French President François Hollande will receive King Mohammed VI  on November 20,  one week after a series of shootings and bombings in Paris by ISIS terrorists killed 129 people and injured more than 350 others, report AFP. King Mohammed VI will be the first foreign head of state to meet with the French President after those heinous terrorist attacks.

It is worth noting that Moroccan security officials provided information that helped their French counterparts launch raids in the Paris suburb of St.Denis on Wednesday, a Moroccan source said. “We exchanged information. Morocco gave information this morning with regard to the events that unfolded this morning,” the source said, referring to the St.Denis raid. According to CNN, Morocco’s intelligence agency alerted French authorities that Abdelhamid Abaaoud — the ringleader in the Paris terror attacks — was in France, a source close to the attacks’ investigation told CNN. This information was relayed after last Friday’s carnage, according to the source.

Hollande said he would appeal to world leaders to form a wider coalition to go after ISIS, so after meeting with the Moroccan monarch, French President will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin next week.

France and Morocco are very close allies and are always looking forward to reinforcing their historical relations that bind the two countries. France and Morocco vowed to fight terrorism together and to fully cooperate on security issues. So tomorrow, a lot of media outlets will be present to cover that highly important meeting as Paris reels from the terrorist attacks that killed 129 people last week.

he US House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation that would pause the country’s program for accepting Syrian refugees, AFP reported.

The Republican-introduced bill seeks to impose stricter security provisions on the screening of Iraqi and Syrian refugees. The bill was still being voted on at the time of reporting, but had easily acquired enough votes to pass, with 287 in favor and 130 opposed, AFP reported.

The White House has said that Barack Obama will veto the bill should it pass Congress’ upper chamber.

Robert Shines

The Kuril Islands dispute between Russia and Japan is not so much noteworthy with respect to its past origins, but rather for what it portends for Russia’s future foreign policy direction. Recently, Japan has stated that it’s inappropriate to host a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin due to the ongoing dispute and recent Russian investment in militarization projects on the islands. These projects, in conjunction with Russia’s Pacific Fleet base at Vladivostok, will allow Russia to project power into several local theaters simultaneously, reflective of its more assertive foreign policy.

Northeast Asia

Originally, Russia’s economic hope was to use Japanese technological expertise and financial acumen to develop and improve resource extraction in the Russian Far East in the near-term. Strategically, Russia was also looking to Japan to help balance the rise of its quasi-ally, China. However, as Japan has sided with the West in the application of sanctions against Russia in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, these two aspirations look ever more remote.

Consequently, Japan now finds its airspace the target of regular aircraft incursions from China to the southwest and now Russia to the north. Future Russian incursions based out of the Kuril Islands are likely to continue as Russia knows Japan is the anchor of the U.S.’s “rebalance” to Asia. However, it is a vulnerable anchor due to its resource dependency and proximity to Russia, the world’s largest oil producer and natural gas exporter. Similar to how China recently highlighted Japan’s rare-earth element (REE) dependency, Russia will be using its own resources to weaken the U.S.’s play in the Pacific through its proxy Japan.

Alaskan Intrusions

Unlike the defensive Russian strategy of the early 2000s primarily concerned with the post-Soviet countries, future Russian foreign policy strategy is likely to be much more assertive. In this region, this is particularly going to be the case around Alaska. Similar to Russian air incursions into Japanese airspace, there have been several instances of Russian aircraft flying in proximity to U.S. airspace near Alaska.

The Kuril Islands form the northernmost portion of the First Island Chain, which China is trying to break through in Southeast Asia in order to reach the Second Island Chain and expand its influence. Russia has taken notice of this and Beijing’s strategic importance placed on its Hainan Island military facility, and is looking to replicate its model northward. In the long-term, any future Russian military base on the Kuril Islands will help not only to protect Russia’s local huge oil and natural gas reserves, but simultaneously help to project power close to U.S. shores and airspace. Specifically, Russia is proactively intimating that it will tolerate no interference from other great powers in this geographic area and if interference does occur, it has the ability to reciprocate at will, a capability which China has also recently demonstrated near Alaska.

The Arctic Holy Grail

Similar to how a Kuril Islands military presence will help supplement Vladivostok’s place in Russia’s Pacific Ocean strategy, it will also aid Russia’s current and planned Arctic military bases in their implementation of Russia’s Arctic strategy in the future. Unlike Central Asia where Russia has effectively ceded economic primacy to China, it will be unwilling to do so in the Arctic, preferring military as well as economic preeminence. This is because current estimates show the Arctic is even more resource-rich than Central Asia in oil, gas, and REEs. Additionally, Russia has the longest Arctic coastline. Lastly, the Northern Sea Route runs through Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and aims to more effectively connect markets from Europe to Asia and vice-versa, similar to China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative.

Any military base(s) on the Kuril Islands will be close enough to the Bering Sea, the gateway to the Arctic from East Asia, to protect Russia’s economic interests there while also serving as a deterrent of sorts against outside powers. The Arctic is not a busy international commercial route yet on the order of the South China Sea, but by strategically building and re-building military bases in the vicinity, Russia is planning several moves ahead.

Putin’s Thesis

Summarily, the Kuril Islands dispute is just one element in Russia’s overall strategy of using its geography, natural resource endowment, and proximity to resource-hungry states to underwrite its development. This was the core of Putin’s doctoral thesis almost twenty years ago and comes as no surprise to close Russia-watchers today. Currently, this economic development is underwriting Russia’s re-emergence as a great power and should be expected to continue in the future.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com.

Terrorism is great for business if you’re in the business of growing the government leviathan. The bodies in Paris are not yet buried, while the vultures with dollar signs (and pounds and Euros, etc) in their eyes have already swooped down for a feast.

Terrorism, what is it good for?

1) The military-industrial-Congressional complex: Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for bringing to light the enormous profits that are already rolling in for the merchants of death as Paris still smolders. As Greenwald points out, the markets could hardly wait to start buying from these military suppliers:

And France’s largest arms manufacturer:

2) The surveillance/spy state: This morning UK prime minister David Cameron announced that, in light of the Paris attacks, an additional 2,000 spies will be hired in Britain’s MI5, MI6, and GCHQ. The British are among the most spied-upon people on the planet, and with a 15 percent increase in spy hires they can look forward to having even more of their private lives in view of government snoops, as well as their civil liberties further clipped in the name of freedom. Cameron calls ramping up the surveillance state “invest[ing] more in our national security,” but does anyone believe an even larger spy bureaucracy will keep Britain safe?

3) The regime-change interventionists: Still in the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron is planning, in light of the Paris attacks, to greatly expand British training of rebels to fight in Syria. The 85 British troops already training “moderate” rebels in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan are “woefully insufficient,” according to former chief of the defense staff, Lord Richards. In Saudi Arabia, the British are training the much-touted but rarely-sighted Free Syrian Army, which has the Assad government as its primary target. Anyone who believes those passing through this ramped-up British military training program are not going to focus on removing the Assad government rather than fighting ISIS are drinking far too much government-supplied Kool-Aid.

4) Washington’s foaming-at-the-mouth-troops-on-the-ground faction: Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are demanding a US ground force of 80-100,000 US soldiers to invade Syria with the unenviably complex task of wiping out ISIS, clearing out Russia, and tossing out Syrian President Assad. That should leave….what exactly? The mythical rainbow unicorn called “pro-democracy” to take up running the place. Kind of like what was supposed to happen in Libya. But it will work this time, they promise.

Bill Kristol has blown a gasket, quoting Winston Churchill about “total victory.” On This Week Sunday, he smirked  that while “Americans are a little war weary and they’re worried about another intervention in the Middle East… If ISIS is going to be destroyed, America has to be in the lead… you are going to need troops on the ground.” He’d like to see 50,000 Americans go to war in Syria. Considering that State Department Spokesman John Kirby has asserted that ISIS’s presence in Syria is all Assad’s fault, it is not too difficult to see that Kristol’s army would “finish the job” in Syria by taking out its secular president Assad.

Yes, while the relatives of the slain are left to grieve, so many others are smiling and rubbing their hands together greedily. As Rahm Emmanuel once so famously said, “you never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Terror attacks provide that opportunity and so many of the worst sort are rushing to capitalize on it.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By C. Raja Mohan*

Although media commentary has dismissed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s London visit as all pomp and no substance, Britain’s strong endorsement of India’s regional interests marks an important shift in the way two countries relate to each other in the Subcontinent and the Indian Ocean.

After independence, Delhi and London found it hard to reconcile their world views. India’s non-alignment stood in opposition to Great Britain’s efforts to contain Moscow during the Cold War. In the Subcontinent, Delhi suspected that London, along with Washington, was trying to limit India’s freedom of action.

In the broader Indian Ocean, Delhi was upset with the British decision to hand over the Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago to the United States, which turned it into a powerful military base.

The collapse of the Soviet Union did not significantly improve matters. Britain’s continuing tilt towards Pakistan on Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Modi and the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, have apparently agreed to put this negative inheritance behind them and find ways to minimise differences and expand cooperation in the India’s neighbourhood.

In London last week, the two leaders announced the decision to establish ‘an annual senior official South Asia dialogue covering security including terrorism, connectivity, and maritime issues’. Implicit in this is a British acknowledgement of India’s primacy in the Subcontinent and beyond and not to contest it.

The joint statement declared that “the UK and India share interests in stability and prosperity across Asia and the Indian Ocean. Taking into account India’s geostrategic location and interests in the South Asian region, the two Prime Ministers resolved to deepen and extend existing bilateral consultation and cooperation in these areas”.

Britain has now offered support to most of India’s current concerns in the Subcontinent. On cross-border terrorism, Modi and Cameron “condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and directed their relevant officials to have close and regular consultations on UN terrorist designations. They reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai to justice.”

On Afghanistan, Britain was ready to dispel suspicions in Delhi that London was eager to ‘hand over’ Afghanistan to the Taliban and Pakistan. The joint statement “emphasised their shared commitment and support for a stable, secure and successful future for a sovereign, democratic and united Afghanistan.” Modi and Cameron also “emphasised the importance of a sustainable and inclusive political order in Afghanistan which ensures that the gains of the past decade are consolidated and remain irreversible.”

Skeptics would argue that this might be little more than a restatement of the limited convergence on Pakistan and Afghanistan. But there is no escaping the clarity of British support to India’s current approach to Nepal and Maldives that are in turmoil.

Modi and Cameron ‘stressed the importance of a lasting and inclusive constitutional settlement in Nepal that will address the remaining areas of concern and promote political stability and economic growth.’

At a time when many in Kathmandu hope that the West would come to their support against ‘Delhi the bully’, London has lined up squarely behind India by emphasising the importance of an ‘inclusive’ constitution and Kathmandu addressing ‘remaining areas of concern’.

On Maldives, they ’emphasised the importance of a stable and inclusive democracy in the Maldives including an independent judiciary.’ As the current leaders in Maldives play, with impunity, the China card against India, support from London that has traditionally taken a lot of interest in the strategically located island chain is of Maldives, is welcome in India.

Delhi and London, which have often been at odds with each other in Sri Lanka for many years, now hope that Colombo will “be able to deliver lasting peace and prosperity for all its people and underlined their commitment to working with the Sri Lankan Government to achieve this.

One joint statement does not guarantee that Delhi and London will be best friends forever in the Subcontinent and the Indian Ocean. But it heralds the beginning of a new phase in the regional engagement between India and Britain.

*The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and Consulting Editor on foreign affairs for The Indian Express

Courtesy: The Indian Express, November 18, 2015

A leaked diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Argentina states that current presidential candidate Mauricio Macri accused U.S. officials of being “too soft” on the government of Argentina.

Reporting on a meeting between the U.S. Ambassador and Macri in November 2009, the cable, published by WikiLeaks, and previously analyzed in the book “Argenleaks: Los cables de Wikileaks sobre la Argentina, de la A a la Z” by Santiago O’Donnell, states:

Macri reprised an earlier conversation with [the then Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Thomas Shannon, the State Department’s top official for Latin America] regarding the need to set limits on the Kirchners’ misbehavior and the USG’s supposed “softness” on the Kirchners. He argued that the USG’s “silence” on the abusive mistreatment it suffered at the hands of the Kirchners (such as at the 2005 Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas) had encouraged more of the same.

The leaked conversations are likely to be noticed in a heated presidential race where Argentina’s national sovereignty, especially with regard to Washington, has been raised as an issue. The Argentine economy was restructured in the 1990s and fell into a deep depression from 1998–2002, under the tutelage of the Washington-dominated International Monetary Fund. And last year a New York judge ruled in favor of “vulture funds,” blocking Argentina from paying its creditors. Many Argentines have become wary of U.S. influence as a result of these and other interventions from Washington that had negative outcomes.

“This would probably be a bombshell revelation in any country’s presidential election,” CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said today. “Asking a powerful foreign country, especially the U.S. – considering its track record in Argentina – to come down harder on your own government is not likely to be viewed positively.”

The cable, classified as “confidential,” reports many complaints and harsh criticisms of the Kirchners by Macri, including that they had “succeeded in alienating the United States.” The U.S. ambassador appears to disagree with this claim:

Macri said the Kirchners had succeeded in alienating Washington to the point where Washington did not care what Argentina (unlike Brazil or Chile) had to say about anything. The Ambassador sought to disabuse Macri of that notion, arguing that Washington remained fully committed to deepening and strengthening relations with Argentina. She pointed out that Washington was keenly aware of Argentina’s position in the world as an agricultural powerhouse and of Argentine cooperation, actual and potential. As an example, she cited Argentina’s role in developing satellites to be launched by NASA as evidence of Washington’s appreciation for the high-tech value that Argentina could bring to bear.

By John Feffer*

Charlie was a pretty good musician. He played guitar, composed songs.

Dennis Wilson, the drummer and co-founder of the Beach Boys, befriended Charlie and tried to help him make it in the music industry. He arranged for the young man to make a studio album, which eventually came out in 1974. But before that, the Beach Boys recorded a tune Charlie had written for them. The song, “Never Learn Not to Love,” debuted in 1968 as the B-side of “Blue Birds Over the Mountain.”

But the relationship between the two musicians soured, quickly. Dennis Wilson had changed the title of the song — from the rather downbeat “Cease to Exist” — and altered the lyrics as well. Worse, Charlie’s name didn’t appear on the single. That meant that Charlie wasn’t entitled to any of the royalties.

If Charlie had been a different person, he would have sued the Beach Boys. Instead, Charlie threatened to kill Dennis Wilson. He even showed up at his house to follow through on his threat. Wilson beat him up instead.

Charlie never got over that treatment. It didn’t help that he had a criminal record and was heavy into the drug scene. Charlie drifted deeper into psychosis. His entourage, a group of hippies he called his “family,” encouraged him in his delusions. They ultimately helped him take revenge on the “system” by carrying out a brutal set of murders in August 1969 that left Hollywood starlet Sharon Tate and several others dead.

Charlie was, of course, Charles Manson. As Allen Frances explains in Psychology Today, Manson fits the classic pattern of a mass murderer:

The mass murderer is an injustice collector who spends a great deal of time feeling resentful about real or imagined rejections and ruminating on past humiliations. He has a paranoid worldview with chronic feelings of social persecution, envy, and grudge holding. He is tormented by beliefs that privileged others are enjoying life’s all-you-can-eat buffet, while he must peer through the window, an outside loner always looking in.

Charles Manson — musician, injustice collector, mass murderer — was the face of evil for many Americans of a certain age. Though he looked like a long-haired hippie and spoke vaguely of environmental concerns, Manson directed operations as if he were involved in a military campaign. It was war, Manson said in an interview with Barbara Walters some years later, and he was sending his soldiers into battle. One of his disciples, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, went so far as to attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford.

This potent cocktail of military posturing, feelings of resentment and persecution, cult-like behavior, and sociopathic tendencies has been served up time and again in recent history, from Timothy McVeigh and the Columbine killers to Anders Breivik and Dylan Roof.

In Paris on Friday the 13th, mass murderers again went on a rampage. They too believed that they were soldiers in a war. As members of an economically marginal community — Muslims in France and Belgium — they experienced both real and imagined persecution. And in following the orders of the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — who shares with Manson a criminal background, an apocalyptic vision, and multiple delusions of grandeur — the Paris killers have also given an entirely new meaning to the phrase Je Suis Charlie.

Anatomy of a Mass Murder

Many mass murderers want to create a spectacle. “Do something witchy,” Manson told his followers. “Leave a sign to show the world you were there.” The Manson family used the blood of their victims to scrawl slogans on the walls of the crime scene, including the infamous Beatles quote, “helter skelter.”

The Islamic State similarly specializes in the theater of cruelty. It stages elaborate set pieces of decapitation, crucifixion, and immolation. It blows up a Russian passenger plane. It sends two suicide bombers into a poor neighborhood in Beirut to kill Muslims of a rival sect.

The perpetrators of the recent Paris atrocities also demonstrated their affinity for Grand Guignol, using the city as their stage. They planned their spectacle in advance, enacted it in public, and put themselves and their victims on display. They prepared to be killed — or to die in suicide bombings — because martyrdom is part of their preferred story line. They are out for revenge, not against specific individuals but against some larger entity: community, country, society.

But not all mass murderers follow this script. Some try to conceal their acts in an effort to preserve some façade of normalcy.

Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is just such a mass murderer. He’s a white-collar professional: a would-be ophthalmologist turned politician. He has a photogenic family. He has no intention to die for his cause. And he’s responsible for more death than all the terrorists in the world combined over the last five years.

Assad also has no interest in killing anyone other than his own people. He has no plans to bomb the cities of Europe or the United States. He doesn’t direct a legion of “lone wolves” who will sow mayhem and destruction at his command.

Assad, in other words, is a conventional mass murderer, a thoroughly modern type who doesn’t bloody his own hands but rather uses the machinery of the state to execute his plans. Concealing his crimes is integral to achieving his main goal: staying in power. It’s hard to know precisely how many civilians the Assad government is responsible for killing. A 2014 report from the Syrian Network for Human Rights puts the number at over 100,000, including over 15,000 children but not including the nearly 5,000 people who have died in custody of torture. That compares to the roughly 87,000 deaths by terrorism that took place between 2010 and 2014, more than half of them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Syrian government doesn’t publicize figures of “collateral damage,” preferring the world to believe that it’s only killed combatants, extremists, and the like. That puts Assad in the same category as the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and all the other countries conducting aerial bombardments and drone attacks that have claimed the lives of thousands of non-combatants. As I’ve discussed at length elsewhere, it’s part of the DNA of the modern state to conceal the atrocities that are so much part of the warp and weft of geopolitics.

That’s why the West will eventually find some kind of accommodation with Assad, even if only temporarily. And that’s why the West won’t sit down to negotiate with the Islamic State, its pretentions to statehood notwithstanding. Although history is full of examples of siding with one mass murderer against another — with Stalin against Hitler, for instance — neither the United States nor Europe will team up any time soon with Assad against the Islamic State. Indeed, even an alliance of Moscow and Washington against the Islamic State isn’t yet in the works.

But the Paris killings once again remind Europe and the United States that ousting Assad isn’t their most important objective in the region. A ceasefire in Syria that leaves Assad’s position ambiguous — one possible outcome of the current peace talks in Vienna — would amount to a tacit alliance against the Islamic State.

Courting Apocalypse

At first blush, the Islamic State would seem to be acting with all the irrationality of a mass murderer by encouraging and taking credit for brazen acts like the Paris massacres, the Beirut bombings, and the downing of the Russian passenger jet over the Sinai peninsula. By striking at French, Lebanese, and Russian citizens and bolstering the resolve of the world community to unite against it, the Islamic State would seem to be signing its own death warrant.

But there is a rationale, if not a rationality, behind the Islamic State’s “foreign policy” of killing foreigners. For instance, the Islamic State dreams of an apocalyptic battle in the Middle East not unlike the end of days that some Christian fundamentalists eagerly await. As Craig Whitlock and Ellen Nakashima explain in The Washington Post:

According to the group’s extremist ideology, the caliphate will eventually triumph in a great war against infidel forces, culminating in a final end-of-days battle in Dabiq, an obscure Syrian town near the northern city of Aleppo.

The group’s online propaganda magazine is titled “Dabiq.” Each edition features the same prophetic quote about how the conflict will unfold: “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify — by Allah’s permission — until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.”

In a similar way, al-Qaeda hoped that its 9/11 attacks would lure the United States into overreacting by launching a war (or two) and implementing Crusade-like policies in the Muslim world. The Islamic State leaders, perhaps because they are closely following the Republican presidential debates, believe that the West will fall for this trick again.

The Islamic State has an even more cunning strategy for Europe. As Harleen Gambhir points out, also in the Post,

The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent.

There are plenty of Europeans ready and waiting to overreact, including anti-immigrant political parties like the National Front in France and the UK Independence Party. Their push to bar immigrants, re-erect internal borders and strengthen external ones, and essentially criminalize the entire Muslim population in Europe plays directly into the hands of the Islamic State. The attacks demonstrate yet again that extremists in the Middle East and extremists in Europe, though they would never break bread together, sup from the same trough and depend on one another for sustenance.

As for declining the invitation to participate in an apocalypse in the Middle East, that might prove an even more difficult temptation to avoid.

The Choice Before Us

French President Francois Hollande has already responded to the Paris attacks with the predictable declaration that “France is at war” and it will “destroy ISIS.” The United States reacted in the same way after 9/11. It was the wrong approach, just as if the U.S. government had declared war on the Manson family back in 1969. War is exactly what the Islamic State wants. War legitimizes its claim to be a state and to be treated like a state.

The bombing strategy — whether pursued by Hollande or Obama or Putin — is also doomed to fail, even if it succeeds in its narrow objective of destroying the Islamic State. That entity, after all, emerged after the defeat of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And who knows what will replace the Islamic State when it too passes away? “The Chinese have a saying: before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,” I wrote back in 2007. “The U.S. pursuit of vengeance, rather than justice, has been similarly self-defeating.”

President Obama has generally tried to find the middle ground. Even as he continues the aerial bombardment of the Islamic State, he’s ruled out sending in ground troops. He’s also rightly pushed back against Republican critics who want to bar Syrian refugees from the United States — or, as Ted Cruz argues, non-Christian Syrians — because of the possibility that terrorists lurk in their midst. What a great way to sow the dragon’s teeth of resentment for generations to come — by refusing entry to people desperately trying to escape from the clutches of one mass murdering entity or another.

Meanwhile, governments are focusing on ringleaders. And indeed, individuals like Charlie Manson, Dylan Roof, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi should be the proper focus of law enforcement efforts. But it’s even more important to dry up their pool of followers, the ones who are not sociopaths.

In a recent piece in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell describes these followers as responding to different thresholds of violence. They aren’t the first people to throw bricks in a riot, and they might not even be the second or third person to do so. It’s only when a lot of bricks are flying that they pick one off the ground and aim at the nearest shop window.

In the Middle East, in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, the riot has been going on long enough that plenty of people are eyeing the bricks on the ground and getting ready to join the fray. The responses so far have been either to bomb the riot or neutralize anyone with a brick in hand or bending down to pick one up. But wouldn’t it be better to figure out how to stop the riot, and then alter the conditions that generated it in the first place?

*John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus

The Bangladeshi government should halt the imminent executions of two men convicted of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The authorities should immediately suspend the death sentences of Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid of the Jamaat-e-Islam Party and Salahuddin Qader Chowdhury of the Bangladesh National Party pending an independent and impartial review of their cases.

On November 18, 2015, the Bangladesh Supreme Court rejected review petitions by Mujahid and Chowdhury despite serious fair trial concerns surrounding their convictions. Both men were convicted of alleged war crimes during the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence in trials before the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT).

“Justice and accountability for the terrible crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence are crucial, but trials need to meet international fair trial standards,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “Unfair trials can’t provide real justice, especially when the death penalty is imposed.”

The death sentences against Mujahid and Chowdhury follow a disturbing pattern from previous ICT cases. In December 2013, Abdul Qader Mollah was hanged following hastily enacted retrospective legislation prohibited by international law. Another accused, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, was convicted despite credible allegations of the abduction by government forces of a key defense witness from the grounds of the courthouse, with the ICT refusing to order an independent investigation into the charge. Mohammed Kamaruzzaman was hanged in April 2015 even though witnesses and documents were arbitrarily limited by the courts and inconsistent prior and subsequent statements of prosecution witnesses were not allowed into evidence.

The trials of both Mujahid and Chowdhury have been marred by similar complaints, with arbitrary limitations on witnesses and documents. Mujahid’s lawyers submitted 1500 names of defense witnesses. The court acted reasonably in refusing to consider all 1500, but acted unreasonably by ordering that only 3 witnesses could testify for the defense. The court did not identify the most relevant witnesses; instead, it chose this number arbitrarily. Mujahid was sentenced to death for instigating his subordinates to commit abuses, although no subordinates testified or were identified. Shortly before the hearing on the review petition, one of his lawyers had to go into hiding following a raid on his house and the arrest of another defense counsel in a related case.

In Chowdhury’s case, the court refused to accept any testimony from his alibi witnesses while still demanding that Chowdhury prove that his alibi was valid beyond a reasonable doubt. Despite allowing the prosecution to call 41 witnesses, the ICT limited Chowdhury’s defense to 4 witnesses.The authorities reportedly ordered international airlines flying into Dhaka to declare whether any of Chowdhury’s defense witnesses were booked on their flights ahead of Chowdhury’s review hearing, presumably with an eye to denying them entry on arrival.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Bangladesh is a party, affords the accused the right “to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his or her behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him or her.”

“Treating the prosecution and defense equally is a basic fair trial principle, but the ICT has routinely ignored that principle in its seeming eagerness to convict the accused,” Adams said. “The accused in all these cases were allowed a minuscule fraction of witnesses, counsel were regularly harassed and persecuted, defense witnesses faced physical threats, and witnesses were denied visas to enter the country to testify.”

Government assurances that it would adopt recommendations from the US government, Human Rights Watch, and others to improve the proceedings and amend the law have yet to be fulfilled. Stephen Rapp, the former US ambassador for war crimes, who has long advised the government to make changes to ensure fair trials, spoke out this week on the miscarriage of justice in the cases of Mujahid and Chowdhury:

“Throughout my engagement, my first interest has been to achieve justice for the victims and survivors through trials and appeals that would establish the undisputable truth and hold the major surviving perpetrators to account. For such a process to stand the test of time, I urged that the judicial proceedings of the International Crimes Tribunal respect the highest legal standards. It saddens me to say that I do not believe that was done in the cases of Salauddin Qader Chowdhury and Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid. Under the provisions of international law that Bangladesh has bound itself to uphold, the imposition of sentences of death in these cases is not justified …”

Trials before the ICT, including those of Mujahid and Chowdhury, have been replete with violations of the right to a fair trial. The ICT has fundamental flaws because of article 47(A) of the constitution, which states, “This Article further denies any accused under the ICT Act from moving the Supreme Court for any remedies under the Constitution, including any challenges as to the unconstitutionality of Article 47(A).”

The article specifically strips people accused of war crimes of certain fundamental rights, including the right to an expeditious trial by an independent and impartial tribunal, and the right to move the courts to enforce their fundamental rights. This article has permitted the ICT overly broad discretion to deny those accused in this and prior cases the rights and procedures accorded to other defendants.

Many of the trials before the ICT have been marred by evidence from intercepted communications between the prosecution and the judges that has revealed prohibited and biased communications. The ICT’s response on several occasions to those who have raised objections about the trials has been to file contempt charges against them in an apparent attempt to silence criticism rather than to answer substantively or to rectify any errors. Human Rights Watch, the journalist David Bergman, and staff members of The Economist magazine have all been tried for contempt for publishing articles critical of the trials.

Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty. Bangladesh should join with the many countries already committed to the United Nations General Assembly’s December 18, 2007 resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and a move by UN member countries toward abolition of the death penalty.

The UN Human Rights Committee, which interprets the ICCPR, has said that “in cases of trials leading to the imposition of the death penalty, scrupulous respect of the guarantees of fair trial is particularly important” and that any death penalty imposed after an unfair trial would be a violation of the right to a fair trial.

“Bangladeshis are rightly demanding justice for the atrocities in the liberation war,” Adams said. “But delivering justice requires fairness and adherence to the highest standards, particularly when a life is at stake.”

11/13, the day of the ghastly Paris attacks, is a date that will go down in our collective memory as Europe’s 9/11. In the confusion and cacophony of reactions that followed the events, from the pledges to heighten security, mobilize the army, close the borders, and all the way to the solemn promises of ‘never again’, one element was sorely absent – cracking down on the way terrorists are funded. Indeed, one needs not just a deranged individual armed with a radical ideology and a death wish, but also wads of cash to finance recruitment, training, weapons purchases and building bombs. And oddly, unlike closing down borders, nipping the cash flow of terrorists is actually easier than it sounds. Why? Because one of the most likely products to be smuggled and used to light the fires of terrorist attacks is…cigarettes.

Indeed, thanks to their ubiquity, ease of manufacturing and the lows risks involved, cigarette smuggling is booming. Experts estimate that contraband costs governments worldwide $40 to $60 billion in lost tax revenue every year – a consistent fraction of that money making its way into the pockets of terrorist organizations worldwide. Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, FARC, IRA, ETA, PKK, ISIS, al-Nusra Front, have all relied on tobacco smuggling to line their war chests.

Combatting tobacco smuggling is a regular Catch-22 for policymakers. Why? Because measures that are meant on the surface to discourage consumption, play right down in the hands of individuals involved in the illegal tobacco trade. The higher taxes go, the greater the disparity between the white market price and the black market price. The simpler the packet gets – like the renewed drive to export plain packaging from Australia to Europe – the easier it will be for people with even the most limited of means to flood the market with knock-offs. Both the UK and Ireland have passed such measures and France is set to vote in November to impose plain packaging regulations.

Smuggling cigarettes for ‘the cause’

Take the case of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, one of the most feared African terrorists and mastermind of the Amenas gas plant attack that left 38 people dead, who financed his operations by running a continent-wide smuggling scheme that earned him the nickname “Mr. Marlboro”. With that infrastructure in place, Belmokhtar got into the racket of drug, oil and human trafficking – but according to experts, cigarettes remain the most profitable and least risky form of contraband. “No one thinks that cigarette smuggling is too serious, so law enforcement agencies don’t spend resources to go after it”, as Louise Shelley, expert at Washington’s George Mason University puts it.

Let’s look at the IRA, which made an approximate $100 million from smuggling cigarettes into Northern Ireland between 1999 and 2004. After Ireland passed the plain packaging law, customs officials estimated that some €120 million stand to be made by present and former IRA members from tobacco smuggling, with one source quoted as saying: “If you are caught bringing in €10,000 of heroin or coke, you could face 10 years in jail. But bring in a million fags, and you’ll get a slap on the wrist. Cigarettes are the new cocaine.”

Hezbollah has similarly taken advantage of the different state-wide tax regimes in the US to ship cigarettes from low-tax states to high-tax states, reaping massive profits. Operation Smokescreen spearheaded by a cross-agency task force between 1995 and 2002 exposed several trafficking rings run by Mohammed Youssef Hammoud, a key Hezbollah financier, that were funneling cash to the terrorist organization. Al Qaeda also reaped a share of the spoils: in 2008, Saifullah Anjum Ranjha, a Pakistani residing in the US transferred a part of his profits made through smuggling cigarettes, weapons and drugs to al Qaeda sympathizers. Even the rebels in Ukraine were funneling cigarettes through the Black Sea port of Odessa.

Lawmakers can no longer ignore the testy issue of tobacco smuggling and should take into account this global coalition of terrorist groups that use it to fund their nefarious activities when calibrating their legislative responses. An effective long-term solution requires the collective action of a range of stakeholders. Enhanced law enforcement at local levels to stymie the tobacco trade, building public-private partnerships to control branding, quality control and supply chain integrity, pursuing sensible tax policies and re-examining the merits of plain packaging, as well as mounting awareness campaigns about the health risks and associated harms, are all sensible and easy to implement measure that would make life considerably more difficult for smugglers. At the international level, the EU member states should ratify the UN-backed Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which would establish a global tracking and tracing system to reduce and eradicate illicit trade. Sadly, even if the EU signed the convention in December 2013, only Austria has actually ratified it so far.

Cigarettes can no longer be ignored and their role can no longer be downplayed. The Paris attacks show that now, more than ever, a global, multi-pronged approach is needed to root out the many-headed hydra of global terrorism, and wage war against such groups not just in the physical sphere, but also on the financial one.

*David Meijer is a senior security analyst based in Amsterdam specialized in trans-national contraband.

France’s emotional response to the recent tragedy, devoid of reason and ignoring history, just makes matters worse.

The death toll in the November 13 attacks in Paris stands at 127. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sent a message to his French counterpart Francois Hollande condemning the attacks. “In the name of the Iranian nation, itself a victim of the evil scourge of terrorism, I strongly condemn these inhumane crimes and condole with the bereaved French nation and government.”

In contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opened his weekly Cabinet meeting by calling on world leaders to condemn terror against … Israel. He began by addressing the killing of two Israelis, ignoring the 81 Palestinians who have died in protests this month. “The time has come for the nations of the world to condemn terrorism against us as much as they condemn terrorism anywhere else in the world.” He pledged Israeli intelligence assistance to France, adding “An attack on any of us needs to be seen as an attack on all of us.”

Translate: France’s tragedy is a wake-up call for solidarity with … Israel.

France’s colonial legacy

Until 2012, France was spared serious terrorist attacks, but its enduring colonial mentality continues to stoke anger. Most evident recently was the official defence of anti-Muslim hate literature published by the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Rather than persecuting the Islamophobes, which would have prevented blowback by enraged Muslims, the French insistence on 吐reedom・led to an attack in January on the Paris offices of the magazine, killing 12 people and wounding 11 others.

Worse yet, the new Socialist President Hollande pushed ahead with a return to outright colonial invasion, with air strikes and arms to Syrian rebels in opposition to both the Syrian government and ISIS supporters. This confused policy only makes sense if the intent is to dismantle the Syrian state and refashion a Syrian puppet government, harking back to France’s invasion of Syria-Lebanon following WWI in collusion with Britain, when they destroyed the Ottoman state and set up puppet regimes across the Middle East.

France was slow to adjust to post-WWII decolonization, and stubbornly maintained its military presence not only in Vietnam but in the Middle East. Along with Britain, now both humiliated bankrupt powers, it was in no position to enforce its will, and it handed over its colonial possessions to the US either directly or via the new world order institutions. Plus, of course, intrigue where a glimmer of independence appeared, as in Iran in 1953 or Egypt 1956.

Worst of all was the horror France inflicted for more than a century in Algeria. Algeria had to suffer a long, brutal war of liberation in which a million Algerians died before France finally left in 1962. French meddling in Algeria since has only compounded the anymosity, especially the support given the military coup in 1992 in which 200,000 Algerians died.

France’s current return to openly colonial policies, first in Afghanistan, then Libya, Mali and now Syria, are guaranteed to have dire consequences. To its credit, France did not support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but there are now 3,200 French troops there.

France and US support the terrorists

France and the US have played a dangerous and foolish hand in their great games of asserting world power, at times using jihadists (1980s in Afghanistan) and at other times attacking them (1990s+ in Afghanistan), sometimes both at the same time (2011+ in Syria).

“Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar,” John McCain told CNN in January 2014. Is McCain not aware that two of the most successful factions fighting Syrian President Assad’s forces are Islamist extremist groups Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, and that their success is due to the support they have received from Qatar and Saudi Arabia? A senior Qatari official told The Atlantic journalist Steve Clemons that “he can identify al-Nusra commanders by the blocks they control in various Syrian cities. But ISIS is another matter. As one senior Qatari official stated, ‘ISIS has been a Saudi project.’”

France doesn’t have a wild card like McCain, but, like the US, supports Islamic fundamentalists in Syria and elsewhere through its ties with the Saudi and Qatari regimes and its actions in Syria. Even after it became obvious to everyone that the regime change project in Syria has led to an expansion of terrorism, Hollande was still pursuing it.

But then this hypocrisy goes for all the western nations, in the first place Canada, which has been bombing Syrian rebels and, at the same time, just signed a $14.8b arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The largest arms exports contract in Canadian history will be remembered as going to one of the worst human rights violators in the world and a funder of ISIS-related groups in Syria and Iraq. In fact, Canada’s record on bombing Muslims in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, on restricting birqas and promoting ‘free speech’ defaming Islam, mirrors France, and led to a shooting last year that penetrated the parliament buildings in Ottawa and had Prime Minister Harper cowering in his closet.

Harper’s answer, when he had stopped shaking, was the same as Hollande’s: he insisted that “Canada will not be intimidated” by acts of violence and remained committed to Canada’s efforts “to work with our allies around the world and fight against the terrorist organizations … who bring their savagery to our shores.” He did admit that “we’re all aware and deeply troubled that both attacks were carried out by Canadian citizens, by young men born and raised in this peaceful country,” but, like Hollande today, failed to draw the logical conclusion.

Powder keg

France has the largest Muslim population in Europe at 10m. Despite its claims of “liberty, equality and brotherhood”, it is considered the most racist country in Europe. French-Algerian communities still live on impoverished housing estates, go to bad schools, and have few opportunities for social advancement. Discrimination in everything from jobs to housing is routine. There are few French-Algerians in politics, the law, the media or any other profession, though the prisons are full. Hollande refuses to reverse measures like the burqa ban and has highlighted his opposition to halal meat and praying in the street because of a lack of mosques.

Populist rightwing politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen routinely portray alienated migrant communities as France’s enemy within. Le Pen garnered 20% of the popular vote in the first round of May’s presidential elections.

In their communique, the perpetrators of the recent attacks listed France’s crimes as leading a “new crusade” in Syria, as well as defending the Charlie Hebdo magazine, and just because of general French decadence and racism. They claimed their targets were well chose―a footbal match between ‘crusaders’ France and Germany attended by Hollande, and the Bataclan exhibition where “hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice” (the California group Eagles of Death Metal).

“This is for Syria,” were the last words of one of the Paris attackers. But he could have said it was for Mali, or Libya, or Iraq. France is very proactive against Islamists worldwide, especially in the face of what is frequently seen as British and American retreat. Over 10,000 French troops are currently deployed abroad. In addition to Iraq, there are over 5,000 troops in western and central Africa. Last week Hollande announced that France will deploy an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to assist the fight against ISIS.

As with Osama Bin Laden’s strategy of promoting dramatic terrorist attacks in the West to provoke a crackdown and to radicalize Muslims, the strategy behind the current attacks is to generate a French crackdown to encourage Muslims to follow ISIS’s caliphate fantasy. It has worked all too well so far, and Hollande’s vow to be “ruthless” in his response leads him and France in the wrong direction.

In his address on recent events, Iran’s Leader Imam Khameini acknowledged that “there are voices of criticism in the West about its colonial past. But they only criticize the distant past. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems?”

Source: http://english.khamenei.ir/news/2494/France-s-response-to-Paris-attacks-encourages-ISIS-s-caliphate

Israeli Arabs have called a general strike against the decision of the Israeli government to outlaw the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, accusing it of inciting violence.

An “anti-democratic and unjustified” measure, protested Palestinian leaders. Israeli Defense minister Moshe Yaalon signed the decree issued under state of emergency regulations, British Mandate-era legislation which Israel inherited in 1948 and has kept in place with annual renewal since.

The cleric Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement – accused of ties with Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood – has been active for months in the promotion of “defence committees” of the Al Aqsa mosque compound or Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Salah explained that the measure will not serve to annihilate his organization, which will “continue to exist and adhere to the principles on which it was founded”. The Islamist leader next week will begin serving an 11 months prison sentence for instigation of violence and racism for a speech made 8 years ago. His appeal was rejected by the Israeli supreme court last month.

Numerous Palestinian organizations condemned the decision, considered a “declaration of war” against the Arab component of the Israeli society. According to some observers, the Netanyahu government is taking advantage of the global outrage over the Paris attacks to crackdown on Palestinians.

For the past year, astronaut Scott Kelly has been tweeting breathtaking photos of Earth from the International Space Station.

On Sunday, he may have tweeted a photo of something far more astounding — a UFO.

That, at least, is what conspiracy theorists and alien obsessives would have you believe.

Their proof is “clearly” visible in a photo Kelly tweeted on Sunday from the ISS over India.

“In the upper right of the photo you can clearly see a large object with two lights on each end,” alien hunter Sonofmabarker wrote on YouTube (see video below). “It also appears to be very large and constructed.”

Fellow UFO fanatic secureteam10 agreed with Sonofmabarker’s assessment.

“We see here what appears to be a long, white UFO,” he said in a YouTube video. “It looks to have two lights on it, one on each end.”

Scott Waring, the editor of ufosightingsdaily.com, goes further than his conspiratorial colleagues in suggesting that Kelly was intentionally showing off the supposed UFO.

On his blog Waring wrote:

When an astronaut tweets a photo of a UFO, you can bet people notice it. Scott Kelly likes to send out photos of the view from the windows of the space station…and they look cool. This one however has a cigar shaped glowing UFO with a metallic body in it. The UFO is about 25 meters long and 150-200 meters away. It looks like Scott was trying to hint at the existence of aliens. Message received Scott, and thanks.

NASA has not commented on Sunday’s alleged UFO sighting, but on Thursday morning Kelly tweeted another photo from the ISS that appears to capture the same UFO.

By Jemima Pierre*

The video begins mid-action. A Black man sprawls on the ground. He seems injured. He tries to move but his efforts are slow, labored, slight. There is blood beneath him, fresh and bright against the polished white floor. On the edge of the frame, people move frantically. The Black man is encircled. Someone holding a gun – he looks like a soldier – steps forward and kicks the Black man in the head. From the bottom right of the screen, an orange bench is thrown, smashing into the head of the Black man. Someone – another soldier? – waves the others back and lifts the bench from the Black man’s head. Another man carrying a book bag quickly walks towards the Black man and swiftly kicks him in the head. His body spins across the floor, leaving a large smear of red blood. The man with the book bag walks away, unhurried. The Black man tries to lift his arm. A large White man places the legs of a tall stool over him. The man appears to be shielding the man on the floor from further attack; he yells at the crowd, flailing his arms, waving people away as they try to advance on the Black man. He is actually trying to keep the Black man from escaping. A person from the growing mob gets in another kick at the almost lifeless Black man on the ground, and the stool is briefly knocked away. The large man quickly replaces the stool over the victim while frantically screaming at and waving away the enraged mob.

I can no longer watch.

Hours after the attack, the Black man succumbs to his injuries and dies.

When I came across the video, it was captioned: “Horrific footage of Israelis beating Eritrean refugee falsely accused of being bus station attacker and shot on site.”

His name was Habtom Zerhom. He was twenty-nine years old. He had migrated from Eritrea to Israel seeking political asylum. On that fateful day, he had gone to Beersheba, the capital of Negev, to renew his work visa. He was in the Beersheba’s bus station when an Israeli soldier was attacked and shot by someone the media referred to as an “Arab citizen of Israel.” After the attack, Mr. Zerhom scrambled to get away with the rest of the crowd. But according to official sources, Israeli security forces assumed he was with the attacker and shot him multiple times. Mr. Zerhom was shot, according to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, “Just because of his skin color.” The mob kicked him and spat on him, while screaming “death to Arabs” and “Arabs out!” reportedly “mistook him for a terrorist.”

The “lynching” of Habtom Zerhom has been reported as an isolated incident, even as there is the occasional, muted recognition that African immigrants and other Black populations in Israel have been subject to dehumanizing discrimination – often propagated by the State of Israel itself. Indeed, incited by prominent Israeli officials, attacks on African migrants and other Blacks have been on the rise. In 2012, for instance, I wrote about a spate of attacks, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, that included the firebombing of apartments and a kindergarten used by Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers, racist protests, and mob assaults (see photo stream here). Some have described these attacks and protests as a coordinated pogrom against Africans. The Hareetz journalist, Ilan Lior, who was present at the anti-African rally in Tel Aviv on May 23, 2012, described his reaction:

“I’ve covered terror attacks, funerals, car accidents, and protests. I’ve seen fury, frustration, despair, and sadness in a variety of places and forms. But I’ve never seen such hatred as it was displayed on Wednesday night in the Hatikva neighborhood. If it weren’t for the police presence, it would have ended in lynching. I have no doubt.”

In early January 2014, a fifty-nine-year old Israeli man stabbed an eighteen-month-old Eritrean girl in the head with scissors as she was being held in her mother’s arms at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. Once caught, the man told police, “I attacked black terrorists, she’s a black baby.” He then continued, saying of Africans living in Tel Aviv: “I hate them, they’re black and they make a big mess.”

These attacks by individuals and mobs are bolstered by equally disturbing racist language of some Israeli politicians as well as the punitive anti-Black actions by the Israeli state. In 2012, the most vocal of these politicians was Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai, who consistently argued that the country must solve the “problem of the infiltrators,” African immigrants. Like many protesters, he accused African asylum seekers of spreading disease and raping Israeli women. Yishai was also adamant that Israel “belongs to us, to the white man.” In fact, several leading Israeli politicians, many of them from the ruling Likud party headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed a May 2012, anti-African rally in Tel Aviv. At the rally, Likud MP, Miri Regev, stated that, “the Sudanese were a cancer in our body.” Parliamentarian Ben-Ari (who was once a member of the Meir Kahane Movement, banned in Israel and placed on the U.S. State Department’s Terror List) demanded that all “African infiltrators” be deported. Meanwhile, Knesset member Aryeh Eldad of the National Union said that, “anyone that penetrates Israel’s border should be shot.”

Netanyahu has argued that Africans threaten “the social fabric of society” and the “Jewish and democratic character of the country.” While claiming to denounce anti-African violence, his official response was to order the immediate deportation of 25,000 African asylum seekers and to erect a border fence between Israel and Egypt. Moreover, a new law went into effect in June 2012 allowing the Israeli government to hold all African asylum seekers – including women and children – in prison for up to three years without charge. (After intervention by Israeli NGOs against this long-term detention, the Israeli High Court of Justice ordered that this law was revised to reduce detention to no more than twelve months.)

The Israeli government in late 2013 began offering the mainly Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers each a cash amount of $3500 and a one way ticket to return to their country of origin – or to a third party country. If they refuse, they are sent to the recently built Holot detention center for African asylum seekers – a sprawling “open prison” in the Negev desert. (Israeli officials summoned the father of the 18-month-old Eritrean girl who was stabbed in the head to the Holot detention center just a few months after the stabbing, and while his daughter was still receiving treatment at the hospital.) Although the Israeli government is now only allowed to hold asylum seekers in Holot for 12 months, it bans the released former prisoners from entering, living, or working in cities such as Eliat and Tel Aviv, places where the Eritrean and Sudanese migrants have community. They also only have two months to renew their conditional release visas. If these asylum seekers have no place to go, or refuse to “self-deport,” they can be sent to Saharonim prison and held indefinitely.

The treatment of African migrants is as much about race and Blackness/anti-Blackness as it is about asylum. In fact, we can get a better sense of the vitriolic nature of anti-Blackness by seeing the responses of some Israelis to other Israelis who protest against anti-African violence. For example, in a video shot right after an anti-African rally, a lone Israeli woman who disagreed with the racism and xenophobia of the protestors is brusquely insulted and threatened by the crowd. In front of children, men and women protesters shouted: “A Sudanese man will rape you in the ass,” “May your daughter be raped,” “May your mother be raped,” and “She wants some nigger dick.”

Similarly, Israeli human rights organizations assisting migrants have received threats of arson and rape. The marshaling of the typical anti-Black stereotypes of hypersexuality, criminality, and disease, and now “terror,” and the increased violence and incitement against Black/African asylum seekers, reflects a disturbing trend. But the recent reports that Jewish Ethiopian women were forcibly injected with long-acting contraceptives (which has ultimately decreased the Ethiopian Jewish population by 50 percent), and that Ethiopian Jews remain severely marginalized in Israel, confirms the depth of anti-Blackness in Israeli society. Significantly, it underscores, if not exposes, Zionism as an explicit racial project.

The rise in this crude form of racism and anti-Black violence seen in the attack on Mr. Zerhom are not unrelated to the ongoing dehumanization of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. By now, we know all too well the ongoing trauma of the Palestinian people through displacement and military occupation: the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians during the founding of Israel (“al-Nakbah”); the siege of Gaza and its separation from the West Bank; the dual system of laws that allow the indefinite detention and imprisonment of children (some in solitary confinement), students, politicians; dehumanizing checkpoints; the forced immobility of students and scholars; the rewriting of history texts; home demolitions; destruction of olive trees; and most recently the full out bombardments and summary executions of Palestinians, young and old, men and women.

The recent report by the Task Force on the American Anthropological Association Engagement on Israel-Palestine carefully documents some of these practices, confirming that the Palestinian people continue to suffer through an occupation buttressed by a legal apparatus that impacts all areas of life and that depends on violence against the living – and the dead.

The Zionist dehumanization of Palestinians and its culture of anti-Blackness depend on the same system and, as scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis reminds us, “its outbursts are not isolated incidents.” Indeed, Davis’s words come in the context of a renewed U.S. Black-Palestinian solidarity movement, one that builds similar work dating back to the early 1960s.

During the summer of 2014, as Israel waged yet another military assault on Gaza, young Black people in Ferguson were protesting the killing of Michael Brown (as well as the posthumous desecration of his body and dehumanization of his person) and battling racialized state sponsored violence and repression. Many in the Black-Palestinian solidary movement point to the fact that Palestinians were among the first to voice solidarity for protestors in Ferguson. At the same time, a delegation from the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson visited Palestine and the Occupied Territories. Protestors in the U.S. also revealed that U.S. police have traveled to Israel for seminars in “counterterrorism techniques,” that include combat training and tours of border checkpoints, military facilities and surveillance.

On a trip to occupied Palestine, Black community organizer Cherrell Brown acknowledged that the struggles of U.S. Blacks and Palestinians are not the same but remarked that “many parallels exist between how the US polices, incarcerates, and perpetuates violence on the black community and how the Zionist state that exists in Israel perpetuates the same on Palestinians.” As the lynching of Mr. Zerhom reminds us, Black people living within Israel – asylum seekers, documented residents and citizens – can easily become victims of the ethno-supremacist Zionist edifice.

My support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement against Israeli cultural and academic institutions (not individuals)[3] emerges in this context of solidarity through similarity and difference, and out of an understanding of the life and death matters of state sponsored racialized violence transnationally. As a Black anthropologist with cultural, political, and research concerns in communities of African descent, I know too well the ways that global structures of race and power operate to control, destroy, debase, punish, and dehumanize. I understand that anti-Blackness in Israel is but a symptom of the broader culture and practice of Palestinian disenfranchisement. Even as I recognize that anti-Blackness exists in most societies [4], I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian right of self-determination. As a U.S. citizen whose tax dollars are used to support a violent racial state that refuses to comply with international law, I say “not in my name!” And as a human being concerned with social justice and equality for all, I cannot look away [5] – and I cannot stay silent.

* Jemima Pierre is Associate Professor in the Departments of African American Studies and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. This article previously appeared in Savage Minds.

END NOTES

[1] I am grateful to Peter James Hudson for his incisive commentary on this essay, and to Robin D.G. Kelley for his generous feedback.
[2] This includes my full support for the Resolution put forth by the Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions. Please note that the resolution explicitly calls for the boycott of institutions and not individual academics.
[3] And of course there is also the community of Afro-Palestinians who are subject to the same Israeli occupation as other Palestinians, but who also experience forms of anti-Blackness.
[4] The inspiration for this piece comes from two placards held by participants in the Black Solidarity with Palestine video, “ I See Them, I See Us.” Dr. Angela Y. Davis’s sign read: “Racism is systemic. Its outbursts are not isolated incidents.” Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley’s sign read: “I really have no choice, I can’t look away.”

November 30, 2015, marks the 50^th anniversary of the publication of Ralph Nader’s landmark book Unsafe at Any Speed. The book focused on the faulty rear suspension system of the General Motors Corvair, This defect could cause the Corvair to skid violently and roll over. The corporate negligence that had produced the various Corvair defects, Nader said, was “one of the greatest acts of industrial irresponsibility.” More generally, Unsafe at Any Speed documented how Detroit habitually subordinated safety to style and marketing concerns. The main cause of automobile occupant injuries, Nader demonstrated, was not the “nut behind the wheel” so often blamed by the auto industry, but the inherent engineering and design deficiencies of motor vehicles that were woefully unsafe, especially in terms of “crashworthiness”—no seat belts, etc.

The publication of Unsafe at Any Speed led to GM’s contemptible investigation by private detectives and attempts to smear Nader, GM’s subsequent public apology at a Senate hearing, and ultimately the 1966 auto and highway safety laws that have saved countless lives and profoundly accelerated the pace of auto safety innovation.

On March 22, 1966 at a Senate hearing chaired by Senator Ribicoff, James M. Roche, the President of GM, apologized to Nader saying:

As president of General Motors, I hold myself fully responsible for any action authorized or initiated by any officer of the corporation which may have had any bearing on the incidents related to our investigation of Mr. Nader…While there can be no disagreement over General Motors’ legal right to ascertain necessary facts preparatory to litigation…I am not here to excuse, condone, or justify in any way our investigating Mr. Nader. To the extent that General Motors bears responsibility, I want to apologize here and now to the members of this subcommittee and Mr. Nader. I sincerely hope that these apologies will be accepted. Certainly I bear Nader no ill will.

This episode catapulted auto safety into the public spotlight, leading to a series of landmark laws that have prevented millions of motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries. In particular, the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed put forces in motion that brought about the passage of the law that created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in order to assert federal leadership in auto and highway safety. The agency was empowered to set minimum, uniform safety performance and eventually fuel efficiency standards for all motor vehicles, and to require automakers to notify owners and recall cars containing safety-related defects. The episode also cemented Nader in the public mind as a fierce, incorruptible advocate and watchdog, a reputation that launched one of the most singular and enduring roles in American politics. Nader has used his considerable talents as an organizer, activist, legal analyst, and author to rally public opinion, start many citizen initiatives, and push through hundreds of reforms in business, government, and various professions.

In November of 1966, Ralph Nader’s lawyer, Stuart Speiser, filed suit against GM for its harassment, invasion of privacy, attempted intimidation, and other nefarious actions. In 1970, GM settled with Nader, agreeing to pay him $425,000, which he used to found several public interest organizations. Newsweek remarked that this settlement will in effect serve as “General Motors’ contribution to the consumer movement. They are going to be financing their own ombudsman.”

This prediction proved to be true; Nader went on to found a wide variety of organizations, all aimed at advancing corporate and government accountability. Nader-inspired groups include Public Citizen, the Center for Auto Safety, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Clean Water Action Project, the Pension Rights Center, the Princeton Alumni Corps, and the Appleseed Foundation—a nonprofit network of 17 public interest justice centers.

In addition, Nader helped establish the state-based PIRGs—Public Interest Research Groups—which are organizations that function on college campuses and in communities in 23 states. The PIRGs have published hundreds of ground-breaking reports and guides, lobbied for laws in their state legislatures, and called the media’s attention to consumer, environmental, and energy problems. Many other non-profit advocacy groups followed in the wake of these Nader-inspired organizations.

Nader also played a pivotal role in advancing and improving several major federal consumer protection laws such as the motor vehicle safety laws, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Clean Air Act, and the landmark Freedom of Information Act, and he worked tirelessly to launch federal regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

An author, lecturer, attorney, and political activist, Nader’s life-long work and advocacy has led to safer cars, healthier food, safer drugs, cleaner air and drinking water, and safer work environments. In 2006 he was cited by The Atlantic as one of the one hundred most influential figures in American history, TIME Magazine has called him the “U.S.’s toughest customer,” the New York Times has said of him that “[w]hat sets Nader apart is that he has moved beyond social criticism to effective political action,” and in 1974, a survey conducted by U.S. News and World Report rated him as the fourth most influential person in the United States.

In September of 2015, Nader received extensive media coverage for his newest project: the American Museum of Tort Law in Winsted, Connecticut—the first law museum in America.

Nader continues to work relentlessly to advance meaningful civic institutions and citizen participation as an antidote to corporate and government unaccountability. In light of recent revelations about Volkswagen’s deceptive skirting of emissions tests, Nader’s work is again proving its centrality in consumer advocacy. Not only did the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed spur the creation of many necessary organizations, it also provided a fundamental framework for protecting citizens from corporate malfeasance that is as effective today as it was in 1965.

Most of the official leaders of Russia’s Muslim community have denounced the Paris terrorist violence as something organized by non-Muslim forces interested in discrediting the umma, but at least 500,000 Muslims in Russia support ISIS and view the attacks very differently, according to Aleksandr Malashenko.

Such divisions will intensify with each new terrorist incident and with Moscow’s increasing involvement in Syria, the Carnegie Moscow Center expert says, leading “not only” to deeper splits within the Muslim community “but also to a growth of Islamophobia … and inter-ethnic tensions” in Russia (carnegie.ru/commentary/2015/11/18/ru-62009/im13).

Russia’s roughly 20 million Muslims, he says, divide in various ways on ISIS, Russia’s actions in Syria and the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. “The representatives of the Muslim political establishment and religious usually treat the actions of the Islamic radicals exactly as do the [Russian] authorities,” blaming outside actors rather than Islamist extremists for them.

Such assessments, Malashenko argues, reflect a desire to “’de-Islamicize’ ISIS” and to treat “Islamism as an illness brought from outside, even as ‘a cancerous tumor,’” one that can be eliminated exclusively with the help of ‘forceful surgery.’”

But they “consciously ignore the fact that Islamism is a global religious-political trend which has spread throughout the entire Muslim world and which is based on the idea that it is possible to build a state and society on the basis of Islamic tradition.,” an idea many Muslims find attractive.

There are many Muslims in Russia who support that idea and they are found throughout the country and not just in the North Caucasus as formerly, the Carnegie expert says. The aging traditional clergy isn’t able to compete, and the radicals are taking over many mosques. In addition, they have founded “thousands of Salafi circles” to promote radical views.

“According to various estimates,” he says, “from two to seven thousand Muslims from Russia are now fighting for ISIS.” No one has any exact statistics on “the number of those who sympathize with the Islamic State,” but “their number could reach 500,000” – or about one in every 40 Muslims in Russia.

Of course, he says, not all those who support the idea of an Islamic state back the use of terrorism. Many are as opposed to that as their official leaders. But the idea attracts many and that can’t be ignored, Malashenko says. Nor can Moscow afford to ignore the fact that many Muslims in Russia view the Kremlin’s attacks in Syria “as a war against Islam.”

Many of Russia’s Muslims also believe those behind it should be punished, and their number too will only grow as the fighting continues.

“Today,” Malashenko says, “many write that after November 13 France became different. That is possible. But did Russia become different after Dubrovka or Beslan? On the other hand, the Muslim community in which is taking place differentiation among people and groups over whose interpretation of Islam is most accurate is constantly changing.”

By Khalid Kazimov

An Iranian MP said the country is capable of reactivating the Arak reactor within six months, if the US sanctions on the Islamic Republic are not lifted.

“If the Americans break the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding lifting the sanctions, Iran will activate the Arak reactor within six months,” ISNA news agency quoted Head of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iranian Parliament, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, as saying Nov.19.

Under the JCPOA clinched in July Iran should redesign and rebuild a modernised heavy water research reactor in Arak. The redesigned and rebuilt Arak reactor will not produce weapons grade plutonium.

Iran has disconnected almost a quarter of its uranium-enriching centrifuges in less than a month, Reuters reported Nov. 18.

According to the JCPOA, signed between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries made up of the UK, US, France, Germany, Russia, and China, Tehran is committed to reducing its number of centrifuges.

(EurActiv) — Justice and Home Affairs ministers from EU member states are meeting today (20 November) in Brussels to discuss new security measures following the terrorist attacks in Paris last weekend that left 129 people dead.

Council officials called the passenger name registry (PNR) a top priority for the ministers’ meeting.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called for an EU-wide PNR after the attacks in Paris.

Negotiations have been going on between the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission over the controversial PNR legislation. But critics of the data collection law for flight passenger information have warned that the Council’s demands would clamp down on civil liberties and privacy rights.

Council ministers will also focus today on security measures at the Schengen zone’s external borders, regulating firearms and a counterterrorism centre within Europol that will be set up on 1 January.

Negotiations over PNR are expected to change the position agreed by the Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) in July, which allows data collection only for flights entering or leaving the EU.

Member states have signalled that they want the law to apply to flights within Europe as well. Negotiators are set on finishing talks by the end of the year. It’s still unclear what types of flights will be included in the law.

British MEP Timothy Kirkhope (ECR), Parliament rapporteur on the PNR bill, voted for data to be collected for flights within Europe too, but that was rejected by other MEPs.

Kirkhope said collecting PNR data for flights within Europe is “something which I believe has value, not just in the fight against terrorism, but also in the fight against trafficking, drug smuggling, and a number of other serious kinds of criminality.”

The original European Commission proposal included 60 different categories of personal data to be collected, including passengers’ contact details, flight origins and destinations, IP addresses and payment information.

The Parliament wants data from passengers on charter flights to also be collected, but member states are divided over that.

Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld, the ALDE shadow rapporteur on the PNR legislation, said the Council’s focus on PNR in today’s meeting is an attempt to push member states’ agenda during trialogue negotiations with the Parliament and Commission.

“Parliament has voted for a position which is clearly different from the position of Council. Rather than trying to sort out differences in trialogue as we’re supposed to do, they’re now trying to put pressure on the process by issuing press releases and Council conclusions,” in ‘t Veld told EurActiv.

In ‘t Veld said there is “zero” agreement on whether the PNR data that’s collected will be shared between member states, which Parliament voted in favour of. Member states have been much more reluctant to share intelligence information.

“What is the point of a European directive on the processing of European data if those data are stored in national silos and not shared?” she said.

Critics of PNR warn that the draft legislation could face the same fate as the data retention directive, which was struck down by the European Court of Justice in 2014 for allowing “general and blanket data retention.”

“Whatever the question is in relation to security, the answer from our political leaders is always surveillance. But the answer is rarely untargeted surveillance,” said Joe McNamee, director of NGO European Digital Rights.

In an opinion published in September, European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli said it isn’t clear why mass PNR data should be collected instead of on a targeted basis.

Since the attacks in Paris last week, supporters of tightened national security measures increasingly spoke out in favour of PNR.

German MEP Monika Hohlmeier (EPP) sent out a press release yesterday calling for PNR negotiations to move ahead and suggested that legal action be taken to weaken encryption.

“Data privacy is an important priority, but protecting the lives of innocent people in Europe takes precedence,” she said.

Hohlmeier also blamed “left-wing groups” who advocated for “loopholes in our safety and security legislation.”

“The movements of terrorists have to be monitored, their financial sources have to be drained and their encrypted communications must be accessed,” Holmeier said in the statement.

Earlier this year, Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip denied rumours that the Commission wanted to propose legislation allowing backdoors to bypass encryption.

David Cameron and other European politicians amped up their calls for backdoors to encryption following the terrorist attack on the office of Paris-based magazine Charlie Hebdo in January.

Privacy advocates argue limiting encryption would do more harm than good—and wouldn’t do much to stop crimes.

“The only impact of restrictions on encryption will be that innocent people will be less secure,” said Joe McNamee.

The more prominent reasons behind the collapse of prior Israeli-Palestinian negotiations include disagreement on rules of engagement, a failure to delink the conflicting issues, a lack of trust, political factionalism, power disparities in the negotiations and an absence of bold leadership.

By Dr. Alon Ben-Meir*

No new format for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians can succeed unless it carefully considers the reasons behind the failure of past negotiations to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. The following highlights some of the more prominent reasons behind the collapse of prior Israeli-Palestinian negotiations:

Disagreement on rules of engagement: Given their stark disagreement on various issues, each side insisted on rules of engagement that could serve their own strategic interests first. For example, Israel insisted that the negotiations must first consider its vital national security concerns, whereas the Palestinians wanted to negotiate borders first to establish the parameters of their state.

In addition, both sides have failed to delink the conflicting issues, arguing that nothing is agreed upon unless everything is agreed on at the same time.  Moreover, by not setting aside, or “banking,” any conflicting issue over which they have reached an agreement, it made it difficult to make significant progress as every time they entered into new negotiations, they had to start from scratch.

Lack of trust: One of the most daunting problems is the lack of trust between the two sides, as neither has made any effort to mitigate it. On the contrary, they have both made demonstrable actions on the ground such as building and expanding settlements, erupting into wanton violence, and engaging in public acrimony in ways that only deepen mistrust. Moreover, personal chemistry and communication, which could stimulate trust between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, was and still is absent.

Failing to engage the public: Both sides have failed to involve their respective publics in the progress (or lack thereof) in the peace process, invite support, and prepare their citizens to accept the inevitable concessions that will be required to reach an agreement.

Moreover, the press was left in the dark and was not allowed to witness or gauge any aspect of the negotiations to engender public discussion, thus leaving the public with little or no expectation or hope that the peace negotiations could in fact lead to an agreement.

Political factionalism: Whereas a majority of Israelis and Palestinians (based on many polls conducted over the years) have steadily supported a solution to the conflict based on two states, political factionalism within both communities makes it extremely difficult to concede on this or any other issue.

Major opposition from political opponents who have different agendas, though they represent a smaller part of the overall population, have consistently scuttled the peace talks. The settlement movement in Israel and extremist jihadist groups among the Palestinians wield far greater political influence than their numbers warrant, and thus far have succeeded to dash any prospect for peace, justifying their refusal to accommodate the other.

Power disparity in the negotiations: Whereas Israel enjoys a preponderance of military and economic power and negotiates from a position of strength, the Palestinians are living under occupation with a limited ability to challenge Israel.

As a result, they have sought to balance their power relations at the negotiating table or prior to the commencement of the negotiations with Israel by demanding, for example, to freeze settlement activity or release Palestinian prisoners, to which Israel objected.

Lack of a comprehensive US strategy: As the mediator, the US did not follow a carefully constructed framework for the negotiations that could guide both sides to make the necessary concessions to reach an agreement.

Indeed, being that both Israel and the Palestinians often vacillated and changed course by design or circumstances, the US (out of frustration) changed its strategic approach in response, thereby losing consistency and control over the negotiating process, which led to repeated failures.

No consequence for failure: Although the US offered economic and security incentives for both to reach an agreement, it lacked a strategic approach and attached no repercussions for failing to reach an agreement. That is, the lack of a mechanism to punish either or both sides for failing to make serious progress made it possible to resist any pressure, knowing that they could do so with impunity.

Absence of bold leadership: There has been a serious absence of courageous and visionary leadership that could move against the political current for the sake of a larger purpose by making important concessions to each other to advance the peace negotiations.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, neither side has produced a leader with the strength and conviction to take a risk for the sake of peaceful coexistence. This leadership malaise will have to be cured before a new round of negotiations begin, but is not likely to happen without intense and consistent external pressure.

The new international effort to resume the peace negotiations must not lose sight of the popular demand of the majority on both sides to live in peace, because on their own, they will not come to terms with one another.

The regional turmoil must not forestall the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; on the contrary, it should serve as the catalyst that could end one of the longest conflicts in modern history.

Past experiences also revealed that although some progress was made through US mediation, the negotiations failed to produce an agreement and nothing indicates that the resumption of the negotiations under US auspices would lead to different results.

As such, it has become increasingly clear that only international intervention would provide the practical channel for the peace negotiations and motivate or incentivize both sides to come to terms with the inevitability of coexistence.

The US’ role is central to the success of these efforts, provided that Obama or his successor stop enabling Israel to pursue its self-destructive path by no longer providing Israel with unconditional political backing and economic and military support.

Indeed, the two-state solution remains the only viable option that allows for peaceful coexistence, on which any new initiative must be based.

*Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

Stadia have re-emerged as a preferred jihadist target in the wake of last weekend’s Islamic State (IS) bombing of the Stade de France stadium, a shootout five days later with jihadist militants in a Paris suburb adjacent to the stadium, a reportedly foiled plot against a stadium in the German city of Hannover barely an hour before the German national team was scheduled to play, the cancelation of a friendly between Belgium and Spain, and France’s banning of fans from travelling to matches for the next three months.

The targeting of stadia spotlights jihadists’ often convoluted relationship to soccer. Many jihadists see soccer as an infidel creation designed to distract the faithful from fulfilling their religious obligations. Yet, many of them are soccer fans or former, failed or disaffected players who see the sport as an effective recruitment and bonding tool.

In a perverse way, France’s decision to ban fans from travelling to their team’s away from home matches recognizes soccer’s utility as a mobilizer. A successful attack on a soccer match would go a long way to achieve IS’s goals of polarizing communities, exacerbating social tensions, and driving the marginalized further into the margins.

French fears are grounded in a degree of alienation among segments of youth with an immigrant background that has prompted them to refuse to support the French national team in a manifestation of their sense that there is no equal place for them in French society.

French fears were also rooted in a history of immigrant soccer violence irrespective of whether the French team wins or not dating back to France’s winning of the World Cup in 1998 with a team that brought together a generation of players who all had their origins outside France and was widely seen as a symbol of successful French integration of minorities.

Days earlier, police in France and four other European countries had arrested 100 people of Algerian descent associated with the Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA), a militant Islamist group fighting in Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s that left at least 100,000 people dead.

Eleven years later, some 12,000 youths of Algerian descent poured into Paris Champs Elysees for celebrations to celebrate Algeria’s defeat of Egypt in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum rather than support France which was preparing for a crucial World Cup qualifier against Ireland.

The celebrations degenerated into clashes with police prompting a student to tell Andrew Hussey, a scholar who has charted French-North African relations and the soccer politics of French communities of North African origin: “”I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not just about football. It has to be about something else.”

Mr. Hussey argued in The Guardian that the riots were not simply about perceived racism in France but harked back to French colonial rule that viewed Algeria as an integral part of France but treated Algerians as second class citizens.

More recently, fans with a migrant background and police clashed last year in Paris and Marseille after Algeria beat Russia to advance to the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.

It is those kind of societal divisions that IS targeted with its attack last Friday on the Stade de France and its alleged plots in Germany. In doing so IS is seeking to exploit a perception of prejudice, discrimination and abandonment that stretches far beyond France and is not restricted to communities feel disenfranchised and hopeless.

Ironically, that may have failed with French and other Muslims far more assertive in their condemnation of the Paris attacks than of the assault in January on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.

However, mixed with the abhorrence felt by French Muslims at the carnage in Paris is a sense among many that Muslims are being stereotyped and targeted whether at home or in countries far and near. A French Muslim office worker quotes his daughter as asking him after returning from school: “Why am I to blame? What did I do? I’m French. Yet, I’m denounced as a terrorist while they bomb Muslims in Syria and Iraq.”

A French taxi driver of Algerian descent quips: “Nothing justified what happened. These people are beasts. But France and others can’t go round the world bombing countries and leaving ordinary people to pick up the pieces. It’s logical that there would be a reaction. This, however, was not the way to do it.”

Turkish fans booed this week during a minute of silence in honour of the Paris victims at the beginning of a match in Istanbul between Turkey and Greece attended by the Turkish and Greek prime ministers and intended to seal Turkish-Greek reconciliation. Boos and jeers were also heard during a minute’s silence in Dublin at a Euro 2016 play-off between Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The sense of an international community that measures with different yardsticks is deeply felt across the globe, including by Syrians fleeing civil war and Lebanese who suffered an IS bombing‎ a day before the attacks in Paris that shook the world. 40 people were killed in the Beirut bombing.

“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colours of their flag, wrote Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor. He was referring to landmarks as far flung as Sydney’s Opera House and London’s Big Ben that were lit up in France’s tri-couleur to honour the victims of the Paris attacks and express solidarity.

“When my people dies, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world, Fares added, suggesting that Arab lives mattered less. ‎

Writing on Facebook against the backdrop of the outpouring of sympathy in the wake of the Paris attacks, Nour Kabbach, a Syrian ‎refugee from Aleppo said: “Now imagine all that happening without global sympathy for innocent lives, with no special media updates by the minute, and without the support of every world leader condemning the violence.”

‎The sense of abandonment expressed‎ by Fares and Kabbach is equally deeply felt in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek that has repeatedly popped up as an important link in IS’s European network. Unemployment ranges from 30 to 50 percent in Molenbeek, treble Belgium’s national average.

“Religion is not the main access point (to radicalization). It is that they cannot see any future for themselves,” Jamal Ikazban, a left-wing Belgian lawmaker of Moroccan descent and resident of Molenbeek told The New York Times.

French officials and analysts privately concede that retaliatory French air strikes are likely to do little to defeat IS unless military efforts are embedded in social and economic policies at home that address deep-seated and justified concerns. “We are in a period of elections. The strikes have everything to do with domestic politics at a time that IS has given the far-right a tremendous boost. They are not going to make a difference on the ground in Syria,” said one analyst.

The suicide armed attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 were unprecedented in magnitude and scale. It has exposed France’s vulnerability to political armed violence and has alerted the rest of Europe to the jihadist threat within their domain.

By Weimeng Yeo*

The series of simultaneous armed and suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 130 people and left 350 injured in multiple locations in Paris have highlighted once again the terrorism threat in France. Though tragic, these attacks in Paris, France, do not come as a complete surprise.

In the last 18 months, France has already suffered from more than five major terrorist attacks. What is surprising is the magnitude and scale of these six assaults, which were very ambitious. Divided into three distinct groups, the militants were able to execute simultaneous strikes on six locations. Simultaneous attacks are very effective as they cause significant number of casualties before the security services have the time and ability to respond. These attacks were also very well coordinated and involved myriad attack devices reflecting a sophistication that can only come from having some level of military training and expertise as well as centralised control.

Similar to the Mumbai attacks in 2008

The worst violence occurred at the siege of the Bataclan Theatre that left more than 80 people killed. Such suicide armed attacks or sieges witnessed at the theatre involve an individual or a group opening fire on a gathering of people in order to kill as many as possible. Similar to the Mumbai attacks in 2008, the ability to roam around and sustain the attack, while being willing to kill themselves in the onslaught, makes such terrorist attacks more difficult to combat.

From the terrorist’s perspective, this attack mode offers a number of advantages. It allows for greater target discrimination, flexibility during the operation, cause large numbers of casualties and generate extensive worldwide media exposure. Such attacks are stunning but not unprecedented. Several terrorist groups have also incorporated such assaults as part of their attack repertoire. For example, the Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are famous for sending suicide squads against military targets. These attacks are not explicitly suicidal, although the chances of survival are slim and the militants are often killed.

Use of TATP explosives

French authorities have disclosed that triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosives were used as part of the suicide bomb vests for the attacks at the stadium ans the Bataclan Theatre. This is an interesting point. TATP is basically a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric, nitric, or hydrochloric acids. These are chemicals relatively available in your neighbourhood stores.

However, TATP is highly unstable and is very sensitive to heat as well as shock. More often than not TATP will detonate prior to the desired time. Given the high level of precision and coordination needed to orchestrate these attacks, an experienced bomb maker had to be involved in creating the suicide bomb vest stable enough to be used in these operations.

IS’ claimed responsibility

The Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the catastrophic attacks in the French capital, though this has not been officially authenticated. The suicide operations and the synchronous nature of these attacks are consistent with the modus operandi of salafi-jihadi militant groups such as IS and al-Qaeda.

In the eyes of the jihadi community, France’s military incursion in the Middle East such as its recent bombing campaigns against IS positions in Syria and Iraq, justifies its targeting. Both IS and al-Qaeda linked groups have in the past have threatened reprisals against France for its military intervention in the region.

On the domestic side, the fact the one of the suicide bombers was a Syrian refugee will also further fuel longstanding ethnic tensions in the country. France continues to struggle to deal with the problems of poor integration and perceived marginalisation of its large Muslim population. Domestic policies such as the deeply unpopular headscarf ban have contributed to the feelings of victimisation claimed by some sections of the French Muslim community.

French jihadists returning home

Compounding the threat landscape are indications that many French individuals have travelled to countries such as Syria and Libya to receive paramilitary training. The experience of other Western European countries, which face their own home-grown terrorist threat, has shown that individuals benefiting from foreign training and combat experience can act as lightning rods for local radicalised individuals and provide an addition impetus to orchestrate attacks in their homeland.

So far, French authorities believe that there are about 400 French citizens in Syria fighting with extremists, making the French among the largest western contingents of foreign fighters in Syria.

More attacks to come?

The attacks in Paris are the deadliest in Europe since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain where 191 people were killed and over 1,800 people injured. These attacks have probably made suicide armed assaults and bomb attacks a more attractive tactic for terrorist groups to replicate. Such attacks will typically target people in crowded areas that lay outside any security perimeter checks such as a ticketing area of an airport. Most probable targets for such attacks are landmark buildings where there is a large civilian presence.

With regard to the terrorism risk landscape in France, while the suicide bombers have been all killed, the drive-by shooters remain at large. Moreover, despite several arrests in Belgium of individuals allegedly linked to the attacks in Paris, it is still unclear whether these detentions have broken up the terrorist network that supported these attacks. Thus, in the short term, subsequent attacks in France or even neighbouring countries cannot be discounted.

*Weimeng Yeo is a principal modeler at Risk Management Solutions (RMS). He was previously with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.