Headline News 04/08/2018

Headlines:

America uses Issue of Detained Pastor to Tighten the Leash on Erdogan in Syria

Despite Extensive ‘Establishment’ Support, PTI Imran Khan Struggles to form Government

Merciless US-Backed Saudi Campaign against Yemen’s Hudaydah Port continues

Details:

America uses Issue of Detained Pastor to Tighten the Leash on Erdogan in Syria

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, America’s primary ‘gangster’, to use North Korea’s description, is building pressure on Turkey’s Erdogan. According to the New York Times:

Declaring that “the clock had run out,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Turkey on Friday to free an American pastor imprisoned on espionage charges, in a case that had spurred United States to impose sanctions against two top Turkish government officials.

Mr. Pompeo discussed the case of the evangelical pastor, Andrew Brunson, with Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on the sidelines of a Southeast Asia security conference in Singapore, after previously pressing the case at least three times by phone.

Mr. Brunson’s imprisonment has threatened to plunge fraught relations with Turkey, a vital NATO ally, into crisis.

“The Turks were well on notice that the clock had run out and that it was time for Pastor Brunson to be returned. I hope they’ll see this for what it is: a demonstration that we’re very serious,” Mr. Pompeo told reporters before the meeting, during the short flight from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.

The US stance plays well to Trump’s evangelical vote base but this American pastor has been detained by Turkey since 2016; the real reason for exerting this pressure on Turkey at this time is the situation in Syria. The United States is playing a complex game in Syria because of its fear of entering the field with an army of its own, and its dependence therefore on the armies of others. Of course the US has tried to reduce its risks by using different countries’ forces for different regions of the country, but sometimes the US has to pull hard to stop a particular force from going beyond its remit. This last year has seen the US tighten the leash on Iran, and now the US has to pull back Erdogan, who lusts for the entire Kurdish region in Syria. According to a 25 June Reuters report:

Turkey will continue to “liberate Syrian lands” so that refugees can return to Syria safely, President Tayyip Erdogan said in an election victory speech on Monday.

It is expected that Erdogan will kneel once more in front of his American masters as he has done so many times in the past. According to a Reuters report on Friday:

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that he expected a joint roadmap with the United States regarding the northern Syrian city of Manbij not to be impacted by tensions between the NATO allies.

Erdogan’s comments, in a speech in Ankara, came two days after Washington imposed sanctions on two Turkish ministers over the trial of a U.S. pastor accused of backing terrorism. Turkey has said the sanctions were unacceptable.

Despite Extensive ‘Establishment’ Support, PTI Imran Khan Struggles to Form Government

Despite extensive intimidation, manipulation and control in favour of Imran Khan’s PTI both before the election as well as on polling day itself, the PTI has still been struggling to form the next government. According to Reuters:

Former cricket star Imran Khan’s party, which won Pakistan’s July 25 general election, said on Friday it had enough support in the National Assembly to form a government after more than a week of talks with other parties and independent politicians.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), or Pakistan Movement for Justice, did better than expected to scoop up 16.86 million votes, trouncing the party of jailed former premier Nawaz Sharif, which finished second with 12.89 million.

But the 116 seats won by Khan’s lawmakers were not enough to give him a majority without coalition partners in the National Assembly, which has 342 seats including 70 set aside for women and members of religious minorities.

Fawad Chaudhry, a PTI spokesman, told reporters on Friday that the party believed it had the support of 180 lawmakers when it counted coalition partners and holders of reserved seats.

The entire world’s media has now been commenting on the Pakistan powerful military, generally referred to locally as the ‘establishment’, being the real reason for Imran Khan’s win. Of course, the establishment has always intervened in democratic elections in Pakistan but this time it had to use extreme measures as it had set itself the task of preventing both mainstream parties from taking power, the PML-N of Nawaz Sharif and the PPP of Asif Zardari, thus resorting to a third more marginal force, the PTI’s Imran Khan, as the above-quoted article goes on to indicate:

A European Union election monitoring team in its initial assessment described the election campaign as an unequal playing field, describing a “systematic effort” to undermine Sharif’s former ruling party, but said it was up to the people of Pakistan to decide on the vote’s legitimacy.

Pakistan’s democracy is no different than any other implemented anywhere in the world. It must be remembered that the term ‘representative democracy’ is actually a cover for oligarchy, the actual ruling system of the Western Capitalist ideology. True democracy, in which the entire population actually participates in governance, is a practical impossibility, a fantasy that has never been applied anywhere in the world. Even in ancient Athens, where the entire citizenry participated, the city had narrowly defined ‘citizen’ to constitute a minority of the Athenian population. And yet the thinkers of the day, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, still remained firmly opposed to democratic rule.

Merciless US-backed Saudi Campaign against Yemen’s Hudaydah Port continues

According to the New York Times:

Warplanes of the Saudi-led coalition fired more than two dozen missiles into this rebel-held Yemeni port city on Thursday, hitting the fish market, the entrance to the main hospital and a security compound in an attack that killed at least 30 people, medical workers said.

The missile strikes, which were an escalation of the conflict, came after a week of tensions in which Saudi Arabia accused its Yemeni adversaries, the Houthi rebels who occupy Al Hudaydah, of attacking a Saudi oil vessel in a Red Sea shipping lane.

At the same time, aid agencies sharpened criticism of the Saudi coalition over civilian suffering in the city, which the coalition has been threatening to invade for months.

Hours after the missile strikes, the United Nations special representative for Yemen briefed the Security Council in New York about a possible renewal of peace talks in the country, which the United Nations has declared the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

Yemen is another example of a war against Muslims that the US has chosen to fight using others. And the purpose of attacking the Hodaydah port is to wage a new type of warfare in which the civilian population is starved of food and basic supplies, so that the country submits to American control.

War between competing powers is inevitable but in the millennia that Islam dominated world affairs, it was military forces alone that conducted war with each other, and that too in accordance with high standards of ethics and chivalry. Even the disbelieving European nations fighting amongst each other would adhere to these standards after being heavily impressed by the approach of Muslim armies during the Crusades. The invading Christians had massacred the people of Palestine but were stunned by honourable treatment accorded them by Salahuddin Ayyubi (r.a.), a rare historical fact that they continue to remember even today. But as soon as the Ottoman Islamic State fell from the position of the world’s leading power, and Western secular Capitalism began to dominate world affairs, the disbelieving West reverted to their former jahil (ignorant) ways, unleashing terror on civilian populations to cut the support to their military opponents. With Allah’s permission the re-established righteous Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) will teach the world again about ethics, humanity and spiritualism even when in the battlefield.