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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28776 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Eric Adams indicted

NYC mayor Eric Adams has been indicted in federal court. The indictment details a scheme where he took illegal benefits from Turkey in a quid-pro-quo scheme, and there's an additional scheme where he applied for matching campaign funds using illegal campaign contributions. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/26/us/whats-in-nyc-mayor-eric-adams-indictment/index.html

The indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams unsealed Thursday morning alleges he secretly solicited and accepted freebies and illegal campaign donations from wealthy foreigners, including Turkish officials, as far back as 2014.

In exchange, he pressured the Fire Department of New York to approve the opening of a new Turkish consular building in the city without a fire inspection, the indictment states. In addition, his campaign used those illegal campaign donations to “steal public funds” through New York City’s matching funds, according to the indictment.

Those allegations represent the core of the federal indictment charging Adams with five counts: bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy and two counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals.

Adams, a Democrat elected in 2021, has denied wrongdoing and said he does not plan to resign.

“I look forward to defending myself and defending the people of this city as I’ve done throughout my entire professional career,” Adams said.

And that's pretty much the meat of it. There's the full indictment in the link if you want to read 56 pages of legalese.

Naturally, the right wing punditsphere is speculating that this dropped because Adams is critical of the open border, but I think it more likely that he just got caught, and maybe there's some sort of low-profile diplomatic dustup with Turkey that got the FBI investigating Turkish influence in the US. Bigger question- what are the odds he tries to play up that story in the hopes of a Trump pardon? I suspect that if he was going to pull an Eric Johnson over his disagreements with the DNC(and he is not a standard democrat) he would have already done it, but there doesn't seem to be much way he can really dispute these charges and federal courts almost always convict, and Trump just might pardon him like he did Blagojevich.

and maybe there's some sort of low-profile diplomatic dustup with Turkey that got the FBI investigating Turkish influence in the US.

In 2017 (was it that long ago!) there was an incident where Turkish secret police attacked anti-Erdogan protestors in Washington DC. It might have got Turkey on the radar.

The other thing that comes to mind is Turkey holding up Finland’s NATO admission, which would line up with the timeline quite well.

To completely sidetrack the conversation, is there a way to kick members out of NATO? Because Turkey needs to go. They just kinda... suck on every dimension.

Turkey has the second biggest army in NATO and relevant geography for anything involving Russia or the Middle East.

Isn't this just 20th century thinking?

Their human capital sucks. Israel would destroy Turkey in a war despite a much smaller population and inferior geography. The world has moved on from the era of the Dreadnought. Today's it's all about raw materials, supply chains, and microchips. Turkey is a dinosaur whose poorly trained troops would only be cannon fodder in a conflict which involved the U.S.

Turkey produces their own F-16s under license-build, they export drones, they build satellites and they're even working on their own fifth-gen fighter like South Korea.

Turkey isn't Iraq, Syria or Egypt totally reliant on whatever they can import, they build things. Turkey actually managed to beat back France and Britain and escape a planned partition after WW1, they don't just instantly lose whenever Europeans show up like Arabs. They export manufactured goods: televisions and vehicles. They're 8th in steel production worldwide.

Israel has never fought any first or even second-rate militaries like Turkey, they've never fought any serious industrial powers at all and would be reliant upon nukes (in the admittedly ridiculous scenario where the US wasn't bailing them out).

Even if that is all true (and given Turkey's population size, I don't think it is; quantity has a quality all of its own), it's far better for them to be cannon fodder FOR the US than cannon fodder for the other side.

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