Category: America

Latina Singer to Represent US in Turkish Language Olympiad

The young Hispanic Jaqueline Mata poses with her guitar in the garden of her home in El Paso, Texas. (EFE)

Jacqueline Mata, a 14-year-old Latino girl from El Paso, has been chosen to represent the United States in the Turkish Language Olympiad to be held May 23-June 14 in Istanbul.

The teen, who was chosen last month at the Olympiad U.S. finals in Houston, will compete against 179 students from other countries in a contest where all the songs will be sung in Turkish.

But for Mata that won’t be a problem since she has been taking Turkish classes since 2009 and believes she has developed a really respectable grasp of the language.

“I’m immensely happy because I will not only represent my city but the whole country. I hope to do a good job and make my artistic mark with a foreign audience,” the singer told Efe.

Mata attends Harmony Science Academy El Paso, a charter school.

First Blind Symphony in the World

“I’ve always been particularly fascinated by Turkey, and that’s why I wanted to learn the language. Then I learned several songs and here comes this beautiful opportunity,” Jacqueline said.

The student also said that the school board has behaved like her own family and that teachers and classmates meet with her all the time to encourage her in this new facet of her future artistic career.

The organizing body of the U.S. Finals is Raindrop Turkish House, a non-profit foundation present in eight states around the country and whose mission is to teach Turkish culture in the United States.

The organization is also sponsoring Mata and will pay all the expenses of her artistic adventure.

Jacqueline was invited to Turkey last year to attend the Turkish Language Olympiad but this is the first time she will compete.

“I already know something about Istanbul, but now I want to find out more about its culture and its people so I can make a lot of friends,” she said.

Mata has her musical repertoire ready and has included such songs as “Arkadas” (Amigos), “Soyle Buldun mu” (Que Crees que Dicen, or What Do You Think They’re Saying), and “Gurbet” (Nostalgia).

Latino Stars Grace Billboard Awards

She spends every afternoon practicing the lyrics, knowing full well that besides her intonation, the juries will be paying keen attention to her pronunciation.

One factor in Jacqueline’s favor is the wholehearted support of her mother, who has also learned to speak Turkish for the sole purpose of helping her daughter.

“I thought it was vital to learn the new language that my daughter speaks, so I’ll know what she’s talking about,” laughed Norma Longoria, who is doing all the necessary so she can accompany her Jaqueline to the land of the Turks.

via Latina Singer to Represent US in Turkish Language Olympiad | Fox News Latino.

March 23, 2012
Israel Matzav: Turkey wants US exemption from Iran sanctions

President Obama’s best friend among Middle East leaders wants an exemption from tough US sanctions against purchasers of Iranian oil that are due to come into effect at the end of June (Hat Tip: Joshua I).

“Turkey’s absence from the United States waiver list regarding the Iran issue doesn’t mean it will not be included,” [Turkish Energy Minister Taner] Yıldız told reporters at an energy conference in Ankara.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan plans to raise the issue with US President Barack Obama during a nuclear security summit in South Korea later this month, Turkish officials told Reuters.

Diplomatic sources in Ankara told Today’s Zaman that the Turkish government officials have been continuing their efforts to have Turkey included in the waiver list of Washington.

Turkey imports around 200,000 barrels per day of oil from Iran, representing over 7 percent of Iran’s oil exports. Yıldız said Turkey would continue to buy oil from Iran until existing contracts expire.

The United States exempted Japan and 10 EU nations from financial sanctions because they have significantly cut purchases of Iranian crude oil, but left Iran’s top customers China and India exposed to the possibility of such steps.

The decision announced on Tuesday is a victory for the 11 countries, whose banks have been given a six-month reprieve from the threat of being cut off from the US financial system under new sanctions designed to pressure Iran over its nuclear program.

Yıldız said Turkey could not halt purchasing from Iran unless other suppliers were lined up.

The Republican Presidential candidates ought to be making a big deal out of this. Giving out all those exemptions – and there probably will be more – is effectively gutting sanctions that passed the Senate over Obama’s objections by 100-0.

via Israel Matzav: Turkey wants US exemption from Iran sanctions.

March 23, 2012
Musa Dagdeviren recovers foods that Turkey forgot

Musa Dağdeviren (right) in the kitchen at his restaurant Çiya Sofrasi. Photograph by Carolyn Drake.

To get to the restaurant Çiya Sofrasi from the old city of Istanbul, you take a twenty-minute ferry ride to the Asian side of the Bosporus. On a cold Monday night last November, a friend persuaded me to make the trip with him. The place was pleasant but unremarkable, with a gray tiled floor, wooden tables, and no tablecloths or printed menus. There was a self-service bar with meze priced by weight. Hot dishes were dispensed at a cafeteria-style counter by a hatchet-faced man in a chef’s hat.

The first sign of anything unusual was the kisir, a Turkish version of tabouli, which had an indescribable freshness and suddenly reminded you that wheat is a plant. The bitter edge of sumac and pomegranate extract, the tang of tomato paste, and the warmth of cumin, which people from the south of Turkey put in everything, recalled to me, with preternatural vividness, the kisir that my aunt used to make. Likewise, the stewed eggplant dolmas resembled my grandmother’s version even more intensely, somehow, than those dolmas resembled themselves.

Food, I should clarify, has never played a large role in my mental life. I enjoy a good meal as much as anyone, but I get so confused by nutritional, budgetary, ecological, ethical, aesthetic, and time-management concerns that I often subsist for weeks on instant oatmeal and multivitamins. Having read Proust, and also neuroscientists on the direct connection from smell and taste receptors to the hippocampus, I have long been aware that eating is, for many people, an emotionally and mnemonically fraught activity. But, that night at Çiya, I viscerally understood why someone might use a madeleine dipped in tea as a metaphor for the spiritual content of the material world.

Overwhelmed by the kisir and the dolmas, I wondered if the explanation lay in my past. Both my parents were born in Turkey, but I hadn’t been back for more than four years. I hadn’t gone to my grandmother’s funeral; I had been holed up in my apartment in San Francisco, writing a dissertation chapter about Proust—Proust, who wrote so movingly about losing a grandmother! Now, belatedly returning to my parents’ homeland, I found myself not on the Black Sea, where my grandmother was born and buried, or in Ankara, where she lived, or in my father’s home city of Adana, where my aunt still lives. Instead, I had come to Istanbul, a city with which I had many romantic associations but little practical experience. Perhaps the meze reminded me of an irretrievable time when my aunt and my grandmother had cooked for me, and I had been where I was supposed to be in the world.

As the meal progressed, the tastes grew stronger and more varied. One inscrutable salad contained no recognizable ingredient except jewel-like pomegranate kernels, nestled among seaweed-colored, twig-shaped objects and mysterious chopped herbs, nutty and slightly bitter. A stew uniting beef, roasted chestnuts, quince, and dried apricots in an enigmatic greenish broth tugged at some multilayered memory involving my mother’s quince compote. I kept looking around the room for some clue to what was happening. Half the tables were empty; near us sat a few Turkish families, a handful of lone diners with books, and two Italian backpackers. There were some restaurant reviews on the walls, and a portrait of Atatürk, and a shelf with a row of jars bearing handwritten labels—“Dried Quince,” “Pickled Deer-Mushrooms,” and many terms I didn’t recognize, which I copied into a notebook.

via Musa Dagdeviren recovers foods that Turkey forgot : The New Yorker.

more: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/19/the-memory-kitchen

March 20, 2012
Bush, Blair found guilty of war crimes in Malaysia tribunal

Former US president George Bush and his former counterpart Tony Blair were found guilty of war crimes by The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal which held a four day hearing in the Malaysia.

The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in blatant violation of international law.

The judges ruled that war against Iraq by both the former heads of states was a flagrant abuse of law, act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people.

In their verdict, the judges said that the United States, under the leadership of Bush, forged documents to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

They further said the findings of the tribunal be made available to members of the Rome Statute and the names of Bush and Blair be entered into a war crimes register.

Both Bush and Blair repeatedly said the so-called war against terror was targeted at terrorists.

March 19, 2012
CIA Agent Exposes How Al-Qaeda Doesen’t Exist

March 19, 2012
Former CIA Agent Claims Americans Did Not Kill bin Laden

Osama bin Laden died a natural death nearly 5 years before it was announced that he was eliminated by the American commandos. This sensational statement was made by a Turkish politician, and a former U.S. intelligence agent. In an interview with Russia’s Channel One, he said that the Americans simply found and opened the tomb of the leader of al-Qaeda.

The journalists of Channel One first met this man in 2008. At the time he was featured in the documentary “Plan Caucasus,” talking about the attempts of the western intelligence services in the early 1990’s to separate the Northern Caucasus and, in particular, Chechnya from Russia. Chechen by nationality, Berkan Yashar is now a Turkish politician, but in those years he was one of the ideologists of Johar Dudayev. He asked for a meeting, promising to tell the truth about the death of Osama bin Laden whom he met in the early 90-ies in Chechnya.

“In September of 1992 I was in Chechnya, that’s when I first met the man whose name was Bin Laden. This meeting took place in a two-story house in the city of Grozny; on the top floor was a family of Gamsakhurdia, the Georgian president, who then was kicked out of his country. We met on the bottom floor; Osama lived in the same building, “said Berkan Yashar. Berkan said he did not know why bin Laden visited while in Grozny, and said only one thing about his meetings: “Just wanted to talk.”

However, according to Channel One, in those years the former employee of Radio Liberty Berkan Yashar already had an operational name Abubakar, given to him by the CIA. According to Berkan, after that trip Chechen nationals appeared in Osama bin Laden’s circle. Berkan Yashar emphasized that they did not participate “directly in the terror bombings.” “They protected bin Laden, it was his choice because he trusted them entirely, and knew that they would never betray,” said Yashar. According to Yashar he was not the only one who knew about it, but the Russian security services and the CIA were aware of this as well.

Answering the question whether he believed that the Americans killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Berkan Yashar answered: “Even if the entire world believed I could not possibly believe it.” “I personally know the Chechens who protected him, they are Sami, Mahmood, and Ayub, and they were with him until the very end. I remember that day very well, there were three sixes in it: 26 June 2006. These people, as well as two others from London and two Americans, all seven of them, saw him dead. He was very ill, he was skin and bones, very thin, and they washed him and buried him,” said Berkan Yashar.

Yashar stressed that although the two American Muslims and two British Muslims the guards of bin Laden and saw him dead, they did not participate in the funerals. “Only three Chechens buried him, according to his will,” said Yashar. Bin Laden was buried, according to Yashar, in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border. “There was no assault,” said Yashar. “I know the American operations from the inside: they find the grave, dig out bin Laden and tell everyone about this. They need to show how technologically the security services worked, how each step was controlled, and then present it as a great victory to show that taxpayers are not paying taxes for nothing. ”

Berkan now blames himself for the fact that the Chechens from the protection of bin Laden, “the terrorist number one” are no longer alive after the U.S. intelligence services began to tap Berkan’s telephone conversations. He said he was the first one who announced the date of death of bin Laden. “I was the first one who announced the date of his death in November of 2008 at a conference in Washington, not naming any names, and it looks like it was when the Americans began to track my contacts,” he said.

The last security guard Berkan saw Sami, who, according to him, a few days before bin Laden was declared killed, was kidnapped by the U.S. intelligence agencies. According to Berkan, most likely, it was him who disclosed to them the exact place of burial in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border.
In any case, the last call from Sami was from Pakistan. Berkan explained why he informed the journalists of Channel One: he feared for his life. According to him, only wide publicity around the world can protect him from the CIA. However, just in case, the Turkish secret services, according to him, provided him with guards and weapons.

Pravda.Ru, 19.05.2011

March 18, 2012