The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
Must-see!
See also:
– Oldest, Largest Pyramids Found In Bosnia – Interview With Dr. Sam Osmanagich
Added: 18. February 2011
Göbekli Tepe, is a hilltop sanctuary erected on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge some 15 km northeast of the town of ?anl?urfa, in southeastern Turkey and 500 miles away from Istanbul, Turkey.
It is the most astonishing archaeological discovery in modern times and also thought to be the oldest advanced civilization on Earth.
Divide et impera! Criminal elitists love Wikileaks!
– Wikileaks: A US Government Con Job
– Wikileaks: Brought to you by the CIA or Mossad
Why is it that all leaked information supports the elitist agenda?
A WikiLeaks cable reports that Pope Benedict XVI, seen here being received by Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara in 2006, ‘might prefer to see Turkey develop a special relationship short of EU membership’. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images
The pope is responsible for the Vatican’s growing hostility towards Turkey joining the EU, previously secret cables sent from the US embassy to the Holy See in Rome claim.
In 2004 Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope, spoke out against letting a Muslim state join, although at the time the Vatican was formally neutral on the question.
The Vatican’s acting foreign minister, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, responded by telling US diplomats that Ratzinger’s comments were his own rather than the official Vatican position.
The cable released by WikiLeaks shows that Ratzinger was the leading voice behind the Holy See’s unsuccessful drive to secure a reference to Europe’s “Christian roots” in the EU constitution. The US diplomat noted that Ratzinger “clearly understands that allowing a Muslim country into the EU would further weaken his case for Europe’s Christian foundations”.
But by 2006 Parolin was working for Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and his tone had distinctly chilled. “Neither the pope nor the Vatican have endorsed Turkey’s EU membership per se,” he told the American charge d’affaires, “rather, the Holy See has been consistently open to accession, emphasising only that Turkey needs to fulfil the EU’s Copenhagen criteria to take its place in Europe.”
Read moreWikiLeaks Cables: Pope Benedict XVI Wanted Muslim Turkey Kept Out of EU
A new force of armed European guards is to be dispatched to Greece to patrol the country’s border with Turkey in an attempt to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration into Europe.
The deployment of the Rapid Intervention Border Teams, assembled from the border guard forces of other European countries, will be the first time Brussels has deployed multinational armed units on the EU’s external land border.
The teams are to arrive in Greece within days, the European commission announced today , although the precise numbers and makeup are yet to be decided.
A commission official said: “This is a new front. The teams are armed, but they can only use their arms in self-defence.”
Struggling to cope with the hundreds of migrants who are entering Greece every day through an inhospitable, unmonitored stretch of the country’s border with Turkey near the town of Edirne, Athens appealed to Brussels for help at the weekend.
“The flows of people crossing the border irregularly have reached alarming proportions,” said Cecilia Malmström, commissioner for home affairs. “Greece is manifestly not able to face this situation alone.”
Some eight out of 10 migrants entering Europe this year have arrived in Greece via Turkey, according to Brussels. Some are illegal economic migrants, at the mercy of gangs of human traffickers; many are Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers, whose treatment by the Greek authorities the United Nations and the EU regard as indefensible.
David Cameron defended his remarks at a press conference with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (REUTERS)
David Cameron used a visit to Turkey to make his strongest intervention yet in the intractable Middle East conflict today when he likened the experience of Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip to that of a “prison camp”.
Although he has made similar remarks before, his decision to repeat them on a world stage in Turkey, whose relations with Israel have deteriorated sharply since it mounted a deadly assault on the Gaza flotilla, gave them much greater diplomatic significance.
Cameron’s comments, in a speech to business leaders in Ankara, prompted the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to issue another strong condemnation of how Israel dealt with the flotilla.
Erdogan likened the behaviour of Israeli commandos, who shot dead nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists, to Somali pirates.
Cameron’s criticism of Tel Aviv came when he called for Israel to relax its restrictions on Gaza. “The situation in Gaza has to change,” he said. “Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”
He strongly condemned Israel after the assault on the Gaza flotilla. “The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable,” he said. “I have told prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. “Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change.”
Read moreDavid Cameron: Israeli Blockade Has Turned Gaza Strip Into A ‘Prison Camp’
Obama, an elite puppet President we can believe in:
– Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts: ‘AIPAC Owns The US Puppet Government’
The truth is bad for Israel:
– Former US Marine Disarms Israeli Commandos, Describes Mass Murder By Israeli Soldiers
– Autopsy Results Reveal That Gaza Flotilla Activists Were Shot In Head At Close Range (Guardian):
Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.
The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.
– Robert Fisk: The Truth Behind The Israeli Propaganda (Independent)
Turkish PM Erdogan and U.S. President Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12, 2010 (AP)
According to the report, Obama warned Erdogan that the international probe which Turkey has demanded could turn into a “double edged sword,” as it could lead to accusations against the passengers on board the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara ship, some of whom were members of the pro-Palestinian IHH organization.
The two leaders met in Canada on the sidelines of the G-20 summit earlier this week.
Following the Israeli Navy commandos’ raid in May in which nine Turkish activists were killed Turkey announced that it was recalling its ambassador to Israel.
Erdogan said the incident represented a complete violation of international law and called for an international probe into the military action.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said today that Kurdish militants would “drown in their own blood” as he led political and army chiefs in paying his respects to troops killed in a clash with the rebels during fighting on Saturday. Eleven soldiers and 12 Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) guerrillas died in the south-eastern province of Hakkari, near the Iraq border.
At a ceremony in the city of Van, Erdogan said: “I say here very clearly, they will not win. They will gain nothing. They will melt away in their own darkness … they will drown in their own blood.” The death toll in Saturday’s clash was one of the highest in recent years in a conflict which has killed more than 40,000 since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of creating a homeland in the south-east.
Read moreTurkey: Prime Minister Erdogan Vows Kurdish Rebels Will ‘Drown In Their Own Blood’
Crowds at the funeral of one of the Turkish victims of the Gaza flotilla raid, at the Beyazit mosque in Istanbul. (AP)
Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.
Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.
The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.
Read moreAutopsy Results Reveal That Gaza Flotilla Activists Were Shot In Head At Close Range
– Turkey will ‘never forgive’ Israel (Al Jazeera):
The Turkish president has said that Israel’s military raid on civilian aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip has caused “irreparable” damage to his country’s relations with Israel, and will “never” be forgiven.
The Turkish president has said that Israel’s military raid on civilian aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip has caused “irreparable” damage to his country’s relations with Israel, and will “never” be forgiven.
“From now on, Turkish-Israeli ties will never be the same. This incident has left an irreparable and deep scar,” Abdullah Gul said in a televised speech on Thursday, as thousands gathered in the streets of Istanbul to pay their respects to the humanitarian activists killed during the raid.
The raid “is not an issue that can be forgotten… or be covered up… Turkey will never forgive this attack,” he said.
More on Israel:
– American teenager among those killed in Israeli raid of aid flotilla; Israeli soldiers accused of refusing to treat the injured, letting them die (Washington Post/Al Jazeera)
– Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky: Gaza flotilla raid ’so stupid it’s stupefying’ (The Raw Story)
Read morePresident Abdullah Gul: Turkey will ‘never forgive’ Israel
See also: Israeli soldiers murder at least 10 civilians on boat carrying aid to Gaza
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s deputy prime minister says Turkey is withdrawing its ambassador to Israel, canceling three joint military drills and calling on the U.N. Security Council to convene in an emergency session about Israel.
The moves come after 10 pro-Palestinian activists on an aid flotilla were reported killed and dozens wounded by Israeli forces.
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc says Turkey is withdrawing its ambassador on Monday and also calling back a youth soccer team from Israel. He equates Israel’s actions with “piracy.”
FILE – In this Sept. 19, 2003 file photo, Turkish commanders, from left, Chief of Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, Land Forces commander Aytac Yalman, Navy Commander Ozden Ornek and Air Forces Commander Ibrahim Firtina seen during a meeting of the National Security Council in Ankara, Turkey. Police detained more than 40 high-ranking military commanders Monday, Feb. 22, 2010, for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government. Several high-ranking members of Turkey’s military, including Firtina and Ornek, were among those detained. The sweep highlighted the ongoing struggle between the secular establishment and the Islamic-oriented government, and left many wondering if the military no longer called the shots in a nation accustomed to viewing it as the pillar of the secular state. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)
(AP) ANKARA, Turkey — Prosecutors on Tuesday interrogated 51 Turkish military commanders, including former Air Force and Navy chiefs, over alleged plans to destabilize the country by blowing up mosques to trigger a coup and topple the Islamic-rooted government.
It was the highest profile crackdown ever on the Turkish military, which has ousted four governments since 1960. For decades Turkey’s senior officers, self-appointed guardians of the country’s secular tradition, called the shots.
But the balance of power in this EU-candidate country appeared to have shifted Monday as police rounded up the 51 military commanders, following the gathering of wiretap evidence and discovery of an alleged secret coup plan, dubbed “the sledgehammer.”
The nationwide sweep has dramatically deepened a power struggle between the secular establishment and the government, which has strong electoral backing and the European Union’s support. Turkey’s elite military — known as “pashas,” a title of respect harking back to Ottoman times — were once deemed untouchable.
“The most heavy sledgehammer to military custody,” read banner headline of daily Taraf, which has published leaked military documents that lead to the detentions.
The Fertile Crescent is left dry as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle (AP)
Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.
Last week, Iraqi ministers called for urgent talks with upstream neighbours Turkey and Syria, after the combination of a second year of drought and dams in those countries cut flow on the Euphrates as it enters Iraq to below 250 cubic metres a second. That is less than a quarter the flow needed to maintain Iraqi agriculture.
Tensions have been growing since May, when the Iraqi parliament refused to approve a new much-needed trade deal with Turkey unless it contained binding clauses on river flows. But Turkey appears in no mood to compromise. In July, it announced the final go-ahead for yet another dam, the Ilisu on the Tigris.
Meanwhile, according to Hassan Partow at the UN Environment Programme, Iraq’s hydrological misery is compounded by Iran, which is also building new dams on tributaries of the Tigris. “Some of these rivers have run completely dry,” he told New Scientist. And Iraq itself is set to worsen the problem with its own dam building, he says. This year construction is set to begin on another Tigris tributary at Bekhme Gorge in Iraq’s northern province of Kurdistan. At 230 metres it will be one of the world’s tallest dams.
In ancient times, the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through Iraq were bountiful – irrigating fields that sustained civilisations like Sumer and cities like Babylon. But the combination of drought, dams and Iraq’s own desire to revive its agriculture is placing huge pressure on the last remnant of that bounty, the Mesopotamian marshes, which form where the Tigris and Euphrates meet and flow to the sea.
Read moreParadise Lost: Fertile Crescent will disappear this century
In 1963, an inhabitant of Derinkuyu (in the region of Cappadocia, central Anatolia, Turkey), knocking down a wall of his house cave, discovered amazed that behind it was a mysterious room that he had never seen, and this led him room to another and another and another to it … By chance he had discovered the underground city of Derinkuyu, whose first level could be excavated by the Hittites around 1400 BC
Archaeologists began to explore this fascinating underground city abandoned. Consiguieron llegar a los cuarenta metros de profundidad, aunque se cree que tiene un fondo de hasta 85 metros. It managed to forty meters deep, but is believed to have a fund of up to 85 meters.
At present 20 levels have been discovered underground. Sólo pueden visitarse los ocho niveles superiores; los demás están parcialmente obstruidos o reservados a los arqueólogos y antropólogos que estudian Derinkuyu. Only eight can be visited at the highest levels; others are partially blocked or restricted to archaeologists and anthropologists who study Derinkuyu.
The city was used as a refuge for thousands of people living in the basement for protection from the frequent invasions suffered Cappadocia, at various times of their occupation, and by the early Christians.
The enemies, aware of the danger that enclosed inside the city, usually the people who were trying to leave the area by poisoning wells.
The interior is striking: the underground galleries of Derinkuyu (where there is room for at least 10,000 people) could hang on three strategic points moving circular stone door. Were between 1 to 1.5 meters in height, about 50 centimeters wide and weighing up to 500 Kilos.
Read moreDerinkuyu, the mysterious underground city of Turkey
Turkey is reported to be in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a $40 billion loan. Very shortly, the Baltic States and at least a dozen developing countries will be filing for IMF handouts. But how will the venerable lender of last resort fund itself?
According to a fact sheet posted on its website in October, the IMF had $200 million available for emergency loans to the third-world, and another $50 billion in “additional resources”. But the IMF’s liquidity is rapidly dwindling. Between the crisis facilities concluded with Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Iceland and Pakistan, and the expected spate of new loan requests, the IMF should be running out of money within the first quarter of next year. Quite simply, unless the rich nations (including American tax-payers) can add to the IMF’s funding capabilities, the global recession will cause unprecedented havoc, chaos, hunger and turmoil in the world’s poverty pockets.
The International Monetary Fund may soon lack the money to bail out an ever growing list of countries crumbling across Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, raising concerns that it will have to tap taxpayers in Western countries for a capital infusion or resort to the nuclear option of printing its own money.
IMF’s work in countries such as Turkey is only just beginning
The Fund is already close to committing a quarter of its $200bn (£130bn) reserve chest, with a loans to Iceland ($2bn), Ukraine ($16.5bn), and talks underway with Pakistan ($14.5bn), Hungary ($10bn), as well as Belarus and Serbia.
Neil Schering, emerging market strategist at Capital Economics, said the IMF’s work in the great arc of countries from the Baltic states to Turkey is only just beginning.
“When you tot up the countries across the region with external funding needs, you get to $500bn or $600bn very quickly, and that blows the IMF out of the water. The Fund may soon have to start calling on the West for additional funds,” he said.
Brad Setser, an expert on capital flows at the Council for Foreign Relations, said Russia, Mexico, Brazil and India have together spent $75bn of their reserves defending their currencies this month, and South Korea is grappling with a serious banking crisis.
“Right now the IMF is too small to meet the foreign currency liquidity needs of the larger emerging economies. We’re in a dangerous situation and there is the risk of extreme moves in the markets, as we have seen with the Brazilian real. I hope policy-makers understand how serious this is,” he said.
The IMF, led by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has the power to raise money on the capital markets by issuing `AAA’ bonds under its own name. It has never resorted to this option, preferring to tap members states for deposits.
The nuclear option is to print money by issuing Special Drawing Rights, in effect acting as if it were the world’s central bank. This was done briefly after the fall of the Soviet Union but has never been used as systematic tool of policy to head off a global financial crisis.
“The IMF can in theory create liquidity like a central bank,” said an informed source. “There are a lot of ideas kicking around.”
Ukraine, Hungary, and Serbia are all in emergency talks with the International Monetary Fund, raising fears that an exodus of foreign investors will set off a systemic crisis across Eastern Europe.
A team of IMF trouble-shooters rushed to Kiev on Wednesay to draw up a possible standby loan to help Ukraine stabilize its bank after a panic run on deposits this month.
Read moreCrisis spreads to Eastern Europe as Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia call IMF
Russia said U.S. ships could only stay in the Black Sea for 21 days according to the Montreux Convention, and warned if they do not leave by then Turkey would be responsible.
Russia’s deputy military chief Anatoly Nogovitsyn said the NATO warships’ entrance to the Black Sea is a “serious threat to our security,” Hurriyet daily reported on Thursday.
He said under the Montreux Convention, signed in 1936 on the status of the Turkish Straits, the warships can only stay in the Black Sea for 21 days.
“If the NATO ships continue to stay in the Black Sea after the expiration of 21 day-period, then I would like to remind you that Turkey would be responsible,” he added.
INSTANBUL/MOSCOW, August 23 (RIA Novosti) – NATO has sent a Polish frigate and a U.S. destroyer through the Bosporus to boost its presence in the Black Sea, where it is delivering humanitarian cargoes to Georgia, a source in the Turkish navy said.
“Two more NATO ships passed through the strait and entered the Black Sea on Friday evening,” the source told RIA Novosti.
“Production has been halved to 300 kilos (661 pounds) per 1,000 square meters (250 acres), even in well-irrigated parts of the region, as rainfall declined to one-fortieth of normal levels, Referans daily said on Wednesday, citing farmers and farming associations.”
The government has selected 35 of its 81 provinces as eligible for financial assistance, Erdogan said. Farmers who have lost more than 30 percent of their harvest to drought can claim assistance and also postpone any agricultural loan payments by a year, he added.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey and Syria are considering setting up a joint energy company and could build joint nuclear power plants for electricity, Syria’s oil minister was quoted as saying on Friday.
Turkey’s state-run Antolian agency quoted Oil Minister Sufian Alao as saying that the two countries will announce the establishment of a joint energy company in the coming days, which could explore for oil in Turkey, Syria and in third countries.
“We could also enter into cooperation in the nuclear field. I spoke to (Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler) Mr. Guler on cooperation. In the future we could found joint nuclear power plants for electricity production,” he was quoted as saying.
Washington released intelligence in April which it said showed Syria secretly built an atomic reactor with North Korean help. Damascus, a U.S. foe and ally of Iran, denies any covert nuclear activity and has said it would cooperate with a U.N. investigation into the allegations.
Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, is already under pressure from Washington because of its natural gas cooperation with Iran, whose secretive uranium enrichment program has been under scrutiny since 2003.
The general director of Turkish state energy firm TPAO, Mehmet Uysal, was also quoted as saying the two countries had decided to set up a joint energy company and that a deal could be signed by the end of the year, but did not mention cooperation on nuclear energy.
(So what now? Bomb them all? -The Infinite Unknown)
Fri Jun 13, 10:57 AM ET
Source: Reuters
“In a regional war scenario, Israel will deal mainly with Lebanon and Syria while the U.S. and Britain will deal mainly with Iran. [51] The help of Turkey and NATO will definitely be needed by Israel, America, and Britain in such a war. Ankara and NATO will also be involved in both fronts. [52]
NATO has already built a presence on the western borders of Syria and Lebanon and inside Afghanistan on the eastern borders of Iran with forward positions. Israeli officials such as Shaul Mofaz have also stated, in no uncertain terms, that if they launch an attack on Iran, the U.S. and NATO will come to the aid of Tel Aviv.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Israel, Syria, and Lebanon Prepare the “Home Fronts”
The Levant could be the starting point of a major international conflict with global ramifications and which could quickly spin out of control. Such a conflict could even involve the use of Israeli or American nuclear weapons against Iran and Syria. Syria has additionally declared that it is preparing for an inevitable war with Israel despite the fact that it believes that the chances of a war in 2008 are slim. (They are not slim at all. – The Infinite Unknown)
Contrary to some claims that the Bush administration will allow diplomacy to handle Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a leading member of America’s Jewish community tells Newsmax that a military strike is not only on the table – but likely.
“Israel is preparing for heavy casualties,” the source said, suggesting that although Israel will not take part in the strike, it is expecting to be the target of Iranian retribution.
“Look at Dick Cheney’s recent trip through the Middle East as preparation for the U.S. attack,” the source said.
Cheney’s hastily arranged 9-day visit to the region, which began on March 16, included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Turkey, and the Palestinian territories.
Tensions in the region have been rising.
While Israel was conducting the largest homefront military exercises in its history last week, Israel’s National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer warned Tehran about expected attacks on the Jewish state.
“An Iranian attack will prompt a severe reaction from Israel, which will destroy the Iranian nation,” he said.
He predicted that in a future war, “hundreds of missiles will rain on Israel,” but added that Iran “is definitely aware of our strength.”
BRUSSELS: President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will end months of wrangling Thursday by presenting a joint plan to strengthen Europe’s ties with countries on its southern borders.
Read moreSarkozy and Merkel draft agreement detailing role of nations on EU’s southern border