SpankyMcFarland

Any bilingual country that has English as one of its languages will struggle to keep the other alive these days.

My best friend immigrated to Canada from Ireland and sent his four kids through the French system (not immersion) in Burlington, Ontario. Three are completely bilingual adults now and two speak French at work. It can be done.

There is a downside to that for other Anglophone countries. Their own cultural products struggle to be seen even at home as their markets are flooded with US material. On Bell TV, we don't even get the world edition of CNN news but are given the US version. For the 'younger people' there is a means of escape from this on the Net if they would only choose to use it. Monolingualism isn't as limiting as it used to be but people like myself stuck with one language do tend to see the world from one angle. It was one of Christopher Hitchens' regrets and David Cameron's too. Even the news in French looks like it is covering a different planet sometimes.

The pol who most impressed me with his bilingualism was Jean Charest - I didn't realize he wasn't a native English speaker at first - but apparently his mother was an Anglophone.

Anglophones have a general problem with learning other languages because they can get by without another language. It's basically laziness. Many Northern Europeans are tri-lingual and their English is prefect. Even I can tell that the French of most Anglophone politicians in Canada is awful, far worse than the English of Francophone pols. What were they doing in school?

That is difficult to assess. British intelligence was utterly humiliated after the war by communist spies who kept on popping up - I suspect we don't know all their names yet - whereas the French were more effective in that particular area. The IRA was always a small group, centred in a small region and with limited aims. The French are facing something much larger.

Wolf Blitzer asked the question and either Manafort or Miller (the speechwriter who looks like he popped off a Mad Man episode) answered it. These days when your surrogates repeat something it's not as truthy as you doing it, apparently. Amazing to see Trump feuding with Cruz again today, completely off message as Pence looked on, well, pensively. You could imagine him seeking to settle a lot of scores as President.

Yes it's still there e.g. he's still going to build a wall but no mention of Mexico paying for it.

Fluent speech by Trump with some of the wilder rhetoric trimmed off. Now for him the tough part begins of staying on message.

Demanding the extradition of Gulen is good for Erdogan either way and may be even better if the US keeps him. A show trial could be divisive at home but railing against foreigners who refuse to hand over evil-doers will play very well with the base.

The time to get tough was during the campaign. Instead, Cruz initially let others do the hard lifting against Trump while he drafted along in his slipstream. He was the most talented candidate in the field but I think there will be even less of a market next time round for what he is selling.

I'd say he's moving towards an Erdoganist state.

Giuliani is still an excellent speaker:

A few needless own goals at the RNC. Melania's speech should have been checked more carefully for copied and pasted bits.

I'm suggesting that the Romans and Greeks increased the mortality rate of battles. Discrete pitched battles surrounded by long peaceful interludes are not so much a Western construct as one of advanced civilizations. Going back to the basic human group, you might have only 30 or 40 men who could fight. Skirmishing has been the standard interaction for millennia.

Western warfare is a cultural construct as John Keegan pointed out. Other societies have had different conventions for resolving conflicts, less acutely dangerous but usually more bloody over the long term than the pitched battle. The whole idea of terrorism is arbitrary. In general, the other side are terrorists.

Opposition parties in Turkey did denounce the coup attempt as well. For them it was a case of bad and possibly worse. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/turkish-political-parties-unite-coup-attempt-160717170830139.html

Without them, we are doomed but there is a spectrum from good to bad: http://takimag.com/article/black_cop_drunk_jew_white_city_david_cole#axzz4EmxXTe3i

The Kurds are also involved with ISIL oil and migrant-trafficking. There are no clean hands. Things have not been great in Iraqi Kurdistan either: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/analysis-war-against-journalists-kurdistan-2038679912

With ISIL overall, it's probably been a plus but not by much. Lord knows what's really going on: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/07/17/turkeys-incirlik-air-base-resumes-anti-isil-operations/87221308/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict The recent attack on Ataturk airport was attributed to ISIL which suggest they are not entirely happy with Turkish policy. On migrants, Europe isn't yet ready to get tough enough. For decades, the barrier states of West Asia and North Africa did the dirty work. Turkey is still vital while Europe changes its policies.

Basically, for Europe, migrants. They have to deal with Turkey because of this issue. Assistance on ISIL has been a plus overall but is less important politically.

Erdogan has been fortunate to run a developing economy at at a time of rapid expansion. That buys a lot of good will from voters.

More information will emerge in time, not just from government sources either. We have very little to go on right now. Erdogan seems to be nicer to Putin and Netanyahu these days than he is to Obama and Merkel, which says something about the guy.

I guess we will have to wait and see who these rebels are. If they are all Hizmet followers, there's a case to be made.