Friday, February 25, 2005

ADL Not Amused by 500 Christians

The New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is yet another well-financed Zionist lobby masquerading as a "human rights" group. The ADL's past is more than murky, its sordid dealings with Mossad agents and police informers and the use of police bribery to obtain personal records used to monitor literally thousands of individuals and private groups was briefly exposed in a California court case in the early 1990s.

The statement below from the ADL's "Holocaust"-surviving leader, Abe Foxman, is revealing--"It is especially unfortunate that the World Council of Churches approved this policy without any consultation with Jewish leaders" Boo-hoo.

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ADL Dismayed By World Council of Churches Decision to Pursue Divestment As Means to Punish Israel


New York, NY, February 22, 2005 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is deeply dismayed by a recommendation adopted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee encouraging its member churches to consider divesting from companies doing business in Israel, modeled after a similar measure being considered by the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The Central Committee, the main governing body of the WCC, approved the recommendation for a policy of "phased, selective divestment from multinational corporations involved in the (Israeli) occupation," at a meeting on February 21 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, and Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, ADL Director of Interfaith Affairs, issued the following statement:

We are deeply dismayed that the World Council of Churches has endorsed a divestment policy against Israel. The Council's call for divestment is based on a biased, one-sided interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that unfairly portrays Israel as the perpetrator of alleged violations of international law, while failing to acknowledge myriad other factors in the conflict, not least the sustained campaign of Palestinian terror that is at the root of Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

As we have said repeatedly in conversation with Presbyterian Church leaders, divestment policies are counterproductive and a detriment to the newly revived peace initiative between the Israelis and Palestinians, and fundamentally flawed as a mechanism for resolving the conflict. Divestment hurts not only Israel, but has economic impact on Palestinians as well.

It is especially unfortunate that the World Council of Churches approved this policy without any consultation with Jewish leaders, and that its policy statement is wrapped in the garb of "religious truth," rather than as an interpretation of international law. Interpretations of international law are simply that, and not revealed religious truths.




The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

500 million Christians urged to divest from Israel

From: RePorterNoteBook@aol.com

500 million Christians urged to divest

SAM SER
THE JERUSALEM POST
Feb. 23, 2005


An organization representing up to half a billion Christians worldwide has encouraged its member churches to divest from companies that participate in "illegal activities" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The central committee of the World Council of Churches, which represents more than 340 Protestant and Orthodox churches in more than 120 countries,announced the decision on Monday, toward the conclusion of the governing body's meeting in Geneva.

It specifically noted the "process of phased, selective divestment from multinational corporations involved in the occupation" now being implemented by
thePresbyterian Church (USA). "This action is commendable in both method and manner, [and] uses criteria rooted in faith," the group said in a statement.

While that campaign angered segments of the American Presbyterian community,the WCC's international affairs expert Peter Weiderud told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that its own statement was the result of a "grassroots initiative" from its membership, and was not merely the view of a limited number of senior clergy. The WCC itself noted in another statement that it had chosen to follow a "consensus decision-making model."

The central committee "reminded the council's member churches that 'with investment funds, they have an opportunity to use those funds responsibly in support of peaceful solutions' to the Israel-Palestine conflict," the statement said.

"Multinational corporations have been involved in the demolition of Palestinian homes, and are involved in the construction of settlements and settlement infrastructure on occupied territory, in building a dividing wall which is also largely inside occupied territory, and in other violations of international law being carried out beyond the internationally recognized borders of the State of Israel determined by the Armistice of 1949," the statement continued.

"The WCC governing body encouraged the council's member churches 'to give serious consideration to economic measures' as a new way to work for peace, by looking at ways to not participate economically in illegal activities related to the Israeli occupation. In that sense, the committee affirmed 'economic pressure, appropriately and openly applied,' as a 'means of action.'"

Weiderud noted that the committee had taken into account recent positive developments in the peace process, but, as the body itself stated, "illegal activities in occupied territory continue as if a viable peace for both peoples is not a possibility."

Apparently seeking to preempt criticism of the move as anti-Semitic, the WCC's central committee "framed" its recommendation by "recalling" its statement in 1992 that "criticism of the policies of the Israeli government is not in itself anti-Jewish."

Moshe Fox, minister for public and interreligious affairs at the Israel Embassy in Washington, DC, disagreed.

"While maintaining that this recommendation is neither one-sided nor anti-Jewish, it is clearly both," Fox told the Post on Tuesday.

"At a time when Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a political process, returning to negotiations, this decision is utterly ill-timed. The WCC is apparently seeking to dovetail on the Presbyterian Church's campaign. But, while the Presbyterian Church is still deliberating, the WCC is charging forward... [but] a boycott of Israel will not bring the Israelis and Palestinians any closer to the path of peace," he added.

Weiderud also said the WCC was unaware of any intimidation of Palestinian Christians by Palestinian terrorists or desecration of Christian holy sites. No churches under Palestinian control were large enough to qualify for membership in the WCC, although the body had indirect contacts with several churches there, he said.

Although the World Council of Churches comprised mostly American and European churches when it was founded in 1948, the WCC's expansion since then has primarily been in South America and southern Asia, Weiderud said.

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"Deep down, I believe that a little anti-Semitism is a good thing for the Jews - reminds us who we are." --Jay Lefkowitz (NYT Magazine. Feb.12, 1995. Page 65). Jay Lefkowitz is now Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. A sick man! Don't you think?

+++++++

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Sex and Fraud Woe For Greek Church

I have been reluctant to comment on the high profile media fanfare surrounding the Church of Greece in recent weeks. Although I cannot help but doubt the authenticity of this photo showing a decrepit 91-yr old man with a young woman. I have heard some counter allegations that this is a fraud and moreover a purge that is being thrown onto Greece from foreign "special interest" groups operating abroad that are seeking to separate the Greek concepts of Church and Nation.

Other articles by the international press have quoted dubious polls by left wing Greek newspapers claiming that the majority of Greeks want a separation of Church and State.

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Sex And Fraud Woe
For Greek Church
Embattled Orthodox Archbishop Asks
For Forgiveness Over Lurid Claims
By Helena Smith in Athens
The Guardian - UK
2-19-5

Greece's Orthodox church, buffeted by sex and corruption scandals, met in emergency session yesterday amid lurid claims that have included one newspaper publishing photographs of a 91-year-old bishop naked in bed with a nubile young woman.

Scrambling to resolve the worst crisis in the church's modern history, the embattled spiritual leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, convened the rare meeting as allegations of skulduggery, sexual improprieties, trial rigging, drug and antiquities smuggling engulfed the institution.

"I humbly ask for forgiveness from the people and the clerics who, for the most, honour... the cassock they wear," he said addressing the 102-member Holy Synod, the church's ruling council.

"There is a lot that must be done to put our house in order," he conceded before proposing a series of reforms.

Greeks have watched dumbfounded as allegations of their priesthood's dissolute lifestyle have unfolded on their television screens.

Snatched tape-recordings, aired nightly, have revealed rampant homosexuality among senior clerics who, unlike ordinary priests, are under oaths of chastity.

The alleged debauchery has not been limited to monastic cells. Last week, claims emerged that Metropolitan Theoklitos of Thessaly, a leading churchman, had been arrested on suspicion of drug dealing in a police raid on a notorious nightclub in Athens.

The priest was reportedly rounded up with Seraphim Koulousousas, the archbishop's former private secretary, also implicated in another "unholy affair" involving gay sex with a bishop.

In a setback for Archbishop Christodoulos, Mr Koulousousas announced this week that he was leaving the church to embark on a career as a fashion designer in Paris.

The Greek Orthodox church sees homosexuality as an "abomination," with the archbishop recently describing it as a "blatant, crying sin".

The revelations follow the suspension of two high-ranking clerics for "ethical misconduct" earlier this month.

Metropolitan Panteleimon of Attica, who headed Greece's richest diocese, was withdrawn from duties after allegations of "lewd exchanges with young men" and charges that he had embezzled around Ä4.4m (£3m) for "his old age."

The bishop is one of several eminent priests whose names have been linked in a widening trial-fixing and corruption scandal involving at least 20 judges currently under investigation.

In the wake of suggestions by fellow members of the synod that he resign, Panteleimon's reaction was less than charitable. "If I speak, there will be an earthquake. I'll take many with me to my grave."

Earlier this month, Archimandrite Iakovos Giosakis was also suspended after being charged with antiquities smuggling following the disappearance of valuable icons from his former diocese.

Under public pressure from a media determined to expose the shenanigans, the church is investigating four more clerics, including a 91-year-old metropolitan bishop who was captured on camera cavorting in the nude with a young woman. The picture was splashed across the front page of the mass-selling Avriani.

"It is true that some of us have sinned, mistakes have been made," the synod's spokesman admitted. "There is clearly a need for catharsis."

But with the revelations showing no sign of abating, Greeks were doubtful yesterday whether the clean-up would go far enough. Although Archbishop Christodoulos appeared unusually contrite, he stopped short of chastising his own role in the growing furore.

In yet another embarrassing twist, the fiery leader has been accused of procuring the services of a convicted drug smuggler, Apostolos Vavylis, to help elect a favoured cleric to the post of patriarch of Jerusalem in 2001. Investigations have shown that the archbishop wrote a recommendation letter for Vavylis months before he was arrested smuggling heroin.

"A tsunami is coming and it will reach the archbishop himself," predicted Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos, a noted liberal.

Unsurprisingly, the allegations have severely dented the reputation of the church in a country where 97% are baptised Orthodox. Unlike its Roman Catholic counterpart, the Greek Orthodox faith stresses the infallibility of its 11,000-strong priesthood as a whole. Greeks, in contrast to other Europeans, intrinsically link their national identity to their religion, viewing the church as the vehicle that kept Hellenism alive during 400 years of dark Ottoman rule.

But, this week, for the first time ever the vast majority told pollsters they would support the full separation of church-state relations.

"What all of this has confirmed is that corruption is not limited to the public sector," said Thanos Dokas, a political scientist.

"Despite widespread evidence that these sort of things were happening, its leadership was always reluctant to deal with them.

"For the last 150 years, the church has had a leading role in a country... now it is fighting a rearguard battle to maintain its grip on Greek society."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

THE LITTLEST NAZIS

This American writer claims that his contemporaries all went through a "Nazi phase"; I suppose this is one phase that Freud neglected to mention in his theories on the different phases one goes through when growing up.

Little Nazi growing pains....


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http://nypress.com/18/8/news&columns/knipfel.cfm

NEW YORK PRESS Vol 18 - Issue 8 - February 23-Mar 1, 2005


THE LITTLEST NAZIS
Wisconsin's youth did the goose-step with style.

By Jim Knipfel

This may be an uncomfortable subject, one most people don't care to admit or consider. I can also see, even before I start writing, that this is likely going to be misinterpreted in outrageous ways. Still, what I'm talking about is true: Kids love Nazis. Or at least they did when I was a boy.



Perhaps this fascination wasn't quite as widespread in New York or other major cities as it was elsewhere in the country. But when you grew up, as I did, in a community whose population was almost exclusively German and Northern European—in a town that had only one Jewish family and no black families (outside of those associated with the football team), the kids could get away with doing and saying things that could, in 21st-century New York, result in some sort of prosecution.



There was nothing surprising, for example, in seeing kids scrawl swastikas all over their notebooks or in the margins of their homework. I was guilty of it myself. It wasn't considered a big deal. If you saw a swastika scrawled on the wall in a stairwell (which wasn't at all uncommon), it was seen as nothing more than stupid, uncreative vandalism, not an attack on anyone and certainly no kind of threat.



A friend of mine named Norby might've taken things a bit further than most. I guess you could say he was quite smitten with the iconography and the style. In fourth or fifth grade, I remember, he moved beyond simply scribbling swastikas or writing "Sieg Heil" on things to making himself little fashion accessories out of paper. He made a paper armband and a paper tie. Even a little paper Hitler moustache, which he taped below his nose. The tie was my favorite—down below the large swastika emblazoned across the middle of the tie, he'd written "JA!" in thick black block letters. This I found both absurd and hysterically funny.



He wore this to class a few days in a row, and none of the teachers ever said a word to him. Nor did they say anything to any of the other kids who were also fascinated with the Third Reich. It's not that the teachers were themselves collaborators—instead, they simply recognized (and rightly so) that there was nothing political behind it, nothing anti-Semitic or racist. (The racism in town was something quite independent, developing along strange and twisted paths all its own.) I'm guessing the parents didn't say anything either because they simply believed their kids had taken up an unexpected and healthy interest in history.



But it wasn't history. And no, it wasn't racist. It had nothing to do with "white power" or any other such nonsense. It was at heart, I believe, nothing more than a question of esthetics, not unlike the early days of punk rock. I might suggest that this whole Nazi flirtation thing was our own brand of punk rock before punk rock existed. We had no idea what National Socialism was all about. All we knew was that there was something forbidden and dangerous (and therefore attractive) about it, even if we didn't know exactly what or why. It was "evil," and that was enough.



We were a generation growing up with no direct memories of WWII. The Nazis were fictional characters to us. Comic book villains. "Hitler" was as much a mythological figure as Paul Bunyan or the devil. What we knew about the Nazis came from Hogan's Heroes, Captain America and that Star Trek episode. They cropped up in movies an awful lot, too‚ either as slickly evil madmen or bumbling idiots. In either case, they always lost in the end, but they still had style. Cool uniforms and eye-catching symbols. And the characters on Hogan's Heroes never discussed gas chambers or death camps.



The history classes in our schools didn't get around to World War II until 11th grade. And despite all the books I'd read (there were a remarkable number of books about Hitler and the Third Reich aimed at pre-teens), I had no idea what the Holocaust was until the miniseries aired in 1978. Many of the kids I knew watched Holocaust from beginning to end, but as will happen with kids, they did so for all the wrong reasons. It had nudity, for one thing (and at that age, you don't notice the nudity is associated with horror). Lots of gore, too. What more could a 12-year-old ask for from a tv show? (I'm not even going to get into what they did with Roots.)



Yet, in spite of the boobs and the blood, the message began to sink in. At least for me it did.



Again, you have to understand, I never went to school with any Jewish or black kids until my junior year of high school (at which point I met one of each). Throughout most of my childhood, "Jewish" was an alien concept—to me, and to most of the folks in town. But while it was alien, there was no animosity connected with it. The collective animosity in Northeast Wisconsin was saved for the people who were around: mostly Poles and Indians.



I'm not trying to justify anything, just describe it. Kids love monsters, even when they don't fully understand what those monsters represent or the full ramifications of the monster's actions. I liked monsters more than most. And whatever attraction I may have felt to the Nazis had less to do with any kind of hatred than with this simple love of monsters. And to a kid at that time and in that place, the Nazis were monsters with style.



The more I read, however, the more it became clear that these were men, not monsters. "Banal," as Hannah Arendt would call them. Soon enough, my fascination passed, and I moved on to my next phase—designing packages for fake products, like "Donkey Oaties" breakfast cereal.



Most all of us came to our senses before too long. Everyone except for my friend Bob, that is. But Bob wasn't really a Nazi—he just liked to piss people off. Memories of poor Norby's paper accessories may have contributed, too. When the Dead Kennedys released their "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" single in 1982, Bob came to school wearing the armband that accompanied it. And while the red slash through the swastika was clear and obvious, it still caused a bit of a stir (though not as big a stir as the time he wore his Circle Jerks "Group Sex" t-shirt).



In recent years, I've met people who grew up all over the country at roughly the same time I did, who report the same kind of experience, that same early fascination. Kids from Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan, New York, California—all report some sort of Nazi phase when they were young before moving on to punk rock. In some cases, there very much was a racist element attached to it. Some got over it sooner than others, and most are hesitant to admit to it nowadays.



But I guess that's why the History Channel exists.

Volume 18, Issue 8

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Wall Street Journal and Turkey; "The Sick Man of Europe"

It has been interesting that the classically pro-Turkish and influential Zionist-American newspaper , Wall Street Journal, has decided to turn up the heat on the Turk's non-committal attitude towards the greater Zionist dream of destroying any semblance of Arab unity. Yet put in a historical context it is not all that surprising. Zionist diplomats and opinion makers have through the centuries from Disraeli to Rothschild to Kissinger to Kaplan to today's Robert l. Pollock have flip flopped from hot to cold with Turkey in their bazaar-like haggling game of gaining favor from the Turks.

In no way should we fall into some delusional deception that the usual cabal has had a sudden change of heart, they are merely upping the ante in their human high stakes card game for earthly dominance.

Two articles follow, one is from Turkish sources expressing alarm at Pollock's seemingly anti-Turkish article and on the other hand enthusiatic praise from the Greek-American lobby , American Hellenic Institute (AHI.)

The final link is to Wall Street Journal's published reader response's to the Pollock article.

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http://www.zaman.org/?bl=international&alt=&hn=16800

INTERNATIONAL 02.23.2005 Wednesday - ISTANBUL 09:27

Greek, Armenian Support Pollock's Turkey Article
By Zaman
Published: Tuesday 22, 2005
zaman.com


Armenians and Greeks living in the US have provided significant support toRobert L. Pollock for his heavy criticism of Turkey in an article published on February 16th in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which has a circulation of two million.

The Greek American Society distributed the article to US Congress members they are close to. Anti-Turkish comments flourished in response to Pollock's article. Many e-mails supporting Pollock's views were posted on the WSJ's website. Armenians mostly congratulated the author for his work but there was a weak response from Turks. One reader named David Govett wrote: "Turkey cannot be the sick man of

Europe because it has never been a part of Europe. Ataturk's initiatives to modernize Turkey were as successful as Crazy Peter's Westernization attempts on Russia." Armenian readers interpreted that Turkey's was the sick man of Europe not just because of its hostility towards the US, but also because of its rejection of the "Armenian genocide." According to another reader, Robert Roughsedge, Kurds are much more significant for Armenians now.

Pollock described Turkey as "small-minded, paranoid, and marginal."




Ankara
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http://www.ahiworld.com/press_releases/021705.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: GEORGIA ECONOMOU
February 17, 2005—No.11 (202) 785-8430

The Wall Street Journal Piece Highlights Turkey’s Promotion of Anti-American Attitudes

WASHINGTON, DC—The AHI would like to bring to your attention a piece in The Wall Street Journal entitled, "The Sick Man of Europe—Again" by Senior Editorial Writer Robert L. Pollock. This article highlights the major points of inconsistency regarding the U.S.-Turkish relationship.

"I would strongly encourage everyone in our community to send this article to their elected members of Congress," said AHI Executive Director Nick Larigakis.

The text of the article follows:


THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

ANKARA DISPATCH

The Sick Man of Europe—Again

Islamism and leftism add up to anti-American madness in Turkey.

BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 12:01 a.m.

ANKARA, Turkey—Several years ago I attended an exhibition in Istanbul. The theme was local art from the era of the country's last military coup (1980). But the artists seemed a lot more concerned with the injustices of global capitalism than the fate of Turkish democracy. In fact, to call the works leftist caricatures—many featured fat capitalists with Uncle Sam hats and emaciated workers—would have been an understatement. As one astute local reviewer put it (I quote from memory): "This shows that Turkish artists were willing to abase themselves voluntarily in ways that Soviet artists refused even at the height of Stalin's oppression."

That exhibition came to mind amid all the recent gnashing of teeth in the U.S. over the question of "Who lost Turkey?" Because it shows that a 50-year special relationship, between longtime NATO allies who fought Soviet expansionism together starting in Korea, has long had to weather the ideological hostility and intellectual decadence of much of Istanbul's elite. And at the 2002 election, the increasingly corrupt mainstream parties that had championed Turkish-American ties self-destructed, leaving a vacuum that was filled by the subtle yet insidious Islamism of the Justice and Development (AK) Party. It's this combination of old leftism and new Islamism—much more than any mutual pique over Turkey's refusal to side with us in the Iraq war—that explains the collapse in relations.

And what a collapse it has been. On a brief visit to Ankara earlier this month with Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, I found a poisonous atmosphere—one in which just about every politician and media outlet (secular and religious) preaches an extreme combination of America- and Jew-hatred that (like the Turkish artists) voluntarily goes far further than anything found in most of the Arab world's state-controlled press. If I hesitate to call it Nazi-like, that's only because Goebbels would probably have rejected much of it as too crude.

Consider the Islamist newspaper Yeni Safak, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's favorite. A Jan. 9 story claimed that U.S. forces were tossing so many Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that mullahs there had issued a fatwa prohibiting residents from eating its fish. Yeni Safak has also repeatedly claimed that U.S. forces used chemical weapons in Fallujah. One of its columnists has alleged that U.S. soldiers raped women and children there and left their bodies in the streets to be eaten by dogs. Among the paper's "scoops" have been the 1,000 Israeli soldiers deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq, and that U.S. forces have been harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market."

It's not much better in the secular press. The mainstream Hurriyet has accused Israeli hit squads of assassinating Turkish security personnel in Mosul, and the U.S. of starting an occupation of Indonesia under the guise of humanitarian assistance. At Sabah, a columnist last fall accused the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, of letting his "ethnic origins"—guess what, he's Jewish—determine his behavior. Mr. Edelman is indeed the all-too-rare foreign-service officer who takes seriously his obligation to defend America's image and interests abroad. The intellectual climate in which he's operating has gone so mad that he actually felt compelled to organize a conference call with scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey to explain that secret U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the recent tsunami.

Never in an ostensibly friendly country have I had the impression of embassy staff so besieged. Mr. Erdogan's office recently forbade Turkish officials from attending a reception at the ambassador's residence in honor of the "Ecumenical" Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, who resides in Istanbul. Why? Because "ecumenical" means universal, which somehow makes it all part of a plot to carve up Turkey.

Perhaps the most bizarre anti-American story au courant in the Turkish capital is the "eighth planet" theory, which holds not only that the U.S. knows of an impending asteroid strike, but that we know it's going to hit North America. Hence our desire to colonize the Middle East.

It all sounds loony, I know. But such stories are told in all seriousness at the most powerful dinner tables in Ankara. The common thread is that almost everything the U.S. is doing in the world—even tsunami relief—has malevolent motivations, usually with the implication that we're acting as muscle for the Jews.

In the face of such slanders Turkish politicians have been utterly silent. In fact, Turkish parliamentarians themselves have accused the U.S. of "genocide" in Iraq, while Mr. Erdogan (who we once hoped would set for the Muslim world an example of democracy) was among the few world leaders to question the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections. When confronted, Turkish pols claim they can't risk going against "public opinion."

All of which makes Mr. Erdogan a prize hypocrite for protesting to Condoleezza Rice the unflattering portrayal of Turkey in an episode of the fictional TV show "The West Wing." The episode allegedly depicts Turkey as having been taking over by a retrograde populist government that threatens women's rights. (Sounds about right to me.)

In the old days, Turkey would have had an opposition party strong enough to bring such a government closer to sanity. But the only opposition now is a moribund People's Republican Party, or CHP, once the party of Ataturk. At a recent party congress, its leader accused his main challenger of having been part of a CIA plot against him. That's not to say there aren't a few comparatively pro-U.S. officials left in the current government and the state bureaucracies. But they're afraid to say anything in public. In private, they whine endlessly about trivial things the U.S. "could have done differently."

Entirely forgotten is that President Bush was among the first world leaders to recognize Prime Minister Erdogan, while Turkey's own legal system was still weighing whether he was secular enough for the job. Forgotten have been decades of U.S. military assistance. Forgotten have been years of American efforts to secure a pipeline route for Caspian oil that terminates at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Forgotten has been the fact that U.S. administrations continue to fight annual attempts in Congress to pass a resolution condemning modern Turkey for the long-ago Armenian genocide. Forgotten has been America's persistent lobbying for Turkish membership in the European Union.

Forgotten, above all, has been America's help against the PKK. Its now-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was expelled from Syria in 1998 after the Turks threatened military action. He was then passed like a hot potato between European governments, who refused to extradite him to Turkey because—gasp!—he might face the death penalty. He was eventually caught—with the help of U.S. intelligence—sheltered in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi. "They gave us Ocalan. What could be bigger than that?" says one of a handful of unapologetically pro-U.S. Turks I still know.

I know that Mr. Feith (another Jew, the Turkish press didn't hesitate to note), and Ms. Rice after him, pressed Turkish leaders on the need to challenge some of the more dangerous rhetoric if they value the Turkey-U.S. relationship. There is no evidence yet that they got a satisfactory answer. Turkish leaders should understand that the "public opinion" they cite is still reversible. But after a few more years of riding the tiger, who knows? Much of Ataturk's legacy risks being lost, and there won't be any of the old Ottoman grandeur left, either. Turkey could easily become just another second-rate country: small-minded, paranoid, marginal and—how could it be otherwise?—friendless in America and unwelcome in Europe.

Mr. Pollock is a senior editorial page writer at the Journal.

###

For additional information, please contact Georgia Economou at (202) 785-8430 or at georgia@ahiworld.org. For general information about the activities of AHI, please see our Web site at http://www.ahiworld.org.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE AMERICAN HELLENIC Institute (AHI), was founded on August 1, 1974, following Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus with the illegal use of American-supplied arms in violation of U.S. laws and agreements. The AHI initiated the rule of law issue in the Congress in the interests of the U.S., thus changing the face of American politics.

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WSJ. com READER RESPONSES:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/responses.html?article_id=110006299



Saturday, February 19, 2005

Portuguese Demonstrating Against Turkey

.
It is truly amazing that many Western European countries have organizations in their distant lands that demonstrate against Turkish membership in the EU. The news item below, sent from the nationalist ezine Final Conflict, is just one , although small, of the latest of demonstrations against Turkey.

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From: Final Conflict < finalconflict@dial.pipex.com>

PORTUGAL: DEMONSTRATING AGAINST TURKEY

[politicalsoldier.net says: This very evening the Falange were holding a rally against Turkey's membership in Madrid with comrades present from across Europe under the auspices of the European National Front. Look out for a report on www.europeannationalfront.org]: A protest took place last Saturday in Lisbon, Portugal, against the entering of Turkey into the European Union. The organiser of the demonstration told FC e-zine: As announced thru the web in some nationalist websites, like for instance The European National Front(www.europeannationalfront.org/) last Saturday we went to de Portuguese representation of the European Commission in Lisbon to protest against the entering of Turkey.

You can see some photos at our main website www.frente-nacional.org. Since you perhaps can’t read Portuguese I provide you the URL for the automatic translation to English from the Altavista.com: http://babel.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=pt_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.forum-nacional.net%2f%7efn%2findex.htm

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Thursday, February 10, 2005

Neo-Paganism: another Western disease

The introduction of neo-paganism to Greece, in recent years, has not incoincidentally coincided with rise of overt homosexuality, gluttonous and meaningless materialism and loss of traditional faith due to the Nations submission to its Western masters.

This essay makes some interesting points on the growth of deviant sects and the pseudo intellectual deviants who follow them in the West. Sadly, the Greek nation has been subject to this latest Western import, and will have to struggle to thoroughly eradicate this disease, may we pray that this import does not grow and place roots in the Fatherland to the extent of that other import , called communism.

Tellingly ," neo-pagan mythology often either assumes or looks forward to the establishment of a communist-like society. One of three “declared objects” of the Theosophical Society is the formation of a “universal brotherhood of humanity.” Similarly, wicca claims to have originated in a matriarchal, nonviolent, egalitarian culture that practiced “sexual communism.”
Most neo-pagans thus approve of abortion, birth control and homosexuality.6For some neo-pagans, abortion is even considered a “sacrament”—made holy by offering the child to the goddess Artemis
. "