Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Map of Where Zarqawi Was Killed

A map of the Triangle of Death showing where the 2 US soldiers were captured on June 16 can be found at this site here. The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated January 23, 2008:

Don't you guys (my readers) realize why you even bother to come to this obscure blog? The reason you come, whether you realize it or not, is because you find information, photos, and photo essays here that are difficult, if not impossible to find elsewhere on the web.

Don't forget the contextual articles that group together many different obscure Internet pieces with analysis, commenting and photo essays. Do you realize how long it would take you to trawl around the Net gathering up all this stuff on your own? All this we do for you, dear readers, and we don't even charge admission!

As another example of the great blog value you get here on Robert Lindsay, we offer you some excellent maps of the region of Iraq where Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, notorious leader of Iraqi Al Qaeda, was killed by two 500-pound bombs dropped by a US F-16 at 6:15 PM on Wednesday, June 7, Baghdad time.

Apparently Jordanian intelligence was involved in tracking him down through both analysis of the formless terrain on a recent videotape he arrogantly released and betrayal by an informer from his own organization, who was a Jordanian intelligence asset.

The mainstream media has told us that he was killed either in the city of Baqubah or the city of Hibhib, 10 1/2 miles west of Baqubah (background on Hibhib here).

There have been a series of horrible crimes committed by terrorists in and around Hibhib recently, which suggested the presence of a nasty terrorist cell in the area.

First there were a series of 17 severed heads of Shia civilians found in fruit boxes around the city. Then a bus was stopped just north of Hibhib, and 19 people, mostly high school students, were ordered out of the bus and all of the Shia, including 12 Shia high school and college students traveling to Baqubah for exams, were murdered.

The suggestion is that locals were disgusted by this brutality and may have helped turn Zarqawi in. Both cities, Hibhib and Baqubah, are in red-hot Diyala Province, where the Iraqi Civil War is currently raging.

He was killed at a meeting with six colleagues, at least according to the US Central Command statement, 8 kilometers (5 miles) north of Baqubah. The US Centcom statement appears to be incorrect. Hibhib is west-northwest, at best, of Baqubah, not due north at all. On my map it is 17 km W/NW of Baqubah. On another map it is 8 km W/NW of Baqubah. I believe 17 km away is correct, based on this BBC map here.

The five colleagues, including a woman thought to be his wife, Zarqawi's spiritual advisor, a young boy thought to be his son, and three other persons who were not identified (the age, sex, and identity of those killed with Zarqawi seem to constantly change with various news reports on different days) were also reportedly killed in the steel-reinforced safehouse surrounded by palm trees.

Subsequent news reports say reporters went to the city of Hibhib to see where he was blasted away. That implies that Zarqawi was in fact killed in Hibhib.

What is interesting is that as far back as January 2005, Iraqi intelligence reports connected Zarqawi to Hibhib.

Those reports said that Zarqawi was hiding in between the Dora District of Baghdad and Baqubah and Hibhib in Diyala Province, that he was keeping a contingent force in Khalis and Hibhib to ambush convoys traveling between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and that he was spending time in the town of Ghalabiyah, near Khalis.

So Zarqawi, instead of showing up in Hibhib recently, may have been there off and on for 1 1/2 years.


This shows where Zarqawi was killed, 1 1/4 miles north of Hibhib (the black square to the southwest of the explosion mark), which is about 10 miles west/northwest of Baqubah. The location description given by Centcom - 8 km north of Baqubah - is inaccurate. That location is about where the "Zarqawi Killed Here" banner is. Copyright Oakhurst Technology 2006.



Zarqawi's hideout was about 1 1/4 mile northeast of the center of Hibhib. The hideout was surrounded by large US bases. For instance, the hideout is only six miles Southeast (and on the other side of the Tigris) from the largest US base in Iraq, LSA Anaconda and is also only about 3-4 miles west of the brigade-sized base at Baqubah called Camp Freedom I.

An excellent map of Zarqawi's hideout can be found by going to Google Earth's location here. The apparent coordinates are 33.48' 03.19"N 44.30 48.09E.


An excellent, highly detailed map of the part of Diyala Province where Zarqawi was hiding. Click on the map to view it in greater detail. As you can see, Hibhib is not really north of Baqubah at all, but is actually West/Northwest of the city. Copyright Oakhurst Technology and distwalker 2006.


This is a zoom shot of the same superb map showing where Zarqawi was killed. As you can see, the location is just northwest of Hibhib - 1 1/4 miles northwest of Hibhib to be precise. Compare to the two photo shots below. Copyright Oakhurst Technology and distwalker 2006.



This excellent map shows a detailed view of the precise location of Zarqawi's hideout. It can be found at the Google Earth url linked above. The coordinates are also listed above. On the map, north is at the bottom and south is at the top. The town of Hibhib can be seen in the far right corner of the map. This map can also be found at this url.

It comes from a former US Army paratrooper and infantryman whose son is an Army Ranger in the 75th Regiment on his third tour in Iraq. Compare this map to the superb New York Times photo map here and the map below to get a better perspective. Copyright Oakhurst Technology and distwalker 2006.


An excellent photo of the exact location of the hideout, taken from an Associated Press copy of a US Department of Defense photograph linked on Yahoo News photographs. Compare it to the Google Earth coordinate map and the New York Times photo map, both linked above.


Many other articles are commenting on Zarqawi's life and death, so there is no need to re-plow those fields here (this Atlantic piece is especially good). An excellent roundup of reports on Zarqawi and related reports on the Iraqi insurgency peripheral to Zarqawi can be found here, on the essential Counterterrorism Blog .

Iraqi Al Qaeda has already appointed a successor. Abdallah Bin Rashid al Baghdadi, head of the Mujahedin Shura Council in Iraq, has been appointed head of Iraqi Al Qaeda. This ought to put to rest confusing statements by my friends that the Shura Council is actually nationalist-dominated.

Wariya Arbili, according to Debka, is now the top Al Qaeda operative in Iraq. Arbili is head of Ansar Al Sunna, an Islamofacsist terrorist group with roots in the (officially dissolved, but actually just subsumed into other groups) Islamofascist terrorist group Ansar Al Islam. I believe that AAS has formalized an alliance with Iraqi Al Qaeda in recent months, but they were always ideologically close.

Debka says that AAS controls significant swaths of Iraq - particularly parts of Kurdistan. They also have a presence in Kirkuk, Mosul, Tal Afar and parts of the Sunni triangle. They are definitely active around Hit, Ramadi and Fallujah in Anbar Province and down around Madaen, Salman Pak, Yusufiyah, Latifiyah and other parts of the Triangle of Death south of Baghdad in Babil Province.

I agree that AAS probably has a large presence in Tel Afar, but my information is that a while back it was Ansar Al Islam that had a huge presence there. Anyway, AAI and AAS are pretty much the same thing. AAS is a superset of AAI.

On the day of the Zarqawi hit, US TV news turned into Z News, or Zarqawi News - All Zarqawi, All The Time - complete with the usual triumphalist BS we have come to expect from this Administration and its de facto US-government controlled TV news organs. This is a turning point, we are told, we are winning the war, the terr'rists are on the run. The rightwing Internet blog echo chamber was also working overdrive.

I am as happy as anyone to see Zarqawi dead. After all, I am a sane secular Leftist who is self-aware enough to realize that these Islamofascists are Enemy Number One of my comrades and me.

I supported the relentless war the Algerian state waged against Islamofascist barbarians in Algeria, in which they killed maybe 10,000's of Salafist primitives (though not the abuses that that entailed).

Much as I disliked the Afghan Communist regime, I think they did a superb job of slaughtering armed Islamic fundamentalists, always a noble and commendable operation. Saddam Hussein also killed all sorts of dangerous Sunni fundamentalist throwbacks, an achievement for which he ought to be commended.

Egypt killed 9,000 of these armed barbarians in the past decade and temporarily defeated the Islamic Jihad insurgency that was machine-gunning tourists at pyramid sites like Luxor.

As far as jihadi-Salafists like Zarqawi go, in my opinion you cannot kill enough of them. Most Salafist women, most Salafist older males and all Salafist minors should be spared, but Salafist-jihadi males aged 18-50 are simply dangerous, whether armed or not.

They have a poisonous ideology that should be banned outright, and most of them can turn dangerous any time. In many cases they need to be thrown out Western countries if they are not citizens, and even have their citizenship revoked, if they are citizens. If that's un-Constitutional, then amend the Constitution.

All Muslim immigrants to Western countries should be questioned intensively, and all those espousing Sunni Salafist ideology should be banned from entering.

That said, the question begs: What will Zarqawi's death do the three major wars currently raging in Iraq - the Shia guerrilla war against Coalition troops, the communal civil war and the Sunni guerrilla war against US forces? I do not think his death will benefit any of these conflicts.

In the same way that after Saddam's capture, guerrilla operations surged for a few months, I think we may be in for a similar rerun here.

Keep in mind that many of the Sunni tribes and even a lot of the Sunni nationalist guerrilla groups have histories of conflicts with Iraqi Al Qaeda. This conflict has periodically broken out into open warfare. No doubt some Iraq's Sunni nationalist fighters are cheering the death of this maggot. No doubt his removal will give their groups a shot in the arm.

Sure, Iraqi Al Qaeda may be down for the punch for a while, but maybe they aren't. Anyway, the notion that the Sunni insurgency is in any way dependent on Iraqi Al Qaeda is patent nonsense. If anything, it was a drag on the movement and unnecessarily vicious and divisive.

Furthermore, if Iraqi Al Qaeda's operations are reduced, we may not see much difference. Many of the Iraqi Sunni nationalist groups have now become, as Zarqawi's plot had anticipated, just as vicious, murderous and terroristic towards the Shia as Iraqi Al Qaeda was.

The Shia resistance has been caught up in the sectarian struggle with the Sunnis, which has diverted them from attacks on Coalition forces.

Furthermore, all Iraqi Shia guerrilla groups were tainted due to the association of Iraqi Al Qaeda with the insurgency itself, since the Shia in general, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, hate Zarqawi with a passion. With IAQ temporarily wounded, the Shia may feel freer to attack US forces.

For all of these reasons, I don't expect this killing to do much. Instead, I am afraid it may even give the guerrilla movement a shot in the arm. Time will tell.

Update: I have responded to my colleague Brian's (who is currently in Jordan doing citizen journalism and blogging with Iraqi colleagues) critique on his blog of some of the points I made in this post in the comments section at the end of this post.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Kurdish Secessionism Looms Over the Middle East

Updated Updated February 1, 2008:

The Kurds are an "Aryan" people in the true, Indo-European sense of the word (not the Nazi aberration meaning "Nordic"), referring to the populations of Northern India, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran. Their origins are uncertain. One school holds that they are related to Iranian (Persian) tribes living around Lake Van in southeastern Turkey 3,000 years ago.

The ancient Kurdish city of Hasankeyf on the Tigris River is currently threatened by a huge dam that will destroy hundreds of archaeological sites and a great deal of valuable wildlife, especially, bird habitat. It is widely opposed by Kurds.


Others feel that the Kurds are former Persian Jews who converted en masse to Islam (see Joseph Katz' fascinating site Eretz Yisroel for more on that theory). At any rate, Kurds having been living in Anatolia for 2,700 years.

Turkey has been committing cultural genocide against its Kurdish population since the formation of Turkey as an ethnic ultranationalist state in 1918, amidst the blood of 1.5 million Armenians, a massacre that Turkish fascists refuse to admit to until this very day, much to the fury of Armenians around the world.

For decades, in a campaign reminiscent of the boarding schools US Indians and Australian Aborigines were sent to, Kurdish children were bussed off to boarding schools, where they were raised as Turks. The goal here, as with the Indians and the Aborigines, was the destruction of the child's culture and language.

The US has backed all of Turkey's Nazi-like fascism to the hilt. 80% of Turkey's weapons come from the US. There are bizarre laws on the books against "separatism".

Until recently anyway, "separatism" meant such mundane things as speaking the Kurdish language, wearing Kurdish colors in one's hair, celebrating Nawruz (the Kurdish New Year), giving your kids Kurdish names or testifying about Turkish genocidal racism in other countries.

In recent years, Kurds somehow managed to get five parliamentarians elected to the Turkish Parliament. Now all five are languishing in Turkish prisons for speaking out about Turkish fascism.

Turkish nationalism, honed in genocide with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the rise of the Young Turks, and Kemal Ataturk's obsessive secularism, has been a particularly virulent and racially supremacist ultranationalism. At the moment, this disease is the Turkish character.

The majority of Turkish people are fascists and racists, which explains why, despite their poor country that retains remnants of semi-feudalism, every election year they march off and vote for one rightwing party or another, against their basic interests.

As feudalism and fascism typically give rise to Leftism, this has happened in Turkey too. Turkey has a vibrant, militant, often-armed Left that carries out regular armed attacks on the Turkish state. It even has an extant Maoist movement, always a sign of a society that is at least semi-fascist and semi-feudal.

It is useful to note, and shameful of the Armenians to refuse to discuss (not to mention Turkish ferocious denials) the fact that while the Turks were killing 1.5 million Armenians during the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, the Turks also killed 275,000 Assyrians and 350,000 Pontian Greeks. A total 2.125 million people were slaughtered by the genocidal Turks.

Armenians freezing in the winter during the Armenian genocide. The fate of this particular group is unknown, but 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Turkey will not acknowledge the genocide to this day.


Around about the same time, from 1910-1919, Turks ethnically cleansed 1.5 million Greeks from Pontia in far western Turkey, where they had lived for centuries. In the process, 350,000 Greeks were killed.

When I call Turks Nazis, fascists and racists, I do not use the term lightly! I can back it up with facts. If this were all in the past, like the German and American forays into genocide, we could at least hope for the future and refuse to blame the sons for the sins of the fathers.

But since the Armenian Genocide of 90 years ago, the Turks have not learned the slightest thing. I am inclined to believe that unless forceful actions are taken to prevent their recurrence, such genocidal behavior can occur again and again.

Why do the Turks refuse to discuss the Armenian - Assyrian - Greek Genocides of 1915-1923? Possibly because that would be like a man cursing his own birth and entry into the world. For with the slaughter of 2.125 million non-Turks and ethnic cleansing of 1.5 million more, the Turkish state, as we know it today, was built.

During World War 1, Turkey was attacked by their ancient rival, Russia. Russia was siding with Serbs, who were hostile to Turkish Ottoman genocidal encroachments into the Balkans. The Kurds loyally helped secure Turkey's borders from the Slavic threat. For this good deed, many of them were cut down.

With the formation of the modern Turkish state after World War 1 amidst the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the European imperialist powers sat down to devour the spoils. Most of the Ottoman colonies were turned into British and French colonies, notably what is now Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and part of Saudi Arabia.

The Kurds demanded and were promised a state with the signing of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, but the Turks reconquered Kurdistan after signing the treaty, Kemal Atatürk rejected the treaty, and the Allies had more pressing matters.

Subsequently, a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, was signed in 1923, and much of Kurdistan was given to Turkey and parts of the rest were chopped up into the new states of Syria and Iraq.

A maximalist map of Kurdistan. I would cut off Iranian Kurdistan somewhere around central Iran, right about at the city of Kermanshah (click on photo to see detail). The notion of extending all the way down to the Iranian coast strikes me as absurd, or a cynical way or giving the Kurds a seaport. Furthermore, Iraqi Kurdistan extends considerably to the south of where it reasonably ought to be and surely includes neither Kirkuk nor Mosul.


Interestingly, the Lausanne Treaty called for the protection of the Greek minority in Turkey, but the Greek population in Turkey has declined from over 400,000 in 1923 to only about 2,000 now. This precipitous decline was caused by the virulent anti-Greek racism of the Turks, that continues to this very day.

The Kurds were furious at the loss of the state they were promised in the land they had lived in for centuries, if not millennia. An uprising broke out right away and was viciously suppressed by racist Turks. Since then, Turkish Kurdistan has been in almost continuous rebellion. There have been a total of 29 violent rebellions since 1924, and all have been savagely crushed by the genocidal Turkish state.

The most ferocious rebellion was led by the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, from 1984-1999. It left 37,000 people dead in its wake. I supported this rebellion 100%. The leader of the PKK was Abdullah Ocalan. He was recently captured in Africa by Turkey with the disgusting, despicable help of intelligence from the Israelis, of all people.

As in Palestine, the war left a trail of villages wiped off the map - 3,000 in Turkish Kurdistan. Kurds are forbidden to return to these wrecked sites. If you try to go back to one of these villages now to rebuild the ruins, you run the risk of being arrested by Turkish fascists, tortured and murdered.

After the usurpation of parts of Kurdistan by Syria and Iran, the Kurds in those regions were also often in rebellion. In Iraq, the British waged ruthless campaigns against the Kurds, to the point of dropping chemical weapons on them. Winston Churchill angrily justified using poison gas on the Kurds.

Later, Saddam Hussein waged a decades-long genocidal war against the Kurds, including the Anfal Campaign in the 1980's that left countless Kurds dead. There was another genocide in Syria as Syrian Arabs brutally crushed Kurdish rebellions there.

In recent years, Syria has ethnically cleansed Kurdish and Assyrian villages in the far north and moved Arabs into them in their place. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have not been granted Syrian citizenship and wallow in statelessness, in a condition similar to the Palestinians but off the world's radar screens.

Brutal repression of Syria's Kurds continues. Recently, wild Kurdish riots in Syria's northeast were met with gunfire and scores of Kurds were killed. Syria's Baathist Arab nationalism, like Saddam's was a virulent, racist, Arab supremacist, Nazi-like ethnic ultranationalism that resembled fascism in some ways.

In post-Saddam Iraq, the Kurds have played important roles in the tragic history of US-occupied Iraq. Much of that history goes beyond the scope of this post.

One of the essential sticking points between Kurds and the government of Iraq is the demand by Kurds of not only an independent Kurdistan, which is reasonable, but to make the oil-rich city of Kirkuk their capital, which is not reasonable, since Kurds have not been a majority there for decades.

The virulent Arab nationalist racist and Sunni bigot Saddam Hussein started an ethnic cleansing campaign in Kirkuk and other parts of the north in recent decades. Around Kirkuk, this campaign was intended to keep the oil fields in the hands of Arabs and out of the hands of Turkmen, Assyrians and Kurds.

Before this ethnic cleansing campaign, the oil region of northern Iraq (basically the Kirkuk fields) was inhabited by Kurds, Sunni and Shia Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen, frequently living together peacefully. Since 1950, Turkmen has been the largest group in the city of Kirkuk, even after Saddam's racist campaigns.

In Iran also, the Kurds have been chronically rebelling, and as in Turkey, Syria and Iraq, there was another Kurdish genocide in Iran.


Monday, May 8

Adana:
Turkish prosecutors are outrageously charging 4 kids aged 13 and 14 with distributing PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) propaganda during a funeral for a PKK member who was killed by Turkish fascist forces. The youngsters are facing decades in prison for this outrageous crime.


Sunday, May 7

*****
Diyarbakir: Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited Turkish Kurdistan for the first time in years and made some conciliatory statements at a local meeting of his political party. "As long as we walk together as Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Lazes, Georgians, Bosniaks and Albanians, without discriminating against any particular ethnic group, nobody will be able to divide us," Erdogan said.

Although this statement appears bland and unimportant, it is actually a very important remark. For the Turkish state is finally starting to acknowledge ethnic groups other than Turks in Turkey. For decades, Kurdish identity has been denied, and Kurds were referred to as "mountain Turks".

Although Erdogan stated that "Turkish citizenship should be the primary identity of all Turks", he still deserves commendation for acknowledging the existence of non-Turkish populations within Turkey.
*****

The leader of the PKK, Cemil Bayik, threatened to attack Iran due to Iran's launching artillery attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan (see April 30 post). This blog strongly supports the right of the PKK to attack Iran due Iran's shelling of the PKK. Iran may be trying to cement an alliance with Turkey over their mutual racist oppression of the Kurdish people.


Saturday, May 6

Iraqi Kurdistan:
While Iranian and Turkish ominously line the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan, the President of Iraq appealed for calm. I cannot stress enough how destabilizing this matter in Iraqi Kurdistan is for the region.

Hakkani: Large crowds protested against the PKK after the attack that wounded soldiers' children in this town earlier in the week (see May 3 entry). It was not known whether the protesters were Kurds or Turks. This attack appears to have been a PR disaster for the PKK.

USA: US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, Kurt Volker cynically warned European countries to shut down all PKK media in their countries, as the US tried to suck up to its disgusting ally, fascist Turkey. Denmark has refused to outlaw ROJ-TV, despite many requests by Turkey that it do so. This blog salutes Denmark's noble stance on this matter.


Thursday, May 4

Diyarbakir:
80 Kurdish youths face phony charges for participating in illegal demonstrations during funerals for PKK fighters killed in action fighting against fascist Turkish troops. They face outrageous charges of 10-15 years for demonstrating against the fascist state.


Wednesday, May 3

Hakkani:
The PKK launched a brutal roadside bomb attack on a military vehicle guarding a school bus carrying the children of soldiers in this town, wounding 27 people, including 11 children.


Sunday, April 30

*****
Iraqi Kurdistan: Iranian forces moved into Iraqi Kurdistan and attacked Kurdish guerrillas there. Iranian forces fired artillery at Kurdish forces at Hajj Umran in far northeastern Iraqi Kurdistan, and then crossed the border to fight the guerrillas.

I have always supported the secessionist Kurdish armed movement in Iran, which has been going for a long time, at least 10 years. However, at the moment, considering the Zionist and imperialist threats against Iran, perhaps now is not the best time to break off any pieces of Iran.

Kurdish secessionism in Iran would be easier to support at another time when it would not be such a painful imperialist and Zionist tool against Iran.

Iraqi Kurds inspect a crater from Iranian artillery in Iraqi Kurdistan.


*****

Istanbul: Check out a breathtaking video of a wild riot in the streets of Istanbul in support of the Kurdish uprising, organized by the PKK, the MLK (Maoist Communist Party), the TKIB (Communist Workers Party of Turkey) and MLKB (Marxist-Leninist Communist Party)
*****


Thursday, April 27

Fascist Turkey added another 30,000 troops to Turkey's southeast, adding to the estimated 250,000 already there, in response to recent violence by the PKK. Turkey also has 2,000 troops inside Iraqi Kurdistan, in apparent violation of international law.

*****
Concerns were rising in the region that recent violence in Kurdistan could be a harbinger of a return to the bloody violence of the 1980's and 1990's, when the PKK was a ferocious struggle against Turkish fascism for the self-determination of their people. In recent months, 40 PKK fighters, 14 soldiers and 4 police have been killed in renewed fighting.

Riots that raged across Turkey in late March killed 16 people and resulted in hundreds of arrests. There are a large number of young Kurds who are living in Kurdish cities after their villages were destroyed by the fascist Turkish army in previous decades. These young people have not adjusted well to life in the city (and probably to the destruction of their villages) and are very, very angry.

It is this angry young generation of Kurds that is threatening to reignite the war. The Kurdish region remains mired in horrible poverty, with high unemployment and a lack of business investment.
*****


Wednesday, April 26

Kurdish guerrillas attacked a Turkish military outpost in Turkish Kurdistan with grenades, killing 2 Turkish soldiers and wounding a third.

*****
A bit on the background of the present unrest: In 1999, after waging a 15-year armed struggle, Abdullah Ocalan was captured with the help of treasonous US and Israeli agents in Africa and spirited to Turkey.

He was subsequently sentenced to a long term at an isolated prison. After his sentence, Ocalan urged the Kurds to abandon armed struggle and seek peaceful accommodation with the fascist Turkish state.

Of course, any settlement is impossible with fascists. The Turkish state made many moves towards reforms and said that everything is fine now. Kurdish university students who demanded instruction in Kurdish were thrown out of school and arrested.

The 3,000 Kurdish villages that had been wiped off the map, Nakba-like, were not rebuilt. Anyone publishing any book on the Kurdish Question was subjected to harsh measures.

The housing needs of the many Kurdish refugees who migrated to the cities after their villages were destroyed were ignored, and they suffered serious discrimination in the cities. Demands for compensation or acknowledgment by the relatives of the thousands of Kurds slaughtered by fascist death squads were ignored.

Kurdish history and language continue to be banned in the schools. Beautiful Kurdish folk songs are banned in Turkey. Every day in Turkish schools, millions of Kurdish kids are forced to utter the fascist phrase, “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk.”

The Turkish government has recently allowed the Kurdish language to be broadcast on TV for a whopping 45 minutes a day, for a total of a stunning 4 hours per week. All programs must have Turkish subtitles. This is the sort of meager gesture that Turkey calls a serious reform.

It is in this kettle of frustration, phony promises, continuing repression and rising rage that the current crisis was incubated.
*****


Monday, April 24

A wing of the PKK called the Kurdish Falcons has warned of a wave of vicious bombings in Turkish cities designed to bring the war to the Turkish people themselves. The Falcons have claimed responsibility for 8 bombings in the past 3 months that left 2 dead and 47 wounded. The Falcons have posted detailed bomb-making instructions on their website. This is an unfortunate but typical escalation of the conflict.


Sunday, April 23

Sirnak:
Fighting between the PKK and Turkish troops killed 3 PKK fighters and 1 Turkish soldier. Fighting continued into the next day.


Friday, April 21

The riots and violence of the recent days have been the worst that Turkey had seen in years, and, according to this article, threaten to erase the "progress" being made in recent years regarding the Kurdish question.


******
Wednesday, April 19

Turkey appears to be slipping into the bad old days recently after the riots and demonstrations in southeastern Turkey during the funerals of 4 PKK fighters. 13 Kurds were killed by police during the rioting and hundreds of others were wounded.

Many more were arrested, imprisoned and apparently tortured. Members of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party are already facing a slew of phony charges based on current anti-terrorist legislation. Under new regulations slated to go into effect, waving a PKK banner could get you 15 years in prison (!) and spreading PKK propaganda (which I am apparently doing in this post) could get you 5 years in prison.

Considering that the vast majority of Kurds in the southeast support secession and probably, consequently, the PKK, these laws seem to turn about 3 million Kurds into felons facing 5-15 years in prison.
*****


Tuesday, April 18

Istanbul
: Terrorists set off a bomb in a trashcan in Istanbul, wounding 31 people. There were no claims of responsibility but the attack may have been done by the Kurdistan Liberation Hawks, or TAK.


Monday, April 17

Brussels:
Thousands of Kurds took to the streets of this city, demanding an independent nation in eastern Turkey, better treatment for Kurds and freedom for jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.


Sunday, April 16

*****
Iran: Guerrillas from the Kurdish separatist group Pejak, a Marxist group, were interviewed by a reporter in Iran. The group is Marxist, pro-ecology, feminist, secular, and pro-human rights and freedoms. They are not well-armed but they have a number of female fighters. Their numbers are estimated at 500-2,000.

They claim to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers since March after starting a new offensive after Iranian forces killed 10 Iranian Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku. The group claims to have hundreds of thousands of supporters amongst Iran's 4 million Kurds. Since the election of Islamofascist Ahmadinejad, the Kurdish situation has worsened here.

The group, formed in 1998, operates a training camp on one of the tall mountains in Iranian Kurdistan. Since the clashes in March, they claim to have been flooded with new recruits. This blog strongly supports Pejak.
*****


Tuesday, April 11

Istanbul:
Turkish forces arrested 20 PKK members in Istanbul on suspicion of planning firebomb attacks.


Monday, April 10

Istanbul:
The TAK claimed responsibility for planting a bomb on a bus full of prosecutors and judges. The bomb was found by the bus driver before it could go off. The bomb was a warning to judicial officials to stop prosecuting PKK fighters.

Iran: Iranian officials arrested 7 Pejak (see April 16 entry) members in northern Iran near the border with Turkey. Kurdish guerrillas, mostly from Pejak, killed 120 Iranian police last year and wounded many more. Pejak is thought to be associated with the PKK in Turkey.


Saturday, April 8

*****
Istanbul:
Turkish troops reportedly "protesting the new violence in the southeast of the country" took hostages in Istanbul in a symbolic action. The situation was resolved by security forces and the hostages were freed. However, the bit about protesting against the violence in Kurdistan was Turkish propaganda that was idiotically picked up by most of the world's clueless media.

We will set the record straight here. These 2 Turkish troops shouted Turkish ethnic nationalist (fascist) and anti-Kurdish slogans during the hostage crisis. Reportedly, they were stationed in a Turkish city and were all upset because they were not being sent to Kurdistan where they could have fun repressing, killing, wounding, arresting and beating Kurds. Poor guys.
*****

*****
Elazig: Kurdish guerrillas exploded a land mine as a Turkish military vehicle passed by, wounding 2 soldiers. Turkish troops here also arrested the alleged perpetrator of a bombing at a Turkish resort as he planned another bombing attack.

He was associated with the Kurdish Liberation Hawks, a breakaway group from the PKK. They were responsible for a bombing against a Turkish tourist site in the city of Kusadasi that killed 5 innocent tourists and wounded 13 more.
****

Thousands of PKK guerrillas are apparently sheltering in Iraq. Rebels are vowing revenge for 14 people killed in riots in southeast. The riots erupted during funerals for 4 PKK guerrillas. Funerals for the 14 killed in the latest riots were taking place.


Friday, April 7

Near the Iraqi border, Late night:
Turkish forces killed 6 Kurdish guerrillas in fighting in Turkey's southeast. Turkish commandos, backed by helicopters tracked down a group of guerrillas said to be responsible to for the killing of 5 Turkish troops in recent days. 2 guerrillas escaped during the fighting.

Istanbul: Turkish forces arrested 11 Kurds armed with explosives here.


Wednesday, April 5

Istanbul:
Kurdish guerrillas bombed an office of the ruling Justice and Development Party here, wounding 2 people, in an audacious attack.


Sunday, April 2

Istanbul:
Rebellious Kurds attacked a bus in the Bagcilar suburb of Istanbul, killing 3 innocent passengers and seriously wounding 1 more. Rioters shouting Kurdish separatist slogans attacked the bus with firebombs. As it tried to escape from the area, it was hit by a firebomb and the passengers were killed.

Kurdish rioting continued for the 7th day in a row across Turkey.


Saturday, April 1

Riots continued to rage across Turkey.


Saturday, March 25

*****
A military confrontation between the PKK and Turkish forces resulted in the deaths of 14 PKK guerrillas. The PKK claimed that Turkish troops used chemical weapons to kill the guerrillas. It was the deaths of these fighters, possibly with chemical weapons, that set off the wild riots that followed.

The riots started in Diyarbakir, but soon spread to many other towns and cities, including Batman, Siirt, Mardin, Kiziltepe, Nusaybin, Hakkari, Agri, Van, Ergani, Kars, and Istanbul. In scenes reminiscent of the Palestinian Intifada, ordinary Kurdish citizens took to the streets throwing stones at Turkish forces.

Many women, children and older people even threw stones in a genuine popular rebellion.

Kurdish children mourn over a poster commemorating the death of a Kurdish child during riots in Turkey protesting the killing of 14 PKK fighters.


The fascist Turkish forces used German Leopard tanks and US-supplied helicopters. It is disgusting that the US and Germany continue to supply this criminal reactionary state.
*****

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Wikipedia, Ziopedia or Judeopedia?

I recently got an account at Wikipedia and after a while, I started editing some pieces. I got really excited about it. I was one of the wonderful Wikipedians. I talked to people about what a wonderful site it was. I started spending a lot of time on there editing articles. It was fun. Yaay! I loved Wikipedia .

There was something kind of weird and cultist about it, but, if you understand the theory of cults well, you will understand how I found that appealing, as I felt I had become an adept - one of the anointed ones.

Another thing you will realize if you understand cult theory is that people like me will tend to get thrown out of most any cult, organization, political party, and God forbid, corporation. I shudder to say workplace, though I have improved now in that it usually takes them about a year to fire me for insufficient brown-nosing and chronic rebellion.

Thus, alas, my induction into the Wikipedia cult was doomed from the start. The fatal blow? I branched out from editing non-controversial stuff and one day I decided to edit some articles dealing, peripherally, in one way or another, with Jews. You know, like Jews, Israel, Palestine, the enemies of the Jews (the designated "anti-Semites"), stuff like that.

Why? Cuz those are some of the most outrageously sucky articles in the whole suckathon called Wikipedia, that's why. I lasted about two days, carefully making only the most minor, cautious and reasonable edits.

Then, disgusted and enraged, I penned this gorgeous spit wad of a F-you missive, like a rock through a window, and left it up on my homepage to see how long it would take before the Wikipedia Cops showed up to haul me off.

Took about 12 hours before one of the worst sociopathic militant Jewish ethnocentric nationalists on there (a former member of Oingo Boingo, no less) did his tribal duty and murdered my membership in Wikipedia. I am now permanently banned (permabanned) from editing Wikipedia, till death do us part.

Update:I am pleased to report that two noble Wikipedia administrators have opposed my permabanning on jpgordon's talk page. Details here. I'd like to throw a shout to Wiki admins Jahiegel and Everyking for their very principled stand.

Note that jpgordon is continuing to call me a "virulently anti-Semitic bigot". Also note that a casual perusal of Gordon's talk page clearly reveals him as a sociopathic, militant Jewish ethnic activist.


Kevin MacDonald, a brilliant modern thinker, makes clear in his works, especially the brilliant Understanding Jewish Influence - Background Traits For Jewish Activism, that militant, highly ethnocentric Jews simply cannot distinguish between those who criticize them in the tiniest way and the people who want to throw them in the ovens.

Any criticism harkens the threat of another genocide, and all non-Jewish humans are divided into two halves: the obsequious pro-Jews who slavishly shower praise on the tribe, and the "Nazis", ranging from everyone who ever utters one peep of criticism of the Jews to those who want to finish Hitler's work.

Quoting psychologists Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, the "irrational beliefs" at work here (in cognitive therapy speak) should be quite obvious.

As far as being banned from Wikipedia...it feels...good! It's an honor. All decent progressives should strive to get banned from Wikipedia. It's like getting thrown out of the Republican Convention.

In case you are wondering, here is the gigantic "fire me" letter I shoved up on my homepage:
Smash Ziopedia!

Hello, my name is Robert Lindsay, an independent Leftist journalist and blogger in California. This is my Wikipedia (actually Ziopedia) page. My popular blog, which has received over 50,000 visitors in over a year and currently gets about 150 visitors a day, can be viewed here.

First, I would like to point out that Wikipedia is an illusion and probably does not exist. There is, however, a bizarre entity known as ZIOpedia, which masquerades as Wikipedia. Ziopedia means that Wikipedia has been taken over by Zionists, Jewish ethnocentrists and their Gentile supporters.

Most articles having anything to do with Jews or Israel exhibit Jewish or Zionist bias, despite noble efforts by many Ziopedians to promote the Wiki farces of Neutral Point of View and other types of scientific and scholarly discipline.

Most of these people are militant Jews, but some are liberal and Leftist Judeophilic Gentiles. This has wrecked much of the quality of many of such pieces. Make the tiniest edits to any of these pieces and the militant Judeophilic gatekeepers immediately spring into action to "protect the tribe", and all of your edits will be reverted within hours with no discussion given.

Try to discuss and you will be met with silence or the usual dissembling, sophism, lawyerese, nonsense, BS, diversion, nitpicking, ad hominem, red herrings, false comparisons, and trivialism, along with and every logical fallacy known to mankind.

Not only that, but you will be put on Ziopedia's very own Neo-Nazi watch list"! LOL! Can you believe it? Object to Ziopedia's control freaks, and you're automatically a Nazi - even Commies like me.

The founder of Ziopedia is a sleazy porn merchant named Jimbo Wales. Jimbo has deep links with powerful US militant Jewish interests. He is also a passionate Zionist. The vast majority of Wiki admins, arbitrators and top staff are also Zionists and Judeophilic. A vastly disproportionate number of them are also Jewish.

Jimbo Wales runs this fraudulent website with an iron fist, along with his Wiki-fascist PC brigades. Go against Dear Leader Zio-Jimbo and watch yourself get slowly banned from the Ziopedia Travesty.

Please come to my talk page to discuss the outrage called Ziopedia or anything else related to my contribs.

If you are opposed to Jewish ethnocentrism and Zionism receiving preferential bias on Ziopedia, please become a contributor (non-monetary!) to Ziopedia and help fight the Zio brainwash. It's probably hopeless, but at least there is strength in numbers. If you have a blog or post to Usenet, please spread the word about how Wikipedia is really Ziopedia, or maybe even Judeopedia.

Above all, do not contribute one nickel to this Ziopedia Joke in its present form. Starve the beast. There is no point contributing to Ziopedia, a website that blatantly promotes imperialism and racism while pretending to be anti-racist, liberal and particularly unbiased.

The parts of Ziopedia not dealing with Jews and Israel are often remarkably unbiased, scientific and professional and adhere to scholarly standards. This stands in naked, painful, embarrassing contrast to the Ziopedia's Alternate Universe of anything even slightly Judaic. Feel free to contribute to the non-Judaic Ziopedia Universe and feel pride in what it is and shame and what Ziopedia could have been.
Nice, huh? Actually, I was stupid enough to think that they believed in free speech there (they claim they do), and I actually thought I would get away with flipping a great big huge verbal bird like that. Ah, but I am so naive.

For the uninitiated, on first glance, like a lot of evil things with pretty faces, pleasant manners and diabolical cores, Wikipedia looks pretty neat. It's an open-source encyclopedia, created by anyone in the whole world who wants to help work on it. Kumbaya! Let's all communistically hold hands together and work for free on the free encyclopedia for the whole world. Yaaay.

And what's more, anyone can edit most any article. Even you. Or me (well, not anymore). Wikipedia has this neato New Age touchy-feely aspect about it, with a hardcore dollop of nerd tossed in. It feels nice, groovy, fun, smart. They have all sorts of neato sounding rules and sayings that they like to bandy about. That's part of the culty thing, but you don't see it at first.

The rules are really de facto garbage nonsense, like "no original research" or "no personal blogs cited" or "neutral point of view". And the sayings are Chairman Mao-like stuff like "Be Nice", "Wikipedia is not therapy", bla bla.

Only after you dive into the black heart of the beast do you realize that the rules, like Lenora Helmsley's taxes, are only for "the little people", i.e. everyone not in with the Wikipedia Elite Cult. After a while you figure out that all the Mao-like dictums are the products of so-called "benevolent dictator of Wikipedia" Jimbo Wales.

You realize that the sayings are not neato or groovy, but instead cultist aphorisms from super-creepy "Dear Leader" Jimbo. Jimbo likes to say stuff like, "We want Wikipedia to be the sum total of human knowledge", and "We are creating a free encyclopedia for every poor child in Africa".

That, along with his comments along the lines that Wikipedia is an alternate source of information to the corporatized media, is sure to warm the hearts of Leftists, liberals and progressives. Except that...Jimbo is none of the above!

After a while on Wikipedia, you start shaking your head wondering what kind of politics the Cult Leaders of Wikipedia espouse. And like any good Maoist commune, groupthink pervades Wikipedia. Except you can't figure it out at first. Are they liberals? Yes and no. Are they conservatives? Yes and no. Are they Zionists? Yes. Are the religion-hating (except Judaism), science-worshiping, atheist skeptics? Yes!

So you go read up on criticism of Wikipedia. Leftists say they are Rightists. Rightists say they are liberals. And yet...they are neither. Finally you crack the puzzle. Wikipedians are..."computer geek libertarians".

Dear Leader Jimbo, a self-proclaimed libertarian, stated that no aid whatsoever should be given the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He called that government aid "fascism". Wikipedians love that word, along with "Nazi" - both reserved for anyone Wikipedians don't like.

See here how Dear Leader Jimbo is willing to suspend any and all "rules" (they already selectively enforce or suspend them anyway) on Wikipedia in order to keep "Nazis" from editing articles. Well, that's nice, but who is a Nazi? According to Wikipedia, I am a Nazi, since one of the militant Zionist Jews on there put me on the Wikipedia Neo-Nazi Watch List.

Could it be that Jimbo is a reactionary who deliberately tries to chase Leftists off Wikipedia and is hostile to all progressive and Left viewpoints? Dear Leader Jimbo doesn't think that corporations should pay one nickel in taxes and doesn't think that government should do anything to help its citizens.

His pet peeve in recent years is apparently "government-sponsored health care", surely a dire threat to mankind. Almost all of the top-levels of the Wikipedia Cabal are Objectivists, or libertarians, if not Fox News conservatives.

Almost all of the administrators are conservatives or libertarians, and one is a Moonie. It's a white-collar, conservative neocon, White American point of view. Wikipedians oppose the minimum wage, any and all social programs and, sharing Jimbo's view, any and all aid to Hurricane Katrina victims.

A very large number are also militant Jews.

And this is a much more sensitive subject. On the Wikipedia Review, a site set up by Wikipedia refugees to critique the site, one poster gingerly tested the waters on this hot-button issue. He notes the obvious - that the upper cabal and administrator level of Wikipedia is chock-full of militant Jews sociopathically pushing a Zionist and pro-Jewish point of view.

He nervously asks about how they should broach the subject of what he calls the "Wikipedia Jews" without "sounding like a bunch of anti-Semitic a**holes". Indeed. And that is exactly my dilemma as I write this piece, which is why I held off writing it for over a week.

Note: The link above has been removed by Super Defender of the Jews Selina, a top administrator at Wikipedia Review. First she made a post ridiculing me for saying she shuts down threads that deal with Jews, then she did just that. Whatever. As you can see, Wikipedia Review is starting to develop serious self-censorship problems on The Jewish Question, like most of the rest of our terrified society.

Selina vigilantly stalks Wikipedia Review, searching for references to That Question and threatening to shut down any thread that mentions it, while threatening to ban anyone who discusses The Question That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

There may be a reason for this in the history of Wikipedia Review. Wikipedia Review was apparently founded by a banned user from Wikipedia named Igor Alexander. My research reveals that Igor is indeed what he was said to be on Wikipedia Review - a notorious neo-Nazi, White Supremacist and Holocaust Denier.

Some feel that Igor was actually Alex Linder, founder of the Nazi Vanguard News Network , but on investigation, that is clearly not true. See my comments section for more on this fairly obscure matter.

Mr. Linder is a terrible person, a neo-Nazi, virulent racist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. But he is very smart, is a superb writer and is very funny, if you can distance yourself from his genocidal persona. It is useful to look over his site to see what such creeps think like, so as to understand them better. I pray his attitude is not so common.

Many Wikipedia Review members were perturbed by Igor's seemingly excessive focus on certain themes such as The Jewish Question on Wikipedia. After a while, almost everyone left and the new Wikipedia Review (the one you see now) was formed when one of the members bought the current domain name.

So, like the post-WW2 German government and many Jews, the new Wikipedia Review may have some valid reasons to be paranoid about anti-Semitism. Not that such paranoia typically makes sense, but it helps to understand why people do things.

See my comments section for comments by a current Wikipedia Review member on the founding and current status of Wikipedia Review, along with some remarks about my comments about that site in this post.

Alas, the gatekeepers are everywhere.

The huge over-representation of militant Jews on Wikipedia is one of those aspects of Wikipedia that is not immediately obvious, but kind of creeps on you after a while. With time, you start to realize what it is and it knocks you out of your chair when you do.

For what you see in this aspect of Wikipedia is a full-blown Jewish Media Control Conspiracy, operating right in front of your very eyes, in full view to anyone willing to look.

The perpetrators of this conspiracy even brag about what they are doing as they cavort through Wikipedia on their psychopathic mission to defend the tribe. They gleefully call themselves names like "The Cabal", "The Jewish Cabal", and the like. But woe to anyone who points out the obvious. If you do, you will be immediately banned from Wikipedia as a "hate-monger" and a "Nazi".

The size of this cabal is not large - maybe 20-30 militant Jewish tribal activists (actually, doing more research into Wikipedia, I think it may be far, far larger than that) but they also have the backing of the huge, largely rightwing Judeophilic Gentile Zionist cheering section behind them.

Having said that, I assume that Wikipedia is probably full of Jews dutifully editing away at linguistics or math or computer languages or biology or whatever, who have no relation to the Cabal. They just write about their fave subjects, and don't write about anything having to do with the Jews.

And some Jews write about Jewish subjects in a non-militant, fair, balanced, NPOV way. I should point out that moderate Jews, moderate Zionists and Jewish dissidents on Wikipedia are also ferociously attacked by the militant Cabal.

So, probably the vast majority of Jews editing on Wikipedia have nothing to do with the Cabal, and probably don't even know it exists. They are innocent. And the Wikipedia Jewish Cabal has the total support of a huge number of Wikipedia Judeophilic Gentiles, who back the Wikipedia Jewish/Zionist Cabal agenda 100%.

Which, when you think about it, is a pretty good example of how your average Jewish Media Control Conspiracy works in real life.

A few militant Jews converge on a media enterprise or enterprises with the goal (usually independently, and not necessarily conspiring with other like-minded folks) of gaining enough influence over the enterprise or even taking it over completely in order to "protect and promote the tribe" (mostly to protect).

90% of Jews don't have anything to do with this conspiracy and aren't even aware it exists. They are office workers and students, shopkeepers and librarians, who worry about getting enough sleep and their love life and paying their bills and who is mad at or in love with who today.

The worldly affairs of the tribe are far away. If they know about the conspiracy, they either angrily deny it, or shrug their shoulders, or even oppose it. They are innocent.

I think, right there, with the Wikipedia example, we can explain a lot of the Jewish Media Control Conspiracy Theories bandied about, restrict the more florid theories, and answer most of the silly rejoinders to the theories too.

Keep in mind, too, that most conspiracies are done by individuals who share the same goals without necessarily elaborating them and working together to carry them out. That's all you need to pull it off. You don't need smoke-filled rooms, game plans, scrimmage lines on chalkboards at halftime, false identities or secret handshakes.

And actual conspirators love to project. In the midst of a media control conspiracy, conspirators will rant and rave about how their ideological enemies actually control the media that the conspirators themselves control. Don't ask me to explain such Rube Goldbergian defense mechanisms. Consult a psychology text instead.

See here where the Wikipedia Jewish Cabal got so worked up over "anti-Semitic bias" at the same Wikipedia they actually had under lock-down control themselves that they actually set up a page dealing with the subject. Oh, my head is spinning.

Also see this archived user page from 2003, where a typical fanatical activist " Wikipedia Jew" (a teacher at a Jewish school) was actually on the verge of being banned from Wikipedia due to his unrelenting hostility, rudeness, paranoia, sociopathy and promiscuous flailing of the "Anti-Semite" and "Nazi" epithets.

For instance, this fellow was convinced that 2/3 of Wikipedians were anti-Semites. He also referred to Wikipedia as "Nazipedia".

The Wikipedia Jewish Cabal, while quite powerful (see Fear Ireaan's comments on the page here), seems to have been less dominant back in 2003 then it is now.

Do note, however, how long this criminal-type Jewish user, RK, was allowed to get away with his antisocial behavior before he was finally (sort of) disciplined. And note below how nowadays, with the Cabal so deeply in control, pro-Palestinian editors are banned quickly for behavior that is meager in quality in longevity compared to RK's.

Typical of fanatical Jewish activists, RK felt that he was 100% correct in all of his wild, baseless, bizarre accusations and behavior. Even more disturbing is his claim that his fellow teachers at the Jewish school shared his strange, near-delusional views.

One more thing: actual conspirators usually get extremely angry when exposed, and one of their favorite epithets is, "Conspiracy theorist!" In the dumbed-down yet nevertheless conspiracy-riven USA, that is actually a put-down. Kind of like, "Jews do NOT control Hollywood, dammit! And if you ever say that, you will never work in this town again!"

You think I make all this crap up, in my deluded mind? Heh. Here is the talk page of one of the highest-ranking members of the Wikipedia Jewish Cabal, Izak, w+ho has disgustingly been allowed to run amok like a criminal through Wikipedia, trashing much of the site. Just read the talk page; I will say no more.

Here is a poor pro-Palestinian editor, Alberuni, banned for fighting the Jewish Cabal on articles relating to the Israel-Palestinian Conflict. He was banned for "POV" (point of view violations).

What that means in Wikipedia Jewish Cabal 1984 double-speak is that he was trying to make some of those articles slightly more fair and unbiased. Here is his sad talk page, documenting the crimes committed against him on Wikipedia.

Here is the pitiful Sanhedrin Ziopedia Kangaroo Kourt proceeding against poor Alberuni. Read it and weep. This page also lays out in disgusting detail the depredations of the militant Zionist Jewish crooks who are destroying Wikipedia.

Here is the tragic talk page of Yoshiah, a decent Wikipedia Jew who is going against Jewish groupthink on Wikipedia and catching the full, ferocious brunt of Jewish Wikipedia militants for his transgressions. Yoshiah is a Jewish convert to Christianity, a type of Jew traditionally despised by militant ethnocentric Jews.

Here is the excellent homepage of HistoryBuffr, who also rants against "Ziopedia" like I did, but for some reason has not yet been given a targeted assassination by the Wikipedia militant Jewish bullyboys. Matter of time, I guess.

But look here! Just recently, while I was editing this article, poor HistoryBuffr, an eminently fair editor, has been banned from editing Wikipedia for two months, and has been banned from editing articles on the Israel-Palestinian Conflict for one year!

Here is the laughable, pitiful, Kafkaesque "decision" to kill HistoryBuffr on Wikipedia by the preposterous Wikipedia Kangaroo Court hanging judges in all its gory outrage.

You have to understand Wikipedia a bit to realize what a ludicrous joke this decision is. On Wikipedia, if you are fair-minded and oppose Jewish chauvinism and militant Zionism, it's just a matter of time before the militant Jewish Zionist creeps nail you up too.

This insipid copy of a Wikipedia talk page shows you just how insane and stupid the 8th-grade-playground-on-acid called Wikipedia really is.

Note halfway down where the Zionist thugs that run Wikipedia can't decide if the Occupied Territories are really occupied. Except that international law is unanimous that they are. Wikipedia Thought Police think they should be called "disputed", a view rejected by 100% of all experts in international law.

Here is another travesty, concerning the Wikipedia article on Marwan Bargouti.

See here for a take on Wikipedia as a Jewish Media Control Conspiracy from an unfortunately blatantly anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi site. Despite the disgusting nature of the site, it's still an intelligent, albeit much exaggerated (as many such sites are), take on the matter.

I don't know about the sayanim stuff and about the monitoring by Hillel, SPLC, and ADL types, but I would not put it past the Wikipedia fanatics at this point.

For a radical critique that pretty much avoids the anti-Semitism above, while dredging similar waters, see this brilliant, gorgeously written critique from the blog Americans are Ambitious Wolves.

Hey, where does Wikipedia get all its money anyway? Good question. No one seems to know, and Jimbo won't answer any questions. Hmmm.

This long, intelligent article, titled Swastikapedia, gives a detailed overview of many of the problems that plague the Wikipedia disaster zone.

A much more recent article by the same author, The Great Failure of Wikipedia , rambles quite a bit, but nevertheless makes some excellent points, the most important of which is that Wikipedia does not believe in majority rules.

That is, in a vote of 74-1, the losing side can win the vote if the lone vote against was an administrator. Or a vote of 75-45, the 45 losing votes can win because they were "of a better quality". And on and on. He also points out, as I have in this piece, that there is a group of people who are dedicated to destroying Wikipedia.

Wikipedia-Watch has a lot of great critical stuff on Wikipedia.

The site was founded by one of the Wikipedia pioneers, who subsequently left and turned into a Wikipedia-hater, apparently because he is a decent person and was offended by the Wikipedia sewer.

The author of Wikipedia Watch is also a very active contributor to Wikipedia Review. The Wikipedia Cabal and Cultists have initiated a vindictive campaign against this dissident, in true cultist fashion.

Perhaps you want to work on Wikipedia, but are disgusted at the thought of having to dodge the Wikipedian punks all the time? Well, there is a fork of Wikipedia called Wikinfo. Unfortunately, it is headed by Fred Bauder, a conservative, who is an administrator on Wikipedia , and participates in the usual Kangaroo Kourt Krap.

Nevertheless, on Wikinfo, he seems to allow his decent side to come out and play, and Wikinfo is free of many of the problems of Wikipedia. Wikinfo's criticism of Wikipedia is here. Conclusion? Wikipedia is garbage.

If you are a Zionist, a conservative, a neocon, a libertarian, or just a person with a serious lack of ethics, head on over to the Wikipedia mud puddle and wallow away to your heart's content.

I am going to argue that all progressives, liberals, Leftists, Muslims, Arabs, anti-Zionists, pro-Palestinians, and basically all decent people in general, should just avoid editing on Wikipedia at all costs. If you go there, the gangsters are likely to rake you over the coals and you are probably going to get really angry. Sooner or later, you will be banned.

You may spend a great deal of time on excellent edits only to have them "reverted" (destroyed) instantly, with no comments at all, by one of the creepy Wikipedia Warlords. If you are already editing happily on Wikipedia, by all means keep on doing it. But I will also advocate that none of us should give one nickel to this highly ethically-challenged enterprise.

If you think you can just avoid this mess on Wikipedia by not messing with Jewish-oriented stuff, you are probably mistaken. Although my info is sketchy, I have been told that the Jewish Cabal is not the only cabal on Wikipedia. Reportedly, there are all sorts of other gangs and cliques and mini-cabals sociopathically running amok on Wikipedia in many other areas of the site.

There probably is no avoiding the revert-wars, edit-wars, flagrant power abuses and other BS if you edit a lot on Wikipedia. And no matter where you edit, sooner or later you are doubtless going to run into the Ayn Randian Objectivist Libertarian Cabal types who basically run the place. If you are progressive at all, I doubt you will find that a pleasant experience.

I suggest that anyone who thinks like we do and wants to work on the Wikipedia project head on over to Wikinfo and try to work there for a while. Wikinfo really needs a lot of work. One cool thing about Wikinfo is that you can import any Wikipedia article you want to from Wikipedia and just stick it in Wikinfo. Then you can edit it or just leave it up there.

Down with Wikipedia! Down with Jimbo Wales! Down with Ayn Rand! Down with sociopathic militant Jewish ethnic activists!

Update: This piece was recently linked at a major New Zealand magazine called The Listener in a piece called Cuts Both Ways by Russel Brown. Brown refers to this article, noting:
Bizarrely, a freelance journalist who disengaged from the project accused Wales of leading a cabal of right-wing Zionists intent on giving the site's political content a particular slant.
As usual, when one talks about certain things that are so painfully obvious that they hit you in the face with a left hook, even when, like me, you would love not to see them, one is thrown in with the tin foil hat crowd. God forbid that any ethnic conspiracy, or any conspiracy, had ever taken place on this good, green Earth. To suggest this, one must be off one's meds, no?

This post was also linked at the Wikipedia Review, which I still regard as an excellent resource.

Predictably, "Selina", the administrator who reflexively shuts down any topic that mentions the word "Jew" and bans the user as a "Nazi", accuses me, a pan-humanist universalist, a homicidally anti-Nazi, deeply anti-racist, fanatical anti-fascist Leftist of "Nazi-like racism against Jews". She also calls me a "f*****g maniac", which is arguably true, but you would have to check with my girlfriend to make sure.

What's important is that Selina's behavior, like the fanatical Zionist reaction to the Walt/Mearshimer landmark paper on the Jewish-Israeli Lobby in the US (see Juan Cole's great but futile petition to the Conference of Major US Jewish Organizations for more), serves to shut down debate about an important topic.

Worse, the terror of anti-Semitism that makes so many Americans so censorious and self-censorious about The Jewish Question creates the scenario where the only people in America discussing such Questions are anti-Semites and militant ethnocentric Jews and their Judeophilic allies like Selina.

In this "debate", the pro-Jewish side is not really having a discussion so much as they are standing in the bleachers trying to shout down the whole conversation. The anti-Semites are just calling names and trying to pick a fight with the other side. Everyone other than these two parties is standing in the corner, silent and terrified.

Because such Questions never get discussed, we end up with a very bad situation.

A scenario whereby Hollywood and the US media are heavily under the domination of militant members of a tiny, ferociously ethnocentric ethnic group that uses these means of communication to brainwash the US public into going along with the ethnic group's politics, and then uses an "anti-racist" sledgehammer to bash anyone who dares to point out this obvious, demonstrable fact in mixed company.

You also end up with an ethnic lobby that has Congress, most state governments and the Executive Branch by the short hairs, to the point where the Lobby is able to give lawmakers marching orders on US foreign policy.

You end up with disastrous wars like the clusterf**k in Iraq and a threatened nightmare in Iran. You end up with 9-11, oil embargoes, the tragedy of the USS Liberty and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon.

While ethnic warfare may be the norm in the Middle East and much of the world, it needs to be roundly condemned as anti-American in the melting pot USA. Certainly all ethnic warfare, Jewish or otherwise, needs to be seriously slammed by all principled progressives as antithetical to both our universalist ethics and to basic norms of human decency.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

War Continues in Afghanistan

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here.

Updated January 28, 2008:

Afghanistan

*****
Unfortunately, things are continuing to unravel in Afghanistan. Canadian and British troops are rotating into Southern Afghanistan and both are finding the area to be quite hostile. Canadian troops in particular have met with serious resistance in just the past week alone, causing the Canadian population to question the deployment. There are 2,200 Canadian forces in Kandahar.

The Canadians have accepted the command of Uruzgan, Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces, having taken over from the US. All of these majority-Pashtun provinces are seriously unstable and are hotbeds of support for the Taliban. The insurgency has been growing in all of these provinces since last year. The first deployment of 150 British forces arrived in Helmand in mid-February.

A much larger contingent of British forces - over 2,000 - is due to replace the small US contingent in Helmand shortly. Among the attacks in the past week, we have seen particularly ominous attacks in Kapisa, Badakhshan and central Farah Provinces.

These attacks are unusual because all of these areas have been quite calm since 2001. Attacks in these areas may indicate that the guerrilla war is spreading to new areas.
****


Saturday, February 25

Kandahar, 10:30 PM:
Guerrillas fired RPG's at a Canadian patrol on the road between two Canadian camps on the southern outskirts of Kandahar city. There were no serious injuries in the attack. Kandahar is quite hostile.


Sunday, February 26

Khost Province:
Taliban Islamofascist idiots bombed a just-completed girls' high school in Khost. Police found and defused another bomb inside the school. Khost is very hostile, with some sort of fighting about every other day in the province. Guerrillas move back and forth across the border between Khost and the North Waziristan Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.


Monday, February 27

Between Khost Province and Kabul:
2 Afghan policemen and 1 civilian were wounded when an attempt to defuse a roadside bomb on the highway between Kabul and Khost Province went awry when the bomb went off.


Tuesday, February 28

Tarin Kot:
Taliban guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb under a US Humvee in Tarin Kot in southern Uruzgan Province, killing 1 US Special Forces soldier, Master Sgt. Emigdio E. Elizarraras, and wounding 2 others. 7 Taliban were arrested by US forces in the attack. Tarin Kot has been very hostile for a long time now.


Wednesday, March 1

*****
Helmand Province: Fighting between Afghan government troops and guerrillas in Helmand killed 1 Afghan soldier and wounded 2 more. Guerrillas also suffered unknown casualties. Helmand is extremely unstable - it is more unstable now than at any time since the US invasion in 2001. There is a great deal of opium production here - it grows more opium than any other Afghan province.

There are not many government or Coalition troops in Helmand. Instead, security is left to Afghan police, who are poorly armed, often have no uniforms and have often received either no training or only a few weeks of training. In combat, Afghan police are often outgunned by the Taliban. In Helmand, the Taliban have formed a marriage of convenience with drug traffickers.

Drug traffickers pay the Taliban to fight government forces to keep security forces so tied up fighting guerrillas that they won't have time to fight the drug trade. In return, the Taliban guard heroin factories and provide armed guards for drug convoys heading south into Baluchistan in Pakistan. This alliance has left the Taliban in Helmand flush with cash and arms.

A few years ago, it was widely suggested that Mullah Omar, former leader of the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan and on the run since the US invasion, might be hiding out in Helmand, where he has family and tribal ties.
*****

Zabul Province: Afghan troops battled guerrillas in Zabul. 3 guerrillas were arrested in the course of the fighting.


Thursday, March 2

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Outside Kandahar, 9:50 AM: 2 Canadian soldiers were killed and 5 more were wounded when their LAV III armored vehicle overturned 4 miles from the city of Kandahar. It was the second death of a Canadian soldier in a week in hostile Kandahar Province. Corporal Paul Davis was killed immediately.

2 soldiers, Master Corporal Timothy Wilson and Private Miguel Chavez, were seriously wounded. Wilson died on Sunday of his wounds. 4 more soldiers, Private Nathan Justice, Private Mark Taylor, Private Thomas Wong and Sergeant Darren Haggerty, were wounded and in stable condition.
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Kapisa Province: Guerrillas attacked a vehicle carrying the Afghan intelligence chief for Tagab District in Kapisa, 37 miles northwest of Kabul. The chief was killed in the attack. There has been little or no violence against Afghan or Coalition forces in Kapisa Province. This is not a good sign.


Friday, March 3

Kandahar Province:
A guerrilla suicide bomber in a vehicle attacked a Canadian LAV III armored vehicle in Kandahar, wounding 5 Canadian soldiers. The attacker was an Afghan from Kandahar who had the name of a Pakistani Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, written on his chest.

Sangin District, Helmand Province: There was heavy fighting between Afghan government forces and Taliban guerrillas in Sangin District in Helmand Province 47 miles northwest of the capital of Helmand. 11 Taliban were killed and 4 policemen were wounded in the fighting. 10 more Taliban were arrested by government forces. The Taliban assassinated also the head of Sangin District.


Saturday, March 4

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Gumbad, Kandahar Province, Afternoon: 1 Canadian soldier, Lieutenant Trevor Greene, was critically wounded and is currently in a coma after an ax attack by an armed villager in the northern Kandahar village of Gumbad, near Kawndalan in Shah Wali Kot District of Kandahar Province, 50 miles north of Kandahar.

Soldiers had come to the village to discuss reconstruction needs with village elders. Troops had removed their helmets as a sign of respect when one of them was attacked from behind with an ax by a man in his 20's.

After the attack, the attacker was immediately killed by Canadian troops. A melee ensued afterwards as villagers ran in all directions and armed men opened fire on Canadian troops with automatic weapons and RPG's from across a river. The village appeared to be in on the attack. This part of Northern Kandahar Province near the Uruzgan border is very unstable.
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Nawai Barazkay, Helmand Province: The Taliban detonated a roadside bomb on a vehicle carrying the head of Intelligence for Nad Ali District in Helmand Province 12 miles south of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, killing the intelligence officer and 3 other intelligence officers. The attack occurred near the town of Nawai Barazkay.

Zairkoa, Farah Province: Taliban terrorists shot and killed a UN engineer near Zairkoa in Bala Buluk District on the border of Farah Province and Herat Province, where he was doing rehabilitation work. The terrorists dragged him from a car and shot him dead. That area would not seem to be an unstable place and I am not aware of any recent reports of anti-Coalition forces in that area.

Shah Wali Kot District, Kandahar Province: 1 French soldier was killed in firefight with guerrillas in very hostile Shah Wali Kot District in northwestern Kandahar Province. 2 guerrillas were also killed in the fighting.


Sunday, March 5

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Farah, Farah Province: 2 Afghans and a Pakistani were arrested after their car filled with explosives was pulled over 20 yards from the provincial governor's office in the city of Farah in Farah Province. Provincial officials were meeting with US reconstruction officers in the building at the time.

This incident, along with the previous killing of a UN worker in this province, are not a good sign because Farah has not seen a lot of fighting since the US invasion, other than in the far eastern region, which is majority Pashtun. But the area around Bala Buluk and Farah city have been quite stable. I do not know the ethnic makeup of the rest of Farah province.
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Faizabad, Badakhshan Province: A motorcycle bomb placed outside a hospital in Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan Province, went off as a Provincial Reconstruction Team drove by. 2 civilians were wounded in the blast. This attack is definitely bad news.

There have been very few guerrilla attacks on Coalition or Afghan government forces in far northeastern Badakhshan Province, which is populated with Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kirghiz, Pamirs and Pashtuns. Tajik and Uzbek Muslims mostly migrated to Badakhshan after the Soviet takeover of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the 1920's. These Muslims were alienated by the atheist Soviet Communist regime and have strong anti-Soviet leanings.

The Kirghiz and Pamiris are in a beautiful place in the heart of the Himalayas called the Wakhan Corridor. The nomadic pastoralists in this area are desperately poor nowadays, with widespread malnutrition, infant mortality (and mortality in general) and lately, opium addiction.

The Pashtuns are nomadic pastoralists, government officials and wealthy landowners. Most of them are from around Jalalabad and were moved here by the Afghan government in the late 1800's after the conquest of the northern areas.

The Afghan government moved these Nangarhar Pashtuns to Badakhshan and other northern areas to divide this powerful rival group. Burhanuddin Rabbani's Tajik Jamiat-e-Islami, a huge force in the Afghan civil war that wasted the country from 1992-1996, originated in Badakhshan.

The Tajiks and Uzbeks became alienated from the Pashtun-dominated Communist regime as early as 1979, when one of the first anti-Communist uprisings arose in this province. Khalq, the ruling (mostly Pashtun) Communist faction at the time, purged Sitami Mill (Maoists) and Parchami (the other Pashtun Communist faction) from the ruling regime around this time.

In response, Sitami Mill guerrillas attacked and overran a government outpost in Badakhshan. The government responded by appointing a ferocious official to the province who proceeded to crack down viciously on all opposition, but focusing on Islamist groups. It was this Communist reign of terror that alienated the Uzbeks and Tajiks in Badakhshan and led to the formation of Jamaat-e-Islami.
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