Update from Turkey, with video--and a request
I just went to the headquarters of the IHH, the group that sponsored the Mavi Marmara, to ask the happy folks there a few obvious questions that I haven't seen anyone else putting to them. I brought my friend Okan Altiparmak, a filmmaker. We shot about three hours of footage. It was most instructive.
It was interesting for me to realize that If I had just been taking notes, I would have missed some important details. It was only when I watched all of the footage that I noticed some intriguing remarks, like this:
Claire: It’s France’s best-known counter-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Brougieres, who’s said unequivocally that IHH is a front organization for Islamist financing of terrorist groups in Chechnya, in Bosnia …
Free Gaza Campaign Coordinator: If you’re looking through the glasses of the West, and you think those people who struggle for independence against Serbia, in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion, in Iraq against the American invasion, Palestinians against Israel, then you can look at it that way, but we don’t consider them terrorist groups.
How could I have missed that, you ask? I'm asking that myself. I usually do record interviews, for just this reason: Very often you don't hear the most important words. You're too busy thinking about what someone just said or what you're about to say. This, I suppose, is probably true of every conversation we have.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, taken together, these videos tell a great deal of the story, or at least enough of it to pass judgment. Unfortunately, neither I nor Okan have the time or budget to edit them and get them into the public realm quickly. So we made a decision: We're just putting everything up, unedited. We're hoping there are other people out there who will see why these are important, edit them into manageable chunks, and get them widely disseminated. A crowd-sourcing job, in other words.
I've provided some transcripts on the website, but really every word was revealing in its own way. It may be naive, but we do think that a large number of people who aren't quite sure what to make of the IHH and its supporters would understand it all pretty well if they could just watch these.
Does anyone here at Ricochet want to help with this? Think about who you know who might want to lend us a hand. Spread the word. Share the link on Facebook, on Twitter. It kills me to think of this stuff going unnoticed because we couldn't edit it fast enough.
The video is uploading now, and should be up in its entirety by the end of the day.
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May '10
Re: Update from Turkey, with video--and a request
I sent a note to Breitbart's Big Government that this would be worth their while checking out. Good luck.
Re: Update from Turkey, with video--and a request
Thanks, Steve. By the way, the folks at Ricochet have my phone number if anyone who wants to help us with this would like to chat.