The quid pro quo: F-16s

Fig. 1. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,^[1] fair use.

So if you were wondering that the real quid pro quo for Turkey’s assent to North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership for Sweden^[2] was, it seems it was F-16 fighter jets,^[3] which I expect will be used against Kurds.

[Joe] Biden administration officials have been careful not to suggest any explicit link between the fighter jets and Sweden’s [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] membership bid. But Ankara’s decision to drop its opposition sends a strong message to the US Congress, which must approve sending the F-16s, a move previously opposed by prominent members.

[Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan relented on Sweden’s membership of the military alliance after a flurry of diplomatic efforts on Monday to unlock a deal. Nato, EU and US officials had sought to find ways to win over the Turkish president.^[4]

There was some question over whether this deal would stick while the quid pro quo was not clear. The announced agreement was less than persuasive, lacking substantial tangible elements.^[5] But F-16s are tangible; my guess is the deal sticks.

“We’re having conversations with the administration,” [Bob] Menendez [chair of the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee] told Reuters. “If they can find a way to ensure that Turkey’s aggression against its neighbours ceases, which there has been a lull the last several months, that’s great but there has to be a permanent reality.”^[6]

By ‘neighbors,’ Bob Menendez likely principally means the Kurds who have long sought their own nation, which would be carved from Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq; it is hard to see how they are any less deserving than Zionists.

Joe Barnes, Roland Oliphant, and Tony Diver, “Ukraine to be offered ‘Nato-lite’ protection,” Telegraph, July 10, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/10/ukraine-nato-israel-style-security-guarantees/

Lily Bayer, “Turkey agrees to back Sweden’s NATO membership bid,” Politico, July 10, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-sweden-nato-jens-stoltenberg-agrees-to-back-swedens-membership-bid/

Emily Rauhala, Kareem Fahim, and Michael Birnbaum, “Turkey drops opposition to Sweden’s NATO bid on eve of summit,” Washington Post, July 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/10/turkey-nato-summit-eu-sweden/

Ishaan Tharoor, “A fateful summit 15 years ago hangs over the NATO meeting in Vilnius,” Washington Post, July 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/10/bucharest-2008-nato-summit-history-vilnius-putin-georgia-ukraine-membership/

Felicia Schwartz and Henry Foy, “US says it ‘intends to move forward’ with transfer of F-16 jets to Turkey,” Financial Times, July 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/cd8e7cc1-30c8-4b53-a605-8524d5815156

Neoliberalism

Academic repression

Fig. 1. “The Evolution of Intellectual Freedom.” Comic by Jorge Cham, 2011, via Episyllogism^[7] fair use.

I have moved articles having to do with academic freedom onto a new page and the page on ~~critical race theory~~ history below that page in the hierarchy.

When I look at higher education, I see what seems nearly like a perfect storm, indeed a quadruple-whammy. Capitalists, especially capitalist libertarians, valorize only the ‘education’ (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM]) that directly increases their profits while deriding all other inquiry (“basket weaving,” technically referring to anthropology and the arts, but for which, read the humanities and social sciences generally, never mind human science). Neoliberalism thus propels a reduction of education to job training (that is, preparation for serfdom), and when those jobs fail to materialize, as in my own case and as in far too many cases, people are naturally going to wonder what value they got from their student loans.

This combines with pervasive U.S. anti-intellectualism, a neoliberal reallocation of funds from the actual work of higher education and from teaching to administrations and to extracurricular activities, and the rise of white Christian nationalism to cast education alternatively as a “waste of money” and recently as undermining “Amerikkkan” values, especially with ~~critical Race Theory~~ history, but earlier with the counterculture, antiwar, and liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s.^[8]

Education thus has become less about inquiry, a quest for knowledge, and more about an ideological battleground where capitalists extract wealth from the rest of us first through student loans and then through serfdom. It has, tragically, in short, become a scam.

Megan Brenan, “Americans’ Confidence in Higher Education Down Sharply,” Gallup, July 11, 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx

Zachary Schermele, “Public Trust in Higher Ed Has Plummeted. Yes, Again,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 2023, https://www.chronicle.com/article/public-trust-in-higher-ed-has-plummeted-yes-again

Work

Fig. 1. The spectre of Death, in the form of a large skeleton, rises with the smoke and flames of the burning Asch Building during the Triangle fire, as people jump and fall to their death. Artist unknown, from International Ladies Garment Workers Union Photographs (1885-1985) at The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

I’m only about a third of the way through David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything.^[9] It’s a long read, weighing in at over 500 pages, so I have a long ways yet to go at a point in my life when I’m not in a good place to do such reading.

But one thing that emerges is that in many indigenous societies, rich people had to give away their wealth. They were not permitted to accumulate wealth over generations and could not use property to compel other people to do their bidding.^[10] It’s not like what we’ve been doing since the neolithic has been an improvement and it’s past time to remember the lessons the rich would rather have us forget.

Abha Bhattarai, “Businesses are cutting workers’ hours in a warning sign for the economy,” Washington Post, July 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/11/part-time-jobs-economy/

Tim Henderson, “Despite pandemic pay boost, low-wage workers still can’t afford basic needs,” Pennsylvania Capital-Star, July 11, 2023, https://www.penncapital-star.com/government-politics/despite-pandemic-pay-boost-low-wage-workers-still-cant-afford-basic-needs/

Gilead

Gun nuttery

Fig. 1. “Rally Against Gun Control ‘Come and Take it’ flag at the Minnesota State Capitol,” photograph by Fibonacci Blue [pseud.], April 28, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Mark Belko, “‘The makings of an epidemic:’ Officials sound alarm over large number of firearms seized at Pittsburgh International Airport checkpoints,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 11, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2023/07/11/pittsburgh-international-airport-firearms-transportation-security-administration-checkpoint-gun/stories/202307110044

Steve Hendrix, “Israeli protests return as Netanyahu restarts judicial overhaul,” Washington Post, July 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/11/israel-judicial-reform-protests-netanyahu/

^[1]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q ↩
^[2]Lily Bayer, “Turkey agrees to back Sweden’s NATO membership bid,” Politico, July 10, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-sweden-nato-jens-stoltenberg-agrees-to-back-swedens-membership-bid/; Emily Rauhala, Kareem Fahim, and Michael Birnbaum, “Turkey drops opposition to Sweden’s NATO bid on eve of summit,” Washington Post, July 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/10/turkey-nato-summit-eu-sweden/↩
^[3]Felicia Schwartz and Henry Foy, “US says it ‘intends to move forward’ with transfer of F-16 jets to Turkey,” Financial Times, July 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/cd8e7cc1-30c8-4b53-a605-8524d5815156 ↩
^[4]Felicia Schwartz and Henry Foy, “US says it ‘intends to move forward’ with transfer of F-16 jets to Turkey,” Financial Times, July 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/cd8e7cc1-30c8-4b53-a605-8524d5815156 ↩
^[5]Emily Rauhala, Kareem Fahim, and Michael Birnbaum, “Turkey drops opposition to Sweden’s NATO bid on eve of summit,” Washington Post, July 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/10/turkey-nato-summit-eu-sweden/↩
^[6]Felicia Schwartz and Henry Foy, “US says it ‘intends to move forward’ with transfer of F-16 jets to Turkey,” Financial Times, July 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/cd8e7cc1-30c8-4b53-a605-8524d5815156 ↩
^[7]Bob Lane, “Academic Freedom,” Episyllogism, November 3, 2016, https://boblane.com/2016/11/03/academic-freedom/↩
^[8]Ellen Schrecker, “The 50-Year War on Higher Education,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 14, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-50-year-war-on-higher-education ↩
^[9]David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021).↩
^[10]David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021).↩

Irregular Bullshit

Imperialism

Russia

Ukraine

Neoliberalism

Academic repression

Work

Gilead

Gun nuttery

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Illiberalism

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh

Infrastructure

Leave a Reply Cancel reply