I will soon be setting up a companion blog that will host some verse I am trying out! It's at:
http://crowcaw.blogspot.com

It's called "Caw of the Wild", which is another attempt at wordplay from yours truly!

Should Turkey Raid Northern Iraq?

Should Turkey raid Northern Iraq? For my money, yes.

Turkey is not perfect, or innocent, but the PKK is a terrorist organization, plain and simple. On top of everything they are Marxists. That means the only thing they offer is death to innocent Turkish civilians and tyranny to the Kurds.

Turkey should neutralize the PKK regardless of the validity or legitimacy of Kurdish separatism. Turkey's case is far stronger than America's reason for invading Iraq and it is definitely stronger than Israel's rationale for wrecking Beirut and killing hundreds of civilians en masse.

But what about non-PKK separatists? What about the legitimacy of the Kurdish separatists' cause itself? That is a more complex question. However, the Kurdish areas of Turkey were historically included in Turkey, and not just because of the Ottoman Empire, they were part of Turkiye as region within the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore the Turks and Kurds lived in peace and brotherhood for centuries without issues. It was the Arabs that sided with the British and back-stabbed the Caliphate, not the Kurds. In fact the Kurds took part in the war of independence of Turkey and when Turkey became secular they asked for the Islamic state back; they were involved in Turkey.

It does seem that the Kurds should continue to live peacefully in Turkey then, though there are other factors to consider.

Firstly, after Ataturk's Turkey was established, Islam as a unifying force was dispensed with and the state became Turkish nationalist. This aggravated the Kurds as they were not ethnic Turks. Another issue was that the national language, Turkish, was promoted at the expense of the Kurdish language and identity. This further aggravated the Kurds and drove them to a mixture of Marxism and nationalism.

While these factors do not legitimize the Kurdish separatists, I do believe that Turkey must give greater cultural and linguistic respect to its Kurds and highlight their contributions to Turkey as well as their history with Turkey.

Finally, Turkey must adopt a modern form of secularism (as opposed to the French form) that does not suppress religion and the Muslim identity of Turkey. Turkey must allow practicing Muslims to get affordable government university educations and allow government officials the right to practice their faith freely. Women must be free to dress according to orthodox Islamic rules while attending university if they are orthodox Muslims.

Turkey will find unity in honouring its Ottoman and Islamic heritage and accepting Kurdish ethnicity as equal to Turkish-speakers' ethnicity and culture.

Lastly, let me say that this does not mean that Turkey should not have a single national language. It needs a lingua-franca, and that language (Turkish) needs to be universally understood and taught and acceptable in Turkey. But at the same time other languages should also be respected and used and taught freely.

The return of German Perversion? (Or "Alice in Deutschland")

I knew the Germans were a special people, along with the Japanese. It takes something special to rush head-long into self destructive war and to gas a whole bunch of pseudo-semites on the basis of conspiracy theories. And I am not talking about the usual nonsense about racism or militarism. I mean they were eccentric.

Yes, those highly efficient types sure are funny. Not insightful enough to know that foreign policy based on conspiracy theories and deity-countries is nonsense, but efficient enough to keep triplicate records of their war crimes to facillitate their own hanging later. Anyway...eccentricity...

Everyone knows about the Japanese tentacle fetish. The Japanese have made no secret of what they think about when not keeping schedules and working themselves (or POWs) to death. It's purple-haired girls with huge eyes and giant cephalopods having their way with them.

But what about the Germans? You'd almost think the Germans had gone prudish given how politically correct and benign they try to be. I mean neo-hippie techno music festivals? Whatever happened to the nation of the twisted Joseph Mengele and the pedrastic Goethe? What happened to the nation that was trying to steal Scandinavian women all the while claiming racial superiority all for itself? Those funny wankers.

Well, I got part of my answer when I discovered Rammstein, which is a German rock band if you are as clueless as me. Watching the hulking lead singer looking drugged approaching the mic with lazily distracted eyes in the video of "Amerika" was a bit unsettling, but watching 6 grown men living as the drug mining slaves of a giant, sexually abusive (and beautiful) Snow White was what really opened my eyes. The latter interesting scenario is shown in the video of Rammstein's song "Sonne", and the video has smeg-all to do with the lyrics.

Obviously Germany is back in form, and so is their particular style of efficient-nation psycopathology. It took a few years (maybe the American sunshine-in-a-bag that the Japs got in '45 gave them a kick-start?), but a famous cannibal, a butch dyke PM, lots of techno-tracks later the Germans have finally started heeding the call of those voices in their heads they've been ignoring for so long.


Get ready to trip in Wunderland!

Medieval Japanese print (before huge anime eyes came into fashion). Edited to protect the innocent.

Another adventure in "winner-ism"

Again, going back to when I was 5. There was a big Nigerian boy in the bus called Kabeer. I thought he was the boss. Well, obviously i was good enough to be the boss's friend.

I had seen "Knight Rider", the movie, the day before and someone had mentioned "micro-chips" in it. I imagined little electrical devices making beeping sounds with blinking lights. I had always had a chemistry set fetish but this beat that by a mile. Micro-chips! They made cars talk!

So on the bus I told kabeer that I had micro-chips. He had some idea, I suppose, about what they were, because he was very impressed. "Yes, I make them on my table" I said matter-of-factly. I was pleased at his respectful "wow". yes, indeed I was worthy of rubbing elbows with the bus-aristocracy. I always knew I had been.

Well, that day at break I was standing around the entrance of the school building like a little chav or something. Kabeer walked out talking to his friend and was saying this: "There's this kid on my bus who's really smart, but he's really DUMB, because he thinks he makes mico-chips...". I was a bit taken aback, but nothing could change the fact that I HAD been noticed. No one could deny that, and so I found a perspective that allowed me to be pleased with myself.

All great leaders find the good in even the worst situations.

First Post

When I was young there were some incidents in my life that turned out to be predictors of my future.

First there was the little Saudi girl Sana. I was a hormonal 5 years old and so was she. I did not know arabic and she did not know english or urdu. Still, I was bold in amor and I would harrass her with unwanted attentions now and then. she was quite a sport and was generally nice to me.

One day I decided to impress her. I planned the whole day the barrage of arabic that I would use to win over the woman of my dreams. When I finally ran into her on the bus home I opened up a massive broad-side of random arabic words. She was surprised, her eyes wide in, I thought, admiration. I imagined a fireball of arabic words growing ever larger as I threw in more and more random verbiage in no particular order. "ana, inti, hua, qitta, farasha, min, man, haza", you name it.

When I was quite done she turned to one of her friends and made a comment in arabic about how I didn't know jack. I understood that much. They laughed... and I sat down.

History repeats itself as farce, don't you know?