomb-making cell linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The command said the strike killed five Kurds, described as policemen; Kurdish officials said as many as nine were killed.

[ . . . ]

The American helicopter attack in Mosul struck members of a militia force that is a crucial ally of the United States. The Kurds and their fighters, known as pesh merga, live in mountainous northeastern Iraq, but their control extends west to the Tigris River and Mosul, a city of close to two million. Sunni Arabs make up most of western Mosul, but Kurds dominate the eastern half.

In a statement, the American military said that after observing armed men near the guard post, American troops fired warning shots and called out in Arabic and Kurdish for the men to put down their arms.

An American helicopter then “observed hostile intention” and fired on the guard post. The military statement did not describe specifically what the soldiers saw the Kurdish troops do. But it said that as the helicopter attacked, American ground troops took fire from the bunker. Kurdish officials said six other pesh merga were wounded, some cared for later by American troops.

The Americans were in a helicopter, and therefore better able to see their target than in a jet--even though they could clearly see the British convoy they fired up back in 2003--and what, exactly, does it mean to "fire warning shots?" I mean, if you're in Mûsil and you hear shots, how do you know if they're warning or not? What, exactly, does it mean to "observe[d] hostile intention?" Why was "hostile intention" not specifically described?

According to the LATimes, the Americans claim the pêşmerge fired on US forces, while the IHT quotes a pêşmerge survivor of the American attack as saying that the Kurds did not fire "so we wouldn't be considered terrorists — we did not even shoot a bullet."

The LATimes reports a Mûsil resident's account of the attack:

Ali Sourchi, a 30-year-old grocer, said he had been watching a movie shortly before midnight when the power suddenly went out. He went outside to check his generator and saw the airstrike. He fled inside, fearing what might happen next, he said.

"Sounds of the bombings continued until 2 a.m.," he said. "In the morning, we found stone and rubble where the guards' position used to be."

Therefore the Americans fired on the checkpoint for some 2 hours, reducing it to rubble. The LATimes report continues with a statement from a member of the Kurdish security forces saying, "We are not satisfied with an apology."

From the IHT:

There have been accidental attacks on pesh merga fighters before, according to Mahmoud Othman, an influential Kurdish member of the Iraqi national assembly. But he said that they have not caused frictions between Kurdish and American forces, and he predicted that the incident Friday would not do so either.

"Many of these things have happened in the past four years — it's quite unfortunate," Othman said. "But I don't think it will seriously affect any relations."

But it ought to seriously affect relations.

The Americans are behaving like cowards because "insurgents" have downed five American helicopters in three weeks and they are deliberately vague in their explanation of the attack on Kurds in an attempt to hide their cowardice. They'd be in a world of hurt if they had to engage in a real war.

This is the second known friendly fire incident against Kurds by the Americans. If there were a free and independent media in South Kurdistan, we'd have news of other friendly fire incidents. With the exposure of such cowardice and carelessness on the part of the Americans, there would be a good chance of creating "frictions" that would force the Americans to end their wanton killing of friendly forces.

No more cooperation.

KAYO CONFERENCE

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
~ Pearl S. Buck.

I wanted to mention that tomorrow the first annual Kurdish American Youth Conference (KAYO) will be held at Vanderbilt University and Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee.





For more information on the conference, see the press release at the KAYO website.

I wish them Pîroz Be because they have worked quite diligently on organizing the conference and I hope it's a great success.

Uh, yeah guys . . . I did steal your picture.

PHOTOS FROM THE MOUNTAINS 2

The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer.
~Author Unknown

Commander Hussein Afsheen of PJAK, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, a member group of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, sits in front of a picture of Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of PKK in the PJAK training camp in the Qendil mountain range, northern Iraq. Recruits are training to fight Iran, one of the four countries that rule the fractured Kurdish people. And although they belong to an organization officially outlawed as terrorist by Washington, they appear to be operating unhindered from Iraqi territory controlled by U.S. forces. (AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

PJAK recruits. (AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

Women PJAK recruits. (AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

Bijî Serok Apo!

MURDER MASTERMIND AT MAXMUR

"But we cannot afford to ignore the features of clan-based cultures, whether in Kosovo or in the Middle East, that make them susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous forces for nightmarish geopolitical goals."
~ Jared Israel, The Emperor's New Clothes.

There was a small item on TDN, Wednesday, about Maxmur:

Earlier this week Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. assistant secretary of state, visited Mahmour refugee camp in northern Iraq, which Turkey says is a base for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), CNN-Türk television reported yesterday. Holbrooke, who spoke with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey last week, met with Mahmour's local administrator, Abdurrahman Berzenci, and chatted with women living in the camp.

It looks pretty inocuous at first, doesn't it? A second look might even lead people to think it's some good news, especially if we look at Holbrooke's official CV from a clean Wikipedia page. He's been Assistant Secretary of State for two regions of the world, Peace Corps director, brokered the Dayton Accords for Bosnia, is an investment banker, belongs to all the right clubs (Council on Foreign Relations, International Institute for Strategic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy, and more). He's even a board member of Refugees International. More fabulous club memberships are listed at Sourcewatch.

On the other hand, there are a few minor points that Wikipedia left out . . . like East Timor, for example.

Richard Holbrooke and Paul Wolfowitz together facilitated Indonesia's seizure of East Timor back in the 1970s. From Asia Times in 2001:

In an unguarded moment last May, Richard Holbrooke opened a foreign policy speech in Italy with a fawning tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

[ . . . ]

The example he chose to illustrate his point was East Timor, which was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons - a security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. "Paul and I," he said, "have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."

East Timor is a classic example of the bipartisan nature of US foreign policy during the Cold War - and the secrecy surrounding US military support for authoritarian leaders like president Suharto, who ruled Indonesia from the US-backed coup in 1965 until his downfall in 1998. There is an unbroken link from the Ford-Kissinger years, when the US backed Suharto's invasion of the former Portuguese territory. This continued through the Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras, when US policy focused on supporting Suharto's military and burnishing his image to the world.

[ . . . ]

If Holbrooke is to believed, he and Wolfowitz tried to keep the long, sordid history of American involvement with Suharto hidden from the American electorate during the most recent campaign. That in itself is a sad commentary on the mentality of these men and their dislike of open debate about US foreign policy goals.

From 1975 to 1977, the Indonesian government, backed by the US, in the form of people like Holbrooke and Wolfowitz, managed to murder between 50,000 to 80,000 East Timorese--a fact admitted by the Indonesian foreign minister at the time. When questioned about this massacre, Holbrooke responded as follows:

I want to stress I am not remotely interested in getting involved in an argument over the actual number of people killed. People were killed and that always is a tragedy but what is at issue is the actual situation in Timor today . . . [Asked about how many Timorese were killed in the past] . . . we are never going to know anyway.

What's a few tens of thousands dead when Indonesia was so strategically important to the US? What's a few tens of thousands slaughtered when Indonesia was an oil-producer, was non-aligned during the Cold War, and was such a swell consumer of American war industry product? The fact is that the US-backed Indonesian government engaged in genocide against the East Timorese, slaughtering over 200,000 of the people during the occupation, and the American who oversaw and enabled the genocide is now involved with Maxmur.

But our fine, upstanding American finally visited East Timorese refugees in 1999, according to Mother Jones, and this in spite of the fact that Holbrooke was a past master at downplaying the genocide of the East Timorese:

In later testimony defending US policy in East Timor, Holbrooke repeatedly played down the brutality of the Indonesian occupation. In 1979, Indonesia reported that East Timor's population had shrunk by 10 percent because of "civil war and starvation." Analysts with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International now say the population had shrunk by far more than that, and that the causes were primarily Indonesian military violence against civilians, and starvation caused by the military's use of napalm to deforest the region and poison its farmland. Holbrooke, however, told a Congressional committee that the desperate hunger in East Timor had nothing to do with the Indonesians' invasion, but was the result of years of neglect during Portuguese rule. That the starvation did not reach desperate levels until several years after the Portuguese left the colony evidently did not strike Holbrooke as contradictory.

The irony of Holbrooke enabling yet downplaying genocide, juxtaposed against Holbrooke's visit to East Timorese refugee camps, is heightened by the fact that Holbrooke is himself of German-Jewish descent. And now this murderer is becoming involved with Kurdish refugees from another US-backed terror state? Alarm bells should be sounding.

In Bosnia, Holbrooke again secured US interests at the expense of lives on the ground and with total disregard for the ethnicities involved and with the use of dirty war experts to advise the KLA (More on NATO's Gladio-style use of the KLA here). Bosnia's position of utility as regards US interests was outlined by Zbigniew Brzezinski:

Brzezinski frankly sets the goal for U.S. policy: "to perpetuate America's own dominant position for at least a generation and preferably longer still". This involves creating a "geopolitical framework" around NATO that will initially include Ukraine and exclude Russia. This will establish the geostrategic basis for controlling conflict in what Brzezinski calls "the Eurasian Balkans", the huge area between the Eastern shore of the Black Sea to China, which includes the Caspian Sea and its petroleum resources, a top priority for U.S. foreign policy.

There's much more on US control of oil at the link, including a mention of the US goal of controlling the oil flow to Europe. Another interesting aspect of US policy is the use of "cultural divide" to secure interests:

. . . writer Robert D. Kaplan, who sees a "real battle" that is "drawn along historical-civilizational lines. On the one side are the Turks, their fellow Azeri Turks in Azerbaijan, the Israelis and the Jordanians [...]. On the other side are those who suffered the most historically from Turkish rule: the Syrian and Iraqi Arabs, the Armenians, the Greeks and the Kurds". It is not hard to see whose side the United States must be on in this battle, or which must be the winning side.

Indeed, it's been very clear for a very long time which side the US takes. News that Holbrooke is sniffing around Maxmur means nothing good. Wherever Holbrooke goes, US foreign policy enforcement--with it's attendent mass slaughter--follows.

Ah, well . . . we can always hope that the Iraqi insurgency gets its hands on this murderer, and then we can all watch the video.



NOTE: At one time Holbrooke served on the advisory board of Public Strategies, Inc., the damage control firm that Lockheed Martin hired to read Rastî. Unfortunately, it seems that Public Strategies, Inc. no longer wishes to reveal to the public just who currently sits on their advisory board.

MORE FROM WASHINGTON

"Those who forget history are doomed to testify before congressional committees."
~ Andy Kessler.

What's new at the Pentagon, you ask? Well, a couple of things.

First, they've finally been forced to release a video from two American A-10 aircraft that fired up a British convoy, killing one Tommy and wounding a number of others, way back in 2003. Apparently the video had been leaked to the media, but as part of the deal to release a DVD copy of the video to the UK government, it cannot be aired publicly. According to the Independent, this is not the first time the Pentagon has engaged in an attempted cover-up of friendly fire incidents.

This reminds me of the friendly fire incident from early April 2003 in which a number of Kurdish pêşmerge were killed and wounded by the Americans, again by aircraft. The reason that the Pentagon couldn't attempt to cover-up this incident was because there happened to be a BBC film crew on scene, with cameras rolling, and they managed to capture the bombing and aftermath.

Anybody remember Pat Tillman? He was a believer in the system until a tour in Iraq, when it appears his belief in the system began to change. During a subsequent tour in Afghanistan, the system caught up to him and put him away . . . permanently. Then it lied to cover-up.

Kinda makes you wonder, don't it, Bubba, just how many more friendly fire incidents have been hushed up? Or how many individual instances of collateral damage have been perpetrated by the anti-terror warriors? But, as they say, what you don't know won't hurt you. Right?

The other interesting news from the Pentagon is that it's got big plans for Africa, from the NYTimes:

The Pentagon will establish a new military command to oversee its operations in Africa, President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Tuesday.

Creation of the United States Africa Command, which had been expected, will “strengthen our security cooperation with Africa and create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa,” Mr. Bush said.

Really? They have "security cooperation" with Africa? I didn't even know the US knew there was an Africa. I guess Rwanda missed that part about "security cooperation" back in the 90's, eh? But, wait; it gets funny:

The man who is about to become the head of the Central Command, Adm. William J. Fallon, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 30 that he favored establishment of an Africa Command, in light of the humanitarian crises and instability across much of the continent and its strategic importance.

Is this Fallon guy for real? Since when does the US give a damn about "humanitarian crises and instability" anywhere, much less in Africa? Since when does the US consider Africa of "strategic importance"? For how many centuries have there been "humanitarian crises and instability" in Africa? The US is a big cause of "humanitarian crises and instablity" itself, and all over the globe--Indonesia, Indochina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Turkey, Iraq, soon Iran. If everything goes according to script, expect to see severe "humanitarian crises and instability in Central Asia, too. About the only place the US hasn't been concerned about "humanitarian crises and instability" is Africa.

And the only place where a high-ranking member of the system could get away with intoning "humanitarian crises and instability" without being greeted with howls of laughter is the US Senate.

Come on, now, Admiral Fallon, are you absolutely certain your sudden twinge of conscience has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that China's been in the Sudan for some time, for the oil, thus the concern for "strategic importance"? Are you absolutely certain that Lockheed Martin didn't whip up that little fantasy of concern for "humanitarian crises and instability" so that it could horn in on China's aircraft sales? After all, a couple of years ago, the Washington Post took the sanctimonious and utterly hypocrital tone about who was on the receiving end of China's arms sales to Sudan, but has not the least concern about who might be on the receiving end of American arms sales to anyone.

Concerns over China's spreading sphere of influence and concerns over acquiring new arms markets are the real reasons for the Bush administration's sudden concern to "eliminate an 'outdated arrangement left over from the cold war.'" Forget about the politically-correct hogwash pouring forth from the mouth of Admiral Fallon; someone in Africa is now in the process of aiming the shit at the fan. When a region becomes of "strategic importance" to the US, that means it's time for all hell to break loose.

The "experts" at The Intelligence Summit have just figured out that Iran has been trying to lure Turkey into its corner. Too bad they still haven't figured out that the luring has been mutual. Of course, they are only saying this as part of the manufactured consent necessary to start yet another war and, for that reason, it just wouldn't do to talk bad about a NATO ally--Turkey--whose national foundation is genocide and state terror, two habits for which NATO has been a willing enabler for decades. Besides, all the NATO countries would have to admit their own guilt as state-sponsors of terror and accomplices in the genocide of the Kurdish people.

Besides, Turkey and Iran have engaged in joint military operations against the Kurdish freedom movement last year, so how can anyone be certain that this story of Iran luring Turkey away from the West is not a joint political strategy?

TNA reports that two Turkish parliamentary deputies are hysterically proclaiming that "PKK is flowing into Kerkuk." They also appear to be hysterical that Armenians are flowing into the US Congress. Remember what Heval Cuma said? If it's true that "PKK is flowing into Kerkuk," I have only two words: Bijî HPG! That place needs to be cleaned out anyway, especially of all the MIT/JITEM/ITF trash. Seriously, give that one a read. It's very funny. A teaser:

Comez, claiming the presence of PKK militants in Kirkuk, said, "Turkmens whom I regularly communicate with are reporting that scores of PKK terrorists are coming from Mahmur and other camps into Kirkuk and are carrying IKDP and IPUK identity cards."

"The terrorists were armed with heavy weapons and planned provocative attacks in Kirkuk. He did not elaborate where or when the terrorists might stage these attacks."

Hilarious!

The Washington Times' resident Kurdish "expert" has a column out today to let us know that Abdullah Gul is going to tell Condoleeza Rice just how bad the situation in Iraq has become . . . as if she didn't know. I mean, they all know; they just refuse to admit it publicly.

Poor Gul! He has to make the case that "Turkey is trying desperately not to be pulled into the war" in Iraq which, of course, is absurd. If Turkey doesn't want to be pulled into the war, don't be pulled into the war. That was Turkey's choice in 2003, when the US was desperately trying to pull Turkey into the war with billions of dollars in bribes, so Turkey can choose not to become involved in the war again.

It would probably help Turkey not to be involved if it would remove all of its MIT agents, JITEM agents, and mercenaries from South Kurdistan, but then it would not be able to easily manufacture an environment that could properly be used as an excuse to annex the Mosul Vilayet--and all of its lucrative oil--plus extend its magnificent human rights record to the Kurds of the South.

The Syrian ambassador to the US is quoted as agreeing that a break up of Iraq would be "catastrophic." It should be noted that Syrians are keen Kurd-killers themselves, so getting the opinion of the Syrian ambassador is like getting another fox to help guard the hen house.

What is interesting is that the Syrian ambassador talks about "Kurds [are] feeling emboldened by the autonomous Kurdistan of Iraq and we see how Turkey is not very comfortable . . ." Notice that word: emboldened. It's the current fashion to use "embolden" with "terrorists." Anything that anyone suggests that deviates in the slightest from official US policy in the Middle East is tarred with the phrases "emboldening terrorists" or "emboldening terrorism," meaning that the Syrian ambassador is clearly equating Kurds with terrorists.

It's kind of ironic that an official of the same government that has been funneling terrorists into Iraq since 2003 should equate Kurds with terrorists. On the other hand, I guess a Syrian official could easily be considered an expert on terrorism.

The Washington Times' resident Kurdish "expert" closes by saying that Turkey needs to get closer to Damascus. Now this "expert" is well-known for pushing Turkish propagand and that is why she implies that Turkey has a distant relationship with Damascus. However, the truth is that Turkey has been cozy with Damascus since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. We might consider this something of a regional ménage à trois since Syria is the client of Iran and Turkey has been working closely with Iran. This lends credibility to the assertion: "Turkey is trying to achieve good standing with as many countries as possible . . . "

To paraphrase, as a friend is fond of saying, "Turkey plays the whore," and there's probably no better place to do that than in the qehbexane that is Washington.

Unsurpisingly, throughout this entire Washington Times piece there is not one reference to Turkey's outstanding human rights record vis-à-vis the Kurdish people, nor a reference to the Ankara regime's continued military operations against the PKK during the PKK's ceasefire . . . with support for such continued operations from Washington.

ASSAULT ON WASHINGTON

"In the regions where US influence was least, there was progress in democracy, despite strenuous efforts of the Reagan administration to prevent it. The worst record was in the regions where the US had the most influence. He also explains the reasons: Washington would permit only "top-down forms" of democracy in which traditional elites, linked to the US, would retain power in deeply undemocratic societies."
~Noam Chomsky on Thomas Carothers.

According to TDN, Abdullah Gul will be visiting Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and Lockheed Martin's Stephen Hadley, to talk about the big, bad PKK and the Armenian Genocide resolution that's now in Congress. On Wednesday, he's scheduled to visit certain congressmen who, for the moment, remain unnamed:

During his meeting with Rice on Tuesday, Gül is expected to ask the U.S. administration to block a resolution, introduced in January by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to urge the U.S. government to recognize as genocide the killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire late in the World War I era.

Speaking to reporters at Ankara's Esenboğa Airport before his departure yesterday, in reference to the Armenian resolution likely to pass in U.S. Congress, Gül said he would explain the Turkish thesis and the facts of the history during his talks in Washington. The minister complained of intense propaganda that was leading some politicians to vote for resolutions on historic events, on which they had no knowledge, and cited this as a weakness of the parliamentary system.

"It is our duty to provide information and tell the facts," he said.

Well, that would certainly be a change of heart if, in fact, Gul were really going to tell the facts. However, I suspect that Gul's "facts" are very different than scholarly facts on the Armenian Genocide and probably have more to do with Turkey's image than they do with genocide. I wonder if Gul's reference to "the Turkish thesis" has anything to do with the Turkish History Thesis, concocted by what passed for Turkish intellectualism of the 1930's, when fascism was fashionable:

Mustafa Kemal's words to Muslim tradesmen in a speech in Adana on 16 March 1923 are just a little, significant part of that symbolic production: “Armenians have no right in this prosperous country. The country is yours, the country belongs to the Turks. In history this country was Turk, therefore it is Turk and will remain Turk for ever. Of course, from ancient times this beautiful land, which was Turk and Turanic, has seen the invasions of foreign powers […] The country has finally been returned to its rightful owners. Armenians and the others have no right here. These fertile places are the country of the real Turks.” Such words characterize the historical images in the heads of the nationalist élite of the Republic. They read like the nucleus of the Turkish History Thesis of the 1930s, a highly speculative construction aiming at the prehistorical, anthropological foundation of ethno-Turkish identity in Asia Minor. We can understand this historical imagination as an extremely significant, somewhat desperate effort to symbolically compensate and cover up the huge loss of human, particularly Armenian and Rum, heritage and interaction in Anatolia. The construction of the Turkish History Thesis was a nearly surrealist flight into a distant realm, postponing as much as possible the challenge of facing the recent past and beginning to think about repairing destroyed relationships. It served precisely the denial of the Others’ past, Asia Minor being declared by anthropological “proofs” (racial/racist research and abusively interpreted archaeology) the home of Turks or proto-Turks for many thousands of years.

Until now, significantly, the Turkish History Thesis of the 1930s has never been explicitly revoked in Turkey. . . .

Perhaps Mr. Gul could explain to the American Congress the "intense propaganda" which created the backlash of nationalistic ferver in the wake of Hrant Dink's murder, or which serves as the justification for Turkish police and jandarma forces to pose proudly with Dink's murderer?

That explanation along with the "facts" of the Turkish History Thesis should go over well with Congress, as should Gul's remarks about the "weakness of the parliamentary system." Not that Gul, living in a military oligarchic dictatorship, would know anything about parliamentary systems. Never fear, however, the cavalry is on its way on February 10:

Gül also expressed appreciation over Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç giving the go-ahead for a group of Turkish lawmakers to lobby in U.S. Congress in an effort to bloc possible adoption of the genocide resolution.

The first group of lawmakers will depart on Feb. 10 and deputies will be dispatched to the United States periodically for additional lobbying. As part of their activities, planned both in Washington and New York, lawmakers will present official documents and make it clear that adoption of the genocide resolution will cast a shadow on Turkey-U.S. relations. They are also expected to meet members of the Armenian diaspora.

If they bring plenty of money with them, with which to bribe members of Congress à la Dennis Hastert, then they should achieve great success in their endeavor and bring great credit to the parliamentary system. In the US, this is what is known as "lobbying," as mentioned in the article, while in the Middle East it is simply referred to as "corruption" or "bribery." If this effort should fail, there's always another avenue of approach:

Asked what alternatives Turkey was working on to counter the alleged genocide claims, Gül replied, "We had said we'll seek every way including the court option. These are serious studies. … Officials, including former diplomats, are working on this and the steps we take will be announced when we are finished with them."

Ah, yes, the court option. Luckily for Mr. Gul, he has an old legal hand available in Washington DC, Gunay Hakki Ovunc a partner in Black Hawk Security, Inc. who's helped out with any legal work the Turkish government and Turkish General Staff has filed in the US in the past. It's always so convenient to have a lawyer on retainer especially when the charge is genocide. Plus, it just makes good business sense.

"Gül will seek U.S. support in cracking down on PKK terrorists. It's a major security concern for us," a Turkish diplomat told Reuters. "We can't just sit on the sidelines when our boys are being killed. We have been promised action but have seen few results."

Okay, so the fact that the Deep State roams freely in Turkey to murder Armenian journalists while soccer fans mock the murder and security forces pose with the murderer, and that's not a major security concern? Yet a relatively few Kurdish freedom fighters who justifiably take up an armed struggle against a fascist regime that has murdered hundreds of thousands of Kurds since 1923 is a major security concern. Of course, the Turkish army has invaded North Kurdistan some 20 times in the past 80 years, each time representing "pacification" operations but Kurds have not been "pacified."

But what's a few hundred thousand slaughtered Kurds when "one Turk is worth all the world"? And there are so many more people in the world now than when that crock was cooked up.

In addition, the Turkish army has invaded South Kurdistan several times in the 1990s, and each time has retreated with dead "boys." If Turkish diplomats or anyone else connected to the fascist government apparatus in Ankara were truly concerned about their "boys [ ] being killed," they'd have taken advantage of the peace offer and ceasefire PKK offered beginning last August.

The truth is that crocodile tears for dead Turks and complaints about a "major security concern" created by the Ankara regime itself, are simply excuses for said regime's greed and current target--Kerkuk and oil-rich Behdinan. That is why Black Hawk Security, Inc. and its 1,000-plus former Turkish special team members are opening shop in Kerkuk and that's why Buyukanit will follow in Gul's footsteps.

No doubt Buyukanit, the real power in Turkey, will show the same concern for the "weakness of the parliamentary system," and urge an end to referendum in Kerkuk as well, thus nullifying the Iraqi constitution, finally putting an end to the farce known as "spreading democracy."

UFO'S OVER IRAN, BUYUKANIT IN DC, AND BIG, BAD PJAK

“People are bringing shotguns to UFO sightings in Fife, Alabama. I asked a guy, "Why do you bring a gun to a UFO sighting?" Guy said, "Way-ul, we didn' wanna be ab-duc-ted." If I lived in Fife, Alabama, I would be on my hands and knees every night praying for abduction.”
~ Bill Hicks.

Iran has had a rash of recent UFO sightings stretching back to mid-January, as first reported by Fars News Agency:

A radiant unidentified flying object was observed in the sky of Central Sepidar in the vicinity of Bouyer Ahmad in western Iran at 19:00 hours local time (15:30 GMT) Monday [16 January].

Witnesses told FNA that the object has been observed for one complete hour while moving southwards.

In a similar incident last Wednesday, an Unidentified Flying Object crashed in Barrez Mounts in the central province of Kerman.

Deputy Governor General of Kerman province Abulghassem Nasrollahi told FNA that the crash, which was followed by an explosion and a thick spiral of smoke, has caused no casualties or damage to properties.

He further denied earlier reports that the explosion has been the result of a plane or chopper crash, reminding that all the passing aircrafts have been reported as sound and safe.

The official further stated that investigations were underway by police and other relevant authorities in this regard.

While other reports spoke of meteors, Nasrollahi said there were no conclusive witnesses in that regard, yet he did not dismiss the possibility that the crash has been caused by a meteor.

Eye-witnesses assured that the explosion has been caused as a result of the crash of a radiant unidentified flying object onto the ground.

Meantime, an informed source told FNA that the object has been on fire and there has been thick smoke coming out of it prior to the crash, concluding that the object couldn't have been a meteor as meteors do not smoke.

The source also said that the crash has been witnessed by people in several cities, and mentioned that the rendezvous point was located 100 kilometers from the provincial capital city of Kerman.

He said that people in the city of Rafsanjan also reported to have witnessed a similar incident several days ago.

Similar crash incidents have been witnessed frequently during the last year all across Iran, and officials believe that the objects could be spy planes or a hi-tech espionage device.

A second incident was reported two days later, on the 18th. Today, a more detailed discussion of the Iranian UFO phenomenon appeared in American Chronicle:

It is reasonable to consider that some sightings of unusual objects in the skies above Iran could be part of U.S. operations.

Back in February 2005, Washington Post writer Dafna Linzer reported that, “The Bush administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort.”

[ . . . ]

Linzer also reported that, “U.S. officials confirmed that the drones were deployed along Iran's northern and western borders, first in April 2004, and again in December and January.”

[ . . . ]

So, there seems to be tentative identification of one possible explanation for some objects in the skies above Iran. But is that the complete explanation? U.S. surveillance and psychological operation (PSYOP) intimidation?

Linzer’s reporting seems to verify that some of the objects seen by Iranian citizens could be U.S. surveillance drones, efforts at PSYOP or some other U.S. effort.


[ . . . ]

One thing that U.S. surveillance drones and alleged extraterrestrial visitors have in common is an interest in nuclear sites and weapons, not only in Iran, but worldwide.

Many very unusual and frightening UFO incidents have occurred over the U.S. near nuclear weapons sites and nuclear facilities. Other nations have reported similar activity.

Drones or visitors from Mars? I know where I'd tend to place my money. . .

Speaking of Iran, there was an article about PJAK in the Guardian on Friday. After an intro, we get to the meat of the matter:

The AP recently spent two winter days at a PEJAK training camp tucked in the shadow of the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, listening to its followers describe their goals and operations in Iran.

According to a camp commander, Hussein Afsheen, "PKK gives ideological and logistical support'' while funding comes from Iranian Kurds. He said he didn't know of U.S. funding, but would gladly accept it.

The camp is designed to toughen up the new recruits, who numbered 38 during the AP's visit. Beds are single wool blankets spread over a rough concrete floor, or over a narrow steel bench that hugs an icy mud wall. The only heat comes from a wood-fired potbelly stove.

It's still pitch dark and freezing at 5 a.m., when the fighters line up and pledge allegiance to the Kurdish cause.

Soztar Afreen, a 22-year-old Syrian with a quick smile, says she joined five years ago and the first months were tough.

"I had trouble keeping up. You have to toughen yourself. The physical work is difficult but once you get used to it life here gets easier,'' she said.

She recalled that her parents, PKK sympathizers, sent her off with this plea: "Don't let down the struggle; make us proud.''

Gunfire and explosions echo off mountainsides as recruits learn to fire artillery and rocket launchers and automatic rifles. They are taught to lay ambushes and to endure long hours isolated and in hiding.

Food is spartan - potatoes, tomato broth, onions and a lot of bread baked flat in a deep stone oven.

Much time is spent in ideological training and studying Ocalan's vision of a united Kurdistan, which the guerrillas say has gradually shifted from demanding full-blown independence to settling for autonomy as a distinct culture within the various countries where they live.

PEJAK ideology is rigorously leftist and includes equality of the sexes - unusual in this region. The camp has two leaders, a man and a woman.

The male one, Afsheen, is a Turkish Kurd who joined the PKK in 1990, at age 19. He said he enlisted after Turkish soldiers herded him, his family and his neighbors into the town square and burned down their homes.

Four shepherds were coming home and "The soldiers just opened fire on them. I had inside of me a lot of anger. I promised I would get my revenge,'' said Afsheen.

In training, "Recruits were put in a cave and left there for a month, allowed out only for half an hour each day. We walked for hours in frigid water,'' he said.

Afsheen said he has made several forays into Iran, including one monthlong trek to the Iranian town of Shahha three months ago, not to attack Iranians but to organize Kurds. "We were discovered. There was a firefight and it went on until dark. We were pinned down, trapped,'' he said.

"At nightfall we found an opening and we tried to slip out but we were discovered. The firing went on again and they called in their helicopters. One of our friends was wounded and three Iranian security men were killed.''

Afsheen's co-leader is Beridon Dersim, who grew up in Austria and found her identity with the PKK.

"What I wanted I couldn't find from Turkey. I couldn't find from Europe. The PKK offered me answers about myself, about my ethnicity.''

Dersim, 32, said she wanted to pick up a gun the day she joined the PKK at 17 but it was just before her 20th birthday that she was allowed into the guerrilla ranks.

Unlike Afreen of Syria, she did not have her family's blessing, she says, and her father, a Turkish civil servant, was tortured and left in a wheelchair. She said she has since fought in gunbattles.

The guerrillas vow not to marry or visit their families lest they put them in danger or be distracted from their struggle. Afsheen said he hasn't seen his parents since their village was destroyed 16 years ago. "I was the youngest of nine children, but maybe there are more now. I don't know.''

Dersim says her presence encourages Kurdish women but also frightens the men.

"We go to a village and when we speak they are surprised and they ask us: 'Where do you get such power to do this? How can you speak like this and in front of men?'''

Keep speaking truth to power, hevals. Did anyone notice that the Kurds in that one article come from all over Kurdistan as well as from Diaspora? And we know that there are many who were born as non-Kurds who are now in the mountains fighting for the Kurdish people. This is a fact throughout PKK and always has been.

Also this last week saw reports indicating that ExxonMobil finished last year's earnings race with profits that beat all previous records for any US company. Friday saw the release of the UN report on global warming. What you may not have heard is that neocon temple, AEI, funded in part by ExxonMobil, offered scientists and economists $10,000 to contest the UN report. The best article that touches on all these points comes from the World Socialist Web Site:

The Guardian newspaper in Britain, meanwhile, carried a report Friday detailing an attempt by an ExxonMobil-funded think tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), to bribe scientists and economists into attacking the new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirming global warming and its source in human activity. AEI, whose vice-chairman is former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, offered to pay $10,000 for papers casting doubt on the IPCC document.

More here and here. Lame attempt by an AEI "thinker" to dodge the issue here. Remember, AEI is one of those neocon organizations that have never heard of Turkish atrocities against Kurds.


Buyukanit and Gul will be in Washington this week to cry about the big, bad PKK and Kerkuk. They may have some explaining to do about Hrant Dink's murder as well. Canada's National Post has an interesting opinon piece on the Deep State's control of Turkey. The last paragraph sums things up nicely:

The Dink assassination was only the latest in a long series of appalling events that have disclosed a troubled, confused, and insecure nation. Turkey has no record of political stability in recent decades. Since the middle of the 20th century, government has been changed four times by military coup. Once the centre of great power, Turkey may never have entirely recovered from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s. History has left Turks with incoherent national memories of pride and shame. Their long, painful rise toward modernity demonstrates why a peaceful and prosperous future requires a reasonably honest understanding of the past.

That analysis is punctuated by the recent release of photo and video showing Turkish police and jandarma posing proudly with Dink's murderer, Ogun Samast--Thanks to Heval GT for the head's up on that. Check the link he left for the BBC on that, as well as the report by IHT. Naturally, this was all a plot to blacken the noble character of TSK. The press has been duly warned.

Finally, to brush up on some of the subjects Buyukanit and his secretary, Abdullah Gul, will be talking about in DC, check out why Turkey could become the new threat in Iraq. Don't pay much attention to Neçirvan Barzanî's brush off of Turkish threats--that's just political talk. After all, what was the excuse used by Turkey to invade Cyprus? How is that an example of Turkey's respect for "territorial integrity"? And Cyprus didn't have a drop of oil or a single apocu.

HOW TO RUN AN EMPIRE

"Lockheed is the company that runs the empire."
~ Richard Cummings.

Lukery at WotIsItGood4 has a link to a radio interview with the guy who wrote the Lockheed Martin article for Playboy, Richard Cummings. Go here to get the mp3 link to the interview, and I highly recommend a listen because it goes into a lot of information that was edited out of Cummings' article for the sake of brevity. He was supposed to write 7,000 words on Lockheed but ended up with 15,000 words.

Cummings stresses the point that what is new and significant about the Lockheed Martin complex is that it has moved from a focus on working solely as a government contractor to one of participation in the policy-making process of the US government. Why? Well, for the same reason I have said a hundred times if I've said it once (and I have)--Money.

One example given in the interview is that of US support for Israel, which is a circular process: Congress approves "aid" to Israel and delivers the funds. Israel turns around and spends the funds on Lockheed Martin products. This creates the necessity of an ideology which will perpetuate this business deal for Lockheed, resulting in an emphasis on the similarity between American "values" and Israeli "values." But as Cummings points out, this cycle is extremely cynical; the fact that Lockheed Martin and the rest of the war industry are the only ones to profit by this "policy," without so much as a peep from the mainstream media is cynicism in the extreme.

This cyclical process is the very same one that guides the American-Turkish relationship, which was highlighted in a Federation of American Scientists report from 1999. As Scott Horton, the interviewer, remarks, this system is one in which a select group of people are basically looting the American treasury. Isn't it odd that this select group has dominated government for decades . . . like Joseph Ralston, Marc Grossman, and William Cohen, for example?

Money, again, is at the heart of the rejection of the PKK ceasefire and proposal for a political solution to the Kurdish situation in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. I'm willing to bet that money is at the heart of the continuing violence in Iraq. Cummings also notes that in the build-up to the Iraq war, the intelligence agencies were arrogant in their assessment of the use of high-technology and air power as the methods for easily overthrowing the Saddam regime, thus requiring fewer boots-on-the-ground. According to Cummings, the creator of this new, high-tech means of warfare originated with none other than Lockheed Martin and the American intelligence community swallowed this gimmick hook, line, and sinker. The most high-profile salesman of Lockheed Martin's new war doctrine was Donald Rumsfeld, from the UK's Telegraph:

Victory in Iraq has given added impetus to the drive by Donald Rumsfeld, the United States defence secretary, to transform the way his country will fight future wars.

Donald Rumsfeld

Mr Rumsfeld is a key supporter of a new warfare doctrine called "Rapid Decisive Operations".

Unofficially known as "the Rumsfeld Doctrine", it has replaced the "Powell Doctrine" of using overwhelming force. It concentrates on the use of special forces, air power and high technology so that conflicts can be won more swiftly and with fewer troops.

Speed of action is at the centre of the new thinking. The US army and marines will be told to shift to lighter equipment so that more of their forces can be airlifted to the battlefield rather than having to be moved by ship.

[ . . . ]

The new doctrine includes elements of the "shock and awe" concept formulated by Harlan Ullman in the 1996 book Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance.

As for Harlan Ullman, he's a senior consultant for CSIS. CSIS is one of those little turnstiles between Lockheed Martin and government. For example, Bruce Jackson, Lockheed's old director for strategic planning, is also affiliated with CSIS. Coincidence? Not on your life.

As we see now, in the latest National Intelligence Estimate, released Friday by the same arrogant bastards who bought into (or were paid off by) Lockheed and its new warfare doctrine, the security situation inside Iraq is dismal and is predicted to become more dismal over the next 18 months. This is a direct result of a minimal troop presence plus an unwillingness since Day 1 to enforce any kind of law and order. Remember the scenes of looting? Consider, too, that during the Gulf War, the US deployed 694,550 troops as contrasted to the 165,000 deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

This was a purposeful policy dictated by Lockheed Martin to create chaos in Iraq and the wider region so that it could capitalize on the obscene bloodshed. The Bush Administration's "surge" of some 20,000 additional troops is consistent with Lockheed Martin's warfare lite doctrine. The more bloodshed, the more money for them and the Cheney family (Listen to the interview).

Stephen J. Hadley, former lawyer for Lockheed Martin--also convicted for fraud in the US--and current National Security Advisor has been engaging in damage control in the wake of the new intelligence estimate. More on Hadley earlier on Rastî There's a tidy little wrap-up on that, complete with press conference video, at The Blue State. How convenient is that, to have yet another Lockheed Martin hack to lie to the public about the real reasons why the security situation in Iraq sucks and will continue to suck.

Hidden under the shadow of the new intelligence estimate on Iraq was the release of an International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) report on Ankara and Teheran's joint battle against the big, bad PKK. The IISS is a European version of American neocon and elitist think-tanks, as described by Sourcewatch:

"The Institute has 3,000 members drawn from the government, business and academic élites of over 100 countries. Its current roster of around 200 Corporate and Institutional Members includes some 55 research centres and institutes, 25 media organisations, 35 government ministries and agencies and 40 commercial organisations along with numerous military staff colleges and university departments. The wide range of business interests represented include finance and investment, international banking, insurance, computing, shipping, infrastructure development, automobile production, management consulting, gas and oil, power generation and transmission, aerospace and defence, major media outlets and telecommunications."

Apparently there is cross-over between the American warmongering elitists and IISS warmongering elitists, such as with J. Paul Bremer, Charles Horner, William R. Van Cleave,and the now dead Philip Merrill.

The funniest thing about the report on Ankara/Teheran joint cooperation is the part about PKK planning to commit "terrorist" attacks "using remote-controlled model aircraft." Uh-huh. Like no one would ever see or hear those coming? Apparently, Turkish intelligence is the source of the model-airplane attack fabrication. It's things like this that keep MIT awake at night. Morons.

Given that the Lockheed Martin government is running the same playsheet for Iran that it ran for Iraq in 2002/2003, any bets on how much LMT stock will skyrocket with an attack on Iran? After all, that is the entire purpose for all of those who are so gung-ho to screw up things even more. As Richard Cummings said, the ideology follows the money; that means that the ideology is propaganda created for the justification of the war and to deflect attention from investigating all of those who are truly benefiting from Lockheed Martin's control of the US government. For an excellent analysis of the Iran situation, check an excellent recent article from AsiaTimes.

On last item . . . Sibel Edmonds is having the official screening of her Kill the Messenger documentary today in DC. Check Lukery's KTM blog for details. There will also be a screening for the general public on Sunday. I wish Sibel the best.

SERKEFTIN!

CHARITY CASE GIFTED WITH TURKISH SOCKS

“Have you ever gotten the feeling that you aren't completely embarassed yet, but you glimpse tomorrow's embarrassment?”
~ Tom Cruise.

Everyone has probably seen the photos of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and his socks. If you haven't, you can check the photo and close-up at the BBC. He was exiting a mosque in Turkey when the photo was taken, and it was briefly shown on an article in TDN that praised the superiority of Turkish socks over other socks. . . believe it or not.

So what the hell is that? According to the BBC, as the president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz pulls down $391,440 a year, but this guy is too much of a freakin' cheap-ass to buy new socks when the old ones have holes large enough to drive a truck through. Not only that, but it's clear that Wolfowitz is totally lacking any ability to plan ahead, otherwise, he would have thought to himself: "Hmmm . . . . I'm going to Turkey. If I get invited to someone's house, I may have to take off my shoes. If I go to a mosque, I will definitely have to take off my shoes. Maybe I should invest in a few pairs of new socks and take them with me on my trip."

This is the guy who went ballistic when Turkey refused to join the Coalition of the Willing back in 2003. This is the guy who was throwing billions--yes, billions--of dollars down on the table as a bribe to the Turks so that they'd join the Coalition, but the guy is too cheap to buy new socks. Now the Turkish Sock Industrialists' Association is going to send him twelve pairs of socks and--yes--that was the article from which TDN removed the picture of Wolfowitz and his socks.

Not only was this a Kodak moment, it was a bigtime point-and-giggle moment as well, and it just goes to show you that you can be a tightwad with no capability for foresight and be appointed to head the World Bank.

Geez . . . I don't even want to think about the condition of his underwear.

LIGHTENING UP THE WAR ON TERROR, INC.

“It’s a hoax — and it’s not funny.”
~ Gov. Deval L. Patrick, Massachusetts.

Terror has a new look and it created an uproar in Boston yesterday, from the AP on Yahoo:


In nine cities across the country, blinking electronic signs displaying a profane, boxy-looking cartoon character caused barely a stir.

But in Boston, the signs — some with protruding wires — sent a wave of panic across the city, bringing out bomb squads and prompting officials to shut down highways, bridges and part of the Charles River.

Something that may have been amusing in other cities was not funny to authorities here, the city that served as the base for the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials defended their reaction Thursday even as two men charged in the case, and some residents, mocked the response as overblown.

Young Bostonians familiar with the unconventional marketing tactics used by many companies tended to see the city's reaction as unmitigated hysteria.

Tracy O'Connor, 34, a retail manager, called the police response "silly and insane," contrasting it with that in other cities where no one reported concerns about the devices — an advertising gimmick for the Cartoon Network show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."

"We're the laughing stock," she said.

Excellent one-line analysis of anti-terror forces going totally spastic over light boxes with cartoon characters giving everyone the finger.


CNN has more:

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis called the stunt "unconscionable," while Boston Mayor Thomas Menino called it "outrageous" and the product of "corporate greed." Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, a Boston-area congressman, added, "It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt."

[ . . . ]

Twenty-two-year-old Todd Venderlin, a design student at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, saw one of the devices two weeks ago as he left a lounge in south Boston, according to The Boston Globe. He said he was stunned when he saw bomb squads removing them.


"It's so not threatening -- it's a Lite-Brite," he told the newspaper, referring to the children's toy that allows its users to create pictures by placing translucent pegs into an opaque board. "I don't understand how they could be terrified. I would if it was a bunch of circuits blinking, but it wasn't."

Actually, it would be hard to imagine a more ridiculous bunch of city officials. Boston's mayor should probably shut up about "corporate greed" in this context, since it's the homeland security consultants who are making a killing on the public's being terrified of images of something resembling an electrified Sponge Bob with an attitude. But Mayor Menino spent the day with with everyone snickering behind his back, and that's the real reason he's outraged.

How did other cities react to the presence of the light boxes? More from CNN:

. . . the devices have been in place for two or three weeks in Boston; New York City; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Francisco, California; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[ . . . ]

"We haven't had any calls to 911 regarding this," Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb told AP on Wednesday.

Police in Philadelphia told AP that authorities had confiscated 56 of the devices. In New York, a street was shut down for 45 minutes after two of the devices were found on an overpass, the New York Post reported. In all, 41 of the devices were found in the city, according to the newspaper.

In Portland, police Sgt. Brian Schmautz said officers had no plans to remove any of the signs, so long as they weren't on municipal property. Nor had officers been dispatched in any kind of bomb scare related to the devices.

"At this point we wouldn't even begin an investigation, because there's no reason to believe a crime has occurred," Schmautz said.

Reactions to the boxes across the country can easily be explained by the fact that East Coasters are notoriously uptight about everything while West Coasters are not. Or maybe West Coasters are just more in touch with their inner child and have an easier time recognizing a Lite-Brite when they see one . . . especially when they've been hanging around town in different locations for weeks.

Boston has become a victim of anti-terror propaganda, to the point that city officials are now unable to tell a bomb from a child's toy. The media, for its part, managed to record and broadcast the entire anti-terror response over the airwaves. Hey, I know I feel safer now.

In the meantime, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the cartoon program whose marketing campaign sparked all the stupidity, is due to release a feature film in late March, when the box offices will tell us whether or not the advertising campaign really worked. Who knows? Maybe ATHF will end up giving everyone the finger again.

Hilarious!