RUTHFULLY YOURS

Recently, the Turks complained about the January 31, 2017 Washington placement of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, on a terror watch blacklist. Ankara has supported Hamas substantially for years now, especially since the increasingly dictatorial Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) gained ascendency in the second decade of this century.

Increasingly, with the turmoil and chaos in adjacent Syria and Iraq, the Turks appear to have visions of at least partially recreating the borders of the former Ottoman Turkish Empire. Absent Washington and Moscow’s involvement, this might already have been a done deal by now, with the centuries old rivalry between the Ottomans and Iran’s Safavid and Qajar Shahs over the region at play. Of course, Russia’s involvement here is also nothing new—both in pre-Soviet and post-Soviet days. Moscow was non-discriminatory when expanding its own imperial borders via those of the other two players.

While the AKP claims that it’s not really “Islamist,” Erdogan & Co. certainly have an affinity for at least some militant, fundamentalist Islamist groups—including ISIS and Hamas. It’s no accident that the border has been fluid for ISIS fighters moving between Turkey and Syria.

Since I began by relaying Ankara’s support for a group dedicated to the slaughter of Jews and their sole, resurrected, minuscule nation (note: geographically, thirty-eight Israels fit into Turkey; Israel’s population is about 1/11 its size with about the same 20% mix of Arabs to Jews as Turkey’s 20-25% Kurds to Turks), from here onwards my concern will not be about such things as why or how modern Turkey transformed from Mustafa Kemal’s (“Ataturk”) post-World War I’s secular state to one closely aligned with religiously-motivated extremist groups. Instead, I will concentrate on a comparison between what Ankara faces regarding its own real or perceived threats and how Israel has handled what is, in reality, a far worse situation.

The overall objective of President Macron’s plan is to ensure that French law takes precedence over Islamic law for Muslims living in the country.

The plan, as currently conceived, is vague and short on details, but appears to involve three broad pillars: determining who will represent Muslims in France; delineating how Islam in France will be financed; and defining how imams in France will be trained.

“It is time to bring in a new generation. We have seen fifteen years of debate to defend the interests of foreign states.” — Hakim el-Karoui, a French-Tunisian expert on Islam who is advising Macron on the reforms.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a declared effort to “fight fundamentalism” and “preserve national cohesion,” has promised to “lay the groundwork for the entire reorganization of Islam in France.”

According to Macron, the plan, similar in ambition to Austria’s Islam Law, is aimed at seeking to “better integrate” Islam in France in order to “place it in a more peaceful relationship with the state.”

A key priority is to reduce outside interference by restricting foreign funding for mosques, imams and Muslim organizations in France. The plan’s overall objective is to ensure that French law takes precedence over Islamic law for Muslims living in the country.

In a February 11 interview with the Journal du Dimanche, Macron said that the plan, which is being coordinated by the Interior Ministry, will be announced within the next six months: “We are working on the structuring of Islam in France and also on how to explain it,” Macron said. “My goal is to rediscover what lies at the heart of secularism—the possibility of being able to believe as well as not to believe—in order to preserve national cohesion and the possibility of having free religious conscience.”

Since the failed coup in August 2016, the government says, it has purged more than 107,000 government employees for alleged links to the coup attempt. Worse, according to a Supreme Court justice, the Turkish government is investigating a total of 6.9 million citizens, or about 8.6% of all Turks.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned international companies drilling for oil and gas off Cyprus that these hydrocarbons are within Turkey’s continental shelf. Cavusoglu said that Turkey “is prepared to take all necessary measures” to protect its rights, and those of the Turkish Cypriots, in the eastern Mediterranean.

On January 26, several thousand Turkish Cypriots marched against what they say is Turkey’s unwanted influence. Protesters braved pounding rain to voice their opposition to Turkey’s agitation of “fascist and extremist” segments of their society.

Erdogan’s Turkey apparently has an ideological incompatibility with the word “peace.” This outright bullying can target any nation at any time. Optimists who think it might fade away will be proven wrong once again.

In official language, Turkey is in a state of emergency ever since a failed putsch, allegedly masterminded by a self-exiled cleric, killed nearly 250 people on the evening of July 15, 2016. Since then, the government says, it has purged more than 107,000 government employees for alleged links to the coup attempt. Worse, according to a Supreme Court justice, the Turkish government is investigating a total of 6.9 million citizens, or about 8.6% of all Turks.

Even “not-warmongering” can be associated with being a terrorist. More than 300 activists were arrested for their opposition to Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria. That number did not include the 11 doctors who are members of the Turkish Medical Association who were arrested for calling for a halt to the offensive. (They were later released but will stand trial). In addition, Turkey has asked Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to remove posts on the military offensive.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson began his show Monday evening by slamming the U.S. media’s unseemly crush on North Korean official Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of Kim Jong-un. The 30-year-old Jong is deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department and a member of the North Korean politburo.

Media outlets over the weekend proclaimed that she “stole the show” at the Olympics and won the diplomatic gold medal. The Washington Post dubbed her “the Ivanka Trump of North Korea.”

Carlson argued that progressives have had a long history of supporting the world’s most repressive regimes and invited a member of the Communist Party in America to help him prove his point.

Deirdre Griswold, editor of the newspaper for the Workers World Party, came to the show armed with anti-war talking points, which is what she pushed no matter what Tucker asked her.

Griswold began by telling Carlson that she’s been to both North and South Korea and wanted to let the Foxe News viewers know that neither country wants war with the United States.

“We’re in the process of moving towards a nuclear war,” she declared. “The Korean people know very much what war is like and they’re not for it!”

Tucker tried to get the avowed communist to tell him which Korea she preferred, North or South, because she’d been to both countries.

“One is obviously the world’s last Stalinist regime,” Tucker noted. “It’s pretty rigidly Marxist — that’s North Korea. South Korea is floridly capitalist. It’s a market-based economy, which, of course, you reject. Which country would you rather live in personally?” he quizzed her.

But Griswold didn’t want to “debate” that issue because she had “really important” anti-war talking points that she needed to keep talking about.

When Carlson argued that North Korea is a closed country, she retorted that North Koreans know a lot more than Americans think, and cited their alleged 100 percent literacy rate as evidence.

Tucker pointed out that they “can’t read anything but the propaganda,” but Griswold was too busy reciting her anti-war, anti-American talking points to respond. She argued that the North Koreans were not “prisoners” in their own country. They just want to get out from under the threat of war imposed on them by the United States.

CONTINUE AT SITE

The suicide note left by Fidel Castro’s eldest son has rocked the Cuban nation this week, with the most astonishing revelation being the claim that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was his half-brother and the son of the late Fidel Castro.

The handwritten note left by Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, 68, the eldest of Fidel Castro’s children, appears to confirm the longstanding rumor in Cuba that Fidel Castro fathered Justin Trudeau after a public tryst with Margaret Trudeau in 1970.

“Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning,” Cubadebate website reported.

The death of the high-profile government nuclear scientist, also known as “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, stunned the nation, however it is his “explosive” suicide note that has set tongues wagging in Havana.

Amid a wide-ranging barrage of complaints, the note suggests Fidelito was angry with his late father, the revolutionary Cuban dictator. Fidelito wrote that his father, Fidel Castro, was “always comparing me unfavorably with Justin” and “dismissing my achievements in comparison to his success in Canada.“

“But what was I to do? I am Cuban. My brother is Canadian. If he was born and raised in Cuba, he would have lived in our father’s shadow forever just like me.”

While Justin Trudeau is famously known as the son of Canada’s liberal former Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, comparison images of Pierre, Justin and Fidel suggest there may be something to the Cuban claims.

Strong physical resemblance aside, the Cuban rumors are also backed up by historical fact.

While Justin Trudeau’s birthplace of Ottawa, Canada may be a long way from Havana, his mother Margaret Trudeau visited Cuba nine months before Justin was born, and there are photographs of her socializing with Fidel Castro.

The evolving U.S.-Kurdish partnership has alarmed Turkey. Ankara fears that establishing a Kurdish-led entity on its southern borders would empower its restive Kurdish population, particularly PKK fighters.

Washington needs to ensure that its Kurdish partners on the ground are protected and not distracted from the main mission, which is defeating terror in Syria.

Turkey’s offensive against Syrian Kurds will serve only to aggravate the multi-layered conflict in Syria, making it even harder for international interlocutors to bring an end to the seven-year civil war and secure a much-needed political settlement for the country.

A Turkish assault against Kurdish forces in Syria, such as the ongoing one, was expected by everyone, including the U.S.

Now, three weeks into its controversial offensive against a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria, Turkey’s military is facing fierce resistance from the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in the city of Afrin.

Observing the daily operations since they began on January 20, it is noticeable that the Turkish military and its allied Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish air support, have made little progress in taking control of Kurdish-held territory — the main objective behind Ankara’s decision to launch the offensive in Syria.

So far, Turkey’s advances have not gone beyond seizing a number of villages along its border with Syria, according to local sources.

Since mid-2012, the Afrin region in northwestern Syria has been controlled by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). That occurred after the withdrawal of Syrian regime troops, which then began to focus on fighting rebel forces elsewhere in the country.

The irony, of course, is that so many people, have adopted a way of interpreting human rights and liberal values in a manner that often undermines them.

It is time for some home truths. Islam has been at war with the West for some 1,384 years, with very little respite. When Muslim Arab armies invaded Syria in 634, went on to destroy all but a rump of the Christian Byzantine empire (which it finally defeated when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453), took control of Spain, Portugal, Sicily and other lands on the north Mediterranean coast, it was the start of endless jihad wars.

Most importantly, we seem unable to understand that Islam is, above all else, a totalitarian project covering all aspects of human life from the spiritual to the material, from law to government to clothing to food to sex to taxation and more. This totalitarianism rejects democracy in the most basic way, as having come from mere humans rather than divinely, from Allah.

Unfortunately, concluding that modern terrorism “has nothing to do with Islam” or that “Islam is a religion of peace” visibly contradicts the historical record.

Much of the weakness we have identified in so many modern European states comes, ironically, from many of our strengths. We have much to be proud of. However imperfectly at times, we have replaced tyranny with democracy, guaranteed freedom of speech and the press, ensured rights for all citizens, provided legal and political foundations for the growing empowerment of women, struggled against racist and religious bigotry, brought homosexual men and women out of the closet, given protections to the environment and wildlife, extended healthcare provision to most people, abolished the death sentence in all European countries (and Israel), and instituted regulations to block and punish crimes such as people trafficking, slavery, and drug smuggling.

The best example of what this means is to be found in the state of Israel. It is precisely because Israel and a majority of Israelis have, from the beginning, combined Jewish ethical values with Western Enlightenment beliefs, that makes it stand out so sharply against all its neighbours. Human rights abuses in Iran, the Arab states, Turkey, and beyond guarantee that Israel, however much abused by international bodies and media, and however flawed, is, in fact, a bastion of democracy, human rights, equality under the law and the positive values that go with them.