Jihad Jane was given a deal by Eric Holder to stage a fake terror threat on the internet so Eric Holder and Obama could look like good terrorism fighters and create a diversion from the trillions in wealth being given away free to insiders.

I covered this story well on one of my older suspended accounts. It was an obvious fake FBI job from the start, they admitted she worked for almost a year with them before her “arrest”. They forgot to tell us she was Nada. I have videos of her mental patient FBI patsy fake mom actor. Her fake boyfriend said she just disappeared. It was all an act, fake. Fake with fake media lies on top of it. She was in an FBI office getting va paycheck for months before we heard of it all over CBS and ABC as a real deal. We were conned and the news never said a word. I would not trust this CIA FBI actor trying to sell a book after stabbing her country in the back with a fake false flag terrorism scare that was used to steal real taxdollars. The FBI stages fake terrorism and the fake is used as a real attack for political and financial gain. Its extortion, Eric Holder runs Al-Qaeda in America, planning the next fake FBI attack to scare you into giving up your rights and wealth. Obama ran this whole operation, he is Al-Qaeda, literally. They dont exist without him running fake Mohammed cartoon, underwear, and Portland Christmas tree attacks on you. This was timed with the MUmbai David Headley trial in Chicago, both accused of fake cartoonist scares. They staged a fake Mohammed scare trial to protect Headley from a real trial in India and summary execution for the attacks he planned. Eric and Obama protected the Mumbai mastermind in a fake show trial tied to Jihad Janes fake cartoon internet scare. All timed coinciding with policy or budget needs in DC. Fake terrorism against Americans is planned in the White House. Did I say fake enough times? Obama is staging terror attacks against America, period. He is using the fear from the attacks for political gain, a terrorist by the purest definition of the word.

Uploaded [Youtube] by IranContraScumDid911 on 14 Nov 2011

The Associated Press

PARIS — A Senate panel says it would be unconstitutional for France to make it illegal to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constituted genocide.

Relations between France and Turkey have soured since the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, passed such a bill last month and sent it to the Senate.

The Senate’s Commission of Laws voted Wednesday that such a law, if passed, would violate constitutional protections, notably freedom of speech. The vote was 23 Senators for and 9 against, with 8 abstentions.

The panel vote — a nonbinding recommendation — was the first legislative setback for the controversial bill. The measure goes to the full Senate for debate on Monday.

Updated at 4:20 p.m. CET

For Turkey, busy riding an economic boom and preoccupied with soccer scandals and revolutionary shifts across its borders, the race for the U.S. Republican nomination hasn’t exactly been a box office draw.  Until Tuesday, that is …

Late Monday, Texas governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry said that Turkey was governed by “what many perceive to be Islamic terrorists,” and suggested the country should be booted out of NATO.

The governor’s remarks, made during the Fox News Channel and Wall Street Journal GOP debate in South Carolina, came in response to a question from the moderator over whether Turkey still belonged in NATO amid international concern over media reports of declining press freedoms, deteriorating relations with Israel and a rising murder rate of women.

“Obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then … not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it,” Mr. Perry said.

In Turkey, a long-time ally of Washington and NATO’s only majority-Muslim member, the comments were too late to make the Turkish dailies, but early Tuesday, news websites and Twitter feeds here were abuzz with Turks’ angry and confused reaction. Turkish daily Milliyet ran a banner on its website calling the comments “scandalous.” Hurriyet said the governor’s words were “offensive.”

Readers comments were a little less diplomatic. “America really must be a land of opportunity if this man has managed to become governor,” one reader commented on the website of Vatan newspaper.

A Turkish government spokesman said: “I’m not going to comment, but I think you can imagine what my comment would be,” adding that the Turkish embassy in Washington would be studying the remarks to formulate a response.

Turkey’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement that the remarks were “untrue” and “inappropriate,” and stressed that presidential candidates should be “more careful when they are making statements.”

“Turkey has been a NATO member since Perry was 2 years old,” the statement said.

Mr. Perry’s campaign, which has faltered in recent months after entering the race as favorite in August, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Some voters and international observers have been unnerved by the policies of Turkey’s Islamically-influenced AK Party government, as the country appeared to reorient toward the Middle East and clamp down on press freedoms. But the ruling party, under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, remains popular, successfully presiding over rapid economic growth and expanding diplomatic clout while maintaining good relations with NATO allies.

Analysts said Mr. Perry’s musings were all the more curious since Washington and Ankara’s alliance has been bolstered in recent months by Turkey’s strong backing of pro-democracy movements during Arab Spring uprisings.

“Ankara and Washington are now walking in lockstep… The essence of the new relationship is one where Turkey is more empowered, and more crucial to the U.S. because of its leverage,” said Atilla Yesilada, of Istanbul Analytics, an Istanbul-based political risk consultancy.

Turkish and U.S. diplomats say they cannot remember a time when cooperation between Ankara and Washington was closer, citing that President Barack Obama called Turkey’s prime minister more than any other leader except Britain’s prime minister in 2011.

What analysts call an increasing symmetry of Washington and Ankara’s policies has formed after a period of significant strain in 2009-2010, when Turkey moved closer to Iran and tensions with Israel were at boiling point over the killing of seven Turkish nationals by Israeli commandos on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara flotilla.

In a crucial shift, Turkey agreed last fall to host a North Atlantic Treaty Organization missile-defense system, which was designed by the U.S. to contain Iran.

Turkish media outlets on Tuesday were keen to claim that Mr. Perry’s infamous “oops” moment, when he failed at a November campaign debate to recall the name of a government department he would ax if elected U.S. president, undercut the credibility of his comments.

Mr. Perry’s campaign will likely consider Monday’s comments as significantly less of a stumble, unless the Texan is planning a visit to Istanbul.

In collaboration with the pro-government Interahamwe militias, Rwandan army officials are held to have been largely responsible for organizing the massacres perpetrated against the Tutsi civilian population and moderate Hutu from April to July 1994. The massacres are estimated to have claimed some 800,000 lives. They took place against the background of a civil war between Rwandan government forces and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF): a rebel force led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan president.

In light of France’s support for the Rwandan government of the time and the ambiguities of the allegedly “humanitarian” mission — dubbed “Operation Turquoise” — dispatched by France to Rwanda in June 1994, victims groups and critics of French African policy have long accused the French government of complicity in the genocide. Their efforts led to the formation in 2004 of a “Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry” on the French role in the Rwandan genocide.

One such critic was the late Jean-Paul Gouteux. In August 2005, he spoke with the alternative Canadian publication, The Dominion, about the origins of the Rwandan genocide, the French role in the Rwandan crisis, and what he describes as the “collusion” of the leading French media of the time in covering up the true nature and extent of the violence. World Politics Review here presents Vivien Jaboeuf’s interview with Jean-Paul Gouteux for the first time in English.

Initially, most of the French media described the Rwandan conflict of 1994 as the product of an age-old cultural antagonism between Hutu and Tutsi. From a religious or social or linguistic or historical point of view, can one say that Hutu and Tutsi are two distinct ethnic groups?

Hutu and Tutsi are social categories, which in the past were determined by their respective sorts of work activity: cattle raising in the case of the Tutsi and farming in that of the Hutu. They speak the same language and they have the same culture. Nowadays, this distinction between farmers and cattle breeders no longer makes any sense. But little by the little the “racializing” vision of the German and then Belgian colonial administrators — and, above all, of the Catholic Church — took hold. The categories were adopted and given a racial interpretation by the Belgian colonialists, who had them included on Rwandan identity cards. Mgr. Perraudin, the representative of the Vatican in Rwanda, spoke of Hutu and Tutsi “races.” He was one of the initiators of the ethnically-based “revolution” that would lead to the first massacres of Tutsi civilians in the early 1960s.

Historically, over the course of centuries, the wars that permitted the Kingdom of Rwanda to expand pitted the Rwandan army — including Tutsi, Hutu and Twa — against other armies from the different kingdoms in the region. The tradition of conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi, which has been frivolously presented as the explanation for the genocide, simply does not exist. It is part of the propaganda that has been used to foment such conflicts.

The supposed ethnic conflict was an ideological construct, then, which served the political purposes of the government of the time and extremist groups?

The act of designating a scapegoat — in this case, the Tutsi civilian population — is eminently political. It is an old recipe, which has been constantly used, to the point of being worn out, by European populist and fascist movements. The two successive Hutu republics — the first dominated by the Hutu of the center of the country and the second by the Hutu from the North — made ample use of this “weapon of mass manipulation.” With the advent of Hutu Power, a racist movement that transcended the political parties, this dangerous development took the form of a sort of “tropical Nazism” that led to the genocide of the Tutsi population in 1994.

The racializing vision of the colonizers ended up being adopted in its entirety by Rwandan intellectuals — though certainly much less so by ordinary people. If the political leadership was able periodically to organize anti-Tutsi pogroms by exacerbating ethnic hatreds, it is because numerous Hutu intellectuals accepted this and found in it a means of upholding their own convictions in all good conscience. In effect, it was these intellectuals that benefited from the exclusion of Tutsi from the competition for administrative posts. There is thus a complicated interplay between, on the one hand, the manipulation of racist sentiment by those in power — which allows social problems to be obscured through the designation of a scapegoat — and, on the other, the interests of those who derive small privileges from this process and thus accept it and or even push it still further.

Rwandan victims of the genocide have even filed a criminal complaint “against x” [i.e. against persons unnamed] in the French courts. Do you really think that French political or military leaders could some day face trial and that France could some day make a public apology to the victims of the genocide?

It is my profound conviction that the truth about a genocide cannot be entirely hidden. The phenomenon of genocide is too grave a matter and it appeals to the conscience of humanity as a whole. There are those who think that the consequences of their political turpitude will never be known, because they played themselves out in the “black hole” that is Africa: the “heart of darkness,” as Joseph Conrad put it. But they are mistaken.

The complaint filed by the Rwandan victims is thus of fundamental importance. From how it is handled, we will see the state of the information available in France and also the state of people’s consciences: both of the judges and of the broader public. But there will be other suits filed, as there will be other revelations: still more embarrassing ones for the French state.

THE ROLE OF THE FRENCH MEDIA . . .

A decade after the genocide and after so many years of militating by victims and associations, the seriousness of French complicity is only starting to come out. Has the media had much to do with the length of time it has taken to sensitize the public and politicians to the issue?

As far as Africa is concerned, there is a journalistic tradition [in France] that consists in limiting information to ethnic cliches, without any analysis worthy of the name, and above all of transmitting the terms of French African policy without any criticism. The French media are never interested in any background questions concerning Africa. The image that they cultivate is one of ethnicity and tribalism: that is to say that they only speak of the form and the means of this sort of political manipulation, but not of the manipulation itself. In France, the media are obedient to authority and public opinion is always controlled. That could change.

European public opinion has to liberate itself from French expertise concerning Africa. One can envisage two possibilities: Either Europe refuses the hegemony of the French elites over African policy and it thus becomes the motor of a change in French public opinion; or our specialists, the diplomats and their networks, are able to control African policy. This would be a catastrophe for which Africa would pay a heavy price.

Back in 1994, we were enveloped by this sort of insidious disinformation. Looking back in light of the horror of what occurred and the enormity of the tragedy that played itself out over the course of three months in Rwanda, it is shocking to re-read the French press from this period. The coverage was minimal. Of course, this means that the press bore responsibility in the matter. There were two ways to prevent the tragedy from happening. The first would have been to reveal its extent starting in April 1994 and thus to have induced public opinion to demand that the intolerable crimes be stopped. The second was to reveal the involvement of French authorities, who would have then been forced to control their genocidal allies. Neither was done. The press and the other French media were above it all and remained true to their usual habits as concerns Africa.

In your book Le Monde, un contre-pouvoir? ["Le Monde, a Check on Power?"], you severely criticize the methods of disinformation and manipulation used with regard to the Rwandan genocide and, in particular, the dishonest attitude of newspaper correspondents. Among other things, you say: “[The newspaper] Le Monde, inasmuch as a docile instrument [of French policy in Rwanda], shares responsibility for the lack of comprehension of the French and their passivity in face of the horror that was occurring.” The conclusions of the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry qualify such accusations. The commission report says: “Most correspondents did their job and reported the facts . . . they did not hide the responsibility of France from 1990 onwards.” And then it continues: “Nonetheless, some correspondents and editorial writers and Parisian editorial boards tended to transmit a discourse demonizing the RPF . . .” Do you agree with this analysis?

Not exactly. In the first place, I don’t think there was a “responsibility of France” as such. It is a matter rather of the responsibility of various French political and military leaders, who were involved in a close collaboration with a pre-genocidal and then outright genocidal state. If we speak simply of “France” as such, we avoid having to identify them and we avoid having to analyze their individual responsibilities. The use of this global expression clearly reveals the limits of the commission or rather the intentions of some of its members: notably those who worked on the section on the media. But happily the facts are there and they have the last word.

The media’s obfuscation of the genocide was a very consensual process and it continued until 1998. The silence was broken by a series of articles published by [the journalist] Patrick de Saint-Exupery in Le Figaro at the start of 1998. Theses articles emancipated the press and led the French parliament immediately to form a commission of inquiry to stamp out the scandal. Obviously, there are distinctions to be made as concerns the responsibility of the press. To point out, as I have, the disinformation published in a newspaper like Le Monde, does not prevent one from recognizing that there are excellent journalists who work for the paper and that there are some very good articles that are written.

Do you think that the disinformation could also have its origins in a certain discordance between the points of view of journalists and editors? Or that maybe it’s a problem of the journalists being ignorant about the historical, social and political context of the events?

It is clear that a kind of journalistic collusion exists and that politicians and media people — that is to say, journalists, editors in chief, publishers and owners — maintain obscenely close relations. The collusion between Le Monde and the head of the French secret services, the DGSE, was even made public and admitted by a director of the DGSE himself, Claude Silberzahn. He has written that the director of Le Monde, Jean-Marie Colombani, and Colombani’s specialist in military affairs were “his friends” with whom he “plotted” some good campaigns in the media.

But there are also other journalists who avoid playing this sort of game with the agents of state power. In 1994, Corinne Lesnes, for example, wrote some very good articles for Le Monde, which undertook an analysis and furnished some elements that were indispensable for understanding the crisis. I should add — and I know this from a common friend — that her work was subjected to so much censorship on the part of the editors that she was brought to the point of tears.

The Frontier Telegraph

a) The movie

“Midnight-Express”, a dramatic Anglo-American movie, was released in 1978. It was produced by Alan Parker, who has made other famous movies such as “Birdy”, “Mississippi Burning”, “The Wall”… The scenario, based on the book by Billy Hayes, is from Oliver Stone (later on, we’ll see that he took some highly questionable liberties with regard to the original text, which relates “authentic” events). The movie music, which became all by itself an international success, is from Giorgio Moroder. As for the actors: Billy Hayes is played by Brad Davis, Hayes’ fellow prisoners’ roles are performed by Randy Quaid (Jimmy Booth), John Hurt (Max) and Irene Miracle plays the part of Billy’s girlfriend, Susan.

b) Story synopsis (movie version)

During a stay in Istanbul, Billy Hayes, an American citizen is arrested by Turkish police, as he is about to leave the country by plane with his girlfriend, carrying with him several packets of hashish. He’s sentenced to an “exemplary” four years’ imprisonment. In the remand centre, he meets other western prisoners with whom he makes friends, and quickly prepares an escape plan, which fails. Although his release was getting closer, Billy’s sentence turns into a detention for life. His stay in this Istanbul prison makes his life hell: terrifying and unbearable scenes of rape and physical and mental torture follow one another in a ramshackle remand centre, where bribery, violence and insanity rule. Monstrous warders, acting with unbearable cruelty, have prisoners undergo the worst brutalities. Some of them work for the prison administration as “informers”. In a fit of madness, Hayes kills one of them, who denounces the escape plan prepared by Hayes and his friends. Billy finally tries to escape by “bribing” the warder in chief. After accidentally killing the warder, as the latter wanted to rape him, Billy puts on his uniform, and manages to escape.

Critical analysis of Midnight Express

a) The substance

- A freely adapted scenario from Billy Hayes’s original story

While reading the book, we realize very quickly that there are important differences between the movie and literary versions of “Midnight-Express”. In fact, very questionable liberties have been taken with real events as related by Hayes. We all know that the scenario rhythm of such a movie must be steady, without any slack periods, in order to arouse the utmost attention from a public, the largest possible. However, as the image of a whole nation and a country is here in question, beyond Hayes’ personal story, it would have been decent, intellectually speaking, to respect more scrupulously the original story. Moreover, we’ll see that these liberties are in keeping with a deliberate process to accentuate and to emphasize the movie’s dramatic nature.

Here are some of the most obvious liberties taken with regard to the book:

 In the movie, Billy Hayes is in Turkey with his girlfriend, whereas he’s alone in the original story. In the movie, this love story between the “hero” and his fiancé represents a main dramatic driving force. In the movie, the hero’s image comes close to the “perfect” American’s. In fact, he’s presented as a good person in all respects, who loves and respects his parents and who is dogged by misfortune and Turks. The hero’s only fault in the movie is a very occasional use of hashish. On the other hand, according to the book, Hayes admits that he has been a great drug consumer (his addiction became more severe during his imprisonment) and even that he has illegally carried hashish through Europe on several occasions (Billy Hayes, Midnight-Express, Presse de la Cité, coll. Pocket, 1987, p. 11).

 Another distortion of the truth in the movie, of fatal importance: the scenes of rape. In fact, according to the book, Hayes has never been raped by the Turkish warders. He has never suffered any sexual violence. On the other hand, he has a homosexual relation, entirely consented, with one of the western prisoners, a love relationship carefully hidden in the movie, because it could have “besmirched” the image of the “perfect” American (in fact, in the movie, he refused his friend’s advances and remains true, against the whole world, to his fiancée Susan).

 The following liberty taken with the original story is very significant: serious insults said by Billy against the Turkish nation, in the movie, when he learns that he is given a life sentence, just don’t exist in the book !! Later, we’ll come back to these insults, their nature, and their significance among Turks.

 Otherwise, in the movie and literary versions of Midnight-Express, there are two different ends to the story. In the narrative, the hero is moved to another prison from which he escapes by sea during a storm; in the movie, this passage has been completely changed and replaced by a scene with, again, extreme violence. In fact, Hayes, still in his prison in Istanbul (he’s not moved) is “forced” to murder the warder in chief, who wants to rape him, before escaping thanks to the warder’s uniform.

Of course, all these liberties work towards giving the movie a tragic and dramatic dimension, out of proportion to what Hayes relates in his book (in which events are dramatic enough, not needing addition of anything). Whether intentional or not, these liberties contribute as well to giving a very negative image of Turks in the movie.

- The anti-Turk rhetoric

After carefully watching the film, one notices, throughout the whole story, that the characters and the situations are composed in a pure Manichean way.

The characters:

 Billy Hayes and his family: unity, love, courage and self-abnegation are the keywords characterizing the relationship between the hero and the members of his family. The disputes between Hayes and his father mentioned in the book are totally ignored in the film, which conveys a stereotyped image of a “perfect American family”.

 Turks: Throughout the whole film, they figure as brutes, militarists, bloodthirsty, stupid and evil torturers and sadistic, in brief as true “bastards”. Their image is a real caricature: ugly, with a moustache, badly shaven, suntanned, with eyes and hair very dark. They are stereotypical persons, who, even when they are killed in the film, always have the lot they deserve! All of them are systematically presented in a discrediting way. For example, customs officers: in the film, they methodically search all foreigners, while they let Turks pass (as if Turks could not be drug traffickers!). The same for policemen: they are savages, who do not respect anything, and particularly personal belongings of Hayes during the search of his luggage; they are stupid and rude (scene where Hayes takes out of his boots some bags of hashish forgotten during the search by the policemen). In all this collection of portraits, the warder in chief and the lawyer hold a central place. The first is ignoble and cruel (he closes his eyes to different traffics in the prison); he shows all the ignominy in the scene of the first interrogation, incredible in violence, in which he rapes Hayes. The latter is tortured for having borrowed a blanket during his first night in prison. Images are particularly rough and hardly bearable. The second, Hayes’s lawyer, Yesil, is far from being reassuring and nice: he is fat, corrupt, a liar and very venal.

At this level, one can note an interesting fact for a story supposed to have taken place in Turkey: most of the actors playing the parts of Turks in the film speak the language very badly, with strong accents which make almost incomprehensible their speech for a person with a perfect master of Turkish. Except the Attorney General, this observation is valid for all Turks presented in the film. In the casting list at the end of the film, one can see that there is not a single Turk among the actors: some, in the roles of Turks, are even Armenians and Greeks (the Armenians or the Greeks are known for not having sympathy towards Turks).

Quotations, descriptions, and situations:

 At the beginning of the film, Hayes believes that he can get out of prison, but Max, a prisoner, very quickly removes his illusions about rights of prisoners in the country: “In Turkey, there is no honest lawyer, they’re all twisted, worse than sowbugs. In their profession, it is indispensable. Corruption is taught at the universities.”

 The film presents a dreadful Turkish prison life: everything is only corruption; one can find anything in prison on the condition of being able to pay for it. Besides, there is a striking contrast between the severity of the keepers, changing with their attitudes and the languor that reigns in the daily life (the prisoners take the law into their own hands, for example).

 The dialogue between Hayes and his father, during his first visit to Turkey, is another eloquent example of anti-Turkish discourse:

Billy: “Well, how do you like Istanbul?” The father: “Interesting, well. But, between us, I find their food disgusting. The mess they serve in their cheap restaurants, yucky! I had to rush off to the bathroom, but you should have seen the bathroom! From now on, I shall not take any risks any more. I shall have lunch and dinner at Hilton: steak and chips and torrents of ketchup!”

 Further, in the film, Billy speaks of his situation and the universe in which he is: “Everything is here sula bula (which means so so). One never knows what is going to happen. For the Turks, all the foreigners are hated, under excuse that they are dirty and hated. Homosexuality also is dirty, it is a serious offence here, but it is in current use. There are a thousand things which one considers as hated. For example, one can stab below the belt, but not above, because it would mean an intent to kill. Then, people stroll by stabbing buttocks. One calls that “Turkish vengeance”. All this must look crazy to you, but this place is really crazy.”

One can note the occurrence of the subject of homosexuality in the book and in the film. In chapter 2, Hayes speaks about sexual customs of Turks in these terms: “My stay in Turkey had allowed me to notice that most of the people of this country tended to be bisexuals; all the taxi drivers, the waiters, peddlers seemed to throw at me lecherous glances and there, stark naked in front of these customs officers, I felt these same lustful and immodest glances”. Nevertheless, in the book, this quotation is the only one concerning homosexuality, and constitutes the only attack aiming at Turks as a whole. In general, the original story is much less virulent, aggressive, and offending, towards the Turkish nation, contrary to the film.

 The violence of insults aimed at Turks reaches its paroxysm when Hayes, who learns of his life sentence, pronounces words which profoundly shocked many a Turk: (addressing the Turkish judges) “For a nation of pigs, it is funny that none of you consumes it. Jesus Christ forgave his executioners, for me, it is out of question. I hate the Turks, I hate your nation, I hate your people, and I fuck your sons and your daughters, because they are pigs. You are pigs. All pigs!”. No comments…

b) The form

The least one can say, is that Alan Parker showed in this film that he had a strong sense of shock images. The fact that he has a great experience of exploitation films has certainly a lot to do with it. “Midnight Express” appears, indeed, as a succession of skillfully staged plans, which plunge the spectator into a terrifying atmosphere. It starts with the arrest of Hayes and the first scene of torture. Violence and murders are shown in their crudeness. These shock images are in fact a palliative to the lack of depth of the persons and their characters. As far as the latter are stereotyped, it is the violence of the scenes and of the situations that supports the film. Description and the lowest level, constantly, take the precedence over reflection. Throughout the story, visual effects and manipulation reign. A series of situations and feelings are just exposed instead of investigating and analyzing them. Everything is made to arouse only strong feelings, without any perspective: disgust, dismay, pity and sympathy. They play deeply on the emotional identification of the spectator to the hero. There just is no place for the critical mind, and nothing in the film invites the spectator to minimize the scenes that he sees or the comments he hears.

The lighting plays also a main role in the film. It increases particularly the sinister and lugubrious character, not only of jails, but also that of the city of Istanbul. Everything is dark and sad there.

As for the music, it intensifies the shock caused by images, but also the anxiety. It comes back, monotonous, as if a leitmotiv, to punctuate the most violent scenes of the film: the murder of Rifki, the warder, for example.

In general everything, in the way of capturing the scenes, is tied together in this film. Nothing is left to chance, and the result is an execrable image of Turks and Turkey given to the spectator, bewildered by the power of visual effects. We have already spoken before about comments made by Billy and his father, and evoked the caricatural image of Turks (they do not respect anything, they are fat, they sweat, they are “pigs”).

Istanbul, for its part, is filmed so that the spectator is frightened. The city is indeed swarming with crowds, streets are constantly blocked, full of people or carts, buildings are ruined, dirty. Electric cords hang out of everywhere. In brief, a city of the Third World, which radiates an atmosphere of disorder and chaos. One perceives heads of sheep being roasted, linen suspended across the narrow and dark alleys, and traditional shoeshine boys. One can also see idle people talking on the pavements or smoking the water pipe, that is, the caricature of the indolent and idle Orient. Far from the picturesque impression it could display in other circumstances, this collection of images is not innocent and it contributes, there again, to give to the spectator a feeling of fear and refusal of the “Turkish world”.

Prison life too undergoes a particular treatment, which is understandable, because Turkish prisons are not renowned to be four-star hotels: all the images are dark, and humidity oozes from the walls of the cells… The prison is dirty and falls in decrepitude, there is no comfort, not even the most elementary one. A dirty atmosphere is given off.

In brief, all the stage settings aim at over-dramatizing the story of Hayes, which damages the image of Turks. The question is to check out whether the effort to darken and to slander Turkish people is real, or is an indirect consequence of the shock value of the film? Don’t the scriptwriter and the director reveal signs of extreme primary racism in their way of suggesting the oppression and the atrocity of conditions of detention? Such questions are the subject of a debate between the detractors and defenders of “Midnight Express”, and especially between two categories of film critics, those who pretend to be specialized, and those that consider themselves more popular and close to the enthusiasm of the public for the films of Parker (See in this regard, Coursodon J. Pierre and Tavernier Bertrand, “50 ans de cinéma américain” (50 years of American Movie), Omnibus, 1995). As far as we’re concerned, the answer to the above questions can only be intent to slander and racism. Nevertheless, the quality of the realization and the performance, the décor and photography, give a force of immense persuasion to this film, whose success remains understandable.

Besides its international success, “Midnight Express” caused a terrible disappointment in Turkey, when it was shown on television in the mid 90s. Still today, Turks can hardly understand such an outburst of hatred against them. They consider this film as another element among all the other negative representations that Occidentals have made of them through generations. Representations, more or less forgotten, which stand out by the statement only of these words: “the Turks”. The latter, in the course of the years, turned in upon themselves and, except for official condemnations, avoided reacting to or answering provocations or insults of all sorts that they were victims of. For some years nevertheless, one can notice a willingness of the Authorities, but also and especially of Turks themselves, to improve the image Occidentals have of them.

Source: tetedeturc.com

• Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stated France ‘burned Algerians in ovens’
• Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stated “This is politics based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia. “

• Ambassador of Türkiye Tahsin Burcuoglu recalled from Paris today in protest.
• Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan claimed ‘This is using  Turkophobia and Islamophobia to gain votes, and it raises concerns regarding these issues not only in Francebut all Europe.’

Türkiye froze political and military relations with France in retaliation for the approval by the French parliament’s lower chamber of a measure that makes it a crime to deny so called genocide against Armenians a century ago.

Erdogan said Ottoman Türkiye hadn’t committed genocide against Armenians and that his country is proud of its own history.   Türkiye will “take incremental steps and apply them with determination as long as this position continues,” Erdogan said today in Istanbul.

The French legislation is “unjust, inaccurate and Türkiye condemns it vehemently,” Erdogan stated.  “People will not forgive those who distort history, or use history as a tool for political exploitation.”

Türkiye accuses French colonialists of massacres in Algeria after Paris bill makes it a crime to deny killings of Armenians in 1915 byOttoman Empire was genocide.

“France massacred an estimated 15 per cent of the Algerian population starting from 1945. This is genocide,” Mr Erdogan stated, accusing Mr Sarkozy of “fanning hatred of Muslims and Turks for electoral gains.” ”This vote that took place in France, a France in which five million Muslims live, clearly shows to what point racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have reached dangerous levels in France and Europe,” he stated. When it comes to massacres French action against Algerian rebels in the aftermath of the Second World War, Mr Erdogan concluded Mr Sarkozy’s father had been a French legionnaire in Algeriain 1945 and should be able to tell his son of “massacres”.

France fought a long guerrilla war between 1954 and 1962 to try to hang on to its Algerian colony. Estimates for the number of dead vary wildly.Algeriaputs it at more than a million, French historians estimate 250,000.

Earlier, Türkiye’s ambassador to France had left Paris and Ankara had announced diplomatic sanctions – banning political visits between the countries – and frozen military ties between the theoretical Nato allies.  ”We are really very sad. Franco-Turkish relations did not deserve this,” Ambassador Tahsin Burcuoglu said before taking a flight home. “When there is a problem it always comes from the French side.” ”The damage is already done. We have been accused of genocide! How could we not overreact? Türkiye will never recognise this story of an Armenian genocide.” he stated.”There are limits. A country like Türkiye cannot be treated like this,” he declared.

French carmakers including Renault control a fifth of Türkiye’s auto market and French banks including BNP Paribas SA have assets in the country exceeding $20 billion. French direct investment in Türkiye between 2002 and 2010 was $4.8 billion according to Turkish Embassy in Paris.

Türkiye has been warning France for the past week that its fast-growing economy means it can really hurt companies such as Airbus SAS and Electricite de France SA if the measure goes through.  Türkiye’s economy grew an annual 8.2 percent in the third quarter, a pace only exceeded by China in the world.

French carmaker Renault SA employs 6,800 people in Türkiye and is pressing on with production because the “French decision is a political development,” said Ibrahim Aybar, chief executive officer of Renault Mais in an interview on CNBC-e television.

In a conversation with journalists ,“The French bill is counter-productive because the emotional reaction in Türkiye can set back the cause for years,” Pope said by telephone. “That’s why France is so short-sighted to introduce this bill.” Pope stated.

Tolga Çakır

—————————————————————————————————————————————————-

For nearly a century, the Western World has wholeheartedly accepted that there has been an attempt by the Ottoman Turks to systematically destroy the Armenian people, comparable to what the Nazis committed upon the Jews during World War II. Many Armenians who have settled in America, Europe and Australia (along with other parts of the world, known as “The Armenian Diaspora”) have clung to the tragic events of so long ago as a form of ethnic identity, and have considered it their duty to perpetuate this myth, with little regard for facts… at the same time breeding hatred among their young. As descendants of the merchant class from the Ottoman Empire, Armenians have been successful in acquiring the wealth and power to make their voices heard… and they have made good use of the “Christian” connection to gain the sympathies of Westerners who share their religion and prejudices.

Turks characteristically shun propaganda, and have chosen not to dwell on the tragedies of the past, forging ahead to build upon brotherhood — not hate. This is why the horrifying massacres committed upon the Turks, Kurds and other Ottoman Muslims by Armenians have seldom been heard. When such reports are heard, Westerners can be callously dismissive… Turkish lives are apparently as meaningless to them as Indian lives were to most early Americans.

(The following is an excerpt from Dr. Leon Picon, reviewing the book, “THE ARMENIAN FILE”):

Chelsea and England captain John Terry will face charges over allegations he racially abused another player.

The player will appear in court on February 1 following the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Alison Saunders, Chief Crown Prosecutor for London said:

“I have today advised the Metropolitan Police Service that John Terry should be prosecuted for a racially aggravated public order offence following comments allegedly made during a Premier League football match between Queen’s Park Rangers and Chelsea on 23 October 2011.

“The decision was taken in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors and after careful consideration of all the evidence I am satisfied there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to prosecute this case.”

Videos of the alleged incident were circulated online and last week the CPS were handed previously unseen footage.

The Chelsea star has always denied making a racist comment to QPR’s Anton Ferdinand.

Reacting to the CPS statement he said:

“I am disappointed with the decision to charge me and hope to be given the chance to clear my name as quickly as possible.

“I have never aimed a racist remark at anyone and count people from all races and creeds among my closest friends.

“I will fight tooth and nail to prove my innocence. I have campaigned against racism and believe there is no place for it in society.”

Ahead of the CPS decision Terry’s manager Andre Villas-Boas said the defender had his “full support” of both himself and the Chelsea club.

n a statement, Terry’s club said:

“Chelsea FC has always been fully supportive of John in this matter and will continue to be so.

“The club finds all forms of discrimination abhorrent and we are proud of the work we undertake campaigning on this important issue.”

If convicted, the multimillionaire would face a fine of around £2,500.

Sky

A new bill criminalizing the “denial” of the unsubstantiated “Armenian genocide” claims was introduced in the French National Assembly with the barely implicit support of Mr. Sarkozy.

The co-chairmen of the Coordination Council of France’s Armenian Associations, namely Jean-Marc “Ara” Toranian, former spokesman of the terrorist group ASALA, and Mourad Papazian, unrepentant sympathizer of another Armenian terrorist group, the JCAG/ARA, did not expect that anymore, at least not in 2011. The level of knowledge of the MPs supporting the bill is exemplified by Richard Mallie (UMP), who still uses the crude forgeries of Aram Andonian that have been proven to be fakes since 1983.

The bill is not the result of the Armenian nationalists’ real influence in France; on May 4, 2011 they suffered a humiliating “fiasco”(this is their word) in the Senate after several other failures to obtain any discussion of the old, now defunct, criminalization bill (2008, 2009, 2010). The new bill is not the expression of a wave of anti-Turkish, or still less, anti-Islam sentiment. The Turkish season (2008-2009) in France was a success. According to a recent Gallup survey, 64 percent of the French have a good opinion toward Islam. There is indeed nothing in France like the Protestant fundamentalism in the U.S. and Germany or the vehement anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish demagogy of the so-called “Party for Liberty” in the Netherlands. The French colonial tradition, despite obvious shortcomings, was pro-Islamic and even largely pro-Turkish. The background is so completely different.

In a sense, the reasons for the bill are sadder than that. Mr. Sarkozy is afraid – not without reason – of losing the presidential election and as a result is ready to do anything to obtain more votes. His initiative is a serious error, even in a strictly electoral perspective. Assimilation leads many French Armenians to vote out of ethnic considerations. Even the majority of the nationalist activists and sympathizers vote traditionally for the same party because they prefer to show an electoral fidelity with the hope of being awarded – at least by subventions – for their associations.

So, the oldest alliance still existing in the world – the alliance of François I and Süleyman the Legislator, perpetuated in 1921 by the Ankara agreement and again in October 2011 by the Franco-Turkish agreement against terrorism – is not jeopardized by prejudices but prejudices toward prejudices and in addition toward the personal ties of a few dozen Armenian activists with a few dozen MPs. Similarly, the blog opened on the website of Le Monde by the author of this article was censored because of Armenian pressure. This is merely the result of social intercourse of a few Armenians with one or two editors. The failure of French Turkology to produce works comparable to the ones of Edward J. Erickson, Guenter Lewy and Justin McCarthy, or the passivity of most French Turks until very recently, also has something to do with the problem.

But this is not the time for a blame game. Political irresponsibility can provoke irreversible damages in the context of the Arab Spring – especially the repression in Syria, which makes Franco-Turkish cooperation so desirable – and the unresolved problems in the Caucasus. The French language was studied in Turkey for decades, but especially since the “recognition” of 2001 there has been a dramatic decrease, and that is why this text is written in English. The “recognition” of the “genocide” claims and the irresponsible statements of Mr. Sarkozy about Turkey cost France many contracts and its place in Nabucco. The vote of the liberticidal bill would still be worse. Even if it has nothing to do with any deep anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim feelings in France, the vote on the censorship legislation proposal would be interpreted like that by many Turks and not only by the less educated people.

Armenian nationalism has been used since its revival in 1965 as a tool by powers which have agendas other than European – or more generally Western – unity. Alas, it is also helped by the miscalculation of some Western politicians. As a result, the French deputies have a heavy responsibility. They can choose to damage irremediably the relations with a rising regional power and as a result seriously hurt the European Union policy, the French economy and their prestige and diplomacy. They can also choose to prefer French and European interests, as well as the value of free speech, to the cries of former supporters of Armenian terrorism.

*Maxime Gauin is a researcher at the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK-ISRO) and a Ph.D. candidate at the Middle East Technical University department of history.

Hürriyet Daily News

Davutoğlu’s statement is part of a series of remarks Turkish officials have made to call attention to neo-Nazi killings of Turks in Germany in the past decade. Turkey vociferously demanded German officials investigate the racially motivated murders of Turkish Germans.

Germany pledged a quick and comprehensive investigation to discover how a group of neo-Nazis managed to operate under the authorities’ radar for years, allegedly killing 10 people and robbing a string of banks.

The group called itself the National Socialist Underground — a clear reference to the name of the Nazis, the “National Socialists.” The group is suspected of murdering eight people of Turkish origin, one with Greek roots and one policewoman.

The investigation into the group’s activities has spiraled into a national inquiry of previously unsolved crimes, including attacks in Cologne and Duesseldorf between 2000 to 2004, which are now linked to the National Socialist Underground. Those attacks injured more than 30 people, most of foreign origin.

Two people have been arrested: a suspected co-founder of the group — 36-year-old Beate Zschaepe — and an alleged supporter, identified only as 37-year-old Holger G. Two other suspected founding members, Uwe Boehnhardt, 34, and Uwe Mundlos, 38, died in an apparent suicide. Authorities believe the group might have relied on a larger network of “helpers” across the nation. Boehnhardt and Mundlos are suspected of killing themselves in their mobile home after police closed in on them after a bank robbery in the central city of Eisenach.

In the vehicle, police found the service weapons of two police officers who are believed to have been attacked by the group in 2007. A 22-year-old police woman was fatally shot in the head during the attack and her fellow officer was seriously injured.

Other evidence has been recovered from the house believed to have been torched Nov. 4 by Zschaepe, the same day the bodies of Boehnhardt and Mundlos were found. She turned herself in to authorities last week, but has refused to make any statement.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is tasked with tracking extremists, but each state has its own branch and its own police forces, which critics say has resulted in a lack of coordination that has helped the neo-Nazis remain undetected since 1998.

Davutoğlu, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel, said prejudice against foreigners is more dangerous than any racist terrorist. He added that it is possible to fight a terrorist or terrorist network. “It is more difficult to counter prejudice,” Davutoğlu told the German magazine. Davutoğlu said the Germans should work towards compromise and integration as much as Turks have, and the murders were against the values and goals of Germany and all of Europe. The Turkish foreign minister added that he had seen a serious economic crisis and increasing unemployment during his visits to Europe and that Europeans usually hold immigrants responsible for financial problems, leading to xenophobia. “I do not want to dramatize the incident, but I am really concerned. Politics should be prepared for such a situation,” he said.

via Turkey says Nazi mentality more dangerous than terrorists.