Good Protests, Bad Protests

All over the world people have been protesting their governments. Their reasons vary from economic grievances (eg high gas prices, corruption) to political concerns (eg resistance against centralization or oppression or foreign influences; political freedoms) to religious causes (eg sectarian conflict, religious freedoms).

Some protests are violent while others are peaceful or even festive. Some governments tolerate the protests while others respond with violence. Some protests are purely grassroots while others seem to be fueled by outside parties.

Given all this diversity, how do we know which of these protests are good protests from the perspective of the US foreign policy establishment? And hence, which protests will receive positive, negative or no coverage in US media?

The rule of thumb seems to be that protests are deemed good when they target (and preferably threaten) the continued existence or influence of governments that the US foreign policy establishment regards as insufficiently subservient to its interests.

And protests are bad when they target governments that are friendly to the US.

With some protests, to be sure, it may not yet be clear what the effects will be or who the main driving forces behind them are. And in some cases the protests may be relatively neutral with respect to US interests.

But in many cases it is pretty obvious whether protests threaten or support the interests of the US foreign policy establishment. These are listed below in an arguably simplistic but perhaps nonetheless useful overview:

For How Long Can a World with Nuclear Weapons Avoid Nuclear Annihilation?

We live in a world with nuclear weapons. We know there are enough nukes to blow up the world many times over. And we know that the more time passes the more opportunities there will have been for nuclear war to break out.

But how much time will have to pass for this possibility of nuclear war to become a near certainty?

Let's make four assumptions:

1. Only 10 governments have nuclear weapons at any given time.
2. A government exists for four years on average.
3. Only .1% (1 out of 1,000) of governments with nuclear weapons are stupid or suicidal/homicidal enough to accidentally or intentionally start a nuclear war.
4. Nuclear war will escalate into nuclear annihilation (either directly through the blasts or as an indirect effect in the form of fallout and nuclear winter).

Obama Spokespersons Embarrassing Themselves

In the spirit of people (rightly) mocking Trump press secretary Sean Spicer's blatantly false claims, here are some other examples of blatantly false or ridiculous claims by Obama's spokespersons, typically about matters much more serious than crowd sizes:

28 Obama Foreign Policy Horrors (and three genuine achievements)

With Donald Trump in the White House it makes sense to worry about the direction US foreign policy is going in. But such understandable concerns about the future may lead us to forget just how destructive the previous president’s foreign policy has been.

The Obama administration bombed people in 8 countries, enforced crippling sanctions that caused widespread suffering in already poor regions, played an active role in 2 coups d'état, allied the US with neo-Nazis in Ukraine and Al Qaeda (Al Qaeda!) in Syria, and played dangerous war games with nuclear Russia.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of Obama's foreign policy horrors. Lest we forget.