The Decline Of Terror In The West?

The Orlando shooting was a horrific crime. But larger trends suggest that the threat of mass attacks is receding.

BY PHILIP GIRALDI

THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE

BOKO HARAM (REUTERS FILE PHOTO)

The State Department’s 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism came out earlier this month. It will no doubt be overshadowed by events, as it deals with overseas rather than domestic terror and appeared ten days before the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. But it helps to explain the roots of America’s terrorism problem.

The document purports to be an objective review of the year’s terrorist incidents as well as an overview of some of the players, and it includes a discussion of “violent extremism” issues region by region and country by country. It is a valuable resource that provides considerable information on the various militant groups and the crimes attributed to them. But it is nevertheless a government document.

The Obama Administration definitely has a point of view on what constitutes terrorism and how to deal with it. The report’s section on Afghanistan, for example, implicitly makes a case for a more robust American role in the conflict engulfing that country, and the discussion of ISIS tends to view the group in regional terms, with less emphasis on its ability to operate transnationally.

I often find that how something is described or even ignored is just as important as what is revealed. There is, for example, a section of the report identifying “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” a status that brings with it various sanctions. It would be difficult to find a section that is more hypocritical, as many would consider Washington the leading practitioner of state-sponsored terror, given its claimed authority to go after militant targets anywhere at any time.

This year’s report names only Iran, Syria, and Sudan as state sponsors. Iran and Syria undeniably have relationships with groups like Hezbollah, which is a party of government in Lebanon. Hezbollah is currently heavily engaged in fighting ISIS, which the U.S. government in its own reporting clearly identifies as international enemy No. 1. Meanwhile, Iran is criticized for having a close relationship with Syria, while Syria is condemned for having a close relationship with Iran, resulting in both being labeled state sponsors even though their military efforts, like those of Hezbollah, are focused against groups like ISIS and al-Nusrah that are seeking to do damage to the United States. Regarding Sudan, the report states that it is no longer in the supporting-radicalism business, while earlier annual reports actually commended it for helping international efforts against terrorists—yet it remains on the list, apparently because some people in the White House do not like its president very much.

And there is a bigger problem. I have long argued that “terrorism” is a largely meaningless expression, as it has been politicized to such an extent that it no longer provides any real insight into what a designated group is or is not doing. The United Nations defines terrorism as violent acts intended to coerce a civilian population and destabilize the target country’s government, which probably as far as a reasonable observer should go with the concept.

Others inevitably entertain a somewhat broader viewpoint on what constitutes a terrorist, because the label enables one to marginalize those one does not approve of. Contemporary Turkey’s political leadership describes journalists, protesters, and even the political opposition in parliament as terrorists because it makes it possible to disregard their arguments and curtail their constitutional rights. Israel, meanwhile, calls Palestinians who are legally resisting its illegal occupation of the West Bank terrorists, while the United States uses drones to kill suspected militants based on profiles and, after the fact, rationalizes the deaths by labeling those killed as terrorists.

At any rate, how big of a problem is terrorism, however we Americans define it? The numbers tell us something. Deaths attributed to terrorists are certainly a huge global problem, with the State Department report recording nearly 12,000 terrorist attacks producing 28,000 deaths worldwide in 2015. But the mayhem is very much concentrated in countries that are gripped by what might reasonably be termed civil war, including Syria, Iraq, and Somalia. Several other countries with high levels of “terror” deaths, including Nigeria and Pakistan, are engaged in bloody regional conflicts over economic issues fueled by anti-central-government sentiment: not exactly civil war, but something close to it.

American victims are a lot harder to find. The State Department report, which is only about acts of terrorism overseas, identifies 19 American citizens as victims of terror for the year 2015. Eight of the deaths were in Afghanistan, one in Syria, and one in Somalia, all of which can be regarded as war zones. Three were in Jerusalem and on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a region also suffering from endemic violence: two American visitors, plus a settler who held dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship.

Twenty-two more Americans were injured in terrorist incidents worldwide in 2015, and there were no reported kidnappings during the year. Though I in no way wish to minimize the killing of anyone in a criminal act, which terrorism is, the death and injury toll hardly represents a major international threat to U.S. citizens, and I am sure that many more Americans are killed every year “overseas” in traffic accidents while vacationing. So based on the State Department report, one has to question a counter-terrorism strategy costing hundreds of billions of dollars a year to combat an enemy that is largely ineffective, at least in terms of being able to do direct damage to the United States, its citizens, or its other interests.

And there is, of course, the domestic side of the terrorism industry. The year 2015 was, in fact, a relatively busy year for international terrorists, particularly those who might reasonably be linked to ISIS. Insofar as can be determined, no terrorist act carried out in the U.S. in 2015 was actually ordered or directed by an overseas terrorist group, but some terror suspects were certainly inspired by what is taking place in Europe and the Middle East. The killings in Orlando suggest that the so-called “lone wolf” pattern continues in 2016, with little direction from abroad but considerable motivation generated through interaction with radicals online.

There were 25 deaths in the U.S. attributable to some form of ostensibly foreign-sourced terrorism in 2015, a number that includes six perpetrators killed during or subsequent to the attacks. The largest single attack was at San Bernardino, Calif., in December, which killed 16 including the two gunmen. Another multiple-victim attack took place in Chattanooga, Tenn., in July, killing five military personnel plus the shooter. There has been no real suggestion that any of the attacks could have been prevented, though San Bernardino has led to demands by the government for better access to social-networking accounts and to cell phones. While both capabilities would be undeniably useful for after-the-fact assessments of what has occurred, I would argue that giving the police and intelligence agencies broad authority to access what have traditionally been private communications would lead to fishing expeditions through the thousands of communications posted and calls made by terrorism fantasists. It would be hard to justify an extreme interventionist response as either appropriate or effective.

So a total of 44 Americans died in 2015 in incidents that have been categorized by the U.S. government as foreign-sourced terror. To put that in context, the number is comparable to a single month of homicides in Chicago in the same year, when 468 deaths were recorded.

A final measure of the terrorist threat directed against the United States is the number of people being charged with terrorism offenses in 2015. There were 56 arrests in that year, some involving American citizens or legal residents who intended to travel to join a group that has been designated as “terrorist” by the State Department and/or the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control.

But what do those numbers really mean in terms of the vulnerability of the United States to an actual terrorist attack? An estimated two-thirds of all terrorism cases that result in charges in the U.S. are brought about through the use of a paid FBI informant who becomes friendly with the targets and in theory monitors their activities. In many cases, however, the informant actually creates the legal case against the accused by giving the suspects weapons or bombs that do not work.

If the FBI informant actually motivates the targets to carry out the illegal act, that would be considered entrapment, but one can imagine how difficult it would be to make that case unless one were a fly on the wall during all of the meetings involving the informant. A better measure might be whether those accused were ready, willing, and able to carry out a terrorist act without any intercession from an informant. I have done a rough media survey of the identifiable cases from 2015 and could not find a single one where that was so, though in at least one instance a suspect’s online searches relating to how to turn a pressure cooker into a bomb were considered a serious threat.

I am not trying to minimize the threat posed to the United States by terrorists either overseas or domestically, and last weekend’s horrific massacre in Orlando certainly makes one reluctant to endorse anything like complacency. But I would nevertheless advise that the danger posed by radicalized groups and individuals be put into some kind of context, and that draconian steps to deal with the problem be embraced with caution. Terror is the poor man’s weapon against powerful government forces, so it will likely always be with us, but terrorists are rarely successful in their broader objectives—these are achieved only in cases where there is a political vacuum.

I have been reading the State Department annual reports for many years now, and my firm impression is that the international terrorist threat, as poorly defined as it is, has actually been receding as more and more governments actively seek to eliminate militants in their midst, and as fewer states are willing and able to provide them with assistance or a safe haven. Terrorism is a dying industry in every sense of the word, and while the U.S. government should take every reasonable step to protect American citizens, the key word must be “reasonable.” A global anti-terror Crusade led by the United States is not a reasonable response, nor is it necessary, as terrorist groups always eventually fade away due to their own internal contradictions. It is time to declare the War on Terror finished and move on.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

'Starving To Death': Boko Haram Displaced Facing Food Crisis

BY AMINU ABUBAKAR

AFP JUNE 11, 2016

\

© Provided by AFP The Borno state government in Nigeria and aid agencies have warned about acute food shortages in the Lake Chad region as a result of seven years of violence

At least 10 people are "starving to death" every day in a camp in northeast Nigeria for people displaced by Boko Haram violence, highlighting warnings about a food crisis in the Lake Chad region.

A civilian vigilante and a soldier said the deaths were occurring in the town of Banki where they are based, some 130 kilometres (80 miles) southeast of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

Troops liberated the remote town near the Cameroon border last September.

"People are dying in large numbers in the camp every day from lack of food," the vigilante, who asked not to be identified because of his job assisting the military, told AFP Thursday.

"They are starving to death on a daily basis. Between 10 and 11 people, including men, women and children, die daily since the IDP (internally displaced persons) camp was opened three months ago.

"As of yesterday (Wednesday) we counted 376 graves in the Bulachira cemetery belonging to dead IDPs who died in the last three months."

The soldier, who has been in Banki since the liberation and also asked to remain anonymous, gave a similar account: "At least 10 people are buried every day in the cemetery.

"The whole camp is hunger-stricken. People are emaciated and starving to death. If nobody intervenes, a huge catastrophe is looming because these people can't hold out."

Supply routes

The Borno state government and aid agencies have warned about acute food shortages in the Lake Chad region as a result of seven years of violence.


The United Nations said in May that 9.2 million people living around the lake, which forms the border of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, were in desperate need of food.

One Nigerian refugee in a camp in southeastern Niger told AFP last month: "I think that everyone has abandoned us." Another said it had been four months since they last received food aid.

Even at the giant Dalori camp outside Maiduguri, which houses about 20,000 people, IDPs complain there is not enough to eat and children especially are always hungry.

The camp has been locked down since a suicide blast outside in January, forcing residents to rely on twice daily bowls of cooked rice and beans.

"The food ration given to all the occupants of a room is so little that it can be consumed by this boy," Aisha Bala, 35, told AFP last month, pointing to a six-year-old next to her.

"We force ourselves to eat the food despite its bad taste so as not to die from starvation, " added Babagana Mustafa, 46.

Ahmed Satomi, executive secretary of the Borno state emergency management agency, said there were some 10,000 IDPs in Banki and "relief items" were delivered two weeks ago.

But the vigilante disputed the claim, saying the IDPs received nothing from the state and only UNICEF provided them with water containers and sanitary items in April.

Satomi said they were "preparing to procure maize and rice that will last them (the IDPs) for the next 40 days" but said priority was being given to Bama, 60 kilometres away.

There were more IDPs in Bama and Maiduguri was its only supply route, whereas "Banki can access supplies from neighbouring Amchide in Cameroon", he added.

Walking corpses

Boko Haram Islamist insurgency is one of the world's most brutal conflicts: at least 20,000 people have been killed since it began in 2009 and more than 2.6 million others displaced.

Nigeria's government has been encouraging IDPs to return home since the recapture of swathes of territory lost to the Islamist militants in 2014.

But most are still largely reliant on food hand-outs, with farmlands devastated, and homes and local infrastructure destroyed.

Nearly 6,500 children were found to be severely malnourished at camps in Borno state last year; more than 25,000 others had "mild to moderate symptoms", health officials said in February.

The vigilante and the soldier said troops had been giving two-thirds of their rations to the IDPs, who also lacked access to medical facilities and even basic medicine such as paracetamol.

"People have no food, they are just walking corpses," he said by telephone, adding he was watching another funeral procession as he spoke.

Without the soldiers' rations "only a few would have been alive by now", he added.

The soldier called for urgent action, adding: "These people fled their homes to escape death in the hands of Boko Haram terrorists but they are now slowly dying from starvation."

Africa: A Misrepresented Continent

TRT WORLD

Africa is frequently linked to violence, war, corruption, poverty and infectious diseases in the media. This perception goes all the way back to when it was first dubbed the “dark continent” in the 19th century. But here is the question; Does this impression really reflect the reality of Africa as a whole?

Although some African countries have faced many challenges, there is another side of the continent that has not generally been shown fairly.

Here are some interesting facts about Africa which are generally overlooked:

Africa is not one country

The continent is often stereotyped as a land uniformly filled with deserts, savanna and dangerous creatures with little in the way of culture and civilisation. Yet, when we talk about Africa, we talk about a landmass which is shared by 54 countries and more than 2000 languages. The amount of diversity in Africa is truly staggering.

New tigers of the world: African Economies

Although some African countries have been hit by internal and external factors such as Ebola and political crises, in general the continent is continuing to develop at a steady pace.

According to the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects for 2015, six out of the 13 fastest growing economies in the world are African countries. Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Tanzania and Rwanda have predicted higher annual growth rates (CAGR) from 2014 through 2017 than the USA, Europe or China.

A report by the international management consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company, named "Lions on the Move: The Progress and Potential of African Economies" says that Africa’s combined Gross Domestic Product will be $2.6 trillion by 2020.


Africa's population boom

Africa is the youngest continent in the world with 200 million people aged between 15 and 24.

Niger is the youngest country in Africa as well as in the world, with an average age of 15.1 years, while European countries have the oldest median ages with all of them above 29 years.

It is predicted that Africa’s population will have doubled by 2050 from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion, according to the United Nations.

Female Representation in Africa is high

Although African countries are regularly criticised for not successfully institutionalising democracy, women are well represented in the institutions of many of them.

Four out of 10 African countries have more women representatives in their lower houses than men, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union - a worldwide parliamentary dialogue organisation.

Rwanda is at the top of the list with 63.8 percent of its parliamentarians being women while the United States of America is listed 75th with 19.4 percent.

Rwanda is closely followed by three other African countries - the Seychelles, Senegal and South Africa - in terms of female representation.

In addition Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a female South African politician, serves as the head of African Union Comission, the administrative branch of African Union.

Africa's female labour force

The media generally focuses on the image of helpless and poor African woman.

However, World Bank figures says exactly opposite of 'helpless African woman' image.

Women in Africa have the highest labor force participation rate in the world at 86 percent according to the World Bank.

Rwanda sits at the top of the list with 54 percent of its labour force being women. The country is closely followed by Mozambique in which 53.1 percent of workers are women and Burundi and Malawi, each with a 51.4 percent female labour force.

Who is the richest person of all time?

Well, it’s neither Bill Gates nor Tom Ford. The richest person in world history so far is Mansa Musa, who had an estimated personal net worth of $400 billion, according to the ranking website Celebrity Net Worth.

Mansa Musa was the king of Malian Empire between 1312 and 1337 - a state which ruled over modern day Ghana, Timbuktu, Mali and West Africa.

During his reign Mansa Musa transformed Mali’s capital Timbuktu into an economic hotspot where trade lines from across West Africa met.

At that time Mansa Musa’s empire was the largest producer of gold in the world, mining nearly a tonne in a year, according to Professor Richard Smith from Ferrum College in the American state of Virginia.

His famous pilgrimage to Mecca made the king well-known across the Middle East and Europe.

Mansa Musa is said to have travelled to Mecca along with 60,000 men and dozens of camels, each of them carrying pounds of golds. Musa gave gold to poor people he met on the road, which caused a serious currency crisis in Egypt, according to South Africa’s first renowned archaeologist Astley John Hilary Goodwin.

Niger Delta Avengers Want To Sell Oil Directly To Countries, Bomb Bayelsa Pipeline

BY CHIDO OKAFOR AND JULIUS OSAHON

THE GUARDIAN, NIGERIA

Spilled crude oil floats on the shores of swamps in Bodo, in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, June 24, 2010. Militants in the oil-producing region have threatened secession from Nigeria. Image: Pius Utomi/AFP/Getty

(NIGERIA) -- The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) yesterday said it wants to sell crude oil directly to countries and urged such countries not to buy crude oil again from Nigeria, saying the region producing the oil was being neglected.

The militant group, which rejected overtures from the federal government for dialogue, with a view to ending the destruction of pipelines, blamed government for the attack through its Twitter handle.

Less than 24 hours after it blew up two major oil wells in Dibi, Warri, Delta State, the group yesterday morning bombed yet another crude oil pipeline in Obi Obi Brass Trunkline belonging to Agip/ENI in Bayelsa State around 3:00am, which sparked fire and sent thick smoke into the atmosphere.

The Avengers had previously warned Agip not to repair a pipeline in Bayelsa State, which it had earlier bombed.

The latest attack, which was described as massive, was said to have been carried out in spite of the heavy presence of the military and their gunboats in Brass Council, which also hosts the multi-million-naira Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) project.

The attack also came despite measures put up by security outfits in charge of safeguarding oil facilities in the region, following intelligence report that the state would be the group's next port of call.

NIGER DELTA AVENGERS THREATEN SECESSION FROM NIGERIA

BY CONOR GAFFEY

NEWSWEEK, JUNE 10, 2016

Spilled crude oil floats on the shores of swamps in Bodo, in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, June 24, 2010. Militants in the oil-producing region have threatened secession from Nigeria. Image: Pius Utomi/AFP/Getty

A militant group in Nigeria’s oil heartland of the Niger Delta has threatened secession from the West African country.

The move came as attacks on oil pipelines continue to deplete Nigeria’s output.

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), which carried out its first attack in February, issued a statement Thursday calling on the international community to “speak up against this ongoing terror and come to the aid of the Niger Delta.” The NDA is the latest in a series of militant groups in the Niger Delta to have complained that the benefits of the region’s vast oil resources have not been equally distributed among its citizens.

The group has also called for greater autonomy for the Niger Delta and threatened to seek secession from Nigeria, as South Sudan did from neighboring Sudan in 2011. “We want our resources back to restore the essence of human life in our region for generations to come because Nigeria has failed to do that,” the NDA said. “The world should not wait until we go [the way of] Sudan. Enough is enough.”

Also in the Niger Delta, an explosion was reported at a pipeline operated by a subsidiary of Nigeria’s state-run oil company near Warri, in Nigeria’s southern Delta state. The explosion occurred late Thursday, a security official and local community leader told Reuters. The NDA has not claimed the attack, but said via its Twitter feed that it blew up another pipeline belonging to Italian company Eni. Newsweek contacted Eni for a comment but had received no reply at the time of publication.

The Nigerian government has called for dialogue with stakeholders in the Niger Delta, including the militants. Nigeria’s Petroleum Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said that the military would draw back from operations in the Niger Delta in order to allow the government to reach out to the militants, but the NDA has said it will not negotiate with the government.

Nigeria has had an ill-fated attempt at secession before. In 1967, ex-Nigerian military officer Odumegwu Ojukwu declared an independent Republic of Biafra in southeast Nigeria, sparking a three-year civil war in which more than 1 million people died. Pro-Biafra activists, who have enjoyed a resurgence in recent months, have expressed solidarity with the NDA’s cause. The militant group has also called for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, a prominent pro-Biafra leader who has been detained in Nigeria since October 2015 on charges of treasonable felony, which he denies.

Africans In India Face Constant Battles With Racism

BY MUNEEZA NAQVI

ASSOCIATED PRESS, JUNE 09, 2016

In this June 8, 2016, photo an African woman walks through one of the few neighborhoods that rents apartments to people of African origin in New Delhi, India. For hundreds of thousands of Africans drawn to India by better education and work opportunities, rampant racism is a daily battle. In a country where fair skin is prized, their dark skin places them at the lower end of a series of strictly observed social hierarchies. (Saurabh Das/Associated Press


NEW DELHI (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Fear and anger. Those are the emotions that shadow Odole Emmanuel Opeyemi every time the Nigerian man steps out of his New Delhi apartment.

Every encounter with Indians is fraught with those feelings, whether he’s taking an autorickshaw or the Metro, buying vegetables or trying to find a spot to park his car.

“When I sit down in the Metro, people sit away from me. Even old men and women will stand up as if any contact with me will give them a disease,” he said, describing the mixture of fear and revulsion with which most Indians treat Africans.

Opeyemi is among hundreds of thousands of Africans in India, drawn by better education and work opportunities. For them rampant racism is a daily battle in a country where their dark skin places them at the lower end of a series of strictly observed social hierarchies. Indians routinely perceive Africans as either prostitutes or drug dealers.

The daily indignities Africans suffer usually go undocumented both by the police and local media.

That changed on May 20, when Congolese student Masunda Kitada Oliver was fatally attacked in a dispute over hiring an autorickshaw in New Delhi. Three men who insisted they had hired the vehicle beat him up and hit him on the head with a rock, killing him, according to police.

The death made the city’s African students, diplomats and business owners rally together demanding quick justice. The African Heads of Mission in New Delhi issued a statement asking the government to address “racism and Afro-phobia” in the country.

“Given the pervading climate of fear and insecurity in Delhi, the African Heads of Mission are left with little option than to consider recommending to their governments not to send new students to India, unless and until their safety can be guaranteed,” the statement said.

The killing and the outrage it sparked drew an unusually prompt reaction from local police and India’s foreign ministry. Two men suspected in the attack were arrested within a day, while a third remains at large.

Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted that her ministry asked for “stringent action against the culprits.” But the ministry also said all criminal acts involving Africans should not be seen as racial in nature.

The bad press the country got as a result of the killing prompted India’s glacial government machinery to move quickly to try to address the issue.

An India-Africa art exhibition was cobbled together at government expense and on short notice. A protest planned by African students in the Indian capital was put off after government officials reached out to African student groups.

The police and government began holding workshops in neighborhoods across the city to try to sensitize local residents about their African neighbors.

There were other well publicized examples of anti-African prejudice in India before Oliver’s death.

In February, a Tanzanian woman was beaten and stripped naked by a mob in the southern city of Bangalore after a Sudanese student’s car hit an Indian woman. In September 2014, a video of three African men being beaten inside a security booth at a New Delhi Metro station went viral. For several minutes a large mob beat the men with bare hands and sticks and shoes as they climbed up the walls of the glass booth in terror. The police were absent.

These incidents made it to the local newspapers. Hundreds more do not.

Prejudice is open in India. The matrimonial columns of the newspaper are strictly segregated along caste lines. Landlords in cities like Delhi and Mumbai deny homes to people based on race and religion.

Indians from northeastern India, who look different because of their Asian features, are routinely harassed and have to endure being called names on the streets.

But the worst kind of discrimination is reserved for the Africans. In a country obsessed with fair skin and skin lightening beauty treatments, their dark skin draws a mixture of fear and ridicule.

Landlords shun Africans in all but the poorest neighborhoods, and in those they are charged unusually high rent. African students in the New Delhi neighborhood of Chhatarapur reported paying 15,000 rupees ($225) a month for a single room and bathroom that would normally rent for 6,000 to 7,000 rupees.

Strangers point at them and laugh — or gang up and assault them.

At a recent racial sensitization session in Chhatarapur, the mutual distrust between the Indian landlords and their African tenants was glaring.

“I’m scared,” said Nancy Joseph, a 23-year-old law student from South Sudan. That fear keeps her from visiting friends at night. The autorickshaw driver may refuse to take her. Groups of Indian men could gather and call her vile names just for fun.

“Delhi is the worst city I’ve ever lived in,” said Eddie King, a student from Nigeria. He hasn’t made a single friend in the year that he has spent in the country.

“I can’t talk to my classmates. They won’t even answer me. They pretend they don’t understand.”

The landlords say African tenants drink all day and play loud music all night, characterizations that Africans dismiss as unfair.

“They stand drinking beer on the road. We feel scared crossing the area,” landlord Umed Singh said.

Whether this session succeeded in sensitizing anyone was unclear. Police simply told both sides to try to understand each other.

King said he’ll leave India as soon as he finishes his studies next year. “The African man cannot work with Indians. That’s just the truth,” he said.

Opeyemi, a 34-year-old soccer coach, said he will stay. It’s easier for him to earn a living here than in Nigeria, so he will endure the indignities.

Those include hearing someone call out “Habshi!” — the Hindi word for a black person — as he tries to get on a bus.

Recently, as he tried to park his car, someone called him “bandar” — a monkey. “The security was looking but they said nothing,” Opeyemi said.

“We are scared. We don’t fight back because we know what will happen,” he said. “They will break your head with a brick.”

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP Interview: Clinton Says Trump Behaving Like A Demagogue

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally in Culver City, Calif. Clinton opened her general election campaign against Donald Trump on June 8 by accusing him of behaving like a "demagogue," likening his attacks on judges, the media, his opponents and their families to dark moments in the world's history.



WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Clinton opened her general election campaign against Donald Trump on Wednesday by accusing him of behaving like a "demagogue," likening his attacks on judges, the media, his opponents and their families to dark moments in world history.

"It's classic behavior by a demagogue," she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "We've seen it many, many places and times in the world, and that's why I think it's so dangerous."

The presumptive Democratic nominee, who declared victory in her race against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, a day after reaching the number of delegates needed to claim the nomination, seemed to wonder during the interview whether Trump's candidacy was little more than an elaborate political stunt.

"I don't know if this is just, you know, political gamesmanship that he thinks plays to the lowest common denominator, but whatever the reason for it is, it's wrong and it should not be tolerated by anybody," she said.

But even as she questioned the sincerity of the real estate mogul's rhetoric, Clinton said voters need to take his words seriously and called them evidence that he is untrustworthy, unqualified and unprepared for the rigors of the White House.

While the two candidates have never been personally close, their political and financial circles have occasionally overlapped over the years — especially during Clinton's time as a senator from New York, Trump's home state. Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, attended Trump's third wedding in 2005, and she said later that she thought Trump was "always entertaining."

But Clinton expressed surprise at what she described as the billionaire's descent into "conspiracy theories" in recent years. "He always had opinions which he freely expressed," she said. "I never really ever had any information about him engaging in bigotry and prejudice until he took up the cause of the birthers against President Obama, which is really so bizarre," she added, with an incredulous laugh.

Clinton and Democrats supporting her campaign are attempting to cast Trump as a ruthless con artist who is tricking voters in the same way he duped prospective students into enrolling into his now-defunct Trump University, a business that offered real estate seminars.

It's an argument Clinton and her aides believe will appeal not only to Democrats, but independent voters and even some Republicans worried about how Trump would manage the nation's economy and foreign affairs.

While stopping short of calling Trump a racist for his recent comments about the federal judge overseeing a class-action lawsuit against Trump University, Clinton said her rival has a "very unfortunate and divisive tendency to attack all kind of Americans."

While Clinton seeks to paint Trump as a dangerous huckster, he has spent the past several weeks since claiming the Republican nomination working to define her candidacy. Trump calls Clinton by the nickname "Crooked Hillary" and often says she belongs behind bars for her use of a private email account and server during her time as secretary of state.

"The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves," Trump said Tuesday as he won the final five GOP primary elections. "They've made hundreds of millions of dollars selling access, selling favors, selling government contracts, and I mean hundreds of millions of dollars."

Trump promised to deliver a speech next week focusing on "the Clintons." He's also tried to re-ignite past scandals that dogged Bill Clinton's administration, including his impeachment trial and the Whitewater land deal in his native Arkansas.

Trump has met with Ed Klein, one of Clinton's most strident critics and the author of books spreading discredited rumors about her marriage. Another influence, GOP consultant Roger Stone, is known for peddling conspiracy theories about the Clintons. There is speculation that political strategist Dick Morris, a former Clinton adviser turned adversary, may also join his campaign.

Clinton said she is unconcerned with all of it. "I really don't pay a lot of attention to his efforts to attack me personally," she said. "I don't intend to respond to them because this is his, this is his modus operandi."

Instead, Clinton said she is banking on voters turning to her because of her comparative policy depth, arguing that a frustrated electorate is seeking "specific policies" more than "catchy soundbites" and "throwing slogans around."

For example, when asked Wednesday about the upcoming Summer Olympics in Brazil, she offered a lengthy assessment of the public health crisis caused by the Zika virus. While Clinton said it was probably too late to cancel the Rio de Janeiro Games, as some public health officials have urged, she described the situation as "deeply distressing."

"It's really a serious public health threat and I don't know that we've heard the last word about the advice about whether people or certain kinds of people should go to Rio or not," she said. "This is not just about Rio and the Olympics, this is about a potential outbreak and epidemic."

After calling on Democrats to unify around her candidacy, Clinton said she had no regrets about her campaign against Sanders. She wouldn't offer any hints of what kinds of concessions her campaign might be willing to give the Vermont senator in the party platform.

The two campaigns and the Democratic National Committee are beginning the process of drafting the policy on which Democrats are to rally around in the fall election. On Thursday, President Barack Obama — who defeated Clinton in 2008 — was expected to formally endorse his one-time rival, after meeting with Sanders at the White House.

"I feel very good about the campaign we ran," she said. "It's time that we move forward and unite the party."

Follow Lisa Lerer on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/llerer

Global Violence Worsens, Driven By Middle East Conflicts - Peace Index

BY ALEX WHITING

LONDON, JUNE 8 (THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION) - The world has become increasingly violent with deaths from conflict at a 25-year high, terrorist attacks at an all-time high and more people displaced than at any time since World War Two, the 2016 Global Peace Index showed on Wednesday.

The annual index, which measures 23 indicators including incidents of violent crime, countries' levels of militarisation and weapons imports, said intensifying conflicts in the Middle East were mostly to blame.

But beyond the Middle East, the world was actually becoming more peaceful, researchers behind the index said.

"Quite often, in the mayhem which is happening in the Middle East currently, we lose sight of the other positive trends," said Steve Killelea, founder of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which produces the index.

"If we look in the last year, if we took out the Middle East ... the world would have become more peaceful," Killelea told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

More than 100,000 were killed in conflict in 2014, up from nearly 20,000 in 2008. Syria, where nearly 67,000 people were killed in 2014, accounted for the bulk of the increase, according to the index.

The United Nations has said the number of displaced people is likely to have "far surpassed" a record 60 million last year.

The index showed that most attacks it classed as terrorist were concentrated in five countries - Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The economic cost of violence over the past decade was $137 trillion - greater than the global GDP in 2015, the IEP showed.

The indicator which improved the most in the last year was funding for U.N. peacekeeping operations, which reached record highs in 2016, IEP said.

"However, peacebuilding and peacekeeping spending remains proportionately small compared to the economic impact of violence, representing just 2 percent of global losses from armed conflict," Killelea said in a statement.

More than 120,000 U.N. peacekeepers are currently deployed in 16 operations worldwide. The largest are in Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan's Darfur region, South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic and Lebanon.

Another improvement in peace, is a 10 percent fall in global military spending in the last three years, IEP said.

BUILDING LASTING PEACE

Europe is the most peaceful region in the world, although the region's peace score dropped in the wake of attacks in Paris and Brussels. Deaths from such attacks in Europe have more than doubled over the last five years.

Last year, world leaders agreed to "significantly reduce all forms of violence" by 2030 and find lasting solutions to conflict and insecurity, as part of a set of Sustainable Development Goals to fight inequality and extreme poverty.

Building lasting peace takes more than just improving security, Killelea said.

"Quite often as an international community we lose sight of that and try and have a one shoe fits all (approach)," he said.

"For me the most profound thing about the index is the ability to use it ... to better understand the qualities ... which create peaceful societies," Killelea said.

Iceland is the world's most peaceful country listed in the index, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Portugal.

The least peaceful country is Syria, followed by South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. (Reporting by Alex Whiting, Editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Nigeria Suspends Army Attacks For Talks With Oil Militants

BY BASHIR ADIGUN 

ABUJA, NIGERIA (AP) — Nigerian officials Tuesday ordered the military to suspend attacks in the oil-producing south to allow dialogue with militants whose assaults have slashed oil production, Delta State Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa announced.

The decision came at a meeting of military chiefs, state governors and Petroleum Minister Ibe Kachikwu.

Kachikwu on Monday called for the Niger Delta Avengers group to "sheath their weapons and embrace dialogue." He said the military would continue to patrol waterways but halt other operations. Community leaders have criticized the military campaign in the southern Niger Delta, saying soldiers are brutalizing innocent civilians. Thousands of people have fled the fallout.

The suspension comes days after a new group calling itself the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force threatened attacks on government and oil company offices in Abuja and Lagos, the commercial capital, to destroy infrastructure "built with our oil and gas monies."

President Muhammadu Buhari canceled a much-publicized visit to the region last week after the Avengers threatened to assassinate him. Buhari, who is in London for treatment for an ear infection, was supposed to launch a decades-delayed cleanup operation. Pollution of agricultural and fishing grounds from careless oil production has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of residents and impoverished the region that provides 80 percent of government revenue.

Attacks in recent months ended years of relative peace in the delta and halved Nigeria's oil production to about 1.2 million barrels a day and closed some of the country's biggest oil-exporting terminals. Nigeria has lost its place as Africa's biggest oil producer to Angola.

The militants say they want a bigger share of Nigeria's oil wealth for Niger Delta residents or they will secede. They also object to the government scaling back a 2009 amnesty program which paid 30,000 militants to guard the installations they once attacked.

An Adversarial President, A Divided And Discontent People

BY OBI NAWKANMA

Y-NAIJA, JUNE 05, 2016

OBI NWAKANMA

Truth be told, President Muhammadu Buhari does not have the easiest job in the world. But then again, no one who runs for the president of Nigeria ever imagines it to be easy.

Even on its best days, Nigeria is a very complex and volatile mix ethnic and religious differences compounded by a heritage of political ideas and leadership that has more generally emphasized and intensified these differences rather than create a harmonious idea of shared nationhood.

As I have always insisted, a nation like Nigeria, with its many “ancient kingdoms” and “caliphates” contending with the idea of a single organic nation, is a candidate for profound ruptures.

Nigerians have increasingly grown apart, and have been, as a result of the Machiavellian politics of power and control, pulled apart so much that the nation does not mean much anymore to most Nigerians.

As a matter of fact, except for maybe about 5% of Nigerians, mostly beneficiaries of an oligarchic control of national resource, nobody else loves Nigeria. Over 90% of young Nigerians from the age 15-35, given the choice or opportunity will leave Nigeria, and escape permanently.

They have no reason to love Nigeria, or believe in it. Nigeria does not offer them much. In their estimation, the patch of grass outside its shores holds a greater promise of life than the intense discontent, the darkness of the mood that now pervades the Nigerian psyche and its landscapes.

You can feel it also in the actions and dispositions of the new arrivals from Nigeria to the United States: they wish to have nothing to do with Nigeria, or the community of Nigerians. They basically have given up the idea of a “Nigerian home.”

They do not join Nigerian associations. They just do not want to have anything to do with Nigeria anymore. Those who send their sons and daughters out from the burning land must understand that they have given them up for good, and they shall not return.

This new phenomenon of disconnection and alienation is the product of discontent. This is dangerous – this loss of faith that now animates the Nigerian consciousness. Nigeria is the only nation I know of, which is officially not at war, but whose most educated and most skilled are fleeing from home.

This past week, I had an interesting conversation with an old dear friend of mine, a Professor of Philosophy in one of Nigeria’s major Universities, and his lament was as thick as the melancholy conveyed through the static of trans-Atlantic conversation: “the Nigeria you knew has gone from bad to worse, and I’m telling you this.”

Here is a rationalist, whose field is the Philosophy of Science, and who should, were Nigeria and its political leadership be more clear-minded, be on the advisory council of a National Science Foundation, and on the frequent call-list of Nigeria’s Minister of Science and Technology, saying his dearest hope is to send his children away from Nigeria because he loves them. “The depth of melancholy I felt on returning with them from the US and arriving at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos; the sheer contrast drives me to tears.

As I speak with you, I have no light.” And he lives in one of those faculty housing on campus. This crisis is existential, and we have told this story ad nauseam – the fact that as Nigerians would say, “nothing is working in Nigeria.”

The question is, and has always been, why is nothing working in Nigeria? President Muhammadu Buhari and his school of thought tend to think it is because of “kwaruption.”

Just in case you are not yet cued in, “kwaruption” is the corruption of the word “corruption.” Just imagine, if somebody were to accuse the resident of corruption based on his corruption of the basic morphology of the sounds of the English language.

In any case, I tend to have a different view: corruption is not Nigeria’s greatest problem. It is the fundamental loss or even absence of the imagination.

A nation without visionary capacity is bound to falter. Take for instance, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Minister of Science and Technology. First class in Chemical Engineering and Distinction in his doctoral work at the University of California, though not the one in Berkley, but in California, and we can live with that.

He has all the right credentials, yet, the minister’s first announcement on resumption is that Nigeria will start producing pencils.

Dear readers, I thought we were all living in the 21st century, where Materials Science has taken us so far beyond lead pencils.

Just last week, the minister also said laid out one of his priorities: he would soon establish science museums in the six regional zones of Nigeria. Why not first activate the Research and Production (RAP) strategies or models of the now defunct Biafra Directorate of Research which led to significant war productions, in the six regional zones of Nigeria? Why not create Research Parks? Why not activate interdisciplinary collaboration between the production arm of the Ministry of S & T with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, etc. I think Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu has lost it. But we watch.

The problem is that Nigerian public leadership does not listen. Those who occupy public office feel themselves immune from the consequences of not listening to the Nigerian public. The feelings and dreams of Nigerians are at odds with the agenda and interest of its public leadership. The president knows it all, and he is not ready caution troops and the police shooting unarmed protesters whose greatest crime is that they are seeking self-determination by peaceful means. He is what the Igbo call, “Eze Onye agwa nam.” That is why the president of Nigeria is now in the process of leading Nigeria to a double-headed insurgency in the South of Nigeria.

Last week’s murder of unarmed members of MASSOB and the IPOB continues a strategy intimidation that will not work, either in the creeks of the Niger Delta or in the streets of Aba.

Voices of reason have appealed to President Buhari to revise his policy of militarization, and stem the possibility of an armed struggle, which no one will win. As a matter of fact, the IPOB/MASSOB have issued a warning that they might be forced to arm and defend themselves against the Federal government’s use of deadly force.

It will be a dangerous situation, and it is in the offing; and the great nightmare which the president’s security analysts and advisers have yet to make clear to him is the possibility of spreading to Lagos, and shutting down the South completely as the Niger Delta militia and the Biafrans establish increasing collaboration with greater strategic objective.

This is the time for the president to stop playing the adversarial president and become the statesman. At the moment the president acts like a school yard bully. He must begin strategic engagement with these agitators, even if to reassure them. Last week’s meeting between the president and a group of his party folk, who claimed to represent the Igbo is a joke. The president met with folk who cannot win elections in their own compounds, and have no mandate from that region. The leaders of the Igbo are, at this very moment, their elected delegation to the National Assembly. Only they can speak, and be used to reach the Igbo, including members of the IPOB/MASSOB, on national issues.

The president’s choice of hosting a mutual admiration party does indicate a profound disconnection with the reality. That the president has never made a real move to reach out and explore means of stepping down the Biafran agitation through negotiations speaks of his capacities, or lack thereof, in understanding the complexity of the situation. That he has never met members of the National Assembly representing the South East on this matter, choosing rather to meet members of his party who do not speak, or act, or have any mandate to represent the South-East, indicates the president’s profound confusion about the East.

I should also say here, and now that the president cannot be accused of not liking the Igbo. That would be a total lie: as he himself has said, he is great friends with Azikiwe’s children; he was an ally of General Ojukwu, and his first two running mates – Chuba Okadigbo and Edwin Ume-Ezoke were respected Igbo. Mike Ahamba stuck with him as his lawyer through thick and thin and disagreed with him only on matters of principle.

The problem is that, in making his first political moves, President Buhari failed to leverage his political capital in the East, and continues to rely, not on diplomacy, but the adversarial use of force to quell legitimate discontent. The president sowed the discontent.

'The Greatest Love Of All' Among Songs Inspired By Ali

Muhammad Ali, or Cassius Clay at the time, strikes a familiar pose as he shouts "I am the greatest," as he leaves the ring, arms raised, following his defeat of former heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston, in Miami Beach, Fla.



NEW YORK (AP) — Before he was even heavyweight champion or had changed his name from Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali was a force in the music world. He had befriended Sam Cooke and released an album featuring his comic poetry and a cover of the hit "Stand By Me." But starting in the mid-1960s, Ali himself would inspire songs of all kinds, from all over the world. Here are some notable releases about Ali:

"The Greatest Love of All" Written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed for a movie few remember, the 1977 Ali biopic "The Greatest," this soaring, self-affirming ballad would conquer the world, first as a hit for George Benson, then as a standard performed by Whitney Houston.

"'Cassius Love' vs. 'Sonny' Wilson" A 1964 comedy track by the Beach Boys that spoofed the Ali-Sonny Liston rivalry. Snippets of the band's hit songs were interspersed with insults exchanged between lead singers Mike Love and Brian Wilson, cousins who would feud for real in subsequent years. "Listen Mike, with a voice like yours, when you open your mouth it's a big putdown," Wilson cracks. Answers Love: "At least when I'm singing, it doesn't sound like Mickey Mouse with a sore throat."

"The Louisville Lip (He's the Greatest)" Memphis singer-songwriter Eddie Curtis used a funky blues track to tell Ali's story, with digs at Floyd Patterson, Liston and other Ali foes. The song came out in 1971, soon before Ali lost to Joe Frazier in 15 rounds at Madison Square Garden, quickly dating some of the lyrics: "He's the greatest, he's the greatest," Curtis chants, "don't you know it, Joe Frazier."

"Black Superman (Muhammad Ali)" A mid-tempo reggae ballad by British artist Johnny Wakelin, released in early 1975 as a tribute to Ali's recent victory over George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire. Wakelin sings some of Ali's own rhymes and adds original lines such as "He moves like the black superman/and calls to the other guy/I'm Ali/catch me if you can."

"8ieme Round" Another homage to Ali's knockout of Foreman, a catchy work of African pop music by Zaire's Trio Madjesi and Orchestre Sosoliso.