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What is terrorism? Many are convinced that the word is inherently so vague as to be meaningless. I have never understood this. To me the definition seems singular, and obvious, and it would appear that simply understanding it is the key to avoiding terrible missteps in the aftermath of an attack like the one in Paris.
Terrorism is a tactic in which the primary objective is to produce fear, rather than direct harm. Terrorist attacks are, first and foremost, psychological operations designed to alter behavior amongst the terrorized in a way that the actors believe will serve them.
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The 9/11 perpetrators killed about 3,000 people, and did about $13 billion in physical damage to the United States. That’s a lot of harm in absolute terms, but not relative to a nation of 300 million people, with a GDP of almost $15 trillion. It was a massive blow to many families, and to New York City. But to the nation as a whole that level of damage was about as dangerous as a bee sting.
You may find that analogy suspect because bee stings are deadly to those with an allergy. But what kills people is not the sting itself. It is their own massive overreaction to an otherwise tiny threat, that fatally disrupts the functional systems of the body. And that is exactly what terrorists hope to trigger—a muscular and reflexive response on the part of the victim-state that advances the perpetrators’ interests far beyond their own capacity to advance them.
The 9/11 attack was symbolic. It was not designed to cripple us economically or militarily, at least not directly. It was designed to provoke a reaction. The reaction cost more than 6,000 American lives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than $3 trillion in U.S. treasure. The reaction also caused the United States to cripple its own Constitution and radicalize the Muslim world with a reign of terror that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians.
The return on the terrorists’ investment was spectacular. Assuming the official story is right, then Al Qaeda got $7 million of effect for every dollar it spent on the attack–$7 million, to one. The ratio of harm inflicted on U.S. targets by the 9/11 attacks, to the financial harm the U.S. inflicted on itself reflects the same amplification. For every $1 of damage they did to us, we did $231 to ourselves. For every American that was killed in the attack, we sacrificed more than two on the battlefield. And that is all before we consider the instability we brought to the Middle East, the harm we did to our own freedoms, and the spectacular cost to our reputation abroad.
The lesson, of course, is that above all else a nation should refuse to do what everyone will expect it to do in response to an attack. And if there is a silver lining, it is that one does not need to be sure of the identity or intent of their attackers to respond intelligently.
Terrorists do not engage in terror attacks because they are strong. They engage in these attacks because they are weak. The gruesome spectacle of terrorism is a cost saving measure in which the fears of the victims and onlookers amplify the resources that the terrorists themselves are able to deploy.
Reacting reflexively is inherently self-defeating. If a nation wishes to make itself an unappealing target, then it should get its primordial fears under control.
We are not made safe from terrorists by helicopters, or missiles or boots on the ground. Nor is it drones, torture or digital dragnets that protect us. What makes us as individuals safe from a terror attack is the staggering probability that we will be elsewhere when one occurs. Accepting a tiny chance that we will die at the hands of terrorists is a bargain price for freedom. Reconciling oneself to it is very much like accepting a small chance that one will die on the highway, in exchange for the ability to travel at will.
There is much we do not know, and much we many never know about ISIS and its objectives. We can, however be sure of this: ISIS would like the citizens of the West to surrender their liberties, while lashing out blindly into the dark.
This time, let’s not.
Bret Weinstein is a professor of evolutionary biology at The Evergreen State College. He can be reached at [email protected]
Red Bull enjoyed a positive launch to its 2019 campaign thanks to Max Verstappen’s podium finish in Melbourne, but team boss Christian Horner dismissed talk about a title challenge.
Verstappen convincingly beat both Ferraris to the checkered flag in the Australian Grand Prix and was almost snapping at the heels of Mercedes runner-up Lewis Hamilton, proving that the Honda-powered RB15 is a force to reckoned with this year.
Horner was buoyed by the result achieved Down Under but remained cautious on the immediate future.
“I think it’s too early to talk about championships,” he said.
“But certainly to be on the podium is a great moment for Honda.
Honda ‘relaxed’ after Aussie podium, but no change to targets
“We’re very proud of that achievement, grateful for the product they’ve given us. Hopefully it’s a starting point for a strong season.
“We want to close the gap to Mercedes and Ferrari [and] we’ve done that.
“It’s only one race but we have a good start and we have to build on this positive energy.”
©RedBull
Gasly’s first race with the Milton Keynes-based outfit was a complicated affair, with a botched qualifying session following a strategy miscalculation from the team, and a Sunday afternoon that was always going to be challenging for the Frenchman given his low position on the grid.
“It’s still early days,” commented Horner on Gasly’s efforts.
“There’s always pressure in Formula 1 but I thought he drove a good race. He just needs a straightforward weekend. He built his way into the weekend very well, his feedback’s very strong.
“We know he’s got the pace, we’ve just got to give the kid a bit of time and it’ll come right for him.”
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British lawmakers on Wednesday voted to allow fracking under national parks and other protected areas.
“It is incredible that this decision comes just days after signing a ground-breaking climate change agreement in Paris,” stated MEP Scott Cato.
The Guardian reports that
[m]inisters used a statutory instrument to push through the new rules, which means legislation can pass into law without a debate in the House of Commons. MPs voted in favour by 298 to 261.
As Liberal Democrat head Tim Farron described it, “Government used a parliamentary wheeze to pass the change with no parliamentary debate,” while Shadow energy and climate secretary Lisa Nandy said the lack of debate was “frankly shabby.”
The Independent adds:
The change will also allow the industrial process to be conducted below UNESCO World Heritage Sites like Stonehenge were shale gas ever found there. Regulations were also relaxed around drinking water aquifers.
The new regulations just require that the drilling begin from outside those protected areas.
Environmental campaigners issued scathing responses to the development, and said the government should instead be banning fracking.
Calling the decision “a complete U-turn on earlier promises,” Rose Dickinson, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said, “People will rightly be concerned that the government is not following through on its commitment to have strong regulation on fracking.”
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“The government’s own draft report found contaminated water poses risks to human health. Yet these new rules will put our drinking water and national parks at risk of fracking,” she said.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said the decision was “deeply disappointing.”
“If the government is to match its rhetoric on the climate deal struck in Paris, then ministers must urgently rethink their entire approach to energy policy. To have any realistic chance of keeping global warming to well under 2 degrees we need to ban fracking in the UK.”
“Not only does fracking fly in the face of the climate science but mounting evidence suggests it won’t lower bills,” she said.
Farron said, “Government should hang its head in shame.”
Belatedly, at a sidebar meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Paris climate summit on Monday, President Barack Obama reportedly expressed regret for last week’s killing of a Russian pilot who was shot down by a Turkish air-to-air missile fired by a U.S.-supplied F-16 and the subsequent death of a Russian marine on a search-and-rescue mission, apparently killed by a U.S.-made TOW missile.
But Obama administration officials continued to take the side of Turkey, a NATO “ally” which claims implausibly that it was simply defending its air space and that the Russian pilot of the SU-24 warplane had ignored repeated warnings. According to accounts based on Turkish data, the SU-24 may have strayed over a slice of Turkish territory for 17 seconds. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Facts Back Russia on Turkish Attack.”]
Immediately after the incident on Nov. 24, Obama offered a knee-jerk justification of Turkey’s provocative action which appears to have been a deliberate attack on a Russian warplane to deter continued bombing of Syrian jihadists, including the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist, has supported various jihadists as his tip of the spear in his goal to overthrow the secular regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In his first public comments about the Turkish attack, Obama gracelessly asserted Turkey’s right to defend its territory and air space although there was never any indication that the SU-24 – even if it had strayed momentarily into Turkish air space – had any hostile intentions against Turkey. Indeed, Turkey and the United States were well aware that the Russian planes were targeting the Islamic State, Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other jihadist rebels.
Putin even complained, “We told our U.S. partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The U.S.-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don’t control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our U.S. partners.”
Putin also suggested that the Turkish attack was in retaliation for Russia’s bombing of a truck convoy caring Islamic State oil to Turkey. On Monday, on the sidelines of the Paris summit, Putin said Russia has “received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale.”
Turkey’s Erdogan — also in Paris — denied buying oil from terrorists and vowed to resign “if it is proven that we have, in fact, done so.”
Was Obama Angry?
In private, Obama may have been outraged by Erdogan’s reckless actions – as some reports suggest – but, if so, Obama seems publicly more afraid of offending the neocons who dominate Official Washington’s opinion circles and who hold key positions in his own administration, than of provoking a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia.
On Nov. 24, even as Russian emotions were running high – reacting to the killing of one Russian pilot and the death of a second Russian marine killed after his helicopter was shot down apparently by a U.S.-supplied TOW missile fired by Syrian jihadists – Obama chose to act “tough” against Putin, both during a White House press conference with French President Francois Holland and later with pro-Turkish remarks from U.S. officials.
During the press conference after the Turkish shoot-down and the deliberate fire from Turkish-backed Syrian jihadists aiming at two Russian airmen as they parachuted to the ground, Obama chose to make disparaging remarks about the Russian president.
Obama boasted about the 65 nations in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State compared to Putin’s small coalition of Russia and Iran (although Putin’s tiny coalition appears to be much more serious and effective than Obama’s bloated one, which includes countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been implicated in supporting jihadist elements, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State).
By delivering these anti-Russian insults at such a delicate time, Obama apparently was trusting that Putin would keep his cool and tamp down public emotions at home, even as Obama lacked the integrity and courage to stand up to neocon criticism from The Washington Post’s editorial page or from some of his hawkish subordinates.
The administration’s neocons who keep demanding an escalation of tensions with Russia include Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland. Then, there are the officials most identified with arms procurement, sales and use, such as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford recently volunteered to Congress that U.S. forces “can impose a no-fly zone” for Syria (a dangerous play advocated by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain). Dunford is the same hawk who identified Russia as the “existential threat” to the U.S. and said it would be “reasonable” to send heavy weapons to Ukraine on Russia’s border.
Meanwhile, NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove keeps up his fly-by-the-pants information warfare campaign citing Russian “aggression,” “invasions” and plans to do still more evil things. One is tempted to dismiss him as a buffoon; but he is the NATO commander.
Lack of Control
It does not appear as though Obama has the same degree of control over foreign and defense policy that Putin enjoys in Moscow – or at least one hopes Putin can retain such control since some hard-line Russian nationalists are fuming that Putin has been too accommodating of his Western “partners.”
Perhaps the greatest danger from Obama’s acquiescence to the neocons’ new Cold War with Russia is that the neocon hopes for “regime change in Moscow” will be realized except that Putin will be replaced by some ultra-nationalist who would rather risk nuclear war than accept further humiliation of Mother Russia.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, the U.S. establishment is such that the generals, the arms manufacturers and weapons merchants, the Defense Department, and most of Congress have a very strong say in U.S. foreign policy – and Obama seems powerless to change it.
The model of governing in Washington is a far cry from Russia’s guiding principle of edinonachaliye – by which one supreme authority is in clear control of decision-making on defense and foreign policy.
Even when Obama promises, he often fails to deliver. Think back to what Obama told then-President Dmitry Medvedev when they met in Seoul in March 2012, about addressing Russian concerns over European missile defense. In remarks picked up by camera crews, Obama asked for some “space” until after the U.S. election. Obama can be heard saying, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Yet, even after winning reelection, Obama has remained cowed by the influential neocons – even as he has bucked some of their more aggressive demands, such as a massive U.S. bombing campaign against Assad’s military in summer 2013 and bomb-bomb-bombing Iran; instead, in 2014-15, Obama pushed for a negotiated agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program.
Ideally, Obama should be able to show some flexibility on Syria during his last year in office, but no one should hold their breath. Obama appears to have deep fears about crossing the neocons or Israel regarding what they want for the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Besides the neocons’ close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the neocons are intimately connected to the interests of the Military-Industrial Complex, which provides substantial funding for the major think tanks where many neocons hang their hats and churn out new arguments for more world conflict and thus more military spending.
Unlike Obama, Pope Francis addressed this fact-of-life head-on in his Sept. 24 address to members of the U.S. Congress – many if not most of whom also are lavished with proceeds from the arms trade and then appropriate still more funding for arms production and sales.
“Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering,” Francis asked them face-to-face. “Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”
An Old Epithet
From my days as a CIA analyst covering the Soviet Union, I’m reminded of the epithet favored by the Soviet party daily Pravda a few decades ago –“vallstreetskiye krovopitsiy” – or Wall St. bloodsuckers. Propaganda-ish as that term seemed, it turns out that Soviet media were not far off on that subject.
Indeed, the banks and corporations involved in arms manufacture and sales enjoy immense power – arguably, more than a president; unarguably more than Obama. The moneyed interests – including Congress – are calling the shots.
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The old adage “money makes the world go round” is also apparent in Washington’s velvet-gloves treatment of the Saudis and is nowhere better illustrated than in the continued suppression of 28 pages of the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry on 9/11. Those pages deal with the Saudi role in financing and supporting some of the 9/11 hijackers, but both the Bush and Obama administrations have kept those pages hidden for 13 years.
One reason is that the Saudis are the primary recipients of the U.S. trade in weapons, for which they pay cash. American manufacturers are selling the Saudis arms worth $100 billion under the current five-year agreement. Oddly, acts of terrorism sweeten the pot. Three days after the attacks in Paris, Washington and Riyadh announced a deal for $1.3 billion more.
And yet, neither Obama, nor any of the candidates trying to replace him, nor Congress is willing to jeopardize the arms trade by insisting that Riyadh call an abrupt halt to its support for the jihadists fighting in Syria for fear this might incur the wrath of the deep-pocket Saudis.
Not even Germany – already inundated, so far this year, by a flood of 950,000 refugees, mostly from Syria – is willing to risk Saudi displeasure. Berlin prefers to pay off the Turks with billions of euros to stanch the flow of those seeking refuge in Europe.
And so, an unholy alliance of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states continues to fuel the war in Syria while Obama pretends that his giant coalition is really doing the job of taking on many of those same jihadists. But Obama’s coalition has been woefully incompetent and indeed compromised, bumbling along and letting the Islamic State seize more territory along with Al Qaeda and its affiliates and allies.
Russia’s entry into the war in September changed the equation because – unlike Obama’s grand coalition – Putin’s puny coalition with Iran actually was serious about beating back the jihadists and stabilizing Assad’s regime. Turkey’s shoot-down of the Russian warplane on Nov. 24 was a crude message from Erdogan that success in defeating the jihadists would not be tolerated.
As for the United States and Europe, myopia prevails. None seems concerned that the terrorists whom they support today will come back to bite them tomorrow. American officials, despite their rhetoric and despite 9/11, seem to consider the terrorist threat remote from U.S. shores – and, in any case, dwarfed in importance by the lucrative arm sales.
As for the Vienna talks on Syria, the speed with which they were arranged (with Iran taking part) raised expectations now dampened. Last week, for example, Secretary of State John Kerry bragged about how a meeting of “moderate” rebels is to convene “in the next few weeks” to come up with principles for negotiating with Syrian President Assad’s government. The convener? Saudi Arabia!
Obama knows what has to happen for this terrorist threat to be truly addressed. The Saudis and Turks have to be told, in no uncertain terms, to stop supporting the jihadists. But that would require extraordinary courage and huge political – perhaps even physical – risk. There is no sign that President Obama dares bite that bullet.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President’s Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
As European officials on Wednesday weigh whether or not to re-approve the use of Monsanto’s glyphosate, a storm has erupted after the World Health Organization (WHO) seemingly flipped in its assessment of the dangers posed by the chemical.
Ahead of this week’s European Commission meeting, which could approve the use of glyphosate for up to nine years, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the WHO released a joint summary report concluding that the chemical, a favored ingredient of agrochemical producers like Monsanto and Dow, was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet.”
These findings were widely (and inaccurately) reported as a “clean bill of health” for a pesticide once declared to be “probably carcinogenic” for humans by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
What’s more, documents obtained by the anti-GMO watchdog group U.S. Right to Know found that one of the chairs of the UN’s Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) had, in another capacity, received a six-figure donation from Monsanto.
The Guardian reported on Tuesday:
Professor Alan Boobis, who chaired the UN’s joint FAO/WHO meeting on glyphosate, also works as the vice-president of the International Life Science Institute (ILSI) Europe. The co-chair of the sessions was Professor Angelo Moretto, a board member of ILSI’s Health and Environmental Services Institute, and of its Risk21 steering group too, which Boobis also co-chairs.
In 2012, the ILSI group took a $500,000 (£344,234) donation from Monsanto and a $528,500 donation from the industry group Croplife International, which represents Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and others, according to documents obtained by the US right to know campaign.
Those opposed to the chemical’s re-approval in Europe said the exposed “conflict of interest” in the FAO/WHO report should disqualify it from consideration. The EU’s deliberations, which are expected to last two days, were postponed in March after a wave of public opposition forced lawmakers to renege on their approval.
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“The timing of the release of this report by the FAO/WHO could be described as cynical if it weren’t such a blatantly political and ham-fisted attempt to influence the EU decision later this week on the approval of glyphosate,” said Green MEP Bart Staes.
“Any decision affecting millions of people should be based on fully transparent and independent science that isn’t tied to corporate interests,” said Greenpeace EU food policy director Franziska Achterberg. “It would be irresponsible to ignore the warnings on glyphosate and to re-licence this pesticide without any restrictions to protect the public and the environment.”
Pointing to the discrepancy between the various reports on the toxicity of glyphosate, The Intercept‘s Sharon Lerner noted Tuesday that what distinguished the WHO’s March 2015 study, which concluded with a cancer warning, is that it used research “on both glyphosate alone as well as the complete formations of Roundup and other herbicides,” which included the impact of supposedly “inert” ingredients.
“Research on these chemicals seems to have played a role in the stark disagreement over glyphosate’s safety that has played out on the international stage over the last year,” she writes.
As Lerner noted in the in-depth report, scientific study of these other ingredients has been hampered by biochemical giants claiming industry secrets, though there is increasing evidence that the combination of chemicals could be very harmful to human health.
Lerner reports:
Independent scientists have been reporting since at least 1991 that pesticides containing glyphosate along with other ingredients were more dangerous than glyphosate on its own. More recently, two papers — one published in 2002, the other in 2004 — showed that Roundup and other glyphosate-containing weed formulations were more likely to cause cell-cycle dysregulation, a hallmark of cancer, than glyphosate alone. In 2005, researchers showed that Roundup was more harmful to rats’ livers than its “active ingredient” by itself. And a 2009 study showed that four formulations of Roundup were more toxic to human umbilical, embryonic, and placental cells than glyphosate by itself.
But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health.
As for the European Commission’s negotiations, an early draft report proposed banning at least one potentially toxic co-formulant (polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA) though many other unknown chemicals remain in the glyphosate-based pesticides.
“The decision on glyphosate is a critical test of who’s interests the EU is acting on,” said Aisha Dodwell, a food campaigner with Global Justice Now.
“On one side,” Dodwell continued, “there are powerful agribusiness companies like Monsanto, whose Roundup weed killer contains glyphosate and accounts for a third of its total sales. And on the other side you have over a million citizens from across the EU who have signed petitions saying that they don’t want to be exposed to chemicals that are probably causing cancer.”
On the face of it, it’s been a strong start to the season for Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
The 21-year-old Dutch driver was on the podium in Melbourne, and narrowly missed out on another in Bahrain when a late safety car prevented him from overhauling the ailing Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
But that masks a more sombre state of affairs for Red Bull, with problems for Ferrari in Australia hiding the fact that Red Bull has fallen off the pace of its main rivals over the winter and now has considerable ground to recover.
“We scored some good points and maximised the result in Bahrain, but we still have a lot of things to learn about the car,” acknowledged Verstappen this week.
- Mercedes keeping tabs on Verstappen… just in case
“To finish fourth was not too bad as we struggled with pace and rear grip, especially with the high winds.
“I was sliding around a lot so it was not easy and I just had to manage it, but I don’t think we could have done a lot differently. I drove to the limit of the car.”
But Red Bull will need to dig a lot deeper still if Verstappen is to be a true title contender this season. “We’ve been busy back at the factory and hopefully we can close the gap in China,” he pledged.
Shanghai has been a successful hunting ground for Red Bull in the past, with Sebastian Vettel picking up the team’s first ever Grand Prix victory here in 2009.
Last year provided the team with more positive memories, with Daniel Ricciardo crossing the line to pick up the honours. Now it’s up to Verstappen to pick up the banner and carry the squad to success again.
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“The Chinese Grand Prix is always a good one for racing, because the track gives you a lot of opportunities for overtaking.
“I’m looking forward to hopefully having an exciting race,” he added.
“The first sector is really nice because you can take a lot of different lines through the long right-hander so it can be quite interesting during the race in terms of trying to stay out of the dirty air.
“The track can also be quite hard on the left front tyre so in the race you’re always looking at how you can use the least amount of energy in that corner.
“Overall, Shanghai provides you with a lot of opportunities to fight and set up overtakes like for example in turn six, where you’re already preparing and setting up for that in Turn 1.
“This year in Shanghai is also the tenth anniversary of the Team’s first race win so hopefully we can put on a good show – especially for the passionate fans there who always turn out.”
Whoever wins Sunday’s race will have a permanent place in the F1 history books, as it’s the 1000th Grand Prix in the history of the sport. The first race was held at Silverstone on May 13 1950, with Nino Farina victorious for Alfa Romeo.
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As the Islamic State and Al Qaeda enter a grim competition to see who can kill more civilians around the world, the fate of Western Civilization as we’ve known it arguably hangs in the balance. It will not take much more terror for the European Union to begin cracking up and for the United States to transform itself into a full-scale surveillance state.
Yet, in the face of this crisis, many of the same people who set us on this road to destruction continue to dominate – and indeed frame – the public debate. For instance, Official Washington’s neocons still insist on their recipe for “regime change” in countries that they targeted 20 years ago. They also demand a new Cold War with Russia in defense of a corrupt right-wing regime in Ukraine, further destabilizing Europe and disrupting U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria.
Given the stakes, you might think that someone in a position of power – or one of the many candidates for U.S. president – would offer some pragmatic and realistic ideas for addressing this extraordinary threat. But most Republicans – from Marco Rubio to Carly Fiorina to Ted Cruz – only offer more of “more of the same,” i.e. neocon belligerence on steroids. Arguably, Donald Trump and Rand Paul are exceptions to this particular hysteria, but neither has offered a coherent and comprehensive counter-analysis.
On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton wins praise from the neocon editors of The Washington Post for breaking with President Barack Obama’s hesitancy to fully invade Syria. Former Secretary of State Clinton wants an invasion to occupy parts of Syria as a “safe area” and to destroy Syrian (and presumably Russian planes) if they violate her “no-fly zone.”
Much like the disastrous U.S. invasions of Iraq and Libya, Clinton and her neocon allies are pitching the invasion of Syria as a humanitarian venture to remove a “brutal dictator” – in this case, President Bashar al-Assad – as well as to “destroy” the Islamic State, which Assad’s army and its Iranian-Russian allies have also been fighting. Assad’s military, Iranian troops and Russian planes have hit other jihadist groups, too, such as Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, which receives U.S. weapons as it fights side-by-side with Nusra in the Army of Conquest.
Clinton’s strategy likely would protect jihadists except for the Islamic State — and thus keep hope alive for “regime change” — explaining why the Post’s neocon editors, who were enthusiastic boosters of the Iraq War in 2003, hailed her hawkish approach toward Syria as “laudable.”
To Clinton’s left, Sen. Bernie Sanders has punted on the issue of what to do in either Syria or the Middle East, failing to offer any thoughtful ideas about what can be done to stabilize the region. He opted instead for a clever but vacuous talking point, arguing that the Saudis and other rich oil sheiks of the Persian Gulf should use their wealth and militaries to bring order to the region, to “get their hands dirty.”
The problem is that the Saudis, the Qataris and the Kuwaitis – along with the Turks – are a big part of the problem. They have used their considerable wealth to finance and arm Al Qaeda and its various allies and spinoffs, including the Islamic State. Their hands are already very dirty.
Saudi ‘Hard Power’
What we have seen in the Middle East since the 1980s is Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states creating “hard power” for their regional ambitions by assembling paramilitary forces that are willing and even eager to lash out at “enemies,” whether against Shiite rivals or Western powers.
While the wealthy Saudis, Qataris and other pampered princes don’t want to become soldiers themselves, they’re more than happy to exploit disaffected young Sunnis, turn them into jihadists and unleash them. Al Qaeda (dating back to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s) and the Islamic State (emerging in resistance to the U.S.-installed Shiite regime in Iraq after 2003) are Saudi Arabia’s foot soldiers.
This reality is similar to how the Reagan administration supported right-wing paramilitary forces in Central America during the 1980s, including “death squads” in El Salvador and Guatemala and the drug-tainted “Contras” in Nicaragua. These extremists were willing to do the “dirty work” that Reagan’s CIA considered necessary to reverse the tide of leftist revolution in the region, but with “deniability” built in so Official Washington couldn’t be directly blamed for the slaughters.
Also, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration’s hardliners, including CIA Director William J. Casey, saw the value of using Islamic extremism to undermine the Soviet Union, with its official position of atheism. The CIA and the Saudis worked hand in hand in building the Afghan mujahedeen – an Islamic fundamentalist movement – to overthrow the Soviet-backed secular government in Kabul.
The “success” of that strategy included severe harm dealt to the struggling Soviet economy and the eventual ouster (and murder) of the Moscow-backed president, Najibullah. But the strategy also gave rise to the Taliban, which took power and installed a medieval regime, and Al Qaeda, which evolved from the Saudi and other foreign fighters (including Saudi Osama bin Laden) who had flocked to the Afghan jihad.
In effect, the Afghan experience created the modern jihadist movement – and the Saudis, in particular, understood the value of this paramilitary force to punish governments and political groups that the Saudis and their oil-rich friends considered threats. Officially, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Sunni oil states could claim that they weren’t behind the terrorists while letting money and arms slip through.
Though Al Qaeda and the other jihadists had their own agendas – and could take independent action – the Saudis and other sheiks could direct these paramilitary forces against the so-called “Shiite crescent,” from Iran through Syria to Lebanon (and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, against Iraq’s Shiite government as well).
At times, the jihadists also proved useful for the United States and Israel, striking at Hezbollah in Lebanon, fighting for “regime change” in Syria, collaborating in the 2011 ouster (and murder) of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, even joining forces with the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government to kill ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Israeli Role
Since these Sunni jihadists were most adept at killing Shiites, they endeared themselves not only to their Saudi, Qatari and Kuwaiti benefactors, but also to Israel, which has identified Shiite-ruled Iran as its greatest strategic threat. Thus, the American neocons, who collaborate closely with Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had mixed attitudes toward the Sunni jihadists, too.
Plus, high-profile terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks, enabled the tough-talking neocons to consolidate their control over U.S. foreign policy, diverting American fury over Al Qaeda’s killing nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington to implement the neocons’ “regime change” agenda, first in Iraq though it had nothing to do with 9/11, with plans to move on to Syria and Iran.
As the Military-Industrial Complex made out like bandits with billions upon billions of dollars thrown at the “War on Terror,” grateful military contractors kicked back some profits to major think tanks where neocon thinkers were employed to develop more militaristic plans. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Family Business of Perpetual War.”]
But the downside of this coziness with the Sunni jihadists has been that Al Qaeda and its spinoff, the Islamic State, perceive the West as their ultimate enemy, drawing from both historic and current injustices inflicted on the Islamic world by Europe and the United States. The terrorist leaders cite this mistreatment to recruit young people from impoverished areas of the Middle East and the urban slums of Europe – and get them to strap on suicide-belts.
Thus, Al Qaeda and now the Islamic State not only advance the neocon/Israeli/Saudi agenda by launching terror attacks in Syria against Assad’s government and in Lebanon against Hezbollah, but they strike out on their own against U.S. and European targets, even in Africa where Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for last week’s murderous assault on an upscale Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali.
It also appears that Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have entered into a competition over who can stage the bloodiest attacks against Westerners as a way to bolster recruitment. The Bamako attack was an attempt by Al Qaeda to regain the spotlight from the Islamic State which boasted of a vicious string of attacks on Paris, Beirut and a Russian tourist flight in the Sinai.
The consequence of these murderous rampages has been to threaten the political and economic cohesion of Europe and to increase pressures for a strengthened surveillance state inside the United States. In other words, some of the most treasured features of Western civilization – personal liberty and relative affluence – are being endangered.
Yet, rather than explain the real reasons for this crisis – and what the possible solutions might be – no one in the U.S. mainstream political world or the major media seems able or willing to talk straight to the American people about how we got here.
Sanders’s Lost Opportunity
While you might have expected as much from most Republicans (who have surround themselves with neocon advisers) and from Hillary Clinton (who has cultivated her own ties to the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks), you might have hoped that Sanders would have adopted a thoughtful critique of Official Washington’s neocon-dominated “group think.”
But instead he offers a simplistic and nonsensical prescription of demanding the Saudis do more – when that would only inflict more death and destruction on the region and beyond. Arguably, the opposite would make much more sense – impose tough financial sanctions against Saudi Arabia as punishment for its continued support for Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Freezing or confiscating Saudi bank accounts around the world might finally impress the spoiled princes of the Persian Gulf oil states that there is a real price to pay for dabbling in terrorism. Such an action against Saudi Arabia also would send a message to smaller Sunni sheikdoms that they could be next. Other pressures, including possible expulsion from NATO, could be brought to bear on Turkey.
If the West finally got serious about stopping this financial and military support for Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and their jihadist allies in Syria, the violence might finally abate. And, if the United States and Europe put pressure on the “moderate” Syrian opposition – whatever there is of it – to compromise, a political solution might be possible, too.
Right now, the biggest obstacle to a political agreement appears to be the U.S. insistence that President Assad be barred from elections once Syria achieves some stability. Yet, if President Obama is so certain that the Syrian people hate Assad, it seems crazy to let Assad’s presumed defeat at the polls obstruct such a crucial deal.
The only explanation for this U.S. stubbornness is that the neocons and the liberal hawks have made “regime change” in Syria such a key part of their agenda that they would lose face if Assad’s departure was not mandated. However, with the future of Western civilization in the balance, such obstinate behavior seems not only feckless but reckless.
From understanding how this mess was made, some U.S. politician could fashion an appeal that might have broad popular support across the political spectrum. If Sanders took up this torch for a rational plan for bringing relative peace to the Middle East, he also might shift the dynamics of the Democratic race.
Of course, to challenge Official Washington’s “group think” is always dangerous. If compromise and cooperation suddenly replaced “regime change” as the U.S. goal, the neocons and liberal hawks would flip out. But the stakes are extremely high for the planet’s future. Maybe saving Western civilization is worth the risk of facing down a neocon/liberal-hawk temper tantrum.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’.
e’re only halfway through, and I’m already sick of the US presidential race. As reality television goes, it’s a hackneyed format. The narrative is childish and simplistic. And if I want to watch a bunch of interchangeable thuggish white men and the occasional token minority making terrifying pronouncements to a pounding rock soundtrack, I’ll stick on a Tarantino film.
American commentators often point out that the whole two-year, multibillion-dollar pageant is a great way to distract the entire US electorate from the real-life daily process of democracy. Imagine how the rest of us feel. We’re not even allowed to vote and help decide which candidate gets to go home with all those fabulous prizes, which include a free plane and the largest military arsenal the world has ever known. What can I say? It’s America. They have high expectations. In Britain, whoever Rupert Murdoch picks is usually just excited to meet the Queen.
“The presidential race would be embarrassing even if it weren’t supposed to dramatise the proper function of politics in the world’s only democratic superpower.”
I’ve tuned in for the past five series of this horror show, and I’ve got to say, it’s getting tiresome. It picked up in 2008, when they made some genuinely progressive casting decisions. The 2012 one repeated a lot of the same material, but the writers’ strike was on and the producers had to work with what they’d got. But in recent years, they seem to have broken entirely with the reality aspect and just attempted to glue us to the screens with unremitting horror and the possibility that one of the contestants might start screaming and try to eat the others.
The same thing happened on Big Brother, where the first few seasons were truly engaging, partly because they featured at least some ordinary people who occasionally forgot they were on television. But then they tried to boost ratings by filling a bunker with G-list celebrities wearing DayGlo spray tans who smiled all the time and tried to get them to have sex or kill one another on camera.
In both politics and entertainment, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of shock value, as long as it isn’t replacing actual content. The presidential race would be embarrassing even if it weren’t supposed to dramatise the proper function of politics in the world’s only democratic superpower.
America does seem, at times, to forget that it’s on camera and the entire world can see when it strips naked and rants at itself in the mirror. Guys, everyone can see you seriously considering leadership by a man who calls global warming a “hoax” and wants to build a border wall out of Muslims.
I’ve been paying as much attention to the Republican race as I can stand, and I am now able to tell Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio apart almost 50 per cent of the time, though it’s still like watching the Chuckle Brothers trying to lead a fascist rally. The candidates appear to be competing to deliver the most unhinged bigotry. Last season, it was enough to oppose a woman’s right to choose. This season nobody will pay attention until you say you’re going to make it illegal for women not to be pregnant and replace what remains of the health-care system with a single giant gun.
“Even limited voting rights for everyone affected by US foreign, environmental and trade policy might restore a measure of sanity, or at least oblige the US to acknowledge the existence of several billion non-American human beings who would really prefer not to be blown up or under water.”
It was mildly hilarious at first to think that any one of these swivel-eyed clowns might become the leader of the nominally free world, but that joke has been running for six years now, and it’s not funny any more. It’s just scary. It’s depressing and scary. It’s boring and depressing and scary, and most viewers are bored and depressed and scared and unable to change channel, which is even worse, because it means that these cartoon monsters might even pull it off – like that time everyone voted for four screaming Finns in plastic goblin masks to win Eurovision just to see what would happen. That’s how we got Boris Johnson. Who turned out to have been serious about making London into a giant theme park for millionaires.
Under these circumstances, I am rather nonplussed by everyone asking me what I think of Hillary Clinton. What I think, along with most non-Americans, is that compared to the Republican choices, absolutely anyone at all is acceptable as long as they appear to be at least semi-hinged.
Americans do not appear to realise that, although it would be nice to get the more progressive of the two Democrats, what matters most to the rest of the world is that not a single member of the Republican line-up, the worst boy band in history, ever gets within 50 feet of the Situation Room (hey, I’ve seen The West Wing). What matters is that these people are not allowed to make decisions about climate change, or military intervention, or preferably any decisions at all apart from, perhaps, whether they would prefer milk or hot chocolate at bedtime, because someone should take gentle care of them in a place where they are never allowed to engage in politics again. I’d call them lunatics but it would do a disservice to the many people I know with mental-health difficulties.
At this point I, for one, would feel a lot safer if the selection were done by a lottery of the entire American public. But if we must pretend that this is democracy, there ought at least to be a chance for everyone affected to have their say.
The world is obsessed with the US elections because the outcome of those elections will have an impact on every person on Earth. So, let the world have its say. Why not? Even limited voting rights for everyone affected by US foreign, environmental and trade policy might restore a measure of sanity, or at least oblige the US to acknowledge the existence of several billion non-American human beings who would really prefer not to be blown up or under water.
The world is burning. America is watching a creaky junior string quartet try to play Wagner. Let’s give the species a chance to change the channel.
Laurie Penny is a contributing editor to the New Statesman. She is the author of five books, most recently Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies, and Revolutions.
Who says you have to opt for the run-of-the-mill floor-length dress on the red carpet? Definitely not Margot Robbie, who wisely chose to adopt one of Alessandro Michele’s other-worldly fall 2016 Gucci frocks at the premiere of her soon-to-be summer blockbuster film, The Legend of Tarzan, in L.A. on Monday night.
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Ditching her usual bombshell M.O. for something that puts the capital F in fashion, the 25-year-old actress expertly nailed an all-black silk gown that sexily featured a thigh-high slit on one side, along with intricate flower embroidery, fuzzy pink cuffs, and a high Mandarin collar design that, from afar, resembled a traditional Chinese dress. She turned to stylist Kate Young for the affair and paired the one-of-a-kind design with Tiffany & Co. jewels, matching Gucci shoes, and a well-deserved cocktail.
On the runway, the autumnal outfit was styled with a teal hat with a mesh veil, but Robbie said goodbye to the catwalk getup and instead chose another standout accessory: Alexander Skarsgård. Her Tarzan co-star and the movie’s lead man looked nothing but dapper in a navy suit that, unfortunately, hid his insanely ripped physique.
Todd Williamson/Getty
PHOTOS: Margot Robbie’s Red Carpet Style
Jane Porter, Robbie’s character in the film, would certainly be proud.
Watch the video above to see more of Robbie’s outfit.
Jacob Tremblay might only be nine, but he sure knows the classics!
The young Room star took to Instagram on Wednesday to post a video of him sitting in the backseat of a car while lip syncing and dancing along to Jon Bon Jovi’s hit track “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and let’s just say Tremblay is giving the legend a run for his money with a pretty epic performance.
“#HumpDay! #WrapTime! #FeelsGood! #BonJovi” the actor hash tagged the short video clip in which he appears to be belting out the classic tune while using his hands, nodding his head, and even doing some body rolls along to the beat. During the chorus, the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer winner squeezes his eyes shut and balls up his fists as he pretends to scream-sing “Livin’ on a Prayer.” A male driver can be heard laughing along to the actor’s hilarious antics.
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Not a bad way to get over a hump day! And for those who are concerned about Tremblay getting behind the wheel with those traffic-stopping movies, the actor had a tongue-in-cheek parting message: “Don’t worry! Haven’t started driving yet!”