Bedbugs on airplanes.

I'm reading "Passengers Say Turkish Airlines Flights Have Unwelcome Guests: Bedbugs/Passengers on several of the carrier’s flights said the biting pests were on seats, blankets and in overhead bins and that the airline did not take action" (NYT).

"A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked wide swaths of Turkey and Syria early Monday, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing more than 1,300 people. "

"Hundreds were still believed to be trapped under rubble, and the toll was expected to rise as rescue workers searched mounds of wreckage in cities and towns across the area. On both sides of the border, residents jolted out of sleep by the pre-dawn quake rushed outside on a cold, rainy and snowy night. Buildings were reduce to piles of pancaked floors, while major aftershocks, some nearly as strong as the first, continued.... It struck a region that has been shaped on both sides of the border by more than a decade of civil war in Syria. On the Syrian side, the swath affected is divided between government-held territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces.... 'There are so many other people who are also trapped,” [Huseyin Yayman, a legislator from Turkey’s Hatay province]. 'There are so many buildings that have been damaged. People are on the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.'"

 AP reports.

"Then I went on musing about why it was thought better and higher to love one's country than one's county, or town, or village, or house."

"Perhaps because it was larger. But then it would be still better to love one's continent, and best of all to love one's planet."

Wrote Rose Macaulay, in "The Towers of Trebizond" (1958).

I ran into that quote because — as you see in the previous post — I looked up "muse" in the OED. 

"A court in Turkey transferred the trial in the murder of the Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia on Thursday..."

"... a move almost certain to end the last case that held out hope of serving some measure of justice for a heinous crime that drew global outrage. The Turkish decision was a blow to human rights advocates who had hoped the trial in Turkey would at least make public more evidence of who was involved and how Mr. Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad in 2018 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone to get paperwork he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz. 'Let’s not entrust the lamb to the wolf,' Ali Ceylan, a lawyer for Ms. Cengiz, told the court on Thursday before the decision was announced. 'Let’s protect the dignity and honor of the Turkish nation....'"

From "Turkey Transfers Khashoggi Murder Trial to Saudi Arabia/The move will almost certainly end the last trial aimed at serving justice for a heinous crime that caused global outrage" (NYT).

"The relics believed to be of St. Nicholas were brought from present-day Turkey by sailors 1,000 years ago, and his bones have been entombed in Bari ever since...."

"The presence of the relics has long made Bari an unusual linchpin in relations between Italy and Russia and between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches. In 2007, Mr. Putin himself came to Bari and knelt in front of St. Nicholas’s tomb, just as the faithful did during the prayer for peace.... Larisa Dimetruk, 62, from Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine, said she came to beseech St. Nicholas to make the Russians 'stop their president.' 'Only the people can stop him,” she said. 'We didn’t come here to pray together. We came here for a miracle.'... Others simply felt torn and had no interest in talking politics. 'We’ve all run out of tears,' said Olga Sebekina, from St. Petersburg, Russia, who said her grandmother was Ukrainian and that she still had family there. 'Which side of my heart should break more?'"

 From "Italian City Tied to Russia by a Revered Saint Feels the Sting of War in Ukraine/The port of Bari holds relics venerated by Orthodox Christians throughout the former Soviet bloc. Today it is also home to a spillover of tensions from Russia’s invasion" (NYT).

"The Turkish government said this week that it has opened deportation proceedings against at least seven Syrian nationals accused of eating bananas in a 'provocative' way while participating in a TikTok video challenge..."

"... in a move that underscores rising hostility toward Syrians in a country with a reputation for being welcoming to refugees. The challenge was inspired by an Oct. 17 encounter on the streets of Istanbul that was captured on video, during which a man complained that he could not afford bananas, a staple that has fallen out of the reach of many consumers amid a poor economy. Turning to a female Syrian student, he alleged that refugees from Syria were buying the fruit by the 'kilos,' a reference to false rumors that displaced people were living in luxury off Turkish taxpayer largesse. In response, Syrians in Turkey and elsewhere posted videos of themselves eating bananas to poke fun at the incident. In one video, a group of young Syrians sat around the room, chuckling as they ate their fruit."

 
WaPo reports.

Skimming that, I got confused and thought the "provocative" banana-eating was something like this. You don't really need to look at that to know what it is. You know what it is. 

But it was just people engaged in typical banana-eating, like you see in that "one video" linked above. I experienced secondary confusion thinking the style — American style? — of taking a series of bites from the whole banana looks obscene in some countries. But no, it was just showing off that they had bananas and that it was absurd to think of access to bananas as a mark of a life of luxury.

Why do supporters of Kamala Harris portray her as faceless?!

There's some discussion this week of a ridiculous cookie Harris's people handed out:

Some people are referring to that as a cookie "with her face on" it, but it's quite distinctly a cookie depicting her with no face.

Last October, I showed you this really bad sign, which we'd seen in our neighborhood:

Why would you show a politician you support as having no face? One horrible answer would be: Oh, but it does show her face. It shows the facial trait that matters: The color of the skin of her face.

In action, Kamala Harris uses her face. She's not a blank face. She's a smiling face. Like Obama, she deploys a big smile and laughs as much as possible. Like Hillary Clinton, she seems to laugh too much and not because she's genuinely delighted. 

Perhaps her supporters default to a blank face because efforts to replicate the smile in a drawing or in cookie icing don't work. And how could they? To look like her, the smile would need to look off. So you just can't do it right.

Another idea is that people are uneasy about any sort of a caricature of a black person. Anything you do might be criticized as racist. Facelessness is the graphic design equivalent of if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all... in a world where the standards of what counts as "nice" are so high and so confusing that you feel anything you say may be used against you. So let me revise: The choice of facelessness is the graphic design equivalent of taking the 5th.

IN THE EMAIL: Omaha 1 writes: "I know it's awful but someone on FB said it looks like she has a turkey on her face. I can't un-see it now! You can see the drumsticks sticking out on both sides." That's got to be a reference to "Friends":

AND: Tubal writes: "The shadow of the metal stakes makes Biden and, more so Harris, resemble Mr. and Mrs. Thompson from South Park": 

"Adnan Oktar... a Muslim televangelist and cult leader... proselytised about religion while scantily clad women bopped robotically beside him."

"He and his followers had connections and influence stretching across the world.... The core female members were called 'kittens' and the men 'lions,' and many were recruited from powerful and wealthy families. The local tabloids loved it: an Islamic 'sex cult' run by Istanbul’s Hugh Hefner with a few Quranic verses thrown in. But, after a trial that has gripped Turkey, Oktar’s organisation... been shown to have committed serious crimes and destroyed the lives of many members. In an 480-page indictment prosecutors laid out charges including sexual abuse, fraud and organised crime that reached deep into Turkey’s elite.... Their message of religious understanding and liberal values resonated with [one woman who escaped the group after 10 years]. In it she found another option to the secularism common in her social class. Soon, the group edged out her old friends and her family. 'They were like best friends around me,' she said. 'I mean, they were taking a lot of care of me. They make you feel like you’re indebted to them, so you want to do something in return. Slowly your reality starts getting distorted. Very slowly, not fast. It’s not like "OK, you joined us, now you can’t go out any more."'"

From "Turkish sex cult saga ends in a 1,000-year jail sentence/A televangelist faces death behind bars while the ‘kittens’ he dominated are struggling to resume normal life" (London Times).

"Completed in 537 AD, Hagia Sophia stood for nearly a millennium at the heart of the Christian world...."

"In 1453, Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, and although his troops plundered what they could carry, the building was saved and turned into a mosque. For 500 years it was the venerated center of the Muslim Ottoman Empire.... Minarets were added, and later the great Ottoman architect Sinan built massive buttresses to prevent the walls from buckling under the weight of the dome, which was damaged in earthquakes. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire... Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern secular republic of Turkey, ended the role of religion in the state and closed religious institutions.... But [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s supporters speak of the building as the third holiest site in Islam, after the Grand Mosque of Mecca and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and insist that once a mosque it should never be unconsecrated."

From "Erdogan Talks of Making Hagia Sophia a Mosque Again, to International Dismay/The World Heritage site was once a potent symbol of Christian-Muslim rivalry, and it could become one once more" (NYT).

"Beyond politics, art historians and conservationists worry that they will lose access for study and research if the monument becomes a working mosque, and tourist companies and city authorities fear that visitors will be deterred from coming. The monument is the most visited tourist site in Turkey, with 3.7 million visitors last year.... The greatest worry is what will happen to the incomparable medieval mosaics, among them depictions of Christ, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, alongside rare portraits of imperial figures including Emperor Justinian I and Empress Zoe, one of the few women to rule in her own right. The mosaics were whitewashed for the more than five centuries during Ottoman rule — the depiction of the human form being considered idolatry — and were uncovered and restored only after Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum in the 1930s..... If the museum becomes a mosque, the mosaics will have to be covered during Muslim prayers somehow, including seraphs high up at the base of the dome. Tourists and non-Muslims may be restricted to certain areas...."

A thousand years is a long time and 500 years is a long time. All that religion in one phenomenal place, but the solution, since 1935, has been to keep it as a museum.

It's interesting to encounter this problem at a time when we here in America are struggling over whether to retain images of human heroes. I respect the desire to use a structure to practice a living religion — especially in a phenomenally beautiful building — but the artwork is artwork of another religion, and there's such a strong interest in protecting access for Christians and those of us who love art and architecture.

Here's a "Great Courses" episode on Hagia Sophia (click on Episode 3). I've seen it and strongly recommend it. You'll get lots of closeup looks at the mosaics and the architectural details. I've watched the whole course — "The World's Greatest Churches" — and the teacher ranks Hagia Sophia as the greatest church building in the world.

"This is why [Macron] is a great politician, because that was one of the greatest non-answers I've ever heard. And that's okay."

Trump deploys a strategic, sarcastic compliment in the middle of a back-and-forth that you'll want to watch:

Trump, just now, on the success of his withdrawal from Syria.

https://t.co/7Ud0WLyo4g

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2019

"The Cease-Fire in Syria Worked (More or Less)/Whatever the agreement was, it left the status quo in place, at least for the time being."

Writes Kathy Gilsinan in The Atlantic.

[I]t more or less worked... in the very narrow sense of stopping the worst of the Turkish onslaught against the Syrian Kurds for a time. Now there’s a different kind of order in place of the fighting: Syrian Kurdish forces have withdrawn from a chunk of territory near Syria’s border with Turkey; Russia has vowed to help Turkey push them from an area twice as large....

[I]t’s only become clearer that each of the key players—the U.S., Turkey, and the Syrian Kurdish leadership—all believe they agreed to different things....

By "all believe they agreed to different things," she means all assert something different about what was agreed to. No one is speaking the truth straight from their brain. Anything anyone says is to advance their interests.

Despite accusations that the United States had abandoned the Kurds, they seemed to have no intention of abandoning the United States....

Erdoğan may have received enough guarantees, from enough international backers, to maintain the cease-fire—or whatever it is—for now. He has managed to pull both Russia and the United States into effectively guaranteeing Turkish security along its border with Syria. He has, through three separate incursions into northern Syria since 2016, chopped up a stretch of contiguous Kurdish-held territory they had hoped to keep autonomous....

Of course, I don't know what is really happening, but I hope for the best. I hope Trump's decision works out well, and I wonder if Trump's antagonists are hoping it goes badly, hoping Trump fails.

It was in that context that I undertook the search of the archive discussed in the previous post. How awful it is for Americans to be rooting for the failure of an American military effort because that's how much they hate Trump and want him proved horribly, irrefutably wrong! That made me want to look back at what I'd written when Rush Limbaugh said — on the occasion of Obama's inauguration — "I hope he fails."

ADDED: It wasn't the Atlantic article that got me thinking in these terms this morning. It was this Trump tweet:

Big success on the Turkey/Syria Border. Safe Zone created! Ceasefire has held and combat missions have ended. Kurds are safe and have worked very nicely with us. Captured ISIS prisoners secured. I will be making a statement at 11:00 A.M. from the White House. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2019

"Syria critic Lindsey Graham reverses stance, says Trump's policy could succeed."

Reuters reports.

“I am increasingly optimistic that we can have some historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years if we play our cards right,” Graham said.

Graham said Trump was prepared to use U.S. air power over a demilitarized zone occupied by international forces, adding that the use of air power could help ensure Islamic State fighters who had been held in the area did not “break out.”...

Graham also said he believed the United States and Kurdish forces long allied with Washington could establish a venture to modernize Syrian oil fields, with the revenue flowing to the Kurds. “President Trump is thinking outside the box,” Graham said of Trump’s thinking on oil. “The president appreciates what the Kurds have done,” Graham added. “He wants to make sure ISIS does not come back. I expect we will continue to partner with the Kurds in Eastern Syria to make sure ISIS does not re-emerge.”

"Defense Secretary Mark Esper says that under current plans all U.S. troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq and the military will continue to conduct operations against the Islamic State group to prevent its resurgence...."

"The developments made clear that one of President Donald Trump's rationales for withdrawing troops from Syria was not going to come to pass any time soon. 'It's time to bring our soldiers back home,' he said Wednesday. But they are not coming home.... While [Esper] acknowledged reports of intermittent fighting despite the cease-fire agreement, he said that overall it 'generally seems to be holding. We see a stability of the lines, if you will, on the ground.' He also said that, so far, the Syrian Democratic Forces that partnered with the U.S. to fight IS have maintained control of the prisons in Syria where they are still present. The Turks, he said, have indicated they have control of the IS prisons in their areas. 'I can't assess whether that's true or not without having people on the ground,' said Esper."

ABC News reports.

ADDED: Here's the full transcript of Esper's remarks.

"It’s been … suggested that Turkey may have called America’s bluff, telling the president they are coming no matter what we did."

"If that’s so, we should know it. For it would tell us a great deal about how we should deal with Turkey, now and in the future.... Are we so weak and inept diplomatically that Turkey forced the hand of the United States of America? Turkey!?... I believe that it’s imperative that public hearings are held to answer these questions, and I hope the Senate is able to conduct those hearings next week."

Said Mitt Romney, quoted in "Sen. Mitt Romney raises a troubling theory about Trump and Turkey" (WaPo).

If that’s so, we should know it... Is that so? How can we know it? Romney is talking about reading Erdogan's mind in the past. But, whatever... more hearings! I wonder why. I can't help thinking that the reason for more hearings is to keep up the pressure on Trump and to undermine him to the maximum extent possible. Trump's decision already happened, and maybe it was less good than something else that might have been done, but what's the best way to move forward? Is it making Trump look as "weak and inept" as possible?

ADDED: Here's Trump falling for another con:

DEFEAT TERRORISM! https://t.co/8WbnLPgWIK

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2019

UPDATE, 6:36 PM: Trump tweeted this within the last hour:

pic.twitter.com/p5imhMJqS1

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2019

"Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday agreed to a deal with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that accepted a Turkish military presence in a broad part of northern Syria in exchange for the promise of a five-day cease-fire..."

"... completing an abrupt reversal of American policy in the Syrian conflict. Emerging from close to five hours of talks after a hastily arranged trip to Ankara, the Turkish capital, Mr. Pence hailed the agreement as a diplomatic victory for President Trump, calling it a 'solution we believe will save lives.' The agreement 'ends the violence — which is what President Trump sent us here to do,' Mr. Pence said at a news conference at the ambassador’s residence. Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, immediately contradicted the description of the agreement, saying it was not a cease-fire at all, but merely a 'pause for our operation.' He added that 'as a result of our president’s skillful leadership, we got what we wanted.'"

The NYT reports the deal U.S. reached with Turkey.

Of course, Trump's critics will not stand down or give him any credit for doing anything right, so I like Trump's approach:

This is a great day for civilization. I am proud of the United States for sticking by me in following a necessary, but somewhat unconventional, path. People have been trying to make this “Deal” for many years. Millions of lives will be saved. Congratulations to ALL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2019

He's acting like everyone supported him and congratulating everyone. This gets my "nice Trump" tag.

"Donald Trump's mixture of threats and locker-room banter infuriated Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan."

"His staff told the BBC that he threw the letter into the bin and launched the Syrian operation the same day. That could be proof there was no Trumpian green light. But ever since President Obama partnered up with the Syrian Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the jihadists of IS it was clear the arrangement would lead to problems with the Turks. That's because the SDF is very close to the Turkish Kurds of the PKK. Turkey says they are two halves of the same terror group. Presidents Erdogan and Trump discussed military action last December. Diplomatic sources here in Ankara suggest that Turkey's broader strategic objective was to detach the Kurds and the Americans. That, at any rate, has happened...."

BBC reports.

The Kurds are "not angels," Trump said.

"They fought with us. We paid a lot of money for them to fight with us, and that’s OK. They did well when they fought with us. They didn’t do so well when they didn’t fight with us.... I viewed the situation on the Turkish border with Syria to be for the United States strategically brilliant. Our soldiers are out of there. Our soldiers are totally safe. They’ve got to work it out. Maybe they can do it without fighting."

Reported at The National Post.

Video and different quotes selected at NBC News:

"If Turkey goes into Syria, that’s between Turkey and Syria," he said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. "It’s not between Turkey and the United States, like a lot of stupid people would like us to — would like you to believe.... If Russia wants to get involved with Syria, that's really up to them... They have a problem with Turkey, they have a problem at a border. It's not our border. We shouldn't be losing lives over it."...

"Our soldiers are not in harm's way — as they shouldn't be — as two countries fight over land that has nothing to do with us. And the Kurds are much safer right now, but the Kurds know how to fight. And, as I said, they're not angels. They're not angels, if you take a look.... By the way, everybody hates ISIS... Some were released just for effect to make it look like ‘oh jee, we gotta get back in there.'"

Trump is always telling us to "take a look." But there's no way I can look at the Kurds and see them at all, let alone see — like God — everything they do and think to judge whether they are angels. Trump is always telling us to "look" at things we can't just look at. Either he's enthralled by television and the idiotic illusion that it lets you watch what's going on in the world or he really means I'm telling you what you would see if you could look.

"Turkey rebuffed U.S. calls for a cease-fire in northeastern Syria as it pressed ahead Wednesday with an offensive targeting Syrian Kurdish militants and demanded that the fighters lay down their arms...."

"Turkey launched the offensive last week to rout Kurdish-led forces it says pose a threat to Turkish national security. Erdogan rejected a U.S. offer to broker a truce, saying in a speech before parliament Wednesday that Turkey had 'never in its history sat down at a table with terrorist groups.' Turkish officials view Syrian Kurdish forces as terrorists for their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long war for autonomy in Turkey. 'We are not looking for a mediator for that,' Erdogan said of talks with Kurdish fighters. He said Turkey and allied Syrian rebels plan to forge ahead to establish a buffer zone some 20 miles into Syria. 'Nobody can stop us,' he said.... 'He needs to stop the incursion into Syria,' [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo said of the Turkish president. 'We need a cease-fire, at which point we can begin to put this all back together again.'"

WaPo reports.

ADDED: "Turkey-Kurd Conflict ‘Has Nothing to Do With Us,’ Trump Says." The NYT reports.

"On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump called for an immediate ceasefire, announced increased tariffs on steel imports from Turkey, and imposed sanctions against Turkish government ministries and officials..."

"... in response to the ongoing military offensive in northern Syria that began after Trump withdrew U.S. forces in the area. Critics say Trump’s measures are just as likely to strengthen Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as they are to hurt him....  Meanwhile, the European Union is mulling its own approach to the Turkish incursion in Syria.... Turkey will consider both the drilling sanctions and the EU’s reaction to the Turkish invasion to be 'part of the same European and Western attempt to undermine Turkey,' Dario Cristiani, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, wrote in an email. While further economic sanctions could harm Turkey later, in the short term 'they will push Erdogan to be even more assertive and aggressive than he has been so far,' Cristiani said.... Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that Trump had demanded a ceasefire and said that he and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien would soon travel to Turkey. Trump has also reportedly received a commitment from Erdogan that Turkish forces would not attack Kobani—a strategically significant city for the Kurds."

Foreign Policy reports.

There's a link to "Trump calls for cease-fire in northern Syria and imposes sanctions on Turkey" (WaPo). Excerpt:

Pence said that Erdogan and Trump spoke by phone on Monday and that the president “communicated to him very clearly that the United States of America wants Turkey to stop the invasion, to implement an immediate cease-fire and to begin to negotiate with Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence.”...

The White House released a statement after the call that said Erdogan informed the president that Turkey “will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria” and that the United States did not support the move. The statement, however, made no mention of what Trump would do to oppose or stop Turkey’s aggression.