Salon: The Manchester bombing is blowback from the West’s disastrous interventions and covert proxy wars

In March 1998, Qaddafi’s Libya became the first country to issue an Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden. The warrant was studiously ignored by American and British intelligence, according to French journalist Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac. Five months later, Al Qaeda struck the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (Among the participants in the attack were al-Libi and Ali Abdelsoud Mohammed, a spy for Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri who had entered the US on a CIA-approved visa and managed to rise to the rank of corporal at the John F. Kennedy School of Special Warfare at Ft. Bragg, where he smuggled special forces training manuals out to Al Qaeda cadres.) [...]

A secret 2008 US embassy cable described Qaddafi’s government as a bulwark against the spread of Islamist militancy. “Libya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent,” the cable read. “Muammar al-Qadhafi’s criticism of Saudi Arabia for perceived support of Wahabi extremism, a source of continuing Libya-Saudi tension, reflects broader Libyan concern about the threat of extremism. Worried that fighters returning from Afghanistan and Iraq could destabilize the regime, the [government of Libya] has aggressive pursued operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry, and blunt the ideological appeal of radical Islam.” [...]

When the Libyan uprising broke out in March 2011, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates immediately pumped arms and logistical support into the armed opposition. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saw the insurgency as an opportunity for America to assert its influence amidst the tumult of the Arab Spring. She advocated arming the rebels on the grounds that Washington could get “skin in the game,” according to her Middle East advisor, Dennis Ross. [...]

Libya today is a failed state, its public coffers and oil reserves looted by the foreign powers that oversaw the war of regime change in 2011. Its shores are a main disembarkation point for migrants, where women fleeing conflict and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa are beaten, raped and starved in “living hellholes,” according to UNICEF. The United Nations International Organization for Migration has recorded testimony of open air slave markets in Libya where migrants from West Africa are bought and sold. The refugee crisis has propelled the rise of the far-right in Europe, fueling the demagogic politics of figures from Nigel Farage to Marine Le Pen that blame the victims of the West’s catastrophic interventions.

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Quartz: The pseudoscience that prepared America for Steve Bannon’s apocalyptic message

His views revolve around several key themes that can be explored at some length, but briefly summarized: American society is at a turning point in history and facing social collapse thanks to a decadent generation that has forgotten the values that made America great. Only by re-embracing white, Christian nationalism can the US regain its pioneering chutzpah. He even made a film on the topic, called Generation Zero. [...]

What Strauss and Howe added in their work was a comprehensive theory of generational repetition: US history moves in 80-year cycles, with generations moving through 20-year periods of influence called turnings. The cycles have highs and lows interspersed with major crises in history like the American revolution, the Civil War, and World War II. Each of the four generations embody fundamental characteristics, and these characteristics repeat themselves throughout history. Our current cycle calls for a major, defining crisis that will take place, well, any moment now. [...]

According to their theory of generational repetition, millennials will be a “heroic” generation, the modern analogues of the Greatest or GI Generation that came of age during World War II. Approximately 80 years later, millennials are destined to face a similar political and economic crisis, inherited from the poor management of their progenitors. No doubt the writers also enjoyed the parallels between their new generation, which looks forward to an epoch defining crisis, and the original Christian millenarianist movements, which looked forward to the end of the world. [...]

Elder illustrates the challenges in assuming a homogenous view of generations by citing research into the Greatest Generation that helped define the field. He tracked individuals born in California over 40 years in order to assess how the Great Depression affected them. The results show major differences within fairly small time spans: Children born in 1920 or 1921 and those born seven or eight years later had very different experiences, as did boys and girls. In contrast, Strauss and Howe consider the entire group to be part of the same “GI” generation.

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Katoikos: EU Defence Union: The end of soft power?

Rising insecurity is becoming the new normal in Europe. Armed attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Ansbach, Würzburg, Rouen, Berlin and now Manchester have brought to light the potential of jihadist groups both to recruit and strike within Europe. In the wake of the military conflict in Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly violated the sovereignty of neighbouring countries, intruding regularly on member states’ airspace and territorial waters. From the south, organised crime and unrest resulting from the Libyan chaos is spreading towards European shores. War in the Middle East is causing a mass exodus to Europe, while cyber terrorism is becoming more and more dangerous with each passing day. [...]

France and Germany are the two member states most eager to take advantage of these opportunities. First of all, because a European Defence Union is the living proof that every cloud has a silver lining: it is one of the things that is only possible in an EU without the UK. Moreover, for France, it is an ideal occasion to remind other member states that, with Britain gone, it remains the EU’s sole great military power. For Germany, instead, it is an opportunity to increase its influence in Brussels when it comes to appointing top personnel and to help the German arms industry in the markets of other EU countries. [...]

Some Eastern European countries perceive new EU defence plans as a challenge to NATO, which has recently agreed to station 4,000 troops on their territory and which is, therefore, considered essential to their security. “The European Defence Union does not mean duplicating what we have with NATO,” said Michael Gahler. He added, “We have difficult NATO partners who may try to bloc NATO resources. That’s why we must build up the capabilities to act independently.”

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Jacobin Magazine: Modernism or Barbarism

When I was an undergraduate, modernity was everything we were taught to despise: totalizing, technocratic, rationalizing. It was the impersonal force that organized Africa into colonies and the motor behind the mechanized doom of fascism. As Theodore Adorno wrote, the logic of modernity ends in a death camp, or the mathematics of a strategic bombing campaign — in human beings becoming abstract numbers in a computerized death count.

Marxism itself is not immune from these kinds of critiques. As writers in the Frankfurt School maintained, our problem in advanced industrial societies is to be treated as an instrument, a thing — a problem as deeply felt in the Soviet Union as the United States. As Russell Means, one of the founders of the American Indian Movement, commented, Marxism is just another word for rendering people into resources. [...]

Capitalism is not only unique insofar as it hides its exploitation through the veneer of equal exchange between workers and owners. Capitalists must also constantly revolutionize production through time, space, and technology to produce more value: automating factories, moving the colossus of production around the world, transforming food into giant factories in the field, revolutionizing the human body through pharmacology. [...]

The conflict over the public space that graffiti provoked for Berman was much like the Baudelaire poem, in which the site and presence of the poor, suddenly erupting into the streets, creates a panic for the bourgeois order: their own processes of development have summoned forth voices that they cannot control and do not understand.

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IFLScience: Monkey Muggers Steal Tourists' Belongings, Holding Them For Ransom In Exchange For Food

Monkeys on the island of Bali grift hard to get their supper. Researchers have found that light-fingered macaques at one of the most popular temples on the island have learned to steal tourists' possessions, and then barter with them for food before giving them back.

The criminal underworld of long-tailed macaques is seemingly very fruitful – with some of the best purloiners holding their ill-gotten goods to ransom until they are offered only the choice bits of fruit – yet only some populations display this robbing and bartering behavior, leading the researchers to ask whether or not it is a cultural activity. [...]

Despite other places on Bali having groups of macaques coming into frequent contact with tourists, offering ripe opportunity for extortion, it is only those in the Uluwatu Temple that seem to have figured it out. This suggests that the robbing and bartering behavior is learned, rather than innate. But what the researchers were really interested in was finding out whether or not it was cultural, publishing their results in the journal Primates. 

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IFLScience: California Breaks Record After Getting 81 Percent Of Energy From Renewables

As reported by SF Gate, on Saturday, May 13, renewable energy sources – solar and wind – produced 67.2 percent of the electricity demand. This doesn’t take into account hydroelectric power, but when this is factored in, this figure rises to a remarkable 80.7 percent.

A combination of sunny and windy days, combined with peak operating capacities of California’s hydroelectric plants, helped set this record. Without the massive investment in clean energy, however, this laudable target would have never been met. [...]

By law, California requires utilities to get a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, a figure that rises to 50 percent by 2030. They’re already close to meeting their goal – in 2016, California’s key electric utilities managed to eke 32.3 percent of their energy from wind, solar, and hydro sources.

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CityLab: Meet Mexico City's First Bike Mayor

Mexico City falls far short of the cycling infrastructure that bike activists dream of: as many residents say, it’s no Amsterdam. Although only 30 percent of daily trips in the city are made via private car (the other 70 percent are made by public transportation, by bike, or on foot), Mexico City is known for some of the worst traffic in the world and nearly toxic levels of pollution. Since 2006, there have been over 1,600 cyclist deaths. [...]

In the last decade, cycling has become especially relevant to the city’s agenda. In 2007 the city launched Muévete en Bici, a program that blocks cars from several main streets on Sundays so that cyclists can have the streets to themselves. In 2010, Mexico City implemented a bike share program, EcoBici, the first in Latin America. So far, the city’s only got 140 kilometers of the 600 kilometers of bike lanes that bike activists estimate it needs, but when EcoBici started, the city was virtually devoid of biking infrastructure. Ecobici now has around 6,500 bikes and over 240,000 registered users (which, they argue, is the largest in North America). In July 2014, a new mobility law placed cyclists and pedestrians at the top of a mobility hierarchy and introduced cycling language into urban plans for the first time. However, beyond moving into the next phases of EcoBici and implementing sorely needed safety measures, the plans were vague—plus, critics challenge the special hierarchy, noting that if cyclists were truly at the top, government infrastructure spending would reflect that. [...]

From blockades and protests to speeches and reports, Carreón has attempted to influence public opinion and city leadership in every way possible, including the production of the Urban Cyclist Manuel, the first comprehensive guide for cyclists in the city, and the first of its kind in Latin America. "We did workshops, led courses, put on parties, created art pieces and videos for museums. We have 20 years of innovation under our belts. We’ve tried by all possible means to convince, encourage, and promote this idea that we must move by different means,” she says. “But it took 20 years for city authorities to look at cycling as more than just a pastime.”

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Atlas Obscura: Getting to Know the Bathtub Marys of Somerville, Massachusetts

SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS DOESN’T ATTRACT MANY pilgrims. Spend enough time walking its narrow streets, though, and you’re guaranteed a particular kind of religious experience. It may reveal itself proudly in a front yard, or sneak up on you in a side yard. But eventually, undoubtedly, you’ll be blessed by the presence of a Bathtub Mary: a sculpture of the Madonna, generally about waist-high, carefully sheltered in its own protective nook. [...]

Bathtub Marys get their name from the structures they’re typically placed in: actual bathtubs, tipped up vertically and dug halfway into the ground to form graceful, arched shelters. Although domestic shrines and home altars are a long-lived Catholic tradition, it’s thought that this particular incarnation began just after World War II, when postwar economic recovery led to a rash of home remodeling. Families installed shower-bathtub combos, and their old claw-footed tubs, which were difficult to recycle, ended up out in the yard, repurposed as religiously inflected lawn art. [...]

Pacini is far from the first Somervillian to be captivated by the statues. Cathy Piantigini, a lifetime resident and children’s librarian, has spent the past few years walking every street in the city in an attempt to map them. A local brewery, Slumbrew, has even put out a limited-edition beer called the Bathtub Mary. (It’s a pale wheat ale.) Some of the city’s newer residents have put their own spin on things—one bathtub arch now houses a toy robot.

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Al Jazeera: Crying baby sumo in Japan

Babies, a sumo ring, and lots of crying. This centuries-old tradition is believed to bring good health to kids in Japan.

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