Pretenders to the Ottoman Dynasty

Pretenders and micronations are a fascinating subject, because in their impotence, they lay bare the lack of any real power that states have. All is in the mind of the governors or the governed, or guns, or butter
The Ottoman Dynasty (or the Imperial House of Osman) (Turkish: Osmanlı Hânedanı ) ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1299 to 1922.^[1] Abdülmecid I is widely considered to be the last emperor of the Ottoman Empire, which is pretty funny, because while there is about as much rationale for him being emperor as for not being emperor, those that believe he is not do so with respect to a system that also has about as much rationale for existence as not. Theirs is also a system that came into being at about the same time as they were dealing that same Ottoman Empire the deathblow (The Great Game) that it would finally die of in 1924, when the Ottoman dynasty was expelled from Turkey.^[2] Theirs came into being by virtue of the excesses of that same Great Game, and other military "exploits" like it, which brought about a desire to establish overt military takeovers as subservient to "national sovereignty". All too late for the Ottoman Empire, again with the irony. Europe was once again to sweep through the area once more of course (and for what one can only hope, the last time), this time bearing a banner not of religion, nor adventurism, but democracy, to justify taking over countries by military force. Which just shows that those inventive Americans, at least of the ruling class, never let social progress get them down; if life gives you lemons (democracy), turn it into lemonade (spreading democracy).

The ironically named Ottomanism (ironic because it was actually the spread of Europeanism) put paid to lineage practices that Europeans came to call barbaric. It is not too much of a stretch to compare the Ottoman practice of succession (or the succession of European states on occasion, for that matter) to that of the fictional Klingons. It was costly to the lives and political options of able leaders, as it required a great deal of effort to defend not only their Sanjaks, but their prestige, and their literal proximity to the throne.

See Succession practices of the Ottoman Empire

The early period of the Ottoman Dynasty had a historical tradition of open succession^[3] and other atypical succession practices. During their father's lifetime, all of the adult sons of the reigning sultan would hold provincial governorships. While females were excluded from the throne, the mothers of governors eligible for the throne would accompany and mentor them while they pursued the Ghazw raiding that won them prestige and gained them followers. Upon the death of their father, the sons and their followers would vie for the throne. This was ameliorated to a great extent by a common understanding of who was favored for succession, as was made clear by appointments by the current leader of favored sons to governerships near the capital. As it was easier for troops there to move to and hold the capital than it was for troops elsewhere to travel to and take it, being given the favored governership was in many ways the same as being given the right of succession.

Post-expulsion pretenders (WP) to the Ottoman throne mark their right to succession by linear descent from Abdülmecid I, through one of his sons, Abdülmecid II and Abdülaziz.^[4]

Since 2009, the current linear descendant of Abdülmecid, head of the Ottoman Dynasty and pretender to the defunct Ottoman throne has been Bayezid Osman (b. 1924), a great-grandson of Abdülmecid I.^[5] According to genealogies on the House of Ottoman there are currently twenty-four people in the line of succession after Bayezid Osman.

The lie of WMDs in Iraq admitted

The USA retains over 10,000 nuclear warheads, down from a Cold War average of 20,000

Eight years ago, Colin Powell, on behalf of the Bush administration, set the USA, with its nuclear arsenal still at half its Cold War level, on a course for war with Iraq, with a cry of WMDs! OMG! The administration bulldozed their way past Intelligence agencies that decried their evidence as faulty, but Powell's and later Bush's 16 words speeches went on as planned. With the war, the fabrication of the war, and the aftermath of the war, there was much to obscure the fact that one of the reasons for the Bush administration's success in pulling a war out of a hat was that they had the pretext of a real person, albeit unreliable as a source, who was behind the story as they told it. Now, the source of the information, codenamed Curveball, has come clean.^[6]

"Key Bush Admin "Source" Admits to Lying about Iraqi WMD"

Weapons of mass destruction are nuclear, biological, or chemical

An Iraqi defector whose claims were used to help build the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq has admitted for the first time that he lied. In an interview with The Guardian of London, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi—codenamed "Curveball"—says he fabricated tales of mobile biological weapons laboratories and other secret sites under Saddam Hussein. Janabi says he was hoping to topple Saddam Hussein’s government and was "shocked" when his claims were cited in then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s infamous address to the United Nations eight years ago. Top Bush administration officials insisted on highlighting Janabi’s claims despite widespread doubts amongst U.S. intelligence.^[6] - Headlines for February 16, 2011, Democracy Now!

This shows a different side to the plausible deniability tactic, and a double standard for the reliability of information: providing just enough information to silence dissenters makes information reliable for allies and supporters, where just enough doubt for allies and supporters makes dissenters' information unreliable.

2011 Egyptian media censorship

The Hacktivism group Anonymous displayed the altruistic side of direct action for the uninitiated, with low-tech faxes, to update Egyptians behind the information 'Iron Curtain'^[7] during the January 2011 internet block in Egypt.^[7]

2011 USA intervention in Haitian elections

In 2009, the Fanmi Lavalas party, closest to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forbidden participation in Haiti's November '10 elections by the provisional election council created by the current president, Rene Praval. Under cover of the Egyptian protests, the US, to the orchestrated swell of allegations of voter fraud as a pretext for runoff elections, pressured Haiti to remove Jude Celestin, the candidate least affiliated with right-wing Haitian government, US-backed Haitian governments, Haitian dictators, or all three, after the election was criticized as unfair. The US also pressured Haiti to add Michel Martelly to the ballot, to face Mirlande Manigat in the revised election.^[8]
Election fraud debunked; voter boycott proved
Michelle Martelly won the subsequent runoff election, that was also "marred by problems". The fact that 71% of Haitians stayed away from an election without Lavalas was used to justify the runoff election and give credence to the claims of voter fraud by Celestin. But at the runoff election itself, the turnout was even lower; 25% instead of 29%.^[8] The recent voter turnouts are a slump back to pre-Aristide levels; 60% or more of Haitians voted in all the elections in which Jean-Bertrand Aristide or his Lavalas party were on the ballot.^{[9][10][11][12]}

• Michel Martelly, 'popularly known as' "Sweet Micky" — a moniker sometimes used interchangeably to refer to himself as well as his band — is a Haitian performing and recording artist, composer,^[13] and musical sociopolitical activist, who breaks the expected lefty mold of American and British entertainers with his well-hidden support for the Duvalier regime.^[14] Between the time of the 1991 coup d'état and the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994, he also supported the government of disbanded Haitian military and pro-US forces that deposed Aristide and took power.^[14][15] He ran on a platform of nothing much in particular, being described as a joke candidate by many reports. However, he claimed nepotism and voter fraud by Celestin, as did Mirlande Manigat.

Coalition to Save the Preserves

Coalition to Save the Preserves was a name chosen in 2002 by Mark Sands to cover up his arson of a building that he did not want in his area by portraying it as Propaganda of the deed (or more specifically, 'eco-terrorism').^[16]

The fact that Sands had been perpetrating a hoax, however dangerous a hoax, never seemed to fully sink into the minds of some US. security agency employees, and most likely others decided it would be expedient to ignore this fact, and they have issued numerous lists of terrorists with the CtStP included:

• In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security issued a threat assessment that included the CtStP as one of the threats on US soil that had carried out domestic terrorism.^[17]
• Listing on the Global Terrorism Database by START Wikipedia:National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a Center of Excellence of the US Department of Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland^[18]

Understandably, Sands' Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) activity was something of a threat to real direct action advocates, and Earth First!, with considerably fewer resources than the FBI or the later security agencies, was at the time, at pains to point out that it was not responsible for his activity^[19]

Anarchopedia:Article in the news archive

Citations