Why Turkey Will Never Be Allowed Into the European Union

In the wake of the recent elections in Turkey we've been hearing a lot in the news media about Turkey's aspirations for membership in the European Union (EU) as well as the challenges it faces in achieving this goal. Reporters have been especially great at reiterating a lot of Orientalist discourse about Turkey not being "European" or a lot of Neoliberal bullshit about Turkey's human rights record and we're told that these are the primary obstacles to Turkey's entry into the EU. But is this really what's going on?

Let's look at what Nicholas Sarkozy actually said about the issue in his debate with Segolene Royale before the French presidential elections:

"Ceux qui souhaitent l’entrée de la Turquie en Europe sont ceux qui ne croient pas à l’Europe politique. C’est la mort de l’Europe politique" (Those who hope for the entry of Turkey in the EU are those who do not believe in a political Europe. It's the death of a political Europe).

Politics is about power. What Sarkozy said was that Turkey's entry into the EU would mean the end of the latter as a world power. Why?

I'll start my answer to this question by looking at the most prominent party among those who are hoping for the entry of Turkey in the EU. That's right, you guessed it, the good old USA.

Turkey's entry in the EU is part of the US's plan for rendering Europe completely dependent on a US-dominated energy infrastructure stretching from the Caspian through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Turkey's entry into the EU would also be the last nail in the coffin in which plans fo any independent European military force would be buried. The US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of which Turkey is a key member, would remain the sole guarantor of security on the continent and the EU would be nothing but a free-trade zone dominated by a hegemonic US in a unipolar New World Order.

Unfortunately for the US, like so many of the grandiose dreams of the US ruling class these days, this plan is all but dead. Russia has successfully secured all of the major gas and oil reserves in the Caspian (as of May 12, 2007) completely cutting out the US. In other words the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey pipeline is now empty. The EU's dependence on Russia for gas and oil is now solid and, unlike the US which seeks to weaken the EU and subordinate it to US interests, Russia supports a strong economic and political EU as a partner in its effort to push the US out of Eurasia.

Turkey could strengthen its economy and, more importantly, its sovereignty by looking eastwards to make strategic alliances -- Iran and Russia are two potential partners that come to mind. Otherwise, left out of the EU as well as the rapidly forming alliances in Asia (e.g. the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), Turkey will be just another pawn in the US' losing play for global domination.

Al Qaeda is a Metaphor

First, on Tuesday, Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff wants us all to lock our windows and bolt our doors this Summer because he has a "gut feeling" that the evil Al Qaeda is coming to get us! Then, today, the Associated Press tells us that it's gotten hold of super top secret classified reports from U.S. intelligence agencies that Al Qaeda is the strongest it's been since before 9/11!

Holy shit man! I'd be soiling myself right now if I didn't know that Al Qaeda is about as real as my dream of spending a night with Bipasha Basu, Marylin Monroe, Vanessa Paradis, Ashwarya Rai and Natalie Wood.

Here's what Martin Scheinin (Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) has to say about Al Qaeda:

... I don’t see the global war between states and Al Qaeda as anything more than a metaphor. I don’t see Al Qaeda as qualifying as a global army that could be party of a global, never-ending armed conflict.

Scheinin, as a United Nations appointee, has to mince words. We don't. Al Qaeda is a metaphor that the U.S. government uses to inspire xenophobia (i.e. racism) among the people it controls. Al Qaeda is all people, especially people of color, who oppose U.S. interests whether they employ terrorist tactics or otherwise. What defines a terrorist act according to international law is a violent attack against the general populace. This is not the operative definition the U.S. government uses. When resistance fighters in Iraq attack U.S. soldiers they are not committing acts of terrorism as defined by international law. Yet, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, anyone in Iraq who opposes the U.S. military presence there is a terrorist -- hence the chimera ubiquitous in the U.S. news media known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. Ultimately we will be informed by our leaders that branches of Al Qaeda are firmly entrenched in every single region which is critical to the global hegemonic strategy of the U.S. ruling class.

Free Sami Al Haj!

Five-and-a-half years ago -- on December 15, 2001 -- U.S. military personnel captured Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj while he was en route to Afghanistan in Pakistan. He has since been held, with no criminal charges against him, as an "enemy combatant" in Guantanamo Bay. Sami, who is a Sudanese national with distinctly African features, reported to his attorney who was finally allowed to see him in December of 2005 that:

• he has been tortured (e.g. forced to remain seated, exposed to the tropical sun, deprived of sleep, subjected to sexual abuse, confined in rooms in which extremely loud music was played, etc.)
• he has been interrogated with the use of threats more than 130 times
• he has a throat cancer that is not being treated

Why are the imperialists doing this to a cameraman (besides the fact that he is Arabic, Black, and Muslim)? Here's a hint: according to the London-based Guardian newspaper -- on September 26, 2005 -- U.S. officials offered Sami his freedom if he would agree to spy on Al Jazeera.

In other words the U.S. government claims to support freedom of speech yet it is trying to destroy a news outlet because of its distinctly balanced approach to current events in Western Asia (in March 2003, Al Jazeera was awarded by Index on Censorship -- an international group which campaigns against censorship -- for its "courage in circumventing censorship and contributing to the free exchange of information in the Arab world"). This isn't the first time the U.S. military has struck violently against Al Jazeera:

• November 13, 2001 -- U.S. missles destroy the Kabul offices of Al Jazeera in Afghanistan.
• April 8, 2003 -- U.S. missles strike the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera killing reporter Tarek Ayoub.
• November 22, 2005 -- The Daily Mirror (U.K.) leaks the infamous "Al Jazeera Bombing Memo" in which U.S. President Bush suggests to U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair the idea of bombing Al Jazeera.

The U.S. government claims to care about the genocide against Black Sudanese people yet it is torturing at least one Black Sudanese man as I write this.

The U.S. government claims to fight for Democracy and the rule of law yet it is currently holding countless prisoners without due process.

There is no Global Islamic Conspiracy! This is as much a work of racist fiction as was Hitler's Global Judeo-Bolshevist Conspiracy.

For more about Sami: http://www.prisoner345.net/
To sign a petition: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19079

Kosovo and the Battle for Eurasia

Today's Kosovo is nothing but a criminal enclave led by terrorists and murderers… Kosovo "politicians" are bandits hired by the US in order to turn the territory into a US ground aircraft carrier. This was the main objective of the offensive against Yugoslavia, and this was why they needed to make Kosovo independent from Belgrade… The US, inspired by the chimerical goal of the global dominance, will soon crack down on Iran. A new global drama will begin.

Dmitriy Sedov, Strategic Culture Foundation (a prominent Russian think tank)

As I write these lines, the powerful Group of 8 is deciding the fate of a small province in Serbia known presently as Kosovo. The E.U. and U.S. want independence for Kosovo as quickly as possible while Russia has promised to oppose any moves towards independence without direct talks between Pristina (the administrative center of the province) and Belgrade (the capital of Serbia). Once again the lines are being drawn between opposing sides in an increasingly dangerous global situation.

Kosovo, also known as Kosovo and Metohija, has never in its history been an independent political entity. While most of its population is comprised of ethnic Albanians, there have always been significant Serbian, Bosniak, Turkish and Roma (Gypsy) minorities. In around 1995, a paramilitary organization financed by heroin and prostitution trafficking (as well as other criminal activities) called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged on the scene. The following year, the KLA provoked a full-scale war with Serbia by attacking Serbian police and civilians alike with the aim of full independence. This conflict was known as the Kosovo War and it lasted until 1999. That year, NATO carried out a military operation against Serbia bombing both military and civilian targets. NATO, spearheaded by President Clinton, claimed that the Serbian government was committing genocide in Kosovo and had to be stopped.

In April of 1999, while NATO was bombing Serbia's cities, the U.S. state department announced that the genocide against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had taken as many as 500,000 lives and compared the the ethnic cleansing to the Nazi Holocaust. In May that figure had somehow fallen to 100,000 -- according to the Department of Defense. Strangely, after NATO occupied the region and place it under the governance of the U.N. in June, the number shrank to 10,000 -- this time according to the British Foreign Office. No reports have ever stated how the British Foreign Office arrived at this figure and to this day it has never been objectively confirmed.

The fighting ended in October and by November, most of the ethnic Albanian refugees who had fled during the conflict returned to their homes. However, much of the remaining Serbian population population -- some 250,000 people -- fled and have never been able to return. The Roma (Gypsy) population was also forced to flee after being brutalized by the KLA.

After the war, reports began to surface which revealed that British and U.S. (CIA) intelligence agents had been in constant contact with the KLA since at least 1996 and that they had been providing advice and training to the KLA throughout the war. These reports further undermined the official pretext for the NATO invasion since the putative "genocide" of ethnic Albanians had not begun until well after the CIA made contact with the KLA. While, most people in the U.S. and Europe probably still believe the genocide story and that the U.S. got involved in the Balkan wars of the 1990s for humanitarian reasons, it is fairly clear that the NATO bombing of Serbia was in fact the final phase of the U.S.'s plan for Yugoslavia after the death of General Tito -- dissolution and the establishment of a permanent air base in the region.

Slobodan Milosevic was the antagonist in the official U.S. story about Yugoslavia not because of his war crimes or his responsibility for ethnic cleansing but simply because he opposed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. The wars in the Balkans were wars amongst thieves scrambling for the scraps of what was once a major regional power and war crimes were committed on all sides. Slobodan Milosevic was different from the other forces in the region mainly because his aim was to maintain the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia (he is arguably the least evil of the players involved ). Every step of the way, since the death of General Tito, the U.S. and its junior partners in Europe supported the forces of fragmentation and Slobodan Milosevic stood in their way.

Kosovo, now controlled by the heroin and prostitute trafficking KLA, would be an excellent location for a U.S. air base. It would serve as a strategic base for any air offensive against Iran and is another step towards the goal of encircling Russia and dominating Eurasia.

Of course Russia is opposing Kosovo's independence just as it opposes U.S. missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Moreover, Russia is making its own power moves. Recently Russia secured natural gas deals with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan -- deals which will increase the energy dependence of Europe on Russia. Meanwhile, the efforts of the U.S. and Europe to build a Trans-Caspian oil pipeline that would allow them to bypass Russia are all but dead in the water.

Unlike the Cold War we are no longer in a situation where the major players recognize the line between "yours" and "mine". The U.S. wants Eurasia and a unipolar world while Russia wants to maintain its position as a regional power-broker with China as an equal partner in a multi-polar world. Either they will come to an agreement or they will go to war.

There Won't Be Another Cold War

It's the joke of the year since Iranian missile cannot reach Europe... these days, the Americans tell a lot of jokes. Iranian missiles are incapable of reaching Europe and it is very unlikely that they (the Americans) do not know this.

Ali Larijani, Secretary of Supreme National Security Council, Iran

Iran simply does not have the ability to launch a missile attack against Europe. Moreover, since the E.U. is Iran's biggest trading partner, an Iranian missile strike against Europe wouldn't make any sense. Larijani is wrong about one thing though. This isn't the joke of the year. The idea that North Korea could launch a missile attack against Europe is even funnier.

Side note: the utter contempt with which the current U.S. administration holds the general public is infuriating. They really expect us to swallow these lies?! Well, as Adolph Hitler wrote in 1925, people are most likely to believe a big lie since the average person cannot fathom that anyone would go to such lengths to distort the truth.

So, if the official justification for building missile defenses in Eastern Europe is a lie, then why is U.S. building them? When examined through the lens of the U.S. policy toward Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, the answer to this question becomes obvious. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has pursued policies designed systematically and ruthlessly to destroy Russia.

The first Bush and Clinton administrations carried out the initial phase of the effort -- the looting of the Russian financial system. Under the auspices of the IMF and with the assistance of corrupt Russian politicans (e.g. Boris Yeltsin) and businessmen (i.e. gangsters), billions of dollars were funneled out of Russia and into U.S. banks.

Simultaneously and continuing into the present, the U.S. government has sought to fragment the countries of the former Soviet Union into as many little countries as possible, since little weak countries are easier to dominate than larger ones. The obvious supplement to this strategy has been the support of anti-Russian, pro-U.S. governments in the former Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. Altogether, these are the newly independent states of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, many of which are governed by corrupt, religious fundamentalist and/or right-wing politicans whose only mark of distinction is that they hate Russia and love Uncle Sam.

Side note: NATO absorbed the Baltic States and Poland during these years. The governments in these countries are now openly working to rehabilitate Nazism and demonize the Red Army which was largely responsible for the Nazi defeat in Europe. I wrote about this in a post last month.

The final phase of the plan is to encircle Russia with missile defenses using the pro-U.S. countries of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact as bases. This, theoretically (since missile defense systems have not been proven to actually work), would allow the U.S. the liberty to launch a nuclear attack against Russia without fear of reprisal.

But why would the U.S. want to do all this to Russia? As Zbigniew Brzezinski -- probably the most influential geo-strategist since Henry Kissinger -- wrote:

The most immediate task [in the wake of the Cold War] is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role (page 198, The Grand Chessboard, 1997).

Why is Eurasia so important?

Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources (page 31, The Grand Chessboard, 1997).

In other words the U.S. ruling class must neutralize Russia in order to dominate Eurasia -- the key to global domination.

Russia is still able to challenge the U.S. despite its severe financial handicap and the loss of much of its former territorial influence thanks to its massive wealth of energy resources defended by its gigantic nuclear arsenal. Moreover, the war in Iraq has served to increase Russia's wealth by driving global energy prices to historical heights and strengthen its influence in the world by utterly wrecking the U.S.'s credibility.

As is normally the case, it's the masses of Russian people who have suffered the worst effects of Washington's policy towards Russia. Moreover, if the U.S. ruling elite's quest for global domination precipitates a global war, it will be the masses of people who pay the cost.

Venezuela Blows Up the D.E.A.'s Spot

Estaban haciendo una gran cantidad de traslado de droga bajo la figura de entrega vigilada... nosotros pudimos determinar que estábamos en presencia evidentemente de un nuevo cartel (they were making a large quantity of drug shipments under the pretense of monitoring them.. we were able to determine the presence of a new drug cartel).Pedro Carreño, Minister of the Interior, Venezuela

Last year I wrote about the the so-called "War on Drugs" in Latin America and how it is in fact a cover for the U.S.'s drug wars to protect its financial interest in cocaine trafficking. What I neglected to mention was that the U.S.'s drug wars are part of a political strategy as well. Fortunately Chavez's government called the U.S. out on this issue earlier this month in response to criticism from the White House that Venezuela was not cooperating with the U.S. in curbing cocaine smuggling. Minister of the Interior Pedro Carreño explained to the Associated Press that his government ended its cooperation with the U.S. D.E.A. in 2005 because the agency wasn't making any arrests or smashing any cartels. Instead it was smuggling huge amounts of blow through the country. In effect the D.E.A. was itself operating as a drug cartel. Morever the authorities in Venezuela discovered that the U.S. D.E.A. had infiltrated government intelligence agencies and represented a threat to national security. Thus it would appear that the U.S. D.E.A. serves two functions: (a) as a an instrument of espionage it serves to protect U.S. strategic political interests; and (b) as an enforcement agency it serves to protect the U.S.'s financial interest in cocaine trafficking.

Post-May Day Rant

Sometimes the world is just so fucked-up that El Gringo Rumbero prefers to tune it out and immerse himself in simple pleasures without yielding too much to his many vices. Then he throws cold water on his face, slips on his mouth guard and comes out from his corner swinging!

The Pope is a wicked man. Never mind the fact that he is the master of an institution which bleeds the poor while its leaders, especially the Pope himself, live lavishly. Never mind that the Catholic Church as an institution, throughout its entire history, has done absolutely nothing to alleviate the suffering of the masses of people of the world -- on the contrary it has most often played an intrumental role in oppressing and even murdering people in mass. Just look at the history of this Pope in particular.

1941: Pope Benedict XVI, née Joseph Alois Ratzinger, joins the Hitler Youth. His excuse that he had to join because membership was legally required at the time is not satisfactory from a man who is supposedly the representative of Jesus Christ on earth. Jesus (née Yeshua Ben Yusuf) would not have even been allowed to join the Hitler Youth so I think we know what he would have done in such a situation!

1943: Pope Benedict XVI, née Joseph Alois Ratzinger, is drafted into the German Army. Again, the man who is currently the supreme master of the universal church of Jesus Christ does not resist but willingly joins an organization that is responsible for the deaths of millions of people -- mostly fellow Christians.

Now this man, who we see is not exceptional in any way and certainly not especially Christian, is applauding the Spanish Conquest and "conversion" of the indigenous people of the Americas while denouncing both Marxism (true to his Nazi roots) and Capitalism (while he prances around in gilded robes). Behold, the Antichrist!

What's going on in Estonia? At the end of April, a lot of ink was spilled over clashes between protesters and police that ensued when the Estonian authorities attempted to dismantle a monument to the Red Army commemorating the defeat of the Nazis. As usual, the Western news media neglected to report anything that would allow readers to understand the situation. The current government of Estonia, which is a member of NATO, has been systematically trying to rewrite history to rehabilitate Nazism in the country -- all without a peep from fellow NATO members.

Why would Estonians want to rehabilitate Nazism? Answering this question requires one to look at the history of Estonia and its Baltic neighbors during the period. The governing bodies of the Baltic States, as well as the majority of their populations, were sympathetic to the Nazi cause. So it's no surprise that the Estonians were generally unhappy when the Soviet Union occupied the country in 1940 after the infamous 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (this pact was more than anything a way for the Russians to buy time before the inevitable Nazi onslaught). The primary accomplishment of the Soviet Occupation was saving most of the country's Jewish population from the Nazis by deporting them to Eastern Russia. The attempt to cleanse the country of Nazi sympathizers was really a lost cause since most of the population was down with the Nazi program. That's why most Estonians remember the Soviet Occupation as particularly harsh and oppressive. On the other hand, the Nazi occupation (which began after the German Army took the Baltic States in 1941) was a cake-walk. The Estonians basically welcome the conquering army with open arms and the Nazis, in turn, favored the people in the Baltic region among Eastern Europeans for their pro-Nazi sympathies and their Nordic features. After the Nazis lost the war it was all downhill as far as Estonia is concerned. They were on the wrong side of the war… and 60 years later we are still seeing the repercussions.