International business Times, UK Edition
Remarks
(1) For years their domestic and foreign policies seemed like a huge and extraordinary success. Since then, the Turkish economy has gone into bubble mode, the foreign policy unravelled due to the Arab Spring, the liberties situation turned visibly to the worse with censorship and the government which initially countered decades-old corruption turned out to be corrupt itself.
They clearly missed the point when it was best to pass on the baton.
(2) Warmongers at work (apparently). Deliberating about how to construct a false reason for war, false flag-style.
(3) After more than a year of country-shaking leaks they still discuss such things when recordings are possible? Even with the intelligence chief? How stupid is that?
(4) It's remarkable how leaks have influenced foreign and domestic policies since Wikileaks attracted much attention. Now Russia appears to use leaks as an effective foreign policy tool, trying to thwart opposing schemes.
S O
*: In theory it could be worthwhile to learn Turkish, but it's yet another language family and I'm not inclined to learn it as 5th language.
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The article you linked to is misleading. It claims "The leaked call details Erdogan's thoughts that an attack on Syria "must be seen as an opportunity for us [Turkey]"", when in fact the transcript on the same page says that "Prime Minister said that [...] this attack (on Suleiman Shah Tomb) must be seen as an opportunity for us". Notice that the article has altered the quote to go from being an attack on Turkey (Turkish soil in Syria) to an attack on Syria, changing the meaning.
ReplyDeleteIt's also worth pointing out a couple of other things with this leak. Firstly, the beginning and end of the audio is cut off, making it unclear exactly what was being planned. A limited operation against ISIL (which they think is working with Assad)? An excuse for war with Syria? Or just some kind of publicity stunt to drum up votes? It's unclear due to fact that the beginning and end of the audio has been cut off.
Secondly, the transcript which you linked to, and which everyone seems to be using, doesn't carry across several important things. For example, the part of the translation saying "I'll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey" is misleading. He was speaking in the hypothetical, trying to point out that creating a reason to do whatever they were considering wasn't the problem, the problem was that the idea lacked foresight and strategic planning. The speaker was actually arguing against the plan, not explaining what he was going to do.
I find it funny that you acknowledge the existence of false flags, but will at the same time shout down anyone who claims that such an explanation could be applied to the 911 attacks, as well as the bombings in london and madrid (of which the latter is partially recognised by the public).
ReplyDeleteSectors of the People's Party (PP), and certain media, such as El Mundo newspaper and the COPE radio station,[78] continue to support theories relating the attack to a vast conspiracy to remove the governing party from power. Support for the conspiracy was also given by the Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo (AVT), Spain's largest association of victims of terrorism. These theories speculate that ETA and members of the security forces and national and foreign (Morocco) secret services were involved in the bombings.[79][80]
Defenders of the claims that ETA participated in some form in the 11 March attacks have affirmed that there is circumstantial evidence linking the Islamists with two ETA members who were detained while driving the outskirts of Madrid in a van containing 500 kg of explosives 11 days before the train bombings.[81] The Madrid judge Coro Cillán is continuing to hear conspiracy theory cases, including one accusing government officials of ordering the scrapping of the bombed train cars in order to destroy evidence.[82]
There's a vast difference between officials talking on a recording about a false flag operation and people not being content with the widely held explanation for a major event and making up hypothesises about it.
DeleteIn the latter case, everybody can make up a hypothesis, so the value of such a hypothesis is rabble. Actual evidence (such as a leaked recording of responsible officials) would turn a hypothesis into a credible theory.
The 9/11 truther issue is also a good example for how the behaviour pattern of conspiracy theorists diverges from a rational truth-seeking. They just keep making stuff up and repeat it, no matter how much of their made-up stuff has been debunked already.
'Actual evidence (such as a leaked recording of responsible officials) would turn a hypothesis into a credible theory.'
ReplyDeleteI don't expect you to publish this comment, but FYI, that arguments comes dangerously close to the 'somebody would have talked' category. Competent terrorists (I.E, those employed by 1st world nations) excel at covering their tracks and planting fabricated evidence, in order to implicate their enemy of the week.
They are able to carry out their enterprise in a manner that might be considered 'a perfect crime' by most within the law enforcement system. If you rely purely on traditional practises to implicate them, you'll be left in the dust. As for the attempts at debunking, I wrote two posts on this subject.
http://kesler12-jamesrocket.blogspot.ca/2013/08/conspiracy-theory-faq-part-1.html
http://kesler12-jamesrocket.blogspot.ca/2013/11/conspiracy-theory-q-part-2.html
You write that as if you knew, but by logic you cannot know whether they are very good at covering up their traces because you wouldn't find these traces. And you fool yourself if you think you know how to detect traces that professionals cannot detect.
DeleteSo that, too, is made up.
I have much better things to do than to read up on made up conspiracy theories.
My opinion: Conspiracy theorists want to feel that they're superior by superior knowledge - but they're either too dumb or too lazy to acquire actual knowledge. Thus they make stuff up or the most lazy ones simply adopt made-up stuff. Others disagree often with them, so they get to fool themselves into believing that they know something which the others just don't get.
That's as much a waste of time as is intelligent design, for example. Worthless for actual work about reality.
And yes, I know that my blogging is often at risk to drift into unfounded hypothesis territory itself; that's the risk everyone takes who disagrees with the mainstream on something.