Thanks Sibel for taking the time to still try had to get the good word out...
Here's another article that just came out a moment ago with references to Sibel's earlier efforts...
From:
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/glea01.htmlObama Does Europe
by Graham Lea
(Swans - April 20, 2009) Swans is one of the diminishing redoubts for the essay, usually regarded as a particularly English literary form, as was seen recently in Julian Barnes's essay on that quintessential essayist Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. (1) Interestingly, both redoubt and essay derive from the French redoute, and essai. In this petit coin of Swans we shall, through English spectacles, look at l'Hexagone (as France métropolitaine is often called, to exclude the DOM -- the départements outre-mer -- overseas departments that remain part of France). Before we explore in the future some delightful aspects of French rural life (where the word Paris is never uttered), it is perhaps useful to offer a few comments on the political scene in Europe and France, and how Obama was received when he did Europe recently.
He came as a celebrity, along with an entourage of some 900 persons -- not all wearing sunglasses. He did six countries, three summits (the G-20 meeting in London, a NATO summit in Strasbourg, and a European Union Leaders conclave in Prague), together with five press conferences and myriad meetings. Not surprisingly he always looked tired, but mercifully he was seen to be utterly different from his predecessor, a more consummate performer. It was, however, clear that until he can get his legislative programme through Congress, and most of his 300 million fellow citizens behind him, he could do little abroad other than wave his flag. There is an underlying realisation here that Americans are more concerned with their job security than national security, and with paying for food and excessively over-priced health care, than with contributing to more than a trillion dollars for international banks to waste on projects that might enrich a few dictators and the odd US contractor. As for how the United States is seen by the world, this is clearly far less important to most Americans than their debts and their declining assets.
Obama came to sell outmoded American projects, such as US/NATO, in order to enrich the US war industries -- about all that's left in the U.S., it would seem. The French rejoined NATO's two-tier command structure (the U.S., and the rest), but strange to relate, nobody had missed them. Turkey was persuaded with some concessions to agree to the former Danish prime minister Anders Rasmussen becoming NATO secretary-general. Obama explained how the US/NATO has great respect for Muslims (provided you don't cross the Turkish border to Iraq, of course, or talk about the Kurds). At least the war industry interests of those Turkish generals will remain safe, as former CIA agent Philip Giraldi pointed out. (2)
As for US backing for Turkey's wish to join the EU, the U.S. of course has some history in this. We know -- for example from whistleblower Sibel Edmonds (3) and the documentary Kill the messenger by Mathieu Verboud and Jean-Robert Viallet (4) -- that Turkey was fiscally most generous to Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Dennis Hastert, Marc Grossman, and others. The saga involves bribes, drug trafficking, arms dealing, and nuclear secrets sales. Perle became a major advocate for Turkey's EU membership application, but managed to antagonise the EU into slow-tracking it. Obama's advocacy of Turkish EU membership during his visit to Turkey was not well received -- both Germany and France are uneasy about it. Former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing expressed his reservations in 2002 when he spoke of "a different culture, a different approach, a different way of life" -- and Turkey not being "a European country." (5) The US strategic interest in Turkey (since 1997) is a mistake: the Russia-avoiding BTC pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, via the now unstable Georgia, to Ceyhan on the Turkish Mediterranean coast is probably doomed because Caspian oil production is disappointing, and the pipeline is vulnerable to attack.
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And the Turkish press talked to her the last day or two on what might be some past U.S. involvement in the corruption of the current Susurluk/Ergenekon scandals going on in Turkey now with the Ergenekon trials.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5594839&mesg_id=5594839