Monday, November 30, 2015

Cameron's Hypocrisy : British Kurdish Girl Shilan Ozcelik Imprisoned in UK for wanting to fight ISIS with YPG/YPJ



Democracy and Class Struggle says nothing exposes the hypocrisy of Cameron more this case is London of Kurdish girl Shilan Ozcelik.

The Kurds in Syria are connected via YPG/YPJ to Kurdish Workers Party but Cameron wants to work with Islamists in Syria who are going to have a meeting in Saudi Arabia to fight Syrian Government in his phoney anti ISIS fight while real fighters against ISIS get imprisoned in UK.


LONDON – Shilan Ozcelik, an 18-year-old British girl of Kurdish descent, has been convicted in Britain of trying to fight with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria.

At the trial at London’s Old Bailey, the jury of nine women and three men deliberated five hours to reach a verdict. Shilan Ozcelik was sentenced to 21 months in a young offender institution. The judge, John Bevan, called the Kurdish girl “a stupid, feckless and deeply dishonest young woman.”
“You are the author of your own misfortune. You have lied to your family and this jury,”  the judge told Ozcelik.




The judgement was also based on a letter the Kurdish girl had left for her family, telling them she had joined the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – which is outlawed in Europe as a terrorist organization.

"Believe me this is the right thing for me to do. I am so happy right now that I have become a militant,” Ozcelik wrote in the letter.

The Kurdish girl’s defending lawyer Peter Rowlands said Ozcelik told relatives she was joining the Kurdish militants to hide the fact she had met a man, a 28-year-old man called Mehmet Orhan, in Belgium. She tried to “spare her family from the real truth, which would have brought shame on her in the traditional Kurdish community,” he said.#

Rowlands said in the court room: “There is not a shred of evidence, not a shred, that having left home she joined the PKK, tried to join the PKK, met any members of the PKK, went to Turkey or Syria, or lifted a finger in support of their actions at all.”

However, the jury was not convinced.

Ozcelik is believed to be the first UK citizen to be arrested for trying to fight against ISIS. She has been charged with a terrorist offence under the UK’s 2006 Terrorism Act.

The teenager from London was arrested earlier this year at Stansted airport. Her supporters say she travelled to Brussels in an attempt to try to join the YPG or its women’s YPJ wing. She was arrested on January 16 as she returned from Brussels.

Neither the YPJ or YPG is by itself banned in the UK.

An online petition has started in support of Ozcelik, demanding her release and accusing the judgment of trying to “placate NATO member Turkey.

Ozcelik ”…is a hero not a criminal!,” she petition states. “She…would have joined YPG, which is a legal organization. The British Govt should be ashamed of itself.”

A Kurdish student in the UK told Rudaw that he found the decision "hypocritical."

”The UK is part of the anti-ISIS coalition that bombs ISIS down there. Now a girl is jailed for wanting to fight the same ISIS, as the UK does. It makes no sense," said Mirza Amed.

Neither the YPG nor its women’s wing, YPJ, is banned in the UK. But the PKK is listed as a terrorist group by both the European Union and the United States.

The judgment will prevent other Kurds in Europe from going to fight against ISIS, said Soren Schmidt, lecturer at Aalborg University in Denmark and an expert on ISIS.

“The judgment sends a clear signal that people can’t conduct foreign policy on their own,” Schmidt said.

More Britons have allegedly fought with the YPG against ISIS without being prosecuted. In July, three British and American volunteers who had returned from the battlefield were reportedly received as heroes at the Kurdish Community Centre in London.

Hundreds of foreign fighters have reportedly traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight with Kurdish forces battling ISIS.

Foreign fighters also have joined the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, which remains a staunch US and Western ally in the war against ISIS.

SOURCE :

http://rudaw.net/NewsDetails.aspx?pageid=173477



LIFT THE BAN ON THE PKK in UK 



http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/sign-uk-petition-lift-ban-on-pkk.html?spref=fb

Jeremy Corbyn refuses to whip right wing pro War Labour MP's to vote against bombing Syria - You can walk so far with a Social Democrat they will not go the distance against Capitalist Imperialism and War

Jeremy Corbyn is a social Democrat when it comes to crunch - what do you expect ?

No revolutionary here - no Lenin to oppose imperialist war with civil war - you can only walk so far with a Corbyn he will not go the distance.

It is the lesson of the last 100 years of Social Democracy that stinking corpse has Lenin called it in 1914


Continue to fight the Pig Headed Cameron we are winning the argument even if Corbyn actions loses us this battle.



OPPOSE THE SWINNISH RUSH TO BOMB SYRIA BY PIG HEAD CAMERON 

Do not give up the fight against War and Imperialism - the Red Flag may be on the ground in the mud because of Social Democrats like  Jeremy Corbyn at this moment .

 Pick it up and fight on - has we have done since 1831 in Wales - We have a World to Win








First the former UK Ambassador to Syria now the former NATO general says air strikes on Syria useless - But Pig Headed Cameron is detemined to have his bombing

                 

           General Sir Richard Shirreff, former Nato deputy supreme allied commander Europe



A SENIOR military figure has warned UK air strikes on Syria will not defeat Daesh and could be the first step towards Britain being involved into a “bloody” and protracted war.

General Sir Richard Shirreff, former Nato deputy supreme allied commander Europe, said a large number of western forces would eventually be needed to fight alongside local groups in order to recapture Raqqa, the extremist movement’s self-proclaimed capital.

He spoke out after David Cameron last week ruled out the deployment of British ground troops when he pressed the case for bombing missions over Syria, saying the proposed air attacks would be coordinated with ground attacks by some of the 70,000 local troops in Syria linked to “moderate” groups opposed to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

But yesterday Shirreff told a national newspaper such a military strategy would not defeat Daesh or recapture Raqqa.

“It’s not something you are going to achieve with 70,000 so-called Syria moderates,” he said.
“To take a city of 350,000 is going to need a massive force. Any fighting in cities soaks up troops in a massive way. It’s heavily attritional, it’s bloody and it’s a grim business.”

The United States began an air campaign against Daesh in Syria in September last year, 2014, with France and Russia both launching aerial attacks on Syria in September this year.

There was concern that the Russian air strikes, which were targeting western Syria, far from Isis strongholds, were aimed at helping Bashar al-Assad’s regime rather than weakening Daesh.

Shirreff spoke out after unease emerged yesterday among some Conservatives north of the border about Cameron’s proposals.


SEE ALSO:

Mauricio Macri : War on Venezuela by Jesus Rojas

                                  The face of the right in Argentina - Mauricio Macri

Democracy and Class Struggle we should note the new counter offensive against  Venezuela and attempts to restore US Hegemony in Latin America with the election of Mauricio Macri in Argentina and a increased attempts at de-stabilsation  of Venezuela State prior to and during Venezuelan elections of December 6th.


Macri certainly was the winner of the race for the presidency in Argentina. Cristina
recognizes this, in so doing, she demonstrates her honesty and democratic spirit.

He wins, but has yet to reveal what will be his economic policies.

There will be only one dollar, we do not know for whom will be.

What it is now coming to Argentina is a great loss of its sovereignty and there is a plan
of the international right-wing to go against the people who have made progress. Within 

the scope of the Bolivarian forces in Latin America,

Macri's victory means no encouragement to emerging policies in Latin America and the Caribbean, "what we're seeing with that victory of the right-wing and neo liberalism in elections in
Argentina involves a realignment of political ideology from Mercosur and Unasur
and that constitute  the policies that have been  in the joint cooperation - a political setback"

With the triumph of these neo liberal forces  that hinder these base policies in Latin
America..

What is observed is the loss of sovereignty for the Republic of Argentina
because the advances that could have been given in the integration processes
are lost and we could be in the presence of a new position or a new front of the
right-wing"

What we see in these elections we express from the Bolivarian Venezuela view
through lines of sovereignty that we have raised in the construction of a new block
allowing people self-determination, to start building the new economies, 


The  new integration processes allowing cooperation and sovereignty to tackle global
problems was a  political earthquake,


In this sense, the people of America where large strategic wealth of the planet
are accumulated can maintain and achieve their sovereignty and independence.

Machiavellian plan

There are hidden interests, "We note that these stances of  Macri`s of proposing
the suspension of Venezuela from Mercosur, the with intentions they are not
accidental when international lines are beginning to introduce previous to the
electoral events the introduction of some processes against human rights in
Venezuela, this is part of the Machiavellian plan that is brewing against the peoples
of America.

Macri covers up that his ideological nutrient with  frivolity and his colorful balloons.
He makes puns when babbles on its promises to support social policies instituted
by socialism, and very similar to those from Venezuela, he will seek to maintain them
without any creativity.

The question arises - the question about how he can defend them. 


In Macri, until today, hides everything,  his hatred against Venezuela. He
promises to apply the discredited Democratic Charter. 


Already they scolded for that first gaffe.

Where he does not lack bellows is moving its aggression against our country.
to him as many from here still hurts the force that brought chavismo throughout Latin America.

So much, that even Bush himself suffered with his remarkable strength, when he tried to
impose the free trade agreement in Mar de Plata and recieved a lethal punch ten years ago.


He was told to "take a hike" a slap that is still marked in the face of the right-wing people. 

Symbol of sovereignty that Macri proposes to avenge.

It is hard for someone of the right-wing to live with the insignia of  of the
author of the emergence of this expansive wave of socialist governments in our continent: Kirchner, in Argentina; Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, in Brazil; Rafael Correa, in Ecuador; Evo Morales, in Bolivia; José Pepe Mujica,in Uruguay; Daniel Ortega, in Nicaragua, in addition to give fresh air  to Pablo Iglesias in Spain and in Greece to Alexis Tsipras and many others who have benefitted from this wave in the global period.


That explains the itching that the Venezuelan left-wing causes to Macri, who hates us as before Menem hated Cuba, and see the same right-wing and the same newspaper La Nación pushing a war against Venezuela.



 

Sunday, November 29, 2015

France: The State of Emergency,a weapon of repression !







We have already said it and the facts prove us right, the State of Emergency is not against "terrorism" but against all who oppose the capitalist state.

Protests are still banned in Ile-de-France, the government is already talking of extending the State of Emergency voted by parliamentarians from Front de Gauche to Front National, several dozen activists are under house arrest because of the State of Emergency, squats have been evicted by force, cops spit "there are no more laws", ...

This afternoon, the second time, the State of Emergency was braved in Paris. This time by several thousand people. The cops did their dirty work and suppressed the banned demonstration.






These are officially 208 arrests and 174 in police custody. Cazeneuve promised "extreme firmness".

We call for solidarity with all arrested and held in custody!

Continue to defy the State of Emergency which is only a tool to muzzle dissent!

Dare to struggle, dare to win!: 

"The State of Emergency, a weapon of repression !"

SOURCE:

http://drapeaurouge.over-blog.com/2015/11/etat-d-urgence-arme-de-repression.html

Manchester Stop the War - Don't Bomb Syria







London : Tariq Ali at Stop the War against bombing Syria




Tariq Ali still bound to social democracy ( post trotskyism new style) but nevertheless a useful anti war contribution exposing third wayism on Syria.

The hysteria against Jeremy Corbyn by British Media is mixed up with pro War bombing of Syria.

You do not fight the British War Establishment and their media by reasonable behaviour of Jermyn Corbyn.

You fight them by savaging them and expelling class traitors and the sixth columnists (the one who agree to your face but stab you behind your back )particularly rife in Parliamentary Labour Party.

If there ever was a time to wage class war on part of the Labour Movement in British Isles it is now - even if this calls for temporary alliance with social democrats in that class war to smash the pro War establishment and its perpetual NATO war machine.



Saturday, November 28, 2015

Kurdish Lawyer Sympathetic to PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) assassinated in Turkey


















Kurdish lawyer sympathetic to PKK assassinated in Turkey
A Kurdish lawyer has been gunned down during a press conference in Turkey. Tahir Elci had been arrested in October for saying that the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) was not a terrorist group.
Posted by Channel 4 News on Saturday, 28 November 2015


SEE ALSO:
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/sign-uk-petition-lift-ban-on-pkk.html

Peter Ford Former UK Ambassador to Syria "Cameron Deceitful" on Syrian Question









London Protest "Don't Bomb Syria"





To David Cameron Prime Minster and Carwyn Jones First Minister of Wales - You dress your Mealy words in subtle clothing - You bless the dogs of war with priestly cant - I loathe you with an everlasting loathing arch hypocrite and royal sycophant - Thomas Evan Nicholas




Just heared that the Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones has supported Cameron's call for bombing of Syria under pretext of attacking ISIS  - so I thought people should hear the true authentic voice of Radical Anti Imperialist - Wales

The voice of Niclas Y Glais a great  Welshman and Bard who opposed First World War and Imperialism.

His message is directly addressed to First Minister Carwyn Jones and Prime Minister David Cameron.


And when you pray and pray I cannot listen,
Your silky hands, so steeped in blood, I dread,
From holy altar's, easeful shade I hasten
When on the upward steps I hear your tread.


You dress your mealy words in subtle clothing,
You bless the dogs of war with priestly cant,
I loathe you with an everlasting loathing,
Arch-hypocrite and royal sycophant.


Humanity in need can wait no longer,
And you like foolish mummer on bent knee –
The blood and fat of ox won't feed my hunger –
While untold corpses litter hill and lea.


Your paws are red with blood, you fleshy knave,
Who panting runs with beast of primal cave.


 
Thomas Evan Nicholas (6 October 1879 – 19 April 1971) also known as Niclas Y Glais one of the sonnets written while he was in Swansea and Brixton prisons for his anti-war activities.

Friday, November 27, 2015

Sign UK Petition : Lift the Ban on the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party)


Democracy and Class Struggle says nothing exposes the hypocrisy of David Cameron and his pretext of a War on ISIS for an attack on Syria than  the way the Kurdish Workers Party is treated in UK. 

These comrades have been fighting ISIS while being bombed by NATO ally Turkey and are banned in UK and Sihan Ozcelik one of their UK supporters has been sent to prison for "preparation of terrorist acts" by supporting the PKK in its anti ISIS fight.


A petition is calling on the British government to remove the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from its list of terrorist organizations, citing the group’s democratic foundations and ongoing war against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

As of Friday afternoon, nearly two thousand people had signed the petition on the Parliament website calling on the UK to support the PKK rather than proscribe it.

The petition follows the imprisonment of a British teenage girl last week found guilty of trying to join the PKK.

Sihan Ozcelik, 18, from London, was sentenced to 21 months in jail for engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorist acts.

The far-left PKK is proscribed by several states and organizations, including NATO and the European Union.

However, Russia, Switzerland, India, China and the United Nations do not list the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Colin Chalmers, author of the petition, describes the PKK as the opposite of IS.

“The PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) is fighting Daesh/ISIS on the ground, defending Kurdish and other communities from its barbarism. It is proving extraordinarily militarily effective. The UK should be supporting the PKK, not proscribing it.

“The PKK rescued thousands of Yazidi civilians threatened with genocide in 2014. Its sister organization the YPG has protected Christian communities in Syria.

“The PKK’s strategy is to pursue peace talks while encouraging democracy in Kurdish areas. They embrace women’s rights and oppose every aspect of the reactionary ideology of Daesh/ISIS,” he added.

Kurds, who have lived in Turkey for centuries, have been fighting against Turkish authorities for several decades. They demand an independent state or at least greater autonomy.

Text from RT

Sign UK Petition Here;

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/113738


Success of the International Meeting in Paris for 10th Anniversary of the Revolt of the Banlieues




In a Paris, under the state of emergency, the Maoists from different countries of Europe, with the support of the Maoists parties and organisations of the countries oppressed by imperialism and the attendance of other anti-imperialist forces, held a revolutionary meeting, challenging situation emerged in Paris following the reactionaries Daech attacks of 15th of November.

In a militant and combative atmosphere, the revolt of the proletarian and people’s youth in the banlieues in 2005 has been saluted, analyzed and re-launched in its historical significance.

It has been said loud and clear that the Maoists are against the imperialist wars of aggression in Middle East, against state of emergency in France and other imperialist countries and they are on the side of the youth and the people masses of the banlieues in Paris.

The participating forces stated they are ready to take up their responsibility to fight the imperialists and their wars and support all anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples and to assert the universal road of people's war.

The booklet of the meeting, with all speeches, will be published in the coming weeks in English French, Italian, so to allow all revolutionary, anti-imperialist, communist, Maoist forces to continue the discussion, along with their revolutionary practice.

Information  by the PCm Italy.

November 2015


Thursday, November 26, 2015

Israeli Colonel Caught with IS Pants Down by F William Engdahl


                                 For Truth Follow the Money not the words of ISIS

This was definitely not supposed to happen. It seems that an Israeli military man with the rank of colonel was “caught with IS pants down.” By that I mean he was captured amid a gaggle of so-called IS–or Islamic State or ISIS or DAESH depending on your preference–terrorists, by soldiers of the Iraqi army. Under interrogation by the Iraqi intelligence he apparently said a lot regarding the role of Netanyahu’s IDF in supporting IS.

In late October an Iranian news agency, quoting a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, reported the capture of an Israeli army colonel, named Yusi Oulen Shahak, reportedly related to the ISIS Golani Battalion operating in Iraq in the Salahuddin front. In a statement to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency a Commander of the Iraqi Army stated, “The security and popular forces have held captive an Israeli colonel.” He added that the IDF colonel “had participated in the Takfiri ISIL group’s terrorist operations.” He said the colonel was arrested together with a number of ISIL or IS terrorists, giving the details: “The Israeli colonel’s name is Yusi Oulen Shahak and is ranked colonel in Golani Brigade… with the security and military code of Re34356578765az231434.”

Why Israel?

Ever since the beginning of Russia’s very effective IS bombing of select targets in Syria on September 30, details of the very dirty role of not only Washington, but also NATO member Turkey under President Erdogan, Qatar and other states has come into the sunlight for the first time.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that at least a faction in the Obama Administration has played a very dirty behind-the-scenes role in supporting IS in order to advance the removal of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and pave the way for what inevitably would be a Libya-style chaos and destruction which would make the present Syrian refugee crisis in Europe a mere warmup by comparison.

The “pro-IS faction” in Washington includes the so-called neo-conservatives centered around disgraced former CIA head and executioner of the Iraqi “surge” General David Petraeus. It also includes US General John R. Allen, who since September 2014 had served as President Obama’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and, until she resigned in February 2013, it included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Significantly, General John Allen, an unceasing advocate of a US-led “No Fly Zone” inside Syria along the border to Turkey, something President Obama refused, was relieved of his post on 23 October, 2015. That was shortly after launch of the highly-effective Russian strikes on Syrian IS and Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front terrorist sites changed the entire situation in the geopolitical picture of Syria and the entire Middle East.

UN Reports cites Israel

That Netanyahu’s Likud and the Israeli military work closely with Washington’s neo-conservative war-hawks is well-established, as is the vehement opposition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Israel regards the Iranian-backed Shi’a Islamist militant group, Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, as arch foe. Hezbollah has been actively fighting alongside the Syrian Army against ISIS in Syria.

General Allen’s strategy of “bombings of ISIS” since he was placed in charge of the operation in September 2014, as Russia’s Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have repeatedly pointed out, far from destroying ISIS in Syria, had vastly expanded their territorial control of the country. Now it becomes clear that that was precisely the intent of Allen and the Washington war faction.

Since at least 2013 Israeli military have also openly bombed what they claim were Hezbollah targets inside Syria. Investigation revealed that in fact Israel was hitting Syrian military and Hezbollah targets who are valiantly fighting against ISIS and other terrorists. De facto thereby Israel was actually helping ISIS, like General John Allen’s year-long “anti-ISIS” bombings.

That a faction in the Pentagon has secretly worked behind-the-scenes to train, arm and finance what today is called ISIS or IS in Syria is now a matter of open record. In August 2012, a Pentagon document classified “Secret,” later declassified under pressure of the US NGO Judicial Watch, detailed precisely the emergence of what became the Islamic State or ISIS emerging from the Islamic State in Iraq, then an Al Qaeda affiliate.

The Pentagon document stated, “…there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition [to Assad-w.e.] want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” The supporting powers to the opposition in 2012 then included Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the USA and behind-the-scenes, Netanyahu’s Israel.

Precisely this creation of a “Salafist Principality in eastern Syria,” today’s territory of ISIL or IS, was the agenda of Petraeus, General Allen and others in Washington to destroy Assad. It’s what put the Obama Administration at loggerhead with Russia, China and Iran over the bizarre US demand Assad must first go before ISIS can be destroyed. Now the game is in the open for the world to see Washington’s duplicity in backing what the Russian’s accurately call “moderate terrorists” against a duly-elected Assad. That Israel is also in the midst of this rats’ nest of opposition terrorist forces in Syria was confirmed in a recent UN report.

What the report did not mention was why Israeli IDF military would have such a passionate interest in Syria, especially Syria’s Golan Heights.

Why Israel wants Assad Out

In December, 2014 the Jerusalem Post in Israel reported the findings of a largely ignored, and politically explosive report detailing UN sightings of Israeli military together with ISIS terrorist combatants. The UN peacekeeping force, UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), stationed since 1974 along the Golan Heights border between Syria and Israel, revealed that Israel had been working closely with Syrian opposition terrorists, including Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front and IS in the Golan Heights, and “kept close contact over the past 18 months.” The report was submitted to the UN Security Council. Mainstream media in the US and West buried the explosive findings.

The UN documents showed that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were maintaining regular contact with members of the so-called Islamic State since May of 2013. The IDF stated that this was only for medical care for civilians, but the deception was broken when the UNDOF observers identified direct contact between IDF forces and ISIS soldiers, including giving medical care to ISIS fighters. Observations even included the transfer of two crates from the IDF to ISIS forces, the contents of which have not been confirmed. Further the UN report identified what the Syrians label a “crossing point of forces between Israel and ISIS,” a point of concern UNDOF brought before the UN Security Council.

The UNDOF was created by a May, 1974 UN Security Council Resolution No. 350 in the wake of tensions from the October 1973 Yom Kippur War between Syria and Israel. It established a buffer zone between Israel and Syria’s Golan Heights according to the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement, to be governed and policed by the Syrian authorities. No military forces other than UNDOF are permitted within it. Today it has 1,200 observers.

Since 2013 and the escalation of Israeli attacks on Syria along the Golan Heights, claiming pursuit of “Hezbollah terrorists,” the UNDOF itself has been subject to massive attacks by ISIS or Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front terrorists in the Golan Heights for the first time since 1974, of kidnappings, of killings, of theft of UN weapons and ammunition, vehicles and other assets, and the looting and destruction of facilities. Someone obviously does not want UNDOF to remain policing the Golan Heights.

Israel and Golan Heights Oil

In his November 9 White House meeting with US President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu asked Washington to reconsider the fact that since the 1967 Six-Days’ War between Israel and the Arab countries, Israel has illegally occupied a significant part of the Golan Heights. In their meeting, Netanyahu, apparently without success, called on Obama to back formal Israeli annexation of the illegally-occupied Golan Heights, claiming that the absence of a functioning Syrian government “allows for different thinking” concerning the future status of the strategically important area.

Of course Netanyahu did not address in any honest way how Israeli IDF and other forces had been responsible for the absence of a functioning Syrian government by their support for ISIS and Al Nusra Front of Al Qaeda.

In 2013, when UNDOF began to document increasing contact between Israeli military and IS and Al Qaeda along the Golan Heights, a little-known Newark, New Jersey oil company, Genie Energy, with an Israeli daughter company, Afek Oil & Gas, began also moving into Golan Heights with permission of the Netanyahu government to explore for oil. That same year Israeli military engineers overhauled the forty-five mile border fence with Syria, replacing it with a steel barricade that included barbed wire, touch sensors, motion detectors, infrared cameras, and ground radar, putting it on par with the Wall Israel has constructed in the West Bank.

Interestingly enough, on October 8, Yuval Bartov, chief geologist from Genie Energy’s Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil & Gas, told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that his company had found a major oil reservoir on the Golan Heights: “We’ve found an oil stratum 350 meters thick in the southern Golan Heights. On average worldwide, strata are 20 to 30 meters thick, and this is 10 times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities.” As I noted in an earlier article, the International Advisory Board of Genie Energy includes such notorious names as Dick Cheney, former CIA head and infamous neo-con James Woolsey, Jacob Lord Rothschild and others.

Of course no reasonable person in their right mind would suggest there might be a link between Israeli military dealings with the ISIS and other anti-Assad terrorists in Syria, especially in the Golan Heights, and the oil find of Genie Energy in the same place, and with Netanyahu’s latest Golan Heights “rethink” appeal to Obama. That would smell too much like “conspiracy theory” and all reasonable people know conspiracies don’t exist, only coincidences. Or? In fact, to paraphrase the immortal words of Brad Pitt in the role of West Virginia First Lieutenant Aldo Raine in the final scene of Tarantino’s brilliant film, Inglorious Basterds, it seems that ‘Ol Netanyahu and his pecker-suckin pals in the IDF and Mossad just got caught with their hands in a very dirty cookie jar in Syria.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/25/israeli-colonel-caught-with-is-pants-down/

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Venezuela : US Financial Terrorism by Jesus Rojas



The failure of the state intervention formulas in the 70s, which had projected an extraordinary second economic boom in the postwar period, it unleashed an economic model defined as neo liberalism posed by the opening up of economies, the removal of state regulations and even the dismantling of the national state, the liberalization of markets, especially, the financial markets.

Economic globalization dominated by the funding process anticipated by Lenin in the characterization of imperialism in the early twentieth century, where financial capital is the spearhead of neo-liberal reforms.

From these policies arose unequivocally essential elements of capitalism; this system is incompatible with democracy.

The power of capital is imposed on political systems; national economies become hostages of speculative financial capital calculations; a true plutocracy that revolves around the transnational financial capital is activated.

What happened in Greece is the latest evidence of these claims. National interests are brutally trampled and the popular will expressed democratically. The vast majority of the Greek people rejected the economic policies promoted by the troika.

But that was not an obstacle to the imposition of destructive policies by European Union powers.
This clearly expresses the ethical content of capitalism, where the brutal deterioration of the living conditions of the population are subordinated to international financial calculations.

Economy war and dollar today

In the Venezuelan case it also manifests in a dramatic way the open contradictions between financial capital and the people's interests.

Our economy has been subjected to a relentless attack for more than two years directed among others, against the national currency. Exchange speculation has led to the so-called "black" dollar defined as dollar today to absolutely irrational levels.

From the logic of capitalism, the grotesque profit margins of this criminal business are absolutely justified. Moreover, any action is doomed to waste this opportunity to accumulate profit and power.
Exchange speculation is the biggest promoter of destabilization in the country. It is intended to subdue a people, stop the revolutionary transformations.

It is one of the most visible faces of economic war. With the "black" dollar inflation is accelerated tremendously and the massive shortage are strongly promoted through smuggling. Its disturbing capacity is dramatic.

Dollar today is part of a terrorist policy aimed at the destabilization of Venezuelan society and the Bolivarian revolution, behind which are powerful economic, media groups, and national and transnational politicians.

Exchange control versus exchange speculation

Serious exchange distortions of today, expressed in an unusual deviation of more than 90% between preferential exchange rate and the black market, they have opened again the debate about exchange rate policy.

Some propose the exchange unification under the liberation of change; others demand the exchange unification with maintaining control, others in turn, advocate for the exchange simplification. In most cases, a need to increase the price of the dollar is proposed to overcome the strong real appreciation of the exchange rate.

In general, the controls are applied to overcome conjunctural contingencies, to intervene on structural distortions or to fight both simultaneous situations.

In the particular case of exchange control, its justification was based on the need to stop capital flight occurring in the course of growing political contradictions that led to the coup against Commander Chavez and oil sabotage.

A parasitic, rentier economy and with a very high dependence on foreign trade like ours reinforced the need for such controls.

In the current conjuncture, exchange control are the answer to an economic and politics, internal and external adverse scenario, characterized by the collapse of oil prices, sharpening of political contradictions, significant macroeconomic imbalances, depletion of rentism.

It is impractical for economic recovery without such control.

Efficient and coherent policies

However, the need for exchange control also implies efficiency in its application. This must be adapted to the prevailing conditions.

If its design leads to lags of the exchange rate serious problems are generated.

On the other hand, if controls promote corruption, by its design and / or distortions, They become incompatible with an economic development plan.

Finally, controls should ensure access of business to foreign exchange, otherwise, they become an obstacle to the economy.

An essential rule of controls consists in its permanent review to ensure its efficiency.

Institutional strength is vital for it, especially in the midst of a parasitic mentality that has based the performance of the business sector and the corrupt bureaucracy of the old bourgeois state.

The economic war and its external effects expressed in the collapse of oil prices as a geopolitical weapon of imperialism against Russia, Iran and Venezuela,

It is the result of a deliberate strategy of the enemies of the revolution, which is enhanced as part of an ailing economy and it is further exacerbated by the presence of misguided economic policies.

Out of the variable exchange depends largely the solvency of the economic policy applied in the country, and therefore the relaunch of economic growth.

It is obvious that controls and punitive measures will be insufficient to it.

We would have to work on the efficiency and coherence of economic policies, as well as the increase in the production.



Erdogan’s son Bilal Erdoğan smuggler of illegal ISIS’s oil by William Engdahl


Bilal Erdoğan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.

More and more details are coming to light revealing that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, variously known as ISIS, IS or Daesh, is being fed and kept alive by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President and by his Turkish intelligence service, including MIT, the Turkish CIA.

Turkey, as a result of Erdogan’s pursuit of what some call a Neo-Ottoman Empire fantasies that stretch all the way to China, Syria and Iraq, threatens not only to destroy Turkey but much of the Middle East if he continues on his present path.

In October 2014 US Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard gathering that Erdogan’s regime was backing ISIS with “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons…” Biden later apologized clearly for tactical reasons to get Erdogan’s permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, but the dimensions of Erdogan’s backing for ISIS since revealed is far, far more than Biden hinted.

Erdogan’s involvement in ISIS goes much deeper. At a time when Washington, Saudi Arabia and even Qatar appear to have cut off their support for ISIS, they remaining amazingly durable. The reason appears to be the scale of the backing from Erdogan and his fellow neo-Ottoman Sunni Islam Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutolu.

Nice Family Business

The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdogan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible.

Bilal Erdogan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdogan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.

Gürsel Tekin vice-president of the Turkish Republican Peoples’ Party, CHP, declared in a recent Turkish media interview, “President Erdogan claims that according to international transportation conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdogan is up to his neck in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution.” Tekin adds that Bilal’s maritime company doing the oil trades for ISIS, BMZ Ltd, is “a family business and president Erdo?an’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks.”

In addition to son Bilal’s illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdogan seems hell-bent on toppling.

Turkish citizen Ramazan Baol, captured this month by Kurdish People’s Defence Units,YPG, as he attempted to join ISIS from Konya province, told his captors that said he was sent to ISIS by the ‘?smail A?a Sect,’ a strict Turkish Islam sect reported to be tied to Recep Erdogan. Baol said the sect recruits members and provides logistic support to the radical Islamist organization. He added that the Sect gives jihad training in neighborhoods of Konya and sends those trained here to join ISIS gangs in Syria.

According to French geopolitical analyst, Thierry Meyssan, Recep Erdogan “organised the pillage of Syria, dismantled all the factories in Aleppo, the economic capital, and stole the machine-tools. Similarly, he organised the theft of archeological treasures and set up an international market in Antioch…with the help of General Benoît Puga, Chief of Staff for the Elysée, he organised a false-flag operation intended to provoke the launching of a war by the Atlantic Alliance – the chemical bombing of la Ghoutta in Damascus, in August 2013. “

Meyssan claims that the Syria strategy of Erdogan was initially secretly developed in coordination with former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and Erdogan’s then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutolu, in 2011, after Juppe won a hesitant Erdogan to the idea of supporting the attack on traditional Turkish ally Syria in return for a promise of French support for Turkish membership in the EU. France later backed out, leaving Erdogan to continue the Syrian bloodbath largely on his own using ISIS.

Gen. John R. Allen, an opponent of Obama’s Iran peace strategy, now US diplomatic envoy coordinating the coalition against the Islamic State, exceeded his authorized role after meeting with Erdogan and “promised to create a « no-fly zone » ninety miles wide, over Syrian territory, along the whole border with Turkey, supposedly intended to help Syrian refugees fleeing from their government, but in reality to apply the « Juppé-Wright plan ». The Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutolu, revealed US support for the project on the TV channel A Haber by launching a bombing raid against the PKK.” Meyssan adds.

There are never winners in war and Erdogan’s war against Syria’s Assad demonstrates that in bold. Turkey and the world deserve better. Ahmet Davuto?lu’s famous “Zero Problems With Neighbors” foreign policy has been turned into massive problems with all neighbors due to the foolish ambitions of Erdogan and his gang.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/08/24/erdogan-s-dirty-dangerous-isis-games/

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

TURKEY SHOOTS DOWN RUSSIAN PLANE : BYZANTINE DUPLICITY FROM ERDOGAN - PHONEY WAR AGAINST ISIS - REAL NATO WAR AGAINST RUSSIA ?



Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to embroil us in a War with Russia through NATO - either Erdogan goes or we are in the slipstream to war with Russia. 

Giving British Prime Minister David Cameron authorisation to bomb Syria under these circumstances is only done by someone with a death wish - has the war and bombing will be turned towards Russia and Syria aided and abetted by Turkey and Saudi Arabia and not against ISIS which only Syria ,Russia and Iran and Kurds are seriously fighting - 

Expose the West's Phoney War against ISIS. 80% of Turkeys bombs landing on Kurds fighting ISIS just 20% or less on ISIS. 

If War is coming and we are already in the slipstream then 2017 will see global revolt and revolution.Imperialism breeds War - end the Imperialist system of Global Capitalism.

The European bourgeoisie, with England & France to the fore, are also maybe sleepwalking us into the worst possible outcome of nuclear war, in either restricted probing exchanges, or even all-out MAD.

AmeriKKKa would be to frit for former, but would be prepared to sacrifice allied pawns, such as UK, in swapping of targets with the hope of facing down and gaining eventual strategic advantage.over Russia. 

Cameron & Hollande represent a quisling class that should be scattered by revolution, before they march the working-class of Europe into incineration."Long is the way, and hard that out of hell leads. up to light."





Why Erdogan hates Russia

In June 2014, Ali Edibogluan, a member of parliament with Turkey's main opposition Republican People’s Party, said that ISIS had smuggled $800 million worth of oil into Turkey from Syria and Iraq, Al Monitor reported. He pointed to the Rumaila oil fields in northern Syria as well as those near Mosul, Iraq, saying that the group had laid pipes that allowed it to "transfer the oil to Turkey and parlay it into cash." Edibogluan added, "Turkey’s cooperation with thousands of men of such a mentality is extremely dangerous."

Russia has recently sought to destroy the infrastructure that allows ISIS to transport and sell oil. The Russian air force said last week it had destroyed about 500 fuel tankers, "which greatly reduced illegal oil export capabilities of the militants and, accordingly, their income from oil smuggling,” said Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, spokesman for Russia's General Staff, RT reported.

Oil generates about $40 million a month in revenue for ISIS, the U.S. Treasury Department has estimated, the New York Times reported in mid-November. Its ability to rake in funds by selling oil on illicit markets comes from taking advantage of a "long-standing and deeply rooted black market," said David Cohen, U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, as quoted in the Financial Times in October 2014.


SEE ALSO http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/turkish-intelligence-mit-islamic-state.html





Monday, November 23, 2015

USA: Why I am a Socialist by Helen Keller



For several months my name and socialism have appeared often together in the newspapers. A friend tells me that I have shared the front pages with baseball, Mr. Roosevelt and the New York police scandal. The association does not make me altogether happy but, on the whole,

I am glad that many people are interested in me and in the educational achievements of my teacher, Mrs. Macy (Anne Sullivan).

Even notoriety may be turned to beneficent uses, and I rejoice if the disposition of the newspapers to record my activities results in bringing more often into their columns the word Socialism. In the future I hope to write about socialism, and to justify in some measure the great amount of publicity which has been accorded to me and my opinions.

So far I have written little and said little about the subject. I have written a few letters, notably one to Comrade Fred Warren which was printed in the Appeal to Reason. I have talked to some reporters, on of whom, Mr. Ireland of the New York World, made a very flattering report and gave fully and fairly what I said. I have never been in Schenectady.

I have never met Mayor Lunn. I have never had a letter from him, but he has sent kind messages to me through Mr. Macy. Owing to Mrs. Macy's illness, whatever plans I had to join the workers in Schenectady have been abandoned
.
On such negative and relatively insignificant matters have been written many editorials in the capitalist press and in the Socialist press. The clippings fill a drawer. I have not read a quarter of them, and I doubt if I shall ever read them all.

If on such a small quantity of fact so much comment has followed, what will the newspapers do if I ever set to work in earnest to write and talk in behalf of socialism? For the present I should like to make a statement of my position and correct some false reports and answer some criticisms which seem to me unjust.

First — How did I become a Socialist? 

By reading.

The first book I read was Wells' New World for Old. I read it on Mrs. Macy's recommendation. She was attracted by its imaginative quality, and hoped that its electric style might stimulate and interest me. When she gave me the book, she was not a Socialist and she is not a Socialist now. Perhaps she will be one before Mr. Macy and I are done arguing with her.

My reading has been limited and slow. I take German bimonthly Socialist periodicals printed in braille for the blind. (Our German comrades are ahead of us in many respects.) I have also in German braille Kautsky's discussion of the Erfurt Program.

The other socialist literature that I have read has been spelled into my hand by a friend who comes three times a week to read to me whatever I choose to have read. The periodical which I have most often requested her lively fingers to communicate to my eager ones is the National Socialist.

She gives the titles of the articles and I tell her when to read on and when to omit. I have also had her read to me from the International Socialist Review articles the titles of which sounded promising. Manual spelling takes time. It is no easy and rapid thing to absorb through one's fingers a book of 50,000 words on economics. But it is a pleasure, and one which I shall enjoy repeatedly until I have made myself acquainted with all the classic socialist authors.

In the light of the foregoing I wish to comment on a piece about me which was printed in the Common Cause and reprinted in the Live Issue, two antisocialist publications. Here is a quotation from that piece:

"For twenty-five years Miss Keller's teacher and constant companion has been Mrs. John Macy, formerly of Wrentham, Mass. Both Mr. and Mrs. Macy are enthusiastic Marxist propagandists, and it is scarcely surprising that Miss Keller, depending upon this lifelong friend for her most intimate knowledge of life, should have imbibed such opinions."

Mr. Macy may be an enthusiastic Marxist propagandist, though I am sorry to say he has not shown much enthusiasm in propagating his Marxism through my fingers. Mrs. Macy is not a Marxist, nor a socialist. Therefore what the Common Cause says about her is not true.

The editor must have invented that, made it out of whole cloth, and if that is the way his mind works, it is no wonder that he is opposed to socialism. He has not sufficient sense of fact to be a socialist or anything else intellectually worthwhile.

Consider another quotation from the same article. The headline reads:

"SCHENECTADY REDS ARE ADVERTISING; USING HELEN KELLER, THE BLIND GIRL, TO RECEIVE PUBLICITY."

Then the article begins:

"It would be difficult to imagine anything more pathetic than the present exploitation of poor Helen Keller by the Socialists of Schenectady. For weeks the party's press agencies have heralded the fact that she is a Socialist, and is about to become a member of Schenectady's new Board of Public Welfare."

There's a chance for satirical comment on the phrase, "the exploitation of poor Helen Keller."

But I will refrain, simply saying that I do not like the hypocritical sympathy of such a paper as the Common Cause, but I am glad if it knows what the word "exploitation" means.

Let us come to the facts. When Mayor Lunn heard that I might go to Schenectady he proposed to the Board of Public Welfare that a place be kept on it for me.

Nothing was printed about this in The Citizen, Mayor Lunn's paper. Indeed, it was the intention of the board to say nothing about the matter until after I had moved to Schenectady.

But the reporters of the capitalist press got wind of the plan, and one day, during Mayor Lunn's absence from Schenectady, the Knickerbocker Press of Albany made the announcement.

It was telegraphed all over the country, and then began the real newspaper exploitation.

By the Socialist press? No, by the capitalist press. The Socialist papers printed the news, and some of them wrote editorials of welcome.

But The Citizen, Mayor Lunn's paper, preserved silence and did not mention my name during all the weeks when the reporters were telephoning and telegraphing and asking for interviews. It was the capitalist press that did the exploiting. Why?

Because ordinary newspapers care anything about socialism? No, of course not; they hate it. 

But because I, alas, am a subject for newspaper gossip. We got so tired of denying that I was in Schenectady that I began to dislike the reporter who first published the "news."

The Socialist papers, it is true, did make a good deal of me after the capitalist papers had "hearalded the fact that I am a Socialist." But all the reporters who came to see me were from ordinary commercial newspapers. No Socialist paper, neither

The Call nor the National Socialist, ever asked me for an article. The editor of The Citizen hinted to Mr. Macy that he would like one, but he was too fine and considerate to ask for it point-blank.

The New York Times did ask me for one. The editor of the Times wrote assuring me that his paper was a valuable medium for reaching the public and he wanted an article from me.

He also telegraphed asking me to send him an account of my plans and to outline my ideas of my duties as a member of the Board of Public Welfare of Schenectady. '

I am glad I did not comply with this request, for some days later the Times made me a social outcast beyond the range of its righteous sympathies. On September 21 there appeared in the Times an editorial called "The Comtemptible Red Flag." I quote two passages from it:

"The flag is free. But it is none the less destestable. It is the symbol of lawlessness and anarchy the world over, and as such is held in contempt by all right-minded persons."

"The bearer of a red flag may not be molested by the police until he commits some act which the red flag justifies. He deserves, however, always to be regarded with suspicion. By carrying the symbol of lawlessness he forfeits all right to respect and sympathy."

I am no worshiper of cloth of any color, but I love the red flag and what it symbolizes to me and other Socialists.

I have a red flag hanging in my study, and if I could I should gladly march with it past the office of the Times and let all the reporters and photographers make the most of the spectacle.

According to the inclusive condemnation of the Times I have forfeited all right to respect and sympathy, and I am to be regarded with suspicion.

Yet the editor of the Times wants me to write him an article! How can he trust me to write for him if I am a suspicious character? I hope you will enjoy as much as I do the bad ethics, bad logic, bad manners that a capitalist editor falls into when he tries to condemn the movement which is aimed at this plutocratic interests.

We are not entitled to sympathy, yet some of us can write articles that will help his paper to make money.

Probably our opinions have the same sort of value to him that he would find in the confession of a famous murderer.





We are not nice, but we are interesting.

I like newspapermen. I have known many, and two or three editors have been among my most intimate friends. Moreover, the newspapers have been of great assistance in the work which we have been trying to do for the blind. It costs them nothing to give their aid to work for the blind and to other superficial charities.

But socialism — ah, that is a different matter!

That goes to the root of all poverty and all charity.

When my letter to Comrade Fred Warren was published in the Appeal to Reason, a friend of mine who writes a special department for the Boston Transcript made an article about it and the editor-in-chief cut it out.

The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism, that Helen Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development." Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we had in New York in behalf of the blind.

At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them.

But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. Surely it is his turn to blush.

It may be that deafness and blindness incline one toward socialism. Marx was probably stone deaf and William Morris was blind. Morris painted his pictures by the sense of touch and designed wall paper by the sense of smell.

Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! What an ungallant bird it is! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.

The Eagle is willing to help us prevent misery provided, always provided, that we do not attack the industrial tyranny which supports it and stops its ears and clouds its vision.

The Eagle and I are at war. I hate the system which it represents, apologizes for and upholds. When it fights back, let it fight fair.

Let it attack my ideas and oppose the aims and arguments of Socialism.

It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that i cannot see or hear. I can read. I can read all the socialist books I have time for in English, German and French.

If the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle should read some of them, he might be a wiser man and make a better newspaper.

If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness.






Published as part of Red de Blogs Communistas