Stories to Watch: 10/23/11

More new Walking Dead tonight. Gotta get my zombie fix. Now here's the news...


Flailing former frontrunner Rick Perry decides that the road to the White House runs through flirtation with the lunacy of birtherism.


More mass arrests of Occupy Chicago protesters.


Recovering gunshot victim Rep. Gabrielle Giffords appears to be gearing up for reelection.


A 7.3 earthquake in Turkey may have left somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 dead.


Hillary Clinton calls out Mitt Romney for his criticism of the way the Obama administration has ended the Iraq War.


At least one Tea Party congress critter understands that he represents the 99%.


Polling confirms the tag "do-nothing congress" has stuck.


Finally, Herman Cain is a Washington outsider in the same way that I'm a tree sloth. For the record, I'm not a tree sloth.

Related articles

• Dozens arrested at Occupy Chicago protest (msnbc.msn.com)
• Occupy Chicago: At Least 100 Arrests in City Park (abcnews.go.com)
• Occupy Chicago: 130 arrested in city park protest (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• BREAKING: Obama To Announce Complete Drawdown Of Troops From Iraq By End Of Year (businessinsider.com)

Griper Blade: An Atheist Christmas

Ah, Christmas time. The carols and the trees and Santa and the Kentucky Fried Chicken and the belly dancers. The holly and the booze and the Christmas cakes and strippers. What does Christmas mean to you? That depends on where you happen to be.

In Japan, Christmas has more in common with St. Valentine's Day, with cakes instead of candy. There's still Santa and trees and rampant consumerism, but it's more about love of another than love of humanity. The television media runs stories about "romantic miracles" and restaurants and hotels clean up on what is basically national date night. It also marks the beginning of year-end celebrations, which is basically a month-long drunk.

Kentucky Fried Chicken has convinced everyone that the traditional western Christmas dinner is -- big surprise -- KFC and you actually have to order your Genuine Christmas Chicken Dinner beforehand. They make a killing. By the way, I'm entirely serious about this. It's true.

But real Christmas weirdness comes to us from Turkey. I wrote about this a couple years ago and it sounds awesome. Turkish Daily News reported at the time that "Turkey has for decades been having the weirdest New Year's Eve celebrations on earth. Symbols of Christmas are infused into 'crazy parties' of heavy drinking, gambling, belly dancing and even strip shows." In Turkey, they wrap Christmas and New Years Eve up together and kill two birds with one stone. Kids get gifts from Santa Claus, then everyone goes out, gets hammered, and watches belly dancers. This is a holiday I can get behind and support...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Bush the Appeaser

There's a middle eastern nation threatening an invasion of Iraq, which it is currently shelling, and is pursuing nuclear technology, despite the fact that no one in the region thinks that's a very good idea. Nope, not Iran.

Turkey.

Our NATO ally in the middle east is turning out to be a lot less than helpful lately. According to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, "The Turkish military has stepped up attacks against what it says are Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, bases in northern Iraq. The shelling comes just ahead of a vote in the Turkish parliament on a bill authorizing a ground invasion against Kurdish fighters in Iraq. The military has reportedly amassed 60,000 troops along its border with Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Turkey to refrain from any major military operation, but Washington's influence over Turkey appears to be waning."

It's tempting to think that this is about the recent congressional resolution recognizing the 1915 killings of 1.5 million Armenians as a genocide. It's not. Or at least, if it does have anything to do with it, it's only marginally. Turkey's stance on this incident is bizarre -- it never happened. That not even Turkey believes this is beside the point. They have a sort of Bush-like attitude toward the Armenian genocide -- the more you say something, the truer it becomes.

Turkey tried to buy good PR in the US before the vote in the House of Representatives. Asia Times (via The Center for Media and Democracy) reported that Turkey was "spending more than US $300,000 a month on sophisticated public relations specialists and former Washington lawmakers to help defeat the measure [declaring the genocide]" and that "The Turkish Embassy is paying $100,000 a month to lobbying firm DLA Piper, which is associated with former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, and $105,000 to the Livingston Group (connected to former Republican lawmaker Robert L. Livingston), and it recently paid public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard $114,000 ... a month." All to rewrite history.

Turkey is so touchy about the subject that turks face a three-year jail term for even saying the words "Armenian" and "genocide" in the same sentence. And the Bush administration has been so protective of Turkey's historical delusion that the US Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, was fired for referring to Turkey's crime as a genocide.

This would be weird enough, but the current Turkish state is not the Turkish state that committed the crime. That would've been the Ottomans -- who are gone. The Turkish government is entirely innocent of the crime it denies ever happened...

[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Can Iraq Get Any Worse? Actually, Yeah...

Iraq takes one more step toward regional war.

Associated Press:

Hundreds of Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who attack Turkey from bases there, Turkish security officials said. One official said the troops had returned to their bases by the end of the day, but Turkey's foreign minister denied they had ever entered Iraq.

The senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, characterized the raid as a "hot pursuit" raid that was limited in scope. They told The Associated Press it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks.

One official said, "It is a hot pursuit, not an incursion," proving that there isn't a damned dictionary in the entire nation.

If Turkey really digs in here, it would put the Bush administration in a real bad place. They've used the Kurds as one of the excuses for war, while ignoring Turkey's terrible human rights record toward them. Turkey is a nominal ally in Iraq.

It's hard to imagine that turkish forces would be any more respectful of kurdish human rights in Iraq than they are in Turkey.