Ahead of the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair in October with Turkey as the guest country, Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk spoke to Deutsche Welle about unwanted political attention and his latest book.
DW-TV: About two years ago you learned that you would be the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Looking back over the past two years, has your life as a writer changed?
Orhan Pamuk: Winning the Nobel Prize Made Everything Political | Culture & Lifestyle | Deutsche Welle | 07.09.2008
– Andrew Bostom – –
Fethullah Gulen: Facilitating His Own “Ecumenical Brand” of Alcohol and Kaffir-Free Tourism, the Useful Idiots for Cultural Jihadism at [2] Foreign Policy Notwithstanding?
As [3] MEMRI’s Turkish blog reports (from August 26, 2008), the “fast disappearance” of restaurants in the important mountain resort of Uludag, is now being followed by another demand of Arab Muslim tourists to the region: the reduction of the number of passengers per cable car from 40, to a maximum of 25. Safety concerns, perhaps? Hardly! Arab Muslim tourists are insisting (via their travel agents) that they not be placed in too close proximity to “foreigners,” i.e., non-Muslim kaffirs /infidels, lest they have “…any bodily contact with their women and girls.” To accommodate their Arab clients’ anti-infidel bigotry, the Turkish AKP governed Bursa municipality has begun to impose these changes, extending a cable car line to the area of the hotels, and also declaring that this new line will include both “VIP” and sex-segregated (read Islamic sexual apartheid) cars as well.
Not surprisingly, a company affiliated with the “ecumenist” and, according to the feckless journal Foreign Policy, “[2] World’s Top Public Intellectual,” Fethullah Gulen—in reality [4] Mr. Gulen is a cultural jihadist par excellence—has been offered a non-competitive bid to complete the Islamic supremacist /apartheid cable car line.
Last July, a summary report also by MEMRI noted that,
In 1999, footage was aired on Turkish television of sermons delivered by Fethullah Gulen to a crowd of followers, in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey ruled by shari’a as well as the methods that should be used to attain that goal. In the sermons, he said:
“You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria… like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it… You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey… Until that time, any step taken would be too early – like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all – in confidence… trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here – [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here.”
The sermon continues: “When everything was closed and all doors were locked, our houses of isik [light] assumed a mission greater than that of older times. In the past, some of the duties of these houses were carried out by madrassas, some by schools, some by tekkes [Islamist lodges]… These homes had to be schools, had to be madrassas, [had to be] tekkes all at the same time. The permission did not come from the state, or the state’s laws, or the people who govern us. The permission was given by Allah… who wanted His name learned and talked about, studied, and discussed in those houses, as it used to be in the mosques.”
In another sermon, he said: “Now it is a painful spring that we live in. A nation is being born again. A nation of millions [is] being born – one that will live for long centuries, Allah willing… It is being born with its own culture, its own civilization. If giving birth to one person is so painful, the birth of millions cannot be pain-free. Naturally we will suffer pain. It won’t be easy for a nation that has accepted atheism, has accepted materialism, a nation accustomed to running away from itself, to come back riding on its horse. It will not be easy, but it is worth all our suffering and the sacrifices.”
In yet another sermon, he said, “The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web, to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do. We don’t lay the web to eat or consume them, but to show them the way to their resurrection, to blow life into their dead bodies and souls, to give them a life.”
By the time this was aired, Gulen had already left the country for the U.S., supposedly for health reasons. A year later, in 2000, he was indicted in absentia for attempting to change Turkey’s system of government and for “forming an illegal organization with the purpose of establishing an Islamist state.”
Gulen is clearly succeeding in absentia, the useful idiots for cultural jihadsm at Foreign Policy, notwithstanding.
All Articles Copyright © 2007-2008 Dr. Andrew Bostom | All Rights Reserved
URL to article:
One More Reason to Win:
Letting Sibel Edmonds Speak
October 30 2006
Counterbias.com
by W. David Jenkins III
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” — Edmund Burke
Sibel Edmonds once told me to “put aside 9/11” and instead concentrate on the workings of the Defense Department, amongst other government establishments, because what she had been trying to warn people about was considered by those involved as nothing more than “business as usual.” That was the real danger. What she had discovered during her short time with the FBI was so threatening to those doing such “business” that former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, couldn’t slap a gag order on her (and Congress) fast enough. But a lot of us already know that.
Truth be known, Dennis Hastert has more to worry about than the Mark Foley scandal. In fact, he may be seeing the writing on the wall regarding his upcoming departure from Congress as a welcome relief. However, that result is not only contingent upon a Democratic win in November, but a Democratic majority willing to dig through the tangled mess that is Turkish and American “business relations.”
Now, one must understand why Turkey is a big player, albeit a clandestine one, on the world stage: it involves the desperate need for security and acceptance. Turkey shares with Israel common enemies such as Syria, Iran and Iraq, and maintains relations in the U.S. in order to secure financial aid and military technology. These relations are enhanced by corporations, lobbyists and conservative think-tanks sharing a mutual interest in geopolitical advantage in the Middle East as well as making some big bucks.
These relations are connected between former and present Defense Department members, Project for a New American Century members, AIPAC, MIC Inc., Jack Abramoff, The Livingston Group and others. In other words, the more you dig the bigger the headache, yet you’ll get an idea of how intertwined all the players are.
Wanna go for a little ride? Let’s start with Hastert. The House Speaker has received contributions from Turkish sources to the tune of at least $500,000, and Edmonds knows that there are tapes from wiretaps that will back up this claim. One of the groups who bragged on those tapes about these illegal contributions was the American Turkish Council (ATC), but Hastert denies any ties to this or other Turkish groups. Yet between 1996 and 2002, Hastert made multiple trips to Turkey and would return home with so many “gifts” that his support staff was surprised that the “plane even got off the ground.”
In turn, Hastert has been very helpful to Turkey by using his authority to pull Congressional backing for a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. Hastert, of course has denied this.
On June 3, 2003, Hastert’s political action committee held a $1500-a-plate fundraiser at Jack Abramoff’s restaurant where he received large donations from, among others, one Duane R. Gibson. Gibson is a consultant with the Livingston Group who has been lobbying on behalf of Turkey for about six years at the cost of $1.2 million a year. The only problem is that the money is not coming from the Turkish government and of course the FBI wants to know exactly who is shelling out all the dough. This is what Edmonds refers to as “business as usual,” and what is behind the façade in all of this is obviously so threatening that the government felt it necessary to implement an extraordinary gag order on Sibel and threaten members of her family.
Admittedly, the American–Turkish “connection” doesn’t make for glamorous news when put up against Iraq, Iran or North Korea, but many of the players in those headlines are also involved with Turkey. And if there were an active, inquisitive and motivated Congress in D.C., people might recognize the threat that so far has remained under the radar.
Sibel Edmonds stated many times that when certain intelligence regarding illegal activities (drug or illegal arms trafficking, etc.) which benefited alleged terrorist sponsors also implicated “certain allies or business interests,” then that intelligence was not passed on to counter-terrorism agents in the field. Turkish front groups under surveillance by the FBI (ATC and ATAA) were making large payments to officials high up in the government as well as lobbyists with connections to some of these same officials. These same groups were also nuzzling up to groups like AIPAC who had a mutual desire to embrace certain business interests that could enhance their pursuit of intelligence, influence and aid against common enemies.
With the rise to power of the neo-conservatives and their drive to secure dominance in the Middle East, these front groups found new opportunities. Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, infamous for their push into Iraq, were also recipients of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Turkish interests prior to joining the Bush Gang.
Other groups with long ties to Turkey as well as upper offices in the government consist of the aforementioned Livingston Group, Solarz & Associates, and The Cohen Group. All three are top members of the American Turkish Council with Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group, Joseph Ralston, sitting on their board of advisors. Getting pretty tangled up, huh?
One other firm I want to point out is the group M.I.C. Industries Inc. who boast of an “Ultimate Building Machine” on their web site (a machine worth a $60 million contract with Russia in 1997). Their board consists of, among others, William Cohen (Cohen Group/ATC) and Richard Armitage (PNAC/Valerie Plame outing) and is headed up by one Michael Asari who once teamed up with Alexander Haig in a corporation called US-CIS Venture Inc. which was established to assist in “developments” in Central Asia as well as establishing oil and gas pipeline projects through the region. M.I.C. Inc. is also one of the Livingston Group’s top clients.
These are some of the “business interests” I believe Edmonds’ was speaking of and here’s why. Enormous amounts of money are being funneled to top government officials and certain businesses whose members consist of former Defense and State Department officials and conservative think tanks that have a common interest in Turkey and Israel (in this case) and other countries that play a strategic part in a geo-political “business” plan. However, this money is not coming from those particular governments in question.
Currently, according to former CIA agent Philip Giraldi, there is an investigation into Israel’s illegal sale of U.S. military technology to countries like China and India. The companies mentioned in this article also have ties to the defense industry through their members’ history in government service – who also share close ties with Turkish front groups (as well as an alliance with AIPAC and JINSA) currently under investigation by the FBI. That these Turkish groups would be involved in the same illegal sales with the aid of the aforementioned businesses is not that difficult of a dot to connect as it definitely reflects the “can of worms” that Edmonds’ superiors at the FBI did not want opened. It’s also worth mentioning that Turkey is a large hub in the drugs coming out of Afghanistan and Edmonds has alluded to the drug trade in her past statements.
Yet, fellow FBI translator Malek Can Dickerson, who had encouraged Sibel to join the ATC, was suppressing intelligence Edmonds’ was uncovering regarding these front groups and their relationship to “certain allies and American business interests” in deference to the very organizations that the FBI had under investigation.
One can look back at the names mentioned in this criminal activity and notice that many of the players were involved in the more glamorous stories in the news over the past years. Armitage (MIC Inc./PNAC) leaking the name of a CIA operative who was investigating arms trafficking to Iran, and Feith and Perle (IA Inc./PNAC) who were instrumental in the invasion of Iraq and who are together with Michael Asari (MIC Inc.) pushing for an attack on Iran, are just four of the most notorious examples.
One other thing I want to point out is the sorry state of affairs when it comes to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit database which is maintained by the Department of Justice. This database contains the “who and how much” when it comes to “foreign investment” in exchange for representation in D.C.
Luke Ryland, who has done some remarkable and detailed work on the Edmonds story, pointed out that the “huge database that serves as the public’s lone window on lobbying activities by foreign governments has been allowed to decay to a point they cannot even make a copy of its contents” according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity in June, 2004. Even worse, as far as we know, that system is still operating on Windows 95. So much for investing in technology to fight the “war on terror.”
Sibel stated in an interview in 2005 that “You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.”
I can’t think of a better reason to take back the Congress.
==
W. David Jenkins III is a writer from New York. He can be reached at WDavidJenkinsIII@aol.com.
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My girlfriend and I recently went to Turkey for a seven-day holiday. Armed with the Lonely Planet guidebook, we followed all the instructions and had a splendid time.
We arrived in Istanbul after a six-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur, and an eight-hour transit in Dubai.
We took a train down to Sultanahmet where our accomodation was located. While walking to the hotel, we saw the Blue Mosque. It was awesome and rendered us speechless. We knew that we would be having a good trip ahead of us.
The next day, we visted all the must-see sites like the Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia, Grand Bazaar, and many more. We also took a cruise on the mighty Bosphorus (a waterway between the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara).
As my girlfriend wanted to visit Pammukale, the Unesco heritage site, we took a night bus from Istanbul and arrived the next morning.
The cotton castles of Pammukale indeed is a natural wonder, and anyone going to Turkey should stop by here. We stayed overnight and had the best dinner ever. The pension here is more family-oriented, so dinners were prepared by the pension owner’s mum and dad. Delicious local Turkish cuisine.
After Pammukale, we took a three-hour bus ride down to the port city of Antalya.
We stayed inside Kaleici, an old Ottoman fort city. It was fun trying to find our way out from the maze-like fort.
Marvellous Turkey
From Mr Evangelos T. Pantelidis.
Sir, I have read with interest A. Nurhan Becidyan’s very informative letter (August 30). May I make a small correction concerning his closing sentence?
He writes: “One thing they did not realise was that Istanbul itself was derived from a Greek name (Stanbolin).”
In fact, the name Istanbul probably derives from the Greek “is tin Poli”, which means “to the Polis” (city). When travellers were asked: “Where are you going?” they would answer: “Is tin Poli” – “to the Polis of Constantine”. For Greeks, “i Polis” always refers to the great city: Constantinople.
Another view is that the name Istanbul is just a shortened form of Constantinople, which was hard to pronounce.
Evangelos T. Pantelidis,
Athens, Greece
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Letters – To Greeks, there is only one great city.
