‘Is there a fog of war? After years of threat, will Israel attack Iran? And is Iran really a danger to Israel? What role will the US play in this? Is Netanyahu terrified of Obama? And how will the US-Israeli relations evolve? CrossTalking with Miko Peled and Gideon Levy (27 September 2012)’.
This year’s 67th United Nations General Assembly contained a number of “interesting” performances. On Tuesday, 25 September 2012 U.S. President Barrack Obama gave his speech.
And then it was Iran’s Ahmadinejad’s turn.
But this year’s biscuit was clearly taken by the world’s favourite crackpot, Bibi or the ever-warlike Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, 27 September.
Bibi’s warped view of the world is really turning into a liability for global peace and stability. In the previous century he was unable to convince Bill Clinton that Iran posed a nuclear threat,[1] but now in the 21st century, he seems more desperate and crazy than ever.
[1] “Netanyahu’s Obsession: Iran” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (25 January 2011). https://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/netanyahu%e2%80%99s-obsession-with-iran/.
David Camerons decision to brave one of Americas most-watched chat shows. left the Prime Minister red-faced as he struggled to answer David Letterman’s questions about British history (27 Sept 2021).
Over the past months I have occasionally spoken about the situation in Mali, and now it seems something is happening: ‘Six months after Tuareg and Islamist rebels seized control in northern Mali, the United Nations is still divided on its response to the crisis in the West African state. At a meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, the US and France called for a regional military intervention. Mali’s Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra said the West African troops agreed by regional bloc ECOWAS would assist its own army: “The government of Mali would like to see the immediate presence of this force to support the defence and security forces of Mali in carrying out their noble mission of recovering and maintaining territorial integrity and protecting people and property.” But the plan is unlikely to be adopted just yet, say commentators. Diplomats want a more detailed strategy. In July, the Security Council threw its support behind regional political efforts to solve the crisis. In March, a month-long military coup created a power vacuum that allowed rebels to capture large areas in the north of Mali. That rebellion has since been hijacked by Islamist militants. The military stepped down allowing the formation of an interim government (26 September 2012)’.
Armed groups in control of northern Mali are terrorising people and destroying their culture. Human rights advocates have called for the killings, torture and the destruction of religious sites to stop. So what is the government in Mali doing? Will there be an international military intervention? Guests: Sunny Ugoh, Jean-Marie Fardeau, Renaud Girard (27 Sept 2012).
The police protection provided for journalists proves that a physical threat is taken seriously. In this story, offended Muslims are thought to pose a potential danger to French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. It prizes freedom of expression to an extent many consider extreme. In its turn, Charlie attacks what it considers extreme, and always has. No subject is untouchable, certainly not religion, not even the Prophet Mohammed. Those at the paper don’t see it as inciting hatred, but as pushing thinking beyond conformism. The publishing director Charb (Stephane Charbonnier) said: “What? We can’t lampoon Mohammed in France? Yes we can. We can caricature everyone in France. I don’t hold it against a Muslim for not laughing at our drawings, but he’s not going to tell us what law we have to follow. I live under French law. I don’t live under the law of the Koran.” The team at Charlie Hebdo has a history of not backing down, with a mantra that says no one’s going to do their thinking for them. Charb said: “It’s plain to see that the sole subject that poses a problem is radical Islam. When we attack the Catholic extreme right, very strongly, no one talks about it in the papers. But we’re not allowed to laugh about Muslim fundamentalists. Well, there’s a new rule that will have to be written up, but we won’t respect it.” Charlie won’t be bullied. Last year someone burned the offices with a Molotov cocktail and its website was hacked as it was preparing an issue commenting on the Islamist electoral victory in Tunisia, an issue headed ‘Sharia Hebdo’. Even veterans of left politics in Europe have said the satirists are masochists, pushing as hard as they do. The paper started out called ‘Hara-Kiri’. It was shut down by the Interior Minister in 1970, a few days after a fire in a disco had claimed more than 140 lives. Then the father of the Fourth Republic, General de Gaulle passed away in his home, and it ran the headline: ‘Tragic dance in Colombey – one dead.’ It came back from the ban, borrowing the leader’s first name in its new masthead – or was that just a coincidence? As British parallels to this approach to the sacred we can perhaps cite Monty Python or Private Eye. Only lack of readers put Charlie Hebdo out of business for a decade. Resurrected in 1992, it put the boot into all faiths, the Jews as well, and the editors faced lawsuit after lawsuit. They weren’t gentle with politicians either. An early reader slammed them as ‘dumb and nasty’ (‘bête et méchant’). They made the label their motto. They say what many people might say behind closed doors, only they put it in print, and say damn the risk (26 Sept 2012).
First, the good news. Just below the surface, there’s an enormous political shift underway in America that’s going to sweep the far right reactionaries out of power – and put moderates and progressives back in control. The bad news is…all hell will likely break loose before this happens. Think about it – major political shifts in America have occured in reaction to major economic crises. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and Great Depression put an end to ten years of free-market, corporate Republican rule in the 1920’s – and gave way to the New Deal Revolution and a huge political shift to the left. Similarly – several decades later – the economic crisis caused by problems in the Middle East and the oil embargo in the late 1970’s gave way to the Reagan Revolution – and massive political shift to the right.
Here we are today – again in the midst of another economic crisis and subsequent political shift. The financial meltdown of 2007 and 2008 swung the pendulum back to the Left – with Barack Obama winning the presidency – and Democrats gaining big majorities in the House and Senate. It was 1932 all over again. Yes – the 2010 midterm happened – and Congress snapped back to the Right. But that was an anomaly. It was fueled by racism – it was made possible by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision – and as we see today looking at polls and the failure of the Mitt Romney campaign – we probably won’t continue to swing hard right in 2012. Instead, over the next few years – the United States will move to the Left in response to three decades of failed Reaganomics and so-called “free trade” policies that crashed our economy – and because the Right continues to endorse these same policies today. And lawmakers in Washington are aware of what’s happening (24 September 2012).
Is Thom Hartmann being too optimistic or maybe on to something??? We should know by early November . . .
Political analyst and “all-round good guy” Jeff Greenfield talk about his new book 43*: When Gore Beat Bush, available for just $1.99.
As counterfactual history and alternate realities go, this book seems like an ultimate warning against a vote for Mittens, the successor George W. Bush would like to call his own. The reviewer Barton Swaim opines that, given an ability to ignore “some of the author’s unstated assumptions, Mr. Greenfield’s book is easily worth a couple bucks. His best recurring gag is that public figures still say the sorts of things they’re known for saying, only in dramatically altered circumstances. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for instance, writes the words: “As my cabdriver told me, in an age when the world is flat, any report of discord in our wounded land will only inspire our enemies.” But any satirical edge is undermined by Mr. Greenfield’s rather too facile faith in Mr. Gore’s abilities. Here President Gore has the most prescient lines, none of the humorless angularity of the actual Al Gore, and makes all the “right” decisions, including heeding the counsel of Richard Clarke—who appears almost as heroic as he portrayed himself to be in his own book, “Against All Enemies”—by assassinating Osama bin Laden before the attacks. Surprisingly, though, the planes are still hijacked on Sept. 11, and by sheer bad luck United 93 even leaves on time and reaches its target. Blame President Gore, who had improved airline efficiency”.[1]
Here’s an excerpt:
“President Gore strode into the House chamber as the senators, representatives, cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, chiefs of staff, and a gallery of notables stood and cheered. It was February 27, 2001, and the new president would be making his first appearance at a joint session of Congress since presiding over the counting of Electoral College votes that had made him president seven weeks earlier. He had come here with a message, and a presentation, designed to put him squarely within the broad middle of American politics.
The president’s box was dotted with “Skutniks,” guests the president could point to as living representatives of the points he was making. (They were so named because in 1982 President Reagan had invited Lenny Skutnik, who had rescued one of the passengers of an airplane that had crashed in the Potomac River, to sit in the gallery during the State of the Union address.) Some had served the same purpose during Gore’s 2000 acceptance speech at the Democratic convention: Jacqueline Johnson, from St. Louis, burdened by the cost of prescription drugs, and Mildred Nystel, who left welfare for a job, aided by the Earned Income Tax Credit. Others were new faces: Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco executive who had blown the whistle on the industry’s efforts to hide the impact of cigarette smoking, and one more person, whose identity was not disclosed until the speech itself and who would shortly come to symbolize the Gore administration’s most singular, least celebrated achievement.
Most of Gore’s speech was a study in caution. The president proposed a half-trillion-dollar tax cut, directed at the business community and all but the wealthiest; another half-trillion from the impending surplus went to shoring up the Social Security and Medicare trust funds; four hundred billion more went to paying down the national debt. (This last triggered a dustup among Gore’s economic team, with chief economic advisor Paul Krugman warning, “If we wipe out the debt completely, we have no lines of credit; you guys need to go back and see what Alexander Hamilton had to say about that.”)
The president proposed a health-care policy that was distinctly small-bore, lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to sixty-two—God knows he could afford that, with trillions of dollars in surpluses incoming in the next decade—and if Ted Kennedy was caught by the cameras grumbling to Senator Chuck Schumer about “another damn Eisenhower Republican posing as a Democrat,” well, that was just fine with Gore’s political team.
And, just as he had promised members of the Congressional Rural Caucus, there was a $10 billion down payment to make broadband a national reality.
“My dad was the chief Senate sponsor of the Interstate Highway System,” Gore reminded the Congress, “and I intend to be the champion of the Interstate Information Superhighway. Maybe I didn’t invent the Internet, but I darn well intend to improve it.”
It was toward the end of his speech when Gore turned to a subject that had not been mentioned in the daylong briefings given to prominent journalists by White House staffers.
“Our eyes have been focused here at home,” he said soberly. “An understandable focus with the Cold War gone and the specter of nuclear war a fading memory. But we must never forget that there are forces around the globe that wish us ill and are prepared to kill as many as they can, with no regard for innocent life.
“Terrorism is the enemy of our generation, and we must prevail against it. America will remain a target, because we are uniquely present in the world, because we have taken a tougher stand against terrorism, and because we are the most open society on earth. But that very openness demands vigilance—the kind of vigilance demonstrated by a brave, determined customs inspector, Diana Dean, who stopped a man named Ahmed Ressam as he was on his way, in an auto loaded with explosives, to attack the Los Angeles airport on Millennium Eve. Diana,” Gore said, gesturing to the gallery, “we owe you and your colleagues a profound debt of gratitude.” And when the applause died down, he added, “I want to say to anyone, anywhere in the world, with malevolent intentions toward our country or any of our friends and allies: We will protect ourselves by finding you before you can turn your evil intentions into evil deeds. This is not a threat—it is a promise.”
The applause that greeted this statement was loud but compulsory, reflecting the belief of the audience that the president was offering up a platitude with all the heft of cotton candy. But in the packed House chamber, barely half a dozen knew that this was one promise President Gore fully intended to keep”.[2]
[1] Barton Swaim, “E-Reading: President Gore: A Look Back” The Wall Street Journal (14 September 2012). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444709004577649553834708574.html.
[2] “43* (Excerpt) by Jeff Greenfield” Byliner (September 2012). http://byliner.com/jeff-greenfield/stories/43-excerpt.
Writing a few days ago, Hugh Eakin posits that “late May of this year, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—Turkey’s powerful prime minister, a devout Muslim, and the self-styled leader of the new Middle East—announced that he would be erecting his own grand mosque above the Bosphorus. It will be more prominent than Suleiman’s [mosque in the old part of the city of Istanbul]. The chosen site—the Büyük Çamlıca Tepesi, or Big Çamlıca Hill, overlooking the city’s Asian shore—is 268 meters above sea level; it is easily the most conspicuous point of land in greater metropolitan Istanbul”.[1]
Building this big mosque would carry a lot of weight in Turkey. On a street-level, murmurs that Tayyip and his AKP government are moving Turkey down the slippery slope towards an Iranian state of affairs are always broodingly present and eerily upsetting to the average Turk, unencumbered by a strict observance of the Prophet’s rules and regulations and attached to the freedoms ushered in by Atatürk and his quasi-secularist establishment. In reality, Shia Iran appears far removed from the AKP’s pseudo-Ottoman designs for Turkey. Turkey’s secularist credentials have always been far from certain, in spite of erstwhile headscarf controversies and other distractions. The state’s firm hold on the nation’s religious institutions and on the population’s levels of piety has never been questioned or opposed.[2] Still, an outside observer like Eakin can easily state that “[t]his is not the first time that Turkey’s deeply secular state has seemed to move in a more religious direction. As far back as 1967, a close replica of another sixteenth-century Sinan mosque was built in Ankara; a more daring, modernist design by Vedat Dalokay was rejected. Turgut Özal, who was prime minister in the late 1980s and is credited with beginning the economic opening to the world that has matured under Erdoğan, was a devout Muslim who went on the Hajj while in office. And Erdoğan’s own AKP party is a direct heir to the since-banned Islamist party of Necmettin Erbakan,[3] who briefly served as Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister in the 1990s (leading to a military coup in 1997). But what makes the recent changes particularly dramatic is that the Turks themselves seem to be generally embracing them: headgear has become a point of pride for many Anatolian businesswomen, and the recent alcohol bans appear to have been imposed as much by local communities—by some far more than others—as by higher authorities. Indeed, Erdoğan, now in his third term of office, has a huge base of popular support. And while the AKP has not quite gained the supermajority in parliament the prime minister has sought, it has had sufficient dominance to transform significant parts of the Turkish political system”.[4]
In his search for suitable spots to erect visible markers of his tenure at the head of Turkey’s state ship, Tayyip Erdogan has conjured up more architectural projects in Istanbul: under ‘the name [of] “Canal Istanbul“, [for example, ] Turkey’s prime minister [has also] announced his [self-styled] crazy project [in Turkish, “Çılgın Proje”]. He plans to build a canal on the European side of Istanbul which will link the Black Sea with Marmara sea and will allow large tankers to pass. Canal Istanbul will be around 30 miles long, 25 metres deep and 150 metres wide. Erdogan said “Istanbul will become a city with two peninsulas and an island”. This will of course be a big change for Istanbul. Also the real estate market around the area will rise. Erdogan didn’t mention the exact coordinations of the canal but name Catalca was mentioned during the conversation. Main aim of the Istanbul Canal project will be to relieve congestion through the Bosphorus Strait and reduce chances of an environmental disaster as tankers carrying oil and gas from Russia and Central Asia pass through the waterway separating the Asian and European halves of Istanbul. The project is planned to be completed in 2023 when the 100th anniversary of Turkish Republic will be celebrated. They also plan to build a third airport for Istanbul which will have capacity for 60 million passengers annually’.[5] At the time, which was April 2011, the BBC reported that ‘Turkey will build a new waterway to bypass the heavily congested Bosphorus Strait, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced. He said the 150m-wide (492ft) “Canal Istanbul” would link the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara that opens to the Aegean Sea via the Dardanelles. Mr Erdogan said the canal would be about 45km-long (31 miles), describing it as “the greatest project of the century”. He did not disclose the exact location’.[6] But Tayyip’s Kanalistanbul promises may have been nothing but pre-election rhetorical fluff, and his search for a legacy marker now seems to have found its true focus in the Çamlıca Mosque Project.
Last July, an architect involved in the project, Hacı Mehmet Güner stated in the Turkish daily Milliyet that “We will build an even larger dome than our ancestors made”, adding that the proposed house of worship will be erected in the “classical style”, will possess six minarets (like the famed Sultan Ahmed Camii, the popular Blue Mosque), minarets that will be taller than those of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, whose tallest minarets are 344 feet.[7] In other words, Tayyip’s mosque will look like an Ottoman structure, while at the same time referring to the current centre of ‘Sunni Islam’, Saudi Arabia. Even though the Saudis actually regard all Muslims as apostates and unbelievers, only accepting their own brand of Wahhabi Islam as true to Allah’s precepts, their pious largesse is visible all across the Islamic, and the rest of the, world. On the website belonging to Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), one can read that ‘Turkish and Saudi foreign policy perspectives mutually support each other and create synergy. Mutual high level visits between two countries and the “High Level Strategic Dialogue Mechanism” which was established between Turkey and the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] in 2008 have become the driving forces for our activities towards the region. After the global economic crisis in 2009, Turkey-Saudi Arabia bilateral trade volume has been in recovery tendency. Trade volume between two countries reached 4.66 billion USD in 2010. The number of Turkish companies, mainly in contracting sector, which undertake huge projects in Saudi Arabia is increasing continuously. Similarly, there is a growing interest in Saudi business circles to Turkey. Saudi tourists visiting Turkey significantly increase every year since 2005. The recorded number of 84.000 Saudi tourists in 2010 is expected to rise considerably in 2011’.[8]
On 12 August 2010, the Global Islamic Finance Magazine reported that the ‘President [of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB)]’s visit to Turkey [at that time] . . . enhances scopes for the expansion of trade among the member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. During his visit, the IDB President Ahmad Mohamed Ali met with top Turkish officials in Ankara; first with President Abdullah Gül, then with the State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, State Minister Cevdet Yılmaz, Treasury Undersecretary İbrahim Çanakçı and TİKA President Musa Kulaklıkaya’.[9] This last visit appeared to have been extremely important. TİKA or the Türk İşbirliği ve Koordınasyon Ajansı is a Turkish government agency set up in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union to assist and encourage the development of the newly independent Turkic states in Central Asia. Since 1999 the agency has been linked to the office of the Prime Minister and since 2002 has been assisting in achieving Turkey’s newly articulated foreign policy goals,[10] which I termed pseudo-Ottoman some time ago.[11] Getting back to the just-quoted GIFM piece: ‘During the IDB President’s talks with TİKA President Musa Kulaklıkaya’, the IDB President Ali expressed his satisfaction with the mutual co-operation between the two administrations. He further outlined that the relations gained momentum with the Memorandum of Understanding signed between TIKA and the IDB in 2008, TIKA President Musa Kulaklikaya further stated that the development of existing co-operation would bring benefits to both sides’. [12] Saudi Arabia’s busy agenda in the field of global proselytizing is well-known, and now, it would transpire, it even coincides with Turkey’s willingness to solidify its soft-power prestige across the world. Writing in the self-professed rightwing online publication Canada Free Press, Joseph Klein declared last year that the “Saudi government uses billions of dollars in oil revenues to promote Wahhabism in America and across the globe. David D. Aufhauser, a former Treasury Department general counsel, told a Senate committee in June 2004 that estimates of Saudi government spending went “north of $75 billion.” The money financed thousands of mosques, schools and Islamic centers, the employment of thousands of propagandists and the printing of millions of religious teaching tracts”.[13] And, as reproduced by an anti-jihadist blog, ‘[a]ccording to a major investigation by Washington Post reporter David B. Ottaway published on August 19, 2004, the Saudi government’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Call and Guidance pays the salaries of 3,884 Wahhabi missionaries and preachers, who are six times as numerous as the 650 diplomats in Saudi Arabia’s 77 embassies’.[14] Turkey, for its part, is not shy of promoting Islam and mosque-building either. As reported by the Xinhua news agency: the head ‘of Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs Mehmet Görmez visited China in 2011 and signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs. The two countries agreed to boost bilateral cooperation in religion affairs such as Islamic education, Quran printing and student exchange programs’, in addition to constructing mosques for Chinese Muslims, or Chinese-speaking practitioners of Islam known as Hui.[15] And underlining this resolve to foster ties between an AKP-led Turkey and the People’s Republic of China, keen on pacifying its Chinese-speaking Muslims (or Hui), between 31 August and 7 September 2012, a “2012 China-Turkey Islamic Cultural Expo and Performances” was held at the Ali Emiri Culture Centre[16] in the Istanbul district of Fatih.[17]
Turkey and Saudi Arabia, cooperating to spread the Prophet’s word across the world. And , according to the above-quoted GIFM piece, the ‘ties between Islamic financial insitutions in Turkey [and Saudi Arabia are strengthened] and [these ties] can further help to diversify the growing sector of Islamic banking and finance which is set to soar to over $1.5 trillion US dollars by 2012’.[18]
[1] Hugh Eakin, “Turkey’s Towering Ambition” The New York Review of Books (17 September 2012). http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/17/turkey-towering-ambition/.
[2] “The Turkish Army: Guardian of Turkish Secularism???” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (09 August 2011). https://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/the-turkish-army-guardian-of-turkish-secularism/.
[3] “Turkey Loses its Islamist Figurehead: Erbakan has Died???” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (28 February 2011). https://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/turkey-loses-its-islamist-figurehead-erbakan-has-died/.
[4] Hugh Eakin, “Turkey’s Towering Ambition”.
[5] “Prime Minister Erdogan’s crazy project” Istanbul View (no date). http://www.istanbulview.com/erdogans-crazy-project/.
[6] “Turkey to build waterway to bypass Bosphorus Straits” BBC News (April 2011). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13207304.
[7] Hugh Eakin, “Turkey’s Towering Ambition”.
[8] “Turkey-Saudi Arabia Relations” Ministry of Foreign Affairs. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/turkey-saudi-arabia-relations.en.mfa.
[9] “The President of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia has made an official visit with delegates to discuss Islam” Global Islamic Finance Magazine (12 August 2010). http://islamic-finance.ru/blog/2010-08-12-102.
[10] “TİKA Tarihçesi” T.C. Başbakanlık TİKA. http://www.tika.gov.tr/tika-hakkinda/tarihce/1.
[11] Cfr. C. Erimtan, “A pseudo-Ottoman policy: Turkey’s new station in the world” Today’s Zaman (04 November 2010). http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?load=detay&link=226284.
[12] “The President of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) based in Jeddah”.
[13] Joseph A. Klein, “Libya and Counter-Terrorism At The United Nations” Canada Free Press (21 September 2011). http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/40549.
[14] “Saudi Arabia’s Funding of American Mosques” Defeat the Third Jihad (15 September 2012). http://dttj.blogspot.com/2010/08/saudi-arabias-funding-of-american.html.
[15] “China to launch Islamic cultural pageant in Turkey (2)” Xinhua (30 August 2012). http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/102774/7929173.html.
[16] “Ali Emiri Efendi Kultur Merkezi” Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ali-Emiri-Efendi-Kultur-Merkezi/119242934818254.
[17] “China to launch Islamic cultural pageant in Turkey” Xinhua (30 August 2012). http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90782/7929166.html.
[18] “The President of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) based in Jeddah”.
In Pakistan, violent rallies have left at least 17 people dead. Protesters were demonstrating over an anti-Islam video that was recently released online. Al Jazeera‘s Kamal Hyder reports from Islamabad (21 September 2012).
SITANBUL 
TalkingStickTV – Greg Palast – Billionaires & Ballot Bandits
Talk by investigative journalist Greg Palast author of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps given September 27, 2012 at Town Hall Seattle in Seattle, WA. (29 September 2012).
Category:
Americana, Current Affairs, Democracy, Obama, Political Commentary, Uncategorized