U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda and Co. in Syria

By Moon of Alabama

Global Research, April 08, 2016

 http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/04/us-delivers-3000-tons-of-weapons-and-ammo-to-al-qaeda-co-in-syria.html

The United States via its Central Intelligence Service is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria.
The British military information service Jane’s found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov. Janes writes:

The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command. Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba.
…
The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.

Screenshot of Jane’s Report
The Jane’s author tweeted the full article (copy here).
One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which has a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4.
We already knew that the “rebels” in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these “rebels” regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra):

Hard-core Islamists in the Nusra Front have long outgunned the more secular, nationalist, Western-supported rebels. According to FSA officers, Nusra routinely harvests up to half the weapons supplied by the Friends of Syria, a collection of countries opposed to Assad, ..

U.S. and Turkey supported “rebels” took part in the recent attack on Tal al-Eis against Syrian government forces which was launched with three suicide bombs by al-Qaeda in Syria. This was an indisputable breaking of the ceasefire agreement between Russia and the U.S. It is very likely that some of the weapons and ammunition the U.S. delivered in December were used in this attack.
Millions of rifle, machine-gun and mortar shots, thousands of new light and heavy weapons and hundreds of new anti-tank missiles were delivered by the U.S.. Neither Turkey nor Jordan use such weapons of Soviet providence. These weapons are going to Syria where, as has been reported for years by several independent sources, half of them go directly to al-Qaeda.
From historic experience we can be sure that the consequence of this weaponizing of takfiris will be not only be the death of “brown people” in the Middle East, but also attacks on “western” people and interests.
Skyscrapers falling in New York and hundreds of random people getting killed in Paris, Brussels, London and (likely soon) Berlin seem not be enough to deter the politicians and “experts” that actively support this criminal war on Syria and its people.

The original source of this article is Moon of Alabama

 

Japanese Government Shifts Further Toward Authoritarianism And Militarism

by Tyler Durden

Aug 3, 2016 3:20 PM

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-03/japanese-government-shifts-further-toward-authoritarianism-and-militarism 

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

We’re going to war — either hybrid in nature to break the Russian state back to its 1990s subordination, or a hot war (which will destroy our country). Our citizens should know this, but they don’t because our media is dumbed down in its “Pravda”-like support for our “respectable,” highly aggressive government. We are being led, as C. Wright Mills said in the 1950s, by a government full of “crackpot realists: in the name of realism they’ve constructed a paranoid reality all their own.” Our media has credited Hillary Clinton with wonderful foreign policy experience, unlike Trump, without really noting the results of her power-mongering. She’s comparable to Bill Clinton’s choice of Cold War crackpot Madeleine Albright as one of the worst Secretary of States we’ve had since … Condi Rice? Albright boasted, “If we have to use force it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”

Hillary’s record includes supporting the barbaric “contras” against the Nicaraguan people in the 1980s, supporting the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, supporting the ongoing Bush-Iraq War, the ongoing Afghan mess, and as Secretary of State the destruction of the secular state of Libya, the military coup in Honduras, and the present attempt at “regime change” in Syria. Every one of these situations has resulted in more extremism, more chaos in the world, and more danger to our country. Next will be the borders of Russia, China, and Iran. Look at the viciousness of her recent AIPAC speech (don’t say you haven’t been warned). Can we really bear to watch as Clinton “takes our alliance [with Israel] to the next level”? Where is our sense of proportion? Cannot the media, at the least, call her out on this extremism? The problem, I think, is this political miasma of “correctness” that dominates American thinking (i.e. Trump is extreme, therefore Hillary is not).

– From the post: “We’re Going to War” – Oliver Stone Opines on the Dangerous Extremism of Neocon Hillary Clinton

One of the most discomforting aspects of Neil Howe and William Strauss’ seminal work on generational cycles, The Fourth Turning (1997), is the fact that as far as American history is concerned, they all climax and end with massive wars.
To be more specific, the first “fourth turning” in American history culminated with the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the second culminated with the Civil War (1861-1865), while the third ended with the bloodiest war in world history, World War II (1939-1945). The number of years between the end of the Revolutionary War and the start of the Civil War was 78 years, and the number of years between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War II was 74 years (76 years if you use America’s entry into the war as your starting date). Therefore, if Howe & Strauss’ theory holds any water, and I think it does, we’re due for a major conflict somewhere around 75 years from the end of World War II. That brings us to 2020.

The more I look around, the more signs appear everywhere that the world is headed into another major conflict. From an unnecessary resurgence of a Cold War with Russia, to increased tensions in the South China Sea and complete chaos and destruction in the Middle East, the world is a gigantic tinderbox. All it will take to transform these already existing conflict zones into a major conflagration is another severe global economic downturn, something I fully expect to happen within the next 1-2 years. Frighteningly, this puts on a perfect collision course with the 2020 area.

Now I’m not trying to fear-monger here, I’m just calling it like I see it. What the rise to prominence of a deplorable figure like Trump (as opposed to a Ron Paul or a Bernie Sanders )in reaction to what ails America tells me, is that we can scream from the rooftops to try to change things and wake people up, but history will do what history will do. When I look around the world I see how the stage is so clearly set for global conflict. When I couple that with the admission that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump have the wisdom to prevent it, I become increasingly concerned.
So what got me so bent out of shape that I decided to write about this today? One word: Japan.

An increasingly militaristic Japan is something I’ve been warning about for a while. Here’s an excerpt from my 2015 post, Unusually Massive Protests Erupt in Japan Against Forthcoming “War Legislation”:

In case you aren’t up to speed on your Japanese history, the nation’s post WWII Constitution prohibits military action unless it’s in self-defense. Clearly a sensible approach, which is why the current Japanese government, led by the demonstrably insane and incompetent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, wants to get rid of it.

This story is very important. Not only will this action increase the likelihood of World War III in the Far East, but it’s another important example of a government acting against the will of the people.

Polling has indicated the Japanese public is against a pivot toward militarization and war, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe  is pushing forward nonetheless. In fact, the current legislation to allow overseas military intervention has already passed the lower house of government. This prompted many Japanese to emerge from their decades long political apathy and get out into the streets. It’s estimated these protests were the largest in recent memory.

Fast forward a year, and here’s what Abe is up to now.
From the AP article, Japan Picks Defense Chief Who Downplays Wartime Past:

TOKYO (AP) — A woman who has downplayed Japan’s wartime actions and is known to have far-right views was named defense minister in a Cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday, a move that could unsettle relations with Asian neighbors with bitter memories of World War II-era atrocities.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe changed more than half of the 19-member Cabinet in a bid to support his economic and security policies, as well as push for revising Japan’s postwar constitution.

While keeping the economy as the top priority, Abe said he would do his “utmost to achieve a (constitutional) revision during my term,” which ends in September 2018.

A lawyer-turned-lawmaker with little experience in defense, Inada is one of Abe’s favorites. She regularly visits the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals, a gesture seen as an endorsement of Japan’s militaristic past.

She also has defended Japan’s wartime atrocities, including forcing many Asian women into sexual servitude in military-run brothels, and has led a party committee to re-evaluate the judgment of war tribunals by the Allies.

Her link to a notorious anti-Korea group was acknowledged by a court this year in a defamation case she lost. Inada also was seen posing with the leader of a neo-Nazi group in a 2011 photo that surfaced in the media in 2014.

Finance Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga were among key Cabinet members who retained their portfolios, while 10 ministers were replaced in the reshuffle. Many are not necessarily experts in their assigned portfolio, prompting opposition lawmakers to criticize Abe for dominating the Cabinet with like-minded supporters of his political views.
While campaigning for last month’s upper house elections, Abe promised to focus on economic revitalization in the short term, and to later seek to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Since he took office in late 2012, Abe has sought to boost growth by pumping massive amounts of money into the world’s third-biggest economy. But lavish monetary easing and public works spending so far have failed to reignite growth as much as hoped.

As is typically the case, when all else fails on the domestic front, politicians look to get a war started.

The question is, what sort of war will this be? If it happens, it’ll be the first fourth turning level war since the nuclear age began. In a best case scenario, world leaders would be at least sane enough not to deploy nuclear weapons. If that’s the case, the conflict would likely focus on financial and cyber warfare. Things that can be extraordinarily destructive in their own right, but would at least avoid a destruction of the human race. Such topics will be explored further in the years ahead.

Turkey Launches Investigation Of "Losers" Who Claim Coup Was A Hoax

by Tyler Durden

Jul 25, 2016 9:50 AM

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-25/turkey-launches-investigation-losers-who-claim-coup-was-hoax 

Not content with implementing a state of emergency which has given Erdogan unlimited powers to continue an unprecedented purge of political enemies which has seen over 60,000 workers sacked, over 13,000 arrested, among them soldiers, judges, prosecutors, teachers, deans, hospital workers, and as of today, 42 journalists, in the aftermath of the staged failed coup, which also includes the closure and seizure of 1,043 private schools, 1,229 charities and foundations, 19 trade unions, 15 universities and 35 hospitals Turkey's latest target are those who refuse to question the official script.
As AP reports, Turkish prosecutors are now investigating people who have alleged on social media and elsewhere that a July 15 coup attempt was a hoax carried out by the government, the country’s justice minister said Sunday, reflecting a farcical crackdown on free speech.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in an interview with Turkey’s Kanal 7 television station Sunday that anyone who suggests the coup attempt was staged likely had a role in the insurrection, which was defeated by loyalist forces and pro-government protesters. There has been some internet speculation that Erdogan engineered the unrest in order to rally support and thereby increase his power, a conspiracy theory rejected by the government and most commentators on Turkey’s recent turbulence.
“Just look at the people who are saying on social media that this was theater, public prosecutors are already investigating them. Most of them are losers who think it is an honor to die for Fethullah Gulen’s command,” Bozdag said.

Turkey also said it plans to hire more than 20,000 teachers to replace those who have been fired in a purge of suspected coup plotters in schools and other institutions. Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz said the new teachers will replace state educators who have been dismissed as well as teachers in private schools with alleged links to Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric who has denied Turkish accusations that he directed the coup attempt that killed about 290 people. One can only imagine the educational "slant" that will be part of the new educational curriculum.

In other crackdown measures, Turkey has disbanded the presidential guard after already detaining nearly 300 unit members suspected of plotting against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and authorities detained Muhammet Sait Gulen, a nephew of the cleric who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.
Turkey has declared a three-month state of emergency to restore security following the coup attempt, granting Erdogan the power to impose decrees without parliamentary approval. More than 13,000 people, including nearly 9,000 soldiers, 2,100 judges and prosecutors and 1,485 police, have been detained, according to the president.

Turkey PM To Quit, Handing Even More Power To Erdogan: What This Means For Turkey

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/05/2016 08:24 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-05/turkey-pm-quit-handing-even-more-power-erdogan-what-means-turkey
Yesterday when we reported on the dramatic plunge in the Turkish Lira, which crumbled the most since 2008 on a report that a denied AKP party convention was going to take place, we predicted that this means a resignation of PM Davutoglu, who having been caught in a bitter power struggled with president Erdogan would likely resign, we said "if the convention is confirmed, it means that Turkey is about to be swallowed in yet another bitter political crisis, which will likely result in Erdogan concentrating even more power, unless of course he is stopped which in turn would meat more rioting, more civilian casulties, and even less media freedom to describe one nation's collapse into a despotic, authoritarian state."

An uneasy meeting between president and PM on Wednesday signalled the latest events
Moments ago Davutoglu's resignation was confirmed, and as BBC reports, "Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says he will stand down at an extraordinary congress of his ruling AK Party later this month."

The result has been a dramatic surge in Turkish Lira volatility, which as shown in the chart below just jumped the most in the past decade.

The BBC adds that speculation about his resignation has been rife since Mr Davutoglu met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday. He is long thought to have disapproved of Mr Erdogan's plans to move Turkey to a presidential system of government. He announced his resignation after holding talks with party leaders. The congress would be held on 22 May, he said.
Earlier on Thursday, presidential aide Cemil Ertem said there would be no snap elections following the appointment of a new leader. He also told Turkish TV that the country and its economy would stabilise further "when a prime minister more closely aligned with President Erdogan takes office". In other words, just as expected, this was merely Erdogan's latest move to concentrate even more power in his hands.
For those who have not been following this latest Turkish scandal, here are the basics.
Why is this happening now?
After he was elected president in 2014, Mr Erdogan hand-picked Mr Davutoglu to succeed him as head of the AK Party (Justice and Development Party). But the prime minister's unease with Mr Erdogan's plans to move to a presidential system, among other policies, has been evident in recent months.
In a sign of his weakening influence, Mr Davutoglu was stripped last week of the authority to appoint provincial AK Party officials.
What will this mean for Turkey?
The development comes at a time of increasing instability for Turkey, which is tackling an escalating conflict with the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), attacks by the so-called Islamic State, and an influx of migrants and refugees.
Turkey is also in the midst of implementing a key deal with the European Union, brokered by Mr Davutoglu, to limit the number of refugees flowing across its border in return for accelerated EU accession talks and financial aid.
The future of that agreement, which Mr Davutoglu was seen as having agreed with little input from the president, could be plunged into doubt by his departure.
Who will be his successor?
Among those tipped as successors to Mr Davutoglu are Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, who is close to Mr Erdogan, and Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, who is the president's son-in-law.
They will be formally elected at the party congress.
What has been the fall-out?
The political uncertainty has rattled the financial markets. The Turkish lira suffered its heaviest daily loss on Wednesday, down almost 4% against the US dollar. It rallied slightly on Thursday but was still well off its previous trading levels.
What does it mean for Erdogan?
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is arguably the most formidable politician since modern Turkey's founding father Ataturk. After 11 years as prime minister, he was elected president in 2014 - but under a parliamentary system, in which his role should be largely ceremonial.
The fiercely ambitious Mr Erdogan is intent on changing that to a presidential system, which he says would make Turkey function more effectively, but which would also significantly increase his powers.
As president, he chose a prime minister who he thought would be pliant: the ex-foreign minister and bookish former academic, Ahmet Davutoglu.
But it seems he miscalculated. Seeing wavering public support for a presidential system, realising that he would be significantly sidelined should it materialise and disagreeing with Mr Erdogan on a growing list of policies, the prime minister has quietly dissented.
There has been little public show of disobedience, no clear spat. That's not Mr Davutoglu's style. Nor is it likely, given the widespread fear of Mr Erdogan within the ruling AKP.

CIA ‘Plan B’ for Syria would give rebels MANPADs to 'counter Russia' - report

Published time: 13 Apr, 2016 11:16

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© Reuters

A covert ‘Plan B’ for Syria reserved for a “violation of ceasefire” is being pushed to the US president, anonymous officials told media. Arming “moderate” Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft weapons to fight the “Russia-backed regime” is again on the table.

Back in February, the Wall Street Journal first reported that President Barack Obama’s senior military and intelligence advisers were insisting that a back-up plan is necessary to “counter Russia” in Syria.
The fresh details obtained by the WSJ suggest the CIA has given “provisional assurances” to coalition members to expand support to Syrian armed opposition groups fighting troops of President Bashar Assad. Still, the White House reserved the right to define which weapons systems are to be introduced to the battlefield – if the truce fails and full-scale fighting resumes.
On the eve of the ceasefire agreement coming into effect in Syria at midnight on February 27, the heads of Middle East intelligence agencies met to lay out a plan for waging war after the truce. And consultations on the matter never stopped ever since.
Today Washington and its allies, such as Ankara and Riyadh, are discussing which weapon systems are to be delivered to “vetted” Syrian rebels under this secret program, the WSJ reports.
Experts agree that what the anti-government forces in Syria need the most are electronic means to ensure effective suppression of President Bashar Assad’s artillery batteries and take down fighter jets. For the latter purpose, man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADs) are on the table, with Turkey and Saudi Arabia eager to supply them to the Syrian rebels.
The WSJ claims that US officials have conveyed a “private message” to their Russian counterparts that a return to full-scale fighting could “end up putting more Russian pilots in danger.”
The rebels have already obtained a “small number” of MANPADs “through illicit channels,” the CIA hints, thus posing danger to civil aircrafts. The CIA is now busy preventing more MANPADs from “slipping uncontrollably” into the war zone.
"If the ceasefire collapses, if the negotiations don’t go anywhere, and we’re back to full throttle civil war, all bets will be off,” the WSJ cited a senior Obama administration official as saying in a message to Moscow. “The outside patrons will double and triple down, throwing everything they can into Syria, including much more lethal weaponry.”
Actually, the “full-scale fighting” the US warns of never ended in Syria, at least against some parties in the conflict: no armistice was signed with terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front.
Since the beginning of the ceasefire six weeks ago, dozens of local rebel groups throughout Syria joined the truce or even teamed up with the government forces against the terrorists. The armed formations that opted to side with terrorists are being bombed by Russian and Syrian air forces.
In the given conditions, the question about who would announce that the ceasefire has been violated remains open. Just as soon it could be voiced at the upcoming peace talks between Damascus and opposition groups that are set to resume this week in Geneva.
In the meantime, Washington’s Arab allies suggested high tech means to limit MANPADs’ operability by fitting them with “geographical sensors” to prevent them from being used outside designated areas, but the US remained silent to the proposal. Instead, Washington has been reportedly pressing main sponsors of the Syrian armed rebels, namely Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to use their influence to order the Syrian rebels to abide by the ceasefire.
The CIA’s covert program to provide the Syrian anti-government forces with “limited supplies” of small arms and ammunition was launched in 2013 and has been growing steadily. A year later, the CIA was already providing rebels with antitank TOW missiles today actively used on the battlefield against Assad troops and eventually rescue groups of the Russian task force deployed to Syria.

Turkey: The Business Of Refugee Smuggling & Sex Trafficking

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/04/2016 23:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-04/turkey-business-refugee-smuggling-sex-trafficking
Submitted by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,

• Professional criminals convince parents that their daughters are going to a better life in Turkey. The parents are given 2000-5000 Turkish liras ($700-$1700) as a "bride price" -- an enormous sum for a poor Syrian family.
  
• "Girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen are referred to as pistachios, those between seventeen and twenty are called cherries, twenty to twenty-two are apples, and anyone older is a watermelon." — From a report on Turkey, by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).
  
• Many Muslims have difficulty with, or even an aversion to, assimilating into the Western culture. Many seem to have the aim of importing to Europe the culture of intimidation, rape and abuse from which they fled.
  
• Although the desperate victims are their Muslim sisters and brothers, wealthy Arab states do not take in refugees. The people in this area know too well that asylum seekers would bring with them problems, both social and economic. For many Muslim men such as wealthy, aging Saudis, it is easier to buy Syrian children from Turkey, Syria or Jordan as cheap sex slaves.
  

On International Women's Day, March 8, Turkish news outlets covered the tragic life and early death of a Syrian child bride.
Last August, in Aleppo, Mafe Zafur, 15, married her cousin Ibrahim Zafur in an Islamic marriage. The couple moved to Turkey, but the marriage ended after six months, when her husband abruptly threw out of their home. With nowhere to sleep, Mafe found shelter with her brother, 19, and another cousin, 14, in an abandoned truck.
On 8 March, Mafe killed herself, reportedly with a shotgun. Her only possession, found in her pocket, was her handwritten marriage certificate.

Mafe Zafur is only one of many young Syrians who have been victims of child marriage. Human rights groups report even greater abuse that gangs are perpetrating against the approximately three million Syrians who have fled to Turkey.

A detailed report on Syrian women refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in Turkey, issued as far back as 2014 by the Association for Human Rights and Solidarity with the Oppressed (known in Turkish as Mazlumder), tells of early and forced marriages, polygamy, sexual harassment, human trafficking, prostitution, and rape that criminals inflicted upon Syrians in Turkey.
According to the Mazlumder report, Syrians are sexually exploited by those who take advantage of their destitution. Children, especially girls, suffer most.
Evidence, both witnessed and forensic, indicates that in every city where Syrian refugees have settled, prostitution has drastically increased. Young women between the ages of 15 and 20 are most commonly prostituted, but girls as young as thirteen are also exploited.
Secil Erpolat, a lawyer with the Women's Rights Commission of the Bar Association in the Turkish province of Batman, said that many young Syrian girls are offered between 20 and 50 Turkish liras ($7-$18). Sometimes their clients pay them with food or other goods for which they are desperate.
Women who have crossed the border illegally and arrive with no passport are at high risk of being kidnapped and sold as prostitutes or sex slaves. Criminal gangs bring refugees to towns along the border or into the local bus terminals where "refugee smuggling" has become a major source of income.
Professional criminals convince parents that their daughters are going to a better life in Turkey. The parents are given 2000-5000 Turkish liras ($700-$1700) as a "bride price" -- an enormous sum for a poor Syrian family -- to smuggle their daughters across the border.
"Many men in Turkey practice polygamy with Syrian girls or women, even though polygamy is illegal in Turkey," the lawyer Abdulhalim Yilmaz, head of Mazlumder's Refugee Commission, told Gatestone Institute. "Some men in Turkey take second or third Syrian wives without even officially registering them. These girls therefore have no legal status in Turkey. Economic deprivation is a major factor in this suffering, but it is also a religious and cultural phenomenon, as early marriage is allowed in the religion."
Syrian women and children in Turkey also experience sexual harassment at work. Those who are able to get jobs earn little -- perhaps enough to eat, but they work long and hard for that little. They are also subjected to whatever others choose to do to them as they work those long hours.
A 16-year old Syrian girl, who lives with her sister in Izmir, told Mazlumder that "because we are Syrians who have come here to flee the war, they think of us as second-class people. My sister was in law school back in Syria, but the war forced her to leave school. Now unemployed men with children ask her to 'marry' them. They try to take advantage of our situation."
If they are Kurds, they are discriminated against twice, first as refugees, then as Kurds. "The relief agencies here help only the Arab refugees; when they hear that we are Kurds, they either walk away from us, or they give very little, and then they do not return."
The organization End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) has produced a detailed report on the "Status of action against commercial sexual exploitation of children: Turkey." ECPAT's report cites, from the 2014 Global Slavery Index, estimates that the incidence of slavery in Turkey is the highest in Europe, due in no small measure to the prevalence of trafficking for sexual exploitation and early marriage.
The ECPAT report quotes a U.S. State Department study from 2013: "Turkey is a destination, transit, and source country for children subjected to sex trafficking."
The ECPAT report continues,

"There is a risk of young asylum seekers disappearing from accommodation centres and becoming vulnerable to traffickers.

"It is feared that reports from the UN-run Zaatari refugee camp for Syrians in Jordan are equally true for camps in Turkey: aging men from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states take advantage of the Syrian crisis in order to purchase cheap teenage brides.

"Evidence indicates that child trafficking is also happening between Syria and Turkey by established 'matchmakers' who traffic non-refugee girls from Syria who have been pre-ordered by age. Girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen are referred to as pistachios, those between seventeen and twenty are called cherries, twenty to twenty-two are apples, and anyone older is a watermelon."

Apparently, 85% of Syrian refugees live outside refugee camps, and therefore cannot even be monitored by an international agency.
Many refugee women in Turkey, according to the lawyer and vice-president of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD), Eren Keskin, are forced to engage in prostitution outside, and even in, refugee camps built by the Turkish Prime Minister's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).
"There are markets of prostitution in Antep. Those are all state-controlled places. Hundreds of refugees -- women and children -- are sold to men much older than they are," said Keskin. "We found that women are forced into prostitution because they want to buy bread for their children."
Keskin said that they have received many complaints of rape, sexual assault and physical violence from refugees in the camps in the provinces of Hatay and Antep. "Despite all our attempts to enter those camps, the officials have not allowed us to."

The Human Rights Association of Turkey has received many complaints of rape, sexual assault and physical violence from Syrian refugees in camps in Turkey. (Image source: UNHCR)

Officials at AFAD, however, have strongly denied the allegations. "We provide refugees with education and health care. It is sad that after all the devoted work that AFAD has done to take care of refugees for the last five years, such baseless and unjust accusations are directed at us," a representative of AFAD told Gatestone.

"The number of refugees in Turkey has reached to 2.8 million. Turkey has twenty-six accommodation centers in which about three hundred thousand refugees live. Those centers are regularly monitored by the UN; some UN officials are based in them."

"Many refugees could have been provided with jobs suited to their training or skills," Cansu Turan, a social worker with the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV), told Gatestone.

"But none of them was asked about former jobs or educational background when they Turkish officials registered them. Therefore, they can work only informally and under the hardest conditions just to survive. This also paves the way for their sexual exploitation.

"The most important question is why the refugee camps are not open to civil monitoring. Entry to refugee camps is not allowed. The camps are not transparent. There are many allegations as to what is happening in them. We are therefore worried about what they are hiding from us."

"At our public centers where we provide support for refugees," Sema Genel Karaosmanoglu, the Executive Director of the Support to Life organization, told Gatestone.

"We have encountered persons who have been victims of trafficking, sexual, and gender-based violence.

"There is still no entry to the camps, and there is no transparency as entry is only possible after getting permission from relevant government institutions. But we have been able to gain access to those camps administered by municipalities in the provinces of Diyarbakir, Batman, and Suruc, Urfa."

A representative at AFAD, however, told Gatestone that "the accommodation centers are transparent. If organizations would like to enter those places, they apply to us and we evaluate their applications. Thousands of media outlets have so far entered the accommodation centers to film and explore the life in them."
"The number of current refugees is already too high," said the lawyer Abdulhalim Yilmaz, head Mazlumder's Refugee Commission. "But many Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, have not taken in a single Syrian refugee so far. And there are tens of thousands of refugees waiting at the borders of Turkey."
If these women and children knew what was possibly awaiting them in Turkey, they would never set foot in the country.
This is the inevitable outcome when a certain culture -- the Islamic culture -- does not have the least regard for women's rights. Instead, it is a culture of rape, slavery, abuse and discrimination that often exploits even the most vulnerable.
The horror is that Turkey is the country that the EU is entrusting to "solve" the serious problem of refugees and migrants.
The international community needs to protect Syrians, to cordon off parts of the country so that more people will not want to leave their homes to become refugees or asylum seekers in other countries. Perhaps many Syrians would even return to their homes.
The West has always opened its arms to many beleaguered individuals from Muslim countries -- such as 25-year-old Afghan student and journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, who was beaten, taken to prison, and sentenced to death in 2007 for downloading a report on women's rights from the internet and for questioning Islam.
It was Sweden and Norway that helped Kambaksh to flee Afghanistan in 2009 by helping him get access to a Swedish government plane. Kambaksh is now understood to be in the United States.
Several European countries, however, have become the victims of the rapes, murders and other crimes committed by the very people who have entered the continent as refugees, asylum seekers or migrants.
Europe is going through a security problem, as seen in the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. Many Muslims have difficulty with, or even an aversion to, assimilating into the Western culture. Many seem to have the aim of importing to Europe the culture of intimidation, rape and abuse from which they fled.
It would be more just and realistic if Muslim countries that share the same linguistic and religious background as Syrian refugees -- and that are preferably more civilized and humanitarian than Turkey -- could take at least some responsibility for their Muslim brothers and sisters. Although the desperate victims are their Muslim sisters and brothers, wealthy Arab states do not take in refugees. We have not seen any demonstrations with signs that read "Refugees Welcome!" People know that asylum seekers would bring with them problems, both social and economic. For many Muslim men such as wealthy, aging Saudis, it is easier to buy Syrian children from Turkey, Syria or Jordan as cheap sex slaves.
Women and girls are not, to many, human beings who deserve to be treated humanely. They are only sex objects whose lives and dignity have no value. Syrians are there to abuse and exploit. The only way they can think of helping women is to "marry" them.

Russian Documentary Shows ISIS Documents of Turkey’s Assistance

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Eric Zuesse.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/03/russian-documentary-shows-isis-documents-turkeys-assistance.html 

 

Eric Zuesse

Russian Television is starting a series of documentaries showing captured ISIS documents, and Turkish-border-stamped passports of ISIS fighters. The initial news-report also refers to a ‘fatwa’ that allegedly allows infidels to be killed to supply fresh organs for transplantation into severely injured ISIS fighters. 

Invoices are shown for records of Syrian oil trucked into Turkey for sale, which indicate “the name of the driver, the vehicle type driven, and the weight of the truck, both full and empty, as well as the agreed upon price and invoice number. One of the discovered invoices dated 11 January, 2016, says that IS had extracted some 1,925 barrels of oil from Kabibah oil field and sold it for $38,342.” Turkey then sells it for far more — the current market-price.

Also shown is “Islamist propaganda printed in Istanbul.” 

The U.S. supplies ISIS through Turkey. Furthermore, Turkey is now a dictatorship, and its dictator, the fundamentalist-Sunni Tayyip Erdogan, is passionate to overthrow Syria’s leader, the secular Shiite Bashar al-Assad. ISIS is the main fighting force he works with to do that.

Allied with Turkey in this effort are: U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait.

Turkey and the U.S. are in NATO; the others are in the Saudi group, the Gulf Cooperation Council. (Turkey isn’t, because it’s not on the Persian Gulf. Turkey is instead the GCC’s representative in, or main link to, NATO. Turkey also is their link to the EU, but hasn’t yet entirely won membership in the EU.)

The royal Sauds are the main funders of Al Qaeda, known as Al Nusra in Syria; and, according to a cable from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the entire Gulf Cooperation Council are heavy financial backers of not only Al Qaeda but other jihadist groups.

Earlier I headlined: “Western Reporter in Syria Finds U.S.-Backed Fighters Are Jihadists.” 

The foreign backers of the jihadist groups who have flocked into Syria to overthrow Assad are U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, and that includes the nations whose leadership back jihadists, even while they need to make propagandistic statements and occasionally actions that kill some jihadists. 

The central targets of that alliance are Russia and Iran. Assad, of course, is allied to both Russia and Iran. 

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Turkey's Erdogan Goes Full-Dictator: Designates Journalists And Teachers As "Terrorists"; Arrests Lawyers

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/17/2016 02:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-16/turkeys-erdogan-goes-full-dictator-designates-journalists-and-teachers-terrorists-ar

“It is not only the person who pulls the trigger, but those who made that possible who should be defined as terrorists, regardless of their title,” Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan said on Monday, in an attempt to convince parliament to include journalists, politicians, academics, and activists under the country’s anti-extremism laws.

Erdogan’s comments came a day after the latest in a string of suicide bombings ripped through Ankara, killing 34 and wounding more than 100 in Kizilay. Since then, Turkey has arrested nearly 50 people with “suspected ties” to the PKK against which Erdogan is waging a highly personal crusade.

Apparently, the President doesn’t think parliament is moving fast enough on his “request” to expand the definition of “terrorist” because in a speech on Wednesday, he effectively instructed lawmakers to get moving before also urging parliament to deal with “the issue of immunities.”

Erdogan desperately wants to prosecute HDP members who he says are guilty of “inciting terrorism.” “We must swiftly finalize the issue of immunities,” he said. “Parliament must take steps on this issue swiftly,” he added, as if the first statement was in some way unclear.

(Erdogan gets it, why don't you?)

But frankly, we’re not even sure why he bothers parliament with these things. Erdogan is going to do whatever Erdogan wants to do. We're talking about a man who arrested two of the country's preeminent journalists and had the nerve to charge them with "deliberately aiding a terrorist organization" when what they were in fact doing was exposing Erdogan for... wait for it... deliberately aiding a terrorist organization.
And if that's not absurd enough for you, there are countless other examples including an incident which saw a medical doctor put on trial for posting a picture of the President next to a picture of a fictional creature from a Tolkein novel on social media.
Turks are in fact so scared of their "leader" that just last month, a Turkish truck driver literally sued his own wife for cursing at Erdogan when he spoke on television. "I warned her," the man later said.
True to form, Erdogan didn't wait on parliament to expand the definition of "terrorist" before he went ahead and arrested three academics for "terrorist propaganda" after they made the mistake of publicly asking the government to stop the siege on Cizre and other cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast.
"More than 2,000 academics signed a petition in January criticizing military action in the southeast, including round-the-clock curfews aimed at rooting out PKK militants who have barricaded themselves in residential areas in southeastern cities," Reuters notes. "The petition outraged President Erdogan, who said the academics would pay a price for their 'treachery'".
A few days ago, a group of lawyers made the mistake of holding a press conference to defend the academics who signed the aforementioned petition. On Tuesday, Erdogan arrested the lawyers too.
Finally, when a British citizen who teaches at Bilgi University showed up at the courthouse to support the lawyers, he was also arrested. His crime, in his own words: "I am accused because I had several invitations to Kurdish new year (celebrations on March 21) published by the HDP - the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament - in my bag."
So there you go. Lessons learned all around we suppose.
Better still, the President says he plans to start campaigning in April for his long-planned push to expand the powers of the presidency (because clearly he's not powerful enough). Erdogan will look to rewrite the constitution (literally) in order that it might, in Bloomberg's words, "feature a strengthened presidency while retaining a key role for the parliament."
Yes, "a key role for parliament," where the third largest party is about to have their immunity stripped away so that Erdogan can prosecute the whole lot of them for being terrorists.
Erdogan, Bloomberg goes on to write, "has devoted much energy to expanding the executive role of what’s traditionally been a largely ceremonial post, arguing that strong leadership will help extend a record of economic growth [but] only holds 317 seats in the 550-member parliament, short of the 330 votes needed to take a new charter to a public vote."
Trust us. He'll get it to a referendum. Votes or no votes. And then he'll rig the referendum.
Clearly, Nihat Ali Ozcan at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara (who spoke to Bloomberg) doesn't get it: “The PKK is engaged in a direct confrontation with Erdogan with the aim of preventing him from turning his office into an executive presidency. However, Erdogan may benefit from a growing nationalist backlash in his campaign for a presidential system, as long as he maintains his crackdown on the PKK.”
Gee, do you think so?
That's been the entire gambit since last June's elections. Erdogan lost ground to the pro-Kurdish HDP and so, he used the war on ISIS as an excuse to deliberately restart the conflict with the PKK in order to convince the public that it needs his protection lest the entire country should descend into chaos. Three months and a whole lot of lost lives later, AKP performed better in a November redo election that Erdogan - gun to his head - was "forced" to call when the coalition building process was sabotaged fell apart in August.
We have no doubt that Erdogan will succeed one way or another in his bid to rewrite the constitution. Even if it kills him. Or wait. No. Even if it kills you.

"I'll Go Full Power If There's No Agreement" - Kuwait Breaks OPEC Production Freeze

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/08/2016 08:03 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-08/ill-go-full-power-if-theres-no-agreement-kuwait-breaks-opec-production-freeze

Back in late February, when crude prices had just hit a 13 year low, one catalyst unleashed a furious short-covering rally: a WSJ report which cited a delayed SkyNews interview with the UAE energy minister, according to which OPEC would freeze, if not cut production. Since then we learned, courtesy of the Saudi oil minister Al-Naimi himself, that the Saudis will never reduce output, however, in a utterly meaningless gesture, Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to "freeze" production at levels which are already at maximum capacity and under one condition: that all other OPEC members join the freeze, with the possible exception of Iran which may be allowed to produce until it hits its pre-embargo export levels.

Of course, even said "freeze" is nothing but a stalling tactic employed by an OPEC member (Saudi Arabia), to give the impression that OPEC still exists as a production-throttling cartel when OPEC ceased to exist in that capacity in November 2014. Everything since then has been one surreal redux of "Weekend at Bernies" where everyone pretends not to notice the corpse in the room.

However, while many had pretended to at least play along with the charade, today a core OPEC member effectively broke ranks when Kuwait said it would only agree to an output freeze if all major producers take part including Iran.

According to Reuters, Kuwait's oil minister said on Tuesday that his country's participation in an output freeze would require all major oil producers, including Iran, to be on board.

"I'll go full power if there's no agreement. Every barrel I produce I'll sell," Anas al-Saleh told reporters in Kuwait City. And since Iran has made it very, very clear it will not join the production freeze at its current mothballed output, and will need at least 9-12 months before it regains its pre-embargo capacity levels, one can forget about a production freeze well into 2017 if not for ever since by then at least one if not more OPEC members will be bankrupt (they know who they are: they are the source of those "ALL CAPS" flashing read headlines every day).

Putting Kuwait's production in context, Kuwait - the small Gulf state Saddam invaded 25 years ago - is currently producing 3 million barrels of oil per day. Incidentally, this is precisely how much the oil market is oversupplied each and every day, and why in addition to PADD1, 2 and 3 being almost full, and excess oil now being stored in ships, pipelines and trains, and re-exported to Europe, quite soon empty swimming pools will be full with the "black gold" as the algos continue to refuse to pay any attention to the constantly deteriorating fundamentals.

Kuwait's announcement followed a report by Goldman overnight in which, as we reported, Jeff Currie said that "commodity rally is not sustainable" and it is time to sell crude.

"While these dynamics (rising prices) could run further, they simply are not sustainable in the current environment," the analysts wrote. "Energy needs lower prices to maintain financial stress to finish the rebalancing process; otherwise, an oil price rally will prove self-defeating, as it did last spring."

Perhaps, but not just yet: in addition to China's abysmal exports we also learned that in February China's crude imports soared 19.1% to 31.80 million tonnes, or about 8 million barrels per day, an all time high, suggesting China - like the US - is filling every available container including its SPR at a time when precise are relatively low even if organic demand continues to deteriorate.

As Reuters writes, "despite strong oil demand, questions about the sustainability of growing consumption weighed on markets after China's overall exports tumbled by a quarter in February."

China's February vehicle sales, a key driver for gasoline demand, were down 3.7 percent year on year, data from the country's Passenger Car Association showed."This is really a poor start for trade this year," said Zhang Yongjun, senior economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges.

However, judging by the latest bounce in crude in the last hour of trading, the only thing that still matters is who does the daily "short squeeze" rip higher. By the looks of things, at least one major trader already got the tap on the shoulder.

U.S. Supplies ISIS through Turkey

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Eric Zuesse.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/03/u-s-supplies-isis-turkey.html

On Friday, March 4th, the leading opposition newspaper in Turkey, Zaman, was taken over by the Government; and, today, March 5th, one of the other opposition newspapers, Cumhuriyet, reported that Zaman’s separate news-service to other news-media, Cihan News Agency, has now also been disabled on the Internet. (Anyone who goes to the site obtains an error-message.)

The Turkish Government is trying to prevent the Turkish public from knowing that Turkey has been serving as the transit-route by which the U.S. government and its allied Arab oil monarchies (especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar) have been supplying foreign jihadists and weapons (largely U.S. but paid for with Saudi funds) into Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad from power.

Zaman’s editor has been imprisoned for publishing such prohibited truths, but somehow his newspaper continued reporting on a court case in which Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan is accused of breaking Turkish law by aiding terrorists. That continued resistance by the newspaper might be a reason why the Turkish Government has now (as of Friday March 4th) shut it down.

On March 1st, Cumhuriyet, headlined, “Former Justice Minister of Turkey: Erdoğan Will Stand Trial,” and reported that, “Former Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, said that Erdoğan’s actions ‘do not comply with the decision of the Constitutional Court.’ He criticized [Erdoğan] by saying … ‘One day this matter must be settled by the judiciary’.” 

Russian Television had first reported on the case, in English, back on 26 November 2015, headlining, “Turkish newspaper editor in court for ‘espionage’ after revealing weapon convoy to Syrian militants.” This news-report said that:

In May, the outlet [Cumhuriyet] published photos of weapons it said were then transferred to Syria by Turkey’s intelligence agency. … The articles, published on Cumhuriyet’s front page in May, claimed that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) is smuggling weapons in trucks into Syria and was caught doing so twice in 2014. The trucks were allegedly stopped and searched by police, with photos and videos of their contents obtained by Cumhuriyet.

According to the paper, the trucks were carrying six steel containers, with 1,000 artillery shells, 50,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells. The arms were reportedly delivered to extremist groups fighting against the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, whom Ankara wants ousted from power.

The Erdoğan government alleged the weapons were “aid to Syrian ethnic Turkmen tribespeople and labeled their interception by local police an act of ‘treason’ and ‘espionage’.”

Turkey is a NATO member, and the famous investigative reporter Seymour Hersh had revealed in the 6 April 2014 London Review of Books, that on 20 June 2013 — just a few months prior to the sarin gas attack that Obama blamed on Assad and used as his excuse to invade Syria — the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reported that America’s allies in overthrowing Bashar al-Assad were engaged in “the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort,” but the U.S. Director of National Intelligence denied that it was true. One U.S. ally there was Al Qaeda in Syria, known in Syria as Al Nusra, (Nusra and Erdoğan wanted this gas-attack to provide the excuse that Obama had set as his “red line” to overthrow Assad — a chemical-weapons attack in Syria.) However, Hersh reported, “Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin.” All of that had occurred prior to the 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack.

Hersh went on:

The officer ultimately responsible for the planning and execution of the attack [U.S. bombing of Syria] was General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs. From the beginning of the crisis, the former intelligence official said, the joint chiefs had been sceptical of the administration’s argument that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and other agencies for more substantial evidence. ‘There was no way they thought Syria would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was winning the war,’ the former intelligence official said. Dempsey had irritated many in the Obama administration by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in Syria.

Hersh subsequently reported that, rather than go ahead with an operation that the Joint Chiefs considered fraudulent, they sabotaged Obama’s policy. On 2 January 2016, Hersh headlined in the London Review of Books, “Military to Military,” and he explained how and why they had done this:

The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success.’ So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. … General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. ‘Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria,’ said Patrick Lang, a retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. ‘He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn’t shut up.’

Obama couldn’t be swayed that the enemy were Al Qaeda and other jihadists instead of Assad — that overthrowing him was his top priority. However, Hersh said in his 6 April 2014 article, that Obama had to backtrack at the last moment anyway, because British intelligence reported to David Cameron that the sarin used in the attack didn’t come from Syria — that it had been imported; this implied that it was a set-up job in order to ‘justify’ invading. Cameron didn’t want to be just another Tony Blair. Obama couldn’t get his necessary-for-appearances’-sake public cover for an invasion, Britain, as his predecessor had done regarding Iraq. Hersh went on, in that 2014 article:

Obama’s move for congressional approval quickly became a dead end. ‘Congress was not going to let this go by,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Congress made it known that, unlike the authorisation for the Iraq war, there would be substantive hearings.’ At this point, there was a sense of desperation in the White House, the former intelligence official said.

Obama, in other words, was now trapped. He couldn’t fire all of his Joint Chiefs — at least not right away; it would be embarrassing, how could he explain it? And the Republicans were eager to expose his Administration’s disarray on the matter. So: the story was passed around that Secretary of State John Kerry got Russia to get Assad to eliminate his sarin stocks. Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin was happy to help Obama avoid invading his Syrian ally. That was how the ‘news’ organizations reported the backtrack — as a rare instance of U.S.-Russian cooperation: good news for everybody. But for Obama, it was actually the way out of a desperately embarrassing situation. And he never gave up his goal of switching Syria from the secular Assad to a failed state whose crucial oil-pipeline routes would be in ‘friendly’ (to Saudi Arabia and Qatar) jihadist Sunni-ruled areas of Syria, so that ‘our’ Arab ‘allies’ (the jihadist-financiing nations, as even Kerry’s predecessor Hillary Clinton had known them to be) can grab the world’s largest energy-market, Europe, away from Russia.

Hersh, in his 2014 article, continued:

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.’)

He closed:

Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally.’ 

There is simply too much evidence proving that Erdoğan is supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria. This is the reality of NATO: conquering Russia, first by switching its allies (such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc.), is the assignment, regardless of the public’s safety. Even if the U.S. weren’t backing jihadists directly (which we are), we’re backing them by having jihadist governments such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Qatar as allies — instead of as enemies. ‘Our’ oil companies and mega-banks are in bed with them, and their top stockholders and executives, and their lobbyists, control the people who control the U.S. Government. The U.S. Constitution’s “We, the People …” has become only  those “People.” The rest are now just for extras in crowd-scenes, at political campaign events — and their mass-mind-control is done by their media, ‘our’ ‘free press’ (who don’t report this reality), in ‘our’ ‘democracy’.

Erdoğan is profoundly angry at the unsteady support he has been receiving from the U.S. government in their joint efforts to eliminate Bashar al-Assad. However, apparently, Obama doesn’t feel that the U.S. is yet ready for a nuclear war to be sparked between NATO and Russia — Obama thinks that doing it now would be premature. ‘Color revolutions’ and ‘Arab Spring’ and ‘Maidan demonstrations’, and other populist covers for coups (taking advantage of the local political opposition, which exists in any country), are a far safer way to gradually strip Russia of its allies and turn them into yet-more enemies of Russia — and, only then, can the rip-cord finally be pulled, and Russia be forced to either submit or else die (even if the rest of the world might die also). The U.S. has been doing this boil-the-frog-slowly routine ever since U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush laid the foundation for it in 1990.

As John Kerry recently said, when responding to aid workers at a donor conference for anti-Assad forces, “What do you want me to do? Go to war with Russia? Is that what you want?” Clearly, Erdoğan is lots more eager for that than Obama is. Perhaps Erdoğan thinks that Putin would just back down. American Presidents, however, aren’t so desperate that they feel they need to do it during their own Administration; they can afford to wait until the time is right, even if the plaudits will then go to some future President. Their paymasters will be duly appreciative of the contributions that each one of them has made toward the final ‘U.S.’ victory. (Victory for the paymasters, of course.)

So, the American government’s charade goes on. But already an MIT analysis — the Lloyd-Postal report — on the sarin attack that occurred 21 August 2013, stated unequivocally that the Obama Administration was lying through its teeth about the matter. They provided excruciating detail showing why “the US Government’s interpretation of the technical intelligence it gathered prior to and after the August 21 attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.” (That’s a tactful, yet passionate, way of saying: “Obama and his Administration were trying to lie this country into invading Syria.”) Yet, Western news-media still simply ignore the evidence (they can do that in this dictatorship), and report that Assad’s forces were behind the sarin attack. It’s still the official reason why  we’re at war against Assad. Was even George W. Bush worse than this?

Seymour Hersh had tried to get his news-reports on these matters published by what had been his regular publisher, the New Yorker, which turned them down; and he tried other U.S. outlets as well, but wasn’t successful in finding any that would pay his regular charges — and he had already spent much in order to research these matters. Finally, he obtained a suitable outlet, in the LRB. This is why his recent reports are being published abroad.

Anyone who wishes to know more about what motivates the U.S. government regarding Syria should read the astoundingly brilliant article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., published on an obscure environmental website, February 25th, “Syria: Another Pipeline War.” He tells so much suppressed history there, it’s flabbergasting to see it all brought together into one flowing historical narrative — and my checking of the few sources that I hadn’t previously known of indicates that his standards for quality-of-evidence that he builds his narrative on are as rigorous and high as mine are — which is rare. I very much respect that. Every high school student should read his article in order to understand how corrupt the U.S. is at its highest levels. The article is a masterpiece of historical writing. But even a masterpiece can have a flaw: his article plays down the role that leading Democrats after Reagan have been playing in GHW Bush’s long war to conquer Russia. We’re still in the post-Reagan era, just as, between FDR and Reagan, we had been in the post-FDR era. Obama is as rabid a Russia-hater as practically anyone except John McCain would be. If a piece of historical writing is going to be partisan (as almost all are), at least this one is partisan on the less-unacceptable side.

I might write RFK Jr.’s name onto the Presidential line of my ballot in November. There’s someone with favorable name-recognition, who clearly has the integrity and depth, and knowledge, to deal with the rot that has overtaken America, if anyone does. Maybe he could win by acclamation, if he wouldn’t be knocked-off first. But if the idea of writing in his name goes around like wildfire in the weeks before the November 8th general election, then who knows what would happen? Certainly, if Hillary is on the ballot as the ‘Democratic’ nominee, I won’t vote for her, though I’m a lifelong Democrat. And I don’t want to be forced to vote for Trump (since he’s almost totally unpredictable — which still isn’t as bad as Hillary). (Besides: Hillary should be in prison for her destruction of crucial public records — State Department emails — to hide her crimes; and The Donald should be in prison for his fake Trump ‘University’ commercial fraud. But the corrupt Obama won’t allow any such prosecutions.) And there’s such beautiful irony here: “Trump: If Elected, I’ll Prosecute Hillary.” It’s so much like Ukraine! (Cast Hillary as Tymoshenko, and Trump as Yanukovych — and I’d vote then for Trump, so as to avoid the near-certainty of disaster.)

But no intelligent American can be justified in simply not voting for President. That would be outrageously irresponsible. I won’t ever do that. Every intelligent and caring person must vote for President — not leave that responsibility to others (which would be unpatriotic — plus wrong and callous — for any well-informed voter). The “anyone but ___” non-voters are mere fools and frauds. They simply don’t care enough about the country to do their most-basic civic duty, which is to become informed and then to vote for someone on that basis (though never as a ‘protest vote’ — the nation is too important for any mere ‘protest’ — but only as a real  vote, for someone who has an authentic chance of winning  the election). Any mere throw-away ‘vote’ is like a non-vote.

That article by Kennedy should be linked to by all of his supporters: it tells more about the man than any number of campaign speeches possibly could. It proves that he’s fit for the job, if anyone is. That’s one person who doesn’t need to campaign for the job. He’s an outsider whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is probably among the best there is, and whose heart is unquestionably in the right place — which would be a refreshing and radical change, a change that’s of a kind needed now more than ever in the U.S.

But anyway: RFK Jr.’s article is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the horrendous war in Syria. My article here is just a warm-up to it — and, I hope, a totally non-partisan one.

Democracy Ends in Turkey

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Eric Zuesse.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/03/democracy-ends-turkey.html

On Saturday March 5th, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (German Economic News) headlined “Turkish Police Storm Newspaper Office Zaman” and reported that, “Turkish police entered the editorial offices of critical newspaper Zaman on Friday night.” Accompanying videos there showed a police-state in which ‘security’ forces stormed through a crowd of protesters (readers of the newspaper) outside, into Turkey’s leading opposition newspaper, which is also Turkey’s leading English-language newspaper, Zaman, and arrested staffers there, taking them away, to who-knows-what fates.

There’s nothing like Zaman  in just about any country: for examples, the New York Times, Washington Post, London Times, and Guardian, aren’t “opposition newspapers,” though they used to cover the opposition in a moderately fair way, prior to the George W.  Bush Administration, 9/11, and “regime change in Iraq.” By contrast, Zaman  has constantly been very bold in exposing truths that the regime doesn’t want the public to know. But that’s all past history now — it’s at least as radical a change for Turkey as occurred in America with the Bush regime, which controlled the media as effectively as its successor-regime, Obama’s, has done, and which never needed to employ such blatantly police-state methods as Turkey now is clearly doing.

On Thursday March 4th, Tayyip Erdoğan, the Islamist President of U.S. ally and NATO member-nation Turkey, took over Zaman  or Today’s Zaman, where the headline on Friday was: “Court appoints trustees to take over management of Zaman, Today’s Zaman.” Until after that report was filed, this was only a court matter, not a blatantly police-state one — using physical forms of force, including armed ‘security’ forces inside, and water-cannons against demonstrators outside.

Here was that Zaman  news-report’s opening:

An İstanbul court has appointed trustees to take over the management of the Feza Media Group, which includes Turkey’s biggest-selling newspaper, the Zaman daily, as well as the Today’s Zaman daily and the Cihan news agency, dealing a fresh blow to the already battered media freedom in Turkey.

The decision was issued by the İstanbul 6th Criminal Court of Peace at the request of the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, which claimed that the media group acted upon orders from what it called the “Fethullahist Terrorist Organization/Parallel State Structure (FETÖ/PDY),” praising the group and helping it achieve its goals in its publications.

The prosecutor also claimed that the alleged terrorist group is cooperating with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization to topple the Turkish government and that high-level officials of the two groups have had meetings abroad.

The court decision means that the entire management and the editorial board of Feza Media Group companies will be replaced by the three-member board named by the court.

Turkey’s existing conservative regime is typical of conservative governments in using ‘national security’ rationalizations as excuses for clamping down against the public, supposedly in order to ‘protect’ the public. However, the ‘democratic’ gloss over the transition of a democratic government into a dictatorial one can do nothing to maintain as being true the supposition that the nation is a democracy instead of (now) a dictatorship.

The specific ‘national security’ context behind today’s clamp-down and end of democracy in Turkey, is that the Zaman operations were owned by Erdoğan’s enemy, Fethullah Gülen, who had self-exiled to an estate in Pennsylvania after objecting to the Islamicization of Turkey’s government under Erdoğan. Gülen is no ‘secularist,’ but he came to insist upon a separation between church-and-state, so that there will be no favoritism by the government toward any clergy, and thus no favoritism by the clergy toward any government or political party. In other words: Gülen preaches a relatively progressive version of Islam.

By contrast: Erdoğan has, consistently since he first entered politics, moved Turkey more and more toward a standard Sunni dictatorship, aligned with the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia, and who hold authority over Islam’s two holiest sites: Mecca and Medina. Their Islamic sect is called Wahhabism inside Saudi Arabia, and Salafism outside Saudi Arabia. The founder was Mohammed Ibn Wahhab in 1744, when he swore a mutual oath with the gang-lord Muhammad Ibn Saud, for Saud’s descendants to control the government, and for Wahhab’s preachers to instruct the faithful that the Sauds have God’s blessing to rule. Under this agreement, Wahhab’s preachers determine the laws, based upon the strictest-possible interpretation of the Quran, which therefore functions as Saudi Arabia’s Constitution, while the Wahhabist preachers constitute the legislative and judicial branches of the Saud-led government, who are the executive branch — the Saud-clan’s leaders.

Outside Saudi Arabia, the sect is called “Salafist,” meaning that they derive their authority from their ancestors. This feature authorizes royal rule, because royal dictators achieve their ‘right’ to rule on the basis of whom their ancestors were (i.e., their parents, going ultimately back to some founder who was a conquerer). For this reason, all of the Arabic royal families are Salafists. Inside Saudi Arabia, the Saud family are Wahhabists (the Saudi version of the Salafist sect).

The continued membership by Turkey in NATO would mean that there is a NATO that no longer has any vestige of justification for continued existence after the end, in 1991, of communism, of the USSR, and of the Warsaw Pact. Democracy no longer survives as even a vestigial excuse for its continuation.

NATO, from now on, is just a gang of nations whose aristocracies crave to conquer the world’s most resource-rich nation: Russia. (It’s done by picking off, one-by-one, Russia’s former allied nations and bringing them into the NATO gang.) The U.S. and Saud family, and Erdoğan family, as well as the other Arabic royal families, and the controlling investors in U.S. and allied weapons-manufacturers, etc., constitute the chief beneficiaries of continuing NATO, but the conquest of Russia is not at all the primary goal of the residents  in NATO-member nations. In fact, it’s not a goal that’s even talked about in their ‘elections.’ If those nations were democracies, they’d abandon NATO, as being representative of dictatorship over them all, not of democracy, in any nation.

But we’re all dictatorships now.