Category: Middle East & Africa

British Airways to be sued over child abuse claim

Simon Wood was a pilot for British Airways

British Airways is to be sued for damages over claims one of its pilots sexually abused children in African schools and orphanages.

According to Press Association, lawyers representing 16 young girls and women who claim First Officer Simon Wood assaulted them said the airline bears responsibility because he carried out the alleged attacks while on stopovers.

An inquest is due to be held into the death of Wood, 54, who was struck by a train in August while awaiting a court appearance accused of indecently assaulting a young girl and making indecent images of children.

Law firm Leigh Day said Wood allegedly molested youngsters during stopovers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania while flying for British Airways. Some of their clients are aged just eight.

Lawyer Nichola Marshall said: “We allege that Wood was able to abuse the victims, by reason of his employment with the airline, in particular through his involvement with the airlines’ community relations work.

“The schools and orphanages that our clients attended were all in receipt of charitable donations from the airline, and Wood played a key role in administering those donations, on behalf of British Airways.

“Our team will be travelling overseas over the coming weeks to meet with other potential victims in Nairobi and Uganda that have come forward more recently.”

Wood, from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, died after being hit by a train near Potters Bar station on August 18. He had been due to appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on August 30 charged with one count of indecent assault of a girl under 16, two counts of making indecent photographs of a child and one count of possessing indecent images of a child, Scotland Yard said at the time.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Wood was first arrested over an indecent assault allegation in November 2001 but prosecutors ruled there was insufficient evidence to charge him.

It reconsidered the case in July after receiving new details of similar alleged offences committed overseas and apparent evidence of indecent images.

At Easter 2002, Wood was among 20 crew members from two BA flights who volunteered to spend the holiday period with the Kenyan youngsters, showering the orphanage with presents, medicines and donations raised at home.

He told the Press Association, which covered the trip: “We play, sing, organise activities and generally entertain them. We become very close to the children.”

A British Airways spokesman said: “We were shocked and horrified to hear the allegations against Simon Wood, which appear to relate to his involvement in child-related activities entirely outside the scope of his employment with British Airways.

“Our sympathies are with the victims and it is disappointing that the conduct of one person has caused so much distress to the many thousands of decent people who engage in charitable works on a regular basis.”

The inquest into Wood’s death is due to be held at Hertfordshire Coroner’s Court.

July 30, 2014
Netanyahu said to have offered Lewinsky tapes for Pollard

New critical book on the Clinton family claims that Israel tapped White House phones, blackmailed president with recordings of intern

By Rebecca Shimoni Stoil

Jonathan Pollard, file photo, 1998 (photo credit: AP/Karl DeBlaker/File)

WASHINGTON — Israel attempted to use tapes of former US president Bill Clinton’s steamy conversations with intern Monica Lewinsky to leverage the release of Jonathan Pollard, a new book on the Clinton family’s political enterprises has claimed. In the book, titled “Clinton Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine,” author Daniel Halper relies on on-the-record interviews with former officials together with a close analysis of documents termed “the Monica Files” to paint a salacious – and uncomplimentary – picture of one of the most prominent political families in the United States.

Halper reviewed hundreds of pages of documents compiled as a contingency to use in case the former intern ever was involved in legal action against Clinton.

According to the author, the documents indicate that during the Wye Plantation talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, held in Maryland in 1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled Bill Clinton aside to press for Pollard’s release.

Halper said that Israel had found new leverage to push for Pollard’s release.

“The Israelis present at Wye River had a new tactic for their negotiations–they’d overheard Clinton and Monica and had it on tape. Not wanting to directly threaten the powerful American president, a crucial Israeli ally, Clinton was told that the Israeli government had thrown the tapes away. But the very mention of them was enough to constitute a form of blackmail,” Halper wrote, adding that “according to information provided by a CIA source, a stricken Clinton appeared to buckle.”

Former US president Bill Clinton speaks at Georgetown University on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 (photo credit: Georgetown University)

Halper noted that “intelligence officials in the United States or Israel will of course not confirm on the record the extent or substance of Israeli eavesdropping,” but also cited an article published in 2000 by the magazine Insight, that claimed that Israel had “penetrated four White House telephone lines and was able to relay real-time conversations on those lines from a remote site outside the White House directly to Israel for listening and recording.”

Israel has denied such claims in the past as “outrageous.”

Pollard, a former US naval analyst, was found guilty of passing sensitive documents to Israel, and sentenced to a life sentence in prison for the offense. He remains a cause celebre in Israel, and there have been repeated efforts throughout the past twenty years to secure his release.

Halper cites seemingly corroborating information, including a contemporary New York Times article from November 1998 which reported that the two leaders had discussed Pollard’s release during the ill-fated conference and that “the Israelis had told the president something that opened up the possibility of Pollard’s release, something Clinton had explicitly ruled out during the first six years of his presidency.” The Times article noted that a White House spokesman told a reporter that Clinton was simply “newly impressed by the force of Mr. Netanyahu’s arguments.”

According to Halper, during the special investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr “Lewinsky told prosecutors that Clinton suggested that “they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put-on.”

Halper adds to the narrative claims by the Lewinsky legal support team that “they found evidence that the British, Russians and Israelis all had scooped up the microwaves off the top of the White House.” Halper also offered as evidence the memoir of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who wrote that Russian intelligence had picked up on Clinton’s “predilection for beautiful young women.”

Clinton’s “predilection for beautiful young women,” however, was far from a state secret; it was in fact widely discussed even during Clinton’s initial presidential election campaign.

Netanyahu’s threat, according to Halper, spurred Clinton to consider action. Halper claims that Clinton brought the request before CIA director George Tenet. Tenet, however, threatened to resign his position if Pollard was released, and Clinton backpedalled on the idea.

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky at a Los Angeles premiere in 1999 (photo credit: Monica Lewinsky image via Shuttershock.)

Halper is not the first to claim that Israel illicitly taped the steamy conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky and tried to leverage it to its advantage. In 1999, UK author Gordon Thomas claimed that the Mossad had collected some 30 hours’ worth of phone sex conversations between Lewinsky and Clinton and was using them to blackmail the US or to protect a deeply-embedded mole in the White House.

Thomas also claimed that the Mossad was behind the deaths of Princess Diana, Robert Maxwell, William Buckley, and the 241 Marines killed in a 1983 barracks explosion in Lebanon. At the time, Netanyahu’s spokesman described Thomas’s allegations as “unmitigated drivel.”

Halper, the online editor of the Weekly Standard, says that he “was well aware that the former (and perhaps future) first family and its massive retinue of loyalty enforcers, professional defamers and assorted gadflies would rue my intent to examine the real Clintons” and had been warned “of what to expect from the Clinton PR team.”

In a piece that he wrote for the Huffington Post late Tuesday, Halper said that all of the warnings he had received about clever steps to downplay the impact of his book had proven true.

Copies of Halper’s book were sent out in PDF form to hundreds of reporters days before the book’s official release by a previously unknown individual, in what Halper suggests was an effort to reduce the impact of the book’s release.

timesofisrael.com, 23 July 2014

July 26, 2014
George Galloway: Israel Is A Rogue Terrorist State

Respect MP George Galloway

Hundreds of thousands march to Israeli embassy in Kensington for Israeli offensive strike on Gaza. Protesters marched from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy in Kensington. More than 300 Palestinians have been killed since 8 July, officials in Gaza report. Five Israelis have died.Downing street, Whitehall and most of central London streets were closed down after a huge turn out of protester which came to protest Israel’s attack on Gaza.

Respect MP George Galloway said: All of Britain is here, people of all kind from all over the country is here, we are standing beside the Palestinian people who are under bombardment in Gaza , occupation in West bank and Jerusalem. Israel is rogue terrorist state and we are in Britain standing against it.

Galloway who later addressed the crowd from the stage said: “Nearly 300 passengers aboard the Malaysia Airlines MH17 flight had been killed “without a reason” by “fanatics”.

He went on: “The 300 Palestinians are completely ignored by the same newspapers, by the same television stations and by the same political leaders who are threatening sanctions and war against Russia but who are supporting, with weapons and money and diplomatic political and media support, the Israeli killers.

“In fact, if whoever fired that missile in Ukraine had fired it instead at the beach in Gaza, the media could have knocked off for an early lunch and saved themselves all of this work.

“Why the double standard? Why is the blood in Ukraine so much more noteworthy than the blood in Gaza?”

Sarah Colborne who is the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, stated in her speech to the crowd: “London has already shown its outrage at Israel’s attacks on the mostly refugee population of Gaza, with people turning out in their thousands last week.

“Today’s national demonstration will give people from across the country the chance to say enough is enough, Israel’s siege of Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian land has to end now.

“People want justice and freedom for the Palestinians, and they will be voicing this in their thousands.”

Baroness Jenny Tonge who also addressed the crowd stated: “What on earth is Israel doing? It has lost its legitimacy, it is no longer a democratic state.

“It breaks international law, Geneva conventions, it has no respect for human rights. Israel must leave the international family of nations.”

Two children were pulled over a barrier close to the stage and one organiser said 10 people had fainted in the crowd.

Tolga CAKIR

Protest Of Israeli Strikes in London Downing Street

Turkish Protesters at the protest of Israeli strikes in London at Downing Street

Children Protesters of Israeli Strikes in London

Protest of Israeli Strikes in London

Protest of Israeli Strikes in London

Protest of Israeli Strikes in London

Protest of Israeli Strikes in London

Turkish Forum committee member Tolga Cakir and Respect MP George Galloway

July 20, 2014
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

The burning questions of these times in Turkey

What to do? A presidential election, the first of its kind, is soon coming to Turkey. There are three candidates. One is the prime minister, about whom the less said the better. Another is Selahattin Demirtaş, the Kurdish parliamentary representative, affiliated with the PKK, a separatist, armed terrorist organization. The third is a life-long, Islamist now tricked out as a secularist. He, Ekmelledin İhsanoğlu, characterized himself politically as a loaf of bread. (“Ekmek için Ekmelledin”) While perhaps appropriate, it was not meant to be funny.

Think of it this way, the presidential race is a Turkish-American trifecta. Usually one must pick the exact order of finish, 1-2-3, to win. But not in Turkey’s three-horse run-for-Çankaya. America wins regardless. Erdoğan, who America tried to dump last December, is the odds-on favorite. Demirtaş is the long-shot Kurdish candidate to uphold Joe Biden’s pipedream of a Kurdistan from his days on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And İhsanoğlu, America’s new boy, a smiling loaf of plain, white bread who will make a race of it for awhile. He will be run into the ground by the Erdoğan machine and opposition party voter apathy (and anger). Unless America pushes some magic election buttons at the finish line.

Nevertheless, all three America-bred candidates will win. Erdoğan gets his last gasp of glory until America figures a way to excuse him permanently. İhsanoğlu, entering his first race, is not likely to win (break his maiden) in this one. But he gains experience and will earn a place in America’s stable in case Erdoğan breaks down in a future outing. And Demirtaş gains credibility and track-time as an American entry for the next political operation in Kurdistan. So you see, America wins! The American-bred candidates win! And as usual, those swindled into believing that the presidential race matters, that is, the Turkish people, lose, again. Such is life at Imperial Downs, the American home of rigged elections, puppet shows and broken dreams.

Such are the dire electoral conditions in Turkey today. After a decade of Islamic fascist rule, and opposition party collaboration, its secular democracy is in ruins. This hapless trio of candidates puts the final nail in the coffin of Atatürk’s secular, anti-imperialist republic. This slate was selected by the political parties seated in parliament not the people. The domineering Erdoğan, finishing his third and final term, wants to move into the presidential chair. He will also change the power structure so that his steel-handed, brutish reign will continue. He should win easily. The Kurdish candidate is there to keep his separatist constituency happily dreaming of autonomy and oil revenues. The third candidate, the political opposition’s answer to the religious fascist government, is Ekmelledin İhsanoğlu. He is running because… because… well, because… perhaps because he was born and educated in Egypt, is a career Islamist, has been mute for years about the continuing dangers of shariah being imposed on secular Turkey and has an unconvincing commitment to the principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. All this irrelevance somehow fused into a bewildering symbol of a loaf of bread. And, accordingly, his equally bewildering sponsors concluded that he will surely defeat the undefeated and undefeatable Erdoğan. This so-called thinking is called the “Alice-in-Nightmareland Syndrome.”

So how did a loaf of bread come to represent the adherents of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk? The two major opposition parties, cooperating for the first time, swept the countryside seeking a suitable secular, democratic, Atatürk-loving candidate to face the imperialist-puppet Erdoğan. Amazingly, they could find none. Why? Because the opposition parties are deficient in their knowledge of secularity, democracy and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The truth is that they have both collaborated in the destruction of Atatürk’s republic. They have enabled the religious fascists to come to power and remain in power. One need not be a genius to see this. Being marginally alive in Turkey is enough. And Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu’s secretive selection, even to his own party members, of an Islamist bread loaf is first-hand evidence of his treachery.

IF ONLY…

So what is to be done? Oh, if only Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were here to save us. He’d know what to do. Yes, he would. Falih Rıfkı Atay, Atatürk’s close friend, biographer and confidant, told us in 1968. “What would Atatürk do if he were alive today? Shall I tell you? He would curse the lot of us.”

On Sunday 13 July 2014, Ümit Zileli wrote a compelling column in Aydınlık entitled “To Think Like Atatürk” (Mustafa Kemal gibi düşünmek!). It is well worth reading. Briefly put, Zileli says it is now fight time! I agree. So fight. Here’s why.

First, the coming election. American self-interest, ignorance and criminal negligence prevails. And their puppet government loves to see elections. It validates their crimes. Winning recent local elections allowed Erdoğan to feel vindicated of massive theft and bribery allegations. It allows them to lie to their ignorant constituency, shower them with bribes and become more beloved. And America claps hands and showers their pet fascists with praise and good wishes.

Remember the elation a few years ago when the Iraqis “embraced democracy” and voted for candidates they didn’t even know, a puppet slate installed by the occupying power? Suddenly, thanks to America’s brave men and women, Iraq had become democratic. All it took was purple ink for the index fingers. Some democracy. A deception. Examine Iraq today.

The coming election in Turkey is another deception. It is, as Atatürk said in earlier, similar times, “the work emanating from the brains of traitors.” Turkey is now a totalitarian, de facto one-party police state. And the Turkish people are worrying about whether to vote in a phony election? Vote for what? To be a loaf of bread or not to be a loaf of bread? Hardly a burning question, it’s an empty and insulting exercise.

DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS REQUIRE A DEMOCRACY

Democracy requires a sovereign nation not controlled by outside imperialist powers and its agents, be it CIA or, as the prime minister claims, Fethullah Gülen Gang operators. It would also be nice to not have a criminal government, one that lies, cheats, steals, maims, gasses and murders its own people. Citizens of a democracy have certain specific human rights not to be abused. Vibrant, aggressive, honest opposition parties are also essential. The Turkish nation lacks sovereignty, its borders eroded by its own government. Its destiny is controlled by the needs of foreign powers as implemented by its puppet government. By the prime minister’s own admission, a foreign gang, CIA-supported, operated with impunity to deceitfully destroy the nation’s security forces, that is, the Turkish Army. This same government conspires with various terrorist groups to overthrow the governments of neighboring countries, acting under orders from imperialist powers. It is clear that Turkish democracy is a deception and dysfunctional.

Turkish political representation is a deception and dysfunctional. The party leaders select the candidates that we, the people, vote for. The party that professes to be “revolutionary,” the CHP, as of now the largest opposition party, failed miserably to support the Gezi Park movement. It perceived the movement, mostly consisting of young people, to be against the party’s interests. For once the party was correct. The CHP is primarily a fossilized bunch of status quo parliamentary seat-warmers, completely unrepresentative of Turkish young people. Hence came Ekmelledin İhsanoğlu to yet again prove that point. How insulting is CHP to the youth of Turkey!

The Turkish judiciary system is a deception and dysfunctional. Enormous fascist-style justice buildings everywhere, justice nowhere. The courts are in the hands of the ruling party fascists.

The Turkish media slavishly serves the interests of the political ruling party. Freedom of the press is nonexistent. The wolf-pack media fails to understand its democratic rights and responsibilities.

The Turkish people lack constitutionally guaranteed rights to freely assemble and protest. They live under the constant fear of reprisals, both physical and judicial.

The Turkish police, aided by organized street thugs, assault the Turkish population with fiendish brutality. This is applauded by the prime minister. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and other government-supported terrorists have a free pass into and out of Turkey. There is no personal security in the Turkish police state.

Democracy is dead in Turkey. If you vote, you will be voting for a rotting corpse.

KNOW YOUR ENEMY

The enemy is the system imposed on the Turkish people by insiders and outsiders, the same people Atatürk identified in Nutuk (The Great Speech) over one hundred years ago. They are the “fools and traitors” of the government who “identify their personal interests with the enemy’s political goals.” The enemy is clearly identified. It is the state and the government. It is the treacherous opposition parties. It is America, its ambassadors, its agents and its CIA and NSA operators, here and abroad. The enemy is imperialism and its operators. We all know this. There are no longer any mysteries.

Examine what passes for Turkish foreign policy and weep for the nation. “Peace at home peace in the world?” Atatürk’s motto and Atatürk’s republic are in the hands of criminals and collaborators. And the same tired experts fill the already polluted airwaves with their stale ideas about the responsibility of citizens to vote. Citizens of what? A puppet state of America? Vote for whom? Another imperialistic puppet? Vote for what? More of the same? Or worse?

GETTING STARTED

First, remember that the true objective is often not the field in plain sight but the sea beyond the mountains.

Second, say NO to this false election. If you feel you must vote, carry a pen with you and write the name, MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK, on your ballot. Sure, it invalidates your vote. But the election itself is invalid.

Third, say NO to these fraudulent and deceitful opposition parties. Surely they will collapse after this fiasco. This is good news and a first step towards solution.

Fourth, say NO to this state that so severely mistreats and insults over half the nation.

Fifth, immediately prepare to fight to save Atatürk’s republic, that is, prepare the field of engagement. Please note that there should be no violence nor will it be necessary to engage the enemy, that is, the imperialist powers and their agents, in any physical manner. We, like Atatürk, should choose where and how we fight.

ACTION PLAN

No religious designations on public documents, particularly identification cards. Immediately demonstrate to the enemy that religious designations will no longer be used for political purposes. Accordingly, and in conformance with European Union standards, immediately apply to have the religious designation removed from all Turkish ID cards. This is easily done. One visit to the population (Nüfus) office starts the process. The objective? To neutralize the enemy’s ability to divide Turkey into religious sects. To tell the wider world that the removal of religious designations by millions of Turks is a profound and dramatic step in the people’s battle against internal religious fascism and external imperialist ambitions. Suddenly, Turkey goes from being 99% Islamic in the eyes of the CIA to something dramatically less. Thus, notice is served that we want no part in a government or its supportive agencies and collaborators that use religion to support its own criminal behavior or the criminal behavior of foreign powers.

No military service in support of imperialism or sectarian war crimes.Immediately file a petition with the European Commission of Human Rights that claims conscientious objection (C.O.) status for all young people of age for conscription into military service. The fact that conscientious objection is not legally recognized in Turkey is irrelevant to our purpose. Resistance to the imperialist powers and their puppets will be on all fronts and at all depths. A government that conspires with the Gülen Gang to destroy the Turkish military and then claims that a parallel state, that is, the same Gülen Gang, did it alone is not competent to claim the lives of Turkish young people to serve its dark designs. A government that allows, either wittingly or unwittingly, the catastrophic destruction of the state’s primary security force is either treasonous or incompetent. In either case, Turkish youth should not be cannon fodder for use by a government that has proven to be an enemy of the Turkish people.

Boycott all mainstream propagandizing media. Avoid viewing all television programs and films that support the enemy. Avoid purchasing newspapers or journals that support the enemy.

Boycott enemy products. Boycott all American product. Its role in the destruction of Turkish democracy and security is profound. Boycott the products of all manufacturers and distributors that deny advertising to media opposed to the government. This is prejudicial and undemocratic marketing behavior, driven solely to gain political favor. It has nothing to do with economics and is purely punitive.

Do not engage in mass public protest. Are we angry? Yes! Are we at war? Yes! Are we stupid? No. So we don’t go into the streets. There is a better way. Let the enemy buy more TOMA monsters from that treacherous Turkish enterprise, Nurol Holding. And let imperialist America and cowardly Brazil sell more and more pepper gas to the Turkish police. Let it all rot in their bloody hands.

Watch the political opposition parties collapse. Revealed by this phony presidential election to be non-representative and fraudulent to the people it claims to represent, the opposition parties will again try to re-invent themselves. This, too, will be a disaster. They have proven, once again, that they no longer represent a huge segment of the population, that is, the young people. And for that failure they will proceed, at last, to destroy themselves. From this collapse comes hope.

Watch a new system emerge. The world is heading there whether the current ruling class likes it or not. Representational democracy represents one thing, money. Wealth is politics. Poverty, local and global, can never be solved by a political system that is a slave of business. In a period of economic crisis, that is, 2008 to today, both the number and net worth of billionaires rose by almost 50%. At whose expense? Everyone else, in particular the poor. People are driven from their land. Resources are controlled by a small group of political and corporate elite. Politics is not representative of real people. How many people determined that Ekmelledin İhsanoğlu would be the candidate to represent the interests of those supporting the secular, democratic republic founded by Atatürk? One. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. He knew best. A new system must come. But first the old one must self-destruct.

Join hands.Who knows when this will happen? But we see the cracks appearing everywhere. The overwhelming arrogance that presented the Turkish people with a rigged, phony election should be the inciting incident that leads on to victory over the imperial powers now besieging Turkey. And remember, the enemy remains without a clue about the origin of and reasons for the Gezi Park movement, as do the opposition parties. A new generation of Turks must lead. Help them!

CONCLUSION

We are passing from the sphere of that historical time of Atatürk’s revolution against the forces of backwardness and imperialism. It’s youthful vigor while he lived gave great hope to the people. But it’s long-term, continuing debilitation after his death left the revolution incomplete and vulnerable. Dangerous flirtations with imperialist powers led to disastrous military coups. Hence now the current state of siege by imperial powers, aided by a treasonous government that has destroyed most aspects of secular democracy. This counter revolution will culminate with the rise to full presidential power of an obvious enemy of secular democracy, aided by the naïve treachery of the incompetent political opposition.

All of the democratic institutions of government have been spoiled by the religious-fascist meddling of the ruling party. The Turkish Army appears lost. Its generals bow their heads to political hacks. There are no longer secure borders. Vast regions in the east operate independently and with impunity. The government actively supports terrorist organizations inside and outside Turkey. The Turkish government lacks independent sovereignty. Foreign imperialist powers control the destiny of the Turkish people. All seems lost.

Still, there is a chance that this catastrophe will lead to the consolidation of a massive source of intelligent, patriotic political power long-ignored and long-suppressed. In a word, the relentless power of YOUTH. Impatient, honest, courageous, vigorous, this is the genuine vanguard of the fight to save secular Turkey. It is the future. The full flower of young manhood and young womanhood will sweep aside the political debris that so contaminated the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. We have seen the young people in action. And they were splendid.

Now is the time to show again how a great people, whose national course was considered finished, regained its independence. Now is the time to show how it recreated a national and modern State founded on the latest results of science. Now is the time to rid the land of imperialists and their agents.

Now is the time to engage the enemy on all fronts, domestic and foreign.

Enough is enough! Now is the time to fight!

Let it begin!

Cem Ryan

Istanbul

18 July 2014

REFERENCES:

Atatürk, The Great Speech (Nutuk), Atatürk Research Center, Ankara, 2005.

Atay, Falih Rıfkı. The Atatürk I Knew, Yapi ve Kredi Bankasi, Istanbul, 1973, p. 252.

Zileli, Ümit. Mustafa Kemal gibi düşünmek! )

“There was never a man like Ataturk. He was a mighty torrent that flowed over barren soil and was lost.”

Falih Rıfkı Atay, The Atatürk I Knew, p. 252

But the Turk is both dignified and proud: he is also capable and talented. Such a nation would prefer to perish rather than subject itself to the life of a slave.

Therefore, Independence or Death!

This was the rallying cry of all those who honestly desired to save their country.

Let us suppose for a moment that in trying to accomplish this we had failed. What would have been the result?—why, slavery!

In that case, would not the consequence have been the same if we had submitted to the other proposals? Undoubtedly, it would; but with this difference, that a nation that defies death in its struggle for independence derives comfort from the thought that it had resolved to make every sacrifice compatible with human dignity. There is no doubt its position is more respected than would be that of a craven and degraded nation capable of surrendering itself to the yoke of slavery.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, The Great Speech (Nutuk) p. 10

July 18, 2014
Is Mossad’s Chief Pardo a fortune teller?

Mossad Chief TAMIR PARDO / Photo by Moti Milrod with courtesy of Hareetz

Mossad Chief Pardo seems to know the kidnapping of three teenager beforehand according to the article at the Haaretz. We don’t have any evidence to this however there is a serious indication of his superiority which may be well be classified as a fortune teller. Here is the interesting article below. [

Mossad chief’s chillingly prescient kidnap prophecy

Ten days ago, Tamir Pardo outlined a scenario that was spookily similar to the kidnapping of three teens missing in the West Bank since Thursday.

Ten days ago, at a security cabinet meeting, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo outlined a scenario spookily similar to the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens missing since Thursday night.

The meeting dealt with the report of the Shamgar Committee on prisoner exchanges and on the Habayit Hayehudi bill that prohibits granting pardons to terrorists.

Pardo, along with other defence establishment officials present, tried to convince the ministers not to advance the bill. He was against it because it would limit the government’s room for maneuver in future abduction cases, would keep its hands tied, and prevent it from considering other solutions for dealing with a potential crisis.

Pardo gave as an example the kidnapping of the 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria by the militant group Boko Haram. He addressed Economy Minister Nafatali Bennett, whose party promoted the bill, and used it to draw a comparison of something that could happen in Israel in the future.

“What will you do if in a week three 14-year-old girls will be kidnapped from one of the settlements?,” he asked. “Will you say there is a law, and we don’t release terrorists?”

Pardo did not convince the ministers, however. At the cabinet meeting three days later, the appeal of Science and Technology Minister Jacob Perry was rejected and the bill passed to a Knesset vote. By Wednesday, the bill passed its preliminary reading in the Knesset. ]

Tolga CAKIR

Here is the link to the article: http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.598751?v=9E19E997AD217B5941AFCD9189E2CE76

July 16, 2014
Iraqi government asks U.S. to bomb Islamist fighters as 30,000 troops flee their posts
Iraqi government asks U.S. to bomb Islamist fighters as 30,000 troops flee their posts

BY MITCHELL PROTHERO

McClatchy Foreign StaffJune 11, 2014 Updated 6 hours ago
Fighters of the al-Qaida breakaway group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) burn an armored vehicle belonging to the Iraqi army in Tikrit, 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, June 11, 2014.UNCREDITED — AP
ISTANBUL — Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Wednesday pushed their offensive south into Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland, capturing key crossroad towns on the highway to the capital, Baghdad, andtaking control of a critical oil refinery.

The speedy advance of Islamic State fighters triggered recriminations in Baghdad, where Iraqi officials sought assistance from the United States to counter the advance.

A senior Iraqi official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive politics of the matter, said Baghdad even had asked U.S. officials to consider undertaking air strikes to rout the fighters.

So far, the official said, the Americans appeared reluctant to take that step. “They have not committed yet,” he said, adding that it “doesn’t look like” they will, either.

Word of the request for armed American intervention came as insurgents captured the strategic city of Tikrit, took control of a critical oil refinery and power plant in the town of Baiji and pushed into the mixed Kurdish-Arab city of Kirkuk and the flashpoint city of Samara, just 70 miles north of Baghdad.

In a move that underlined the Islamic State’s ambitions, social media accounts associated with the group triumphantly announced the end of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the demarcation of modern Middle East borders by France and Great Britain after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The group released credible but unconfirmed footage of heavy equipment adorned with the black flag of the Islamic State destroying fences and earthen berms along the Syrian border.

In Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, who Iraq’s current government executed in 2006, the Islamic State was receiving heavy support from local anti-government tribes under an insurgent coalition called the General Military Council. Witnesses inside Tikrit said the rebels had taken control of much of the city, which was being adorned with posters of Saddam.

Dr. Issa Ayal, a local journalism professor, said the scene in Tikrit, the capital of Salahuddin province, was a near repeat of ISIS’ capture late Monday of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, when government soldiers and police shed their uniforms and their weapons and fled their posts ahead of the ISIS attackers.

“They had civilian clothes and left their posts,” he said of Iraqi soldiers in Tikrit.

The governor’s office in Tikrit fell about 11 a.m., he said. “Many members of Tikrit’s tribes loyal to the late President Saddam joined the fighters and I can see and hear them chanting Tikriti songs and chants near the governor’s office,” he said.

He said that ISIS gunmen had halted the broadcast of a Salahuddin satellite TV channel but did not harm journalists at the station and allowed them to leave safely.

In Baiji, which also lies in Salahuddin province, Islamic State fighters took control of the town and were poised to add one of Iraq’s most important oil refineries and pumping facilities to the substantial list of economic infrastructure captured in the past 48 hours. Security forces abandoned the facility, which is connected to a large electrical power plant, and Islamic State fighters had taken control of the area, though it remained unclear if they had entered the plant itself. Ben Lando, editor of Iraq Oil Report, a trade publication based in Baghdad, said the Iraqi government would likely shut down the pipeline feeding the facility if ISIS did take actual control.

Embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki took to state airwaves to offer weapons to any civilians willing to fight against the quickly encroaching Islamic State, a call to arms that was aimed primarily at the Shiite Muslim militias that successfully battled Sunni groups for control of Baghdad in a sectarian war from 2006 to 2008. But how many would respond was not clear, and a key former militia leader, cleric Muktada al Sadr, suggested he would limit his response to protecting the Imam Ali Shrine in the holy city of Najaf, which is about 100 miles south of Baghdad and 200 miles south of the scene of Wednesday’s fighting.

Meanwhile, a number of Sunni Muslim tribes in the provinces of Anbar, Nineveh and Salahuddin appeared to be joining the Islamist advance after years of tensions with the Shiite government in Baghdad.

How the U.S. would respond to the Iraqi request for bombing strikes, first reported by The New York Times, was not immediately clear. Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby on Tuesday had gone out of his way seemingly to discourage speculation of direct U.S. involvement. “This is for the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government to deal with,” he said.

That response came weeks, however, after Maliki had first asked the United States for help, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

A senior U.S. Defense Department official, confirming the report, said that Maliki first made the request around the time of his visit to Washington last October. The official described the administration’s response as cold and said Maliki had asked that the request be kept secret so that it would not appear that he was inviting the United States to return to Iraq.

While rejecting the idea of airstrikes, the Obama administration did agree to speed up delivery of F16 fighter jets and Hellfire missiles. But the jets are not expected to arrive until September, leaving Iraq with a limited ability to attack insurgent positions from the air.

There were reports Wednesday from the rebel-affiliated Local Coordinating Committee in Syria’s Deir el Zour province, however, that Syrian government aircraft had bombed an ISIS convoy that was moving toward Iraq. It could not be learned if the strike was at the request of the Iraqi government, which has supported Syrian President Bashar Assad in his efforts to remain in power.

In northern Iraq, Islamic State fighters appeared to be avoiding confronting the peshmerga militia loyal to the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, which had dispatched troops from the Kurdish capital of Irbil to impose a security cordon around Kurdish areas and to reinforce peshmerga troops in the Kurdish eastern half of Mosul and further south in the Kurdish sections of the mixed city of Kirkuk. But Islamic State fighters and local Sunni tribesmen were battling for control of Arab districts.

“We’ve fully mobilized, obviously,” said Sabaa al Barzani, a Kurdistan Regional Government security official in Irbil. “We’re sending peshmerga fighters to Mosul and Kirkuk and using them to form a protective circle around Irbil.”

Barzani said the stream of refugees that began fleeing Mosul for Irbil had become a torrent on Wednesday.

“We’re counting 20 cars a minute right now, and they’ve been coming all day,” he said.

The International Rescue Committee estimated that at least 500,000 people had fled fighting in Mosul by Wednesday afternoon, leaving a humanitarian crisis in the making as Iraq is already struggling to house 200,000 refugees from the fighting in neighboring Syria.

Reports that the peshmerga were attempting to recapture Mosul’s international airport, which fell Tuesday to the Islamic State, could not be confirmed. But the site represents a major strategic asset that would allow the Iraqi army to send troops and establish supply lines for any attempt to retake the city.

Barzani would not comment on specifics but said that “security operations on several fronts are planned or ongoing.” A security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, did confirm that Kurdish units had retaken the Rabia border crossing with Syria earlier in the day.

ISIS stormed the Turkish consulate in Mosul at midday Wednesday and captured the consul-general, Ozturk Yilmas, a career diplomat, and 48 other staff members, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in Ankara. On Tuesday it arrested 31 Turkish truck drivers as they were delivering diesel fuel to a depot in Mosul.

With 80 people being held, Turkey called for an emergency meeting of the NATO council. But it wasn’t clear what the government in Ankara would undertake as a response, or what support it would seek from its NATO allies. Reports in the Turkish media said ISIS had demanded a $5 million ransom for the release of the drivers. The fate of the diplomats was also unclear. A Twitter account thought to be linked to ISIS stated that the “Turks are not kidnapped. They are only taken to a safe location and until the investigation procedures are completed.”

It was still unclear just how much U.S.-provided military equipment had been captured in the seizure of Mosul, but the booty no doubt totaled tons of heavy weapons. The Islamic State’s treasury also was no doubt swollen by the hundreds of millions of dollars the group’s fighters seized from government offices and banks in Mosul.

In Washington, Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, said the Iraqi government had yet to determine how much war materiel the insurgents had captured. But he provided fresh insight into the depth of the unfolding debacle, saying that around 30,000 Iraqi forces had abandoned their posts in the ISIS onslaught. “Disappointing is an understatement,” he said.

He also pleaded for U.S. support, saying that the Islamic State had proved to be a formidable foe. “They have been creative, aggressive, thinking outside the box, with advanced weapons and financial support,” he said. “This is not a local insurgency.”

HANNAH ALLAM AND NANCY A. YOUSSEF IN WASHINGTON, ROY GUTMAN AND SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT MOUSAB ALHAMADEE IN ISTANBUL AND SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT MOHAMMED AL DULAIMY IN COLUMBIA, S.C., CONTRIBUTED.

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June 12, 2014