US neocons Bolton & PNAC lay down weapons of war for protest signs with their new ‘Turkish Democracy Project’
By Helen Buyniski | RT | July 5, 2021
The aging neocons who have been practicing regime change ops in the Middle East for decades are now launching a project targeting Turkey – perhaps in honor of the deceased Don Rumsfeld.
Erdogan’s Turkey has long been something of a thorn in Washington’s paw, given its ongoing refusal to buy inferior US military equipment (it was booted from the US’ F-35 program for insisting on buying Russian S-400 missiles, making the Americans who still store their nukes at Incirlik somewhat nervous), its refusal to place the good of Israel above its own benefit, and its rumblings of discontent regarding the US’ pleas for support (or at least safe passage) to its Syrian ‘moderate rebel’ militant groups, which Ankara considers to be little more than terrorists.
Under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become quite recalcitrant indeed, far from the ideal domesticated state keen to babysit American nukes and stage American missiles in exchange for coveted membership in the deteriorating NATO structure (not long ago fetchingly described by French President Emmanuel Macron as “brain dead”). Clearly what it needs is a shot in the bottom from that great big needle marked ‘Democracy’ – and who better to deliver that than the good old boys from the Project for a New American Century, many of them the old same men who led and lied the US, blindfolded, into the chaos of Iraq.
Enter the Turkish Democracy Project, a non-profit organization which – it should be clear from the name – has nothing to do with democracy or, really, Turkishness. The group’s website is about as subtle as a nuclear bomb, blaming President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for “dramatically alter[ing] Turkey’s position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy” and calling for “a nonprofit, non-partisan, international policy organization that opposes its destabilizing behavior, supports genuine democratic reform, and holds the forces of corruption and oppression within Turkey to account.” In other words: “We want a piece of your country. Resist and be annihilated.”
It’s not that the US thinks Turkey is stupid. But they believe, and are likely correct, that the US will never have as good a time as now to strike. With its military still feared by many parts of the world (even though its bark is at this point far worse than its bite, and its image still suitably ferocious to put much of the actual war-fighting business to fleeing instead of fighting), the main business must be – if the US expects to do something other than flee home with its tail between its legs – “shock and awe.”
But given that these shock and awe tactics will be taking place in the Middle East, an area which has seen the worst the US can throw at its enemies over the last 20 years of perpetual warfare and realizes all the money in the world can’t give even the largest military on Earth the stamina of the gods, it’s likely these dyed-in-the-wool bloodshed-artists will have to change with the times. To invade a militarily competent nation like Turkey – especially one which, inconveniently, happens to be backed by NATO – is unlikely to be a walk in the park, no matter how many phony war crimes the PNAC crew manage to cook up. Gas attacks have become cliche, and any talk of “weapons of mass destruction” will elicit a chortle at best.
So the TDS, if recent events are any indication, has instead gotten to work with the kind of color revolution-style events that have largely replaced shock and awe in other regime-change hotspots. They’re cheap, they’re easy, and in this case – a protest in Istanbul against Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention? – they require exactly zero imagination. It’s much easier to con the rest of NATO if you don’t have to make them think.
Thousands of activists took to the streets on Thursday, either on their own or hailing from various NGOs, denouncing Turkey’s withdrawal from the European human rights treaty known as the Istanbul Convention. Erdogan’s executive order removing Turkey from the treaty, first adopted back in March, argued the country’s women are protected by domestic laws rather than the international human rights treaty – which he argued had been “hijacked” by the LGBTQ+ community.
The hoary old PNAC boys behind the TDS likely couldn’t believe their luck when something like this fell into their lap. But will they be able to modernize?
The group’s CEO is Mark Wallace, who’s also the CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran – another unsubtly named regime-change operation (and a regime change that has failed repeatedly). An old hand at overthrowing Middle Eastern nations the old-fashioned way, Wallace held several positions with the George W. Bush administration while the nation was attempting to crush Iraq (apparently shocked the children had run forward with IEDs instead of handfuls of wildflowers to welcome their new rulers).
Indeed, numerous fellow veterans of the Iraq regime change effort and abortive attempts to overthrow Iran have bubbled up in the swamp gas to give regime change in Turkey a go. Wallace is joined by other bottom-feeders like former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman and UANI intel chief Norman Roule, as well as glorified mustache-carrier, would-be thug, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. Former Bush adviser Frances Townsend is there, as is former associate deputy director of operations for the CIA (and Blackwater vet) Robert Richer. At least a few members of the shadowy pro-Israel Foundation for the Defense of Democracies were listed and then memory-holed, and Bush’s brother Jeb is there, a speech bubble forever hovering above his head reading “please clap.”
Oddly enough, however, the only currently listed actual employee aside from CEO Wallace is a (presumably) former assistant English professor at Princeton University. No, that’s not suspicious at all. Carry on, I’m sure Turkey will welcome you (and your desired partitioning of the country) with open arms!
With Erdogan still trustingly paying his country’s NATO dues, Ankara is unlikely to expect any sort of real attack, though the leader is likely on guard, given former President Trump’s on-again, off-again announcement to clear out US soldiers from Syria. He is likely to be on the lookout for foreign meddlers among the protesters, however. And Erdogan’s allies with their ears to the ground both inside and outside Turkey have already pegged this absurd attempt at bringing back ‘democracy’ for what it really is. While some have linked it to the infamous Gulen movement, referring to the cleric who most recently was accused of trying to overthrow Erdogan in 2016, Gulen’s movement itself seems to have ties to the same ‘Greater Israel’ plan to redraw the lines on the map of the Middle East, a plan Israeli military strategist Oded Yinon devised decades ago (and which the neocons appear to have used as their foreign policy guide ever since). Former Turkish opposition lawmaker Aykan Erdemir, senior director for Turkey at the FDD, was accused of being connected to Gulen in 2017 and had his assets seized, strengthening the case for the connection between Gulen’s organization and the notoriously pro-Israel FDD.
But with all of NATO’s heads turned to this human rights drama, surely the other countries in the alliance also participating in the drawing-and-quartering of Syria won’t expect a military attack on Turkey as well – not without some warning. The map of Greater Israel shows Turkey losing a mere corner of their land compared to Syria, which takes quite a beating – one which Turkey clearly expects to be a part of, having already staked its claim effectively to certain border regions of Syria under the logic of keeping the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) away. But this is all temporary, and eventually the region must settle into its new form. An Israel-first arrangement will not go down well with any of the other combatants, and, unlike the US and its European partners, Turkey won’t just sit on its hands and sigh wistfully while its share of the Syrian pie is handed to the US by way of Tel Aviv.
Because that’s who the ultimate beneficiary of this mess is supposed to be. Named after the Israeli military strategist who devised it, the Yinon project hopes to balkanize the Middle East and assemble the shards into a single nation consisting of the choicest morsels of those countries in between the Euphrates and the Nile rivers. Iraq has already been cut in half, Syria has shrunk dramatically even as the war goes on, and Egypt is run by a pliant leader who will do what the US and Israel tell him – as General Wesley Clark said over a decade ago, the plan was to take out seven countries in five years. They’re running a bit behind, but never underestimate the abilities of a bunch of old war criminals with nothing to lose.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Telegram.
Media finally covering immense crimes against indigenous peoples in Canada known of for decades. Why now?
By Eva Bartlett | RT | July 4, 2021
The reprehensible issue of what many deem “mass murder” of indigenous children in Canada’s Catholic school system has been in global headlines in recent weeks. But this should have been in the headlines decades ago.
The nearly 1,000 bodies of indigenous children in mass graves were recently found by ground-penetrating radar, said the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations (FSIN) and the Cowessess First Nation.
A reported 150,000 indigenous children were abducted and imprisoned in the Catholic schools, where they were tortured with the intent of erasing their culture and language, as were also sexually abused, had needles driven through their tongues for speaking their own language, were sterilized, among many other horrific practices.
After these findings made the news, people were rightly outraged. Catholic churches in British Columbia and Alberta have since been vandalized and set afire, including churches currently used by indigenous communities as meeting places, acts met with disgust by many indigenous, saying vandalism isn’t justice.
The vandalism continued on Canada Day, with another 10 churches in Calgary targeted.
The premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, denounced the vandalization of an African Evangelical Church, noting that the congregation is “made up entirely of new Canadians, many of whom came here as refugees fleeing countries where Churches are often vandalized & burned down.”
While some have justified the vandalization of the churches as a push for justice, others questioned whether vandalized or burned mosques or synagogues would also receive the same approval.
After Prime Minister Trudeau spoke of “reconciliation” and how “our relationship with indigenous peoples” has evolved, people rightly called out the government of Canada for empty talk, noting indigenous communities around the country frequently lack clean drinking water. Then, there’s the issue that aside from an official apology, the government hasn’t charged or tried anyone for these crimes.
A report first published in March 2016 by the International Tribunal for the Disappeared of Canada (ITDC) has since apparently been heavily censored and removed from Google search results.
It addressed the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” carried out by the government and churches, calling it “a rapid in-house response by church and state designed to present their own self-serving narrative of their Indian residential schools crimes,” noting it “was created by the same institutions of church and state that were responsible for the residential school crimes being investigated.”
The synopsis notes that the crimes were “legally authorized, sanctioned and protected by every level of government, church and police in Canada,” and “amounted to deliberate genocide.”
It refers to horrifying facts that the average Canadian likely doesn’t know, including that “Native children began dying in droves the very first year the residential schools opened in 1889, at an average death rate of nearly 50%.” This, it emphasized, continued for the next five decades, “despite constant complaints and reports by doctors who inspected the schools.”
The deaths were caused by “a continual denial of regular food, clothing and proper sanitation to children interned in the schools, amidst a regime of routine and systemic rapes, beatings, tortures and killings: conditions that continued unabated for over a century, from 1889 to 1996.”
Why now?
While I fully stand with the push for justice for the manifold crimes committed against the indigenous peoples in what is now Canada, I do wonder, why is this making headlines now? It’s not like these are new revelations.
Ostensibly the reason these mass graves are in the news now is due to their recent discovery. But, others point out that indigenous have for decades said there were mass graves, but were met with silence.
Indeed, an article first published in May 2008 – and according to the author, rejected by Canadian media – spoke of a 1996 lawsuit launched by residential school survivors on the issue of the death and torture at residential schools. It noted that “residential school children were being buried ‘four or five to a grave’, and that the death rate in these schools stayed constant at fifty percent for over forty years.”
It rightly asked: “Why is the disappearance of tens of thousands of native children in these schools not the subject of a major criminal investigation?”
That was 13 years ago, the lawsuit over two decades ago.
This is just one of, I’m sure, countless examples over the years, decades even, of calls to investigate the missing children and the criminal practices of the schools they were forced into.
So, while it would seem a good thing that the media is highlighting the issue of the barbaric ‘residential schools’, the fact that the media – and not just Canadian, but global media – is covering this should make us take pause. These are the same outlets that sold us WMDs in Iraq, chemical weapons in Syria, and innumerable lies to justify wars and invasions against sovereign nations.
Again, for me, the question is, why now is Canada discussing this issue? I don’t know the answer to that, but before getting swept up in toppling statues for ‘justice’, it is worth considering this and whether justice is really served by vandalization and the PM’s empty words.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Iran: Israel legally, politically responsible for fate of diplomats kidnapped in Lebanon
Press TV – July 4, 2021
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says Israel and its supporters are politically and legally responsible for the fate of four Iranian diplomats kidnapped in Lebanon in 1982.
“Since the Zionist regime occupied Lebanon in 1982, it bears political and legal responsibility for the abduction of [Iranian] diplomats and the Zionist regime and its terrorism-sponsoring supporters are liable for this measure. Unfortunately, the Zionist regime has not been accountable in this case, and this is why the process of revealing facts and various aspects of this incident has been so slow,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday, which marked the 39th anniversary of the abduction of the four diplomats.
On July 4, 1982, the year Israel invaded Lebanon, Ahmad Motevasselian, Seyyed Mohsen Mousavi, Taqi Rastegar Moqaddam and Kazem Akhavan were kidnapped by a group of gunmen backed by Israel at an inspection post in northern Lebanon.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly announced that there is evidence to prove that the [kidnapped] diplomats were handed over to Israeli forces after the abduction and were subsequently transferred to the Zionist regime’s prisons,” the statement read.
Iran, it added, has gone to great lengths since the abduction, given the humanitarian, legal and political dimensions of the criminal incident, and has put on its agenda the pursuit of the issue through regional and international avenues.
The ministry once again called on the United Nations secretary general as well as international and human rights organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to pay more serious attention to the abduction of its diplomats by Israel.
In a letter to Secretary General Antonio Guterres in July 2020, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Tehran believes the diplomats were handed over to Israeli forces immediately after the abduction in a region controlled by Israel at the time.
“Evidence shows they have been held in Israeli prisons, and are still alive,” the Iranian envoy said.
The Nakba and the Polish Law
By Gilad Atzmon | Almayadeen | July 4, 2021
“Israel” seems upset by a new Polish law that sets a 30-year deadline for Jews to recover seized property. The legislation is yet to be approved by Poland’s senate, yet Israeli officials already refer to it as the “Holocaust law.” They insist that it is ‘immoral’ and ‘a disgrace.’
Last week Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Yair Lapid insisted that the bill “is a disgrace that will not erase the horrors or the memory of the Holocaust.”
I fail to see which part of the legislation interferes with the memory and the horrors of the holocaust. I actually think that the crude attempt to squeeze billions of dollars from Poland in the name of a human tragedy may have a detrimental impact on this historical chapter and the way it is memorized.
The Poles didn’t approve of the Jewish ‘State’ interfering with their internal affairs. On Friday, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hit back at Lapid, stressing, “I can only say that as long as I am the prime minister, Poland will not pay for German crimes: Neither zloty, nor euro, nor dollar.”
Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs echoed Morawiecki’s position, arguing that Lapid’s comments were misguided. “Poland is by no means responsible for the Holocaust, an atrocity committed by the German occupant also on Polish citizens of Jewish origin.”
During the weekend, the crisis seemed to escalate. On Sunday, Poland and “Israel” summoned the other’s ambassador for meetings as the rift between the two countries didn’t seem to subside.
I am not in a position to judge what is right and who is wrong on restitution matters. Suppose the Polish new legislation is “a horrific injustice and disgrace that harms the rights of Holocaust survivors and their heirs,” as Lapid says. In that case, we should also expect Lapid to vividly support the Palestinians, their right of return, and their right to be compensated for the colossal crimes committed against them in 1948 and thereafter.
In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians (the vast majority of indigenous Palestine) were ethnically cleansed by the newly born Jewish ‘State’. This catastrophic racially driven crime (that included a long list of massacres) is called the Nakba. It took place less than four years after the liberation of Auschwitz.
During the 1948 war and shortly after, young “Israel” wiped out Palestinian cities and villages. It then used legislation to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes and applied any possible means to plunder their properties, dispossessing those few Palestinians who clung to their land. Yet, “Israel” never admitted its original sin of ethnic cleansing.
Applying to a moral cause, “Israel” claims to represent Jewish demands for restitution in Poland. I wonder, shouldn’t the same rule be applied to the Palestinians? Shouldn’t “Israel” put the same moral law into play and acknowledge the Palestinians’ right to their land, villages, cities, fields, and orchards?
While in Poland, it was Nazi Germany that brought a disaster on the county’s Jewry. In Palestine, young IDF and Jewish paramilitary groups committed colossal crimes against the indigenous population. While Nazi Germany ceased to exist in 1945, the IDF is still with us. The Labour party (which formed the first Israeli government directly) is still active and is even a member of the current governing coalition. The Likud Party, being the offspring of the Irgun and the Stern Gang (both complicit in some of the most brutal massacres in Palestine), is, by far, the biggest party in the Israeli Knesset. The Israeli and Zionist institutions that were responsible for the 1948 crime have never ceased to exist. They have never owned their crimes, let alone repented.
Holocaust survivors have been compensated by different means for the crime that was committed against them by Europeans. “Israel” benefitted from a large reparations deal with the German government. The Palestinians, however, are still living in open-air prisons and refugee camps, subject to blockades and constant abuse.
The time is ripe for “Israel” to own up to its horrendous past. By now, “Israel” should accept that the Palestinian cause is not fading away or evaporating into thin air. If “Israel” seeks to reconcile with the region, it must first apply to itself that moral code that it demands Poland to follow.
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Is America behind the massive surge in Kiev regime’s child trafficking?
By Drago Bosnic | August 10, 2023
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals. … continue
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