The American Bear

Sunshine/Lollipops

And then there are the wild cards. Israel has announced that it intends to carry out further air strikes against Syrian territory. According to the (London) Sunday Times, Assad has given orders that any further attacks will be responded to by missile strikes on Tel Aviv. A second wild card is ‘chemical weapons,’ which was a focus of President Obama in his statements while visiting Turkey. As numerous analysts and Syrian military leaders have commented, it would be senseless for Syria to use chemical weapons while having control of the air and being able to bomb rebel positions. Thus it is clear that the only military purpose of using chemical weapons at this point would be to encourage US intervention. Who would have the motive for such a step? Hardly Syria.

Iran War Weekly | May 20, 2013

(via jayaprada)

(Source: prosveshcheniye, via randomactsofchaos)

In what critics are calling the most extreme act of censorship in decades, a Turkish state prosecutor imposed a gag upon all media coverage relating to the bombings on Sunday, a decision hailed by Erdogan. The gag follows the reports that Syrian opposition groups may have carried out the attacks. … The Turkish government has arrested nine individuals in connection with the bombings, claiming they are members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C). The government has yet to produce evidence substantiating its claims that these individuals are Syrian operatives or that they actually carried out the attacks. Reports suggest Syrian opposition involvement in Turkish bombings

› Kurdish rebel group begins withdrawal from Turkey | Al Akhbar

Kurdish rebels began withdrawing from Turkey into their stronghold in northern Iraq on Wednesday, a major step towards ending a decades-long conflict that has left tens of thousands of people dead.

The pullout is the first visible sign that months of fragile talks between the state and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) could succeed in ending 29 years of guerrilla war.

“We know that they have started moving,” Selahattin Demirtas, a pro-Kurdish lawmaker actively involved in the process, told AFP.

About 2,000 rebel fighters are expected to begin leaving Turkey on foot, traveling through the mountainous border zone to reach their safe havens in the inhospitable Qandil mountains in northern Iraq.

There they will join another 5,000 fellow militants at the command base which has been used as a springboard for attacks against Turkish security forces.

The withdrawals are expected to take three to four months, with several media outlets reporting that the rebels have been on the move for weeks and that May 8 is a “symbolic” date of departure.

On Tuesday, the rebels said they would not renege on their promise to withdraw following an order from their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Additional news (and signs of future tensions in oil-rich northern Iraq):

Baghdad opposes PKK armed groups in Iraq

Suicide bombers target Kurdish party headquarters in Iraq

› Turkish survivors of flotilla massacre reject Israel's apology | Al Akhbar

Turkish survivors of the 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship said they would not forgive the attack in which nine of their comrades were gunned down despite a recent apology by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The victims on Monday said they refuse to drop lawsuits against the soldiers involved in the killings, even if Israel pays compensation.

“We will continue with the criminal lawsuits we have opened against the Israeli soldiers and commanders, and we won’t accept dropping this suit if compensation is paid,” said Musa Cogas, who was shot in the shoulder by Israeli commandos on board the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla headed towards Gaza to bring over aid.

“It’s not possible to heal my wounds with just an apology,” added Cogas, who also witnessed his friend of 30 years, Cengiz Songur, be killed. “Unless these soldiers are punished and the [Israeli blockade of Gaza] is lifted…we won’t accept compensation.” [++]

It has now become clear that, in the next few days, the Syrian regime will be facing more political and military pressures on the Arab, regional, and international levels, as a result of the Turkish-Israeli-US alliance and its Qatari and Saudi extensions. Erdogan will attempt to include Syrian Kurds in the mix, based on his deal with Öcalan, whose terms of agreement are still unknown. Turkey and Israel Reconcile Amid PKK Peace Promise

cjchivers:

The Airlift.

On the NYT, a sketch of the C.I.A.-assisted aerial pipeline moving arms and other military goods to antigovernment fighters in Syria, via Jordan and Turkey.

More than 160 cargo flights have been made to Jordan and Turkey by Saudi, Qatari and Jordanian planes; most of the flights have occurred since late last year. The most recent flight was last night. In a few minutes we’ll post more data on one of the many legs.  

ABOUT THE ART

Photo of Ilyushin-76MF bearing logo of Jordanian International Air Cargo  taken by a plane spotter in Zagreb, Croatia on Dec. 23, 2012. Bottom, overview of the flights, Sergio Pecanha, NYT.

› The Top other thing Netanyahu Needs to Apologize For: The Gaza Blockade | Informed Comment

[…] What is astonishing in all this is that no one is talking about the reason for which the Mavi Marmara was heading to Gaza and for which the Israeli commandos boarded it and shot it up.

It is that Israel has imposed an illegal blockade on the civilian population of Gaza. The blockade forbids the export of most of what the Palestinians there produce, depriving them of export markets. There are only 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, many of them thrown into desperate poverty by Israeli policy, so they aren’t much of an internal market. The Israelis have a cover story that they are strangling Gaza out of security concerns, but how could exporting goods from Gaza pose a threat to Israeli security? One Israeli official admitted the truth years ago; the Israelis have put the Palestinians ‘on a diet,’ and most creepily actually tried to figure what was the least amount of food they could let in without producing widespread starvation. This policy can only be called fascist and it recalls the worst kind of medical experiments on human beings and social engineering of the mass political movements of the 1930s.

Since Turkey (rightly and courageously) rejects the Israeli blockade on Gaza civilians, its actual diplomatic relations with Israel are likely to continue to be roiled. The Israelis maintain that blockades are a recognized tool of war in international law, but in fact Gaza is not an independent country with which Israel is at war! Gaza is Occupied by Israel, and the 1949 Geneva convention on the treatment of civilians in occupied territories strictly forbids such punitive measures. Gaza has no functioning seaport or airport because the Israelis disallow the former and bombed the latter into smithereens.

I wrote last fall:

“The food blockade had real effects. About ten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under 5 have had their growth stunted by malnutrition.

A recent report [pdf] by Save the Children and Medical Aid for Palestinians found that, in addition, anemia is widespread, affecting over two-thirds of infants, 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, and over a third of pregnant mothers.

I mean, don’t those figures make you want to do something for those mothers and children? Wouldn’t they melt anyone’s heart?

Although, under international pressure, the Israeli government eased its blockade slightly in 2010, and foodstuffs are no longer interdicted, it still limits imports into Gaza, and its wide-ranging ban on exports has thrown Palestinians into unemployment at Depression levels, imperiling their ability to afford food even when it is available.

A UN Report out last month predicts that if Israel does not change its policies toward Gaza, the strip will be uninhabitable by 2020, when the population will likely be 2.1 million (think Houston). The deterioration of the water, and the sharp downward mobility of the Palestinians, are only some of the problems the territory will face.”

Israel must end this unconscionable blockade of Palestinian civilians (half of whom are children) immediately. If Obama thinks Israeli-Turkish relations can be healthy without that step, he has another thing coming.

› Does Obama really want a deal with Iran? | Pepe Escobar

Almaty, Kazakhstan, is in the eye of the volcano next Tuesday, when the P5+1 - the five permanent UN Security Council members, US, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany - meet again with an Iranian delegation over Iran’s nuclear programme.

The record shows that all 16 US intelligence agencies know Tehran is not working on a nuclear weapon. [Not that the intelligence matters, Iran is acting within its rights as a signatory to the NPT - TAB] In a real negotiation, there would be a credible US offer on the table. There is none. This suggests what Washington really wants is to maintain - and turbo-charge - its harsh sanctions package.

Let’s review the mechanism of this “negotiation”. Only a couple of weeks ago, on February 6, a new provision of US sanctions turned the screw on what has been known so far as the “gold-for-gas” trade.

Ankara has been paying Tehran in Turkish lira for its imported gas; Iran then used the money - held in Turkish Halkbank - to buy gold. Now the new sanctions strictly impose what Iran is allowed to buy with its Turkish lira; only food, medicine and industrial products.

Right on cue, Western corporate media again gloated how Iran is “frozen out of the global banking system”. Yet there’s absolutely no guarantee these latest sanctions will work.

Gold will still be part of the picture. A Turkish bank may be threatened with exile from the Western-controlled financial system. But Russian - and Chinese - banks will cautiously find a way to circumvent this, and fill the void. As for Iran, it has decades-old experience of being sanctioned to death - and adapting to it.

Turkey will still need to import natural gas from Iran - at 40 percent, its number one supplier. The other major supplier is Russia; for all of Prime Minister Erdogan’s erratic behaviour, Ankara would never commit the strategic suicide of depending on only one energy source.

So the only loser in this scenario will be Turkey. Why? Because Washington says so.

Now look at Washington’s offer to Tehran; we suspend the gas-for-gold sanctions if you completely shut down the underground Fordow uranium enrichment plant. Not by accident, Fordow would be the most difficult to destroy among Iran’s installations in the event of that perennial “all options are on the table” - a US/Israeli attack.

Right on cue, on Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry, via spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, went straight to the point; “Lately they have said ‘Shut down Fordow, stop (uranium) enrichment, we will allow gold transactions’… They want to take away the rights of a nation in exchange for allowing trade in gold.”

Thus Tehran has duly noted that Washington is not offering to lift UN sanctions; nor lifting unilateral US and EU sanctions; nor ending what amounts to economic war against Tehran - one of the key themes I detailed in this interview by young Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari.

No “gas-for-gold” for Iran is, for all practical purposes, an attempt to revive the ghastly “oil-for-food” in place in Iraq up to the 2003 US invasion/occupation.

And yet, even under a de facto Western trade blockade, the leadership in Tehran will still be plugged into Asian-wide markets - with the added incentive, from the point of view of vast swathes of the developing world, of moving deeper along the path of ditching the petrodollar. [READ]

The People’s Record Daily News Update

thepeoplesrecord:

Here’s a collection of news stories for February 9, 2013 that you may not otherwise have a chance to see/learn about.

Residents of the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh say more than 100 people have demonstrated to call for the release of people detained without charge.

Dozens of security vehicles blocked the intersections of two streets Saturday where the demonstrations were taking place. North of Riyadh in the city of Buraydah, around 30 people — mostly women related to the prisoners — held a similar rally.

In past years, a small number of Saudis have demonstrated in Riyadh to demand the release of thousands of people detained without charge or trial on suspicion of involvement in militant activity. Some have been held for up to 15 years.

Turkish officers are resigning en masse to avoid arrest and sentencing for conspiracy against the government. The cabinet of PM Erdogan is winning the decade-long battle with the country’s once almighty generals.

Mass detentions of both serving and retired officers have been taking place in Turkey over the last decade. The country’s media is closely following a number of trials against top brass accused of plotting against the ruling government. Over at least the past half a century, the Turkish armed forces have been notorious for regular interference in domestic politics, organizing several coups to displace governments and generally having great influence on the political landscape.

In late January 2013 the exodus of Turkish officers from the army was given a new push. Turkey’s number-two naval commander Admiral Nusret Guner resigned, allegedly over the detention of hundreds of his colleagues. His premature voluntary retirement sparked yet another wave of resignations.

In the United States, a Los Angeles police officer who is under investigation for threatening women with jail time if they refused to have sex with him is now being sued by a man he and another officer beat nearly to death after trying to extort money from him last May.

Mulligan “suffered a broken shoulder blade and facial fractures requiring several surgeries at the hands of police officers after they stopped him in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood and forced him to check into a local motel and stay there against his will,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

In Russia, a Moscow district court ordered Sergei Udaltsov, a prominent opposition leader, to be placed under house arrest on Saturday, in one of the most aggressive legal measures to date against a leader of the anti-Kremlin protests that began more than a year ago.

Mr. Udaltsov, the leader of the radical socialist Left Front movement, faces a charge of conspiracy to incite mass disorder, under a statute that can bring a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. According to Saturday’s ruling, he may not leave his house, use the Internet, receive letters or communicate with anyone outside his family and legal team until April 6, the current date for the end of the investigation of his case.

The ruling seemed to signal a new stage in the government’s effort to bring criminal cases against well-known critics of President Vladimir V. Putin.

In Palestine and the occupied territories, Israel’s army forced Palestinian activists to evacuate a West Bank encampment they had set up in protest against illegal Israeli settlement construction and declared the site a “closed military zone”.

Soldiers on Saturday destroyed tents that were being erected in two different areas near the southern West Bank town of Yatta and forced activists to leave, the Palestinian witness said.

At the first site no arrests were made, but soldiers used a cannon that shoots what is commonly referred to as “skunk” water because of its foul smell to disperse activists.

Six people were arrested at the second site, including two photographers.

WARNING: CISPA IS BACK!!!

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection act (CISPA) will be reintroduced before the US House next week following a spate of cyber espionage and hacking attacks. Civil liberties advocates have criticized the bill for violating privacy laws.

The House Intelligence Committee’s Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and ranking member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) will attempt to breathe new life into CISPA on Wednesday.

The bill will be identical to the version of CISPA that passed the House last spring, but was defeated on the Senate floor in August mainly because the upper house was hammering out its own cyber security bill.

(via zeram-deactivated20130410)