According to the Blogger statistics, more visitors to this blog are from the United States than any other nation.  That's not surprising - I post in English and have a decidedly American slant on things.  It's only logical that the States would represent my biggest demographic.

But, surprisingly, the U.S. does not represent a majority of my readers.  American readers make up only 36.8% of my readership.  The majority of visitors here are from overseas, primarily Turkey (33.8%) and Russia (18.2%).  Germany, France, and the U.K. each contribute about 2% of the audience, and Ukraine, Brazil, and Poland each represent about 1%. 

I have no idea why.  Are Turks and Russians interested in the music I post?  If so, why aren't they on better, more informative web sties, like Pitchfork or Stereogum or Brooklyn Vegan?  Are they interested in Zen?  Last time I checked, neither Turkey not Russia were hotbeds of Buddhist activity.  Honestly, sometimes I deliberately post the most boring thoughts imaginable - I can't believe that this blog has attracted a multi-cultural, international audience.

My fear is that this site is being monitored by troll farms, those disinformation factories that spew forth propaganda and fake news to confuse the electorate.  According to U.S. intelligence agencies, the coordinated attack on our media, social and otherwise, originated in Russia.  I don't know Turkey's role in all this, if any, but it wouldn't surprise me if Russia used Turkish servers for their campaign to throw investigators off the scent.

I'll be generous and assume that I've somehow made some Turkish and Russian friends in the course of running this blog the past 15 years, and not that I'm part of somebody's analytics monitoring the effect of  their disinfo campaign.  So it's not without some regret that I'm about to offend some of my new virtual friends and tell them that Turkey's on-going military action in Syria is deplorable.  Yes, I know the U.S. is not without it's own culpability in this matter, far from it, and I'm doing what I can on this end to correct that.  But the Turks, who don't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to genocide, are reportedly engaging in ethnic cleansing and murdering Kurds solely for the "crime" of being Kurdish.

It's a complex situation, and sometimes it seems like there's no course of action without a terrible down side.  PKK terrorism against the Turkish people is deplorable, and will not be tolerated. I get it.  But counter-actions that result in genocide, that benefit primarily Syria, Iran and Russia, and are likely going to lead to a resurgence of ISIS might be the worst course of action of all.

Our president, speaking recently to the General Assembly at the United Nations, said, "The future does not belong to the globalists; it belongs to the patriots."  He couldn't be more wrong - he got it exactly backwards.  The overarching arc of history has lead inexorably to more trade, more connectedness, more communication.  Patriotism, especially of the blind, Trumpian variety, leads to nationalism, which leads to war.  

I call on my Turkish friends to protest and resist this nationalistic military adventure and bring this adventurism to an end.  Look at our friends in Hong Kong, taking to the streets in mass numbers for months on end for their cause. Meanwhile, we'll do what we can on this end to get our President impeached and than start managing diplomacy and foreign affairs on a coherent, less impulsive basis.

Sorry if I offend.  I don't mean to lose friends (if indeed we are friends), but I'm angry at the moment.