The Rohingya Arson Berserker Story

This is going on in the world:

If Myanmar’s notorious army is to be believed―that’s a very big if―its soldiers are facing a highly deranged adversary.

Along Myanmar’s marshy coastline, villages keep going up in flames. All of them belong to the Rohingya, a horribly persecuted Muslim group. The arsonists? Muslims themselves, according to the army.

The Rohingya, we are told, are burning their own homes to attract well-armed government platoons―and then sprinting at them with knives, berserker style, so that they can get mowed down by the dozens.

Patrick Winn offers the obvious analysis, “This narrative defies logic”. The headline is even more direct: “This Muslim purge in Myanmar is so awful you can see it from space”.

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Winn, Patrick. “This Muslim purge in Myanmar is so awful you can see it from space”. Public Radio International. 15 November 2016.

Your Quote of the Day: Merlan on Dick

“Boiling the election results down to Russian interference alone is ridiculous, of course; we’re dumb and racist enough to have shot ourselves in the dick all on our own.”

―Anna Merlan

It’s a pretty good line, isn’t it? To the other, we probably shouldn’t let that distract us from the fact that Admiral Michael Rogers, Commander of United States Cyber Command, and Director of the National Security Agency, twice over the course of his remarks for a Wall Street Journal shindig, accused the Russian government of using Wikileaks in order to tamper with the U.S. election.

But all this also calls to mind the Washington Post’s report on how Breitbart chair Steve Bannon subtly manipulated Donald Trump in a series of radio interviews earlier this year. It’s almost as though Donald Trump is getting played in ways he can’t possibly understand, by people with much bigger goals than merely being his friend.

(Merlan)

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Image note: Photo by Nati Harnik/AP Photo.

Fahrenthold, David A. and Frances Stead Sellers. “How Bannon flattered and coaxed Trump on policies key to the alt-right”. The Washington Post. 15 November 2016.

Merlan, Anna. “NSA Head Openly Accuses Russia of Using Wikileaks to Get Trump Elected”. The Slot. 16 November.