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  • KEYSTONE KOPISTAN

    KEYSTONE KOPISTAN

    A Grim Non-Fairytale

     

    Everything  is unbelievable in the kingdom of Keystone Kopistan, located between Bulgaristan, Greekistan, Syrianistan, Irakistan, Iranistan, Devilistan and the deep blue sea. In fact, the most popular exclamation of astonishment in Keystone Kopistan, always used about the never-ending fraud called “Turkish Democracy,” is “Inanılmaz!” meaning “Unbelievable!” In reality, the unbelievable is always completely believable in K.K. This has been the case since 10 November 1938. Things always worsen and unbelievably so. For example, this is now one more unbelievable thing going from bad to worse: the police in Keystone Kopistan are now arresting the police, that is, each other. There is neither law or order nor order or law in the “advanced” democracy of Keystone Kopistan. Things there are always unbelievably true.

    But a far more serious condition prevails. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, widely thought to have been the all-powerful prime minister of Keystone Kopistan never was.  It seems that Erdoğan, the bad-boy, tough guy prime minister (and now president-in-waiting) discovered upon awakening on the morning of 17 December 2013 that he had only imagined he was prime minister, police chief, head of the Supreme Court, chief prosecuting attorney, chief destroyer of all military forces, chief economist, chief architect, chief paymaster, chief collector of receivables, chief subcontractor, and chief Chief. In fact, Erdoğan had been deep in a twelve-year dream about Yavuz Sultan Selim (1470-1520), known as Selim the Grim for his bloody-handed cruelty. These two sure make strange, grim bedfellows, don’t they?

    On 17 December, the police came knocking on Erdoğan’s door looking for shoeboxes. Oh how they ran, these cops of Kopistan. And oh how Tayyip and the kids ran, ran, ran. And how all the ministers ran. And how all their children ran. And how the words flew. And how Erdoğan, thinking he was prime minister, fired all the cops and prosecutors and judges. And how four of the more corrupt ministers resigned and ran away to do house cleaning chores, so helpful did they become to their wives that day. Everyone was chasing everyone that day—fathers chased children, husbands chased wives, police chased thieves, helicopters flew, curses flew, shoeboxes and candy boxes flew and everyone and everything chased money, vast, countless amounts of money. So what should be done?

    Well that was easy. Since everything is both believable and unbelievable in Keystone Kopistan, Erdoğan blamed the police, the newspapers, the Israelis, the American ambassador and the entire country’s population of stray cats. He even blamed Pennsylvania. Unbelievable, wouldn’t you agree? Yes, but…and “but” is a very important word in Keystone Kopistan. But… it is also believable. And since the media bosses are all corrupt, and most journalists are scribblers for Erdoğan’s interests, and since bribes and lies are the common means of discourse, all are made to believe that a “parallel” state did it. No one asks very much about what happened to all the money. No one asks very much where Erdoğan got all the good cops to replace the bad cops. No one asks much in Keystone Kopistan. And since half the voters are paid by the ruling party, they will also surely die for him and thus surely vote for him. And so these unquestioning incompetents made him president, with a lot of help from the equally incompetent political opposition. And Erdoğan laughingly tallied his winning votes and now, knowingly and safely, counts his unbelievably extraordinary assets.

    Speaking of counting, Selim the Grim was also interested in counting. He specialized in the murderous mathematics of religion. So much so that he slaughtered 40,000 “heretical” Anatolian Alevites, having concluding that killing even one of these despicable heretics was functionally equivalent to the heavenly reward receivable for killing 70 detestable Christians. Obviously he couldn’t find such a concentration of Christians in those days so he invented the Alevite multiplier effect. Selim the Grim was pleased with his genius and continued with his math studies, adding other variables to his original deadly equation: 1A = 70C.  Selim the Grim, soul brother for Tayyip the Grimmer…and the grim tale of Keystone Kopistan continues.

    One can easily understand Tayyip the Grimmer’s fascination with this earlier Sultanic killing machine. After all, after his own interests everyone and everything else comes last. So in homage, Tayyip the Grimmer decided to build a third bridge over the Bosporus, naming it the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge. In perfect historical harmony, this bridge will slaughter millions of trees, plants, wildlife, rivers, streams and the Istanbul air, in short, the entire ecological system of Bosporus and Istanbul will enter a long, torturous death cycle. It is the mathematical, real world equivalent to billions of dollars of real estate speculation and undercover deals. Allah is indeed generous to pious believers. Selim the Grim proved that. And Tayyip the Grimmer reinforces Selim the Grim’s mathematical speculations proving that one shoebox packed with U.S. dollars equals $1 million. Unbelievable! Who needs shoes! Yes, unbelievable. So believe it! And be pious!

    Last December 17, Tayyip the Grimmer awoke from his dream. What? he shouted, You mean I’m not the man in charge? It seems that the major arrest programs of the government’s plan to destroy the military—Ergenekon and Balyoz—happened, but the government didn’t do it. Huh? Yes, the army was destroyed, but not by Tayyip the Grimmer. Huh? Journalists and military officers had their careers and, in a few cases, their lives destroyed, but not by the government. Huh?

    Then who did it? That’s easy, said Tayyip the Grimmer. It was all a sneaky trick done by that unspeakable, terrorist imam in Pennsylvania. He did it! Feto of Pennsylvania did it! My archenemy, my old friend and, until now, my co-conspirator and accomplice. He did it! Huh?

    So while Feto the Unspeakable was doing all the secret dirty business under the blind eyes of a sleeping government, who raped environment? Who plundered the nation’s assets? Whose police maimed and murdered the nation’s youth during the Gezi Park Movement. Who insulted the mothers of dead children? Who continues to defame the dead children? Who arms and finances the ISID killers? Who supports these terrorist demons who consume the inner organs of their dying victims? Who fails to speak out when these sub-human insults to the animal world behead men, women, children and infants in the name of Allah? Who?

    Why it’s the grim, soon-to-be-president of the Republic of Turkey. He and his truly unspeakable, unbelievable, fully believable supporters have brought hell to Keystone Kopistan. Believe it!

     

    James (Cem) Ryan

    Istanbul

    19 August 2014

     

    KeystoneKops  

  • IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, IN ANOTHER WORLD

    IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, IN ANOTHER WORLD

    IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, IN ANOTHER WORLD

    Gezi Park, A Symphonic Movement of Infinite Movements 

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

    With the inevitability and power of spring it arose. From the pregnant earth, from the thinnest of air, from the soul of a long-abused people, it leapt, irresistible. And like the biggest of bangs, it exploded. And the nation was drenched in blood and smiles, hate and sweat, tears and lies, generosity and gas bombs, police brutality and corporate compassion, scimitars and penguins, slander and song, all proof—absolute, exhilarating, genuine proof—that all was well with the ageless Turkish youth. And all was wrong with the treasonous government, now ten years about its nasty business.

    No one understood it. How could simple trees have harbored such explosive force?  Could mere trees, so easily destroyed like scraps of wood by the thoughtless, thieving government, spark a revolution? A clump of trees in the center of the toxic city, a spurt of gas on a beautiful woman in a red dress by a boneheaded cop, and suddenly the nation was enraged and on the march. And in this manner a terrible beauty came to Turkey. Call it freedom. Call it self-defense. Call it rebellion. Label it at your peril. No one understood it then. No one understands it now. Call it Gezi.

    First came the young people, swift, agile and beautiful. They made Gezi Park a new Garden of Eden, a place of peaceful protest, resistant occupation and serenity. These kids will save these trees. And their roots became one. “Intolerable insolence,” said a government mouthpiece. Who needs trees when another shopping center can plunder the people? And in good time the fascists sent their brutal police to make the world safe for relentless capitalism. Like thieves in the night they came, these so-called police and their helmets, armored vests, clubs, pistols, gas bombs, rubber bullets, incendiary devices and cannons belching poisonous sprays. A sneak attack against kids armed only with dreams, patriotism and courage. It was no contest. The cops cleared the park but the world learned the exact nature of the Turkish government and its supporters. In a week, the lies and slander from the now emboldened government left the prime minister standing naked. And out of gas, tear gas, so intense was the resistance. Blindings, murders, beatings, knifings, slashings, thousands injured, all of them democratically and peacefully assembled to register their legitimate protest, six lovely boys dead in the stinking street. The cities were shrouded in fog. Democratic, peace-loving America had to resupply poisonous gas canisters to its naked puppet prince. Their ambassador spouted his usual gas about the Turkish government having a “conversation” with its people. Imagine, such a conversation…perhaps a conversation like America had with the innocent Japanese people in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.

    And then the kids disengaged. They turned passive. Like stones they stood in the public space claiming their right to exist, as one, or as a million. And the government threw more gas. And the fascists were more clearly defined by their violence. Slowly, ever so slowly, the fascist carcass was unveiled, twisting slowly on its meat hook.

    The ruling elite think it went away, that a little more violence will finish it forever. More jailings, more gassings, more state-sponsored murders, more denial of public space to the public, more threats, more nonsensical self-serving “democratic” political packages,  more, more, more, more of the same. This will surely work. They fear for their political lives, these fossils from a world that is finishing. All those who have grown drunk on its atmosphere of greed, ignorance and violence will never understand Gezi. They gape and gasp like beached carp stinking in the noonday sun. Such will be their end. And thus it has begun…

    James (Cem) Ryan, Ph.D.
    Istanbul
    1 October 2013


  • Poor Richards Report

    Poor Richards Report

    Poor Richards Report
    Chapter 6
    Revise the Federal Reserve Act of 1913
    When J P Morgan was testifying before Congress he kept warning them that should pass national banking law. They kept saying “but we have you JP”.
    Well in June J P Morgan died and Congress in its infinite wisdom appointed 6 house members and 6 senators to come up with a bill. The members were considered to be of the highest ethical standards of the day. The party lines were split 50 /50 in each branch and they were told not to submit a bill unless the vote was unanimous. 12-0! They had all sorts of advice from all directions including President Wilson. Finally on Dec 23, 1913 they presented the bill to Congress in the morning. They approved by voice note and the Senate had two NO votes. That afternoon President Woodrow Wilson signed it in to law and appointed JP’s right hand man at President of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY. That was the main power base because that bank cleared all international transactions. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve was just a figure head until The Eisenhower Administration.
    The main composition of the law was for it to be nonpolitical. Politically free from political bickering. To insure that; it would take a 2/3 vote in the house to remove the chairman.
    That is why under pressure Jimmy Carter had to appoint Paul Volcker as the Fed Chairman to his man who had sent the dollar reeling because of the oil crisis. OPEC wanted a basket of currencies because they were losing money with the dollar.
    Paul Volcker killed inflation and when his term was up Donald Regan, then Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan, advised dumping Volcker because he was a democrat. Probably one the greatest chairmen was being discarded because of political reasons. Then he had the gall to ask who would be a good replacement. That was a hit below the belt. So a mighty chairman recommended an impotent small fry –Alan Greenspan. The new Fed Chairman learned how to speak around corners and confuse most politicians in Congress and the press. They called it “Greenspeak”.
    Two lessons we learn from this episode. The head of powerful Brokerage firms (now called banks) are poor candidates to advice presidents or run major agencies or hold cabinet posts. They think money and not people.
    All nations should have something similar to the Federal reserve Act and make sure appointment does not occur during major election years.

  • Poor Richards Report

    Poor Richards Report

    Poor Richards Report
    Chapter 5
    Break Up The Major “Banks”
    The Chairman or President of every major bank worldwide is a BASTARD! To become one he had to be one.
    Today most heads of banks were brokers. The true banker today thinks only how to make more money. With the checks and balances of yesteryear are now only myths and the power of money can be seen everywhere. The Holy Bible of the Christians cautions against greed all through the Old and New Testaments and many other religious organizations I believe.
    The control of the flow of money is of the utmost importance. Eras of easy credit have led to access of wealth into too few hands. Once one has made a million one wants to make more. To do this one must cut corners and expenses at the expense of many.
    Eventually politicians have to be bribed to make everything legal. Not ethical, but legal in the eyes of the law.
    Unknowingly the public is being bribed by rising markets while manipulation rides the ocean waves. Each wave crashed onshore just before the manipulations sell. Then a new wave emerges with new surfers enjoying the thrill.
    Then underneath it all a tsunami comes and everyone wants to sell. But To whom?
    It happens in every cycle. The institutions (banks, hedge funds, mutual funds, and large investors that can manipulate a security) who control the flow of funds, beside the government and their agencies, decide to sell along with the average investor, find out there are bids for securities. No buyers. Markets close. It starts with one country and the sellers go the next country.
    Finally good old USA! It does not matter how strong the economy is. If the umpires are bribed, eventually the fans will riot.
    This is fact. We must act now before the bomb explodes.
    We must break up the banks. Every banker with brokerage experience gets shifted to brokerage business. Bankers now become real bankers and make loans and mortgages and service them locally. No more dumping them on Washington D.C.. This will enable banks to pay interest on deposits based upon a percentage of earnings. Certain amounts can be daily at a lower rate while a higher rate can used for long term deposits.
    Banks will not be allowed to issue Certificates of Deposits, or borrow money in the open markets, but only from the Federal Reserve. (Banks that have excess funds at the end of the day, lend those funds to another bank that belongs to the Federal Reserve that needs it overnight and pays a small interest fee in doing so.)
    All citizens of every country earn a wage with which to live by. These wages are the basis for a country’s strength economically. If the wage earner has faith in the financial institution and their government then they make deposits. If they lack faith, like many Japanese have in the past, they put the cash in the home freezers. Thus the expression – Cold Hard Cash”
    Each country needs a strong conservative banking system that will attract deposits from the local community.
    Listed below are the crucial areas of reform. Please keep in mind that they are draconian in nature but do we have a choice? It is going to happen sooner or later.

    Summary of Bank Break ups more to follow later on.
    1. All banks will pay off shareholders at Net Tangible Book Value.
    2. Banks will break up into Commercial, Financial, and Savings.
    3. No Directors shall be a public office holder or a member of the clergy.
    4. Each director will own a portion of the bank based upon book value. Fines will be paid from directors based their percentage of BV holdings.
    5. Commercial shall consist of checking accounts, mortgages, local business endeavors that serve the community, county and State.
    6. The Financial shall consist of brokerage, bonds , research, distribution of equities to public and private accounts.
    7. Savings banks can originate or buy mortgages from commercial banks. They will have the use of money market funds at a lower rate than savings accounts that will pay quarterly.
    8. All accounts will be computerized to determine that all legal requirements are being met. This will stop corporations opening several accounts at various banks. This “inspector general” can be paid from funds at the various banks he serves.

  • Turkic Groups Fund Questionable Congressional Trips to Azerbaijan

    Turkic Groups Fund Questionable Congressional Trips to Azerbaijan

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    The international media is replete these days with scandalous stories about European and American politicians being wined and dined in Azerbaijan and Turkey, for self-serving ulterior motives.

    The latest such exposé, published by the Houston Chronicle on July 27, was titled: “Congress members’ trips raise red flags.” The article revealed that five Turkic non-profit groups spent $274,459 for the lavish travel of 10 members of Congress and 35 staffers to Azerbaijan in May 2013. The funds were contributed by:

    — Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians (Houston): $101,680
    — Turkish American Federation of the Midwest (Chicago): $68,324
    — Turkic American Alliance (Washington, DC): $52,975
    — Turkic American Federation of the Southeast (Atlanta): $26,550
    — Council of Turkic American Associations (New York): $24,930

    The 10 members of Congress travelling to Baku on all-expenses-paid trip were:

    — Danny Davis (D-IL): $24,084
    — Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX): $19,962
    — Jim Bridenstine (R-OK): $14,173
    — Ted Poe (R-TX): $13,431
    — Steve Stockman (R-TX): $13,431
    — Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM): $12,780
    — Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): $12,034
    — Leonard Lance (R-NJ): $9,798
    — Yvette Clark (D-NY): $8,701
    — Gregory Meeks (D-NY): $6,431

    The actual purpose of the congressional trip was to attend a conference sponsored in part by SOCAR (Azerbaijan’s national oil company) which along with one of its partners, NIOC (Iran’s national oil company), was embarking on a $28 billion project to develop the Shah Deniz gas field. It was no coincidence that the junket was organized at a time when Congress was considering additional sanctions against Iran. The Azeris and their Iranian partners desperately needed an exemption from Congress to carry out their mega-project. Not surprisingly, less than two months after the congressional delegation’s return from its extravagant trip, the House of Representatives went along and approved the sought after exemption!

    The Houston Chronicle explained the speedy approval of this bill by a usually slow-moving Congress by the fact that “SOCAR, along with other Azeri government interests, has become one of Washington, D.C.’s big spenders in efforts to win American allies to get its petroleum products to markets worldwide…. Lobbyists, the Azeri government and energy companies all participated in the elaborate Baku gathering” at the plush Heydar Aliyev Center with Pres. Ilham Aliyev as keynote speaker. “At least four congressmen took along a spouse or a fiancé. Some flew first-class and extended their trips with stays in luxury hotels in Turkey. The congressional travel tabs alone totaled $270,000.”

    Interestingly, the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, the main organizer of the visit, “did not disclose any corporate support or foreign government assistance for the Baku congressional trips,” as required by Federal law, the Chronicle reported. The five Turkic non-profit organizations and 10 Members of Congress may have violated congressional ethics rules and federal law by not disclosing corporate donations for the trip, the Chronicle stated.

    Records show that Cong. Meeks “did not disclose his Baku trip expenses until a year after the deadline,” the Chronicle disclosed. Moreover, Cong. Stockman had received an additional $5,000 in campaign contributions in three installments, during the same month as the trip, from Kemal Oksuz, president of the Turquoise Council, who leads two non-profits that share the same address in Houston. “Both groups were identified as sponsors or organizers of the Baku conference, and both have accepted money from SOCAR. One group, the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan, operates as a U.S.-based public relations arm of SOCAR,” according to the Chronicle.

    Oksuz reportedly told an American journalist in Baku that the oil conference had cost $1.5 million. He also said that some guests had received hand-woven rugs as gifts — which would be a violation, if not reported to proper U.S. authorities.

    The Chronicle revealed that “many of those non-profits are led by followers of Fetullah Gulen, a moderate Turkish ex-Imam who lives in exile in an enclave in Pennsylvania…. Collectively, Turkic groups have funded 272 foreign trips for members of Congress and their staffs from 2009-2013″ to Azerbaijan and Turkey.

    In addition to its eye-opening investigative article, the Houston Chronicle published a blistering editorial, chiding the 10 members of Congress for “being distressingly naïve or disgustingly corrupt,” and in return for “a few well-placed donations,” serving the interests of Azerbaijan, “a corrupt kleptocracy ruled by the Aliyev family, which lines its pockets while keeping political dissent firmly quashed.”

  • A DUCK?

    A DUCK?

    Things are not always what they appear to be. The same goes for people. Take me, for example. I am an American. Since my grandfather was born in Ireland, I am able to be a citizen of Ireland, hence legally Irish. Yet through birth I was always of Irish descent, whether a citizen of Ireland or not. Citizenship is a legal formality. My great-grandfather was German. So I am also of German descent, though to a much lesser degree. I was baptized Catholic as an infant, an event over which I had absolutely no control. Accordingly, I was enrolled in a mixed-gender catholic elementary school named Saint Barnabas. (I remained ignorant of who this Barnabas fellow was until I came to Turkey and learned that he was from Cyprus and preached in Antakya). I served mass as an altar boy, thus memorizing much Latin. In my last year of elementary school, I won the parish Christian Doctrine competition. One Saturday in May, I competed at the city-wide level. I hurriedly finished the examination in order to get to the Polo Grounds in time to see the New York Giants play the Brooklyn Dodgers. Both the Giants and I lost that day. I was very upset about the Giants.

    My teachers in elementary school were all women, mostly religious nuns. I went to an all-boys catholic secondary school. My teachers in high school were all men, mostly religious brothers. My grades were good throughout. My close friends were mostly Christian due to my neighborhood. We competed in sports against Jews and African-Americans and Puerto Ricans without incident. We traveled freely through their neighborhoods. We rode subways and buses without fear. We played basketball in Harlem in a playground next to the Polo Grounds. My boyhood athletic hero was Willie Mays, the black centerfielder for the baseball Giants. I went to university at the United States Military Academy at West Point, then all male, including the faculty. And then I graduated and another life began. I never went to these “homes” again. And now I live in Turkey, as a Turk, since my wife is Turkish. And since my last name ends in –yan, I could nominally be mistaken for an Armenian.

    What are we? What’s your story? There is an old saying about this question. “If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck then it probably is a duck.” So what are we, “probably?”

    Hurry up now, decide. People are dying by the thousands because of what they are or appear to be. They are dying by the thousands because they are “different.” Am I different? Are you different? Different from what? From whom? What does “different” mean?

    And now, again the question! So what am I? A Christian? Irish? An American? A CIA agent? A radical? A tree lover? An agnostic? A revolutionary? A military man? A New Yorker? A Marxist? A book lover? A Turk? An Armenian? A non-Armenian? A non-Sunni? A non-Alevi? A non-Jew? A non-Turkmen? A non-Syrian? What am I?

    A prime minister! A prime minister, for his background, fortunate beyond belief, spews hate speeches, incessantly orders destruction of the environment, covets wealth and power, despises differences, sneers at the hope-filled enthusiasm of youth, orders them maimed by gangster police. He is never happy, this prime minister. He divides like a Samurai warrior cleaves. Finely, precisely, he slices and minces and dices, all people, all things, all ideas not his own. His ill repute stifles. Criminality and lawlessness describe the ruined landscape, the waste land, that is Turkey. His face tells the story of his ruination. This torment of the spirit cannot be effaced. What does his mirror tell him? Does anyone tell him? Someone should. What is he? His is the story of Dorian Gray.

    And me! What am I? I don’t know. Today, looking to the coming catastrophe that is the political system of Turkey, I consider myself a duck.

     

    James (Cem) Ryan

    Istanbul

    9 August 2014

     

    Picture of Dorian Gray Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (1897-1983) As seen in the 1945 film.