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FTR #737 Taqqiya Sunrise, Part II: Turkish Taffy (More on the Rolling Coups in the Middle East)

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of the upris­ings in the Mid­dle East and relat­ed, domes­tic polit­i­cal devel­op­ments, the broad­cast syn­op­sizes major points of this com­plex, ongo­ing series of events.

The title refers to the can­dy called Turk­ish Taffy. A sug­ared con­fec­tion, it might be said to resem­ble the delib­er­ate­ly-sweet­ened ver­sion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-affil­i­at­ed Turk­ish AK Par­ty.

The lat­ter’s much-bal­ly­hooed “mod­er­a­tion” is said to be the pro­ject­ed polit­i­cal stance of the new­ly resus­ci­tat­ed Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, as well as the rea­son why we should not fear that orga­ni­za­tion’s ascent.

In fact, the polit­i­cal under­pin­nings of the AK Par­ty are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with a fas­cist milieu cement­ing the Islam­ic fas­cists of the Broth­er­hood with Euro-fas­cists such as Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Major ele­ments of the analy­sis in this com­plex series include:

  • Wik­iLeaks appears to have played a role in the events, with a pur­port­ed “leaked” State Depart­ment memo hav­ing helped spur the upris­ing in Tunisia which, in turn, helped to gal­va­nize events in Egypt. Far from being the “pro­gres­sive,” “whis­tle-blow­ing” enti­ty it pur­ports to be, Wik­iLeaks is a far-right, Nazi-influ­enced pro­pa­gan­da and data min­ing oper­a­tion.
  • Karl Rove’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Swe­den may well have much to do with the “leak­ing” of State Depart­ment cables from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion that are undoubt­ed­ly mak­ing the suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of state­craft even more dif­fi­cult under the cir­cum­stances.
  • Far from being a spon­ta­neous event, the Mid­dle East upris­ings appear to have stemmed, in part at least, from a covert oper­a­tion begun under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and con­tin­ued under Oba­ma’s tenure. (Oba­ma may well have been set up to take the fall for neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the event. It is unclear just how “on top of it” his admin­is­tra­tion is. In this regard, the event is very much like the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion, begun under Eisen­how­er’s admin­is­tra­tion and con­tin­ued under JFK.)
  • The oper­a­tion may well be intend­ed to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, paving the way for the ascent of the GOP in the Unit­ed States. In this respect, it is very much like what has come to be known as the Octo­ber Sur­prise.
  • Cour­tesy of Wik­iLeaks, the oper­a­tion’s exis­tence was “blown”–con­tacts between U.S. Embassy per­son­nel in Cairo and lead­ers of the April 6 move­ment dur­ing the last months of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion came to light cour­tesy of more alleged­ly “leaked” State Depart­ment mem­os made pub­lic by Wik­Leaks. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the U.S. embassy in Cairo had been in con­tact with lead­ers of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.
  • Loom­ing large in the unfold­ing sce­nario are the the­o­ries of non-vio­lent the­o­reti­cian Gene Sharp, who held posi­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the “lib­er­al” ele­ment of the U.S. intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus.
  • Sharp’s activ­i­ties have been under­writ­ten by junk bond king Michael Milken’s for­mer right-hand man Peter Ack­er­man, who has served as an advi­sor to the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace, an agency of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.
  • The Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace’s Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive–charged by crit­ics with legit­imiz­ing jihadists–may well have been the ini­ti­at­ing ele­ment in these devel­op­ments.
  • High tech firms with links to the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment appear to have facil­i­tat­ed the Pig­gy-Back Coup.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive has endeared it to lais­sez-faire the­o­reti­cians around the world. Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo, at which Broth­er­hood affil­i­at­ed the­o­reti­cians hold forth, is an epi­cen­ter of the eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy of Ibn Khal­dun, the Ikhwan’s eco­nom­ic god­fa­ther.
  • Despite assur­ances from many “expert” sources, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood seems poised to ben­e­fit the most from the unfold­ing events in the Mid­dle East.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­trolled Al Jazeera net­work has also had much to do with the upris­ings.
  • The youth­ful ide­al­ists of the Anonymous/Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty milieu appear to have been cyn­i­cal­ly deceived and manip­u­lat­ed into sup­port­ing an oper­a­tion that fig­ures to empow­er some tru­ly dark forces. Those dark forces are fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to the Utopi­an val­ues dear to the Anonymous/Pirate Bay folks.
  • Those same reas­sur­ing voic­es have told us that the Broth­er­hood aspires to a polit­i­cal agen­da to the “mod­er­ate” agen­da of the Turk­ish AK par­ty. That par­ty is close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The “mod­er­a­tion” of the AK Par­ty may be weighed in the dis­cus­sion below.
  • Pre­cip­i­tat­ing the ascent of the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Mid­dle East may well be an attempt at using the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of the Earth Island as a proxy force against Rus­sia and Chi­na. The goal, ulti­mate­ly, is to peel away strate­gic, resource-rich areas such, as the petro­le­um-rich areas of the Cau­ca­sus and Xin­jiang province.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The PORA move­men­t’s reliance on Sharp’s the­o­ries to aid Mr. Yuschenko in  the Ukraine; PORA’s sub­se­quent dis­il­lu­sion­ment with  Yuschenko, whose regime appears to have been lit­tle more than a cat’s paw for the Ukrain­ian fas­cists of the OUN/B; The New York Times’ pre­sen­ta­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as “mod­er­ate;” Hos­ni Mubarak’s alleged treat­ment for can­cer; review of the GOP’s links to the ter­ror-fund­ing appa­ra­tus bust­ed by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/30/2002; review of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s links with Grover Norquest, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and Karl Rove; the Turk­ish AK Par­ty’s links with Achmed Huber and the milieu of the Bank al-Taqwa.

1. Note that the Turk­ish AK Par­ty is being seen as a role mod­el for “mod­er­ate” Islamist par­ties poised to assume a por­tion of pow­er in Egypt and else­where through­out the Mid­dle East. We begin by look­ing at a Ger­man Islamist group affil­i­at­ed with the Refah Par­ty (the Turk­ish branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood). The pro­gram high­lights con­nec­tions between that par­ty and the AK par­ty cur­rent­ly gov­ern­ing Turkey.

“Mil­li Gorus, Germany’s largest Islam­ic asso­ci­a­tion, recent­ly gained the offi­cial sup­port of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, despite being watched by Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vices due to alleged extrem­ist lean­ings. On April 19, Turkey’s reli­gious-con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment ordered its embassies to offer the Islamis­che Gemein­schaft Mil­li Gorus (IGMG) their sup­port. The group, formed in 1985 in Cologne to sup­port Turk­ish nation­al­ism and oppose the sep­a­ra­tion of state and reli­gion, has long been crit­i­cized by Ger­man offi­cials as being anti-Semit­ic and against lib­er­al West­ern val­ues.”

(“Turkey Offers Sup­port for Con­tro­ver­sial Islam­ic Group”; Deutsche Welle; 4/23/2003; p. 1.)

2. More on the rela­tion­ship between Mil­li Gorus and the “mod­er­ate” AK par­ty.

“Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul on Sat­ur­day refused to dis­cuss his spe­cif­ic direc­tions to diplo­mats regard­ing Mil­li Gorus, say­ing only the gov­ern­ment ‘has for some time tried to strength­en the ties between our coun­try and our cit­i­zens over­seas.’ The deci­sion comes only two weeks after an agree­ment between Ger­many and Turkey on com­bat­ing orga­nized crime incensed many mem­bers of Turkey’s rul­ing AK par­ty because it includ­ed Mil­li Gorus with groups like the Kur­dish ter­ror­ist out­fit PKK. Since many Ak mem­bers have ties to Islam­ic reli­gious groups, Gul was com­pelled to say he did not con­sid­er Mil­li Gorus a ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion.”

(Idem.)

3. The AK par­ty appears to be lit­tle more than a “mod­er­ate” rework­ing of the Refah par­ty, which is lit­tle more than a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood front orga­ni­za­tion. Erbakan of the Refah was the men­tor of Erdo­gan, who pre­sides over the “mod­er­ate” AK par­ty.

“Some observers say the attempt to reform its pub­lic image could be at least part­ly linked to the rise of Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan and his AK par­ty. Com­ing to pow­er in a land­slide vic­to­ry last year, Erdo­gan styles his par­ty as a mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive group based on Mus­lim val­ues. He has dis­tanced him­self from for­mer men­tor Necmet­tin Erbakan, who found­ed the Islam­ic-influ­enced Wel­fare Par­ty. Erbakan’s nephew, Mehmet Sabri Erbakan, was IGMG chair­man until he left office after alleged­ly hav­ing an extra-mar­i­tal affair.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

4. Flesh­ing out dis­cus­sion of Necmet­tin Erbakan, his Refah par­ty and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the pro­gram high­lights Erbakan’s rela­tion­ship with Ahmed Huber and the man­ner in which that rela­tion­ship pre­cip­i­tat­ed Huber’s ascen­sion to his posi­tion as a direc­tor of Al Taqwa.

Close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the AK Par­ty’s pre­de­ces­sor Refah orga­ni­za­tion, Huber’s con­cept of “mod­er­a­tion” might be gleaned from the pho­tographs of some of the “mod­er­ates” he admires.

Speak­ing of the décor of Huber’s res­i­dence:

“A sec­ond pho­to­graph, in which Hitler is talk­ing with Himm­ler, hangs next to those of Necmet­tin Erbakan and Jean-Marie Le Pen [leader of the fas­cist Nation­al Front]. Erbakan, head of the Turk­ish Islamist par­ty, Refah, turned to Achmed Huber for an intro­duc­tion to the chief of the French par­ty of the far right. Exit­ing from the meet­ing (which took place in Sep­tem­ber 1995) Huber’s two friends sup­pos­ed­ly stat­ed that they ‘share the same view of the world’ and expressed ‘their com­mon desire to work togeth­er to remove the last racist obsta­cles that still pre­vent the union of the Islamist move­ment with the nation­al right of Europe.’”

(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algo­ra Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 142.)

5. Note that Erbakan, Huber et al are part of an inter­na­tion­al  fas­cist milieu.

“Last­ly, above the desk is dis­played a poster of the imam Khome­i­ni; the meet­ing ‘changed my life,’ Huber says, with stars in his eyes. For years, after the Fed­er­al Palace in Bern, Ahmed Huber pub­lished a Euro­pean press review for the Iran­ian lead­ers, then for the Turk­ish Refah. Since the for­mer lacked finan­cial means, Huber chose to put his efforts to the ser­vice of the lat­ter. An out­post of the Turk­ish Mus­lim Broth­ers, Refah thus became Huber’s prin­ci­pal employ­er; and it was through the inter­me­di­ary of the Turk­ish Islamist par­ty that this for­mer par­lia­men­tary cor­re­spon­dent became a share­hold­er in the bank Al Taqwa.”

(Idem.)

6. The Turk­ish AKP Par­ty (tout­ed as a role mod­el for the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) has a strong eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship with Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean eco­nom­ic play­ers.

. . . . The focus is on two par­tic­u­lar aspects of Turk­ish pol­i­cy. The first is that over the past few years, polit­i­cal Islam in Turkey has proven to be very coop­er­a­tive with the EU. This is due to the eco­nom­ic rise of the con­ser­v­a­tive sec­tors of the Ana­to­lian hin­ter­land, which is orga­nized with­in the Adelet ve Kalk­in­ma Par­tisi (AKP), the par­ty of Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan and rul­ing par­ty in Ankara since 2002. The AKP has a clear­ly Islam­ic ori­en­ta­tion. The Ana­to­lian enter­pris­es form­ing the back­bone of the par­ty have close eco­nom­ic ties in EU coun­tries. It is on this basis that the AKP has estab­lished inten­sive ties to West­ern Europe, and incor­po­rat­ed into its brand of polit­i­cal Islam a reori­en­ta­tion favor­able to the EU. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[2]) The par­ty has since stood as a mod­el for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Islamism hav­ing a pro-west­ern char­ac­ter. In fact, over the past few years, sev­er­al North African Islam­ic forces — includ­ing sec­tors of the influ­en­tial Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood — have been ori­ent­ing them­selves on the AKP. Accord­ing to a recent study, co-financed by the SPD-affil­i­at­ed Friedrich Ebert Foun­da­tion, near­ly two-thirds of the pop­u­la­tions in sev­en Arab nations, includ­ing Egypt, would be in favor of their coun­tries’ adopt­ing the Turk­ish model.[3] A pro-west­ern ori­en­ta­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, implic­it in such a mod­el, would be appre­ci­at­ed in west­ern cap­i­tals. . . .

“The Turk­ish Mod­el”; german-foreign-policy.com; 2/18/2011.

7.After review­ing infor­ma­tion about Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Talat Oth­man and their links to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood  and the ter­ror-fund­ing appa­ra­tus bust­ed by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids  of 3/20/2002, the pro­gram syn­op­sizes the gen­e­sis of the GOP/Broth­er­hood/ter­ror-fund­ing rela­tion­ship.

Once again, it is to be  not­ed that con­ser­v­a­tives appear to be the only ones who will crit­i­cize the GOP/Brotherhood/terrorist link.

. . . In 1998 [Abdu­rah­man Alam­ou­di] pro­vid­ed at least $20,000  in checks enabling Repub­li­can activist Grover Norqauist toestab­lish what would become a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood front orga­ni­za­tion tar­get­ed at pen­e­trat­ing GOP cir­cles and the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of then-Gov­er­nor George W. Bush. The new enti­ty was called the Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute (bet­ter known at the Islam­ic Insi­tute or II). Alam­ou­di also detailed his long-time deputy, Khaled Saf­fu­ri, to serve as II’s first exec­u­tive director,with Norquist as the Chair­man of the Board.

As a result of these con­nec­tions, Alam­ou­di was among a group of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood oper­a­tives who were invit­ed on May 1, 2000, to meet with Bush in Texas gov­er­nor’s man­sion. Saf­fu­ri was des­ig­nat­ed the Bush cam­paign’s Mus­lim out­reach  coor­di­na­tor and Norquist assist­ed anoth­er promi­nent Ikhwan oper­a­tive, Sami al-Ari­an, to obtain a com­mit­ment from can­di­date
Bush that, if elect­ed, he would pro­hib­it the use of clas­si­fied intel­li­gence evi­dence in depor­ta­tion pro­ceed­ings against for­eign­ers sus­pect­ed of ter­ror­ist ties. This was a pri­or­i­ty for al-Ari­an since his broth­er-in-law was being held at the time by fed­er­al immi­gra­tion author­i­ties on the basis of such evi­dence.

After the elec­tion, a mem­ber of the Islam­ic Insti­tute’s board of direc­tors with myr­i­ad and long­stand­ing con­nec­tions to oth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tions, Suhail Khan, was appoint­ed to be the gate­keep­er for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty in the White House Office of Pub­lic Liai­son. [The below-men­tioned Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko was deputy direc­tor of the White House Office of Pub­lic Liai­son under Ronald Reagan!–D.E.] Such rela­tion­ships and place­ments afford­ed the  Ikhwan unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for influ­ence oper­a­tions against the U.S. gov­ern­ment, espe­cial­ly after 9/11.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Alam­ou­di, his own abil­i­ty direct­ly to exploit such oppor­tu­ni­ties had by that time been irrepara­bly dam­aged by his appear­ance at an anti-Israel ral­ly out­side th White Hosue in Octo­ber 2000. On that occa­sion, he care­less­ly gave the game away, when he  declared on video: ‘I have been labeled as being a sup­port­er of Hamas. Any­body sup­port­ers of Hamas here? [Roars of approval from the crowd.] We are all sup­port­ers of Hamas. [more roars.] I wish they added that I am also a sup­port­er of Hezbol­lah. [More roars.]

Then, in 2003, Alam­ou­di was arrest­ed at Heathrow Air­port (UK) on his way back from Libya with $340.000 in cash giv­en to him by Libyan Pres­i­dent Muam­mar Kaddafi for jihad. The mon­ey was to be used to kill Crown Prince (now King) Abdul­lah of Sau­di Ara­bia. Alam­ou­di was extra­dit­ed to the Unit­ed States where, in the East­ern Dis­trict of Vir­ginia, he pled guilty to and was con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism-relat­ed charges. He was proven to be a senior al Qae­da financier, who moved at least $1 mil­lion dol­lars to the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. . . .

Sharia: The Threat to Amer­i­ca [“Team B”]; Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy Press [SC]; Copy­right 2010 Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy; ISBN 978–0‑9822947–6‑5; pp. 128–129.

8. After review­ing infor­ma­tion about non­vi­o­lent the­o­reti­cian Gene Sharp, the pro­gram notes that the PORA move­ment in the Ukraine was one of the insti­tu­tions that took their cues from Sharp’s writ­ings. Ini­tial­ly a big sup­port­er of Vladimir Yuschenko, PORA turned against him.

As not­ed in FTR #529, Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko, the point per­son for the OUN/B. Lat­er, Yuschenko named Ban­dera a hero of the Ukraine.

One won­ders if the Pirate Bay/Pirate Party/Anonymous milieu will turn out to be sim­i­lar­ly, cyn­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed in the case of the Pig­gy-Back Coup in the Mid­dle East. Youth­ful ide­al­ists, that milieu may well have helped install the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Egypt and  else­where in the Mid­dle East.

PORA, the non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion that played a deci­sive role in Ukraine’s Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, has adopt­ed a high­ly crit­i­cal stance towards the ten-point mem­o­ran­dum signed last week by Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yushchenko and the leader of the Par­ty of Regions, for­mer prime min­is­ter Vik­tor Yanukovych. . . .

“Is PORA Turn­ing Against Yuschenko”; The Kiev Ukraine News Blog; 9/24/2005.

9. In our dis­cus­sion with Fara Man­soor, we exam­ined his con­tention that U.S. intel­li­gence had learned that the Shah of Iran had can­cer long before it became pub­lic and decid­ed to replace that staunch, anti-com­mu­nist ally with the  Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists of Khome­i­ni.

Reports out of the Mid­dle East sug­gest that Mubarak is being treat­ed for can­cer. Is one U.S. sup­port­ed auto­crat in that strate­gic part of the world being replaced by a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood dom­i­nat­ed coali­tion?

Spec­u­la­tion that for­mer Pres­i­dent Hos­ni Mubarak had depart­ed Egypt for Sau­di Ara­bia height­ened Wednes­day with a gov­ern­ment-owned news­pa­per say­ing that he had gone late last week to a spe­cial Sau­di mil­i­tary com­plex at Tabuk for chemother­a­py treat­ment by his usu­al Ger­man doc­tors. He is suf­fer­ing from pan­cre­at­ic and colon can­cer, it said.

There was no offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of the report.

“Paper in Egypt Says Mubarak Is at Sau­di Site Receiv­ing Care” by Neil Mac­far­quhar; The New York Times; 3/2/2011.

Discussion

8 comments for “FTR #737 Taqqiya Sunrise, Part II: Turkish Taffy (More on the Rolling Coups in the Middle East)”

  1. Ter­rif­ic series of shows. There is enough mate­r­i­al for hours and hours of analy­sis. The num­ber of con­nec­tions range now in the hun­dreds, if not in thou­sands. That is why the use of this site is so impor­tant, as you say.

    First, let me say that I a wor­ried about the con­nec­tion that you exposed here between Achmed Huber, Erbakan and Jean-Marie Le Pen. As you know, his daugh­ter, Marine Le Pen,is gain­ing momen­tum in France with the same Front Nation­al. Does she rep­re­sent sim­ply the con­tin­u­a­tion of her father’s ide­ol­o­gy or some­thing more mod­er­ate? I don’t know but if pre­vi­ous exam­ples of fam­i­ly busi­ness are any indi­ca­tions, that is a bad sign. She pub­licly stat­ed that the French should defend France against Islamism. Was it just PR? What does that mean?

    Sec­ond, you quot­ed an extract from the doc­u­ment of the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, titled Sharia(...)I agree with you that it con­tains a fair amount of pro­pa­gan­da, like oth­er sim­i­lar exer­ci­ces such as the Ira­ni­um movie. How­ev­er, you are right to point out that Frank Gaffney seems to be get­ting out of the lot, sin­cere in what he does. In fact he is, I think, what a con­ser­v­a­tive should be: not a fas­cist in dis­guise but some­one who tries to avoid the dis­in­te­gra­tion of his soci­ety. His activism against Islamism is, I think, an expres­sion of that.

    And last, I just want to clar­i­fy the com­ment I made on the Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey’s post. By no means I want­ed to down­play the impor­tance of the books you sug­gest to lis­ten­ers. Each one of these books is essen­tiel for the com­pre­hen­sion of our predica­ment and Kevin Coogan’s cer­tain­ly is as well. My point was to show a his­tor­i­cal antecedent of the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Left and the Right, the Third Posi­tion. I want­ed to stress that if such a col­lab­o­ra­tion proved to be effec­tive and work­ing, although cir­cum­stan­tial and tem­po­rary in the case of Ger­many’s ’20s and ’30s, then it could very well work again after WWII. Con­sid­er­ing the under­groud phase of the Reich, to cut deals behind the scenes with com­mu­nists should have been even more easy.

    Keep on the good work and don’t let your­self be dis­cour­aged. At least we have our pride and sat­is­fac­tion to fight back for the just cause.

    Have a great day.

    Posted by Claude | April 5, 2011, 9:25 am
  2. I rec­om­mend “Ger­many Rebuffs U.S. Calls to Shut Iran Bank” by David Craw­ford in WSJ Online April 12. Touch­es on Ger­man Eco­nom­ic inter­est with Iran­ian Bank­ing.

    Posted by chago | April 11, 2011, 7:46 pm
  3. [...] FTR #737 [...]

    Posted by Addendum on the piggy-back coups in the Middle East: the Turking Taffy series | lys-dor.com | April 19, 2011, 9:42 am
  4. I don’t know the time frame here, but accord­ing to this doc­u­men­tary, Al-Ari­an is in jail as a US polit­i­cal pris­on­er. Are these two dif­fer­ent peo­ple? http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/usa_vs_al_arian/

    Posted by Michael Reust | June 17, 2011, 10:30 pm
  5. Look­ing back at this arti­cle, this is some rather decent infor­ma­tion, but I’m afraid I have to break some bad news to you: The Chi­nese are def­i­nite­ly amongst the bad guys, and are allies of the world crime net­work, per­haps even with the Under­ground Reich(with the Uyghur sep­a­ratists being the dupes and use­ful pawns of both). How else to explain things like the cor­po­ratist crooks tak­ing jobs away from Amer­i­cans and send­ing them to Chi­na?
    On the oth­er hand, it does seem that Rus­sia may soon become an actu­al ene­my of the elite, as they were dur­ing the Khrushchev and Gor­bachev admin­is­tra­tions in the Sovi­et era. You may have heard about the recent anti-Putin protests, and if A Just Rus­sia or any oth­er of non-cor­rupt par­ties were to gain pow­er in Rus­sia, I strong­ly sus­pect the Under­ground Reich and the branch­es of the world elite would prob­a­bly have one hell of a pan­ic attack.
    One scary sce­nario to keep in mind is this might help lead to a sec­ond Rus­so-Chi­nese war. The world crime net­work are start­ing to run out of time, and move­ments to hijack. Peo­ple are wak­ing up, and fast.

    Posted by Steven L. | January 20, 2012, 6:23 am
  6. [...] FTR #737 Taqqiya Sun­rise, Part II: Turk­ish Taffy (More on the Rolling Coups in the Mid­dle East) [...]

    Posted by Interview with Diana West on Secure Freedom Radio: Bogus « democratic » revolutions, civilization jihad and the subversion of western societies | Lys-d'Or | April 8, 2012, 12:15 pm
  7. I’d be tempt­ed to call this a ‘Putin-league’ manuev­er but it looks like Erodogan is on the cusp of some­thing even big­ger. Erodogan is fac­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al term lim­its at the end of his term in 2015 but that does­n’t appear to be a prob­lem for an extend­ed Erdo­gan rule. That’s because Turkey is about to adopt a new con­sti­tu­tion. There’s been an expec­ta­tion that the Turkey would adopt a new con­sti­tu­tion for the last decade but now it looks like the new con­sti­tu­tion is final­ly going to be adopt­ed. And one of the new con­sti­tu­tion­al fea­tures will pos­si­bly include a strong shift towards a pow­er­ful, inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial office. For a Prime Min­is­ter fac­ing term lim­its, a new con­sti­tu­tion with a fan­cy new pres­i­den­tial office must sound like a grand idea. That might be one of the rea­sons why Erdo­gan is now call­ing for the cre­ation a new pow­er­ful pres­i­den­tial office as part of the upcom­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al shake­up:

    Erdo­gan deputy calls for pres­i­den­tial sys­tem in Turkey
    Reuters, 07/05 18:02 CET

    ISTANBUL (Reuters) — A deputy to Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan called on Mon­day for Turkey to move to a pres­i­den­tial form of gov­ern­ment, herald­ing wide­ly expect­ed pro­pos­als for con­sti­tu­tion­al changes that would allow Erdo­gan to become even more pow­er­ful as pres­i­dent.

    Since his Islamist-root­ed AK Par­ty swept to pow­er in 2001, Erdo­gan has dom­i­nat­ed the polit­i­cal land­scape, deliv­er­ing rapid eco­nom­ic growth, trounc­ing the oppo­si­tion in three elec­tions, while pass­ing reforms to bring a staunch­ly sec­u­lar mil­i­tary to heel.

    Under par­ty rules, how­ev­er, Erdo­gan can­not have anoth­er term as prime min­is­ter, and before the last elec­tion it became an open secret in the media that he would like to switch to the pres­i­den­cy before his term ends in 2015.

    Oppo­nents fear Erdogan’s dom­i­neer­ing style would become even more pro­nounced if he had pres­i­den­tial pow­ers with­out a par­lia­ment strong enough to rein him in.

    The judiciary’s inde­pen­dence was reduced by reforms pushed through two years ago, and press free­dom has also suf­fered under Erdo­gan, crit­ics say.

    Since last year’s elec­tion, the poten­tial switch to a pres­i­den­tial form of gov­ern­ment had lain dor­mant, but at a par­lia­men­tary sym­po­sium on Mon­day, just a week after par­lia­ment began work­ing on a new con­sti­tu­tion, Bekir Bozdag, one of Erdogan’s four deputy prime min­is­ters, put the issue square­ly on the agen­da.

    ...

    At the open­ing of par­lia­ment last Octo­ber, Pres­i­dent Abdul­lah Gul urged law­mak­ers to search for con­sen­sus on a new lib­er­al con­sti­tu­tion so it would be rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

    Erdogan’s AK Par­ty won a third con­sec­u­tive term in June last year and had set a tar­get of draft­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion with­in the first half of this year.

    Par­ty rules pre­vent Erdo­gan from serv­ing as prime min­is­ter for more than three terms, but there has long been spec­u­la­tion that he intend­ed to switch to an empow­ered pres­i­den­cy in order to extend his rule.

    ...

    So Turkey already appears to be about to for­mal­ize Erdo­gan’s long-term rule while, at the same time, one of the mid­dle-east­’s old­er dynas­ties is on the verge of col­lapse next door in Syr­ia. It’s an out­come Erdo­gan’s been cham­pi­oning too with open calls for the end top al-Assad’s rule. While there’s no doubt a wide vari­ety of strate­gic rea­sons Ero­gan would­n’t mind see­ing the col­lapse of a neigh­bor­ing regime, it’s safe to say that Erdo­gan’s enthu­si­asm for the Syr­i­an rebels has prob­a­bly been boost­ed by the qui­et takeover of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood:

    Syr­i­a’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood rise from the ash­es
    May 06, 2012|Khaled Yacoub Oweis | Reuters

    ISTANBUL (Reuters) — At a meet­ing of Syr­i­a’s oppo­si­tion, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood offi­cials gath­er round Marx­ists col­leagues, nudg­ing them to pro­duce pol­i­cy state­ments for the Syr­i­an Nation­al Coun­cil, the main polit­i­cal group chal­leng­ing Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad.

    With many liv­ing in the West, and some ditch­ing their trade­mark beards, it is hard to dif­fer­en­ti­ate Broth­er­hood from left­ists. But there is lit­tle dis­pute about who calls the shots.

    From anni­hi­la­tion at home 30 years ago when they chal­lenged the iron-fist­ed rule of Hafez al-Assad, the Broth­er­hood has recov­ered to become the dom­i­nant force of the exile oppo­si­tion in the 14-month-old revolt against his son Bashar.

    Care­ful not to under­mine the coun­cil’s dis­parate sup­port­ers, the Broth­er­hood has played down its grow­ing influ­ence with­in the Syr­i­an Nation­al Coun­cil (SNC), whose pub­lic face is the sec­u­lar Paris-based pro­fes­sor Bourhan Ghalioun.

    “We chose this face, accept­ed by the West and by the inside. We don’t want the regime to take advan­tage if an Islamist becomes the Syr­i­an Nation­al Coun­cil’s head,” for­mer Broth­er­hood leader Ali Sadred­dine al-Baya­nouni told sup­port­ers in a video.

    The footage is now being cir­cu­lat­ed by Broth­er­hood oppo­nents, seek­ing to high­light its unde­clared pow­er.

    ...

    Mind­ful of inter­na­tion­al fears of Islamists tak­ing pow­er, and of the wor­ries of Syr­i­a’s eth­nic and reli­gious minori­ties, the Syr­i­an Broth­er­hood por­trays itself as espous­ing a mod­er­ate, Turk­ish-style Islamist agen­da. It unveiled a man­i­festo last month that did not men­tion the word Islam and con­tained pledges to respect indi­vid­ual rights.

    With back­ing from Ankara, and fol­low­ing the polit­i­cal ascen­dan­cy of the Broth­er­hood in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya since Arab Spring revolts broke out two years ago, the group is poised to be at the top of any new gov­ern­ing sys­tem in Syr­ia.

    Extend­ing the loose Broth­er­hood umbrel­la to Syr­ia will raise pres­sure on the U.S.-backed Hashemite monar­chy in Jor­dan, where the local Broth­er­hood has been side­lined by laws that favor trib­al politi­cians allied with the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus.

    Iraq’s Shi’ite rulers could also find they have a hard­line Sun­ni gov­ern­ment as their neigh­bor, and Lebanon’s Shi’ite guer­ril­la group Hezbol­lah would lose its main Arab backer.

    EYEING VICTORY

    Work­ing qui­et­ly, the Broth­er­hood has been financ­ing Free Syr­i­an Army defec­tors based in Turkey and chan­nel­ing mon­ey and sup­plies to Syr­ia, reviv­ing their base among small Sun­ni farm­ers and mid­dle class Syr­i­ans, oppo­si­tion sources say.

    “We bick­er while the Broth­er­hood works,” said Fawaz al-Tel­lo, a vet­er­an oppo­si­tion fig­ure who is a pious Mus­lim while being on the lib­er­al end of the Syr­i­an polit­i­cal spec­trum.

    “They have gained con­trol of the SNC’s aid divi­sion and the mil­i­tary bureau, its only impor­tant com­po­nents,” said Tel­lo, a for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er who fled Syr­ia four months ago.

    “But they still have to work more do to get sup­port on the inside. Lots of cler­ics, activists and rebels do not want to be linked to them.”

    ...

    With a num­ber of gulf states now open­ly financ­ing the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion and Erdo­gan call­ing for an inter­na­tion­al inter­ven­tion even over Russ­ian and Chi­nese oppo­si­tion it’s look­ing more and more like the MB is going to be in con­trol when, not if, the al-Assad dynasty falls in Syr­ia. And who knows when that could hap­pen but Erdo­gan just declared that he has ‘lost hope’ in a peace­ful solu­tion in Syr­ia and Kofi Annan is warn­ing the world of a region cat­a­stro­phe if the vio­lence in Syr­ia erupts into a larg­er civ­il war.

    Between Egypt poten­tial­ly look­ing at social chaos, Greece fac­ing a gov­ern­men­tal cri­sis on top of its finan­cial per­il, Israel and Iran fac­ing off over nukes, and Syr­ia on the verge of a fullscale civ­il war, this is look­ing like it’s going to be one crazy sum­mer in Mr. Erdo­gan’s Neigh­bor­hood.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 9, 2012, 8:05 pm
  8. @Pterrafractyl: Inter­est­ing stuff as usu­al. Though hon­est­ly, I have long sus­pect­ed that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Assad’s regime, while opposed on the out­side, are, on the inside, tru­ly just the two sides of a stained and smelly Reichs­mark.

    I do hope that the Syr­i­an peo­ple will wake up and real­ize that their move­men­t’s been hijacked. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it may be too late to stop the future blood­shed which is sure to occur once they DO find out the MB’s true agen­da.

    Posted by Steve L. | May 9, 2012, 8:52 pm

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