The Coming Global Civil War: Is There Any Way Out? -- Franco Berardi Bifo
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/the-coming-global-civil-war-is-there-any-way-out/ :* * * * *
The privatization of war is an obvious feature of neoliberal deregulation, and the same paradigm has generated Halliburton and the Sinaloa Cartel, Blackwater and Daesh. The business of violence is one of the main branches of the global economy and financial abstraction does not discriminate criminal money from any other kind.
The process of externalization and privatization is now provoking a worldwide civil war that is feeding itself. According to Nicholas Kristof, in the last four years more people have died in the United States from guns (including suicides and accidents) than Americans died in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.1
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. . . . No beginning and no endan endless war, as Bin Laden promised. . . .
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In a video released by Dubiq, the advertising agency of the Islamic State, the rhetoric is the same as any other type of advertising: buy this product and youll be happy.3 Multiple camera angles, slick graphics, slow motion, and even artificial wind give the whole thing a more dramatic mood: join the cause and youll find friends, warmth, and well-being. Jihad is the best therapy for depression.
A message for feeble-minded people, for suffering people craving warmth, virile friendship, belonging. Not so different from the ads that we see every day in our city streets, . . . .
MUCH more at the link really brilliant.
malthaussen
(17,217 posts)This is an inevitable consequence of a mercenary army. No, I'm not talking about the troops, who volunteer for many reasons, one of which is often the delusion that by doing so, they are protecting and serving their fellow-countrymen, but of the overt usage of military power to advance the agendas of the rulers, whatever the mood or needs of the nation. Divorce the military from defense (whatever one may symbolically or officially claim), and it becomes nothing more than the biggest gang on the block, trying to increase its turf at the expense of anyone who gets in the way. Hell, Smedley Butler explained this to us in the 1930s, and it was nothing new then.
For years, in many fields, we in the West (and in the U.S. in particular) have managed to delude ourselves into thinking that we have conquered history, that we have learned from the past, that "things are different now," and that we are Exceptional. We aren't, you know. (Hell, until WW2, we at least called a spade a spade and had a War department. What is this bull about "defense?" We haven't fought a "defensive" war since 1945) Unfortunately for those who stick their heads in the sand, there are a lot more people in the world than just us, and our society has never fully weeded-out those who are filled with lust, rage, and greed, and who will use any means to appease them, and can never be satisfied.
-- Mal
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Since 2012, the war in Syria has lurched from one escalation to another. Syrians have been subjected to large-scale military force not only by their own government, but also by an array of rebel groups, Islamic State (IS), a US-led coalition and other states. The results have been devastating, as the recent bombing of hospitals illustrates in particular.
Most of the international interventions came in the form of air strikes, though this may change if reports that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are contemplating a ground invasion are true. Although these actions have triggered debate in legal circles, their repercussions for the way force is used havent got much attention.
The interventions in Syria may have deeply affected the norms that define the architecture of global security. Once military force becomes the rule rather than the exception, the general prohibition on the use of force is threatened. This changes established boundaries of whats permissible, and therefore corrodes one of the core premises of global security in general.
The pursuit of state interests by military means is proscribed under the UN Charter, which contains an agreement on the general prohibition of using military force. That general prohibition and its two exceptions self-defence and UN Security Council authorisation under Chapter VII have become key guarantors of global security. They provide common standards regulating the use of force, and above all emphasise that force should only ever be used as a last resort.
http://theconversation.com/how-the-worlds-interventions-in-syria-have-normalised-the-use-of-force-54505
elleng
(131,143 posts)giving him JUST what he wanted.
earthshine
(1,642 posts)So, that makes them the other side of the Bin Laden coin.