The Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, arrived in Egypt yesterday at the start of a three-nation tour as Turkey toughens its stance towards Israel and seeks to become the predominant power among Muslim states in the Middle East and North Africa.
After Egypt, Erdogan will visit Tunisia and Libya to show Turkey’s support for both countries after the overthrow of long-standing police states in the Arab Spring. Turkey’s strong, democratic and mildly Islamic regime makes it a model for new governments in all three countries.
Netanyahu may be tough enough to cow President Obama, but to date, he has been afraid to reign in his fanatical Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. His plan to” weaken” Turkey described below in the Israeli outlet YnetNews suggests that time is running out.
One thing is clear from Lieberman's outrageous proposals to sow dissension in Turkey by supporting anti-Turkish claims of Armenians and Kurds: it will blow back to unify and harden Turkish attitudes. Israel's opportunistic cynicism and lack of a moral center revealed by these proposals boggles the mind — this is particularly true of its flip flop on the recognizing the Armenian holocaust after decades of opposing such recognition on the grounds that it diminished the moral stature of Jewish holocaust.
But these proposals are more than outrageous; they set a new standard for self-referencing stupidity: The Turkish army, which has been one of Israel's best friends in Turkey, has been in a power struggle with PM Erdogan. The army is fundamentally, however, a proud nationalist institution. The army will have no choice but to side with Erdogan in this conflict with Israel. This will increase Erdogan's and the ruling AKP party's political power and give him much more domestic support to tough it out with Israel. And Erdogan is a little like Lieberman, in that he is a self-made tough guy who grew up in the back streets of Istanbul, but he is much smarter and is a true reformer to boot.
Moreover, setting aside personalities of individuals, Turkey, unlike Israel, is not a country burdened down with emotional baggage or a sense that the world owes it. Anyone with a modicum of understanding of Turkish culture knows that it is a proud, self confident culture, with its own sense of history. It is not dependent on handouts from others and is dynamically expanding to the status of being regional power. Finally, a strategy based on the idea that one should publicly back a Turkey into a corner and humiliate her national honor is without a doubt the stupidest way to deal with this proud country.
One can only conclude that a failure to dump Lieberman is a signal that Israel is losing its collective mind and a kind of self-righteous paranoia is displacing common sense in a nuclear armed country. One has to wonder what extent Obama's pusillanimity in dealing with Netanyahu has contributed to this dangerous evolution.
Jerusalem fights back: Foreign Minister Lieberman formulates series of tough moves in response to Turkish steps; Israel to cooperate with Armenian lobby in US, may offer military aid to Kurdish rebels
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Nobel Peace Laureates Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala and Archbishop Desmund Tutu of South Africa, joined six other Nobel Peace Laureates urging President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, an environmental disaster in the making.
Phi Beta Iota: We find it fascinating that the activists are ignoring the larger crime, the use of fresh water to flush the tar sands in the first place.
Tip of the Hat to Public Intelligence.Net at Twitter. In our view this represents the beginning of global push-back against crimes against humanity by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acting “in our name” and at our expense. Similar push-back against the Joint Special Operations Group (JSOG) can be expected.
Phi Beta Iota: The following is being circulated world-wide (less US “mainstream” media), and represents both an African view, and the view of those associated with Cynthia McKinney and her related concerns of 21st Century imperialism and genocide against black Africans at the hands of the Libyan forces seeking to topple Qathafi.
Statement by masses in Ghana and also advice on how to organize a demonstration in your own community.
The “US/NATO Hands Off Libya! Hands Off Africa!” coalition consists of revolutionary and progressive African organizations in Ghana who oppose the US/NATO illegal invasion of Libya/Africa and support Muammar Qathafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya to win the war against US/NATO imperialist forces and NTC/Al Qaeda reactionaries. The coalition is organizing a march from Kwame Nkrumah Circle to the US Embassy to demonstrate against the illegal US/NATO invasion and for victory to Qathafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya on 21st September 2011.
We are calling on all Africans in Africa and the diaspora to demonstrate at US embassies on the same day.
Video: The attacks of September 11, 2001 forced Americans to reevaluate their views on the nation's security. A decade later, is the country stronger and better prepared to prevent a terror attack? (Aug. 31)
This is the American era of endless war.
To grasp its sweep, it helps to visit Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Army will soon open a $31 million complex for wounded troops and those whose bodies are breaking down after a decade of deployment.
Phi Beta Iota: This is not new. War has been the norm since President General David Eiserhower warned of the rise of the military-industrial complex. The article is worth reading in full to understand how very smart people can become very stupid–we are in a state of endless war because none of our leaders have the integrity to apply their undeniable intelligence to waging peace, which is vastly cheaper than war–the problem is that peace enriches poor people rather than concentrating wealth.
A small but growing proxy war is underway in Mexico pitting US-assisted assassin teams composed of elite Mexican special operations soldiers against the leadership of an emerging cadre of independent drug organizations that are far more ruthless than the old-guard Mexican “cartels” that gave birth to them.
These Mexican assassin teams now in the field for at least half a year, sources tell Narco News, are supported by a sophisticated US intelligence network composed of CIA and civilian US military operatives as well as covert special-forces soldiers under Pentagon command — which are helping to identify targets for the Mexican hit teams.
Phi Beta Iota: Black SOF means well, but they are out of context and out of control. We recall with sadness that Cuban exiles trained and equipped by CIA to assassinate Castro used those skills and that equipment to assassinate John F. Kennedy, and more recently, many of the special forces trained in Mexico by US special forces have immediately rolled over to work for the cartels. The US Government lacks intelligence and integrity, and continues to throw money at bits and pieces of the old dysfunctional concepts….doing the wrong things righter instead of doing the right thing. Albert Einstein called that “insanity.” Mike Vickers has learned nothing from history, because he does not wish to learn–this is taxpayer funded playtime for him, and he is not being held accountable for the inevitable “blow back” that has accompanied every DoD/CIA assassination play going back fifty years.
