CapitalistImperialistPig

Donald Trump always lets his reptilian brain do the talking, and that's probably the key to his appeal. He appeals to the baser instincts, and everybody has them. Group punishment - the punishment of a whole group for the actions of a member - are officially a war crime, which is ironic, since war is itself a group punishment. Humans became the animal world's master cooperators partly to cooperate against other groups of humans, and one factor that welds us into groups is the idea that we as individuals can be punished for the actions of one of our members. The gangsters who executed 9 year-old Tyshawn Lee were extracting revenge for another murder committed by the gang his father was in. The terrorists who go on murder rampages probably imagine that they are revenging some slights or offenses by members of the groups attacked. Many of them imagine that they are furthering some larger cause - the advancement of their religion, the protection of the unborn, or whatever. I...

It seems all but certain that we will see a new round of anti-Muslim hysteria in the wake of San Bernadino. Naturally, the already nativist Republicans will feast on it. It's almost certainly going to be a bad month for democracy and tolerance. Trump is already saying that it's not enough to kill terrorists, we have to kill their families too: And the other thing is with the terrorists: You have to take out their families,” he said. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives — don’t kid yourself. … They say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.

William Saletan traces a bunch of domestic terrorism to the fanatical mosques churches of North Carolina. On Friday, a gunman killed three people and wounded nine more at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. The suspect is white American Robert Lewis Dear. When police apprehended Dear, he uttered one telltale phrase: “no more baby parts.” People who have known or met Dear say he wasn’t a regular churchgoer. But they also report that he believed devoutly in the Bible and that he claimed to have read it “cover to cover.” In an online forum, Dear apparently spoke of Jesus and the “end times.” He painted or posted crosses on at least three of his homes. Dear moved to Colorado last year from North Carolina, where he had been living. For two decades, the Tar Heel State has been a hotbed of religious extremism, fueled by clerics who preach holy war. The result is a stream of interstate terrorism. It began with Eric Rudolph, a Holocaust denier who grew up in the Christian Identity mov...

Alex Tabarrok reports on foreign linked terrorism in the United States. The RAND data base of international terrorism counts 567 acts of international terrorism in the US between 1968 and 2009. 140 of these, or about 25%, were committed by anti-Castro Cubans. The second worst offender, with about 10% of the total, was the Jewish Defense League. Both these groups flew a bit under the radar, both because they weren't interested in producing mass casualties among the American public and because they have politically powerful protectors.

The existence of a so-called Islamic State dedicated to terror has proved to be a rallying cry for terrorists around the world, as well as a source for terrorists, terrorism propaganda, and instruction. So the debate has begun over whether it's time to erase that state. There are many reasons why the US and Europe have hesitated, including the cost, especially in soldiers lives, and the manifest failure of regime change projects in Iraq, Syria and Libya. In addition, such a move would further upset the already disrupted Sunni-Shiite balance. Despite the risks, there is a growing feeling that some kind of strike back is needed, some way to show would be terrorists that their tactics are hurting their cause. Christopher Dickey has an article entitled After Paris, Is It Time to Roll on Raqqa, the ISIS Capital? It includes this quote: Thus a CIA veteran with long experience hunting Osama bin Laden and trying to outmaneuver ISIS, speaking privately, tells The Daily Beast, “Every...

How far should France and the World go to repress the kind of terror we saw tonight? Would cutting off the head of ISIS, by destroying its territory utterly, help? Internally, how much civil liberty does one need to sacrifice? Of course we don't know any details yet, but allowing ISIS to exist and occupy territory may not be an option the world can still afford. Destroying the so-called Caliphate may take boots on the ground, and once that is done, then what? Recent history is not encouraging. What about purely internal measures? Again, the details of who the attackers were are crucial. The worst case might be that they were radicalized French citizens. Reputedly there are thousands of radicalized French Muslims already under surveillance. If the attackers are among them, or closely linked, mass roundups of suspicious characters might occur. If French Muslims cannot manage to control their most radical elements, then they are likely to suffer a more general repression.

MacMillan on the Serbian terrorists who lit the fuse: The act which was going to send Europe on the final leg of its journey towards the Great War was the work of fanatical Slav nationalists, the Young Bosnians, and their shadowy backers in Serbia. The assassins themselves and their immediate circle were mostly young Serb and Croat peasant boys who had left the countryside to study and work in the towns and cities of the Dual Monarchy and Serbia. While they had put on suits in place of their traditional dress and condemned the conservatism of their elders, they nevertheless found much in the modern world bewildering and disturbing. It is hard not to compare them to the extreme groups among Islamic fundamentalists such as Al Qaeda a century later. Like those later fanatics, the Young Bosnians were usually fiercely puritanical, despising such things as alcohol and sexual intercourse... ... The leader of the assassination plot was a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, the slight, introverte...

The Boston marathon murderer allegedly left a message in the boat where he hid saying that his attack was in response to the war in Afghanistan. "An attack on any Muslim is an attack on all," he proclaimed. This notion of group solidarity is at the heart of the idea of gang, tribe, clan, and probably religion as well. This statement has sort of mirror image - "an attack by any Muslim is an attack by all." The logical conclusion of this reasoning is war until the extermination of one group or another - or perhaps all groups but one. The evidence suggests that throughout most of human history war has been a major cause of human mortality, and that we evolved to compete in small groups with each other. That instinct to organize against each other is at the center of racial, religious, and national strife as well as the extremes of gang warfare and political partisanship. If you sell an LED light as cheaper than its incandescent counterpart, both conservatives and...

Another terrorist attack in India , and it's once again plausible that the trail leads back to Pakistan.  What are India's options? The trouble with low level conflict between nuclear powers is that it's very hard to respond openly without provoking nuclear war.  If India thought that it could take out most of the Pakistani nuclear deterrent in a first strike, it might be an option, but the cost would be certain to be very high, even if fully successful.  Does India have any useful economic weapons?  I wonder.

The engine of the Euro-spaceliner sputtered dangerously, and the passengers shrieked in fear.  Finally, at 100 miles (160 km) up, Captain Merkle and First Officer Sarcozy cut the engtines. "Not to worry," said the Captain, whose knowledge of physics allowed her to do this sort of calculation in her head, "This thing won't crash into the earth for at least twenty minutes." The passengers cheered and ordered more drinks. Much of the world's financial trepidation today is inspired by those Euro denominated bonds from countries that look like they are going to have a heck of a time paying up, especially Greece, but also Ireland, Portugal and Spain.  All of the above are in deep recession and have a lot of borrowed money, and the fear of the bondholders is that their Euro-cash may just be Euro-trash. Another bailout has been agreed by all the principals - except of course the Greek people - but the crash has simply been put off, since there is little prospe...