RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Brazilians may not know how to run an Olympics, but they are just aces at impeachments.

Americans should take note.

After a lengthy period of deliberation, the Brazilian parliament has formally removed from office President Dilma Rousseff, the corrupt left-wing populist who has been trying to do for Brazil what Hugo Chávez and his epigones did for Venezuela.

The entire Brazilian political class has been in bad odor of late, with a wide-ranging corruption scandal at the state-owned oil company reminding the world why sensible people do not think much of state-owned enterprises, petroleum-oriented or not. Brazil was riding high for about five minutes there while commodities prices were unusually strong, but President Rousseff’s anti-business, anti-trade, anti-investor, welfare-statist agenda — which differs from the current Obama-Clinton-Sanders-Trump economic vision mainly in aggressiveness rather than substance — did what it usually does. Unemployment and inflation took off, and public-sector spending increased radically, resulting in an unbalanced fiscal position that caused Brazil’s government debt to be downgraded to junk-bond status.

As with the food riots in Venezuela, the Left in Brazil and internationally has whispered darkly that this represents a “coup” against a populist progressive who angered the world’s corporate bosses and free-market fundamentalists. “Corruption is just the pretext for a wealthy elite who failed to defeat Brazil’s president at the ballot box,” the Guardian sniffed. The truth is that Brazilians are not eager to go back to being the country in the Western hemisphere that people cite to illustrate what India used to be like.

What is of note is that Brazilians have made the connection between corruption and poverty.

Rousseff’s corruption, at least that which has been persuasively documented, is pretty small stuff by Brazilian standards — indeed, by U.S. standards. It is “pedaladas fiscais,” what we might call “creative” public finance. Brazil has state-run but notionally independent banks and pension funds, whose coffers were raided through a series of loans to the Brazilian government in order to hide the fact that the government’s finances were such a complete and total shambles that payments otherwise could not be made to popular programs such as cash handouts to the poor and housing assistance — the stuff that politicians such as Rousseff and her party use to buy loyalty. In the United States, that sort of thing is just standard operating procedure for the federal government when it comes to things like Social Security, and for local government when it comes to public employees’ pensions: magical accounting.

In today’s technically sophisticated and globally connected world, we assume life has been completely reinvented. In truth, it has not changed all that much.

Facebook and Google may have recalibrated our lifestyles, but human nature, geography, and culture are nearly timeless. Even as ideologies and governments come and go, the same old, same old problems and challenges remain.

Compare what dominated the news in 1966, 50 years ago.

Abroad, Israel was constantly fighting on the West Bank against Palestinian guerrilla groups and in the air over Syria. It is likely that in another 50 years the story will remain about the same.

The Middle East in 1966 was going up in flames, just as it is today — and in many of the same places. The Syrian government was overthrown in a coup. The Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians were involved in a civil war in Yemen. The Egyptian government executed Islamists charged with planning a theocratic takeover.

Africa, as today, was wracked by wars or coups in places such as Chad, Ghana, Nigeria, and Sudan.

American relations with Russia were tense. Moscow clamped down on dissidents and opposed almost all U.S. initiatives abroad.

The Castro government in Cuba was railing against the United States, outlawing free expression and alleging American interference in Cuba’s affairs. The only difference from today was that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro then was a 40-year-old firebrand, not a 90-year-old near-invalid.

Nothing has much changed elsewhere in the world either. Just as Cyprus today remains a bone of contention between Turkey and Greece, 50 years ago Greeks and Turks were meeting to resolve tensions on the divided island. Ditto the ongoing dispute between India and Pakistan, whose leaders met frequently during 1966 following outright war in 1965.

There were also the sorts of rifts within NATO that have become so familiar. Today, the U.S. worries that the alliance is unraveling due to bickering and the unwillingness of European countries to increase their defense budgets. Fifty years ago, the problem was France. In 1966, the French actually quit the alliance, which suddenly had to transfer its headquarters from Paris to Brussels, Belgium.

Nor were things that different at home than they are today.

As stubborn facts ruin their narrative that neonicotinoid pesticides are causing a honeybee-pocalypse, environmental pressure groups are shifting to new scares to justify their demands for “neonic” bans.

Honeybee populations and colony numbers in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and elsewhere are growing. It is also becoming increasingly clear that the actual cause of bee die-offs and “colony collapse disorders” is not neonics, but a toxic mix of predatory mites, stomach fungi, other microscopic pests, and assorted chemicals employed by beekeepers trying to control the beehive infestations.

Naturally, anti-pesticide activists have seized on a recent study purporting to show that wild bee deaths in Britain have been correlated with neonic use in oil seed rape fields (canola is a type of OSR). In a saga that has become all too common in the environmental arena, their claims were amplified by news media outlets that share many activist beliefs and biases – and want to sell more subscriptions and advertising.

(Honeybees represent a small number of species that humans have domesticated and keep in hives, to produce honey and pollinate crops. Many are repeatedly trucked long distances, to pollinate almond and other crops as they flower. By contrast, thousands of species of native or wild bees also flourish across the continents, pollinating plants with no human assistance.)

The recent Center for Ecology and Hydrology study examined wild bee population trends over an 18-year period that ended in 2011. It concluded that there was a strong correlation between population and distribution numbers for multiple species of British wild bees and what study authors called their “measure of neonic dose” resulting from the pesticide, which is used as a seed coating for canola crops.

The study is deeply flawed, at every stage – making its analysis and conclusions meaningless. For example, bee data were collected by amateur volunteers, few of whom were likely able to distinguish among some 250 species of UK wild bees. But if even one bee of any species was identified in a 1-by-1 kilometer area during at least two of the study period’s 18 years, the area was included in the CEH study.

This patchy, inconsistent approach means the database that formed the very foundation for the entire study was neither systematic nor reliable, nor scientific. Some species may have dwindled or disappeared in certain areas due to natural causes, or volunteers may simply have missed them. We can never know.

There is no evidence that the CEH authors ever actually measured neonic levels on bees or in pollen collected from OSR fields that the British wild bees could theoretically have visited. Equally relevant, by the time neonics on seeds are absorbed into growing plant tissue, and finally expressed on flecks of pollen, the levels are extremely low: 1.3-3.0 parts per billion, the equivalent of 1-3 seconds in 33 years.

On August 8, I reported here at PJ Media on American journalist Lindsey Snell, who had reportedly escaped from Jabhat al-Nusra/Jabhat Fateh al-Sham custody in Syria only to be arrested when she arrived back in Turkey earlier this month. No other American media outlet reported on this story — until now.

Snell’s biography notes she has worked for MSNBC, VICE News, ABC News, the Discovery Channel, and Amnesty International, among others.

State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed her arrest during his daily briefing today, stating that she is being held on charges of “violating a military zone”:

QUESTION: Do you have any information about a U.S. citizen who was arrested in Turkey?

MR KIRBY: Who was arrested in Turkey? Yes. I can confirm that U.S. citizen Lindsey Snell was detained in Turkey on the 7th of August, 2016. She is currently being held in a prison facility in Hatay Province. I believe that’s how you say it. Consular officers from the consulate in Adana visited Ms. Snell most recently on the 26th of this month and are providing all possible consular assistance. The embassy and the department are following this case closely. State Department officials have been in contact with Turkish Government officials regarding this case.

QUESTION: Can you spell her name?

MR KIRBY: Lindsey. L-i-n-d-s-e-y. Snell. S-n-e-l-l.

Did you have more?

QUESTION: Yeah. Is – was the arrest at all related to her profession as a journalist or in any case – any way associated with that?

MR KIRBY: What I – what we understand is that she has been charged with violating a military zone, but I can’t speak to her reasons for being in Syria, for traveling there. I can’t speak to that. What I can tell you is that we’ve been informed she was charged with violating a military zone.

“There is no such religion as Christianity … In reality, Jesus Christ was a Muslim coming from Jewish tradition … The name of the religion revealed to Christ was Islam …” — Abdurrahman Dilipak, columnist, Yeni Akit.

In Turkey, not even the smallest village of a few hundred inhabitants has a non-Muslim mayor.

Against this embarrassing background, Turkey is accusing Europe of being racist. That would be like North Korea accusing Europe of being a rogue state.

It’s not a bad joke; it’s a very bad joke. Turkey, where all variants of ethnic and religious xenophobia are a national pastime, is accusing the West of being racist.

Speaking after a spat with Austria and Sweden over news reports and tweets from those countries that accused Turkey of allowing sex with children under the age of 15, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed that the behavior of European countries reflected the “racism, anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish (trend) in Europe.”

He is talking about the same Europe where the inhabitants of one of its biggest cities, London, recently elected a Muslim as its mayor. In Turkey, not even the smallest village of a few hundred inhabitants has a non-Muslim mayor.

CANBERRA, Australia—Australia will step up airstrikes against Islamic State, allowing its military for the first time to attack support facilities as well as militant fighters.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in a major security speech to Parliament on Thursday, said the conservative government had agreed to new rules of engagement requested by the military, amending domestic laws that restricted strikes to only front-line Islamic State units.

“We must combat all of Daesh, including its financiers and propagandists,” Mr. Turnbull told lawmakers, using the government’s preferred term for Islamic State extremists. “It is why we must give our agencies the powers they need. To detect. To disrupt. To arrest. And to target,” he said.
Related

Australia Seeks Indefinite Detention of Some Terror Convicts (07.25.16)
Australia Takes Steps to Counter China’s Rising Military Power (02.24.16)

Australia, a close U.S. ally, has since 2014 committed combat aircraft and army special-forces advisers to the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as well as refueling, early warning and control aircraft.

But U.S. warplanes have been attacking a wider range of ISIS targets because of restrictions in Australian domestic laws than created some ambiguity around who could be defined as a militant fighter. That meant airstrikes weren’t being carried out against so-called “Mad Max technicals”—armed sport-utility vehicles not clearly identified as belonging to militant groups—and supply dumps.

“The government has reviewed its policy on targeting enemy combatants,” Mr. Turnbull said. “This means ADF [Australian Defence Force] personnel will be supported by our domestic laws. They will be able to target Daesh at its core, joining with our coalition partners to target and kill a broader range of Daesh combatants.”

In April, U.S. commanders redrafted rules of engagement to allow airstrikes on ISIS even when there was some risk of civilian casualties, as coalition allies tried to capitalize on air and ground offensives that have seen Islamic State lose territory.

Mr. Turnbull said Islamic State and the inspiration it provided for homegrown terrorism was the greatest strategic threat faced by Australia, which has begun a A$200 billion modernization of its military to counter a buildup of weapons in Asia and increasing territorial assertion by China.

‘We must give our agencies the powers they need. To detect. To disrupt. To arrest. And to target.’
—Australia Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

“We live in an uncertain and complex strategic environment, from territorial disputes in the South China Sea, to Middle East conflicts, tensions on the Korean Peninsula and instability in parts of Africa, broken borders in Europe,” he said.

But he said that Australia—one of the largest coalition military contributors—was confident the “tide had now turned” in the Middle East fight against Daesh after Iraq’s military defeated Islamic State in the key city of Fallujah, in the strategic Anbar province, on June 26. Coalition strategists, he said, believed Islamic State had lost close to half of the territory it once held in Iraq and about 20% of its territory in Syria, as well as losing around a third of its front-line fighters. CONTINUE AT SITE

How ridiculous… try some shock and awe therapy and closing the borders first….rsk
Therapy and Prevention: The Race to Stop Youth from Radicalizing Germany Tries New Strategies to Keep Men from Islamic State –
The recent spate of deadly attacks in Germany have highlighted the need to intervene with angry young men before they turn to extremism or violence. But the country has a lot of catching up to do — and the work can be controversial.

André Taubert used to feel pretty forsaken when he drove his old Mercedes through northern Germany every day.

He and one other colleague were the only ones dealing with Islamists in four German states: Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. They were constantly getting phone calls from worried mothers, women whose sons or daughter were in the process of discovering jihadism. The women were desperate and concerned that they were losing touch with their own children, who suddenly seemed like strangers.

From 2012 to 2015, Taubert’s schedule often meant visiting as many as three different cities in a single day: Kiel in the morning, for example, Göttingen in the afternoon and Bremen in the evening. “We had to set priorities, make lists and think about where we could still have an impact,” he says. “They were kamikaze missions.”

Prevention was not an important topic at the time, at least not for lawmakers. There was only one counselling center for the family members of Islamists in all of northern Germany — with only one position paid for with public funds, which Taubert and his co-worker shared.

The working conditions have improved since then. In July 2015, 39-year-old Taubert became the head of Hamburg-based Legato, an “office for religiously motivated radicalization.” A team of nine employees now operates in Hamburg alone, where they have already handled 130 cases in only one year. None of these young people has traveled to Syria yet, says Taubert, and he is not aware of any of them having become terrorism suspects.

“I’m annoyed by statements that we can’t do anything about terrorist attacks, just because the security authorities don’t recognize everything. This is a disregard for the power of civil society.”

People like Taubert — social workers, therapists, psychiatrists and educators — are what Germany depends on now. They are expected to do what the police and intelligence services cannot achieve on their own: step in when parents run out of options, friends look the other way and neighbors fall silent.

In the bloody summer of 2016, this is perhaps the most important insight: A life without new attacks, and without fear of terror, can only exist if we begin to understand the rage of unstable young men — and find answers to it.

A Dire Need for Initiatives

There is a lot of catching up to do, as the findings of a SPIEGEL survey taken in all of Germany’s states demonstrate. The number of men prepared to use violence who are traveling to Syria and Iraq has risen over the years, but in Bavaria, for example, four relevant state ministries didn’t begin cooperating closely to foster a network against Salafism until 2015. An initiative in the neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg began operations shortly before Christmas. An office titled “Salafism in the Saarland” was opened in the southwestern state on January 1 of this year. There has been little funding for these efforts to date. The eastern state of Thuringia, for example, spent exactly €16,005.76 euros ($17,889.64) on Islamism prevention in 2015.

At a time when terrorism is becoming more and more of a threat, the government and German society have been oddly disinterested in helping at-risk youth or bringing young radicals back from the fringes of society. But appealing to their hearts and minds could be a successful strategy. The biographies — and possible pathologies — of perpetrators of violence are often similar in terms of their infractions, whether they are on the left, the right or extremists.

Last week Iranian naval vessels subjected U.S. warships to what U.S. officials called “harassing maneuvers risking dangerous escalation.”

In an incident last January, Iran illegally detained a group of U.S. sailors—using the fact that their boats had veered into Iranian waters as a supposed justification.

In last week’s incidents, Iran couldn’t even use that excuse since the American ships were in international waters.

First, on Tuesday, Iranian ships buzzed the USS Nitze, a destroyer, in the Strait of Hormuz. They “ignored repeated radio, whistle and flare warnings from the Nitze and slowed their approach only when they were within 300 yards of the U.S. ship.”

And in last Wednesday’s even more serious incidents, ships of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) harassed two U.S. coastal patrol ships and a U.S. destroyer in the northern Persian Gulf.

Finally one of the coastal patrol ships, the Squall, had to fire three shots in the general direction of one of the IRGC ships to get it to stop chasing after the Stout, the destroyer.

As Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen note, Iran is

[testing a] tactic called the “swarming boat” to destroy U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.

The swarming boat attack is just what it sounds like: a number of fast boats equipped with missiles and torpedoes attack enemy ships from multiple angles to damage or destroy them as quickly as possible.

On Thursday the State Department hit back by calling the Iranian ships’ actions “unacceptable,” which should put fear in the hearts of the power-holders in Tehran.

And that was last week.

Further events this week might not have the drama of a precarious naval standoff, but are at least as significant.

On Monday it was reported, and visually recorded, that Iran had deployed its Russian-made S-300 missile-defense system at its Fordo uranium-enrichment site.

The S-300 is one of the world’s most advanced long-range missile-defense systems. Russia was initially supposed to supply it to Iran in 2010—but froze the deal when it came under U.S. and Israeli pressure to do so, citing UN sanctions on Iran as a pretext.