The Turkish coup appears to have collapsed almost as quickly as it began, with government forces backing Turkish President (and Islamist scumbag) Tayyip Erdogan in the process of mopping up the last coup forces.
There’s a conspiracy theory floating around that Erdogan staged the coup for his own benefit so he could consolidate his grip on power. This I don’t believe, because the sort of effort required to carry this off (multiple military movements in both Ankara and Istanbul, control of tanks, helicopter and fighter aircraft units, coordination of seizing bridges, airports, TV stations, etc.), plus the significant amount of bloodshed involved, all strongly suggest that it wasn’t staged.
However, the speed with which is was carried out, and the even more rapid way in which it collapsed, suggests a more plausible conspiracy theory: It was a real coup carried out by elements of the Turkish military, but one that was compromised almost from the beginning from Erdogan sympathizers. Erdogan let the coup happen so he could consolidate his grip on power in the aftermath, which is precisely what happened, with purges of the military and judiciary (which doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with the coup).
Some puzzles:
Why bomb the parliament building, a target of no military significance with great negative connotations? (See also: Reichstag fire.)
How did the military censor FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube? I can’t imagine that there’s a giant switch in Ankara that says “Censor Social Media.” That’s more a National Intelligence (MIT) function, and presumably Erdogan has a had a chance to install his own people there. So how would the coup plotters infiltrate that, or the telecoms?
For that matter, who are the coup plotters? Except for the Emmanuel Goldstein-like character of Fethullah Gulen (who condemned the coup), none have been named. (Supposedly seven have escaped to Greece, AKA Turkey’s traditional enemy. How convenient.)
Why was there evidently no attempt made to kill Erdogen? If you have even partial control of the air force (which the coup apparently did), why not shoot him down as he’s flying back? Taking out the head of state is one of the biggest goals of a successful coup, and it doesn’t even seem to have been attempted here.
It’s entirely possibly that the failed coup is just what it appeared to be as it unraveled: an attempt by a faction of the military that fell just short of seizing control which was underdone by Erdogan’s remaining popularity among the general populace. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions…
After lots of government claims they were winning against the coup, we now have some hard evidence of pro-coup forces surrendering on the Bosphorus bridge in Istanbul, as shown in this video:
While the situation in Ankara may very well be different, this is pretty direct evidence that government forces are winning and that the coup has failed in Istanbul.
Strange that we still haven’t heard anything about who the plotters were, except Erdogan’s assertion that Fethullah Gulen is involved, something Gulen himself (who denounced the coup) has strongly denied…
Lots of conspiracy theories that Erdogan launched his own false flag operation to further consolidate power. Like just about all conspiracy theories, it’s unlikely and way too pat. Though bombing the Parliament building did seem a rather heavy-handed “Reichstag fire” moment…
The military regime is at least making noises about protecting human rights and the constitutional state, which is a good sign.
The army already controls the TV stations and bridges, shut down the airport, successfully disarmed police in Istanbul, and are doing low “fuck you, we’re in charge” plane and helicopter passes over Ankara. I’d say it’s probably all over but the shouting and moping up token resistance from Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party, despite Erdogan’s spokesmen claiming that the coup attempt has been “repelled.”
This is not the first coup in Turkey’s history; indeed, historically they’ve played the roll as a check and balance to Islamic fundamentalism and maintaining Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s vision of a secular Turkish state. Unlike the rest of the Middle East, after a few months or years, the Turkish military relinquishes control back to a (secular) government.
Erdogan tried to prevent this through repeated purges of the military. It appears that he failed.
Meanwhile, Obama continues his amazing streak of backing losers.
The scene there seems a bit chaotic, with intermittent small arms fire:
If this video is any indication, people out on the streets seem more festive than resistant:
Video of Turkish tanks (I’m guessing Leopard 2s, the most modern tanks in Turkey’s armed forces) rolling in the streets:
Here, on the other hand, we see (I think) an M-60 Patton tank just tell protestors “Fuck you and fuck your car” while they beat at it ineffectually with (I kid you not) long sticks (and later an APC does the same thing):
This “death from above” video is getting a lot of play on YouTube. The title says this is an AH-1 Helicopter attacking a police station, which makes more sense than it being an F-16 (as labeled in other copies of the video):
Another day, another Democratic congresscritter indicted. “Corrine Brown, the House rep from the 5th District of Florida, was indicted (along with Ronnie Simmons, her chief of staff) on federal charges of mail and wire fraud.”
Mir Islam, 22, of New York, N.Y., was sentenced today to 24 months in prison on three federal charges stemming from a conspiracy to commit various crimes related to the “swatting” and “doxing” of dozens of victims, and from a false bomb threat made against a university in Arizona and a pattern of online harassment constituting cyber-stalking against a university student, all occurring between February and September 2013.
Mr. Islam and his (thus far unindicted) co-conspirators seemed to target people who wrote about convicted felon Brett Kimberlin.
Robert Stacy McCain also links to computer security expert Brian Krebs, who goes into more detail on the trial and how Islam et. al. obtained information about their victims.
There’s so much Clinton Corruption news dropping I haven’t had time to sift through it all.
Take, for example, this 90 page document, evidently compiled by the 4Chan folks from publicly available sources. I’ve only started go through this. (A lot of it looks like unsourced speculation from the Chan Clan, so caveat lector.)
What would happen to Clinton if she had broken information secrecy rules while in the military. “To say that Hillary Clinton is unfit to be commander-in-chief is to give her too much credit. It implies that she might be fit for other positions of responsibility. She’s not fit to be POTUS, and she’s not fit to be a private. It’s time for her to slink back to her foundation, make her speeches, and retire to private life.”
Slashdot is hardly a hotbed of conservative thought, but look at this thread on Clinton’s statement on H1B visas. All the highest rated comments are how people are fed up with Hillary’s obvious lies and how they won’t be voting for her.
There’s are persistent rumors that Donald Trump might (emphasis on the might) tap Newt Gingrich as his running mate, an idea that gained more currency with Gingrich scheduled to appear with Trump on the campaign trail. Trump’s manifest shortcomings and weird appeal has been covered at length by now, so lets talk about Gingrich.
Though a running mate’s primary constitutional duty is to step in and act as President in the event of the death or impeachment of the sitting President (plus break the occasional tie in the senate), a VP pick is supposed to accomplish three political tasks: Make it easier to win the general election (either by securing their home state or making inroads into a key electoral demographic), be the “bad cop” of the campaign (which ain’t happening, since Trump’s rhetorical style makes him his own bad cop), and to “balance the ticket,” either geographically (Kennedy/Johnson), ideologically (Dukakis/Bentsen), age and experience (Obama/Biden) or some other way. Gingrich would balance the ticket geographically (though if Trump actually needed Gingrich to win Georgia or any of the rest of the “deep” South, his campaign would be in serious trouble), but more importantly would provide a great deal of balance in terms of experience and insider knowledge.
Though stale as to the identities and proclivities of the current crop of insiders, as a former Speaker of the House, Gingrich is a master of the process and minutia of how Capitol Hill actually works. In his heyday, Gingrich was the most effective Republican speaker in my lifetime by a good measure, and possibly the most effective ever (depending on your opinion of Joseph Gurney Cannon, whose career I am not intimately familiar with). A Vice President Gingrich would greatly help cover up Trump’s many blindspots and areas of ignorance, as well as someone who could interface with the House and Senate.
In his heyday, Gingrich was one of the staunchest conservatives in the land. The problem is that Gingrich’s heyday was 1994 (when he unveiled the contract with America and helped Republicans retake the House for the first time since 1952) to 1999 (when he stepped down as Speaker). Since then he’s reinvented himself as an idea-a-minute futurist, offering a blur of interesting ideas, many of which were frequently innovative (but not always good). There’s no question that Gingrich still has the smarts to be an effective VP, but does he still have the focus?
A Trump/Gingrich ticket would probably be the most variable Presidential ticket ever. You could see a dozen innovative initiatives or an explosion of meaningless rhetoric. Trump might offload many policy tasks onto Gingrich (who then might do an excellent job of furthering the Republican agenda), or he might ignore him entirely. Gingrich is one of the very few plausible Trump running mates who would make the ticket more unpredictable.
About the only thing it wouldn’t be is boring.
One final bit of irony would be that liberals would have to refer to Gingrich as the kinder, gentler half of the ticket, something that might have made their heads explode in 1998…
“Until blacks start changing these pathologies, the whole ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, with its insistence that everyone has to change except for blacks themselves is nothing more than Progressive kabuki theater aimed at diverting attention from the fact that Democrats are facilitating self-destructive behaviors in the black community and that blacks are using the Democrat propaganda machine as an excuse to avoid the terrible (but not insurmountable) challenges that really claim black lives.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Who, exactly, is in charge of these cities and city agencies about which African Americans do have many legitimate complaints? Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago: Not exactly famous enclaves of conservative Republican political dominance. Because Dallas is in Texas, people sometimes forget that it is a city like any other American city, and Democrat-dominated. In Dallas, as in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit, that Democrat domination is due in great part to a black Democratic voting bloc.
Eventually, someone is going to figure out that the black progressives protesting municipal arrangements in places such as Baltimore are protesting the municipal arrangements created by black progressives working for the interests of the Democratic party. Dallas’s racial politics aren’t as one-sided as Detroit’s, and neither are its party politics; it is Democratic, but not as lopsidedly Democratic as, say, Philadelphia. It even has had a Republican mayor (the office is technically nonpartisan) within living memory. No doubt somebody in Dallas already is trying to figure out a way to blame that mayor for the murder of those five police officers.
“Friends and family tell us that Alton Sterling was a great guy. That may well be the case, but he is also a convicted sex offender felon with a violent temper, who had six arrests for battery, two domestic violence charges, multiple illegal weapons charges, and who had fought with police over weapons before.”
SuperGenius tries to rob gas station, ends up shooting himself in the groin. I also wonder if he’s the towering intellect that managed to clip his own driver’s side mirror at the pump in the video…
