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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 31-Aug-2019
31-Aug-19 World View -- Russia declares farcical 'ceasefire' as Syrians try to storm Turkey border post

Web Log - August, 2019

31-Aug-19 World View -- Russia declares farcical 'ceasefire' as Syrians try to storm Turkey border post

Mainland China troops poised to crush Hong Kong protesters

by John J. Xenakis

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Idlib Syria civilians push into Turkey
Russia declares a farcical ceasefire
Israel bombs Lebanon, Syria and Iraq all in one weekend
Mainland China troops poised to crush Hong Kong protesters

Idlib Syria civilians push into Turkey

Displaced Syrians are stopped trying to cross the border into Turkey (AFP)

Displaced Syrians are stopped trying to cross the border into Turkey (AFP)

Hundreds of civilians in Syria's Idlib province on Friday tried to push across the border into Turkey.

As the army of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia's army and air force, has been pushing farther into Idlib province, tens of thousands of additional civilians are being forced to flee their homes, and are moving northwest to the border with Turkey.

There are three million civilians in Idlib, including hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in refugee camps in the northwest. About 70,000 people in Idlib are anti-Assad rebels, but al-Assad has declared all three million people to be "terrorists," and he's made it clear repeatedly that he plans to exterminate them like cockroaches.

United Nations officials continue to express alarm at the continued attacks by al-Assad, and are fearing a major humanitarian disaster, as they try to flee into Turkey and are blocked. Turkey, which already hosts 3.5 million Syrians who fled al-Assad's violence since 2011, does not wish to have to host possibly a million more. Germany and other European countries are trying to pressure Turkey and Russia to bring al-Assad to heel, out of fear of another wave of Syrian refugees pouring across the border into Europe.

Russia declares a farcical ceasefire

With hundreds of Syrians pushing across the border into Turkey on Friday, we may be seeing the beginning of large wave of thousands of displaced people, with resulting alarm in Turkey and Europe.

So Russia took hard-hitting action on Friday by declaring a "unilateral ceasefire," starting on Saturday morning.

There has been one farcical ceasefire after another in the last eight years. As usual, Bashar al-Assad didn't agree to the ceasefire, and the anti-Assad rebels didn't agree to the ceasefire.

Historically, al-Assad has always made a mockery of these ceasefires, and this one is sure to be no different.

Israel bombs Lebanon, Syria and Iraq all in one weekend

Israel raised tensions in the Mideast last weekend by attacking Iranian assets in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

According to Israeli sources, the attacks in Iraq and Syria were airstrikes against components of precision guided missiles being transported from Iran to Lebanon for use by Hezbollah against Israel. Starting in 2012, Iran tried by failed to bring precision guided missiles into Lebanon, but Israeli airstrikes destroyed the missiles in transit each time. For the last three years, Iran has been tring to bring components into Lebanon, to be assembled into missiles there. The airstrikes in Iraq and Syria was targeting the components, according to Israeli sources.

The situation in Lebanon was a little different. Israel did not launch airstrikes into Lebanon. Instead, Israel sent two unmanned drones into Lebanon to crash into targets in Beirut, Lebanon's capital city.

At first it appeared that the drones had been shot down by Hezbollah. Then it was reported that the drones were targeting guided missile comnponents, same as the Iraq and Syria airstrikes.

However Debka, an analyst service based on Israeli military and intelligence sources, but which sometimes gets things wrong, is reporting that the drone strikes into Beirut were actually a targeted assassination, targeting Iran’s Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who is the Iranian commander that Hezbollah's chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah reports to. According to the report, the first of the two drones was unarmed on a reconnaissance mission to track the movements of Soleimani, but crash landed when a boy threw a rock at it. The the second drone was to kill Soleimani. Although the second drone did hit a car and explode, it did not kill Soleimani.

Soleimani called the attack "insane." Hezbollah has threatened retaliation.

There are concerns that last weekends multiple attacks were a first step in a new war by Israel against Iran and Hezbollah. This weekend, Israeli troops are on high alert near the Lebanon border.

Mainland China troops poised to crush Hong Kong protesters

Pro-democracy protesters had planned a large public protest on Saturday evening (Saturday morning ET), possibly as large as the protest last month with two million protesters, 25% of the population.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing did the following:

Arrested some protest leaders
Declared that Saturday's protest is illegal
Rotated out the troops that have been occupying barracks in Hong Kong for years, and is now replacing them with riot troops and riot vehicles.
Told people to stay at home on Saturday evening

The organizers of the pro-democracy protests called off Saturday's protests, saying that they couldn't guarantee the safety of the demonstrators

However, a Fox News Hong Kong correspondent (Jonathan Hunt) said that he has just interviewed some of the extremists ("in an undisclosed location") and they're saying the following:

The peaceful protesters will stay at home
The CCP's actions have energized the extremist protesters
Extremist protesters will be out on Saturday evening, with confrontational protests and probably violence

The question always is: How long will the CCP allow this to go on. There's effectively a hard deadline of October 1, the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China, and it's believed that the protests must be "settled or crushed" by October 1.

You can always count on the CCP to do the stupidest, most incompetent, and most self-destructive thing, so the logic of the situation requires a Tiananmen Square type intervention within the next month, in time for Hong Kong to be out of the news by October 1. That suggests that the deadline for action is pretty close.

Sources:

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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (31-Aug-2019) Permanent Link
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