Turkey Worried About Israeli Brutality to Palestinians. Turkey Invades Iraq and Kills 100 Kurds.

The Turks were very very vexed by the Israeli raid on a Turkish vessel in international waters. The Israelis argued that they had the right to attack the ship as it had open intentions of supplying Palestinian terrorists. "Palestinian" is the Israeli adjective for terrorist.

The Turks not be outdone have their own pet phrase for Kurds, "Kurdish rebels". Today Turkey raided Northern Iraq and killed 100 Kurds, rebels all of course. This will certainly enrage public opinion across Europe and most of the free world.


Turkish Raid May Have Killed 100 Kurdish Rebels
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NY Times
Published: June 18, 2010

Filed at 6:28 a.m. ET

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey's military said Friday it killed as many as 120 Kurdish rebels in an air raid on rebel hideouts in northern Iraq last month and a daylong incursion by elite commandos into Iraq this week.

Kurdish rebels have dramatically stepped up attacks in Turkey in recent months in an escalation that poses a dire threat to a remarkable attempt at ending one of the world's longest guerrilla wars. The Turkish military responded to the rebels by sending its warplanes across the Iraqi border to bomb Kurdish rebel positions after acquiring intelligence, apparently from the United States and recently purchased drones from Israel.

The rebels have long used northern Iraq as a springboard for hit-and-run attacks on Turkish targets in a campaign for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast. Several past Turkish air raids and incursions have failed to stop rebel infiltration through the mountainous border.

Maj. Gen. Fahri Kir, the head of the military's internal security operations, said another 30 Kurdish rebels were killed inside Turkey since March in anti-rebel operations. He said the Turkish losses were 43 in the same period. It was not possible to independently verify the figures, which the military says are based on intelligence reports, including interception of radio communication between the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK.

''We anticipate (PKK attacks) to continue incrementally,'' Kir told a news conference at the military headquarters.

The PKK declared an expanded war on June 1, a day after imprisoned Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan said in a message communicated by his lawyers from the prison island of Imrali, near Istanbul, that his calls for rebel dialogue with Turkey had been ignored, so he was abandoning them and giving his consent to the rebel command in northern Iraq to determine the course of action.

Kir said the PKK aims to expand its attacks throughout Turkey in an attempt to create ''fear and chaos.'' The escalation of violence followed the major air assault on May 20 on rebel positions in Hakurk region of the northern Iraq in which several warplanes bombed a large area to kill about 100 rebels.

It was the largest air assault on the rebels since a 2008 ground operation into Iraq that saw many guerrillas return to bases along the border after Turkish units withdrew. The Turkish military says around 4,000 rebels are based just across the border in Iraq and that about 2,500 operate inside Turkey.

Hundreds of elite commandos crossed into Iraq for a daylong operation to hunt down a group of rebels who were escaping after an attack near the border town of Uludere. Kir said the commandos, who returned to their bases on the same day, killed five rebels but later intelligence reports suggested that the rebel casualties, also in a coordinated air strike, were about 20.

Kir said 545 rebels were believed to have defected from PKK last year as a result of Turkish operations and difficult living conditions on the mountains. He put the number of PKK deserters this year at 148.

Maj. Gen. Ferit Guler, the secretary-general of the Turkish military, stressed on Friday that while the military chased Kurdish guerrillas, ''the state should use economic, socio-cultural and propaganda measures in coordination at the international level for an effective struggle against terrorism.''

Turkey has waged a harsh crackdown during the grinding 26-year insurgency by the Marxist group PKK, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the West for killing civilians in urban bombings and arson attacks and slaying government teachers, engineers and clergymen.

The government, however, has tried to distinguish its Kurdish citizens from those who support the rebel group and extended greater cultural rights to the Kurds such as broadcasts in Kurdish language on television, to try to win their hearts.

Turkey, however, rejects calls from the Kurdish rebels and politicians to allow education in schools in Kurdish. The language is also barred in parliament and other official settings on the grounds that its use would divide the country along ethnic lines.

The conflict has killed as many as 40,000 people and allegations of Turkish brutality and restrictions of Kurdish rights have stained the country's human rights record and hampered its bid to join the European Union. The military offensive has also cost hundreds of millions of dollars in defense spending and slowed construction of schools, hospitals and irrigation projects.

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'You know the president is drowning — in oil this time — when he uses the Oval Office.'

Can The One Drop the Buzzer-Beating No. 23 Act?
By MAUREEN DOWD NY Times
Published: June 15, 2010

Of the many exciting things about Barack Obama’s election, one was the anticipation of a bracing dose of normality in the White House.

America had been trapped for eight years with the Clintons’ marital dysfunction disastrously shaping national events and then trapped for another eight with the Bushes’ Oedipal dysfunction disastrously shaping international events. And before that, L.B.J. and Nixon had acted pretty nutty at times.

President Obama was supposed to be a soothing change. He had a rough childhood. Michelle once told a friend that “Barack spent so much time by himself that it was like he was raised by wolves.” But he seemed to have come through exceptionally well adjusted. “His aides from the Senate, the presidential campaign, and the White House routinely described him with the same words: ‘psychologically healthy,’ ” writes Jonathan Alter in “The Promise,” a chronicle of Obama’s first year in office.

So it’s unnerving now to have yet another president elevating personal quirks into a management style.

How can a man who was a dazzling enough politician to become the first black president at age 47 suddenly become so obdurately self-destructive about politics?

President Obama’s bloodless quality about people and events, the emotional detachment that his aides said allowed him to see things more clearly, has instead obscured his vision. It has made him unable to understand things quickly on a visceral level and put him on the defensive in this spring of our discontent, failing to understand that Americans are upset that a series of greedy corporations have screwed over the little guy without enough fierce and immediate pushback from the president.

“Even though I’m president of the United States, my power is not limitless,” Obama, who has forced himself to ingest a load of gulf crab cakes, shrimp and crawfish tails, whinged to Grand Isle, La., residents on Friday. “So I can’t dive down there and plug the hole. I can’t suck it up with a straw.”

Once more on Tuesday night, we were back to back-against-the-wall time. The president went for his fourth-quarter, Michael Jordan, down-to-the-wire, thrill shot in the Oval Office, his first such dramatic address to a nation sick about the slick.

You know the president is drowning — in oil this time — when he uses the Oval Office. And do words really matter when the picture of oil gushing out of the well continues to fill the screen?

As Obama prepared to go on air, a government panel of scientists again boosted its estimate of how much oil is belching into the besmirched gulf, raising it from 2.1 million gallons a day to roughly 2.5 million.

The president acknowledged that the problems at the Minerals Management Service were deeper than he had known and “the pace of reform was just too slow.” He admitted that “there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done.”

He appointed a “son of the gulf” spill czar and a new guard dog at M.M.S. and tried to restore a sense of confident leadership — “The one approach I will not accept is inaction” — and compassion, reporting on the shrimpers and fishermen and their “wrenching anxiety that their way of life may be lost.” He acted as if he was the boss of BP on the issue of compensation. And he called on us to pray.

Testifying before Congress on Tuesday, Rex Tillerson, the chief of Exxon Mobil, conceded that the emphasis is on prevention because when “these things” happen, “we’re not very well equipped to deal with them.”

Robert Gibbs on Tuesday continued the White House effort to emote, saying on TV: “It makes your blood boil.” But he misses the point. Nobody needs to see the president yelling or pounding the table. Ronald Reagan could convey command with a smile; Clint Eastwood, with a whisper. Americans need to know the president cares so they can be sure he’s taking fast, muscular and proficient action.

W. and Dick Cheney were too headlong, jumping off crazy cliffs and dragging the country — and the world — with them. President Obama is the opposite, often too hesitant to take the obvious action. He seems unable to muster the adrenalin necessary to go full bore until the crowd has waited and wailed and almost given up on him, but it’s a nerve-racking way to campaign and govern.

“On the one hand, you have BP, which sees a risky hole in the ground a couple miles under the sea surface and thinks if we take more risk, and cut some corners, we make millions more. In taking on more risk, they’re gambling with more than money,” said Richard Wolffe, an Obama biographer. “On the other hand, you have Obama, who is ambivalent about risk. What he does late is to embrace risk, like running for president, trebling troops in Afghanistan and health care. But in deferring the risk, he’s gambling with his authority and political capital.”

By trying too hard to keep control, he ends up losing control.

Obama, clueless, paralyzed, inept and vindictive, with no idea as to how to stop 2,500,000 gallons of oil leaking into the gulf comes up with the answer.

He has a picture of green trees and windmills on his private website, Obama.com web site

Obama Blows the Vuvuzela. Noise, but the Leak Rolls On.

Training to be President

Why would anyone except the terminally naive, look at the resume of Barack Obama and vote for him to fill the biggest, hottest CEO seat on the planet?

Well, they would not, but they did. They liked the pretty pretty sounds coming from Obama's vuvuzela. The press ran out and picked up their plastic horns and joined the chorus. Tens of millions of other hapless fools did as well and we have President Barack Hussein Obama.

Last night we got to see how it matters. Obama looked small in the big chair and talked about what exactly? Anything about the only thing that really matters, stopping the leak?

No, just more plastic noise from the boy with the toy.

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The Tingle is Gone

Gulf fishermen say Obama's words can't stop the oil
Tue Jun 15, 2010 11:36pm EDT

La., June 15 (Reuters) - It's a familiar refrain in southern Louisiana since the oil spill began and after President Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday, it was voiced once again: there is little he can do until the oil stops gushing.

At the Black Velvet Oyster Bar and Grill in Buras, Louisiana, a popular watering hole for commercial and recreational fisherman, some patrons watched Obama's televised oval office speech intently. Others tuned out.

The crisis has hammered the Louisiana seafood industry, with large areas now closed to fishing.

Fisherman James Swain watched the major televised speech on the response to the BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N) oil spill up at the bar with his friend Ray Cepriano. They ordered up beers and shrimp.

"We're in a bind down here," Swain said. "Obama can't stop the well, and that's what they need to do."

Obama took a tough stance during his address, saying he will direct BP to set up an independently administered fund to compensate workers and business affected by the spill, and to mobilize more equipment.

Still, Cepriano, an oysterman, seemed just as frustrated after the speech as he was before it began.

Like many here, he relies on checks from the oil company and hopes for fishing grounds to open up. It does not make up for what was shaping up as a bumper season, some fishermen believe the best since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

"We went through Katrina. That was fine. We rebuilt," he said. "Now this -- this is not natural and it was done by BP."

Cepriano said he was unhappy with the government response, regardless of the president's tougher tone.

"Nothing's organized. None whatsoever ... they've got this really messed up," he said.

Obama delivered the speech after a tour of the Gulf Coast. An AP-GfK opinion polled showed 48 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the crisis, up 15 percentage points from a month ago. The spill is into its eight week.

At Joshua's Marina, across Louisiana Highway 23 from Buras, Brent Trauth, a fishing guide and seller of oil field equipment, said he believed the president was doing a "decent" job, but could not give him full marks.

He is disappointed Obama did not lift a six-month ban on deepwater drilling, a measure many in Louisiana have blasted for its impact on the state economy.

"A lot of people would (like to see it rescinded)," he said after fueling his boat. "I think it's going to come before six months, myself." (Editing by Eric Walsh)

Nuke The Oil Leak

Look, there is a hole 5000 feet down under water into another 20000 feet of rock. Is the diameter of the hole 36 inches?

Crush it.

We know how to set off an underwater nuclear weapon.

If we set off one or several weapons we will turn that rock to glass and crush the well. When the first estimates of the spill were reported, they talked about 50,000 gallons a day , the contents of a large suburban swimming pool.

Now they are talking about 2.5 million gallons. Could they have been this wrong this long? Maybe, but what if this thing is accelerating? Are we willing to take the entire gulf down because we do not have the audacity to take a risk that has a chance of working?

Do it. Nuke the well. Nothing else is working. It is worth the risk.

Philadelphia Phatties

Most Philadelphians Not Fit For Military
PHILADELPHIA (AP)

A nonprofit group says that up to 90 percent of young Philadelphians are ineligible for military service because of criminal records, obesity or lack of education.

Pennsylvania-based Mission: Readiness released its report Monday. It says 1 million Pennsylvanians are ineligible for the same reasons.

Mission: Readiness is made up of more than 150 retired generals and admirals. The group wants state and federal funding for pre-kindergarten programs that it says give children a solid foundation for academic and personal success.

The report says 145,000 Philadelphians ages 18 to 24 cannot meet the military's medical, moral and mental standards.

Nationally, the Department of Defense estimates that 75 percent of young adults are disqualified from military service.

There is Only One Way to Silence the Vuvuzela

World Cup 2010: BBC may offer vuvuzela-free matches

South Africa defends plastic horns which have sparked global debate over loud drone and are selling out in Britain

The BBC was investigating the possibility of transmitting an alternative "vuvuzela free" version of its World Cup coverage tonight, as the fierce debate over the buzz of the horn looked set to be heading for football grounds all over Britain.

As players, fans and coaches weighed in on whether the loud drone of the plastic horns was an annoying irritant or joyful expression of African culture, South African organisers hit back and encouraged visiting fans to export them back to their own countries.

At the same time, fans in Britain have been snapping up the horns at the rate of one every two seconds and suppliers claimed the UK had been gripped by "vuvuzela fever".

"Vuvuzelas are here to stay and will never be banned," said Rich Mkhondo, a spokesman for the local World Cup organising committee. "People love the vuvuzelas around the world. Only a minority are against vuvuzelas."

The Premier League and the Football League said there was nothing in their rules to stop supporters bringing them to English grounds but the decision would rest with individual clubs.

"There is a good chance they will end up in our grounds because people will bring them back from the World Cup," said a Football League spokesman. "It is a matter for individual clubs, as is the case with drums and other musical instruments."



The drone of the vuvuzela has sparked an international debate since the tournament's launch on Friday, with broadcasters inundated with complaints and arguments raging on radio phone-ins.

The BBC has received 220 complaints and, while it is committed to reflecting the atmosphere in the stadiums on its main coverage, it is believed to be looking into providing a so-called "clean" feed that would strip out the majority of crowd noise, via the red button.

South African organisers insisted today they were an important part of the atmosphere and would not be banned, despite the World Cup organising committee chief executive, Danny Jordaan, saying at the weekend that he personally preferred the sound of singing.

Critics have argued that the constant drone masks the ebb and flow of the game and drowns out the noise of the crowd.

The Danish goalkeeper Thomas Sorensen said after today's match with Holland that the constant noise meant he had to be no more than 10 yards away from his teammates and have eye contact to pass any messages.

Following his opening game, Argentina's Lionel Messi said: "It is impossible to communicate, it's like being deaf."

But the South African goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune, mindful of the value of home advantage, said after his team's opening match that there weren't enough vuvuzelas in the stadium and called on supporters to make more noise.

Even in South Africa, opinion is divided. Some put the wave of international criticism down to the effect of vuvuzelas being blown by enthusiastic visitors rather than the more expert exponents at South African Premier League matches.

But the organising committee called on overseas fans, who have been snapping up the horns, to export them.

"The vuvuzela is now an international instrument," said a spokesman. "People will buy them and stuff them in their suitcases and take them home."

England fans in the UK appear to be heeding his call; Sainsbury's sold 22,000 red vuvuzelas – or "Vu Vu horns" as it brands them – in 12 hours before England's game – one every two seconds. The supermarket chain has ordered 25,000 extra horns but thinks it may run out before Friday's game against Algeria.

There were none left at Sainsbury's in Emmersons Green, near Bristol. A few miles away in Chippenham, Wiltshire, half a dozen remained on the shelves.

Mike Brown was buying two for his children. "I could be making a terrible mistake but I think I'm going to have to make a rule that they can only blow them during the actual games. But the kids wanted them and I can't resist it when they get excited about something like the World Cup."

Amazon said sales had increased by 1,000%. David Broughton, from Northamptonshire-based company thevuvuzelaman.co.uk, said the country was gripped with "vuvuzela fever".

"We sold 1,000 online over the weekend. Someone in Dubai has asked for 10,000. If anyone knows of half a million vuvuzelas lying around, they could get very rich," he said.

World Cup organisers tried to draw a line under the issue of whether the instruments were good for the tournament. "This is a world event hosted by South Africa. As our guests, please embrace our culture and the way we celebrate," said the spokesman.

"You either love them or you hate them. We in South Africa love them."

Collateral Damage

Is NATO to Blame for Russia's Afghan Heroin Problem?

By SIMON SHUSTER / MOSCOW Simon Shuster / Moscow Mon Jun 14, 1:30 am ET

It had to be one of the weirdest displays the Russian president had ever seen. Laid out on a table were a mound of walnuts, a chess set, an old tire and an anatomically correct dummy - all stuffed with little baggies of imitation heroin. Titled "The Deadly Harvest," the exhibit was meant to show the clever ways smugglers have of getting Afghan heroin into Russia, which has become the world's largest consumer of opiates from Afghanistan since the U.S. began its war there in 2001. President Dmitry Medvedev stared at the objects and shook his head grimly. Behind him, wearing equally somber expressions, stood a group of Russian officials who would spend the day, June 9, lambasting the U.S. and NATO for not doing more to stop these little baggies from getting into the hands of Russia's youth.

On the international stage, Russia's Afghan heroin issue has become the country's favorite crusade, and has allowed Russia to enter a global debate about Afghanistan that had previously left it on the sidelines. Its basic point is a reasonable one: NATO has fueled drug production by refusing to destroy Afghan poppy fields, which it stopped doing last year in the hope of winning the support of opium farmers. Perhaps less reasonable is Russia's belief that its heroin problem is caused not by its porous borders or its abysmal treatment of addiction (methadone therapy is illegal in Russia) but by NATO's policy on drugs in Afghanistan. Yet that is what Russian officials contend, and this week they embarked on a campaign of coordinated fuming over the issue. (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)

On June 7, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov was in Singapore for an annual defense conference, and he used his turn at the lectern to berate NATO's tolerance of poppy crops. At a Central Asian security summit in Berlin the following day, the chief of Russia's anti-narcotics agency, Viktor Ivanov, compared NATO to Dr. Frankenstein, suggesting that its Afghan drug policy was "giving birth to a monster." Then on Wednesday and Thursday, the Kremlin's information agency, RIA Novosti, held a conference on the heroin issue in Moscow. The exhibit of smugglers' tricks was its main attraction, and at the podium, some of the Russian speakers threatened to punish the coalition if it didn't change its approach to Afghan poppies. "Further assistance to the coalition must be predicated upon a more active position in the fight against drug production in Afghanistan," Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told the delegates, suggesting that NATO's vital supply route through Russia could be cut if the destruction of poppy fields didn't resume.

In its way, Russia is making an important point. Between 2005 and 2009, Afghanistan's yearly opium output jumped from 4,000 to 7,000 tons, and it now accounts for more than 90% of global supply, according to the United Nations. Russian state statistics say that opiates such as heroin and morphine kill around 30,000 Russians every year, three times more than the total number of Soviets killed during their 10-year war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. And the U.N. also says that the $65 billion earned every year from the sale of opiates partly goes to finance terrorists around the world, including the Taliban militants that the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan. (See pictures of British soldiers in Afghanistan.)

But Russia is wrong to claim that NATO is ignoring the problem. NATO's March offensive in Marjah redoubled the crackdown on drug traffickers with the aim of cutting the Taliban off from its main source of funding, and U.N. data shows that Afghan opium production has fallen by about 15% since its peak in 2007. Russia insists that is not nearly enough, and has consistently offered the help of its own military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), in stemming the flow of drugs through Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Russia and the CSTO - which was founded in 2002 as Russia's attempt to balance against NATO's influence and whose seven members include Armenia, Belarus and a few Central Asian republics - are the only ones advocating the wholesale destruction of poppy crops as a solution. The livelihoods of millions of Afghans depend on opium farming, and at the RIA Novosti conference on Wednesday, M.K. Bhadrakumar, India's former ambassador to both Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, said poisoning the fields would only "stoke the fire of mass anger." And Prince Abdul Ali Seraj, who represents a coalition of Afghan tribes, in his speech called on the international community to "hand something of equal value to the farmers, and that way take the opium away from them." But the last word on the matter seemed to come on Wednesday from the U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, who said that the coalition would not take Russia's advice about destroying opium harvests anytime soon. So Moscow's latest push in the debate has not gotten far. (See pictures on Russian human rights.)

Yet analysts say that for Russia's leadership, the act of pushing is an end in itself. "It is important for Russia to show that it will not be left at the margins of the Afghan issue," says Omar Nessar, head of the Institute for the Center of the Study of Modern Afghanistan in Moscow. He points out that sooner or later the Americans will leave, and Russia will be left to grapple with Iran over influence in Afghanistan. "This is the way it has chosen to make itself known, and indeed its criticism here is justified," Nessar says.

Natasha Kuhrt of the Department of War Studies at King's College in London says Moscow is also seeking to create points of contact between NATO and CSTO. So far the CSTO has not been taken very seriously in the arena of geopolitics, and Russia has been desperate to bring in new members and bolster its prestige.

To this end, "Russia needs to position itself as a competitor in the battle for Greater Central Asia," which includes Afghanistan, Kuhrt wrote in an essay published June 8 in the Russian Analytical Digest. "Russia would like to see the CSTO engage in 'global peacekeeping' as a way of legitimating this organization. In the best-case scenario, NATO would acknowledge the CSTO as a dialogue partner. Unfortunately NATO has been reluctant to accord such a role to Russia." (See pictures of the U.S. Marines' offensive in Afghanistan.)

NATO's attitude toward CSTO could help explain the venom with which Russia has gone after the alliance over its failure to destroy poppy crops, and its insistence that the CSTO could help stop the flow of Afghan drugs. It is not yet clear whether Russia will be given such a role in Afghanistan. But as the war drags on, similar footholds are likely to emerge, putting Russia in a better position to regain influence after the U.S. pulls out.

What's up with Lousiana and Obama?

This post was originally started June 1st.

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On June 1, I wrote:

Anderson Cooper was in Plaguemines Parrish, Louisiana with the Governor Bobby Jindal and and a local officiando touring the oil-laden marshland. They were complaining that neither BP nor the Federal Government had done anything about the oil. They were still waiting for the Feds to approve a local action plan to initiate cleanup actions. Also, Carville was on again calling for Obama to become engaged and make something happen.

My reaction was - What is wrong with the people of Louisiana? Why do they always turn to the Feds? Why are they not already out in the marsh cleaning up that oil?

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Two weeks later, some answers are coming to light. Part of the answer is in the first paragraph. The Feds have not been cooperative in approving the local action plans. Why not?

The Chief of a local volunteer fire department in Alabama told Fox News that his community was having difficulty with the Feds. He decided that they were going forward with their plan regardless. And what was their plan? Simply to place a create a breakwater with barges in front a line of oil booms. Why on earth would the Feds have a problem with this?

Weeks ago, when the oil spill first occurred, it was reported in my local newspaper that the local hair salons were collecting hair to be stuffed in panty hose and used to absorb oil. As we saw the first pictures of oil soaked marsh and birds, I wondered why it seemed nothing was being done to prevent the oil from washing ashore. Apparently, the hair in panty hose is not EPA approved. Not to worry, the situation is under control.

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