On Versailles, the Gypsy Circus, the Jews of Europe, and the “Relocation” of the Tomb of Suleyman Shah

 

bassins_versailles_statue (1)I spent the weekend with my family: my father, my brother, and my nephew Leo (age five, and a typically healthy, energetic five-year-old boy.) My brother and his Italian wife Cristina are now on a rotation to Brindisi, waiting for Cristina — a UN Peacekeeper — to be deployed to the next kind of place UN Peacekeepers get deployed.

I determined that we must all to Versailles, this on the grounds that it is rare for us all to be together on a brilliantly sunny Sunday afternoon in Paris; it would be fun and educational; it would get us all out of the house; that this would be the first time in years all of our immediate family (or what’s left of it) had gone on an excursion; and that one day I want Leo to remember — however dimly — his grandpa David, his Daddy, and his Weird Aunt Claire the Cat Lady doing something fun together in Paris.

Now, I had fully intended to write about that, but events have overtaken me, so I must compress that one down to the essentials. Ladies and Gentlemen of Ricochet, if you have children, I am in awe. That is hard work. And that’s the most understated way I can put it.

I am pleased to say that our expedition was a success. No one had to fish Leo out of the Swan Pond. No one tumbled on to the third rail of the RER. No one felt his parenting skills had been undermined (I hope: I may have screwed up for a moment there when I failed to understand that my brother was trying to inculcate a species of table manners in his son that I didn’t fully understand; but hey, I’m not Italian. I respect Italian wisdom on table manners. The mistake was honest, and I think I walked that cat back fast enough that I didn’t leave Leo completely bollixed-up for life.) No one ended up crying. Everyone got a reasonable amount of the kind of food he liked to eat; there were no total meltdowns involving any member of my family; and all three generations of the Berlinski family saw Versailles together.

No hats or umbrellas were lost. Everyone (but me) was dressed warmly enough. No one — I hope — will end up discussing this day many years from now with his Legotherapist, or swearing this would be the last time we’d ever do anything like that. Nothing was on strike. It was easy to rent bikes. While some parts were under renovation, everyone left with an age-appropriate sense of “What Versailles basically looks like.” (If you’re five, it looks like an appealing thing to build with Legos.) And it didn’t break anyone’s budget. Frankly, this was as good as a family outing gets, and to those of you who do this every weekend, all I can say is: You do have my respect the way I reckon you must feel you deep-down should.

Anyway, I was going to write about this, as well as Saturday’s excursion to the local gipsy circus, and what it suggested to me about “how to have a shrewd, thoughtful pro-natalism policy” (France definitely has one).

I have much to say, so remind me to make this case later. In the meantime, you don’t need subtitles to watch this video; but sadly, it doesn’t capture the whole experience, so it  might not totally persuade you of my point. The key to a high birth rate it is to have cities with tons of affordable things a family might do together on the weekend that are every bit as fun for every member of the family as being single and never having kids. Even if that video doesn’t make it clear, take it from me: it was delightful enough to smash every stereotype about the unrelenting drudgery of childrearing. It so thoroughly delighted the audience — every member, of every age — that I highly doubt anyone who saw it will ever argue with a clear conscience that France would be better off should the Roma be evicted.

Parenthetically, I’ve been pleased to see that the media narrative has swung from “Jews must flee Europe,” to “Beg pardon? You didn’t really say that, did you?”

[F]or many Jews, such remarks ignore, and even insult, the acceptance they feel in the countries where they and their families have often lived for generations.

“We are a little confused by this call, which is basically like a call to surrender to terror,” said Arie Zuckerman, senior executive at the European Jewish Congress. “It may send a wrong message to the leaders of Europe.” Menachem Margolin, general director of the European Jewish Association, said Mr. Netanyahu is wrong in suggesting that Jews can’t live safely in Europe. “To come out with this kind of statement after each attack is unacceptable,” Rabbi Margolin said.

Other Jews in Europe are reacting the same way. Sydney Schreiber, a Canadian attorney who moved to Brussels in 1992, called Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks appalling, complaining of “a statement that can be interpreted as meaning that Jews don’t belong in Europe.”

As you know, I’m with them. We’ll stay here, with the Roma, thanks. And with everyone else. Rule number 1: Terrorist attacks make terrorists flee, not us.

But all of that is by-the-by, even if I’d planned to have much to say. I’d left my phone at home to focus on my family. When I returned, I skimmed through the news and realized that never again must I step away from the news for even a minute. Something beyond bizarre had happened. It was reported thus:

Turkey Evacuates Suleyman Shah Tomb in Syria 

To say I was surprised wouldn’t do this justice. I have no idea if this item is getting the play it deserves in the US, but I doubt it. What was in the news was this:

US Shoppers warned after Shabab Mall Threat

That’s the sort of item that tends to crowd out foreign news, so I wonder if anyone back home heard about the evacuation of Suleyman Shah. However, in my eyes, that is as weird a headline as this would be:

Homeland Security and US Special Forces Evacuates US Shopping Malls 

Followed by a slew of analysis that offers either no real explanation of what happened and why, or analysis that’s in outright conflict.

I have no idea what really happened. Nor could I possibly, nor could any or the reporters who are bringing you the news about this story, because I simply don’t believe any party to it is speaking to the media in the aim of providing a useful, chronological account of the events.

But anyone who pays any attention to Turkey grasps that something weird, huge, and meaningful happened; and knows we have ten times as many questions about this as answers. I’ll offer you a selection of the analyses on offer. Perhaps you’ll have a favorite. That’s all it could be: an analysis that best matches your sense of what must be going on. I suggest reading them only on the principle that this is obviously big, so it might be worthwhile to have a sense of why. It’s certainly notable that an item like this barely ranks in the US media, even though — in my judgment — this probably means something extremely significant.

A commenter at the Guardian, of course, sees this is a sign of hope:

The relocation of Suleyman Shah: the way forward in the Middle East?

So for once we should praise the Turkish government whole-heartedly. Its little military expedition has ensured, with imagination and efficiency, that in a part of the world that is not only self-sufficient in causes for war and atrocity, but a net exporter of such causes to the rest of us, one possible reason for people to kill one another has been safely moved out of play.

The Financial Times sums it up thus:

“It’s an upside-down world and no one knows who are really allies in Syria’s war,” said one opposition activist who asked not to be named.

Alexander Christie-Miller — one of the best foreign reporters in Turkey — is probably right about the following:

The timing of the operation may be linked to fears that the tomb was to have been targeted by Isis, since it came five days after the Turkish government reached an agreement with the US to train rebels on Turkish soil to fight the jihadist group. “Those rebels are going to be fighting Isis, so they had to get their people out,” Aaron Stein, at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said.

Turkey is preparing for a general election on June 7, and so any invasion of the hallowed site, either by Isis or Kurdish forces, would have been acutely embarrassing for the government.

Turkey’s pro-government media went to great lengths to portray the operation as a victory, publishing photographs of soldiers raising the country’s red star and crescent at the tomb’s intended new location inside Syrian territory, opposite the Turkish town of Esmeler.

The decision to relocate it within Syria appears intended to convey the message to nationalist voters that Turkey is not ceding territory, Mr Stein said. The Turkish government had previously vowed to defend the tomb.

However, opposition politicians lambasted the government yesterday (Sunday). “We are losing our lands without fighting for the first time in the 90-year history of the republic. This is not acceptable,” Gursel Tekin, the secretary-general of the main opposition Republican People’s party, said at a press conference

So-called Turkish nationalists (a group that would take me a long time to explain, but let’s just say their response does not surprise me), are enraged:

The Nationalist Movement Party’s deputy chairman, Cemal Adan, also slammed the government for “making Turkey seem weak in the region.”

The main opposition CHP does not seem thrilled, either:

Withdrawal from territory legally considered Turkish prompted a major outcry from opposition parties and the main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) called government leaders ‘deserters.’ CHP deputy Gursel Tekin said Turkey lost territory for the first time, without putting up a fight, while another CHP deputy Akif Hamzacebi called for Davutoglu’s immediate resignation.

Nor is Assad best-pleased:

Syrian state media described the incursion as “flagrant aggression”.

“Turkey goes beyond supporting ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist gangs to launch a blatant aggression on Syrian territory,” state-run SANA news said, referring to the alternate name of ISIL.

One thing seems reasonably clear: Turkey has kept the lines of communication open with every player in the immediate region:

Davutoğlu said the government communicated with groups inside Syria, including the Free Syrian Army, in order to avoid civilian casualties during the operation but did not cite the Democratic Union Party (PYD) which controls the area from which the Turkish army crossed over border to evacuate the troops protecting the Tomb of Süleyman Şah. The Turkish government views the PYD with deep suspicion because of its ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).“All parties were fully aware that any intervention or blockage of this operation would have received the harshest response,” Davutoğlu said, underlining that they would have never hesitated to use the deterrence capacity of the Turkish army if anyone had interfered with the operation.A PYD official said late Feb. 21 that the Turkish army sought cooperation of their armed forces before the operation started as the group controls the Kobane region.

Davutoğlu is assuring the public it was a triumph:

“It was a highly successful operation to the last degree,” he said, emphasising that the mission was fully in line with international law.

Davutoglu congratulated the Turkish army on the success of an operation that he said had posed “considerable potential risks.”

The YPD is taking credit:

Around 300 armed Syrian Kurdish fighters provided a security corridor for Turkish troops that staged an incursion to evacuate a Turkish-held tomb in northern Syria, witnesses in the region say. Fighters from People’s Protection Units (YPG) reportedly created a five-kilometer long corridor while Turkish units entered the Rojava canton of Kobane through the Mürşitpınar border gate en route to the Tomb of Süleyman Şah.

Everyone seems to agree there was a casualty:

The Turkish military said in a statement that there had been no clashes during the operation, the first such ground incursion by Turkish troops into Syria, but that one soldier had been killed in an accident.

“Unfortunately we had one casualty and this was not as a result of a clash but due to an accident that happened at the beginning of the operation,” Davutoglu said at a news conference in Ankara.

Aaron Stein — a sober and responsible analyst, and I trust him to be paying attention — offers this longer analysis, which may be summed up as, “Goodness. Hard to figure this one out.” (Worth reading, but many assertions would be easier to assess if supported with links or notes.)

Perhaps, one day, I’ll read a good historian’s account of the “overnight “Şah Fırat”’ evacuation, as it’s being called. I doubt that anyone who is trying to explain this is in a position to understand how something this significant could have happened: The people who know aren’t talking.

But clearly: Something very significant happened.

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  1. user_409996 Member
    user_409996
    @

    Danny,

    Can I recommend a book to you?

    A Subtreasury of American Humor (Copyright 1941 by E.B White  and Katherine S. White, Coward-McCann, Inc)

    The link is to AbeBooks, and as you can see, they’ve multiple copies reasonably priced.

    I’d recommend William Saroyan’s story The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse (p. 788), and the Mark Twain story His Grandfather’s Old Ram to start.

    Get the 1941 hardcover print.  Mine was passed down until it showed up at a free Book Exchange at Mom’s co-op  and is still in good shape.

    • #31
  2. user_891102 Member
    user_891102
    @DannyAlexander

    #30 iWc

    I’m in vigorous agreement with you on the pleading-with-Claire topic.

    Indeed, my comment back earlier in the thread was aimed at getting her to *augment* her data-set, what with her perplexing (dare I say near-heart-rending) declared conclusion.

    • #32
  3. user_409996 Member
    user_409996
    @

    Speaking of Dour Litvaks, James Gawron, this image of a mural depicting Galilee is from Beth Hamedrash Hagedol (The House of Great Study) on Norfolk Street just north of Grand Street in the Lower East Side.

    Rabbi Jacob Joseph was asked by the Jewish community that dominated the Lower East Side at that time to come and serve as their Chief Rabbi, to help reconcile the Litvak and the Galicieners.  I have read that he did not succeed.

    When he died in 1902, 25,000 Jews formed a funeral procession winding down Grand Street (not a major thoroughfare even today) on foot, bearing and following his coffin.  Legend has it that on the day of the funeral, some Russian factory workers watching this jeered at the Jews in that procession.  Some of those 5 Roman legions worth of mourners, quite possibly the kind of tough union organizers whose grandchildren may have helped form the IDF, broke off, and the police had to break up the street fight.

    The mural is in such bad shape because a later congregation removed the stained glass windows that were in Beth Hamedrash Hagadol at the time and replaced them with clear glass, through which direct sunlight poured on the mural for decades.  Rain and also got in.  Finally, I have been told that there was a fire at the building in 1999 and the Fire Department peeled a portion of the roof back to pour water on the fire.

    Near the old Ark were what I think were copies of the Talmud printed in Vilnius in the 1920’s.

    Detail, Galil, Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, Small

    • #33
  4. user_891102 Member
    user_891102
    @DannyAlexander

    #31 Edward Smith

    Noted and appreciated.

    Just to be clear, I’m of Lithuanian Jewish *heritage,* but I’m Boston-born and -raised. My Boston-born/-raised maternal grandfather was an ADSEC combat surgeon at the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. My Wharton, TX-born/Oklahoma City-raised paternal grandfather was *the* leader of almost all the first-wave computerization of the Federal government from 1946 through 1964. (Both grandmothers were Boston-born/-raised.) So the “Dour Litvak” thing dates back to the great-grandparental generation.

    Accordingly, I’m right there with you on the American humor-reading front.

    Does the volume you recommend contain any Thurber?
    If you haven’t read his “My Life and Hard Times,” I heartily recommend.

    On the racier front, PJ O’Rourke’s first notable opus, “The National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody” is a relatively more recent classic — and the wellspring for more than a few character names that came to life later on in “Animal House.”

    • #34
  5. user_409996 Member
    user_409996
    @

    Danny Alexander:#31Edward Smith

    Noted and appreciated.

    Just to be clear, I’m of Lithuanian Jewish *heritage,* but I’m Boston-born and -raised. My Boston-born/-raised maternal grandfather was an ADSEC combat surgeon at the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. My Wharton, TX-born/Oklahoma City-raised paternal grandfather was *the* leader of almost all the first-wave computerization of the Federal government from 1946 through 1964. (Both grandmothers were Boston-born/-raised.) So the “Dour Litvak” thing dates back to the great-grandparental generation.

    Accordingly, I’m right there with you on the American humor-reading front.

    Does the volume you recommend contain any Thurber? If you haven’t read his “My Life and Hard Times,” I heartily recommend.

    On the racier front, PJ O’Rourke’s first notable opus, “The National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody” is a relatively more recent classic — and the wellspring for more than a few character names that came to life later on in “Animal House.”

    Oh, yes, it most certainly does have Thurber.

    Here’s a picture.  It saves time typing (Droid S3’s are wonderful!).

    Sub-Treasury of Humor, 1941, Index, James Thurber

    • #35
  6. blank generation member Inactive
    blank generation member
    @blankgenerationmember

    Edward Smith:

    Claire Berlinski:

    Edward Smith:By the way, I passed that video of the Gypsy Circus onto a friend from church,

    If I hadn’t been sidetracked by Versailles, the challenge of explaining French and European history to a Lego-obsessed five-year-old,* and the alternative-reality news bombshell I found upon my return, this post would have been all about the Gypsy Circus. It was one of my greatest discoveries in Paris, ever–and I’d never have found it had I not been looking for “a great place to take a kid on a rainy weekend afternoon.”

    I’m almost reluctant to write too much about it, though, for fear that the next time I go there, it will be spoiled by tourists. I couldn’t find a video that captured it. But it was so charming, so hilarious, so innocent (for the kids), so sly (for the adults), and so ingeniously designed to make the whole family glad they spent a day together that I really felt it deserved a post–or a novel–or its own.

    *You know, kids really know nothing. It’s amazing how much parents have to teach them–totally from scratch. How would the parents of Ricochet deal with seeing those memorials to the dead, which never fail to shock–the walls and walls and walls full of names–and trying to explain to a five-year-old why they all died? How do you answer, “But why did the Germans want to take over the world?”

    I thought my father did a fine job on that. Experience, I guess. “Because they thought they could.”

    Accurate, and just about right for a five-year-old. Fortunately, he was soon distracted by the story of the way people used to go to the bathroom in the Court of Louis XIV.

    Did your brother mention the splinters involved? And the riches to be gleamed by the ones who collected the Night Soil? He can bring up the significance of outhouses in archeology later.

    He can also introduce your nephew to a book related to this specific topic, Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, with that delicious subplot about Silas Wegg (I’d love to see the gravestone Dickens copied that name off of) and his quest for his long lost leg bone – now in the possession of Mr. Venus (deliciously played by Timothy Spall in the 1998 mini-series – and boy did that mini-series gives us a sense of the ever-present dust and ash).

    Let’s not forget the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon.   Many funny stories there.

    • #36
  7. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    I hope that boy got some cake, is all.

    • #37
  8. user_645 Member
    user_645
    @Claire

    Zafar:I hope that boy got some cake, is all.

    Of course he did, but only after we were quite sure he’d had enough running around the gardens and a proper meal first. I may not be the most experienced “shepherd of five-year-old kids” on Ricochet, but even I know that you don’t give them the cake first. That would have made him totally hyper and unable to sit through a proper meal. This, in turn, would have made grandpa lose it, and the day would have been shot. (Also, we had to keep in mind that if a report of “cake first” had somehow got back to his mom —and you can’t ask a five-year-old to keep a secret–we would have been toast.)

    Grandpa, however, got a small cookie as a reward for putting on a warm coat before leaving the apartment. Getting him to wear a warm coat without being offended that his daughter was telling him to put on a warm coat–and thus doing exactly the opposite to assert his independence–was quite the achievement. As was making sure that he didn’t let Leo see that cookie and demand one of his own.

    I think about all of you who keep track of many kids, day in, day out, and all I can say is–well, first: thank you. Yes, I am quite aware that you’re doing the most important work there is. And quite aware that demography is destiny, and that I didn’t hold up my end on this one.

    Second: You know that business about women who want to “have it all?” That’s the biggest bull-honky I’ve ever heard. I’m not so conservative that I think there’s a thing wrong with a stay-at-home father, but I am definitely so conservative (or so “not totally blind”) that I can see that one parent has simply got to do that. Anyone who tells me a five-year-old doesn’t require full-time attention–or that this kind of attention is compatible with anything else, no less “all,” is just out of his ever-loving gourd.

    • #38
  9. user_645 Member
    user_645
    @Claire

    iWc:

    OK, for those of you pleading with me to get out of Europe. Guys. I did write the book on it. Literally. It’s not as if the idea of “problems in Europe” is new to me. I like to think–in my moments of extreme, lunatic and totally outsized grandiosity–that I was the one who brought them to your attention. Anyway: opportunity to sell a book spotted. 

    However: Also an opportunity to tell you something you should know: Written in 2005. And the single worst mistake of my career was not fighting for the title I gave that book, which was “Blackmailed by History.” I was told, “That will never sell, the sales force doesn’t like it–the word “History” doesn’t sell.” I caved. I should have said, “My title or it doesn’t get published.” Because that title was important.

    Now 2015. Sadly, in between, the publishing market has changed, and books have become much harder to sell. So has the market for journalism from abroad. I couldn’t make a living by reporting from Europe now.

    The problems in Europe are not the same as they were in 2005. I say this–I like to think–as both a decent historian and a decent trend-spotter, although I’ve missed some hugely important ones.

    The problems are not what they were then. The problem that really strikes me as the most dangerous is this one: the publishing market has changed. Books have become much harder to sell. And there’s no market for foreign journalism anymore.

    Now, you can say, “Well, of course that strikes you as the most dangerous–it is, obviously, to you.”

    Maybe.

    Or maybe not.

    I do know that if someone paid me as much as I got paid to write that book then, you’d be hearing about what I see in Europe in 2015, not 2005.

    You’d be getting a lot of journalism from me–and, I hope, good books. You’d also be getting them from lots of other people.

    My big worry now is “tons of data, flying around without context, and the creation of huge financial incentives for people like me to grab your attention with sensationalism, rather than getting you to focus, sensibly, on the boring stuff.”

    Want to know some boring stuff? I think it’s quite important. But I’ll never sell it.I’ve labored for ages on “French crime data and the way they collect statistics.” Really worked on it. And I have sensible reasons for thinking, “I’ll be fine here.”

    But I am very worried about the overwhelming post-2005 trend:

    1) The collapse in the market for journalism from abroad;

    2) The decline in its quality;

    3) The fact–and this is just a fact–that I know I can make money if I walk into a terrorist attack in Paris. But not if I walk into one in Turkey. I’m not evil. So of course I don’t hope I walk into another one anywhere, ever again. Nor do I expect it in Paris But I also now know that “terrorism in Paris”=huge media coverage=”great day for my bank account.” I’m a journalist, so it’s not wrong for me to report on what I see. But something is very wrong when there’s no market for the rest of what I see.

    4) This is a fact, too, and I can document it with financial records if you think I’m nuts: No one wants reporting from Turkey. They did, when I first got there. Not anymore.

    5) The quality of all reporting, it seems to me, has gone down: It’s been replaced with far too much opinion. And overseas, it’s all too often done by people who haven’t lived there for a long time, don’t speak the language, don’t know the history, don’t know how the government works, don’t know the first thing about statistics, and know–because all journalists do–that now, it’s all about clicks, so none of that matters.

    6) I also know–for a fact–that I could make good money selling quite a number of “narratives” that completely scare the daylights out of Americans. From Ebola hysteria to “Jews fleeing Europe” hysteria to vaccine hysteria. All three are based on something that are real causes for alarm. Ebola is a terrifying disease. Anti-Semitism in Europe is real. And yes, our government has given us reason to be suspicious about vaccines, although fortunately, no one remembers that, and I’m not going to remind them.

    7) I also know–for a fact–that when people really want to know what’s going on in a place I’m living, the ones who call me (and pay me well) are the investors, not the media editors. Nothing at all wrong with that: That’s exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. But something very wrong with the way investors with a real stake in getting it seems to be the only ones paying attention to the important stories–when in fact, we make our foreign policy, not Wall Street.

    Now, I could be confusing “myself” and “the world.” But I know that when someone like me notices how easy it is to sell “terrorism in Paris,” as opposed to “all the other stories in France,” we have a very dangerous incentive scheme at work. I also know that France should be the easiest country from which to sell news, except maybe for another country in the Anglosphere. there’s no excuse for the amount of “bad coverage” I see from France.

    My big worry is people becoming unable to do the thing that Westerners once managed to rule the world by doing: Looking at things other than themselves. Asking, “How does that work? Going to faraway lands to study them, rather than learning about them from television and the Internet. Taking seriously the idea that the American poswar security architecture is not a game, and if you are truly concerned about the fate of Jews in Europe, “flee” is not the right solution: It’s “Emigrate en masse to Europe, strengthen NATO, and look at the things no one wants to look at: our role in this psychodrama in which terrorists feed off the media, and vice-versa.”

    Trying to replace the old and broken models of journalism with ones that seem to be making Americans less informed about the most important things–which aren’t cat vidoes–that, to me, is the great challenge of the age we’re in.

    And it’s a moral challenge for me, personally: I have to make the rent, but I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve turned down to work for “think tanks” that traffic in sensationalism and are designed, basically, to “lobby Americans,” “place op-eds in the major media,” and and “get the American public as far away from fact and toward “a narrative” as possible.

    This worries me. And I wish I knew how to write a best-selling book about what it means–although I don’t, yet.

    • #39
  10. Ricochet Inactive
    Ricochet
    @KermitHoffpauir

    Claire Berlinski:

    iWc:

    OK, for those of you pleading with me to get out of Europe. Guys. I did write the book on it. Literally. It’s not as if the idea of “problems in Europe” is new to me. I like to think–in my moments of extreme, lunatic and totally outsized grandiosity–that I was the one who brought them to your attention. Anyway: opportunity to sell a book spotted.

    However: Also an opportunity to tell you something you should know: Written in 2005. And the single worst mistake of my career was not fighting for the title I gave that book, which was “Blackmailed by History.” I was told, “That will never sell, the sales force doesn’t like it–the word “History” doesn’t sell.” I caved. I should have said, “My title or it doesn’t get published.” Because that title was important.

    Now 2015. Sadly, in between, the publishing market has changed, and books have become much harder to sell. So has the market for journalism from abroad. I couldn’t make a living by reporting from Europe now.

    The problems in Europe are not the same as they were in 2005. I say this–I like to think–as both a decent historian and a decent trend-spotter, although I’ve missed some hugely important ones.

    The problems are not what they were then. The problem that really strikes me as the most dangerous is this one: the publishing market has changed. Books have become much harder to sell. And there’s no market for foreign journalism anymore.

    Now, you can say, “Well, of course that strikes you as the most dangerous–it is, obviously, to you.”

    Maybe.

    Or maybe not.

    I do know that if someone paid me as much as I got paid to write that book then, you’d be hearing about what I see in Europe in 2015, not 2005.

    You’d be getting a lot of journalism from me–and, I hope, good books. You’d also be getting them from lots of other people.

    My big worry now is “tons of data, flying around without context, and the creation of huge financial incentives for people like me to grab your attention with sensationalism, rather than getting you to focus, sensibly, on the boring stuff.”

    Want to know some boring stuff? I think it’s quite important. But I’ll never sell it.I’ve labored for ages on “French crime data and the way they collect statistics.” Really worked on it. And I have sensible reasons for thinking, “I’ll be fine here.”

    But I am very worried about the overwhelming post-2005 trend:

    1) The collapse in the market for journalism from abroad;

    2) The decline in its quality;

    3) The fact–and this is just a fact–that I know I can make money if I walk into a terrorist attack in Paris. But not if I walk into one in Turkey. I’m not evil. So of course I don’t hope I walk into another one anywhere, ever again. Nor do I expect it in Paris But I also now know that “terrorism in Paris”=huge media coverage=”great day for my bank account.” I’m a journalist, so it’s not wrong for me to report on what I see. But something is very wrong when there’s no market for the rest of what I see.

    4) This is a fact, too, and I can document it with financial records if you think I’m nuts: No one wants reporting from Turkey. They did, when I first got there. Not anymore.

    5) The quality of all reporting, it seems to me, has gone down: It’s been replaced with far too much opinion. And overseas, it’s all too often done by people who haven’t lived there for a long time, don’t speak the language, don’t know the history, don’t know how the government works, don’t know the first thing about statistics, and know–because all journalists do–that now, it’s all about clicks, so none of that matters.

    6) I also know–for a fact–that I could make good money selling quite a number of “narratives” that completely scare the daylights out of Americans. From Ebola hysteria to “Jews fleeing Europe” hysteria to vaccine hysteria. All three are based on something that are real causes for alarm. Ebola is a terrifying disease. Anti-Semitism in Europe is real. And yes, our government has given us reason to be suspicious about vaccines, although fortunately, no one remembers that, and I’m not going to remind them.

    7) I also know–for a fact–that when people really want to know what’s going on in a place I’m living, the ones who call me (and pay me well) are the investors, not the media editors. Nothing at all wrong with that: That’s exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. But something very wrong with the way investors with a real stake in getting it seems to be the only ones paying attention to the important stories–when in fact, we make our foreign policy, not Wall Street.

    Now, I could be confusing “myself” and “the world.” But I know that when someone like me notices how easy it is to sell “terrorism in Paris,” as opposed to “all the other stories in France,” we have a very dangerous incentive scheme at work. I also know that France should be the easiest country from which to sell news, except maybe for another country in the Anglosphere. there’s no excuse for the amount of “bad coverage” I see from France.

    My big worry is people becoming unable to do the thing that Westerners once managed to rule the world by doing: Looking at things other than themselves. Asking, “How does that work? Going to faraway lands to study them, rather than learning about them from television and the Internet. Taking seriously the idea that the American poswar security architecture is not a game, and if you are truly concerned about the fate of Jews in Europe, “flee” is not the right solution: It’s “Emigrate en masse to Europe, strengthen NATO, and look at the things no one wants to look at: our role in this psychodrama in which terrorists feed off the media, and vice-versa.”

    Trying to replace the old and broken models of journalism with ones that seem to be making Americans less informed about the most important things–which aren’t cat vidoes–that, to me, is the great challenge of the age we’re in.

    And it’s a moral challenge for me, personally: I have to make the rent, but I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve turned down to work for “think tanks” that traffic in sensationalism and are designed, basically, to “lobby Americans,” “place op-eds in the major media,” and and “get the American public as far away from fact and toward “a narrative” as possible.

    This worries me. And I wish I knew how to write a best-selling book about what it means–although I don’t, yet.

    Which is why I always enjoy your articles whether I actually know much about the subject matter beforehand or not.  In this case I am totally ignorant of the tomb and significance before reading the article and then a quick wiki read.

    I do remember raising two 5 year olds (18 months apart) in the early 1980’s.  My two did not get all hyper if the cake was a snack.  In my case, at about that age, it was immediately after school with homework, reading and/or some project I read about to begin.

    I do have a few 5 year old “out of the mouths of babes” quotes which are hilarious, as did my parents.  Those memories are wonderful ones.

    • #40
  11. Autistic License Coolidge
    Autistic License
    @AutisticLicense
    • #41
  12. user_645 Member
    user_645
    @Claire

    OK, for the minority of Americans hooked on the Süleyman Şah mystery, this report (in English) does a better job of explaining how this is apt to look in Turkey than I did: 

    Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Behçeli strongly criticized Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel for abandoning Turkish soil inside Syria during his parliamentary group meeting Feb. 24 and questioned the top soldier’s loyalty to his country. “Mr. Özel Pasha, what is the homeland for you? Did you skip class when the issue of the homeland was being discussed at the Military Academy?” Bahçeli asked.Bahçeli also lashed out at the government for the operation, describing it as “cowardly.” “Why is Turkey escaping from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL]?” Bahçeli asked, recalling that it marked the first time since 1922 that Turkish troops had withdrawn from Turkish soil.

    I reckon a lot of people are thinking that way, but I’m not there; I could be wrong.

    • #42
  13. user_409996 Member
    user_409996
    @

    Autistic License:

    What did you mean to say?

    • #43
  14. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    According to the ever popular War Nerd it’s a respect thing about the Kurds, and not in a good way.

    • #44
  15. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Claire Berlinski:

    But I am very worried about the overwhelming post-2005 trend:

    1) The collapse in the market for journalism from abroad;

    2) The decline in its quality;

    These two are truly surprising.

    Last night on the Australian Broadcast Corporation (a public channel) I watched the news and it included reporting, by Australians on site (stringers, perhaps, I don’t know) on the conflict in the Ukraine and also on the AAP electoral victory in Delhi.  They both seemed sensible and informed – the latter absolutely so – and got five minutes each.  This is not out of the ordinary for world news.

    (This is a public channel, so perhaps not typical.  I am not familiar with how the commercial channels handle it.)

    Perhaps it’s just the fact that we’re a smaller country down below (under Asia) and this is reflected in our focus?

    Also, do you think this disinterest in overseas news is across the board in the US?  I sometimes see clips of Richard Engel (for eg) hooning around in Iraq or Egypt, and he seems pretty informative.

    • #45
  16. user_645 Member
    user_645
    @Claire

    Zafar:According to the ever popular War Nerd it’s a respect thing about the Kurds, and not in a good way.

    This is the kind of reporting that terrifies me. Because it’s going to look great. It gives people reference points they can relate to–“these guys are like rednecks, these guys are like Nixon,” etc. It gives them a great story.

    He’s going on about Reccip Erdogan. He manages to spell this name several ways. (And this is only the beginning of the “basic facts” problem with this one.) There’s no way you can be in Turkey for any amount of time without learning how you spell Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s name. Not a question of snobbery to learn how to spell it, either: It’s shoved at you everywhere. You can’t escape it. No matter how bad your Turkish is or how much you want to.

    So that tells me this guy is sounding a lot more confident than he should. As do many other hints and factual mistakes and “stuff that I know for sure gets sold to journalists, but just ain’t true.” But that’s the most obvious one. If anyone in the US truly had no idea how to spell Obama’s name, you’d mentally say, “OK, not really a serious go-to guy on US politics.” You could actually live in America and not know who Obama was or how to spell his name, but you can’t live in Turkey without knowing exactly who that guy is and how his name is spelled. (That would be the first hint to most reporters that you want to be very careful about making analogies to American politics.)

    This is the kind of reporting that scares me most, because it sounds truthy.

    The problem with it is this:

    the operation is easy to understand,” he says, “when you know who’s who.”

    And he doesn’t. Not if you look, closely.

    Erdogan and his bigoted hick constituency, which hates Kurds with an insane passion?”

    No, he’s got this quite confused–to the point of not even having the right stereotype. The correct stereotype is that the MHP are the bigoted hicks who hate Kurds. And it sure is true that their Twitter trolls are unbelievable. I’m not surprised that they trolled him. But that’s not the same as reporting.

    the riots in Istanbul. That was classic coastal-elite vs. redneck fundie violence?”

    Was it, now? Hey, anyone looking at this and wondering: When’s the last time our redneck fundies did anything of the sort to our coastal elites in Iowa? You should be. There were riots in Gazientep, remember? These riots didn’t just happen where the journalists were camped out. (And I’m guessing he’s thinking of the Gezi riots, which hit the news, big time, in the US. But those weren’t the only ones. Sure true that they hit the news big time in the US. Our coastal elites pay more attention to Istanbul than to Cizre, and our redneck fundies are … well, look. Does he even have a working model of America, here?)

    If he had written, “Erdoğan needs the bigoted hick constituency and the Kurds, and I have no clue what’s going on in the southeast–no one does, you know that. If there’s a problem there, that’s not going to be mainstream news, clearly. It’s beautiful, but the electricity sucks; you’re more likely to get arrested for being a journalist there, and really, there’s no money in it. You’ll starve to death before you make money by reporting from Cizre. The disincentives to actual reporting are getting stronger every day, because this passes for journalism.”

    Then I’d say we’re “Okay, we’re on planet Turkey, and maybe planet Earth.”

    Otherwise, we’re still on planet armchair reporting. But it’s more sophisticated than most armchair reporting. It sounds confident, and gives readers lots of analogies to help them feel as if they’ve make sense of things.

    But it sure doesn’t make sense of this. And is possibly worse than no news at all, because people won’t realize it’s nonsensical.

    He says, “I’m a war nerd.”

    Hey, nerds: What happens if you put in a bad line of code?

    Hey, people who go to war: Would you trust this nerd with your life?

    I pray we keep the real war nerds somewhere in the Pentagon. (Claire to self: Keep hope alive.)

    • #46
  17. user_645 Member
    user_645
    @Claire

    Zafar:

    Claire Berlinski:

    But I am very worried about the overwhelming post-2005 trend:

    1) The collapse in the market for journalism from abroad;

    2) The decline in its quality;

    These two are truly surprising.

    Stunning, I’d say, if you’re me. Kind of the way it would be if you’d spent your life training to be a doctor and discovered in midlife that you’d been replaced by a medicine robot.

    But I of course have every reason to be dismayed by this and to insist that this medicine robot isn’t even capable of telling someone to take two aspirin and call me in the morning, no less perform skilled neurosurgery. It makes things very awkward for me that my industry was creatively destroyed. And of course I’m going to complain. Of course I liked to think I was doing something skilled, meaningful, and important–and of course I liked being paid.

    Sensible people should probably discount my complaints on those grounds.

    But curious people might take a look at the trendlines on “foreign news coverage” in the US. Actual nerds, not phony ones, might want to see if what there is left has suffered a severe dropoff in basic accuracy. The person who looks at this, ideally, should not have a financial or emotional interest in figuring out the answer.

    Then there’s the question, “Does it matter?”

    Well, of course I think it does. I believe deeply in this self-governance business. That’s never been a joke to me. I don’t think the entire American people should be left out of the discussion of our foreign policy. But if you’re getting the news from abroad from Americans in America or from foreign news sources that have no reason, particularly, to care about the American interest, my guess is that people who care about the American interest–and there are plenty of us–will make the decisions privately without consulting Americans.

    I sure didn’t see mistakes like the War Nerd’s in the Wikileaked State cables on Turkey. Not a one. I discovered that there were outstandingly professional, serious American reporters on the ground in Turkey who were doing the work, interviewing people, and getting all the small details right. It came as a big surprise to me. It came as a big surprise to a lot of people in Turkey. I reckon there’s lots more excellent reporting happening in parts of our government that I can’t see, and I fully approve of that. If we can’t have newspapers that do that kind of reporting, it’s a huge relief to find out that at least someone, somewhere, is doing that much.

    I also know that investors really care about what’s happening on the ground, and learn lots about which regions of Turkey might be stable, might not be, and why. They do not give a damn, however, about many things I do care about, like corruption, human rights, human life, the American interest, etc. They’re a lot more concerned about accurate information than the War Nerd is, but the stereotype there is true: They’re interested in making money–and definitely not so interested that they actually want to go to places like Cizre. They want to summer in the Hamptons, not Cizre. So the people who know what’s happening there–and know how to communicate this in English to a hedge fund manager in Manhattan–have a huge incentive not to report it: It makes their knowledge more valuable to those analysts. (Basic economics: you want your knowledge to be scarce. That way, it’s worth more.)

    So, maybe it’s not a big deal. Maybe I’m excessively idealistic. Maybe this is all working, just fine.

    I don’t think I can analyze this properly: my own financial interests are at stake. I sure know–in retrospect–what career someone like me should have been in if I wanted to be looking at a really comfortable retirement now. I also know exactly how to make lots of money writing fiction and selling it as news. I also know I could justify that to myself so, so easily: family to feed, you’ve got to make a living, etc.

    I also know: that’s wrong. Small lies, tactful ones, normal human ones, I can forgive myself. Heck, I can forgive lots of normal human lying–even the kind that goes under headings like, “adultery,” “tax evasion,” “pretending to like people you can’t stand,” etc.

    Lies that involve things like war? Lying to the American people about things like that? Ixnay. Can’t do that. I’ll go to hell. I know that. I’m not a psychopath. I’m not a traitor. I know you can’t do that. 

    But here’s the thing: I don’t think the War Nerd is a psychopath or a traitor, either. I have no idea who he is, but would bet you anything that he also thinks of himself as a patriotic American.

    I just don’t know what conclusions to draw from this. Maybe the thing to do is recognize that I’m not going to change overwhelming economic and geopolitical trends. Just not in my power. I could drop him a polite e-mail saying, “Love your site, really enjoyed reading it, here are some of my thoughts about this part of the story, based on what I saw.” I’ve rarely met a man who loves being told he’s a total fool by a woman, right? This might be a case of “I can do more good for the world with lavish flattery and a few hints.”

    But when I say, “I sure don’t know what this larger trend means–and I’ve got too much of a financial and emotional interest in it to be a dispassionate analyst,” I think you should believe me. That’s not only truthy, it’s true. And common sense.

    Someone who isn’t me needs to be running the numbers and thinking about what this means. Someone with no financial stake in the outcome and no vanity involved in it. Someone needs to figure out whether this is really a big problem for America or just a big problem for Claire. My instinct says, “huge problem for America”–but it would, wouldn’t it.

    • #47
  18. user_82762 Inactive
    user_82762
    @JamesGawron

    Claire Berlinski:

    Zafar:

    Claire Berlinski:

    But I am very worried about the overwhelming post-2005 trend:

    1) The collapse in the market for journalism from abroad;

    2) The decline in its quality;

    These two are truly surprising.

    Stunning, I’d say, if you’re me. Kind of the way it would be if you’d spent your life training to be a doctor and discovered in midlife that you’d been replaced by a medicine robot.

    But I of course have every reason to be dismayed by this and to insist that this medicine robot isn’t even capable of telling someone to take two aspirin and call me in the morning, no less perform skilled neurosurgery. It makes things very awkward for me that my industry was creatively destroyed. And of course I’m going to complain. Of course I liked to think I was doing something skilled, meaningful, and important–and of course I liked being paid.

    Sensible people should probably discount my complaints on those grounds.

    But curious people might take a look at the trendlines on “foreign news coverage” in the US. Actual nerds, not phony ones, might want to see if what there is left has suffered a severe dropoff in basic accuracy. The person who looks at this, ideally, should not have a financial or emotional interest in figuring out the answer.

    Then there’s the question, “Does it matter?”

    Well, of course I think it does. I believe deeply in this self-governance business. That’s never been a joke to me. I don’t think the entire American people should be left out of the discussion of our foreign policy. But if you’re getting the news from abroad from Americans in America or from foreign news sources that have no reason, particularly, to care about the American interest, my guess is that people who care about the American interest–and there are plenty of us–will make the decisions privately without consulting Americans.

    I sure didn’t see mistakes like the War Nerd’s in the Wikileaked State cables on Turkey. Not a one. I discovered that there were outstandingly professional, serious American reporters on the ground in Turkey who were doing the work, interviewing people, and getting all the small details right. It came as a big surprise to me. It came as a big surprise to a lot of people in Turkey. I reckon there’s lots more excellent reporting happening in parts of our government that I can’t see, and I fully approve of that. If we can’t have newspapers that do that kind of reporting, it’s a huge relief to find out that at least someone, somewhere, is doing that much.

    I also know that investors really care about what’s happening on the ground, and learn lots about which regions of Turkey might be stable, might not be, and why. They do not give a damn, however, about many things I do care about, like corruption, human rights, human life, the American interest, etc. They’re a lot more concerned about accurate information than the War Nerd is, but the stereotype there is true: They’re interested in making money–and definitely not so interested that they actually want to go to places like Cizre. They want to summer in the Hamptons, not Cizre. So the people who know what’s happening there–and know how to communicate this in English to a hedge fund manager in Manhattan–have a huge incentive not to

    So, maybe it’s not a big deal. Maybe I’m excessively idealistic. Maybe this is all working, just fine.

    I don’t think I can analyze this properly: my own financial interests are at stake. I sure know–in retrospect–what career someone like me should have been in if I wanted to be looking at a really comfortable retirement now. I also know exactly how to make lots of money writing fiction and selling it as news. I also know I could justify that to myself so, so easily: family to feed, you’ve got to make a living, etc.

    I also know: that’s wrong. Small lies, tactful ones, normal human ones, I can forgive myself. Heck, I can forgive lots of normal human lying–even the kind that goes under headings like, “adultery,” “tax evasion,” “pretending to like people you can’t stand,” etc.

    Lies that involve things like war? Lying to the American people about things like that? Ixnay. Can’t do that. I’ll go to hell. I know that. I’m not a psychopath. I’m not a traitor. I know you can’t do that.

    But here’s the thing: I don’t think the War Nerd is a psychopath or a traitor, either. I have no idea who he is, but would bet you anything that he also thinks of himself as a patriotic American.

    I just don’t know what conclusions to draw from this. Maybe the thing to do is recognize that I’m not going to change overwhelming economic and geopolitical trends. Just not in my power. I could drop him a polite e-mail saying, “Love your site, really enjoyed reading it, here are some of my thoughts about this part of the story, based on what I saw.” I’ve rarely met a man who loves being told he’s a total fool by a woman, right? This might be a case of “I can do more good for the world with lavish flattery and a few hints.”

    But when I say, “I sure don’t know what this larger trend means–and I’ve got too much of a financial and emotional interest in it to be a dispassionate analyst,” I think you should believe me. That’s not only truthy, it’s true. And common sense.

    Someone who isn’t me needs to be running the numbers and thinking about what this means. Someone with no financial stake in the outcome and no vanity involved in it. Someone needs to figure out whether this is really a big problem for America or just a big problem for Claire. My instinct says, “huge problem for America”–but it would, wouldn’t it.

    OK Claire I’ll give you a serious answer (boy you are persistent),

    1) The deconstructionist philosophical school took over intellectual life at University in the late 1980s. This started in the English Dept. and spread to the History Dept. Journalism was normally seen as a analogue activity to the History Dept. In the late 80s and 90s Journalism looked like fancy prose from the English Dept and fancy camera work from the Drama Dept. It looked shallow because it was shallow. If you don’t believe in facts, in theory, or in judgement then you can’t be anything but shallow. Nihilism is fancy crap that excuses no analysis. You can fill page after page but it’s just hubris. Like reading the NYTimes.

    2) The grievance industry and its highly professional implementation on campus allowed an essentially ad hominem attack on white males substitute for theory, fact, and judgement. Men are too “Logos” oriented so the Jungian refrain went. Of course, Logos orientation is the backbone of professionalism. End result was the dumbing down of the professional mind.

    3) The post Vietnam anti-colonial Marxist Leninism Fanonist Saidist narrative which in earlier times would have been a joke became the standard narrative in the environment of ignorance created by #1 and #2. The Cambodian Genocide and the revealed Stalinist Genocide (and the eventually to be revealed Maoist Genocide) should have been enough to get the attention of any serious thinker. However, idiot nihilism produces highly talented idiots. They fill page after page and make pretty video. None of it is worth anything but they get paid big money so who will challenge them.

    4) The trends created by #1, #2, and #3 have matured and now control and rot all the power centers of society. The internet gang which we are part of is falsely accused by the truly guilty, the nihilist power brokers, as the cause of the problem they created. They would do anything to get rid of us even destroy the Internet itself. Our job is to survive and to thrive.

    In short, you are still that quick hard money making machine that you always were. You just need to aim your guns at the real target and pull the trigger. Gd is on our side, I mean that literally and figuratively. Have a little faith.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #48
  19. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Claire Berlinski:

    Someone who isn’t me needs to be running the numbers and thinking about what this means. Someone with no financial stake in the outcome and no vanity involved in it. Someone needs to figure out whether this is really a big problem for America or just a big problem for Claire. My instinct says, “huge problem for America”–but it would, wouldn’t it.

    Okay, so in my opinion this is a huge problem for America.  The public has a vote, which to some degree directs the foreign policy decisions of the world’s only superpower, and an uninformed or poorly informed (or worst of all pandered to) public is more vulnerable to being misled and manipulated. Iow it’s a danger to itself and to others, both at home and abroad, no matter how well intentioned or pure of heart.

    Wrt the War Nerd – why not drop him a line?  A serious email is probably far more flattering than any amount of “you go! you radical thinker you!”.  You might make a difference.  More accurate reporting and more thoughtful opinion pieces have got to be a force for good, no matter where they originate from in the political spectrum.  Consider it a patriotic service to the nation.

    • #49
  20. Gaby Charing Inactive
    Gaby Charing
    @GabyCharing

    Rule number 1: Terrorist attacks make terrorists flee, not us.” You wrote this is February 2015. Do you still feel the same? Many French Jews no longer feel safe and want to leave.

    • #50
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