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May 20, 2022Liked by Claire Berlinski

"USA is the manifestation of all I hate—Modernity, westernization, unipolarity, racism, imperialism, technocracy, individualism, capitalism."

Just a quick reminder that this man already has serious clout with ethno nationalists and aspiring theocrats in the United States. I believe he was the inspiration between the "reject modernity" memes that started to make the rounds 7 or 8 years ago. I also think he fertilized many of the Putin Apologists we have today.

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May 20, 2022Liked by Claire Berlinski

"Greene cuts a very glamorous image among those voters who live in trailers and shoot at opossums."

Dang, and here we've been scolded about how US Elites don't respect the American poor...

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May 20, 2022Liked by Claire Berlinski

Deep and dependable as always. Regarding subscriptions: I started out free, but after a week realized that the CG is unique in its breadth and depth. I read several online (and legacy) publications and the CosmoG is not only in a class by itself. Claire and company seem to put out more information than most mid-sized daily newspapers. I'm an old miser who watches every nickel. The CG is a good deal.

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This comment is so pleasing that it's going straight to our promotional material. Thank you! I'd say this means more to me than the money, but that would be a lie. No one with bills to pay can live on praise alone. But if CG didn't have stacks of bills sitting on our desk, I'm sure this would mean more to me than money.

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hi claire -- glad you liked the note and hope your vast and powerful promotions crew can make some hay with it though so far as i know an endorsement by me is worth somewhere around a plug nickel, at best.

i understand the money thing. i'm a miser by necessity, but if i do figure out how to win the lottery i'll make sure the first million goes to you. meantime if there's anything i can do to help spread the word about CG let me know.

with admiration

dave

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“🇹🇷 Does Erdoğan’s Turkey belong in NATO?”

Can the idiots who ask this question read a map?

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author

I often wonder this.

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Can people in Turkey read a map to see why Finland and Sweden should be in NATO?

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founding

Peter Zeihan provides an excellent explanation in this 7 minute video

https://youtu.be/zmNnyFpVNzc

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While I understand Zeihan position I personally would oppose throwing the Kurds under the bus and instead suggest an alternative strategy employed by Francois Mitterand which is to basically roll Turkey's veto. This was what was done when Margaret Thatcher attempted to assert to Britain veto during the Single European Act and the creation of the Euro. Mitterand's people just made up a legal opinion that said no Britain actually didn't have a veto even though every British govt official and lawyer had universally believed the UK had veto rights joining back to it's original membership in the EEC. In turn Mitterand convinced the other EU member states to agree with his made up opinion(It was technically the Italians as rotating Presidency of the EU at the time but Mitterand was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

The downside of this strategy of course is I think one could argue is one of the key moments that set Britain down the road to Brexit and the same might very well be true of Turkey except on a lot quicker pace and of course if you believe like Claire and WigWag that keeping Turkey in NATO is very important then of course you could say this is a very bad thing(Some might have said the same about Britain in the EU). Turkey like Britain could very well say fine if you don't respect our veto we are going to walk from the club and I could imagine Emmanuel "The Asshole" Macron like he did with the British telling Erdogan see ya(or perhaps my favorite a heavily accented "Goodbye Mr. Erdogan").

Claire once asked why I was so interested in French politics. One reason is at least the very strong willed Presidents like De Gaulle, Mitterand, and now Macron are all assholes but also from an American standpoint they all practiced a very distinctly American form of assholery which is rare in American politics but very common in American business, sports, and culture. That of a rich tough minded leader that doesn't give a damn whose toes he steps on. The 1980s "steely" Corporate Raider Gordon Gekko type who takes over failing companies and liquidates them unsentimentally to further his own wealth and power. Look at the way DeGaulle steely and coldly threw all the European settlers, pied noirs, colons under the bus in French Algiers to further his own vision of what France should be despite the French state earlier essentially recruiting said settlers in Algiers to further the colonial project in the 19th century. Just like a Gordon Gekko or Lawrence Garfield(in Other People's Money) corporate "raider"

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