Category: News

  • The Corona “Global False Alarm”, the Campaign against Racism and Neoliberalism

    The Corona “Global False Alarm”, the Campaign against Racism and Neoliberalism

    By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, June 06, 2020 Region: Europe, USA Theme: Media Disinformation, Police State & Civil Rights, Science and Medicine

    Neoliberalism in Latin America

    “The media is the most powerful entity on earth. Because they control the minds of the masses, they have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power…If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X

    “For one bright moment back in the late 1960s, we actually believed that we could change our country. We had identified the enemy. We saw it up close, we had its measure, and we were very hopeful that we would prevail. The enemy was hollow where we had substance. All of that substance was destroyed by an assassin’s bullet.” – William Pepper (page 15, The Plot to Kill King)

    ***

    Across America, as well as in Western Europe, there is an ongoing campaign against racism following the dramatic events in Minneapolis. Our thoughts are with George Floyd, his family and friends.  We stand in solidarity with African-Americans who are the target of police killings and racial discrimination. Colonial and contemporary history has left its mark. Today, African-Americans are also the victims of neoliberalism which triggers poverty, social inequality and unemployment.

    The campaign against racism including the protest movements cannot be divorced from the broader battle against neoliberalism and the carefully designed instruments of economic and social oppression.

    At this juncture, there is an important question which must be addressed. The Covid-19 pandemic, which is based on manipulated data coupled with a fear campaign is destroying people’s lives. It is an act of economic and social warfare against humanity. It is carried out Worldwide.

    The most recent evidence from a leaked report of Germany’s Ministry of the Interior confirms that the COVID-19 virus is a “Global False Alarm”. According to the team of experts contracted by the German Government, Covid-19 is of lesser significance than the 2017-2018 seasonal flu, which barely made the headlines. While the report acknowledges  the dangers to public health, it nonetheless emphasizes that “The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm”. [in German in the report: globalen Fehlalarm]

    Other reports come to similar conclusions not to mention the manipulation of death certificates.

    Italy’s lockdown in early March was justified by quoting “fake data”. Vittorio Sgarbi, MP stated in Parliament that the closure of 60% of Italy’s economy was taken on the basis of an “estimated” 25,000 Coronavirus deaths.

    “It’s not true,” he said. “According to the National Institute of Health, 96.3% did not die of coronavirus, but of other pathologies stated Sgarbi – which means that only 925 have died from the virus and 24,075 have died from other things claimed Sgarbi, “… the virus was little more than an influenza. Don’t lie! Tell the truth!”

    The lies are numerous:  Both in Britain and the US, “duplicate counting” has been used to inflate the reported positive cases.

    Many prominent scientists and politicians have courageously spoken out:

    Senator Dr. Scott Jensen of Minnesota “received a  7-page document that showed him how to fill out a death certificate as a “COVID-19 diagnosis” even when there isn’t a lab test confirming the diagnosis”. According to Jensen:

    “Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.” (Dr. Sen. Scott Jensen, from Fox Interview, emphasis added)

    Meanwhile, politicians have been lying through their teeth, the media has been entrusted to sustaining the fear campaign. People’s lives are threatened. Lies and Bribes are the driving force. Politicians and scientists are co-opted.

    All of which is intent on justifying “social distancing” as well as enforcing the infamous lockdown which confines people to their homes, in many cases without income, food and  medical attention.  And people obey because they are scared.

    But why have these issues not been raised by the anti-racism campaign?

    Confinement is “racist”. It serves as a  justification to deny peoples’ fundamental right to employment. It’s social engineering. The lockdown destroys our institutions, undermines family life and social relations, destroys culture (including music and the arts), closes down schools and universities, and of course it impoverishes large sectors of the World population.

    And if the pandemic is “A Global False Alarm” (Official Germany Report), there is no justification for closing down the economy. But that report along many other independent reports is subject to media censorship.

    The Anti-Racism Campaign and The Lockdown

    The lockdown from the outset is being used as a means to destabilize the US economy and create massive unemployment. Why then is the campaign “against racism” firmly supportive of the lockdown?

    This campaign against racism is not a protest movement against the financial elites who are pressuring governments to postpone the reopening of the national economy as long as possible.

    Big Money controls the politicians. They control the media that wages the fear campaign. They are also the creditors of the State, who are now in the process of concocting a multi-trillion dollar loan package for indebted governments. Their intent is to deregulate the labor market, and pick up the pieces of bankrupt enterprises.

    The protests and the riots serve their interests. The financial elites are not the target of the protest movement. Quite the opposite: their elite billionaire foundations are supporting many of the progressive NGOs which are waging the campaign against racism, while also paying lip service to the Democratic Party which is firmly against the reopening of the US economy as part of their 2020 election campaign.

    BLM’s #WhatMatters2020 is a campaign aimed to maximize the impact of the BLM movement by galvanizing BLM supporters and allies to the polls in the 2020 U.S Presidential Election to build collective power and ensure candidates are held accountable for the issues that systematically and disproportionately impact Black and under-served communities across the nation.

    BLM’s #WhatMatters2020 will focus on issues concerning racial injustice, police brutality, criminal justice reform, Black immigration, economic injustice, LGBTQIA+ and human rights, environmental injustice, access to healthcare, access to quality education, and voting rights and suppression.

    This initiative will inspire and motivate people to ask themselves and their candidates are you really addressing What Matters in 2020?

    “What Matters in 2020?”   While rightly focussing on the police killings and the criminalization of justice,What Black Lives Matter fails to address is that African-Americans are the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic fear campaign, which in practice is contributing to social divisions, racism and the development beyond bounds of a police state apparatus.

    It’s a scam: Confinement creates unemployment, affecting African-American communities across the United States. It is an instrument of “economic injustice”. It’s neoliberalism.

    The economic and social “collateral damage” of COVID-19 is mass unemployment, poverty, death and despair. It emanates from the financial establishment.

    Supporting the lockdown which creates poverty and disrupts economic activity Worldwide has de facto racist overtones. Why? Because it destroys peoples lives.

    The damage incurred by a “global economic lockdown” far exceeds the health impacts of the corona virus.

    The objective of the financial elites, the billionaire foundations and philanthropists is the concentration of wealth, bankruptcy of the real economy, mass unemployment, social inequality and racism.

    If you are against racism, an end to confinement, the reopening of the national economy and the restoration of employment should be a number one priority.

    To put it bluntly: There is no mass protest movement against the COVID-19 lockdown. The lies are accepted at face value.

    The WHO is funded by the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma, politicians around the World are co-opted and bribed. But at the same time, the billionaire charities and foundations (including Soros, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller et al) are financing the “progressive” anti-racist NGOs, which are acting as a “controlled opposition”.

    Manufactured dissent and the funding of dissent is also a multibillion dollar undertaking. “The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations”.

    And these NGOs have decided to overlook the fact that African-Americans are the victims of neoliberalism and the lockdown of the US economy.

    And the lockdown is an integral part of the 2020 election platform of the Democratic Party, which is a neoliberal pro-war racist agenda imposed by Wall Street, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex, et al.

    You cannot wage a battle against the Empire and then ask the Empire to finance your protest movements.

    “Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, former National Security Advisor and president of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979)

    BLM does not in any way “endanger” global capitalism:

    “… Black Lives Matter is increasingly awash in cash, raking in pledges of more than $100 million from liberal foundations [2016]… [including] The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy … That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million from top Democratic Party donor  George Soros …, as well as grant-making from the Center for American Progress.” [headed by John Podesta Jr., Obama’s White House chief of staff]

    This is not an issue of “choice” between Republicans and Democrats both of which are racist and corrupt. It is an issue of confronting the “Big Money” architects of this diabolical project to destabilize the economy, social relations and institutions of the entire planet. The police state and racism is an integral part of that “destabilization agenda”.

    A Real Grassroots Movement

    What we need is a real grassroots movement, across the land, nationally and internationally, independent of corporate funding. The Coronavirus crisis is an act of war against humanity. We must reach out to all those who are victims of the corona crisis. The legitimacy of the COVID-19 pandemic depends on fear,  disinformation and submission to higher authority.

    Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

    What is required is the development of a broad based independent grassroots network at all levels of society, urban areas, towns and villages, work places, parishes. Workers and  farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, schools, student unions, veterans associations, artists, musicians, church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement. The COVID-19 pandemic is based on a Lie. The consensus has to be broken. The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2020


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     215 Articles by: Prof Michel Chossudovsky

    About the author:

    Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.  He has taught as visiting professor in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. He has served as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has acted as a consultant for several international organizations. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com

  • Turkey Attempts to Take Over Armenian Properties in Jerusalem

    Turkey Attempts to Take Over Armenian Properties in Jerusalem

    By Harut SassounianPublisher, The California Courier www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com

    An article in the Jewish Press of February 13, 2020 exposed the activities of the Turkish Government to take over the Armenian and Christian Quarters of Jerusalem. The article by journalist Baruch Yedid is titled, “Turkey Working to Take Over Armenian Quarters in Jerusalem’s Old City.” 

    Jerusalem’s Armenian “residents have told TPS [Tazpit Press Service] about efforts of Turkish officials in recent years to persuade them to deny the Armenian holocaust perpetrated by the Turks a century ago and other actions to acquire property owned by local Christians, according to Yedid. 

    A Jerusalem Armenian, whose grandfather had survived the Armenian Genocide, told TPS that 40 minutes into a meeting with a Turkish female diplomat, she tried to convince him to drop his activities for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. “I realized that she wanted to persuade me to cease my activity to preserve the Armenian massacre.” The Armenian said that he immediately showed the door to the Turkish diplomat who understood that the Armenian community will never give up on the recognition of the Genocide. “We will wait another 100 years, but we will never rescind our demand for compensation until we reach a payment agreement, like the one that Israel signed with Germany,” the Armenian said.

    Other Armenian property owners in Jerusalem told TPS that Turkish government representatives recently offered them $3,000 grants for their various needs. However, Armenians rejected the Turkish bribes, calling them “silencing grants designed to ensure that the Turkish government will not be sued for the 1915-1917 massacres.” Even though the Israeli journalist Yedid uses the term ‘massacre’ in line with the Israeli Government’s denialist policy, he quickly deviates from that policy by explaining that “the Armenian extermination was a deliberate and systematic genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War against the Armenian population in its territory. Even after World War I, Turks, Kurds, and Arabs continued to massacre Armenians until 1923, and it is widely believed that about half the Armenians in Turkey, about 1.5 million people, were murdered.” Turks and Kurds did commit Genocide against Armenians, but I am not aware of any massacres of Armenians by Arabs.

    Yedid continued his article by citing examples of Turkish attempts to purchase Armenian properties in Jerusalem: “Turkish pressures are also manifest in its activity to acquire Armenian assets. TPS learned that a few months ago, the residents of the Armenian Quarter were shocked to find that one of their homes was sold to a Muslim, three times its real value. An inquiry revealed that funding for the purchase of the Armenian property came from Turkey. Following the incident, some of the community leaders met to review the chain of events and took action to prevent the leakage of the community’s assets to the Turks. There is still a lingering fear among the Armenians of the Turks taking over or buying more property.” 

    Yedid cited another Turkish scheme to take over Christian properties in Jerusalem: “One Christian trader, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the Turks recently transferred to the Jordanian Waqf [Muslim endowment] very old ownership certificates, some crumbling, including Ottoman-era documents and property ownership documents in the Armenian and Christian Quarters. The trader, who showed TPS photos of several of the certificates, says the Turks have asked the Waqf to verify the documents which are being used to purchase the assets.” It is paradoxical that the Turkish government would not disclose from its archives the certificates of properties (deeds of trust) owned by Armenians prior to the Genocide, yet it would send copies of property certificates to a Jordanian Waqf.

    Yedid also covered in his article “the growing Turkish activity in Jerusalem and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood [which] are of concern to Israel. In its recent annual intelligence assessment, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] Intelligence Division has, for the first time, defined Turkey as a threat.”

    Yedid then described Israel’s reluctance to recognize the Armenian Genocide: “Israeli officials have often raised the possibility of recognizing the Armenian holocaust as a counter-reaction to Turkish activity against Israel, which includes the hosting of Hamas’ terrorist headquarters in Turkey. Over the years, Israel has refrained from officially recognizing the Armenian genocide, fearing that such recognition would damage diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey.” This is a nonsense argument as Israel’s relations with Turkey are already damaged and its recognition of the Armenian Genocide will not cause any further damage, just like last fall’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. House and the Senate did not negatively affect US-Turkish relations.

    The Israeli journalist correctly pointed out that “Turkey monitors all publications on the Armenian genocide and considers the issue of great significance to Turkish national security, and accordingly, the Turks have not relented with their attempt to persuade the Armenians in Jerusalem to cease their commemorative endeavors.”

    Yedid also reported that the Turkish government has been encouraging Turkish tourism to Jerusalem by paying the cost of travel to mosques in Jerusalem and the West Bank: “Turkish nonprofits operate in Jerusalem daily, helping mainly the Muslim Brotherhood and Jerusalem religious activities. A source in the Armenian Quarter said that Turkish tourists in the Old City have also recently been working against the Armenians, tearing up posters and publications about the Armenian genocide. Graffiti inscriptions in condemnation of the Armenians were sprayed on the Quarter’s walls.”

    Furthermore, the Turkish ‘Heritage’ Society is active in Jerusalem “in the fields of education, culture, real estate and welfare, and also carries funding for the ‘convoy project’ to transport thousands of Muslim worshipers to mosques as well as funding tens of thousands of meals to break the Ramadan fast,” according to Yedid.

    Similarly, TIKA, Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, funded several projects in Jerusalem. Dozens of mosques and houses have been renovated by Turkey.

    It is up to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to counter the Turkish efforts by precluding local Armenians from selling their properties to Turkish buyers. The Armenian Government’s Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs should assist the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to oppose the Turkish attempts to encroach on the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem.

  • Ümit Haluk Bayülken

    Ümit Haluk Bayülken

    Ümit Haluk Bayülken
    Ümit Haluk Bayülken

    Diplomat, Statesman, Politician

    Birth: 07 Temmuz, 1921
    Istanbul, Turkey

    Education

    Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences

    Diplomat, politician and statesman. He was born on July 7, 1921 in Istanbul. He graduated from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences (1944). He worked at the Foreign Affairs Ministry as; Frankfurt vice consulate (1947), general secretary (1964), Ambassador to London (1966), Head of Turkish delegation in UN (1969). He was the foreign affairs minister in Nihat Erim, Ferit Melen and Naim Talu governments (1971-1974) and the general secretary of CENTO (1975-1977). After 1980 September 12, military coup he was appointed as a general secretary of the President and also as a contingent senator. He was the Minister of National Defense in Bülent Ulusu government (1980-1983).

    He was the Antalya deputy from MDP in 1983 elections. After his party has dissolved itself, he continued with his duty as an independent deputy. He has received numerous charters, medals and badges at national and international levels. Some of these are; Great Cross Order of Merit from the President of Federal Germany (1965), Spain Catholic Isabel Order (1964), Great Victoria Order of the Queen of England (1967), Sitarei Pakistan Order of Pakistani President (1970) etc.

    He died in Ankara (2007) and was buried in Karşıyaka Cemetery.

    WORKS:

    Değişen Dünya Koşullarında Ortak Güvenlik ve Savunma Kuruluşları (1977), Birleşmiş Milletler ve Hukukun Üstünlüğü İlkesi (1979), İnsanlığın Barış İdeali ve Atatürkçü Dış Politika (1981).

    REFERENCE: Türkiye Kültür ve Sanat 2008 Yıllığı (2008), İhsan Işık (TEKAA, 2009).

  • Why does Turkey send masks to the USA

    Why does Turkey send masks to the USA

    Turkey makes their own masks now. They share with the US because even though the US chose to support the YPG (an offshoot of the mutual enemy PKK, designated a terrorist organization by both Democrat and Republican administrations), Turkey and the US are still allies.

    Hopefully US policy will mature so we can repair the damage done by the support to that group. The reported reason for that partnership between US and YPG was to fight ISIS. But the problem is that YPG only allied with US to fight ISIS to take territory belonging to Syria, not because we’re old allies. We aren’t. We were enemies with PKK, but the Pentagon rebranded fighters to sell the concept to the American public who is not paying attention to such things. It’s a mess. There are no real US allies out of that conflict.

    There’s a very fundamental misunderstanding among many Americans, regarding Turkey. People question why we’re friends.

    We’re friends because we have common goals and common interests and common values, believe it or not. Our continued friendship, business relationship, and military alliance is valuable and mutually beneficial.

    An alliance with communist rebels is not beneficial, especially when it damages our relationship with Turkey, an actual nation and long-standing member of NATO who hosts our military personnel on bases on their soil (even when many EU countries refuse to do so, Turkey stands with us and supports us. We’re the ones who have not shown them support, withholding missile systems while allowing them to partner with us on the F35. It sends mixed signals and makes them turn elsewhere for equipment they need for their defense. Why do they need extra defense? Because we’re supporting their enemy in the neighboring country!)

    Source: Quora

  • Turkey needs flexible foreign policy now more than ever

    Turkey needs flexible foreign policy now more than ever

    Turkey needs to adopt a softer foreign policy to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it’s triggered, but the government’s rhetoric makes such a shift highly unlikely.

    Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a joint news conference following talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 13, 2020. Photo by Pavel Golovkin/REUTERS.
    Cengiz Candar @cengizcandar

    Topics covered

    covid-19, core-periphery eu relations, turkish influence in the middle east, turkish influence in syria, turkish influence in libya, uae, turkish foreign policy, turkish government

    May 18, 2020

    When Ahmet Davutoglu was Turkey’s foreign minister from 2009 to 2014, he frequently called a group of journalists to share his vision of Turkish foreign policy. A chatterbox who can speak for hours, he would reveal his views on history, strategy and international relations. He loved to talk geopolitics and emphasize Turkey’s central role in the international arena. He used to frequently refer to a compass metaphor placing Turkey at the heart of every major conflict zone in the world.

    He argued that Turkey has to adopt a foreign policy with a 360-degree vision. The current foreign policy-makers of Turkey are following in the footsteps of Davutoglu, who succeeded Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as prime minister and party chairman in 2014 until he was fired by him in May 2016.

    Today Davutoglu is the leader of the Future Party, breaking away from the ruling Justice and Development Party. Regardless of whether one agreed with his arguably ambitious views regarding foreign policy, he was a high-profile figure as Turkey’s foreign minister. His successor Mevlut Cavusoglu is underwhelming in comparison.

    Nonetheless, Cavusoglu inherited Davutoglu’s Turkey with foreign policy issues to contend with in every direction. Promoting Erdogan as a leader with global stature means Turkey needs to act as a global international relations player far beyond its means, in conflict or friction with so many foreign governments.

    With this in mind, the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s reaction to the joint declaration by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates and France on the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya is noteworthy.

    The five countries clash with Turkey regarding the Eastern Mediterranean’s gas drilling, maritime boundaries and Libya. The Turkish Foreign Ministry accused the group of “seeking regional chaos and instability.”

    With the fiery language employed so frequently in Turkey’s domestic politics, it characterized the five countries as “have fallen into a delirium as their agendas are disrupted by Turkey.” The statement avoided the word Cyprus and used GCA instead, referring to the Greek Cypriot Administration. Three of the countries facing Turkey’s wrath are members of the European Union, with which some observers say Turkey will need to repair relations in the wake of the pandemic crisis that has left a devastating impact on the Turkish economy.

    Among the three EU members, France was singled out and accused of seeking to establish “a state of terror in Syria” that would naturally be detrimental for Turkey’s security.

    “It is apparent that France, whose intentions to establish a state of terror in Syria were disrupted with a heavy blow by our Operation Peace Spring, is attempting to be the patron of this axis of malice,” the statement said.

    Interestingly, the Turkish military operation conducted against the Syrian Kurds in October 2019 could be interpreted as foiling the intentions of France — Turkey’s NATO ally — in northeastern Syria. Moreover, the Turkish Foreign Ministry accused France of being “the patron of this axis of malice,” a metaphor reminiscent of US President George W. Bush’s qualification of “axis of evil” including Iran, Iraq and North Korea in a 2002 speech.

    On May 11, the day the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s belligerent statement was issued, Cavusoglu accused the UAE of “bringing chaos to the Middle East,” speaking to Akit TV, a hard-line Islamist television channel.

    “If you are asking who is destabilizing this region, who is bringing chaos, then we would say Abu Dhabi without any hesitation,” he said, and added, “It is a reality that they are the force that unsettled Libya and destroyed Yemen.”

    He also accused the Emirates of extending support to the militants in Somalia, where Turkey has a military base to train Somalian troops.

    Turkey’s uneasy foreign policy objectives seem not to be confined to France, the UAE and the other countries in Ankara’s “axis of malice” but spread throughout the vastness of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Middle East and North Africa. It also extends to the United States and the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, as they are involved in mediating between rival Syrian Kurdish groups.

    “Turkish disgruntlement was palpable in a May 11 dispatch in Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. It characterized the effort to unite disparate Syrian Kurdish factions as more of a conspiracy aimed at creating ‘international representation space’ for the ‘terrorist organization in northern Syria,’” wrote Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman. “Ominously and unusually, Turkey also fingered Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and a longtime ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Anadolu said Barzani had been ‘commissioned’ by France and the United States to implement the plan.”

    Turkey seems to be pursuing a conflict policy with everyone.

    At the crossroads of an unprecedented economic and financial crisis that requires Turkey to reconcile with the United States and European Union, the trajectory of Turkish foreign policy puzzles many sober minds.

    The Wall Street Journal reported May 13 that against the pressures of the pandemic, Turkey’s practice of using up its foreign exchange reserves has become unsustainable and the country is headed for a crisis.

    Such a situation demands flexible and soft-spoken foreign policy, contrary to what Erdogan’s Turkey manifests today.

  • ‘Disagreement between friends’: Ret. Adm. Stavridis downplays Turkey’s S-400 deployment but warns about Russia threat

    ‘Disagreement between friends’: Ret. Adm. Stavridis downplays Turkey’s S-400 deployment but warns about Russia threat

    Oya Bain oyabain@gmail.com

    James G. Stavridis
    James G. Stavridis

    Yesterday I participated in the THO program of General Stavridis and Fikri Isik. I am very impressed with both of them. Stavridis was excellent, moderate, mature, and had only best comments about Turkey and Turkish armed forces. Stavridis probably grew up with the endless brainwashing coming from his father. Also, the common people on both sides suffered terribly during those years. Probably it was later during the population exchange the father has left Anatolia, not early in 1920. Greeks occupied Izmir on May 15 1919 and advancing in Anatolia in 1920s

    I think we have to look forward in such cases. It appears that once Stavridis got to know the Turks his impressions and feelings changed. He was the commander of US Southern Command 2006-2009 and Supreme Commander of European NATO forces 2009-2013. The book was written in 2008.

    changed.http://click1.crm.foreignpolicy.com/qwfggbrdrngtmmmvtvnbhtjrcwtbbjdvhvmdwhfwpsmpw_jmrbjqjnqnwbvfnvjmvss.html?a=21438&b=Morning+Brief+OC&c=21438

    Amiral Stavridis hakkinda ek bilgi…

    Early life and family[edit]

    Stavridis was born in West Palm Beach, Florida,[23] son of Shirley Anne (Schaffer) and Paul George Stavridis.[24][25][26] His father was a United States Marine Corps colonel who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.[27] Stavridis is married to Laura Hall, author of Navy Spouses Guide.[28] His paternal grandparents were Anatolian Greeks, born and raised in Western Anatolia, who emigrated to the United States.[29] His mother’s family was Pennsylvania Dutch (German).[30]

    In his 2008 book, Destroyer Captain: Lessons of a First Command, Stavridis wrote:

    In the early 1920s, my grandfather, a short, stocky Greek schoolteacher named Dimitrios Stavridis, was expelled from Turkey as part of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (read pogrom) directed against Greeks living in the remains of the Ottoman Empire. He barely escaped with his life in a small boat crossing the Aegean Sea to Athens and thence to Ellis Island. His brother was not so lucky and was killed by the Turks as part of the violence directed at the Greek minority.

    A NATO exercise off the coast of modern Turkey was the “most amazing historical irony [he] could imagine,” and prompted Stavridis to write of his grandfather: “His grandson, who speaks barely a few words of Greek, returns in command of a billion-dollar destroyer to the very city—Smyrna, now called İzmir—from which he sailed in a refugee craft all those ye

    Bulent Dogruyol