Banksy’s Mural Support for Zehra Doğan

On Thursday, 15 March 2018, the anonymous graffiti artist Banksy, in cooperation with another “graffiti artist [named] Borf“ unveiled a mural depicting Zehra Doğan behind bars on the Bowery in New York City. The anonymous artist even spoke to the New York Times in an attempt to draw public attention to the plight of the imprisoned Turkish artist. Banksy said the following: “I really feel for her. I’ve painted things much more worthy of a custodial sentence”, adding that Dogan had been “[s]entenced to nearly three years in jail for painting a single picture“.¹

Last year, the London-based wrtie and photograpger Perwana Nazif explained that the “Turkish-Kurdish painter and journalist Zehra Doğan has been sentenced to two years, nine months, and 22 days in prison for creating a painting which depicted the destruction caused by Turkish security forces in the Nusaybin district of Mardin province, a Kurdish region in Turkey . . . According to Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, the Mardin Second High Criminal Court in Turkey handed down the sentence because she drew Turkish flags on buildings destroyed by Turkish forces. However, according to Artforum, the court expressed that Doğan’s sharing of the image of her work, featuring current military operations, was the cause for her prison sentence“.²

Doğan herself tweeted “I was given two years and 10 months [of jail time] only because I painted Turkish flags on destroyed buildings. However, [the AKP-led Turkish government] caused this. I only painted it”.³ The tweet has since apparently been deleted. There had been a two-year cease-fire in place between Turkish security forces and the PKK, when the negative election outcome in July 2015 led the Prez Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP henchmen to renew hostilities in order for popular sentiment to become more amenable to a renewed AKP mandate . . . which was successfully delivered in a election re-run in November — Turkey’s so-called November Surprise. Since then, all-out war between the two parties has erupted anew, a war which has now also swept into Syria, where the AKP-led government is currently fighting the PKK-affiliated PYD with the help of its Jihadi terrorist warriors carrying the misleading moniker FSA or Free Syrian Army.

1Tom Powell, “Banksy unveils New York art mural as a protest against jailing of Turkish artist Zehra Dogan” Evening Standard (16 March 2018). https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/banksy-unveils-new-york-mural-in-protest-against-jailing-of-turkish-artist-zehra-dogan-a3791411.html.

2Perwana Nazif, “Turkish Artist Zehra Doğan Sentenced to Prison for Painting of Kurdish Town Attack” Artnet News (24 March 2017). https://news.artnet.com/art-world/painter-zehra-dogan-sentenced-to-jail-for-artwork-902015.

3Perwana Nazif, “Turkish Artist Zehra Doğan Sentenced to Prison for Painting of Kurdish Town Attack”.

The American Civil War according to the Drumpf

As voiced by the journalist Ishaan Tharoor on Twitter: “Trump’s right-wing populism is built on historical amnesia”.ⁱ Tharoor is obviously referring to the Drumpfian presentation of “alternative facts” regarding the American Civil War (1861-65) and the presidency of the genocidal Andrew Jackson (1829-37) . . . and, in response, Professor David Blight told Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy the following: “[s]o he really said this about Jackson and the Civil War? All I can say to you is that from day one I have believed that Donald Trump’s greatest threat to our society and to our democracy is not necessarily his authoritarianism, but his essential ignorance—of history, of policy, of political process, of the Constitution. Saying that if Jackson had been around we might not have had the Civil War is like saying that one strong, aggressive leader can shape, prevent, move history however he wishes. This is simply 5th grade understanding of history or worse. And this comes from the President of the United States! Under normal circumstances if a real estate tycoon weighed in on the nature of American history from such ignorance and twisted understanding we would simply ignore or laugh at him. But since this man lives in the historic White House and wields the constitutional powers of the presidency and the commander in chief we have to pay attention. Trump’s ‘learning’ of American history must have stopped even before the 5th grade. I wish I could say this is funny and not deeply disturbing. My profession should petition the President to take a one or two month leave of absence, VP Pence steps in for that interim, and Trump goes on a retreat in one of his resorts for forced re-education. It could be a new tradition called the presidential education leave. Or perhaps in New Deal tradition, an ‘ignorance relief’ period. This alone might gain the United States again some confidence and respect around the world” . . . and then, Professor Blight added, “[h]ope this helps. God help us”.ⁱⁱ

And the Drumpf being the Drumpf did what he does best, dictate another tweet to his assistant at 3:55 AM – 2 May 2017: “President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!”.ⁱⁱⁱ While, on the White House website the following appraisal of President Jackson can be found: “Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, seeking to act as the direct representative of the common man. More nearly than any of his predecessors, Andrew Jackson was elected by popular vote; as President he sought to act as the direct representative of the common man. Born in a backwoods settlement in the Carolinas in 1767, he received sporadic education. But in his late teens he read law for about two years, and he became an outstanding young lawyer in Tennessee. Fiercely jealous of his honor, he engaged in brawls, and in a duel killed a man who cast an unjustified slur on his wife Rachel”.^iv In other words, the Drumpf would probably like to present himself as a latter-day Jackson, winning the popular vote and representing the common man, though he would probably never engage in a duel to defend Melania’s honour.

Writing in Indian Country Today, Gale Courey Toensing matter-of-factly declares that a “man nicknamed ‘Indian killer’ and ‘Sharp Knife’ surely deserves the top spot on a list of worst U.S. Presidents. Andrew Jackson ‘was a forceful proponent of Indian removal,’ according to PBS. Others have a less genteel way of describing the seventh president of the United States”.^v In the next instance, Courey Toensing fleshes out her argument, detailing the catalogue of misdeeds committed by the seventh U.S. President: “Andrew Jackson was not only a genocidal maniac against the Indigenous Peoples of the southwest, he was also racist against African peoples and a scofflaw who ‘violated nearly every standard of justice,’ according to historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown. As a major general in 1818, Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida chasing fugitive slaves who had escaped with the intent of returning them to their ‘owners,’ and sparked the First Seminole War. During the conflict, Jackson captured two British men, Alexander George Arbuthnot and Robert C. Ambrister, who were living among the Seminoles. The Seminoles had resisted Jackson’s invasion of their land. One of the men had written about his support for the Seminoles’ land and treaty rights in letters found on a boat. Andrew Jackson used the ‘evidence’ to accuse the men of ‘inciting’ the Seminoles to ‘savage warfare’ against the U.S. He convened a ‘special court martial’ tribunal then had the men executed. ‘His actions were a study in flagrant disobedience, gross inequality and premeditated ruthlessness . . . he swept through Florida, crushed the Indians, executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and violated nearly every standard of justice,’ Wyatt-Brown wrote”.^vi

i https://twitter.com/ishaantharoor/status/859385847673761792.

ii Tim Murrphy, “Historian on Donald Trump’s Civil War Comments: ‘God Help Us’” Mother Jones (01 May 2017). http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/historian-donald-trumps-civil-war-comment-god-help-us.

iii https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/859209801175269376?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet.

iv “Andrew Jackson” White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/andrewjackson.

v Gale Courey Toensing, “Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot on List of Worst US Presidents” Indian Country Today (20 Feb 2017). https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/people/indian-killer-andrew-jackson-deserves-top-spot-on-list-of-worst-us-presidents/.

viGale Courey Toensing, “Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot”.

Libya: Five Years On

Five years ago, Libya’s one-time strongman Muammar Gaddafi was brutally murdered and mutilated by NATO and its Islamist allies on the ground.[1] Now, the writer and commentator John Wight argues that “Gaddafi’s crime in the eyes of the West was not that he was an authoritarian dictator – how could it be when their closest ally in the region is Saudi Arabia? His crime in their eyes, it was revealed in a tranche of classified Clinton emails, released by Wikileaks in January of [2016], was his intention of establishing a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and the dollar as an international reserve currency in Africa. In this regard the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and then US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, were key actors in pushing for NATO intervention. Libyan oil was also a factor”.[2]

On April Fools’ Day 2011, Sidney Blumenthal, former aide to President Bill Clinton, long-time confidante to Hillary Clinton, (as well as being a sometime journalist) e-mailed the following missive to Hillary Clinton, then-Secretary of State (21 January 2009 – 1 February 2013): “According to sensitive information available to . . . these individuals, Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March, 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (south west in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli. This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French.franc (CFA)”. And then adding this important note: “(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues: a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production, b.Increase French influence in North Africa, c. Improve his intemai political situation in France, d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world, e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa)”.[3]

Blumenthal’s electronic missive purports that the driving force behind Gaddafi’s fall from grace and his subsequent bloody death was none other than the diminutive French President of Hungarian descent Nicolas Sarkozy, serving in the Élysée Palace between 16 May 2007 until 15 May 2012. As put by Wight, the “classified emails prove beyond any doubt that what took place in Libya was a monstrous crime for which those responsible have yet to be held accountable. On the contrary, Sarkozy is currently in the process of preparing a political return as French president, while Hillary Clinton is favorite to win the race for the White House against Republican nominee Donald Trump”, continuing that “[o]f the two, it is Clinton who was filmed clapping her hands and laughing at the news of Muammar Gaddafi’s murder in 2011. It is Clinton who pressed for the military intervention that ended in Libya’s destruction. And it is Hillary Clinton who has the gall to present herself as a moral giant in comparison to her rival for the US presidency”.[4]

 

 

[1] “Whither Libya??? The Execution of Gadhafi, the NTC, and a New Prime Minister” The Erimtan Angle (02 Nov 2011). https://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/whither-libya-the-execution-of-gadhafi-the-ntc-and-a-new-prime-minister/

[2] John Wight, “Hillary Clinton and the Brutal Murder of Gaddafi” CounterPunch (21 Oct 2016). http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/21/hillary-clinton-and-the-brutal-murder-of-qaddafi/.

[3] “H: FRANCE’S CLIENT & Q’S GOLD. SID” ‘Hillary Clinton Email Archive’ WikiLeaks. https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/6528.

[4] John Wight, “Hillary Clinton and the Brutal Murder of Gaddafi”.

Bundestag Abstimmung über „Völkermord an Armeniern”

‘Der Bundestag wird heute über eine Resolution abstimmen, in der die Massenmorde von 1915 des Osmanischen Reichs an Armeniern als Völkermord eingestuft wird. Die Morde fanden im Ersten Weltkrieg statt, bei denen über eine Million Menschen getötet worden sein sollen. Die Türkei lehnt die Bezeichnung des Völkermordes jedoch strikt ab. Aus Protest gegen die Resolution hatten sich am Samstag und auch gestern in Berlin Hunderte Mitglieder pro-türkischer Organisationen versammelt. Bundeskanzlerin Merkel werden heute allerdings nicht bei der Abstimmung dabei sein. Sie spricht stattdessen auf einem Kongress über digitale Bildung. (2. Juni 2016)’.

 

Holocaust Denial: Ursula Haverbeck

‘In 2015, Ursula Haverbeck made history in a defiant interview in which she threw down the gauntlet to the biggest taboo of our times. Revisionism . . . on German TV! A seismic event. Published on May 14, 2015’.

Last November, Allan Hall wrote that a “German grandmother aged 87 has been sentenced to ten months in jail for denying the Holocaust and saying Auschwitz was ‘just a labour camp’. Ursula Haverbeck, who is a friend of Gudrun Burwitz – elderly daughter of Nazi S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler – was sentenced in a court in Hamburg for sedition over an interview she gave to a TV station denying that Jews were murdered in extermination camps. In the interview with the ARD network she claimed the death camp of Auschwitz in Nazi occupied Poland, where at least 1.1 million people were murdered, was ‘nothing more than a labour camp'”.[1]

[1] Allan Hall, “German grandmother, 87, is sentenced to ten months in jail for denying the Holocaust and saying Auschwitz was ‘just a labour camp'” The Daily Mail (November 2015). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317083/German-grandmother-87-sentenced-ten-months-jail-denying-Holocaust-saying-Auschwitz-just-labour-camp.html#ixzz3zDF3My4u .

Armenian Genocide: Survivors Recall Events 100 Years On

Diana Markosian: “I was never interested in pursuing work on the Armenian genocide. When I started this project, it was still just a vague historical narrative. I knew that, in 1915, the Ottomans initiated a policy of deportation and mass murder to destroy their Armenian population. And that, by the First World War’s end, more than a million people were eliminated from what is now modern-day Turkey. But I had no idea of the personal toll the genocide exacted on my own family, or the sense of connection I would slowly come to feel through making this piece. I am Armenian, but I was born in Moscow and raised in America. For most of my life, I struggled with my Armenian identity, partly because of the history one inherits. It is something I understood but never fully embraced. Then a year ago, I happened to be in Armenia when a foundation approached me, requesting help in finding the remaining genocide survivors. I pursued voter registrations online to see who was born before 1915, and then traveled cross-country to find them. That’s how I met Movses and Yepraksia — who lived past their hundredth year. When I met them, they shared with me memories of their early homes. Movses was born in the village of Kebusie in Musa Dagh Mountain not far from the Syrian border. Yepraksia lived in a small village near Kars on the Armenian border. They hadn’t seen their home since escaping a century ago. I wanted in some way reunite each of the survivors with their homeland. I decided to travel back Turkey to re-trace their last memories. When I told the survivors I would be visiting their native land, each one asked me to fulfill a wish. Movses, from Musa Dagh, drew a map of his village, and asked me to find his church and leave his portrait on the footsteps of what are now ruins. He hadn’t seen his home in 98 years. In his village, I found everything he had described to me: the sheep, the fruit he remembered eating, and the sea. I even found the ruins of what was once his church. Yepraksia, from a small village in Kars, asked me to help her find her older brother who she separated from after 1915. Once I returned to Armenia, I created billboard-sized images of the survivors’ homelands as a way of bridging the past and present. All these years later, upon delivering the image, the survivors grabbed on, as if by holding the image close they would be taken back to a place they called home many years ago. This is a story of home — everything they had, everything they lost. And what they have found again”. (Published on Dec 24, 2015)’.

Markosian says that “[b]efore this project I didn’t even feel comfortable identifying myself as Armenian, partly because of the history one inherits. But I started to find parallels between myself and [the survivors]—forced from our homeland and forced to give up some of our past. It intimately connected me with the people”.[1]

[1] Coburn Dukeheart, “100 Years Later, Visualizing a New Armenian Narrative” National Geographic (09 October 2015). http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/author/cdukehart/.

The Irish Holocaust???

‘Chris Fogarty was raised on farm in Ireland where he worked the land with his father, and later went on to reside in the US. Mr. Fogarty has been a regular Columnist for the past nineteen years in Irish American News and is a citizen-investigator of Chicago aldermanic crime. He is the author of Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it ‘Perfect’ and he is behind irishholocaust.org. Chris joins us to speak about the Irish Holocaust and the cover-up that is accomplished by the same British terrorism and bribery that perpetrated the genocide. He explains the dark time during 1845-1850 when Ireland starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia. Chris describes how the British completely took over 95% of Ireland’s territory, extracting all goods and wiping out at least half of the indigenous population. We’ll discuss the lie of Ireland’s “potato famine,” the official story used to explain the deaths of over 5.2 million people, which is propagated to this day – even by the Irish government, academia, and the Catholic Church. Chris gives details of his extensive research into the locations of British food removal regiments and over 170 mass graves across Ireland. He’ll explain the fear of persecution and intimidation that continues to infect Irish society in modern times. We end by considering Ireland’s long history of ethnic cleansing, the role of the government and Catholic hierarchy, and the notion that the IRA are terrorists (6 March 2015)’.