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As I've written many times, the civil war in Syria, in which Shia/Alewite Bashar al-Assad is being supplied with heavy weapons, which he uses along with chemical weapons to massacre and torture Sunni women and children, is serving as an enormous recruiting opportunity for Sunni jihadists in South Asia, the Mideast, the Maghreb (northern Africa), and the Caucasus. However, Algeria has been cracking down on Syria-bound jihadists, by infiltrating and dismantling recruitment cells.
However, that's only one of the reasons why the number of Algerian jihadists headed for Syria has been kept under control. Other reasons are:
The results have been remarkably effective, as the number of Algerians killed in Syria is far lower than then the number of Tunisians and Libyans. Magharebia
Last year, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) did something no other modern terrorist group has: conquered a large region within a sovereign country -- the northern 2/3rds of Mali. France's air and ground forces reconquered the north, with more than 4,000 French soldiers in Mali at the peak. But France will withdraw 3,000 of them this year, and the last thousand next year, leaving defense of Mali in the hands of a United Nations peacekeeping force, which may not be able to handle the job.
There is a major shift going on. American policy makers have long treated the Middle East and South Asia as the main battlegrounds of the war on terror, but those regions are quickly being joined by Africa, which is now home to some of the largest and most active Islamist militias in the world. AQIM is using Mali as a base to plot sophisticated attacks outside its borders -- including last year's Benghazi attack that killed the American ambassador. AQIM has publicly promised to carry out attacks in France in revenge for the intervention in Mali.
Since then, despite French intervention, northern Mali has become a jihadist front and training camp, with Islamist militants flowing in from around the world. While America remains focused on threats from the Middle East and South Asia, the new face of terror is likely to be African. AQIM is able to take advantage of the fact that many of the continent’s countries have porous borders; weak and corrupt central governments; undertrained and underequipped militaries; flourishing drug trades that provide a steady source of income; and vast, lawless spaces. And the reason that AQIM was able to conquer northern Mali in the first place was because of vast treasure troves of Libyan weapons left behind by the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. Atlantic and AP
A list of tools to foil hackers and identity thieves include: identity protection, credit monitors, computer security systems, fraud protection, virus and malware protection, social security tracing, and identify restoration. FreePeopleSearch
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Sep-13 World View -- Algeria cracks down on jihadists headed for Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Sep-2013)
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Leaders of Greece's Golden Dawn 'criminal organization' arrested
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In an extraordinary move, Greece's police have arrested the leader of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, and formally charged him with belonging to a criminal organization. Dozens more members have been arrested as well, including four MPs (holding seats in Greece's parliament). The charges include homicide, attempted homicide, money laundering, blackmail, grievous bodily harm, and other serious crimes.
Not since the end of Greece's military dictatorship in 1974 has there been a mass arrest of MPs. Due to the nature of the charges, it's clear that the government has been preparing for this day for a long time, but has been reluctant to take steps for fear of a political backlash.
Nonetheless, there may still be a backlash. Because of the financial crisis, hundreds of thousands of Greeks have indicated in polls that they wanted to vote for Golden Dawn, even though Golden Dawn party members have openly assaulted immigrants and other people that they don't like, and called for deportation of even Greek citizens who are not pure ethnic Greeks. The Greek public only turned against Golden Dawn on September 18, after self-identified Golden Dawn members murdered a white Greek civilian, Pavlos Fyssas, or Killah P, who rapped against the kind of racism that Golden Dawn practices. That killing shocked the Greek public, and allowed the government to go ahead with the arrests of Golden Dawn members, but with Golden Dawn so popular in the past, a backlash is still feared as the memory of the death of Killah P recedes. Kathimerini and BBC and Kathimerini
As Nato and American forces withdraw from Afghanistan, the dreamy hope is that the amount of violence will go down, sort of like what happened in Iraq before the American forces were withdrawn in December 2011. But a new report shows that the number of security incidents -- bombings, shootings and other violent attacks -- has been increasing and surged significantly in September. The table of monthly security incidents is as follows:
Month Number of incidents
--------------- -------------------
Mar 167
Apr 1145
May 1363
June 1317
July 1466
Aug 1205
Sep to 26 Sep 1724
President Barack Obama adopted a "surge" strategy in Afghanistan because he was hoping to repeat the enormous success of President George Bush's "surge" strategy in Iraq. But as I wrote at the time, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there are significant differences between Iraq and Afghanistan that make a surge strategy in Afghanistan very unlikely to succeed, even though it worked in Iraq, and it has to do with the fact that Iraq's last generational crisis war (the Iran/Iraq war, 1980-88) was an EXTERNAL war, while for Afghanistan it was a bloody internal CIVIL war (1991-96). (See "2-Sep-12 World View -- U.S. decision on Haqqani Network will affect Pakistan relations")
When a country unites to fight a foreign enemy in a generational crisis war, then that feeling of unity survives through the following Recovery and Awakening eras. But when a generational crisis civil war splits a country, that split survives into the following Recovery and Awakening eras.
So forget about generational theory, and just imagine what's been going on in Afghanistan. The civil war pit the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan against the the Northern Alliance, an alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. Each of these two sides raped, mutilated, tortured and massacred people on the other side, there are many people alive today who remember those horrors. So there's no way that these ethnic groups are going to get along, even as well as they do in Iraq. In Iraq, the main instigators of violence are Sunni jihadist foreign fighters, but in Afghanistan, it's the Afghan people themselves.
Some analysts are talking about a "Pashtun uprising," pointing to the fact that the Taliban are jihadist Pashtuns, implying a renewal of the 1990s civil war. This is impossible in a generational Awakening era. There will be no new civil war, but there will be an increase in "security incidents" and low-level violence of all sorts, particularly as the American and Nato forces leave. KGS Night Watch
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Sep-13 World View -- Violence in Afghanistan surges in September thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Sep-2013)
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Washington gives $100 million non-bailout bailout money to Detroit
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Based on its longitude, the country Spain, like Britain, is well within the region of the Western European time zone. However, in 1940, Spain's Fascist dictator Francisco Franco met with Adolf Hitler, who convinced him to switch Central European Time, so that Spain's clocks would be synchronized with Germany's. The result has been that Spanish workers never seem to get enough sleep, which is why they need a siesta during the day. But now Spain's government plans to move the country back to West European time, which might mean the end of the siesta for many Spaniards. However, one Spanish citizen commented on the move to British time, "Maybe we should also drive on the left side, get drunk over the weekend and have only three typical dishes instead of thousands." International Business Times
The Obama administration bailed out General Motors when it was close to bankruptcy, and is now getting requests to bail out Detroit, which has already filed for bankruptcy. However, there isn't a lot of support these days for a new bailout, with the sequester and such. But the Administration has found a way anyway. They've identified $100 million earmarked for discretionary grants that have never been granted, and they're reassigning the grants to their good pals in Detroit. However, this is not a "bailout," since these are grants.
Detroit is also planning to use Obamacare as a vehicle for an even larger non-bailout bailout. Detroit has some $6 billion in unfunded liabilities for health care for retirees. Detroit is planning to tell its retirees to apply for health insurance in the Obamacare exchanges. Detroit will pay the retirees a small stipend to help pay for the insurance. In addition, Washington will pay each retiree an Obamacare subsidy. And so, the retirees get their health insurance, Detroit saves over $1 billion in health care funding, and the Obama administration gets the undying love of their good pals in Detroit. So everybody wins. Right? Washington Times and Business Insider
The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to adopt a resolution that requires Syria to eliminate its arsenal of chemical weapons. Unfortunately, if the Syrian regime's psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad simply ignores the threat and goes on ordering the rape, mutilation and massacre of innocent women and children on a large scale, then the only "punishment" that the resolution specifies is a threat to hold another Security Council meeting. So Russia got its way once again, and has humiliated President Obama and the United States once again. The mainstream media is calling the resolution "historic" and a "landmark decision," but then again, the NY Times and NBC News will call President Obama eating a hamburger "historic." NBC News/AP
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued on Friday a so-called "landmark report" that's dead on arrival, and deservedly so. It says that it proves with near absolutely certainty that human activity is the cause of carbon emissions, and that they're resulting in global warming. Even if that's true, then so what?
I keep receiving scorn whenever I compare the climate change scientists to scientists in the year 1900 who might have said that the increase in the growth of horse crap was due to human activity. And yet, not one of these scornful comments has ever shown why this comparison is invalid.
Climate scientists today predict that carbon emissions will raise the temperature of the earth by X degrees by 2100. Horse crap scientists in 1900 could have predicted that there would be X inches of horse crap all over the place by 2000.
Horse crap scientists in 1900 would have had absolutely no inkling that the Model T Ford would be coming along soon to solve the horse crap problem, all without government help. If they had recommended the funding of any government programs, they would have been programs to develop a new kind of feed for horses that would produce less horse crap, and the programs would have been disasters.
Today's climate scientists have been recommending government programs related to green energy, all of which have failed, as illustrated by the Solyndra disaster. Climate scientists have absolutely no inkling of new technologies that will be coming along to solve the carbon emissions problems. There are probably thousands of commercial firms in the world trying to develop products to reduce carbon emissions, and when one of them finds something, they'll patent it, bring it to market and make enormous sums of money. And they'll do it all without government help.
In November, 2009, thousands of e-mail messages were hacked from the web server at East Anglia University, the place at the heart of "climate science." There were thousands of e-mail messages online from a period of several years. I did a search of the hacked East Anglian e-mail messages for the word "Singularity," and it doesn't appear once. You would think that these brilliant scientists would have at least asked the question of one another: "Hey, what about the Singularity?" But apparently it was never asked once. It must have been a forbidden subject, since it conflicts with their own claims. (See "Climate Change conference in Copenhagen is all about getting green -- money" from 2009.)
Even if you don't "believe" that the Singularity is going to occur, there's still absolutely no question that intelligent computer technology and nanotechnology is going to explode in the 2020s. These will bring a wealth of new technologies and products that will reverse the growth of carbon emissions in the same way that the Model T Ford reversed the growth of horse crap emissions in the last century.
The reason that "climate scientists" can't even stand to think about such things is because it's all about the money:
I want to emphasize that this is what it's all about, even if every word in Friday's climate change report is true. The report is irrelevant because the carbon emission problem will be taken care of by new technologies that the "climate scientists" don't have a clue about, and don't even want to think about. UN IPCC Report and AFP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Sep-13 World View -- U.N. Security Council passes overhyped, totally irrelevant resolution on Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Sep-2013)
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Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharif under fire over peace talks with Taliban
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The Mideast changed dramatically on April 30 of this year, when Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanon-based Shia terror group Hezbollah, gave a televised speech saying that Hezbollah would militarily enter the fight in Syria, on the side of the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, and then followed up by winning an overwhelming victory against Syria's opposition in Qusair. (See "6-Jun-13 World View -- Syria and Hezbollah gloat over victory in town of Qusair".)
That was the point in time when Syria's civil war turned into a war between Sunnis and Shias in the Mideast. That was the time when the Sunni terror group Jaish al-Muhajireen wa Ansar (the Army of the Immigrants) was formed in Russia's Chechnya province for the purpose of fighting against the Alawite/Shia forces of al-Assad. That was the time when the trickle of Sunni jihadists coming to Syria to fight began to turn into a flood, arriving from central Asia, northern Africa, and Russia's southern Caucasus provinces.
It turns out that many of Hezbollah's leaders were reluctant to take the step into Syria. Hezbollah's mission had never been anything but leading "the resistance" -- which is the phrase that stands for expelling Israel from the region. These leaders feared that abandoning the resistance and going into Syria would mean that they would be permanently embroiled there for years, abandoning their main mission, the resistance.
So why did they go ahead with the Syria mission? It's because they were ordered to do so by Hezbollah's master and funding source, Iran. Nasrallah's announcement came just a few days after he returned from a trip to Tehran, where he had met with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei. According to one Lebanese politician, "Nasrallah is not going to say ‘No' to someone who has given him $30 billion over the past 30 years."
In many ways, the fears of the reluctant Hezbollah leaders have been realized. It now appears that Hezbollah will become fully immersed in the Syrian war, and part of the larger conflict between Shias and Sunnis that is growing in the region. According to one former Hezbollah leader, the minority Shias can never win a proxy war with Sunnis:
"Until recently, I had thought that armed resistance (against Israel) is a top priority and a precious goal... Those seeking to fortify the resistance should not drag it into war between Sunnis and Shi'ites... That strife will consume everybody."
In addition, the Syrian conflict has been a new monetary disaster for Iran. According to a Lebanese security official, "Syria is sucking up Iran's reserves, with the Islamic Republic paying between $600-700 million a month (just towards the cost of fighting in Syria)."
It's worth noting that this is the backdrop against which Iran has been pursuing its so-called "charm offensive" at the United Nations this week. The Syrian conflict may have made Iran desperate enough to seek some kind of game changer, so Iran may be more willing to make concessions than we realize. Reuters
People in Pakistan are increasingly using the word "appeasement" to describe the continuing insistence by the new prime minister Nawaz Sharif to hold peace talks with Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP - the Pakistani Taliban). It was a major campaign promise by Sharif that instead of getting tough with the TTP, he would end the constant stream of violent terrorist attacks across Pakistan by talking with them. The TTP have indicated that they would be willing to participate in peace talks under certain conditions -- TTP prisoners must be released from jail, the army must be withdrawn from the tribal areas where it has been fighting the Taliban, and the government must agree to impose Sharia law on the country. Sharif has certainly not rejected these demands, perhaps dreamily hoping that they could be negotiated down. But what's really crushing Sharif's dreams is that TTP is continuing its major terrorist attacks -- an attack that killed three army officers on September 15 in Upper Dir, and a major attack on a Christian Church in Peshawar on September 22.
Former president Asif Ali Zardari, whose wife Benazir Bhutto was killed by a terrorist attack in 2007, said last week in a veiled criticism of Sharif:
"The greatest… threat to democracy emanates from the militant mindset [that] seeks to impose their agenda through force.If there has been any doubt about the futility of appeasing the militants these must be removed by the incident in Upper Dir today."
On the other hand, you have Imran Khan, the former cricket superstar turned anti-American politician who opposed Nawaz Sharif and lost, who continues to insist that peace talks with the TTP are the way to go, despite no letup in terrorist attacks.
In fact, there are a significant number of TTP supporters in Pakistan, no matter how many innocent people they blow up in mosques and churches. Similarly, there are plenty of people who are so in love with Syria's president Bashar al-Assad that no matter how many thousands of innocent women and children he orders raped, mutilated, massacred and slaughtered, they'll continue to support and cherish him. Here in the United States, President Obama could pick up a gun and kill somebody, and the NY Times and NBC News would find a way to blame it on the Republicans.
The increasing number of sycophants of the kind that I've just described is characteristic of today's generational Crisis era. In America's last Crisis era, one group of sycophants admired Benito Mussolini, saying that he kept the trains running on time, other sycophants admired Adolf Hitler for whatever reason, and a third group admired Josef Stalin because they loved Communism. This sycophantic admiration for leaders, even when they turn into monsters, is what characterized the last Crisis era and the current one, and is one of the reasons why a war is inevitable. Dawn (Pakistan) and Daily Times (Pakistan)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Sep-13 World View -- How Hezbollah's reluctant foray into Syria changed the Mideast thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Sep-2013)
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Russia-spawned Al-Muhajireen terrorists fight Russia's allies in Syria
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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According to the latest figures, inflation in Venezuela reached the hyperinflationary level of 45.4% in August. Since the bolivar currency was introduce in January, 2008, total inflation has been 323%. The country is plagued by shortages of everything from milk and cooking oil to toothpaste and toilet paper. The hyperinflation is thought to be caused by the extravagant spending and vote-buying by the late president, Hugo Chávez. However, the astronomically high inflation of the past few years turned into hyperinflation this year because of an August, 2012, explosion at the government-owned Amuay Refinery, killing 42, reducing Venezuela's oil exports by 25%.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, full-scale hyperinflation happens, with very few exceptions, in generational Unraveling eras. Venezuela is currently in a generational Unraveling era (see "Students riot against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela" from 2007). Germany's famous Weimar hyperinflation occurred during an Unraveling era, as did Zimbabwe's hyperinflation. In America, there was 30% inflation from 1977 to 1980, near the end of America's Awakening era, but this was well below the "hyperinflation" level.
Today, America, Europe and much of the world are in a generational Crisis era, a period when the bills come due for all the excesses of the previous Unraveling era. Although America did not have hyperinflation during the 1990s, it did have the huge tech stock market bubble that led to the Nasdaq crash in 2000, and eventually to the current financial crisis (which is far from over). There is no hyperinflation during generational Crisis eras, because when the bills come due, people stop spending money, and society goes into a deflationary spiral. World Socialist Web Site and Venezuelanalysis
There's increasing evidence of the violent blowback threatening Russia that Russia's policies in Syria are creating.
Russia's policy of providing support for and supplying weapons to Syria's psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad has spawned a major new al-Qaeda linked jihadist group, Jaish al-Muhajireen wa Ansar (the Army of the Immigrants) in Russia's own North Caucasus provinces that is fighting against al-Assad in Syria. The group reportedly has over 1,400 Russian members, most of them with past military experience in the North Caucasus, and is headed by a commander from Chechnya, Abu Abdurakhman. According to one Russian official, young people from Chechnya first travel to Azerbaijan, from where they travel to Turkey and then on to Syria:
"Young people are lured there by allegations that there is ‘jihad’ going on [in Syria] and that there is a fatwa by famous Islamic scholars about that. So they think that participating in the Syrian war is the direct obligation of every faithful Muslim."
Chechen jihadists in particular are attracted to the fight in Syria, according to another official, because of the two wars between Russia and Chechnya in the 1990s:
"People here know that the Russian government supports Bashar Assad’s regime, so participation in the hostilities against Syrian authorities is for them a continuation of the war with Russia."
But jihadists outside Russia are joining al-Muhajireen as well. Citizens of Tunisia, Libya, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have also gone off to Syria to join their Russian brethren's fight against al-Assad's regime.
Another reason for jihadist interest in Syria is because of the connection to the jihad against Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
These jihadists are getting training and developing skills in in fighting Russian weapons and Russian tactics in Syria. When the war ends, they'll have to go somewhere to use all those new skills, and that might be any country.
As I wrote in "18-Sep-13 World View -- Russia and Vladimir Putin pursue a disastrous Syria policy", Russia's policies not only harm the United Nations, but also are inflaming Shia/Sunni fault lines throughout the Mideast, which will inevitably lead to a wider war. Jamestown and BBC
A jihadist group in Syria has posted the video of a former Guantánamo prisoner, who was released by the Bush administration, and who went to Syria to fight a jihad there. At the funeral, another former Guantánamo prisoner delivered the eulogy:
"He went to the jihad in Afghanistan with his family and children to aid the downtrodden in the name of God.He went through hardship for the sake of God in the prison of the Americans in Guantánamo for five years and he was patient through his plight and he did not change, waited until God lifted him and he was released.
He then went to the land of al Sham (Syria) ... He saw death and dispossession and destruction, so he went in response to God. ...
I knew him, God have mercy on his soul, one of the best youth of the community of believers. He was pious, devout and honest and had God on his tongue at all times. In his heart he had a love for God and Muslims."
People talk about Guantánamo prison as a "recruiting tool" for al-Qaeda, but that's nothing compared to Syria as a recruiting tool for all kinds of jihadists. Miami Herald
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Sep-13 World View -- Venezuela's economy approaches full-scale hyperinflation thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Sep-2013)
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Iran's president Hassan Rouhani 'snubs' Obama at United Nations
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Greenpeace has a history of bizarre, high publicity activist protests, everything from disrupting Iceland's whaling fleet to scaling skyscrapers, earning themselves the names "eco-terrorists." After each event, they painted themselves as innocent victims, and they always got away with it. But now they may have gone too far. Last week, activists tried to scale a Gazprom offshore oil platform in the Arctic Ocean, hoping that the big publicity stunt would embarrass the Russians. But nothing embarrasses the Russians. Russian authorities boarded the Greenpeace boat, arrested all the activists on board, and towed the boat to Murmansk port, where the activists are being questioned and charged with piracy. Ria Novosti
During Tuesday's speech by President Barack Obama, he was uncharacteristically critical of Russia's and Iran's policies with respect to Syria, calling that policy a "fantasy":
"Assad’s traditional allies have propped him up, citing principles of sovereignty to shield his regime. And on August 21st, the regime used chemical weapons in an attack that killed more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children. ...The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood, and landed in opposition neighborhoods. It’s an insult to human reason -- and to the legitimacy of this institution -- to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack. ...
Now there must be a strong Security Council resolution to verify that the Assad regime is keeping its commitments, and there must be consequences if they fail to do so. If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws. On the other hand, if we succeed, it will send a powerful message that the use of chemical weapons has no place in the 21st century, and that this body means what it says. ...
Nor do I believe that America or any nation should determine who will lead Syria; that is for the Syrian people to decide. Nevertheless, a leader who slaughtered his citizens and gassed children to death cannot regain the legitimacy to lead a badly fractured country. The notion that Syria can somehow return to a pre-war status quo is a fantasy.
It’s time for Russia and Iran to realize that insisting on Assad’s rule will lead directly to the outcome that they fear: an increasingly violent space for extremists to operate."
President Obama's substantive criticisms echo what I wrote last week in "18-Sep-13 World View -- Russia and Vladimir Putin pursue a disastrous Syria policy": Supporting the genocidal monster who leads Syria not only harms the United Nations, but leads to increasing violence in the region.
President Obama also echoed again, as he's done more than once recently, the Truman Doctrine:
"But I also believe the world is better for it. Some may disagree, but I believe America is exceptional -- in part because we have shown a willingness through the sacrifice of blood and treasure to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interests, but for the interests of all."
The Truman Doctrine was put forth by President Harry Truman in 1947, and making the U.S. the Policeman of the World. Truman's reasoning was that WW II was so expensive, and cost so many lives, and so intervening in the Greece/Turkey crisis of the time would be only a tiny fraction, and would be well worth it if it prevented a new world war. President John F. Kennedy repeated this theme in his inaugural address. White House
According to news reports, Iran's president Hassan Rouhani declined to meet with President Obama on Tuesday at the United States, giving as a reason that it was "too complicated." A number of reporters are saying that Rouhani "snubbed" Obama, but in fact the "too complicated" description is quite believable.
As I wrote last week in "21-Sep-13 World View -- Does Iran's 'Heroic Flexibility' signal a real policy change?", the reference by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei to "Heroic Flexibility" is a signal that Khamenei is finally being forced to give in to the demands of the young generation that grew up after the Great Islamic Revolution and the Iran/Iraq war.
However, this "generation gap" is just as controversial in Iran today as it was during America's Awakening era in the 1960s. In fact, Khamenei's declaration of "Heroic Flexibility" has become extremely controversial in the last few days, drawing a great deal of criticism from younger members of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) who are determined for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, despite external pressures and sanctions. So a meeting between Rouhani and Obama may well have been "too complicated" for Iran's politics.
In his United Nations speech, Rouhani said that Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, a claim that few believe. He also went off the deep end in terms of fatuous nonsense by proposing a United Nations project called "The world against violence and extremism," which is laughable in view of Iran's continuing policies of violence and extremism.
At any rate, Rouhani's speech sounded nice, but had no content whatsoever. It remains to be seen whether Iran's new "Heroic Flexibility" policy means anything. Al Monitor and Sky News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Sep-13 World View -- President Obama blasts Russia and Iran over Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Sep-2013)
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Greece tries to purge Golden Dawn from police
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On July 7, 2005, four suicide bombers detonated bombs in a coordinated attack on the London subway system, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds. The terrorist bombings all went off simultaneously at about 8:50 am local time -- the same time of day that the Madrid subway bombing occurred on March 11, 2004, and the time of day that the first plane flew into the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. One of the 7/7 bombers, Jermaine Lindsay, was married to Samantha Lewthwaite, who condemned the bombing and said she had known nothing about it.
After that, Lewthwaite was responsible for a string of terror acts in Kenya. She was dubbed the "White Widow," and has become the world's most wanted woman. Now, a dead white woman has been found among the terrorists killed by soldiers in the Kenya mall attack, and speculation is growing that the dead woman is the "White Widow." Daily Mail (London)
Though not saying so publicly, Israel has taken a leading role in aiding Kenya in the continuing fight against al-Shabaab terrorists at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. Kenya and Israel have long-standing close relationships, involving everything from commercial interests to sharing intelligence. Israel has developed alliances with a number of majority Christian African countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Togo and South Sudan. Israel's interest in these alliances has increased substantially since the beginning of the Arab Awakening has stirred up several Muslim countries, and the downfall of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi unleashed a flood of weapons across the region. AP and Debka
Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has been losing popularity in the last few days, since a self-identified Golden Dawn member last week killed a left-wing rapper Pavlos Fyssas. Golden Dawn's popularity had been low but growing in the last few years, despite (or because of) their program of targeting immigrants economically, and sometimes violently. However, the murder of ethnic Greek Fyssas, apparently just because he was left-wing, has shocked the Greek public, turning it against Golden Dawn. Even worse, the Greek police have been standing by while Golden Dawn members have attacked immigrants, and did so again when Fyssas was killed. In an effort to purge the police of Golden Dawn sympathizers, over a dozen senior officers of the police were fired, suspended or transferred on Monday. A probe of the police involvement in the Fyssas murder is continuing, though some people fear a backlash among the police if they feel they're being made scapegoats. Kathimerini
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Sep-13 World View -- Kenya and Israel strengthen ties as mall attack continues thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Sep-2013)
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New killings make Chicago the murder capital of America
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A large, well-planned terrorist attack on the upscale Westlake Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, is continuing into a third day, although authorities are now promising "a speedy conclusion," as of this writing on late Sunday evening.
At least 68 have been killed so far, 175 have been injured in the attack that began on Saturday, and there are believed to be about 30 hostages, though some have been rescued. Among the dead are the nephew of Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta, and the nephew's fiancee. In addition, a Canadian diplomat has been killed.
The perpetrators are al-Shabaab, a Somalian offshoot of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Shabaab have been terrorizing Somalia, the country next door to Kenya for years. Starting in 2010, Kenya's troops and African Union troops have been fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia, and have significantly reduced Al-Shabaab influence.
The attack was well coordinated, with gunfire and grenades coming from multiple entrances, and appeared to have been in the planning stages for months. It's being compared to the terrorist attack on a Mumbai hotel in 2008. (See "After Mumbai's '26/11' nightmare finally ends, India - Pakistan relations face crisis" from 2008.) That attack killed 126 people in three days, and injured 327 people. As the terrorists were from Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan, the attack almost led to war between India and Pakistan.
According to al-Shabaab on a twitter account, the terrorists are from America, Canada, Britain, Finland and Somalia. CNN
Of the three terrorists from the United States, two are from the Somali community in the twin cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) region of Minnesota.
The first wave of Somali refugees came to America in 1991 and were relocated to Minneapolis, where there was a need for workers. The refugees were so successful that their relatives soon followed, and today there are 40-80 thousand Somalis living in the region, including many that were born there and are American citizens.
However, this large community of Somali refugees also provides a recruitment opportunity for al-Shabaab, and the FBI has been raising concerns as recently as last month about al-Shabaab training videos directed specifically at the Somali community in Minnesota. Called "Minnesota Martyrs, the Path to Paradise," the video encourages disaffected Minnesota Somalians to travel to Somalia for terrorist training, and return to the U.S. to use those skills.
As a precaution, the Mall of America in Minnesota, the largest Mall in the United States, capable of holding almost 10,000 people, has been holding "lockdown drills" since 2009. Each drill lasts about ten minutes, and loudspeakers ask all mall customers to flee to the nearest store. All stores are closed during the drill, and customers are instructed to hide in the back of the store. CBS Minnesota and Twincities.com
The worst attack ever on a Christian church in Pakistan occurred on Sunday when two suicide attackers blew themselves up while 400 worshippers were greeting each other at the end of the Sunday service, in the northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar. The attack triggered clashes between Christians and police in the southern port city of Karachi. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP - the Pakistani Taliban) claimed credit for the attack, and blamed it on American drone attacks. The News (Pakistan)
At least 16 people were killed after a suicide bomber targeted mourners in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. A further 35 people were wounded in an attack in Doura, which came a day after a triple bombing at a funeral in Baghdad's Shia Muslim stronghold of Sadr City killed at least 85 people. The surge in bombings in recent weeks has pushed the monthly death toll to over 500. Al-Jazeera
Since Friday, 11 people were shot in Chicago, five of them fatally. 13 people were injured in a shooting on Thursday, including a 3-year-old boy. This week, Chicago became "the nation's murder capital," with 500 murders in 2012, had more killings than any other U.S. city that year. USA Today
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Sep-13 World View -- Minnesota link to Kenya shopping mall attack raises U.S. fears thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Sep-2013)
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List is more complete than expected, but it's still a diversion
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Much to the surprise of a number of people (including me), Syria submitted an inventory list of items in its chemical weapons stockpile on time on Saturday. U.S. officials said they were pleasantly surprised and encouraged by the initial submission, and said that it was more complete than anticipated.
Questions remain, however, about why the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad started large movement of chemical weapons stores last week immediately upon agreeing to provide a list. Supporters of the regime say that it was to make the inventory list easier to compile, by having everything together. Others say that Assad is continuing to hide a portion of his chemical weapons stockpile.
A number of analysts are reacting to the announcement by pointing out that it's a diversion. The psychopathic al-Assad has been responsible for killing over 100,000 of his own people using conventional weapons, and for driving people from their homes, creating millions of refugees, and that slaughter is continuing every day, irrespective of any chemical weapons inventory. CNN and BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Sep-13 World View -- Syria turns over inventory list of chemical weapons thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(22-Sep-2013)
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Iran's president Hassan Rouhani publishes an op-ed
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Iran's extremely hardline Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, surprised Iranian officials this week by using the phrase "Heroic Flexibility" to describe how Iran should negotiate nuclear issues with America and the West.
According to Khamenei:
"Though the world has changed, that cannot be a justification for the change of ideals, goals, or the correct path. ... The nuclear matter must be evaluated within this outlook.We do not accept nuclear weapons, neither due to nor not due to America, but because of our beliefs. When we say that no one must have nuclear weapons, we certainly do not pursue them, but the true goal of Iran's opposition in this field is another matter.
Of course, these few countries do not want their monopoly to be broken in the nuclear energy field... Therefore, the turmoil and tension created by America, the West and their related currents in the nuclear discussion must be understood and analyzed within the framework of the deep tension between the Dominant System and the Islamic Revolution.
I do not oppose correct diplomatic movements. I believe in what was called 'heroic flexibility' years ago because this movement is very good and necessary in situations but it must be binding to fundamental conditions.
A good wrestler sometimes shows flexibility due to technical reasons but does not forget his opponent or his main goal.
All of these achievements were accomplished in the oven of the enemies' pressure and conspiracies, and this valuable experience demonstrates that no obstacle can stop a faithful, coherent and determined people that know their way."
The phrase "Heroic Flexibility" refers to the act of a Muslim hero, following the death of the prophet Mohamed in the 7th century, to finally reverse his clan's opposition to the message of Mohamed. His reversal is referred to as "History's Most Glorious Heroic Flexibility." It led to major victories of Islam in Arabia, but it also led to the major split in Islam between the Sunni and Shia branches, and a bitter civil war that has been repeated throughout the centuries.
So the deep historic significance of this phrase by the hardline Khamenei was startling to other Iranian leaders, because it was felt that Khamenei would not have used that particular phrase unless he actually intended a major change of policy, rather than simply some West-baiting statement.
Another Iranian leader, Ayatollah Sadegh Amoli Larijani, reacted to the "heroic flexibility" phrase as follows:
"Just as the Supreme Leader pointed out during the [IRGC] commanders meeting, our country's officials and policy makers must pay attention to America's true personality, behavior and nature.Negotiations must take place in the framework of a complete and total understanding of the opposing side, and we must not forget America's tricks and deception. We must not forget how they supported this current in the [2009] sedition matter [Green Movement] and were determined to confront the great Iranian nation in their velvet reserves [referring to Velvet Revolution] with their cast iron and steel claws."
American Enterprise Institute (Sept 17) and American Enterprise Institute (Sept 18)
Assuming that a change in Iran's policies is actually about to occur, many analysts are attributing it to the American sanctions. This comes from the standard silly view that almost everything in the world occurs because of something that happens in Washington, when in fact very little that happens in the world is caused by Washington policies.
If a policy change occurs, it would be part of a much larger change in Iran's government that Generational Dynamics has been predicting for years. (See for example, "China 'betrays' Iran, as internal problems in both countries mount" from 2008.)
Iran is in a generational Awakening era. That's because its last generational Crisis war began in 1979, with the Great Islamic Revolution, and continued until 1988 with the Iran/Iraq war, during which Iran was the target of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) -- poison gas from Saddam Hussein's Iraq army. The survivors of that war, currently led by Khamenei, have devoted their lives to make sure no such horrific war happens again. From the point of view of the survivors, the way to do this is, first, to keep the country united behind a hardline Islamic state and, second, to have a strategic defense to the WMDs held by Iran's neighbors, including Pakistan and Israel.
What characterizes a generational Awakening era is that, very simply, the crisis war survivors die off, and they are replaced by younger generations of people who grew up after the crisis war, who have no personal memories of the horrors of the crisis war, and who rebel against the survivors, creating a "generation gap." This happened in America in the 1960s, when the presidencies of war survivors John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon were all faced with massive student protests, demanding such things as sexual freedoms, the end of the Vietnam War, and racial equality. The student protests triggered police violence that reached a peak in the 1968 Democratic party convention in Chicago, though the protests continued pretty freely after that.
In Iran, student protests began in the early 2000s, and police violence reached a peak during the 2009 re-election of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The police violence was so bloody and brutal that open protests have all but ended since then. But the underlying generational changes cannot be stopped by police action. The Iran/Iraq crisis war survivors are retiring and dying off, and the younger generations of people with no personal memory of the crisis war are reaching positions of power and influence. That's going to happen no matter what the police do.
So in order to predict changes in Iran's policies, one needs to look at the opinion of young people, as I've been doing for years, and these are the conclusions that I've reached:
I would add that it's been my opinion for years, in contradiction to almost every American opinion on the left and the right, that even if Iran has nuclear weapons, it has absolutely no intention of using them on Israel.
Furthermore, Iran's leaders know that Israel is not their enemy, and never has been. Their enemies are the Sunni nations, including the Saudis and the Pakistanis.
So as I've been saying for years, I expect Iran's policies to move in the directions dictated by the opinions of young people, as outlined above. Thus, I would expect the hardline social behaviors to be weakened, I would expect the inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric to be softened, but I would expect nuclear weapons development to continue.
In his 'Heroic Flexibility' speech, Supreme Leader Khamenei said that Iran does not want nuclear weapons. I expect Iran to continue development of nuclear weapons, but despite the concerns of Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it's my opinion that Iran has no intention of using them on Israel.
Iran's president Hassan Rouhani is traveling to the United States this week to speak at the United Nations, and possibly to meet with president Barack Obama.
During the last couple of weeks, we've reported on an op-ed by Russia's president Vladimir Putin in the NY Times, and an op-ed by Senator John McCain in Pravda.ru.
So it's only right that on Friday, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Iran's president Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani has only recently been elected president as a "reformer," which in Iran could mean somebody only slightly less hardline than his predecessors. But my guess is that "reformer" means that he's moving policy away from the hardline policies of the war survivors toward the increasingly popular policies of the young postwar generations.
"Three months ago, my platform of “prudence and hope” gained a broad, popular mandate. Iranians embraced my approach to domestic and international affairs because they saw it as long overdue. I’m committed to fulfilling my promises to my people, including my pledge to engage in constructive interaction with the world. ...We must pay attention to the complexities of the issues at hand to solve them. Enter my definition of constructive engagement. In a world where global politics is no longer a zero-sum game, it is — or should be — counterintuitive to pursue one’s interests without considering the interests of others. A constructive approach to diplomacy doesn’t mean relinquishing one’s rights. It means engaging with one’s counterparts, on the basis of equal footing and mutual respect, to address shared concerns and achieve shared objectives. In other words, win-win outcomes are not just favorable but also achievable. A zero-sum, Cold War mentality leads to everyone’s loss.
Sadly, unilateralism often continues to overshadow constructive approaches. Security is pursued at the expense of the insecurity of others, with disastrous consequences. More than a decade and two wars after 9/11, al-Qaeda and other militant extremists continue to wreak havoc. Syria, a jewel of civilization, has become the scene of heartbreaking violence, including chemical weapons attacks, which we strongly condemn. In Iraq, 10 years after the American-led invasion, dozens still lose their lives to violence every day. Afghanistan endures similar, endemic bloodshed.
The unilateral approach, which glorifies brute force and breeds violence, is clearly incapable of solving issues we all face, such as terrorism and extremism. I say all because nobody is immune to extremist-fueled violence, even though it might rage thousands of miles away. Americans woke up to this reality 12 years ago. ...
My approach to foreign policy seeks to resolve these issues by addressing their underlying causes. We must work together to end the unhealthy rivalries and interferences that fuel violence and drive us apart. We must also pay attention to the issue of identity as a key driver of tension in, and beyond, the Middle East.
At their core, the vicious battles in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are over the nature of those countries’ identities and their consequent roles in our region and the world. The centrality of identity extends to the case of our peaceful nuclear energy program. To us, mastering the atomic fuel cycle and generating nuclear power is as much about diversifying our energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world. Without comprehending the role of identity, many issues we all face will remain unresolved. ...
After 10 years of back-and-forth, what all sides don’t want in relation to our nuclear file is clear. The same dynamic is evident in the rival approaches to Syria.
This approach can be useful for efforts to prevent cold conflicts from turning hot. But to move beyond impasses, whether in relation to Syria, my country’s nuclear program or its relations with the United States, we need to aim higher. Rather than focusing on how to prevent things from getting worse, we need to think — and talk — about how to make things better. To do that, we all need to muster the courage to start conveying what we want — clearly, concisely and sincerely — and to back it up with the political will to take necessary action. This is the essence of my approach to constructive interaction.
As I depart for New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, I urge my counterparts to seize the opportunity presented by Iran’s recent election. I urge them to make the most of the mandate for prudent engagement that my people have given me and to respond genuinely to my government’s efforts to engage in constructive dialogue. Most of all, I urge them to look beyond the pines and be brave enough to tell me what they see — if not for their national interests, then for the sake of their legacies, and our children and future generations."
This is a pretty good article, fitting well into the "soaring rhetoric" pattern that we've seen in some politicians' speeches, though none recently. However, it contains little actual content.
What's most noticeable about it is that it contains none of the venom of the op-eds by Putin and McCain, or of the speeches of Obama and Assad. There are no inflammatory remarks about America or Israel, as would certainly have been the case in an article by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the next week, Rouhani will begin to fill out his rhetoric with actual policy positions, and then we'll see whether "Heroic Flexibility" actually means anything. Washington Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Sep-13 World View -- Does Iran's 'Heroic Flexibility' signal a real policy change? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Sep-2013)
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Spam: The luxury food of South Korea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we reported yesterday, thousands of Greeks in cities across Greece have been clashing with police after a self-identified member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party killed a left-wing rapper. The killing has stirred up a sharp political split between the left and the right in Greece, and the political split may become violent.
According to Greece's prime minister Antonis Samaras:
"The government is determined not to allow the Nazi descendants to poison our social life, commit murders, terrorize and undermine the foundations of the country that gave birth to democracy.Democracy is much stronger than its enemies realize. ... Violence is a downhill slide that destroys any chance of Greece achieving what it deserves, in other words growth, prospects and prosperity.
This is not the time for internal disputes or tension. We all know that our country is at an exceptionally crucial moment and that our people are suffering the biggest sacrifices to conquer the crisis and succeed in its financial rebirth. Any political disagreements should be solved with a democratic dialogue, not with incendiary arguments nor with violence anywhere it may come from and, what is more, not with blood which divides us and exposes us abroad."
Initial suggestions that the Golden Dawn party be banned have been rejected. However, the government plans to bring more than 30 criminal cases involving Golden Dawn MPs and members. Greek Reporter and Kathimerini
Starting on September 14, the exact day that Syria signed on to the Russian-American agreement that Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles will be destroyed, the Syrian regime began moving around its chemical weapons stockpiles. U.S. satellites observed truck convoys moving in and out of storage sites, starting on that day. The Pollyannaish explanation is that the regime is consolidating its stockpiles so that they can be more easily be classified and tabulated. However, U.S. intelligence officials are skeptical, believing that it's more likely that they're moving the stockpiles around to conceal them.
According to the agreement that Syria signed, they are required to provide a full written accounting of all their chemical weapons stockpiles by Saturday. Last Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry said, "We agreed that Syria must submit within a week — not in 30 days, but in one week — a comprehensive listing," and that the U.S. would allow "no games, no room for avoidance, or anything less than full compliance." Well, Syria's government is now indicating that the deadline will not be met. It's not known whether the listing will EVER be provided. CNN and LA Times
As we reported last week, the NY Times published an absurd op-ed by Russia's president Vladimir Putin. An angry Senator John McCain promised to get a response published in a Russian publication, and it appeared on Thursday:
"Senator John McCain: Russians deserve better than PutinI believe the Russian people, no less than Americans, are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ...
President Putin and his associates do not believe in these values. They don't respect your dignity or accept your authority over them. They punish dissent and imprison opponents. They rig your elections. They control your media. They harass, threaten, and banish organizations that defend your right to self-governance. To perpetuate their power they foster rampant corruption in your courts and your economy and terrorize and even assassinate journalists who try to expose their corruption.
They write laws to codify bigotry against people whose sexual orientation they condemn. They throw the members of a punk rock band in jail for the crime of being provocative and vulgar and for having the audacity to protest President Putin's rule. ...
How has he strengthened Russia's international stature? By allying Russia with some of the world's most offensive and threatening tyrannies. By supporting a Syrian regime that is murdering tens of thousands of its own people to remain in power and by blocking the United Nations from even condemning its atrocities. By refusing to consider the massacre of innocents, the plight of millions of refugees, the growing prospect of a conflagration that engulfs other countries in its flames an appropriate subject for the world's attention. He is not enhancing Russia's global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world."
Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Pravda newspaper was the country's official news publication, though it contained no news except Communist party opinions and press releases. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Pravda remained an organ of the Russian government, but a web site, Pravda.ru, sprang up to be an actual source of news. It's the latter that published McCain's op-ed, and it's not very likely that many Russians have seen it. Pravda.ru and Pravda.ru
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Spam, the pre-cooked pork meat in a can that the U.S. Army used to feed its soldiers in World War II, has become a popular luxury food in South Korea, since it was introduced by American soldiers during the Korean War. Asia is celebrating the annual lunar thanksgiving holiday this week, and in Korea, it's usual to give and receive packaged cans of Spam -- Classic Spam, Mild Spam, Bacon Spam, Garlic Spam, etc. According to one restaurant owner:
"Spam has a premium image in Korea. It's probably the most desirable gift one could receive, and to help create the high-class image, we use famous actors in our commercials. Anyone who gets a Spam gift-set also gets a warm feeling in their heart."
Premium Spam gift sets can run as high as $75. BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Sep-13 World View -- Syria moves its stockpiles of chemical weapons for 'unknown reasons' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(20-Sep-2013)
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Anti-Golden Dawn protests across Greece turn violent
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Federal Reserve has been pouring vast amounts of money into the banking system since 2011, at the rate of $85 billion per month. This money has been making its way into the stock market, artificially pushing stock prices to astronomically high levels. But many analysts, including some of the Fed governors, are demanding that this has to end, since it's creating massive distortions in the economy. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke himself has even suggested that the Fed would begin "tapering" this month, meaning that it would begin to reduce the $85 billion, bit by bit, possibly starting with a reduction to $75 billion in September. So the financial community was shocked on Wednesday when Bernanke issued a statement that no "tapering" would occur at this time. It's thought that the Fed committee is so concerned about the fragility of the economy so much that even a small reduction in tapering might cause a substantial collapse of the stock market. As things stand, the promise of continuing the full $85 billion per month caused the stock market to skyrocket to record highs, and interest rates (yields) on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds fell sharply after the announcement. Generational Dynamics predicts that Wall Street stocks will fall to the Dow 3000 level or below. AP
The U.N. chemical weapons team that inspected the site of the August 21 sarin gas attack in the Damascus suburbs in Syria was forbidden, at the insistence of Russia, of determining who was the perpetrator of the attack. The Russians demanded that they only be allowed to determine whether or not a sarin attack had occurred.
But apparently the U.N. team found a way to prove blame without having to say it. In their scientific analysis of the evidence, they included calculations of the trajectories of the rockets that delivered the sarin gas. They drew no conclusions about where the rockets were launched, but they provided enough scientific information within the report so that experts studying the report can show that the rockets must have been launched from a Syrian Republican Guard unit. Very clever!
I watched an hour-long interview of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad by two Fox News reporters on Wednesday evening. At one point, he said that al-Qaeda terrorists had manufactured sarin in their kitchens and launched the August 21 attack. At another point, he said that his army could not have launched the sarin attack, because it required specialized army units that have had a great deal of training. Like many psychopathic murderers, al-Assad is such a skilled liar that even he doesn't know when he's lying. McClatchy
China has stepped up military border incursions into India-governed regions of Kashmir and Jammu, the site of wars between Pakistan and India since 1947. According to an Indian analysis, China's actions are part of a larger warning to the India government not to form an alliance with other countries that encircles China. China is particularly concerned about a possible partnership between its bitter enemy, Japan, and India. China is also concerned that the U.S. is attempting to bring India under its strategic umbrella with an objective to check China within Asia. But while India is building partnerships on China's periphery from Myanmar to Japan, China is developing partnerships with Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives. Times of India and Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS)
Protests turned to violent clashes with police in cities across Greece on Wednesday evening, after a so-called "anti-fascist activist" was stabbed to death by a man who said he belonged to the far-right Golden Dawn party. ("Far right" has a different meaning in Europe than in America.) In Keratsini, west of Athens, where the stabbing took place, the confrontation between the police and thousands of protesters lasted more than two hours. 6,000 protesters marched in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city. The political party Golden Dawn has adopted Nazi symbols and is advocating the deportation of anyone who is not "pure Greek," even foreigners who have legally become Greek citizens. They've been blamed for an increase in violence against immigrants, and a coalition of political leaders on Wednesday evening called for legislation to make Golden Dawn illegal. Kathimerini and AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Sep-13 World View -- Fed surprises Wall Street by continuing massive money-printing thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(19-Sep-2013)
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Syria's civil war versus Sri Lanka's civil war
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Apparently Time Magazine feels that it's necessary to protect Americans' feelings with regard to the ability of Russia's president Vladimir Putin to repeatedly humiliate the United States and President Barack Obama over the Syria issue. The cover of Time's three international editions has a cover picture of Putin with the caption:
"America's weak and waffling, Russia's rich and resurgent -- and its leader doesn't care what anybody thinks of him. The World according to Vladimir Putin by Simon Shuster."
Actually, Putin is down in polls in Russia, and he cares very much what the Russian people think of him.
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Time Magazine in the past hasn't worried too much about hurting the feelings of its readers. The July 1 issue of Time for Asia featured Burmese Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu was so offensive to the government of Burma (Myanmar) that the magazine was banned.
Many people are saying that Time Magazine was protecting president Barack Obama by using a different cover in the America edition. This is entirely plausible since Time has been totally in the tank for Obama since the beginning. The managing editor, Rick Stengel, has been so completely in the tank for Obama that he's now leaving Time and being rewarded with a plum job in Obama's State Department. Time Magazine and Daily Caller
Until last month, Russia was insisting that Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime didn't even have chemical weapons. Now they've been forced to admit that al-Assad has huge stores of chemical weapons, but insist that al-Assad would never use them, despite massive amounts of evidence that he did, on August 21. The Russians keep demanding more and more evidence to show that al-Assad's regime is guilty, but they offer not an iota of evidence to support their claim that opposition rebels were guilty.
France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Monday:
"When you look at the amount of sarin gas used, the vectors, the techniques behind such an attack, as well as other aspects, it seems to leave no doubt that the regime [of President Bashar al-Assad] is behind it."
Sitting next to Fabius at a joint news conference was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said:
"We want objective professional assessment of the events of 21 of August. We have serious grounds to believe this was a provocation... But the truth needs to be established and this will be a test of the future work of the Security Council."
I guess Lavrov doesn't believe that the U.N. team gave an "objective professional assessment." And I'm sure Lavrov would like to get rid of secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who said that al-Assad has committed "many crimes against humanity."
It's beginning to appear that Russia is going to get away with it again. As I've been reporting since 2011, Putin has adopted a policy of using the United Nations as a tool to cripple American and European policy. After the horrific August 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria, it was beginning to appear that events would spin out of Russia's control, but Lavrov is quickly bringing the situation back under Russian control. BBC
Vladimir Putin may be enjoying the experience of humiliating Barack Obama and the United States, but Russia's Syria policy is disastrous for Russia, for several reasons. We've previously described some of these reasons:
However, there's one more reason why Putin's strategy is disastrous: A Generational Dynamics analysis indicates that the entire strategy cannot succeed, and this can be illustrated by comparing Syria's civil war with Sri Lanka's civil war that recently ended in 2009.
According to a number of analysts, Russia's strategy is as follows: Use the United Nations to give Syria's president Bashar al-Assad time, and provide al-Assad with huge quantities of heavy weapons, so that al-Assad can win the war and end it quickly. Once the opposition is crushed, things will return to the pre-war "normal," with al-Assad still in power, owing a great deal to Russia.
This strategy assumes that al-Assad can win a clear victory that will end the war. However, Syria is in a generational Awakening era, so this is not going to happen.
Long-time readers will remember that I followed the Sri Lanka civil war for a number of years, as it turned into a generational crisis war. As the war approached a generational crisis, I predicted that a victory by the Sinhalese government over the Tamil rebels would, in fact, be an end to the war, after 30 years. Every other journalist and analyst organization in the world, as far as I'm aware, said that the war had been going on for 30 years, and therefore would continue after a Sinhalese victory. But this was a generational crisis war reaching a climax, and a victory would mean the end of the war, just as the American victory over Germany and Japan in WW II ended that war. My prediction, based on generational theory, turned out to be absolutely correct, and everyone else's turned out to be wrong. (See "Tamil Tigers surrender, ending the Sri Lanka crisis civil war" from 2009.)
However analysts, including Russian analysts, are making the opposite mistake in the case of Syria's civil war. They look at the 1982 victory of al-Assad's father over the rebels, and they look at other civil wars like the Sri Lanka civil war, and conclude that al-Assad can score a victory and end this war. But those two other wars were generational Crisis era wars. Syria is in a generational Awakening era, and there will not be a generational crisis to this war. Al-Assad cannot end this war with a victory.
That means that war-weary Syrian opposition figures may agree to a cease-fire, and may sign a "peace agreement," but they will continue the protests that caused al-Assad to start slaughtering people in the first place. Furthermore, the Sunni jihadists that are arriving in Syria will never agree to a "peace agreement" with the Shia/Alawite al-Assad. So al-Assad will never reach the kind of peace that he and the Russians are hoping for.
I keep saying that if politicians could only become familiar with generational theory, they wouldn't make so many stupid decisions. This is a prime example. Russia and Vladimir Putin may be riding high these days, but they're following a disastrous policy that Russians will soon regret.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Sep-13 World View -- Russia and Vladimir Putin pursue a disastrous Syria policy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Sep-2013)
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Why are so many German professors against the euro?
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey scrambled two F-16 jets on Monday, and shot down a Syrian Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter, after warning it that it was approaching Turkish airspace. The helicopter was shot down over Turkey's airspace, but it landed in a ball of flames on the Syrian side of the border. It's unknown what happened to the pilots, but reports indicate that Syrian anti-government rebels shot them dead after they ejected.
In June of last year, Syrian forces shot down a Turkish air force jet. ( "23-Jun-12 World View -- Syria shoots down Turkey's air force jet") A furious Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that the rules of engagement had changed, and that Turkey would use military force in response to any incursion by Syrian aircraft. Zaman (Istanbul)
A United Nations report concludes that on August 21, "chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in [Syria], also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale," and that "surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used in the Ghouta area of Damascus."
According to U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon:
"The report makes for chilling reading.The results are overwhelming and indisputable. The facts speak for themselves. The United Nations Mission has now confirmed, unequivocally and objectively, that chemical weapons have been used in Syria. ...
There must be accountability for the use of chemical weapons. Any use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere, is a crime. But our message today must be more than: Do not slaughter your people with gas. There must also be no impunity for the crimes being committed with conventional weapons.
This is a war crime. This is the most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them in Halabja (Iraq) in 1988. The international community has a responsibility to hold the perpetrators accountable and to ensure that chemical weapons never re-emerge as an instrument of warfare.
The international community has pledged to prevent any such horror from recurring, yet it has happened again. ...
It is for others to decide whether to pursue this matter further to determine responsibility. We may all have our own thoughts on this, but I would simply say that this was a grave crime and those responsible must be brought to justice as soon as possible."
At Russia's insistence, the U.N. team was forbidden from reaching any conclusions about blame, but the report emphasizes the large volume of chemical weapons that were used, that they were delivered by sophisticated rockets, and that the rockets were launched from places controlled by regime of president Bashar al-Assad. U.N. press release and Full U.N. Report (PDF)
The laughable op-ed article by Russia's president Vladimir Putin that the NY Times published last week contains the following:
"No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization."
The League of Nations collapsed because it was paralyzed in the 1930s by people like Vladimir Putin. Putin's policy since the 2011 Libya action, as I've reported several times, has been to use the United Nations as a tool to control Barack Obama and cripple American foreign policy, and he's been spectacularly successful since then. ( "22-Apr-11 News -- Russia seeks to cripple Nato through Libya United Nations politics")
So Putin, who massacres his own people in Chechnya, invades Georgia and annexes two Georgia provinces, all "without Security Council authorization," and who provides weapons to the psychopath Bashar al-Assad to promote mass slaughter, mutilation and murder of his own citizens, who lectures Americans on morality and preserving the United Nations.
Putin has used the United Nations to lead Barack Obama by the nose and repeatedly humiliate him and the United States. In doing so, he's also harmed the United Nations, making it look useless and impotent.
And now it looks like Putin is going to do it again. The U.N. team report and Ban Ki-moon's statements make it clear that Bashar al-Assad's regime launched horrific, massive sarin gas attack on Syrian civilians on August 21, a major crime against humanity. But on Monday, Putin's representatives were going full steam denying that the U.N. report proves anything, and that the sarin gas attack was launched by opposition forces, even though that appears to be physically impossible. They were saying that under no circumstances would they authorize military action against Syria, even though it was only the threat of American military action that got Russia and Syria to admit they had chemical weapons. But Putin isn't interested in the truth; he's interested in crippling American foreign policy, using the United Nations as a tool.
Putin's actions make this an existential crisis for the United Nations itself. Ban Ki-moon must realize this, which is why, I believe, he used such strident, condemnatory language in his statements on Monday, going right up to the line of accusing the Bashar al-Assad regime of new crimes against humanity, though not crossing it.
In fact, I'm not so sure that what happened on Friday was an accident. As I reported ( "14-Sep-13 World View -- Ban Ki-moon accidentally tells the truth about Syria"), Ban was giving a talk to a women's group at the United Nations that was supposed to be private. But in fact his statement, which accused the Bashar al-Assad regime of "many crimes against humanity," was broadcast throughout the U.N. building. Was this all truly an accident? Why was Ban making a statement like that to a women's group? Could he really have been surprised that the cameras were rolling?
Right now, Putin is controlling the United Nations agenda, and crippling American foreign policy. I believe that Ban is well aware of this, and is looking for ways to take control away from the Russians. Because if Russia is able to prevent any consequences to follow from al-Assad's truly monstrous and gigantic crimes against humanity, then nobody will trust the United Nations again. Russia Today and Jamestown
The arch-conservative Philip Plickert has a revealing comment in Frankfurter Allgemeine explaining why so many German professors hate the euro. The reason is largely psychological. Many of them had warned against the adoption of a single currency in the 1990s, but were ignored at the time by Helmut Kohl, who considered them technical morons with no sense of the political and historical understanding of the project. It is no surprise, therefore, that they are offended now. EuroIntelligence and Frankfurter Allgemeine (Trans)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Sep-13 World View -- Can Ban Ki-moon prevent Russia from destroying the United Nations? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Sep-2013)
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Dozens killed in bombings and shootings across Iraq
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India has successfully conducted the second test flight of the indigenously developed Agni ("Fire") V nuclear-capable long-range missile. The missile was launched from a mobile launcher, and is capable of reaching deep into China, and as far as Europe, when it's deployed in 2014 and 2015. Only China, France, Russia, the United States and Britain are currently deploying this kind of long-range missile. India is far behind China in military capabilities, which continue to grow rapidly, while China's ally and India's enemy, Pakistan, is also rapidly expanding its military, leading to an arms race in the region. Hindustan Times and Reuters
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Dozens killed in bombings and shootings across Iraq
As part of a continually growing trend of sectarian violence, a wave of car bombs and shootings across Iraq killed some 40 people in Iraq on Sunday. On Saturday, more than 20 people died when a suicide bomber targeted a Shia funeral. On Friday, At least 30 people died in a bomb attack on a Sunni mosque. The psychopathic mass slaughter of Sunni Muslims by Syria's Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad, enthusiastically supported by massive shipments of heavy weapons from Russia's president Vladimir Putin, has inflamed the entire Sunni/Shia fault line from Pakistan to northern Africa to the Caucasus, probably nowhere more so than in Iraq. Ever since American forces were pulled out of Iraq in December 2011, sectarian violence, particularly Sunni jihadist violence targeting Shias, has been growing steadily every month. Some 800 people were killed in August alone. In recent weeks, Iraqi security forces have reportedly arrested hundreds of alleged al-Qaeda members around Baghdad. These arrests have angered the Sunni community, but the violence continues to grow. BBC and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Sep-13 World View -- India tests nuclear-capable long-range missile thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Sep-2013)
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John Kerry thanks Russia for it's hard work in Syria
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Massachusetts residents who have access to Framingham TV should tune in on Sunday (9/15) evening at 6 pm, where I'll be the guest on the subject of Syria on Jim Pillsbury's news/talk show.
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A strong populist movement in India has resulted in the selection of Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who in 2005 was banned from entry into the United States, as the candidate for prime minister for the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP will be running against the more liberal Congress Party, which has not yet named its lead candidate for next year's elections.
Hindu nationalism is controversial in India because opponents associate it with "Hindutva violence," where the Hindutva movement began in 1923, led by terrorist Veer Savarkar (Vinayak Damodar Savarkar), mostly as a movement against British colonization. (See "'Hindutva' terrorist violence against Muslims shocks Indians" from 2008.) In particular, a large terrorist bombing in Malegaon in India in 2008 was initially blamed on Muslim Jihadists, but evidence led to a Hindutva terrorist group that seeks revenge against Muslims.
Modi became associated with Hindutva violence in 2002, soon after the time he became, Governor of the Gujarat province (on the border with Pakistan), where he still serves as Governor. On February 27, 2002, a train with activists shouting Hindutva slogans passed through the city of Godhra in Gujarat province. There were some unsavory incidents, including an attempt to molest a Muslim girl and pull her into the train. Stone-throwing by Muslims led to a fire in one of the coaches, and deaths by burning of 58 people. This triggered several days of sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims, killing hundreds and displacing more than 150,000 people, of which the majority were Muslims, who have since been living in refugee camps in dire humanitarian conditions.
As Governor, Narendra Modi was accused of complicity in the violence against Muslims -- for provoking it, and looking the other way when it occurred. An investigation eventually cleared him, but suspicions remained, and he was denied entry into the United States by President Bush's administration in 2005.
Modi has become extremely popular, either despite or because of his Hindutva connection. This popularity is part of a growing trend that began in the 1970s of increasing hostility between the Hindu and Muslim populations. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this mutual hostility is expected to increase, and the region is headed for a new war between Hindus and Muslims, refighting the genocidal war that followed Partition, the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Hindustan Times and AFP and Telegraph India
John Kerry and Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov gave a joint press conference at 6 am ET on Saturday morning. I assume that the 6 am time was chosen in the hope that no Americans would hear it, since it was so painfully embarrassing for the United States. I transcribed the first three minutes of it, which was the first part of John Kerry's statement:
"I'm particularly grateful to Sergei Lavrov who stayed extra time from what he had originally planned, hoping we'd finish sooner, and this gave us additional opportunity to be able to work through some of the issues.I especially wanna thank the cooperative effort of Sergei Lavrov, who has worked hard and his entire delegation, including teams of the world's foremost chemical weapons experts, who have joined us here for the important discussions that we've had over the last two days.
Two weeks ago made the decision that because of the egregious use of chemical weapons in Syria against innocent Syrian citizens, women and children, all indiscriminately murdered in the night that claimed the lives even of people trying to rescue people, he believed it was critical for the world to say "No more."
The president made the difficult decision that after multiple warnings, it was his decision that the time had come to take military action to deter future use of such weapons.
But he also made the decision that we needed to take time to enlist the support of the congress and the American people, and I have no doubt that the combination of the threat of force, and the willingness to pursue diplomacy helped to bring us to this moment.
But diplomacy requires willing partners, and I wanna thank President Putin for his willingness to pick up on the possibility of negotiating an ended to Syrian weapons of mass destruction. His willingness to embrace ideas for how to accomplish this goal, and his willingness to send foreign minister Lavrov here to pursue 12:03 this effort was essential to getting to this point.
And I wanna thank Sergei Lavrov for his diligent efforts and the efforts of his entire delegation who worked hard and in good faith to overcome difficulties and even disagreements. In order to try to find a way through tireless efforts to get us where we are today."
It's good to see that Sergei Lavrov was effusively thanked several times for his magnificent effort of staying an extra day to fully make fools of the U.S. administration once again. I wouldn't want Lavrov to think that his magnificent efforts were not appreciated by John Kerry. John Kerry also expressed thanks to Vladimir Putin for sending the magnificent Lavrov to meet with Kerry. I was disappointed, though, that Kerry never took a moment to thank Syria's president Bashar al-Assad for his magnificent efforts as well.
As for the terms of the agreement, as I understand them, they are as follows:
The Obama administration is taking credit for this agreement, saying that the threats of military intervention, as well as all the flip-flops and gaffes, were actually done on purpose, just to bring this agreement about. (Do I need to comment on this claim?)
We can expect to see the following scenario one or more times in the weeks to come: Syria breaches the agreement. John Kerry complains to the U.N. Security Council. Lavrov says it's just a technical detail, and anyway there's no evidence. Kerry offers a resolution. Russia vetoes it.
Reports indicate that now that the threat of American force has ended, Syria's air force is doubling its attacks with conventional weapons.
Russia's 2011 strategy of using the United Nations to cripple the Obama administration and American policy is continuing to succeed spectacularly.
At some point, Kerry and Obama are going to be forced to react to Putin and al-Assad repeatedly leading them by the nose and making fools of them, and the result may not be pleasant for anyone.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Sep-13 World View -- Hindu nationalist nominated as India's prime minister thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Sep-2013)
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Russia elated by its diplomatic victory on Syria
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Massachusetts residents who have access to Framingham TV should tune in on Sunday (9/15) evening at 6 pm, where I'll be the guest on the subject of Syria on Jim Pillsbury's news/talk show.
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I keep trying to stay away from the Syria situation frankly because it's depressing to keep seeing first Congress then KGB officer Vladimir Putin and psychopathic Bashar al-Assad continue to make fools of the community organizer President of the United States and the administration, as the latter bumble from one flip-flop and gaffe to the next. But I keep getting pulled back in by the sheer astonishment I feel because of the unbelievably ridiculous play that's being acted out in the international community.
Friday's stunner occurred when United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told the truth about Syria's president Bashar al-Assad when he thought he was talking privately. Instead, his remarks were seen and heard by all the U.N. journalists. Here's what he said:
"What happened is that [al-Assad] has committed many crimes against humanity. Therefore, I'm sure that there will be surely the process of accountability when everything is over. ...Our team will come out soon with the report. But I believe the report will be overwhelming, overwhelming report that the chemical weapons were used, even though I cannot publicly say at this time before I have received this report."
Ban also gave a U.N. estimate that the August 21 chemical weapons attack killed 1,400 people. Ban did not say that the al-Assad regime was responsible for the chemical weapons attack, though he arguably implied it. The "many crimes against humanity" that Ban was referring to were committed with tanks and missiles and bombs and other "conventional" weapons, that have killed over 100,000 people and displaced millions from their homes. The U.N. official report is expected on Monday.
Now Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are negotiating over this ridiculous proposal to destroy Syria's chemical weapons. This has been endlessly discussed on every news show, and every analyst has said that it would take years to accomplish this, which means that it's never going to happen. This is just one more way that Russia and Syria are making fools of the U.S. administration. AFP and Fox News
It was just a couple of weeks ago when President Barack Obama was snubbing Russia's president Vladimir Putin because Putin was gloating over having given asylum to American traitor Edward Snowden. Now Putin has not only completely humiliated the American administration, but has also stopped cold the President's avowed intention to respond forcefully to Syria's use of chemical weapons. In fact, the military action was going to destroy al-Assad's air force, the principal weapon that he had to commit crimes against humanity against his own people. Al-Assad is now free to resume full mass slaughter of his people, using the heavy weapons supplied by Putin.
So now we come to Thursday's stunning event: Vladimir Putin's op-ed, published by the NY Times.
"The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization."
This is laughable. The United Nations is already as useless as the League of Nations, and Putin has made it so. As I wrote in 2011, Russia's policy since the Libyan action has been to use the United Nations to cripple NATO and the United States, leaving it free to pursue any military operations it wants. ( "22-Apr-11 News -- Russia seeks to cripple Nato through Libya United Nations politics")
Thus, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, without asking for approval from the United Nations. Russia still has troops in Georgia, without asking for U.N. approval. Russia has annexed to of Georgia's provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, without asking for U.N. approval. Russia is supplying masses of heavy weapons to al-Assad, where they're being used to commit crimes against humanity, all without asking for U.N. approval. So Putin's policies have been astonishingly successful. He's free to pursue any military policies he wants, and at the same time he's using the United Nations to cripple American and Nato policy. It's absolutely incredible, and it's only possible because of America's phenomenally incompetent foreign affairs policies.
"My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation."
This is making my head explode. Of course he appreciates Obama's Tuesday address to the nation, because Obama totally capitulated to Putin. What's there not to like for Putin?
Well he found something. It's dangerous, according to Putin, for America to see itself as exceptional.
The concept of America being exceptional is a new one for Obama, who's spent most of his life listening to his mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, say things like "God Damn America! God Damn America!" And Obama began his presidency by apologizing for almost everything. So apparently the president has even "evolved" enough to say that America is exceptional. It was such a strange thing for Obama to be saying, that perhaps even Putin was astonished.
It's possible that Putin went too far. Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez said that Putin's op-ed made him almost want to throw up, and House Speaker John Boehner said he was "insulted." Washington Post and CNN
The chemical weapons negotiations between America and Russia are farcical on their face, as described above, since even in the best of circumstances it would take years to accomplish the goal of destroying the chemical weapons. But now there are numerous reports that Bashar al-Assad's army has been moving the chemical weapons about 50 other sites within the country. This means that the entire negotiation is just another joke that Russia and Syria are playing on Obama and Kerry. Independent (London)
Some people are suggesting that after President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have been so incompetent and shown such weakness and confusion, that now many nations -- China, Iran, Russia, etc. -- will feel free to do whatever they want because they know they can get away with anything.
But that's not the way the world works.
At some point, community organizer Barack Obama is going to be sick and tired of being made a fool of by one person after another, and he'll get angry and strike back. That may mean, for example, taking some military action WITHOUT first asking permission from Vladimir Putin or Congress. The military action might be successful, but also it might impulsive, might be disastrous, might even cause a war.
Even forgetting that, the Syria debacle will have further inflamed Sunni and Shia jihadists who are heading for Syria to fight, and will dash the hopes of the millions of Syrian refugees who had been hoping that they might return to their homes soon.
Those who believe that Putin's victories this week mean the world is a safer place should understand that the opposite is true. The Syria debacle has made the world a much more dangerous place. That's the way the world works.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Sep-13 World View -- Ban Ki-moon accidentally tells the truth about Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Sep-2013)
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Tensions grow between Egypt and Gaza's Hamas
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Tens of thousands driven from homes by Muslim terrorists in the mostly Christian city of Zamboanga on the Philippine island of Mindanao. An estimated 180 terrorists from the al-Qaeda linked separatist group Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) are holding as many as 180 hostages. The army says that it has the situation "contained," but it is feared that the fighting will spread. Previous peace agreements between the government and the MNLF's predecessor, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), but the army did not honor their pledges to reduce poverty and reduce security either failed or never materialized. President Benigno Aquino III, who took office in 2010, vowed to spend time and money to resolve the issues, but has not been effective. CNN and International Crisis Group (PDF) and VOA
When Hamas was formed in 1988, it was a branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. It took control of Gaza in 2008 in a war between Palestinian factions. During the year when Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party were controlling Egypt, until he was deposed by a coup on July 3, Morsi never did very much for Hamas. But now that Egypt's army is in charge, tensions are growing rapidly between Hamas and Egypt, largely because of terrorist attacks on Egyptian soldiers in the northern Sinai region of Egypt, near the border with Gaza. The Egyptian military has been making threatening actions towards Hamas, such as sending warplanes over Gaza airspace. On Thursday, two Egyptian army tanks for the first time crossed into the corridor that separates Egypt and Gaza. Egypt state TV is reporting that Hamas has been training Egyptian terrorists how to plant bombs in cars, and that Hamas gave 400 landmines to Egyptian militant groups. Reuters and AFP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Sep-13 World View -- Philippine troops in clashes with al-Qaeda linked terrorists thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Sep-2013)
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North and South Korea reopen Kaesong Industrial Park
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Satellite images from August 31, 2013, shows white steam rising from a building near the reactor hall that houses the gas-graphite reactor’s steam turbines and electric generators. The reactor generates electricity by using the heat from the nuclear reaction in the core to create steam that spins the turbines. The white coloration and volume are consistent with steam being vented because the electrical generating system is about to come online, indicating that the reactor is in or nearing operation. The reactor is capable of producing plutonium that can be used in nuclear weapons.
This news comes just after the Syria debacle, where President Barack Obama has essentially ceded victory to Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and Russia's president Vladimir Putin over Assad's use of chemical weapons against innocent Syrian victims.
In April of this year, Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to South Korea:
"We are all united in the fact that North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power. The rhetoric that we're hearing from North Korea is simply unacceptable."
This statement is silly anyway, since North Korea has already been a nuclear power for several years. But now North Korea is apparently starting up its nuclear reactor, and saying that North Korea as a nuclear power is "unacceptable" sounds a lot like saying that Syria using chemical weapons is "unacceptable."
Why should anyone pay attention to anything that anyone in the Obama administration says, anyway? It's all fatuous hot air. 38 North and Reuters
North and South Korea have agreed to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Park for a trial production run on Monday. 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.
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 has been costing North Korea a great deal of money. The child dictator has essentially capitulated on South Korea's demands, but is making up for it by restarting his nuclear reactor. Yonhap (Seoul)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Sep-13 World View -- North Korea apparently restarting its nuclear reactor thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Sep-2013)
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Bird flu and MERS virus show new potential for spreading
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Nawaz Sharif, the new PM of Pakistan, made a campaign promise that he would negotiate with the Pakistan Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan - TTP), so that TTP would stop terrorist bombing strikes on Pakistani targets, presumably leaving them free to focus on terrorist attacks on Nato and Afghan government sites in Afghanistan. At the time, I indicated that Sharif's campaign promise was a dream.
So, since taking office, Sharif has been attempting to fulfill his promise, but he's had one problem after another.
First, the Punjabi branch of the TTP said that they weren't interested in peace talks, so they went their separate way. Then Lashkar-e-Janghvi (LeJ), which has set as its goal the extermination of all Shia Muslims in Pakistan, and has been methodically setting off bombs in order to achieve that goal, also said that they weren't interested in peace talks, and so LeJ went its separate way.
That left the TTP with a couple of its branches missing. Then, on May 29, a TTP leader was killed by a U.S. drone strike in the tribal region of Pakistan. The TTP decided to "completely cancel" its offer to talk, and said, "We will teach a lesson to Pakistan and United States for depriving us of our leader."
According to an Indian analysis, Pakistan continues to offer broad state support to "a wide range of jihadist formations" operating against Afghanistan and India. The analysis adds that Pakistan's "policy of duplicity" is failing "to contain the blowback of violence within the country."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, India and Pakistan are headed for a major war between Sunni Muslims versus Hindus and Shia Muslims, refighting the bloody genocidal war between Muslims and Hindus that followed Partition, the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP)
There are two different deadly flu viruses floating around, each showing greater potential than before to start a worldwide pandemic.
The new H7N9 bird flu is showing "unique traits" in China that make it more likely to spread. In particular, it is able to infect both the nose and the lungs, making it easy to spread, and making it likely to cause death from pneumonia. This indicates that a mutation has occurred, making the new bird flu virus easier to spread. Since the H7N9 outbreak began last spring, 135 people have been infected, and there have been 44 deaths.
The second virus potentially capable of producing a deadly pandemic is the extremely lethal Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Researchers have thought that virus is contained in Saudi Arabia, where it has infected 114 people, and killed 54.
However, it now turns out that the MERS virus may already have spread much farther. Dromedary camels, water buffaloes and cows in Cairo, Egypt, and also in the Nile Delta region, turn out to have blood antibodies from the MERS-CoV virus. The animals had been imported from Sudan, indicating that the virus may already have spread there, causing more infections and deaths that have gone unreported.
There is already grave concern 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-CoV to countries around the world.
Potential flu pandemics in recent years have been contained because of strenuous efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO), and that in fact may happen again. However, the world is overdue for a major deadly flu pandemic, and either H7N9 or MERS-CoV are possible candidates. BBC and Recombinomics
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Sep-13 World View -- Pakistan's attempts at peace with Taliban seem doomed to failure thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(11-Sep-2013)
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An example of the intelligence of today's college professors
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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U.S. Secretary of State made a major new gaffe on Monday, when he was asked in London what Syria's president Bashar al-Assad could do to prevent an American strike. He said:
"Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that, but he isn't about to do it and it can't be done, obviously."
This remark was completely off-script, and the last phrase was apparently a failed attempt to recover. Too late. Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov immediately asked Syria to promise to turn over his chemical weapons to the international community, and Syria immediately said they accepted the proposal, though they never said they would implement it. United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon immediately approved the plan to launch a project to transfer chemical weapons to "places inside Syria where they can be safely destroyed." He said that the "international community will have a very swift action."
That's all that President Barack Obama needed to apparently back off completely from the threat of a Syria strike. According to one commentator, President Obama appeared to be breathing a sigh of relief when he said that he would take the time to consider the "Russian proposal."
This all would be laughable if it weren't so serious. I've written before about my utter astonishment at what's going on -- a return to 1938-type appeasement, when Adolf Hitler snookered Britain's prime minister Neville Chamberlain into declaring "Peace in our time," at a time when Hitler was already making preparations for a war with Britain. I never dreamed that I would see a repeat of that scenario in my lifetime, but here we are. Kerry bumbled and made a gaffe, and Russia turned it into a "Russian proposal," Ban Ki-moon turned into a "U.N. proposal," and Obama did a flip-flop. It's hard to believe.
Obama will be addressing the nation on Tuesday evening. Atlantic Wire and Telegraph (London)
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As I was writing this column, Al Jazeera aired an interview with Kimberly Marten, Professor of Political Science at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. I decided to transcribe what she said, as a shining example of the level of intelligence and scholarship of college professors today, and also an example of what our college students are being taught.
Marten was asked what she thought of the "Russian proposal" to ask al-Assad to turn its chemical weapons over to the international community. She praised Russia's president Vladimir Putin:
"I think it was a BEAUTIFUL proposal.It was a BRILLIANT move by Putin. He looks STRONG before his domestic audience because he SOLVED this problem. He's actually done a FAVOR for Obama, by getting Obama out of a jam, which I think maybe he was looking to do, because there were indications earlier in the summer that he wants a good relation ship with OBAMA.
And you know he looks like the GOOD guy in all of this. He gets support throughout the WORLD for not being the warmonger.
I think it gets ASSAD out of a jam too. It's a way of insuring that there are no STRIKES on his TERRITORY - he doesn't actually NEED chemical weapons to accomplish anything. Chemical weapons are not the most effective weapons to use. So it makes HIM look like not such a bad guy either.
I don't think [Assad is getting away with anything], because there are other ways you can punish Assad. you could take him and his regime to the International CRIMINAL Court. So I don't think it's the end of the story.
But I think, you know, PUTIN is a JUDO master. And I think this was a JUDO move. You don't win in judo games by being the stronger player. You do it by having SURPRISE attacks that throw your opponent off balance."
Well, I do agree with this moron about one thing: Putin did win on Monday, and Obama and the United States lost big. Al-Jazeera
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Sep-13 World View -- New Kerry gaffe leads to further political chaos over Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(10-Sep-2013)
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Egypt launches military operation against Sinai militants
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Egypt's police and armed forces launched on Saturday the largest and most violent military operation yet seen in the Sinai Peninsula. The clashes took place near the borders with Gaza and Israel.
Ground forces raided a number of houses, accompanied by a number of Apache helicopters. Armed forces also bombed militants’ locations in Central Sinai with reports of casualties in the region.
A security source stated that the initial attack resulted in the death of 10 militants and injuring of 20 others, in addition to the arrest of 15 armed assailants. Eye witnesses stated that during the campaign, armed forces employed nearly 30 different types of tanks and armoured vehicles, along with 6 Apache helicopters which were used to pursue militants attempting to flee the area.
Eye witnesses stated that Apache helicopters launched strikes against militant locations, accompanied by tanks and armored vehicles. Witnesses further described loud explosions being heard in the area, along with rising clouds of smoke, after a number of four-wheel-drive pickup trucks had been attacked, which led to the death and injury of a number of individuals.
The Egyptian attack was triggered by an al-Qaeda linked group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis ("Partisans of Jerusalem"), which claimed responsibility for a suicide bomber attack in Cairo that targeted the convoy of Egypt's interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim, whom the terrorists blame for killing and arresting of hundreds of Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Mohamed Morsi, overthrown by the military in a popularly backed coup on July 3. Daily News Egypt and AFP
Although not discussed publicly, the growth in Sinai attacks is resulting in greater cooperation between Israel and Egypt. According to Israeli army figures, more than 300 attacks were launched against Egyptian troops in Sinai over the past few weeks. Last month, 25 Egyptian policemen were shot to death execution-style in the Sinai, prompting widespread anger in Cairo. Israeli military sources say there are hundreds of terrorists in Sinai, in jihadist groups supported by local Bedouin tribes. Cooperation between Israel and Egypt will get even closer if jihadists launch attacks on Israel from Sinai. The Media Line
One of the puzzles of the massive August 21 chemical weapons attack by Syria's forces is why the attack took place when the United Nations inspectors were in the country. I speculated at the time that perhaps president Bashar al-Assad did not personally order the attack, and that it might have been ordered by one of his lieutenants who didn't even know that the U.N. inspectors were in town. Now German intelligence is saying that it may have happened that way. The intelligence was obtained from radio traffic intercepted by a German naval reconnaissance vessel sailing close to the Syrian coast. Reuters
Poland announced that it will confiscate private pension funds and transfer them to the national government in order to alleviate public debt. Although some pension reform was expected, total confiscation caught investors off guard. By putting the private funds on the government balance sheet, the debt-to-GDP ratio is lowered enough so that Poland can borrow more money. This is the latest of European policies that began with the Cyprus confiscation of private bank accounts where countries confiscate private assets to pay public debt, in order to keep borrowing. Reuters and ZeroHedge
Six years ago, global warming scientists predicted that there would be no Arctic ice left by 2013, but Nasa satellite pictures show that after a chilly Arctic summer there's 60% more Arctic ice this summer than in 2012. In the 1970s and 80s, the term "climate change" referred to global cooling and a "nuclear winter." In the 1990s, it changed to mean "global warming." Now it's apparently back to "global cooling." Daily Mail (London)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Sep-13 World View -- Poland confiscates private pension funds to pay public debt thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(9-Sep-2013)
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John Kerry: 'This is our Munich Moment'
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
On Saturday in Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the world was facing a "Munich moment," referring to Neville Chamberlain's 1938 meeting with Adolf Hitler, and returned to London brandishing an agreement with Hitler for "Peace in our time":
"This is our Munich moment.We in the United States know, and our French partners know, that this is not the time to be silent spectators to slaughter.
This is the time to pursue a targeted and limited but clear and effective response that holds dictators like Bashar Assad responsible for the atrocities which they commit.
This is not the time to allow a dictator unfettered use of some of the most heinous weapons on earth."
President Barack Obama also referred to the lead-up to World War II when he said that not coming to Britain's aid was not the right thing to do:
"I'm not drawing an analogy to World War II other than to say that when London was getting bombed, it was profoundly unpopular, both in congress and around the country to help the British. Doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing to do."
Both Kerry and Obama were, in fact, drawing analogies to WW II. Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward Hitler was extremely popular, but was later recognized as historically disastrous, as Britain was in full-scale war the following year. When I was growing up in the 1950s, my school teachers all vilified Chamberlain for his appeasement of Hitler. And Obama makes the point that, just as Chamberlain's appeasement policy was extremely popular, any American plan to aid Britain as London was being bombed by the Nazis was extremely UNpopular. It was only after Pearl Harbor was bombed that helping Britain became acceptable to the American public.
I've written about so many truly astonishing things that have happened in the last ten years, and this situation has got to be among the two or three most astonishing. It literally takes my breath away.
On the one hand, you have President Obama, who spent 20 years in avid adoration of his mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose theme was "God Damn America! God Damn America!", but who was elected president on a surge of popularity because of his hatred of President George Bush.
On the other hand, you have John Kerry, who testified before the Senate in 1971 that America's soldiers were a bad as Nazis, and who reaffirmed his 1971 statements in 2006, at the same time he was saying that any American soldier who ended up in Iraq was stupid. Obama appointed Kerry as Secretary of State because they shared the same views about America.
So you have two people, the epitome of anti-Americanism and the hatred of American values, who have suddenly done a 180 degree turnabout and adopted the most American of pro-World War II values, that it's America's responsibility as Policemen of the World to protect human life and alleviate suffering, even if it means using military force, especially when doing so might prevent a wider war. If these two have been botching foreign policy, it's because they've been at war with themselves.
But that's only half of the astonishment.
The other half is that we are, in fact, reliving the late 1930s, a "Munich moment," a time when appeasement is suddenly extremely popular, and a willingness to help people suffering horrific deaths is extremely unpopular. And the history of the 1930s tells us that such appeasement leads to war.
Some people have written to me to complain that al-Assad is no Hitler, and this time it's different because al-Assad isn't annexing territory as Hitler was doing.
But that's wallowing in details and not looking at the big picture. What Hitler and al-Assad have in common is committing psychopathic atrocities on a large scale, treating the international community contemptuously, and openly driving the region and the world to a major war.
And what's Russian president Vladimir Putin's role in all this? Putin has already used military force to annex parts of Georgia, and other regions in the Caucasus and in central Asia are being threatened. Even if al-Assad alone isn't annexing territory, his ally Putin is, and if Putin were contemplating any way to gain control of Syria, we'd have no way of knowing it until it happened.
There are powerful forces gathering momentum across the world, converging on Syria -- Sunni jihadists from Pakistan to Nigeria to Dagestan are going to fight in Syria. Shia jihadists from Iran and Hezbollah are going to fight in Syria. Russia is pouring advanced weapons into Syria. Millions of refugees are pouring out of Syria into neighboring countries. The entire Sunni/Shia and Arab/Jew fault lines are inflamed throughout the Mideast.
And in the middle of all this, the psychopath Bashar al-Assad shocks the entire world by perpetrating a horrific chemical weapons attack, and the psychopath Vladimir Putin helps him.
As I've said in the past, it's my opinion that Syria has already passed a tipping point, headed for a major conflict that will engulf the entire region. That's going to happen no matter what the U.S. does. Furthermore, the U.S. will be drawn into this conflict sooner or later.
So that's the context in which a decision has to be made whether to strike at Syria, in one form or another. If we do nothing -- if we "appease" al-Assad, and allow him to use chemical weapons freely with no restrictions -- if we "appease" Putin, and allow him unrestricted use of Russian weapons and military -- will we be drawn into a larger war? Based on my understanding of history, there's no doubt in my mind that we will, and that the West will be blamed for appeasement.
In fact, I believe that the last two years have proven that. America has been appeasing al-Assad for two years, ignoring his psychopathic attacks on his own people, and the result has been disastrous for the region, getting worse every day.
So what if we do take some military action? Two years ago, that would have been extremely effective. But what about today? Will that immediately trigger a larger war? I don't believe so. Despite all the bluster, Russia will not launch a strike at American assets. Iran and Hezbollah are both in generational Awakening eras, and they won't be triggered into a major war, in my opinion. Most of the threats of war from Iran and Hezbollah are just posturing. I don't want to underestimate the threat of a terrorist act on an American embassy or other American or Israeli asset, but that threat always exists no matter what we do. And I do believe that America showing some strength instead of ceaseless dithering and confusion can have some deterrent effect, as it has had for decades, and may even curtail al-Assad's use of chemical weapons for a while.
So is appeasement of the psychopaths al-Assad and Putin the right or wrong policy? There are too many unknowns to reach a conclusion, the worst unknown being that neither Obama nor Kerry has a clue what's going on in the world, and are completely rudderless. As I've said, the Mideast is headed for a major war along numerous fault lines -- Sunni versus Shia, Arab versus Jew, Arab versus Arab (Saudi Arabia versus Qatar), just to name a few. As we continue to relive the late 1930s, the only thing we can be sure of is that we're headed for the worst world war in the world's history. And all we can do is hope the country survives. BBC and Irish Independent
Since WW II, we've signed mutual defense treaties with numerous countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS treaty), the Philippines, Israel, Europe, Iceland, and others.
President Obama made the point, quoted above, that when our close ally, Britain, was being brutally bombed by the Nazis, it was extremely unpopular for America even to consider helping our close ally, and so we didn't.
So are any of the treaties we've signed worth the paper they were written on? If Israel, or the Philippines, or Japan, or any other country with whom we have a treaty were attacked and asked for our help, would providing that help be so unpopular with the American people, that America would be completely paralyzed?
Here's a quotation of unknown origin that I heard today on the BBC: "Peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading."
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Sep-13 World View -- Would America not defend Israel after all? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(8-Sep-2013)
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Wealthy investors cheer bad unemployment report
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The unemployment rate declined from 7.4% to 7.3% in August, but it wasn't because of a growth in the job market, which was disappointing. Instead it was caused by a new sharp fall in the "labor force participation rate" -- the percentage of workers who haven't given up searching for work. It fell to 63.2%, the lowest level since August 1978, after a whopping 516,000 more workers dropped out of the labor market in August. The labor force participation rate began to fall after the Nasdaq crash in 2000, and has been plummeting rapidly since the financial crisis began in 2007.
Friday's jobs report was good news for wealthy stock market investors, because it means that the Federal Reserve is more likely to continue its quantitative easing project of pouring $85 billion into the banking system EVERY MONTH. This money has been propping up the stock market, and from there going into the portfolios of wealthy investors.
If you've heard the word "tapering" a lot on financial newscasts, it refers to the possibility that the Fed might start to gradually reduce the $85 billion monthly cash injection. This would be considered bad news for wealthy investors, since a lot of the $85 billion goes into their bank accounts. But the $85 billion has failed to stimulate growth in the economy, and so there's an increasing amount of political pressure for the Fed to begin tapering. Friday's bad jobs report makes it less like that the Fed will start tapering right away, and so investors are generally pleased. Zero Hedge and LA Times
It was U.S. President Barack Obama versus Russian President Vladimir Putin on the last day of the G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia. Both of them were ranting, but Obama accused Putin of paralyzing the international community, and Putin accused Obama of violating international law.
It's hard to take either of them seriously. Obama has been babbling, incoherent and indecisive for so long, and nobody has a clue what he's going to do next. Putin talking about international law is a farce, with Russian troops still occupying Georgia in violation of international law, following his 2008 invasion of Georgia, in violation of international law. Nonetheless, the bitter divisions were obvious.
The following countries sided with Obama: Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The following countries sided with Putin: Russia, China, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, India, Germany, South Africa, Indonesia, European Union.
The United Nations was started after World War II in order to prevent exactly what's going on now, but the United Nations is now as useless as the League of Nations.
The only thing that matters now is what happens in Washington, the home of the Policemen of the World. The political battle is just as bitter and divisive as the battle at the G20, splitting both political parties, and far more consequential.
Obama will give a televised nationwide address on Tuesday. It should be interesting. Independent (London)
Because of threats of retaliation over the situation in Syria, the U.S. State Dept. is evacuating some staff from embassies in Beirut, Lebanon, from Turkey and from Iraq. According to the Beirut embassy:
"On September 6, the Department of State drew down non-emergency personnel and family members from Embassy Beirut due to potential threats to U.S. Mission facilities and personnel. The Department of State urges U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to Lebanon because of current safety and security concerns. U.S. citizens living and working in Lebanon should understand that they accept risks in remaining and should carefully consider those risks.U.S. citizens concerned for their safety should consider making plans to depart by commercial means. U.S. citizens will be responsible for arranging their own travel out of Lebanon. Beirut International Airport is open and commercial flights are operating. Travelers should check with their airlines prior to traveling to verify the flight schedule.
Those who remain should prepare to depart at short notice. ... U.S. citizens should be aware that the Embassy does not offer “protection” services to individuals who feel unsafe. U.S. citizens with special medical or other needs should be aware of the risks of remaining in Lebanon given their condition and should be prepared to seek treatment in Lebanon if they cannot arrange for travel out of the country. U.S. citizens traveling or residing in Lebanon who choose to remain should be aware that the U.S. Embassy's ability to reach all areas of Lebanon is limited. The Embassy urges all U.S. citizens in Lebanon to monitor the media for the latest developments."
McClatchy and State Dept.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Sep-13 World View -- U.S. and Russia split bitterly over Syria intervention issue thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(7-Sep-2013)
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Defecting Syrian Army general may play transitional role
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A contest intended to inspire patriotic good feelings in Russia has turned into political disaster, highlighting the mutual xenophobia between ethnic (Orthodox Christian) Russians and (Sunni Muslim) North Caucasians.
The nationwide "Russia 10" contest was launched in March with the purpose of selecting a symbol for the Russian Federation from a roster of architectural and geographic landmarks across Russia's nine time zones. Russian citizens voted online or by text message. The contest drew little attention until July, when a public relations campaign in the North Caucasus province of Chechnya, led by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, led to the "Heart of Chechnya Mosque" in Grozny shooting far into first place. The mosque received almost 40 million votes, even though Chechnya's population is only 1.3 million, because Russians were allowed to vote as many times as they wanted, and because Muslims all across Russia joined in.
Well, this infuriated the ethnic Russian nationalists, who would find a mosque intolerable as Russia's national landmark, and who started an online “Anything but the mosque” campaign. Suddenly, in the last two days of August, another building, Kolomensky Kremlin (citadel) in Kolomna, suddenly received tens of millions of new votes, beating out the mosque by only 400,000 votes. Kadyrov is screaming "blatant fraud," and is demanding a refund of all the texting fees -- millions of dollars that the cell phone companies made in texting fees -- and has called for a boycott of the cell phone companies. The last round of voting will is still in progress, but so far, all the contest has done is highlight the growing hatred between ethnic Russians and North Caucasians. Jamestown and RFERL
Reports indicate that Syria's former defense minister General Ali Habib has defected to Turkey. He was dismissed as defense minister in 2011 when he broke with president Bashar al-Assad over the use of the military against civilian protesters. There are hints that the U.S. and the Russians are actually in agreement about something, namely that General Habib might play a role in a new Syrian government if al-Assad could be made to disappear. There have been numerous defections from al-Assad's government since 2011, but almost all of them have been Sunni Muslims. Habib's defection would be significant because he's a Shia/Alawite, so he could potentially represent the Alawite community in a deal to end the war. Hurriyet (Istanbul)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Sep-13 World View -- Russian landmark contest fiasco highlights widespread xenophobia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(6-Sep-2013)
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Iran's government splits over al-Assad's chemical weapons
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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I listened to part of President Barack Obama's press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, on Tuesday. He was asked a question about NSA spying, he sounded like a babbling idiot as he rambled on for about 15 minutes without saying anything coherent. In the past couple of weeks he's said one dumb thing after another about the situation in Syria, and made a chaotic mess of American foreign policy.
So imagine my shock and surprise when he gave the clearest and most coherent defense of U.S. military action that I've yet heard when he was asked about Syria:
"First of all, I didn’t set a red line; the world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use even when countries are engaged in war.Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated that -- in a piece of legislation titled the Syria Accountability Act -- that some of the horrendous things that are happening on the ground there need to be answered for.
And so when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what’s happening in Syria would be altered by the use of the chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn’t something I just kind of made up. I didn’t pluck it out of thin air. There’s a reason for it. That’s point number one.
Point number two -- my credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.
And when those videos first broke and you saw images of over 400 children subjected to gas, everybody expressed outrage: How can this happen in this modern world? Well, it happened because a government chose to deploy these deadly weapons on civilian populations. And so the question is, how credible is the international community when it says this is an international norm that has to be observed? The question is, how credible is Congress when it passes a treaty saying we have to forbid the use of chemical weapons?
And I do think that we have to act, because if we don’t, we are effectively saying that even though we may condemn it and issue resolutions, and so forth and so on, somebody who is not shamed by resolutions can continue to act with impunity. And those international norms begin to erode. And other despots and authoritarian regimes can start looking and saying, that’s something we can get away with. And that, then, calls into question other international norms and laws of war and whether those are going to be enforced."
It's laughable that he claims he didn't set a red line, but that's not why his response was coherent.
Obama's response is fully in the spirit of the Truman Doctrine, put forth by President Harry Truman in 1947, and making the U.S. the Policeman of the World. Truman's reasoning was that WW II was so expensive, and cost so many lives, and so intervening in the Greece/Turkey crisis of the time would be only a tiny fraction, and would be well worth it if it prevented a new world war. President John F. Kennedy repeated this theme in his inaugural address.
Obama's reasoning is that the world must prevent the use of chemical weapons, which could lead to a new world war, and that this justifies American military action. This is a modern day justification that's similar to the Truman Doctrine.
Unfortunately, President Obama earlier said so many dumb things, he has little credibility left. And nobody knows what Obama's plans are for Syria, if he wins Congressional approval. White House
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a resolution giving U.S. President Barack Obama authority to take military action against Syria over its use of chemical weapons on civilians. The measure must pass both houses of Congress to become law, and is expected to face stiff opposition that splits both parties.
The Senate committee approved a plan that would give Obama authority to order limited strikes against Syrian military targets for 60 days. He could extend the window by another 30 days under certain conditions. The resolution does not authorize the use of ground troops. It states military action must be aimed at deterring and preventing Syria from carrying out future chemical weapons attacks. VOA
Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who is giving massive amounts of advanced heavy military weaponry to Syria's psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad for use in massacring civilian women and children, and who feels free to order the invasion of Georgia or any other country without getting permission from the U.N. Security Council, on Wednesday accused U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry of being a liar:
"I watched the debates in Congress. A congressman asks Mr. Kerry: ‘Is al-Qaeda there?’ He says: ‘No, we are telling you responsibly that they are not.' ...[The Syrian rebels’] main combat unit is al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda unit. They [the US] are aware of that. … He [Kerry] lied. And he knows that he lied. This is sad."
It turns out that Putin misquoted Kerry, but Putin is attacking the United States, hoping to stop the bleeding of his own popularity numbers, which have been plummeting. Furthermore, Putin risks major embarrassments on several issues this week, with the G-20 summit taking place in St. Petersburg.
It turns out that Russian public opinion is indifferent to the fate of Syria's al-Assad regime, but is extremely upset about a number of other issues, including:
Ria Novosti and Jamestown
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been a leading dissident in Iran's government since the 2009 presidential elections, but is still highly revered as a hero of the Great Islamic Revolution of 1979. Last week, Rafsanjani blamed Syria's president Bashar al-Assad for the use of chemical weapons, in a radio interview, as posted on an Iranian news web site:
"The Syrian people have had more than 100 thousand dead and eight million displaced inside and outside. The prisons are full of people [and] have no more space, some have taken stadiums and are filled. Bad circumstances rule the people. On one side, the people are chemically bombarded by their own government and from another side, today, must await American bombs."
Since this was far from Iran's policy, the remarks were taken down from the web site and altered to say something completely different. Rafsanjani may be in serious political trouble for having spoken the truth. One MP is quoted:
"We are impatiently awaiting Mr. Hashemi [Rafsanjani's] denial and plainly and correctly announcing his position. We also request the Ministry of Intelligence to investigate this matter and report the truth to the people. If this tape is real ... [it means] that he seeks to weaken the Resistance Front against the Dominant system, which of course is untrue in my opinion."
Another MP said even more ominously:
"I have seen that speech's video and certainly the video cannot be manufactured. Of course Hashemi [Rafsanjani] stated those words and it is his opinion.Perhaps Mr. Hashemi views the country's expediency in this, but overall [one] must request explanation from him to plainly announce his opinion.
Some have said that Mr. Hashemi's statements are a cooperation of sorts with America, while it is not like this at all because Mr. Hashemi condemns America. Perhaps Mr. Hashemi's opinion has been that if the Syrian government used chemical weapons, we condemn these measures but will not stop supporting Syria.
So long as the majority of the Syrian people support the government, we will also support them. Supporting Syria is very important for Iran because they are the Axis of Resistance, and in case of their elimination [Lebanese] Hezbollah will no longer be effective.
The Syrian government must implement the necessary reforms. If from the beginning, it did not exhibit violence in reacting to the protests of a section of the people, we would not have reached the current point, but overall we considered the Assad government acceptable by the majority, therefore we support them."
Iran is in a generational Awakening era (like America in the 1960s), and although Rafsanjani is in the older generation of survivors of the Great Islamic Revolution, he's been taking the positions of the younger generations in Iran's Awakening era "generation gap." In the 2009 presidential election, several leaders supported the views of the younger generation, and many of them were thrown into jail. Some of them have never gotten out. Rafsanjani has survived so far, but one of these days he's going to tell the truth once too often, and then the Supreme Leader will do the equivalent of tying a cement block to his leg and tossing him into the Caspian Sea or the Persian Gulf.
American Enterprise Institute and Reuters and American Enterprise Institute
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Sep-13 World View -- Obama gives a surprisingly coherent defense of Syria intervention thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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Obama to meet with gay activists in Russia
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The number of registered Syrian war refugees who have fled to other countries has now passed the two million mark, more than half of them children. This is nine times as many as there were a year ago. The number of refugees increases by about 5,000 every day. As of the end August this comprised 110,000 in Egypt, 168,000 in Iraq, 515,000 in Jordan, 716,000 in Lebanon and 460,000 in Turkey. A further 4.25 million people are displaced inside Syria, amounting to a total of more than 6 million people refugees.
So we have millions of refugees fleeing Syria, we have tens of thousands of al-Qaeda linked Sunni Muslim militants headed for Syria, we have thousands of Shia Muslim militants supplied by Iran and Hezbollah headed for Syria, and we have massive amounts of advanced heavy military weaponry arriving from Russia, headed for the Syria regime. This is a clear trend toward an explosive situation, irrespective of whether the U.S. lobs a few cruise missiles or not. United Nations refugee agency - UNHCR
Republican Congressional leaders on Tuesday came out strongly in support of President Barack Obama's proposed military strike on Syria, giving enormous additional momentum to the proposal.
The proposal will authorize American military action in Syria for 60 days, with a possible 30 day extension.
This was despite a statement by Obama that seemed to be designed to cover all the bases:
"It is something limited. It is something proportional. It will degrade Assad’s capabilities. At the same time, we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition and allow Syria to ultimately free itself.This is not Iraq, this is not Afghanistan. This is a limited proportional step that will send a message not only to the Assad regime, but to other countries that may be interested in testing some of these international norms, that there are consequences."
The words "limited" and "proportional" are targeted to people who want little or no military action, while the phrases "degrade Assad's capabilities" and "upgrade the capabilities" are targeted to people who want to do something more than a so-called "pin prick" strike.
Administration officials evaded answering the question of whether Obama would go ahead with a military strike anyway, even if the Congress votes against it.
Whatever the real intentions of the Administration, it appears increasingly inevitable that a military strike will occur. Time
Early Tuesday morning, Russia's Information Agency (RIA) raised an alarm that the Russian military ballistic missile early warning system had detected the launch of two "ballistic targets,” traveling eastward from the central Mediterranean region. The suggestion was that perhaps the United States was launching a military attack on Syria. However, later in the day, the Pentagon announced that it had been a successful test of Israel's ballistic missile defense system, and it had been planned a year ago, so had nothing to do with Syria. Ria Novosti
Russia's president Vladimir Putin has taken one "screw you" decision after another against President Obama and the United States, most recently by giving asylum to American traitor Edward Snowden and by aggressively supporting the genocidal activities of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. So president Obama has apparently decided to take revenge, at least symbolically. The administration has already announced that Obama will snub Putin and not meet with him during the G20 conference in St. Petersburg this week. But now, Obama will take additional steps to publicly embarrass Putin by meeting with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activists while in Russia. USA Today
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Sep-13 World View -- U.S. Syria military strike gains momentum, despite confused signals thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(4-Sep-2013)
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Drone strikes decreasing sharply in Pakistan
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It was just a week ago when it was thought that Britain, France, and the United States would form a coalition for military action against the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad in response to the regime's use of chemical weapons. But then Britain's parliament rejected any involvement, and President Barack Obama reversed his position, delaying any strike and leaving the decision to Congress, putting American foreign policy into chaos.
This week, it appears that France is leading the effort. France says it is building a coalition to back military action against the regime. According to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Monday:
"This act cannot be left without a response. It's not for France to act alone. The president is continuing his work of persuasion to bring together a coalition without delay.France is determined to penalize the use of chemical weapons by (President Bashar al-)Assad's regime and to dissuade with a forceful and firm response. The objective is neither to topple the regime or liberate the country."
On Monday, France issued a nine-page report on Syria's chemical arsenal:
"The Syrian chemical program began in the 1970s with import of chemical munitions. Since the 1980s, Damascus undertaken to procure the materials, products and know-how the establishment of an independent national production capacity and mass in this area.The nature of the Syrian chemical arsenal With more than a thousand tons of chemical warfare agents and precursors Damascus has one of the world's largest operational stocks without perspective programmed destruction."
Syria for years has been intensively developing chemical weapons and delivery technology. The report details hundreds of tons of mustard gas, VX gas and sarin gas, and a wide range of artillery and missiles, with a range up to 500 kilometers, capable of accurately delivering hundreds of toxic agents.
The report confirms "a massive and coordinated use of chemical agents against civilians on August 21," with half the victims being women and children. The attack could only have been made by the regime itself, because of the quantity and sophistication of the weaponry required to carry off this massive attack.
The Russians have said that al-Assad would have to be "crazy" to launch such an attack, because they were already winning the war. This assessment is contested by many analysts, but the report makes al-Assad's motives quite clear:
"Our information confirms that the regime feared a large scale attack on Damascus by the opposition during this period. Our assessment is that the regime sought to loosen the grip of the opposition, and to regain strategic control of the capital. ...Finally, we believe that the Syrian opposition does not have the capacity to lead a chemical weapons operation of such magnitude. No group belonging to the Syrian insurrection has, at this stage, the ability to store and use these agents, let alone deploy them in a size similar to that used on the night of August 21, 2013 in Damascus. These groups have neither the experience nor the know-how to implement them, in particular by the means used in the attack on 21 August."
Reuters and France 24 and France declassified National Intelligence (Translation)
President Obama met with two Republican Senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have repeatedly urged military action in Syria. The meeting is part of Obama's full-scale sales campaign to get an affirmative vote from Congress on military action in Syria. The Senators are complaining that the president has no coherent policy, but is just reacting to one crisis after another with no strategy.
After the meeting, Lindsey said:
"The President really has no one to blame in many way but himself, about the lack of public understanding of what's at stake in Syria. We talked about the past, the present and future. Twoyears ago, we had an opportunity to get Assad out, when there were dozens of al-Qaeda only in Syria. Now there's thousands, a year from now there are going to be tens of thousands. Two years ago, there were not 600,000 refugees in Jordan, compromising the Kingdom of Jordan. Time is not on our side, so we urge the president to up his game."
Lindsey was responding to a threat by Bashar al-Assad that any military action could cause the region to "explode." Lindsey's point is that inaction is already causing the region to explode. As I've written in the past from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the region is going to "explode" with or without military action. Military Times and TV transcription.
On Monday, Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen dressed as Afghan police attacked a U.S. base near the Pakistan border, setting dozens of parked NATO supply vehicles on fire. Reports indicate that the vehicles were to be transported across the Pakistan border overland to the sea port of Karachi, as part of the massive logistics effort required to remove ten years worth of military equipment from Afghanistan before NATO's final departure next year. Taliban suicide attacks have been on the increase as NATO forces have been leaving.
China's president Xi Jinping is visiting Afghanistan on Tuesday, at a time when China is concerned that Nato's withdrawal will free up jihadists to head elsewhere, including China itself. "The worry is the withdrawal of US troops will have a spillover effect," according to a Chinese analyst. Arab News
Drone strikes decreasing sharply in Pakistan
Despite increasing terrorist attacks near the Afghan-Pakistan border, American drone strikes in Pakistan have been sharply decreasing since they reached a peak in 2010. Although the drone strikes have been extremely effective in eliminating terrorist leadership from al-Qaeda and the Taliban, they've experienced increasing public opposition because of collateral damage. In May, a court ordered drones entering Pakistani airspace to be shot down, calling them a war crime, a violation of international law, basic human rights, and the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan. The US worry over safe and secure withdrawal from Afghanistan has forced it to bend before Pakistani pressure and the steep decline in drone attacks is the natural fallout. South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP)
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Never smile at a crocodile
A tourist visiting an island in Australia was unable to leave the island because a monster 20 foot crocodile kept stalking him every time he tried to leave the island in his small canoe. He was trapped on the island for two weeks and was running out of supplies when a local man going by in a boat spotted him by chance and saved him. There's no word on whether the tourist tried to coax the crocodile into swallowing an alarm clock so that he could listen for the ticking of the clock to know whether the croc was getting close. Daily Mail and Related YouTube video
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Sep-13 World View -- France promises a military response to Syria's chemical weapons attack thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Sep-2013)
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Egypt's Mohamed Morsi accused of inciting violence
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Syria crisis has apparently turned into an existential crisis for the presidency of Barack Obama, as he shifts gears to prepare for continuing speeches and briefings in an effort to get Congressional approval for military action in Syria. ( "1-Sep-13 World View -- U.S. foreign policy in chaos as Obama reverses himself on Syria")
The issue has deeply divided the public in both political parties, with polls showing almost 80% opposing any intervention at all. However, President Obama has now personally committed both himself and the country to military action, and he will be bringing all of his speech-giving and community organizer skills to bear on getting approval from Congress, as he did for Obamacare.
Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on all of the Sunday morning news shows, looking like he hadn't slept in two days, which may well be the case after President Obama pulled the rug out from under him.
Republicans have been vitriolically critical of Obama for several days, criticizing his handling of the Syria issue, and his plan for a military strike with cruise missiles that would accomplish nothing but boost his ego.
But now, even Obama's supporters are questioning his competence as president. This was apparent on Sunday from the comments of reporters on CNN who have always been totally in the tank for Obama -- up until now.
The last time that I wrote about CNN political analyst David Gergen was in 2009 in the article "Vile 'teabagging' jokes signal the deterioration of CNN and NBC news".
So it was quite surprising on CNN on Sunday to hear him question Barack Obama's competence as President, in an interview along with President Bush's Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. Gergen was asked what Obama is going to say to Russia's president Vladimir Putin when they both attend the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg next week, and they face each other "eye to eye":
"DAVID GERGEN: Whatever it is, it's going to be frosty on both sides. I don't think they will talk very much. I think a risk, and Nick was pointing out some of the risks, there is a very definite risk that Russia now will step up its armaments of the Syrians in preparation for an attack.After all, this is their friend [al-Assad]. They are going to say this is a wrongful action with no international support, illegal internationally and we're going to step it up.
So there are those risks, I think. I think the bigger risk, and what the president has got to work on here, is that you can say it's wise to have call for the Congress to do this, but the way he went about it, it was so jerky and unpredictable, that I think it's raised questions about just how firm a grip he has on the wheel as a commander in chief.
After all, starting with the drawing of the red line itself, which seemed to be sort of almost by the way, it's a red line, as opposed to a well thought-out plan, and now we have no apparent strategy for long term in the Middle East. Nick knows this better than I do.
But presidents need to be seen in control of events and guiding events, and not just reacting or bouncing around. I'd welcome Nick's views.
NICHOLAS BURNS: I think David's right. The United States has to -- the administration has to regroup here. The Congress has to vote in favor of this resolution or else the credibility of the United States as a global power in the Middle East is going to be vastly reduced.
And it means also that the administration has to give the kind of powerful performance that Secretary Kerry gave this morning on all the Sunday shows. ... He gave a ringing endorsement for why it's important for us to act.
We have to see that kind of consistency, resolve and strength from the administration. That's what the world is looking for. It didn't see it this week. I hope we'll see it in the next week or two."
I think that I can honestly say that I never expected to hear David Gergen say anything remotely like, "the way he went about it, it was so jerky and unpredictable, that I think it's raised questions about just how firm a grip he has on the wheel as a commander in chief."
Nor would I ever have expected much criticism for Obama from CNN's commentator Fareed Zakaria, who has been totally in the tank for Obama until now:
"Last March, President Barack Obama spoke off-the-cuff about how Syria's use of chemical weapons would be a "game-changer." It has turned out to be, except not quite in the sense that he meant.It has been an event that has confused and confounded the Obama administration. Whatever your views on the larger issues, it's hard not to conclude that the administration's handling of Syria over the last year has been a case study in how not to conduct foreign policy.
The president started out with an understanding that the Syrian conflict is a messy sectarian struggle that cannot be influenced easily by American military intervention. He was disciplined in resisting calls to jump into a cauldron.
But from the start, he confused and undermined this policy with loose rhetoric, perhaps egged on by some of his advisors and critics to "do something." So, he announced just over two years ago that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had to go.
Now, a pundit can engage in grandiose rhetoric. The president of the United States should make declarations like that only if he has some strategy to actually achieve it. He did not.
In truth, Obama and many others miscalculated. They believed that Assad's regime was near the end, misreading both its strength and brutality, but also the level of support it has from several segments of Syrian society.
Then, just about a year ago, came the off-the-cuff remarks about a red line on chemical weapons, insufficiently thought through but now publicly stated and definitive.
Since then, American foreign policy in Syria has largely been concerned about ensuring that Obama's threat does not seem empty. After all, what American national interest is being followed?
The administration says it is upholding international law. Except, as Fred Kaplan points out in Slate, the institutions that embody international law and consensus, the United Nations and other international organizations, do not support this action.
The United States plus France and Turkey cannot be considered the embodiment of international law and global public opinion.
The nature of the strike, we are told, will be short and symbolic, a shot across the bow, in the midst of a civil war in which both sides are in a high-stakes struggle for survival.
Does anyone think that this will make any difference? And then, the strangest twist, an unplanned, last minute appeal to Congress, paving the way for further delay, weakening momentum, erasing what little surprise existed, and setting the stage for a potential defeat at home.
I don't think that this strike, should it eventually take place, will be as damaging as its critics fear. The Assad regime will likely hunker down, take it, and move on.
It will make little difference one way or the other. But the manner in which the Obama administration has first created and then mismanaged this crisis will, alas, cast a long shadow on America's role in the world."
Many analysts are predicting that President Obama will win Congressional approval because there's so much at stake, in that a defeat would be devastating to his international credibility and the international credibility of the entire nation. The result is that Democrats will fall into line behind the President, and enough Republicans will support military action to gain Congressional approval.
Ironically, Obama will be going into "Obamacare mode" at a time when Obamacare itself is under fire, having suffered a series of disastrous setbacks. (See "5-Jul-13 World View -- Eurozone and Obamacare continue their parallel economic collapse")
President Obama had expected to devote all his energies in September to selling Obamacare, to prevent a collapse of the "Obamacare exchanges," which are scheduled to open on October 1, but which are woefully behind schedule. He'll now have to split his community organizing and speech-making skills between Syria and Obamacare, and Republicans will be sure to demand concessions on one issue in exchange for support on the other issue. CNN-SOTU Transcript and CNN-Fareed Zakaria Transcript
Former president Mohamed Morsi, who has been detained in an unknown location since he was deposed in an army coup on July 3, is now being charged in criminal court for ten deaths in clashes between his Muslim Brotherhood supporters and his opponents, after he assumed dictatorial powers in a constitutional decree. Morsi and 14 members of his presidential staff have been accused of ordering their supporters to attack peaceful protesters who assembled outside the presidential palace to denounce his decree. The move reportedly came after the republican guards and ministry of interior refused to obey orders to attack protesters. Al-Ahram (Cairo)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Sep-13 World View -- President Obama goes into 'Obamacare mode' over Syria issue thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Sep-2013)
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Cassandra, Winston Churchill, and me
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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United States foreign policy went into complete chaos on Saturday, after President Barack Obama announced a major retreat on military action in Syria:
"Now, after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope. But I'm confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.Our military has positioned assets in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has informed me that we are prepared to strike whenever we choose. Moreover, the Chairman has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now. And I'm prepared to give that order.
But having made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I'm also mindful that I'm the President of the world's oldest constitutional democracy. I've long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that's why I've made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people's representatives in Congress."
This is a sharp reversal from earlier Administration statements that the White House would not seek Congressional approval before proceeding.
It's thought that Obama retreated because of public polls that show that almost 80% of all Americans are opposed to the military action, with bitter splits in both the Republican and Democratic parties, triggering anti-war protests in cities around the world. Republicans have been especially critical of the weakness of the planned "pin prick," sending cruise missiles that would, according to critics, accomplish nothing except make Obama feel better.
President Obama could call Congress back immediately, but instead will wait until Congress is back in scheduled session on September 9. That means that any military strike, if it occurs at all, will be delayed for several weeks.
President Obama's retreat is in sharp contrast to the strong words in Friday's statement by Secretary of State John Kerry:
"It matters because if we choose to live in a world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity, even after the United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will."
If President Obama had said from the start that he would ask for a vote from Congress as, for example, President George Bush did before the Iraq action, then there probably wouldn't be an issue.
But having initially said that he would go ahead on his own, now throwing this foreign policy decision into a bitterly divided dysfunctional Congress is going to postpone a decision, but won't resolve any issues. Anti-war protests will increase substantially, Bashar al-Assad will use the time to protect his assets, and the exact form that the military action will take will be openly debated for the next month. It's far from clear that Congress will approve any military action, which means that Obama's "decision" to go ahead will be annulled -- which means that he hasn't made any decision after all. It's hard to believe that this retreat is anything but a way to avoid making a decision and blame it on Congress.
This is one more chaotic flip-flop in a foreign policy that's already in chaos. After a year of major retreats and flip-flops on announced "red lines" in Syria, a recent announced Afghanistan peace process that collapsed within 24 hours, a recent announced Mideast peace process that almost everyone in the Mideast considers a joke, and now a major flip-flop on Syria intervention, there is no reason to believe that President Obama or anyone on his foreign policy team has the vaguest clue what's going on in the world. NPR and NBC News
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Throughout my life I've heard teachers and politicians ridicule Britain's prime minister Neville Chamberlain who, in 1938, returned from a meeting with the psychopathic Adolf Hitler with a promise of "Peace in our time." I've heard Chamberlain's name reviled for decades, for having "appeased" Hitler. It's personally astonishing to me to see the same kind of thing happen with the psychopathic Bashar al-Assad.
It's worth repeating a couple of sentences from the lengthy statement from Britain's Lord Paddy Ashdown that I reported yesterday:
"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?"
Like Neville Chamberlain's appeasement, Barack Obama's reversal is going to be extremely popular, given the strong public opposition to the Syria intervention. But making decisions based on polls can solve problems temporarily, but create greater problems later on.
Whether we like it or not, America is policeman of the world, and has been since the end of World War II. People always ask me the question, "Who made us policemen of the world?" So it's worth taking a moment to answer that question.
The U.S. became Policeman of the World with the Truman Doctrine, put forth by President Harry Truman in 1947:
"This is a serious course upon which we embark. I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious. The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace. The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than 1 tenth of 1 percent of this investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain. The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died"
President John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address in 1961, echoed the Truman Doctrine:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge -- and more."
Since WW II, we've signed mutual defense treaties with numerous countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS treaty), the Philippines, Israel, Europe, Iceland, and others. All of these countries have cut back on their own military in the last 65 years because they've counted on U.S. protection. President Obama's foreign policy has made a number of countries doubt that their mutual defense treaty with the United States is worth anything.
With regard to Syria, thanks to 2 1/2 years of weakness on the part of the Policeman of the World, we already see a gathering of powerful forces in the region. On the one side, we see Russia supplying powerful weapons to Syria, with thousands of soldiers being supplied by Iran and Hezbollah. On the other we see Saudi Arabia and other Arab states becoming increasingly concerned about the slaughter of Sunni Muslims by Syria, Russia and Iran. We also see Sunni jihadists from Pakistan to Nigeria to Dagestan being trained for combat in Syria.
When the policeman stops doing his job, violence and chaos break out. We see this in Chicago's South Side, and we see it in the Mideast.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin said the following on Saturday:
"Syrian government troops are on the offensive and have the opposition contained within several areas. In this situation, to give those calling for intervention such a trump card is utter nonsense. ...Regarding the position of our American colleagues, who affirm that government troops used chemical weapons, and say that they have proof, well, let them show it to the United Nations inspectors and the Security Council. If they don't show it, that means there is none."
A lot of this is laughable. Russia feels free to invade anyone it wishes, without requesting Security Council approval. In fact, Russia still has troops in Georgia after Russia's 2008 invasion, and has, in effect, annexed two of Georgia's provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. All this was done with no public debate and no authorization from the United Nations or any international body.
In fact, Russia's policy since the Libyan action has been to use the United Nations to cripple NATO and the United States, leaving it free to pursue any military operations it wants. The policy has been astonishingly successful. ( "22-Apr-11 News -- Russia seeks to cripple Nato through Libya United Nations politics")
Here's what I wrote in 2011:
"However, now that the military action is turning into a stalemate of indefinite duration, Russia is realizing a number of political objectives, including the ability to cripple Nato through United Nations politics. ...Russia plans to demand that Nato restrict its activities to only the humanitarian acts allowed by the UN resolution, and then veto any attempt to expand the resolution in the Security Council, in order to guarantee a continued stalemate in Libya.
This will set a precedent that allows Russia to effectively control future activities of Nato, since only activities approved by the Security Council, and hence by Russia, could ever be permitted.
Moscow has a broader interest in seeing the US and NATO tied down in wars of choice and other protracted confrontations. These wars increase Russia’s leeway for action in ex-Soviet territories, which is Russia's top priority, according to the article. Furthermore, if Libya's oil exports are stopped, then Russia's own oil exports become more valuable."
This policy has been followed for three years, and is wildly successful.
When Churchill spoke about what the Nazis were doing, he was ridiculed and disbelieved. When Hitler proved Chamberlain disastrously wrong, Churchill became Prime Minister, and is viewed by history as one of the great heroes of the 20th century. However, the moment the war ended, Churchill was still so reviled that he couldn't even win an election in his own district.
[Correction from a reader: Churchill won his district, but his Conservative party lost so many seats to Clement Atlee's Labour party in 1946 that Labour was able to name the Prime Minister - which is not an elective office in Britain. And Churchill kept on winning his district until he retired at age 89.] (Paragraph added. 1-Sep)
We now know what happened in the 1930s, because exactly the same thing is happening today, with people in Washington totally oblivious to what's going on.
I identify very closely with the mythical Cassandra. Zeus fell in love with her, and gave her a gift: The ability to accurately foretell the future. When she spurned him, he cursed her by allowing her to keep her gift of accurately foretelling the future, but no one would believe anything she said. She was disbelieved and ridiculed when she warned about the Trojan Horse, but she was ignored, and the people were massacred. After the war was over she was reviled and raped, similar to what happened to Churchill, though more violent. Later, Cassandra became King Agamemnon's mistress, and she told him that his wife, Clytemnestra, would kill them both. He didn't believe her, and Clytemnestra killed them both.
I am the living embodiment of Cassandra, but not good looking like her. Generational Dynamics has not exactly made me popular. I'm shunned even by some people that I've known since college. So the story of what's happened to Cassandra is exactly what's happened to me, which indicates that the ancient Greeks discovered some eternal truths.
But popular or not, in the past ten years, Generational Dynamics has been right, just as Winston Churchill was right.
I've received a lot of criticism in the past week, from people on the left and right calling me names and accusing me of advocating an invasion of Syria. Actually, I've never recommended anything of the sort. I'm an analyst, and I rarely recommend anything. I apply the Generational Dynamics methodology to tell what's going on, and whether you like it or not, for the last ten years my forecasts and analyses have been shown to be the most accurate in the world, more accurate than any web site, journalist, analyst and politician.
Some people, sycophants of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, criticize me for calling him a psychopath. But what I've seen is that we're dealing with two psychopathic leaders -- al-Assad and Putin -- both worthy of being perpetrators on a tv show like "Criminal Minds." But instead of mutilating and dismembering one person at a time, they're doing it on a mass scale. And instead of a small FBI profile team finding and arresting the perpetrator, an entire armed force will be required to stop Syria's atrocities. Fortunately or unfortunately, the United States is still policeman of the world, and whether we like it or not, we're going to be forced militarily to deal with the Syria situation sooner or later. Obama's flip-flop will only make it worse.
However, I will make one recommendation to my readers: Don't go too far out on a limb being a supporter of Bashar al-Assad, because history tells us that this is a man whose life is not going to end well.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Sep-13 World View -- U.S. foreign policy in chaos as Obama reverses himself on Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Sep-2013)
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