Category Archives: Analysis

Rules of the underworld

Katherine Hirschfeld writes: In March 2013, a drug cartel staged a grisly tableau near a central plaza in Uruapan, Mexico. Seven dead and mutilated bodies were left sitting upright in plastic chairs. Two had crudely lettered signs pinned to their chests with ice picks that read, “Warning, this is going to happen to all muggers, pickpockets, thieves of cars, homes, and walkers — as well as kidnappers, rapists, and extortionists.” Photos found their way to CNN and other media outlets in the United States and Europe. (You may view them here if you are brave.)

Those who inhabit the upper world — law-abiding citizens who enjoy the rights and protections of government — instinctively turn away from such images of horrific violence. Not only are the photos disturbing to look at, they don’t make sense. Why would a drug cartel go to such lengths to issue a proclamation against thievery? Drug cartels are not law-abiding organizations, so why arrange a display of dead bodies with ice picks and cardboard signs in order to declare rules?

The scene at Uruapan contains a message from the underworld — the subterranean organized crime groups that control much of the world’s traffic in illicit commodities. Criminal organizations often communicate through the bodies of the dead, and we should not look away just yet, because their message contains a warning for all of us.

What the bodies in Uruapan tell us is that underworld groups are law-and-order organizations, but their laws and their order are not the same as those of the upper world. We know this because the intrepid journalists, human rights activists, and forensic anthropologists who have crossed over to explore specific examples of the global underworld have brought back stories that reveal common themes. Criminal groups may be culturally or geographically distinct, but they operate with similar rules.

The primary rule of the underworld is that the cartel (or the mafia or the warlord) makes the rules, and disobedience is a capital crime. Public displays of death convey the cartel’s power to impose the kind of lethal punishment typically reserved for the state. The public setting in Uruapan symbolizes that the Mexican government no longer has jurisdiction over matters of criminal justice in this municipality. Through these practices, the cartel reanimates the dead and compels them to speak to the living one last time: “Obey, or you will end up like us.” [Continue reading…]

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In Syria, rebuilding bombed hospitals is an act of resistance

Charles Davis writes: The horror of the conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, can be measured with statistics: over 400,000 people dead; half the population displaced; the life expectancy of a newborn child dropping from 76 years in 2011 to under 56 years in 2016. But the grotesque absurdity of this revolution turned civil war is perhaps best captured by the fact that today Syrians are forced to crowdsource money online to rebuild and fortify bombed hospitals.

“Now, thanks to this war, we are 10,000 years back and we dig hospitals in the mountains and in the ground,” Zaidoun al-Zoabi, head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations (UOSSM), told me. “In our worst dreams — in our worst nightmares — we never thought we would have to fortify hospitals,” he said. “It’s not humane. It’s impossible to comprehend.”

Zoabi, a 42-year-old father of three daughters, spoke to me from Berlin, where he fled two years ago. Originally from Daraa, where the initially peaceful uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad began, he fled when he “couldn’t stand anymore the brutality of the regime. Two times in jail was enough for me.” Now, like 4.8 million other Syrians, he witnesses the brutality from abroad.

Today, Syria lacks many things, including the democracy Zoabi and thousands of others were arrested and tortured for demanding, but there is no shortage of atrocities. [Continue reading…]

Interview with Dr. Zaher Sahloul, founder of the American Relief Coalition for Syria, senior advisor to and former president of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and a practicing physician in pulmonary and critical care medicine (recorded on April 26, 2016 in the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver).

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Syria regime relentless on siege of ‘thorn in side’ Daraya

AFP reports: Under international pressure, Syria’s government has agreed to partial aid access for thousands of civilians living under regime siege but one town near Damascus remains a “thorn in its side”: Daraya.

The town was one of the first to erupt in demonstrations against the government — and one of the first to be placed under a strict regime siege in late 2012.

Despite appeals from its residents, the United Nations and rights groups, Syria’s government has steadfastly refused to allow aid convoys into the town, most recently in a dramatic 11th-hour rejection earlier this month.

Since a partial truce began in February, aid groups have made modest strides in reaching some besieged areas with assistance.

But Daraya remains without a drop of aid.

“The regime is using its ‘submit or starve’ policy to try and take back the town,” said Bissan Fakih, spokeswoman for The Syria Campaign, an advocacy group focused on the conflict.

“Daraya is on the capital’s doorstep, so the regime won’t give it up.”

The town lies a mere 15-minute drive southwest of central Damascus and is even closer to the regime’s prized Mazzeh air base, which hosts the feared air force intelligence services and their notorious prison.

A source close to the government said: “Daraya has a special place in the government’s mind.

“The state wants to take Daraya — it doesn’t want a truce there. The location is too strategic.”

Clashes on the town’s edges have intensified as pro-government news website Al-Masdar said the army would “kick off a major military operation” to capture Daraya in the coming days.

Daraya was once known for its sprawling grape vines and factories producing delicate embroidered tablecloths sold throughout the capital.

When Syria’s uprising began in 2011, the town’s protesters became renowned for handing out flowers and water to government soldiers.

But daily death tolls grew as sniper fire turned to shelling and residents began to take up arms against the regime. [Continue reading…]

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Death of Mullah Mansoor highlights Taliban’s links with Iran

The Guardian reports: The killing of the Taliban chief on the main highway leading from the Iranian border shines new light on the movement’s complicated relationship with Tehran.

Although it is Pakistan that has traditionally been condemned for secretly supporting Afghan insurgents, analysts say Iran also provides weapons, cash and sanctuary to the Taliban. Despite the deep ideological antipathy between a hardline Sunni group and cleric-run Shia state the two sides have proved themselves quite willing to cooperate where necessary against mutual enemies and in the pursuit of shared interests.

Mullah Mansoor first entered Iran almost two months ago, according to immigration stamps in a Pakistani passport found in a bag near the wreckage of the taxi he was travelling in when he was killed by a US drone strike.

The passport, in the name of Wali Muhammad, also showed he had only just returned to Pakistan from the border crossing of Taftan, some 280 miles (450km) away from the site where he was killed, an area called Ahmed Wal, where he had stopped for lunch. [Continue reading…]

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Afghan government secretly fosters Taliban splinter groups

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Afghan government is giving financial and military support to a breakaway Taliban faction, according to some Afghan and U.S. coalition officials, in an effort to sow rifts within the insurgency and nudge some of its leaders toward peace talks.

The effort comes as the U.S. military conducted an airstrike inside Pakistan that American officials said likely killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, potentially setting the stage for another leadership struggle that could fragment the group further in the coming days. The Taliban, which usually respond promptly to requests for comment, hadn’t issued a statement by late Sunday.

Senior Afghan and U.S. diplomatic, military and intelligence officials, including several who had roles in creating the program, described its details and said that resources provided by the U.S. were used to support it.

The Afghan intelligence agency is leading the drive to recruit new Taliban assets, Afghan and U.S. officials said. The agency relies on the U.S. for most of its funding and is still mentored by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA declined to comment for this article.

Despite billions invested in reconstruction, Afghanistan still relies on aid for most of its funding and the U.S. pays more than $4 billion a year for its security forces.

The program’s goal, Afghan and U.S. officials said, is to exploit divisions that emerged after the Taliban’s longtime leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was revealed last July to have been dead for years, a disclosure that stunned local Taliban leaders and threw the group into disarray.

It targets southern Zabul, Helmand, eastern Paktika and western Farah and Herat provinces, where groups of insurgents and their commanders, unhappy with the Taliban’s leadership, have defected to a commander named Mullah Mohammad Rasool.

Afghan and U.S. officials said Mullah Rasool’s faction and other fractious Taliban groups have been receiving cash, ammunition and weapons from the Afghan government. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. takes war back to Pakistan with drone strike aimed at Taliban leader

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. drone strike that killed Taliban chief Akhtar ­Mo­hammad Mansour represents another escalation of U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan by trying to cripple an insurgent group that has for years found refuge on Pakistani soil.

The strike early Saturday marks the most aggressive U.S. military action in Pakistan since the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. It is also thought to be the first time that the U.S. military has directly targeted the top leader of the Afghan Taliban, a potentially destabilizing action that could leave the group violently lashing out as it seeks to find a new leader.

President Obama called Mansour’s death “an important milestone.”

“We have a high-profile leader who has been consistently part of operations and plans to potentially harm U.S. personnel and has been resistant to the kinds of peace talks and reconciliation that could ultimately bring an end to decades of war in Afghanistan,” he said during a visit to Vietnam.

While Obama denied that the attack represented a shift in the U.S. approach, analysts see it as an escalation.

“This is an unprecedented move to decapitate the Taliban leadership in its safe haven of Pakistan,” said Bruce Riedel, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution. “It exposes Pakistan’s role in promoting and protecting the Taliban, and will provoke a crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations.”

But unlike the bin Laden raid, which prompted outrage in Pakistan, the reported strike on Mansour drew a fairly muted reaction Sunday from Pakistani government and military leaders, even as Afghan officials cheered and described the attack as proof of the Afghan Taliban’s deep presence in Pakistan. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: The killing of Mansoor represents a remarkable expansion of the programme because it happened well outside the tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan where nearly all known strikes have taken place, usually focusing on al-Qaida and allied groups.

US officials said the attack took place near Ahmad Wal, suggesting it was the first ever known strike in the vast southern province of Balochistan, where the insurgency’s “Quetta Shura” leadership council is thought to be based, and one of very few to target a senior member of the Afghan Taliban.

The drones were described as having been piloted by US special forces – suggesting it was not a CIA operation, as is usually the case with attacks inside Pakistan. [Continue reading…]

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Peace talks in Kuwait: Will they solve Yemen’s crisis?

Helen Lackner writes: Thirteen months into the full scale war which has encompassed the country, negotiations started in Kuwait on 21 April between the Saleh-Huthi alliance who control the Yemeni northern highlands and the capital Sana’a and the internationally recognised government of president Hadi who was elected in 2012, and has been in exile in Riyadh for most of the last year.

A month into the talks, their main achievement is that they have not definitively broken down. Insofar as any negotiations are taking place, it is thanks to the systematic interventions from the Shaikh of Kuwait or other senior figures from different countries to bring one or the other side back to the table after their routine almost daily walk outs. Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN special adviser and his team do their best and this time, at least, have real support from the international community.

While naïve observers might think that the ongoing and worsening suffering of 25 million Yemenis might have brought the warring parties to their senses to seek a solution without imposing further starvation, thirst, destitution and death, it would seem they consider this irrelevant.

Ensconced in their luxury hotels in Riyadh or their protected environments in Sana’a, living conditions of the population appear to be the least of their concerns. Instead, their petty rivalries, long-standing feuds and greed for power and control determine their tactics. Any planning they may be doing for the future may well focus more on how they will appropriate future external humanitarian and development funding.

So, why are these negotiations taking place? Answering this question may also help to understand their likely outcome. In addition to the military stalemate, and the collapsed economy, the role of external actors is as relevant today as it was to reach the Gulf Cooperation Council Agreement of 2011 and the transitional regime which followed it. [Continue reading…]

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New political earthquake in Brazil: Is it now time for media outlets to call this a ‘coup’?

The Intercept reports: Brazil today awoke to stunning news of secret, genuinely shocking conversations involving a key minister in Brazil’s newly installed government, which shine a bright light on the actual motives and participants driving the impeachment of the country’s democratically elected president, Dilma Rousseff. The transcripts were published by the country’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, and reveal secret conversations that took place in March, just weeks before the impeachment vote in the lower house took place. They show explicit plotting between the new planning minister (then-senator), Romero Jucá, and former oil executive Sergio Machado — both of whom are formal targets of the “Car Wash” corruption investigation — as they agree that removing Dilma is the only means for ending the corruption investigation. The conversations also include discussions of the important role played in Dilma’s removal by the most powerful national institutions, including — most importantly — Brazil’s military leaders.

The transcripts are filled with profoundly incriminating statements about the real goals of impeachment and who was behind it. The crux of this plot is what Jucá calls “a national pact” — involving all of Brazil’s most powerful institutions — to leave Michel Temer in place as president (notwithstanding his multiple corruption scandals) and to kill the corruption investigation once Dilma is removed. In the words of Folha, Jucá made clear that impeachment will “end the pressure from the media and other sectors to continue the Car Wash investigation.” It is unclear who is responsible for recording and leaking the 75-minute conversation, but Folha reports that the files are currently in the hand of the prosecutor general. The next few hours and days will likely see new revelations that will shed additional light on the implications and meaning of these transcripts.

The transcripts contain two extraordinary revelations that should lead all media outlets to seriously consider whether they should call what took place in Brazil a “coup”: a term Dilma and her supporters have used for months. When discussing the plot to remove Dilma as a means of ending the Car Wash investigation, Jucá said the Brazilian military is supporting the plot: “I am talking to the generals, the military commanders. They are fine with this, they said they will guarantee it.” He also said the military is “monitoring the Landless Workers Movement” (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST), the social movement of rural workers that supports PT’s efforts of land reform and inequality reduction and has led the protests against impeachment. [Continue reading…]

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How Kosovo was turned into fertile ground for ISIS

The New York Times reports: Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an improvised mosque in a former furniture store.

The mosque is one of scores built here with Saudi government money and blamed for spreading Wahhabism — the conservative ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia — in the 17 years since an American-led intervention wrested tiny Kosovo from Serbian oppression.

Since then — much of that time under the watch of American officials — Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.

Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam. Over the last two years, the police have identified 314 Kosovars — including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children — who have gone abroad to join the Islamic State, the highest number per capita in Europe.

They were radicalized and recruited, Kosovo investigators say, by a corps of extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab gulf states using an obscure, labyrinthine network of donations from charities, private individuals and government ministries.

“They promoted political Islam,” said Fatos Makolli, the director of Kosovo’s counterterrorism police. “They spent a lot of money to promote it through different programs mainly with young, vulnerable people, and they brought in a lot of Wahhabi and Salafi literature. They brought these people closer to radical political Islam, which resulted in their radicalization.”

After two years of investigations, the police have charged 67 people, arrested 14 imams and shut down 19 Muslim organizations for acting against the Constitution, inciting hatred and recruiting for terrorism. The most recent sentences, which included a 10-year prison term, were handed down on Friday.

It is a stunning turnabout for a land of 1.8 million people that not long ago was among the most pro-American Muslim societies in the world. Americans were welcomed as liberators after leading months of NATO bombing in 1999 that spawned an independent Kosovo.

After the war, United Nations officials administered the territory and American forces helped keep the peace. The Saudis arrived, too, bringing millions of euros in aid to a poor and war-ravaged land.

But where the Americans saw a chance to create a new democracy, the Saudis saw a new land to spread Wahhabism.

“There is no evidence that any organization gave money directly to people to go to Syria,” Mr. Makolli said. “The issue is they supported thinkers who promote violence and jihad in the name of protecting Islam.”

Kosovo now has over 800 mosques, 240 of them built since the war and blamed for helping indoctrinate a new generation in Wahhabism. They are part of what moderate imams and officials here describe as a deliberate, long-term strategy by Saudi Arabia to reshape Islam in its image, not only in Kosovo but around the world.

Saudi diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2015 reveal a system of funding for mosques, Islamic centers and Saudi-trained clerics that spans Asia, Africa and Europe. In New Delhi alone, 140 Muslim preachers are listed as on the Saudi Consulate’s payroll.

All around Kosovo, families are grappling with the aftermath of years of proselytizing by Saudi-trained preachers. Some daughters refuse to shake hands with or talk to male relatives. Some sons have gone off to jihad. Religious vigilantes have threatened — or committed — violence against academics, journalists and politicians.

The Balkans, Europe’s historical fault line, have yet to heal from the ethnic wars of the 1990s. But they are now infected with a new intolerance, moderate imams and officials in the region warn.

How Kosovo and the very nature of its society was fundamentally recast is a story of a decades-long global ambition by Saudi Arabia to spread its hard-line version of Islam — heavily funded and systematically applied, including with threats and intimidation by followers. [Continue reading…]

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Yazidi escapees of ISIS’s youth training camps tell their harrowing stories

The National reports: In a bustling office in the suburbs of the Kurdish city of Dohuk, 11-year-old Raed quietly begins to recount his ordeal at the hands of ISIL. It does not take long for his eyes to well up.

The diminutive, soft-spoken Yazidi boy had been earmarked as a future jihadist and potential suicide bomber by ISIL, which is grooming the next generation of fighters for its self-proclaimed caliphate in camps set up for this purpose.

Hundreds of Yazidi boys have been forced to undergo the brutal training after being taken from their parents when ISIL attacked Iraq’s northern Sinjar region in August 2014. Raed struggles to hold back his tears as the memories come flooding back.

“I forgot about some things, but other things are more difficult to forget. I can’t get them out of my head,” he says.

Raed spent eight months in a camp called Farouk near Raqqa, ISIL’S main stronghold in Syria, where about a hundred boys were subjected to a gruelling daily routine aimed at forging the model jihadi. He says roughly half of them were fellow Yazidis who had been forced to convert to Islam. The others were children of ISIL members sent there by their parents. [Continue reading…]

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Unholy alliance: Muslim countries join forces with America’s religious right

Brian Whitaker writes: The United Nations will hold a three-day meeting in New York next month in a move towards ending the worldwide Aids epidemic by 2030. But preparations for the meeting were thrown into disarray last week when Egypt blocked 11 gay and transgender advocacy groups from attending.

In a letter to the UN, Egypt gave no reason for objecting to the groups’ participation but said it was acting on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which represents 57 predominantly Muslim countries.

The UN responded by emphasising the need for “nongovernmental organisations working on the ground” to contribute to the discussion, and to hear “the voices of people living with HIV and people most affected by the epidemic, including women and girls, sex workers, people who use drugs, gay men and other men who have sex with men and transgender people”.

Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the UN, also complained about the blocking action by Egypt and the OIC. “Given that transgender people are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than the general population, their exclusion from the high-level meeting will only impede global progress in combating the HIV/Aids pandemic,” she said.

It is the second time in less than two months that something of this kind has happened at the UN. In March, Saudi Arabia – where the OIC has its headquarters – objected to a report from Juan Méndez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, who had been asked to consider how the prohibition of torture in international law could be applied “to the unique experiences of women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons”. [Continue reading…]

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Defending the status quo helps the populists thrive

Natalie Nougayrède writes: his is the age of the disgruntled – in domestic politics and foreign affairs alike. Anti-establishment sentiment within countries is somehow echoed by the way the rule book of international relations is being torn up. These dynamics feed on each other. They are at play in America (the rise of Donald Trump), Europe (growing populism) and Asia (nationalism and an arms race). Finding a way to address them will be crucial if democracies are to have any hope of resisting instability.

I recently attended the Lennart Meri conference in Estonia – a transatlantic gathering where much of the talk focused on how the “dream of a Europe whole and free” might be fading, and how that is affecting security and stability. And this week in London, at a meeting on global governance, and what needs to be done to improve it, a key focus of British and other European participants was: how do we restore the legitimacy of international institutions?

In democracies it is only natural that public opinion influences actions taken by governments on the international stage. But the way that pressure is exerted has changed. The Dutch government would never have sought a review of an association agreement between the EU and Ukraine if a referendum in the Netherlands – with a turnout of only 32%, triggered by a petition that had just over 300,000 signatures – hadn’t signalled a rejection of that treaty. [Continue reading…]

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Many of GOP’s wealthiest donors don’t like Trump

The New York Times reports: A powerful array of the Republican Party’s largest financial backers remains deeply resistant to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy, forming a wall of opposition that could make it exceedingly difficult for him to meet his goal of raising $1 billion before the November election.

Interviews and emails with more than 50 of the Republican Party’s largest donors, or their representatives, revealed a measure of contempt and distrust toward their own party’s nominee that is unheard of in modern presidential politics.

More than a dozen of the party’s most reliable individual contributors and wealthy families indicated that they would not give to or raise money for Mr. Trump. This group has contributed a combined $90 million to conservative candidates and causes in the last three federal elections, mainly to “super PACs” dedicated to electing Republican candidates.

Up to this point, Mr. Trump has embraced the hostility of the Republican establishment, goading the party’s angry base with diatribes against wealthy donors who he claimed controlled politicians. And he has succeeded while defying conventions of presidential campaigning, relying on media attention and large rallies to fire up supporters, and funding his operation with a mix of his own money and small-dollar contributions.

But that formula will be tested as he presents himself to a far larger audience of voters. Mr. Trump has turned to the task of winning over elites he once attacked, with some initial success. And he has said he hopes to raise $1 billion, an enormous task given that he named a finance chairman and started scheduling fund-raisers only this month. [Continue reading…]

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Do countries fight over oil resources?

oil-industry

Emily Meierding writes: When China’s Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig sailed into waters off the Paracel Islands in May 2014, it provoked an international crisis. Hanoi insisted that the rig was operating illegally in Vietnamese territory. Both countries sent naval and fishing vessels to enforce their claims. Commentators predicted that the two states might come to blows.

The confrontation died down, but a critical question remains: Do countries fight over oil resources?

The question isn’t just pertinent to the South China Sea. The Arctic, Caspian, East China Sea and eastern Mediterranean have all been identified as potential “hot spots” for international oil conflicts. Numerous conflicts, including Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Japan’s invasion of the Dutch East Indies in World War II, Germany’s attacks against the Russian Caucasus in the same war, the Iran-Iraq War, the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay, and even the Falklands War, have been described as international “oil wars.”

However, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the risk of international oil wars is slim. Although oil is an exceptionally valuable strategic and economic resource, fighting for it does not pay.

The belief that countries fight for oil rests on a flawed foundational assumption: Countries reap the same benefits from foreign oil resources as from domestic oil resources.

In reality, profiting from oil wars is hard.

Countries face at least four sets of obstacles that discourage them from fighting for oil: invasion costs, occupation costs, international costs and investment costs. [Continue reading…]

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How Facebooks taps into our lack of imagination

Frank Bruni writes: Those who’ve been raising alarms about Facebook are right: Almost every minute that we spend on our smartphones and tablets and laptops, thumbing through favorite websites and scrolling through personalized feeds, we’re pointed toward foregone conclusions. We’re pressured to conform.

But unseen puppet masters on Mark Zuckerberg’s payroll aren’t to blame. We’re the real culprits. When it comes to elevating one perspective above all others and herding people into culturally and ideologically inflexible tribes, nothing that Facebook does to us comes close to what we do to ourselves.

I’m talking about how we use social media in particular and the Internet in general — and how we let them use us. They’re not so much agents as accomplices, new tools for ancient impulses, part of “a long sequence of technological innovations that enable us to do what we want,” noted the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the 2012 best seller “The Righteous Mind,” when we spoke last week.

“And one of the things we want is to spend more time with people who think like us and less with people who are different,” Haidt added. “The Facebook effect isn’t trivial. But it’s catalyzing or amplifying a tendency that was already there.”

By “the Facebook effect” he didn’t mean the possibility, discussed extensively over recent weeks, that Facebook manipulates its menu of “trending” news to emphasize liberal views and sources. That menu is just one facet of Facebook.

More prevalent for many users are the posts we see from friends and from other people and groups we follow on the network, and this information is utterly contingent on choices we ourselves make. If we seek out, “like” and comment on angry missives from Bernie Sanders supporters, we’ll be confronted with more angry missives from more Sanders supporters. If we banish such outbursts, those dispatches disappear.

That’s the crucial dynamic, algorithm or whatever you want to call it. That’s the trap and curse of our lives online.

The Internet isn’t rigged to give us right or left, conservative or liberal — at least not until we rig it that way. It’s designed to give us more of the same, whatever that same is: one sustained note from the vast and varied music that it holds, one redundant fragrance from a garden of infinite possibility. [Continue reading…]

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America feels like it’s in decline again — and Trump is just a symptom

By Liam Kennedy, University College Dublin

A visceral sense of domestic decline is coursing through contemporary American culture and politics – and it’s become one of the central themes of this year’s presidential campaign. Donald Trump in particular has used it to stoke the inchoate anger of his supporters, telling them: “Our country is falling apart. Our infrastructure is falling apart … Our airports are, like, third world.”

And paradoxically, even as Trump laments the US’s decline, leading pundits are pointing to his remarkably successful insurgency as evidence of the same phenomenon. Andrew Sullivan, describing the election campaign as “dystopian”, argued that “America has never been so ripe for tyranny.“ He concluded: “In terms of our liberal democracy and constitutional order, Trump is an extinction-level event.”

But while they certainly have a deep resonance today, dramatic lamentations of American decline have a long history. Ever since the founding of the nation, Americans have gone through bouts of self-doubt, struggling to come to terms with national and global crises both real and perceived. American political culture is shot through with the theme of decline followed by regeneration, a distinctive pattern that helps frame the idea of American exceptionalism.

Political leaders frequently invoke this dynamic in their rhetoric, although usually to paint a picture of regeneration. Pessimism is not often rewarded. Jimmy Carter’s notorious “crisis of confidence” speech in 1979 may have been meant as a bold admonition to the nation to pick up its spirits, but its dour attempt at straight talk was no match for Carter’s sunnier successor, Ronald Reagan, who was re-elected by a landslide in 1984 as he declared it “morning again in America”.

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Kerry helps Egypt’s dictator avoid being asked awkward questions

David Sanger writes: The contrast between Myanmar, once one of the world’s most closed societies, and Egypt made me revisit my recent travels with Mr. Kerry in terms of what restrictions were placed on us journalists.

In November, Mr. Kerry zipped through Central Asia on a tour of some of the world’s most repressive states, including Turkmenistan, whose leadership shares Mr. Sisi’s approach to anyone who utters a thought the government finds distasteful. Still, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov allowed international reporters to record his encounters with Mr. Kerry, though local Turkmen journalists were kept at a far remove.

The King of Bahrain, who knows a thing or two about clearing the streets of critics, invited reporters in for the start of his meeting with Mr. Kerry last month, and, with a deep understanding of how to keep them docile, fed them at the palace before they were packed off.

Even China’s leaders routinely let the news media pool in, though they do their best to ignore them.

Egypt used to do the same — in what now looks, by comparison, like the days of openness when Hosni Mubarak was still president. [Continue reading…]

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