[Hurriyet Daily News] Religion has always played a role in Turkish politics, although secularism is guaranteed by the constitution. Islam has always been an essential part of right-wing politics: Religious discourse and symbols have been used and abused not only by Islamist but also nationalist and center-right parties. Back in 1970, the leader of the main Islamist party of the time, Necmettin Erbakan, even complained that the center-right Justice Party and its leader Suleyman Demirel were abusing religion by distributing copies of the Koran featuring the party symbol.
At that time it was the height of the Cold War, and religious politics were an essential part of the "fight against communism." It later became the turn of the military regime after the coup in 1980 to use a strange mixture of Kemalism and religion to justify its authoritarianism. The religious factor played such an important role that the so-called "Turkish-Islamic Synthesis" became the new official ideology.
Only after the rise of Islamism as an opposition ideology did The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... shift to "strict secularism" with the intervention of the army into civilian politics on Feb. 28, 1997. This was a period of embarrassing suppression of religious freedoms and other human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... , even including a ban on headscarves in universities that hindered the right to education.
Such a backlash created a severe democracy regression, but it could not hinder the Islamists' march to power. The Islamists transformed themselves into "conservative democrats" under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and in fact, until very recently, the AKP refrained from using religious discourse.
Despite its many shortcomings, its politics could be well-defined as the politics of an ordinary "conservative party." Only after the AKP started to fail to deliver democratic governance - and after managing to gather enormous power in its hands - did it turn to religious-nationalist politics both domestically and abroad.
What we are witnessing now is the most extreme use and abuse of religion by the governing party and the president. This has become the main political weapon against the opposition during the election campaign. Even the Islamist parties of the past did not indulge in such abuse of religion, which has taken the form of blackmailing the opposition by labelling them "un-Islamic." The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) is portrayed as being an enemy of Islam from the start of the republican regime. The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is accused of being the Kurdish equivalent of the Turkish republicans, who aim to strip the Kurds of their religious identity. A pro-AKP newspaper recently "exposed" that HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtas ate a "ham sandwich" while on his Europe tour. Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout the long-awaited message arrived. They quickly got to work with their decoder rings... an AKP deputy and columnist warned that anyone who votes for the HDP will endanger their religious faith and practice, as the HDP aims to lead Kurds to "Kafiristan," or "the land of infidels."
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... , who openly campaigns for the ruling party despite his constitutional duty to be impartial, slams the opposition for its supposed enmity against society's Moslem identity. Moreover, being in opposition has started to be associated with being a "fifth column" of foreign plotters trying to stop the rise of Turkey as a "global independent power, in the service of all Moslems across the world."
Even the late Ottomans moved to drop the discourse of "the land of Islam" against "the land of infidels" during the years of reform from the beginning of the 19th century. Now, this discourse is striking back, as Turkey slides into a dark abyss.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2015 00:00 ||
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Chlorine: It's not just a poisonous gas.
[DAWN] RESPONSIBLE societies learn from experience, hence it would be wise to take seriously the potential threats that Naegleria fowleri -- also referred to as 'brain-eating amoeba' -- poses to the people of Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... .
Apparently, two deaths caused by the amoeba have been reported in the city over the past 15 days, bringing the total number of fatalities caused by the organism this year to three. Last year, at least 14 people bit the dust to complications linked to the amoeba.
The organism is found in swimming pools and freshwater sources, while sufficient chlorination of water is considered a sufficient safeguard. However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... as studies in the past have shown, a significant portion of Karachi's water has been found to be insufficiently chlorinated.
While there should not be any panic, local authorities must scientifically examine the causes of the recent deaths, as well as test water samples. Failure to do so can cause more loss of life.
The authorities should gather proper case histories of the victims to determine if they came in contact with the amoeba through swimming, or the use of tap water.
Above all, major stakeholders -- the health department, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation as well as the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board -- must evolve a coordinated strategy to deal with the issue.
Testing the city's water and chlorination levels are essential in this regard -- the deaths caused by the amoeba raise questions about the overall quality of Karachi's water. And while discussing public health, it would also be worth examining the situation in other cities, such as Lahore, to see if the state is ready to deal with seasonal illnesses especially major threats such as dengue.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Speaking of public health, how's that polio vaccination campaign coming along?
Most of us have watched movies where a mysterious threat attacks an unsuspecting community. They may be vampires ravaging an Alaskan town or a blob-like being swallowing a town. Typically the defenders, at first confident, are rapidly dismayed when they find that police firearms have little effect against the creatures. With that realization the characters go from complacent to desperate in a few minutes of movie time until the hunted survivors are forced by desperation to try an outlandish theory from a crackpot who has a peculiar insight into the nature of the monsters.
Sometimes real life resembles a horror movie, as in the present instance when Westphalian states find to their surprise that the state-killing bullets in their arsenal can't kill Islamic extremism. Perhaps the epitome of such weapons is the precision guided missile-firing drone or its equivalent, the special forces raiding team directed by the signals intelligence wizardry of the NSA. This targeted force is like Zeus' thunderbolt; it is inconceivably potent, almost unimaginably effective. Surely such a thing can destroy what the president of the United States aims it at.
The United States has killed Saddam Hussein, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, and Osama bin Laden. It was instrumental in the death of Imad Mughniyah. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current head of ISIS, is probably lying crippled in some safe house never to walk again from the effects of a March 18, 2015 airstrike. And now a US special operations team has killed one of the next in line, the chief of ISIS' oil smuggling business, its "chief financial officer", a Tunisian with the nom de guerre Abu Sayyaf.
...Now that America has put a bullet through the body, head and wallet surely all that is left is to watch ISIS die. SECDEF Ashton Carter believes they've dealt it a serious blow. But others are not so sure. "Michael Weiss, author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," said Abu Sayyaf was largely unknown to close observers of the organization." Killing him won't hurt it any more than its been hurt before.
...But like the monster in the movie, it's taken "three billion electro-volts of energy and it's still coming on"! Why have none of the previous heavy blows slowed ISIS or any of the affiliated rebel groups down? Why is the jihadi organism inexplicably resistant to leadership disruptions, whether caused by drone strikes or the murderous work of rivals from other factions? How can it stand against the Olympian thunderbolt? This is an important question to answer.
#3
It may not be a state, but it's a landlocked entity surrounded by states that say they're enemies who somehow buy millions of dollars a day of oil from them.
[Breitbart] A new study finds the use of birth control pills is associated with significantly lower cortical thickness in certain brain structures believed to be important in the response to emotional stimuli.
The study, published by the journal Human Brain Mapping, states that oral contraceptives (OCs) "contain steroid hormones that may affect the brain's structure and function."
Researchers Nicole Petersen, Alexandra Touroutoglou, Joseph Andreano, and Larry Cahill studied 90 women, 44 users of the combination form of oral contraceptives, and 46 non-users, and compared the cortical thickness and volume of various brain regions between the two groups. They found significant thinning in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex in the women on birth control pills.
"These regions are believed to be important for responding to rewards and evaluating internal states/incoming stimuli, respectively," the authors write.
#4
Big Pharma is having some difficulties, brain tissue reduction discoveries, etc, but the manufacturing of Low Information Voters must continue.
Merck is ready to settle NuvaRing lawsuits for $100M
February 7, 2014 | By Eric Palmer
The drugmaker may be getting off cheaply compared to other settlements for contraceptive risks
The risks of women developing a blood clot while using certain contraceptives are well known and have spawned thousands of lawsuits and resulted in billions of dollars in payments. Now it is Merck's ($MRK) turn to pony up, with a $100 million settlement that some say lets it off cheap.
The New Jersey drugmaker is prepared to make the payment to settle 1,700 lawsuits tied to its NuvaRing contraceptive device, Bloomberg reports, first citing sources and then a judge's comment in a hearing today. While a $100 million settlement averages out to more than $58,000 a claim, the product earned it $686 million last year, according to its recent earnings report. It's also a fraction of what Bayer has laid out to settle lawsuits over its Yaz and Yasmin products, Bloomberg points out. The German drugmaker has reported having spent more than $1.6 billion over the years to resolve litigation over the contraceptives. In 2012, it agreed to pay $110 million to settle the first 500 of 11,000 lawsuit, which meant an average payout of about $220,000. But then Bayer's birth control products earn it more than $1 billion a year.
"Merck may be getting out much more cheaply than its competitors because proving the liability case against the NuvaRing device appears to be more difficult than against the other contraceptives," Carl Tobias, who teaches liability law at the University of Richmond in Virginia, told Bloomberg.
#5
OS, I believe the Catholics have a point with their opposition to contraception, especially the oral types. Most of the lefties who love consequence-free sex for everyone and don't mind ingesting regulatory hormones, are also the same ones who shop at Whole Foods so they don't have to eat hormone injected chickens. They also think it is OK for 8 year old children to begin life long hormone treatments to correct birth "gender errors". Nuts!
An interesting analysis of what may come next. The money quote,
The Yemeni affair is still in the beginning but what Nasrallah and Iran fear is that Yemen may be the beginning of a certain phase and not at the end of a specific phase, as Tehran had hoped. They're afraid it may be the beginning of a new Arab approach on how to deal with current crises in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. In clearer words, Iran is afraid that the Arab stance may become different in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. I'd add that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. The US by bombing IS may well find themselves on the wrong side in this conflict.
#1
"The US by bombing IS may well find themselves on the wrong side in this conflict." The US in the middle East is beginning to look like a blind and deaf man trying to join a gunfight.
#3
During one of my tours in the Gulf, we used to do what could be termed free-for-all strategy sessions. Generally one or two topics, rank was put aside for the hour, and you had to be prepared to defend your argument. One of the topics broached was "what if a militarily or politically smart Arab showed up."
#10
I find it hard or difficult to believe that Iran's white-haired, white-bearded Mullahs/
Ayatollahs would think that their country being "MAHANIST", or otherwise desiring to be a MUSLIM GREAT POWER ANDOR GLOBAL POWER, WOULD BE EASY OR LINEAR???
DITTO AS PER OWG CO-SUPERPOWER RISING CHINA + TRADITIONAL CHINESE "SOFT POWER" VEE THE SOUTH CHINA SEA, AS AGZ USDOD SEC ASHTON CARTER, UNCLOS, + US THREAT OF [USN/CVBG-led]"DIRECT, BUT LIMITED, MILITARY ACTION" IN OPPOSITION + CHALLENGE TO CHINA'S RECLAMATION = "ISLAND-BUILDING" ACTVITIES.
Beijing told Kerry that China's sovereignty in the SCS is "solid as a rock" + will be defended azg all comers.
ANALYSTS = WILL CHINA STOP ITS ACTIVITIES, OR ATTACK THE US NAVY???
China's response = Iran's response = Russia's response = can make-or-break its Geopol Ambitions = "Manifest Destiny" as a "US-style" OWG Co-Superpower or Global Power.
MoreSO for CHINA given ...
* VARIOUS DEFENCE.PK/.FORUMS = ...
> [Reuters] XI JINPING: CHINA + US CAN BOTH BE PACIFIC POWERS.
> TIME FOR CHINA TO HAVE OVERSEAS MILITARY BASES.
> JAPAN WOULD ATTACK NORTH KOREA TO DEFEND US AFTER [NoKor = LRBM/ICBM?] MISSLE ATTACK: [Japan]DEFENCE MINISTER SAYS. Gen. Nakatani.
* WORLD NEWS = ...
> [Stars-N-Stripes] SOUTH CHINA SEA TENSIONS HAVE SOME FILIPINO LEADERS HOPING THE US NAVY WILL RETURN TO SUBIC BAY.
> [People's Voice = SCMP] CHINA WARNS US NOT TO SEND SHIPS TO DISPUTED SCS WATERS.
For CHINA + US Entrenchment in East Asia, First Island Chain = IRAN NOT BEING ALLOWED TO HAVE NUKES = US STILL BEING A SELFISH COLD WAR + POST-COLD WAR-ESQUE "SOLE" SUPERPOWER, NOT A 21ST CENTURY, OWG-NWO GLOBAL-FRIENDLY CO-SUPERPOWER = ONE OF MANY SAME.
Before I get to the meat of this, I should probably mention that if there's anyone in the entire universe who won't get pissed off about what I've got to say they probably don't have the capacity to understand it. It has to do with things we in the USA and most of the rest of the Western world have been taught are forbidden.
And no, it's not racist. It just steps on a lot of the fences that have been built around the concept of racial bigotry so people can't accidentally be racist. Sarah's mentioned the way humans everywhere do this: if something is taboo, then a whole ring of related things also become taboo so nobody accidentally breaks the original taboo.
The problem with that is that eventually you run out of taboos and wind up in the realm of "Everything that isn't permitted is forbidden" instead of where we of a more freedom-loving bent prefer to be, "Everything that isn't forbidden is permitted."
Okay. So, that said, we Odds are among those fighting the slide of the USA (and with it, the rest of the Western world) back into the bad old days where anyone who wasn't in power was functionally owned by their nation/state/kingdom/whatever. I've seen the confusion over why people keep wanting "the government" to take care of things without realizing that in doing so people are giving up their freedom.
The simple fact is, the USA is an outlier nation built on the backs of some truly extraordinary outliers.
"Normal" humans (by this I mean "pick a random person from anywhere in Europe, Asia, or Africa") are tribal. If we were using animal terminology, we'd be either pack or herd animals, to the extent that most people (at the 90% or higher kind of range, the last time I was looking at the research) would rather remain at the bottom of the pecking order in a social/societal hierarchy than attempt to exist without one. In short, they'd rather be slaves with a more or less predictable existence than be free without any of those certainties.
In the USA and the other colony nations where the percentage of people descended from colonists and willing immigrants is markedly higher than any other demographic (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc.) there is a much stronger interest in and desire for individual freedom. The entire Anglosphere tends to value individual freedom more highly than most other cultures.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
You understand, for the Left, anyone or anything that does not comply with their commands you are indeed committing a crime punishable with the penalty of slavery. As Obama/Holder DoJ has declared, simply being accused makes you guilty (ask any male student accused of inappropriate sexual misconduct on campus how that works).
#2
and according to the left - if you are white, or male, or hetrosexual, or conservative, or successful, or married to the opposite gender - you are already guilty. Guilty! GUILTY!
And fully deserving whatever punishment decreed. That may be having to work your ass off to get even what the 'protected classes' get for free (from your earnings). It may mean having to bow and scrape and apologize profusely for so-called crimes your ancestors might, or probably might not have done 150 years ago.
It may mean never, ever saying 'NO' to someone of a certain protected class.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
