Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

[Translated and transcribed from Turkish by Güzin Bilgi for www.palestinethinktank.com and Gulagnik Translators (www.gulaknick.wordpress.com) English editing by Mary Rizzo. It may be reprinted with full credits to the translators and source. Subtitled video, Italian (by Diego Traversa), German (by Güzin Bilgi) and more languages to come, so watch this space.

[Palestine Think Tank] is extremely pleased to be able to provide the full text of Erdogan's speech to Turkish Parliament. It is an intervention of monumental historical importance and our excellent translator Guzin Bilgi transcribed it in Turkish and translated it also into English. It is currently available in those languages on PTT, and later in the day, the Italian version by Diego Traversa will follow as well as the subtitled video. You are free to link and reprint, fully crediting the translators and source.]

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Christopher King

The concentration camp that is Gaza

Christopher King looks beyond Israel’s latest crime against humanity, its murder in international waters of aid workers bound for Gaza. He argues that it is high time to accept the fact that Israel is a fundamentally illegitimate entity and that the only chance for peace lies in a one-state Palestine shared among Palestinian Arabs and Jews.

Anthony Blair said on television prior to invading Iraq, “Well, we won’t kill as many people as Saddam has!” He underestimated his ability. Sanctions had already killed half a million Iraqi children and the American invasion sold to this country and Europe by Blair killed about one million persons, created four to five million refugees and devastated the country. This war criminal has subsequently been enriched by America for his work and was presented with one million dollars by Israel.

In creating the Gaza concentration camp where food from humanitarian organizations is allowed in to 1.5 million Palestinians on a basis calculated as the minimum necessary to sustain life, Israel is similarly challenging Nazi achievements. Israel claims that it does not ration food to Gaza on this basis but the calculation exists. We must draw our conclusions from it.

Israel’s action in attacking the humanitarian relief flotilla that was attempting to breach the illegal blockade of Gaza is nothing less than piracy with murder. At least nine and perhaps 19 persons are reported to have been killed, according to reports. One cannot comprehend why the international community tolerates the existence of this regime, much less supports and protects it as America does.

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Mark Karlin

From the 1953 CIA Overthrow of Democracy in Iran, to the Iraq War, to the Criminal Gulf Catastrophe and Deaths, BP Was There

If you were to draw an oily line from the first exploitation of oil in the Middle East by the British in 1901 (they were in the process of converting their then world dominating naval fleet from coal to oil and were in desperate need of it) to the overthrow of the secular democratic leader in Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, to the Iraq War, to the criminal environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, BP would have been there.

But the fourth largest company in the world wasn't always called BP. It used to be owned by the British Government (remember the navy armada in need of oil). It was named the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company when the CIA teamed up with the British because the Western style Iranian leader Mossadeq wanted to nationalize Britain's 100% owned and run giant oil concession in Iran, and the West would have none of that. So Eisenhower authorized "Operation Ajax," and the Shah of Iran was placed in power -- ruling with an iron fist and the dreaded SAVAK, all the time fully backed by the U.S. -- leading to the radical theocratic revolution that we still confront today. All the time BP, which formally adopted its current name in 1954, was there.

BP was there throughout the de facto colonization of the Middle East to provide oil to the West, the British and the U.S. remaining strong partners in keeping any recalcitrant nations in line. Which leads to the Iraq War and why many Americans and Brits were puzzled by Tony Blair's eagerness to go along with Cheney's secret oil committee plan to seize Iraq oil fields and Bush's belief that the war was Biblically justified. BP is the largest corporation in the UK and the third largest energy company. Do you have any more questions?

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Xymphora

You can't understand Israel and the Jewish attitude towards it unless you understand how violent group supremacism works. Rachel Corrie wasn't suicidal. She assumed that the bulldozer driver would recognize her as a fellow human being, and stop. Her thinking process was that she would afford the bulldozer driver the courtesy, indeed the privilege, of sharing the compass of her moral sphere. As a fellow moral being, he would never hurt her, particularly when hurting her would disprove her thesis of his morality. Non-violent protest always makes the assumption that shared morality as human beings will cause the state instruments of violence to avoid their default actions. That's the gambit: I assume you are a moral being like me - do you dare disprove my assumption by hurting me?

To a violent group supremacist, Rachel Corrie's assumptions were an outrage. How dare she assume that she was on the same moral plane as the bulldozer driver? Didn't she know that he was a superior being? Her attempt to bring him down to her level, the level of farm animals or insects, was the worst insult that could be made to a Jew. So he ran her over. In standing up for group supremacism, he immediately became an Israeli folk hero.

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Chris Hedges

"We have to grasp, as Marx did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good."

"The fear of communism, like the fear of Islamic terrorism, has resulted in the steady suspension of civil liberties, including freedom of speech, habeas corpus and the right to organize, values the liberal class claims to support."

The witch hunts against communists in the United States were used to silence socialists, anarchists, pacifists and all those who defied the abuses of capitalism. Those “anti-Red” actions were devastating blows to the political health of the country. The communists spoke the language of class war. They understood that Wall Street, along with corporations such as British Petroleum, is the enemy. They offered a broad social vision which allowed even the non-communist left to employ a vocabulary that made sense of the destructive impulses of capitalism. But once the Communist Party, along with other radical movements, was eradicated as a social and political force, once the liberal class took government-imposed loyalty oaths and collaborated in the witch hunts for phantom communist agents, we were robbed of the ability to make sense of our struggle. We became fearful, timid and ineffectual. We lost our voice and became part of the corporate structure we should have been dismantling.

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JungleLaw.com

The state of Israel, it seems, knows no limits, not moral ones, and not legal ones either. By attacking and seizing ships on the high seas, Israel has proved once again that it is not worthy of membership in the global community of states. Apart from the ugly crime of STATE PIRACY committed today by Israel against innocent unarmed civilians in an aid convoy bound to Gaza, Israel is also in grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the rules and customs of war, by upholding its illegal siege of Gaza continuously over the past couple of years.

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, aid which Israel has denied from the Palestinians, despite the repeated calls of the international community to let aid in to Gaza. The latest such call came from the EU: The spokesperson of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice President of the Commission Catherine Ashton issued the following statement yesterday: "The EU remains gravely concerned by the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The continued policy of closure is unacceptable and politically counterproductive. We would like to reiterate the Eu's call for an immediate, sustained and unconditional opening of crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and persons to and from Gaza."

Israel claims that the passengers aboard these ships are connected to international terrorism, when in fact these brave people are the ones who decided to stand up against Israeli state terrorism and expose its illegal siege of Gaza. Adding insult and injury to an existing injustice is the specialty of the Israeli gangsters, so it seems.

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