Is a stage magician distracting us with conspiracy theories?

I really want to put full attention on long-term issues of human survival, human potential and science and technology, the issues I know best, which offer the most hope for a future much better than the present. But every time I try to bring people further in those directions, the realities of today’s political world come into play  -- for example, by creating obstacles to doing concrete things we need to do even just to stay alive. And so, as Yeshua asked long ago, I keep one eye on “the watch”... even watching CNN (as the President himself does!) but also other sources.

Lately, it is ever more amazing to me how far most people talking on CNN are out of touch with the larger realities in play here and now, let alone the far future.

For example, many are totally fixated on the theme that Donald Trump is a kind of stage magician, using distraction as his number one tool for manipulating us all, a kind of grand Fu Manchu, full of conspiracy theories which he uses to manipulate both us and himself. But guess what? That fixation is itself a grand distraction. And Trump himself is equally a victim, when he allows himself to be manipulated into the silly idea that Hillary Clinton is the great and sneaky shadowy spider manipulating everything sinister in the world. But there really are conspiracies out there, and if we relax a little and open our eyes a few things ought to be obvious to people.

Just a few days ago, there was a scandal about how the US bombed and killed a number of the Kurdish fighters working with us to fight ISIS. A guy appeared on TV to explain; “well, our friends told us there were ISIS bad guys there, so of course we bombed them.” Our friends?

“We must focus all of our attention on the one thing which really matters – the investigation and punishment of Russia. You have to understand, Putin is a thug, popular in Russia but unscrupulous in suppressing the real competition and free marketplace of ideas which define real democracy.”

Yet at least when I was watching, CNN said nothing at all about our great friend Erdogan. France24 did, and it was an incredible eye-opener to me. Not only is Erdogan less popular than Putin in his home country; he also has been using much more radical methods to suppress opposition, even the most highly constructive and peaceful opposition, much worse than Putin. France24 also told things about Erdogan’s background, easily verified by sources like wikipedia. The basic story: he and his ally Gul (not Gulen) were energetic leaders and founders of an Islamic party committed to the Islamization of all of Europe, apparently by a combination of force and subterfuge. Only after they spent some time in jail (an experience like what shaped Adolf Hitler’s career as well) did they emerge to start a larger, more powerful party AKP, which simply avoided discussion of their long-term aims. There is much, much more to support this analysis... Our great friends.

I certainly do not claim to know which groups control chemical weapons in Syria. But I was a bit nervous when another spokesman, like the one who explained our bombing of Kurds, said “We are absolutely certain about what happened because our friends told us.”  Hmm. Could it be the same friends?

The New York Times reported long ago about the international Moslem Brotherhood (of which the party in Egypt is just one branch, and ISIS likewise) getting primary funding from certain salafist billionnaires living in Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. (The 9/11 investigatoin revealed similar patterns in more detail.)  I did not realize exactly how close Erdogan was himself in a personal committed way to their goals, until France24 led me to check. And now, as of yesterday, Erdogan is exercising the next phase of his plan to close the noose, and eliminate most of what is left of freedom in Turkey.

What’s next? Not my business. I’m just an old retired guy, and what **I** do next will be some algebra for some math more fundamental than that quantum theory I was doing until about a month ago. A little topology, a little real analysis. The wheel will keep turning in many, many ways, and keep surprising all kinds of people.  But certainly, if I were Trump, I would worry much more about Erdogan and his network than about Hillary Clinton and Putin (important as both of those are in their own ways). 

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Among the many striking things we have learned about Erdogan lately, from France24, is that he used the exact same tactics on Turkish officials in NATO that Lamar Smith used on a very large part of NSF. Very strange tactics. He has been blatantly dishonest abut his use of Gulen as a scapegoat and excuse for massive purges of people who had nothing to do with Gilen, and he is now performing a kind of grand inquisition of all imams in Turkey to make them a reliable force. But... this is not my priority now; I probably would not have added this at all except for the noisy push I see now of folks
who want war with Russia...