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"L’impunité et la violence policières ne sont pas des aberrations ; les policiers agissent en tant que petits souverains d’un système qui reproduit constamment l’injustice et l’oppression à travers les États-Unis, et qui reste tacitement soutenu par plusieurs millions de personnes aujourd’hui. Autrement dit, l’acte de tuer permet à la police, en tant qu’institution symbolique, de se réaffirmer et de se maintenir. Les actions de la police et du public sont liées et inséparables. Le pouvoir policier fonctionne au service de l’ordre social qui l’autorise. “

Spectacle as Camouflage | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/column/suchitra-vijayan/spectacle-camouflage

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Repertoires of representation about black bodies and black narratives remain largely unchanged in contemporary depictions. A hundred years after Gordon’s scarred back was photographed and circulated, the civil rights movement is remembered through dramatic photographs of protesters attacked with police dogs and fire hoses, firebombs and shotguns, and tear gas.4 Art historian Martin Berger argues that the most famous images of the era show black activists victimized by violent Southern whites.5 In his analysis of the thirteen photographs of the Birmingham campaign published in Life magazine on May 1963, he writes:

With great consistency, those photographs that most effectively stirred the consciences of northern whites routinely cast blacks as the passive and hapless victims of active and violent whites…It was not that photographs depicting “active” blacks did not exist, but that they held little allure for liberal whites…The appeal of civil rights photographs to whites rested largely on their success in focusing white attention on acts of violence and away from historically rooted inequities in public accommodation, voting rights, housing policies and labor practices.6

These gruesome acts of violence against blacks were framed as spectacles that generated discomfort and outrage among the white population, while offering a socially acceptable way of depicting racism. "Spectacle is a form of camouflage. It does not conceal anything; it simply renders it unrecognizable."7 The historicity of men and women of Black America, their everyday struggle, resistance and heroism remains camouflaged and their narratives have become subsumed into a generic denunciation of the mass suffering.

Photographs that depict white cops inflicting hurt on the black population, aids the narrative that identifies black bodies as victims. These images while potent as forms of representation that create uproar always mask the structural injustices and inequalities that have benefited white societies. It also successfully positions the “problem” of race, as the problem of “violence”, performed by “bad” white actors on “innocent” black victims. When representations of black passivity and victimhood are the norm, images that adhere to this norm reinforce and aid the maintenance of racial systems of domination.

Winter is Coming: Castle Black, the Syrian Withdrawal, and the Battle of the Bases | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/blog/winter-coming-castle-black-syrian-withdrawal-and-battle-bases

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They called it Castle Black, an obvious homage to the famed frozen citadel from the HBO series Game of Thrones. In the fantasy world of GoT, it’s the stronghold of the Night’s Watch, the French Foreign Legion-esque guardians of the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms.

This Castle Black, however, was all too real and occupied by U.S. Special Operations forces, America’s most elite troops. In its location, at least, it was nearly as remote as its namesake, even if in far warmer climes — not on the northern fringe of Westeros but at the far edge of eastern Syria.

Today, the real Castle Black and most of the archipelago of U.S. outposts only recently arrayed across the Syrian frontier are emptying out, sit abandoned, or are occupied by Russian and Syrian troops. At least one — located at the Lafarge Cement Factory — lies in partial ruins after two U.S. Air Force F-15 jets conducted an airstrike on it. The purpose, according to Colonel Myles Caggins, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the U.S.-led military coalition fighting ISIS, was to “destroy an ammunition cache, and reduce the facility’s military usefulness."

“Only yesterday they were here and now we are here,” a Russian journalist announced after taking selfies at the abandoned base at Manbij where U.S. forces had served since 2015 alongside allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of mainly Kurdish and Arab fighters. “It appears as though the U.S. servicemen fled in their armored vehicles,” said another reporter with RT’s Arabic service, as she walked in front of American tents and equipment at the hastily abandoned outpost. Photographs show that when U.S. troops bugged out, they also left behind other standard stuff from American bases abroad: “crude dick drawings,” a football, fridges stocked with Coca-Cola, an open package of animal crackers, a can of Pringles, and a paperback copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

How the Khashoggi Case Plays in Yemen
▻http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/how-khashoggi-case-plays-yemen

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The humble little solar power system and small TV my elderly mother and her friends gather around every night in Wadi Bana, their village in Ibb in the midlands of North Yemen, provides them – for the single hour the power lasts – with a tiny daily window for entertainment and laughs amid the misery of the war. Now, when I call from Sana’a to check on my mom, she complains that she can no longer watch her favorite programs: All the channels have replaced her shows with special coverage of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder case. My mother has become an expert. When I ask her about her health, she responds instead with all the latest updates and breaking developments.

It’s not just that the overwhelming number of Yemenis are left wondering why the whole world cares so much about this one man while thousands upon thousands of Yemenis have been killed and the whole country destroyed by the US-backed Saudi- and Emirati-led war. Long before Jamal Khashoggi began writing newspaper columns for The Washington Post – long before he fell out with the Saudi regime, to which he had once been a loyalist – Khashoggi had a complicated and in many ways negative history with respect to Yemen, rendering our reaction to his terrible murder a more nuanced one.

For many years, Khashoggi was only known to top political elites in Yemen who followed his writings, interviews and tweets because they saw him as being close to top decisionmakers in Saudi Arabia – an intimate of Saudi intelligence – and as such, a good source for trying to predict whatever new Saudi tempest towards Yemen lay on the horizon. He was associated with Saudi interference in Yemen’s sociopolitical and socioeconomic affairs, part and parcel with Saudi propaganda, and reflecting official Saudi policies towards Yemen.

What’s Wrong With Rights ? Radha D’Souza in Conversation,
by Zahra Moloo, le 15 aout, Warspaces
▻http://www.warscapes.com/conversations/what-s-wrong-rights-radha-d-souza-conversation

There is no such thing as derivatives, it is a completely legal fiction. Or hedge funds. Or insurance which is property and it’s very much part of property rights. Or trade in debt. Property itself has become intangible – that’s one part of it.

Teacher-student relationships were considered a very privileged, responsible, socially important relationship. Now universities regularly say that students are our consumers, they have a right to education, and we are service providers.

As every aspect of life becomes commodified, you have rights coming in because without rights, there can’t be commodification.

When the UN was established, there were some thirty odd rights, twenty-eight I think. Now there are about 300 rights. Do people have more rights than in 1945? I mean, it’s open to question.

the farmer is not the only person claiming rights. The farmer is saying I have right to water, to food but so is Monsanto. It’s a fundamental feature of our legal and social system that a corporation is a person like a natural person. In law, both of them are entitled to human rights.

I think it’s this inability to see how corporate persons and natural persons work that gets us into all this kind of tangle.

There is nothing indigenous about an indigenous company other than the faces of people that run it.

What liberalism does is project a merchant’s world view and understanding of the world as the human world view, and as something that is universal to all humanity. Anything that has a transactional or exchange value becomes something with value. When we start extending that to everything – to land, to forest, to all sorts of things in life, then it becomes problematic.

What does democracy promotion mean? It means that there are certain international, so-called mature democracies, which are invariably, the G7 countries, the former colonizing countries who supervise elections, who fund elections, who tell them how to write the electrical rules and who then certify the elections that are right, democratic, and so on. Now my question is, where is the social contract here?

Cambridge Analytica emerged as one of those companies that provided election services to third world states. Much before they got involved in Trump election, they were involved in elections in Kenya and in India.

We are in the situation we are in because we have forgotten some of the histories of our struggles. That’s an important reason why we are not able to imagine a way of articulating our demands, a way of reconceptualising struggles and strategies. We have really forgotten that history and we are left with this idea that the only thing left is rights.

Why have we lost the courage? I think we are kind of trapped in this whole discourse of rights as the only way to imagine freedom, so much so that we are not able to imagine what real freedom will look like. And that’s the big difference between anti-colonial movements and our times now. [...] we are not able to re-imagine this because we have forgotten our histories.

African Solutions for African Problems | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/african-solutions-african-problems

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The transcript of the speech titled “African Solutions for African Problems: Limning the Contours of a New Form of Connectivity” delivered by poet and scholar Ali Jimale Ahmed at the 10th anniversary of the Hargeysa International Book Fair in July 2017.

Let me first thank Dr. Jama Musse Jama and his colleagues for inviting me to the 10th anniversary of the Hargeysa International Book Fair. Ten years is a long time to observe and gauge the development, consistency and staying power of a new idea. It is gratifying to know that the book fair, a fledgling project ten years ago, is now a full-fledged institution. But that is not all. Dr. Jama and his colleagues have succeeded in teaching by example: Thanks to him, we now have the Mogadishu Book Fair and Garoowe Book Fair, with many more book fairs cropping up on the horizon, and coming soon to a city near you. What this shows, then, is that people in Somalia are now emulating the good deeds of Jama and Co. He has shown that institutions can be built and sustained over the years. And for that, we give our thanks.

Now let us turn to the matter at hand.

We live in interesting and challenging times, to quote from a purportedly age-old Chinese adage that never ceases to be relevant. Our time is the best of times and the worst of times. It is the worst of times in that history has mercilessly deposited us at a crossroads; and crossroads, by nature, baffle the traveler. This is the time when old ideas unmitigated by wit cannot help; it is also a moment in time when the future is still in its inchoate or embryonic stage. But our times also represent the best of times, for there are two ways to look at calamities or apocalyptic events. We could view the apocalyptic as a ground for despair, to paraphrase Gerald Graff. You could also see it—and seeing is an act of interpretation—as “a ground for celebration” (a ground for hope, that is). In short, the apocalyptic could be interpreted through its antiphony, the visionary. Apocalypse, as you know, signifies rebirth, renewal. It is the end of the world as we knew it or have known it. And the end, as in all endings, is a prelude to a new beginning. And while it is painful to be living in a time when self—both communal and individual— and history collide, it is also a moment of immense opportunity, as truth, to paraphrase a Somali proverb, is born or created at the dissolution of another truth. I have mentioned elsewhere that all forms of crisis should be seen and embraced as challenges. The Chinese word for “crisis” is weiji, which consists of two characters: danger and opportunity. So in the midst of crises, one finds opportunities. But to find opportunity in the bosom of crisis, one must be willing to think outside the box.

Dispatch from Tehran | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/blog/dispatch-tehran#undefined.uxfs

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The historical residue of abrupt revolutions and precarious state identities has done little to subdue popular discontent. A significant number of Iranians believe either one historical narrative or the other, resulting in a deep and dangerous political division in society. The resultant political conversations are held in people’s dining rooms and bedrooms. Consistently, the Shah’s era is presented by those opposing the current regime as a golden age of Iran, when people were free, had better rights and access to jobs. And suddenly in private conversations too, people’s anger has swelled to a level where they will even throw themselves behind an obsolete idea of an historically glorious Persian monarchy and are not in a mood to acknowledge that the former Shah was, too, an authoritarian dictator. They choose not to remember that the Shah also had a terrible record of dealing with the opposition, forgetting, for example, the Jaleh square massacre which left eighty two people dead. How could he be thought as better on economic or human rights? But soon I figured out that people are using these discourses only to point at deeper crises.

A few days ago, protests against the government of President Rouhani, which originated in the city of Mashhad, were hijacked by anarchic groups of local people to challenge the entire clerical rule. Yesterday evening when my English student came over for her lessons, we got into a conversation about the protests and the people most affected by economic instability. What she told me got me thinking about the complexity of Iran’s broken economy. She said “the reason you don’t see poor people in the streets is because they are clothed and provided for by the people themselves.” In this very neighborhood, stories are rife about people’s economic distress.

Very recently a young woman in her thirties lost her husband and was left with a six year old son and her elderly mother and soon after she was diagnosed with cancer. The government did nothing to help. The woman’s neighbors raised money to provide for her family including covering rent during her prolonged illness. When she passed away, neighbors were left with her son and old aged mother who they could not shun. They ended up buying a house for the family, an extraordinary gesture.

Concerning Fanon
▻http://www.warscapes.com/reviews/concerning-fanon

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Concerning Violence, a documentary by Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson, opened to a packed theatre at the Sydney Film Festival last week, and despite being a powerful film, it did not close to the enthusiastic cheers and applause that other films had. Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, scholar of postcolonial studies and a legend in her own right, offers a monotone introduction to the film. Spivak’s short lecture on Martinican psychiatrist and anticolonial thinker Frantz Fanon appropriately ushers viewers into the universe of this documentary, which is decidedly academic, theoretical, pedagogical and, to some degree, experimental.

Though a seasoned documentary filmmaker, Olsson’s claim to fame, at least in the United States, was a recent documentary—Black Power Mixtape—that brought together dormant archival footage from the Black Power movement. This documentary was widely reviewed and appreciated partly because of the ease with which the material could be digested and the straightforward collage approach to the narrative. Concerning Violence is a completely different beast.

Relying yet again on possibly forgotten footage from Swedish archives, I have a feeling that it will be generally perceived that the film has been anchored in Frantz Fanon’s controversial essay, “Concerning Violence,” from his 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth. However, I had the distinct impression that we were being provided a visual exegesis on Fanon’s famous, misunderstood and over-read text about violence, and that the images, in fact, served to bolster, or rather, offer, a kind of choreography to the text. Olsson’s interest is in decolonization—that short yet potent moment at the tail end of an anti-colonial war followed by the transfer of power when the new nation comes into being. This has often proven to be one of the most violent episodes in postcolonial history, and Fanon is its most articulate philosopher.

The film’s subtitle, “Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense,” reflects Olsson’s investment in making Fanon’s theory relevant and up-to-date. The opening sequence offers a brief thrill which is immediately appropriated: Choppers whir in the air and soldiers shoot down terrified cows in a vast and lush field. This footage is reminiscent of Coppola’s war scenes in Apocalypse Now, but the illusion is immediately shattered as the camera closes in and holds on the face of a murdered cow, blood slowly trickling down from her nostrils. This is the first scene out of the nine, titled “Decolonization,” and focuses on the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in 1977 as it carries out a stealth attack on the Portuguese-ruled and oil-rich Cabinda province in Congo. This footage is juxtaposed with that of white, pre-pubescent boys playing golf as African caddies follow them around carrying their clubs. A throaty and assertive rendition of lines such as, “Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder,” is delivered by singer, songwriter and activist Lauryn Hill, who reads Fanon’s passages on decolonization, nationalism and violence. As she recites, Fanon’s words are also shown as text on the screen in a large serif font.

Proxies Aside; A closer look at the war in Yemen
▻http://www.warscapes.com/conversations/proxies-aside-closer-look-war-yemen

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The Saudi-led coalition pummeling Yemen has announced that its campaign is in the final stages - preparing to declare “victory,” some sources report - with the country in shambles and none of the issues driving the war resolved. The devastating civil war is playing out in one of the most internally complex nations in the Middle East, Yemen’s intricate mix of tribes, religious sects and decades-deep power struggles driving a conflict intensified by the outside intervention of regional rivals. The Saudi-led air military coalition, “Operation Decisive Storm,” has introduced some 100 warplanes and 100 thousand troops into the already volatile mix, with Egypt, Morroco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and now even Colombia making war in one of the poorest, yet most culturally rich, countries in the region as they combat the Houthi movement, which has received some degree of support from Iran. Airstrikes have killed more than 1,100 people, the majority civlians, and devastated Yemen’s already tenuous infrastucture, while at least one in four Yemenis was in need of humanitarian assistance even before Cyclone Chapala slammed Yemen’s southern coast on November 4, adding thousands of fleeing coastal residents to the already nearly 1.5 million Yemenis internally displaced by the war.

Yet, for all the outside intervention, this is not a proxy war, according to leading Yemeni scholar and conflict specialist Nadwa Al-Dawsari. The founder of Partners Yemen, the local affiliate center of Partners for Democratic Change International, Al-Dawsari’s work has taken her deep into Yemen’s tribal areas. Warscapes turns to her to better understand the deeper forces driving the seemingly hopeless conflict.

Michael Bronner: Thanks again for doing this. Can you tell me a little bit about your area of expertise as we get started?

Nadwa Dawsari: My main expertise is in the area of conflict and local security, mainly in tribal areas in Yemen. I have worked extensively with civil society and created a civil society organization in 2009. I have done research and field assessments on areas related to local security and justice, both formal and informal, and the relationships between the formal and informal justice and security mechanisms. I’ve written articles and reports on tribes, tribal conflicts, security and justice, al-Qaeda, tribes and al-Qaeda, tribes and the Houthis, political issues in Yemen. My work on the ground involves spending a lot of time building relationships with locals.

Carceral Landscapes: UK’s Growing Detention Spaces | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/reportage/carceral-landscapes-uk-s-growing-detention-spaces

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On October 15, 2009, United Kingdom Border Agency [UKBA] officials took Adeoti Ogunsola, a ten-year old girl who attended a primary school in Gillingham, from her aunt’s home during an early morning raid. Adeoti had been one of 1,119 children placed in immigration detention when her family was detained in the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Center [IRC] earlier that year. At the time, a psychotherapist warned that Adeoti was suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the detention and that, if detained again, she might attempt suicide. Following the raid, Adeoti was taken to Tinsley House IRC, where her mother was already being held. Staff later found Adeoti in the kitchen trying to strangle herself while her mother was asleep.

More recently, on January 11, 2017, a 27-year-old Polish detainee was found hanging in his cell at the Morton Hall IRC. He had been refused bail, a decision affected by the absence of a guarantor. His girlfriend, heavily pregnant at the time, was unable to travel to the remote center to attend the man’s bail hearing.

Whilst detention under immigration powers is supposed to be a last resort, thousands of people – often desperate and vulnerable – are detained every day across facilities in the United Kingdom, and the population is growing. Over the past two decades, the UK’s immigration detention estate has grown by almost 1,500 percent. In 1993 there were just 250 places in which immigration control legislation could see someone held in custody; today the detention estate has 3,617 places.

Immigration detention in the UK can be defined as the practice of holding a person subject to immigration control legislation in custody whilst they wait for either permission to enter the United Kingdom or their forced removal. Immigration detention is not the result of any criminal proceedings, and is not overseen by any court or judge. Under the Immigration Act of 1971, and several subsequent laws, the state has the power to deprive migrants of their freedom for as long as takes for the competent authorities to decide their status.

There is no time limit to this sort of imprisonment.

The UK operates 11 sites that are used to detain people for more than 24 hours – one of the largest networks of immigration detention facilities in Europe. There are nine IRCs used for long-term incarceration, and in 2016, almost 29,000 people entered immigration detention.

Morton Hall occupies the site of a former prison and is run as an immigration detention centre by the Prison Service on behalf of the Home Office. Prior to that, it was a base for the Royal Air Force; it occupies a vast portion of land, surrounded by sparse woodland, and ultimately by the arable land of Lincolnshire.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, the intersectional feminist we should all know about
▻http://www.warscapes.com/reviews/kamaladevi-chattopadhyay-intersectional-feminist-we-should-all-know-about

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History records that when Mahatma Gandhi raised a handful of salt in 1930, he shook the mighty British Empire. But history, as we know it, has a way of overlooking revolutionary women. One such woman was Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (1903-1988). Not many know that women were not supposed to have a role on the frontlines of the salt march. A “flabbergasted” Kamaladevi, who had “built up a whole edifice of hopes of involving women in this great adventure,” eventually persuaded Gandhiji to call upon women to march with him in defiance of the British salt tax. What happened next is well-known. The Dandi march sparked a massive civil disobedience movement that turned ordinary men and women into freedom fighters.

There’s a lot to learn about, and from the life of, Kamaladevi from the new book A Passionate Life, published by the feminist Indian press Zubaan Academic. The book contains Kamaladevi‘s long-forgotten writings as well as essays by scholars eager to revive her life and legacy. Reading about Kamaladevi, it strikes me that today she would be known for intersectional feminism, someone who naturally connected women’s rights with other movements for political freedoms and social justice.

Mogadishu’s Tipping Point | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/mogadishus-tipping-point#sthash.u9r6HdOz.gbpl

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To better understand the political and security implications of last Saturday’s massive attack in Mogadishu, I reached out to Dr. Afyare Abdi Elmi, a Somali-Canadian academic who teaches international politics at Qatar University in Doha. “The security approach that has been used for the last ten years has not worked,” Dr. Elmi said emphatically. “If Al Shabaab can pick and choose their targets, attack government military posts and drive a lorry full of explosives into the busiest area of Mogadishu and kill hundreds, then this means that for the government, regional forces and the U.S, there is a need for a new security strategy.”

One thing that the deadliest terrorist attack in Somalia’s history has made crystal clear is the utter failure of the hyper militarized counterterrorism strategy of the past decade. Ultimately, the Shabaab conundrum is a political one, and not a purely military problem. The time has come for Somali leaders and the international community to think outside the box and try a new approach instead of continuing with the same failed strategy. Negotiations with willing Shabaab members was one such proposed idea but it has not been pursued in any meaningful fashion.

There have already been some high profile defections from the group, most recently that of Mukhtar Robow who surrendered to the government in August of this year. And proponents of the negotiation strategy contend that more members would be willing to defect if they are offered credible promises of amnesty. Dr. Elmi asserts that in the past, negotiating with Shabaab has been a redline for Western donor nations, especially the United States which wants nothing less than total defeat of the terrorist group.

Saturday’s attack is likely to become a turning point. Years from now, we might view the fight against Shabaab in terms of before and after October 14, 2017. There is something new in the way Somalis are talking about it that makes it seem like this reached a tipping point. There is so much anger on the part of the public. There has also been so much support and goodwill toward Somalia from all over the world. The magnitude of attack has put the vast majority of Somalis on the same page in terms of how they view Shabaab and its crimes against humanity. And it is this shift in opinion that appears to be unprecedented. Somali leaders must take advantage of this moment. This is the time to come up with long-term political solution to the Shabaab question.

Life Under the Color Grey

▻http://www.warscapes.com/art/life-under-color-grey?platform=hootsuite
#racisme #xénophobie #europe #photographie

Is Masculinity a Death Cult? | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/masculinity-death-cult#st_refDomain=www.facebook.com&st_refQuery=

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Contradictory facts and impressions about Omar Mateen, the murderer of 49 people in Orlando, Florida, continue to circulate. Any consistent and determining identity applied to his character or motive tends to dissolve upon scrutiny: A Muslim fanatic without piety; a violent homophobe who liked gay hook-up apps; a terrorist admirer of the NYPD; a madman without a clear mental illness; a victim and practitioner of racism. Even as intersectionality, the irreducible complexity of combinations of racial and gender oppression, has become an increasingly mainstream notion, this instance seems to exceed and trouble such a problematic. The fundamentally incoherent set of identities that fail to define Mateen reveal the limits and consequences of an intersectionality deadly to himself and to others, or something difficult to express in the terms of intersectionality. He is almost, but also not at all, a “queer person of color,” and nearly, but not quite, an “authoritarian nationalist patriarch.”

It has been apparent for some time that phrases like “radical Islam” and even “jihad” are poor designators for the ideology motivating various bloody crimes in France, the US and elsewhere. Instead, some have suggested that the concept “Salafi-Takfiri jihadism” is a better descriptor, despite its clunky, jargonistic quality, because it specifies the very unusual, novel and idiosyncratic interpretation of jihad proffered by the theorists of Al-Qaeda and Daesh.

However, at least in the case of the most recent attack, “Salafi-Takfiri jihadism” is not quite right either because this still indicates that some kind of political theology, however peculiar, is the determining motivation, and this doesn’t seem to be at all the case. Daesh and its sympathizers may be motivated by something much more cynical and opportunist. “Nihilist jihadism” might be the most appropriate term, but I hesitate to include the word “jihad” at all, because even this grants some degree of religious motivation that doesn’t actually seem present. So it is worth looking elsewhere entirely than the question of political Islam or distortions of it.

I have seen more than once a dark, serious joke suggested by friends on social media, that it is straight men, rather than Muslims, who need to “clean house” and reflect on the violence rooted in our culture, beliefs and sense of self. The possibility that the perpetrator of the massacre was not exactly straight does not obscure this, because he certainly possessed a profound, murderous desire to be heterosexual, or at least to destroy or dominate any trace of femininity in himself or his surroundings, and this is more significant than the inevitably complex nature of his own sexual practice.

So with that in mind I am going to write something about the culture and self-experience of straight men and our love for violence

Deadly Rhetoric of Strongholds and Bastions: Burj Al-Barajneh, Gaza, Molenbeek and French Banlieues | Warscapes
►http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/deadly-rhetoric-strongholds-and-bastions-burj-al-barajneh-gaza-molenbeek-

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Many of the Western descriptions of the double suicide bombing in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood in Southern Beirut systematically depicted it as a “Hezbollah stronghold” or “Hezbollah bastion.” Although the association of this neighborhood with Hezbollah can hardly be denied – Hezbollah is in charge of security in many Shi’a neighborhoods in South Beirut, which ISIS noted in justifying its decision to attack this specific area, and Hezbollah both participates alongside the Syrian regime in the war in Syria and fights ISIS in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon – such terminology is highly problematic for at least two reasons. The first is specific to the audience targeted in these articles: the immediate association of the forty-five victims in Burj al-Barajneh with Hezbollah implies, for these readers, an inherent connection between the victims and the typical Western image of a terrorist organization, rather than a multifaceted civil and military organization whose actual complexity does not make it much more likeable. The second major problematic aspect of the terminology used by much of the Western media is closer to the core of this text’s topic: the construction of an antagonizing, or hostile, image of certain neighborhoods in various cities of the world. The terms “stronghold” and “bastion” impose militarized characteristics to a residential neighborhood and, in doing so, deny the status of civilians to those targeted by these deadly attacks.

Preethi Nallu March 15, 2016

▻http://www.warscapes.com/reportage/rohingya-refugees-semantics-politics

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“On November 13, his predilection for an unceasing dystopian state of affairs was broken by a historic turn of events in the country. While Orwell’s narrative could not have accommodated the coexistence of Big Brother and the Outer Party in one system, in the parallel real world, the Myanmar military conceded elections to the National League for Democracy (NLD) headed by the iconic Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The seventy-year-old leader spearheaded a landslide victory, with her party claiming enough seats in the parliament to choose the next president.

The recognition is a significant game-changer for a country where every publication, including advertisements, until recently required pre-approval by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRB), part of the Ministry of Information. This draconian rule dictated flow of information from and within Myanmar for 50 years. But, the latest polls, which appear to have been relatively free and fair with substantive local and international media coverage, beckon a new political climate.

However, such progress primarily applies to the Bamar majority in the country. In addition to this group, which constitutes about 68 percent of the population, Myanmar officially recognizes 135 ethnic minority groups. While the Shan constitute the largest such group in Myanmar, with official figures pitting them at nearly 10 percent of the population, hundreds of thousands live unclassified as refugees in Northern Thailand. In parts of Shan State, which constitutes one-fourth of the country’s landmass, fighting resumed between government forces and the Shan State Army (SSA) following November’s polls.

Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s strategy with most ethnic minorities—“vote for NLD and we will represent your democratic rights”—has proven effective, as she won by large margins in the restive borderlands of the country, according to a latest Economist report. At the same time, voting was canceled in large swaths of the ethnic minority regions that have been chronically war-torn since the creation of a Burmese state in 1948. Resolving these discrepancies after the new Parliament convenes in early 2016 will be an uphill battle.

Yet the biggest stumbling block for the leader has been her conspicuous silence on the issue of the Rohingya. The absence of at least 1.2 million Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority, from the vote is but one glaring gap in basic democracy in Myanmar.

While the latest polls provided a significant impetus for change for a majority of the population living inside the country, the Rohingya have suffered an even greater setback, with their voting rights suspended by the military backed government ahead of polls. Not a single Muslim candidate is expected to sit in the coming Parliament.

No recognition from the government of Myanmar, no prospects of assimilation in neighboring countries and no means in between—these prevailing conditions that have dominated the experience of the Rohingya community have also earned them the label of one of ‘the most persecuted people’ in the world from UN agencies.”

Afghanistan, Iraq & Vietnam veteran accounts of war crimes are eerily similar | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/blog/afghanistan-iraq-vietnam-veteran-accounts-war-crimes-are-eerily-similar

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This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Winter Soldier Investigations, a three-day media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) featuring over 100 honorably discharged veterans testifying in regards to war crimes committed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The intention of the Winter Soldier Investigation was to highlight the ongoing nature of war crimes as part of the U.S. military’s operating procedure. William Crandell, a first lieutenant of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade Americal Division stationed in Vietnam, delivered the opening statement of the WSI: “We intend to show that war crimes in Vietnam did not start in March 1968, or in the village of Son My or with one Lt. William Calley. We intend to indict those really responsible for My Lai, for Vietnam, for attempted genocide.”

In his opening statement, Crandell gave a short speech on the nature of war crimes:

“A war crime is more and other than war. It is an atrocity beyond the usual barbaric bounds of war…Deliberate killing or torturing of prisoners of war is a war crime. Deliberate destruction without military purpose of civilian communities is a war crime. The use of certain arms and armaments and of gas is a war crime. The forcible relocation of population for any purpose is a war crime. All of these crimes have been committed by the U.S. government over the past ten years in Indochina.”
Hart Viges, a U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq, revealed stories of “kill counts” and “kill games” during the Iraq and Afghanistan Winter Soldier testimony held in 2008 by the Iraq Veterans Against the War as a follow-up to the original WSI. He also stated, “We never went on a raid where we got the right house or the right person”, and rarely found evidence of the civilians being of “enemy” relations; in one case, a single small pistol was considered enough evidence to take a whole family as prisoners.

A non-biased, independent investigation into evidence of war crimes is crucial to ensuring accountability. Without proper oversight, war crimes will continue, and the power of military personnel will go unchecked.

The International Criminal Court is a just alternative to the internal investigations that are often conducted in cases involving allegations of criminal activity during conflict. However, the U.S.’s non-participation in the ICC precludes American soldiers from trial in the Court. The danger of internal investigations lies in the skewed lens of justice and truth in institutions like the U.S. military that are built to justify certain deadly force.

The cycle of crimes without consequence continues.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrbGhFHk0-8

Uncertain Progress in #El_Salvador
▻http://www.warscapes.com/blog/uncertain-progress-el-salvador

Will British airstrikes stop ISIS? An Infographic | Warscapes
▻http://www.warscapes.com/blog/will-british-airstrikes-stop-isis-infographic#st_refDomain=www.facebook.c

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Deadly Rhetoric of Strongholds and Bastions: Burj Al-Barajneh, Gaza, Molenbeek and French Banlieues
►http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/deadly-rhetoric-strongholds-and-bastions-burj-al-barajneh-gaza-molenbeek-

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“They called your apartments and gardens guerrilla strongholds.
- June Jordan, Apologies to All the People in Lebanon (1989)

On the evening of Friday, November 13, while the murderous attacks on Paris were still occurring, social media was already saturated with messages and opinions of all kinds. One recurring argument highlighted the great disproportion between coverage of the Paris attacks in relation the ones in Beirut and Baghdad occurring only a few hours earlier. Although this argument is undeniably well founded, it’s regrettable that much of the attention brought to Beirut, and later to Bamako (November 20), seems to have been brought in opposition to Paris, rather than with genuine care for and attention to the local contexts in which these other attacks happened – this despite the paradoxical selling point of the articles’ titles promising insight into “the thing that no one is talking about.” But talking about the fact that we are not talking about something does not make us actually talk of this thing, and it certainly does not address the terms chosen to talk about it.

Many of the Western descriptions of the double suicide bombing in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood in Southern Beirut systematically depicted it as a “Hezbollah stronghold” or “Hezbollah bastion.” Although the association of this neighborhood with Hezbollah can hardly be denied – Hezbollah is in charge of security in many Shi’a neighborhoods in South Beirut, which ISIS noted in justifying its decision to attack this specific area, and Hezbollah both participates alongside the Syrian regime in the war in Syria and fights ISIS in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon – such terminology is highly problematic for at least two reasons. The first is specific to the audience targeted in these articles: the immediate association of the forty-five victims in Burj al-Barajneh with Hezbollah implies, for these readers, an inherent connection between the victims and the typical Western image of a terrorist organization, rather than a multifaceted civil and military organization whose actual complexity does not make it much more likeable. The second major problematic aspect of the terminology used by much of the Western media is closer to the core of this text’s topic: the construction of an antagonizing, or hostile, image of certain neighborhoods in various cities of the world. The terms “stronghold” and “bastion” impose militarized characteristics to a residential neighborhood and, in doing so, deny the status of civilians to those targeted by these deadly attacks.”

Ukraine’s Cultural Backlash: 38 Books Banned

Yesterday #Ukraine announced that it has banned 38 Russian authored books. The books, which largely concern the ongoing war in Ukraine, have been deemed by Ukrainian officials as “a method for information warfare and the disinformation of Ukrainian citizens.”

▻http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/ukraines-cultural-backlash-38-books-banned
#livres #censure