Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

by Bill Van Auken One week after the abortive military coup to overthrow Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, there remains no doubt that Washington had a major hand in the bloody events that shook Istanbul and Ankara. Turkish military commanders with the closest ties to the Pentagon have been directly implicated in the attempted overthrow, including the commander of the Incirlik air base, where the US stores its largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in Europe and from which it carries out its bombing campaign against Iraq and Syria. Multiple aircraft supporting the coup flew out of Incirlik under the eyes of the US military. After it became apparent that the coup would fail, the Turkish base commander asked the US for asylum. It emerged Wednesday that a warning of the impending coup had come from Russia, which relayed intercepted radio communications between the coup plotters to Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, known as the MIT. The warning was shared with the Turkish ...

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 6/7/2016 The results of the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar parliamentary by-elections clearly indicated the people’s choice and dissatisfaction. In disarray, Pakatan Harapan has taken the people’s views for granted. Have Pakatan leaders learned from the outcome? Yes, blame BN over some cash inflows and vote buying, but what about themselves? As the two by-elections had given confidence to the once-bitten Umno-led BN coalition, the prospects of a snap general election being called either at the end of this year or in early of 2017 seems to be coming into reality as BN leaders have been doing the ground work and dispatching their goodies since. The major problem here is that the people are very disappointed with the way BN is running this nation because of its corrupt and swindling nature which cause billions of ringgit loss from our nation’s coffers almost every year. Asides, afraid of its unpopularity and increasing criticism a...