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  • Seymour M. Hersh’in 4 Nisan 2014 tarihli “The Red Line and The Rat Line” isimli yazısının Türkçe Çevirisi
  • Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels (9 April 2014)
  • Naci Eriş: A Hero For These Times (15 November 2013)
  • MY APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE by Admiral Türker Ertürk (Ret.)
  • The American Ambassador (20 June 2013
  • Alain Badiou--Türkiye: Gerçek Bir Tarihi İsyan Mı? (19 Haziran 2013)
  • Alain Badiou--Turkey: A Genuine Historical Riot? (19 June 2013)
  • Barricade Defense
  • Ayranı Fazla Çekince (Bekir Coşkun-30 Mayıs 2013)
  • ÜMİT UMUTU VERİR 24 Mart 2013
  • İYİ ŞEKER BAYRAMLAR!!!! AKP'DEN (19/8/2012)
  • Olympic Women (11/8/2012)
  • OBAMABALL: an open letter to the President of the United States (2 August 2012)
  • Sinatra Dedicates One to Ataturk (17 May 2012)
  • As He Lay Dying (14 May 2012)
  • Viva 19 Mayis! Haydi gel! Bizimle ol!
  • It's 19 May...Know Your Enemy! (11 May 2012)
  • I'm as mad as hell... (2 April 2012)
  • ARAB SPRING=AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
  • Happy World Women's Day in Turkey (8 March 2012)
  • My e-mail note from Barack Obama (12/19/11) and my response
  • Women's Volleyball Team-the only winners
  • MEDIA ALERT: ATATURK SOCIETIES OF THE USA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM (6 June 2011)
  • BASIN BILDIRISI: AMERİKA VE İNGİLTERE ATATÜRK DERNEKLERİ (6 Haziran 2011)
  • Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fascist
  • Ryan Interview: Kanal B, Bilmek Gerek, 28 March 2011
  • Ergenekon Headquarters (karargâh)
  • When the Nazis Came: 8 March 2011
  • Letter to President Obama: 20 Jan. 2009
  • (Türkçe) Letter to President Obama: 20 Jan. 2009
  • Letter to President Obama: 20 Oct. 2009
  • Letter to President Obama: 3 Jan. 2010
  • Letter to President Obama: 20 July 2010
  • (Türkçe) Letter to President Obama: 3 Jan. 2010
  • (Türkçe) Letter to President Obama: 20 Temmuz 2010
  • Follow-up Letter to Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone: 12 March 2011
  • Letter to US Senator Mark Udall: 12 Feb. 2011
  • Islam, Secularism and the Battle for Turkey’s Future
  • WHAT PERCENTAGE OF US ARE STUPID? 5 October 2009
  • Portrait of Ataturk-29 November 2006
  • Cool Turkey-7 December 2004
  • Making Hash of Turkish Democracy-16 September 2005
  • Kidnapped (17/8/2012)
  • The Dead
    • AND SO PASSES A WOMAN’S LIFE IN TURKEY (21 October 2014)
    • Bury My Heart At Heartbreak
    • "Adil" means "just" in Arabic (18 July 2012)
    • THERE WILL BE NO ICE CREAM IN DAMASCUS THIS LOVELY EVENING (14 June 2013)
    • IN ISTANBUL A DOORMAN DIES (31 January 2014)
    • İSTANBUL'DA BİR APARTMAN GÖREVLİSİ ÖLÜR (31 Ocak 2014)
    • "Terrorist Pietá"
    • NOTHING BUT MARGARET (9 May 2014)
    • August 6, 1945 (6 August 2012)
    • BREATHLESS IN AMERICA (5 December 2013)
    • JFK DIES FOR THESE SINS (27 December 2013)
  • Short Fiction
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    • Poetry in Music: The Lyrics of Lorenz Hart >
      • A Ship Without A Sail
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      • I Could Write A Book
      • I Didn't Know What Time It Was
      • It Never Entered My Mind
      • I Wish I Were In Love Again
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    • SINATRA >
      • Only the Lonely
      • Sinatra's Greatest Hits
      • GET HAPPY, WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS
  • Poetry
    • TO THE IRANIAN KIDS BUSTED ON EXCESSIVE HAPPINESS CHARGE BY TEHRAN’S KORANIC KOPS (22 May 2014)
    • AMERICA
    • Joe the Biden Eats the Bison (21/01/2013)
    • A poem by Etheridge Knight
    • Apprehension in the Bronx Botanical Garden
    • A Shine on the Quay at Üsküdar
    • Like Kerim
    • Pandemonium
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    • Starry Night
    • Senseless, Remembering
    • That Russian Woman in the Caffé Taci
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    • Traitor
    • World Series Obsequies
  • On Sports
    • A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE by John McFee
    • Baseball poetry by Lynn Rigney Schott about her father
    • Brownsville Bum
    • Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
    • Miracle of Coogan's Bluff
    • Muhammad Ali: "Eclipse of the Sonny"
    • The Four Horsemen
    • The Green Fields of the MInd
    • The Death of a Racehorse
  • On Peace
    • A WAR ON WARMONGERS, A “JEFFERSONIAN” REBELLION (April 4, 2016)
    • WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SOCIALIST by Chris Hedges (21 September 2015)
    • THE YOUNG EURO CLASSIC PEACE ORCHESTRA
    • Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah ‘Worse than Hiroshima’ 15 October 2014
    • Criminal Complaint: International Criminal Court, 6 October 2014
    • What I'd Like to See on Front Pages of Newspapers (By Noam Chomsky)
    • THE NOBEL OBAMA (2 September 2013)
    • My Vote For President: 2012
    • American Democracy
    • Democratic Socialism
  • On West Point
    • West Point Slimed By Trump Visit
    • OBAMA VISITS WEST POINT THEN LIES, CHEATS AND STEALS (6 June 2014)
    • West Point Graduates Organize Against The War - 21 April 2006
    • Good Neighbor Senator Sessions Walls Out Mexico . . . and Robert Frost - 19 May 2006
    • Now Is The Time - 12 May 2006
    • Cadet Bush at West Point: Screw that chin in, beanhead! - 1 June 2006
    • Guantánamo: The Subject Was Linens- 15 June 2006
    • Impeach the President of the United States - 7 October 2006
    • Election Eve Daze--Hanging in There Together - 6 November 2006
    • Peace Award Remarks - 12 November 2006 - Syracuse, New York
    • George W. MacBush–Serial Murderer - 15 December 2006
    • Abolish It! - 9 Feb 2007
    • WEST POINT TO HONOR DISHONORABLE GEORGE W. BUSH >
      • On West Point, War and Pizza - 6 May 2006
  • On America
    • George Floyd opens the floodgates
    • BRONX GIRL OUSTS 10-TERM DEMOCRAT POLITICAL BOSS!
    • The United States of America: Land of internment camps
    • THIS IS AMERICA!
    • MY DISGUST AND DESPAIR ABOUT TRUMP'S SCHEME TO DESTROY THE V.A.
    • MY LETTER TO SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER , 3 February 2017
    • DONALD DEMENTIA
    • MY LETTER TO GOVERNOR CUOMO
    • Service Academy Graduates Against the War
    • U.S. Service Academy Graduates Oppose Bombing Syria (5 September 2013)
    • NO WAY OUT YOU NO GOOD PSEUDO-AMERICAN NEOCON NUDNIK APPARATCHIKS! CATCH ME IF YOU DARE!
    • WILLIE MAYS FOR PRESIDENT! (SEPTEMBER 24, 2016)
    • COUNT ME OUT, BERNIE! NO MORE $3 CONTRIBUTIONS! March 2, 2016
    • The atrocities of ISIS and the US wars of sociocide (26 August 2015)
    • WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT U.S. FOREIGN POLICY (25 August 2015)
    • KILLING RAGHEADS FOR JESUS (By Chris Hedges) (26 January 2015)
    • The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass
    • THOMAS PAINE, OUR CONTEMPORARY (27 May 2014)
    • JAMES SALTER
    • BEFORE A SUMMER SUN >
      • Prologue
      • 4. Teaching Bloody Instructions
      • 8. The Doctrine of Discovery
      • 11. Crazed from the Cradle
      • 15. The Necessary Ending of the American Indian
    • JFK >
      • JFK Files: Cover-Up Continues of President’s Assassination
      • JFK: Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association (12 September 1960)
      • JFK: American University Commencement Address (10 June 1963)
      • JFK HEALTH CARE SPEECH (May 20, 1962)
    • The CIA and the Media
    • The End Of Democracy As We Knew It (Bernd Hamm)
  • Literary Criticism
    • Mrs. Ramsay's Wedge: A View of Woolf's "To the Lighthouse"
  • Paintings
    • "Genuine Fake"--"Gerçik Taklit"
    • "Progress"--"İlerleme"
    • "Her Şey Ortada"
    • Resimler (7/8/2012)
  • Presentations-Papers
    • Boğaziçi University-Symposium
  • THE ISRAELI-AMERICAN KILLING MACHINE (19 July 2014)
  • I-THE FRAME-UP (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Trial) 8 January 2009
  • II-THE ARRAIGNMENT (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Trial) 9 January 2009
  • III-ATATÜRK APPEARS (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Trial) 26 January 2009
  • How Old Are You? 4 May 2009
  • On Living
    • "Art, Truth & Politics" by Harold Pinter (1930-2008)
    • The Power of Imagination (Chris Hedges-13 May 2014)
    • WE ARE ALL ONE
    • The Story of Stuff-What Needs To Be Done (10 May 2012)
    • An Arab Springtime? by Samir Amin
    • From Resistance to Revolution
  • Photographs
    • Istanbul
    • Tarlabaşı, Istanbul 2013
  • Kidnapped (17/8/2012)
I am no longer able to call myself an American. Such defamation I can no longer tolerate. Nor is being a Turkish citizen any better, in many ways it is worse. The world is being destroyed by two individuals, not men, individuals, in fact, inhuman individuals, in fact, murderers: the war mongering Obama and his partner, Erdogan…  I reject these peace menaces. So I refuse to be labeled. So call me Ishmael, as in “outcast.”  Call me a bastard.
James Ryan

Picture


The atrocities of ISIS and the US wars of sociocide

by Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site



Images posted Tuesday on social media have confirmed the destruction by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) of the 2,000-year-old temple of Baal Shamin in the Syrian city of Palmyra. The images show ISIS fighters planting explosive charges throughout the ancient structure and then detonating them, reducing the temple to rubble.

The willful demolition of this site, one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world and one of the best preserved Greco-Roman ruins in existence, followed the savage murder a week earlier of Professor Khaled Assad. The 82-year-old Syrian archeologist had participated in the excavation and restoration of Palmyra’s ruins and had remained there as the head of antiquities for nearly half a century. He was beheaded for refusing to assist ISIS in looting the site.

UNESCO, the United Nations cultural and educational agency, justifiably denounced these atrocities as “war crimes,” adding that “their perpetrators must be accountable for their actions.”

There is no question that those responsible for these acts and for far bloodier atrocities against the Syrian people are criminals and should be held accountable. The obstacle to bringing to justice those principally responsible, however, is the fact that they are the former and current chief officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA.

It was they who laid waste to one Middle Eastern country after another, while working with the Islamist forces that comprise ISIS to carry out their wars of regime-change against a series of secular Arab governments.

The systematic destruction of a cultural heritage carried out by ISIS has a historical precedent in the crimes carried out by the Pol Pot regime and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. This regime set out to erase the country’s cultural heritage, while carrying out a reign of terror and mass murder against the population.

The similarities between ISIS and the Khmer Rouge do not end with their barbaric assaults on culture and human life. In both cases, the preconditions for these atrocities had been created through the destruction of entire societies by US imperialism.

In Cambodia, a US bombing campaign dropped some 532,000 tons of explosives on the country in four years—more than three times the tonnage dropped on Japan during all of World War II. The resulting death toll is estimated as high as 600,000, while 2 million people out of a population of 7 million were made homeless and economic life was shattered.

ISIS and the current bloodshed across Syria and Iraq are the direct products of similar acts of sociocide on the part of US imperialism. In Iraq, the illegal US invasion of 2003, the subsequent occupation and the systematic destruction of what had been one of the most advanced health and social infrastructures in the Arab world claimed the lives of over 1 million Iraqis, while turning another 5 million into refugees. The divide-and-rule strategy pursued by the Pentagon stoked a sectarian civil war by deliberately manipulating tensions between Iraq’s Shia and Sunni populations.

The ramifications of this policy have long since spilled across national borders, with increasingly catastrophic consequences, all driven by Washington’s resort to militarism to advance its aim of hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia.

To this end, the US has been involved in wars for over 35 years, beginning with the CIA’s orchestration of the war for regime-change against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan, where it allied itself with Islamist forces, including Osama bin Laden and the other founders of Al Qaeda.

Nine months before the last US troops withdrew from Iraq in December 2011, Washington and its NATO allies launched another unprovoked war of aggression to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and impose their own puppet regime over the oil-rich North African country. The destruction of the Libyan state and the murder of Gaddafi plunged the country into chaos and bloodshed that continues to this day. Islamist militias used as US proxies in the Libyan war, along with tons of captured Libyan weapons, were subsequently funneled—with the aid of the CIA—into the civil war in Syria, strengthening ISIS and helping create the conditions for it to overrun more than a third of Iraq.

In the name of the never-ending “war on terrorism,” Washington is prosecuting another military campaign in alliance with the Shia-based government in Baghdad against ISIS in the predominately Sunni regions of Iraq, while in Syria it is stepping up military operations in alliance with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Gulf monarchies, while attempting to find “moderate” Sunni Islamists it can utilize as proxies in the war to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The New York Times Tuesday published a lengthy article reflecting an internal debate within the Obama administration over whether to provide more direct US support to Ahrar al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist militia with multiple links to Al Qaeda. The group already receives extensive backing from key US allies Turkey and Qatar.

The horrific consequences of decades of US wars are now spilling into Europe, with the increasingly desperate flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees—in many cases at the cost of their own lives—from homelands that Washington has turned into killing fields.

Politically and morally, the US government and its top officials, starting with Bush and Obama, are totally responsible for all of the crimes, atrocities and human suffering resulting from the multiple wars of aggression they initiated.

None of them have been held to account. Representatives and defenders of an oligarchy of corporate billionaires, they are not, under the present political setup, answerable to the American people, whose opposition to war they routinely defy.

The task of bringing these war criminals to justice and putting an end to the succession of wars and growing threat of a new world war lies with the working class. It must mobilize its independent strength in a mass international antiwar movement armed with a revolutionary socialist program for the overthrow of capitalism.



Bill Van Auken
Picture
THE CRIMINAL CABAL FOR PERPETUAL WAR


MY PLEA FOR JUSTICE TO THE INTERNATIOMAL CRIMINAL COURT
http://www.brighteningglance.org/my-plea-for-justice-to-the-international-criminal-court-14-january-2015.html