Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

Iran to expand ties with Armenia: Rohani

By

Iran’s President Hassan Rohani says the Islamic Republic will seek to expand relations with Armenia.

“The relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Armenia have always been friendly, close and based on mutual interests, and definitely in the future, amiri20130805122639540Tehran’s efforts will focus on deepening relations and improving cooperation in all sectors,” Rohani said in a meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in Tehran on Monday.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always expanded interaction with Armenia based on cultural and civilizational commonalities…,” the Iranian president said.

Rohani noted Armenia’s friendly positions adopted vis-à-vis Iran in the international scene.

For his part, Sargsyan underscored two decades of effective and constructive cooperation between Tehran and Yerevan.

Iran has bartered more than 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas with Armenia’s electricity over the past six years.

National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said recently that around 1.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas has been traded with Armenian electricity during the 2007-2012 period.

Last year, the Islamic Republic exchanged some 481 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas with the neighboring country’s electricity, the largest amount of bartering between Iran and Armenia in six years.

USA: BA Protest To Close Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen Charter Schools-Stop The Theft Of Public Funds By Gulen Movement

By

BA Protest To Close Gulen Charter Schools-Stop The Theft Of Public Funds By Gulen Movement
by United Public Workers For Action UPWA
Sunday Jul 14th, 2013 12:01 AM
Trade unionists and activisgulen__fethulah_with_korants joined together in a national protest against the Imam Fethullah Gulen’s chain of schools in the US. According to Oakland researcher Sharon Higgins over $400 million a year of public funds is being directed into the Gulen cult movement in the US. The action was held at the Gulen run school in Oakland called the Bay Area Technology School.
July 13 Oakland Protest of Turkish Government Connection In Oakland At Charter School Run By Turkish Government Supporter Fethullah GulenBay Area Technology School at 8251 Fountaine St. Oakland CaliforniaA Press Conference With
Gulen Researcher and Oakland Resident Sharon Higgins
Lawyer and Commission On Teacher Credentialing Kathleen Carroll
Trade unionists
Members of Northern California Turkish CommunityStop The Theft Of Our Public Schools And Privatization-National Action Against Gulen Movement And Their Publicly Funded School System In US
Stop The Gulen Movement
Contact
Called By United Public Workers For Action http://www.upwa.info
800_gulen_stop_stealing_public_fundsFor information call (415)867-0628 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (415)867-0628 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting or (510) 510-910-4930In Conjunction with picket of Fethullah Gulen’s Home In Pennsylvania
National Protests Against Gulen Movement in US Schools and
Gulen Movement’s organizations in California.
Get Your Bloody Hands Of US Public Education

More Troubling News For Turkish Media’s Independence (another veteran journalis Can Dundar of Milliyet)

By

A riot police officer orders a news photographer to move away during an anti-government protest in central Istanbul, July 28, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Osman Orsal)
By: Tulin Daloglu for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on August 2.

A riot police officer orders photographer to move away during an anti-government protest in central IstanbulIt’s getting more depressing every day writing about yet another veteran journalist, this time Can Dundar of Milliyet daily, getting fired because of his critical approach to government handling the Gezi Park protests in June, and being personally warned to be cautious by family, friends and colleagues in this new political environment before commenting on anything about the Justice and Development Party (AKP). As someone who lost her contract in May 2010 with Haberturk, allegedly by a request from the prime minister’s office, I empathize with those caring voices around me.
But what happens if all our voices are silenced one by one? While I privately feel grateful not to be working for a Turkish media organization, I strongly urge everyone to include George Orwell’s 1984 in their summer reading list as I keep finding myself referencing that novel in my articles because it feels like it’s reflecting the atmosphere here well.

There is undoubtedly a heavy cloud over the Turkish media’s freedom and independence moving forward — not that it was perfect in the past. As the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) writes, “Covering the news in Turkey is more dangerous than it has been in two decades. CPJ has documented dozens of anti-press attacks since the [Gezi Park] protests began, including vandalism and assaults, with police posing the biggest threat.”

In his initial remarks after the news broke, Dundar said he is neither the first victim nor will be the last of the country’s new political atmosphere. “I learned in a telephone call I received from Erdogan Demiroren [Milliyet’s owner] that my job is terminated. … I was expecting this for a long time; there was no surprise,” he said yesterday, Aug. 1. “What’s important is it’s not only about losing a job, we’re on the verge of losing a profession. Until we get together again, there will be more victims.”

“There is no Abdi Ipekci [the legendary editor-in-chief of Milliyet from 1959 until his assassination in 1979] journalism at Milliyet for a long time, but there is, ‘Let not the Master be disturbed’ journalism,” wrote Hasan Cemal, who was forced to resign in March after 35 years at Milliyet when the daily broke the biggest scoop about the negotiations between the AKP and the imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Looking back at that time, Dundar wrote yesterday: “It was clear what was happening to those who do not bend down before all [AKP] policies. … When Erdogan said from the platform [days before Cemal’s contract was suspended] that ‘damn your journalism’ was not an expectation, but an order. The boss’ floor was flooded by those telephone calls from the ministers/advisers to indeed accomplish that.”

Aysenur Arslan, another veteran journalist who was fired from CNNTurk due to her strong opposing views of the AKP government, wrote about the Dundar case on July 28. “The Gezi protests have become a real turning point for Erdogan. Erdogan’s fear and anger as result of these events are so huge that he and his team could do anything.” Indeed, the AKP was so troubled by the Gezi Park protests that Mehmet Ali Sahin, deputy chairman of the ruling AKP, said the protesters should be legally evaluated under a section of the Turkish penal code that “requires life sentence.” “Because I believe the protesters were trying to bring down the government,” Sahin said.

Arslan’s point about the mounting pressure regarding Dundar was this, though: “The AKP came to such a point that they can even discard the Demiroren group, which has been supporting [the ruling party] for years. Surely, if what they want does not happen!” she wrote. “They want Can Dundar’s contract to be terminated. Can is on leave for a while. I knew this even before he was forced to go to vacation. Here is what I know. After the most heated days of the Gezi Park protests, Yalcin Akdogan [the most prominent adviser to Erdogan] screamed the place down in Ankara. In fact, by giving names: What are these Demiroren doing? Are they trying to stab us from the back? If they don’t do what’s required, we will immediately sacrifice them. We know who does what one by one. Starting from Can Dundar, all will go. Whoever sides with those Gezi Park protesters stands against us. Maybe his words were not verbatim exactly like this, but I know Yalcin Akdogan’s rhetoric well.”

On July 30, Akdogan responded to Arslan from his column at the Star daily. “The negative image that is trying to be established against Prime Minister Erdogan is being done by accusations such as silencing the media, intolerance to criticism, and clearing the media from contrarian columnists,” wrote Akdogan under the headline, “Are we on the hook for media engineering?”

“The AKP government certainly does not have any policy or taken any step in an attempt to create partisan media, silencing the press, or discharging the opposition. … For some time, Aysenur Arslan has been writing wrong facts about me. … First of all, she claims we screamed down the place during Gezi events. But the media’s approach and coverage of the protests are so open out there that no explanation is needed. I even did not talk to any friends in the media at that time — let alone scream down the place.”

Nevertheless, for Dundar and others to lose their jobs due to government pressure at privately owned media networks, one needs to spotlight the relationship between the government and media owners, and how the media ownerships continue to increase their wealth through this privileged access to the highest authorities of the state. Mehmet Baransu of Taraf daily, for example, provided quite a controversial account about the Demiroren group’s background nine days before the Gezi Park protests started.

“It was discovered that the owner of Milliyet and Vatan dailies, Erdogan Demiroren, is being accused of murder and seizing the victim’s wealth,” Baransu wrote on May 20 as if it was a sign of a mounting pressure on the Demiroren group. “According to the records of General Staff, the investigation about the murder is an ongoing one since 1982. According to the document that Taraf had found, Erdogan Demiroren has unjustly appropriated the properties of Arsimidis company and has a role in the murder of a businessman owning a brick factory.” Baransu went on to write: “The date is prior to 1980. One of the owners of the Greek-origin Arsimidis Co. was murdered and his corpse was burned somewhere around Halkali, Istanbul. The representatives of this company sued [Demiroren] for illegally seizing the assets of this company. This trial went on for many years.”

Once the government discovers such a suspicious element, the general perception is that that is how power is being used to clamp down all those divergent views in the media. Therefore, the media ownership needs to be clean and free of being dependent on the government work or bids to sustain their wealth and investments. Although this is nothing new about the loose ends of the fourth estate and it is one of the reasons why it fails to stand to the highest standards of contributing to the advancement of democracy in this country, the Erdogan government is probably the most wise and the talented in knowing how to use these pitfalls to their benefit.

In Cemal’s words, “During Erdogan’s period, the media’s livelihood is getting encircled more and more every day.”

Tulin Daloglu is a contributor to Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse. She has also written extensively for various Turkish and American publications, including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Middle East Times, Foreign Policy, The Daily Star (Lebanon) and the SAIS Turkey Analyst Report.

Turkey records national minorities with secret ‘race codes’: report

By

August 2, 2013 – 09:26 AMT

An official document penned by the Istanbul Provincial Education Directorate has surfaced, revealing that Turkey’s population administration system has been recording citizens who have Armenian, Jewish or Anatolian Greek (Rum) origins with secret “race codes,” according to Hurriyet Daily News.

167281The Armenian-Turkish weekly newspaper Agos published as its headline story on Aug 1 a report on an official document that openly states “citizens with Armenian origin are coded with ‘2.’” The implementation is reported to have been in place since 1923, the foundation year of the Turkish Republic.

A Turkish citizen’s mother whose origin is Armenian requested to register her child at an Armenian kindergarden, but the school responded by asking her to prove she had the “2 code” in order to check that she had not changed religion, according to the document. In Turkey, only minority communities’ members can register their children at minority schools, according to the education law.

The document, sent from the Istanbul Provincial Education Directorate to the Şişli District National Education office, stated that “since 1923, the secret code of Armenians is ‘2’ on identity registration certificates,” according to the Agos report.

“Since 1923, identity registration certificates have a secret ‘race code,’” the document added.

The family’s lawyer, İsmail Cem Halavurt, said the struggle to register children at the Armenian kindergarden was still continuing.

“We are now waiting for an official document saying, ‘Yes, your race code is 2, you can register at an Armenian school,’” Halavurt told the Agos.

Interior Ministry officials were not available for comment and referred reporters to the Directorate General for Population and Citizenship Affairs, which is a body working under their own ministry, the HDN said.

An official from the population administration told daily Radikal that the practice was being conducted “to allow minority groups use their rights stemming the Lausanne Treaty,” signed between Turkey and Western countries, which led to the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic.

As part of the practice, Greeks were coded 1, Armenians were coded 2, and Jews were coded 3. Other minorities or groups are not coded, the official told daily Radikal.

While there was no immediate official response to the report, opposition parties’ lawmakers harshly criticized the alleged document.

“If this is true, it is fatal. It must be examined. I will bring this onto Parliament’s agenda,” Sezgin Tanrıkulu, deputy head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Altan Tan, a deputy of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), stated that there had long been such allegations, but they were always denied by the authorities. Tan urged Interior Minister Muammer Güler to make a statement on the issue.

“If there is such a thing going on, it is a big disaster. The state illegally profiling its own citizens based on ethnicity and religion, and doing this secretly, is a big catastrophe,” Tan said.

Author of book on Genocide confirmed as U.S. envoy to UN, Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author

By

August 2, 2013 – 11:37 AMT

Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and foreign policy advisor to President Obama, won confirmation Thursday as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations with a vote that completes the administration’s foreign policy team for the second term, Los Angeles Times reports.

167298The outspoken former journalist and human rights advocate was confirmed by a vote of 87 to 10, far more support than critics had predicted after her high-profile career as an author and activist.

“As a longtime champion of human rights and dignity, she will be a fierce advocate for universal rights, fundamental freedoms and U.S. national interests,” Obama said in a statement. “I’m grateful that Samantha will continue to be a vital member of my national security team, and I know that under her leadership our UN mission in New York will continue to represent American diplomacy at its best.”

Power, 42, covered the war in Bosnia in the 1990s as a writer for several newspapers and magazines. After she returned, Power earned a degree at Harvard Law School and wrote about the public policy of human rights.

She is best-known for her 2002 book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” the work that caught Obama’s attention as a new member of the U.S. Senate.

The book pointed out the successes and failures of the United States in responding to mass atrocities, ideas that Power echoed in many public speeches and interviews after its publication.

Secret Thatcher Notes: Kohl Wanted Half of Turks Out of Germany

By

By Claus Hecking

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and newly elected Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn in 1982, the day after he told her of his plan to “reduce the number of Turks in Germany by 50 percent.”

Margaret Thatcher 1982 bei Helmut Kohl in BonnUnsealed confidential British documents reveal that in 1982, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl tried to carry out a radical plan. He wanted to reduce the number of Turks living in Germany by 50 percent within four years.

“SECRET,” the top of the densely typewritten document reads. Underneath, an official had added a handwritten note: “NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION.”

ANZEIGE

It was a controversial plan that the newly elected German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, confided to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during her visit to Bonn, then the West German capital. “Chancellor Kohl said (…) over the next four years, it would be necessary to reduce the number of Turks in Germany by 50 percent — but he could not say this publicly yet,” state the secret minutes of the meeting dated Oct. 28, 1982.

It adds: “It was impossible for Germany to assimilate the Turks in their present numbers.” Only four people were in the room at the time: Kohl, his longtime adviser Horst Teltschik, Thatcher and her private secretary A.J. Coles, the author of the document.

The file, labeled “PREM 19/1036,” smells musty. For three decades, the records of the 1982 and 1983 meetings between Kohl and Thatcher have been sealed, inaccessible to ordinary people. But now that the period of confidentiality has expired, the British National Archives has made them available to the public.

The minutes of the Thatcher meeting outline how Kohl intended to get hundreds of thousands of Turks out of Germany. But they also cast light on how the relationship between the Germans and their Turkish compatriots has improved over the past three decades. Because to a contemporary German sensibility, the apparent social consensus in Kohl’s West Germany seems quite far to the right.

‘No Problems with the Portuguese’

According to the document, Kohl wanted the Turks out. “Germany had no problems with the Portuguese, the Italians, even the Southeast Asians, because these communities integrated well,” wrote minute-keeper Coles of the chancellor, who had only been in office for four weeks. “But the Turks came from a very distinctive culture and did not integrate well. […] Germany had integrated some 11 million Germans from East European countries. But they were European and therefore presented no problem.”

Kohl listed forced marriages and illegal employment by Turks as examples of “a clash of two different cultures.” One out of every two should leave, said the chancellor, and those who remain should be provided special schooling. “Those who were to be integrated must learn German.”

The Rhineland native apparently didn’t think too highly of immigrants from Turkey’s Anatolia region, which made up the country’s largest segment of so-called guest workers. Back when Kohl was merely an opposition leader for the center-right Christian Democratic Union — today the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel — he described them as “incapable of integration and, incidentally, unwilling to integrate.” And in his first policy speech, two weeks before the meeting with Thatcher, he said, “Integration is only possible if the number of foreigners living among us does not increase further.” But Kohl concealed his specific plan to get rid of every second Turk within four years, although public outrage would probably have been limited at the time.

Fear of Being Overrun

“Back then, the societal consensus in Germany was that Turks were guest workers and would have to go home,” Freiburg-based historian and author Ulrich Herbert told SPIEGEL ONLINE. And this wasn’t confined to right-leaning political parties like Kohl’s CDU, but rather “penetrated deep into the SPD,” he added, referring to the center-left Social Democratic Party. SPD member Holger Börner, at the time the governor of the central state of Hesse, said the influx of foreigners had to be “strictly stopped.” Kohl’s Social Democrat predecessor, Helmut Schmidt, was quoted in the summer of 1982 as saying, “Not one more Turk will come over the border.” His chief of staff, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, sneered at Muslims who “butcher their sheep in the bathtub.”

Many a German grew tired of having such a large population of guest workers. In 1973, only 12 years after the signing of the immigration agreement with Ankara, the coalition government agreed on stopping recruitment in Turkey. Yet the number of Turks in Germany continued to rise, as women and children joined their male heads of household and, after a coup in Ankara, more and more applied for asylum. By 1982, around 1.5 million Turks were living in Germany. And the country had its own problems to deal with: After the second oil crisis in the early 1980s, the German economy began to slump at rates not seen since World War II. In 1982, 1.8 million people were unemployed — six times as many as in 1973.

Many German citizens began to see immigrants as burdens on the social welfare system and competitors for jobs that were rightfully theirs. A 1982 survey conducted by pollster Infas found that 58 percent of Germans wanted to reduce the number of foreigners in the country. “The politicians in Bonn were overwhelmed,” said Herbert. “They were afraid of being overrun with Turks, and wanted to get rid of them. But they didn’t know how.”

Kohl took a shot at it with his favorite political tool: money. “He intended to capitalize on the (social) insurance payments which Turkish workers had made and give them a lump sum,” the Thatcher logs say. Indeed, in 1983 the center-right government approved a law providing limited assistance for foreigners to return to their country of origin. Bonn hoped that a one-time payment of 10,500 deutsche marks and reimbursement of their retirement insurance payments would entice Turks to return home. But the program turned out to be a flop. “Only about 100,000 Turks left,” said Herbert. At the same time, tens of thousands continued to come to Germany seeking asylum.

 

A piece of Jesus’ cross? Relics unearthed in Turkey (More prove that the land belong to the Christian Greeks, Armenian & Assyrians not Muslim Turks)

By

Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News

Turkish archaeologists say they have found a stone chest in a 1,350-year-old church that appears to contain a relic venerated as a piece of Jesus’ cross.

6C8473452-f_jesus2_130731_blocks_desktop_mediumThe artifacts were unearthed during a dig at Balatlar Church in Turkey’s Sinop Province, and displayed this week by excavation team leader Gülgün Köroğlu. “We have found a holy thing in a chest. It is a piece of a cross,” the Hurriyet Daily News quoted her as saying.

Köroğlu, an art historian and archaeologist at Turkey’s Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, said the team suspects that the chest served as a symbolic coffin for the relics of a holy person — and that the fragments within it were associated with Jesus’ crucifixion.

She showed reporters at the site a stone with crosses carved into it. “This stone chest is very important to us. It has a history and is the most important artifact we have unearthed so far,” she said. The chest has been taken to a laboratory for further examination.

Köroğlu said her team has been working since 2009 at the church — which was built in the year 660, during the Byzantine era. She said the ruins of an ancient Roman bath were also found at the site, along with more than 1,000 human skeletons.

Fragments associated with Jesus’ cross were sent far and wide as relics in ancient and medieval times. According to legend, St. Helena — the mother of Emperor Constantine — found the cross in Jerusalem and distributed pieces of the wood to church leaders in Jerusalem, Rome and Constantinople (present-day Istanbul in Turkey).

Later in the 4th century, St. Cyril of Jerusalem said the whole world “has been filled with pieces of the wood of the cross.” St. Gregory of Nyssa said the wood had “saving efficacy for all men, though it is, as I am informed, a piece of a poor tree, less valuable than most trees are.”

The 16th-century Protestant theologian John Calvin famously joked that if all the pieces linked to the “true cross” were assembled in one place, “they would make a big shipload.” However, the Catholic Encyclopedia quotes the 19th-century French archaeologist Charles Rohault de Fleury as saying that all of the cataloged relics would amount to less than a third of the wood in a 3- to 4-meter-high (10- to 13-foot-high) cross. Relics linked to Jesus’ cross can be found in many churches, including the Shrine of the True Cross and the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Texas.

President offers condolences to Mark Saghatelyan’s family

By

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan sent a telegram of condolence to the family, relatives and friends of famous Armenian showman Mark Saghatelyan, who died Markyesterday in hospital where he was in coma, the presidential press service reported.

Mark Saghatelyan was admitted to Yerevan’s Nairi Medical Center with acute leukemia on July 30.

Turkey police fire tear gas to disperse protesters

By

Turkish riot police on Wednesday fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters at Istanbul’s Taksim square, the epicentre of violent demonstrations which rocked the country in June, AFP reported.

Turkish police Tear gasAt least four people were injured, eye witnesses said, after police stepped in to break up a crowd of around 500 protesters clustered at the square.

“We’ll resist until we win!” the protesters shouted. “This is only a beginning, we’ll continue to fight!”

Cat-and-mouse games between police forces and protesters ensued in the streets around the square.

Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government was shaken in June by a wave of protests that presented it with the biggest public challenge since coming to power more than a decade ago.

US system of information control is beginning to crack because of the Manning case – Mark Mason told RT

By

University of California anthropologist Mark Mason told RT

We have a desperate US administration trying to hold together the ‘American Empire’ as the information about its illegal activities is getting out through the cracks, University of California anthropologist Mark Mason told RT.

28_siThe US government has fish to fry bigger than Manning, the one they want to catch is Julian Assange, Mason added.

RT: What’s your reaction to the ruling?

Mark Mason: This is a landmark court decision. The judge essentially sided that journalism is not treason. This is really all about, not only of course Bradley Manning, but the attack on journalism and WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The US Government and Obama administration, they really have bigger fish to fry, they are after Julian Assange that is the one they want to catch. They are in a state of like catatonic terror about WikiLeaks, that is really their goal.

RT: What impact do you think this case will have on investigative journalism?

MM: I will not diminish the importance of the judges’ decision. And yet on Friday we had a Federal Appellate Court order James Reason a New York Times  reporter to reveal his sources in court so on Friday we had an attack from the Appeals Court and we can expect that the Obama administration will follow up with the current attack. We have a massive attack on free speech and on freedom of the press, and they are going to go after Julian Assange.

RT: Manning’s fate has been decided by a judge alone – that was his choice. Why do you think he didn’t want a military jury to do that?

MM: That had been on discussion, I would like to be privy to the discussion between Bradley Manning and his attorneys. My suspicion is that with the military court system, the juries if he had chosen to using the jury trial system, the juries would have been appointed to by the commanding officer of the post, still they are not selected randomly as they are in civil trial. Also I think that may have had a major factor in this.

RT: So has Manning become something of a martyr for free speech?

MM: Bradley Manning is a civil liberties hero. He will go down in history. People will be reading about him two hundred years from now about sacrifices of Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers of this period, Daniel Ellsberg and others. He has sacrificed his future for defending the right of Americans to know about US war crimes, this comes back to the larger context here, that we have the wrong person in the court. George Bush should be sitting in a court room facing charges for war crimes. And this is a story that will be told hundreds of years from now about the courageous acts of Bradley Manning.

RT: Manning’s supporters say he made ‘a personal sacrifice’ – what do you think he achieved by this sacrifice?

MM: The Obama administration is really on the run due to the courageous acts of Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers. Information is actually getting out through the cracks out to the people about the illegal activities and illegal NSA spy programs, the illegal wars. So I think that we have a desperate administration that is trying to hold together the ‘American Empire’ and that is Obama’s job, he is just another guy, he is a temporary assistant holding down the job of maintaining the ‘Empire’ for four years. That’s what Presidents are. And so we really have a constitutional crisis, the United States is in a constitutional crisis right now.

Again a list of all the violations of the Constitution, the 1st Amendment the 4th Amendment, the 5th Amendment certainly are all being violated by all three branches of the government. A recent public opinion poll which released just days ago showed that 70% of the American public believe that the American government is collecting information about Americans and using it for purposes that have nothing whatsoever to do with spying. Americans are not supposed to know that, they are supposed to be controlled through the mass media, through 5 mega corporations that control and manage public opinion here in the United States. So the control over public opinion is a linchpin of elite control on the United States and the government represents the interests of bankers, the military contractors, big oil and big farmer and such. And this system of information control is beginning to crack and this comes back again to Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks and the importance of Obama targeting both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.

RT: US Army Private Bradley Manning has been convicted of all but two charges in the Wikileaks case – how badly do you think this is going to go for him?

MM: That is my understanding Bradley Manning has already pre-trial pled guilty to certain charges and those are already on the book so to speak. He has found guilty to 19 of 20 charges. My understanding is that Bradley Manning will be subjected to a minimum of 20 years in prison. Even though as you mentioned and noted carefully that the judge has discarded the argument that he was committing treason.