Aeon: The unforgiven

‘My fiancée’s worried that I’m not going to come back the same. I’ll never tell her what things I did here. I’ll never tell anybody. ’Cause I’m not proud of killing people. I’m just proud to serve my country. I hate being here but I love it at the same time.’ [...]

The story of the Trojan horse, delivered as a gift but transporting lethal agents instead, has long served as an allegory for the destructive power of secrets – like the unaddressed guilt hidden in the minds of soldiers, repeated with every homecoming for thousands of years. War’s simple premise, killing, is like that Trojan horse, devastating those sent to do it and, ultimately, the society they return to when the war is done. The insidious damage is only made worse because wartime killing, a philosophically problematic act, has been left out of the global dialogue. After all, how can humanity’s greatest civil crime, killing, become heroic in the context of war? There are practical considerations as well: will too much discussion of killing make soldiers hesitate or even rebel against protecting us from threats? [...]

What we’re beginning to learn now is that, of all those things Marlantes mentioned, unaddressed guilt might be the most dangerous for returning veterans. A recent study by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) shows that nearly two-dozen veterans are killing themselves every day, nearly one an hour. This attrition, connected at least in part to combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other war-related psychological injuries, is an enormous price to pay for avoiding the subject. So great, in fact, that the total number of US active duty suicides in 2012 (349) was higher than the number of combat-related deaths (295). [...]

According to the VA psychologists Shira Maguen of San Francisco and Brett Litz of Boston, both experts on military trauma, the key precondition for moral injury, our so-called Achilles’ heel, is a sense of ‘transgression’, a betrayal of what’s right. ‘In the context of war,’ they write, ‘moral injuries may stem from direct participation in acts of combat, such as killing or harming others, or indirect acts, such as witnessing death or dying, failing to prevent immoral acts of others, or giving or receiving orders that are perceived as gross moral violations. The act may have been carried out by an individual or a group, through a decision made individually or as a response to orders given by leaders.’ Indeed, commanders are not just responsible for the physical wellbeing of their soldiers, but through the moral consequences of their orders, their future mental health.

Some military leaders are disturbed by the findings, and say the term moral injury impugns the character of their soldiers. But researchers argue it’s quite the opposite: if soldiers felt nothing about taking the life of another human being, that would be indicative of sociopathy. Disturbance caused by killing indicates the presence of morality, not its lack.

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UnHerd: The rise of post-truth liberalism

Visiting New York a few weeks after Trump’s victory in the presidential election, I found myself immersed in a mass psychosis. The city’s intelligentsia was possessed by visions of conspiracy. No one showed any interest in the reasons Trump supporters may have had for voting as they did. Quite a few cited the low intelligence, poor education and retrograde values of the nearly 63 million Americans who voted for him. What was most striking was how many of those with whom I talked flatly rejected the result. The election, they were convinced, had been engineered by a hostile power. It was this malignant influence, not any default of American society, that had upended the political order. [...]

For those who embrace it, a paranoid style of liberalism has some advantages. Relieved from any responsibility for the debacles they have presided over, the liberal elites that have been in power in many western countries for much of the past 30 years can enjoy the sensation of being victims of forces beyond their control. Conspiracy theory implies there is nothing fundamentally wrong with liberal societies, and places the causes of their disorder outside them. No one can reasonably doubt that the Russian state has been intervening in western politics. Yet only minds unhinged from reality can imagine that the decline of liberalism is being masterminded by Vladimir Putin. The principal causes of disorder in liberal societies are in those societies themselves. [...]

The singularity of the present time lies in the fact that the geopolitical retreat of the West has coincided with the advance of a hyperbolic liberal ideology in western societies. The fall of communism was celebrated as the endpoint of political development. In future, the only legitimate mode of government would consist of replicas of liberal democracy. But rather than a victory for liberalism, the Soviet collapse was the defeat of an illiberal Enlightenment project originating with the Jacobins and implemented by Lenin. Far from embracing another western ideology – the cult of the free market – post-communist Russia has become a Eurasian power defining itself against the West as a separate civilisation founded in Eastern Orthodox religion. Similarly, when China rejected Maoism it was not in order to embrace a western-style market economy. Instead a neo-Confucian variant of state capitalism has been developed, on whose continuing success western economies now heavily depend. [...]

But decoupling the universal claims of liberalism from monotheism is easier said than done. Secular liberals believe history is moving in the direction of their values. Yet without a guiding providence of the sort imagined by monotheists, history has no direction. With the referenda on same-sex marriage and abortion, tolerance and personal freedom have advanced in Ireland – a latecomer to the liberal West. But there is no reason for thinking this a chapter in a universal story in which humanity is slowly being converted to these values. Theories that posit a long-term historical movement towards a liberal future are religious myths recycled as ersatz social science.

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UnHerd: What’s driving this French revolution?

The protesters range from the middle class suburban elderly to the rural poor. Most road-blocks were good-humoured and well-behaved, although there was a scattering of racist and homophobic attacks on drivers who refused to halt, including an incident near Lyon where demonstrators snatched away the head-scarf of a muslim woman.

The uniform of the revolt is the yellow hi-vis jacket, or gilet jaune, which French drivers must carry in their vehicles by law. The protest has no formal leaders or organisation and has refused help from political parties or trades unions. It is predominantly rural and outer suburban, anti-Metropolitan and anti-politician but cannot easily be dismissed as a populist trend of hard-Right or hard-Left. [...]

The French sociologist Alexis Spire cautions that these parallels, as well as comparisons with protest movements in other countries, are misleading. Poujadism, like the Tea Party movement in the US, was an attack on the state and on public spending. The yellow jackets are anti-government-as-usual, but they are pro-state and pro-state-spending. They complain that Paris does not spend enough on rural and suburban roads, public transport or hospitals – while piling heavy, new taxes onto non-Metropolitan France. [...]

This pattern is not entirely new. In the last 25 years, Presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande have suffered the same catastrophic collapse in popular support soon after their election. This can, in part, be explained by a characteristically French brand of perversity. The country cries out for “reform”, in the abstract, but opposes all “reforms”.

Something new is happening, however. The yellow jacket protests expose fault lines that stretch well beyond France:  motorists v environmentalists; cities v the countryside and outer suburbs; the working class, the struggling middle, the middle-aged and the old v the Metropolitan and the enterprising young. [...]

But there is also a deeper and older issue: a sense that tens of thousands of French people are being left behind, ignored or exploited by the thriving world of Metropolitan France, which includes not just Paris but Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Grenoble and many other cities. François de Rugy, France’s environment minister – or “minister for ecological transition” – sums up the issue well.

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The New Yorker: New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Brexit

Emma Briant, an academic expert on disinformation at George Washington University, has unearthed new e-mails that appear to reveal the earliest documented role played by Bannon in Brexit. The e-mails, which date back to October of 2015, show that Bannon, who was then the vice-president of Cambridge Analytica, an American firm largely owned by the U.S. hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, was in the loop on discussions taking place at the time between his company and the leaders of Leave.EU, a far-right nationalist organization. The following month, Leave.EU publicly launched a campaign aimed at convincing British voters to support a referendum in favor of exiting the European Union. The U.K. narrowly voted for the so-called Brexit in June, 2016. The tumultuous fallout has roiled the U.K. ever since, threatening the government of the Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May. [...]

The precise role played by foreign entities in promoting and possibly funding Brexit has been clouded in mystery and controversy. British law forbids foreign contributions to its political campaigns—just as U.S. law bars foreign campaign contributions. The laws are designed to prevent international manipulation of domestic affairs. Executives working for Cambridge Analytica, which filed for bankruptcy this spring, have categorically denied that the firm was paid to do any work for the Leave.EU campaign. The new e-mails do not contradict that, but show that, even if the firm was not paid for its services, it laid some of the early groundwork for the Leave.EU campaign. The e-mails show that Banks and others in the Leave.EU leadership met with Cambridge Analytica executives in 2015, and discussed what Banks called a “two-stage process” that would “get CA”—Cambridge Analytica—“on the team.” [...]

Whether foreign funds secretly supported the Brexit movement has become the focus of intense speculation and investigation in the U.K. The British probes, in many respects, are parallel to the Robert Mueller investigation of possible Russian support for Trump’s 2016 campaign. Banks has drawn particular scrutiny because his business spent some nine million pounds supporting the Brexit campaign, making him the country’s single largest political-campaign donor by far, despite questions about whether he had the personal wealth to contribute that much on his own. Banks has insisted that his contributions were legal, and that foreign sources, including Russia, contributed no funds. But multiple British agencies have launched inquiries, including a criminal investigation into Banks’s role by the National Crime Agency, the U.K.’s equivalent to the F.B.I. [...]

The American investigations into foreign interference in Trump’s election, and British probes into Brexit, have increasingly become interwoven. The role of the Russian Ambassador to the U.K., Alexander Yakovenko, has reportedly been the subject of interest both to Mueller’s investigators and to those in the U.K., who have examined his relationship to Banks. The role of Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right, Euroskeptic U.K. Independence Party, who has been an ally of Bannon and Trump, has also reportedly stirred the interest of investigators in both countries, especially after he was spotted in 2017 leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, in which Julian Assange has taken refuge. Assange’s media platform, WikiLeaks, published many of the e-mails stolen by Russia from the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 election season.

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Haaretz: What Hamas and Netanyahu Have in Common

To his credit, Netanyahu has come to understand what many opportunistic right-wing politicians are not willing to admit: War is not the solution to the confrontation with Hamas. [...]

However, Netanyahu refuses to negotiate with Hamas, arguing that it is as extreme as ISIS, when in fact it is innately different from ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants.

The differences between the Hamas and ISIS are manifested in their worldview and actions. There is a profound ideological chasm between them, which leads to mutual denigration, and in some instances, to violence. [...]

Whereas Hamas grudgingly and indirectly accepted Israel’s existence in its new charter of 2017, ISIS and al-Qaeda consider such a compromise to be betrayal. [...]

In order to move beyond Netanyahu’s "no war and no negotiations" gridlock for Gaza and the Israelis living next door, we need to think critically about the underlying assumptions of Israel’s ruling right-wing parties, which reject peace negotiations, yet fail to eliminate terror.

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Politico: Italy’s politics gives new life to anti-abortion campaign

However, according to the latest health ministry figures, over 70 percent of gynecologists refuse to carry out the procedure on moral or religious grounds, declaring themselves “conscientious objectors.” That percentage rises to as high as 90 percent in some regions, especially in the more conservative south.

In October, Verona became the first Italian city to declare itself officially “pro-life.” City councillors approved a motion, put forward by the League’s member of the council Alberto Zelger, which includes public funding for Catholic and anti-abortion associations, and the launch of a regional project to encourage pregnant women to give unplanned babies up for adoption. [...]

The League’s coalition partners, the 5Stars, do not share its views on abortion: Undersecretary of State Mattia Fantinati called Verona’s move “medieval.” [...]

Bonino agrees with abortion rights activists on the need to fight back against organized conscientious objection. Because of the prominent role played by the Catholic Church in Italian hospitals and clinics, doctors who are prepared to perform abortions are often marginalized. According to the Council of Europe – which has slammed Italy twice in recent years over limited abortion access — doctors face “various types of direct and indirect labor disadvantages” if they perform abortions.

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The New York Times: Rick Scott Wins Florida Senate Race After Recount

The win in Florida gives Republicans a 52-to-47 margin in the Senate. If the party also retains the Senate seat in Mississippi after a Nov. 27 runoff, it will have a 53-to-47 edge, a two-seat pickup for the 2018 cycle. [...]

For now, Republicans will savor another victory by Mr. Scott, who has mastered the ability to eke out wins. No politician in the state’s recent history has as enviable a record: Mr. Scott is unbeaten in three consecutive statewide contests, two for governor and one for senator.

His margin has shrunk with each victory — he beat Alex Sink by 1.2 percentage points in 2010, Charlie Crist by 1 point in 2014, and Mr. Nelson by 0.1 of a point. But this year, for the first time, he obtained a majority of the vote, 50.1 percent.

Behind Mr. Scott’s victories lies his vast personal wealth. He and his wife, Ann, put more than $70 million into his first campaign for governor and nearly $13 million into his second; this year, Mr. Scott spent more than $50 million on the Senate race. But as a candidate, Mr. Scott, who is not known for his charisma, did more than just open his checkbook: He campaigned incessantly and stayed relentlessly on message, casting Mr. Nelson as a do-nothing has-been who had to be retired. [...]

During the campaign, Mr. Scott carefully distanced himself from Mr. Trump in an election that turned heavily on voters’ dislike for the president’s administration. Over the course of his eight years as governor, he also tempered his Tea Party conservatism somewhat, shifting to support more moderate measures on guns and immigration. But he embraced Mr. Trump’s bombastic style after Election Day, when it came to claiming rampant fraud nobody could prove.

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CNN: With the Khashoggi story worsening, the US may finally have an adult in the room

MBS has also variously presided over a disastrous war in Yemen; the blockade of Saudi Arabia's neighbor, Qatar; the de facto temporary kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister; and the incarceration in a luxury hotel in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, of some two hundred businessmen and princes, who had to hand over tens of billions to secure their freedom in what the government described as settlements in an anti-corruption drive.

Astonishingly, given the importance of Saudi Arabia there hasn't ever been a Trump-appointed ambassador in the country. The US-Saudi relationship has therefore been largely an informal one managed by President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, 37, and MBS, 33. [...]

It's hard to think of someone more qualified than Abizaid for the role. Abizaid, aged 67, speaks fluent Arabic and once ran Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for US military actions in the Middle East. This gives him great expertise and experience in the region as well as the gravitas to speak for President Trump. [...]

Jeffrey was one the dozens of signatories of the 'Never Trump' letters by leading Republican national security officials during the 2016 presidential election campaign. In the past, signing such a letter would have torpedoed your chance of serving in a significant role in the administration, but in Jeffrey's case his subject matter expertise has apparently trumped the letter.

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Independent: Brexit deal: Theresa May faces defeat over plan to force release of economic analysis of her plan

On Monday more than 70 MPs from six different parties will attempt to push through an amendment to the Finance Bill, which if passed would obligate Ms May to publish an economic impact assessment into the withdrawal deal she has agreed with the EU. [...]

“The reality is they won’t give us the truth because they can’t say that we will be better off with this deal than we are at the moment. That’s why even prominent Brexiteers are saying we would be better off staying in the EU than leaving with this deal – an extraordinary state of affairs.” [...]

The assessment would have to include a comparison between the current terms of the UK’s EU membership and the proposed agreement set to be signed off at an EU summit in a week’s time.

It would also have to be made public before MPs vote on whether to accept Ms May’s Brexit plans and the independent Office for Budget Responsibility would have to evaluate its accuracy. [...]

Ms May and other ministers have refused to specifically say they would publish such an analysis, and have instead stuck to the more vague line that MPs would be given the “appropriate information” before voting on Ms May’s Brexit plans.

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