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Post by jdredd on Jun 2, 2013 22:41:51 GMT -5
www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/06/201362234021816855.html"Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Turkey's four biggest cities and clashed with riot police firing tear gas for a third day in the fiercest anti-government demonstrations in years. The din of car horns and residents banging pots and pans from balconies in support of the protests has been resonating across neighbourhoods in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, and the capital, Ankara, late into the night. For much of Sunday, the atmosphere in Istanbul's Taksim Square was festive, with some people chanting for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, to resign and others dancing. There was little obvious police presence." While America is still obsessed with Al Qaeda under every bed, the rest of the world has moved on.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 5, 2013 4:03:02 GMT -5
www.thenation.com/blog/174634/revolution-television-and-real-life"There ought to be a word for the kind of irony that attends a culture convulsing over the massacre on the latest episode of Game of Thrones just as a blossom of real-life political dissent is appearing in Turkey, don’t you think? (Which isn’t even to mention that yesterday and today are the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.) One doesn’t want to scold people for paying attention to pop culture—as a person who writes about it, I would be a giant hypocrite if I did. But the way these two things have met in time at the very least raises the question: Why don’t we care, in quite the same way? I somehow doubt it’s because Americans haven’t the heart for real political conflict. Nor do I think the whole explanation is that Americans feel powerless. It’s not like any of us could have stepped in front of the sword that ran through Robb’s gullet on Sunday night. Rather, I suspect it’s mostly the power of narrative that’s missing here. The truth is that most people have no idea what the story of Turkey is, and only the vaguest sense of Erdogan’s failings." Ten years ago I might have agreed with this lady. Now, I've gotten to the point of wondering what difference what is happening in Turkey to anyone in the USA? Any? What difference did the Tiananmen Square massacre make for me? None. Will my life be any better or worse depending on which crook runs which country in the Middle East? I doubt it. I'm tired of watching upheavals overseas come to naught. I did want to see Khaddafi get his just desserts simply for it's entertainment value, which is why I watch Game of Thrones!
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Post by jdredd on Jul 3, 2013 14:48:51 GMT -5
Gosh, the Middle East was so much easier when we just supported any dictator that would do our bidding. Even Saddam got our aid before he went rogue. Since our guy Mubarak fell, Egypt has been in turmoil. Democracy is SO messy, and dictators are so much easier to bribe.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 9, 2013 14:35:14 GMT -5
Tuned in to Hannity, and predictably he is a big supporter of the military coup in Egypt. I doubt too many people in the West are sad to see Morsi go. Of course, if honesty was a virtue in geopolitics, we wouldn't give lip service to encouraging democracy in the Middle East. But I suppose we need to for political expedience.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2013 15:38:28 GMT -5
Lets see Obama will appoint another terrorist of the terror group of the muzzie brotherhood, Let Egypt sort it's own affairs! At least they don't like obummer and the brotherhood! As Obummer liberal pal whats his name the mayor if Sh*tcago his quote never let a good crisis go to waste! Oh yea! Obummer will never lets a good crisis go to waste!
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Post by jdredd on Jul 18, 2013 10:09:44 GMT -5
Apparently Obama is going to let the Syrian Rebels hang in the wind. So Iran and Russia win, and Israel and Saudi Arabia lose.
Who cares?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2013 11:28:01 GMT -5
Apparently Obama is going to let the Syrian Rebels hang in the wind. So Iran and Russia win, and Israel and Saudi Arabia lose. Who cares? Yep Terrorist will bite Russia hard, Russia is helping terrorists, So the Chechnya Muzzie terrorists will hit russia hard! Who cares when terrorist attacks Russia! It's Russia problems not ours!
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Post by jdredd on Aug 15, 2013 19:48:35 GMT -5
Whatever you think about the conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Army, you cannot deny that America is talking out of both sides of it's mouth. Do we support democracy, or not? Apparently not, if people we don't like get elected. Legally we are required to withdraw support for a country that has a military coup, but I guess we can ignore the law if we just don't call it a coup.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 17, 2013 3:08:10 GMT -5
www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/08/201381615196784361.html"King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called on Arabs to stand together against "attempts to destabilise" Egypt. "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, its people and government stood and stands by today with its brothers in Egypt against terrorism," he said in a statement read on state TV on Friday, backing Egypt's military leadership. "I call on the honest men of Egypt and the Arab and Muslim nations ... to stand as one man and with one heart in the face of attempts to destabilise a country that is at the forefront of Arab and Muslim history," he added. He also said that they are confident that Egypt will recover. Saudi Arabia was a close ally of former president Hosni Mubarak and has historically had a difficult relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. It pledged $5 billion in aid to Egypt after Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood was ousted from the presidency last month." It's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the Middle East, if there are any good guys. But the corrupt despots who run Saudi Arabia are pretty high on MY bad guy list.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 20, 2014 3:39:28 GMT -5
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party"The Kurdistan Workers' Party, commonly referred to by its Kurdish acronym, PKK, is a Kurdish militant organization which from 1984 to 2013 fought an armed struggle against the Turkish state for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds in Turkey,[12] who comprise between 10% and 25% of the population and have been subjected to official repression for decades. The group was founded in 1978 in the village of Fis (near Lice) by a group of radical Kurdish students led by Abdullah Öcalan.[19] The PKK's ideology was originally a fusion of revolutionary socialism and Kurdish nationalism, seeking the foundation of an independent, Marxist–Leninist state in the region known as Kurdistan. Since his capture and imprisonment in 1999, however, Öcalan has abandoned Leninism,[20] leading the party to adopt his new political platform of "Democratic Confederalism" ( influenced strongly by the libertarian socialist philosophy of communalism) while ceasing its official calls for the establishment of a fully independent country. In May 2007, former members of the PKK helped form the KCK, an umbrella organisation of Kurds from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan on 20 March 2005,[21] described the need for a democratic confederalism and went on to say: "The democratic confederalism of Kurdistan is not a State system, it is the democratic system of a people without a State... It takes its power from the people and adopts to reach self sufficiency in every field including economy." As an old leftist, I find it amusing that the PKK have abandoned Marxist-Leninism for some form of touchy-feely New Age Libertarianism. Every generation has to make it's own bed, I guess.
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Post by Turk on Jun 25, 2015 9:03:57 GMT -5
BBC News - UK Suicide Bombers Go On Strike
Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda have so far failed to produce an agreement.
The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death would be cut by 25% this February from 72 to 54. A spokesman said increases in recent years in the number of suicide bombings has resulted in shortage of virgins in the afterlife.
The suicide bombers' union, the British Organization of Occupational Martyrs ( B.O.O.M.) responded with a statement saying the move was unacceptable to its members and called for a strike vote. General Secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like this is like a kick in the teeth”.
Speaking from his shed in Tipton in the West Midlands, Al Qaeda chief executive Haisheet Mapants explained, "I sympathize with our workers concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day Jihad in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditures or laying people off. I don't like cutting benefits but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up.”
Spokespersons for the union in the North East of England, Ireland, Wales and the entire Australian continent stated that the change would not hurt their membership as there are so few virgins in their areas anyway.
According to some industry sources, the recent drop in the number of suicide bombings has been attributed to the emergence of Scottish singing star, Susan Boyle. Many Muslim Jihadists now know what a virgin looks like and have reconsidered their benefit packages
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Post by jdredd on Jul 25, 2015 18:18:10 GMT -5
www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_iran-emerging-as-a-new-power-in-the-region-turkey-should-adapt-to-new-order_394441.html"Volkan Ediger, a professor of energy systems engineering who served as the energy adviser to three Turkish presidents between 1998 and 2010, has said the United States reached a deal with Iran in order to prevent a strategic alliance in the region between Russia, China and Iran and has urged Turkey to adapt to the “new order” in the Middle East that is in the making, especially in the field of energy. According to Ediger, the primary motivation for the United States to strike a nuclear deal with Iran was to break up the parallel strategies of Russia, China and Iran in the Middle East, as seen by their common stance toward the Syria crisis. Ediger agrees with the argument that Iran is likely to benefit the most from the deal and will become the new power in the region. In response to a question over what the US has to gain, Ediger points out that as a result of the deal with Iran, there will be a decline in energy dependence on Russia for Europe and the deal will also prevent the gap created by the US in the region from being filled by its competitors such as Russia and China." So if the troglodyte right torpedoes the deal, Iran will ally itself with China and Russia? If not, will Iran become our ally? No wonder Israel's panties are all in a bind.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 1, 2015 15:52:24 GMT -5
www.wsj.com/articles/desert-storm-the-last-classic-war-1438354990"We were going through the options when the phone rang. It was Robert Kimmitt, the acting secretary of state, saying that his department had just received word from the U.S. ambassador in Kuwait that an Iraqi invasion was under way. “So much for calling Saddam,” said the president grimly. We didn’t know it at the time, but the first major crisis of the post-Cold War world had begun. Looking back on that conflict, which stretched out over the better part of the following year, it now has a classic feel to it—very much at odds with the decidedly nonclassic era unfolding in today’s Middle East. But the Gulf War is still worth remembering, not only because its outcome got the post-Cold War era off to a good start but also because it drove home a number of lessons that remain as relevant as ever." "It is a stretch to tie the events of 1990-91 to the mayhem that is the Middle East today. The pathologies of the region—along with the 2003 Iraq war and the mishandling of its aftermath, the subsequent pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, the 2011 Libya intervention and the continuing U.S. failure to act in Syria—all do more to explain the mess. The Gulf War was a signal success of American foreign policy. It avoided what clearly would have been a terrible outcome—letting Saddam get away with a blatant act of territorial acquisition and perhaps come to dominate much of the Middle East. But it was a short-lived triumph, and it could neither usher in a “new world order,” as President Bush hoped, nor save the Middle East from itself." This is what I've learned to love about history: everyone gets to write their own. This self-aggrandizing article is typical. But from where I sit, Desert Storm was the beginning of a tragedy going on 24 years now and costing America trillions with little to show for it. But hey!, we apparently have trillions more we can burn in the Middle East in the next 24 years.
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