8 Comments

Turkey was resolutely against the extension of NATO into Finland & Sweden. This move in Syria suspiciously looks like a bribe to get Turkey back on the NATO expansion train. What’s Turkish interest in this annexation?

Expand full comment
author

Have you been following the war against Syria? If you had you would know about Erdogan's neo-Ottoman ambitions. Turkey invaded Aleppo with the Turkish backed Al Tawhid brigade back in 2012, occupied the industrial sectors in Sheikh Najjar and stole the majority of machinery etc before re-establishing it inside Turkey. Since then Turkey has been on a creep mission to occupy and annex Syrian territory all along the northern border, building settlements in northern Idlib and even a separation wall for miles. All this under the pretext of national security - the threat from the Kurds.

Expand full comment

Yep, I know, they have been doing similar since the 1990s in Iraq under no fly zone rubric. It’s just notable that during this current weekend we’ve had Turkey go from no way Finland in nato to oh by the way let’s formalise the Balkanisation of Syria & suddenly Turkey is good with Finland or so it seems.

Expand full comment
author

The agreement to balkanise Syria was earlier in May pre-Finland in NATO. Erdogan flip flops endlessly but will always come in line with US policy eventually.

Expand full comment

Vanessa, why do you suppose that you are willing and able to use your foreign policy skepticism on the exp. injections, but Aaron Mate and Glenn Greenwald seem incapable of this parallel skepticism?

What is unique about 'health' or 'vaccines' that suspends all the same truth to power impulses?

Expand full comment
author

It is difficult to speculate. However I would question the motives of any so-called anti-imperialist who effectively supports one of the biggest imperialist projects in our history targeting the working class globally - and even pushes vaccines onto Africa where Big Pharma has used Africans as "lab rats" for decades.

Expand full comment

I cannot disagree with this.

And I watched as this issue split the Grayzone.

I watched Rania Kalek try to frame this as "why are we keeping the magical injections from poor people?" and that was a clue that a whole lot of people had not done even cursory research on the injections.

I watched Max go one way, and Ben Norton go the other.

I watched Aaron try to split the middle like the good middle child that he tries to be.

I think, Vanessa...that a lot of people fell for the branding of the word "vaccine", not realizing these are consumer medical products to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Now they can't walk it back without a giant reckoning.

I appreciate you, VB.

Expand full comment