I can imagine, but can’t see your utopia John

Imagine
by John Lennon

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today… Aha-ah…

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I can imagine, but not a whole a lot better world than the one we have. Living for today might be an attractive proposition for the “flower childeren” like you, especially when under the influence, but it never excited me; too selfish for my taste.
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Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for

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The People Will Decide in Turkey

Omurgalı entellektüel dostum Israel Shamir’in bir önceki yazıda bahsettiğim yazısı:

An excellent article on the Failed Coup by an intellectual with moral spine.

Kaynak

The most striking feature of the failed Turkish coup has been the people’s response. The plotters did their routine right: they seized the broadcasting station, they sent a sortie to kill the president, they stationed troops in the vital points, they rolled out the tanks. They calculated everything but the people’s response. As the president survived the attempt on his life, he had made the mobile phone streaming call to the nation urging people to get out and decide their future for themselves.

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Noam Chomsky’yi niye her defasında kandırıyorlar?

Gavurun sözünü herkes duymuştur: Herkesi bazen, bazıların her zaman kandırabilirsiniz ama herkesi her zaman kandıramazsınız.

Bu söze göre  ünlü dil-bilimci/düşünür Noam Chomsky en azından bizimle ilgili konularda “bazıları”  kümesine giriyor , zira bizim yerli bize ait herşeyin düşmanları onu her defasında kandırıyorlar veya kanmıyor aslında ama ajandası onlarla örtüştüğü için onların dezenformasyonunu stratejik olarak araçsallaştırıyor. Kim bilir? Kalbine giremem ama aklına hitap etmeye çalıştım.

Daha önce Gezi sırasında kendisi ile yaptığım yazışmalardan bahsetmiştim. Kendisine bilgiyi Türkiye’deki dostlarının sağladığını ve Amnesty International (AI) ve medya haberlerinin de bunu desteklediğni ifade ettikten sonra beni “kafayı kuma görmekle”, konuda cahil kalmakla itham etmişti. Benim cevabımın da onun altında kalmamış olduğunu beni biraz tanıyanlar tahmin eder.

Adını “Barış İçin Akademisyenler” veya medya ifadesi ile “1128 akademisyen” bildirisinde görünce dayanamadım, gene sordum “katil Erdoğan” hükmüne nasıl vardığını: Yazışmaların bir kısmı aşağıdadır (tercümeler altında):

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From: Bekir L. Yildirim [mailto:bekirlyildirim@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 5:53 AM
To: Noam Chomsky
Subject: Are you truly interested in the facts on the ground?

Mr. Chmosky,

As in the Gezi Protests, you appear not to be bothered by the facts vis-a-vis the “Kurdish Issue” or let them get in the way of a good Erdoğan bashing.
You appear to be so confident in your stature as an independent thinker that you could get away with claim that North Korea is a true liberal democracy!

Show me or the world or informed public,  whoever means anything to you, verified facts to prove that “Erdoğan is a murderer”. I can cite to you hundreds of such facts , all using anti-Erdoğan or International watchdog, UN sources.
Facts Mr. Chomsky, verified or verifiable facts, even if you are Socrates, your claims must be supported by facts.

Do you know how many protesters were killed by police during Gezi protests? Not more than 3-4 (and only two by bullets , one by tear gas canister hitting a sensitive part of the body). That is less than half killed by the protesters.

The operations in the southeast Turkey (a.ka.Turkish Kurdistan) soldiers are carrying civilians trapped behind the ditches, dug by the terrorists, on their backs akin to Rachel Corrie trying to save the Gaza family! Yesterday they threw bombs in an elementary schoolyard where Kurdish children were receiving their semester reports. Does it matter to you? It matters to us.

If your stance is due to lack of knowledge, I invite you to planet earth and pay attention to the facts before reaching conclusions on who is murderer.

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A reminder to the the civilized West on the Barbarians at the gate

The following poem by Emma Lazarus is so fitting to the plight of the refugees that one may be misled to think she wrote it for the families like Aylan’s, the toddler whose little body was washed ashore not far from Rhodes, the Mediterranean Island the name refers to, instead of the Statue of Liberty and American immigrants.

May I remind those Xenophobic-Westerners like the Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (if I were the descendant of Atilla the Hun, I would shy away from making bigoted remarks about others)that we are all the descendants of immigrants.

The New Colossus

As if Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

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Who watches the watchdogs: The case of Turkey versus Israel

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Whose da’wah is Hagia Sophia anyway?

• Turkey is within its sovereign right to determine the status of Haga Sophia based on its own historic heritage and values. That said, there is no urgency to convert it back to mosque when the country is facing more pressing issues

  • Bekir L. Yıldırım

   

  

  The Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya in Turkish), built as a patriarchal basilica (532-537), has changed status several times throughout its tumultuous history. It remained as the Eastern Orthodox cathedral until 1453 when Fatih Sultan Mehmed (Mehmed the Conqueror) took Istanbul, except for the brief Latin Crusader occupation in the 13th century, during which it served as a Roman Catholic cathedral. Fatih converted the building into an imperial mosque. During the reign of Fatih and his successor sultans, many repairs were done. Minarets and eventually buildings including a madrasa, an imaret (soup kitchen), sultans’ tombs and library were also added, transforming it into a külliye or a religioussocial complex. As a result of these additions during the Ottoman era, the Hagia Sophia gained an added Islamic-Ottoman character. It remained in the mosque-külliye status until 1931 when it was closed for repairs and minor modifications for its eventual conversion to a museum in 1935, a status it has held since. As a result of its history, it held and still does, a religious as well as historic significance to both Orthodox Christians and Muslim Turks, in addition to its status as an architectural wonder of the world. The building which some art historians include among the “seven wonders of the medieval era,” holds world heritage site designation by UNESCO.
   

Full article in Daily Sabah

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Neither preemptive nor authoritarian and by the way not a doctrine

NEITHER PRE-EMPTIVE NOR AUTHORITARIAN…AND BY THE WAY, NOT A DOCTRINE

The AK Party goverment’s groundbreaking outreach was met with the approval of the majority of the people, contrary to the expectations of pundits who are always disappointed by the ballot boxes

by Bekir L. Yıldırım

Prime Minister Erdoğan’s “authoritarian tendencies” have long been a mantra for Erdoğan-bashers in Turkey and abroad. Mustafa Akyol, a prolific Turkish journalist, enriched the terminology with the contribution of “Turkey’s preemptive authoritarianism doctrine” in an article of the same title (Al Monitor, April 10, 2014). The article provoked me to respond because it represents a mindset voiced by many here and abroad with increasing frequency – at least since the Gezi Protests – and reached its peak with the Dec. 17 attempt to topple Erdoğan with or without the feared ballot box.

Recent political history tells us that when the powers decide to hold the feet of a leader in the non-Western world on fire, such depictions abound. The differences are merely in tone or the specific tools employed and not on the modus operandi. Another and no less important reason for the response is the portrayal of people who support Erdoğan with unwarranted belittling, demeaning adjectives akin to those employed customarily by the laicist, self-proclaimed elite. We developed a thick skin for those insults – albeit not put as politely as Akyol does – by the privileged, wannabe Western crowd over the last hundred years. But seeing a young idealistic journalist who takes pains to differentiate himself from them and calls himself a liberal-devout Muslim falling in the same domestic-orientalism trap is disheartening.

Full article in Daily Sabah

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Israel’s Illegal Settlements in America

By Grant Smith On November 27, 2009 @ 11:00 pm

Türkçe

US Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell was highly enthusiastic about Israel’s partial, temporary illegal settlement freeze stating “it is more than any Israeli government has done before and can help move toward agreement between the parties.” In fact, Israel has done more. In 2005 Israel reversed settlement construction and its overt occupation of Gaza. Palestinians situation worsened under a strangulating economic blockade and total Israeli control of borders, airspace and maritime access. Ironically, those Americans seeking a permanent end to Israeli settlement activities face a predicament similar to the Palestinians. Peace in the Middle East depends on reversing a peculiar manifestation of illegal Israeli settlements right here at home. These US settlements were built not on stolen land, but the strategic territory of US governance through violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

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Afghanistan : No War for Heroin

By Israel Shamir

The war in Afghanistan makes no sense at all. The war in Iraq made very little sense, too, but the Afghani war takes the cookie anytime. Our friend Jeff Blankfort quipped: if the Iraqi war was for oil, the US lost. The neocons’ desire to secure the realm of Israel is the only remaining rational explanation for the Iraqi war. However, in case of Afghanistan we have not got even that. No Israeli politician ever asked for regime change in Afghanistan . No oil company asked for it. Nobody wanted Afghanistan . It is a mystery for me, why would anybody want to invade and take over this remote and hard land of poor and ferocious men? There are no spoils to be taken, no oil, no important routes.

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Spotlight on Palestine: an interview with Stuart Littlewood

By Angie Tibbs

15 November 2009

British writer and photographer Stuart Littlewood talks to Angie Tibbs about his experience of Israel’s occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, and comments on how British and American collusion, under the auspices of the Jewish lobby, is helping to sustain the world’s most lawless, brutal and unjust occupation regime.

“Lawlessness must have painful consequences for the lawless, not their victims.” (Stuart Littlewood)

Stuart Littlewood is one of the most consistent and passionate writers on the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestine. His book, Radio Free Palestine, and his frequent articles, focus readers on the plight of the Palestinian people, on the occupiers who are responsible, and on the governments who support Israel’s slow-motion genocide and theft of an indigenous people’s homeland, culture and history. I spoke with him recently.

[Angie Tibbs] Has your active support for the Palestinian people always been a part of who you are or was there a defining moment which caused you to speak out?

[Stuart Littlewood] I’m new to this game. The Palestinians’ struggle for justice isn’t taught in school here and our politicians are afraid to discuss it, so the British people are kept in ignorance.

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