Turkish officials have decided against making public the letters and diaries of the wife of modern Turkey´s revered founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The issue over Latife Usakligil´s documents had been hotly debated in the Turkish media as a 1980 court ban on their publication drew to an end.

Some Turks argued that the works would shed a more personal light on Ataturk and his short-lived marriage.

But others feared it might tarnish his image as a national hero.

The head of the Turkish History Foundation said Latife Usakligil´s family have demanded that the documents continue to be kept secret.

"The issue is over. It is impossible for us now to release them," Yusuf Halacoglu told Anatolia news agency.

Much is known about Ataturk´s public life - how he founded the Turkish Republic in 1923 and drove through an ambitious programme of Westernisation over the next decade.

He introduced the modern parliamentary system, made secularism the cornerstone of the Turkish state and gave full political rights to women.

Inspiration

But relatively little is known about his wife of just two years and their reportedly stormy marriage.

Latife Hanim, as she was known, was in her 20s and two decades younger than her husband when she married.

Memoirs of some of Ataturk´s aides depicted her as an argumentative woman who was exasperated by her husband´s drinking habits and would chide him in public.

However, her Western education, fluency in several languages and never wearing the veil is believed to have inspired many of Ataturk´s reforms.

He divorced her in 1925. Although she lived until the 1970s she never spoke publicly about their marriage.

Ataturk died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1938.

The decision not to release the letters and diaries is a relief to those who feared they would be used to tarnish Ataturk´s image.

"No-one in this country will have the power to make media monkeys out of Latife and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," wrote columnist Emin Colasan in the Hurriyet newspaper.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4235691.stm

My terror as a human shield: The story of Majdi Abed Rabbo

As battle raged in Gaza, Israeli soldiers forced Majdi Abed Rabbo to risk his life as a go-between in the hunt for three Hamas fighters.

After yet another fierce, 45-minute gun battle, Majdi Abed Rabbo was ordered once again to negotiate his perilous way across the already badly-damaged roof of his house, through the jagged gap in the wall and slowly down the stairs towards the first-floor apartment in the rubble-strewn house next door. Not knowing if the men were dead or alive, he shouted for the second time that day: "I´m Majdi. Don´t be afraid."

All three men – with Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, wearing camouflage and headbands bearing the insignia of the Izzedine el Qassam brigades – were still alive, though one was badly injured and persuaded Mr Abed Rabbo to tighten the improvised bandage round his right arm. The youngest – perhaps 21 – was taking cover behind fallen masonry from where he could see the Israeli troops who had sent the visitor. Nervously, Mr Abed Rabbo told them: "They sent me back so I can take your weapons. They told me you are dead." It was the youngest who replied defiantly: "Tell the officer, ´If you´re a man come up here´."

When the soldiers had arrived at about 10am, Mr Abed Rabbo, 40, had no inkling that over the next 24 hours he would make four heart-stopping trips, shuttling across increasingly dangerous terrain between the Israeli forces and the three besieged but determined Hamas militants who had become his unwelcome next-door neighbours. He would recall every detail of an episode which, in the telling, resembles the more melodramatic kind of war movie, but which was all too real for a man who by the end had lost his house and thought (wrongly) that his wife and children were dead. He had also witnessed at too close quarters the last stand of the men from the Qassam brigades in the face of relentless Israeli ground attacks and Apache helicopter fire.

Civilians were not killed in this episode, as they were in all too many during Operation Cast Lead. Instead, it offers a rare and detailed glimpse of an actual engagement between the Israeli military and Hamas fighters. And while it helps to reinforce Israel´s contention that Hamas operates in built-up civilian areas, it also suggests that its own commanders were prepared to use civilians as human shields to protect Israeli troops.

It is one man´s version of what happened, of course. But as the soldiers would find out when they checked later, Mr Abed Rabbo is a former member of the Fatah-dominated intelligence, still being paid by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. He believes the Hamas gunmen had no right to be in the house next door. But he also strongly objects to the use made of him by the Israeli military. "I could have been killed," he explained.

The soldiers arrived on 5 January, the second day of their ground offensive, with a Palestinian he knew only by his family name of Daher. After telling him to remove his trousers and roll up his shirt to establish he had no weapons, the soldiers told him to bring out his wife, Wijdan, 39, and family. Then, with Mr Abed Rabbo escorted at gunpoint by three soldiers and his family still in the yard, the troops searched his house up to the roof. The Arabic-speaking soldier assigned to Mr Abed Rabbo then asked him about the house next door. He told them he thought there was no one in the property. Then, he said, one of the soldiers brought a sledgehammer with which Mr Abed Rabbo was told to smash a hole in the wall between the two roofs, each opening to the apartments below.

An officer arrived and ordered a search of the house next door. The officer went first, stepping cautiously sideways down the stairs with his M16 rifle pointing downwards, then Mr Abed Rabbo with the soldiers and their guns pointed at his back. Suddenly, the officer turned and started screaming at his men. "We went back upstairs. The soldiers were pulling me and I fell twice," Mr Abed Rabbo said. "We went back to the roof of my house." It became apparent what the officer had glimpsed when suddenly the soldiers, by now on high alert and outside the yard of Mr Abed Rabbo´s house, came under fire. He was taken into a mosque, which was already full of soldiers, across the road, then handcuffed and told to sit. After a 15-minute silence, the Hamas militants opened fire again. "The soldiers took position at the windows of the mosque and started shooting back. I was screaming at the soldier who spoke Arabic, ´My wife and children are in danger´." Mr Abed Rabbo said he was then told "shut up or I´ll shoot you". "I collapsed and started to cry," he added. "I felt my family was dead."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/my-terror-as-a-human-shield-the-story-of-majdi-abed-rabbo-1520420.html

Israel Soldier _Palestine Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQyIKyd2gqA&eurl=http://www.americablog.com/2009/01/palestinian-woman-stands-up-to-israeli.html

Berkeley Cartoonist Takes Presidential Race to La Peña

 You won’t have to remove your shoes when you enter Khalil Bendib’s White House.

“I will not bring the mosque into the oval office,” promised the Algerian-Berkeleyan cartoonist, who’s mounting a run for the presidency.

“I want to be top dog in a top-dog country—master of the universe,” he told the Planet in an exclusive one-on-one interview in his light-filled north Berkeley home, surrounded by his sculptures, paintings and campaign signs. It would be unthinkable to run for a lesser office, such as mayor or governor, he said.

Unfazed by what might be seen as a technical lack of eligibility as a naturalized citizen—“I’ll ride Schwarzenegger’s coattails. After he has the law changed for him, I’ll pass him up,” Bendib said, ignoring the timing problem that may present for the 2008 election cycle. And undaunted by the lack of funds and a heightened prejudice against Arabs since 9/11, Bendib’s taking his “Pres in the Fez” campaign—inspired he says by Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat—to the people.

He has a campaign stop Dec. 13, 7:30 p.m., at La Pena, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Bendib will bring along copies of his newest book: Mission Accomplished: Wicked Cartoons by America’s Most Wanted Political Cartoonist, Interlink Publishing Group, $17.95.

Cynthia McKinney and Howard Zinn’s accolades appear on the book cover. The forward is written by Norman Solomon. “This book refuses to accept … false choices. Bendib’s cartoons scramble a deck that has been stacked by the demagogues and crusaders who feel that they must diminish the humanity of others to exalt their own,” Solomon writes.

Unabashedly, Bendib admits marketing the book is behind the idea to run for president. When he saw photos of huge lines of people snaking around city blocks to buy Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s books, “I thought—I have a book, too. I have got to become an ex-president. Unfortunately—and I’ve researched it—in order to become an ex-president, you have to be President first,” he said.

The first thing Bendib would do as president is get rid of the influence of money, which, he says, has corrupted politics and “so-called public education” along with academic freedom.

“You see it right here in Berkeley,” he said, flipping open Mission Accomplished to a cartoon depicting a man giving directions to a freshman. The man was pointing the way to the university president’s office on a campus map dotted with corporate logos and saying: “Go towards the McDonald’s Nutritional Science Building, past the Monsanto Sustainable Agriculture Department, down to the Lockheed-Martin World Peace Hall, turn right at the Enron School of Business Ethics, and you’ll see it there: Doctor Faust’s office….”

Born to parents seeking refuge in France during the Algerian war for independence, and having spent his youngest years in Morocco, Bendib became keenly aware of politics as a small child.

His earliest memories were of his parents sitting in their Rabat, Morocco living room listening intently to the radio for every scrap of news from Algeria. Politics permeated every conversation. Friends were killed; an uncle working for the resistance—an artist—was captured and tortured. “It was a very popular war. Everyone was involved in it in one capacity or another,” he says. Of 10 million Algerians, 1.5 million died. “It was an incredibly bloody war; we call it a genocide,” he said.

Bendib says he uses humor as a way to speak to those who may not otherwise listen to what he has to say.

“To reach people, I have to sugar-coat my argument, otherwise I run into a wall in the face of a huge propaganda machine on the other side,” he said.

For example, he often uses cartoons to show the hypocrisy he sees in George Bush’s politics. In the Mission Accomplished cartoon, labeled “Habeas Corpus Suspended,” the statue of liberty has been hung; the U.S. House and Senate are saying, “You’re guilty until proven innocent,” and G.W. Bush is saying to the hung Statue of Liberty, “Sorry, Ma’am, but in times of war…” Then the little bird Bendib calls his alter ego reminds the reader what Bush has said about the cause of 9/11: “Because the terrorists hate our freedom,” the little bird says.

A call for justice runs through Bendib’s work, with special consideration for the rights of the Palestinian people. “Nobody else in this country does cartoons about Palestine from a fair perspective,” Bendib said. “There’s incredible censorship when it comes to Palestine. I feel it’s my special mission to bring a little bit of the alternative view.”

He brings this perspective to all of his work, as he is also a serious sculptor, painter and radio show host of KPFA’s Voices of the Middle East and North Africa.

One of his best-known sculptures is a 1994 statue, which stands in Santa Ana Civic Center, of Alex Odeh, once regional head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, killed by a pipe bomb in his office. Bendib describes the work as a tribute to Odeh’s “courageous defense of the maligned Arab-American community.”

Bendib’s sculptures and paintings can be seen at www.studiobendib.com and his cartoons at www.bendib.com. His campaign website is not up yet.

Khalil Bendib: Pledging Allegiance to No One

Standing on the deck off the third-story studio at his Berkeley home, Khalil Bendib tries to match his pose to that of the Statue of Liberty. Oversized pen in one hand and a fez on his head, he checks an old newspaper photo of the statue to make sure he is holding his head in the right place and stretching his arm up high enough. Like everything Bendib does, he is in the process of creating a spoof by re-imagining a well-known scene and making it his own.

That’s why Bendib is a cartoonist, the profession for which he is best-known. That is often complemented by the native Algerian’s lesser-known and more serious side—that of a fine artist.

Since coming to the United States in 1977, Bendib has pursued various forms of artwork that include painting, sculpture and ceramics. Like his cartoons, his artwork is political. Yet it is also intensely personal, with most of his paintings and non-commissioned sculptures and ceramic works focusing on his Middle Eastern culture.

Bendib also has several large commissioned works, including three separate sculptures that hang on the north side of the Gaia building. All three represent the Greek goddess Gaia, in various incarnations, and are meant to represent the power of women.

Instead of a play on a theme like his cartoons, Bendib uses his art to convey a much more direct message. It’s about “portraying my roots and my culture in a way that is attractive,” he explains. “It’s an attempt to balance all the negative images that are attached to my culture.”

One of the artist’s paintings, Cafe de Almohades, shows two groups of men sitting at a cafe drinking coffee and talking. The scene is set in Morocco, and Bendib says it is meant to represent the serenity of the culture. Unlike here in the United States, where “time is money,” Bendib shows the men enjoying their time with each other, focused on their conversation and nothing else.

“What I liked so much was their freedom from the constraint on time,” he says. “When I went back to Morocco it occurred to me that [in the United States] we don’t have this wonderful calm. They are daydreaming, what we would call in the west, ‘wasting time.’”

Bendib’s most popular pieces are his ceramics, which he says create a nice medium between drawing and sculpting. Coffee is the preferred theme.

Whereas his ceramics evince a gentle nature, his cartoons are more what he calls “blunt instruments,” coming through like a wrecking ball, shattering assumptions.

It Became Necessary to Destroy The Planet in Order to Save the It, a collection of Bendib’s political cartoons, contains a three-panel cartoon that juxtaposes two young boys with Jerusalem in the background. The boy on the left greets the other boy and says, “Hi, I’m Haile, a Jew from Ethiopia.” In the next frame the boy on the right answers, “And I’m Ali, a Palestinian from here,” which prompts the Ethiopian boy to ask, “What are you doing here in my country?”

“It’s not completely accurate and it’s not meant to be,” Bendib says about a cartoon. But, “such an exaggerated thing can be devastating. That’s what makes my cartoons either so attractive or repulsive.”

Aside from the obvious political element within his artwork, Bendib feels the conception of the art itself is a political statement. He says he produces art the way he wants to and refuses to conform to the standards that have been set out there for “good art.”

“Even as a artist, I find myself ‘reinventing the wheel’ so to speak, to escape those little boxes that exist even in the art world—the various art fads. I’ve never pledged allegiance to any particular school or art movement, finding myself in that way also, again, somewhat of an oddball, even among artists.”

Bendib continues to produce work that pushes the comfort level, even among leftists. His post-9/11 cartoons have tackled some of the harder issues that continue to be edged out everywhere else.

Several of the cartoons in the 9/11 section of his book focus on the racism both the Arab and Muslim communities faced. One strip has three frames, the first, labeled “Pearl Harbor 1941,” shows a flag-waving American demanding to “Kill all the Japs.” The next frame, labeled “NYC, D.C. 2001,” shows the same American demanding to “Kill all the Muslims.” The third and final frame is labeled “Oklahoma City, 1995,” and in it the American initially demands to “Kill all the white guys,” then, thinking better, adds, “No, wait a minute...Punish the Guilty, Don’t Generalize.”

As an Arab and a Muslim, Bendib confesses he was scared initially that his cartoons would anger someone enough that they would come knocking on his door.

“I am scared,” he says. “But I am compelled to do these cartoons. Post-9/11, Arab and Muslim Americans have become the proverbial canary in the cage in the mine shaft of our constitutional liberties. As their rights are being taken away, so will, eventually, the rights of all citizens be eroded and gradually ‘disappeared,’ if we keep sliding on this downward slope. My job is to debunk [the stereotype], and that makes me unpopular with those in the mainstream whose job it is to spread this message. The common denominator between all my cartoons is rebellion against blind conformity.”
<[script] type="text/javascript"> http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2004-03-16

Mike, have a look, you can get it from Amazon.com. A bit expensive:

The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 by Justin McCarthy (Paperback - Mar 14, 1997)

Buy new: $65.60 $59.04

17 Used & new from $40.99

In Stock

Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping.

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Excerpt - page 373: "... 176,000 Total 17,53 ) 6,000 Armenian Gregorian and Protestant. Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities, New York, 1983, p. 110. 373 ..."Surprise me! See a random page in this book.

Books: See all 27 items

Shoe hurled at Chinese PM in UK  - I guess shoe throwing is becoming fashion,

http://english.aljazeera.net/business/2009/02/200922113521108103.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhjxRIo0TyY