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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Turkey’s economy would leap forward when “democratic move” was fulfilled.

Speaking at the opening of “D-Marin”, a marina in Didim town of Aegean province of Aydin, Erdogan said, “investments continue in the western and northern regions of the country and some parts of the south. However, unfortunately, the entrepreneurs can not invest in the east and the southeast because of lack of stability and confidence there.”

“Atmosphere of confidence, stability, tranquility and peace are among the fundamental needs of economy,” Erdogan said.

Erdogan said the government targeted to make Turkey among the first 10 economies of the world in 2023 after restoring confidence and stability.

Erdogan said global financial crisis was also felt in Turkey, noting that Turkey would overcome this crisis, “recovery has started in Turkish economy.”

Turkish Weekly for more

By Paul Kingsnorth & George Monbiot, Guardian

Dear George
On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy’s gross domestic product.
What grips me about these graphs (and graphs don’t usually grip me) is that though they all show very different things, they have an almost identical shape. A line begins on the left of the page, rising gradually as it moves to the right. Then, in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards, like a pilot banking after a cliff has suddenly appeared from what he thought was an empty bank of cloud.

The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos. We know this; some of us even attempt to stop it happening. Yet all of these trends continue to get rapidly worse, and there is no sign of that changing soon. What these graphs make clear better than anything else is the cold reality: there is a serious crash on the way.

Yet very few of us are prepared to look honestly at the message this reality is screaming at us: that the civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it. Instead, most of us – and I include in this generalisation much of the mainstream environmental movement – are still wedded to a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present. We still believe in “progress”, as lazily defined by western liberalism. We still believe that we will be able to continue living more or less the same comfortable lives (albeit with more windfarms and better lightbulbs) if we can only embrace “sustainable development” rapidly enough; and that we can then extend it to the extra 3 billion people who will shortly join us on this already gasping planet.

Counter Currents for more

A single slender woman who terrifies an army of generals

By Badri Raina

In Burma resides a dame,
Terra Firma is her name;
They lock her indoors,
But her pitying smile soars,
And the Generals are rendered lame.
Thomas Carlyle, that prophetic voice of the 19C, delineated in Heroes And Hero Worship (1841) what he thought were types of world-historical individuals.
Among them he projected Cromwell as a type of hero whose strength lay in a species of obdurate conviction that had no need of any flamboyant oratorical skills.
Two other figures from the 20C/21C spring to mind as further exemplars of the type, namely, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi.
No more true metaphor for them than the grass, which Whitman called the “handkerchief of the Lord,” fusing in a magnificently visionary way god with democracy.
The grass, it grows everywhere, however you trample on it. In its fecund unendingness, it symbolizes and manifests the will-to-life itself, and in its undefeatably cussed humility, it is the spirit of universal freedom and common democracy that refuse to be quelled.
And, as any good gardener knows, the more you cut the more it grows.
Which may be why the sensible British did not heed Hitler’s counsel in 1938: When Chamberlain went to reason with him, he mentioned Gandhi and how troubled the empire was by him.
Uncomprehending, the Feuhrer asked, “why don’t you shoot him?”
And had they done so, nothing might have brought about so early a collapse of the empire—and in predictably brutal ways.
Clearly, the two-penny tyrants in Burma who strut about in a prison of their own making—if Suu Kyi cannot leave her house, the Generals may not leave Burma, for they are reviled everywhere, including in those parts of the world who have shabby deals with them—have understood that much.
Thus, for their own wretched safety, they desist from doing that Hitler on her. So, we ask, are they winning or losing Burma? Losing, we think. And over that knowledge, Suu Kyi’s smile arches like that of angels, seeing far far beyond the events of any single day, beyond even her own life.
II
Meanwhile, the merchants of commerce and pelf the world over—a mining interest here, a military interest there, all clothed as high policy—speak from both sides of the crooked commercial mouth all at once.
ZMag for more

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Bruce Dixon

Quite separately from each other, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Rev. Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich have long ago forfeited whatever credibility they may once have had. Taken together, they are simply a bad joke: three grown men publicly eye-poking and slap fighting each other while they all come together to sell us high-stakes testing, charter schools, educational privatization and the whole package of corporate “school reform.”

by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon

Back in the late 19th and early 20th century heydays of vaudeville, when the singers bombed, when the jokes fell flat and audience attention started wandering, management knew what to do. They would send in the clowns. Some things haven’t changed.

Despite a decade of hard sell by right wing think tanks, foundations, and big media, the American people have not bought the corporate version of school reform. Most people just don’t believe public schools should be privatized or militarized, or operated by business people like businesses instead of by educators, parents and communities in the interests of children, parents and communities, like the best schools always have been run. And most educators doubt that high stakes testing improves educational outcomes in any meaningful way.

Since the public debates on charter schools and privatizing education are ones that our elite cannot win, they have decreed there will be no debate. Instead of an honest public examination of the disastrous impact of No Child Left Behind, and its attendant decade of creeping educational privatization, corporate media, the Obama administration and its bipartisan allies are sending in the clowns with a 21st century three stooges remake starring the Rev. Al Sharpton, along with Republican former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, elbowing and slapping at each other, yukking it up about their supposed political differences while they all come together around the corporate elite’s version of “school reform.”

Stooge number one is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a former basketball player and friend of the president who, without a single hour of teaching experience was named by Chicago’s Mayor Daley to head the nation’s third largest school system.

Black Agenda Report for radio commentary and more

Written by Sandra Cuffe

Marcial Hernandez: beaten, detained & hospitalized. Photo by Sandra Cuffe.

Repression against the national movement opposing the military coup in Honduras has become a daily occurrence. All over the country, police and the army are using tactics of terror and violence to disperse protests and illegally detain demonstrators.

Nevertheless, the resistance actions coordinated by the National Front of Resistance to the Military Coup in Honduras (FNRCGE, for its acronym in Spanish) continue to grow across the nation.

On August 14, organizations and citizens from the northwestern region of the country mobilized in Choloma, blocking vehicle traffic along the highway between San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortés, which leads to the country’s main port. Puerto Cortés has a great volume of exports, principally to the United States, of textile goods from the maquila factories in the northwestern region, as well as the fruits of the Tela Railroad Company, subsidiary of the transnational banana company Chiquita.

Soon after the highway blockade began, there was a negotiation between resistance leaders and police officials, supposedly in order to avoid yet another violent eviction. According to witnesses, a verbal agreement was made between the two parties to allow the protest to continue for another hour and peacefully disperse.

However, approximately twenty minutes after the agreement was reached, a large police presence gathered, along with some elements of the army. The police then proceeded to violently quell the protest, using tear gas and a water cannon. The demonstrators dispersed, but police ran after resistance participants running towards downtown Choloma, using brutal violence during their arrest of protesters and others, and during their transfer to the nearby police station in Choloma.

Upside Down World for more

by James Suggett – Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, August 21st 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Trade between Venezuela and the United States decreased by more than half in the first semester of this year. Meanwhile, Venezuela continued to diversify its trading partners in South America and abroad, most recently through a series of bilateral accords with Brazil, while Russia increased its investments in the Orinoco Oil Belt fivefold.

According to a recent report by the Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Venamcham), trade between the U.S. and Venezuela was valued at $25.7 billion in the first half of 2008, and declined by nearly 53% to just over $12 billion during the first half of 2009.

During April and June of this year, Venezuela’s exports to the U.S. totaled $6.4 billion, which is nearly 56% less than its exports to the U.S. during April and June of last year, when exports were worth $14.5 billion, according to the report. Venezuela’s imports from the U.S. totaled $2.3 billion in April and June of this year, a 22% decline in comparison to April and June of 2008, when imports were worth $3 billion.

Overall, the Venamcham report shows that Venezuela’s oil sector accounted for 96% of exports to the U.S. in the first semester of this year, which is roughly the same as last year. Non-oil goods accounted for roughly 93% of Venezuela’s imports from the U.S. in the first semester of this year.

Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to diversify its trade amongst countries in South America and abroad. In a meeting in Caracas on Friday, the foreign relations ministers, trade ministers and other officials from Brazil and Venezuela signed a series of bilateral accords to increase cooperation in food security and electricity generation, and to boost Venezuela’s capacity to produce glass products, valve, PVC plastic products, industrial refrigeration, and electrical appliances.

Venezuela Analysis for more

Courtesy American College of Physicians and World Science staff

A minor epidemic of streptococcal infection may have killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the towering composer who died mysteriously in 1791, researchers say.

Speculation on causes of Mozart’s rather sudden death at age 35 have ranged from poisoning to rheumatic fever. But there has been no consensus on what really happened, although most experts call the murder scenario unlikely.

Mozart as portrayed in a contemporary etching by K. Dostal.

The Austrian composer succumbed after a short illness, for which other recent diagnoses have included kidney failure, Henoch-Schonlein purpura, and lethal trichinosis.

According to witnesses, Mozart’s body became badly swollen in his final days. He died on Dec. 5, 1791, ironically in the midst of writing of his famed Requiem or funeral mass, which had been anonymously commissioned. Upon sensing his end was near, witness accounts say, Mozart took to bitterly remarking that the piece must have been meant for himself.

The new study proposing an outbreak of streptococcus bacteria as the cause of Mozart’s demise appears in the Aug. 17 issue of the research journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

World Science for more

By JOHN CHERIAN

That the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable is becoming increasingly clear to the U.S. administration.

TIM WIMBORNE/REUTERS

A U.S. soldier on patrol in the Pesh valley in Kunar province on July 24. Much of the Afghan countryside is under Taliban control.

DESPITE the military surge in Afghanistan ordered by President Barack Obama, the situation is only getting worse for the United States-led occupation forces as well as for ordinary Afghans. The Taliban has shown its military resilience by continuing with its attacks on the U.S./North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces and has on many occasions stood its ground against massive firepower and the troop surge in Helmand and other areas of western Afghanistan, where most of the current battles are raging. The Taliban continues to hold considerable sway over almost a third of Afghanistan.

As for the civilians, a United Nations report released in the last week of July said that 1,013 civilians had been killed so far this year. During the same period in 2008, the civilian toll was around 800. July was a particularly bad month for the foreign troops. Seventy of them were killed in the month – 43 of them American and 22 British soldiers. It was the worst month for the foreign forces since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned that the Taliban fighters had become more dangerous and that the U.S./NATO forces faced a crucial 18-month period before Afghanistan was “stabilised”.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said in late July that the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was alarming. She called for immediate steps to be taken by all the sides involved in the conflict to protect the civilian populace. According to the U.N., most of the civilian casualties were the result of roadside bomb explosions caused by the Taliban and the rampant use of airpower on civilian targets by the occupation forces. Most observers feel that the civilian casualties are only bound to increase as the U.S. military surge continues. The fighting is now getting concentrated in populated areas.

Frontline for more

By Siv O’Neall. Axis of Logic.

Never has the world been subjected to as pure and destructive lunacy as at this time in history. Never have the anti-civilization voices been heard as stridently as in the so-called debate that is going on today. The insane and desperate noise of the single-party political scene in the United States, the deafening roar of the Mafia, is threatening, and seemingly managing quite well, to out-thunder the few reasonable and civilized voices that are attempting to be heard over the din.

The civilized debate that might be expected to be going on about health care, tax reforms, regulation of financial speculation, the criminality of imperial wars, improving education and much more, is poisoned while still in the womb, by the formidable power of the one political party that is spelled M O N E Y. Their power tools are the mass media, the ceaseless propaganda machines, the formidable use of hypnotic slogans and, added to that, the severe lack of insight and intellectual curiosity of the U.S. citizens. All this is made possible through the obscene lowering of educational standards and the carefully programmed lack of information that is the normal state of things today in Middle America.

Axis of Logic for more

via Countercurrents