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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 19-Aug-2016
19-Aug-16 World View -- Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad

Web Log - August, 2016

19-Aug-16 World View -- Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad

Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump's campaign

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump's campaign
Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad
Six years of UN envoys and Syrian peace talks

Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump's campaign

Stephen K. Bannon

Stephen K. Bannon

I've been listening all day to the idiotic comments on the appointment of Steve Bannon as Trump's campaign manager. They describe Bannon as a wild bomb thrower running the racist Breitbart news site.

This is absolutely hilarious. Former Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer originally asked me in 2010 to start cross-posting my World View articles on the Breitbart news site, and later Bannon took over. I know Bannon pretty well, as he's been a big supporter of cross-posting my daily columns on the Breitbart news site, even though I've been highly critical of the rise of xenophobia and nationalism in countries around the world in this generational Crisis era, including Trump's remarks about Mexicans and Muslims. So I know for a fact that Bannon is no bomb thrower, and he's no racist, and for that matter, the Breitbart news site is not racist.

I worked pretty intensely with Bannon when I was being filmed for the movie "Generation Zero." Bannon is one of the few people in the media who have studied what I've written and who understand generational theory and Generational Dynamics. Bannon is also one of the very few people in the media who actually know a great deal about what's going on in the world, a lot more than most politicians do, and certainly a lot more than the media airheads who are writing about him. Bannon is a very bright guy and is someone that Trump needs.

In other words, the airheads in the media know how to spell Bannon's name, but everything else they've been saying has been pretty idiotic. Real Clear Politics

Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad

Five year old boy, Omran Daqneesh, sitting confused in an ambulance in Aleppo after being pulled from the rubble of one of Bashar al-Assad's airstrikes. To al-Assad, this boy and others like him are just cockroaches to be exterminated.

Five year old boy, Omran Daqneesh, sitting confused in an ambulance in Aleppo after being pulled from the rubble of one of Bashar al-Assad's airstrikes. To al-Assad, this boy and others like him are just cockroaches to be exterminated.

The UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura made probably the strongest condemnations he's ever made about the situation in Syria. Without mentioning Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, he excoriated al-Assad's policies of wanton massacres of innocent civilians.

The context was a regular meeting of the international humanitarian taskforce co-chaired by Russia and the United States. De Mistura cut the meeting short after 8 minutes, saying that it made "no sense" to continue, because of the fighting in Syria.

"Today we had a very short meeting of the Humanitarian Task Force. It lasted not more than 8 minutes. I decided to use my privilege as Chair to declare that there was no sense in have a humanitarian meeting today unless we got some action on the humanitarian side in Syria.
Tomorrow is the World Humanitarian Day and in Syria what we are hearing and seeing is only fighting, offensives, counter-offensives, rockets, barrel bombs, mortars, hellfire cannons, napalm, chlorine, snipers, air strikes, suicide bombers.
Not one single convoy has so far reached any of the humanitarian besieged areas this month, not one single convoy, and why? Because one thing, fighting."

All of this happened in the context of a heartbreaking video of Omran Daqneesh, a young boy who was pulled out of the rubble and woke up in an ambulance, dazed and covered with mud and blood, a big gash on his face, looking around confused, wondering how he got there. The video has gone viral, and the picture above is a screen shot from the video. Ironically, Omran is one of the "lucky" little boys, because he survived.

De Mistura demanded an agreement for a 48-hour humanitarian pause in the fighting. Later in the day Russia agreed, apparently because of all the international pressure generated by the video of the young boy. But whether Bashar al-Assad will agree is far from clear, and even if does agree, his regime has repeatedly violated previous ceasefires.

It's worthwhile to stop and review how we got here. When peaceful anti-government protests began in Syria early in 2011, al-Assad responded with a campaign of torture, massacres and genocide targeted at all Sunni Muslims in Syria, and that genocidal campaign has continued to this day, with full support of Orthodox Christian Russia and Shia Muslim Iran.

The video posted today was not the first one. Shortly after al-Assad started bombing Sunni civilians, a video surfaced of one of al-Assad's atrocities. ( "1-Jun-2011 News -- Mutilated teenage boy becomes symbol for Syria's revolution")

The 2011 video showed a 13-year-old boy, Hamza al-Khatib, who was beaten and tortured by al-Assad's security forces for over a month, before the boy's swollen and mutilated body was dumped. At that time, people were hoping that the video would shame al-Assad so much that he would stop his genocidal campaign, but of course that never was going to happen. And Hamza al-Khatib was soon forgotten.

In 2014, a military photographer who defected from al-Assad revealed 55,000 photos of how al-Assad used electrocution, eye-gouging, strangulation, starvation, and beating on prisoners on a massive "industrial strength" scale. ( "22-Jan-14 World View -- Western leaders sickened by Assad's 'industrial strength' torture in Syria").

Emaciated man showing wounds from repeated beatings by rod-like object. There are 55,000 photos like this, showing 11,000 corpses

Emaciated man showing wounds from repeated beatings by rod-like object. There are 55,000 photos like this, showing 11,000 corpses

Many people hoped that these photos would bring about some changes, and there was even a Congressional investigation. But those photos have also been long forgotten.

The al-Assad regime has used Sarin gas on its own population, with impunity. The regime has continued to use chemical weapons. Regime helicopters drop huge barrel bombs onto civilian neighborhoods. The barrel bombs may contain explosives, screws, nails and other shrapnel, plus canisters of chlorine and ammonia. When chlorine is inhaled, it reacts with the moisture in the lungs, turning into hydrochloric acid that literally burns the target to death from the inside out.

This is what the Orthodox Christian Vladimir Putin and the Shia Muslim Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei are supporting, and are responsible for. Do not let anyone tell you that there is anything "holy" about either of these men. They both deserve to go to the deepest ring of Hell, along with al-Assad himself.

It's almost unbelievable how much destruction al-Assad has caused. Thanks to al-Assad, Putin and Khamenei, there are about 50,000 jihadist fighters from 86 countries that have come to Syria, first to join the rebels fighting al-Assad, then to join the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS), and the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Al-Assad has created the al-Nusra front and ISIS. He's created millions of refugees that have flooded into neighboring countries, and over a million have poured into Europe.

Al-Assad has caused destruction and triggered wars that will last for decades. And America is more and more closely allying itself with Russia and Iran, and therefore to al-Assad. America is also giving way to Russia as the principal power in the Mideast. ( "17-Aug-16 World View -- Russia-Iran airbase agreement further isolates Saudi Arabia")

Long-time readers are well aware that I've been saying for ten years, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran and Russia would become our allies. In a way, it's similar to how we were allied with Soviet Union genocidal dictator Josef Stalin after he'd massacred, starved and tortured tens of millions of people. It's sickening to me and to many others to see the Generational Dynamics prediction come true in this way, but that's the way the world works. United Nations News and VOA and Telegraph

Six years of UN envoys and Syrian peace talks

As I like to point out, almost every day something new happens that a few years ago you would have to have been crazy to believe would ever happen. Whether it's in America, Europe, Africa, the Mideast or Asia, things that could never happen are happening.

Many of those impossible things have occurred in Syria, and many are related to the laughable peace talks, which have only made things easier for al-Assad and his extermination campaign.

Kofi Annan, the virulently anti-American former Secretary-General of the United Nations from Ghana, was the first UN envoy on Syria. Annan formulated a farcical six-point 'peace plan' which said absolutely nothing, but which al-Assad used as a cover to continue exterminating innocent Sunni women and children with impunity.

After Kofi Annan was repeatedly humiliated by Bashar al-Assad, the UN appointed a new Syria peace envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to replace Kofi Annan. Brahimi wasn't as much of an idiot as Annan was, but he still resigned in disgust in May 2014, after it became clear that al-Assad really had no desire to do anything but exterminate Sunni civilians.

So the next UN envoy was and is Staffan de Mistura, and I really can't figure him out. Putin and al-Assad have repeatedly made a fool out of de Mistura and made him look like an idiot, and yet he clings on as UN envoy and makes moronic statements like, "This will not be tolerated." Perhaps the current crisis will be his breaking point.

At any rate, this has been going on for over five years, with no end in sight. It looks more and more that the Syrian war will not end until the entire Mideast is engulfed in war.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Aug-16 World View -- Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (19-Aug-2016) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 19-Aug-2016 19-Aug-16 World View -- Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad

Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump's campaign

Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad

Six years of UN envoys and Syrian peace talks

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 19-Aug-2016
19-Aug-16 World View -- Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad