My intention was to get back to the Istanbul shooting today.. Sadly it's not working out for me. Getting sidetracked with other topics. I'll get back to that tomorrow. Instead I'm featuring an oped from Daily Sabah. The author is addressing an absurd recent Robert Fisk piece. Fisk get's paid and he clearly kowtowed to his pay masters- I'm not a fan of his, at the best of time. I'm unsure how many readers here caught the piece of trash written by Robert Fisk? I know that Ally did because we exchanged comments regarding the piece.
AllyJanuary 3, 2017 at 9:43 AMHave you seen Robert Fisk's article for the Independent? ReplyDelete
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PennyJanuary 3, 2017 at 12:35 PMThe one about why the west doesn't care?It's a piece of trash, more typical of Fisk's writingHe's not a go to person for me I've used his work once in the past few years- that's it
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Yep, terrible. Why do you think that so many people have actually fallen for the bad Turkey meme? Why has it worked so well? I can't understand...
Why has it worked so well? Because it's been repeated and reinforced so often ! Robert Fisk repeated and reinforced. Alexander Mercouris could have been mistaken for that neo con at AEI Micheal Rubin- spinning his whole analysis around a demonization of Turkey, only enabled by the fact that he fudged the truth about the UN Resolution. Mr Mercouris couldn't touch the truth because then he couldn't have wrote an entire piece implying Turkey was bad and would surely victimize Russia- which I find to be a strange meme. Russia has strong leadership, that much is obvious, Putin and Lavrov, don't strike me as they easily victimizable. Nor the type that will take abuse lying down. Pretty sure Turkey's leadership understands this obvious fact. Which is why I said.."Mr Mercouris should have pondered the possibility that those who would not endorse the ceasefire agreement may work the hardest to ensure the ceasefire fails"Considering the recent Robert Fisk article regarding Turkey..This is the reason why we don't dwell on Turkish deaths in the WestI truly thought the article was a piece of trash. In short- all those people died because Erdogan is bad - Switch out Erdogan and replace with Assad- That would be OK too! Let's compare that to 9/11? To bad, so sad, people died because GWB was evil. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Besides the usual demonization/cult of personality Fisk pushed the simplistic blowback theory- One I have very little use for and find it to be mostly distraction. Blowback as commonly presented is circular reasoning. Yet another logical fallacy
Blowback: Begging the Question/Petitio Principii and Circular Reasoning
A simplistic meme for a simplistic trashy article. Seriously. I had intended to ignore it completely, but, an oped from Daily Sabah entered my consciousness- What can I say? The author made so many good points it had to be posted.Keep in mind that the intentional destabilization of Turkey has been written about here for well over two years now- It's been obvious to me all that time and has only grown even more obvious since then.From November 2014 and forward:
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Kurd/ ISIS Symbiosis- The impending destruction of Turkey.
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Pt.2- Kurd/ ISIS Symbiosis- The impending destruction of Turkey
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Pt-3: Destabilizing Turkey. Pre- Election Bombing/Explosion at Kurdish Rally
"The nightclub massacre has shocked many and has even reached the esteemed journalist Robert Fisk. But what's his problem with the Erdoğan administration? And why can't he see the blood on the hands of Western leaders?"
Guilty of not sloppy journalism nor losing himself in the narcissistic vapidity of Oped writing, nor indeed for having one too many sharpeners before the 4 o'clock gong; no, Fisk is guilty of the most morose and unforgivable of all crimes by the fourth estate with his recent ejaculation across the pages of the Indie's opinion section, with his rant about Turkey's recent tragic nightclub shooting. In the words of Monte Python, for "stating the bleedin' obvious."Get involved in your neighbor's war and you pay a heavy price with reprisals on your own doorstep.But what Fisk alludes to touch on in the article in the first sentence, that "Turkey is alone," is left dangling and I would argue is really what these recent attacks in Turkey are all about. Turkey has become a rogue state in the minds of both London and Washington. And if anyone is kind enough to giving the EU the credit for being a geopolitical player – on paper at least – then, yes the EU also has turned its back on Ankara and made it a pariah state"I'll omit the paragraphs regarding the complex Russian/Turkish relationship and stick with the NATO aspect
Recall? July 2015: NATO Bows Out on Turkey. Turkey and Article 4
Both the EU and NATO – and certainly Obama – all are guilty of pushing Turkey out into the cold and now what we are experiencing is the country having to punch above its weight just to defend its own turf against terrorism – whether that takes the form of old foes like the PKK or Daesh. Despite having a formidable army, fighting in Syria and Iraq against both Daesh and the Kurds is stretching its resources beyond what it was originally planned for back in the day when the bullshit press releases from the EU and NATO were actually believed; what Fisk fails to elaborate on – possibly because the Independent is such a poor newspaper and a servant of Brussels and its fake news – is that it is the West's fault that such a country is fighting the war that it is, on so many fronts. Where was NATO when those first bombs from Daesh exploded in Istanbul? Why didn't Fisk remonstrate that NATO had failed in its obligations to defend Turkey against a threat to one of its members? Brussels is becoming a graveyard of failed super power organisations, it seems, as it is hardly surprising that NATO has the crisis of confidence that it has, with many members only spending half of the required 2 percent of GDP on defense and – keeping the unwritten rule of ideally spending that with Uncle Sam. And where was the EU and that shambles of a British newspaper the Indie – which trumpets its cause so zealously by fillings its pages with its manufactured fake news from Brussels – when Turkey had to endure an attempted coup? More than 7,000 army officers are in jail because Erdoğan – who is portrayed as an anachronistic paranoid Ottoman leader - wants to ensure that another coup attempt can't happen? What would Fisk and his friends on the Independent prefer the Turkish leader to do with them? Send them on an EU-funded training course run by a Greek EU civil servant who explains how to overthrow a country by stuffing underpants into the exhaust pipe of a tank while giving you the powerpoint presentation on "how to write a good press release" before lunch?Has Fisk completely lost his mind? It is inconceivable that Fisk doesn't know that the West has been funding (training and arming) Daesh through an ingenious yet simple manner of both allowing some Gulf states to support it, militarily and with cash in the early days, and also by funding, even to this day, a group of a dozen or so "moderate" fighters, who have certainly good relations with al-Nusra, which we shouldn't forget is al-Qaida at the end of the day.Such rank hypocrisy is startling. If Turkey did give logistical support to Daesh so that it could hit both Assad regime troops and the Kurds hard, few could blame it. The West can hardly wave the finger when it had the power to stop it, rather than let a bevy of third rate journalists to report on the diesel smuggling that was going on at one point across the border. They, and indeed Fisk, have all missed the point. The West and Turkey have in the past supported their own respected opposition groups in Syria and it is simply preposterous if not louche to isolate Erdoğan now with this over-simplified, disingenuous accusation. It is rather like the thumb-sucking foreign correspondents who like to run down Fisk on the dinner party circuit in Beirut for being a poor journalist in the region simply because he can't speak Arabic; I take the other view and salute him for being a great journalist who overcomes his language deficiency and still hits the mark with his work.On this one though, he missed the target altogether. But then it is only the Indie.And there you have it. Turkey is on it's own and fighting for it's survival. That much is clear and has been for quite a while!-Robert Fisk is happy to blame and frame Turkey, while turning a blind eye to the involvement of the US/EU/UK and Israel. In fact Israel get the biggest free pass in all of this- Despite their involvement in destabilizing Syria & Turkey alongside the US/UK and the PKK. Pity the nation that is fooled twice. Apparently Turkey doesn't want to get fooled again. From earlier:
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