Politics

Submitted by Roger Barris via Acting-Man.com,

Happy Armchair Warriors

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have thrown the debate about ISIS into overdrive, particularly among the presidential candidates.  Several strands have emerged from these discussions, but I think that their taxonomy is not often clearly laid out.  I would therefore like to try to do this.

IS military parade in Mosul

I think that there are three inter-related strands to the discussion, which I summarize below:

If Donald Trump’s poll numbers tell us anything, it’s that Americans are angry.

Angry with what they perceive to be government ineptitude, angry with the economy, angry with US foreign policy, angry with just about everything.

The palpable sense of rage has manifested itself in support for dark horse presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and is also apparent in “incidents” like that which occurred on Saturday when armed militiamen seized a remote government building in Oregon.

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

On December 3rd, a month before Saudi Arabia carried out it largest mass execution since 1980 — subsequently setting the region on fire — Arjun Sethi wrote an article for Al-Jazeera titled: Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism As An Excuse for Human Rights Abuses. According to Cora Currier at the Intercept:

Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar appear to have blocked the article outside of the United States because it is critical of an ally of Qatar.

“We are helpless and not being able to do anything against this deliberate destruction to the oil installations. NOC urges all faithful and honorable people of this homeland to hurry to rescue what is left from our resources before it is too late.”

That’s from Libya’s National Oil Corp and as you might have guessed, it references the seizure of state oil assets by Islamic State, whose influence in the country has grown over the past year amid the power vacuum the West created by engineering the demise of Moammar Qaddafi.

An investigation into dodgy dealings by fatcat bankers has been quietly axed. The decision by the Financial Conduct Authority, has sparked outrage and has been labeled a “a huge blow for taxpayers” and “a slap in the face for ordinary people”. The investigation was dumped as the FCA said other measures were in place to tackle wrongdoing,  but many see Osborne’s decision to sack the head of the FCA for wanting to be too tough on bankers as a critical reason. The Mirror reports: Early in 2015 the FCA announced plans to review banking’s culture.