plumednom's comments

I have always thought that maybe the USSR was pissed off that they lost 20 million people to Hitler while winning World War 2 for us and were never told, "Thank you". You know, instead of thanking them we immediately labeled them enemies and poured all of our resources into rebuilding Germany .. against them.

> Brothers? Sisters? Mothers? Sons? Do their siblings, children not want to help them out so much that they end up homeless?

Americans have this "rugged individualism" to our culture. I left my own home when I was still 15, most people at 17 or 18.

I live in Istanbul, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of homeless people in this city of 15-20million (depending on with whom you are talking). This is because Turks have a much stronger family structure, and most people live with their parents until they're married at the very least.

I'm from San Francisco and have known many of my friends to become homeless over the past 20 years through combinations of, as I stated before, substance abuse, trauma, and a lack of a strong family / social support structure.

My closest friend is a homeless violinist hippy in San Francisco (who just returned after 4 years in Istanbul). He keeps tents in 6 or 7 spots around the bay, most of them with breathtaking views. He just likes being homeless. (Brilliant guy. Oliver. He plays mostly in Bart, the Mission, and North Beach. Say hi in any language, he knows it)

I also know a lot of kids from my various music scenes who are homeless on purpose. The street punks, for example, find a stronger family structure drinking 40s on telegraph or the haight all day than they ever did in their own middle-class homes. (PS: Fuck the kids on haight. They're basically an aging street gang, I used to be in a band with one of them.)

Change your perspective if you want to help. Those aren't tents. Those are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers with nowhere else to go, with drug and /or emotional problems. Those are soldiers who fought our oil wars and came home broken and abandoned.

Those aren't "tents", they're you if you made the wrong choice or had the wrong thing happen to you.

I will be in London next month. What exactly should I expect the sales person to say when I tell them who sent me. Sounds covert. :)

You forgot the most important part: Gulen was Tayipp's closest friend, ally, and advisor .. until he wasn't. Gulen was a huge part of Gulen gaining power, and he used that network to his advantage. Go back to whatever it was called, Operation Sledgehammer.

I was here during the fake coup, watching the f16s, watching Tayipp descend from his private jet like he was jesus, his arms stretched out, telling his people to come defend him, hoardes of nationalists swarming the tarmac to his defense.

The whole time it seemed like bullshit. My friend's father, who is 80 and has experienced 5 or 6 coups, went fishing 5am saturday morning. When his children told him not to, he said, "I've been through this 5 times now, and I call bullshit. This isn't a coup, this is a theatrical rendition of 1984, and Gulen is Emmanuel Goldstein.

Interesting anecdote: I met a Gulenist in Ukraine last month. I'm a US citizen living in Türkiye, working for an American firm, and was in Kiev meeting some contract programmers. One programmer, a Tatar from Russia, One found out I was living in Istanbul and approached me really excitedly. He wanted to tell me about the great Turkish organization which funded his education.

I stopped him right there and told him that an in-law of mine was hurt in the fake coup and he would do well to end this line of conversation, but he persisted. When I suggested Gulen was a terrorist, he rather .. aggressively told me "No Erdogan is the Terrorist" and got in my face. I politely told him "Both can be true, have a nice night".

The next day I had him removed from our account due to his actions, but in reality, due to his association with a terrorist group, and let my account manager know what was going on. He's no longer with that consulting company either.