Sakine Cansiz

Somehow I find myself on the mailing list of the PKK (the Kurdish Workers Party), which is engaged in armed struggle against Turkey for an autonomous Kurdistan and cultural and political rights for all Turkish Kurds. According to Wikipedia, international human rights groups document decades of human rights abuses against the Kurds. In addition to criminalizing the Kurdish language, the Turkish government has deliberated destroyed 4,000 Kurdish villages and forcibly evacuated a million Kurdish civilians from their homes. This is in addition to the execution of 18,000 Kurds and the imprisonment of more than 119,000. Because Turkey is an ally, the US and the EU oppose the Kurds having an independent or semi-autonomous state and brand the PKK as a terrorist organization.

The newsletter is called Koma Civiken Kurdistan Info (in English Peoples’ Confederation of Kurdistan-Info). Founded in the early seventies, the PKK has backed away from its original Marxist-Leninist orientation (at least according to Wikipedia). However it’s the first newsletter I have read in more than two decades that still refers to it members as “comrade.” This makes me nostalgic for the old days. I suspect this is why I continue to subscribe.

I confess I don’t even open the newsletters most weeks. Following the assassination of three (female) PKK leaders in Paris last week, I read every single word of one I got on Sunday. For people who may have missed this story in the corporate media, this was a classic Mossad-style execution in which the killers got through an electronic lock system (requiring a code to get in) at the Kurdish Information Center. All three women died of three or four gunshot wounds to the head. The executions have occurred in the context of secret peace negotiations between the PKK leadership and the Turkish government. The day before the killing, rumors began to circulate that the PKK and the Erdogan government had agreed on a peace plan. The PKK has massive groups of followers in Europe, primarily in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. However according to the AL Monitor, this was the first PKK assassination carried out on French soil.

The Kurdish Rosa Luxemburg

Sakine Cansiz, one of the co-founders of the PKK, was the most prominent of the three. She organized the prison resistance movement during the decade she spent in prison in the 1980s. The fact that half of the PKK armed resistance are women is credited to Cansiz, often referred to as the Kurdish Rosa Luxemburg.

Is the Mossad Responsible for the PKK Executions?

Here in New Zealand we know all about the Mossad’s ruthless international assassinations (they will go anywhere and kill anyone to further Israeli Zionism). The Mossad was front page new in 2010 after our government discovered Israeli spies had used forged New Zealand passports to assassinate a Hamas leader in Dubai. Six months later, another suspected Mossad agent was discovered to have five passports on his person when he was killed in the Christchurch earthquake.

C. Tuttle, writing in Firedoglake also puts the Mossad high on the list of likely culprits. He refers to a November AL Monitor article by Sedat Laciner revealing that Israeli intelligence monitors PKK training camps continuously via drones, satellites and other electronic. John Robles, writing in The Voice of Russia, believes that Israeli or US intelligence, both eager for a pretext to invade Syria and/or Iran, would have an equally strong incentive to derail a PKK-Turkish peace settlement. Like Iraq, Syria and Iran have large semi-autonomous Kurdish regions, which the PKK uses as a base for military operations against Turkey. Robles reminds us that Turkey recently authorized military incursions into Iran, supposedly to seek out and attack PKK militants. It’s easy to see the US or Israel using the threat posed by Kurdish “terrorism” as an excuse to put boots on the ground in either or both countries.

The PKK Blames Turkish Gladio

In their most recent newsletter, the PKK agrees that the assassinations were an effort to derail the peace negations. However they hold the Turkish Gladio responsible. This is a shorthand reference to Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of the CIA’s infamous Gladio program. This is a clandestine US-backed force formed in France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and other countries with strong communist sympathies after World War II.

photo credit: txengmeng via photopin cc

Cross posted at Daily Censored

Revolutionary Military Council (Aleppo)

According to alakhbar English, the so-called Revolutionary Military Council, having declared an independent Islamic state in Syria’s largest city Aleppo, has banned women from driving. They have also made prayer compulsory, as well as creating a Saudi-like vice-and-virtue police to enforce these and other Islamic precepts.

Syrian women, who fly planes, join the army and serve as judges, and many secular opposition activists are appalled by this development. In contrast, Sunni rebels welcome it, arguing “it is part-and-parcel of the freedom revolution, which means that the conservative Muslim majority has the right to impose its views on society, as long as it is the majority” and “Syrian society will find it difficult at first, as was the case with our Saudi brothers a century ago, but they will eventually discover that their purpose is to apply Islam and justice.”

Could someone please remind to me exactly why the Obama administration has been supporting – with arms, training and other aid – this misogynous “freedom revolution”? When the Taliban treat Afghan women this way, it’s used to justify the continuing US occupation of Afghanistan.

Two very different bin Laden clones (Veterans Today)

Paul Craig Roberts isn’t your garden variety conspiracy nut. We’re talking about a former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Scripps Howard News Service. In a November 29^th article at Information Clearinghouse Roberts, who has been highly critical of both the Bush and Obama administration for destroying US Constitutional protections, the senseless and exorbitantly expensive War on Terror and US policy on Palestine, republishes a November 2001 interview with bin Laden in which the late Saudi financier specifically denies responsibility for 9-11. It was originally published in Urdu in Pakistan’s daily newspaper Unmat on September 28, 2001. It was translated by the BBC’s World Monitoring Service and made public on September 29, 2001. In the interview, bin Laden asserts attacks on innocent civilians are inconsistent with his religious beliefs, as well as expressing the opinion that the attacks originated with people “who are part of the US system but dissenting against it.” I first learned about the interview from David Ray Griffin’s 2009 book, Osama Dead Or Alive? As both Griffin and Roberts carefully document, all the post-2001 videos and audiotapes supposedly claiming responsibility for the Twin Tower attacks have been discredited as fakes by bin Laden lookalikes.

As Roberts points out, Osama bin Laden’s sensational denial was never reported by the US print or TV media, except for a one minute CNN segment that quotes from an al Jazeera report regarding bin Laden’s Unmat interview and concludes “we can all weigh that in the scale of credibility and come to our own conclusions.” There was no effort to investigate bin Laden’s September 2001 claims by either the White House or Congress.

Ironically, as Roberts notes, the corporate media did widely report on bin Laden’s death from kidney and lung failure in December 2001. Several post-2001 videos, in which a person alleging to be bin Ladin takes credit for the attacks, have also be widely promoted in the corporate media. Careful analysis by a range of international experts (which Griffin details in his book) have discredit all of them as fakes.

Roberts is scathingly critical of the insipid hoax the Obama administration is perpetuating that Navy Seals assassinated someone in Abbottabad Pakistan last year who already died in 2001. In addition to testimony from neighbors who report that the helicopter allegedly transporting the Seals couldn’t have evacuated anyone because it crashed and burned, there are a lot of strange coincidences: for example, the unfortunate death of 30 members of the SEAL unit in a mysterious helicopter crash in Afghanistan and the failure of any of the thousands of sailors on the USS Carl to witness bin Laden’s alleged burial at sea.

The obvious question is why. Why would the Bush administration fabricate such a monstrous lie and more importantly, why on earth would Obama perpetuate it?

In my mind answer is simple: because they can. It’s a measure of the absolute power and corruption of a despotic political system when political leaders can invent their own truth at will for political expediency. It forces all of us to confront the painful reality that the US government is no less corporate-controlled or corrupt (it’s probably a little more so) under Obama than under Bush. To believe otherwise is wishful thinking.

Read the entire interview and Roberts’ commentary here.

Retiring Congressman Ron Paul, former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, comes down on the same side as many progressives on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. A recent post on his website, reiterates comments he made when was president about Gaza being nothing but a vast concentration camp.

It has never mattered to Paul which party was in power. His greatest appeal, especially among young supporters, is his ability to tell the unvarnished truth. He puts the blame for Gazan atrocities squarely where it belongs: with the US government, which is the main supplier of planes and bombs Israel uses to attack Palestinians.

He highlights Obama’s hypocrisy in “racing” to justify Israel’s massacre of Gazan civilians – “No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders” – reminding us of all the missiles our President is raining down on Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and numerous other countries.

The libertarian congressman  sides with progressive columnist Glenn Greenwald when he emphasizes that current US policy only exacerbates the loss of human life on both sides. He also points outs that our country’s bellicose Middle East policy serves to reduce, rather than increase US security.

Read more here: How to end the tragedy in Gaza

photo credit abcnews.go.com

Writing at ConsortiumNews.com, long time investigative reporter Robert Parry reveals that Petraeus would have been sacked if he hadn’t resigned. Quoting political and intelligence insiders, he makes a strong case that Bush’s favorite general had a long history of undermining Obama’s peace initiatives in the Middle East. As an example, Parry discloses how Petraeus and his neocon friends from the Bush administration tried to maneuver the President into launching a military strike against Iran.

Parry also describes Petraeus’ machinations to prevent Obama from enacting plans to draw down troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

He reiterates the conventional wisdom that the only reason Obama appointed the four start general to head the CIA was to keep him out of the presidential race.

Read more here.

Photo credit: http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.co.nz/2008_04_01_archive.html

A recent article in the Guardian reveals that Britain has denied a US request to use bases in the UK, Cyprus, Ascension Island or Diego Garcia for either military or air support of an attack on Iran. Government spokespersons cite secret legal advice, drafted by the attorney general’s office and circulated to Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, indicating a preemptive strike on Iran potentially violates international law.

The secret memo takes the position that Iran, which has consistently denied it has plans to develop a nuclear weapon, fails to meet the standard of presenting “a clear and present threat”.

Quite a drastic and refreshing change from Tony Blair’s gung ho support for George W Bush’s (illegal) aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps the tide is turning.

Read more here

Mail Online photo

According to the British Mail Online, Pakistani human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar has filed two separate court cases intended to trigger a formal murder investigation into the roles of two US officials responsible for ordering drone strikes which killed teachers, students and policemen in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The officials are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s former chief lawyer. Rizzo is named because of an interview he gave after he retired as CIA General Counsel last year. In it, he boasts that he personally authorized every drone strike in which America’s enemies were ‘hunted down and blown to bits’.

The first case which has already been heard by a court in Islamabad and judgment is expected imminently. If the judge grants Akbar’s petition, an international arrest warrant will be issued via Interpol against the  two Americans.

The second case is being heard in the city of Peshawar. In it, Akbar and the families of civilian drone victims civilians are seeking a ruling that further strikes in Pakistani airspace should be viewed as ‘acts of war’. For this reason, they argue that the Pakistan Air Force should try to shoot down the drones and that the government should sever diplomatic relations with the US and launch murder inquiries against those responsible.

According to a report last month by academics at Stanford and New York universities, between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed since Pakistan drone strikes began in 2004. According to the report, up to  881 were civilians, including 176  children. Only 41 people who were killed were confirmed as ‘high-value’ terrorist targets.

Read more here: CIA Chiefs Face Arrest

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To provide some historical context, I have embedded the 1998 documentary about five brave whistleblowers (Ralph McGhehee, Verne Lyon, Mary Embree and Phillip Agee), who left the Agency owing to disgust with CIA policies involving the torture and assassination of innocent civilians and subsequently went public. Agee, especially, experienced major retaliation for writing about his past CIA work. Roetinger’s account is most interesting, as he was in charge of organizing the coup in Guatemala that removed democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz from the presidency. The manner in which Roetinger was recruited is extremely comical. This CIA officer comes to the door, refuses to identify himself and tells him they want him to overthrow an unnamed government in Latin America.

YouTube video is in 6 parts. Full video can also be seen at http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/secrets_cia

Syrian "rebel" - note black al Qaeda flag in background

According to an October 14^th New York Times artice: “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.”

Thanks to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds at Boiling Frogs, most of the blogosphere knew the truth about the Syrian civil war twelve months ago. I guess the recent acknowledgement in the New York Times – the mouthpiece of the Pentagon, US State Department and CIA – makes it official.

So why now? Why would Obama suddenly decide to disclose the truth about Syria three weeks before an election?

The answer seems pretty obvious: to undercut a Republican opponent who has made Syria a campaign issue by promising to provide Syrian rebels with the more powerful weaponry, including antiaircraft and antitank weapons that the US and its allies have are thus far declined to provide.

The article stresses the dreadful consequences of such weapons ending up in the wrong hands. Unnamed officials even express concern that ousting President Assad could have extremely negative consequences: “American officials worry that, should Mr. Assad be ousted, Syria could erupt afterward into a new conflict over control of the country, in which the more hard-line Islamic groups would be the best armed.”

Imagine that. Sounds like what Americans of conscience – as well as Russia and China – have been saying all along.

Very humorous video by Paul Joseph Watson analyzing Romney’s position on Syria in the recent presidential debates. Watson provides all-important context missing in the mainstream media.

If video doesn’t play go to Does America Share Its Values with Terrorists?

Australian ex-Guantanamo detainee David Hicks

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, new evidence has emerged that all Guantanamo Bay detainees, including David Hicks, an Australian citizen held for years at Guantanamo without charged, were involuntarily drugged with scopolamine, a substance that has a long history as a truth serum.

Recently declassified US documents revealing show that scopolamine was administered to all detainees taken to the Cuban detention center. The documents, which were standard operating procedures for nursing staff, reveal that the rationale for the drug’s use on all detainees was to prevent motion sickness.

This contradicts the advice of US military experts, who frown on scopolamine’s use for motion sickness because of its severe side effects.

Details of Hicks’ mistreatment at Guantanamo were set to emerge publicly during legal action by the Australian government to stop him receiving proceeds from his book Guantanamo: My Journey. The government subsequently abandoned the case.

Scolpolamine is also the drug many believe was administered to psychotic shooter Robert Holmes prior to the Batman Massacre

According to Hicks lawyer, Josh Dratel, Guantanamo detainees were also forced to take sedatives and other psychoactive drugs prior to their interrogation sessions. His assertions are supported, in part by an affidavit by former Guantanamo guard Brandon Neely.

According to Neely, detainees were beaten for refusing to take the medications.