Month: September 2008

NTV television, Turkey
Aug 31 2008

Turkish premier says Russia "more than special" for Turkey

Prime Minister Erdogan has said that Turkey is trying to make sure
that the tension in the Caucasus does not become worse. He said:
Russia is special for us.

The prime minister was replying to reporters’ questions during the
Victory Day reception at the at the Gazi military club in Ankara.

In reply to a question on President Gul’s visit to Armenia, Erdogan
said: May it be auspicious.

As for the president, he said he has not yet decided whether to go or
not.

Erdogan said that together with Foreign Minister Babacan, they were
trying to solve the problems in the Caucasus at the negotiation
table. He said: Russia is more than special for us. The United States
is our ally and Russia is our largest trade partner. We get two thirds
of our energy from Russia. God forbid, we may remain in the dark. We
are also sensitive in connection with Georgia.

In connection with the warships in the Black Sea, Erdogan affirmed
that the Montreux Convention would be followed, and that the ships
will leave on time, and maybe earlier.

[translated from Turkish]

Turkish Press
Aug 30 2008

Turkish president to attend football match in Armenia: report
Published: 8/30/2008

ANKARA – President Abdullah Gul will travel to Armenia next week to
attend World Cup qualifiers between Armenia and Turkey, in a landmark
visit expected to ease relations between the two foes, a press report
said Saturday.

Gul’s office would not confirm the report by the daily newspaper Vatan
but if the visit takes place on September 6 it could help improve
relations between the neighbours.

Vatan said Gul would travel to Yerevan for the match and return to
Turkey the same evening. The president’s office will announce the trip
within the next few days, it added.

Gul said on Tuesday that he had not taken a decision on whether to go
to Yerevan.

He sent a reconciliatory message to Armenia earlier this month, saying
Turkey was "no enemy" to any country in its region.

The conflict between Georgia and Russia shows the need for "early
measures to resolve frozen problems in the region and… prevent
instability in the future," said Gul in televised remarks.

In 1993 Turkey shut its border with its eastern neighbour in a show of
solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, then at war with Armenia,
dealing a heavy economic blow to the impoverished nation in the
strategic Caucasus region.

Diplomats from Armenia and Turkey met secretly in Switzerland in July
in a fresh effort to normalise ties following three rounds of talks in
2005 and 2006. No progress is so far publicly known.

Armenian and Turkish leaders have meanwhile met on the sidelines of
international gatherings, including a Black Sea regional summit in
Istanbul last year.

Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service
August 29, 2008 Friday

Georgian port is focal point of standoff with Russia

By Shashank Bengali And Dave Montgomery, McClatchy Newspapers
POTI, Georgia

POTI, Georgia _ Weeks before Russia invaded Georgia earlier this
month, excavators in this key Black Sea port began to lay the ground
for a $200 million tax-free zone to triple the port’s capacity and
create, Georgian officials said, the Dubai of the Caucasus.

Some of that soft green earth now is occupied by Russian tanks and
soldiers camped behind huge, freshly dug trenches, within firing range
of ships approaching the port. A second Russian checkpoint is about a
mile away, along a river that’s sometimes used to ferry goods into
eastern Georgia.

The Russian presence is a stark illustration of how this 150-year-old
port, which handles millions of tons of cargo moving between Europe
and Central Asia, is now a key pressure point in the standoff between
Russia and the West.

The port is functioning normally again, despite numerous news reports
to the contrary and the claim by Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili _ most recently in Thursday’s Financial Times _ that
Russia continues "to occupy" Poti.

The Persian Gulf-funded expansion project is now on hold, however, and
major questions remain about the Kremlin’s intentions here. On
Wednesday the United States shelved plans to unload 38 tons of
humanitarian cargo at Poti, not because the port was closed but to
avoid a potential confrontation with Moscow. The U.S. Coast Guard
cutter Dallas delivered its cargo instead to Batumi, 50 miles to the
south.

Poti is a key element in a network of seaports, railroads, highways
and energy pipelines to Azerbaijan and Armenia that makes Georgia a
major transit link between East and West. The U.S. Commerce Department
has described the sleepy, working-class town of 50,000 people as the
most important port in the mountainous Caucasus region, which
stretches east and west along Russia’s southern border.

The expansion of the port has enhanced Georgia’s strategic importance,
and some U.S. analysts think that Russia wants to dominate its former
Soviet neighbor to seize control of those transportation assets or to
stifle Western commerce in the region.

"It’s a huge deal," said Ariel Cohen of The Heritage Foundation, a
conservative research center in Washington. "What Russia is trying to
do is to plug the east-west transportation corridor that includes
railroads and pipelines.

"By controlling Poti, they’re controlling the strategic bottleneck of
the southern Caucasus."

After overwhelming Georgia’s military in a brief war that drew
condemnation from Western nations, Russia scaled back its military
presence under a French-brokered cease-fire pact. But its troops
remain scattered in Poti and dozens of other locations throughout the
country, prompting U.S. and European officials to accuse the Kremlin
of failing to abide fully by the cease-fire.

While Russian forces haven’t stopped cargo from entering or leaving
Poti, port officials are worried about what could happen if the forces
were provoked or after world attention on Georgia fades.

"Poti is the biggest supplier to Georgia and the region, and they (the
Russians) are at the entrance of the city," said Eduard Machavariani,
the port’s director of commerce. "Anytime you don’t know your enemy’s
intentions, you have to be a little scared."

Russian forces bombed the port at the start of the conflict on Aug. 8,
killing five Georgian workers, damaging the container dock and
knocking the port offline for nearly three days. On Aug. 19, Russian
troops seized the port for several hours and captured 22 Georgian
soldiers who were standing guard there. The soldiers later were
released.

The bombing of a bridge near Kaspi severed east-west rail traffic
until an alternate rail line opened in recent days. The rail breakdown
and military blockades on the roads forced cargo to stack up in the
port, and officials say that some cargo ships diverted to ports in
Turkey and elsewhere.

Amy Denman, the executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce
in Georgia, said that the transport delays, along with minor
interruptions at Batumi, had put companies in danger of breaching
agreements on shipping contracts. Poti is Georgia’s transit center for
dry goods; Batumi is a transshipment point for oil from the Caspian
Sea.

"Goods are moving," Denman said, "but there is still a backup."

"For a week the port was closed and therefore our vessels were not
able to call the port," said Michael Storgaard, a spokesman for the
Denmark-based Maersk Line, one of the world’s biggest container
fleets. "After the port resumed operations, there have naturally been
some backlog issues. We are confident that these soon will be
cleared."

More than 7 million tons of cargo passed through Poti last year, a 16
percent increase over 2006, and trade increased another 10 percent in
the past year.

In April, the Georgia government sold a 51 percent stake in the port
to a United Arab Emirates investment fund to develop a free economic
zone. The RAK Investment Authority plans to spend $200 million to
build a new port, spawning additional development that’s expected to
generate up to 20,000 jobs over the next five years, according to news
reports.

Analysts say that transit tie-ups could cause merchants and
manufacturers to think twice about shipping into Georgia, raising the
prospect of future shortages in the country.

"What is it going to be in two weeks, three months?" said Rick Lussen,
the director of Tbilisi’s American Academy, which serves Georgian and
American students. "It’s a question of how interested people are in
wanting to do trade with Georgia."

An executive with a major shipping company that uses the Poti port,
speaking on the condition of anonymity because of company policy, said
the port had operated without serious problems despite the Russian
attacks. When he drove there several days ago, he said, he saw a group
of soldiers clustered around four or five armored vehicles at a
checkpoint.

The soldiers, he said, "just sit there" and "don’t interfere with
traffic."

They’ve had a couple of run-ins with residents, however. One night
last week, a Poti man, reportedly drunk, wandered near the checkpoint
and was assaulted by Russian soldiers. Another night, a group of
Russians, themselves drunk, raided a nearby meat-processing plant and
ran off with sausages and other products, residents said.

The behavior worries port officials.

"It’s very hot, and those soldiers drink a lot of vodka," Machavariani
said. "You don’t know what can happen."

___

(Montgomery reported from Washington.)

Review: Ararat: In Search of the Mythical Mountain

Sunday Telegraph/UK
by Frank Westerman
31/08/2008

Jeremy Seal follows one man and his Noah complex up Mount Ararat

A perilous ducking, though not quite of the biblical proportions his
title suggests, opens Frank Westerman’s memorably enquiring but wayward
memoir-cum-travelogue. Westerman recalls a July day in 1976 when melt
waters released from a dam in the Austrian Alps engulfed the ‘wadeable
stream’ where he was playing. That famously dry summer thus proved
torrential for the holidaying Dutch boy, if only temporarily. Washing
up unharmed in the back eddy of an inlet, he sensed Deliverance and so
thanked ‘God the Father for having heard my cry above the roaring
waters’. It is this Noah complex, as it might be called, and the
scientific values he comes to espouse in its place that Westerman’s
highly personal, occasionally brilliant narrative sets out to explore.

The adult Westerman sees science as ‘a vaccine against believing’. He
has given up prayer and resigned his membership of the Dutch Reformed
Church. He wonders at his own grandfather holding the creationist line
that the Earth is 6,000 years old – roughly a millionth, incidentally,
of current scientific estimates. Even so, he never forgets the story of
Noah and how the Ark was left on top of Mount Ararat when the flood
receded, nor that the tale transfixed him back in the days of Sunday
school. After a visit to Armenia in 1999, he decides ‘to climb biblical
Ararat and walk its highest ice fields’.

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The Armenian holy mountain just inside Eastern Turkey thus looms large
as Westerman’s spiritual and physical object, though it is less clear
what the author expects from the experience of climbing it. He talks of
putting ‘to the test my own resolve as a non-believer’, as if exposing
himself to holy places might still stir him to faith, but goes on to
dismiss the explanation as naive. While waiting for a clearer motive to
come along, Westerman focuses on a mountain richer in devotional,
scientific, geo-political and cultural significance than perhaps any
other.

Westerman takes in the Armenian church, a potted history of Ararat
mountaineering, and fundamentalist ‘Arkeologists’ (Ark searchers) such
as the former astronaut Jim Irwin. Sorties into the realms of
vulcanology and seismology (Ararat is highly earthquake-prone) entail
visits to, among others, a former geology professor, an exiled Armenian
academic and even the author’s atheist publisher. Westerman proves a
perceptive, passionate writer, with a line in memorable observations.
He describes the current rise of religion and the fear of modern-day
parents that they might lose children to it, ‘the way our parents 25
years ago could lose us to the squatters’ or punk scene’.

He also pens excellent discursive sections, notably on the 19th-century
discovery of Assyrian flood accounts which were inscribed on clay
tablets several centuries before the Old Testament was written, a fact
that causes him to dismiss the Bible as ‘one long act of plagiarism’.
There is a fine description of a low-tide walk on the Wadden shallows,
a kind of Dutch Morecambe Bay which Westerman presents as physical
preparation for the mountain climb.

It is characteristic of his narrative voice, candid to the point of
transparency, that he should allow his actual, symbolic intentions to
show through. ‘You want to defy the water. For your story,’ his wife
tells him.

Westerman clearly likes to range widely; the problem is his book’s
200-odd pages can feel uncomfortably crowded. Mount Ararat jostles for
space with the various memoir strands, including a whimsical one that
concerns Westerman’s young daughter. His journey to the base of the
mountain brings in the Armenian genocide, Ataturk, the Kurdish
insurgency and Orhan Pamuk (Westerman passes through the gloomy town of
Kars where the Turkish author’s Nobel-Prize winning novel Snow is set).
Less excusable are a number of dull inclusions, not least an ongoing
account of the bureaucracy entailed in securing a climbing visa, which
only add to the impression of a book so swollen with uneven content as
to burst its narrative banks.

The further surprise, given what gets in, is what stays out of Ararat.
Fans of mountaineering accounts should be advised that Westerman’s
actual climb occupies only the last 15 pages. Nor does Westerman do
more than touch upon resonant fears of the floods which rising sea
levels may cause. From a Dutchman, this feels like an omission.

Brad and George survive the curses of the Coen brothers
The funny and profane Burn After Reading is a fine way to open
proceedings…
but this year’s festival has yet to catch fire

Nick James
The Observer,
Sunday August 31 2008

Incandescent rage and constant recourse to four-letter words might be
an unusual way to begin a film festival but that’s how Venice’s opening
film, the Coen brothers’ winning, darkly funny but somewhat gummy
satire Burn After Reading, gets under way. CIA analyst John Malkovich
loses his job and turns to drink and writing his dubious memoirs. His
doctor wife Tilda Swinton, heavily into an affair with federal marshal
George Clooney, cares not a whit. But when gym workers Frances
McDormand and her cheery colleague Brad Pitt find the memoirs on a disc
and smell an opportunity for blackmail, the film’s virtual catchphrase,
‘What the fuck!’, becomes ever more meaningful and emphatic.

McDormand, sweetly lethal in her self-help mania, wants a midlife
transformation through plastic surgery. Pitt is splendidly gormless,
Malkovich a fulminating nut job and Clooney does that paranoid goofy
thing with his eyes as he sees spooks (CIA men) in cars wherever he
goes. Swinton is as disdainful as Kenneth Williams smelling something
nasty. What makes it a lesser Coen brothers film than No Country for
Old Men is that the CIA and dim gym bunny targets are too soft, and it
has a bit of a production line feel about it.

The odd swear word might also have been heard from the Venice
programmers, as the first few days came off a little lacklustre. Last
year Venice trounced Toronto, its August rival festival, and nearly
eclipsed Cannes with a brilliant programme including the Bob Dylan
movie I’m Not There and the great western The Assassination of Jesse
James. This year, with Toronto apparently insisting on an ‘us or them’
policy with some US films, there’s little excitement so far. Guillermo
Arriaga, in his directorial debut The Burning Plain, which stars
Charlize Theron as a sexually available woman locked in a
self-destructive hell of meaninglessness, delivers only a little of
what we’ve come to expect from a screenwriter who gave us Amores Perros
and 21 Grams. We get a multi-thread story covering separate timeframes
in the lives of characters gradually pulled towards each other for a
denouement of predictable deep moral seriousness. One story concerns
two families, one Mexican, one ‘white’, both riven by the violent death
of one parent from each, who were sleeping with each other when their
desert trailer rendezvous exploded into flames. Another concerns a
strange Mexican man haunting Theron’s restaurant-owning wastrel.
Dazzlingly shot ponderous soap is what it mostly is, made to seem more
sophisticated than it is by the deft time-play and cross-cutting.

Much better was Christian Petzold’s Jerichow, pretty much a remake of
The Postman Always Rings Twice with a few new plot twists. Like
Petzold’s Yella, this is a realist film of crisp simplicity and rigour,
with the emotions locked behind devious faces. A penniless former
soldier helps out the Turkish manager of a chain of food outlets, and
is soon driving for him, and lusting after his wife. She is hard to
read and prone to impulsive behaviour. When the husband goes away,
ostensibly to Turkey, the driver and the wife fall for each other
properly and plan the husband’s death. What Petzold then does with the
plot is satisfying but would spoil if told.

The one other film of note early in the festival is something of an
experiment from the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Shirin
begins with a quick montage of illustrations that forecasts the story
we’re about to hear but not see. For the rest of the film, as we listen
to the soundtrack of a mythical melodrama about the love between an
Armenian princess and a Persian king, we gaze at close-ups of women
ostensibly watching the film we can hear. Among them are most of the
most beautiful actresses Iran has to offer, plus one Juliette Binoche.
All have their heads covered and are entrancing to gaze upon, some of
them looming out of the darkness as the light of the ‘film’ brightens
their eyes or catches the glisten of a tear as it rolls. Not for
everyone, perhaps, but refreshingly something like a cross between a
film and an art installation.

Perhaps Venice isn’t cursed after all, just cursing.

The People’s Voice, TN
Aug 31 2008

What If the Israeli Lobby was the Islamic Lobby?
B. R. Gowani

What if:

Abu Faisal was White House press secretary (instead of Ari Fleischer)

Altaf Adham was deputy national security advisor (instead of Elliott
Abrams)

Sofian Bishr was Supreme Court Justice instead of Stephen Breyer

Tarf Kaukab was Nightline host (instead of Ted Koppel)

Dawud Bushr was New York Times columnist (instead of David Brooks)

Rukan Badar Ghiyath was Supreme Court Justice (instead of Ruth Bader
Ginsburg)

Thamer Furud was New York Times columnist (instead of Thomas Friedman)

Laith Keid was host of Larry King show (instead of Larry King)

Yousuf `Yo’ Luqman was US Senator from Connecticut (instead of Joseph
`Joe’ Lieberman)

Zuhaa Midlaj was New York Times reporter (instead of Judith Miller)

Dawud Fouad was Bush’s speechwriter (instead of David Frum)

Lu’ay Labib was Cheney’s Chief of Staff (instead of Lewis Libby)

Polat Walif-Rizk was Rumsfeld’s Deputy Secretary of Defense (instead
of Paul Wolfowitz)

Mahdi Parvez was editor of The New Republic magazine (instead of
Martin Peretz)

Basil Kishwar was the editor of The Weekly Standard instead of (Bill
Kristol)

Ali Wisam was the famous Nobel Peace laureate (instead of Elie Wiesel)

Jaafer Ghawth-Badr was a staff writer at New Yorker (instead of
Jeffrey Goldberg)

Rifat Pir was the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory
Committee (instead of Richard Perle)

Yaman Sikandar was the famous filmmaker (instead of Steven Spielberg)

Ibrahim Faqih-Ma’n was the head of the Anti-Defamation League (instead
of Abraham Foxman)

Alam Daoud-Vida was the famous lawyer (instead of Alan Dershowitz)
…

Imagine the above Muslims in key positions. There are 2 per cent Jews
in the US and the same percentage of Muslims. Now consider for a
moment that both communities have exchanged places as it happens on
that TV show `Wife Swap.’ Here not only wives but the entire community
exchanges places. Or a still better example would be the 1970 film
`Watermelon Man’ in which a white man wakes up in the morning and
discovers he has turned into a black person. Blackness becomes his
fate.

However, first let us check out the power Jews have in the United
States in order to imagine how things would have been different if the
Muslims had exactly the same power.

This article, however, realizes that Jews are not a monolithic
group. For instance: 75 per cent of Americans supported the war in
2003 in US, whereas the Jewish support was at 50 per cent.

Like many other Jews, the billionaire George Soros favors a dialogue
between the Hamas (the elected government in the Palestinian
territories) and the Israelis:

`… Israel, with the strong backing of the United States, refused to
recognize the democratically elected Hamas government and withheld
payment of the millions in taxes collected by the Israelis on its
behalf. This caused great economic hardship and undermined the ability
of the government to function. But it did not reduce popular support
for Hamas among Palestinians, and it reinforced the position of
Islamic and other extremists who oppose negotiations with Israel….’

There have always been Jewish people and institutions who have tried
to work for some peaceful solution of the Palestinian/Israeli problem
but the Jewish Lobby and pro Israel individuals have always succeeded
in silencing or marginalizing those voices.

Bill and Kathleen Christison explain how the word `anti-Semite’ is
abused:

`Anyone who has the temerity to suggest any Israeli instigation of, or
even involvement in, Bush administration war planning is inevitably
labeled somewhere along the way as an anti-Semite. Just whisper the
word `domination’ anywhere in the vicinity of the word `Israel,’ as in
`U.S.-Israeli domination of the Middle East’ or `the U.S. drive to
assure global domination and guarantee security for Israel,’ and some
leftist who otherwise opposes going to war against Iraq will trot out
charges of promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the old
czarist forgery that asserted a Jewish plan for world domination.’

A Few Clarifications

Before proceeding any further, it is important to remember the
historic injustices suffered by the Jewish people. The past has not
been especially nice to the Jews; rather it has been extremely
cruel’mainly, in the form of European Christianity. The atrocious
climax reached between 1939 and 1945 under Nazi Germany. Between five
to six million Jews were murdered. But since then, although there have
been some instances of targeting Jewish people and desecrating their
cemeteries in Europe and elsewhere, these have not in any way affected
their survival and growth as a distinct religious and cultural
entity. And economically they are one of the few most powerful groups
in the world.

In addition: There are many interest groups or lobbies in the United
States who are doing immense harm to people within and without, and
the dominant corporate press is one of those groups. People who want
to register their protest or recommend changes are at the mercy of the
media managers. So, the Jewish Lobby is not the only one exerting
influence. Nevertheless, the Lobby’s power is enormous and it has
wielded it in such a devastating way that the whole of Middle East has
been burning for quite a long time now ‘ and in turn it affects the
entire world.

There is, of course, a convergence of the US interest to control the
oil; and, the Israeli interest to be the sole regional power. If one
thinks from that perspective, then without doubt the US would have
been in a better shape if it would have avoided the 2003 complete
destruction of the almost-destroyed Iraq of 1991 and if it had left
Saddam Hussein pitted against Iran. Not only would this have saved the
US billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives but would
have preserved its hegemony a little longer.

Anti-Arab, anti-Palestine, anti-Iran, anti-Muslim?

When a corporation exploits its workers it is called an
exploiter. When a member of the majority discriminates against a
member of the minority then she/he is called a racist. When a male
discriminates against a woman he is called a sexist. When one person
discriminates another on the basis of religion then that person is
called a communalist. When anyone hates or kills a Jew (simply because
he is a Jew), that person is called an anti-Semite. When a Muslim
kills someone in the name of Islam, he is called a Muslim
fundamentalist/militant/fanatic/etc.

What would you call those influential Jews, individuals and those
belonging to the Lobby, in the US who played an important role in the
war to destroy an Arab country of Iraq without any reason or are now
pushing for a war against Iran?

They are beardless, suited, booted. They are not overtly religious
like Taliban and so we can’t call them Jewsratics or Jews who are
Israel Fanatics. However, their religion is Israel and so the
appropriate word (for their world devastating pro Israel stand) should
be `Israel Fanatics’ or `Isratics.’ These Isratics are on a revenge
path for past injustices.

The victims are now the victimizers. Their victims are not the white
Europeans but the Palestinians and other Arabs.

And the Isratics are equipped with a WMD or word of mass destruction,
and so the moment anyone points out their control over the US
Congress, government, news media, etc. she/he will be labeled an
`anti-Semite.’

Holocaust

Auschwitz, located in Poland, (then under German control) was the
largest of the many concentration camps where the Jews were
transported and were murdered using all sorts of inhuman
methods. Other communities suffered too.

For the organized Jewry, the `Holocaust’ has become a profitable
enterprise, as Norman Finkelstein’s insightful study, `The Holocaust
Industry,’ makes clear. Just one example: The Swiss banks’ offer of
$600 million was rejected by the Jewish leaders and so in August 1998,
they agreed to pay $1.25 billion. A press release by Swiss banks
explained `the aim of the additional payment’ `is to avert the threat
of [US] sanctions as well as long and costly court proceedings.’ Back
in March, Edgar Bronfman, president of World Jewish Congress had
warned the Swiss banks: `If the Swiss are going to keep digging their
heels in, then I’ll have to ask all US shareholders to suspend their
dealings with the Swiss [emphasis mine].’ Finkelstein reminds us that
the United States is equally guilty of the three categories (Swiss
denial of asylum to refugees, claimants to inactive Swiss bank
accounts, and victims of slave labor which proved advantageous to the
Swiss) for which the Swiss had to pay; whereas, the US has not even
been threatened, let alone charged.

`Many’ lawyers were charging $600 an hour for filing claims, and one
lawyer wanted $2,400 for reading Tom Bower’s book `Nazi Gold.’

Many other European governments, including Germany, have also paid
huge sums of money to organized Jewry.

The US itself has never paid any money to the Native Indians, the
blacks, and many others. One may wonder as to why the US government
threatens other governments or their institutions to pay reparations
to the Jews!

(In 1986, the World Court ordered the US to pay $17 billion to
Nicaragua for multiple crimes. The US ignored the verdict.)

Most interesting to note: Finkelstein says, `The Holocaust’s mystery,
Wiesel avows, is `noncommunicable;’ `we cannot even talk about it.’
Thus, for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine),
Wiesel lectures that the `secret of Auschwitz’s `truth lies in
silence.”

Daniel McGowan provides a good portrait of this peace laureate.

`He is a multi-millionaire, but carefully cultivates the image of a
perpetually disheveled professor. Although he has won the Nobel Peace
Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Guardian of Zion Medal,
and the Oprah Book Award, many people in Israel resent the way he has
used the Holocaust to make his living. Some Israelis refer to him as a
`sho’an.’ The word `sho’a’ is Hebrew for Holocaust; with the suffix it
indicates a professional specializing in the subject. So it is both
funny and derogatory, not unlike Norman Finkelstein referring to
Wiesel as the `resident clown’ of the Holocaust circus.’

Wiesel was awarded a Noble Peace Prize in 1986. In 1983, according to
the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s secretary, his name was recommended by
half of the US Congress.

Noam Chomsky says that in the US, Wiesel is respected as a `secular
saint’ and is considered a `critic of fascism.’

However, the saint keeps his mouth shut where Israel’s crimes are
involved:

`I support Israel, period. I identify with Israel, period. I never
attack; never criticize Israel when I am not in Israel.’

This so called harbinger of peace was in the White House on February
27, 2003 to see the National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice. President George Bush was also there. Wiesel echoed the same old
nonsense of comparing Germany of the late 1930s with 2003’s Iraq. In
simple words he wanted Bush to start a war. He said: `It’s a moral
issue. In the name of morality how can we not intervene.’ `I’m against
silence.’ So he wanted Bush to scream out loud with weapons.

Further, there are people like the late Nahum Goldmann, President of
the World Jewish Congress, who have criticized those who exploited the
Jewish tragedy:

`We will have to understand that Jewish suffering during the Holocaust
no longer will serve as a protection, and we certainly must refrain
from using the argument of the Holocaust to justify whatever we may
do. To use the Holocaust as an excuse for the bombing of Lebanon, for
instance, as Menachem Begin does, is a kind of `Hillul Hashem’
[sacrilege], a banalization of the sacred tragedy of the Shoah
[Holocaust], which must not be misused to justify politically doubtful
and morally indefensible policies.’

The letter H in the word `Holocaust’ is in capital letter because many
influential Jewish leaders firmly believe that theirs is the unique
tragedy. In other words, they have a copyright over the word
`Holocaust’ and thus the millions of Native Indians, African slaves,
Armenians (victims of Turks), the Congolese (victims of Belgium), the
Bengalis of East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, (victims of West
Pakistan, now Pakistan), Roma and Sinti people or gypsies (victims of
Nazi Germany), and others can’t claim their tragedies as holocaust.

Robert Fisk tells us that the word holocaust has been in currency
since the 18th century. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
as a matter fact, used it for the Armenians:

`In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the
infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor.’
The `war criminals,’ that is the Turks, massacred `uncounted thousands
of helpless Armenians – men, women and children together; whole
districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust – these were
beyond human redress.’

Money Talks, Politicians Walk

It is the power of the influential Isratics. And they are everywhere
in the US. The third richest man in the US (and the richest Jew in the
world) and the owner of two of Las Vegas’s huge casino resorts, the
Palazzo and the Venetian, Sheldon Adelson, opposes the two-state
(Israel/Palestine) solution. In October 2007, during Republican
donors’ visit to the White House, he warned President George Bush that
the policy which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is pursuing in
the Middle East would ruin him.

His both arms around Adelson and his wife’s shoulders, Bush replied:
`You tell your Prime Minister [Israel’s Ehud Olmert] that I need to
know what’s right for your people’because at the end of the day it’s
going to be my policy, not Condi’s. But I can’t be more Catholic than
the Pope.’

AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)

The Jewish Lobby is made up of several Jewish groups. The Israel Lobby
includes some pro Israel Evangelical Christians and Christian
Zionists. AIPAC is one of the most important of the Jewish groups.

Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in 2005 that AIPAC’s `leaders can be
immoderately frank about the group’s influence.’ Years back, while
dining with AIPAC’s Steve Rosen, Goldberg asked if the 1992 incident
involving the then AIPAC President David Steiner had hurt the AIPAC’s
influence. `A half smile appeared on his face, and he pushed a napkin
across the table. `You see this napkin?’ he said. `In twenty-four
hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this
napkin.”

The above conversation is not an isolated incident.

On October 22, 1992, New York businessman Haim (Harry) Katz [HK]
recorded his conversation with AIPAC President David Steiner [DS]
without his knowledge. Later, when the conversation became public,
Steiner resigned. Excerpts of that conversation:

DS: Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which a fabulous thing,
$3 billion was in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion
dollars in other goodies that people don’t even know about.

DS: … I said look Jim [Baker, Papa Bush’s Secretary of State], `You
don’t want a fight before the election. It’s going to hurt Bush….

HK: … But you met with Baker. . .

DS: Personally.

HK: Personally. Because you know, he’s the one who cursed, who cursed
the Jews.

(When the Jewish influence in the US was mentioned at a government
meeting on Middle East, Baker supposedly said, `Fuck the Jews. They
don’t vote for us [Republicans] anyway.’)

DS: Of course, do you think I’m ever going to forgive him for that?

…

DS: Do you think I could ever forgive Bush for what he did September
12th [1991] a year ago? What he said about the Jews for lobbying in
Washington?

(Bush Sr. had said: I was `up against some powerful political forces
. . . I heard today there was something like 1,000 lobbyists on the
Hill working on the other side of the question. We’ve got one lonely
little guy down here doing it.’)

…

HK: … I thought [presidential candidate Rose] Perot did marvelous in
the debates.

DS: He doesn’t know how to govern. He’s not going to make it. And
there was an incident where his daughter was going out with a Jewish
professor at school and he said, `I wouldn’t have my daughter marry a
Jew.’

…

DS: … you ought to think about coming to some of these things. I’ll
have a dinner this fall. I’ll have 18-20 senators there. I run
programs in Washington. We just had a, I had at Ted Kennedy’s house
last month kosher dinner. I brought foremost caterers down. I had 60
people on the couch for dinner. Last year, I did it in Al Gore’s
house.

…

DS: I personally am not allowed, as president of AIPAC, to get
involved in the presidential campaign, because I have to deal with
whoever wins. …

HK: … what will he [Bill Clinton] do for Israel, better than Bush…

DS: … Gore is very committed to us. (Gore once said: `I have a 100
percent voting record for Israel, even though there wasn’t one
synagogue in my congressional district.’ And this person had lectured
Jesse Jackson for meeting Yasser Arafat.)

…

DS: I’ve known Bill for seven, eight years … One of my friends is
Hillary Clinton’s scheduler, one of my officer’s daughters works
there. We gave two employees from AIPAC leave of absences to work on
the campaign. I mean, we have a dozen people in that campaign, in the
headquarters.

…

DS: Let me tell you the problem with the $10 billion in loan
guarantees, right? We only have the first year. We have authorization
from Congress, but it’s at the discretion of the president every year
thereafter, so if Bush is there, he could say, you know, use it as a
club, you know. `If you don’t give up Syria, I won’t give you the
money. If you don’t give up the Golan Heights.’

…

DS: … A girl who worked for me at AIPAC stood up for them [Clintons]
at their wedding. Hillary lived with her…. We have never had that
with Bush…

DS: … He’s got something in his heart for the Jews, he has Jewish
friends. Bush has no Jewish friends.

…

DS: Reagan had something . . . He knew Jews from the film industry; he
was one of the best guys for us. He had an emotional thing for the
Jews. Bush doesn’t have it…. Bush is, there’s a man with no
principles. Absolutely no principles.

…

HK: … I wish we had a Jewish candidate for president.

DS: I don’t think the country’s ready. …

HK: … I think Joe Lieberman would have, uh, would have, if he wasn’t
Jewish…. (Lieberman was Albert Gore’s running mate in the 2000
presidential elections.)

DS: I’d like to see him on the Supreme Court.

HK: If Clinton is elected, has he told you who he’s going to put on
the Supreme Court?

DS: We’re talking now…. We’re more interested right now, in the
secretary of state and the secretary of National Security
Agency. That’s more important to us.

HK: If Clinton is elected, who do you think will be secretary of
state? …

DS: I’ve got a list…. I’m not allowed to talk about it.

John Mersheimer and Steven Walt point out the use of pro-Israel
congressional staffers as one more source for the Lobby. They quote
former AIPAC chief Morris Amitay:

`There are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ ` on Capitol
Hill ` `who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at
certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys
who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those
senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.’

A former AIPAC staff member Douglas Bloomfield sheds light on how the
congresspersons conduct their research:

`It is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to
AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of
Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or
administration experts.’

`[AIPAC is] often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation,
advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal
votes.’

A senior congressional staffer, writing under the pen name George
Sunderland, here on the CounterPunch site, explains how the
politicians attending the annual AIPAC meetings act:

`Command performances before AIPAC have become standard features in
the life of a Washington elected official, like filing FEC reports and
hitting on interns. The stylized panegyrics delivered at the annual
AIPAC meeting have all the probative value of the Dniepropetrovsk
Soviet’s birthday greeting to [the Soviet leader, Joseph] Stalin,
because the actual content is unimportant; what is crucial is that the
politician in question be seen to be genuflecting before the AIPAC
board. In fact, to make things easier, the speeches are sometimes
written by an AIPAC employee, with cosmetic changes inserted by a
member of the Senator’s or Congressman’s own staff.’

Talking to the New York Sun in January 2003, Howard Kohr said,

`Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq was one
of AIPAC’s successes over the past year.’

Occasionally AIPAC is not successful. In 1981, it vehemently opposed
the US sale of AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) to Saudi
Arabia but failed to block the sale. Former President Gerald Ford was
infuriated at the AIPAC antics and called a Republican senator and
fumed:

`Are we going to let the fucking Jews run American foreign policy?’

Reagan announced the AWACS sale on national television with these
words:

`It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign
policy.’

But Edward Tivnan sees this sale as not much of a victory:

`… AIPAC had taken on the President of the United States, and
almost, as Ronald Reagan himself had claimed, embarrassed him in front
of the whole world. (What kind of President couldn’t sale five
airplanes to a small Arab country, particularly one sitting on
billions of dollars of oil crucial to American prosperity?) … ‘

Abraham Foxman

In March 2003, Collin Powell had said: `It is not driven by any small
cabal that is buried away somewhere, that is telling President Bush or
me or Vice President Cheney or [National Security Adviser Condoleezza]
Rice or other members of the administration what our policies should
be.’

But the reality is exactly opposite.

Foxman, National Director of Anti-Defamation League, is a very
important figure; his power can be gauged by the meeting he had with
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, i.e., foreign minister,

“In his [Powell’s] own State Department there was a keen awareness of
the strength of the Jewish lobbyists. Secretaries of State did not
usually meet with lobbyists, but both Jewish officials and Jews that
did not officially represent specific groups from Abe Foxman of the
Anti-Defamation League to Ronald Lauder, could meet with Powell on
short notice…. At the State Department, Foxman had an aura of
omnipotence. He was held responsible for the appointment of [Martin
S.] Indyk as Undersecretary of State under Clinton, and was thought to
have played a role in the appointments of Secretaries of State
[Warren] Christopher and [Madeline] Albright. Powell related to Foxman
almost as if he were someone to whom he must capitulate. Once Foxman
told one of his deputies that Powell was the weak link. When the
Secretary of State heard this he began to worry. He knew that in
Washington a confrontation with the Jewish lobby would make his life
difficult. Once he arranged a meeting with Foxman, but the busy Foxman
postponed the meeting three times. When they eventually met, the head
of the Anti-Defamation League apologized to the Secretary of State
[for the postponements]. `You call, we come,’ replied Powell,
paraphrasing a well known advertisement for a freight company. That
statement had much more meaning than just a humorous polite reply.”
(from Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, Boomerang…).

Nevertheless, one has to accept the fact that even though Powell had
been a part of governments during the 1991 Iraq War and the 2003 Iraq
War, he was not in favor of war. One can argue that in that case he
should have quit his position and thus boosting the morale of the
anti-war movement.

Once on a visit to Jerusalem, he stood his ground, when he refused to
comply with Sharon’s order.

Sharon: I don’t want you to go to Damascus [Syria]. I don’t think it
serves the interests of peace, and we don’t like it here in Israel
when you go to Damascus.

Powell: Ariel, thank you very much but I am going anyway. I am
Secretary of State of the United States of America and not the foreign
minister of Israel.

Powell was fed up with the neo-cons pushing for war and called them
the `fucking crazies.’

It is obvious that it is the Israel Lobby’s power that enabled Sharon
to order Powell; otherwise, in reality, he was just a premier of a
tiny country ‘ although in military means, the fourth most powerful
country in the world.

To be continued Monday

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

B. R. Gowani can be reached at [email protected]. Notes and
references available from the author on request.

© 2008 B. R. Gowani

URL:
n/blogs/voices.php/2008/08/31/what_if_the_israeli_ lobby_was_the_islami

http://www.thepeoplesvoice. org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/08/31/p28231

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Fresno Bee , CA
Aug 31 2008

Armenians find reason to celebrate

Bee staff08/30/08 22:22:27

The Mousa Dagh Commemoration Committee in Fresno held its annual
picnic and celebration Saturday at the Fresno Police Association’s
training grounds.

This year marks the 93rd year of remembrance of the Forty Days of
Mousa Dagh, a village in Armenia.

The villagers, under siege by the Turks during the Armenian genocide,
fought off the soldiers for 40 days before being saved by a French
ship passing by on the Mediterranean Sea. The celebration Saturday
began with the cooking of the Harissa, a lamb and whole wheat stew.

The event also included traditional music and dancing.

It continues today with church services at 10:30 a.m., a blessing of
the Harissa and music until 3 p.m.

The picnic began in 1978 with a few families keeping the culture alive
and now attracts between 800 and 1,000 people each year from as far
away as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Canada.

Boston Globe, MA
Aug 31 2008

Insurer’s support of ADL challenged

It’s been a little more than a year since Watertown became the
white-hot center of controversy over formal recognition of the
Armenian Genocide, and tempers continue to rage as town officials
pressure the state’s largest insurance carrier to join the fight.

In August 2007, Watertown severed ties with the AntiDefamation
League’s No Place for Hate program, sponsored by the venerable
national organization to fight intolerance on the local level. The
action followed protests from members of the Armenian-American
community who objected to what they termed the failure of the ADL’s
national leadership to officially recognize the slaughter of nearly
1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish empire between 1915 and
1923 as a geno cide. Other cities and towns have followed Watertown’s
lead, and so far, 13 communities statewide have dropped the program.

Now, members of the Town Council are lobbying Blue Cross and Blue
Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest insurance carrier, to
drop its financial support for the No Place for Hate program. In a
letter to Blue Cross president Cleve Killingsworth, dated Aug. 14, the
council offered an invitation for him to appear before its members "to
discuss your interest, relationship and future plans" with the ADL and
the No Place for Hate program, adding its intention to "strongly
encourage" the firm to sever that relationship.

Jay McQuaide, a Blue Cross-Blue Shield spokesman, noting that
Watertown is a customer, said a company official would be happy to
talk to the council about its financial support for the program. He
declined, however, to discuss the company’s position on halting its
funding. John J. Curley, a senior vice president and public affairs
officer at Blue Cross, has agreed to meet with the council on
Sept. 23, McQuaide said.

Councilor Stephen Corbett had drafted a resolution to formally request
that Blue Cross immediately withdraw funding for the No Place for Hate
program. But at the urging of the council’s president, Clyde
L. Younger, councilors opted to postpone a vote on the resolution
until officials from Blue Cross-Blue Shield were given an opportunity
to explain the company’s stance.

Younger, who expressed some surprise that the issue has percolated
again in recent weeks, said it was "great news" to hear the company
will talk to the council. "You want to be fair with people," he said.

"I would’ve liked to see us take action on it," said Corbett. "We just
don’t feel Blue Cross funds should be going toward a program that
won’t recognize the Armenian Genocide."

McQuaide declined to comment on an Aug. 22 statement issued by the
ADL’s national director, Abraham H. Foxman, ostensibly to clarify the
league’s position on the Armenian Genocide. Posted on the ADL’s New
England office website just two days after the announcement that
Derrek L. Shulman of Needham had been appointed the new regional
director for its New England chapter, Foxman’s latest statement
asserted that the league has referred to the massacre as a genocide.

"There is simply no basis for the false accusation that we engage in
any form of genocide denial, and we believe this characterization of
ADL crosses the boundary of acceptable criticism and falls into the
category of demonization," the posting read.

Last August, Foxman issued a statement on the mass killings in Armenia
that said "the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to
genocide," and acknowledged to the Globe that he privately believed
those events constituted a genocide.

Foxman’s statement came just days after he fired the ADL’s then-New
England regional director, Andrew Tarsy, who had defied the national
organization to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. Two weeks later,
Tarsy was rehired, only to resign in December. On Aug. 19, the ADL
announced that Shulman, political director in the Boston office of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had been hired as his
replacement.

Ara Nazarian, with the No Place for Denial campaign, a blog-based
activist group, said Foxman’s latest remarks are both inaccurate and
curiously timed, perhaps offered to help offset the current Blue Cross
controversy.

"They’re trying to whitewash this," Nazarian said, while denying that
any Armenian group is trying to demonize the ADL. "Nobody’s trying to
do that. We don’t have any problem with the ADL, only on this issue."

Shulman has declined to comment on the controversy until he assumes
his new position in October. Jonathan Kappel, the ADL New England
chapter’s interim regional director, did not return calls requesting
comment.

Citing the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s decision to withdraw
its umbrella support for the No Place for Hate program in April,
activist David Boyajian of Newton said, "Blue Cross Blue Shield should
really follow suit."

Corbett cautioned that even if the company decides to continue to
support No Place for Hate, neither he nor the council are ready to
advocate dropping Blue Cross-Blue Shield as one of the insurers
available to town employees.

"Too many people have it, and it wouldn’t be realistic or
appropriate," said Corbett.

Both Corbett and Younger said they are Blue Cross customers.

les/2008/08/31/insurers_support_of_adl_challenged/

From: "Katia M. Peltekian" <[email protected]>
Subject: ANKARA: Turkey lays out plans for Caucasian alliance

Hürriyet, Turkey
Aug 31 2008

Turkey lays out plans for Caucasian alliance as Georgian FM in
Istanbul

A Turkish delegation would visit Yerevan to hold meetings with their
Armenian counterparts to convey Turkey’s proposal for a Caucasus
alliance, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said Sunday after
meeting with his Georgian counterpart in Istanbul. (UPDATED)

Turkey’s proposal was the country’s latest effort to promote peace
between Georgia and Russia since they fought a war this month over
Georgia’s separatist republic of South Ossetia.

Babacan hosted Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili, two days
before he is to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the
same city.

Georgia welcomed Turkey’s proposal for a Caucasus alliance, Babacan
told a joint press conference with his Georgian counterpart
Tkeshelashvili. Georgian foreign minister, however, said her country
would only consider joining such a group after Russian forces leave
his country and fully apply the ceasefire.

Russian troops entered Georgia on August 8 to push back a Georgian
offensive to retake South Ossetia, which broke away from Tbilisi in
the 1990s with Moscow’s backing.

Georgia and Russia accuse each other of having provoked the
conflict. Moscow has pulled out most troops after a French-mediated
ceasefire agreement but Tbilisi wants all Russian forces to leave the
country.

Babacan said Turkey supported its northeastern neighbor’s territorial
integrity, and added the Caucasian countries had common futures.

He said Turkish-Georgian relations were grounded on a strong basis,
adding Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum natural
gas pipeline and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project are the natural
products of Turkey’s strategic cooperation and neighborly relations in
South Caucasus.

"These projects, in fact, have linked the Caspian Sea with the
Mediterranean, Caspian basin with Anatolia and the Caspian Sea with
the Black Sea," he said.

Babacan also called on everyone to behave calmly after recent tension
and disagreements in the region.

"We all know from previous experiences that no one wins in such
tensions, and every one will lose something," he said.

Tkeshelashvili warned of a "domino effect" in the Caucasus region and
Ukraine after Russia moved troops into Georgia.

"Russia’s military hostility against the small state of Georgia could
have a domino effect in other countries of the region like Ukraine,"
she said.

She accused Moscow of an "expansionist policy" and called on the
international community to back Georgia’s territorial integrity.

GUL’S VISIT

The Turkish delegation would also discuss with Armenian officials
issues regarding a possible visit of Turkish President Abdullah Gul to
Yerevan to watch a football match between Armenia and Turkey, Babacan
told the conference.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has invited Gul to watch a football
match between the two countries’ national teams on Sept. 6 to mark "a
new symbolic start in the countries’ relations."

Turkish president said Saturday he is yet to make a decision on
accepting the invitation. However, Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan said in the same day he wished Gul’s visit would bring
positive results, hinting that Gul might have actually decided to
accept Sargsyan’s invitation.

Erdogan also said Babacan would accompany the Turkish President during
the trip to discuss relations with Armenia.

Turkey is among the first countries that recognized Armenia when it
declared its independency. However there is no diplomatic relations
between two countries, as Armenia presses the international community
to admit the so-called "genocide" claims instead of accepting Turkey’s
call to investigate the allegations, and its invasion of 20 percent of
Azerbaijani territory despite U.N. Security Council resolutions on the
issue.

A warming period had started between two neighboring countries after
the presidents exchanged letters after Sargsyan’s election victory.

PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung), Austria
Aug 31 2008

Turkey tries to promote peace in Caucasus region

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) – Turkey has proposed forming a regional
cooperation group in a bid to stabilize the Caucasus region in the
aftermath of the war between Russia and Georgia.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan says the proposed group would
include Turkey and four nearby Caucasia nations: Russia, Georgia,
Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Babacan gave details about the proposal during an official visit to
Turkey on Sunday by Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili. She
responded by saying that Georgia would only consider joining such a
group after Russian forces leave his country.

Babacan’s proposal was Turkey’s latest effort to promote peace between
Georgia and Russia since they fought a war this month over Georgia’s
separatist republic of South Ossetia.