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Baalbeck is back on Olympus: International Festival of Baalbeck

Posted by: on: August 4, 2015

Baalbeck is back on Olympus

C’est envers et contre tout qu’a été donné hier soir, au cœur même de son site emblématique, le coup d’envoi du Festival international de Baalbeck.

Au cœur même des vestiges de cette éternelle Héliopolis, symbole de civilisations et de cultures millénaires, que célèbre justement le spectacle d’ouverture Ilik Ya Baalbeck (Pour toi Baalbeck).

Une fresque poétique et musicale qui a réussi la gageure de réunir sur son affiche, mais aussi au pays du Cèdre, le temps d’une soirée, un exceptionnel vivier de talents libanais dispersés aux quatre coins du monde.

« La poésie et la musique sont les plus belles parures des hommes », dit-on.

De certains lieux aussi, dont elles revivifient la splendeur de leurs gemmes étincelants.

Pour rappeler – et il le faut en ces temps de barbarie et de pourriture – l’ancienneté de nos civilisations méditerranéennes et les vertus fédératrices de la résistance culturelle, les plus grands artistes et créateurs libanais ont allié leurs talents (sous l’impulsion du comité du Festival international de Baalbeck et la houlette du metteur en scène Nabil el-Azan) pour offrir à Baalbeck une œuvre ciselée sur mesure et parfaitement enchâssée dans un incomparable écrin : Ilik Ya Baalbeck.

Après la version intimiste et épurée, présentée en prélude le 7 juillet dans le cadre du festival d’Aix-en-Provence, c’est la version orchestrale et son feu d’artifice de musique, de chants, de projection d’images qui a rendu hommage hier à cette magnifique acropole romaine et à son prestigieux festival, le plus ancien du Moyen-Orient et qui fêtera bientôt ses 60 ans.
Le casting est impressionnant : Wajdi Mouawad, Etel Adnan, Salah Stétié, Adonis, Talal Haydar, Issa Makhlouf (auteurs), sans compter l’emprunt du poème Baalbeck de Nadia Tuéni et de strophes du Prophète de Gebran Khalil Gebran ; Abdel Rahman el-Bacha, Gabriel Yared, Béchara el-Khoury, Naji Hakim, Zad Moultaka, Ghadi Rahbani (compositions musicales), ainsi qu’Ibrahim Maalouf et Marcel Khalifé, qui, eux, se sont produits en guest stars.

Sans oublier l’interprétation virtuose du jeune pianiste Simon Ghreichy.

À 21h pile, une heure (de retard) après l’horaire annoncé (Typical in Lebanon?), juste après l’hymne national joué par l’Orchestre philharmonique du Liban sous la direction de Harout Fazlian, les lumières s’éteignent pour laisser toute la place à la voix de Rafic Ali Ahmad qui lance les premiers mots de cette célébration du retour vers Baalbeck.

C’est ensuite sur une composition dramatique du compositeur et organiste Naji Hakim qu’ont déferlé, projetées sur la façade du temple de Bacchus (avec un éclairage malheureusement extrêmement mal adapté), les très belles images des grandes heures du Festival de Baalbeck signées du vidéaste Ali Cherri.

Ali Ahmad magnétique
C’est une Fadia Tomb el-Hage à l’allure de grande prêtresse en longue robe rouge (conçue par Rabih Kayrouz) qui apparaît, ensuite, au haut des marches du temple de Bacchus, où était installée la scène, pour interpréter une mélodie très rahbanienne concoctée justement par Ghadi Rahbani.

Se succéderont ainsi tout au long de la soirée son chant modulé (ainsi que sa déclamation plutôt décevante d’un texte en français), les récitations magnétiques du très charismatique comédien Rafic Ali Ahmad et les divers morceaux composés par les différents compositeurs.

On retiendra, entre autres : l’harmonieux et vibrant tableau de danse (avec un impressionnant Nacim Battou) et de chant sur l’air superbement enlevé illustrant « le mariage » de Gibran composé par Gabriel Yared.

Le solo de trompette, puissamment incantatoire, du très grand Ibrahim Maalouf que tentera, en vain, de troubler un pathétique faux ambulancier toutes sirènes hurlantes ; l’énergique séquence de dabké et hip hop (la troupe al-Majd et Nacim Battou) ; l’incandescente sensibilité des mots d’Etel Adnan portés avec justesse par Caroline Hatem ; la truculence baalbeckiote de Talal Haïdar montant sur scène, enveloppé dans sa abaya, pour déclamer ses propres vers.

Il est difficile d’énumérer chaque performance constituant ce spectacle de quelque cent participants. Sauf que si l’idée de patchwork géant d’œuvres des meilleurs artistes libanais mises bout à bout est géniale, elle aurait gagné à être plus travaillée au niveau de la mise en scène et de la lumière surtout, qui constitue l’un des éléments essentiels de ce genre de spectacles. Particulièrement dans ce site grandiose.

Caroline Hatem shared this link

J’ai eu la chance de dire un superbe texte d’Etel Adnan dans le temple –
et de passer 3 nuits parmi ces colonnes, et sous la lune.
Merci

Hier soir, Baalbeck était sur l’Olympe – Zéna ZALZAL
Hier soir, Baalbeck était sur l’Olympe Festival Sur le papier, l’idée est magistrale :
réunir les plus grands artistes libanais en hommage à Baalbeck, à son festival, à sa résilience culturelle, comme un archétype d’un Liban métissé, pluriel et rayonnant….
lorientlejour.com|By Zéna ZALZAL
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How private Federal Reserve Bank behaved since early 20th century?

Posted by: on: June 22, 2012

How the Federal Reserve Bank behaved since early 20th century?

The US Federal Reserve Bank, an owned private institution, was created on December 23, 1913. It was planned at a secret meeting in 1910 on Jekyll Island, Georgia, by a group of Zionist bankers and politicians.

The power to print money was transferred from the US Government to a private group of Zionist bankers.

The Federal Reserve Act was hastily passed just before the 1913 Christmas break. Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. warned: “This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this act the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigation, will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trust wants inflation….From now on, depression will be scientifically created.”

Three years after signing the Federal Reserve Act into law, US President Woodrow Wilson made the following statement:

“Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world–no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.”

During the Great Depression people who had gold in the banks wanted the banks to honor their contract to redeem the paper currency for gold…

The fraudulent nature of fractional reserve banking was at risk of being exposed because there was not enough gold on deposit in the banks to redeem all Federal Reserve Notes issued promising payment in gold.

That was when US President Roosevelt declared a national emergency and closed the banking system for two days as recommended by the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act declaring it illegal for US citizens to own gold under penalty of up to a $10,000 fine and/or up to 10 years in prison.

The people exchanged their gold and gold certificates for Federal Reserve Notes of created dollars based on debt, which stated a promise of redemption in lawful money.

Gold was now removed from the system, leaving silver dollars as the only lawful money available. Silver was eventually eliminated from the money system in 1965, leaving the public with a totally scam money system of irredeemable paper currency and copper-nickel clad tokens.

This money system represents a debt owed to the owners of the Federal Reserve Banking System, the payment of which is guaranteed by the collateral of all property and income of all US citizens.

When banks cannot honor their contract to redeem their notes for gold or silver coins, they are bankrupt. The contract between the people and the Federal Reserve printed on each bank-note promising to pay in lawful money was invalidated because:

1. the system went bankrupt and

2.  the amended version of the “Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917” placed all US citizens in the category of enemy, and no contract is considered valid between enemies.

American citizens were declared to be the enemy by their own government.  Indeed they would be the enemy if the people ever discovered what had happened to their money.

Being unable to trade in wealth such as gold and silver coin enslaves the people to those who create and control what is being called money. All it took to rob the public was to convince the people that “paper and credi”t are money.

The Federal Government and the Federal Reserve have the power to create unlimited amounts of credit because credit does not exist. Credit is not a tangible substance, but an idea represented by bookkeeping entries and computer symbols.

To pay means to deliver a tangible substance as money like gold and silver coin. Where there is no substance, there is no payment. There is only pretend payment.

Banks do not really lend money, they only pretend to lend money. They put no money in a borrower’s account. They only make bookkeeping entries that are reduced as the borrower writes checks against imagined deposits.

When the banks charge interest on a loan they do not make then banks impart psychological value to numbers of nothing. Charging interest sustains the illusion that banks loan something of value, when all they do is rent the appearance of money.

The Secretary of the Treasury is not the US Secretary of the Treasury because:

1. the US Treasury was bankrupted in 1933.

2. The Secretary of the Treasury is not paid by the United States Government. The Secretary serves as US Governor of the International Monetary Fund as receiver of the bankrupt United States, collecting the debt from US citizens.

The Federal Reserve Bank has provided the needed sleight-of-hand credit financing to involve America in every foreign war during the twentieth century. The net result of America getting involved in one foreign war after another has been a consequent steady decline in personal freedom; the growth of a highly centralized, bureaucratic and fascistic government.

A horrendous rise in taxation and the planned destruction of the gold standard, which used to give some degree of protection to American citizens against an out-of-control, profligate, high-spending government in Washington.  

The value of the US$ in 1940 was worth 17 times more than the value of the US$ now as a result of the Federal Reserve’s long-term monetary policy, which has quietly cooperated with the federal government to finance government deficits with Federal Reserve credit.

The Federal Reserve made extensive usage of the misleading words “Federal” and “Reserve” and has over time replaced our system of real money of gold and silver coin with worthless paper, which is against the law according to the US Constitution.

Alan Greenspan, served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, stated at the annual Dinner and Francis Boyer Lecture of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research on December 5, 1996:

 “Augmenting concerns about the Federal Reserve is the perception that we are a secretive organization, operating behind closed doors, not always in the interests of the nation as a whole. This is regrettable, and we continuously strive to alter this misperception.”

The only solution to this problem is to do away with the Federal Reserve and go back to the way it used to be and have American money system based on gold and silver coin.  The only solution to the problem is honest money.

Thomas Jefferson saw it coming more than 150 years ago and wrote:

“If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

The Ninth Circuit Court adjudicated in 1982:

“Examining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks, and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations.”
– Lewis vs. U.S., 680 F. 2d 1239, 1241]

Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, delivered a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, June 10, 1932:

“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known.  I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.  

Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions.  They are not government institutions.  They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders which prey upon the people of the united States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers.  

The Federal Reserve Banks are the agents of the foreign central banks.  

The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board.” End of quote

Congressman Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking & Currency Committee, speech on the House floor, 1967:

“In the united States we have, in effect, two governments….We have the duly constituted Government….Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution.”

Teddy Roosevelt said:

“These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

Americans have to ask themselves why they were not taught the truth about the Federal Reserve in school.

The US Congress initially defined a lawful money “dollar” as being and consisting of (at least) 371.25 grains of pure silver.  Before 1965, anyone could exchange one paper dollar for one real silver dollar.  

However, in 1965 the united States’ mint stopped minting silver dollars.  When this occurred inflation began to skyrocket.  Now it takes an entire fist full of paper dollars (i.e., “Federal Reserve Notes”) to buy one real silver dollar.  

It now takes two working parents to support a family and the national debt is shooting over 12 trillion dollars!  And this is not even counting the private debt by individuals and corporations, which is somewhere over 50 trillion dollars.

The paper and digital currency that bankers create out of thin air is backed by nothing. The more paper “dollars” they roll off the printing presses or digital “dollars” created by computers, the less each one is worth.  Therefore, it takes more of ’em to buy the things people need, so the price of everything has to go up and up and up in endless inflation.  

Wages for most people will not increase fast enough to stay ahead of the game.  But not to worry, the international bankers have created plastic credit cards – VISA, MasterCard, American Express etc., to help the people out.  Of course, they don’t bother to tell us that they do not create enough paper/digital currency to pay off the debt plus interest so mathematically the economy will eventually collapse as has always occurred in history with paper currencies.

The Federal Reserve system was created by international banking families such as the Rothschild, Wartburg and Rockefeller.  This international banking cartel creates “money” out of thin air.  It only costs them a few cents to print each Federal Reserve Note “dollar bill”, and then they “bill” the American people for the full face value of the note.  

To add insult to injury, they charge Americans interest to borrow their so-called “money”.  If you or I did this, we would be arrested for counterfeiting and fraud.  This system was instituted gradually, starting with the Civil War and culminating with the fraudulent passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.

The passage of the Federal Reserve Act was unconstitutional because:

1) the US Constitution prohibited “bills of credit” (i.e., paper notes) and

2) the US Constitution would have to be amended to go off the silver and gold coin standard for money.  The US Constitution, the supreme Law of the Land, can only be amended pursuant to Article V.  The US Constitution cannot be amended by statute.  These unlawful actions by a criminal Congress remind me of a quote by Alfred E. Neumann of Mad Magazine fame: “America is that land which fought for freedom and then passed laws to get rid of it.”

The Federal Reserve is also a monopoly– in a country where monopolies are supposed to be illegal.  

The US income tax department – Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – deposits people’s income tax payments directly in the Federal Reserve Bank (not in the United States Treasury).  Therefore, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), an unconstitutional entity, is merely the collection agency for the international bankers.  

Over the years the IRS has become a tool of the elite banking families to financially attack and/or imprison people who expose the Federal Reserve.

If you take out a paper dollar and look at it, you will notice that it states at the top of the “bill”:  “FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE”.  A “note” is, by definition, an “instrument of debt” and “evidence of debt”.  

According to BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY (Sixth Ed.) “MONEY” is defined:  

“In usual and ordinary acceptation it means coins and paper currency used as circulating medium of exchange, and does not embrace notes, bonds, evidences of debt, or other personal or real estate.”  

Now this may come as a shock to some people, but those paper “Federal Reserve Notes” are not money and they are not dollars.  Federal Reserve Notes are merely an informal document acknowledging debt.   There is nothing backing these “bills” except debt.  However, people voluntarily use them as instead of money and as dollars.  The key word is “as” – The smallest words can have the biggest meanings.

Banks can create this phony “currency” out of thin air.  Banks can loan out “currency” that they don’t even have.  When you apply for a loan from a bank, the bank does not have anything to back up that loan because they are allowed to loan out about 7 to 10 times more “currency” than they have on deposit.  

This is not mere speculation; this is a matter of court record, testimony under Oath, by a former lawyer for the Federal Reserve.  In other words bankers create “currency” with just the stroke of a pen or the keystroke of a computer.  These bankers then charge you “interest” to borrow this “currency”, which is nothing more than some numbers typed on a piece of paper!  If American People ever did this they would be spending many years in an US federal prison.  

Unfortunately, they do not print enough currency to pay the interest so more pseudo-dollars must be borrowed to pay off the interest, resulting in ever-increasing debt that cannot be paid.” End of quote

Countless preemptive wars were waged, and many political and physical assassinations of leaders and Presidents in the USA were direct results of preserving this privately owned Federal Reserve Bank.

Seek knowledge and get engaged to change mankind’s lot.

Note 1: The article is a section of a lengthy reply by Nalliah Thayabharan in response to my post: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/super-nationalist-zionism-contributed-to-the-rise-of-the-third-reich/

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Uri Avnery “Any fool can start a war, only a very wise person can prevent one”: 30 years later, Israel 1982 war on Lebanon…

Posted by: on: June 10, 2012

30 years later: Uri Avnery on Israel 1982 war against Lebanon Background: THIRTY YEARS ago this week, the Israeli army crossed into Lebanon.

That was the most stupid war in Israel’s history.

It lasted for 18 years. About 1500 Israeli soldiers and over 40, 000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, and four folds suffered serious injuries and handicapped.

Uri Avnery published “The war of Lies” on June 9, 2012 (with slight editing):
The War of Lies
Almost all wars are based on lies. Lies are considered legitimate instruments of war. The 1982 war on Lebanon is a glorious example.From beginning to end it was a war of deceit and deception, falsehoods and fabrications.THE LIES started with the official name: “Operation Peace in Galilee”.

If one asks Israelis now, 99.99% of them will say with all sincerity: “We had no choice. They launched Katyusha at the Galilee from Lebanon every day. We had to stop them.”

TV anchormen and anchorwomen, as well as former cabinet ministers have been repeating this throughout this week. Quite sincerely. Even people who were already adults at the time.

The simple fact is that for 11 months before the war, not a single shot was fired across the Israeli-Lebanese border.

A cease-fire was in force and the Palestinians on the other side of the border (south Lebanon) kept the peace scrupulously.

To everybody’s surprise, Yasser Arafat succeeded in imposing strict military operations on all the radical Palestinian factions, too.

At the end of May, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon met with Secretary of State Alexander Haig in Washington DC. He asked for American agreement to invade Lebanon. Haig said that the US could not allow it, unless there were a clear and internationally recognized provocation.

And lo and behold, the provocation was provided at once. Abu Nidal, the anti-Arafat and anti-PLO master terrorist, sent his own cousin to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London, who was grievously wounded.

In retaliation, Israel bombed Beirut and the Palestinians fired back, as expected.

The Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, allowed Sharon to invade Lebanese territory up to 40 km, “to put the Galilee settlements out of reach of the katyushas.”

When one of the intelligence chiefs told Begin at the cabinet meeting that Abu Nidal’s organization was not a member of the PLO, Begin famously answered: “They are all PLO”.

General Matti Peled, my political associate at the time, firmly believed that Abu Nidal had acted as an agent of Sharon. So do all the Palestinians I know.

The lie “they shot at us every day” has taken such a hold on the public mind that it is nowadays useless to dispute it. It is an illuminating example of how a myth can take possession of the public mind, including even of people who had seen with their own eyes that the opposite was true.

NINE MONTHS before the war, Sharon told me about his plan for a New Middle East.

I was writing a long biographic article about Sharon with his cooperation. He believed in my journalistic integrity, so he told me his plan “off the record” and allowed me to publish it – but without quoting him. So I did.

Sharon had a dangerous mental mixture: a primitive mind unsullied by any knowledge of (non-Jewish) history, and a fatal craving for “grand designs”.

Sharon despised all politicians – including Begin – as little people devoid of vision and imagination.

Sharon design for the region, as told me then (and which I published nine months before the war), was:

  1. To attack Lebanon and install a Christian dictator who would serve Israel,
  2. Drive the Syrians out of Lebanon,
  3. Drive the Palestinians out of Lebanon into Syria, from where they would then be pushed by the Syrians into Jordan.
  4. Get the Palestinians to carry out a revolution in Jordan, kick out King Hussein and turn Jordan into a Palestinian state,
  5. Set up a functional arrangement under which the Palestinian state (in Jordan) would share power in the West Bank with Israel.

Being a single-minded operator, Sharon convinced Begin to start the war, telling Begin that the sole aim was to push the PLO 40 km back. He managed to vote in Bashir Gemayel as the President/dictator of Lebanon.

After the assassination of Bashir, Sharon facilitated the genocide that the Christian Phalanges carry out the massacre in Sabra and Shatila in order to terrify the Palestinians into fleeing to Syria.

The results of the war were the opposite of Sharon expectations:

1. Bashir was killed by the Syrians and his brother, who was then elected by Israeli guns, was an ineffective weakling.

2. The Syrians strengthened their hold over Lebanon. The horrible massacre did not induce the Palestinians to flee.

3. Hussein remained on his throne. Jordan did not become Palestine.

4. Arafat and his armed men were evacuated to Tunis, where they won impressive political victories, were recognized as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people” and eventually returned to Palestine.

THE MILITARY plan went awry right from the beginning, no less than the political one. Since the war was celebrated in Israel as a glorious military victory, no military lessons were drawn from it – so that 2006 preemptive war on Lebanon was an even greater military disaster.

The simple fact is that in 1982, no unit of the army reached its goal at all, or certainly not on time. Valiant Palestinian resistance in Sidon (Saida) held the army up, and Beirut was still out of reach when a ceasefire was declared.

Sharon simply broke it, and only then did his troops succeed in encircling the Capital Beirut and entering its Eastern part.

Contrary to his promise to Begin (repeated to me at the time by a very senior coalition partner), Sharon attacked the Syrian army in order to reach and cut the Beirut-Damascus road.

The Israeli units on that front never reached the vital road, and instead suffered a resounding defeat at Sultan Yacoub in the Chouf.

The Chief of Staff was Rafael Eitan, called Raful. He was appointed by Sharon’s predecessor, Ezer Weizman. At the time, I asked Weizman why he had appointed such a complete fool.

Weizman typical answer was: “I have enough IQ for the two of us. He will execute my orders.” But Weizman resigned and Raful remained.

ONE OF the most significant and lasting results of this war concerns the Shiites.

From 1949 to 1970, the Lebanese border was the quietest of all our borders. People crossed by mistake and were returned home.

It was commonly said the “Lebanon will be the second Arab state to make peace with Israel”, not daring to be the first.

The mostly Shiite population on the other side of the border was the most downtrodden and powerless of Lebanon’s diverse ethnic-religious communities.

When King Hussein, with the help of Israel, drove the PLO forces out of Jordan in the “Black September” of 1970, the Palestinians established themselves in South Lebanon and became the rulers of the border region, which was soon known in Israel as “Fatahland”.

The Shiite population did not like their overbearing new Palestinian lords, who were Sunnis. When Sharon’s troops entered the area, they were actually received with rice and candies by the Shias (I saw it with my own eyes.)

The Shiites, not knowing Israel, believed that their liberators would drive the Palestinians out and go home.

It did not take them long to perceive their mistake. They then started a guerrilla war, for which the Israeli army was quite unprepared.

The Shiite mice quickly turned into Shiite lions. Faced with their guerrillas, the Israeli government decided to leave Beirut and much of South Lebanon, holding on to a “security zone”, which duly became a guerrilla battleground.

The moderate Shiites were replaced by a much more radical new Hizb-Allah (“Party of God”), which eventually became the main political and military force in all of Lebanon.

To stop them, Israel assassinated their leader, Abbas al-Musawi, who was promptly replaced by a vastly more talented assistant – Hassan Nasrallah.

At the same time, Sharon’s clones in Washington started a war that destroyed Iraq, the historic Arab bulwark against Iran.

A new axis of Shiite Iraq, Hezbollah and Alawite Syria became a dominant fact. (The Alawites, who rule Assad’s Syria, are a kind of Shiite. Their name derives from Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, whose descendants were rejected by the Sunnis and accepted by the Shiites.)

If Sharon were to wake up from the coma which has been his lot for the last six years, he would be shocked by this result – the only practical one – of his Lebanon War.

ONE OF the victims of the war was Menachem Begin. Many legends have been woven around his memory, blowing it out of all proportion.

Begin had many excellent qualities. He was a man of principle, honesty and personal courage. He was also a great orator in the European tradition, able to sway the emotions of his audience.

But Begin was a very mediocre thinker, completely devoid of original thought. His mentor, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, treated him with disdain. In his way, he was quite naive. He let himself be easily misled by Sharon. Being single-minded and devoted to defeating the Palestinians and extending the rule of the “Jewish” state to all of historical Palestine, he did not really care about Lebanon, Sinai or the Golan.

Begin’s behavior during the Lebanon War bordered on the ridiculous. He visited the troops and asked questions that became the butt of jokes among the soldiers. In retrospect, one wonders whether by that time he was already mentally affected. Soon after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which shocked him to the core, he retreated into deep depression, which lasted until his death ten years later.

THE MORAL of the story, relevant today as ever: Any fool can start a war, only a very wise person can prevent one.

 

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Privately owned Federal Reserve Bank: How the Rothschild family controlled the printing of the Dollars?

Posted by: on: June 10, 2012

Privately owned Federal Reserve Bank: How the Rothschild family controlled the printing of the Dollars?

The US British colonies had the right to print their own currencies before they snatched their independence. Benjamin Franklin was ambassador in France and delivered a speech in London. He explained how the colonies developed and prospered by issuing money as the internal market expanded to facilitate transactions.

The Rothschild family got the message clear and set about to acquiring the monopoly of printing the US money.

In 1804, Alexander Hamilton, US finance minister and aristocrat during President Thomas Jefferson, coerced Congress to sign a charter with the Rothschild financier family to print US currencies.

This decision came as a price for England loaning Jefferson the necessary money to purchase the Louisiana Territory (all the States bordering the Mississippi River) from Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803.

In 1811, the charter for the Ashkenazi Rothschild family owned the first Bank of the United States and managed to be in control of the US money supply. This control expired and the US Congress voted against the renewal of the charter.

Andrew Jackson, later the 7th President of the US from 1829 to 1837, said:

“If the US Congress has a right under the US Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.”

Nathan Mayer Rothschild was not amused and he stated: “Either the application for renewal of the charter for the bank is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war.”

Andrew Jackson’s response to this was “You are a den of thieves vipers, and I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out.”

Nathan Mayer Rothschild replied:  “Teach those impudent Americans a lesson. Bring them back to colonial status.”

In 1812, backed by the Rothschild’s money, the British declared war on the United States, entered the Capital Washington and set fire on it.

The Rothschild’s plan was to cause the United States to build up such a debt in fighting this war that they would have to surrender to the Rothschild family and allow the charter to be renewed.

In 1816, during President James Monroe, the charter for the Bank of the United States was renewed for another 20 years and the  Rothschild recovered the Control of the US money supply again.

The British war against the USA therefore ended with the deaths of thousands of British and US soldiers, but the Rothschild’s got their bank.

In 1819, the Bank cut-off all credits to the settlers in Ohio and the North-West territory and generated the first big financial crisis.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln (16th President of the US from 1860 till his assassination in 1865) approached the Rothschild’s to try to obtain loans to support the ongoing American civil war. The Rothschild’s agreed, provided President Abraham Lincoln allows them a Charter for another US central bank, at interest of 24% to 36% on all monies loaned.

President Abraham Lincoln was very angry about this high interest rate and so his government printed its own debt free money and informed the public that this was now legal tender for both public and private debts.

By April 1862, $450 million worth of President Abraham Lincoln’s debt free money had been printed by the US government and distributed. Lincoln stated:

“We gave the people of this republic the greatest blessing they ever had, their own paper money to pay their own debts.”

That same year, The Times of London publishes a story containing the following statement:

“If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should be become indurated down (be rooted) to a fixture North-West territory, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of civilized governments of the world.

The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That US government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”

In 1863, The Rothschild’s used John D. Rockefeller, one of their agents in America, to form an oil business called “Standard Oil“, which eventually took over all of its competition.

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln discovered that the Tsar of Russia, Alexander II (1855 – 1881), was having problems with the Rothschild’s for refusing their continual attempts to set up a central bank in Russia. President Lincoln asked the Tsar for help in the Civil War and the Tsar sent part of his fleet to anchor off New York and the other part off California.

The Tsar made it clear to the British, French and Spanish that if they attacked either side, Russia would take the side of President Lincoln. Lincoln subsequently won the Civil War.

In 1865, in an a statement to Congress, President Abraham Lincoln stated,  “I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the financial institution in the rear. Of the two, the one in my rear is my greatest foe.” Later that year, President Lincoln is assassinated.

The US Federal Reserve, an owned private institution, was created on December 23, 1913.

It was planned at a secret meeting in 1910 on Jekyll Island, Georgia, by a group of Zionist bankers and politicians. The power to print money was transferred from the US Government to a private group of Zionist bankers.

The Federal Reserve Act is hastily passed just before the 1913 Christmas break.

Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. warned: “This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this act the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigation, will be legalized.”

US President John F. Kennedy planned to terminate the privately owned Federal Reserve System. In 1963, he signed Executive Orders EO-11 and EO-110, returning to the government the responsibility to print money, taking that privilege away from the Rothschild.

Shortly thereafter, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Another myth that all Americans live with is the charade known as the “Federal Reserve.” It comes as a shock to many to discover that it is not an agency of the United States Government.

The name “Federal Reserve Bank” is not federal, nor is it owned by the government. It is privately owned.  Its employees are not in civil service. Its physical property is held under private deeds, and is subject to local taxation.

It is an engine that has created private wealth that is unimaginable, even to the most financially sophisticated.

It has enabled an imperial elite to manipulate US economy for its own agenda and enlisted the US government itself as its enforcer.

Federal Reserve Bank controls the times, dictates business, affects Americans’ homes and practically everything in which Americans are interested.

It takes powerful force to maintain an empire, and this one is no different.

The concerns of the leadership of the “Federal Reserve” and its secretive international benefactors appear to go well beyond currency and interest rates.

Alan Greenspan, served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, stated at the annual Dinner and Francis Boyer Lecture of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research on December 5, 1996:

“Augmenting concerns about the Federal Reserve is the perception that we are a secretive organization, operating behind closed doors, not always in the interests of the nation as a whole. This is regrettable, and we continuously strive to alter this misperception.”

The privately owned Federal Reserve has confused the public, lied to them and stole their gold and silver.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects of the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

Of all the contrivances devised for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes him with paper money.

After many years of blundering toward it, and only a few months before the beginning of the World War 1, Rothschild found the formula for the most efficient credit machine that was ever invented. This was the Federal Reserve System.

Most people are unsure of the meanings of words such as money, dollar, wealth, inflation and credit. The average person would be very surprised if they knew how the money system used to work compared to how it operates now.

The essence of psychological warfare is to confuse the meaning of words, and infiltrate the mind with conflicting concepts. The use of the word Federal in the name federal Reserve leads the public to believe that the Federal Reserve is a government institution, when it is really a private corporation owned by foreign and domestic banks and operated for profit.

The Federal Reserve controls America’s money supply and interest rates, and there by manipulates the entire economy, in violation of

1. Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution that expressly charges Congress with power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, and.

2. Article 1, Section 10 of the constitution says “No State shall make any thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in payment of Debts.”

Over time, gold and silver coins were removed from American money supply and removed as backing for American paper currency and replaced with debt (or credit).

The definition of dollar has changed to hide the fact that a dollar is not money, but a unit of measurement for gold and silver coin. For example:

1. Title 12 United States Code Section 152 says: “The terms lawful money or lawful money of the United States shall be construed to mean gold or silver coin of the United Sates.”

2. Title 31 United States Code, Section 5101 says: “The money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars.”

The recent equivalent to the goldsmith’s receipt for gold is the Federal Reserve Note. The word “Federal” implies Federal government, but the Federal Reserve is a privately owned corporation. The word “Reserve” implies that something gives the paper receipt value, but no gold or silver backs this paper.

The word “Note” implies a contract, because legally a note must state who is paying, what is being paid, to whom and when.

Most people say something like, “I have a dollar bill”. But what is a bill?

A bill is a receipt of a debt owed by one person or company to another. Therefore, a “dollar bill” is a receipt (or bill) of debt of one dollar that is owed.

From 1914 to 1963, Federal Reserve Notes never claimed to be money, nor did they claim to be dollars. A note for five dollars read: “The United States of America will pay to the bearer on demand five dollars.”

How can a promise to pay five dollars be five dollars?

To the left of the President’s picture and above the bank seal, it said: “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank.”

In 1963, the Federal Reserve began to issue its first series of notes without the promise, while taking notes with the promise out of circulation. How can paper become what it promises by removing the promise?

To the left of the President’s picture and above the bank seal, it now read: “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.”

A note is a proof of debt. It is not possible to pay off a debt with a debt. No debt can be paid in full unless paid in gold or silver, coined and regulated in value by Congress. The name “Federal Reserve Note” is a fraudulent label since each word claims to be something that in reality it is not.

By removing the promise to redeem the note in lawful money, the Federal Government in cooperation with the Federal Reserve, eliminated the monetary system of the United States as established by the Constitution and replaced it with something totally different.

If you are holding a one dollar Federal Reserve Note, the question is: “what is it one dollar of?”

The answer is absolutely nothing. The number one measures no substance.

The only thing that give paper money value is the confidence people have in it as is stated in chapter 30 of our textbook.

Federal Reserve Notes are only accepted because people believe they have value.

Note:  The article was from Nalliah Thayabharan in response to my post: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/super-nationalist-zionism-contributed-to-the-rise-of-the-third-reich/

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Hot posts this week June 9/2012

Posted by: on: June 9, 2012

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Statistics on Reviewing books of “Writers of Color”?

Posted by: on: June 9, 2012

Statistics on Reviewing books of “writers of color”? 
You must be suspicious that women are underrepresented in certain echelons of publishing, as in many public and private positions.
You must be suspicious that writers of color are likely to face similar issues in the publishing business and reviewing of their books and manuscripts.

Evidence of proofs will go a long way.  is trying to do just that in “Where Things Stand“, posted on June 6, 2012 (with slight editing):

“After the VIDA counts in 2010 and 2011, as well as Jennifer Weiner’s count (released on her blog in January 2012), I wanted to see where things stood for writers of color.

Race often gets lost in the gender conversation as if it’s an issue we’ll get to later.

As I considered this problem, I had no proof, and people want proof.  And even when you do have proof, people will try to discount your findings. We’ve seen this with birthers and global warming deniers and the like.

I went on a fact-finding mission and found some facts.

These counts are really difficult to execute. A lot of the data compilation requires painstaking work and there are few guarantees of accuracy. There is no centralized database tracking the gender or race of the writers who are published or reviewed in major publications.

Most of the data compilation, particularly when it comes to race, is approximations.

I tasked my graduate assistant, Philip Gallagher, with looking at every book review published in the New York Times in 2011, identifying the race and gender of the reviewed titles’ authors. The New York Times is one of the preeminent book review outlets. We only looked at one year.

The project took 14 weeks, with Philip going at it for about sixteen hours each week. Information for some authors was more readily available than others. Some information was simply ambiguous. Some information could not be found.

We originally set out to look at several major publications but without an army of volunteers, it will never be possible to compile a dataset on race similar to VIDA’s. It is simply too difficult to identify race without a great deal of effort and even then, it’s hard to know just how accurate that data is.

We looked at 742 books reviewed, across all genres:  655 were written by Caucasian authors (1 transgender writer, 437 men, and 217 women). Thirty-one (out of 81 written by Africans or African-Americans were reviewed (21 men, 10 women), 9 were written by Hispanic authors (8 men, 1 woman), 33 by Asian, Asian-American or South Asian writers (19 men, 14 women), 8 by Middle Eastern writers (5 men, 3 women) and 6 were books written by writers whose racial background we were simply unable to identify.

The numbers are depressing and I cannot say I am shocked. The numbers reflect the overall trend in publishing where the majority of books published are written by white writers.

Writers were grouped into rather broad racial and ethnic categories. Without data about how many books were published by writers, across race, it’s hard to know if the numbers are proportionate or not.

The numbers are grim. Nearly 90% of the books reviewed by The New York Times are written by white writers ( Caucasians in the US are 72% of the population, according to the 2010 census).

We know that far more than 81 books were published by writers of color in 2011. You don’t really need other datasets to see this rather glaring imbalance.

These days, it is difficult for any writer to get a book published. We’re all clawing. However, if you are a writer of color, not only do you face a steeper climb getting your book published, you face an even more arduous journey if you want that book to receive critical attention.

It shouldn’t be this way. Writers deserve that same fighting chance regardless of who they are but here we are, talking about the same old thing—these institutional biases that even by a count of 2011 data, remain deeply ingrained.

I don’t know how to solve this problem or what to do with this information. I’m not riled up. I’m informed. I like seeing some numbers, having some sense of the scope of a problem.

I like knowing where things stand. Will these numbers encourage review outlets to be more inclusive in reviewing books?  And treating diversity Not as a compartmentalized issue, where we can only focus on one kind of inequity at a time.

Such mindfulness is important. If we want to encourage people to be better, broader readers, that effort starts by giving readers a better, broader selection of books to choose from.

Note: Roxane Gay’s writing appears (and forthcoming) in Best American Short Stories 2012, New Stories From the Midwest 2011 and 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, NOON, Salon, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and many others.

She is the co-editor of PANK, and an HTMLGIANT contributor. She is also the author of Ayiti. You can find her online at http://www.roxanegay.com.

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I got wed. Now, what I do next?

Posted by: on: August 29, 2010

I got wed. Now, what I do next?

Note: This article is a shortened version of a previous post, focusing on what to do next after the wedding…

Millions of couples get wed every day.

The vast majority never experienced intercourse, at least one party in the union.  It is no surprise that most of the couples have not met before the wedding, at best they have seen a puny picture of the member, supposed to living with for the rest of their life.

Many couples love the companionship.  The sexual part, and principally the intercourse phase, is the least interesting exercise in their mind, at least for one member of the couple.

It is wise that rarely any one in the couple bring up the truth that the sexual part is in second or third order of priority:  The wrong interpretation is invariably a bad one, of the most dangerous kind.  For example, “Am I that disgusting? Am I ugly?  Do I smell terrible?”

Well, you got wed and now you are wondering “what should I do next to make this courageous decision a success story?”

First principle, and maybe the only one of value for sexual intercourse, is that male partner is the passive part:  The woman should be the active and guiding partner.

Many males wait years before they comprehend that a successful, rewarding, and pleasuring intercourse is to sit back and let the woman do the job right.

Many women know that they are the one getting the most pleasure of that exercise, but they postpone indefinitely getting the courage of teaching their husband to take the proper course of action.

Before you resume the rest of this post, I suggest to the brides to imagine (visualize) the kinds of story they should undertake as they got the principle down.

Now that you have your own story of the proper way to enticing your man to perform intercourse in a very relaxed manner, you may continue reading.

I can figure that most women think that a sexy attire, in the privacy of the house, is the first in the list of “must do”.

This line of thinking comes with years of training and ruining the family treasury for clothing.  Sexy wear is an excellent idea but it is mainly a prompt.

The groom and the bride have acquired particular idiosyncrasies as to the varieties of sexy cloth.  Once the man comprehends what garment is meant by “tonight there is intercourse“, then the way is clear.

The man knows the objective of the evening, he feels relaxed, and can think of ways to be romantic.  The main hurdle is crossed, once the prompt is clearly defined.

Next, olfactive or the sense of smell is the most powerful sense in the lymbic (primitive) brain system.

Thus, both parties have to have a bath and smelling fresh.  A joint bath is excellent; you rub one another body parts, get relaxed, laugh, and play like kids.

By the by, both parties learn the nice smells that they jointly love; the kind of soaps, the perfume… Once this phase is nailed down, things can progress smoothly.

While wearing the sexy gown and then taking a joint bath or shower, make sure the background music is devoid of any lyrics: You don’t want to clutter your thinking brain; focus on what excite the limbic system.

The sense of touch has a direct route to the lymbic system but it has lost its power for men.  Women are more endowed with the pleasure of touch:  they kept this sense alive from practicing it since childhood.  Men don’t get excited by touch; it is mainly to enhancing his mental imagination.

The only “touchy” part in a male is the closest region of his anus.

I get generous and add the genital parts, but this is a manner of increasing his ego.  I am convinced that when a female touch the genital parts of a man, it is the imaginative brain section that is excited. The man think: “Wow, she wants it!” and that is enough for assuring an erection.

Man has to touch his partner everywhere, and seriously learn the most efficient exciting parts in his partner:  He does not want to bore his partner with lousy time-waster when the partner is ready to enjoy.

I suggest to the women to use boldly the largest skin areas in the hands, feet, and thighs: Nail and finger touching is to be avoided because man is different from woman in that powerful section of the lymbic system.

The sense of touch is basically atrophied in man and it is fundamentally used to excite the imaginative sections in the brain.

Good luck in your journey of learning the body of your partner:  It might be the initial phase in appreciating companionship and privacy.

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Posted last week (July 26)

Posted by: on: July 26, 2010

  • Boat immigrants and desert passers
  • What is your race; I mean “ethnic origin”?
  • Urban Islam and Rural Islam
  • What Collective Spirituality: State religious mythology?
  • What expert on the Orient: Lev Nussimbaun?
  • Why Hitler invaded Russia: Cycle closing in again?
  • How Nazi Germany managed to arm and train between the two wars?
  • Freikorps (Voluntary Military Corps): Precursors of Nazi “Waffen SS”
  • Transcending a myth: “Chosen people?”
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    Part 2: Turkey’s Strategy

    Posted by: on: June 29, 2010

    Turkey’s Strategy

    In part one, I explained the many problems that Turkey resolved with its neighboring States such as Greece, Armenia, Cyprus, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.  The long-term strategy of the Turkish State in the coming two decades is to be at a par  with Italy, France, and Spain in deciding for the Mediterranean Sea peace, security, and development. To be able to be a credible partner and valued mediator Turkey has, in the mean time, to iron out all its historical and current difficulties with its global neighboring regions such as the Balkan States (such as Bulgaria, Romainia, Albania, and Serbia), the Caucasus States (such as Armenia, Azerbajan, Georgia, and Tchechnia), the Central Asian States (such as Tajikistan, and Uzbakistan), the Middle East States (such as Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan), the Near East States (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine), the major north African States (Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco), and the Arab Gulf States. 

    The Balkan States have over four centuries of interactions with the Othoman Empires.  Even in the 15th century, most princes in the Balkan States were vassals to the Turkish Prince who later will be called Sultan and the Caliph of Moslem after defeating the Mamelouk Sultan of Egypt in the 16th century.  Even the Byzantium Emperor was a vassal, paid tribute,  and had to join the Turkish Prince in his expansion wars.  After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, (the Turkish Prince had build a navy and blocked any sea entrance to Constantinople for sea supplies and secour by Genoa and Venice), the Othoman Empire expanded to all Central Europe and the Caucasus region. 

    The Othoman Empire set siege twice to Vienne (later the Capital of the Habsburg Empire) and Vienna suffered famine and was saved at the nick of time.  At that time, there was no Russian Empire and the only Kingdom that could come to the rescue was the Catholic Kingdom of Poland that included current Belorussia and Ukraine.  Obviously, Greece was also part of Othoman Empire and the dividing line between Turkey and the rest of Europe was the Danub River (the eastern part of Hungary was under Othoman domination.)

    Emperess Catherine of Russia in the 18th century expanded the Russian Empire toward the Caucasus and Central Europe.  The Balkan States were freed from the Othoman occupation but were vassals to various European Nations such as France, England, Russia, and mainly Austria (that was desintegrated after WWI) as the Othoman Empire (allied to Germany) was then defeated.  Communist Russia or the Soviet Union set claim to most of the Caucasus States and a few Central Europe States. 

    The Caucasus region and many Central European States share many cultural, customs, linguistic, and culinary traditions (even among the Orthodox Christians) with the Turkish traditions.  It seems that Turkey managed diplomatic and political entente with most of these States and the oil pipelines crossing Turkey from the oil production sources in Azerbajan and the Ural region of Russia are vital economic relief to all these regional States. Turkey managed a peaceful settlement of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabach within Azerbajan.

    During the Cold War, the military regime in Turkey sided with the USA against Communist Russia and Turkey was included in the OTAN.  As West Germany was the main buffer Zone to the remaining Western European States, Turkey was the main buffer zone to the effective expansion of the Soviet Unions in the Middle East.  Israel was but a secondary ally and a typical mercenary State that the Western Powers supplied financially, militarily, economically, and politically so that the Israeli Jewish soldiers pay the price for believing that they were building their ancestral mythical State (that never existed historically but in stories in their Bible).  Fact is, most Arab States had sided with the US who purchased oil and supported the Arab monarchies and dictators.

    The Soviet Unions extended defensive arms to the Middle East States because it refused to witness a reverse immigration of the Russian Jews.  Egypt was the main State that received substantial economic and financial aid from Soviet Unions, not because Egypt was viewed as the largest Arab State but mainly because Egypt did not consider itself directly concerned with the Israeli/Palestinian cause until the invasion of Israel, France, and England in 1956 on the Suez canal.

    Turkey and Iran have a long history of interactions since antiquity.  Fact is, most of the Persian dynasties were Turkish in origine.  In the 18th century, the Persian Safafid dynasty was indeed a Turkish tribe and then, it turned to Chiaa Islamic sect and expanded its territory all the way to Afganistan and Central Asia.  Then, as it wanted to expand westward, the Othoman Sultan defeated badly the Safafid monarch and the current borders between the two nations were drawn at that period and remain intact since then.  Thus, the Othoman Sultan got control of Iraq and the Arabic Peninsula (current Saudi Arabia).

    As the tribe of Seoud in the Hijjaz reverted to a fundamentalist Wahhabit sect and expanded in the Arabic Peninsula then, the Othoman Sultan dispatched one of his generals Muhammad Ali (Albanian of origine) to crush the Wahhabit revolts.  Muhammad Ali was very successful and destroyed the Seoud tribe Capital.  Thus, Muhammad Ali was appointed governor of Egypt and then, turned against his master and established his own dynasty in Egypt.  Consequently, the political relationship between Turkey (OTAN) and Egypt of Gamal Abdel Nasser (who had no option left but to side with Russia for military hardware and economic development) were mainly cold for over 35 years.  Turkey is attempting to warm up with Egypt, but the current Mubarak political regime in Egypt is viewing the growing power of Turkey with suspicion since it supplanted Egypt as the main power broker in the Middle East with the Western nations.

    Modern Turkey is no longer an Othoman Empire but its rapid strategy, in the last two decades, to link up with all its regional States that were part and parcel of its vast Empire for over 4 centuries is giving ammunition to the so-called “moderate” isolationist and defeatist States in the Arab World (such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Morocco) that refuse to reform and plan for the future.

    Fact is, Turkey is the cornerstone State for the larger alliance among Iran, Syria, and Iraq for a stronger and much more stable Middle East political climate.

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    Part One: Turkey’s Strategy

    Posted by: on: June 28, 2010

    Turkey’s Strategy

    The long-term strategy of the Turkish State in the coming two decades is to be at a par  with Italy, France, and Spain in deciding for the Mediterranean Sea peace, security, and development. In the mean time, Turkey has to iron out all its historical and modern difficulties with its neighboring regions such as the Balkan States (such as Bulgaria, Romainia, Albania, and Serbia), the Caucasus States (such as Armenia, Azerbajan, Georgia, and Tchechnia), the Central Asian States (such as Tajikistan, and Uzbakistan), the Middle East States (such as Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan), the Near East States (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine), the major north African States (Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco), and the Arab Gulf States.  So far, in the last decade, Turkey has been successful in bringing security and stability to most of its bordering States such as Greece, Syria, Iran, and Armenia.

    For example,  on Turkey initiatives to its neighboring States, Turkey’s government extended a peace treaty with Armenia; the Armenian government signed it and the Armenian Parliament is yet to ratify the entire package.  The USA, pressued by Israel lobby, is delaying this ratification and even threatening to ask Congress to re-open the Armenian genocide file at the turn of the 20th century.  The Armenian/Lebanese demonstrated in Lebanon against the ratification, but this does not count. Sooner or later, this treaty will be ratified; and in the mean time, the many economic cooperation between the two States are growing fast. You may read my post on the Turkish and Armenian problems https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/cursed-cities-karss/

    Turkey initiated a reconciliation between the two divided sections of Cyprus (the Greek and Turkish sectors).  The Cypriot Greeks are delaying the execution of this reconciliation; mainly, because the European Union (EU) does not want Turkey to have a leg in the union, even, indirectly (Cyprus Greek is part of the EU).

    There are no problems between Syria and Turkey:  The borders are opened to trade, commerce, and without visas.  Turkey and Syria are conducting joint military maneuvers.  The Kurdish movements in Syria is under total control.  Syria had claims on the district of Iskandaron on the sea shore that mandated France relinquished to Turkey in 1936.  Turkey was a mediator between Syria and Israel for a peace treaty.

    There are no problems between Turkey and Iran.  Both States have interest to contain and manage the Kurdish separatist movements on their lands.  Turkey and Iran have interest to keeping Iraq united a fter the withdrawal of the US troops in 2011 and are cooperating in that strategy.  Lately, Turkey joined Brazil to coaxing Iran into signing the nuclear treaty and Turkey was successful in that mediation.

    Turkey and Greece are in great terms economically and politically.  Turkey aided Greece during the earthquake of 1999 and is contributing to get current Greece out of its financial morass.

    Turkey has demonstrated the will to safeguard the rights of the Palestinians who were chased out of their homeland in 1948 by the new emerging State of Israel.  Turkey is leading the political and diplomatic endeavors to securing the human rights and civil rights in the occupied land of Palestine.

    The main problem in Turkey is internal:  Turkey has to find a satisfactory resolution to its Kurdish separatist movement.  Negotiations are under way with most Kurdish movements but Israel has heavily infiltrated several radical Kurdish factions to keeping the heat on the Turkish State.  This case will be resolved as the US troops vacate Iraq and the Iraqi State regains some significant sovereignity over its land. (Article to be continued)

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