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Britain's leaders engage in soul-searching
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
President Barack Obama says that he has not yet made a decision. But he's set several "red lines," and failed to do anything when the red lines were breeched. He's flip-flopped on his own attitudes, as stated in 2007-08 when he criticized President George Bush for things that he's apparently about to do. Thus, many analysts believe Obama has no choice but to launch an American attack on Syria, and they expect an attack this weekend, possibly with some support from France and Turkey.
Secretary of State John Kerry gave a very strongly worded statement, apparently in preparation for an attack on Syria:
"Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack, and I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment. ...Well, we know that the Assad regime has the largest chemical weapons program in the entire Middle East. We know that the regime has used those weapons multiple times this year.... We know that the regime was specifically determined to rid the Damascus suburbs of the opposition, and it was frustrated that it hadn’t succeeded in doing so.
We know that for three days before the attack the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons personnel were on the ground in the area making preparations. And we know that the Syrian regime elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks and taking precautions associated with chemical weapons. We know that these were specific instructions. We know where the rockets were launched from and at what time. We know where they landed and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and went only to opposition-controlled or contested neighborhoods.
And we know, as does the world, that just 90 minutes later all hell broke loose in the social media. With our own eyes we have seen the thousands of reports from 11 separate sites in the Damascus suburbs. All of them show and report victims with breathing difficulties, people twitching with spasms, coughing, rapid heartbeats, foaming at the mouth, unconsciousness and death. ...
The United States Government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children. Even the first responders, the doctors, nurses, and medics who tried to save them, they became victims themselves. We saw them gasping for air, terrified that their own lives were in danger. ...
We also know many disturbing details about the aftermath. We know that a senior regime official who knew about the attack confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime, reviewed the impact, and actually was afraid that they would be discovered. We know this.
And we know what they did next. I personally called the Foreign Minister of Syria and I said to him, “If, as you say, your nation has nothing to hide, then let the United Nations in immediately and give the inspectors the unfettered access so they have the opportunity to tell your story.” Instead, for four days they shelled the neighborhood in order to destroy evidence, bombarding block after block at a rate four times higher than they had over the previous 10 days. And when the UN inspectors finally gained access, that access, as we now know, was restricted and controlled."
What form will the attack take? Almost all analysts say that there will be three days of cruise missile strikes, launched from five destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea.
According to one assessment from a U.S. official, the intensity of the attack will be "just muscular enough not to get mocked" but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia. However, the attack may be mocked anyway.
Many analysts, both Republican and Democrat, are concerned that this will be a "pinprick" strike, allowed al-Assad to brag that he survived an attack by the Great Satan, and then will just go on killing his people, with and without chemical weapons. So the concern is that the attack will be worse than doing nothing. U.S. Dept. of State and LA Times
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After Britain's prime minister David Cameron's shocking defeat on Thursday in the House of Commons, and his subsequent announcement that Britain will not be participating in any military action in Syria, many British politicians are going through some soul-searching.
The vote against Cameron was led by his opposition leader, David Miliband, leader of the Labor Party, who said:
"People are deeply concerned about the chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but they want us to learn the lessons of Iraq.They don't want a rush to war. They want things done in the right way, working with the international community."
Miliband was branded a 'f****** c***' who was giving 'succour to" Assad', and on Friday he did a partial flip-flop, saying, "I don't think the Government should wash its hands of this issue."
According to Lord Hurd, foreign secretary from 1989-95:
"I cannot for the life of me see how dropping some bombs or firing some missiles in the direction of Syria, with targets probably some way removed from the weapons that we have been criticizing, will lessen the suffering of the Syrian people."
Many people pointed to the sense of déjà vu, as if the days leading up the 2003 Iraq invasion were being replayed, with the same kinds of intelligence reports talking about WMDs.
However, Lord Paddy Ashdown, born 1941, told the BBC (my transcription), referring to the 1938 Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia:
"I think the consequences for that [yesterday's vote] are that we are a diminished country this morning. The special relationship [with the United States] will certainly be damaged, maybe grievously so.Speaking as somebody who spent nearly 50 years trying to serve our country one way or the other, I woke up this morning feeling depressed, and I must say, I'm somewhat ashamed, that now I must watch those people die in agony, in Syria, and including people, kids being napalmed yesterday, and say that the response of my country has nothing to do with me. ...
But I think there's a real danger that Britain certainly returns to isolationism. I think there's a real danger that the world will itself go into a period of isolationism, if something doesn't concern us, then we don't need to be bothered.
[In the 1930s, people said,] 'Czechoslovakia is far away country of which we need know little.' You remember the famous phrase from the 1930s, and how badly it turned out in the end. Of course I recognize that parliament yesterday was representing the national will. There's no mood for this. Strong mood against it in the country. But we should just remember that when Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich with the peace of paper that said 'Peace in our time,' he was the most popular prime minister before or since we've ever had. And Churchill was deeply unpopular. Which of these two proved to be right?"
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Aug-13 World View -- U.S. Administration lays out the case for Syria intervention thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Aug-2013)
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Echoing 1938, Britain gives a pass to Syria's Bashar al-Assad
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A survey conducted for the last nine years shows that in the last year, the mutual public hatred between the Japanese and Chinese people has reached critical levels. In the latest survey, 90.1% of Japanese had unfavorable impressions about China, while 92.8% of Chinese had unfavorable impressions about Japan.
The report blames it on the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, but that doesn't take into account the centuries of hatred between the two people. The Chinese people have repeatedly made it clear that they're seeking revenge for Japan's genocidal actions prior to and during World War II, especially the 1937 Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre, and the use of Chinese "comfort women" by the Japanese soldiers during the war.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the sharp increase in mutual contempt between the two populations since 2005, especially in the last year, is caused by the disappearance of the generations of survivors of World War II. For them, WW II was so horrible that they were traumatized for life, and have devoted their lives to make sure that nothing so horrible happens again. But now those survivors are almost gone, leaving behind younger generations growing up after the war, with no personal memories of the horrors of the last war between Japan and China. These younger generations have no personal memories of the horrors of the last war, and so they have no fear of the next war, and no clue what's going to happen to them. GenronNPO and China Daily and The Diplomat
In a major political victory for Syria's psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad and his psychopathic arms supplier, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Britain's House of Commons on Thursday evening rejected any military action in response to al-Assad's repeated use of chemical weapons against his own citizens.
The vote is a major defeat for prime minister David Cameron, who said:
"I strongly believe in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons, but I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons. It is very clear tonight that, while the House has not passed a motion, it is clear to me that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the government will act accordingly."
The vote throws Cameron's own political future into doubt. During the debate, Cameron called attention to a contradiction in the arguments used against him. On the one hand, some asked why he was rushing into military action, when the chemical weapons attack occurred only last week, while others pointed out that there had been 14 previous (smaller) chemical weapons attacks, so why now? However, others said that after the experience of going to war in Iraq based on intelligence that turned out to be faulty, they were simply unwilling to support any military intervention under any circumstances.
The rejection is reminiscent of the free pass that Britain's prime minister Neville Chamberlain gave to Adolf Hitler for the Nazi invasion and annexation of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938, announcing that Hitler promised "Peace in our time."
Far from preventing war, Chamberlain's free pass convinced Hitler that Britain was too weak to oppose his "Lebensraum" policy, and Britain and the Nazis were at war a year later.
In the current situation, Western weakness, combined with al-Assad's and Putin's aggressive Sunni extermination plans, have already tremendously inflamed the entire Mideast, as al-Qaeda linked jihadists from Pakistan to Nigeria to Dagestan have been traveling to Syria to fight al-Assad's Shia/Alawite forces, and also to Iraq, where the number of deaths from terrorist acts targeting Shias has been skyrocketing. The actions of these two psychopaths have caused the deaths of 100,000 Syrians, almost all civilians, as well as millions of refugees, over a million of which have flooded into neighboring countries. The vote in Britain can only make that situation worse.
Britain's rejection was apparently a surprise to everyone, including the White House. Caitlin Hayden, a spokesman for the White House and National Security Council said in a statement:
"As we've said, President Obama's decision-making will be guided by what is in the best interests of the United States. He believes that there are core interests at stake for the United States and that countries who violate international norms regarding chemical weapons need to be held accountable."
Some analysts believe that time is now working against President Obama, and if he is going to take some action, it will have to be this weekend, for two reasons. First, international will to take action is weakening with time. And second, Obama will be traveling to Russia next week for the G20 meeting.
President Obama has painted himself into a corner. He's repeatedly said that use of chemical weapons was a "red line," and that al-Assad had to "be held accountable." Britain's rejection is already a humiliation for Obama and the United States, and if al-Assad is permitted to get away with using chemical weapons to slaughter masses of his own civilians with no accountability, it will represent a major humiliation for the West, and will set the stage for a major war, just as surely as Chamberlain's "Peace in our time" message did in 1938. Unfortunately, sending a few missiles into Syria with no permanent effect on the war will have the same effect. CBS News and Atlantic Wire
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Aug-13 World View -- China and Japan really DO hate each other thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Aug-2013)
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Obama, under international pressure, may be forced to back down on Syria
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A series of car bombings and some gunfight attacks across Baghdad, in mostly Shia areas, on Wednesday killed 86 people and wounded 263. The numbers of these casualties from these attacks have been increasing steadily every month, reaching over 1,000 deaths in July, ever since American forces withdrew from Iraq in December, 2011, fulfilling a campaign promise by President Barack Obama. The conflict in Syria has inflamed the entire region, including Iraq, but Iraq is by far the worst hit country outside of Syria itself. BBC and Reuters
Britain's prime minister David Cameron has been forced to delay consideration of Britain's participation in military intervention in Syria because of deep public opposition. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for delays, and U.N./Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said that any military action would be illegal without Security Council approval.
President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that no decision had been made yet, despite very sharp rhetoric that implies that some military action is required:
"I have not made a decision. I have gotten options from our military, had extensive discussions with my national security team."I have not made a decision, but I think it's important that if, in fact, we make a choice to have repercussions for the use of chemical weapons, then the Assad regime, which is involved in a civil war, trying to protect itself, will have received a pretty strong signal that in fact, it better not do it again. And that doesn't solve all the problems inside of Syria, and you know, it doesn't, obviously, end the death of innocent civilians inside of Syria.
We have looked at all the evidence, and we do not believe the opposition possessed nuclear weapons on -- or chemical weapons of that sort. We do not believe that, given the delivery systems, using rockets, that the opposition could have carried out these attacks. We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out. And if that's so, then there need to be international consequences,
We do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable."
Many analysts and politicians, including a number of Democrats, are expressing concern that when President Obama talks about "a pretty strong signal," that he's planning to just lob a few missiles into Syria, leaving Syria's president Bashar al-Assad to declare himself a hero for having survived an American attack.
During the 2007-08 presidential election campaign, both Barack Obama and Joe Biden were vitriolically critical of President George Bush, and Biden even said that he might call for Bush's impeachment. But now Obama and Biden are doing exactly the things that they criticized Bush for, suggesting that they're naively stumbling from one foreign policy action to the next, based on the latest poll results, with no underlying principles, and no clue what's going on in the world.
Others are suggesting that the apparent uncertainty and confusion in the administration is simply a ploy to mislead the Syrians and Russians, so they'll be unprepared for a planned surprise attack. We'll see. BBC and CNN
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Aug-13 World View -- New sectarian bombings kill 86 in Baghdad, Iraq thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Aug-2013)
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Israel prepares for counter-attack from Hezbollah
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Both Syria and Hezbollah are promising to respond to an American attack on Syria with a counter-attack on Syria. In Israel, civilians flooded gas mask distribution centers spurred on by fears that any Western military response to last week's alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria could ensnare their own country in war. Euro Jewish Press
American rhetoric has now reached the point where it will be politically almost impossible to avoid an attack on Syria. ( "27-Aug-13 World View -- The drums of war beat over Syria")
According to Vice President Joe Biden:
"Chemical weapons have been used.No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and there's no doubt who's responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime.
The options that we are considering are not about regime change. They are about responding to the clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons."
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that American forces are now ready to act immediately on an order from President Barack Obama.
The U.S. is considering three days of missile strikes on Syria, perhaps beginning on Thursday. After three days, strategists could run an assessment and target was previously missed. The U.S. missile strikes would almost certainly be launched from Nary destroyers or submarines in the Mediterranean Sea. Four destroyers are lined up ready to strike: the USS Barry, the USS Mahan, the USS Ramage and the USS Gravely.
According to U.S. officials, it will not be an objective to cripple Syria's military, or to topple president Bashar al-Assad. The objective of the attack will be to "send a message" to al-Assad.
A number of analysts have expressed concern that unless the attack significantly degrades Syria's armed forces, then it will have been for nothing, and America's credibility will suffer even further. Some analysts express concern that President Obama is going ahead with the attack for his own political purposes, to "do something," after have set several "red lines," and doing nothing when they were crossed. NBC News
A Russian aircraft landed in Latakia airport in Syria on Tuesday, with 20 tons of humanitarian aid, mostly consisting of tinned foods and sugar. About 180 people, 100 of them Russia, will leave Syria on the return flight.
Russia's foreign ministry says that the West was acting in the Islamic world like "a monkey with a grenade." According to a spokesman:
"Attempts to bypass the [United Nations] Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa.We are calling on our American partners and all members of the world community to demonstrate prudence (and) strict observance of international law, especially the fundamental principles of the UN Charter."
Despite reports that the Palestinian Authority had canceled peace talks on Monday, following the deaths of three Palestinians, the Monday evening meeting was apparently held anyway. According to a Palestinian source, the two negotiation teams met in the house of chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat amid the absence of envoys from the United States, the sponsor of the peace talks. Xinhua
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Aug-13 World View -- U.S. attack on Syria could come as early as Thursday thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Aug-2013)
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Mideast peace process meeting canceled after 3 Palestinians killed
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The horrific videos of Wednesday's chemical weapons attack in Syria have been streaming in, and Syria continued until the last week to bomb and shell the site of the attack, in order to degrade and destroy the evidence. These factors have dramatically changed international attitudes between Friday and Monday. As recently as Friday, officials indicated that there was no desire for military action. By Sunday, attitudes were changing rapidly, and by Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry was using very strong, personally emotional words:
"What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality. Let me be clear: The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders, by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard it is inexcusable, and despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable. ...Moreover, we know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons. We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very places where the attacks took place. And with our own eyes, we have all of us become witnesses. ...
I went back and I watched the videos, the videos that anybody can watch in the social media, and I watched them one more gut-wrenching time. It is really hard to express in words the human suffering that they lay out before us. As a father, I can’t get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead child, wailing while chaos swirled around him; the images of entire families dead in their beds without a drop of blood or even a visible wound; bodies contorting in spasms; human suffering that we can never ignore or forget. Anyone who can claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass. ...
But make no mistake: President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny."
No U.S. aircraft carriers are being sent to the region. However, there are four U.S. destroyers positioned in the eastern Mediterranean, with hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles ready to be launched, if and when President Obama gives the order. Countries on the region are going on high alert. U.S. Department of State
These are some of the issues being raised about military intervention in Syria against the regime of president Bashar al-Assad:
The legal standing of an American military intervention would be considerably stronger if other nations participated militarily, rather than America going it alone.
Dept. of Defense and NATO
After being delayed by the Bashar al-Assad regime for five days, the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors finally reached the site of the attack on Monday. The lead vehicle came under heavy attack by unidentified snipers as it approached the site, and was forced to turn back, but there were no injuries, and the inspectors reached the site later. According to a spokesman, the team had a "very productive" day collecting evidence and interviewing victims, and will continue its work on Tuesday. CNN
I've written many times in the past that if Al Gore had won the presidency in 2000, then he would have pursued the Iraq war, just as President George Bush did. (See, for example, "The Iraq war may be related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." from 2008.)
I received a lot of scoffing and ridicule for that assertion, but now with President Obama we can see what might have happened with a President Gore. There is no one more politically opposed to any military action than Obama, but he's being forced into attacking Syria for political reasons, but knowing that he'll be blamed if anything goes wrong, just as he bitterly attacked Bush for the Iraq action.
And so, once again, Generational Dynamics has been proven to be right, and its critics have been proven wrong. This has happened too many times to count.
The Palestinian Authority canceled peace talks on Monday, after Israeli security forces killed three Palestinians at the Kalandiya reguee camp in the West Bank. According to the security forces, they were reacting to a large scale attack on them by hundreds of Palestinians. A Palestinian spokesman called on the United States to intervene and prevent the collapse of the "peace process." Jerusalem Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Aug-13 World View -- The drums of war beat over Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Aug-2013)
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New Buddhist on Muslim violence in Burma (Myanmar)
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Syria said on Sunday that it will allow U.N. weapons inspectors full access to any site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, starting on Monday. However, both American and British officials are rejecting the offer, for two reasons: First, the regime waited five days for the offer, giving themselves time to tamper with the evidence; and second, the regime has been continuously showering the site with missiles, apparent in an effort to degrade or destroy the evidence, and that shelling is continuing as late as Sunday evening. According to a U.S. official:
"If the Syrian government had nothing to hide and wanted to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons in this incident, it would have ceased its attacks on the area and granted immediate access to the UN -- five days ago."At this juncture, the belated decision by the regime to grant access to the U.N. team is too late to be credible, including because the evidence available has been significantly corrupted as a result of the regime's persistent shelling and other intentional actions over the last five days.
Based on the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, witness accounts, and other facts gathered by open sources, the U.S. intelligence community, and international partners, there is very little doubt at this point that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in this incident."
Another official said, "There is nothing credible to indicate that the rebels, either the Syrian National Council or even al-Nusra Front, have used chemical weapons. Only the Assad regime is responsible for chemical weapons use." CNN
British Foreign Secretary William Hague echoed the U.S. officials' remarks, and added:
"We cannot, in the 21st century, allow the idea that chemical weapons can be used with impunity, that people can be killed in this way and that there are no consequences for it."
Another White House statement said:
"President Obama and [French president François] Hollande discussed possible responses by the international community and agreed to continue to consult closely."
The momentum for some kind of military intervention appears to be building quickly. AFP and Reuters
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In signs that Buddhist on Muslim violence is continuing to widen in Burma (Myanmar), about 1,000 Buddhist rioters burned Muslim shops and homes in the village of Kanbalu, in the northern region of the country. This follows hundred of recent deaths of Muslims by Buddhists, first in Rakhine State in the southwest last year, and then in central Burma in March. (See "5-Apr-13 World View -- Meiktila, Burma, violence has echoes of Kristallnacht".)
The latest wave of violence erupted after a Muslim man was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rape a Buddhist woman on Saturday evening. A crowd of about 150 people and three Buddhist monks gathered at the police station demanding that the accused be handed over to them. When the authorities refused, the mob attacked Muslim property in the area and the crowd grew in size and ferocity as the night went on.
With this spreading anti-Muslim violence one can see a full-scale crisis civil war building between the Buddhists and the Muslims. It's going to explode into a major bloodbath before too much longer. AFP and BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Aug-13 World View -- Syria chemical weapons inspection offer 'Not Credible' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Aug-2013)
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Muslim Brotherhood appears to be weakening in Egypt
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF - Doctors without Borders) says that on Wednesday, hospitals it supports in Syria treated about 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms", of whom 355 have died. MSF says that staff at the hospitals described a large number of patients arriving in the space of less than three hours with symptoms including convulsions, extreme salivation, contracted pupils and sight and respiratory problems. With the MSF report, and with continuing releases to the internet of hundreds of pictures and videos of Wednesday's chemical weapons attacks, international pressure is building rapidly to take some military action against president Bashar al-Assad's regime. Britain and France are said to have already concluded that military action is necessary.
There is no chance that the United Nations Security Council will approve any action, and so President Obama is said to be considering using NATO's 1998 air war in Kosovo as a legal precedent for an attack on Syria.
Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich, has claimed that the chemical weapons attack was planned and carried out by opponents of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. As evidence, he points to videos of the attack that were posted several hours earlier than the actual attack. However, it's now believed that Lukashevich became confused because he relied on the time stamps on the YouTube videos, and the time stamps are always based on California time. The attack occurred early on Wednesday morning in Syria, while it was still Tuesday in California. BBC and The Atlantic Wire
After Friday's bombings targeting two Sunni mosques in the north Lebanon city of Tripoli, the Lebanese people are fearful that rounds of tit for tat sectarian bombings are going to accelerate and worsen. Friday's bombings cost more than 47 lives and hundreds of injuries, and were the deadliest since the 1980s civil war, and were retaliation for last week's enormous car bomb targeting the Shia Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah. ( "16-Aug-13 World View -- Car bomb in Hezbollah's Lebanon stronghold kills 20")
Sunni clerics are accusing Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime for Friday's blasts. A statement issued by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said:
"We know with certainty that behind this deplorable act committed against are the hands of the vile, rafidah Hezbollah, which stands side by side with Bashar in Syria.That vile party ... should know that it will meet retribution soon."
It was just a few years ago that Muslim terrorist groups throughout the Mideast got along well with another, and cooperated in their jihad against Israel. But the Syrian conflict has turned Sunnis and Shias against each, on the trend line to a massive sectarian war throughout the region. Daily Star (Beirut) and Reuters
It was just a week ago that many pundits were predicting a civil war in Egypt between Muslim Brotherhood (MB) supporters versus opponents, but now there are signs that the entire conflict has fizzled. MB leaders had called for a massive turnout in protests on Friday. Instead, the turnout was considerably smaller than predicted, and the protest marches ended relatively quickly. On Friday, the government locked out a large part of Cairo with tanks. The government has jailed hundreds of MB leaders and has killed almost 1,000 MB supporters in the last week alone, in actions that many people in the international community are calling "brutal." Al-Ahram (Cairo)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Aug-13 World View -- Obama may use NATO to justify missile attack on Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Aug-2013)
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Turkey's Erdogan adopts Muslim Brotherhood's four-fingered salute
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In a sign that relations between Turkey and Egypt are becoming increasingly unfriendly, Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been increasingly flashing the new "R4BIA" four-fingered salute that has been adopted as a victory sign by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) adopted the new salute after last week's clashes when security forces cleared out the massive sit-ins of MB supporters, resulting in nearly 1,000 deaths, mostly of MB supporters. Most of the clashes occurred in Cairo's Rabaa Square. In Arabic, the word "Rabaa" or "Rabia" means "fourth," and MB supporters are now publicizing the new four-fingered salute by carrying around bright yellow signs, and posting the signs on social networking sites.
Erdogan has flashed the four-fingered salute several times in the last week, showing his solidarity with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and his disapproval of Egypt's new government. Al-Arabiya (Dubai) and Anadolu Agency (Ankara)
To the surprise of no one except the sycophants of the psychopathic Bashar al-Assad, we're now in the third day following the horrific chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb in Syria, but the U.N. inspectors are still sitting in Damascus, forbidden by the regime to travel the 20 miles to the site to inspect it.
And we're hearing the usual garbage from the Russians. Of course it's the rebels, not the regime, who launched the attack, they're saying, and yes, we'd like to encourage the Syrians to allow the inspectors to visit the site. But those remarks, which have been widely touted as "a sign of hope" by the credulous mainstream media, did not come at the U.N. Security Council, nor from President Vladimir Putin, nor from Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. They came from a spokesman, who added:
"It draws attention to the fact that biased regional media have immediately, as if on command, begun an aggressive information attack, laying all the responsibility on the government."
So apparently the real victims here are not the hundreds of people who died horrifically on Wednesday from a chemical weapons attack. According to the Russians, the real victim is Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, who is being subjected to a horrific "information attack."
At any rate, Syria continues to block inspections by the U.N. inspectors. As everybody is well aware, each day that goes by not only causes the evidence to degrade, and also gives the al-Assad regime time to clean up any evidence that might incriminate it. Russia Today
Senior American Defense Department officials are acknowledging that the U.S. is considering various options for military intervention in Syria, including a list of targets for possible cruise missile strikes. At the same time, the U.S. Navy is putting more forces into the area, in preparation for a possible cruise missile strike.
There are two conflicting commonly held views with regard to U.S. or Western military intervention into Syria:
In this case, both views are correct.
As I've suggested in the past and will now make explicit, it's my opinion that a tipping point has been reached and passed, and it really no longer matters what steps are taken or not taken with respect to military intervention in Syria. Either way, the Syria conflict has launched a trend that will continue to strengthen until it leads to a much larger conflict.
It was in 2003 that I first wrote that the Mideast was headed for a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the genocidal 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Since then, it was left to be answered how that new war would be triggered.
There were several possibilities. There was the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. There were several wars involving Israel, Fatah, and Hamas in Gaza. But all of those wars fizzled out within a few weeks.
The Syrian conflict might have fizzled out in 2011 if the U.S. and the West had intervened military at that time.
Or, it might have fizzled out by itself if it hadn't been for Russia's incredible military intervention, supplying massive amounts of heavy weapons and training to the al-Assad regime.
However now, 2 1/2 years later, the U.S. and the West have lost all credibility in the Mideast by allowing themselves to look like weak fools, while Russia continues its aggressive support for Syria, and is perceived to be the strong power.
Today, the Syria conflict is nowhere near fizzling. Even a year ago, if al-Assad had been eliminated, then the war might have fizzled. Actually, that would still be true today if it weren't for outside intervention.
But, in my opinion, a tipping point has been reached and passed, and even the elimination of al-Assad at this point would not end the Syria conflict, because outside forces, particularly Russia and al-Qaeda, as well as Iran and Hezbollah, are too committed to seeing it through to victory.
Then there are the refugees. Some two million Syrians have been displaced within Syria's borders. Hundreds of thousands of them are pouring into neighboring countries, overwhelming services there. The number of refugee children has just passed one million. Funds to feed all these refugees are scarce, and humanitarian agencies are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of the refugees. In Lebanon, sectarian conflicts are already growing, with two car bombs targeting Sunnis on Friday, and a major explosion targeting Shias a week ago.
At the same time, al-Qaeda is strengthening and growing. Russia's military intervention in Syria has resulted in ruthless attacks on Sunni Muslim families by the Shia/Alawite regime. So of course this is going to tremendously inflame al-Qaeda linked groups. Jihadists from throughout that part of the world, from Pakistan and Uzbekistan to Libya and Nigeria to Dagestan and Chechnya are getting training so that they can fight in Syria to defeat the Shia/Alawite regime, and then the go to Syria and get further training that they can take back home for more terrorist attacks.
That in turn has inflamed Shia jihadists. Iran has sent thousands of troops to Syria to fight against al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah has sent tens of thousands, and has scored some impressive victories that are further inflaming the al-Qaeda linked groups.
Another factor is this week's horrific chemical weapons attack. This is significantly increasing demands for military intervention in Syria, not only in the West but also in the Arab states.
All of these factors have created a growing trend line that, in my opinion, can no longer be stopped. Will the U.S. launch cruise missiles into Syria, or not? I sure don't know, but in the long run, I don't believe it will make any difference anyway. CNN and CBS News and LA Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Aug-13 World View -- U.S. hints at cruise missile strikes against Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Aug-2013)
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Rockets fired from Lebanon land in northern Israel
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You just can't make this stuff up. A day after the huge chemical weapons atrocity killed hundreds or perhaps thousands of people in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, the U.N. chemical weapons inspectors who are sitting there in Damascus are being forbidden by the regime to go and inspect the attack. The Bashar al-Assad regime has been making very one indignant statement after another that they aren't responsible, but they're still using one excuse after another to prevent the U.N. from finding out the truth.
In New York, Russia has already made it clear that it will not allow the U.N. Security Council to do anything.
To add to the farce, Samantha Power, America's new ambassador to the United Nations, who for years has never missed an opportunity to express childlike, girlish outrage at atrocities in Darfur and elsewhere, and has demanded that the U.S. intervene to alleviate such atrocities, seems to have disappeared. She didn't show up at Thursday's emergency Security Council meeting, and no one would say where she is. Speculation is that she's on vacation, and no one wants to admit it.
The farce was continued in the State Department briefing by spokesman Jen Psaki, when she spouted the usual Administration nonsense:
"Well, the redline has been clear. I know there’s been some confusion about this. The redline is the use of CW, the use of chemical weapons. That was crossed a couple of months ago. The President took action, which we talked about at the time. While, as I mentioned, we’re still focused on nailing down the facts – the intel community is focused on that, the Administration is focused on that – if these reports are true, it would be an outrageous and flagrant escalation of use of chemical weapons by the regime. So our focus is on nailing down the facts. The President, of course, has a range of options that we’ve talked about before that he can certainly consider and, of course, discuss with his national security team."
It's hard to stop laughing when you read this bilge. "The President took action" a couple of months ago. And what was the action? "[to focus] on nailing down the facts." That's exactly the same "action" that the president took several times in the past year.
It's just as well the President Obama and Ambassador Power are both out to lunch right now. The U.S. could have done something to stop this conflict a couple of years ago, but today there's nothing left to do but let the Syria conflict continue to spread into a major regional conflict. And anyway, the U.S. administration no longer has any credibility anywhere in the world, so let's just let them enjoy their golf games and outdoor barbeques.
I've received a number of criticisms from web site readers complaining about yesterday's article that I shouldn't automatically assume that the Bashar al-Assad regime is responsible for Wednesday's chemical weapons attack, since the opposition rebels might have been the perpetrators.
It's true that I assume that the regime of the psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad is responsible, because (a) the regime has been responsible for hundreds of atrocities in the last 2 1/2 years, and (b) al-Assad has lied so many times that he has no credibility. Is there anyone out there, including those who support al-Assad and criticize me, who believes anything that comes out of al-Assad's mouth?
However, I'm willing to be open-minded. Let's see what the U.N. inspectors have to say. If they find that the al-Assad regime is innocent, then I'll admit I was wrong.
Here's one comment from another web site reader, defending al-Assad and criticizing me:
"Mr. Xenakis, you are quick to blame [Bashar al-Assad] but you give the very reasons for which it would not make sense for him to have done this. With inspectors 20 miles away, he would HAVE to allow them access to the alleged attack site. If not, the world would automatically suspect that he has something to hide."
Well, this is good for another laugh. Maybe the regime "would HAVE to allow ... access," but it's not happening, is it? The inspectors are still in Damascus. So apparently the regime doesn't HAVE to allow access, after all.
But still, why would al-Assad order this chemical weapons attack while the U.N. inspectors are in town? The answer to that question is easy: Al-Assad probably didn't personally order the attack. The attack was probably ordered by one of al-Assad's lieutenants who is just as psychopathic as al-Assad, and who didn't even know that the U.N. inspectors are around.
It's unreasonable to expect a man as busy as al-Assad to take the time to approve every atrocity, massacre, mass torture and mutilation and chemical weapons attack by his army. He can leave those decisions to his lieutenants. If he had to approve every one personally, then he wouldn't have the time to pursue his hobbies, which, I assume, are something like going into his basement and sticking needles under the fingernails of Sunni Muslim children, and then pulling out their teeth with pliers.
As for who's responsible for Wednesday's chemical weapons attack, let's see if the U.N. inspectors to do their inspection, or whether the psychopaths Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin will block them.
My bet is that the regime launched the chemical weapons attacks, and that they won't permit the U.N. inspectors in. Let's see if I'm right or my critics are right. BBC and Fox News
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An al-Qaeda linked terrorist group, Brigades of Abdullah Azzam, is claiming credit for launching a barrage of four rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel, suggesting that Islamist militants are opening up a new front with Israel. Two struck Israeli communities and one was shot down by Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-missile system. None of them caused any casualties.
Israeli officials are concerned about the increasing rocket attacks on Israel by jihadist militants in both Lebanon and Sinai. The Syrian conflict has provided a fertile training ground that has drawn jihadists from Pakistan to Nigeria to Dagestan to come for training in Syria and to learn terrorism skills they can take back home. Thanks to the Syrian war the entire region is becoming inflamed, and I place the blame squarely on Russia's president Vladimir Putin whose weapons and training have made it possible for al-Assad's atrocities against Sunnis, many of whom are innocent women and children, to continue. Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Aug-13 World View -- Farce continues over Wednesday's chem weapons attack in Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Aug-2013)
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Iranian military advisor discusses Syria and World War II
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb in Syria on Wednesday has apparently produced hundreds of horrifying deaths. The attack happened at a time when 20 U.N. chemical weapons inspectors are already in Syria, investigating chemical weapons attacks that occurred months ago. The Syrian government agreed to let them in, presumably because the attacks occurred so long ago that there wasn't any evidence left.
The rebels, as well as most other people, believe that the regime of the psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the new weapons attack, well aware that he can get away with mutilating, massacring, torturing or killing anyone he wants with no consequences. However, officials from the regime say that they had nothing to do with it, that the rebels are responsible.
Well, what a happy coincidence this is! The U.N. inspectors are already there, just a 20 minute ride from the site of the new chemical weapons attack. They can just zip over there and check out the new attack, can't they? And the regime officials won't have any objections, since they've already said they're not responsible, right?
Well, you already know the answer, Dear Reader. The regime won't permit anything like that because they know they can kill anyone they want at any time with no retribution.
It was a year ago that President Obama gave us one of those great moral lectures he loves to give us, saying that chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would have consequences. He said that al-Assad would be "held accountable by the international community" if he made the "tragic mistake" of using these weapons. He said that the United States does not shirk from its moral duty, blah, blah, blah. Well, there was total silence from spokesmen in Washington on Wednesday. The moral lecture that Gen-Xer Barack Obama gave us was like almost all his moral lectures -- total garbage. So the "red line" will be crossed again, with no consequences. I suppose it doesn't really matter. Under the leadership of Secretary of State John Kerry, who has several times said that the American army is as bad as the Nazi army, and who has said that American soldiers fighting in Iraq are stupid ( "John Kerry and Seymour Hersh trash the armed forces."), and who is himself the stupidest and most incompetent Secretary of State in quite a while, the U.S. has no credibility left in the Mideast. So what difference does one more disaster in the Mideast make?
Then we have the United Nations Security Council in New York. The U.S., the U.K. and France will give speeches expressing huge moral outrage. But will those 20 inspectors be permitted to inspect this new site? Russia has already signaled that it will block it. Edward Snowden's hero, Russia's president Vladimir Putin, is just as psychopathic as al-Assad, and has gleefully and energetically provided Syria with all the weapons and training that al-Assad needs to cause as many mutilations, tortures and murders as possible, with no consequences.
With the world being run by morons and psychopaths, is there anyone left in my readership who does NOT believe that a world war is around the corner? BBC and Bloomberg
Senior Military Advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader MG Yahya Rahim Safavi gave a speech excerpted below:
"The Syrian war, in reality, is an American and Zionist regime proxy war [executed by] Arab countries and Turkey, and Israel’s military attack has manifested the true nature of this proxy [war] more than before. ...After three years of civil war, the Bashar Assad government and resistant Syrian Army have now become totally dominant over the terrorists from a military and security point of view, and have retaken most regions from them. The [Syrian] people also did not support the terrorists and even the Muslim Brother separated from them due to the extreme violence and barbarity of al-Qaeda forces, including decapitating 1,000 people. Only the matter of the political front in Geneva 2 has remained [as the solution] that will determine their own fate with the help of Syria and China. In Syria’s military and political conflict, Iran, Syria, Russia and China are victorious and America and Israel are the losers. They thought that they could destroy Bashar Assad within a year, currently three years have passed and they have not been able to achieve their goals. ...
The smaller and less populated countries are overthrown sooner against foreign military threats, and the wider, more populated [countries] with intelligent, talented and courageous people who have wise leaders, they have more power. ...
From a geopolitical position, Iran is the link of three continents, Europe to Asia and Africa to Asia, and the axis of the North’s communication to the South and the East to the West. Any political, military, cultural, etc., events that occur in these three countries affect Iran and its internal security. The Iranian plateau is a special geographical unit in the Iranian land that connects the North to the South and the East to the West. If Iran’s railroad is connected to Basrah, [Iraq], Central Asian countries will be connected to open sea and Central Asian products can reach the Mediterranean by rail. ...
Due to this importance, Iran was occupied militarily during World War II, when it had not interfered in this war. Iran, from the north by the Russians and the south by the British, due to our country’s special geopolitical position was occupied, and at the end of World War II they nicknamed Iran ‘the Bridge of Victory’ while the Iranian Army at that time did not even resist for a day against the foreigners’ forces. ...
A significant percentage of Iranian trade takes place by sea. We have a powerful naval force in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Iran’s geographic position in the Persian Gulf, Caspian Sea and range of Iranian beaches are national sources of power for our country. ...
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a stable and powerful authority in the region. Iran has a population of 75 million and possesses powerful political and revolutionary leader, this is while the age of marginal Persian Gulf countries do not surpass 100 years. Our political geographers consider some Persian Gulf countries rootless governments that have not become a nation-state yet."
The paragraph that describes Iran's role in World War II is particularly interesting from the point of view of Generational Dynamics. Iran's two generational Crisis wars in the 1900s were the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-10, and the Great Islamic Revolution of 1979 combined with the Iran/Iraq war that ended in 1988. So during World War II, Iran was in the middle of its generational Awakening era, like America in the 1970s. The Constitutional Revolution was a particularly brutal war, engulfing the entire region. The survivors of this war were still alive in the 1940s, and like the survivors of any generational crisis war, they vowed that they would never let anything like the Constitutional Revolution happen to their own children or grandchildren. So Iran did not participate in WW II, even though the country was occupied by the Russians and the British. By 1979, the survivors of the Constitutional Revolution were all gone (dead), and there was no one left to prevent a new brutal, bloody civil war, the Great Islamic Revolution. American Enterprise Institute
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Aug-13 World View -- Horrific Syria chem weapons attack causes farce in Washington and New York thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Aug-2013)
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Turkey's Erdogan blames Israel for the coup, infuriating Egypt
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Since the July 3 Army coup that ousted president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government from power, it increasingly appears that the Army's aggressive attack on the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) organization is having some success:
The MB's fall from grace from the highest of heights when Morsi was in power to the current lowest of lows has been spectacular, and it leaves the MB with few choices, none of them pleasant.
The most obvious choice is increased violence, which would inevitably see the MB team up with al-Qaeda linked jihadists. Jihadist organizations are calling for this, of course, but the Egyptian public is already wary of MB violence, and would take any link with jihadists to be a sign that the Army should have leave to crush the MB even further.
The other major possibility was called by one analyst a "return to the Golden Era." The MB has been an illegal organization since 1952, and quite used to being in that position, playing the victim, and using its membership to serve as a humanitarian organization within Egypt. The MB has been a disastrous failure at governing, but they've always been extremely successful in the victim role, non-violent, and actually a positive force in Egyptian society.
Right now, MB is reconstituting its leadership, and deciding a new direction. It's worth repeating what I've said several times in the last couple of weeks: It is my expectation that there will be NO civil war between those who support and those who oppose the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, it looks like the MB is suffering an identity crisis, and will have to decide what kind of organization it wants to be, and what kind of direction it wants to go in: violence and jihadism versus humanitarianism and victimhood. I'd bet on the latter. Al-Ahram (Cairo) and Reuters and VOA
The political chaos in Egypt has also caused political chaos in Turkey. Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had seen the "Arab Awakening" that began in 2011 as an opportunity to advance conservative Islam throughout the Mideast, and the victory of Mohamed Morsi as president was viewed as a major opportunity. The ousting of Morsi has personally infuriated Erdogan, and he expressed his fury on Tuesday:
"What is said about Egypt? That democracy is not the ballot box. Who is behind this? Israel is. We have the evidence in our hands. That's exactly what happened. ...If we stay silent in the face of the coup in Egypt, we will not have the right to say something if they [the Israelis] set the same trap for us in the future."
The evidence Erdogan was referring to was a 2011 video of a press conference by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy, in which Levy says:
"If the Muslim Brotherhood arrives in Egypt, I will not say democracy wants it, so let democracy progress. Democracy is not only elections, it is also values. [With regard to Israel's use of military power,] I will urge the prevention of them [the MB] coming to power, but by all sorts of means."
Erdogan also stepped up his criticisms of other Muslim countries that have not adopted strict Muslim teachings, and especially the Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait) that gave $16 billion to post-coup Egypt:
"The Islamic world is like the brothers of the Prophet Yusuf, who threw him down the well. As in the case of the brothers of the Prophet Yusuf, Allah will shame those in the Islamic world betraying their brothers and sisters in Egypt."
Erdogan's statements infuriated Egyptian officials, who accused Erdogan of making false statements to harm Egypt's national unity. According to an official statement by Egypt's cabinet:
"Egypt is running out of patience. ... Egypt does not share anyone’s hostility [and its] Arab and Islamic identity are clear."
Erdogan's statements also received sharp rebukes from officials in Washington and the European Union. Zaman (Istanbul) and Al Ahram (Cairo) and Debka
The chaos resulting from the July 3 ouster of Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi has caused convulsions in Cairo and opportunities for jihadists on the border with Israel in Egypt's Sinai region. The border between Israel and Egypt has been relatively quiet for decades, but now Israel's army is beefing up its patrols along the border. According to one Israeli analyst:
"The militants in Sinai will try to drag Israel into the conflict, so we need to contain their activities. If a rocket falls on a hillside in Israel, and no-one is hurt, then we can bear that. But if a rocket falls on a hotel in Eilat, then Israel will have to retaliate. That is a situation we need to avoid."
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Aug-13 World View -- Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood faces identity crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Aug-2013)
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Tensions grow between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar
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The European Union is investigating a growing dispute between Britain and Spain over the enclave of Gibraltar, on the tip of Spain, but ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1714, following on Britain's victory in the War of the Spanish Succession. ( "13-Aug-13 World View -- Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain")
The dispute began after Gibraltar used concrete blocks to build an artificial reef to prevent Spanish fishermen from fishing in waters near Gibraltar. This infuriated Spanish officials, who got revenge by toughening border checks at the crossing points, leading to enormous delays for workers and tourists entering Gibraltar.
On Monday, the European Commission issued a statement:
"[A] Commission fact-finding mission should as soon as possible examine in loco the border control, movement of people and goods questions. President [José Manuel Barroso] expressed his hope that Spain and the UK will address these matters in a way that is in line with their common membership in the EU."
Spanish fishermen, already struggling because of the financial crisis, say that Gibraltar's actions are hurting them the most. "Over there you can catch 30 to 60 kilos of clams a day, for which they pay us nine euros a kilo. But here you get thin shells that fetch two euros and moreover there are only a few of them," according to one Spanish fisherman. Reuters and AFP
Suspected Islamist terrorists killed 24 Egyptian policemen on Monday in Egypt's Sinai region, near the border with Gaza and Israel. Jihadists are increasingly teaming up with indigenous Bedouins in the Sinai, especially since the July 3 ouster of president Mohamed Morsi, taking advantage of the chaotic situation in Cairo. According to one analyst, the Sinai is almost three times the size of Israel and largely lawless, where there are no roads, there is no law, and the situation in Sinai "is almost an all-out war." However, according to another analyst, "Considering how big Sinai is, very few have properly observed that a large bulk of the violence is concentrated in a tiny portion of the peninsula, pushed right up against the border." Jerusalem Post
A Cairo court has ordered the release of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak in an ongoing corruption case in which he is accused of squandering public funds to renovate his private residences, pending his trial. Mubarak was ousted early in 2011 at the beginning of the "Egyptian revolution," and he was jailed on corruption charges shortly thereafter. However, there are conflicting reports as to whether Mubarak will actually be released from custody, as he may be held by another court where he is facing additional charges. Al-Ahram (Cairo) and Bloomberg
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Aug-13 World View -- Sinai 'is almost an all-out war' as attack kills 24 Egyptian policemen thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Aug-2013)
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A relatively quiet day in Cairo - only 36 deaths
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Sunday was a relatively quiet day in Egypt, after a week of clashes between security forces and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) supporters that resulted in almost 1,000 deaths. The Muslim Brotherhood called off several planned protest marches on Sunday, rather than risk additional clashes with the police. The major event of the day occurred when at least 36 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed by security forces in a gunfight when they tried to escape from a prison convoy as they were being transported to jail. Al-Jazeera
I received a couple of inquiries about the statement I wrote yesterday that "A full-scale crisis civil war is a real possibility in Egypt." I was unclear in writing this sentence. I was not attempting to predict a civil war between Muslim Brotherhood (MB) supporters and their opponents. I was only attempting to contrast Egypt, where a crisis civil war is a possibility, with Syria, where a crisis civil war at this time is definitely not.
The reason for the inquiries is that the statement appeared to contradict my recent article, "28-Jul-13 World View -- Generational Dynamics analysis of the crisis in Egypt" in which I wrote, "So my prediction is that there will NOT be a civil war between pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators."
This is still my prediction, though it's worth pointing out that I make this kind of prediction with "only" 80-90% probability. My record on making predictions in the last ten years has been the best in the world, and I still challenge anyone to find a journalist, analyst, web site or politician with anything close to the predictive success of Generational Dynamics. (For more on the mathematics behind Generational Dynamics forecasting, see my 2009 paper: "International business forecasting using System Dynamics with generational flows." (PDF))
So let's look more closely at the situation in Egypt, and see if it's reasonable to expect a crisis civil war between the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, versus their opponents.
In order to have a crisis civil war, the country has to be in a generational Crisis era (which Egypt is, and Syria is not). And there has to be a hard fault line that separates the two groups that will be fighting each other.
What do I mean by a "hard fault line"? The major criterion is that your membership in each of the conflicting groups is decided at birth, and there's no way, in most cases, to "switch sides."
So, for example, the American Civil War was fought along a geographic fault line that separated the North from the South, and in those days it was rare for Northerners and Southerners to mingle.
The 1994 Rwanda civil was fought between two ethnic groups -- the Hutus and Tutsis. In that war, a man might get up in the morning, grab a machete, go to his neighbor's house next door, kill and dismember the men and children, rape the wife, and then kill and dismember her. That's the kind of thing that happens in a crisis civil war.
In the Bosnian civil war of the early 1990s, there were both ethnic and religious differences between the Christian Serbs versus the Muslim Bosnians and the Catholic Croats. (Paragraph corrected. 19-Aug)
In her book, World on Fire, here's how author Amy Chua describes the Bosnian war:
"In the Serbian concentration camps of the early 1990s, the women prisoners were raped over and over, many times a day, often with broken bottles, often together with their daughters. The men, if they were lucky, were beaten to death as their Serbian guards sang national anthems; if they were not so fortunate, they were castrated or, at gunpoint, forced to castrate their fellow prisoners, sometimes with their own teeth. In all, thousands were tortured and executed."
In Burma (Myanmar) today, you can easily see a full-scale crisis civil war building between the Buddhists and the Muslims. (See "5-Apr-13 World View -- Meiktila, Burma, violence has echoes of Kristallnacht".) That's going to explode into a major bloodbath before too much longer.
Now, I just don't see anything like that building between the pro- and anti-MB Egyptians. Except for isolated incidents, I don't expect to see masses of pro-MB Egyptians raping and mutilating and dismembering masses of anti-MB Egyptians, or vice-versa. The fighting and massacres so far have still been mainly between civilians and security forces, not between civilians and civilians.
A web site reader sent me a link to a Feb 2012 article that talks about a supposed American-Zionist plot to partition Egypt into four separate countries. I read through the article, hoping to find some evidence that there were significant hard fault lines within Egypt that might lead to such a partitioning, but it turned out that the accusations were just fatuous nonsense, as far as I could tell.
One might argue that there are hard fault lines between Egyptians on the one hand and Jews and Coptic Christians on the other hand, but except for isolated incidents we've seen little animosity between these groups. The one hard fault line that I've seen is with Bedouins in Egypt's Sinai.
And that's why I predict, with 90% probability, that there will not be a full-scale crisis civil war between pro- and anti-MB Egyptians. I'm willing to change my mind, but only when I see something significant, such as what's going on in Burma.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Aug-13 World View -- More on the Generational Dynamics analysis of Egypt's crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Aug-2013)
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Concerns raised about a possible civil war in Egypt
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Dramatic videos were broadcast on Saturday of Egyptian security forces hiding behind tanks shooting and killing unarmed protesters with their hands up, further polarizing the country after almost 1,000 people have been killed in the last week in clashes between security forces and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) supporters. Although most MB supporters are protesting peacefully, some reports are saying that some activists are stockpiling weapons in preparation for a major battle. Egypt's interim government on Saturday threatened to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood organization entirely, and seize its property and assets, calling it a terrorist organization. However, attempting to dissolve MB would not end the protests and riots, and might make them worse.
Many politicians are expressing concern that Egypt is headed for a civil war, and they're using Syria as a comparison. But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Egypt and Syria are completely different cases.
Syria is in a generational Awakening era (like America in the 1960s), with plenty of survivors who have vivid memories of the 1982 bloodbath when tens of thousands of people were slaughtered in fighting between Sunnis and Alawites in the city of Hama. These survivors do not want to see anything like that happen again, and the war in Syria would have fizzled long ago if it weren't for the actions of the psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad, supported with massive heavy weapons shipments from Vladimir Putin, the psychopathic president of Russia.
Egypt is in a generational Crisis era. There is no inhibition of the kind felt by the survivors in Syria. A full-scale crisis civil war is a real possibility in Egypt. BBC
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With the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabaab blocking international aid workers for vaccinating Somalians against polio, an "explosive" outbreak is now occurring. According to the United Nations:
The fact that [over 100] children show symptoms of paralysis means that there are probably thousands more with the virus, who do not have symptoms, but are capable of spreading it."
Polio is highly infectious, exacerbated by poor sanitation and a lack of clean water. It invades the nervous system, and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. The disease is spreading through regions of Somalia controlled by al-Shabaab and various warlords, and is also spreading to the almost half a million Somalia refugees in camps in Kenya. On Wednesday, medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF - Doctors without Borders) closed its programs in Somalia after 22 years because of repeated terrorist attacks and murders by al-Shabaab. Polio remains endemic in three other countries -- Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan -- mostly because al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups refuse to allow vaccination programs, sometimes claiming that they're a secret plot to sterilize Muslims and prevent more Muslim children. BBC and Middle East Online
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Aug-13 World View -- 'Explosive' outbreak of polio spreading in Somalia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Aug-2013)
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Dozens of churches burned and looted in Egypt's 'Friday of Rage'
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Government officials from the Philippines have begun negotiations with the United States over increasing the presence of the U.S. military in the Philippines. The U.S. will deploy aircraft, ships, troops and equipment in civilian and military facilities in the Philippines. According to Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Carlos Sorreta:
"There is a sense of urgency in getting this agreement through…There are things that we need quite urgently that they can help. For example, building our capacities for being aware of developments in the region, watching movements, projecting movements in our part of the world including the [South China Sea] ... It’s all that and more.Right now we desperately need this kind of awareness in this part of the world."
These talks are generating a great deal of controversy in the Philippines. U.S. bases in the Philippines were forced to close in 1992, and some Filipinos strongly oppose anything that looks like a return.
According to a statement by the Communist Party of the Philippines, the negotiations are nothing but a "masquerade":
"The plan to grant the US greater military access to local ports and infrastructure and extending rights to set up its own facilities has long been agreed upon by the Aquino government and the US military.Considering that the US has long been granted access by the Aquino regime, the current round of negotiations will likely result in allowing the US to have exclusive access to certain facilities, which is a step further in formally allowing the return of the US military bases."
However, these concerns are being blown away by China's aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, which it's using its vast military power to follow a "Lebensraum" policy and take possession of islands belonging to other countries. Last year, China sent warships to Scarborough Shoal, which is Philippine territory, and annexed it. Philippines officials have begun a military buildup to allow them to confront China militarily, and negotiations with the U.S. are said to be a temporary measure for protection of the country's sovereignty until it improves its own military capability. ABS-CBNnews (Manila) and Philippine Star
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Dozens were killed and hundreds were injured in Egypt on Friday during the "Friday of Rage" called by the Muslim Brotherhood to protest the carnage earlier this week when hundreds of people, mostly in the Muslim Brotherhood, were killed in confrontations with security police. Some 32 churches have been burned or looted in the violence since Wednesday, mostly in the upper Egypt province of Minya, which has a history of sectarian tensions. Al-Ahram (Cairo)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Aug-13 World View -- U.S. and Philippines make military plans to counter China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(17-Aug-2013)
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Good news is bad news on Wall Street
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A Sunni Muslim Islamist group called "the Brigades of Aisha" claimed responsibility for a large car bomb that killed 20 people, injured hundreds, and damaged numerous cars and buildings in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, in a stronghold of the Iran-linked Shia Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah. The Islamist group issued a video statement addressed to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah:
"This is the second time that we decide the place of the battle and its timing...And you will see more, God willing."
This was the largest in a series of terrorist acts directed at Lebanon's Hezbollah group, ever since Nasrallah publicly announced that Hezbollah would actively fight side-by-side with Syria's psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad in his quest to exterminate Sunni women and children in Syria. Every since Nasrallah made his announcement in early May, sectarian tensions pitting Sunnis and Shias against each other have surged throughout the Mideast. Al-Qaeda is taking credit for the unraveling security chaos in Iraq. Reuters and BBC
The official death count by Egypt's Interior Ministry from the clashes that followed Tuesday's "dispersal" of Muslim Brotherhood supporters has now risen about 600. The coup ousting Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi has been a bitter disappointment for Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has led an Islamist government in Turkey for many years. And now Erdogan is harshly criticizing the Tuesday's violence and the security forces' "bloody intervention":
"We strongly condemn that the Egyptian administration has once again resorted to violence against peaceful demonstrations despite all warnings.The incumbent administration which intervened in the democratic and civilian regime through a coup d'état is responsible for the loss of lives of the brotherly Egyptian people since the 30th of June. [The latest developments are a] great blow to hopes for Egypt to return to democracy through an inclusive transition process."
On Thursday, Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Cairo "for consultations," and Egypt quickly followed by withdrawing its own ambassador from Ankara.
Just as the population of Egypt is itself bitterly divided, countries are lining up on different sides. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) foreign ministry statement said:
"The UAE ... re-affirms its understanding of the sovereign measures taken by the Egyptian government after having exercised maximum self-control. What is regretful is that political extremist groups have insisted on the rhetoric of violence, incitement, disruption of public interests."
As we've recently reported, Egypt has been promised $12 billion in aid from Gulf Arab states that don't like or trust the Muslim Brotherhood -- Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kuwait.
This is significant for American foreign policy. Washington is debating whether to threaten to cut off American aid to Egypt, in order to gain leverage. But America's $1.3 billion in aid is only a small fraction of the aid they're getting from the Arab states, which means that America really doesn't have much leverage at all.
President Obama has managed to infuriate and alienate just about every faction in Egypt. The Islamists are furious because he doesn't support Morsi, who was the first democratically elected president in Egypt's history. The secularists are furious because Obama appears to be taking the side of the MB supporters by criticizing the government's violence, but ignoring the violence by MB activists against police and Christian churches.
President Obama's Mideast policies have been a disaster at every turn, as we've been documenting, and Egypt is no exception. Why is President Obama lecturing and moralizing to the Egyptian people on a regular basis? Why is President Obama constantly interfering in Egypt's politics? How did the Administration get into such a mess in Egypt? In my opinion, the disaster began with President Obama's "apology tour" speech in Cairo in 2009, where he made promises that could never be kept, with the result that he has no credibility left with anyone. Like many young Gen-Xers, President Obama is absolutely certain that he knows absolutely more than anyone else in the world, and rather than take some advice from his elders, he goes off and makes one mistake after another. Daily News Egypt and Hurriyet (Ankara)
Some analysts are blaming Thursday's 225 point stock market plunge on a relatively good unemployment data on Thursday morning. The reasoning is that better unemployment data means that the Federal Reserve will begin to "taper" its monthly $85 billion quantitative easing, which is the only thing holding up the stock market. As I've said in the past, it's like we're all watching a dreadful horror movie, but we're locked in the movie theatre and can't get out. Washington Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Aug-13 World View -- Car bomb in Hezbollah's Lebanon stronghold kills 20 thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Aug-2013)
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North and South Korea agree to reopen Kaesong industrial complex
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Egypt's Interior Ministry is saying that almost 100 people were killed and hundreds injured in clashes between the security forces and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) supporters on Wednesday, while MB activists put the numbers at triple that figure. After six weeks of sit-ins by tens of thousands of supporters, following the July 3 ouster of president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government, the new army-led interim government finally carried through on its repeated threats to "disperse" the protesters.
Others are complaining that angry mobs of MB supporters attacked and torched a number of Christian churches, monasteries, schools and shops in Alexandria, Suez and other cities.
MB activists are claiming that deaths were all caused by live fire by the Army and police. The Interior Ministry says that, although almost all MB protesters were peaceful, some fired at the police from hidden positions, in order to provoke return fire.
Most reports point to polls that show that most of the population are sick and tired of the MB. They got into office a year ago, governed the country as dictators, imposing a version of Sharia law that few wanted, while the country's economy got worse and worse. And then, when Morsi was ousted, they refused every compromise, and created political chaos.
However, the MB is still an extremely powerful force in Egypt's politics, with some 30% of the population belonging to the organization. Al-Ahram (Cairo)
Egypt's people are quite used to living under a state of emergency. The last one was declared in 1981 after the assassination of president Anwar Sadat, and was not lifted until Hosni Mubarak was deposed two years ago. Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood was an illegal organization under Mubarak, and so the current status of its members is familiar territory to them. In fact, probably the reason why they went so crazy with power when Mohamed Morsi was president is that they didn't know how to handle it.
So today's government declaration of a month-long state of emergency is quite familiar to Egyptians. What's new today is that the government has also imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Cairo and 10 other provinces, allowing the army to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone who violates the curfew. Anti-government activists in Cairo claimed police and soldiers aided by self-styled "popular committees" of civilian vigilantes armed with clubs and machetes enforced the curfew, searching cars and checking identity cards of people passing through makeshift checkpoints made of tires and concrete blocks. Reuters
Mohamed ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize several years ago for his work with the United Nations atomic energy agency, had joined the government at the request of the Army, as a moderate-liberal-secular voice. On Wednesday he resigned, saying:
"It has become hard for me to keep bearing responsibility for decisions that I did not approve of and warned against their consequences. I cannot be responsible before God for a single drop of blood.It was hoped that the people's uprising of 30 June would steer the country back into the path of achieving the revolution's goals after the dominating, exclusionary policies practiced by the groups that ruled the country for one of its worst years. This is what drove me to accept a government position, but things took a different direction where polarization and division reached more dangerous levels and the social fabric faced disintegration.
I believed that there were acceptable peaceful alternatives to resolve our societal confrontation that could have stood a chance at achieving national reconciliation. Violence begets violence, and mark my words, the only beneficiaries from what happened today are extremist groups."
Several analysts said that the interim government should simply have allowed the sit-in to continue for as many weeks or months as they wanted, with no need for violence. Al-Ahram
Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise visit to the State Dept.'s press briefing room on Wednesday, and read a statement excerpted below:
"The United States strongly condemns today’s violence and bloodshed across Egypt. It’s a serious blow to reconciliation and the Egyptian people’s hopes for a transition towards democracy and inclusion. ...Today’s events are deplorable and they run counter to Egyptian aspirations for peace, inclusion, and genuine democracy. Egyptians inside and outside of the government need to take a step back. They need to calm the situation and avoid further loss of life. ...
Violence is simply not a solution in Egypt or anywhere else."
This is the kind of banal silliness that we've come to expect from Kerry, at a time when America's credibility in the Mideast is at an all time low. Last month, Kerry announced an Afghan "peace process" that collapsed within a day; his Mideast "peace process" is a joke; the Administration's handling of the violence in Syria, setting one "red line" after another, and then doing nothing when it's crossed, is a farce; and then there's Benghazi.
Kerry's statement is being viewed with contempt in Egypt because it say anything about the one question that everyone wants to know: Is it the opinion of the Obama administration that the July 3 ouster was a "coup," or not? If it was a coup, then American law requires that aid to Egypt be terminated. Egyptians on both sides are furious with Obama for not taking sides, though I would argue that not taking sides is the right thing for Obama to do at this time. State Department
North and South Korea agreed in principle Wednesday to reopen their joing Kaesong industrial complex, after it was closed in April by a temper tantrum from North Korea's child dictator, Kim Jong-un. However, no date was set for the reopening. North Korea had wanted to reopen Kaesong earlier, without any conditions, because it's a lucrative source of hard currency for the North. South Korea apparently at least got some sort of promise from the North that they would not shut it down again "under any circumstances." At the insistence of the South, they also agreed to allow foreign investors to operate in Kaesong, because the South believes that the presence of foreign companies will make it more difficult to shut it down again. Yonhap (Seoul)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Aug-13 World View -- Hundreds of casualties in clashes in Egypt thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Aug-2013)
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China's propaganda program frightens opponents and stirs domestic nationalism
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Israel on Tuesday released 26 Palestinians from prison as its first of four such releases as one of the conditions for "peace process" negotiations with the Palestinians to proceed. The 26 were welcomed as heroes in the West Bank and Gaza, where thousands of Palestinian well-wishers cheered their arrival as fireworks lit the sky. The 26 have all been prisoners since before the 1994 Oslo peace agreement, and had been convicted of crimes such as murder or terrorism. Relatives of the Israeli victims held protests all day, and some protesters tried briefly to block the buses from leaving. The "peace talks" between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are scheduled to begin on Wednesday. AP
With terrorism increasing in Egypt's Sinai region, which is on the border with both Gaza and Israel, concerns have been growing of rocket attacks on Israel from Sinai. On Tuesday, terrorists in Sinai fired rockets into Israel, targeting the southern city of Eilat. At least one rocket was intercepted by Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-missile system. No missiles struck Eilat. The Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis jihadi group claimed credit for launching several Grad missiles, blaming the attack on last week's never-confirmed missile strike on Sinai terrorists by an Israeli drone. Jerusalem Post and Reuters
During crises earlier this year between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal, and between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, the Chinese media contained regular appearances of People's Liberation Army (PLA) figures making threatening and hawkish statements. While some China analysts called these remarks "reckless statements, with no official authorization," they were remarkably effective. On the one hand, they stoked Chinese nationalism, leading nearly 80% of the Chinese people to support military action and war against the Philippines for the latter's "provocations." On the other hand, they forced other countries to accept a new status quo: the Philippines backed down completely and ceded the Scarborough Shoal to Chinese ships, while the Japanese backed down partially, forced to accept almost daily confrontations with Chinese patrol boats around the Senkaku Islands. Although not official Chinese policy, the PLA's "hawkish faction" appear integral to Chinese handling of international conflict. Jamestown
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Aug-13 World View -- Thousands of Palestinians celebrate with fireworks as Israel releases 26 prisoners thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(14-Aug-2013)
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Your mortgage documents are fake!
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It's for a previously scheduled naval exercise in the Mediterranean, but Britain's dispatch of warships to the coast of Gibraltar couldn't have happened at a more significant time. Gibraltar is located on the tip of Spain, but it's British territory, thanks to the 1714 Treaty at Utrecht that settled the War of the Spanish Succession. Since then, it's been the source of unending tension between Britain and Spain, but tensions really soared last month when Gibraltar created dumped cement blocks into the waters around the enclave, in order to prevent Spanish boats from fishing there. This infuriated Spanish officials, who retaliated by partially blocking the border checkpoint between Spain and Gibraltar, making it almost impossible for people to travel there from Spain, with some officials calling for a return of the "Spanish Armada" to Gibraltar. Britain is now retaliating back by threatening legal action, saying that the border controls are a violation of European Union rules. The Spanish Armada and the British warships are a show of force, but we don't believe that this will turn into a shooting war.
Spain has announced that it's going to team up with Argentina, and take the case to the United Nations, where they'll demand that Gibraltar be returned to Spain, and that the Falkland Islands be returned to Argentina. Gibraltar Chronicle and Spiegel
Most people, I've discovered, have never heard of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), but it's one of the most significant wars of the last millennium. WSS made Scotland a part of Britain, but as we wrote last year (see "16-Oct-12 World View -- England and Scotland agree to a referendum on Scottish independence"), that agreement may now be unraveling.
You can enumerate just a few "world wars" that affected all of western Europe in the last few centuries. There was the Spanish Armada war against Britain that climaxed with Spain's defeat in 1588, and then the Thirty Years War that climaxed in 1648 with the Treaty at Westphalia (called the "Peace of Exhaustion"), settling the boundaries between European countries.
The War of the Spanish Succession broke out 52 years after the treaty at Westphalia was signed. It was triggered when the King of Spain died childless in 1700, and because of numerous marriage alliances, it finally turned out that Spain was bequeathed to the grandson of the King of France, who then became King of Spain, and so Spain became allied with France, where previously it had been allied with Germany. This led to the WSS "world war," with the two sides led by England and France. England miraculously and unexpectedly defeated the French army in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. France's final defeat came in August 1709, at the battle of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle in Europe for the entire eighteenth century.
Once again, the boundaries of the European countries were set by agreement, this time by the Treaty at Utrecht in 1714, and one of the spoils of war was Britain's acquisition of Gibraltar from Spain. The treaty held until the next "world war," Napoleon's conquest of Europe following the French Revolution, almost a century later. But the agreements coming out of the War of the Spanish Succession that made both Scotland and Gibraltar part of Britain are both still being disputed today.
Thanks to information from a newly unsealed lawsuit, it turns out that many people reading this articles have mortgages with banks that can't prove ownership of your property. We haven't written about "robo-signing" for a couple of years, but it now turns out that the reason that robo-signing was used was because the banks wanting to foreclose properties could not prove they had the right to foreclose, and so they used robo-signing to forge fraudulent documents, and then lied to the courts and government about them.
Tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to foreclose. This hasn’t stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the breakdown of law in the judicial system. Homeowners trying to sell their properties find that their properties are impossible to sell.
Banks who committed this fraud include: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and US Bank.
As usual, the Obama administration adamantly refuses to investigate and prosecute these crimes, because these banks are all big donors to Administration campaigns and programs, with the result that no one has gone to jail for trillions of dollars of criminal fraud that caused the financial crisis. The level of criminality going on in Washington is incredible, and nobody gives a shit. That's why I keep referring to Hannah Arendt and Nazi Germany, where respectable people were actually gangsters, and gangsters were treated as respectable people. Salon
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Egypt's interim government backed down on plans to "disperse" tens of thousands of protesters in a sit-in in two large squares in Cairo. The protesters are demanding that ousted president Mohamed Morsi, who has been held in detention at a secret location since July 3, be released and restored to the presidency, and that his Muslim Brotherhood government be restored to power. No reason was given for backing down, but various conjectures have been put forth: the U.S. pressured them to stand down; or it's a strategy to confuse the protesters; or the "dispersal" will occur later when the element of surprise is available; or some people hope that negotiations are still possible; or some people fear that the violence will end up killing hundreds of people. Al-Ahram (Cairo) and Foreign Policy
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Aug-13 World View -- Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Aug-2013)
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Palestinians accuse Israel of sabotaging 'peace process'
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Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has recently changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (referring to Syria), is taking credit for a series of car bombs in mainly Shia areas of Baghdad on Saturday that killed 90 people and wounded hundreds. Attacks have increased in every month since the withdrawal of American troops in December 2011, alongside the increasing strength of al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in bombings and shootings in July, making it the deadliest month since violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims peaked prior to President Bush's military "surge", in conjunction with the Anbar Awakening that drove out al-Qaeda in Iraq. These new attacks come just weeks after al-Qaeda in Iraq succeeded through an assault on Abu Ghraib prison to free hundreds of prisoners, including leading al-Qaeda fighters.
The following is my transcription of a BBC interview with BBC Arabic correspondent Murad al-Shishani on Sunday:
"Al-Qaeda in Iraq [AQIR] have been increasing their attacks every month since the withdrawal of the Americans. We're expecting a statement from AQIR bragging about this accomplishment. Since the 2007 Anbar Awakening, AQIR has been losing influence, but with the crisis in Syria, AQIR has been given geographic spaces and a recruitment pool. The increases in attacks in Iraq mean that they have logistic support and manpower support coming from Syria, from their counterpart jihadist groups.From Anbar in the western part of Iraq, up to the northwestern part of Syria in Aleppo, there's a sort of strip there of ungoverned space that al-Qaeda is working there. AQIR recently changed name to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. This geographic space gives them a recruitment pool, and gives them a strategic space to hide in and prepare for attacks, as well as to receive support from the Sunni communities there, on either side of the border."
Al-Jazeera and Washington Times
Media reports from several sources say that Egypt's security forces will begin dispersal of thousands of pro-Morsi supporters on Monday morning. The plan for the initial phase, according to unconfirmed sources, is a siege, where security forces block all entrances to the protest areas, allowing people out, but not allowing them back in, nor allowing any food or other supplies in. There have been massive protests and sit-ins every day since president Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the army, and held in detention at an unknown location. The protesters are demanding that Morsi be freed and returned to the presidency, and that his Muslim Brotherhood party be returned to power. Al-Ahram (Cairo)
With Israeli / Palestinian "peace process" negotiations set to resume on Wednesday, Palestinian negotiators Saeb Erekat and Muhammad Shtayyeh accused Israel of aiming to sabotage the talks by announcing plans to build 1,200 more settlement apartments in Jerusalem and in regions of the West Bank that Israel captured in the 1967 war. According to Shtayyeh:
"It is clear that the Israeli government is deliberately attempting to sabotage US and International efforts to resume negotiations by approving more settlement units three days before the first Palestinian – Israeli meeting.Israel continues to use peace negotiations as a smoke screen for more settlement construction. The Israeli government is showing the world that the only way to achieve piece is justice, meaning end of Israel’s impunity.
Israel has been claiming that they want negotiations without ‘conditions,’ but on the ground is clear that they are the only ones imposing conditions: to negotiate with settlement construction, creating new conditions on the ground in order to pre-empt the result of any negotiations.
We call upon the United States and the rest of the international community to hold Israel accountable in order to give a chance for peace."
However, Israel says that the new settlements do not have effect on the peace talks, because they're all in places which, according to previous agreements, will remain part of Israel. According to Israeli spokesman Mark Regev:
"[The construction] in no way changes the final map of peace.The construction decided upon in Jerusalem and in the settlement blocs is in areas that will remain part of Israel in any possible peace agreement."
On Tuesday, Israel will release the first 26 of the 104 prisoners, all of whom are jailed for terrorist acts committed prior to the 1994 peace talks. Israel has promised to release all 104 over nine months, provided that the "peace process" negotiations continue. Some Palestinians are referring to those terms as "blackmail," since they prevent the Palestinians from walking out of the negotiations before the nine months are up. Jerusalem Post and BBC
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Warfare between the Arab Maaliya and Rezeigat tribes in the Darfur region of Sudan has been spreading, with hundreds of people killed in recent weeks. There were 1.4 million people living in refugee camps at the beginning of 2013, and an estimated 300,000 people have been displaced from their homes so far in this year's surge of violence. Two other Arab tribes, the Misseriya and Salamat, announced a ceasefire two weeks ago after more than 200 people had been killed.
The mainstream press keeps describing the Darfur war as having begun in 2003, and that's complete nonsense.
Darfur's civil war began as low-level violence in the 1970s as a fairly standard conflict between farmers and herders. What always happens is that the herders' animals trample on the farmers' crops, and then the farmers build fences to block the herders' animals. The violence worsened over the years, and the conflict transitioned to a generational crisis war in 2003, with the light-skinned "Arab" Janjaweed militia herders slaughtering the dark-skinned "non-Arab" farmers. That's when the United Nations "discovered" Darfur, and launched a donation-based program to protect the farmers from the herders. So the farmers were moved into huge refugee tent camps where they became entirely dependent on aid and donations from foreign entities.
For a detailed generational analysis of the war in Darfur, as well as a chuckle or two, see "Ban Ki Moon blames Darfur genocide on global warming" from 2007.
The financial crisis has reduced donations, and starvation is widespread in the Darfur refugee camps. Furthermore, Sudan's government is refusing to renew permits for some of the United Nations' international humanitarian staff in Darfur. And now, the fighting between the "Arab" tribes indicates that Khartoum is losing control of the Janjaweed militias.
As I've been writing for years, a generational crisis war is an elemental force of nature, and has to reach a climax. At some point, the Janjaweed militias will return to finish the job, slaughtering the "non-Arab" refugees like fish in a barrel. That will finally end the Darfur war. AFP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Aug-13 World View -- Darfur fighting spreads as Janjaweed militias spin out of control thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Aug-2013)
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Violence with smugglers increases on Turkey - Syria border
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India is celebrating switching on the nuclear reactor on Saturday of it's new nuclear-powered submarine, the Arihant, which means "destroyer of enemies" in Sanskrit. The enemies, presumably, are China and Pakistan. The submarine will initially be armed with K-15 nuclear missiles, with a range of 750 km, to be upgraded to K-4 nuclear missiles, with a 3,500 km range. Once it undergoes 18 months of extensive sea trials, with Russia's help, India will be joining the club whose only current members are the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France, able to launch nuclear missiles from land, air or sea. Times of India and BBC
The year 2012 marked the 40th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations between India and Vietnam. These two historic enemies of China are consolidating their activities in the fields of defense and security, trade and investment, science and technology, information technology, capacity building and human resource development, agriculture, education and culture. Two agreements are particularly important in view of the conflicts between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea. First, for several years, India and Vietnam have been jointly involved in oil exploration in the waters off Vietnam, in a region that has historically belonged to Vietnam. But this region, along with South China Sea regions historically belonging to other countries, are now being claimed by China in its modern "Lebensraum" policy, with the claims backed by military threats. Which leads to the second agreement between India and Vietnam: For the first time, India has offered a $100 million credit line to Vietnam to purchase military equipment. This will be used to purchase four patrol boats that Vietnam will use to defend its rights in the South China Sea. Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS)
Yesterday's reports, emerging from Egypt's Sinai region, of an Israeli drone strike in Sinai have not been confirmed by either Israelis or Egyptians, but if true would be a dramatic escalation in the violence in the region, marking the first time in decades that Israel's air force struck a target on Egyptian soil. Furthermore, Egypt denies initial reports that it gave Israel permission for the strike.
Sinai, like Gaza, has become a hornet's nest of terrorist activity, but unlike Gaza, the vast desert province is part of sovereign Egyptian territory, placing Israel in an ongoing dilemma on how to deal with emerging threats. On the one hand is the need to respect Egyptian sovereignty and maintain the strategically vital peace treaty with Cairo. On the other is the obligation to defend southern Israel from the rising terrorist threat.
Whether caused by an Israeli drone strike or not, the explosions killed five terrorists and a rocket launcher capable of firing Iranian-made M-75 missiles known as Fajr-5. It's thought that the current versions of these missiles have an integrated radar system with a 75 km range, causing Israel to close an airport in Eilat in southern Israel, near the Sinai border. Jerusalem Post and YNet and Debka
Turkey's military says that 18 soldiers were wounded on Tuesday when border troops intercepted a group of almost 3,000 smugglers bringing diesel fuel from Syria into Turkey. When the confrontation began, the smugglers set barrels of diesel fuel on fire to keep the troops back, and the soldiers fired into the air and used tear gas to disperse the smugglers. Local villagers attacked the troops with stones, Molotov cocktails and firearms. Smuggling from Syria into Turkey is becoming big business, with the war leaving Syrian refineries and storehouses mostly unguarded. Diesel fuel costs four times as much in Turkey as in Syria. Relief supplies, provided by the international community for Syrians, are also being smuggled out and sold in southern Turkey. Zaman (Istanbul) and The National (UAE)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Aug-13 World View -- Questions growing over Israel's drone attack on Sinai jihadists thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(11-Aug-2013)
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Dept. of Justice accuses Bank of America of securities fraud
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One or two large explosions on Friday afternoon in the Sinai region of Egypt, near the borders of Gaza and Israel, killed four or five jihadist militants, and wiped out a jihadist radar installation, according to first reports. Egyptian sources were quoted as saying that the explosion was caused by a missile attack from an Israeli drone, launched with permission of the Egyptian army, as part of the increasingly close cooperation between the two armies against a common enemy. However, later in the day, an Egyptian army spokesperson stressed that there's no truth to media claims of an Israeli attack on Egyptian soil, nor to claims of Egyptian-Israeli coordination. Al Ahram (Cairo) and Jerusalem Post
President Obama's Dept. of Justice has adamantly refused to investigate and prosecute the criminals who caused the financial crisis, which is far from over, with the result that no one has gone to jail for one of the greatest crimes in history. This week's decision by the Justice Dept. to charge Bank of America with securities fraud for knowingly selling billions of dollars in faulty mortgage-backed securities does not change that.
According to William K. Black, who was the senior regulator investigating the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s:
"Yes. So this, first, is a civil suit, not a criminal prosecution. And even in a civil suit, the Department of Justice has refused to sue any of the senior officers who, according to this complaint, became wealthy through leading this massive fraud by Bank of America. ...The allegation of the nature of the fraud is that Bank of America knew that it was selling product that was often fraudulent and was--mortgage product that was often fraudulent and was in any event of very poor quality, and that it lied in its representations to Wachovia and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco in order to induce them and others to purchase the alleged best portion of this mortgage-backed security.
And there are some more interesting allegations along the way, interesting because I think the Department of Justice doesn't explain how--understand how embarrassing they are to the Department of Justice. So one of the allegations, for example, says that Bank of America, after it realized that one of its loan officers was working with a borrower to commit a fraud, fired the loan officer, made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. That loan officer, former loan officer, is under indictment; in other words, he's going to be criminally prosecuted; and that they still--they being Bank of America--still sold that loan under representations and warranties that it was a great long, even though they knew it was in fact a product of multiple frauds. And, of course, the loan blew up and caused substantial losses.
Now, of course, the question that everyone in the world except the Justice Department would ask is the complaint goes on to say that Bank of America employees came under intense pressure from senior officials at the Bank of America to deliberately make bad loans and to approve bad loans made by loan brokers, that they were specifically instructed that their job was not to find fraud, that their bonus packages depended on approving really crappy loans. And they got extra big bonuses if they exceeded their quotas. And the only way to do that was to approve all kinds of terrible loans."
In other words, the Justice Dept. is not prosecuting the real criminals in order to hide their own complicity in the criminal activities. And as I've pointed out in the past, these senior bank officials contributed enormous sums of money to Obama's reelection campaign, and are immune from prosecution.
There is massive corruption in Washington and on Wall Street and in the mainstream media. As Hannah Arendt documented in the early days of Nazi Germany, respectable people are actually gangsters, and gangsters are treated as respectable people. Reuters and Willam K. Black
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Azerbaijan is arming to the teeth. Armenia is growing increasingly disillusioned with Russia, its main protector. And the potential for armed conflict in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region appears higher than it has been in years. Many of the increased tensions throughout the Caucasus can be attributed to Russia's decisive victory in its 2008 5-day invasion of Georgia, in support of the separatist region of South Ossetia, for years a province a Georgia. As a result of that war, Russia's role as powerbroker in the region was undermined, according to an analyst:
"[The war] sent also a signal to other post-Soviet countries that Russia is willing to use force to implement its interests. It also undermined Russia's role, to some extent, as a player which has allies, maybe, in the region."
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a very bloody war that ended in 1994 with Armenia gaining control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in the middle of Azerbaijan. According to an Azerbaijani politician:
"The war between Russia and Georgia was, in reality, an aggression of Russia against independent Georgia -- there is no doubt. And it is a very dangerous action after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the Caucasus because it demonstrates that Russia is the same empire -- very aggressive to all peoples and to all small nations in the region."
Russia tried and failed to mediate between the two countries, but that attempt failed after the 2008 war. Today, Russia has largely reduced its role to that of the main arms supplier to both sides. RFERL
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Aug-13 World View -- Reports of an Israeli drone strike in Sinai disputed by Egyptians thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Aug-2013)
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Greece's unemployment reaches fresh record high, despite tourist season
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North and South Korea are preparing to resume negotiations to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Park. North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un had shut down the complex in April when he threw his temper tantrum, threatening to shoot missiles at Japan, South Korea, and America. Several attempts at talks have collapsed without agreement. The South has been asking for the North to guarantee it won't block operations due to non-economic reasons and called on the North to accept responsibility for the current situation, and recently has begun taking steps to make the shutdown of Kaesong permanent. Reports indicate that the North has essentially capitulated on all of the South's demands.
Kaesong Industrial Complex was built in North Korea in 2004 as a joint venture between the North and South, and was considered a symbol of peaceful cooperation until April, when the North Koreans suddenly withdrew their 53,000 workers from the project. Since the North refused to negotiate, the South finally withdrew its thousand or so employees, effectively shutting the complex down. Kaesong was a major source of hard currency for the North Koreans, tens of millions of dollars per year, and so the child dictator's temper tantrum was costing North Korea a great deal of money. The North's capitulation indicates that even child dictators can learn some harsh lessons. Yonhap (Seoul)
The Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, TTP) is taking credit for a new horrific suicide bombing outside a mosque in Quetta in Pakistan on Thursday. But the most likely perpetrators are the offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has recently issued a statement saying, "Our mission [in Pakistan] is the abolition of this impure sect and people, the Shias and the Shia Hazaras, from every city, every village, every nook and corner of Pakistan," and which had carried out their threat by killing hundreds of Shias and Hazaras, and wounding thousands, in a long series of terrorist attacks. Thursday's suicide bomber was kept from entering the mosque and killing dozens of worshippers by an observant policeman, forcing the bomber to detonate his bombs outside the mosque, resulting in the deaths of about 30 policemen, including several police chiefs. Dawn (Pakistan) and McClatchy
It continues to be true that Greece's economy is worse than last month and better than next month. On Thursday, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) announced that the country's unemployment rate rose to a new historic high of 27.6% in May, up from 23.8% a year earlier. Normally unemployment goes down at the start of the tourist season, but the current rise can be explained by the widespread use of apprenticeships for citizens of Eastern European countries, and by mutually agreed termination of work contracts for employees to collect unemployment benefits (which, I assume, would be fraud). Kathimerini (Athens)
The bar is pretty low for the intelligence of country presidents, and readers are well aware that I show little patience for stupid decisions by politicians. But sometimes a politician appears to be so stupid that you wonder how he can figure out how to get out bed in the morning.
This brings us to President Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus, the country that was saved from bankruptcy in March by an EU bailout, on condition that 60% of the savings accounts of large depositors (mostly Russian oligarchs) be confiscated.
Anastasiades announced the complete reform of social policy to provide a Guaranteed Minimum Income for all citizens, starting in June 2014 (10 months from now), taking into consideration the needs of every citizen and every household concerning nourishment, clothing, consumption of electricity and other indispensable items. According to Anastasiades:
"Beneficiaries will be all of our fellow citizens who have an income below that which can assure them a dignified living, irrespective of age, class or professional situation."
The new social policy includes the following reforms:
The president said the level of the Guaranteed Minimum Income would be determined in an objective and scientific way by the Statistical services, with the International Labor Office playing a catalytic advisory role.
You'd think that Anastasiades would be embarrassed to say anything so stupid, but the other trait that politicians have in common, besides stupidity, is the inability to be embarrassed by anything. Cyprus Mail
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Aug-13 World View -- Cyprus president announces 'Guaranteed Minimum Income' for all thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Aug-2013)
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Mongolia's natural resource riches lost to corruption and foreigners
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A spokesman for Russia's president Vladimir Putin says that he's "disappointed" that President Obama will not meet with him in September, as previously planned, because of Russia's decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, who is wanted in the U.S. on charges of espionage. This is just the latest negative incident in relations between Russia and the U.S. that were supposed to have gotten better after the U.S. pushed the "reset" button in 2009. However, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, America's real enemy in the coming world war will be China, not Russia. Russia was America's enemy before and after World War II, but was America's close ally during the war, and it appears that something like that is happening again. BBC
Mongolia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of raw materials that everyone wants, such as coal, copper, gold, uranium and rare earth minerals. Under a 2007 deal between Mongolia's government and Australia's mining giant Rio Tinto, billions of dollars worth of Mongolian minerals have been shipped to China. Rio Tinto is making a great deal of money, but Mongolia is not. The situation is made worse by incompetency and corruption among government employees, such as the former head of Mongolia's Mineral Resources Authority, who was sentenced to several years in prison. The result is that tensions are growing, and Rio Tinto is threatening to shut down operations. Spiegel
Chinese scientists on Wednesday reported the first likely case of direct person-to-person transmission of the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus that has killed over 50 people since March, mostly in China. Scientists have long feared the virus would mutate into a form that transmits easily from person to person. However, there's no evidence that such a mutation has occurred, since person to person transmission is still "not so effective." Still, in May of this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared H7N9 bird flu a 'significant' public health danger. Although there's no current pandemic threat, it's feared that cold weather in the fall and winter will cause a lethal resurgence of the virus.
H7N9 is not the only pandemic threat of concern these days. The extremely lethal Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) has killed 44 people so far, mostly in Saudi Arabia (See "15-Jul-13 World View -- WHO meets to discuss MERS virus pandemic threat") The concern is that the Hajj, which will bring millions of Muslims from around the world to Saudi Arabia in October for their once in a lifetime pilgrimage, will result in the spread of MERS to countries around the world. AFP
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In a televised speech on Wednesday, the last day of Ramadan, Egypt's interim president Adly Mahmoud Mansour said that ongoing attempts to end violence had failed:
"Diplomatic efforts ended today. The state gave room for all necessary efforts to be exhausted in order to urge the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters to reject violence, prevent bloodshed and cease the disruption of Egyptian society by holding its future hostage. [The Brotherhood and its allies bear] full responsibility for the failure and what will follow."
Mansour did not specify what action will be taken. Al-Ahram (Cairo)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Aug-13 World View -- Egypt's interim government declares end to negotiations with Brotherhood thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Aug-2013)
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India accuses Pakistan of involvement in Kashmir attack
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At the request of the Obama administration, U.S. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham delivered a message to Cairo on Tuesday:
"The people who are in charge were not elected, and the people who were elected are now in jail. In a democracy, you have to talk to each other. It is impossible to talk to somebody in jail."
This comes at a time when the credibility of the United States in the Mideast, including Egypt, is at an extreme low. Secretary of State John Kerry announced an Afghan "peace process" that collapsed within a day; he announced a Mideast peace process that people in the Mideast consider to be a desperate joke; President Obama has announced one red line after another in Syria, and did nothing when each red line was passed, except to announce a new red line; has done nothing to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Benghazi attacks, although CNN has found and interviewed at least one perpetrator; and the president who was greeted with chants of "We love you Obama!" when he spoke in Cairo in 2009 is now the object of unmitigated fury by the Egyptian people.
President George Bush was widely hated, and was even targeted by a Hollywood movie (Death of a President) that wishfully portrayed his assassination. But at least President Bush knew what he was doing and, particularly with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, managed foreign policy competently, crowned by the successful surge in Iraq. But President Obama, who would rather be loved than be competent, and is now neither, is stumbling from one crisis to another with no apparent direction, which is not surprising in view of his youth and his attitude ( "Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead!".) So it's not surprising that he's turning to senior Republican politicians to try to help out in Egypt -- assuming it's not too late. AFP and Al Ahram (Cairo)
When the United States and United Kingdom closed their Mideast embassies on Sunday, it was for unspecified threats by Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), some time towards the end of Ramadan on Wednesday. But by Tuesday, the threat seemed to focus exclusive on Yemen, as diplomats have been fleeing the country for their safety. Yemenis have reporting seeing a steady stream of surveillance drones of the capital, Sanaa, and U.S. officials say that U.S. drones have shot down four al-Qaeda suspects traveling by car outside of Sanaa. As a result, many Yemenis are fearing the worst, and that the intended target is more Yemen itself than America. Time
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Just days after allegedly Pakistan-supported Taliban terrorists killed and wounded dozens in a suicide attack targeting the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad, Afganistan, allegedly Pakistan-supported terrorists killed five Indian soldiers late on Monday in the disputed Kashmir region. The government of India accused Pakistani troops of being involved in the killing, saying that "The attack was carried out by 20 heavily-armed terrorists, along with persons in Pakistani army uniform." India and Pakistan have fought each other in three wars following the massive genocidal conflict in 1947, so it's not farfetched that India's accusations are correct.
Pakistani Taliban terror groups have been attacking Indian interests in both Afghanistan in the west and Kashmir in the east. Indian analysts fear that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency is taking advantage of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to redirect the Pakistani Taliban away from Afghanistan, to target the Indian military in Kashmir and Jammu. Dawn (Pakistan) and Times of India
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Aug-13 World View -- U.S. Senators McCain and Graham try to restore U.S. credibility in Egypt thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Aug-2013)
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Pakistan accused over terrorist attack on Indian Consulate in Afghanistan
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With a number of American embassies closed because of feared al-Qaeda attacks, there are unconfirmed reports that the feared attack could use the next generation of the underwear bomb that was used in the failed Christmas day bombing in 2009. This and other technologies are thought to be developed by Ibrahim al-Asiri, a senior terrorist in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the original developer of the underwear bomb. One technology is a new liquid explosive that absorbed into ordinary clothing that becomes explosive once the liquid dries. Another is a surgically implanted body bomb. It's not thought that current Transportation Security Administration (TSA) measures can detect either of these kinds of bombs, though a TSA official says, "As always, our security posture, which at all times includes a number of measures both seen and unseen, will continue to respond appropriately to protect the American people from an ever evolving threat picture." ABC News
There are several reasons why Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may be planning a spectacular attack on Wednesday, August 7:
On Saturday, a suicide bomber attack in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, blue up a marketplace, killed 8 children, killing and wounding dozens of other Afghans. However, this was actually a foiled terrorist attack on the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad. According to an Indian analysis, a range of Indian interests in Afghanistan are being systematically targeted by Pakistan-based terror groups, such Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Haqqani Network, and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is directly involved. Afghan officials are openly blaming Pakistan for attacks on Indian targets. Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul stated:
"[Those responsible for the Jalalabad assault] and their financial, ideological and logistical sponsors must realize that they cannot shake the close and strong bond of friendship and partnership between Afghanistan and India through terrorism. Afghanistan will leave no stone unturned to ensure the safety of Indian diplomatic personnel and the Afghan Government is determined to counter the efforts of those inimical to India's friendship with Afghanistan."
India is strengthening its age-old relations with Afghanistan, which is significantly shaking the Pakistan government, where the hope was that Afghanistan could be annexed as a vassal state after the 2014 U.S. withdrawal. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, as I've written many times over the past several years, Afghanistan is headed for a proxy war between India and Pakistan as part of a major re-fighting of the genocidal war between Sunni Muslims versus Hindus and Shia Muslims that followed Partition, the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into Pakistan and India. South Asia Terrorism Portal
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Aug-13 World View -- Fears grow of a next-generation 'underwear bomber' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Aug-2013)
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Islamic 'Peace Mobile' smartphone ready for launch
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A surface combatant squadron of the Russian Navy arrived in Cuba on Saturday for the first time in four years. The Cuban government announced the fleet was there for a “friendly visit.” The unit consists of the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, missile cruiser ‘Moscow’, the large anti-submarine ship ‘Vice Admiral Kulakov’ of the Northern Fleet and a number of supply and service ships. The squadron visited the port of Havana to replenish supplies. The ships were greeted by an artillery salute, a naval band and a few hundred onlookers as they arrived in the Bay of Havana.
Cuba's economy was supported by the Soviet Union until it collapsed in 1991. After that, Venezuela took over. With the death of Hugo Chávez, perhaps Russia will be taking over again. Russia Today
During a recent visit to Hanoi, Russia's defense minister General Sergei Shoigu sided with Vietnam and the United States in the dispute with China over control of the South China Sea:
"Russia, like other maritime powers, has a stake in freedom of navigation. Russia will react to any challenge to this freedom in the same way that the United States, Japan, and India have done by asserting Russian rights under international law."
Shoigu is responding to China's claim of "indisputable" sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, including many regions that have historically belonged to other countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. All these nations, except Brunei, have troops stationed on various islands in the Spratly Islands to assert their respective claims. China is demanding that each of these nations avoid trouble by simply giving up their claims, and turning the entire region over to Chinese sovereignty. China and its neighbors are all becoming increasingly nationalistic over these conflicting claims, and the dispute has become intractable.
Russia is backing up its statements with money. Russia is helping to revamp Vietnam's centrally situated Cam Ranh port, near key shipping lanes in the South China Sea, and close to the oil-rich Truong Sa (Spratly) and Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelagos. Russia has also agreed to supply Vietnam with six Kilo-class diesel submarines. This is being described as "a credible asymmetric counter-poise to China’s growing naval might in the South China Sea." Eurasia Review
The U.S. State Department is extending 19 of Sunday's 22 embassy closures to Saturday, August 10. In addition, the State Department's worldwide travel alert is continuing to the end of August, warning of planned attacks by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. According to one House member, "This threat was so specific as to how enormous it was going to be and also certain dates were given. It could be in Europe, it could be in the United States." One reason for the additional days of closure is that Ramadan ends on Wednesday and Thursday, and the Muslim weekend is Friday and Saturday, so the embassies can reopen on Sunday when, presumably, all the excitement will be over. In the meantime, many parts of the Mideast are bracing for an attack, and Americans are being strongly discouraged from traveling to the region.
Interpol has issued a global alert related to the recent rash of jail breaks in Pakistan, Iraq and Libya that we've reported on. Analysts are mixed in opining whether or not these jailbreaks are connected to one another, but few believe they're related to the U.S. State Dept. travel warning. Bloomberg and State Department and CNN
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A new Android smartphone targeting Muslims is going to be launched within the next week. Called the "Peace Mobile," its purpose will be to reconcile the Quran with modern science, and will come loaded authentic Islamic apps and software and helps practicing Muslims stay connected with the Islamic world. According to a press release:
"People will be able to experience the difference, as communicating through technology will make life easy and convenient par excellence while fostering an intimate relationship with the Creator."
The phone will include 50 Islamic applications, 80 hours of video, hundreds of Islamic wallpaper, 200 Islamic ringtones, and books on Islam and comparative religion. Advance sales of the smartphone are said to be huge. Arab News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Aug-13 World View -- Russia sides with Vietnam in the South China Sea dispute thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Aug-2013)
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Intelligence from Yemen forcing embassy closings
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It would be hard to choose a country leader anywhere in the world who's more vile than Syria's Bashar al-Assad, but Zimbabwe's 90 year old Robert Mugabe certainly qualifies. Mugabe's actions to transform Zimbabwe, the breadbasket of southern Africa, into a starving disease-ridden country are almost beyond belief. (See "'Liberation Hero' Robert Mugabe now destroys Zimbabwe with cholera." from 2008.) Mugabe's neighbors have refused to deal with him because of his stature as an anti-American anti-Western anti-white 'Liberation Hero," even though militias affiliated with Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), operate as de facto enforcers of government policies and commit assault, torture, rape, extralegal evictions and executions without fear of punishment.
Now Mugabe has apparently overwhelmingly won a new election for president, with the official results to be announced later this week.
There's plenty of evidence that Mugabe's government rigged the election.
Mugabe's actions are mostly based on the historical enmity of two tribes -- Mugabe's Shona tribe, and his enemies, the Ndebele tribe. Genocidal warfare occurred between these two tribes in previous generational crisis wars -- the Mfecane war that climaxed in 1828, the Matabele Wars that climaxed in 1897, and the Rhodesia civil war, climaxing in 1979. It was the last war that gave Zimbabwe independence, making Mugabe the President.
In 1983, to consolidate his hold on power, Mugabe launched "Operation Gukurahundi" ("The rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rain"). 20,000 people, almost all of them from the Ndebele tribe, were tortured, raped and slaughtered.
As recently as the 1999, Zimbabwe was a breadbasket of Africa, exporting up to 500,000 metric tons of surplus food. By 2003, Zimbabwe was starving. What happened during those three years was a Marxist socialist "land reform" program by Robert Mugabe that confiscated 4,500 white-owned commercial farms and redistributed the property to his own Shona ethnic group.
Apparently, white farm owners are too evil for Mugabe to tolerate. It's better just to let people, especially the Ndebele, starve to death. And if anyone complains, just torture and massacre thousands of Ndebele, so that there'll be more food for the Shona.
After 2003, more and more Zimbabweans have been dying of starvation, because Mugabe has destroyed the farm infrastructure. By 2008, the official rate of inflation was 231 million percent. Zimbabwe was printing 200 million dollar bills.
Zimbabwe's economy has improved since 2008, and there's plenty of food, as well as fuel for the cars, but it's not because the farms are producing much more food, or because industry is returning. It's because the diamond mines are move valuable than ever, and investors from China are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the country in return for the diamonds and other natural resources.
And so, white farmers were too evil to be allowed to run the farms, apparently because they don't have black skin, but Chinese investors can just come in and take Zimbabwe's national resources. Apparently, Chinese skin is black enough for Mugabe.
And of course the Chinese have no qualms about supporting any of the world's most vile leaders, whether Syria's Bashar al-Assad or Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Anyone who thinks that China's president Xi Jinping is a "nice guy" who would never launch a surprise attack on the United States should be aware that we're dealing with some of the sleaziest and most repulsive leaders in the world.
Mugabe's Ndebele opponents are absolutely furious that Mugabe has rigged another election to get another 5 year term as president. Many observers expect violence when the official results are announced on Wednesday. Mugabe's security forces expect violence as well, and so we may be just a few days away from another Ndebele bloodbath. CBS News and ZimDiaspora blog
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Fresh intelligence from Yemen, home of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has led the U.S. to conclude that AQAP is in the final stages of planning an attack on U.S. and Western targets, either in Yemen or throughout the Middle East and northern Africa, between Sunday and Tuesday. This intelligence has caused the U.S. State Dept. to issue a global travel alert through the end of August. In additional, the U.S. is closing 22 embassies and consulates in the region. Germany, France and Britain are also closing their Yemen embassies on Sunday and Monday. The UK Foreign Office warned its citizens to leave Yemen:
"If you don't leave the country now while commercial carriers are still flying it is extremely unlikely that the British government will be able to evacuate you or provide consular assistance."
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Aug-13 World View -- Zimbabwe's 90 year old 'Liberation Hero' Robert Mugabe wins another election thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Aug-2013)
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Spain's unemployment rate to remain above 25% past 2018
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Greece's civil servants union, ADEDY, went on strike on Friday, after the government published yesterday the names of more than 2122 primary and secondary school teachers who will be transferred to the new "mobility scheme," which will cut their salaries and require them to find other jobs or be fired after 8 months. The teachers will be joined by some 3,000 municipal police officers, 1,500 administrative staff from universities and technical colleges, 1,500 public healthcare workers and 600 staff from various social security funds and manpower organizations. As part of its commitment in return for two bailouts, the government has promised to have 12,500 civil service in the "scheme" by September, and 25,000 by the end of the year. However, as we reported two days ago, even with all the committee austerity measures, Greece's bailout will have a funding shortfall of €11 billion over the next two years. Kathimerini (Athens)
Property prices in Greece have plunged 11.3% in the last year, and are poised to have fallen 40% since 2008. According to a Bank of Greece survey, a lot of the price collapse is caused by forced selling -- owners, especially of older buildings, who are desperate to sell in order to cover their obligations. As I've explained in the past, deflated bubbles, including stock market crashes, occur not because of emotional reasons, but because of forced selling. Kathimerini
An alarming new report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) tries to put the best face on Spain's economy, and even congratulates Spain on implementing a number of austerity programs. But even with those austerity programs, the report forecasts that Spain's unemployment rate, which is currently at 27.2%, will remain above 25% past the year 2018. However, even that figure is based on optimistic assumptions that the economy will start growing again -- a forecast that's been made every quarter for several years, and has turned out to be repeatedly wrong. International Monetary Fund
The State Department issued a worldwide alert to U.S. citizens traveling abroad on Friday, warning that al Qaeda and its affiliates are planning terrorist attacks that may materialize before the end of August, and suggesting that North Africa and the Middle East are the focus of the threat. The alert, which expires August 31, 2013, urges Americans traveling in that region to be aware of their surroundings:
"U.S. citizens are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure. Terrorists have targeted and attacked subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime service."
As of Friday morning, at least 21 facilities in 18 countries announced that they will close on Sunday pursuant to the State Department's guidance, including the U.S. embassies in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Mauritania, Sudan and Djibouti.
The current heightened security posture in the Middle East and North Africa is a result of the lessons learned from the attack in Benghazi.
Apparently the CIA is threatening anyone with knowledge of the Benghazi affairs who talks to Congress or the press will lose their job or face criminal prosecution. The Obama administration has refused to investigate anyone connected with the Benghazi incident, apparently for fear of being embarrassed, just as they adamantly refuse to investigate and prosecute anyone connected to the financial scandal, since those people are huge donors to the president.
The only person who's gone to jail is the guy who made the video that the administration originally falsely accused of causing the Benghazi attacked. It's so wonderful to know that even though freedom of speech has been put in danger, the person who caused the Benghazi attack is no longer at large. CBS News and CNN
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Hassan Rouhani won a surprise victory in Iran's presidential elections in mid-June, and will be taking the oath of office on Saturday. (See "16-Jun-13 World View -- Iran's elections won by 'moderate' Hassan Rouhani".)
Two days ago, Iran's student news agency ISNA had quoted Rouhani as saying: "The Zionist regime is a wound that has sat on the body of the Muslim world for years and needs to be removed." ISNA retracted this quote, and one reporter who has seen video of the actual event says that the quote was wrong, and the retraction was correct. Here's what Rouhani actually said:
"In our region, in the shadow of the occupation of Palestine and dear Quds, a wound has been sitting on the body of the world of Islam, and this is a reminder that the Muslim people have not forgotten their historical right and will stand against oppression and invasion. ...In circumstances where the world of Islam is facing problems in the region, Zionists think that this is an appropriate opportunity to show a peace-seeking image of themselves while in reality they continue their invasions and transgressions of the Palestinian land."
On the other hand, at the same event, outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "I will inform you with God as my witness, a devastating storm is on the way that will uproot the basis of Zionism," and added that Israel "has no place in the region." Jerusalem Post and American Enterprise Institute
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Aug-13 World View -- Iran's president-elect Rouhani corrects quote on 'removing' Israel thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Aug-2013)
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In financial crisis, Hamas considers asking Iran for support again
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On July 9, 2010, United Nations Security Council approved UN Resolution 1929 imposing sanctions on Iran, including a partial arms embargo, for continued uranium enrichment. Although Russia voted for the resolution, which was supported by then-president Dmitry Medvedev, arms dealers in Moscow were unhappy with it, because they wanted to sell arms to Iran. Now reports indicate that Russia has offered to sell Iran an improved version of the S-300VM, also known as Antey-2500—a long-range, anti-aircraft and medium-range ballistic missile defense system, in violation of UN Resolution 1929. These reports come on the same day that Russia's president Vladimir Putin thumbed his nose at the United States by granting asylum to accused American criminal Edward Snowden. Jamestown
The toppling if Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi has been a financial disaster for Hamas, the governing authority of the Gaza Strip. The sequence of events was something like this: Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood is historically linked to Hamas, and Morsi supported Hamas, at least half-heartedly. But when a coup ousted Morsi, the Bedouins and jihadists in Sinai, on the border with both Israel and Gaza, became active, and have been conducting a terror campaign against Egyptian security forces in Sinai. Egypt, with support from Israel, has launched a military campaign in Sinai to root out the jihadists. As part of that campaign, Egypt has shut down the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that Gazans depend on for things like food, building materials and weapons. In recent months, Hamas has been earning some $8 million in taxes with smuggled fuel alone, and also levies a tax of about $5 on every ton of cement. An average of 70,000 tons of cement are smuggled into Gaza every month. According to a Hamas official:
"The Gaza Strip has lost around $225 million during the past month due to the halt of imports, namely, fuel and crude materials for construction, such as cement, gravel and steel."
Just a few years ago, Hamas had plenty of money and weapons, thanks to generous support from Iran. But that support dried up after Hamas rejected the genocidal extermination actions against innocent Arab women and children in Syria by the psychopathic president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, with the support of Iran and Lebanon's bloody Shia militia, Hezbollah.
Reports indicate that a totally desperate Hamas has gone back to Iran to ask for help, but Iran responded that Hamas must first revive its support for both the psychopathic al-Assad and the bloody Hezbollah, as they kill innocent women and children Arabs in Syria. Spiegel and Al Monitor and Debka
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Aug-13 World View -- Russia considers selling arms to Iran as Snowden gets asylum thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Aug-2013)
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Bank Of England helped Hitler loot Czechoslovakia's gold
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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After Adolf Hitler's Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Bank of England helped Hitler's war machine by transferring gold valued at $1 billion in today's prices from Czechoslovakia's account to Germany's account, in cooperation with the Bank of International Settlements. So Britain not only appeased Hitler's Lebensraum territory grabs, but also the Bank of England continued the appeasement by helping Hitler loot Czechoslovakia's gold assets. These details came out on Wednesday when the Bank of England posted 50 year old documents on the history of the BoE prior to WW II. This story illustrates how much corruption occurs during a generational Crisis era. I'll leave it to you, Dear Reader, to reach your own conclusions about Washington in today's generational Crisis era. Telegraph (London) and Bank of England (PDF)
A new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that Greece's second bailout will have a funding shortfall of €11 billion over the next two years. This will not be surprising to any long time readers, inasmuch as I've been explaining for over two years why these bailouts will fail with 100% certainty for generational reasons. Nonetheless, it's amazing how credulous so many people are in the face of repeated lies and backdowns by eurozone officials, highlighted by Jean-Claude Jüncker, former chairman of the Eurogroup finance ministers, who said when caught in one of these numerous lies, "When it becomes serious, you have to lie."
But now opposition is growing to further bailouts of Greece. Germany's public has been getting increasingly skeptical, and with her reelection campaign coming up, chancellor Angela Merkel is being very cautious about what she says. But now Brazil, whose representative to the IMF is one of its 24 board members, is openly starting to object. Paulo Nogueira Batista abstained from approving the latest bailout payment, and says that Greece's implementation of austerity measures — conditions of its bailout — has been "unsatisfactory in almost all areas" and assumptions about growth and debt sustainability "continue to be over-optimistic." Kathimerini (Athens) and CNN and AP and IMF (PDF)
Despite calls by the government for pro-Morsi Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators to end their protests, activists have continued their rallies, and are calling for a new major rally once again after midday Friday prayers. But now the interim government has ordered the interior ministry to end the protests. According to Wednesday's statement from the cabinet:
"Based on the mandate given by the people to the state, and in preservation of the country's higher interest, the cabinet has delegated the interior ministry to proceed with all legal measures to confront acts of terrorism and road-blocking.The cabinet has reviewed the country's security situation and has concluded that the dangerous situation in Rabaa and Nahda Squares, including the terrorist acts and road-blocking that has occurred, is no longer acceptable as it constitutes a threat to the country's national security."
Hundreds of protesters, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, have already been killed since the ouster of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency on July 3. Some reports indicate that Egyptian public opinion is getting fed up with these Brotherhood protests, and that with the deaths they're "getting what they deserve." Wednesday's announcement threatens new clashes and violence, especially on Friday. al-Ahram (Cairo)
Since last month's Afghanistan peace talks collapsed within one day after they were announced with great fanfare by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Pakistan and India are considering their options as American troops withdraw. During the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan, Pakistan sided with the group that later became the Taliban, and India sided with a different anti-Soviet group. Since the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on American soil, American has pressured India to reduce its role in Afghanistan, while Pakistan has continued support for some parts of the Taliban. After America withdraws, India will have the choice of seeing Afghanistan become a vassal state of Pakistan, or get re-involved with Afghanistan, risking a proxy war. Global Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Aug-13 World View -- Egypt's government demands end to pro-Morsi rallies thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Aug-2013)
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