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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Jan-2015
8-Jan-15 World View -- The historic dilemma of the West versus the Muslim jihadists

Web Log - January, 2015

8-Jan-15 World View -- The historic dilemma of the West versus the Muslim jihadists

Eurozone inflation rate becomes negative, falling into deflation

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

The historic dilemma of the West versus the Muslim jihadists
Eurozone inflation rate becomes negative, falling into deflation

The historic dilemma of the West versus the Muslim jihadists

After Wednesday's attack, France is on high alert with thousands more police on the streets in Paris (Reuters)

After Wednesday's attack, France is on high alert with thousands more police on the streets in Paris (Reuters)

Wednesday's terrorist attack in Paris requires an appraisal of where the world stands today:

There is already a historic, growing war going on in the Mideast and south Asia, with jihadist Muslims killing thousands of other Muslims every month. This is a growing war, and it's both ethnic (pitting tribe against tribe) and sectarian (pitting Sunnis against Shias). Christians and westerners killed by these jihadists are a minuscule percentage of the people killed. (See "29-Dec-14 World View -- Do news organizations ignore jihadist attacks on Christians?")

There are various objectives of this Muslim versus Muslim war: Iran wants hegemony over the entire Mideast; al-Qaeda linked groups want to duplicate the Iran's 1979 Shia Islamic revolution in another country, such as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Algeria; the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL) wants control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the entire Levant.

In what is, in my opinion, a deliberate public relations obfuscation tactic, to avoid having to admit that they're killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims, the jihadists portray their war as a war against the West, and kill several thousand Westerners per year. This PR tactic justifies their actions, even though what's really happening is that they're massacring huge numbers of Muslims.

Mainstream Muslim scholars are calling the jihadists apostates, not real Muslims. One opinion writer in Pakistan recently referred to them as "terrorists in Muslim garb killing Muslims."

In support of the jihadist PR tactic, thousands of disaffected young men and women from countries around the world have gone to Syria to be trained in terrorism. Some of them have already returned to their native countries.

At the same time, thousands of refugee Muslim immigrants are fleeing the war in Syria and persecution in Africa by flooding into Europe, where they are tolerated but not wanted. (Similarly thousands of Christian immigrants are fleeing Latin America for the U.S., to escape poverty and violence.)

Of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, about 1.5 billion of them just want to live in peace, have families, feed their children, and grow old gracefully.

One of the goals of the jihadist PR tactic of killing Westerners to hide their massive slaughter of Muslims is that there are growing xenophobic anti-Muslim groups, sometimes neo-Nazi, creating a backlash against ordinary Muslims. ( "6-Jan-15 World View -- Germany's PEGIDA 'anti-Islamization' protests grow, stirring counter-protests") These xenophobic and neo-Nazi groups are an important part of the jihadists' strategy, because they are used to justify the existence and tactics of the jihadist organizations.

Wednesday's terrorist attacks in Paris are certain to exacerbate these trends.

This was not a random shooting. The terrorists were well trained in using assault weapons, and the attack was carried out with clockwork precision, probably after being planned for weeks. They spoke perfect French, leading to the speculation that they were home-grown terrorists who had gone to Syria for training. The terrorists murdered the editor and several cartoonists at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons and articles mocking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. They shouted, "We have avenged the prophet" and "Allahu akbar" (God is great). It's said to be the deadliest terror attack on French soil in 50 years, since 1961 when a right-wing paramilitary organization opposed to France's withdrawal from Algeria blew up a train killing 28 people.

Some Muslim leaders are blaming the attack on the victims. According to one Sunni Muslim scholar, it came as a response to "extremism from the other side." "When freedom of thought oversteps boundaries and legitimizes and encourages the insult of other religions, there will be such consequences." I disagree with this conclusion. In my opinion, it's the other way around, with the mocking of Mohammed purposely triggered by the actions and PR strategy of the jihadists.

Wednesday's attack is creating a backlash within the populations of the West, especially Europe:

First, people are uniting behind freedom of speech. Ironically, it's noteworthy that no publication is reprinting the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that angered the jihadists, for fear of a similar attack on their own organizations. In that sense, "the terrorists have won."

Second, xenophobic and neo-Nazi anti-Islam groups are expected to grow in strength, and become major political forces, especially in Europe. This is a particular problem for France, where 8-10% of the population are Muslim, many of them disillusioned with the French government.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is the kind of thing that happens during generational Crisis eras. In World War II, Japanese were interred, while Germans were not. Today, Muslims are under suspicion (probably with worse to come), while Chinese are not.

This isn't true only in the West. In China, for example, anti-American and anti-Japanese xenophobia are also growing.

As the world today goes deeper into a generational Crisis era, we can expect xenophobia and nationalism to increase in nations around the world. The world becomes a more dangerous place every day, and the growing Muslim versus Muslim war is just one part of it. It's only a matter of time until somebody does something that triggers a real war. AFP and USA Today and Bloomberg and Telegraph (London) and The Trumpet

Eurozone inflation rate becomes negative, falling into deflation

The inflation rate in the eurozone has been extremely low for years, as we've reported several times, and in December it crossed over into deflation, with an inflation rate of -0.2%. The deflation is being blamed on the falling price of oil. Deflation in Europe is an important story, and there's a lot more to be said, but it's been squeezed out by the news from Paris. Maybe tomorrow. BBC and Eurostat

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Jan-15 World View -- The historic dilemma of the West versus the Muslim jihadists thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (8-Jan-2015) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Jan-2015 8-Jan-15 World View -- The historic dilemma of the West versus the Muslim jihadists

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Eurozone inflation rate becomes negative, falling into deflation

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8-Jan-15 World View -- The historic dilemma of the West versus the Muslim jihadists