The gang was indulging in Trump bashing and only loosely discussing the surfacing of the “Kurdish Question” — should Kurdistan become a state representing the autonomous self-determination of 35 million souls now subjugated in suzerainty across five states: Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey?
Not to poop on the party, but you know that’s what I’m going to do. ๐ฆ
Prepare.
๐
On the surface and pro-Kurdistan:
–The Kurds have been producing a rapidly developing and modernizing society;
–The Kurds appear inherently communal and tolerant in their views of themselves and others;
–Of course, the Kurdish Peshmerga and separate men’s and women’s defense units form the advanced line against ISIS in Iraq and Syria;
–For a glimpse of Utopian values in place, it would be hard to beat the experience of Rojava (enjoy the look-up).
On the surface and negative:
–Since we’re all just one big family, what’s your may be theirs, at least in the minds of remote brigands;
–The suzerainties (Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey) support about 35 million people governed by many chiefs. Having been defeated by the arms of militarized states, they’re seeking a sub-state state of confederation, which may work for peace and prosperity but remain far from the American and other western experiences;
–Finally, the push-back against stronger states involved a guerrilla movement / terrorist organization aligned with the Soviet Union (1978) known as the PKK, and although the organization has been displaced by updated banners, it may be that the same personalities continue the good fight for autonomy and statehood. (Look-up Kyle Orton’s piece in The New York Times).
I explore a little bit at a time from the desktop; try to get in some background reading; and certainly try to “meet” (virtually) personalities much closer to the politics at hand.
The United States has betrayed the Kurdish desire for independence numerous times; however, noting that, the Kurdish leadership has also leaned back toward Moscow — effectively a dictatorship today — in its development politics, rather like India and Pakistan in earlier days playing east against west and back and forth, the ambivalence of the west would seem understandable.
I’ve gotten the impression that the Kurds in earlier days had used the mountains as their defensive barrier against the barbarism of others, but the greater world and changes in the technology of martial force have put them in the position of leveraging decent ideals and values, would that they would keep to them.
Those who patiently make their way through my words (more than once) know that I regard Putin’s Russia as representing feudal absolute power bent on compromising the economies, ideals, and values of the EU and NATO states, and toward that end, Russia has gotten its way with Erdogan in Turkey, a NATO signatory but no longer NATO in at least official spirit. Putin’s preference in leadership has involved other autocrats, and not so much for exacting cooperation, which he gets, but most for reinstalling the feudal and medieval worldviews in the modern democracies.
Now: tell me how Putin has done so far and where Donald J. Trump fits in that scheme.
That, I believe, is what the fussing is all about in Washington.
Do Americans want a real democracy and greater cohesion around it or rather another of the world’s sham democracies masking elite governance and kleptocracy (that’s how things usually work out with autocrats)?
It appears that the President attempted to leverage Comey’s personal loyalty to take care of an uncomfortable “matter” being investigated by the FBI. Comey then shared the experience with a friend who forwarded the same to the press, and so Comey lost the executive’s confidence. Where was the classification for the memos; where is the nondisclosure covering the conversation?
As AG Loretta Lynch has been relieved of her position, her blocking actions regarding Clinton will probably be ignored, imho. The elections over; she’s over: attention has shifted to where public attention is most needed: America’s political character, Russia’s political character, and the relationship between the two at the highest levels of governance.
The note on Comey’s so-called “leak” may reflect the fact that classification and discretion were within Comey’s authority to call, and given the President’s behavior and the FBI’s mission to defend the Constitution, the antagonism developed between the two would seem to have developed naturally in the defense of the democracy.
Lynch: old news.
Related on BackChannels for any newly arriving from Mars:ย Moscow’s Rules.
The same have witnessed the destruction of Syria by Bashar al-Assad as flanked by Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei and how theย casualty, IDP, and refugee figures have mounted on the chaos and mass destruction of warfare overseen by Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran.
If you think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a separate issue . . . think again.
The organizer of the march for Ukraine in Washington, D.C., Ed Skibicki reports that the Ukrainian-language version of the march has pulled more than 120,000 views.
In BackChannels’ opinion, these videos and related material should be pulling hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide as Ukraine serves — and as it has many times in history and too much in modern or “post-medieval” history — as a front line state standing against the barbarism, iron rule, greed, malign narcissism, and ruthlessness put on full display in Syria and Crimea by the once “Red-Green” phantoms of theย Cold War.
Note and update 5/22/2017: BackChannels has trusted UA Position but hasn’t seen second source corroboration on the Crimea story. ย Source seems to be Crimean Tatar via
Related by Euromaidan Press and published in April 2017:
An alarmist announcement in one publication associated with the justifiable want of sympathy in the maw of an invading force encourages doubt; however, as noted immediately below and in patched-in sections, open source headlines and reports suggest Russia has been revitalizing once abandoned Cold War Era assets in Crimea.
Again: has Moscow really planted nuclear missiles in Crimea?
This note comes from the Federation of American Scientists and comments on similar web claims dating back to 2014:
The news media and private web sites are full of rumors that Russia has deployed nuclear weapons to Crimea after it invaded the region earlier this year. Many of these rumors are dubious and overly alarmist and ignore that a nuclear-capable weapon is not the same as a nuclear warhead.
Several U.S. lawmakers who oppose nuclear arms control use the Crimean deployment to argue against further reductions of nuclear weapons. NATOโs top commander, U.S. General Philip Breedlove, has confirmed that Russian forces โcapable of being nuclearโ are being moved to the Crimean Peninsula, but also acknowledged that NATO doesnโt know if nuclear warheads are actually in place.
Nuclear arms agreements may have comfort the public of an earlier day, but ambiguity would seem to bedevil the field.
From BackChannels’ open source perspective, there are no authoritative or official sources or statements. ย What appears in the chronologically ordered headlines, however, suggests a course in the redevelopment of Cold War Eraย militaryย facilities.
A few twists and turns further and the driver pulled over to the side of the road. He was saying something about a monastery, and pointing to a series of blue roofs that rose up above the trees ahead of us. Presumably, it was the only viable tourist destination that he could think of in this vicinity. He seemed friendly enough, so I risked blowing our cover โ leaning forward to say, โObjekt Dva-Dva-Adin.โ
Our driver laughed, repeated the name of the colossal ruin, once a well kept military secret, and turned the car around.
It is a functioning military base with an anti-ship missile system,โ the villager told a Reuters reporter who visited the area in July.
The bunkers are just one small part of a new Russian programme to militarise the Crimean peninsula. Based on recent site observations by Reuters, accounts from locals, media reports and official Russian data, Moscow has reanimated multiple Soviet-built facilities in the region, built new bases and stationed soldiers there
I had started this separate post last night, but as things may move fast in Crimea and Syria — readers may wish also to take a look at Russia’s cash position as regards funding its aggression and barbarism against the autonomous, democratic, or western-leaning states of its surrounding world — this brief referencing may as well ride along on the same because, essentially, the material is about the same thing: Moscow’s brandishing its biggest gun, i.e., the threat of nuclear exchange and all that may follow it.
Chess pieces, demonstrations, exercises, sales, and threats — there’s a mix of prudence and evil that seeps down into the economies of all Big Defense Production states, but Moscow has placed itself in the desperate position of wanting to produce a primary defense industry even while Russians suffer from the funds siphoned away for its foreign ambitions and apparently natural kleptocratic tendencies.
Related: General Russian Defense Industry
Putin is allocating unprecedented amounts of secret funds to accelerate Russiaโs largest military buildup since the Cold War, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The part of the federal budget that is so-called black โ authorized but not itemized โ has doubled since 2010 to 21 percent and now totals 3.2 trillion rubles ($60 billion), the Gaidar Institute, an independent think tank in Moscow, estimates.
Stung by sanctions over Ukraine and oilโs plunge, Putin is turning to defense spending to revive a shrinking economy. The outlays on new tanks, missiles and uniforms highlight the growing militarization that is swelling the deficit and crowding out services such as health care. Thousands of army conscripts will be moved into commercial enterprises for the first time to aid in the rearmament effort.
Turkish President Erdogan lies to his loyal subjects in Turkey — why should his subalterns not do the same here?
CNN’s coverage of Tuesday’s melee notes Turkish embassy claims that groups affiliated with the PKK, a once militant organization much changed from its Soviet communist aligned heyday in the late 1970s, provoked Turkish Americans eager to greet President Erdogan, but then it goes on to state, ” . . .ย that account differs greatly from the sequence of events described by protesters and video captured by the Voice of America Turkish service . . . .”
Among those assaulted were two American Secret Service agents and a Washington, D.C. Metropolitan police officers, who was injured.
From Mother Jones‘s coverage:
As the violence broke out, videos from the confrontation quickly emerged on social media appearing to show Erdogan’s security detail using force on protesters, even kicking multiple people in the face, while DC police officials attempted to intervene. NBC confirmed on Wednesday that Erdogan’s bodyguards were the ones beating protesters.
The Turkish embassy did not respond to requests for comment.
Casting aside his predecessorโs concerns about human rights abuses and the suppression of free speech in another nation, Donald Trump lavished praise on another autocratic foreign leader on Tuesday, calling it โa great honor to welcome the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the White House.โ
Just hours after Trump focused his remarks on โthe exemplary valor of the Turkish soldier,โ however, Erdoganโs presidential bodyguards were caught on video punching and kicking protesters outside the Turkish ambassadorโs residence in Washington.
The footage shows local police shoving not only demonstrators but several men in suits. One of the men in suits can be seen kicking a woman who had already been knocked to the ground. Witnesses reportedly said that the protesters were demanding that a pro-Kurdish lawmaker, Selahattin Demirtas, be released from prison in Turkey.
U.S. officials strongly criticized the Turkish government Wednesday as video appeared to show its president’s security forces pushing past police and violently breaking up a protest outside their diplomatic residence in Washington.
Attacking the small group of protesters with their fists and feet, men in dark suits and others were recorded repeatedly kicking one woman as she lay curled on a sidewalk. Another wrenches a woman’s neck and throws her to the ground. A man with a bullhorn is repeatedly kicked in the face. In all, nine people were hurt.
The jihadist dictator Erdoฤan is bent on expanding his powers both inside and outside Turkey. Erdoฤanโs temper recently flared against Europe when several European governments refused โto allow his ministers to rally Turkish expatriates.โ He also declared that โEurope is collapsingโฆEurope will pay for what they have done in humiliating and oppressing Turksโ; and in response to a European headscarf ban in the workplace, he accused Europe of starting โa clash between the cross and the crescent.โ
Now he is so bold as to allow his thugs to behave violently on American soil.
Look at it. ย Read about it. ย Weep. ย And then read the update . . . .
First, The Donald dissed Israel with the astonishing statement delivered by a diplomat that the Western Wall was a part of “the Israeli-occupied West Bank”.
โThis isnโt your territory. This is in the West Bank. It is a private visit by the president, and itโs not your business,โ responded one US official, according to the Times of Israel.
Israelโs Channel 2 identified the official as David Berns, the political counselor at the US Consulate in Jerusalem, and said he was accompanied by economic adviser Jonathan Shrier, who also was involved in the row.
BackChannels much appreciates the dogged primary journalism.
BackChannels also feels David Berns should have been briefed as to the significance and sovereign possession of the Western Wall. ย If he had been apprised of the history involved, then shame on him with little mercy for what he may be suffering through today.
Notes Aaron Klein writing for Breitbart and angling for another knock at the Obama Administration: “Berns is a career officer at the State Department who has been working at the U.S. Consulate since August 2015. In other words, he received his position there during the Obama administration. According to his LinkedIn profile, Berns served from January 2002 until present as a foreign service officer with the State Department.”
If you’re informed, you know what just took place, especially if you have been fighting ISIS as part of the “YPG” (People’s Protection Units) or “YPJ” Women’s Protection Units).
One correspondent noted that in the joint appearance, “The Donald cited PKK @ 5:20, whereas Erdoฤan cited YPG/PYD @ 11:50.”
True.
In essence, Erdogan appears to have just gotten President Donald J. Trump to not only endorse his dictatorship but the potential for the continuing suppression and potential cultural annihilation of the Kurds who in his benighted opinion should have no defenses at all.
Regarding BackChannels statement about the Kurdish People’s struggle for a unified state:
. . . Turkey pretends on the surface that they are willing to help Kurdish President Barzani in Iraq but behind the scenes, they are doing everything in order to prevent an independent Kurdistan: โThey view the Kurdistan issue as a matter of survival for them. As the Kurds of Syria move closer to America and walk away from the PKK and the Marxists, the Turks are trying to paint them as Marxists, Iranian agents, Assad agents and terrorists. It is all in order to prevent the Kurds of Syria from getting access to the sea. That is the primary reason why Erdogan came to the US.โ
Sherkoh Abbas speaking on behalf of the Kurdish People and as quoted in the following publication and URL:
Slinging mud stops working when one catches the spatter and gives it a good look.
By way of research a decade ago, BackChannels has come to view the PKK as a marginalized organization with its leader Abdullah Ocalan sitting in a Turkish jail. ย The conflation of the old PKK with the whole of Kurdish forces and their aspirations may misguide the public. ย BackChannels will try to obtain an up-to-date clarification involving the integration of Kurdish political movements across the several suzerains maintained by adverse hosting/subjugating states.
Millions of Christians in the United States and the Jewish People recognize political defamation and demonization — and readers worldwide should as well. ย That the same may be meted to the Kurds by Turkish President Erdogan bodes ill for the western democracies against the feudal absolutism embraced and promoted by Moscow-Tehran.
President Erdogan has turned Turkey into a now de facto dictatorship while the ruling powers in Moscow have resumed their promotion of disingenuous speech — actually . . . lying — and the distribution of “active measures” and related propaganda (just look up “alternative media” and “alternative news” and the garbage that fills the minds of those who patronize the biggest dump of Orwellian “untruth” that has ever been milled out of a basement — where it should have stayed.
Update – On American Cooperation with Turkey on the Defeating of Kurdish Aspirations for Independence – May 17, 2017
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey โ Armored vehicles flying American flags, American soldiers posing for photos with Kurdish Peopleโs Protection Units (YPG) militants and incessant reports on US-YPG relations have been the top news in Turkey in recent days, all suggesting that the United States was heading toward an alliance with the Kurds on the Syrian battlefield.
Turkish officials reacted sometimes harshly, sometimes more guardedly, to this alliance in the making. The US administration finally said the last word with statements from their officials that Washington had decided to give direct weapons assistance to the Kurds. Although American officials tried hard to explain that the weapons will be going to the Syrian Democratic Forces, everyone knows that the backbone of that force is the YPG. This radical decision by the Trump administration has naturally become a topic of international politics.
Perhaps “The Donald” at the podium was schmearing President Erdogan after all.
Yesterday, the day of initial publication for this post, BackChannels installed in the title the hedge, “Appearance of Betrayal”. ย With that, readers have perhaps entered a new era, not so much of “Fake News”, a term Trump’s Administration with autocratic tendencies has used to undermine faith in the mainstream media, but of high-level “Fake-Outs”.
KYIV, UkraineโUsing artillery, tanks, and rockets, combined Russian-separatist forces attacked Ukrainian forces along the front lines in eastern Ukraine on Sunday and early Monday morning, highlighting, once again, that the February 2015 cease-fire has failed.
โThis is barbarism,โ Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Monday in response to the attacks, according to a tweet from his press secretary, Svyatoslav Tsegolko.
WASHINGTON โ President Trump cast doubt on whether Moscow is backing separatists engaged in the recent escalation of fighting in eastern Ukraine, appearing to side with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has long denied involvement in the conflict despite evidence to the contrary.
Mr. Trump said he did not take offense at the outbreak of a lethal bout of fighting in Ukraine that came within a day of a phone conversation he had with Mr. Putin, saying of the recent clashes, โwe donโt really know exactly what that is.โ
According to multiple accounts, the Trump campaign has successfully worked behind the scenes to make sure the new Republican platform would not pledge the lethal defensive weapons Ukraine has been pleading for from the United States. Trumpโs forces have tabled a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, and have substituted โappropriate assistanceโ for โproviding lethal defensive weaponsโ to Ukraineโs military. Removing sanctions and blocking lethal military assistance to Ukraine are the two primary goals of Putinโs foreign policy. The Republican platform is handing those goals to Putin on a golden platter.
It’s been 3 years and over 10,000 people dead, 23,000 wounded and over 1.5 million displaced people in Donbas region. We all know that this bloody conflict is a covert Russian war against Ukraine, and its objective is to destabilize Ukraine and to prevent it from ever having a chance to be a part of Europe and exist independently from Russian influence.
But many Americans don’t realize that the war in Eastern Ukraine is far from being over.
This is why we will march and rally on May 20th to raise the awareness about an on going Russian aggression and to ask the US for support.
We demand that the Russian assisted militia immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine ASAP.
If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government sticking to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by all means necessary, in order to restore territorial integrity of the Ukrainian nation. American Government needs to be tough on Russia.
Above: BackChannels edited (re-paragraphed) excerpt from the San Francisco promotion for the May 20, 2017 march.
For democracy, for classical liberalism, for dignity and freedom, for rule of law (as opposed to the rule of thugs), fight back. ย Attend or publicize the above-listed marches.
BackChannels finds its unbelievable how so active a war as that taking place in Ukraine — and brought to Ukraine by invading Russian forces — has been so off the headlines in major media. ย To catch up with events, BackChannels has a portal page, “Ukraine Conflict Resources – Short List“.
Choose your Ukrainian conflict reporting or news outlet and get acquainted.
Russia has launched an unprecedented active measures / disinformation campaign across the web in association with its feudal aggression in Ukraine, and if you have been well informed, you may take measure of that yourself by having a look at the “alternative media” and “alternative news” outlets or the propaganda listings appearing to the right of the videos displayed here. ย You will find plenty evidence of “reflection in the mirror” or what BackChannels refers to as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” in Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s portion of the “information warfare space”.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Belarus’s, Kazakhstan’s and Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.[1]
The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Russia has deployed as many as 10,000 troops in eastern Ukraine for more than a year and has actively sought to hide the deaths of its soldiers, according to a new report that provides a comprehensive assessment of the Kremlinโs invasion of its neighbor.
The report was published Thursday by the Interpreter, a daily online journal that translates Russian media and reports on Russian affairs, also detailed the Kremlinโs provision of increasingly sophisticated weaponry and vehicles to separatists in Ukraine. Nearly 8,000 people have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict since April 2014.
As Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day today, Poroshenko said that more than 2,500 Ukrainian servicemen and 7,500 civilians had been killed since the outbreak of the war in the spring of 2014.
In an interview with Holos Ukrainy, the official journal of the Ukrainian parliament, the defense minister, Viktor Muzhenko, specified today that 3,064 members of the security forces had been killed in the east since the start of what the Ukrainian government calls the “anti-terrorism operation” (ATO) in April, 2014.
Of this number, Muzhenko said, 2,636 were soldiers in the Ukrainian armed forces (VSU), the others presumably being volunteer fighters or servicemen in the National Guard, police or State Border Service. 2,148 of the VSU casualties were combat losses.
8 December 2016 โ A new United Nations report out today has confirmed that Ukrainians living close to the โcontact lineโ โ the area between Government-controlled and armed group-controlled territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions โ not only suffer due to fighting near their homes but also face the threat of landmines and unexploded ordinance as well as have to contend with severe restrictions on movement.
According to the Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine launched today by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), between mid-August and mid-November, at least 32 civilians were killed in conflict-related incidents and another 132 injured. Between mid-April 2014 and 1 December this year, more than 2,000 civilians are estimated to have dined while an additional 298 were killed in the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17.
Conflict-related civilian injures are estimated between 6,000 and 7,000.
โIt is of deep concern that Government forces and armed groups operating in civilian areas do not take all feasible precautions against the effects of fighting, resulting in damage to schools, kindergartens, and medical facilities,โ noted the report.
It added that it was worrying that Ukrainian military forces and armed groups continued to be positioned in civilian homes and buildings in villages and towns adjacent to the contact line.
The report also raised concern that armed groups in the self-proclaimed โDonetsk peopleโs republicโ and โLuhansk peopleโs republicโ continue to deprive people of their fundamental rights as well as of effective mechanism for redress.
The total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Crimea and eastern Ukraine is 1,590,056 as of 3 April 2017, according to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine.
IOM assisted over 137,000 vulnerable IDPs and conflict affected people in 24 regions of Ukraine.
Lack of funds made 40% of vulnerable IDPs IOM assisted with cash in Ukraine refuse medical treatment, according to the post-distribution monitoring of IOMโs project in 13 regions of Ukraine.
The march โ with a full police escort โ is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. at the Washington Monument and conclude at the Holodomor Memorial, near Union Station, where a vigil is to be held, concluding at approximately 5:30 p.m.
Among the invited guest speakers are analyst Paul Goble, Peter Borisow, president of the Hollywood Trident Foundation; other noted Ukraine advocates are expected and, at the time of writing, were still being confirmed, among them Ukraineโs Ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly. Clergy from the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Churches, as well as leaders of the Jewish and Muslim faiths in Ukraine have been invited to properly represent the people of Ukraine.
As stated by Mr. Skibicki: โWe demand that the Russian-backed terrorists immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine. If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government to stick to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by providing modern defensive weapons in order to help the Ukrainian people restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We are NOT calling for American troops to be deployed to Ukraine.โ
BackChannels 