Tag Archives: Turkey

Turkey Must Rein In Azerbaijan | Nagorno-Karabakh 4

This was a weird one. I had most of an unproduced video on Azeri threats to Nagorno-Karabakh put together already. Then this week Azerbaijan just reached out and conquered the Armenian enclave, much more quickly than anybody expected. The message had to be changed somewhat, but I think it just got a lot more important. It may seem absurd to look to Turkey to defend these put-upon Armenians. But sadly that’s all that’s left.

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Is Turkey A Democracy?

The Turkish elections are finally here. It’s been a while since I’ve addressed Turkiye in a produced video. It’s been so long the country has a new name! But I have been doing a ton of research. My following of Turkish news fades in and out, but over the past couple months I have read three biographies of Turkish president Erdogan, and I think that has helped me produce some pretty solid analysis of what we’re about to see this weekend.

Today’s produced video is brief, but it provides a ton of information. If you want to learn more allow me to suggest the two Turkish election related podcasts that we have also uploaded this week.

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How To Use Ukraine Against China

I feel like I’m weirdly a lot more optimistic about American power today than most of the US media is. Today I lay out why I think that may be. The US is reacting to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some inexplicable horror, another step back towards history’s chaos, and another sign that the American world order is falling to pieces. As more of a cynic, and a student of foreign relations, my sense is that the US world order has been falling apart since at least 2003. What Russia has done in Ukraine, is give us a second chance. By conclusively setting himself up as a more destructive and dangerous actor than the US government, Putin has given the US world order a new lease on life.

What’s vital in this moment is that we seize that opportunity. Europe is now back on our side in ways it hasn’t been for two decades. What we should do now, is try to win over the rest of the world by improving our relations with old enemies that no longer matter. To it’s credit, the Biden administration is already trying to do this with Iran and Venezuela. Unfortunately, they are being blocked by their efforts to do so, and not just by Republicans. I think it’s a failure of understanding. US government and media don’t understand just how bad the situation was, and how valuable a window Russia has given us. Today’s video is my attempt to explain the situation.

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Russia’s Hidden Victory In Armenia and Azerbaijan

I don’t talk about Russia much. Mostly because I don’t take it very seriously. I take its nukes very seriously, but my fears there are more about mismanagement of stockpiles than the possibility of intentional use. When it comes to Russia’s position in the world I see it as an under-funded and doomed power that is trying to do way, way too much with what little it has left. When Russia looks strong, it’s usually because the United States has done something incredibly stupid, like overthrow a democratically elected president on Russia’s periphery or destroy an Arab state.

This impression does not seem to be widely shared, so I suppose a video explaining this view is long over due. Weirdly, my excuse for finally getting this complicated map video out there is what I believe to be an unacknowledged Russian victory. We’ve been hearing about all these farcical Russian victories for half a decade, and now that there’s a real one, everybody seems to be ignoring it. Today’s video also explains why that is…

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Azerbaijan and Ethiopia Just Proved US Empire | Avoiding the British Empire 17

It’s always worth re-examining something we all just think of as normal. I would never call myself a journalist. I don’t do the hard work of cultivating sources and ferreting out things that are hidden from us. But what I hope the MFF is good at is re-interpreting things we all know, connecting the dots, and laying out why certain aspects of our common knowledge are troubling. That’s what today’s video attempts to do. We have come to see it as normal that actors all over the world seek to take advantage of US elections to get away with things. Why should they care what happens in this country? And what does it say about the true dimensions of US power that they do?

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How Screwed Is Saudi Arabia Under Biden?

Over the course of Trump’s presidency, outraged politicians across the US system took many principled stands against Saudi Arabia. With a president who was so shamefully subservient to crown prince Muhammad Bin Salman, Congress, and every democratic politician running for president was free to condemn the country, and propose a number of concrete ways to punish and humiliate the Kingdom’s out of control leadership. My guess is that it is going to be shocking how quickly all of that evaporates.

But, as I lay out in today’s video, that’s not necessarily a reason for despair. An emotionally satisfying blow-up with Saudi Arabia is vastly less important than the end of the invasion of Yemen and the speedy restoration of the Iran Nuclear Deal. That ought to be our true measure of success in dealing with Saudi Arabia.

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How Turkey Helps France Persecute Muslims | Everybody’s Lying About Islam 41

I wrote this video about a month ago, but then got cold feet. I’m glad I did, because the Vienna attack occurred the day I was going to upload it. That attack was initially sold as a serious, organized, multi-person act of terror. It’s now clear that it was committed by just another lone psycho. This video’s central message, that what we are seeing now is nothing compared to five years ago, and that Islamist terrorism has largely run its course, seems pretty clearly true to me.

One interesting aspect, that I left out of the video because it was already too long, is the difference between the US and French attitudes towards counter-terror. Even under Trump there’s a serious effort to move away from worrying about Islam. A Saudi military officer, likely affiliated with Al Qaeda, shot up a US military base last fall, killing 3 US soldiers! It’s been forgotten completely. The French government, on the other hand, is eager to make the actions of lone psychos the centerpiece of its domestic political agenda. What explains this difference?

Well, it’s quite cynical. The US military industrial complex, from defense contractors to the military to the media that promotes them, it’s all moving on to China. We don’t need to freak out about Islam to justify our pentagon budgets anymore. But France’s military budgets depend on fighting “Terrorism” in Africa. So they remain very big on demonizing Islam. Grim. But hard to deny.

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Trump’s Syria Withdrawal Hoax | Election 2020 12 | Syria 29

Syria makes me so sad. If you’ve been with me through the Trump years, you’ll remember that I’ve periodically celebrated Trump’s approach to Syria. The truth is I got played.

The fact that Trump hasn’t gone whole hog and launched Iraq 2003 2.0 in Syria is a good thing, but Obama accomplished that too. We were promised more. Over and over. Today’s video makes clear how little was delivered.

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Turkey Exposes The NATO Lie | S-400 | MIC 26

It really is amazing how committed Washington, DC can be to utterly fantastical narratives. If Turkey experiences real consequences for turning on the S-400 missile system it has purchased from Russia, it will be because of the damage this choice has done to US defense contractors who feel left out. But that won’t be the story that US congresspeople use to explain the collapse of the 70 year old relationship with Turkey. No, they’ll blame it on Turkey’s choosing to side with Russia.

DC has been trying to sell this idea for years. Despite the fact that Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015. Despite the fact that Russia and Turkey are involved in the most serious cold war between great powers that Western Eurasia has seen since the 1980s. Today’s video lays out how Russia and Turkey are now facing off against each other in not one but three separate regions. Today’s video also explains the real reason Turkey could be about to fall out of NATO.

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Azerbaijan is Not Turkey | Nagorno-Karabakh 2

YouTube comments are great. A week or so back I issued a pretty clear condemnation of Azerbaijan’s actions over the past ten days. They have launched a military attack on the Azeri regions that Armenia has occupied for the past three decades. I still believe that Azerbaijan is the driving force behind the new hostilities and that they should knock it off. But the outraged comments from Azeri nationalists helped me see that my analysis was neglecting some really important aspects of the conflict.

With every video I learn a ton more about every topic I cover. Not just about the actual events that have occurred, but about which events and actions are most important to the people involved. As irritating as an occasionally abusive comment section can be, I’ve learned a ton. Today’s video seems geared to piss everybody off, both Turks for acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, and Armenians for pointing out the parallels that their 1990s behavior presents with the Ottomans in 1915. It should be another fun and educational comment section!

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