It’s necessary to have people out there to help collect information about what’s happening in the world; ideally they then report on it reasonably honestly.
It seems to me to have been adequately established that the US pullout from Syria makes Turkey happy because then they can resume their decades-long attempt to wipe out the Kurds.
[wsj]
Does anyone believe that? Did the Wall Street Journal just go print some press release from the Turkish Department of SomethingSomething?
I find myself in the awkward position of agreeing with the stereotypical Trump supporter, who claims that the “mainstream media” is full of fake news. If that’s not fake news, I don’t know what is. The rest of the Imperial American War Party are not pretending that the conflict in Syria is going to result in anything more than slaughter, land and resource grabs – why is The Wall Street Journal pretending?
Oh, and don’t forget: the US is deeply concerned about sovereignty which is why they wagged their finger most seriously at Russia when they obliterated the US’ proto-puppet state in Ukraine. Since Turkey is about to flat-out invade Syria, we will surely lodge a most serious protest! Perhaps we will even complain to the UN!
How stupid do they think everyone is? Oh, wait. I think I just figured it out. We have always been allied with EastAsia.
The Kurds are going to lose badly; they have made the mistake (thanks to the US) of collecting their forces to where they can be destroyed. I hope they make the Turks suffer for what they are going to do, but it’s probably going to be pretty one-sided.
I just realized there’s a flaw in Orwell’s 1984. Why would INGSOC bother propagandizing its people, at all? The society is set up so that there’s nearly zero chance of a successful revolution and the machinery of state power is completely overwhelming. There’s no need to pretend. If “the object of power is power” is all, then power wouldn’t waste its time trying to appear palatable to anyone; that’s not power. Absolute power absolutely does not give a shit.
I miss Volkischer Beobachter and Пра́вда, when lying was more subtle and graceful.
Den Lille Abe
The last map I saw of who is in control of different parts of Syria showed ISIS in control of a small area on the eastern border of Syria well south of the areas under Kurdish control. I guess it’s just coincindence that Turkish troops will have to go right through a chnk of Kurdish controlled territory to get to the ISIS controlled area. /s
The Kurds will never be allowed to have to have their own country. The PKK are Anarchists and the only thing more horrifying than Anarchists running a country is Anarchists running a country and not fucking it up. People in the rest of the world might get ideas.
This description is inaccurate. In every country, also in Ukraine, there are people with various political positions. “Let’s kiss USA’s butt as much as possible” is a political opinion that is rather prevalent in Eastern Europe, and people who support this position have more volition than you give them credit for.
I’m not qualified to talk about Ukraine, so I’ll explain how this works in Latvia. After all, despite the differences between Ukraine and Latvia, some of the underlying problems are the same. “Let’s kiss USA’s butt as much as possible” is a pretty common political position among Latvian citizens. It’s nowhere near universal, but a lot of elected politicians support this political opinion. The problem is that people who adhere to this mindset are terrified of Russia. They were the ones who were eager to join EU and NATO in 1990ties. The argument was “Latvia either joins EU and NATO now, or we will be forced to join Russia some years from now when Russian tanks arrive to Latvian border.” They were eager to sign every international agreement there was. They were also eager to support American wars and send Latvian soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2013 these people were eager to join Eurozone, the argument was “Latvia either adopts the euro now, or we will be forced to use Russian rubles later.” These people desperately fear a Russian invasion, and they believe that kissing USA’s butt will somehow protect them from Putin. They hope that USA and Western European countries would protect us if Putin decided to send his tanks here. Of course, these people understand that kissing USA’s butt has plenty of drawbacks, but they perceive this as a choice between two evils (USA being the lesser evil), and they believe that the alternative, namely kissing Russia’s butt, would be even worse.
Like I said, this political position is nowhere near universal among Latvian citizens. Some Latvians worship Putin and like Russia. Some people dislike both USA and Russia and aren’t happy about Latvia being a member of the EU. And so on, political positions differ. As it always happens with human opinions, it’s complicated.
Personally, I don’t agree with this political position. I’m way too cynical for this. Countries with weak militaries adhere to international agreements. Countries with nuclear weapons, on the other hand, simply say, “Screw the rules, we will do whatever we want.” NATO or no NATO, Americans would be perfectly willing to sell out Eastern European countries to Russia if that was beneficial for them. Moreover, as of now, Putin doesn’t seem eager to invade Latvia anyway, so this fear doesn’t seem justified for me. Then there’s also the pesky little fact that I hate my country. I’m currently still staying there only because I can live in my mother’s home for free and I’m too lazy to get a real job. I dislike Russian authoritarianism and I wouldn’t be willing to live under Putin’s rule, but if Russian tanks really came here, I’d just buy a one way plane ticket to Germany. Or maybe France or Italy. Whatever, I’m a polyglot anyway.
I was thinking something along these lines earlier about an entirely unrelated issue. I was reading this NPR story because after the title I was curious whether they’d mention at any point that the current shutdown really has little to do with Democrats because republic control everything right now. They literally just have to agree among themselves and the Democrats would be stuck coming along for the ride.
Shutdown Continues As President And Democrats Remain At Odds Over Funding For Wall
Ieva Skrebele@#4:
This description is inaccurate. In every country, also in Ukraine, there are people with various political positions. “Let’s kiss USA’s butt as much as possible” is a political opinion that is rather prevalent in Eastern Europe, and people who support this position have more volition than you give them credit for.
Really? Who gives a shit what The People think! That’s not how it’s done around here; the question was whether Poroshenko could be tied into trade agreements, defense pacts, oil contracts, and arms sales so that Ukraine would be unable to extricate itself from US influence. The EU and NATO – you can think of those a a great big bundle of treaties and controls which can be dropped over a country to keep them in line. Geeze, I probably sound like a “brexiteer” but … ultimately (and this is the part that should scare you:) it’s all about controlling who has access to fossil fuels.
We are so fucked.
if Russian tanks really came here, I’d just buy a one way plane ticket to Germany
You’d find the German border temporarily closed for the duration. Be more cynical.
[us department of energy]:
Also: [bloomberg]
I stand by my earlier characterization of Ukraine as a would-be puppet. Now they’re going to be a failed state/Russian puppet. Same as it ever was.
lanir@#5:
They literally just have to agree among themselves and the Democrats would be stuck coming along for the ride.
Yup. And they’ve all gone home for the holidays and can’t be arsed to come back and govern. Literally, that is what is happening: Congress thought they had a deal and could go home and let Trump sign it, so they went home and Trump accidentally used it to wipe his bottom on and now they’re all going to wait until after Jan 1 because they don’t want to reschedule their travel.
The fact that Washingtonians won’t greet them at the airport with pitchforks and torches just shows how little political will there is left in the US.
It’s not like I haven’t noticed that the USA is interested in getting access to fossil fuels or, if there are no fossil fuels in some country, then at least some other forms of financial exploitation (you can always give some country a loan and collect interest afterwards). The argument, as I have heard it, goes approximately like this: “USA only wants to financially exploit some Eastern European country and take their oil; Russia wants to financially exploit the same country, take their oil, invade the country, drop some explosives on its cities, and engage in something that won’t be called a ‘genocide’ but will have certain similarities to one; in conclusion USA is clearly the lesser of two evils.” Then there’s also some nationalism and an anti-Russian sentiment, to paraphrase an argument I once heard: “It wasn’t Americans who sent my grandfather to a Gulag camp.” At least for now it seems that places like Abu Ghraib are reserved for Muslims, and Eastern Europeans don’t have to fear landing in one of those just yet. Thus, from the standpoint of people who live in Eastern Europe, it’s possible to argue that cooperating with the USA is better than cooperating with Russia. Personally, I do not agree with this position, but I can understand people who think like this.
Actually, financial exploitation doesn’t really scare me that much. Bombs being dropped on cities, wars, the climate change, torture programs—there certainly are a lot of things that really scare me. But USA doing some financial exploitation and forcing a country to sign a treaty that allows USA to take their oil, well, it’s not like this one doesn’t bother me, it’s just that financial exploitation pales in comparison with other threats.
The Kurds are likely screwed. As is the ability of the US to have allies.
This is the way of narcissistic sociopaths, to use people and institutions for momentary gain and then to casually discard them when they are problematic. Even after a massive betrayal, given a slight change of events and a desire to use them again, Trump will shamelessly talking about how the Kurds are our friends and our loyalty is boundless. There is no bottom.
The good news is that a few tweets does not a full abandonment make. The DoD has enough independent physical, manpower and financial resources to maintain some serious support of the Kurds even as the POTUS blathers on. If someone wanted to blunt a Turkish attack a single cargo plane load of TOW-2 missiles and a single night would be enough. The plane and missiles are a short hop away in Israel. I understand that the Kurds are already trained on the system. It isn’t as if in the short term Turkey pounding on the Kurds in Syria is going to settle the wider question of Kurdish independence.
A lot depends on the next SoD and the perceived intentions of the many players on the ground. The general tendency in the middle east is that players are strengthened or weakened but seldom are players removed from the game entirely. A weakened player with a hand still in the game can be used in many ways. As puppet, proxy, shield, back door, or excuse. Which is why politics in the area are so very complicated.
IMHO the Kurds shouldn’t be abandoned. But, here again, that is just how I feel after all the media propaganda and BS.
Marcus,
as a German, I feel obliged to disagree.
As refugees, Latvians would be far more accepted as Syrians were. And we do have almost half a million of Syrian refugees.
Our rightwingers objected to that, but they wouldn’t object to Xian white Europeans.
And Ieva already speaks German. She will just mix in.
wereatheist@#10
Yes, my personal experience was the same. I lived in Mainz while studying for my master’s degree. There everybody was very nice to me, I felt no xenophobia. Even though I lived as openly queer, there was no homophobia either. At first I was really happy for a few months; it just feels great to live in a society where everybody is nice to each other. And then I befriended a young Muslim woman who was also a student in my university. She was born in Germany, but her parents were from Somalia, she had black skin and she wore a hijab. She told me that she had encountered plenty of racism and xenophobia. Some Germans treated her as if she didn’t belong in her country. Only then I realized that I had been enjoying the white privilege without even realizing it—I happen to have white skin and I look like Germans. Thus, even though I spoke German with a noticeable accent, people still treated me like I belonged in Germany just because I happened to have the right skin/hair/eye color.
wereatheist@#10:
as a German, I feel obliged to disagree.
As refugees, Latvians would be far more accepted as Syrians were. And we do have almost half a million of Syrian refugees.
Fair enough.
Germany has provided a good example for the rest of Europe, it is true.
And, need I say: the US sucks. We did more to trigger the Syrian refugee crisis than anyone else and our politics are dominated by white supremacist ultra-nationalists who certainly would respond by making life more difficult for the refugees if they possibly could. Because that’s the kind of assholes who are in power right now.
Ieva@#11:
Just imagine what kind experiences your friend would have made in, say, Bautzen!
University cities, especially those in the western parts of FRG, are usually mostly ok for PoC/Muslims.
Homophobia is still a thing, in rural settings and among some immigrant communities, e.g. our ‘Russians’, who are either Jewish or Wolgadeutsche (the latter predominantly from Kazakhstan).
Marcus:
‘We’ botched it somewhat, though. The federal governmet did not provide enough money to deal with the situation.
In Berlin, refugees had to wait in queues for days for registration, on the street, at freezing temperatures.
And right now, ‘we’ are deporting Hazara to Afghanistan, into a civil war, which looks to me like a violation of international law, which is a violation of the Grundgesetz, too.
So it’s far from really good.
Why is your article title rhetorical? And why is your rhetorical response completely beside the point?
Never mind. Rhetorical articles are ALWAYS besides the point.
You first ask: “Why do we trust the news?” That’s a very valid and poignant question, especially these days. Then you take a 90-degree turn to: “It’s necessary to have people out there to help collect information about what’s happening in the world; ideally they then report on it reasonably honestly. It seems to me to have been adequately established that the US pullout from Syria makes Turkey happy because then they can resume their decades-long attempt to wipe out the Kurds.”
A valid point, but it doesn’t answer your question, unless your question was a rhetorical response to a given news outlet’s headline. Which it seems to be. So, why should we trust your rhetorical responses instead of the “mainstream” news’?
To anyone who’s been following middle-eastern conflicts since President Chaney invaded Iraq, it’s pretty obvious that the first ally we had in that region were the Kurds, and we’ve been trying to work with and defend them ever since our 9/11 invasion of Iraq. Kurds v. Shiites. Headlines galore. For years after that war started. Eventually, we ended up in some dumbass effort to topple the gov’t of Syria without knowing what the hell we/(our U.S. gov’t) was getting itself into. Russia and Iran were always proxy foes in that war, and we didn’t dare wage any direct war against Assad. This was always a proxy war.
Have to wonder, by the way, why you posted a screenshot of a pay-wall portion of the full article, and why you’re using just that portion to comment on this issue.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-amasses-troops-tanks-on-syria-border-as-it-plans-to-take-over-isis-fight-11545686991
Could it be because you’ve bought into that dumbass idea of the “mainstream” media that is constantly crowed about by people like Rush Limbaugh…. or the “Fake News” that our idiot President constantly blames for all his failings?
I haven’t heard enough from LEGITIMATE NEWS SOURCES yet to know whether or not Turkey wants to wipe out the Kurds… but from some current and many previous reportings, it seems fairly obvious: Donald Trump just gave up one of our allies, that was helping us overturn a foreign government, when we shouldn’t have been doing that, to a neighboring country of said foreign government.
The portion of the mainstream media THAT ACTUALLY REPORTS FACTS has been reporting that the Kurds will be wiped out in Syria if we pull our troops out. They’ve been saying that from the moment our dumbass President was reported to have told Erdogan “fine! you take over!”
You’re the last person who should be talking about anyone trusting the news considering your post. We should all stop at reading it, and ask, “why should anyone trust you?”
The Phix@#15:
Why is your article title rhetorical? And why is your rhetorical response completely beside the point?
It amuses me.
Have to wonder, by the way, why you posted a screenshot of a pay-wall portion of the full article, and why you’re using just that portion to comment on this issue.
Various websites appear to enforce the paywalls differently depending on how you come at an article. I also sometimes get blocked because I have ad-blockers in my browser. So, depending on the phase of the moon and other mysterious things, I may or may not see an article and I may or may not quote from whatever I see. I don’t put much thought into it – I’m not assuming or requiring that one of my readers will go read the source material.
I haven’t heard enough from LEGITIMATE NEWS SOURCES yet to know whether or not Turkey wants to wipe out the Kurds…
Define “LEGITIMATE” as you are using it in this context.
The posting I wrote hovers between a couple of questions regarding whether we can trust news reporting, whether we can trust government’s stated policy, and why, and when? I don’t pretend to have answers to those questions and I suppose I have fallen into the trap of suspecting that it’s all fake. Certainly, when I look at any of it, all I see is spin and propaganda, i.e.: none of it is “LEGITIMATE.”
I specifically used the Wall St Journal as I have used the New York Times elsewhere [stderr] because a lot of Americans probably would say they are “LEGITIMATE” established press. They appear to me to spread lies just as enthusiastically as the alternative press.
So what do you mean by “LEGITIMATE”?
In my mind that would mean that they try not to lie, that they reference sources and facts, and they check their own reporting for bias or inaccuracy, then own up to their mistakes. That would not include printing in whole or part press releases from the government without clearly marking them as such and fact-checking the hell out of them. I do not feel that journalism is automatically “LEGITIMATE” if it comes from a source that has been established longer; survival is not an indicator of quality, merely endurance.
To anyone who’s been following middle-eastern conflicts since President Chaney invaded Iraq, it’s pretty obvious that the first ally we had in that region were the Kurds, and we’ve been trying to work with and defend them ever since our 9/11 invasion of Iraq. Kurds v. Shiites.
I only started following it in the 70s; I’ve had to back-fill a lot with history books. The question of whose ally is whose and how long is more complicated than just looking at it since 2001. Yes, there has been plenty of front-page news about them. I’ve done postings about that, including the US’ willingness to put American troops in a firing-line between the Kurds and the Turkish to prevent the Turks from trying to displace them from Manbij (which they specifically said they wanted to do)
The portion of the mainstream media THAT ACTUALLY REPORTS FACTS
Which portion would that be?
You’re the last person who should be talking about anyone trusting the news considering your post.
I’m suggesting the news is not trustworthy. That does not equate to my suggesting that my blog s trustworthy. My saying you’re wrong doesn’t mean I’m saying I’m right. Perhaps that is why I frame some of these things as confused rhetorical questions.
We should all stop at reading it, and ask, “why should anyone trust you?”
If you trust me, you’re a bigger fool than I take you for.
wereatheist@#14:
In Berlin, refugees had to wait in queues for days for registration, on the street, at freezing temperatures.
The refugees in Greece have it a lot worse. Some of them have been living in camps for years. They have food lines, never mind registration lines.
I know it’s more complicated than this but: destabilizing Syria was a bad idea. Iraq, Libya, then Syria: refugee crisis, now it’s a big surprise, “where did all these people come from!?”
Marcus:
Yes. This is the outcome of the Schengen laws: the (poor) border states of the EU have to keep refugees out, lest they have to care for them. This was always insane. Now, the Greek can’t pay their teachers, people are literally malnourished, but German banksters love it. But there are pretty solid lamp posts, too.