How Terrible Does Turkey Have to Get?

by Burak Bekdil • October 14, 2019 at 5:00 am

So where is this "economic devastation" against Turkey? Or does that make two promises that the U.S. has not kept?
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been threatening to flood Europe with more refugees. "We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way," he promised on October 10.
Meanwhile, obscenely, Erdoğan has been invited to the White House for November 13.
The real crime was for the US to betray the Kurds -- savory or not -- by making promises it did not keep... and leaving the world to wonder which Middle East ally the US will double-cross next. Take a guess?

The funeral of Kurdish politician, Hevrin Khalaf, who was dragged by from her car and executed by Turkish forces. Photo: Getty Images.

Turkey's military offensive into the overwhelmingly Kurdish northeastern Syria is sending messages on many wavelengths. One consequence is beyond dispute: Turkey is adding further chaos, bloodshed and tears to a region already in turmoil. The U.S. had apparently "assur[ed] Kurdish protection from Turkey." Trump spoke of "economic devastion" if Kurdish forces were attacked. "As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I've done before!)," Trump tweeted on October 7. [Microsoft may thoughtfully have censored this tweet for you. Ed.]

So where is this "economic devastation" against Turkey? Or does that make two promises that the U.S. has not kept?

Continue Reading Article

Climate's "Extinction Rebellion" and the Child Stalking Horse

by Andrew Ash • October 14, 2019 at 4:00 am

Their "cause", right or wrong, seems to be what matters. Even as they are cheered along by doting parents, political agitators and junk science, the sad fact remains that solar flares -- apparently the leading cause of climate change -- do not award monetary research grants.
While it is undoubtedly better not to choke the world with plastic, the Israelis and others have fortunately invented several varieties of fibre as strong as plastic but as soluble as an orange peel -- and reportedly often safely edible.
Rather than shedding some light on a difficult, and complex problem, the climate protestors seem merely to be fuelling the increasingly divisive world in which we live. As the former chief of staff of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted this summer, the Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a "how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing".
What they seem to want to change it into, however, is socialism: governmental control of the economy, including the means of production and distribution. Historically, socialism has only led to lowered standards of living and rationing for everyone, to cut costs. Here in the UK, in the National Health Service, qualified people apparently do not want to work hard for less. Everyone ends up poorer and with services that are wanting... What is needed is growth: better education and the creation of more jobs... rather than attacking the "rich" [read: middle class] and blaming them for inequalities.
When the closest one has ever got to an occupation is by occupying other another person's place of work, the right to preach morality appears a dubious one.

Just when you thought it was safe to travel into London again without getting caught up in the mayhem of yet another protest, climate change activists have organised a whole two weeks of it, which kicked off on October 7. Pictured: Climate change activists protesting on Lambeth Bridge, in London, on October 7, 2019. (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

"Extinction Rebellion UK" appears to be a rag-tag collective of millennial and post-middle-aged eco-warriors, with three attributes in common -- conservation, the love of the sound of their own voices, and having not enough to do with their time.

Not content with having already brought mayhem to London earlier in the year, or having brought Manchester to a standstill last month, or even having disrupted cities throughout the UK, during the September 20 "strike" -- where their school-age counterparts bunked off for the day to do the same thing, "XRUK" have planned to occupy parts of central London, supposedly "in an attempt to save the planet".

Continue Reading Article