Brinkmanship vs Statesmanship: Avoiding the slippery slope to war, violence

War and violence in any form, are bad for several reasons, but most reprehensible of them is the absolute degeneration of qualities that differentiate humans from animals. Empathy, compassion, kindness and such traits which facilitated human collaboration to create the world we know, is replaced with behaviour associated with feral animals. Ordinary, law-abiding, God-fearing family men go on a merciless rampage, plundering, raping and killing. We read about mobs lynching a mentally challenged victim, or a police officer brutally raping and slaughtering a child and wonder – who are these people? Are they even human?

The shocking answer is – they are as human as we are and therefore by corollary, our virtuous conduct is just a thin line away from the evil that lies latent in most of us. What makes a regular ‘next door neighbour’ transform into a rapacious demon and kill without mercy or remorse?

In a polarised Spain, what does it mean to be Spanish?

“Fracture” is the word of the day in Spain, where the Catalonia region's bid for independence and the Spanish government's response are not only pushing the country into uncharted political territory but also sowing the seeds of hate.

Many are warning that the crisis is giving rise to an “us versus them” mentality that is dangerously inaccurate in its simplism and uncomfortably familiar for a country that only four decades ago was under a fascist dictatorship.

If you don't support the October 1 independence referendum, which was suspended by Spain's Constitutional Court and deemed illegal by the central government, you must be anti-Catalan. If you don't applaud the actions of the central government, including the police violence against Catalan voters, you must be anti-Spain. Spanish is the only acceptable language, or Catalan is. There is only one Spanish identity and one Catalan identity. All or nothing.

Messages like these abound. But is the situation truly so binary, and Spain so uniform? Judging by the popularity of one woman's Facebook post about what it means to be Spanish, the answer is no.

In a viral missive, Laura Moreno de Lara describes a Spain that not only celebrates the many distinct cultures, customs and languages contained within, but defines itself by that diversity. A country not of disdain and violence, but of solidarity and love.
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Turkey condemns violence against Rohingya, offers help via 1k tonnes of aid

Turkey will send 1,000 tonnes of aid to Myanmar to help Rohingya Muslims after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with the Asian country's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a spokesman said.

Erdogan had condemned escalating human rights violations against the Rohingya minority during the phone call earlier in the day, Turkish presidential sources said.

"After the president's conversation with his Myanmar counterpart... Permission was given for 1,000 tonnes of aid to be sent initially," Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in a statement.

The United Nations said 123,600 Rohingya had crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh in the past 11 days following a spike in fighting between militants and Myanmar's military in strife-torn western Rakhine state, which raised fears of a humanitarian disaster.

The latest violence, which began last October when a small Rohingya militant group ambushed border posts, is the worst Rakhine has witnessed in years, with Erdogan last week accusing Myanmar of "genocide" against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Unverifiable testimony from those who have fled Myanmar has alleged tit-for-tat mass killings and villages being torched by the army, Buddhist mobs and Rohingya militants.
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Trump's comments on violence includes white supremacists: White House

The US President Donald Trump's condemnation of the hatred this weekend in Virginia, also included the white supremacists who organised the "Unite the Right" rally, the White House said on Sunday.

"The president said very strongly in his statement (on Saturday) that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred," Efe quoted a statement issued by the White House.

"Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups," the White House added.

Trump has come under fire from Democrats and even members of his own Republican party for blaming "many sides" for Saturday's violence in Charlottesville and not explicitly pointing the finger at white supremacist groups.

Those organisations had organised a rally on Saturday in that university city of 50,000 inhabitants to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that had been considered a symbol of slavery and racism.

The planned midday Saturday rally was cancelled but clashes broke out with counter-protesters, one of whom -- a 32-year-old woman -- was killed when a car ploughed into a crowd of people.

Two Virginia state troopers who were monitoring the situation in the city also died when their helicopter crashed.
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Amid the blaring headlines, routine reports of hate-fueled violence

Last Wednesday, July 19, was something of a busy news day. There was word North Korea was making preparations for yet another provocative missile test. The Supreme Court, in its latest ruling in the controversial travel ban case, said that people from the six largely Muslim countries covered by the immigration enforcement action could enter the U.S. if they had a grandparent here, refusing to overturn a ruling that grandparents qualified as "bona fide relatives." And then, late in the day, President Donald Trump gave a remarkable interview to The New York Times, one that, among other things, laid into Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The day also produced its share of what, sadly, has come to qualify as routine news: A Muslim organization in Sacramento, California, received a package in the mail that included a Koran in a tub of lard; police in Boise, Idaho, identified a teenage boy as the person likely responsible for scratching racist words on a car; in Lansing, Michigan, police launched a search for a suspect in the case of an assault against a Hispanic man. The victim had been found with a note indicating his attacker had been motivated by racial animus.

The specter of hate incidents and crimes — some of them fueled by the nastiness of the 2016 presidential campaign — felt white hot months ago. The issue remained high-profile as several horrific murders — a South Asian immigrant slain in Kansas City, a homeless black man butchered near Times Square in New York — generated outrage and national news coverage.
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The last near-century of American dominance was extraordinarily violent

John Dower is one the most preeminent historians of World War II’s Pacific theatre and the aftermath of the conflict in Asia. His book War Without Mercy (1986) described the racial component of the U.S. campaign against Japan. In Embracing Defeat (1999), he examined the post-war U.S. occupation of Japan. He has long taken a critical look at U.S. foreign policy, subjecting the vaunted ideals of America’s global pretensions to sceptical scrutiny. He’s not interested in “good wars” or “good occupations.” He describes the exercise of power, and it’s almost never a pretty picture.

In recent years, Dower has been extending his critical analysis both chronologically and geographically. Cultures of War (2010) was an initial effort to link the violence of World War II to 9/11 and the Iraq War. Now, with The Violent American Century, Dower deepens his analysis by addressing the emergence and expansion of American global power all the way up to the Obama era. Dower is particularly interested in connecting the dots between the United States that emerged victorious from World War II and the America of the 21st century that appears willing to do almost anything to maintain its status as the world’s only superpower.

Dower begins his story just at the moment when the United States is poised to become a global titan. It’s 1941, the year the United States officially entered World War II. It’s also when Time’s Henry Luce proclaimed the beginning of “the American century.” For all his talk of democratic principles and the American spirit, Luce was not naïve. He knew that America would have to use force – in some cases, overwhelming force – to establish its global position. The saturation bombing of Dresden and Tokyo followed by the nuclear attacks against Nagasaki and Hiroshima became the pivotal moments of “war and terror” on which the United States would secure its authority.
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