A Muslim wants to know, and so should we

Muslim writer Dr Rakib Ehsan:

Following the mosque massacres in Christchurch, political figures across the Western world did not hesitate in accurately describing what they were – white-supremacist terrorist attacks on Muslims in their places of worship during Friday prayers.

In the aftermath of Christchurch, Hillary Clinton expressed her solidarity with the global Muslim community – the Ummah – and said ‘we must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalisation of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms’. Former US president Barack Obama tweeted that himself and his wife Michelle were grieving with the people of New Zealand and the ‘Muslim community’. Our own prime minister, Theresa May, correctly labelled Christchurch as a ‘horrifying terrorist attack’.

Now, contrast this with the language used by the same three figures following the coordinated series of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. Affectionate expressions of solidarity with persecuted Christian communities have been missing. The Christians killed in their own churches have been referred to by Clinton and Obama as ‘Easter worshippers’. Despite the clearly sophisticated, well-planned nature of the terrorist attacks, which very much had the aim of killing a large number of Christians, the British PM – a vicar’s daughter – referred to them as ‘acts of violence’.

The differences in tone and nature between the condemnations of the Christchurch and Sri Lanka terrorist attacks are striking. After Christchurch, there was no hesitation about stating the religious backgrounds of the victims and directing emotion and affection towards Muslim communities. Politicians took no issue with categorising the events in Christchurch as terrorism.

In contrast, the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘Christianity’, along with their associated terms, have so far failed to feature in much of the reaction to the attacks in Sri Lanka. ...

The fact is that the persecution and victimisation of Christians continues to take place in many parts of the world, often at the hands of Islamists.

Would that we had such clarity from our own religious and political leaders.

Related: Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, writes in the Toronto Sun, "Why Islamic terrorists slaughtered Christians in Sri Lanka."

Almost no one dared to mention the word “Christian” let alone identify the terrorists as Muslim or Islamist or whatever safe word they could find in the politically correct dictionary that only the chattering classes employ. Using ordinary plain English to describe the atrocities would of course open one to be labelled “White Nationalist” or “Islamophobe.”

It’s no wonder the trio of America’s living liberal saints, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren all used the phrase, “Easter Worshippers,” instead of Christians. It was almost as if the C word was beneath them. ...

Here are the words of the suicide bomber Mohamed Zaharan from his YouTube channel where he declares: “It is a sin to live in Dar Al Kufr, (a country with a non-Muslim majority)” and “Even if a Kaffir (non-Muslim) does good things, I hate him, because he is a non-believer [in Islam].”

Such hate may not be a dominant trait among ordinary Muslims, but as one, I am aware where such hate is planted in our minds. Seventeen times a day, every Muslim child in every mosque, in every country, hears the Imam read a prayer where both Christians and Jews are referred with derision, yet no one dares to intervene.

Whereas Islam’s foundation is based on ‘Tawhid’ (invoked in the name of the Sri Lankan terrorist group), which means strict monotheism, its exact opposite is the concept of ‘Shirk’ (the Christian belief in the Trinity). No amount of inter-faith dialogue can bridge the zeal of the Muslim to answer the call to end ‘Shirk’ from the surface of earth.

Colombo is not the last city to be attacked. It’s just the latest in a long list that began with Constantinople.

This, too, by another Muslim writer: "When Christians Are Under Attack, Muslims and the Left Need to Defend Them."

To call these acts of violence heartless and barbaric would be an understatement. Nevertheless, they aren’t the first such Easter-related attacks on Christians. In Egypt, on Palm Sunday 2017, Islamic State suicide bombers murdered 45 people in two Coptic churches. In Pakistan, in 2016, a suicide bomber affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban targeted Christians celebrating Easter at a public park, killing 75 people. In Nigeria, on Easter Sunday 2012, a suicide bomber believed to be a member of Boko Haram targeted Christians outside a church, killing 38 people.

I am a Muslim, and I consider myself to be on the left, but I’m embarrassed to admit that in both Muslim and left circles, the issue of Christian persecution has been downplayed and even ignored for far too long.

Gendercide and the problem of millions of extra young men

Science Alert:

A deep-rooted preference for sons over daughters has skewed the world's sex ratios more than we thought.

A massive five-year analysis has found that since 1970, sex-selective abortions in a dozen countries have resulted in 23 million 'missing' girls.

These are women that were never born, and yet today, their absence is palpable, especially in eastern Europe and Asia. In China alone, the study found there were 11.9 million missing females, and India had 10.6 million.

Males are normally born at a rate of 105 males birth for every 100 female births. It evens out over the next 20 years or so because males die at a higher rate before maturity than females. But now females die in the womb at a much higher rate than males.

After years of a controversial single-child policy, China was unsurprisingly at the top. At one point in 2005, the authors found that the most populated country in the world actually had a male birth ratio of 118.

So what do you do with tens of millions of young, virile and frankly horny young men who have zero chance of getting married because there are zero women available to marry them? Maybe more importantly, what do those men do? The question practically answers itself.

Today, in China and India, men outnumber women by 70 million, and it's causing an epidemic of loneliness, a distortion of labour markets, and an increase in female trafficking and prostitution.

Not only that, but those nations will lose one of the natural restraints of going to war that inhibited prior generations, though of course not always successfully: the fear of massive casualties. China could invade Taiwan and if it lost three million men conquering the country, so what? It still has 30 or 40 million more that can die invading somewhere else.

More insight is provided by the US National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health in, "Abnormal sex ratios in human populations: Causes and consequences."

In parts of China and India, there will be a 12–15% excess of young men. These men will remain single and will be unable to have families, in societies where marriage is regarded as virtually universal and social status and acceptance depend, in large part, on being married and creating a new family (45).

An additional problem is that many of these men are rural peasants of low socioeconomic class and with limited education (46). When there is a shortage of women in the marriage market, the women can “marry up,” inevitably leaving the least desirable men with no marriage prospects (47). For example, in China 94% of all unmarried people age 28–49 are male and 97% of them have not completed high school (48). So, in many communities today there are growing numbers of young men in the lower echelons of society who are marginalized because of lack of family prospects and who have little outlet for sexual energy. A number of commentators predict that this situation will lead to increased levels of antisocial behavior and violence and will ultimately present a threat to the stability and security of society (31, 45–49).

There is some empirical evidence to fear such a scenario. Gender is a well-established individual-level correlate of crime, and especially violent crime (50). It is a consistent finding across cultures that an overwhelming percentage of violent crime is perpetrated by young, unmarried, low-status males (50–52). In India, a study carried out between 1980 and 1982 showed a strong correlation between homicide rates in individual states across the country and the sex ratio in those states, after controlling for potential confounders such as urbanization and poverty (53). The authors concluded that there was a clear link between sex ratio and violence as a whole, not just violence against women as might be assumed when there is a shortage of females. These analyses were repeated by Hudson and Den Boer (46), who showed that the relationship between sex ratio and murder rates at the level of the Indian state persisted through the late 1990s. In China, young male migrant workers are thought to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of urban crime, especially violent crime. It is reported that migrants account for 50% of all criminal cases in the major receiving cities for migrants, with some cities reporting up to 80% (54).

There is also evidence that, when single young men congregate, the potential for more organized aggression is likely to increase substantially (45, 53). Hudson and Den Boer, in their provocative writings on this subject (45, 46), go further, predicting that these men are likely to be attracted to military or military-type organizations, with the potential to be a trigger for large-scale domestic and international violence. With 40% of the world's population living in China and India, the authors argue that the sex imbalance could impact regional and global security, especially because the surrounding countries of Pakistan, Taiwan, Nepal, and Bangladesh also have high sex ratios.

It will get worse until 2050, when the number of "missing girls" will peak at present trend lines.

What about the United States? Wikipedia:

While the majority of parents in United States do not practice sex-selective abortion, there is certainly a trend toward male preference. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, if they were only allowed to have one child, 40% of respondents said they would prefer a boy, while only 28% preferred a girl.[107] When told about prenatal sex selection techniques such as sperm sorting and in vitro fertilization embryo selection, 40% of Americans surveyed thought that picking embryos by sex was an acceptable manifestation of reproductive rights.[108] These selecting techniques are available at about half of American fertility clinics, as of 2006.[109]

But I guess that's okay because abortion on demand is a woman's sacred right. Kidnapping young girls and women into sex-trafficking rings for unmarriageable men? That's a crime. That it occurs at increased numbers because of abortion does not matter because abortion? That's medical care.

Quote of the day

People like to feel good about themselves, which is to say that they like to read things about the stupidity and wickedness of people they dislike. They don't like to hear about their own shortcomings.

David P. Goldman, in the comments section of his own article, The Triumph of Inequality.

The great divide is not between black and white, or male and female. We are turning into two races: Eloi who play video games and Morlocks who program them. The July 3 New York Times reported, "By 2015, American men 31 to 55 were working about 163 fewer hours a year than that same age group did in 2000. Men 21 to 30 were working 203 fewer hours a year...video games have been responsible for reducing the amount of work that young men do by 15 to 30 hours over the course of a year. Between 2004 and 2015, young men’s leisure time grew by 2.3 hours a week. A majority of that increase — 60 percent — was spent playing video games."

Read the whole thing.

"EMP Commission Chair Warns on North Korean EMP"

I posted in April of the implications of a massive electricity outage in San Francisco, suing it as a springboard to discuss the stunning seriousness of how massively lethal a deliberate, coordinated attack on the nation's power grids could be.

And that included a low-orbit detonation of an atomic weapon designed to emit increased, intense electromagnetic radiation, known as Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP.

 In one instant, power grids across most of the country could be rendered useless. Some estimates of deaths caused, not by the atomic blast but by the years-long effects of sudden reversion to a 18th-century way of life, are in the many millions.

Comes now John R. Moore, much more conversant on this topic than I, pointing put that the United States' EMP Commission Chair Warns on North Korean EMP. There is, 

... a new piece on the topic -- “North Korea Nuclear EMP Attack: An Existential Threat.” The author is the former head of the congressional EMP Commission and is a foremost expert on EMP. This article adds to the PJ Media report by confirming that the yield of nuclear weapons already tested by North Korea is sufficient to be devastating. It refutes the prior article:

Thus, even if North Korea only has primitive, low-yield nuclear weapons, and if other states or terrorists acquire one or a few such weapons as well as the capability to detonate them at an altitude of 30 kilometers or higher over the United States. … the EMP Commission warned over a decade ago in its 2004 Report, “the damage level could be sufficient to be catastrophic to the Nation, and our current vulnerability invites attack."

Read the whole thing. As John concludes, "[T]he threat is real. It could happen at any time. We are not ready."

"The Moral Obscenity of Kim's North Korea"

The Moral Obscenity of Kim's North Korea

The entire country is a maximum-security death row. Three successive generations of Kims have murdered millions of their subjects. Read the whole thing.

Massive SanFran power outage might be ....

See updates

Massive power outage hits San Francisco, shuts down businesses, BART station, traffic lights

A massive power outage in San Francisco on Friday morning caused a blackout in neighborhoods across the city, from the Financial District to the Presidio, forcing the closure of businesses, a federal courthouse and a BART station, officials said.

A spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said at least 90,000 customers lost power.

PG&E also said that it had not identified the cause of the outage.

But it might be a good time to remind ourselves that America's power grid is so vulnerable to sabotage and attack that even Scientific American says that it keeps the Pentagon up at night.

A report last year [2015-DS] prepared for the President and Congress emphasized the vulnerability of the grid to a long-term power outage, saying “For those who would seek to do our Nation significant physical, economic, and psychological harm, the electrical grid is an obvious target.” 

The damage to modern society from an extended power outage can be dramatic, as millions of people found in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The Department of Energy earlier this year said cybersecurity was one of the top challenges facing the power grid, which is exacerbated by the interdependence between the grid and water, telecommunications, transportation, and emergency response systems.

And The Hill reported a year ago that a power grid attack is a nightmare scenario.

The threat of an attack on the nation’s power grid is all too real for the network security professionals who labor every day to keep the country safe.

“In order to restore civilized society, the power has got to be back on,” said Scott Aaronson, who oversees the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC), an industry-government emergency response program.

While cybersecurity experts and industry executives describe such warnings as alarmist, intelligence officials say people underestimate how destructive a power outage can be.

The most damaging kind of attack, specialists say, would be carefully coordinated to strike multiple power stations.

If hackers were to knock out 100 strategically chosen generators in the Northeast, for example, the damaged power grid would quickly overload, causing a cascade of secondary outages across multiple states. While some areas could recover quickly, others might be without power for weeks.

But the greatest threat is from the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) emanating from a near-space atomic detonation. In one instant, power grids across most of the country could be rendered useless. Some estimates of deaths caused, not by the atomic blast but by the years-long effects of sudden reversion to a 18th-century way of life, are in the many millions.

Just last month former CIA Director James Woolsey wrote that,

... former senior national security officials of the Reagan and Clinton administrations warned that North Korea should be regarded as capable of delivering by satellite a small nuclear warhead, specially designed to make a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States. According to the Congressional EMP Commission, a single warhead delivered by North Korean satellite could blackout the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for over a year—killing 9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse.

Two North Korean satellites, the KMS-3 and KMS-4, presently orbit over the U.S. on trajectories consistent with surprise EMP attack.

Ninety-percent of Americans dead? I would not go that far, but more than 10 million, certainly. Probably multiples of that.

So why does North Korea have two satellites in polar orbits, each traversing over the United States several times per day?

Having been a nuclear target analyst in my military career, I find this simply horrifying.

Update: There are many more threats to the country's grid than just EMP or conventional sabotage. "In 1989, for example, 6 million residents of Quebec lost power for nine hours following a geomagnetic disturbance from a solar storm."

What about truly massive solar storms? These are usually called Coronal Mass Ejections and if large enough the ejected solar mass, not just radiation, can penetrate the earth's atmosphere. A "significant flare" occurred less than three years ago.

Much larger CMEs than this have reached earth very recently.

Solar storms would primarily affect the power grid, and are not likely to harm things like computers.  Also, solar storms would only disrupt communications temporarily, and would not be likely to cause direct harm to communications equipment (except for satellites).   An extremely large solar storm, though, would induce geomagnetic currents that could destroy a substantial fraction of the very largest transformers on the power grid (possibly over much of the world).  If this happened, electric power loss due to a large solar storm would be out for a period of years and possibly decades.  Unlike nuclear EMP, such a solar storm is an eventual inevitability.

The last solar storm that could have caused this level of damage happened in 1859, before the power grid was in place (although in 1921 a large solar storm, of briefer duration than the 1859 event, occurred which affected a much smaller area of the planet). The power grid has only been in place for a fraction of one percent of human history, and a really large solar storm (of the size and duration of the 1859 event) has not happened in that time.  There is a general assumption that any solar event that is similar to, or larger than, the 1859 solar superstorm will simply never happen again, although there is no justification for such an assumption -- in fact, we know that this assumption is false. There is a good possibility that such a large-scale solar storm will happen in this century. If it happens in the current situation without adequate spares for our largest transformers, a large part of the worldwide power grid (including 70 to 100 percent of the United States power grid) will be down for years.

Those transformers are custom manufactured for each site. They are not pieces that simply roll off an assembly line. But reverting to an 18th century lifestyle isn't the half of it. We'd also revert to an 18th-century economy. Absent the US national grid alone, to say nothing of Europe's grid and western Asia's, the worldwide economy would simply collapse. Very hard and very fast.

The net worth of the typical American would simply vanish because money today is almost purely electronic. SFGate reports of an ice cream store whose owner kept the store opened despite having no power - may as well sell as much ice cream as possible before it melted, right? But "sales were few and far between."

“No one pays cash anymore,” he said, spoon in hand as a siren wailed outside. “I’m angry. I’m annoyed."

Charge and debit cards are not money, they are promissory notes, basically IOUs. In an EMP or CME, you might have had $50,000 just sitting in your savings account, but not any more. The ledgers would still show it but they are mostly electronic, too. And banks don't keep much cash on hand, anyway. Same for international commerce and currencies. They'd be shut down.

Life would become nasty, brutish, and short very quickly. Civil violence would reach unimaginable proportions as commodities (like food and drugs) become immediately scarce. It would be a zombie apocalypse, minus the zombies.

How North Korea cured obesity

Well of course they did: Olympian Declares That North Korea Is One of the Few Countries That Has Tackled Obesity

James Cracknell is a British athlete and two-time gold medal Olympian. But now he has his sights set on politics. His pet issue? Tackling obesity.

Yes, you heard that right. Cracknell told Sky News this morning that he believes Cuba and North Korea are shining examples of countries that have tackled the obesity problem.

“If you think of the two countries in the world who’ve got a handle on obesity, what do you think they are, which two countries?” Cracknell asked a Sky News presenter.

“I’m stumped there, I don’t know,” the presenter said.

“North Korea and Cuba,” Cracknell said proudly.

The presenters all take a moment to wait for the punchline or something and then kind of politely agree before realizing that he’s serious. Cracknell insists that these dictatorial regimes influence “behavioral change.”

“Yeah, but people are starving in North Korea, aren’t they. They’re not obese because they haven’t got any food,” another presenter chimes in, trying to inject some sanity into the conversation.

"Behavioral change?" You know, like this: How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea.

When North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il died of a coronary this weekend [in 2011- DS] after 17 years in power, the homuncular tyrant left his country much as he found it -- poor and desperately hungry.

For the last two decades, North Korea has grappled with food crisis upon food crisis, the result of a dysfunctional government and its erratic leader. In 1994, the year Kim inherited North Korea's reins from his late father, the country was in the midst of a severe agricultural decline. The newly minted despot transformed it into a famine that would claim as many as three million lives. Food shortages have plagued the country ever since.

It begs the question: How did one man starve a nation of roughly 23 million people? The answer: By clinging to a broken economic system designed to do little but ensure his own survival.

Old news, one might say? Here is the LA Times from just March of last year:  North Korea tells its people a new famine may come, they again may need to 'eat the roots of grass'

This week, an official mouthpiece of the North Korean state made what appears to be the country’s first acknowledgment that it is preparing for worsening economic conditions.

“We may have to go on an arduous march, a time when we will again have to eat the roots of grass,” said an editorial in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. ...

For decades, North Koreans have lived in poor conditions while their government has poured huge sums into weapons development, and the state has used the language of collective sacrifice when selling tough times to the populace.

Here are some examples of North Koreans who have undergone behavior change to cure their obesity (link); the photos were taken by a British photographer who broke so many rules that he has been banned for life from re-entering the country.

Only the nation's elites are allowed to live in the capital of Pyongyang. There are two supermarkets in the city, open only to the politically favored and westerners.

But Olympian Cracknell is right. The North Korean people have certainly been "behavior changed" out of obesity. And out of cancer, heart disease, the infirmities of old age. And liberty, freedom of conscience and of religion, and of hope for their future. Because when you're dead, your behavior has been changed pretty effectively.

Related:

Communism didn't fail the people, the people failed it

More photos from North Korea

Communism didn't fail the people, the people failed it

So MIT Press publishes a "Communism for Kids" book,

... written by a German author who specializes in political theory and "queer politics," was released last month. The thesis of the children's book is that communism is "not that hard," but has not been implemented in the right way.

Ah, yes, the oldest apologetic for communism there is: Communism has not been found difficult and lacking, it just has never been tried correctly.

When someone posted a question on Quora, "Why is communism a failed ideology?" it garnered a number of responses, including one that laboriously explained,

Communism is not a failed ideology, people failed to live up to communism. 

However, the writer did go on to call the whole communist ideology "quixotic" and unrealistic. Although he did not say so, communism is in fact a religion based on the ideology of the perfectibility of human beings through controlled economies. As I quoted a conversation between two Soviet army officers in "Why planned economies cannot succeed,"

"And who, in your view, will carry the sewage under communism?"

The question [wrote Suvorov] was so simple and it was put in such a mocking tone, it was like being pole-axed. . . . Before, everything had been absolutely clear: everyone works as he wants and as much as he wants, according to his ability, and he receives whatever he wants and as much as he wants, i.e., according to his needs. . . .

You want to be a teacher? Right then, every kind of work is honored in our society. You want to be a wheat farmer? What work can be more honourable than to provide the people with bread? You want to be a diplomat - the way is open!

But who will be busy in the sewers? Is it possible that there will be anybody who will say, ‘Yes, this is my vocation, this is my place, I am not fit for anything better?’ 

Finally, Suvorov hit upon the answer: "Everyone will clean up after himself!" The other man responded, "Take Kiev, for instance, and see how much of its one and a half million inhabitants arranges his own sewerage system, in his free time, and cleans it and maintains it in good order." He continued,

"Who, under communism, will bury the corpses? Will it be self-service or will amateurs carry out the work in their spare time? There is plenty of dirty work in a society and not everyone is a general or a diplomat. Who will carve up the pig carcasses? And who will sweep the streets and cart off the rubbish? . . . Will there be any waiters under communism? . . .

"And finally, for someone who at present has not the slightest idea about how to set about sewage-cleaning, like Comrade Yakubovskiy himself for instance, has he any personal interest at all in the arrival of that day, when he will have to clean up his own crap all by himself? . . .

"What, exactly, does an ordinary, run-of-the-mill Secretary of the District Party Committee stand to gain from this communism? Eh? Plenty of caviar? But he’s got so much caviar already that he can even eat it through his [rear end] if he wishes. A car? But he has two personal Volga cars and a private one as well. Medical care? Food, women, a country house? But he already has all these things. So our dear Secretary of the most Godforsaken District Party Committee stands to gain bugger-all from communism!  

"And what will he lose? He will lose everything . . . . He will lose his country house, his personal physicians, his hirelings and his guards. [So for party officials] communism has long since ceased to be of any interest to them at all." 

And that is precisely why planned economies -- meaning communism and its precursor, socialism -- cannot work: when the people of the society are serfs to be told what to do (and they have to be, otherwise the economy cannot be "planned") the directors always keep hold of their power. There is no reason to give it up.

In Marxism-Leninism, the directors were called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." The term was Marx's, but the implementation was Lenin's. Not long after Marx's death there arose debates among his disciples on what to do about elections once the worker had driven the bourgeoisie from power. Marx had insisted that bourgeoisie elections were completely rigged so that no matter who "won," the economics and power structure of the country would not change. Elections were a sham designed to do one thing only: deceive the proles that they actually had a real say in the governance of the country.

What to do about this? On the one hand, one Marxist faction believed that once the workers had cast off their chains and appropriated the means of production (the generators of the economy), then the proletariat would be able to vote truly and well because the capitalist bourgeoisie would not be allowed or able to blinker them and spoil the natural purity of their proletariat hearts. Hence, right away elections could continue to be held and this time, dadgummit, they actually would mean something.

The competing view, held by the Russian Bolsheviks, was that they were the "vanguard of the revolution" and that therefore Marx's instruction of the necessity of a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat -- meaning by Lenin and his gang, not the general proletariat - was the key to bringing forth True Communism.

In Marxism-Leninism, true communism was a state in which material production was so great that all human needs were met without shortage. Greed would therefore disappear and the inherent but capitalist-suppressed natural nobility of men and women would emerge. They would be transformed into true communists -- altruists who worked each day for the good of the people, not for crass, selfish profit.

The vanguard revolutionaries understood that to leap from workers in chains, unaware of how deluded and ignorant they really were, and in political infancy, to the status of the True Communist Man was stupidly unrealistic. So their own dictatorship was a deplorable but critically-important step to bring the long-oppressed and unenlightened proles to political maturity and understanding. Truly fair, honest and meaningful elections certainly would be held - eventually. Just not yet. But trust us, it's right around the corner, any day now. Forever.

So Soviet elections -- and those of every other socialist country ever -- were wholly fake and were supposed to be wholly fake. The education and political training of the general proletariat was not quite complete and if they had a real say in matters, they would only enchain themselves once again. So for the proles' own good the vanguard of the revolution (maybe in its fourth generation by now!) must also be the conservators of the revolution.

The people did not fail communism. Communists failed communism. But then, communism was never about the welfare of the people, but the personal enrichment and aggrandizement of the communists.

This is your hospital on communism:

This is your daily commute on communism.

Or maybe this.

This is your first-class apartment home on communism:

These are typical apartment exteriors in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. Only
the well-connected are allowed to live in the capital. These are the apartments
of the country's elites.

However:

This is your politicians' commute on communism:

Kim Jong Un rides in his personal Mercedes limousine.

This is your politicians' homes on communism:

Former retreat villa of Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist
party of the USSR, 1964-1982. Now part of a hotel complex, it is located in Lithuania. 

Any questions?

The worst North Korean nuclear threat isn't ICBMs

As bad as North Korea's ongoing ballistic-missile program is, the Kim regime has a weapons-delivery system that is far more ominous to the United States.

That this sub is a rust bucket doesn't mean it's not dangerous.

The Express reports,

While North Korea is still struggling to develop nuclear-headed airborne missiles, it is fast increasing its underwater military power. 

The country possess numerous submarines, which it has used with devastating effect in the past, with fears they are now being adapted to fire nuclear weapons. 

Even more worrying is the submarines’ ability to 'disappear' and avoid detection. In 2015 around 50 went missing, setting alarm bells ringing in Seoul and Tokyo.

Presently, the DPRK's sub threat cannot reach the United States, but it has for years used subs to ferry Northern special-ops teams to South Korea to mount raids and demolition. Seven years ago a DPRK sub torpedoed and sank a ROK naval vessel, killing 46 South Korean sailors.

Missiles from subs are called Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles, SLBMs, and long range missiles would not be required to strike South Korea or Japan severely if atomic warheads were ever fitted. CNBC reports,

The chilling thought of North Korea's fully submersible submarines firing a nuclear ballistic missile isn't as far-fetched as some might think. Pyongyang has made major advances in weapons in recent years and shown a willingness to use its submarines for offensive military actions.

North Korea has about 70 submarines in its fleet, but most of them are small, including 10 "midget" subs. There are believed to be only 20 "Romeo" class subs, a 1950s Soviet design but one that could still pose a serious threat to nearby countries even though they are very old and not stealthy. But, like Japan's kamikazes of World War 2, only one needs to get through to cause serious destruction.

Perhaps a more likely threat from subs are cruise missiles, simpler vehicles than SLBMs but more than capable of wreaking enormous devastation. North Korea is thought to have an active (but still mostly unrevealed) cruise missile program based on the fleeting appearance of a Russian model in a propaganda film.

The missile is believed to be similar to the Russian KH-35 missile, which came into service in 2003. 

Cruise missiles are weapons guided by on-board computers, used to attack specific targets. The majority of the North's known missiles are much larger missiles.

The North is under UN sanctions over its weapons and nuclear programmes.

Pyongyang has carried out three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, and is thought to have enough nuclear material for a small number of bombs.

However, analysts say the North does not appear to have successfully manufactured a nuclear warhead small enough to be carried by its missiles.

Nor is it known whether the North's Romeo subs have been fitted to carry KH-35s.

Just a few days ago unusual US anti-submarine activity off California's coast led people to wonder whether a hostile submarine was lurking off the coast of California (see update below).

The idling presence of anti-submarine military crafts hovering off the United States' West Coast has prompted concerns of a possible threat to national security.

Concerns have circulated that a foreign submarine from North Korea or Russia could be the reason for the unusual military activity off the coast of California.

Three low-lying military aircraft were reportedly seen in the area using flight-tracking software, despite it not being a normal area of surveillance.

Among aircraft seen were the Navy EP-3E Aries II, which is used for electronic surveillance, a Navy P-3C Orion, used for submarine spotting, and a Boeing P-8 Poseidon used for anti-submarine warfare, InfoWars reported.

The military vessels were allegedly seen spanning the coastal waters from Los Angeles to the San Diego/Tijuana border near Mexico.

The website stated that a Royal Canadian CP-140 Orion, which is also known for its capability to spot submarines, entered the area at one point.

The Pentagon has not confirmed these activities, but civilian-radar mapping of the aircraft seems to support the reports.

The land-based missile threat is growing, too. Here is the BBC's map of the North's capabilities.

Potential sub-launched weapons extend the threat all the way to American shores, and with warnings of attack of only minutes if the sub is just outside American waters.

Update: And this isn't good, either: "North Korea may be able to arm missiles with sarin, Japan PM says."

Update, April 18: According to news reports, the NK missile that failed on launch April 16 was an SLBM. Some sources say that US defense agencies actually caused the failure by hacking the control software, which would be nice if true.

Second, I received this email from a reader I remember from back in the "old" days of blogging (you know, 12 years ago or so) who has a wealth of analysis on the apparent sub hunt off California that I linked to above from the Daily Mail's site. Here is what he said:

I'm a long ago P-3 crewman, so I followed this one with interest.

Several things strongly suggested it was an exercise:

• it is in an area where ASW exercises are often held

• the aircraft were being tracked by their ADSB transmissions. It is *very* unlikely that they would have ADSB on during real, as opposed to exercise, sorties. ADSB is used in aircraft today to allow the FAA to track them, and to allow them to track each other. In a real mission, the airspace would be cleared and under total control of the military, not the FAA. They certainly would not want civilians tracking, and reporting on those aircraft.

• there were three types of aircraft involved:

• P-3C - US Navy traditional ASW aircraft, now being phased out and replaced by the P-8 (737 airframe)

• Aurora (CP-140) - the Canadian version of the P-3 

• EP-3C - US Navy ELINT aircraft such as the VQ-1 squadron's aircraft that was forced down in China in 2001

It is unlikely that this mix would be out there - especially the Aurora - except for an exercise. And, I would expect P-8's to be involved in a real mission - they have superior systems. The EP-3C also would be an unlikely participant - the P-8 can probably do the ELINT for this sort of thing, and EP-3C's are a rare asset. They don't have much work to do near the west coast of the US, after all. I saw them at Atsugi Japan, close to the real targets in those days of Vietnam, China, North Korea and eastern USSR. A friend flew in them around Vietnam, but 50 years ago.

It is  unlikely that the Norks could send an ancient Soviet diesel sub that far.

The Facebook VP (Patrol) Navy forum discussed this issue, and they have people from before my P-3 time (1968) to very recently. All concluded that this was an exercise. I think the whole fuss was started by Alex Jones, not the most reliable source.

Of course, we could be wrong about the situation.

BTW, enjoyed your article on the motives for killing Jesus.

Regards,
John Moore 

(former blogger of Useful Fools back in the day)

 Very much appreciated, John, and thank you for your service to our country. And yes, had I known that the story originated off InfoWars, I probably would have passed it by.

150,000 Chinese troops sent to North Korean border

Troops of China's People's Liberation Army

South Korean media are reporting that an additional 150,000 Chinese soldiers have been sent to China's border with North Korea. Google translates the page thus:

As the United States announced its independent North Korean behavior and moved the United States Navy's nuclear-powered Calvinus (CVN-70) carrier class to Singapore, the Chinese army has deployed about 150,000 troops in two groups, "The report said. It is because of the prospect of taking "military options", such as preemptive attacks on North Korea, just as the United States has launched an air raid on Syria. ...

There is an observation that medical and back-up support units will be dispatched to "train for North Korean refugees," the newspaper added

What this means is that when President Trump sent 60 cruise missiles against Syria's Sharyat airfield, the Chinese very soon took seriously the possibility that an attack could be made against North Korea's atomic-weapons program unless Kim Jong Un, the North's dictator, backs down peacefully.

The additional troops are almost certainly to prevent floods of North Korean refugees from crossing into China if there is a military strike against the DPRK's nuclear program. China has long had to contend with thousands of refugees annually refugees from the DPRK. Many are killed or die making the attempt. China has a mixed record at best of turning over successful escapees to North Korea. Amnesty International reported in 2012,

Chinese authorities forcibly returns North Korean refugees back to North Korea where they face risk to their lives. By its actions, it intimidates North Korean refugees and those who are helping them in China. China refuses to give access to the UN refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Those individuals apprehended by Chinese border police and North Korean authorities in China are reportedly detained in China for several days and then forcibly returned to their country where they are at risk of punishment including arbitrary detention, forced labor, and in some cases, the death penalty for leaving the country without authorization.

Meanwhile,

China's top nuclear envoy arrived in Seoul Monday for talks on the North Korean threat, as the United States sent the naval strike group to the region and signalled it may act to shut down Pyongyang's weapons program.

Speculation of an imminent nuclear test is brewing as the North marks major anniversaries including the 105th birthday of its founding leader on Saturday - sometimes celebrated with a demonstration of military might.

Wu Dawei, China's Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Affairs, met with his South Korean counterpart on Monday to discuss the nuclear issue.

Voice of America reports that China and South Korea have come to an agreement: "South Korea, China Agree on Action to End North Korea Nuclear Threat."

WASHINGTON — South Korea and China say they have agreed they will take strong action against North Korea if Pyongyang conducts more nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests.

The top nuclear envoys from North Korea's neighbors, Kim Hong-kyun and Wu Dawei, discussed the latest developments Monday in Seoul.

South Korea is in a pickle. A nuclear-armed North is a much graver threat to the South than ever. But the South cannot try to match the North a-bomb for a-bomb because its leaders realize that nuclearizing the both countries raises the risk of confrontation even higher. Why? The initiation of such a program would only increase the chance that Kim Jong Un would be more motivated to strike sooner rather than later.

Nor is the South altogether comfortable with the idea of a pre-emptive strike against the North.
South Korea's Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said Monday the repercussions of a potential military response were worrying.

'Pre-emptive strikes may be aimed at resolving North Korea's nuclear problems, but for us, it is also related to defending the safety of the public,' he told reporters.

While a US unilateral strike on North Korea from a shorter range might be more effective, it would likely endanger many civilians in the South and risk triggering a broader military conflict, experts warn.

In a conventional war with the North, casualties would be enormous in the South. I explained many of the reasons why back in 2010, and the reasons have not changed - yet. If the North gets nukes, the potential for truly mass death will be very great.

Just War and Syria Strikes

Can we frighten this man into killing
people only conventionally?

This is a revisit of an essay I wrote in 2013 when President Obama was contemplating bombing Syria because of the Assad government's chemical-weapons attacks against militias opposing his regime.

As then, I am framing this in the context of Just War Theory (JWT henceforth), a theological inquiry in Christianity going back at least to Saint Augustine, 354-430. It's most robust treatment was by St. Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274, whose exposition was so thorough that it still forms the basis of modern theory. I have written over the years quite a bit about JWT in different contexts.

Today my main points are that going to war justly requires that at least these questions to be answered in the affirmative, below.

1. Is there just cause for the war?

2. Is the war authorized by proper authority?

3. Is it wise, as far as we can discern, to wage the war?

4. Is there a just objective to waging war?

First, though, there is the question whether the cruise-missile strikes against Sharyat airfield the evening of March 6 constituted "war," or were they military violence of a kind other than war. I think the answer is straightforward, for here the key point is not what President Trump wanted to do (frighten Assad) but the means he used to do it. And the means were exclusively military and violent.

Throughout history, to attack another country with military forces has been seen unambiguously as an act of war. Just imagine that the evening of Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese government messaged President Roosevelt that the air raid against Pearl Harbor should not be construed as as act of war, but only as a warning to the US not to inhibit Japan's imperial plans in the Far East. "We are prepared to do more," Japan might have said, if the United States did not comply. What do you think Roosevelt's response would have been?

And that leads to a second key point: Though President Trump initiated the violence, he does not get to call it war or not-war. Bashar Assad does. To expect that Assad sees the strikes as anything other than war is fantasy thinking.

This doesn't mean that Assad won't be cowed away from using chemical weapons again. My point is that no matter how the strikes are spun by the administration or others, they opened an actual war against Syria. The war may be brief, it may not. Syria might respond, it might not. But war it is. And we must remember that it takes both sides to end a war. The United States unilaterally began it, but we cannot unilaterally end it. This war will not be ended until Assad either says so or is removed from power. And even then his successor may choose to continue it.

Is there just cause for war?

Just Cause of war is the fundamental question, of course. I remember reading a (probably apocryphal) story of a South Seas island native chieftain who after a large battle between the US Marines and the Japanese in World War 2 asked the American commander who was going to eat the vast quantities of flesh of the slain soldiers.

The Marine general explained that neither the Japanese nor Americans killed people for food.

"What barbarians you are!" the chief replied, "To kill for no good reason!"

Historically, Western thought on war has held that war cannot be separated from larger concerns of nations, and in fact is one part of national relationships. "Politics is the womb in which war develops," said Prussian officer and theorist Carl von Clausewitz. More famous is his observation that, "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means."

JWT has generally held that the political just cause for war is pretty narrowly expressed: either to defend one's own nation from actual or imminent attack, or to protect innocent third parties from lethal aggression or oppression. Some years after the American Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman put it simply: "The only just aim of war is a more just peace," which is a political goal. Absent a political orientation, warfare becomes just what the South Seas chieftain said, an exercise in pointless killing.

Not all JWT theorists agree that a nation may strike pre-emptively even in the case of clearly imminent attack, but since no one in the Trump administration claims that Syria poses any kind of military threat to the US, I'll not address the self-defense tenet here, especially since in his remarks following the missile strike, President Trump never invoked it at all. (In fact, when President Obama was contemplating similar strikes in 2013, he said specifically that the United States did not face an imminent threat.)

Absent self defense, then, the question then becomes one of protection of the innocent. Is that the case here?  Undeniably, victims of March 4's sarin attack against Idlib Province, held by opponents of the Assad regime, were innocent. After all, of the 85-plus people who died and scores more injured, many were children. So it would seem that a prima facie case can be made that the cruise-missile attacks against Sharyat airfield were justified on the basis.

However, the question is then begged whether chemical weapons are so unique that American warmaking on their users is justifiable for that reason alone. The Syrian civil war has already taken the lives of 400,000 people, perhaps as many as 500,000, of whom many thousands were children and countless thousands more were adult non-combatants. Neither President Obama nor President Trump ever invoked the prospect of military strikes against Syrian government forces for that reason.

So what, exactly, makes Tuesday's chemical attack so uniquely objectionable? It cannot be the number of victims, which in war's sanguinary calculus was rather small compared to other attacks by Syrian forces on civilian targets. Nor can it truly be that children were killed, even though President Trump did cite that specifically. Children have been killed all along.

It would seem, then, this administration like the prior one, maintains that the use of chemical weapons by itself was the reason for the cruise missiles to be launched. Is that a just cause of war against Syria?

If the answer is no, then war making against Syria cannot justly be done on that basis alone.

If the answer is yes, as the administration clearly claims it is, we move to closely-related inquiry of JWT - the war we wage must be justly conducted to achieve a just objective, which Trump says is the cessation of chemical weapons.

Here is the sticking point as I see it. By focusing exclusively on chemical casualties, Trump has written off a half-million or so violently killed by other means. Trump spoke not a syllable indicating he would take active steps to end that slaughter. But Trump did call for a political settlement -- as did Obama, as have many other states, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

But this simply means that at best the war will continue with conventional violence only, and unnumbered thousands more will die -- unless truly decisive military steps are taken to remove Assad from power and enforce a ceasefire. Absolutely no nation is contemplating that -- which makes the claim that the deaths of this week's 85 persons are uniquely offensive simply hollow and morally unsustainable.

Let's look at the the JWT tenet of proportionality. The doctrine of proportionality is simply stated that the means of conducting the war must be proportionate to the goal for which the war is waged. Another way of looking at it is that while the just ends desired do not justify any means to attain them, they absolutely justify some means. The tenet of proportionality, then, is to assess what the justified means are, then employ those means and not the unjustified ones.

Which leads directly to the question: what exactly is the goal here? The president, secretary of state and others, in multiple remarks and interviews, have announced four key things:

A. There is no intention of effecting regime change in Syria by military means.

B. The strikes are to punish Assad's regime for using chemical weapons.

C. The strikes are intended to deter Assad from using such weapons in the future.

D. It is more urgent than ever that a political solution to the conflict be obtained.

Are these just objectives of war? If so, it is apparently just to "punish" Assad for using chemical weapons, and to deter him from using them again, but not just to remove him from power. Why? (I will note that these are identical objectives to those of President Obama in 2013.)

In fact, is punishment itself a just aim of war? This tends to slide the war into a legal enforcement mode, which indeed the president has more or less confirmed in his denunciation of Assad's use of chemical weapons. But that only makes us confront a key question: why is it just to punish Assad but leave him in power - when it was his criminal exercise of power that is at the heart of the violation?

The question of means

"Without killing," wrote Clausewitz, "there is no war." Conducting war is a matter of intentional lethality. In the proposed war against Syria, then, this is the question of means: What constitutes a level of violence inflicted upon the Assad regime that is effective deterrence against using WMDs by the regime again or, in future years, deters other bad actors in the region?

The centering question of the doctrine of proportionality is deciding the violence necessary to achieve the war's objectives while not using excessive violence to do so. To employ too little violence is as disproportionate as to employ too much. It is unjust to wage war ineffectively even for a just cause.

Hence, planning for such strikes necessarily involved a massive amount of guess work on what level of lethality and destruction needed to be inflicted upon Syria to ensure the Assad regime never orders the use of chemical weapons again. But that is a heavily psychological calculation for which a high-confidence answer is practically impossible!

The reason is that we do not know the calculations Assad used to to order the chem-weapons attack in the first place. What was going through his mind when he gave the order? We don't know, although in 2013 the Obama administration said it had intercepted some messages that gave some clues. Even if the Trump administration has such messages, they are almost certainly originated mostly by subordinates and oriented toward action rather than rationale, and are many levels removed from what Assad was thinking, Since making him fearful of re-use is a stated goal of the president, our own calculations' margin of uncertainty is bound to be very vast.

As for deterring leaders of other nations, namely Iran and North Korea, assessing what example to make of Syria to deter them is like entering a dark room blindfolded, in the dead of night in a dense fog, to look for a black cat that may not even be there. Does anyone really expect that the Iranian or North Korean governments will abandon their goal of attaining nuclear capability just because the United States mounted a very limited missile strike against Syria, even if the president has promised would be repeated if he sees fit?

All of these things mean that the proportionality calculus has no answer. It is like a math question to solve the value of X in which both the variables and constants are also unknown. We do not know how much death and destruction to inflict upon Assad-Syria to persuade the regime to refrain from using a single class of weapons in the future, and have no realistic prospect that we even can know. And this is a problem cubed for deterrence of other national regimes.

So the question: Even stipulating that the use of chemical weapons is a just cause for the proposed war, can the war be justly waged when we have no way of assessing, within reasonable margins of error, what waging it will require to achieve its stated goals?

When I was assigned to the Pentagon during the planning for Operation Desert Storm, the first ground war against Iraq in 1991, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Carl Vuono emphasized that in our planning we needed to remember two simple concepts: "Hope is not a method and wishes are not plans." Good advice now, too. To which I add: launching missiles is not a strategy.

This is not a strategy. It may be a means to achieve a strategy. Or it may not. 

But is there a strategy?

ABC News Radio reported March 8 of the aftermath of a meeting between the Senate's leaders and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford on the previous day:

“We don’t have the benefit of a larger strategy, for the same reason that I think the previous administration had difficulty coming up with a strategy, because it’s very, very complicated,” Sen. John Cornyn, the second-highest ranking Republican in the Senate, said Friday after a meeting with the Chair of Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The Hill adds,

Senators left a closed-door briefing Friday saying the Trump administration did not lay out a comprehensive plan for Syria. 

Cornyn added that there were “discussions” about the legal authority being used in Syria and whether the administration’s main target is President Bashar Assad government's or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“We ... need a strategy to figure out what is our goals in Syria,” he said. “Is our goal just to defeat ISIS or is our goal to change the regime, and if there is policy to change the regime what comes next?”

There is presently no answer to that question.

My conclusion: The Trump administration has no strategic objectives evidenced by the missile strikes. "No chemical weapons" is not a strategic goal because it leaves untouched and undeterred almost all of Assad's total offensive capability and gives assent to the war's continuation, even escalation, by conventional means and offers no remotely significant protection of the innocent from lethal attack.

There is no just cause for this war if we use the terms and conditions that President Trump himself has set.

2. Is the war authorized by proper authority?

I covered this in my post, "Trump just went to war with Syria." The US Constitution clearly grants to Congress, and only to Congress, the authority to "declare war." However, the Constitution does not define just what constitutes a declaration. As then-Senator Joe Biden accurately explained in 2001, the Congress has declared war when the Congress thinks it has. Hence, he said, an Authorization for the Use of Military Force meets Constitutional muster as a declaration of war.

I happen to be a professor of Constitutional law. I'm the guy that drafted the Use of Force proposal that we passed. It was in conflict between the President and the House. I was the guy who finally drafted what we did pass. Under the Constitution, there is simply no distinction ... Louis Fisher(?) and others can tell you, there is no distinction between a formal declaration of war, and an authorization of use of force. There is none for Constitutional purposes. None whatsoever. 

Constitutional lawyers over the decades have held that varying kinds of enabling acts, such as monetary appropriations for military action, have also amounted to Constitutional satisfaction and, at least, consent of the Congress to action ordered by the president, in whom the Constitution grants authority to conduct warfare.

Neither of these conditions pertained to the missile strikes. The president did not even bring into consultation the senior leaders of either chamber of Congress before the strikes took place. As I pointed out in "The fierce urgency of bombing now!",

Even stipulating that bombing Assad's forces may be justified under humanitarian concerns, what the Guardian [newspaper] is conflating is the difference between moral justification of war and legal basis for it. They are not the same.

Under classic just war theory, both just cause and rightful authority are required. In Syria today there may be just cause for Western intervention, but so far there has been no rightful authority for it.  

... Since the dawn of the American republic, the Congress and the presidents have generally agreed that the president may order US forces into combat against another nation, solely on his own authority, if and only if there is:

1. Imminent danger of attack from the other power, so imminent that time taken for Congressional deliberations would hinder defense against it, or,

2. To protect actual threat against US citizens abroad, or to rescue them from actual danger.  

Neither of these were the case in Syria. Therefore, no matter the moral justification of them, the missile strikes failed the test of rightful authority. This is the president wielding military power not in a representative-democratic manner,  but in a monarchist manner.

There was and is no threat to the United States or to the Syrian people that is so immediately imminent that no time dare be spent in Congressional deliberation to authorize the strikes. If there is, the president should explain why, with 400,000-plus already dead, a few more days of deliberation is unwarranted.

My conclusion: The "proper authority" test was not met.

3. Is it wise, as far as we can discern, to wage the war?

With the failure of the first two criteria, it is hard to see how this war is being waged wisely so far. That the risk of confrontation with Russia has risen, perhaps sharply, seems incontrovertible. However, this question is really one of consequences as cannot be well answered except retrospectively.

My conclusions: Although I do not think the strikes were wise, based on their failure of proportionality (mainly meaning that Assad, not concrete and dirt, should have been the target), I'll keep an open mind. It may turn out to have been better than ill-advised. We will just have to wait and see.

4. Is there a just objective to waging war? 

Well, not yet. See all of the above. But to the point: the deaths and suffering inflicted by chemical weapons have been and are such a tiny part of the overall deaths and suffering inflicted that merely ending their use is not in itself a just objective of waging war against Assad's Syria.

Final thought

One thing the chemical and missile attacks have done is illustrate that the status quo - unending war that is effectively a proxy war between the Western powers one one side and Russia and Iran on the other - cannot be maintained for long. Eventually, Trump and his administration will be faced with doing something other than simply keeping their hand in. The United States will face the hard choice in Syria of going big or going home.

That is exactly is the reason that Congressional and public debate must be entered into sooner rather than later. Going to war against Assad-Syria may be the right thing to do (or maybe the least-bad option) but President Trump initiated it the wrong way politically, strategically, and tactically.

Related:

When Secretary of State John Kerry insisted in June 2013 that US warplanes should begin bombing Assad-regime targets right away, I wrote an extended essay on JWT and Syria, "No justification for Syria Intervention," in which I claimed that not only would such intervention fail the Just War test, it also failed the test of the rigidly secular concept of Realpolitik.

A key note from that day: "Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey made it clear that a few runs on target would do no good, that if the bombing was not be be merely symbolic, it would require a sustained, large effort of no short duration."

What has changed? Nothing. Except now there are Russian boots on the ground in Syria, which certainly does not simplify things.

Other essays here and here and here.

Update: "The Grim Logic Behind Syria’s Chemical Weapons Attack"