Video: NATO and US allies say that only Turks have the right to defend their airspace
07/12/2015 23:23
Article by George of Golden Dawn New York Division.
Jens Stoltenberg the General Secretary at NATO (pictured above) recently gave an interview to CNN. In the video below, the reporter asks him if there is a double standard on NATO policy. The reporter was referencing of course the incident of the Turks shooting down a Russian jet for the alleged airspace violation of approximately 17 seconds. The reporter compared it to the thousands of aggressive Turkish violations of Greek airspace per year in order to ask if there is a double standard.
Stoltenberg replies “No” and starts babbling like a robot that had a system malfunction, repeating that Turkey is a “Special Case” because of it’s proximity to Syria and Iraq etc etc.. Completely refusing to answer why one NATO country is allowed to blast a jet out of the sky for a minor airspace violation, while another is supposed to routinely tolerate thousands of blatant violations, including over 800 armed formation violations.
What is particularly interesting about Stoltenberg, is not so much that he lied so blatantly, but that he got so flustered when some American woman asks him a simple question. This reminded me of my travels in Northern Europe and the culture of “non-debate”.
In many countries televised debating or arguing is quite normal. In Greece this reaches ridiculous levels. Even in the US however it is not uncommon for people on television to argue. In countries like Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands such arguing or cross questioning is unheard of.
In the Netherlands for example, they even have a word for this style of “debate” called “Polder Model” which is essentially a “debate” where each person will say what their position is, but nobody will react to what the other one is saying or point out flaws in logic or correct misinformation. This is done in order to “not offend” the weaker members in the debate and keep things “tolerant”. I am not certain if the Norwegians have a word for this also, but the temperament is very similar.
It is obvious from the video above that there is a bit of a cultural miscommunication between Jens here and the “Sassy” American woman. Jens, despite being the General Secretary of a huge military alliance such as NATO gets timid around a woman. One can only imagine how he will deal with Putin in the future.
