Sunday, May 13, 2007

Sibel Edmonds and Turkish politics.

In the comments, Steve A says:
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Th(is) article discusses some of the background to Turkish politics, something that I know very little about.

Sometimes I get lost thinking about what your informant Sibel claims because I don't see the background context very well.

I suspect that most people who one might think of as part of the mass, or the crowd, don't pay much attention, because they do not understand the general story of what's going on in Turkey, or the rest of the world, and how it could possibly relate to them.

I suspect news organizations cut out a lot of their foreign coverage in order to make people pay less attention."
thanks Steve.

for the record:
  • I wouldn't categorise Sibel as my 'informant' - at all. Just about everything I know is from the public record (some of which is from my interviews with her)
  • I don't know anything about Turkey at all, either. The 'background context' actually isn't necessary to understand what she's saying. It's true thta there is some stuff 'related' to 'Turkey' - but basically we only need to consider the whole thing as a criminal enterprise. To a large extent, 'nationality' is irrelevant. It's important to remember that. A lot of Sibel's stuff isn't about 'Turkey' - it's just about some people, some are Turkish, some Americans, some from other nations.
  • It's true that many don't understand Sibel's story - that's my fault. I'm trying to change it. The story isn't really that difficult. If I can understand it, anyone can. One of the great mysteries, to me, is that we can't recruit certain segments of the population to the cause. The anti-war crowd ought to be lining up to yoke Perle and Feith, even if not for the reasons that Sibel's case indicates.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the reply.

It bothers me too why there isn't a lot of interest in the crimes of our leaders.

It isn't so much about how some particular foreign government is involved. It's a story about how our leaders are involved in a crime, a crime that isn't that difficult to understand.

I will go along with that, but then, in a country that spent so much time over the details of meaningless crimes like those of O.J., why be so ho hum about something that really means something?

I take it, one of the things you're saying is that whether we have a lot of foreign coverage, say in Turkey, or even the middle east, the crimes we're interested in involve our own leaders, and the details about foreign places just makes the cases overly and unnecessarily complicated.

Do our leaders take bribes in order to do things against the interests of the American people? If this is the question, then it doesn't matter that much whether it's Turks or Greeks or Saudis or israelis who are offering such bribes.

I think the reason people are not so interested in the crimes of our leaders has to do with the connection these leaders have with the owners and leadership of our media who would otherwise tell us about these criminal cases. There's major conflict of interest.

Another reason, I think, has to do with a general skepticism about what people can know. I know that people I work with refuse to take any claims about politicians or political events seriously because they believe disagreements about what's really going on are unresolvable. No one can ever really know. And so, though these claims come and go, we can never tell what really happened.

When they spend a lot of time on the crimes of OJ, I suspect people aren't supposing they've learned anything about the world. Instead, they get to know about some compelling story. A fiction. Entertainments.

The entertainments occupy their attention and stand to bother them much less than the more matter of fact, possibly more troubling, and definitely less resolvable, real life criminal stories.

Anonymous said...

Steve A,

I too have mentioned to Luke that the story is vast and intricate, I also have trouble grasping it.

For me, it is enough to know Sibel's firing fits into a pattern by this "adminstration' of punishing competent and ethical employees who tell the truth and bring criminality to light, while rewarding those who are complicit in the deceits.

When I ask for hearings to let Sibel speak, it is for this reason and when she does speak, the rest willk follow more rationally because the gag will be gone.