Out of all the political prostitutes in the Western world, one man stands out as the perfect illustration of a politician who works solely to serve his puppet masters. Even though the majority of politicians are controlled by economic and corporate elites, the current US President, Barack Obama, is the epitome of a man who is bought and paid for by special interests.
Obama was elected President in November 2008, and inaugurated in January 2009. From the very beginning of his Presidency, it was clear who the “lord and saviour” was beholden to. According to OpenSecrets.org, Obama’s top campaign donors in 2008 included: Goldman Sachs; JPMorgan Chase; Citigroup; Morgan Stanley; Microsoft; Google; and IBM. Considering Obama’s donors, it’s no wonder that (unlike Iceland) the US has not prosecuted the plethora of bankers and financial institutions that have engaged in fraud for years, and subsequently played a pivotal role in causing the financial crisis of 2007/08.
“I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go”
In a bizarre speech in 2008, Obama said: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve travelled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to, even though I really wanted to visit.” Did he simply make a mistake? Was he joking? Or was this just another slip from a person who is really just hypnotically going through the motions anytime he speaks, with no real interest in what he is saying. This bizarre statement is not an isolated one from the US President, as just a few months ago, Obama tried to argue that Russia bombing ISIL is only “strengthening ISIL.”
The Narcissist
In Greek mythology, Narcissus, the son of a river god, fell in love with his own reflection. Judging from his actions in office, Obama also appears to care more about himself than anything else. In a recent 33-minute speech, Obama referred to himself a whopping 76 times; a true mark of a narcissistic, arrogant and egocentric person. Perhaps he was trying to challenge Julius Caesar’s record, as the former Roman general penned the majority of the ‘Commentaries on the Gallic War,’ in which the word “Caesar” is used 775 times, according to the historian Robin Lane Fox.
Tears of Deceit
Emotive propaganda 101; cry and weep during a highly controversial and political speech on gun control, pulling at the heartstrings of the American public to push a political agenda. In this piece, I’m not trying to underplay the death of innocent people, but merely point out the way in which Obama is emotively trying to manipulate the opinions of the American public in order to push through legislation. Whatever your personal views are on gun control in the US, Obama’s tactics should be denounced as deceitful and staged.
Remember, the man who stood up and gave an Oscar winning performance recently, is the same man who is the head of the country that is carrying out more drone strikes around the world than ever before; has been funding and arming terrorists to overthrow the secular Syrian government; bombed a hospital in Afghanistan which killed at least three children; destroyed and destabilized the nation of Libya (which previously had the highest standard of living in Africa); supports Saudi Arabia in its war crime in Yemen; tortures and interrogates people across the world; and countless other crimes that kill and maim innocent people, yet no tears are shed by the US President.
Was San Bernardino a Black Op?
There are also some anomalies in many of the mainstream narratives regarding mass shootings in the US. The tragic shooting in San Bernardino for instance, which the mainstream media claimed was carried out by husband and wife, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, appears to conflict with some eyewitness accounts of the attack. Two reported eyewitnesses claim that the shooters were three tall white men wearing military gear.
Was San Bernardino a black op carried out by military personnel or mercenaries to further legitimize the push for gun control? It is difficult to conclusively say what actually happened, but the official narrative is a shaky one. It should also be noted that some investigative journalists have argued that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of mass shootings under Obama, one of the most pro-gun control President’s in recent decades.
January 16, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite | ISIL, Obama, United States, Yemen |
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Turkey has established a strict blockade of the Kurdish regions in Syria surrounded by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), depriving Syrian Kurds of essential supplies and shooting people trying to enter Turkey from Syria, RT’s Murad Gazdiev reports.
The Turkish border with the Kurdish territories in the northern Syria, which stretches for 750 kilometers, has been fitted with two layers of barbed wire, a huge minefield, and sniper towers at regular intervals. It has only two border crossings that are closed most of the time.
“They [Turks] do not let anything across: neither food, nor humanitarian aid, nor medicine. They only let returning refugees cross,” Hadir Mustafa, the head of one of the border crossings on the Syrian side, told RT.
“The Turkish soldiers do not cooperate, they are aggressive and hostile. They push, hit people and tell them to never come back,” he added.
Murad Gazdiev reported from the border that Turkish border guards had refused to let an ambulance cross the border that was transporting a man critically injured in a terrorist act in a nearby Syrian Kurdish town, saying they needed to receive permission from Turkish provincial authorities first.
Apart from maintaining the blockade, Turkish snipers on towers also target civilians on the Syrian side. They recently shot and killed a Kurdish schoolboy, who was trying to cross the border in order to find work in Turkey.
“The Turks shot him 70 meters from the border, on the Syrian side. I saw the place myself,” the boy’s father told RT.
On Sunday, a 16-year-old girl was also shot dead as she was trying to get to Turkey from Kurdish territories in Syria, while others from her group were injured and had to be treated for gunshot wounds.
The Turkish blockade of Syrian Kurdistan is “total,” Gazdiev reports citing the locals.
“The large part of what we grow here we throw away because we can’t sell it outside,” a Kurdish fruit and vegetable seller named Beze told RT, adding that it is easier to smuggle goods through IS-controlled territories than to transport them through the Turkish border.
“Things that do not grow here also have to be smuggled in. By the time they get here they cost ten times as much,” Beze added.
At the same time, the Turkish border with jihadist-controlled territories in Syria remains open. Weapons, fighters and goods flow freely through checkpoints manned by Islamic militants.
January 13, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | ISIL, ISIS, Syria, Turkey |
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Sheikh Akram Al-Kaabi, the leader of Hezbollah al-Nujaba, a major Iraqi Shiite resistance movement fighting Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) in the region, has revealed that the jihadist group receives lavish amounts of money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and modern weaponry from 120 countries around the world, according to the Iranian news agency FARS.
“Saudi Arabia and Qatar are extensively supporting the Takfiri (Daesh and radical Islamist) terrorists financially but surely victory belongs to the resistance groups,” the agency quoted Sheikh Akram al-Kaabi as saying at a meeting with Iranian Shiite cleric Ayatollah Alavi Gorgani in the Iranian city of Qom (also known as Ghom) on Saturday night.
“In the Syria war, 120 countries throughout the world are supplying the terrorists with state-of-the-art equipment and weapons,” added the Iraqi leader.
He voiced concern about the dire humanitarian situation in the besieged towns of Kafria and Foua’a regions in Idlib province, and said sending aid to these two towns is difficult due to the presence of terrorist groups.
Kaabi said that the Takfiri terrorists are still attacking the two Shiite-populated towns and despite the resistance forces’ operations to break the siege of the two towns, they are still under the militants’ control.
Similar concerns have been earlier voiced by Leader of the Lebanese Orthodox Party Masarik Roderick Khoury, who named Turkey as the main sponsor of terrorist groups in Syria.
“Turkey is the first and main power which funds and supplies weapons to terrorist groups. We believe the fight against terrorism should begin with pressuring Turkey. Now Turkey is the main sponsor of terrorism in the region,” Khoury said at a press conference in Moscow in December.
“The name of the real leader of the terrorists is Tayyip Erdogan [Turkish President]. The others like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [Daesh/ISIL leader] and al-Qaeda are just his servants. Al-Nusra Front also carries out orders from Turkey,” he then pointed out.
The Lebanese politician said there was real exidence to the allegations: after the city of Kassab, near Latakia, was liberated from terrorists Turkish ambulance vehicles, clothes and weapons were found there.
Khoury also added that when the terrorists take Syrian or Lebanese hostages they only can be released after negotiations with Turkey.
January 11, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Da’esh, Iraq, ISIL, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey |
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As Washington sends mixed signals on whether or not it will introduce new sanctions against Iran, Tehran is considering other options should a new round of penalties come to pass, says Seyed Mohammad Marandi, professor at the University of Tehran.
The United States delayed the announcement of new penalties, which reportedly seeks to punish several companies and individuals from Iran, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates that the US believes have been involved in Iran’s ballistic missile tests.
However, such an announcement comes as no surprise to Tehran, according to Marandi, who said that even as the [nuclear] negotiations were taking place between Iran and the P5+1, the general consensus in Iran was that “the United States would move towards increasing sanctions through other excuses than that of the nuclear program.”
Marandi provided a list of methods the United States was using to target Iran, including the recent passage of a law restricting visas for people that have visited Iran, as well as for Iranian citizens that have dual nationality. Also, Iranian assets are being confiscated abroad, which the Iranians “believe… is theft by the United States through using different excuses.”
The professor at the University of Tehran says such actions could “severely damage the chances for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action bearing fruit.”
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is an agreement designed to oversee Iran’s nuclear program reached in Vienna on July 14, 2015 between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany), and the EU.
Marandi believes that Washington’s aggressive stance towards Iran must be explained by other reasons because, he says, “there’s never been any evidence to show that Iran’s nuclear program has been anything but peaceful. The United States has been making many accusations against Iran that have been unfounded.”
The real reason the US is fundamentally opposed to Iran is because the Islamic Republic successfully freed itself from Washington’s rule many years ago, he argues.
“The United States has not forgiven the Iranian people over three and a half decades for gaining their independence from the United States and becoming an independent actor in this part of the world.
“Therefore, the Iranians expect the United States will use all sorts of excuses – whether it’s the nuclear program, terrorism, human rights.”
Marandi exclaimed with a hint of irony that the only thing Iran has not been blamed for by Washington is “global warming.”
Yet the nuclear issue, he says, is not the main point of contention between the two countries. What really irks Washington about Iran “is not the nuclear program, but rather Iran’s political independence of the US,” he asserts.
But the international community will see through the actions of the United States that – despite the agreement between the two countries – is “trying to make ordinary Iranians suffer until Iran bows down to the will of the US.”
Marandi is adamant that such a thing “is not going to happen.”
In fact, according to the academic, Tehran has many options open to itself should the US impose a new round of sanctions, including seeking the cooperation and partnership of other countries – both non-Western and Western alike.
“If the US continues to go down this road, we will see greater tensions and probably it will be an important incentive for Iran to increase and develop its ties with Russia and China, as well as other non-Western countries.”
Marandi concludes that due to Washington’s support of countries in the region that are guilty of “supporting al-Qaeda and ISIL [Islamic State/ISIS],” Tehran is of the opinion that countries like Russia, China and increasingly India, and even many European Union countries will begin to “look more to Iran as a reliable partner and this is making it far more difficult for the US… to impose sanctions on Iran in a way in which the international community would abide by those demands of the US.”
January 2, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics | al-Qaeda, Iran, ISIL, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
1 Comment
A Turkish court in Adana acquitted five Turkish suspects accused of procuring chemicals used in production of sarin gas, Zaman reported.
In May 2013, media reported that Turkish special service officers arrested members of Syrian opposition group who were in possession of two kilograms of sarin, Sputnik reported.
Moscow conducted a thorough investigation of the incident and expressed hope that Turkey would provide information regarding the detention of the militants. However, two months later, all detainees were released pending trial.
Later on when the court established that the materials they were trying to obtain could in fact be used to produce sarin, a warrant for the arrest was issued.
The case sparked political controversy when the deputy of the Turkish opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Eren Erdem said in an interview with RT that Turkey knew about ISIL-bound shipments of deadly sarin gas passing through its territory.
Eren Erdem was accused of treason by Ankara’s top prosecutor and criminal investigation was opened against him.
But after addressing the parliament and saying that the Turkish president had started a smear campaign against him, Erdem went even further by accusing the Turkish authorities of complicity, stating that the government pressured the prosecutor of the case into toning down the accusations and ending the trial rapidly.
The prosecutor of the case involving the five Turkish suspects recently denied Erdem’s accusations in a statement, saying the Turkish suspects were released because they were not found to be in possession of the materials used for sarin production, while rejecting the idea that the justice minister pressured him into bringing the case to a close immediately.
Two CHP deputies said that the Turkish government was out to get Eren Erdem and had launched a lynching campaign against the deputy.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Ali Şeker stated that Turkish authorities must answer questions in connection with the incident.
January 1, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | ISIL, Syria, Turkey |
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It is now openly discussed even in mainstream media the fact that Turkey has been intimately involved in fomenting and supporting the war on Syria, with its ultimate goal being the overthrow of the Syrian government and its replacement by a compliant proxy aligned with Turkish President Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood. That this is no longer a ‘conspiracy theory’ but a conspiracy fact not only vindicates my analysis over the last four years, but it also brings to the fore the nefarious role of a NATO member in stoking a brutal and bloody war for its own ends.
Beyond just the war itself, Turkey has been implicated in a wide variety of crimes (some constituting war crimes) which cast Ankara in a very bad light: a supporter of terrorism, a criminal government engaging in acts of aggression against its neighbors and other world powers, the repression of journalists and others who have brought the truth to the light of day, among many others. Taken in total, it becomes clear that under President Erdogan Turkey has become a belligerent actor with delusions of hegemony and a complete disregard for human rights and sovereignty.
But how exactly has this transformation happened? What has been proven regarding Turkish government actions that make it so clear that the regime in Ankara is criminal in nature?
Cataloging Turkish Crimes
The criminality of the Erdogan government can be roughly broken down into the following categories: aggression against sovereign states, material support for international terrorism, and systematic violation of human rights. Naturally, there are many other crimes that would also be included in a full and completing accounting of Ankara’s illegal actions including, but not limited to, corruption, promoting and tacitly supporting fascist gangs, and many others. But it is the support for international terrorism that rises above all others to thrust Turkey into the spotlight as one of the single most important supporters of the global scourge of terrorism.
Turkey’s central role in each and every aspect of terrorism in Syria must be the starting point of any analysis of Turkey’s grave crimes. President Erdogan has not been shy about calling for regime change in Syria, but his position has been far more than merely rhetorical; Erdogan’s government has played a very direct role in the sponsorship, arming, facilitation and military backing of everyone from the Free Syrian Army to Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) and the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh).
In 2012, the New York Times confirmed that the CIA was sending weapons and other military materiel into the hands of anti-Assad forces from the Turkish side of the border, using their connections with the Muslim Brotherhood to do so. However, it has also come to light that Turkish intelligence has been front and center in the ongoing campaign to arm and resupply the terror groups such as the al-Nusra Front and others. This fact was exposed by Can Dündar, the editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet, who now faces a potential life sentence at the behest of President Erdogan, who himself called for Dündar to receive multiple life sentences.
What is the reason for the attack on Dündar and other opposition journalists? The Cumhuriyet, one of the most widely read Turkish dailies, published video footage confirming the widespread allegations that Turkish trucks, ostensibly loaded with humanitarian supplies, were actually filled with arms bound for terror groups fighting against Assad, and that those trucks were operated by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT). But it goes much further than that.
Turkey has been directly involved on the ground in Syria both in active military and support roles. In fact, transcripts of wiretaps obtained by Cumhuriyet, and presented in Turkish courts, along with shocking video footage, have confirmed what numerous eyewitnesses have stated: Turkish security forces have been directly involved in shelling and support operations for Nusra front and other jihadi groups in and around Kassab, Syria, among other sites. This is a crucial piece of information because it explains just why those terror groups were able to successfully capture that region in 2014, and recapture it this year. Eyewitnesses in Kassab have confirmed what Syrian soldiers speaking on condition of anonymity had reported, namely that Turkish helicopters and heavy artillery were used in support of Nusra and the other terror groups during both the 2014 and the current campaign.
Of course this policy of alliance with anti-Assad terrorists has been part of Turkey’s modus operandi since the beginning of the conflict. In 2012, Reuters revealed that Turkey, “set up a secret base with allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar to direct vital military and communications aid to Syria’s rebels from a city near the border… ‘It’s the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main coordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom,’ said a Doha-based source.”
This information was confirmed by Vice President Joe Biden in his spectacular foot-in-mouth speech at Harvard University where he stated:
Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends… [and] the Saudis, the Emirates, etcetera. What were they doing?… They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad — except that the people who were being supplied, [they] were al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world.
But one must guard against the false notion that somehow Turkey’s role has been merely as auxiliary in Syria, as a supporter, but not leader, of the terrorist factions wreaking havoc on the Syrian battlefield. Instead, it is now an inescapable fact, even acknowledged by some high-ranking military and intelligence officials, that Turkey has been the principal financier and supporter of the Islamic State and the other jihadist groups.
According to the UK Independent, President Erdogan’s son Bilal Erdogan, along with a number of other close associates, have been directly benefiting from the illicit oil trade with the Islamic State. The paper noted that, “Bilal Erdogan… is one of three equal partners in the BMZ group, a major Turkish oil and marine shipping company, which both the Russian and Syrian governments have accused of purchasing oil from ISIS… Bilal Erdogan has been directly involved in the oil trade with ISIS… Turkey downed a Russian jet on 24 November specifically to protect his oil smuggling business.”
In fact, Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi explained that “All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts [sic] as well.”
So it seems that Erdogan and his clique are involved not simply in fomenting war and terrorism in Syria, but also in its plunder, with complex smuggling networks being directly tied to the Turkish President himself. Indeed, just such smuggling networks have been uncovered throughout Asia, tying Turkey into the broader international architecture of terrorism trafficking.
In late 2014 and early 2015, a human trafficking ring was exposed by Chinese authorities. It was revealed that at least ten Turks were responsible for organizing and facilitating the border crossings of a number of Uighurs (Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang), at least one of whom was a wanted Uighur terrorist with others being “radicalized potential terrorists.” These individuals were likely part of a previously documented trend of Uighur extremists traveling to the Middle East to train and fight with the Islamic State and/or other terror groups.
In fact, precisely this trend was exposed two months earlier in September 2014 when Reuters reported that Beijing formally accused militant Uighurs from Xinjiang of having traveled to Islamic State-controlled territory to receive training. Further corroborating these accusations, the Jakarta Post of Indonesia reported that four Chinese Uighur jihadists had been arrested in Indonesia after having traveled from Xinjiang through Malaysia. Other, similar reports have also surfaced in recent months, painting a picture of a concerted campaign to help Uighur extremists travel throughout Asia, communicating and collaborating with transnational terror groups such as IS.
Now, with these latest revelations regarding Turkish nationals being involved in the trafficking of extremists, it seems an invaluable piece of the terrorist transit infrastructure has been exposed. Indeed my assertions above (initially made here in early February 2015) have been substantiated by Syria’s ambassador to China, quoted at length by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his piece Military to Military which notes the following:
[Syria’s ambassador to China Imad Moustapha explained that] ‘China regards the Syrian crisis from three perspectives,’ he said: international law and legitimacy; global strategic positioning; and the activities of jihadist Uighurs, from Xinjiang province in China’s far west. Xinjiang borders eight nations… and, in China’s view, serves as a funnel for terrorism around the world and within China. Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – an often violent separatist organisation that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in Xinjiang. ‘The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence,’ Moustapha said. ‘China is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria may be extended in the future to support Turkey’s agenda in Xinjiang. We are already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria’ [emphasis added].
Moustapha’s concerns were echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst who has closely followed the passage of jihadists through Turkey and into Syria. The analyst, whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, told me that ‘Erdoğan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.’ He added that there was also what amounted to another ‘rat line’ that was funnelling Uighurs – estimates range from a few hundred to many thousands over the years – from China into Kazakhstan for eventual relay to Turkey, and then to IS territory in Syria [emphasis added]. ‘US intelligence,’ he said, ‘is not getting good information about these activities because those insiders who are unhappy with the policy are not talking to them.’ He also said it was ‘not clear’ that the officials responsible for Syrian policy in the State Department and White House ‘get it’. IHS-Jane’s Defence Weekly estimated in October that as many as five thousand Uighur would-be fighters have arrived in Turkey since 2013, with perhaps two thousand moving on to Syria. Moustapha said he has information that ‘up to 860 Uighur fighters are currently in Syria.’
It has become clear that Turkey is now unmistakably a major supporter of international terrorism, with Syria being merely the proving ground for a stable of terror groups directly or indirectly working with Erdogan’s government. This is further evidenced by the now documented and verified fact that the Erdogan government was directly involved in the transfer of chemical weapons into the hands of ISIS.
As Turkish MP Eren Erdem explained before the Turkish parliament and to international media, “There is data in this indictment. Chemical weapon materials are being brought to Turkey and being put together in Syria in camps of ISIS which was known as Iraqi Al Qaeda during that time.” Erdem noted that according to an investigation launched (and abruptly closed) by the General Prosecutor’s Office in Adana, Turkish citizens with ties to the intelligence community took part in negotiations with ISIS-linked and Al-Qaeda-linked militants to sell sarin gas for use in Syria. The evidence of these allegations came in the form of wiretapped phone conversations similar to those published earlier this year by Cumhuriyet.
Taken in total, the case against Erdogan’s government is damning. At the same time, one must also note Erdogan’s grave crimes against his own people.
As noted already, Can Dündar and his colleagues at Cumhuriyet have been targeted by Erdogan’s state for their disclosure of Ankara’s dealings with the terrorists of Syria. Just a few weeks ago Dündar, along with Cumhuriyet’s Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul, were charged in a Turkish court with “spying” and “divulging state secrets.” This should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Turkey’s track record when it comes to opposition journalism.
In fact, in December 2014, the Turkish police raided the offices of the Zaman newspaper, one of the most popular in the country, alleging that Zaman was responsible for “launching an armed terror organization.” The authorities detained the Zaman Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı , as well as the head of the Samanyolu Media Group, Hidayet Karaca, along with a producer, scriptwriter and director.
The Turkish Journalists Association (TGC) and the Turkey Journalists’ Labor Union (TGS) released a joint statement in condemnation of the raids and the ongoing repression of journalists by the Erdogan government, noting that “Almost 200 journalists were previously held in prison on charges of being a member of a terror organization, violating their right to a fair trial. Journalists are now being detained once again. These developments mean that freedom of the press and opinion is punished in Turkey, which takes its place in the class of countries where the press is not free.”
International organizations too expressed their outrage at this blatant violation of freedom of the press. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), and its regional group the European Federation of Journalists (EFL), stated that, “We are appalled by this brazen assault on press freedom and Turkish democracy… One year after the exposure of corruption at the heart of government, the authorities appear to be exacting their revenge by targeting those who express opposing views… This latest act demonstrates that the authorities’ contempt for journalism has not diminished.”
Of course, Ankara’s war on freedom of speech, and the media generally, is not relegated to established media outlets such as Zaman and Cumhuriyet, but also to citizen media and social media as well. In response to the leaking of recordings on Twitter documenting corruption among Erdogan cronies and political elites within his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdogan attacked the social media platform, and his government immediately moved to restrict access to Twitter.
Erdogan even went so far as to suggest a total ban on all social media sites, including Facebook and YouTube, saying that “The international community can say this, can say that. I don’t care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is.” This sort of megalomaniacal rhetoric has become the norm for Erdogan, who sees himself as less a president and more a sultan or absolute monarch.
The famous words of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg succinctly and matter-of-factly state that the waging of aggressive war is “essentially an evil thing… to initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” This is undeniably true. But what happens when one is engaged in an international campaign to destroy a neighboring country through war? What happens when one country enables and participates in the destruction of another? What happens when one country will stop at nothing to come out victorious in a war it is not officially involved in, but covertly manages, and from which it directly benefits? Are these not simply different forms of the same crime, the supreme crime, as it were?
Let’s face it, Turkey is now a mafia state ruled by a criminal regime. It is also a NATO member state. Perhaps now the pernicious illusion of NATO as military alliance defending justice, human rights, and the rule of law can finally be put to rest. While the propagandists will continue the charade, Turkey has permanently exposed the US-NATO-GCC-Israel for the warmongers they are in Syria and around the world. Let’s just hope the world notices.
December 29, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Da’esh, Erdogan, GCC, ISIL, ISIS, Israel, NATO, Syria, Turkey, United States |
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The Pentagon’s pledge to wage a cyber war against the Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri group is a cover for other US ploys as America itself was the group’s main supplier of computer hardware, says an American counter-terrorism analyst.
The US Defense Department is weighing more aggressive cyber attacks against the Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri group, aiming to disrupt the terror organization’s web-based activities, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday, citing officials who were not allowed to publicly discuss the matter.
US Cyber Command military hackers and programmers have reportedly developed a collection of malware that can sabotage the terror organization’s online capabilities for recruitment and propaganda.
It is estimated that extremists post about 90,000 Twitter messages a day, according to the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based nonprofit organization.
In an interview with Press TV on Monday, Scott Bennett, a former US army psychological warfare officer, said the claim was “outrageous,” as it is the US who helped the ISIL run its propaganda machine by providing it with sophisticated computers through its main supporters among Persian Gulf.
“We are enabling those countries and ISIS (Daesh) to engage in the recruitment and engage in their cyber propaganda,” Bennett told Press TV on Monday, using another acronym for the terror group. “So to say that the United States is now going to cut it off is laughable.”
Bennett explained that authorizing such operations is primarily aimed at attracting more defense contractors, and “this is one of the greatest scandals,” as it gives them access to troves of top secret documents and puts them in charge of highly sensitive cyber operations, besides raking in “lots of” money.
The counter-terrorism analyst cast doubt on the real US intentions behind the plan, saying similar cases of online recruitment for Daesh have indicated a deep route in some government agencies, raising suspicion that the activities are “state-sponsored.”
“That indicates a state-sponsored, state-managed, intelligence agency-managed cyber black operation which is a false flag operation,” he said.
“Why it is being done,” the analyst noted, is “to increase the military police state in America, putting everyone on a list of questionable people.”
December 21, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Da’esh, ISIL, Saudi Arabia, United States |
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Islamic State militants have managed to steal chemical weapons from underground storage facilities in Libya that were not properly guarded and the gas has already been used, a cousin of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi told RT Arabic in an exclusive interview.
“ISIS has managed to find some of the secret underground storage facilities, still holding chemical weapons, hidden in the desert. Unfortunately, they weren’t properly guarded,” said Ahmed Gaddafi Al-Dam, a cousin of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader who was killed in 2011.
Al-Dam, the stolen gas was then trafficked to the northern part of the country and sold.
“There are two known cases of this chemical agent being stolen. I know this from my sources in Tripoli. In the first case, seven drums of sarin were stolen, and in the second, I think it was five.”
And the destructive chemicals have already been used, said Ahmed Gaddafi Al-Dam, who formerly was one of Gaddafi’s most trusted security chiefs. He recalled that during the recent clashes near the Al-Quds Mosque in Tripoli, security forces discovered a vehicle loaded with sarin.
“Unfortunately, those who had driven this vehicle into the city didn’t understand the dangers of this nerve agent, and how risky it was to bring it into an urban area, let alone ever use it. I don’t want to spread panic, but that’s the reality. And the world knows this very well,” he said.
Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) has already used chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria, according to numerous reports.
Earlier this month, Eren Erdem, a member of Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), told RT that IS terrorists in Syria had received all the necessary materials to produce deadly sarin gas via Turkey.
December 19, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | ISIL, ISIS, Libya, Syria, Turkey |
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“The ISIL simply would not be able to support itself without American airpower,” US politician Art Olivier told Press TV on Saturday.
The United States is supporting the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group because it does not want to end war in the Middle East, an American politician and political analyst says.
“The United States is ultimately behind ISIS,” Art Olivier said on Saturday, using an alternative acronym for the Takfiri group.
Olivier, former mayor of Bellflower, California, and former US vice presidential [Libertarian] candidate, told Press TV that the United States creates these terrorist groups “to keep fighting in the Middle East.”
“The ISIS simply would not be able to support itself without American airpower — in Iraq — and without American spies,” he noted.
On Friday, a US “friendly fire” reportedly killed at least 20 Iraqi soldiers and injured 30 others in Fallujah in Anbar province.
Olivier said US airstrikes also “attack the Syrian army when the Syrian army is fighting against ISIS. The only thing they drop on ISIS is ammunition and food.”
“Recently, some Iraqi soldiers caught some ISIS [militants] and they had fresh rations of US military food with them, and the whole idea that the US is fighting ISIS is silly,” the analyst stated.
The US and some of its allies have been conducting airstrikes against purported Daesh positions in Iraq and Syria and since last year.
The US-led coalition has done little to stop the ISIL’s advances in parts of Syria and in western Iraq.
Commenting on the recent shooting in San Bernardino, California, Olivier said, “Every witness said that they saw three tall white men with athletic skills that were the terrorists, and what they [police] ended up doing was killing a Pakistani man and his petite little 90-pound wife.”
“You know the story about ISIS is getting more ridiculous all the time,” he added.
On November 2, at least 14 people were killed in San Bernardino in the deadliest mass shooting in the US in three years on November 2.
Hours later, the suspects, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29, reportedly died in an exchange of fire with police. The Daesh group has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.
December 19, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Da’esh, Iraq, ISIL, ISIS, United States |
3 Comments
Theoretically, it would be a great story for the American press: an autocrat so obsessed with overthrowing the leader of a neighboring country that he authorizes his intelligence services to collaborate with terrorists in staging a lethal sarin attack to be blamed on his enemy and thus trick major powers to launch punishing bombing raids against the enemy’s military.
And, after that scheme failed to achieve the desired intervention, the autocrat continues to have his intelligence services aid terrorists inside the neighboring country by providing weapons and safe transit for truck convoys carrying the terrorists’ oil to market. The story gets juicier because the autocrat’s son allegedly shares in the oil profits.
To make the story even more compelling, an opposition leader braves the wrath of the autocrat by seeking to expose these intelligence schemes, including the cover-up of key evidence. The autocrat’s government then seeks to prosecute the critic for “treason.”
But the problem with this story, as far as the American government and press are concerned, is that the autocratic leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is in charge of Turkey, a NATO ally and his hated neighbor is the much demonized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Major U.S. news outlets and political leaders also bought into the sarin deception and simply can’t afford to admit that they once again misled the American people on a matter of war.
The Official Story of the sarin attack – as presented by Secretary of State John Kerry, Human Rights Watch and other “respectable” sources – firmly laid the blame for the Aug. 21, 2013 atrocity killing hundreds of civilians outside Damascus on Assad. That became a powerful “group think” across Official Washington.
Though a few independent media outlets, including Consortium News, challenged the rush to judgment and noted the lack of evidence regarding Assad’s guilt, those doubts were brushed aside. (In an article on Aug. 30, 2013, I described the administration’s “Government Assessment” blaming Assad as a “dodgy dossier,” which offered not a single piece of verifiable proof.)
However, as with the “certainty” about Iraq’s WMD a decade earlier, Every Important Person shared the Assad-did-it “group think.” That meant — as far as Official Washington was concerned — that Assad had crossed President Barack Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons. A massive U.S. retaliatory bombing strike was considered just days away.
But Obama – at the last minute – veered away from launching those military attacks, with Official Washington concluding that Obama had shown “weakness” by not following through. What was virtually unreported was that U.S. intelligence analysts had doubts about Assad’s guilt and suspected a trap being laid by extremists.
Despite those internal questions, the U.S. government and the compliant mainstream media publicly continued to push the Assad-did-it propaganda line. In a formal address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013, Obama declared, “It’s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack.”
Later, a senior State Department official tried to steer me toward the Assad-is-guilty assessment of a British blogger then known as Moses Brown, a pseudonym for Eliot Higgins, who now runs an outfit called Bellingcat which follows an effective business model by reinforcing whatever the U.S. propaganda machine is churning out on a topic, except having greater credibility by posing as a “citizen blogger.” [For more on Higgins, see Consortiumnews.com’s “‘MH-17 Case: ‘Old Journalism’ vs. ‘New’.”]
The supposedly conclusive proof against Assad came in a “vector analysis” developed by Human Rights Watch and The New York Times – tracing the flight paths of two rockets back to a Syrian military base northwest of Damascus. But that analysis collapsed when it became clear that only one of the rockets carried sarin and its range was less than one-third the distance between the army base and the point of impact. That meant the rocket carrying the sarin appeared to have originated in rebel territory.
But the “group think” was resistant to all empirical evidence. It was so powerful that even when the Turkish plot was uncovered by legendary investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, his usual publication, The New Yorker, refused to print it. Rebuffed in the United States – the land of freedom of the press – Hersh had to take the story to the London Review of Books to get it out in April 2014. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Was Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?”]
The Easier Route
It remained easier for The New York Times, The Washington Post and other premier news outlets to simply ignore the compelling tale of possible Turkish complicity in a serious war crime. After all, what would the American people think if – after the mainstream media had failed to protect the country against the lies that led to the disastrous Iraq War – the same star news sources had done something similar on Syria by failing to ask tough questions?
It’s also now obvious that if Obama had ordered a retaliatory bombing campaign against Assad in 2013, the likely winners would have been the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which would have had the path cleared for their conquest of Damascus, creating a humanitarian catastrophe even worse than the current one.
To confess to such incompetence or dishonesty clearly had a big down-side. So, the “smart” play was to simply let the old Assad-did-it narrative sit there as something that could still be cited obliquely from time to time under the phrase “Assad gassed his own people” and thus continue to justify the slogan: “Assad must go!”
But that imperative – not to admit another major mistake – means that the major U.S. news media also must ignore the courageous statements from Eren Erdem, a deputy of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who has publicly accused the Erdogan government of blocking an investigation into Turkey’s role in procuring the sarin allegedly delivered to Al Qaeda-connected terrorists for use inside Syria.
In statements before parliament and to journalists, Erdem cited a derailed indictment that was begun by the General Prosecutor’s Office in the southern Turkish city of Adana, with the criminal case number 2013/120.
Erdem said the prosecutor’s office, using technical surveillance, discovered that an Al Qaeda jihadist named Hayyam Kasap acquired the sarin.
At the press conference, Erdem said, “Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism.”
Erdem said the released operatives were allowed to cross the border into Syria and the criminal investigation was halted.
Another CHP deputy, Ali Şeker, added that the Turkish government misled the public by claiming Russia provided the sarin and that “Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a U.S. military intervention in Syria.”
Erdem’s disclosures, which he repeated in a recent interview with RT, the Russian network, prompted the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation into Erdem for treason. Erdem defended himself, saying the government’s actions regarding the sarin case besmirched Turkey’s international reputation. He added that he also has been receiving death threats.
“The paramilitary organization Ottoman Hearths is sharing my address [on Twitter] and plans a raid [on my house]. I am being targeted with death threats because I am patriotically opposed to something that tramples on my country’s prestige,” Erdem said.
ISIS Oil Smuggling
Meanwhile, President Erdogan faces growing allegations that he tolerated the Islamic State’s lucrative smuggling of oil from wells in Syria through border crossings in Turkey. Those oil convoys were bombed only last month when Russian President Vladimir Putin essentially shamed President Obama into taking action against this important source of Islamic State revenues.
Though Obama began his bombing campaign against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria in summer 2014, the illicit oil smuggling was spared interdiction for over a year as the U.S. government sought cooperation from Erdogan, who recently acknowledged that the Islamic State and other jihadist groups are using nearly 100 kilometers of Turkey’s border to bring in recruits and supplies.
Earlier this month, Obama said he has had “repeated conversations with President Erdogan about the need to close the border between Turkey and Syria,” adding that “there’s about 98 kilometers that are still used as a transit point for foreign fighters, ISIL [Islamic State] shipping out fuel for sale that helps finance their terrorist activities.”
Russian officials expressed shock that the Islamic State was allowed to continue operating an industrial-style delivery system involving hundreds of trucks carrying oil into Turkey. Moscow also accused Erdogan’s 34-year-old son, Bilal Erdogan, of profiting off the Islamic State’s oil trade, an allegation that he denied.
The Russians say Bilal Erdogan is one of three partners in the BMZ Group, a Turkish oil and shipping company that has purchased oil from the Islamic State. The Malta Independent reported that BMZ purchased two oil tanker ships from the Malta-based Oil Transportation & Shipping Services Co Ltd, which is owned by Azerbaijani billionaire Mubariz Mansimov.
Another three oil tankers purchased by BMZ were acquired from Palmali Shipping and Transportation Agency, which is also owned by Mansimov and which shares the same Istanbul address with Oil Transportation & Shipping Services, which is owned by Mansimov’s Palmali Group, along with dozens of other companies set up in Malta.
The Russians further assert that Turkey’s shoot-down of a Russian Su-24 bomber along the Syrian-Turkish border on Nov. 24 – which led to the murder of the pilot, by Turkish-backed rebels, as he parachuted to the ground and to the death of a Russian marine on a rescue operation – was motivated by Erdogan’s fury over the destruction of his son’s Islamic State oil operation.
Erdogan has denied that charge, claiming the shoot-down was simply a case of defending Turkish territory, although, according to the Turkish account, the Russian plane strayed over a slice of Turkish territory for only 17 seconds. The Russians dispute even that, calling the attack a premeditated ambush.
President Obama and the mainstream U.S. press sided with Turkey, displaying almost relish at the deaths of Russians in Syria and also showing no sympathy for the Russian victims of an earlier terrorist bombing of a tourist flight over Sinai in Egypt. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama Ignores Russian Terror Victims.”]
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman expressed the prevailing attitude of Official Washington by ridiculing anyone who had praised Putin’s military intervention in Syria or who thought the Russian president was “crazy like a fox,” Friedman wrote: “Some of us thought he was just crazy.
“Well, two months later, let’s do the math: So far, Putin’s Syrian adventure has resulted in a Russian civilian airliner carrying 224 people being blown up, apparently by pro-ISIS militants in Sinai. Turkey shot down a Russian bomber after it strayed into Turkish territory. And then Syrian rebels killed one of the pilots as he parachuted to earth and one of the Russian marines sent to rescue him.”
Taking Sides
The smug contempt that the mainstream U.S. media routinely shows toward anything involving Russia or Putin may help explain the cavalier disinterest in NATO member Turkey’s reckless behavior. Though Turkey’s willful shoot-down of a Russian plane that was not threatening Turkey could have precipitated a nuclear showdown between Russia and NATO, criticism of Erdogan was muted at most.
Similarly, neither the Obama administration nor the mainstream media wants to address the overwhelming evidence that Turkey – along with other U.S. “allies” such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar – have been aiding and abetting Sunni jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda and Islamic State, for years. Instead, Official Washington plays along with the fiction that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others are getting serious about combating terrorism.
The contrary reality is occasionally blurted out by a U.S. official or revealed when a U.S. intelligence report gets leaked or declassified. For instance, in 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in a confidential diplomatic memo, disclosed by Wikileaks, that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”
According to a Defense Intelligence Agency report from August 2012, “AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later morphed into the Islamic State] supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. … AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”
The DIA report added, “The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. … The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition.”
The DIA analysts already understood the risks that AQI presented both to Syria and Iraq. The report included a stark warning about the expansion of AQI, which was changing into the Islamic State. The brutal armed movement was seeing its ranks swelled by the arrival of global jihadists rallying to the black banner of Sunni militancy, intolerant of both Westerners and “heretics” from Shiite and other non-Sunni branches of Islam.
The goal was to establish a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” where Islamic State’s caliphate is now located, and that this is “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition” – i.e. the West, Gulf states, and Turkey – “want in order to isolate the Syrian regime,” the DIA report said.
In October 2014, Vice President Joe Biden told students at Harvard’s Kennedy School that “the Saudis, the emirates, etc. … were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war … [that] they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda.”
Despite these occasional bursts of honesty, the U.S. government and the mainstream media have put their goal of having another “regime change” – this time in Syria – and their contempt for Putin ahead of any meaningful cooperation toward defeating the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
This ordering of priorities further means there is no practical reason to revisit who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack. If Assad’s government was innocent and Ergogan’s government shared in the guilt, that would present a problem for NATO, which would have to decide if Turkey had crossed a “red line” and deserved being expelled from the military alliance.
But perhaps even more so, an admission that the U.S. government and the U.S. news media had rushed to another incorrect judgment in the Middle East – and that another war policy was driven by propaganda rather than facts – could destroy what trust the American people have left in those institutions. On a personal level, it might mean that the pundits and the politicians who were wrong about Iraq’s WMD would have to acknowledge that they had learned nothing from that disaster.
It might even renew calls for some of them – the likes of The New York Times’ Friedman and The Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt – to finally be held accountable for consistently misinforming and misleading the American people.
So, at least for now — from a perspective of self-interest — it makes more sense for the Obama administration and major news outlets to ignore the developing story of a NATO ally’s ties to terrorism, including an alleged connection to a grave war crime, the sarin attack outside Damascus.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
December 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Bellingcat, Erdogan, Human Rights Watch, ISIL, John Kerry, Middle East, New York Times, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, The New Yorker, Thomas Friedman, Turkey, United States |
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The contingent of elite US commandos which is currently on the ground in Syria could well start helping the Free Syrian Army in its fight against the country’s government as soon as they are done with Daesh (ISIL/ISIS), political analyst Dr. George Masse from the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut told RIA Novosti.
“The position of the US is still unclear. They could help the Free Syrian Army though they know well it consists of Islamists. And if they start helping them, it won’t be against Daesh, but against the Syrian Army and the Russians,” added Dr. George Masse, who is also the Chairperson of the Department of International Affairs, Humanities, & Social Sciences of the University in Beirut.
The expert said that even if currently the US Special Forces are fighting Daesh, tomorrow they will turn against the Syrian Army, adding that the US TOW (“Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided”) anti-tank missiles, which were given to the rebels, only prove it.
Dr. Masse explained that the Americans will keep an eye out where the Syrians and the Russians are gaining ground and then will provide more weaponry to the other side, the Islamist terrorists.
After Russia started its air operation in Syria,he said, the US and its allies had to adjust its strategy on the ground in fear that if they do not do anything and only watch Russia gaining success, Russian could take control of everything on the ground.
Masse, however, was doubtful that the US would provide any help to the Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as the US is an ally of Turkey, and Ankara is acting against any empowerment of the Kurds along Syria’s border with Turkey.
Turkey does not want the Kurds to have their own land as it is dangerous for Turkey, he said. The Americans, regardless of any changes in their strategy, will try to “play with the time” and watch for developments. It is in the interests of the US to avoid seeing a quick resolution to the conflict.
On Monday, President Obama revealed that a small contingent of elite US commandos has begun working with allied forces inside Syria to “tighten the squeeze” on Daesh.
Speaking at the Pentagon, the president said that about 50 US Special Operations forces would help allied groups target Daesh leadership.
December 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism | Da’esh, ISIL, ISIS, Syria, United States |
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An investigation on treason charges has been opened against a Turkish MP who alleged in an exclusive interview with RT that Islamic State jihadists used Turkish territory as a transit route to deliver deadly sarin gas to Syria.
Ankara’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office opened the case against Istanbul MP Eren Erdem of Republican People’s Party (CHP) after his interview about sarin was aired on RT on Monday.
“Chemical weapon materials were brought to Turkey and put together in ISIS camps in Syria, which was known as the Iraqi Al-Qaeda at that time.”
Erdem noted that the chemicals used for the production of weapons did not originate from Turkey. “All basic materials are purchased from Europe. Western institutions should question themselves about these relations. Western sources know very well who carried out the sarin gas attack in Syria,” Erdem told RT.
As Turkish media reported Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office is planning to send a summary of proceedings to the Ministry of Justice on Thursday. Following that, the summary could be forwarded to the Turkish parliament, which could vote to strip Erdem of his parliamentary immunity.
Once Turkish mass-media reported the criminal investigation had been opened against Erdem, the hashtags #ErenErdemYalnızDeğildir – #ErenErdemYouAreNotAlone began to circulate in Turkish social networks.
On Tuesday, MP Erdem issued a written statement in his defense, saying he had become the target of a smear campaign because of his statements made in parliament.
As for his accusations about Turkish businessmen being involved in supplying Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) with the poisonous gas sarin and other reactants needed for chemical warfare, Erdem maintained this statement was made based on the results of a Turkish court investigation in 2013.
Erdem revealed that five Turkish citizens had been arrested by the Adana Chief Prosecutor’s Office as a result of an investigation coded 2013/139. A Syrian national was prosecuted in Turkey for procuring chemical agents for Islamist groups in Syria. At the same time, Erdem noted all the persons arrested within the framework of the 2013/139 investigation were released a week later.
In his statement Eren Erdem claimed he had received death threats over social media following the publication of his interview to RT.
Eren Erdem said that the Turkish paramilitary organization Ottoman Hearths has published his home address on Twitter in an effort to enable at an attack on his house.
“I am being targeted with death threats because I am patriotically opposed to something that tramples on my country’s prestige,” MP Erdem said.
In an interview to Turkey’s Kanal 24 on Tuesday, Cem Küçük, a columnist at the pro-government Star daily, said that Erdem’s claims about sarin gas should be regarded as treason. Erdem should be stripped of his parliamentary immunity to “pay for his deeds,” Today’s Zaman cited Küçük as saying.
The Turkish public is “very much polarized” and those supporting the government and followers of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) make up “about half of the country,” Hisyar Ozsoy, Turkish MP for leftist HDP party, told RT.
“They really do not care about what is happening in terms of freedom of expression,” Ozsoy said, adding that “anybody who is critical of the government is facing incredible pressure: indictments, court cases, even imprisonments.”
The Turkish government – and the president in particular – use polarization of the Turkish community as a mode of carrying out politics that very much worries the other half of the citizenry.
The most widely-reported chemical attack in Syria took place in the early hours of August 21, 2013, in Ghouta, on the outer fringes of Damascus. Rockets containing sarin gas were reportedly fired, killing more than 1,400 people, including no fewer than 426 children. It was on the very day a UN team of inspectors arrived in the city to investigate the alleged March 19 chemical attack in Khan al-Assal, northern Syria.
December 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | European Union, Human rights, ISIL, ISIS, Turkey |
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