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War is a great risk for Azerbaijan: Thomas de Waal #Karabakh

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f57002ea3b3d5e_57002ea3b3d95.thumbPolitical scientist Thomas de Waal has told the radio station “Deutsche Welle” that the new developments in the region are taking place against the background of a new turning point in the Middle East conflict.

“The Armenian side will benefit from the status quo. For Azerbaijan war is a great risk that threatens their government, as the golden era of economic development in Azerbaijan comes to its end. Oil prices fall and
Azerbaijan is entering a new phase,” – he said.

According to Mr. de Waal Karabakh is the only factor that can bring together Azerbaijanis against Armenians.

Ex-Bush Official: ‘War is a Racket’ Led by Corporations, Not Security

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1037231218Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, derided the US military-industrial complex, warning that corporate interests have taken over America’s security apparatus.

“War is a Racket,” the famous 51-page pamphlet written in 1935 by Major General Smedley Butler, the most highly decorated US Marine of his generation, criticizes the US war machine, noting that the US wages war as much to ensure corporate profit as it does to secure and protect the so-called American way of life.

On Tuesday, former Chief of Staff to State Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, stated, without irony, “I think Smedley Butler was onto something.”

Wilkerson expanded on his observation. “Was Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO – after George H.W. Bush and James Baker had assured Gorbachev and then Yeltsin that he wouldn’t go an inch further east – was this for Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, and Boeing, and others, to increase their network of potential weapons sales?” Wilkerson asked. “You bet it was,” he said.

Today, observes Wilkerson, the US military-industrial complex “is much more pernicious than Eisenhower ever thought it would be,” pointing to Lockheed Martin’s role in providing arms to repressive Middle Eastern regimes like Saudi Arabia and increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Since the middle of the 20th century, the US military-industrial complex has branched out from simple weapons manufacture to promulgating think tanks and other forms of legal and tax-exempt non-profit organizations that purport to be impartial, writing editorials and policy proposals that support the agenda of the military-industrial infrastructure, and often adopted as policy by Congress and the executive branch.  

“Is there a penchant on behalf of the Congress to bless the use of force more often than not because of the constituencies they have and the money they get from the defense contractors?” Wilkerson asked. “You bet.”

“In many respects it is now private interests that benefit most from our use of military force, whether it is private security contractors that are still all over Iraq or Afghanistan or it’s the bigger known defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin,” he stated.

Wilkerson again quoted Butler: “Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

The war racket revealed by US military hero Smedley Butler — himself a kind of proto-whistleblower — continues as strong as ever. Corporate profits and shareholder revenue continue to outweigh most concerns of national security. Defense contractors make very good money making devices that only kill, and that often end up in the hands of terror organizations like Daesh to be turned against Americans, both civilian and those in uniform.

Former Chief of Staff Wilkerson said of America that which is well known but is now spoken of more commonly: “We are the death merchant of the world. We’ve privatized the ultimate public function: war.”

Source: sputniknews.com

Erdogan’s War Against Kurds in Southeast Turkey is ‘Part of Business Plan’

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1034883245Most construction companies in Turkey belong to Erdogan mafia gang,

Ankara has unleashed a devastating war against Kurds in the southeast Turkey to “urgently nationalize” the affected structures and implement the AKP-led project of Urban Change in Diyarbakir, Istanbul-based independent scholar Dr. Can Erimtan writes, dubbing the process as “disaster capitalism à la Turca.”

The Kurdish peace process launched by Recep Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) back in 2009 has been eventually brought to an end by Ankara, who now has unleashed an all-out war against its own population in southeastern Turkey.

“The Turkish-state-as-led-by-the-AKP has been waging all-out war against the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] ever since the June elections proved unable to produce the desired outcome. In fact, the hostilities began on 24-25 July 2015 when Turkey’s Armed Forces (TSK) undertook Operation Martyr Yalcın aimed at PKK and ISIS [Daesh] positions in northern Iraq (KRG) and northern Syria (Rojava),” Istanbul-based independent scholar Dr. Can Erimtan narrates in his article for New Eastern Outlook.

Citing Human Rights Watch’s December report, the scholar calls attention to the fact that since July 2015 Kurdish civilians including women, children and elderly residents have been killed in the course of the Erdogan government’s military operation in southeastern Turkey.

The severe military crackdown has led to the destruction of numerous buildings and monuments, including mosques and churches.

According to Erimtan, the ongoing operation is not a mere punitive action, but, apparently, part of Ankara’s business plan.

The crux of the matter is that since 2010 the AKP-led government has repeatedly made vain attempts to kick off the Urban Change program in Turkey’s southeast region. The project envisaged that 330 individual buildings would be demolished in the area of Sur in Diyarbakir.

“In view of the numerous protests against this apparently wanton and profit-driven destruction, these controlled demolitions were brought to a halt subsequently. But now that real estate is being destroyed in the course of the ongoing armed conflict, Turkey’s State Housing Agency Directorate (TOKİ) has come to the fore once more,” Erimtan elaborates.

Turkish pro-government media outlets have begun to bang the drum for the AKP-led program of Urban Change in Diyarbakir, claiming that the affected structures should be “urgently” nationalized and rebuilt.

There is something very fishy about the Turkish Ministry for Environment and Urban Planning’s report ‘Urban Change and Diyarbakir,’ issued in February 2015, when nothing hinted at any trouble, the scholar stresses.

“The report deals specifically with the area of Sur within the prefecture of Diyarbakir and proposes the realization of ‘a comprehensive change’ in favor of earlier ‘localized interventions’ or ‘narrow-scope implementations’ in order to accomplish feats of ‘conservation,’ ‘regeneration,’ and ‘renewal’ in the area,” Erimtan explains.

The lucrative project envisioned the construction of 8,000 new buildings and the conservation of 1,000 historical monuments.

What lies beneath Ankara’s punitive operation in southeastern Turkey? Apparently it is Erdogan‘s “disaster capitalism.”

Erimtan refers to Canadian author Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (2007) that describes the controversial strategy invented by US economist Milton Friedman and then implemented by his followers all over the world.

“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable,” Friedman wrote in the 1960s.

Klein’s book tells the story of the utter victory of neoliberalism and corporations which used natural and man-made disasters and wars to ruin a region’s economy and infrastructure in order to grab its assets and natural resources.

Remarkably, in 2015 independent Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein released his book “Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe” that echoes Klein’s concept and confirms that disaster has become big business.

Erimtan believes that the Erdogan government is implementing its own version of disaster capitalism in Turkey. Instead of bolstering the country’s productivity and increasing its gross domestic savings, the AKP is pushing ahead with widespread privatization of Turkey’s state assets and enterprises.

The ongoing armed conflict is seen as an ideal business opportunity by Ankara: ignoring the people on the ground the Erdogan government is planning to carry out its lucrative building project in southeast Turkey. 

Armenian Reform Plan Lays Path to War and Genocide

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Armenian-Reform-package-1914-3Posted By: Daryl Worthington

The Armenian Reform Plan was signed into law on 8th February, 1914. The agreement is an often overlooked moment which marked both the deterioration of European diplomacy into the First World War, and the onset of events which would culminate in terrible tragedy for the Armenian people.

Russia and the Ottoman Empire were the agreement’s signatories. It granted autonomous administrative rights to Armenians in the six provinces of Turkey where their population was most heavily concentrated. Two inspector generals were also established by the new agreement. Appointed by agreement between Britain, France, Russia and Italy, the inspector generals would hold judicial authority over the Armenian provinces.

On a regional level, the agreement was the result of a long campaign by the Armenians to gain recognition and equality within the Ottoman Empire. For centuries they had suffered political oppression, largely as a result of their Christian beliefs. As the Empire entered its decline in the nineteenth century, the situation worsened, as growing Turkish nationalism and resentment focused oppression on all non-Muslim elements of society. The fact that the Armenian community seemed to be so successful in the face of the decline only served to exaggerate that resentment.

The Armenian National Delegation (AND) had been founded to campaign for autonomy. After the failure of Turkey’s new constitutional government to implement significant reforms, and the aggressive nationalism which came in the wake the Young Turks’ coup d’etat, the AND began to lobby other European countries to push for changes within the Ottoman Empire. The upheaval in Turkey following defeat in the First Balkan War (1912-1913), provided the perfect moment for the governments of Russia, Britain and France to pressure the Ottoman Empire into instigating change.

Beyond mere concern for Armenian well-being, the intervention of other European powers in the Armenian question was in fact symptomatic of the complicated international tensions dividing Europe in the run up to the First World War. Armenian grievances became a vehicle for the geostrategic goals of empires.

For Russia, the benefits of greater Armenian autonomy were clear. The territory in question was close to the Turkish-Russian border. Since the turn of the century Russia had endeavored to undermine the struggling Ottoman Empire, its main rival for influence in the region. Greater Armenian independence would push the Ottoman Empire closer to dissolution, and boost Russia’s chances of gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea.

Britain and France tacitly backed Russia in its intervention in the Armenian question. Germany had forged close ties with the Ottoman Empire, which the members of the Triple Entente considered an attempt by the Kaiser to assert greater influence in the valuable region.

Highlighting the increasingly polarised state of Europe, Germany vetoed the initial terms of the Armenian Reform Plan. The original intention of the agreement was to join the six Armenian-inhabited vilayets, or districts, into a single province. The German opposition saw the agreement modified to create two separate provinces instead.

The Armenian campaign to end political oppression, which resulted in the Armenian Reform Plan, was used by the imperial powers of Europe to achieve their geopolitical goals. The tragic consequence however, was that within the Ottoman Empire it fueled the sense that Armenians were in league with Turkey’s rivals, increasing already smoldering resentment against them with horrendous consequences.

The outbreak of the First World War later in 1914 meant the terms of the agreement never really took effect. With Russia, Britain, France and Germany distracted by war, the Armenians were left unprotected. In April 1915, 200 Armenian intellectuals were arrested, accused of supporting Russia. It proved the first step in what is now widely referred to as the Armenian Genocide.

Source: newhistorian.com

Video Warmonger: Hillary Clinton Architect of Libya-Syria war & Madeleine Albright Serbian war Architect

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1033705848

Two Secretary of State two Warmonger Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright

WATCH: Here’s what Bernie Sanders told NBC’s Kate Snow about Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s comments that

“there is a special place in hell for women who don’t support each other. and is the same woman who said 

500,000 Iraqi children dead from sanctions was “worth it”. A few months later she was confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of State and nobody even questioned her about this statement.

A prominent economics professor and political thinker has penned an article in which he calls Clinton a “war candidate” in the pocket of the military industrial complex.

Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned professor of economics, has authored a column in which he attacks presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton for her ties to the military industrial complex. Sachs, a senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist, said Clinton’s decisions as Senator and as Secretary of State have put the US in danger and led to an unending state of conflict.

“The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on national security has it wrong,” Sachs writes. “Her so-called foreign policy “experience” has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.”

Sachs goes back to the administration of Bill Clinton, noting that the Clintons both have accepted money from both Wall Street and weapons contractors who have an interest in the US taking an active role in conflict around the world.

“Just as the last Clinton presidency set the stage for financial collapse, it also set the stage for unending war. On October 31, 1998 President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act that made it official US policy to support ‘regime change” in Iraq,” Sachs explains.

Sachs points out that, later in 2003, Hillary voted for war with Iraq in the US Senate, a war which many now criticize for having destabilized the region and helping push the US to financial collapse. 

Going forward in time, Sachs calls Clinton’s “record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history.”

“Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.”

Sachs places a lot of blame on Clinton for the crisis in Syria. 

“Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been Hillary’s relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria,” he writes. “Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful.”

He also charges Clinton with fostering the current situation between the US and Russia by 

“Hillary’s support at every turn for NATO expansion, including even into Ukraine and Georgia against all common sense, was a trip wire that violated the post-Cold War settlement in Europe in 1991,” Sachs says. “As Senator in 2008, Hillary co-sponsored 2008-SR439, to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. As Secretary of State, she then presided over the restart of the Cold War with Russia.”

Saudi military intervention in Syria amounts to war: Russian deputy

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d4ed3ead-5472-48a9-a1fd-79686eed0867A Russian deputy has warned Saudi Arabia that any military ground operation in Syria without the Damascus government’s consent amounts to a declaration of war.

“Syria has to give official consent, to invite, otherwise it will be a war. The same applies to international law,” Pavel Krasheninnikov, the head of the State Duma committee, told Interfax on Friday.

Krasheninnikov said that by promising a ground operation in Syria Riyadh now “intends to send troops to the territory of a sovereign state essentially without declaring a war.”

Saudi Arabia on Thursday voiced readiness to participate in any ground operations in Syria if the US-led coalition allegedly targeting terrorists decides to start such operations.

US State Department spokesman John Kirby also welcomed the Saudi decision.

Saudi Arabia is a member of the so-called US-led coalition that has been conducting air raids against what are claimed to be the Daesh terrorists inside Syria without any authorization from the Syrian government or a UN mandate since September 2014.

The US-led strikes have on many occasions targeted infrastructures and left many civilians dead.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said during an interview in March 2015 that the US-led military campaign does not aim to “do away” with the terror group.

Washington and its regional allies, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have been backing militants fighting against the Syrian government and people. Since the Syria conflict started in 2011, they have been providing military and financial aid to the militants who are accused of widespread war crimes and crimes against civilians.

Ankara Has Decided to Wage an Open War Against the Kurds – US Historian

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turkish tanks in the street

The Teflon terrorist/ gagrulenet

The Turkish government has deployed additional military equipment to Diyarbakir, where security services are fighting PKK activists. University of Michigan Professor Ronald G. Suny believes that Ankara has decided on an open military campaign against the Kurds, adding that the Turkish leadership’s actions could lead to a full-blown civil war.

Last month, Turkish authorities imposed a curfew in a number of southeastern settlements in Turkey following an escalation in the conflict between Turkish security forces and militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party in the country’s majority-Kurdish southeastern regions, where some 1.3 million civilians are reported to live. 

In the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Kurdish neighborhoods subjected to a curfew are under attack by Turkish military forces, coming under heavy gunfire from tanks and armored vehicles, local media has reported. Reports have also emerged about the deployment of additional heavy equipment to the area.

Citing local media and citizens’ organizations, RT Russia has calculated that in the course of Ankara’s 10 month old operation in the country’s southeast, 11,354 stores have been closed, 100,000 civilians have fled their homes, with over 15,000 people losing their jobs in the city of Diyarbakir alone.

Speaking to Turkey’s IMC TV, a local shop owner in the besieged city explained that they were forced to stay in their homes for weeks at a time. 

“I am engaged in wholesale trade. Here I have my warehouse, and further up the street is my shop. As you can see, I have nothing left, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And it’s the same way throughout the area. We were forced to spend 20 days indoors without being able to leave our homes. We were starving; it felt like torture,” the woman said.

“We don’t need anything from Erdogan, let him just leave us alone,” another woman noted.

Speaking to RT, Ronald Suny, a professor of history at the University of Michigan and expert on Russian and South Caucasian history, suggested that Ankara is factually waging an open war against the Kurds, which could lead to Turkey’s destabilization.

“In fact there’s a kind of open war, in cities such as Cizre, and in some parts of Diyarbakir against the Kurdish population. These areas are surrounded by tanks. There are reports of snipers on the rooftops, who fire on civilians if they go out after curfew.”

“In this region in southeastern Turkey, it is now difficult for people to support themselves. People are out of work, businesses are closing. Erdogan and the government have decided to openly wage a war against the Kurds in the southeast of the country – this is their policy. But in doing so, they will only provoke a civil war in Turkey, and cause a migration crisis, and another country in the region will be destabilized,” Suny warned.

Source: sputniknews.com

Turkey: Brink of Civil War: Civilian Casualties Soar in Turkish Assault on Kurds

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1032352472The death toll among civilians has surged as Turkish security forces continue a large-scale operation against Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey, shattering the last hopes to conclude a truce between the opposing sides

Government forces have killed over 150 civilians and at least 200 Kurdish insurgents within the last week, according to human rights groups and local officials, cited by the New York Times. Amid escalating fighting across southeastern Turkey, hundreds of thousands of residents have abandoned their homes for safer regions.

“What people here in the west [of Turkey] do not realize is that we are one step away from a civil war,” Engin Gur, a resident of the Turkish South East who moved to Istanbul, told the New York Times.

The frozen conflict between state authorities and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) reignited last July following the failure of a two-year ceasefire agreement.

Many experts observed that Turkish President Erdogan initially aimed to use the Kurdish conflict as a tool to strengthen the position of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), and consolidate the nation around its leader in the run up to parliamentary elections in November.

As soon as AKP won the elections by a large margin, the violence erupted.

Erdogan promised to eradicate the PKK, claiming that the group is the primary enemy of Turkey in spite of significant military achievements by the Kurds in Syria, including territorial gains that are aligned with the stated policies of Ankara.

“You will be annihilated in those houses, those buildings, those ditches which you have dug,” Erdogan pronounced, referring to trenches made by rebels in many southeastern cities. “Our security forces will continue this fight until it has been completely cleansed and a peaceful atmosphere established.”

At the same time Ankara officially claims it seeks a political settlement to the conflict. Once the military operation is finished, authorities state, talks with Kurds will be resumed.

It’s unknown who would take part in those negotiations on behalf of Kurds. Ankara has ruled out talking with the leader of pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas following his calls for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast of the country.

According to the New York Times, the most probable candidate for the role of Kurdish diplomat is jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

“They do not want to deal with the legitimate political actors, that is, the HDP or the PKK leadership directly,” Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, commenting on the stance of Turkish officials in the Kurdish conflict.

Aydintasbas added that Ocalan will likely demand a “form of self-rule or autonomy” for the Kurdish population.

As a result of the recent conflict, many settlements in southeastern Turkey have no electricity and many citizens are trapped in their houses with no food, according to the New York Times. Scarce reports from those regions say that once densely populated areas now resemble war zones similar to those of Syria and Iraq.

“The tanks fire all day and we have nowhere left to hide,” Nurettin Kurtay, a resident of Turkey’s southeastern province of Sirnak told the New York Times by phone.

Exclusive: Turkey, the war against the Kurds

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arton1012-25ab7No information, disinformation, poisoning minds, teaching of hatred of the other, even in schools, that is the reality of the field experienced by the people in eastern Turkey, and more particularly to Nusabyn, a city Mardin near the Turkish-Syrian border. This is what we wrote a civilian eyewitness on site where terror reigns.
Separated, for 2 years, with a son barbed wire network, the Syrian and Turkish Kurdistan, “wall of shame” (…)
The testimony from a personality such that Ms. Gültan Kisanak can not be doubted. The activist of the first hour for a political solution to the Kurdish question, successively Diyarbakir MP, Co-Chair of the BDP (Party for Peace and Democracy) and now co-mayor of the metropolitan city of Diyarbakir and co President of GABB (Union of Municipalities of southeastern Anatolia) denounces with his usual frankness, in a pathetic appeal to international solidarity, the intolerable situation in which there is the population of Diyarbakir and other towns in the Kurdish region of Turkey.
See more information available: on AKB.bzh

Anonymous declares war on Terrorist State of Turkey

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f567a865b544b2_567a865b544ed.thumbThe Anonymous hacktivist group has taken responsibility for a powerful cyber-attack on the Turkish sector of the internet last week, Russia Today reports.
It promised to continue waging cyber warfare on .tr domains until Ankara stops the “insanity” of supporting Islamic State.

The massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Turkish websites last week, initially attributed to spooky “Russian hackers,” has been clarified with Anonymous issuing a video claiming responsibility and declaring cyber war on Turkey for supporting terrorists of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The DDoS attack (measured in gigabits per second, or plainly how much traffic is being sent to a site) on Turkish DNS servers reached 40 Gbps, quite enough to shut down altogether any domain.

The attack began on December 14, and came to a halt only a week later, on December 21. Turkish media alleged that 400,000 .tr domains were forced offline.

The affected websites were able to return online only after Turkey’s leading National Response Center for Cyber Events cut off all incoming international traffic to the .tr websites, thus shutting down national “internet borders,” completely and denying “anybody outside the country access to Turkish websites,” Anonymous pointed out.
“This mass cyber-attack is known to be the biggest so far with the intensity of slowing down the websites,” ODTÜ Computer Engineering Professor Attila Özgit said as cited by Hurriyet Daily News.
The hacktivists claim the attack on Turkey was conducted within the framework of the counterterrorist cyber operation #OpISIS. The basic message behind the attack is that Turkey’s woes with the internet are set to repeat unless Ankara revises its policies towards Islamic extremists.

“We won’t accept that [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, the leader of Turkey, will help ISIS any longer. The news media has already stated that Turkey’s internet has been the victim of massive DDOS
attacks,” SAID a cloaked figure in the video wearing a Guy Fawkes mask.

Source: tert.am