‘Democracy, Freedom and the Rule of Law’ have No Value, Erdogan Says

Turkey will strike Kurds everywhere

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan © Adem Altan / AFP

Democracy, freedom and the rule of law have no value any longer, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said. He added that those who don’t support Ankara’ efforts to combat terrorists in the country are Turkey’s “enemies.”

“Democracy, freedom and the rule of law…For us, these words have absolutely no value any longer. Those who stand on our side in the fight against terrorism are our friend. Those on the opposite side are our enemy,” Erdogan told local leaders in Ankara on Wednesday, according to the DPA news agency.

"You're either with us, or your against us"! Where did I hear that before? Oh, yes, just before America invaded Iraq.

Ankara is planning to deploy “an iron fist against terrorism” and “fight Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants” in the country’s south east Erdogan said.

Turkey views all Kurdish militia that are also spread widely throughout Syria and Iraq as a direct national threat. Erdogan repeated Turkey will strike Kurds everywhere.

Isn't that akin to genocide? This ought to be particularly disconcerting to Canada which is planning on increasing its training of Peshmerga forces in the Syrian conflict. They will definitely be going into the line of fire. Will Erdogan care? I doubt it!

Erdogan bombs Kurds 'wherever they are'

"Wherever you run, our soldiers, police and village guards will find you there and do what is necessary," the president said, referring to Kurdish militants.

He also urged the authorities to “swiftly” end immunity from prosecution for pro-Kurdish politicians.

“I no longer see as legitimate political actors the members of a party, which is operating as a branch of the terrorist organization," Erdogan said. The Turkish president has repeatedly accused the Peoples' Democratic Party of Turkey (HDP) of supporting PKK fighters.

Watch for the arrest of Kurdish politicians, coming soon to a theater near you.

This is not the first controversial comment made by the Turkish president. In January, he reiterated his desire to ensure Turkey’s adoption of a presidential system of government. He has even cited Adolf Hitler’s Germany as an example of how this can be achieved.

“There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler’s Germany,” he said on Thursday, according to a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency. “There are later examples in various other countries.”

In February, Erdogan accused Washington of causing the bloodbath in Syria by not recognizing as terrorists Kurdish forces fighting against Islamic State (IS, former ISIS, ISIL) in the region.

Of course, Erdogan is a supporter of ISIS. He thinks they are the good guys and the Peshmerga are the bad guys. That tells you a lot about Erdogan.

“Oh America! I told you many times, you are [either] beside us, or all of these terrorist organizations. You haven’t had a good grasp of them, and that is why the region has turned into a sea of blood,” Erdogan said, referring to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its militia wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which the US does not recognize as terror groups.

The conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish population, who demand greater autonomy, has been continuing for decades. With several failed ceasefires between the sides, Ankara has been blamed by a number of human rights groups for putting civilian lives at risk in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

In summer 2015, Ankara launched a military operation to crack down on Kurdish fighters linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The violence ended a two-year truce.

Law to Stop Domestic Violence Un-Islamic - Pakistani Clerics

© Mohsin Raza / Reuters

A new law protecting women from abuse in domestic situations has been denounced by at least 35 religious groups in Pakistan.

The Muslim bodies, made up entirely of men, called on the government in their country’s largest province, Punjab, to reverse the law, calling it un-Islamic and part of a Western conspiracy to destroy Pakistan’s constitution.

The Women’s Protection Act was passed in February to safeguard women from domestic, psychological, and sexual violence. Along with setting up a free helpline, women’s shelters, and local panels to investigate incidents of abuse, the law also calls for offenders to be tracked with GPS bracelets.

Women’s groups have hailed the law as a progressive step, while conservative clerics said it goes against the Quran.

A joint statement from the religious groups said the new law aimed to “add to the miseries of women”, and called on the government to retract the bill.

“This controversial law to protect women was put into operation to accomplish the West’s agenda to destroy the family system in Pakistan,” it read.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, conservative leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami (Assembly of Islamic Clerics), said the law contradicted Islamic teachings.

“The government is making public only sugar, and hiding the poison of the law,” he said during a press conference.

Rehman previously made bizarre comments about the law, stating it would make “a man insecure” and accused the government of making a “Western colony again”, according to the Independent.

Ironically, in the US, the country that perhaps best symbolizes the west, which is demonized by these Pakistani clerics, conservative Christian men also oppose domestic violence prevention laws.

Some 22 Republicans senators voted against reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act three years ago because they opposed extending the act to same-sex couples and undocumented individuals.

So it is not domestic violence prevention laws conservative Christians are against, it is the inclusion of same-sex couples which some Christians don't recognize.

In Russia, domestic violence is not recognized as a separate criminal offence, instead mostly being classified as battery or infliction of light injury. Few cases result in convictions, because few victims report them to police. Yeah, because there is no point!

However, the country's Council for Human Rights has submitted to President Vladimir Putin a domestic violence prevention bill, that would attempt to stop incidents occurring in the first place, not simply dealing with them after the fact. Good plan!

Kurds to Announce 'Democratic Federal' System In Controlled Syrian Territories, Turkey Rejects

PHOTO: A Syrian Kurdish flag flies during a protest against exclusion from the Geneva talks. (AFP: Delil Souleiman)

Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria are expected to declare a federal system imminently, Kurdish officials say, taking matters into their own hands after being excluded from talks in Geneva to resolve Syria's civil war.

The step aims to combine three Kurdish-led autonomous areas of northern Syria into a federal arrangement and will be sure to alarm neighbouring Turkey, which fears a growing Kurdish sway in Syria is fuelling separatism among its own minority Kurds.

Well this is certainly no surprise. The Kurds will not easily give up control of the significant area of Syria that they have fought so hard to win. Not inviting them to Geneva seems like a matter of Erdogan closing his eyes and hoping the problem would go away. It didn't!

A conference held in the Kurdish-controlled town of Rmeilan on Wednesday discussed a "Democratic Federal System for Rojava — Northern Syria", and ended with a decision to make the announcement at a news conference on Thursday.

Iraqi Kurdistan is a parliamentary democracy within Iraq with a regional assembly that consists of 111 seats. The announcement reveals the intention to create a similar government within northern Syria. Ankara is afraid that the PKK in southeastern Turkey will attempt to follow suit.

Rojava is the Kurdish name for northern Syria.

Aldar Khalil, a Kurdish official and one of the organisers, said he anticipated the approval of a new system, and "democratic federalism" was the best one.

Conference participants also forecast a failure of UN-led talks which began in Geneva this week, in the absence of the Syrian Kurdish PYD party.

Syrian Kurds effectively control an uninterrupted stretch of 400 kilometres along the Syrian-Turkish border from the Euphrates river to the frontier with Iraq, where Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed autonomy since the early 1990s.

Turkey, whose conflict with the Kurdish PKK has escalated in recent months, said such federalism was not acceptable.


Who are the Kurds? Why are they fighting Islamic State? Why is Turkey fighting them? And what do they want?

"Syria's national unity and territorial integrity is fundamental for us," a Turkish Foreign Ministry official said.

"Outside of this, unilateral decisions cannot have validity."

On Saturday, Syria's government in Damascus ruled out the idea of a federal system for the country, just days after a Russian official said that could be a possible model.

The PYD has been left out of the Geneva peace talks, in line with the wishes of Turkey, which sees it as an extension of the PKK group that is waging an insurgency in south-eastern Turkey.

The area of northern Syria controlled by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and groups fighting with it is growing with their advances against Islamic State militants over the last year.

Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies have already carved out three autonomous zones, or cantons, known as Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin.

Their capture of the town of Tel Abyad from Islamic State last year created territorial contiguity between the Jazeera and Kobani areas.

Reuters

FDA Changes Drug Review Rules to Challenge Martin Shkreli-like Medicine Monopolies

© Srdjan Zivulovic / Reuters

The US drug regulator is paving a fast-track for generic remedies to market while also sealing a loophole, used by pharmaceutical executives like Martin Shkreli, to profit from jacked-up prices on exclusive medicines.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now granting an “expedited review” to generic drugs producers that would compete with brand-named treatments, currently produced by only one manufacturer.

The new rule is going to make an approval process faster for off-patent producers, which potentially means that exclusive drug makers will face increased competition sooner and might be toppled from their monopoly position, largely exploited to hike up prices for life-saving drugs.

According to FDA estimates, the change in prioritization could expedite reviews of as many as 125 generic drug applications, Sandy Walsh, an agency spokeswoman, told Bloomberg.

The FDA’s amendment comes amid the nationwide outrage over price gouging, recently exemplified by Martin Shkreli and the company he formerly owned. Under Shkreli as CEO, Turing Pharmaceuticals raised raised the price of Daraprim, a drug essential for HIV treatment 5,500 percent, from $13.50 to $750 per pill in just over a month last fall.

With the price increase, some patients received $16,000 co-pays for a single prescription, according to Ars Technica.

Daraprim’s price increase scandal was not Shkreli’s first time facing controversy. Having earned himself the title of “most hated man in America”, Shkreli was arrested on for securities fraud in December, which was not related to his raising the price of life-saving pills exponentially, but rather to his time at a hedge fund.

Prosecutors accused him of illegally taking stock from Retrophin, Inc. to pay off his personal debts from unrelated business dealings as a hedge fund manager for MSMB Funds. In 2011, he started Retrophin and acquired old drugs in order to raise their price.

Retrophin sued Shkreli in federal court for $65 million, accusing him of misusing the company’s assets, including its stocks and cash, "to enrich himself, and to pay off claims of MSMB investors (who he had defrauded)," the lawsuit said.

The FDA’s new rule may also thwart business of Valeant Pharmaceuticals, another manufacturer upped its blood pressure treatment’s price over 600 percent last year.

The high blood pressure drug Nitropress’ price shot up 625 percent to $1,346.62 per vial. Isuprel, a heart medicine, went up 820 percent, costing $36,811 for 25 pills. Cuprimine, a rheumatoid arthritis capsule, jumped 2,949 percent in price to $26,189 for 100.

NASA, IPCC Needlessly Creating Panic About Global Warming

It has become my position that the global warming phenomenon is severely over-hyped, in particular, man's responsibility for it. 

We have reported that the IPCC predicted a 1.0 degree C rise in the global temperature between 1990 and 2025. 

Up to this winter's El Nino event (which is an outlier) the global temperature had risen only about 0.2 deg from 1990. 

That means the temperature has to rise by 0.8 deg. in the next 9 years which is precisely the rise in the global temperature since 1880 - 135 years. It would be astonishing to see a temperature rise equal to the 135 year rise in just 9 years. 

In fact, the 30 year cycle I identified of temperatures climbing then holding steady would indicate that there will be no significant temperature rise between about 2000 and 2030. This has been born-out as there has been no real temperature rise since 1998.

Now here is another near hysterical prediction by arguably the world's number one climate expert. NASA's James Hanson was quoted in the Chicago Tribune in 1988 saying that the mid-west US would suffer from very high temperatures and drought in the next decade and beyond. 

What actually happened?

Obviously the number of very hot days in the mid-west decreased over the next 25 years or so.

But what about precipitation, was he right on that?

It's obvious, at first glance, that precipitation has increased since the 1930s. Below normal precipitation is indicated by the brown bars, above normal by the green bars. You don't even have to look at the blue trend line to see the obvious.

In spite of being out to lunch on their predictions, NASA and the IPCC continue to scare gullible public and governments alike with frightening scenarios in time frames that are completely unjustifiable. Neither are they justified in blaming anthropomorphic pollution for the entire rise in global temperature. If we have contributed to the rise in temperature, I suspect that it is so infinitesimal an increment that it is beyond our capability to measure. 

So now the question is, is their science that bad, or are they intentionally attempting to create panic?

Anti-Immigration Party Makes Inroads into Germany's Regional Parlaiments

Germany’s anti-immigrant AfD wins enough votes

to secure seats in 3 state parliaments – exit polls

after large anti-immigration protest in Berlin

Frauke Petry, chairwoman of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD)

Exit polls in German regional elections show significant success for the right-wing AfD party, which received enough votes to get into three state legislatures. Merkel’s conservative CDU party suffered losses in two out of three state elections.

AfD  (Alternative for Germany) party secured 23.9 percent in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, making it the second largest party after the ruling CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany), which won 29.8 percent.

According to early figures from Baden-Württemberg, AfD managed to win 14.6 percent of the ballots to come in third, after the state’s ruling Green Party with the most votes, and CDU, which took second place.

Figures for Rhineland Palatinate also put AfD in the third place, while CDU lost its majority to Social-Democrats, securing only 32.4 percent against their 36.5, according to exit polls on the broadcaster ZDF.

Voting booths in all three states closed at 6 pm (17:00 GMT) on Sunday. Over 12 million Germans were eligible to vote in the regional parliamentary elections.

The results amounted to a resounding success for right-wing AfD, a party which didn’t even exist some three years ago, created in 2013 as an anti-euro movement, while Chancellor Merkel’s conservatives lost in two out of three regional state elections.

We have fundamental problems in Germany that led to this election result,” said AfD chief Frauke Petry, whose party is now to enter all three regional parliaments.

The party’s Berlin chairman, Georg Pazderski, spoke of the tasks ahead. “The results come with responsibility. There is a lot to do for us. There is a deep feeling in the German population that something is going wrong. It’s not only because of the migration crisis, it’s also because of the euro crisis and other things. People see that politics in Germany is going the wrong way and this is the main reason why we have such good results today,” he said.

In a dig at Chancellor Merkel’s open-door migration policy, the AfD campaigned under slogans like “Secure the borders” and “Stop the asylum chaos” on their way to winning representation in five of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments.

Today’s election was widely seen as the biggest electoral challenge for Chancellor Merkel ahead of next year’s general election and a test of support for her open door migrant policy.

Her party’s poor results in the regional polls could come as a setback for the Chancellor as she tries to muster all of her political clout to seal a much-debated EU deal to send migrants back to Turkey in exchange for more funding and visa-free travel.

This year’s turnout in all three states greatly exceeded that for the previous elections in 2011, being up by over 5 percent in Baden-Wuerttemberg, 9.7 percent in Rhineland-Palatinate, and 11.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt.

‘Merkel must go’: Thousands of anti-migrant demonstrators protest pro-refugee policy in Berlin

 Several thousand right-wing demonstrators marched through the streets of Berlin to protest Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy on Saturday, chanting “Merkel must go” and “We are the people.”

Nearly 3,000 protesters carrying German flags and banners took part in a demonstration against the German government’s migration policy. People gathered at Washingtonplatz next to the capital’s main train station and then moved in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate.

The event was organized by a group called “We for Berlin & We for Germany,” whose main aim is to force Merkel and her government to step down. Among other demands, the group wants an end put to the “dictatorship” of the EU and stricter border controls, while claiming that they are against radicalism, “whether religious or politically motivated.”

There were also members of PEGIDA, an anti-Islam and anti-migrant group, among the demonstrators, as well as a number of other nationalist groups and ordinary people who are unhappy with the current state of affairs in Germany.

“Merkel works against her own people. She underestimates the consequences of allowing so many people with such different backgrounds into our country,” one of the protesters told RT’s Peter Oliver.

“We are against Merkel’s policy because everyone can come here, even terrorists. You don’t even need documents and they can stay here without any control. We need to stop it,” said another demonstrator.

Oliver reported a heavy police presence in the city center.  Meanwhile, several anti-fascist groups promoting the rights of asylum seekers have promised to stage counter-demonstrations. Pro-refugee activists holding up banners reading “Nationalists must go” and “Asylum is basic right” marched along a neighboring street, which also leads to the Branderburg Gate.



The demonstrations came just a day before a key local election dubbed “Super Sunday,” which is seen as a test of Merkel’s leadership. The Chancellor’s popularity has suffered a significant decline as of late, with some media sources suggesting that her migration policy has begun to turn against her.

PEGIDA’s anti-migrant demonstrations have not always been peaceful in the past, with some ending in violent scuffles with Antifa and police.

In February, tens of thousands of people supporting the PEGIDA movement marched through cities spanning 14 European countries, including Germany, France, the UK, and the Czech Republic, among others, to protest against the flood of migrants and refugees that have flooded into the EU from the Middle East. Counter-protests, clashes with police, and arrests took place, despite the ban on some of the rallies declared by the authorities beforehand.

Protesters Block Migrant Routes to Calais, Demand End to ‘Invasion in Europe’

© Génération Identitaire / Facebook

More than a hundred protesters have blocked several routes for migrants, preventing them from gaining access to Calais. The activists’ banners called to “stop the invasion of Europe” and “defend” their city.

The protest was initiated by the Facebook community Génération Identitaire, a group which opposes mass migration. According to the group’s estimates, more than 130 people took part in the rally.

The activists, who were carrying banners with the slogans “Go Home,” “Defend Calais” and “No way,” claimed they had taken control of three bridges leading to the city.

At least 12 protesters have been detained by riot police, the group later wrote.

“For months, Calais has been a symbol …of the real invasion confronting our continent,” the group wrote on Facebook, saying that the city has recently seen “attacks against police, against motorists and truck drivers, city riots, the total disintegration of social life and the economy.”

The group blamed political leaders in France and across Europe for the deteriorating situation in the city.

“Since these governments refuse to protect people by restoring the borders,… they will see people building barricades! As this morning in Calais,” the group added.

Numerous photos and videos on social media show the protesters surrounded by police.

The rally comes a day after a huge blaze ripped through the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp. The cause of the fire is still unknown.

On Friday, Xavier Bertrand, president of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region, told the Guardian that France wants UK border guards to tell refugees that Britain is tightening asylum rules.

“What we need now is UK border guards going through the camp at Calais every week telling the people that it is no longer the case that the UK is an El Dorado,” he said.

He added that Calais residents “are exasperated.” “It is not sustainable for the region. I do not want a drama, it’s what I want to avoid, but it’s possible someone will be killed unless we make progress,” he said.

Earlier in March, hundreds of Calais residents arrived in Paris to protest against the deteriorating economic situation in their region, which they say has been caused by the migrant crisis.

Doctors Without Borders have opened a new migrant camp near the town of Grande Synthe, in the Nord-Pas de Calais region. The camp was set up without the approval of the French government.

The new camp project was launched after French authorities ordered the demolition of part of the Calais Jungle camp, which served as a temporary home for over 5,000 asylum seekers. It was the largest makeshift camp in Europe and has gradually turned into a small town with its own social life.

In February, a court in Lille authorized the demolition of the Jungle, but commanded police to spare public facilities such as mosques, restaurants and schools that have sprung up on the site.

Most Jungle residents, whose overall numbers likely exceed 4,000, are from the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan. Most have traveled to France in the hope of crossing the English Channel to the UK, after having had their applications rejected elsewhere, or in expectation of better prospects in the country.