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Michael Lewis: How the stock market is rigged
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Thailand's "red shirt" supporters of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra have remained relatively quiet, in the face of "yellow shirt" anti-government protests that have been going on since December. But on Monday Yingluck will have to defend herself against corruption charges before a National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), and if the commission recommends impeachment, then it could trigger counter-protests and riots by the "red shirt" supporters.
The anti-government protesters are demanding that prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra resign, and allow the protesters to appoint an unelected "People's Council" that will rule in place of the elected government. The Bangkok protests are a clash between two ethnic groups: the "yellow shirt" market-dominant light-skinned Thai-Chinese elite minority, vastly outnumbered by the "red shirt" dark-skinned Thai-Thai who do most of the menial labor, and who continue to support the Yingluck's Pheu Thai political party. Because of the Thai-Thai majority, the Pheu Thai have won the last five elections and can continue to do so. That's why the elite Thai-Chinese anti-government protesters want to throw out democracy and replace the elected government with their own People's Council that they can control.
There are fears that any red shirt march on Bangkok could end in a bloodbath, similar to one that occurred in 2010. Reuters
Sunday's nationwide municipal elections in France have dealt a stunning blow to president François Hollande and his governing Socialist party. Turnout was low, and it's thought that the reason is that his supporters, furious that he's not left-wing enough and embarrassed by his scandals, stayed home without bothering to vote.
France's economy has been tanking. The number of people out of work is at a record high, and earlier this month, the European Commission warned that France's debt is going out of control, blaming it on lack of competitiveness in the unfavorable business environment:
"France is projected to miss both headline deficit and structural adjustment targets over the entire forecast period.Despite measures taken to foster competitiveness, so far there is limited evidence of rebalancing. While wages have developed in line with productivity, the labor cost remains high and weighs on firms’ profit margins.
The unfavorable business environment, and in particular the low level of competition in services, further aggravate the competitiveness challenge. In addition, rigidities in the wage setting system result in difficulties for firms to adjust wages to productivity."
Further, President Hollande has been through two recent scandals that would be fit for a televised situation comedy.
The first occurred in January, when Hollande called a reporter and announced:
"I wish to make it known that I have ended my partnership with Valérie Trierweiler."
Trierweiler was his 48 year old girlfriend, who had lived with him in the Élysée Palace since he took office last year. But a reporter had discovered that Hollande was sneaking out of the Palace and spending nights with a 41 year old actress, Julie Gayet.
The second recent scandal occurred earlier this month, over an investigation in the wiretapping of the phone of Hollande's predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande denied that this government had anything to do with it, and France's Justice Minister Christiane Taubira gave a press conference denied knowing anything about it. During the press conference she held up two documents, assuming that no one could read them. But Le Monde was able to zoom in and read the documents, and the documents proved that she was lying, as she had to admit the next day.
Beyond the theatre, French voters were looking for a change. Many had expected Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front party would score well in the elections. The National Front did well, though not nearly as well as they had hoped. The big winner was the center-right Union for Popular Movement (UMP), which is headed by Nicolas Sarkozy. However, Sarkozy himself is also under investigation, for involvement in irregular party funding practices (which is the reason why his phone was being tapped in the first place). BBC and Reuters and Reuters
US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov talked for four hours on Sunday, with no agreement. At the end, according to the BBC, Lavrov looked "satisfied," while Kerry "just looked tired." (I believe I also heard an on-air female BBC reporter actually say, "Awwww. Couldn't they reach any agreement? That's a shame.") Lavrov denied that Russia has any plans for an invasion, but continued to lay the groundwork for such an invasion, by calling the government in Kiev "fascists," jeopardizing the safety of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. Russian troops massed on Ukraine's borders will not be pulled back. The impression, according to the BBC, is that the U.S. is "bending over backwards" in the hope of getting a diplomatic solution. The meeting had been arranged on Friday, when Russia's president Vladimir Putin telephoned President Barack Obama. BBC
Most people who are active in the stock market these days are large hedge funds and institutional investors, who run "high-frequency computerized stock trading" shops. These huge companies have invested millions of dollars in software algorithms and high-speed networking to be able to make dozens of stock trades in a second.
So it won't come as a surprise to anyone that the wealthiest investors have rigged the stock market so that they can make unethical profits at the expense of less fortunate investors. According to best-selling financial investigative reporter Michael Lewis, they use a technique called "front running."
The way it works is that if you buy a million shares of something, then your order will go through another company's computer. That computer will allow only half your order to go through. Then it will purchase the other half of your order, and resell it to you at a higher price. All this goes on in a fraction of a second on a computer server in New Jersey linked to the NY Stock Exchange. CBS News 60 Minutes
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Mar-14 World View -- France's president François Hollande suffers election debacle thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Mar-2014)
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Crimean Tatars vote to push for self-rule
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A suicide bomber on Saturday evening drove his black Kia automobile, laden with explosives, to an army checkpoint in Arsal, a Lebanon town on the border with Syria, and detonated the explosives, killing three soldiers and four others. A Sunni jihadist terrorist group, Free Sunnis of Baalbek Battalion, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group first became known in December when it took responsibility for the assassination of a senior commander of the Iran-funded Hezbollah militant group outside his home.
The string of terrorist attacks in Lebanon was triggered by a televised announcement, last April 30, by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, saying that Hezbollah would militarily enter the fight in Syria on the side of the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. Al-Assad is conducting "industrial strength" torture and extermination on his own civilians, particularly targeting innocent Sunni women and children, which has enraged Sunnis throughout the Mideast. Hezbollah's support for al-Assad has caused the sectarian war in Syria to spill over into Lebanon. Daily Star (Lebanon) and LA Times
The United Nations Security Council has threatened a quick "appropriate response" to North Korea, for having launched two medium-range Rodong ballistic missiles into the sea earlier this week. According to the Security Council president:
"Members of the Security Council condemned this launch as a violation of Security Council resolution(s). Council members agreed to consult on an appropriate response.There was unanimous condemnation of the launches. ... We also all agreed that this response should be given quickly."
The firings raised concerns, because these are the first missiles that North Korea would use to launch an attack on either South Korea or Japan.
No clue was provided for what an "appropriate response" might be. However, it's thought that the only country in a position to provide any response at all is China, and China has been consistently unwilling in the past to consider any response at all to the North Koreans.
The North Koreans fired the missiles on March 26. It was on March 26, 2010, just four years ago, that the North Koreans launched a torpedo at a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, sinking it and killing 46 people. (See "27-Mar-11 News -- South Korea commemorates Cheonan warship attack, while North starves".) After this incident, China refused to condemn or even criticize the North Koreans. Reuters
A congress of Crimea's 300,000 strong Tatar community met on Saturday and voted to push for autonomy from Russia, but remained divided on how best to achieve that goal.
Crimea is the historic homeland of the Tatars. In 1944, Russia's dictator Josef Stalin deported 200,000 Tatars from Crimea to central Asia, accusing them of collaborating with the Nazis. It was only in the 1980s and 1990s that the Tatars returned in large numbers to Crimea, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence. The Tatars are scared to death of being under the control of the Russians again, and they're particularly concerned about Moscow's frequent reference to "Nazis" in Kiev, which they see as a possible signal that they're going to be accused of rom new collaboration again.
On Saturday, the congress adopted a resolution entitled "On the Crimean Tatar people's right to self-determination on their historical territory in Crimea." According to the chairman,
"By adopting this document, we inform all parties of the beginning of political and legal procedures for setting up a national autonomous territory of the Crimean Tatar people on their historical territory in Crimea."
This was adopted after hours of sometimes angry debate, with no conclusions reached whether to seek an autonomous entity in Ukraine or in Crimea, which is now part of Russia. AFP and Interfax-Ukraine
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Mar-14 World View -- U.N. promises 'response' to North Korea firing midrange missiles thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Mar-2014)
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Russia's Vladimir Putin calls Obama to discuss Ukraine
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Articles on current events in the Central African Republic (CAR) such as the one I posted two days ago often generate a great deal of commentary. Last year, Muslim Seleka militias killed tens of thousands of Christians and drove 400,000 from their homes. This year, Christian anti-balaka militias have retaliated with vengeance, massacring hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and have driven millions more from their homes -- so far. Muslims are just 15% of CAR's population, and some anti-balaka leaders are promising to kill every Muslim that doesn't flee the country. This is a fact. I may not like this fact, and you may not like this fact, but it's a fact nonetheless.
One response is to say that the Christians in CAR are just defending themselves from the Muslims. I won't disagree with that, except to say that anti-balaka leaders saying that they're going to kill all the Muslims seems to me to cross the line from self-defense into genocide.
Another standard response is to say that the Christians in CAR aren't really Christians. This is the same response often given to the fact that millions of Christian Church-going Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jews. According to this response, the Holocaust happened because Hitler wasn't really a Christian. Well, my understanding is that if you've been baptized in Christ, then you're a Christian, and that there's no further litmus test. But OK, let's ignore that.
This response is very hard to defend, because you would also have to claim that all those millions of church-going Nazis were also not Christian. But OK, let's ignore that.
Question: How do you know that Hitler and the Nazis weren't Christian? Answer: Because they perpetrated the Holocaust. So this is circular reasoning. Christians didn't commit the Holocaust because Nazis weren't Christians, and Nazis weren't Christians because they committed the Holocaust. But OK, let's ignore even all those problems.
OK, so let's just accept that explanation: Hitler and the Nazis weren't Christian, because they perpetrated the Holocaust.
But now you have another problem, because the same argument can be turned against you. The Muslim jihadists are killing some Christians, but they're mostly killing other Muslims -- millions and millions of Muslims. The same is true of Bashar al-Assad's genocide against Sunni women and children. You can claim that the Koran justifies these killings, but it doesn't. The Koran may or may not justify killing Christians (it's debatable) and other "infidels," but what the jihadists and al-Assad are doing is killing Muslims -- and that's clearly a violation of the Koran. And so by the same reasoning that people use to say Nazis weren't really Christians can be used to say that the jihadists aren't really Muslims.
In other words, if Hitler wasn't a real Christian, then Osama bin Laden wasn't a real Muslim, for the same reason.
And so, if you can't blame Christians for the Holocaust, because Hitler wasn't a real Christian, then you can't blame Muslims for 9/11, because OBL wasn't a real Muslim.
Lots of people point to the fact that most massacres being conducted today are by Muslims, albeit mostly to other Muslims. That's certainly true. All you have to do is look at Pakistan or Syria, for example, to see it happen.
But I think there's a more interesting question. Let's turn the question around. Instead of asking why Muslims are most often the perpetrators of massacres, let's ask instead why Muslims are most often the victims of massacres. Muslims are the victims of massacres by Muslims in Pakistan and Syria, by Buddhists in Myanmar (Burma), and by Christians in Central African Republic.
What is there about this particular point in history that makes Muslims the most massacred group in the world? From the point of view of generational theory, that's a very interesting question. Muslims are the most massacred people in the world today. Why is that?
Some people would say that the reason that Muslims are the most massacred people in the world today is because a lot of the world is angry for terrorist acts like 9/11. Once again, that reason would be difficult to defend, because it doesn't explain why Muslims are massacring Muslims.
In his monumental book War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy recounts Napoleon's invasion of Russia. But Tolstoy is completely stumped and frustrated about why the war occurred at all, especially because the people on both sides were Christians. Here's what he wrote:
"It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178.It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient.
To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them."
Generational theory does provide some answers to these questions, and it has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with being human. Just as Christians can have inappropriate sex, they can also have inappropriate wars. If humans did not have sex, then the human race would die out. If humans did not have genocidal wars of extermination, then the human race would not survive, because it's only through wars of extermination that the strongest tribes, societies and nations become the leaders.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these wars of extermination are generational crisis wars. When one of these horrific wars occurs, the generations of survivors vow to do everything possible to keep anything like that from happening to their children and grandchildren. They succeed in that, but when the survivor generations die off, then the younger generations, with no personal memory of the crisis war, have no motivation to keep it from happening again. And so the next generational crisis war begins, usually around 60 or more years after the end of the last one.
Going back to Central African Republic, the last generational crisis war was the 1928-1931 Kongo-Wara Rebellion ("War of the Hoe Handle"), which was a very long time ago, putting CAR today deep into a generational Crisis era. There are probably no survivors left from the Kongo-Wara Rebellion, and so it's not surprising at all that a new war of extermination is breaking out in CAR today.
The White House announced on Friday that Russia's president Vladimir Putin placed a phone call to U.S. president Barack Obama to discuss a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Ukraine. According to the White House statement:
"President Obama noted that the Ukrainian government continues to take a restrained and de-escalatory approach to the crisis and is moving ahead with constitutional reform and democratic elections, and urged Russia to support this process and avoid further provocations, including the buildup of forces on its border with Ukraine. ...President Obama made clear that [a diplomatic solution] remains possible only if Russia pulls back its troops and does not take any steps to further violate Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. President Obama reiterated that the United States has strongly opposed the actions that Russia has already taken to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity."
Russia issued its own statement:
"Vladimir Putin drew Barack Obama’s attention to continued rampage of extremists who are committing acts of intimidation towards peaceful residents, government authorities and law enforcement agencies in various regions and in Kiev with impunity. In light of this, the President of Russia suggested examining possible steps the global community can take to help stabilize the situation. The two presidents agreed that specific parameters for this joint work will be discussed by the Russian and US foreign ministers in the near future."
This reads to me like a standard attempt to buy enough time so that the world will forget what Putin is doing. By referring to "continued rampage of extremists who are committing acts of intimidation towards peaceful residents," Putin is preparing a case for military action in Ukraine, and for not removing his troops from Ukraine's border. He could order his troops into Ukraine next week, and then claim that Obama didn't propose a way to protect "peaceful residents," so he had to do it.
We'll see if anything changes now. Politico
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Mar-14 World View -- Christians versus Muslims in Central African Republic thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Mar-2014)
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Obama to meet Saudi King Abdullah among significant policy differences
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resident Barack Obama visits Saudi Arabia on Friday, and will meet with the King, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. There are significant policy differences separating the two:
Saudi Gazette and VOA
U.S. officials are saying that Russian troops have been flooding into the region along the border with Ukraine in the last few days. The estimates of the number of troops range from 30,000 to 80,000, with Ukrainian officials claiming that the number is as high as 100,000.
Nato's Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove has said that the Russian force on the border "is very, very sizable and very, very ready." Since the Russian troops are deployed right on the edge of Ukraine's border, if they do invade then there'll be no advance warning, and no chance for Ukraine's forces to react. A U.S. defense official says that if Russia were to invade, then this would be "far from a bloodless event as we saw in Crimea," although the Ukrainian army would be defeated. It's possible that the Russian forces could push through Ukraine to the other end very quickly, to annex Moldova's separatist territory Transdniestria, which is on Ukraine's western border. VOA and AFP and Fox News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Mar-14 World View -- Pentagon concerned that Russia is about to invade Ukraine thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Mar-2014)
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Iran's Supreme Leader fears Great Islamic Revolution will be forgotten
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The 6,000 man African Union peacekeeping force, known by its acronym Misca, has designated the Christian "anti-balaka" militias in Central African Republic as "terrorists" and "enemy combatants," following a wave of anti-balaka attacks on Misca soldiers, and the killing on Monday of a Misca peacekeeping soldier from the Republic of Congo. According to a Misca statement:
"Henceforth, MISCA considers anti-balakas as terrorists and enemy combatants, and they shall be treated accordingly."
Although 2,000 French soldiers and 6,000 Misca soldiers have been deployed as peacekeepers, the violence in Central African Republic (CAR) has not been quelled. In fact, as I've been saying for months, this is spiraling into a full-scale generational crisis war that will be enveloped by tribal massacres on a massive scale.
Muslim Seleka militias began killing Christians last year, after a coup by Muslim leader Michel Djotodia. There were predictions last year of revenge by Christians. The international community forced Djotodia to step down in January, in the hope that his doing so would quiesce the Christians, but that hope was in vain.
As I've explained, CAR's last generational crisis war was the 1928-1931 Kongo-Wara Rebellion ("War of the Hoe Handle"), which was a very long time ago, putting CAR today deep into a generational Crisis era, where a new crisis war is increasingly likely.
The Kongo-Wara rebellion was nominally an uprising against the French colonialists, but it also had it share of the same kind of tribal violence that we are seeing today. After a crisis war like that ends, the survivors on both sides look back in horror at the acts that were perpetrated on both sides, and vow to devote the rest of their lives to making sure that nothing like that happens to their children or grandchildren. They succeed at that, but once the survivors have passed away, so that there's no one left with a personal memory of the last crisis war, then there's nothing to stop a new crisis war from starting, and that's what's happening now. French and African Union peacekeepers will try desperately to put a lid on it, but nothing will stop it now.
In fact, young people in CAR today certainly have heard of the Kongo-Wara war, just as Americans have heard of WW II. But what do they know? Nobody's told them about the its horrors. What the Muslims know is that their great-grandfathers were war heroes because they killed thousands of French and Christians, while the Christians have heard that their great-grandfathers were even bigger heroes, because they slaughtered even more Muslims. Now all of them want to be new generations of heroes.
If the Misca peacekeepers are now going to treat the Christians as enemy combatants, then this crisis war will be moving to the next stage. It will no longer be just CAR residents versus CAR residents. It will also be a war between CAR residents and soldiers from other nations.
I have not seen any reports about the role of the French peacekeepers in this declaration of enemy combatants, but as the situation deteriorates it would not be surprising to see the French embroiled in the war as well. AFP and BBC and Reuters
Iran's last generational crisis war was the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution, followed by the Iran/Iraq war, that climaxed in 1987 with Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons. These crisis wars are at the heart of generational theory, because the traumatized generations of survivors of these wars create austere rules and institutions to keep the same thing from happening to their children and grandchildren. As the younger generations come of age, they rebel against this austerity, creating a "generation gap" and a generational Awakening era, as happened in America in the 1960s.
Iran is going through an Awakening era today, and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei is becoming panicked because younger generations don't appreciate the sacrifices that his generation had to make. In a speech to young people earlier this week, Khamenei said that "The memory of the Sacred Defense era must be kept alive" and warned against the efforts of 'some' who seek to erase the war’s values and historical memory:
"The front of the enemies of the Islamic system, meaning these European governments and the American government, encouraged Saddam’s Ba’athist regime to continue the war by providing him advanced capabilities and equipment. This matter caused the Imposed War to last for eight years.But God almighty showed his hand of power and crushed the mouths of the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the iron fist of divine tradition and rubbed their noses to the dirt.
The greatest lesson of the Islamic Revolution to the Iranian nation was that the path of achieving high ideals is fighting, sacrificing and persevering for these ideals.
Those who wish ill for the Iranian nation and also some [others] are seeking to erase from memory the sacrifices of the Sacred Defense era and its prominent figures. On this basis, they are making efforts to prescript the sacrifices of the Sacred Defense and the path that the great Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamenei's predecessor] the wise and sage servant of God, had determined."
Khamenei is expressing the same frustrations and the same kinds of warnings that Presidents Johnson and Nixon expressed during America's Awakening era, and were the victims of violent protests by young people. These Awakening era political battles are almost always (though not always) won by young people because the older generations die off. AEI Iran Tracker
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that he has high regard for the fatwa issued by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei a decade ago. According to Kerry:
"I show a lot of respect for this fatwa as it is a religious message and is highly respected by people."
The problem, as I wrote last week, is that even Iranian scholars do not believe that this fatwa exists. Khamenei doesn't list it on the fatwa page of his web site, and no one has ever seen the actual text of the fatwa.
Apparently the tales of this fatwa began with a statement published in 2005 by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) announcing the fatwa:
"The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons."
As far as I can tell, that press report was the original mention of the fatwa, and that sentence has been repeated over and over since then.
Of course, Ayatollah Khamenei could clear up this confusion at any time. Did he issue this fatwa or not? He never says.
In my opinion, this is a scam and a fraud being perpetrated by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei. What looks to be the case is as follows: Khamenei never issued the fatwa, but got IRNA to publish a report saying that he HAD issued the fatwa. So he has the best of both worlds. He's got Kerry and everyone else quoting his non-existent fatwa, but when crunch time comes, he'll say, "Oh no, there was no fatwa. IRNA got it wrong." He could clarify things today if he wanted to, but he doesn't want to because he's scamming President Obama, Kerry, the West, and everyone else, and getting away with it.
If anyone out there disagrees, it's easy enough to prove me wrong. Find a published copy of the text of the entire fatwa, and then show an official affirmation that Khamenei issued it. Radio Zamaneh and IRNA (2005)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Mar-14 World View -- Central African Republic peacekeepers call Christians 'enemy combatants' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Mar-2014)
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Ebola virus spreading from Guinea to Liberia
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The 69 year old Arab League is meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday at the time in its history when it's most divided.
Qatar's support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt and Saudi Arabia refer to as a terrorist organization, has resulted in a bitter dispute that caused Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain to recall their ambassadors from Qatar, as we recently reported.
Even more pressing is the issue of Syria, which has rendered the Arab League helpless and impotent in the face of 150,000 Syrian deaths, and millions of Syrian refugees. If the Arab League can't do anything about such a serious problem, then what is it good for?
In fact, there's a whole list of issues facing the Arab League, especially since the beginning of the "Arab Spring." In Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Bahrain, and Somalia -- all members of the Arab League -- there's a war going on, or at least there's some disturbance and disorder in each country. That's about half the countries of the Arab League. And there's no sign that anything is going to improve soon. Arab News (Saudi Arabia) and Al Jazeera (Qatar)
Vietnam and the Philippines are natural allies in the face of China's belligerent actions in the South China Sea. China is threatening to use its massive military force to annex the entire South China Sea, including regions that have historically belonged to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. According to the Chinese, these countries have no rights to anything outside their 12-mile territorial seas, while China has the right annex everything else. The Chinese are using what is being called a "salami slicing strategy," described as: "the slow accumulation of small actions, none of which is a casus belli, but which add up over time to a major strategic change." (You should not miss the point, Dear Reader, that China and Russia both feel they have the right to annex other countries' territories, especially since apparently no one is willing to stop them.)
According to Philippine and Vietnamese analysts, when the Philippines last year brought a complaint against China's actions in the South China Sea to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal, the Chinese "were really unprepared for that and were really embarrassed by it." The reason the Chinese are upset is "because they already have five battlefields — the political, diplomatic, mass media, security, military — and now [the Philippines] added a sixth: the legal battlefield. The Chinese have a saying, 'when the flag is in your hands, don't yield it to others.'" Beijing is very much at sea on the legal front, with little experience in international law.
The downside of the Philippines legal master stroke is that the Philippines replaced Vietnam as China's number one harassment target. It used to be that the Chinese regularly attacked Vietnam boats. (see "10-Jun-11 News -- Vietnam protests Chinese attack on Vietnamese survey ships"). But in the last couple of years, China has annexed the Philippines' Scarborough Shoal, and harassed Philippine fishing boats around the Spratly islands. In the meantime, relations between Vietnam and China have been improving, though unless China has changed policies in the South China Sea, that improvement won't last long. Foreign Policy in Focus and RSIS (India)
The Ebola virus appears to be spreading from Guinea to neighboring Liberia, and is also threatening Sierra Leone. The disease spreads through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. At least 86 cases and 9 deaths have been recorded. Bloomberg
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Mar-14 World View -- Vietnam, Philippines unite to confront China in South China Sea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Mar-2014)
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How analysts used the Doppler Effect to locate Malaysia flight MH370
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Jonathan Pollard has been in jail since 1987, when he pled guilty to passing classified information to Israel. Israel has repeatedly tried to get him released, but one American administration after another has refused to let him go.
Now Pollard is becoming an issue in the Mideast "peace talks." The Obama administration got these "peace talks" going last year by "convincing" the Israelis to release 104 prisoners from the jails. These prisoners had been convicted of terrorist acts prior to the 1994 Oslo accords. The release of these prisoners has been extremely controversial in Israel, with very vocal opposition from the family members of the people whom these terrorists had killed. Nonetheless, Israel doesn't want to be seen to oppose President Obama, and though the "peace talks" have been a worthless farce, the Palestinians had continued to participate so that the prisoner releases will go forward. But the last batch of 26 prisoners are scheduled for release on Friday (March 28), and the "peace talks" will officially end of April 29.
The "peace talks" farce is now enveloping the Jonathan Pollard situation. Israel is releasing 104 killers from jail, but Pollard can't be released.
So now there are reports (or rumors) that the Obama administration is desperate to keep the "peace talks" going (presumably for purely domestic political reasons), and so they are offering to release Jonathan Pollard if the Israels will, in turn, offer some further concessions to the Palestinians to keep the "peace talks" going. Releasing Pollard seems like a reasonable thing, but these "peace talks" have literally a zero probabilty of achieving anything, and holding them together by a combination of multiple bribes and extortion is so absurd as to be beyond belief.
This administration has had one major policy debacle after another, whether it's the Russian "reset," the Afghan "peace process," the Syrian "red line," or the Iranian nuclear talks. It seems every day that they do one more stupid thing. I think I can honestly say that, in my lifetime, I have not seen an administration, Democratic or Republican, so completely inept and clueless about what's going on in the world. Israel Today and Jewish Journal
In many ways, the central Asian country of Kazakhstan is similar to Ukraine. Both were part of the Soviet Union before it collapsed. And both have sizeable populations of ethnic Russians. Kazakhstan and Russia have the longest continuous common land border in the world. A quarter of Kazakhstan's population is ethnic Russian, largely concentrated in the northern provinces, along the border with Russia.
Kazakhstan has never recognized the independence of Georgia's provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russian troops have occupied since Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Just last month, several Russian politicians called on Russia to annex part of Kazakhstan.
So Kazak politicians have been extremely anxious about Russia's annexation of Crimea. On March 3, prior to the annexation, Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry had warned that "further escalation of tension may lead to unpredictable consequences" and called on all parties "to renounce options that imply the use of power."
But once the Crimea referendum was held, Kazakhstan's government flip-flopped, and issued a statement that many interpreted as supporting the annexation:
"The referendum held in Crimea is seen in Kazakhstan as a free expression of the will of the Autonomous Republic’s population, while the decision of the Russian Federation under the existing circumstances is regarded with understanding."
The interim Ukraine government responded with this on March 19:
"Ukraine expressed its deep concern in connection to Kazakhstan’s response to the referendum in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The response contradicts the statement Kazakhstan made earlier about the need to maintain territorial integrity of Ukraine."
Kazakhstan officials are being very careful not to criticize Russian, Ukrainian, or Western governments for their action, hoping to maintain good relations with everyone. Relations between Kazakhstan and Ukraine had been improving in recent years. Russia is Kazakhstan's premier economic and security partner, while Ukraine offers Kazakhstan an important connection with European markets and institutions. The Ukraine crisis has already harmed Kazakhstan economically, and the desire is to prevent any further damage. Tengri News (Kazakhstan) and Jamestown
Monday's dramatic announcement from Kuala Lumpur that Malaysian Airlines flight 370 had with certainty "ended in the southern Indian Ocean" west of Perth meant the families of the passengers on the flight could no longer hope that their family members were still alive somewhere. It's interesting that after a couple of weeks of knowing almost nothing, suddenly officials can be certain where the plane went down.
If you've ever stood and watched a train or a noisy truck drive by you at high speed, then you may have noticed that the noise coming from the vehicle changed pitch as the vehicle went past. As the vehicle was approaching you, the sound waves coming from the vehicle were being squeezed together, creating a higher pitch. As the vehicle was moving away from you, the sound waves were being stretched out, creating a lower pitch sound. If you had equipment that could precisely measure these two pitches, then you would be able to use that data to compute the speed of the vehicle. If you studied physics in high school, then you may recall that this phenomenon is called "the Doppler Effect."
What a company called Inmarsat did was use the same principle to compute the speed and direction of MH370. The plane's engines would send out a "ping" every hour of so that would be received by an Inmarsat satellite. There was no information in the transmission, just "I am here" ping. By measuring tiny differences in the frequencies of successive pings, and using the Doppler effect, the engineers were able to determine with certainty that the plane had crashed into the southern Indian ocean. The Star (Kuala Lumpur) and Ars Technica
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Mar-14 World View -- U.S. may release Jonathan Pollard to keep Mideast peace talks going thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Mar-2014)
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Europeans alarmed as Russian troops mass on Ukraine border
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Turkey's F-16 fighter jets shot down a Syrian aircraft which crossed Turkey's border. Tensions have been high between Syria and Turkey since the Syrian civil war began three years ago, sending millions of refugees to neighboring countries, including half a million into Turkey. But concerns have been rising even further in recent weeks because of threats to the tomb, in Syria, of Süleyman Sah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire.
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan explained the incident at an election rally on Sunday:
"A Syrian plane violated our airspace. Our F-16s took off and hit this plane. Why? Because if you violate my airspace, our slap will be hard. Now in your presence, I congratulate the General Staff, the Turkish military and our air forces."
Opposition politicians in Turkey are claiming that the incident was an attempt for Erdogan to gain popularity seven days before national elections, and to divert attention from the growing corruption scandal swamping him and his family and administration. Cihan (Turkey) and Zaman (Turkey)
Two days after annexing Ukraine's Crimean peninsula to Russia, some 20,000 Russian troops are performing military exercises on the border of east Ukraine. At the same time, pro-Russian activists in eastern Ukraine are planning rallies to encourage a Russian invasion.
Nato's Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove emphasized the large size of the Russia force -- large enough to push all the way across eastern Ukraine to Moldova on the other end:
"The (Russian) force that is at the Ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizable and very, very ready.There is absolutely sufficient force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Trans-Dniester if the decision was made to do that, and that is very worrisome."
Trans-Dniester is a small province of Moldova with a large ethnic Russian population that wants to separate from Moldova and become part of Russia. They have been given hope by Russia's actions in Crimea.
The Russians say that they have no intention of invading eastern Ukraine, but it was only a few days ago that they said they had no intention of annexing Crimea.
Europeans are becoming increasingly alarmed that Russia's actions are destabilizing the European Union itself. "We must not allow a new division of Europe," according to Germany's foreign minister.
In America, politicians are becoming increasingly critical of inaction by President Obama, even in the Tea Party, which has been isolationist in the past. According to political analyst Ron Senor on ABC News on Sunday, "Rand Paul was initially quite critical of Republicans who were 'going back to cold war rhetoric,' and then you watch where the party went, where Ted Cruz went - he's a good bellwether for where the base is - he was extremely critical of the president on Russia and Ukraine, and suddenly Rand Paul has moved to a more muscular position."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is all as expected, as I've been saying for years. In this generational Crisis era, Russia, Europe, America and most other countries are becoming increasingly nationalistic, as they're forced to abandon their pie-eyed dreams left over from the 1960s. CNN
Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday categorically said that Pakistan was not sending its troops to Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. The denial came because of persistent and increasingly numerous rumors that Pakistan is sending 30,000 troops to Saudi Arabia for the defense shield force of the Gulf Cooperation Council. During the Arab Spring revolts in Bahrain, it's believed that Pakistanis quelled the revolt. It's estimated that almost 10,000 Pakistanis are still serving in security services in Bahrain.
What triggered the new reports were visits from Saudi and Bahraini officials to Pakistan to discuss common security concerns. And most significant, there was a sudden, unexpected payment of $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, with no coherent explanation, with some officials calling an aid, then a grant, then aid, then a gift. The mystery deepened when it emerged that Saudi Arabia had purchased weapons systems from Pakistan.
Those in Pakistan who oppose sending either weapons or troops to Saudi Arabia express concern that the Saudis will use them to fight Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria, as part of the growing Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict in the Mideast. Pakistan has its own problems with sectarian battles, as Taliban-linked jihadists in Pakistan have vowed to exterminate all Shias in Pakistan, and have been carrying out that threat with frequent bombings of Shia mosques and markets. The fear is that if Pakistan becomes embroiled in Syria or in the Mideast sectarian fight in any way, then the sectarian conflict in Pakistan will only become worse.
As I've said many times over the last ten years, Generational Dynamics predicts that in coming Clash of Civilizations world war, China, Pakistan and the Sunni countries will be allied against the West, India, Russia and Iran. The increasing military relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia appears to support that prediction. The Nation (Pakistan) and Memri and The News (Pakistan)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Mar-14 World View -- Pakistan debates sending troops to Saudi Arabia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(24-Mar-2014)
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France kills 40 Islamists in Mali in recent operations
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russian troops consolidated their control of Crimea by smashing their way into the remaining Ukrainian military bases in Crimea with armored vehicles, automatic fire and stun grenades and taking them over. Russian troops sang Russian songs, while Ukrainian troops changed, "Long live Ukraine!"
Although Saturday's actions were mostly bloodless, with few casualties, Western officials fear further possible Russian plans to invade eastern Ukraine, and cause an incident that triggers a real military confrontation and a wider war.
Russia's annexation of Crimea is not a trivial matter for the Europeans. There is a growing sense in Europe that the entire European Union project is in jeopardy. The European Union was formed with the specific purpose of providing a political and legal infrastructure that would prevent a repeat of the two world wars that had ravaged the continent. The Europeans have been building this infrastructure for 60 years, with courts and parliaments and treaties and constitutions and banks and even a new currency. But the ease with which Russia could annex another country's territory with impunity, or that China could do the same thing in the South China Sea, makes it clear to everyone that, in the end, that infrastructure prevents nothing. And if that infrastructure prevents nothing, then what's the purpose of the European Union, except a temporary romantic convenience? Irish Times and Telegraph (London)
France's defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday that operations by French soldiers in Mali have killed about 40 Islamist militants in the last few weeks, including a senior commander.
When France's president François Hollande announced in January of last year that he was sending French peacekeeping troops into Mali to prevent a takeover of the entire country by al-Qaeda linked Islamists, he expected to withdraw them by March -- of last year. Then the withdrawal date was postponed to August, then to December, and then to March of this year.
According to Le Drian, the fight against militants in Mali "is far from finished." The military action in Mali has already gone on far longer than anyone expected, and has been far more expensive, and apparently there's no end in sight. Expatica France and Al Jazeera
Experts in the west African nation Guinea had been unable to identify the disease that's killed 59 people in the last six weeks, but on Saturday it was finally identified as the Ebola virus by scientists studying samples in Lyon, France. The disease kills 25-90% of those who fall sick. It's extremely contagious, but is transmitted by direct contact with blood, feces or sweat, or by sexual contact or unprotected handling of contaminated corpses. Ebola is not transmitted through the air, so it's unlikely to cause a widespread pandemic if the public takes reasonable precautions. According to French officials, anyone who has to travel to southern Guinea should "strictly respect the hygiene rules, not consume the meat of animals killed by hunting and stay away from areas of high density of population like markets and football grounds." AFP and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Mar-14 World View -- Russia's Crimea annexation brings entire European Union into question thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(23-Mar-2014)
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Xi Jinping redirects China's ideology from Marxism to Nationalism
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With Russia's annexation of Crimea now a fait accompli, it's well to remember that this isn't the first recent annexation of other countries' territories. China has already seized islands in the South China Sea that have historically belonged to the Philippines and Vietnam, and is operating on the belief that any "short, sharp attack" on any one island won't bring an American response. China intends to continue annexing islands in this fashion. ( "16-Jan-14 World View -- China threatens military seizure of South China Sea island from Philippines")
The news on Friday is that Russia is massing over 20,000 troops on the border with eastern Ukraine, evidently with the intention of invading, in order annex some or all of that territory. It's really not logical for Russia's president Vladimir Putin to stop with Crimea, since there are plenty of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and because Crimea can't survive without the fresh water, electricity, gas and food that it imports from Ukraine. NBC News
Russia has long complained about Estonia's insistence that its large Russian minority in the country should learn to speak Estonian. But recent remarks by Russian diplomats that, for example, Russia was "concerned by steps taken .. in Estonia as well as in Ukraine" to user language to "segregate and isolate groups" is giving rise to fears that Estonia is one of the countries on Vladimir Putin's list to be invaded in order to protect Russian citizens.
Estonia has a centuries old bitter history with Russia. People today vividly remember that Josef Stalin's Red Army reoccupied Estonia in June 1940, and made it part of the Soviet Union. On a one-night operation, June 13-14, 1941, thousands of Estonians, mostly women and children, were deported to Siberia, while tens of thousands of men were forcibly relocated to Russia to fight in the army. This period of bloody Soviet rule left a deep mark on the Estonians, and so when the German Nazis invaded later in 1941, they were greeted as liberators. The Nazis were just as brutal as the Soviets, but when the Red Army returned in September, 1944, some 70,000 Estonians fled the country, and formed a diaspora throughout Europe and North America. After the war, Stalin's Soviet brutality continued by forcing ethnic Russians to relocate to Estonia to dilute the Estonian population. Estonia only became independent in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, as Estonia is well into a new generational Crisis era, it is haunted by ghosts of "Nazi sympathizers" who opposed the Soviets, and a substantial Russian minority, mainly descendants of Russians whom Stalin had forced to relocate to Estonia after the war, who consider themselves to be victims as well.
There are several countries that separate Russia from the European Union, and many of them have sizable ethnic Russian minorities who consider themselves to be victims. Many of these countries, including Estonia, are members of Nato, meaning that if Russia invades, then Nato will be required by treaty to fight the invasion militarily.
Russia as a whole, and Putin in particular, are becoming increasingly nationalistic, and it's possible that Putin will conclude from the experience of annexing Crimea that Nato won't respond militarily even after a Nato country is invaded, but will simply adopt new sanctions such as making it illegal for Russian politicians to visit Disneyland. Similarly, the Chinese may conclude from Russia's experience in Crimea and their own experiences in the South China Sea that they can continue annexing other people's islands and territories with impunity. But that would be a mistake on the part of the Russians and Chinese. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, nationalism is going to surge on all sides in this generational Crisis era.
It's true that there's a "new normal" today that permits Russia and China to annex foreign territories with impunity. But actually it's the same "old normal" that existed in 1938 when Britain allowed Nazi Germany to annex Sudetenland with impunity. As nationalism increases on all sides, which always happens in a generational Crisis era, sooner or later the "new normal" gives way to military force, and a new war, which has been the "real normal" since time immemorial. International Business Times
A year after taking office, president Xi Jinping is emerging as the strongest Chinese leader in decades. He's adopted Mao Zedong's populist style by means of photo ops such as eating steamed buns with ordinary citizens.
Xi is also making deep changes to China's ideological culture, in order to resolve a major ideological conflict. Modern China was founded when Mao and his peasant revolutionaries defeated Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists, in the climax of the Communist Revolution in 1949. Today, however, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elites in Beijing cower in fear at the thought of a new Mao-style peasant revolution. So just as Mao's movement obliterated China's Nationalist past, replacing it with a revolutionary Marxist culture, Xi is introducing a new orthodoxy which obliterates Mao's revolutionary culture in favor of a return to the Nationalist past. This includes a new revival of Confucius and "the excellent elements of traditional Chinese culture." Naturally, this new direction also builds on the popular resurgence of interest in traditional culture among many citizens, amid the sense that Chinese society has lost its moorings in the midst of rapid economic and social change.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, none of this is going to make any difference. The lives of 1.35 billion Chinese are not going to be affected in any way by the adoption by a few Beijing elites of a new ideological culture. These cultural changes always come from the people, anyway, not from the politicians or elites. China had a "peasant revolution" in the 1850s-60s called the "Taiping Rebellion," and had another peasant revolution in the 1930s-40 called the "Communist Revolution." China is now due for a new peasant rebellion, and an ideological diktat won't change that in any way. Jamestown
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Mar-14 World View -- The 'New Normal': Russia and China annex other countries' territories with impunity thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(22-Mar-2014)
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Hundreds of dead pig carcasses found in China's Gan River
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The approval rating of Russia's president Vladimir Putin has soared 15 points since January 1 to 75.7% of Russians supporting him. Putin's political opposition was already pretty dispirited, but the Crimean annexation has permitted Putin to crush the opposition in polling.
In fact, the Crimea annexation has split the opposition itself. Liberal anti-war groups are calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, while leftist movements like the Left Front are joining nationalist forces to demand that Crimea be returned to Russia. This split has allowed Putin to claim that an "absolute majority of Russians" supported the annexation of Crimean, while those who opposed it were "national traitors" acting on behalf of Western countries. Moscow Times
With Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas at age 79, many officials in the Palestinian Authority (Fatah) are considering the question of who will be his successor. Abbas is part of the old generation of survivors of the genocidal war between Jews and Arabs that followed the 1947 partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. When Yasser Arafat died in 2004, Abbas was a natural choice to succeed him, because they were both war survivors and shared a common world view. But now the time is approaching for a successor and for a generational change.
The major aspirant is 52 year old Mohammed Dahlan. Dahlan grew up poor in a Gaza refugee camp, but as a top aide to Arafat became Gaza's strongman in the 1990s, jailing leaders of rival Hamas which was trying to derail Arafat’s negotiation with Israel through bombing and shooting attacks. Abbas and Dahlan uses to be allies, but the 2008 war between Fatah and Hamas, that made Hamas the governing power in Gaza caused tension between them, until 2011 when Abbas expelled Dahlan completely from Fatah. The bitterness between the two has been growing, and in the last few weeks they've even started calling each other traitors in the resistance to Israel. Abbas has accused Dahlan of involvement in six murders, hinting that he might also be behind the death of former leader and Palestinian icon Yasser Arafat. Dahlan has called Abbas a "catastrophe" for the Palestinian people.
The vitriolic personal fight is spilling over into the streets. In Gaza City on Tuesday, dozens of Abbas supporters clashed with Dahlan supporters using stones and sticks. The police were called in to separate the two parties.
In Lebanon, tensions are growing in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp between supporters of the two sides. With the war in Syria spilling over into Lebanon anyway, most Palestinians have followed the lead of Hamas in standing against Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, who is exterminating Sunni women and children. But there is a pro-Assad faction in Ain al-Hilweh who is siding with Abbas. With tensions growing almost daily, there are fears that all out violence could break out any day. AP and Middle East Monitor and Daily Star (Beirut)
Chinese officials have pulled hundreds of dead pig carcasses out of the Gan River, in central Jiangxi province. The Gan serves as the main drinking water supply for several large cities, but Chinese officials say they've tested the water and it's still safe for consumption. It's not known where the pig carcasses came from, or why they were disposed of this way.
This year's situation seems less severe compared to what happened last year, when there were 16,000 pig carcasses. It was later determined that the pigs were from an upstream farm, which was hit by a common pig virus, porcine circovirus, infecting thousands of livestock. The virus, which is not harmful to humans, was responsible for quickly taking out a huge portion of the farm’s pig population, and the farmers dumped them into the river to dispose of them. International Business Times and Radio Free Asia
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Mar-14 World View -- Putin's approval ratings soar in Russia over Crimea annexation thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(21-Mar-2014)
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Ukraine capitulates to Russia in Crimea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Ukraine's interim government has announced that it will withdraw its troops from Crimea. It is not known whether Russia plans to invade eastern Ukraine. BBC
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Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is united worldwide under a single Pope in Rome, the Eastern Orthodox Church is actually a community of a dozen or so self-governing ("autocephalous") churches sharing common values. A Catholic is a Catholic anywhere in the world (in theory, anyway), but there's no such thing as a generic "Orthodox Christian." You have to be Orthodox PLUS something else -- Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox, for example. A Greek Orthodox would reject becoming a Catholic, but just as important, he would never become a Russian Orthodox either.
There is an amusing anecdote describing how the Russian Orthodox Church was founded in Kiev. The anecdote involves a pagan prince named Vladimir, who in 980 became ruling prince of the Slavs, headquartered in Kiev. And Prince Vladimir went religion shopping.
According to legend, he rejected Islam, because it forbade alcoholic drink. He sent commissions to visit the Christian Churches. The Bulgarians, they reported, smelt. The Germans had nothing to offer. But Constantinople (or Byzantium) had won their hearts. There, they said in words often to be quoted, "We knew not whether we were in heaven or earth, for on earth there is no such vision nor beauty, and we do not know how to describe it; we know only that there God dwells among men." Around 986-8, Prince Vladimir was baptized as an Orthodox Christian by a Byzantine emperor in the Greek colony of Chersonesos -- near Sevastopol in Crimea. Vladimir accepted Orthodox Christianity for himself and his people. Vladimir might have chosen Catholicism, and thus would one man have changed the history and the map of the world. In the centuries to come, the Slav culture moved east and formed the Russian Empire.
Well, Kiev was conquered by the Mongols in 1240, while Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Muslims in 1453, and became Istanbul.
With the destruction of Rome by the Visigoths, and the destruction of Constantinople by the Ottomans, by 1472 Ivan the Great decided that Moscow was going to become "the third Rome," the home of the true (or "orthodox") Christian faith, and the defender of Jerusalem. He gave himself the title "Czar" or "Tsar," derived from the name of the Roman Emperor Caesar (as is the German word "Kaiser").
Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church became married to the Russian state. This led Russia to enter the Crimean war as a generational crisis war in the 1850s in its role as the defender of Jerusalem. The Crimean war was a disaster for Russia and led in the following generational Awakening era to Russia's "Nihilist Movement," which rejected both the Church and the State, and can be thought of as an extremely violent analog to the violent protests in America in the 1960s. The Nihilist Movement grew and became the lynchpin of the next generational crisis war, the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Tsarist state was destroyed, and the Russian Orthodox Church was destroyed, though it was revived in the Soviet era during World War II when it was needed to help fight the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis. Since the Soviet Empire collapsed in the 1990s, the Russian Orthodox Church has once again become close to the Russian state.
Like a dog wagging its tail, changes in the Russian Orthodox Church have pushed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church through multiple chaotic events throughout this millennium of history. Sometimes it was subordinate to the Moscow Church, sometimes it was completely self-governing. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the Ukrainian church itself was split, with the result that there were three Orthodox jurisdictions in Ukraine:
At one time, it was hoped that these three churches would eventually merge, possibly even become entirely subordinate to the Moscow church. But Russia's annexation of Crimea has thrown any such hope into chaos, and it poses a serious threat to the Moscow church.
The Bishops of Crimea are requesting that their Orthodox churches become subordinate to the Moscow church, rather than be a part of any of the Ukrainian churches. The Moscow church faces two bad choices:
It's worth pointing out that the Kiev Patriarchate is strongly opposing the actions of the Russian state in annexing Crimea, while the Moscow Patriarchate is supporting those actions. One possible outcome is an ironic one: that the Crimean churches join Moscow, and the three Ukrainian churches finally unite into a single autocephalous church as the Kiev Patriarchate. So the Russian action in Crimea may finally unite the Kiev Patriarchate, but not in the way that the Moscow Patriarchate had hoped.
Russia's annexation of Crimea has changed the map of Europe by force, for the first time since WW II, and may have changed the map of the Orthodox world as well. Religion News and Washington Post and Catholic Culture and Jamestown
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Mar-14 World View -- Russia's annexation of Crimea splits the Russian Orthodox Church thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(20-Mar-2014)
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Putin's spokesman signals plans to invade eastern Ukraine
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In a speech to the Duma on Tuesday, Russia's president Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will annex Crimea.
"In order to understand why this choice was made , it is enough to know the history of the Crimea, and know what Russia means for the Crimea and what Crimea means to Russia.There is ancient Chersonesos there, where Holy Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual struggle - an appeal to Orthodoxy - predestined common cultural values and civilizational framework that will unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. In the Crimea, there are graves of the Russian soldiers, with whose courage the Crimea was taken into the Russian state in 1783. The Crimea is Sevastopol, a legendary city of great destiny, a fortress city and the birthplace of the Russian Black Sea Navy.
During all these years, many citizens and many public figures have raised this issue, saying that the Crimea is a native Russian land and that Sevastopol is a Russian city."
One might almost have sympathy for Putin's arguments if the Crimean referendum hadn't been conducted under gunpoint of a Russian invasion, with Ukrainian supporters beaten up or locked up, justifying the Russian invasion because some Russian citizens were being attacked by Nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Russophobes. By Putin's logic, Turkey could invade Germany because some Turkish citizens have been attacked by German neo-Nazis. In fact, by Putin's logic, any country whose citizens are attacked by any terrorists in any other country has a right to invade that country, to "protect its citizens" from "the terrorists."
I would have more sympathy for Putin, but my opinion of him is strongly colored by my overwhelming disgust by the situation in Syria, and Putin's support of Bashar al-Assad. As I've said in the past, it's like the TV show "Criminal Minds," which dwells on scenes of rape, torture and mutilation. But al-Assad and Putin are performing "Criminal Minds" scripts on an "industrial strength" scale, bombing innocent women and children with barrel bombs, sarin gas, and any other heavy weapons al-Assad can get his hands on from Putin, in his campaign to exterminate all Sunnis in Syria. Al-Assad is a war criminal, and Putin is also a war criminal for supplying weapons to al-Assad.
So when I hear war criminal Putin say that he's going to protect Russian citizens from "terrorists" and "neo-Nazis" (i.e., Ukrainians), it takes me back to the beginning of the Syrian civil war, and I feel we're going down the same path. And so do a lot of other people. Pravda (Moscow) and Tauric Chersonesos
A furious Vladimir Putin made it pretty clear how contemptuous he was of Western politicians, in Europe and the U.S. It's well known that Putin believes that the European Union and President Barack Obama lied to him several times, particularly in the context of the Libyan war in 2011. (Not hard to believe.) Russia and China abstained on the vote for a no-fly zone in Libya, based on the promise of no military intervention which, Putin believes was a lie.
As I wrote in 2011 (see "22-Apr-11 News -- Russia seeks to cripple Nato through Libya United Nations politics"), Russia adopted a policy of using the United Nations Security Council to cripple American and Western foreign policy. Putin has been incredibly successful with this policy, by vetoing one Security Council resolution after another, even resolutions mildly criticizing Bashar al-Assad.
So today we're seeing the culmination of Putin's successful policy. Western foreign policy is crippled by Putin's policy, but Putin invades Crimea with no Security Council resolution.
In his speech on Tuesday, Putin clearly expressed his utter contempt for the West:
Like a mirror, the situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in the world over the past several decades. After the dissolution of bipolarity on the planet, we no longer have stability. Key international institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they are sadly degrading. Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right. They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle “If you are not with us, you are against us.” To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organizations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.This happened in Yugoslavia; we remember 1999 very well. It was hard to believe, even seeing it with my own eyes, that at the end of the 20th century, one of Europe’s capitals, Belgrade, was under missile attack for several weeks, and then came the real intervention. Was there a UN Security Council resolution on this matter, allowing for these actions? Nothing of the sort. And then, they hit Afghanistan, Iraq, and frankly violated the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, when instead of imposing the so-called no-fly zone over it they started bombing it too.
There was a whole series of controlled “color” revolutions. Clearly, the people in those nations, where these events took place, were sick of tyranny and poverty, of their lack of prospects; but these feelings were taken advantage of cynically. Standards were imposed on these nations that did not in any way correspond to their way of life, traditions, or these peoples’ cultures. As a result, instead of democracy and freedom, there was chaos, outbreaks in violence and a series of upheavals. The Arab Spring turned into the Arab Winter."
Putin is saying something I've said many times before in the context of a Generational Dynamics analysis. The survivors of World War II created the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation (Green Revolution), and other international organizations not only to prevent a new world war, but also to end poverty and starvation and to improve health. Only WW II survivors could accomplish these things. But today, with the WW II survivors gone, it's almost impossible to accomplish anything by compromise. The only thing -- the ONLY thing -- that works today is military force. Washington Post
Two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin promised not to "consider" annexing Crimea. That promise was broken within two days.
In his speech on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin said that Russia has no plans to invade eastern Ukraine. But his spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, was interviewed on the BBC on Tuesday, and said in effect the opposite (my transcription):
"First of all, we do expect some measures from those people who are calling [themselves] the Ukrainian government.And we do expect western community backing those people to take effective measures in order to protect those people living in the eastern regions of Ukraine. Because at the same time, we're receiving reports about clashes in Kharkov, it's an east city of Ukraine, in eastern region. So there are clashes and sounds of gunfire, and also some reports about one or two people being wounded. Those clashes between military gun men and fighters extremist coming from western regions, so we do expect Ukrainian government to protect Russian population. Otherwise Russia simply cannot stay without reaction. We will have to react. We will have to protect Russians, and those Ukrainians living there."
A careful reading of this statement reveals that it contains all of the elements and rationalizations for a Russian invasion of east Ukraine:
In other words, Putin is going to use the violence in Kharkov as an excuse to invade eastern Ukraine, and will blame it on the "Western community" -- the United States and the European Union.
There are many people in Poland, Estonia and Moldova who believe that once Putin is finished "protecting Russians" in Ukraine, he'll move on to their countries. With the U.S. and Europe distracted by the possible war in eastern Europe, China may choose this time to move on the islands in the South China Sea and East China Sea.
Doku Umarov, the Chechen leader of the Caucasus Emirate, has been responsible for several major terrorist attacks in Russia, including bombings at the Moscow airport in 2011 and on the Moscow subway in 2010. In addition, he called for terrorist attacks at last month's Sochi Olympics. A jihadist website says that Umarov is dead, and will be replaced by Ali Abu Mohammed. The report cannot be independently confirmed, and there have been several previous reports of his death, those is the first time by his sympathizers. CNN
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Mar-14 World View -- Putin gives angry, nationalistic speech annexing Crimea to Russia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Mar-2014)
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U.S. special forces capture pirate Libyan oil tanker in Mediterranean
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As expected, Russia will not immediately annex Crimea, despite the fact that Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to do so on Sunday. According to the decree signed on Monday by president Vladimir Putin:
"Considering the will of the peoples of Crimea expressed at the all-Crimea referendum on March 16, 2014, I hereby decree that the Republic of Crimea, where the city of Sevastopol has a special status, be recognized as a sovereign and independent state."
This is similar to what Russia did in 2008, after Russia invaded Georgia. Russia took control of two Georgian provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but did not officially annex them to Russia. The annexation thus was "de facto," not "de jure."
In the case of Georgia, international outrage settled down within a few months, and everything returned to business as usual. Possibly Putin hopes the same thing will happen with respect to Crimea.
The other possibility, being advanced by some analysts, is that Putin wants to postpone annexing Crimea until after a new invasion of Ukraine allowing Russia to annex either eastern Ukraine or all of Ukraine, along with Crimea. Itar-Tass (Moscow)
The interim nuclear agreement that the West signed with Iran in November has been very troubled from day one. The full text of that agreement has never been published. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that under the agreement Iran had no right to enrich uranium, while Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gloated that Iran had preserved its right to enrich uranium. The White House published a "summary," but Iran completely rejected the White House summary as "not true." Then, in January, Iran disclosed that there was a secret side agreement to the nuclear agreement. The White House first confirmed this, saying that the side agreement would be made public, and then denied that there was a secret side agreement.
In selling the interim nuclear agreement, President Barack Obama frequently referred to a fatwa issued by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei that Iran's nuclear program is entirely peaceful, and that forbids the development of nuclear weapons. The fatwa supposedly says, "the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons."
The problem is that Obama has apparently never actually seen this fatwa, and apparently neither has anyone else. Iranian and Arab writers have been examining Obama's claim, and they say that there is no such fatwa. The closest thing to it that's verifiable is a slogan from Khamanei:
"Nuclear weapons for no nation, nuclear energy for all nations!"
This story could be the plot of a situation comedy.
Following the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, the eastern region of Libya, formerly known as Cyrenaica and now called the Barqa Region, is being governed by rebels who demand to secede from the Libya headed by the government in Tripoli -- and keep their oil wells for themselves.
A major drama played out in Libya over the last two weeks. A North Korean-flagged oil tanker, the Morning Glory, docked in the port of As-Sidra in "Barqa." The rebels loaded it up with $38 million worth of crude oil from Libya's wells. The Tripoli government said that if the oil tanker leaves port, it would be bombed. The rebels said that if it's bombed, then it would be a "declaration of war."
Then Libya's prime minister in Tripoli announced that the oil tanker had been captured, and that it was under control of Libya's navy. The next thing we heard was that the oil tanker had slipped away anyway. The prime minister was sacked, and he's now fled to Europe.
So the oil tanker headed to the waters near Cyprus, where the pirates began trying to sell off their oil. Both Cyprus and Libya asked for America's help, and early Monday morning, a U.S. SEAL commando team boarded the tanker from a Naval special warfare rigid inflatable boat and took control. No one was injured. The ship will be returned to Tripoli.
Despite the comedic nature of this story, the serious side is that Libya is in chaos. The country is essentially being run by individual militias, with little government control over the country. The Morning Glory incident may not be fully played out, but even if it is, it's going to lead to retribution in its aftermath. Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Mar-14 World View -- Does Iran's anti-nuclear fatwa really exist, as claimed? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(18-Mar-2014)
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Islamic Jihad gaining popularity over Hamas in Gaza
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Although Hamas is the governing authority in Gaza, last week's rocket barrage from Gaza into Israel came from Islamic Jihad, not from Hamas. Hamas has been losing popularity, and Hamas's loss has been Islamic Jihad's gain.
Hamas has faced a variety of problems in recent months:
The result is that the Gaza economy is in freefall along with Hamas's popularity. The wages of most government employees haven’t been paid for months, there are shortages of fuel, electricity, building materials, and some basic foodstuffs. Gazans are turning to Islamic Jihad as the "hope and change" terrorist group. In the meantime, Islamic Jihad has been arming for a future war with Israel. Israel Hayom and Fox News
Jubilant citizens in Lenin Square in Crimea's capital Simferopol celebrated Sunday's referendum on secession from Ukraine, where Crimeans voted more than 95% in favor of seceding to join the Russian Federation.
According to Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague"
"Nothing in the way that the referendum has been conducted should convince anyone that it is a legitimate exercise.The referendum has taken place at 10 days' notice, without a proper campaign or public debate, with the political leaders of the country being unable to visit Crimea, and in the presence of many thousands of troops from a foreign country. It is a mockery of proper democratic practice.
The UK does not recognise the referendum or its outcome, in common with the majority of the international community."
France's president François Hollande said Saturday that if there is no "de-escalation" in Ukraine, there will be "sanctions" Monday the EU against Russia:
"It is a 'pseudo referendum' in the Crimea because it does not conform to the Ukrainian domestic law and international law. This is why France and the European Union will not recognize the validity of this pseudo referendum."
According to Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper:
"The so-called referendum held today was conducted with Crimea under illegal military occupation. Its results are a reflection of nothing more than Russian military control.This 'referendum' is illegitimate, it has no legal effect, and we do not recognize its outcome. Canada is working with other countries on the possibility of further sanctions."
President Barack Obama telephoned Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Sunday saying the U.S. and allies "prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions." According to the White House:
"We reject the 'referendum' that took place today in the Crimean region of Ukraine. This referendum is contrary to Ukraine's constitution, and the international community will not recognize the results of a poll administered under threats of violence and intimidation. ...President Obama reiterated that a diplomatic resolution cannot be achieved while Russian military forces continue their incursions into Ukrainian territory and that the large-scale Russian military exercises on Ukraine’s borders only exacerbate the tension."
AFP and La Tribune (France) and BBC and NBC News and Canadian Press
European Union leaders, supported by President Obama, plan to meet on Monday in Brussels to decide on sanctions. If Russia takes no further action, it's possible that the whole sanction regime will be abandon and things will go back to business as usual, with Crimea's secession a fait accompli. However, it seems very likely that Russia will take further action.
The first and most logical action would seem to be the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. However, some analysts say that may not be the most likely first step.
Most people seem to agree that Russia's president Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet/Russian empire, and wants all of Ukraine, not just Crimea. According to this logic, Putin would hold off annexing Crimea until he could launch a full invasion first of eastern Ukraine, then all of Ukraine, pushing west all the way across Ukraine to the border of Moldova, and its secessionist province Transnistria. NBC News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Mar-14 World View -- Russia and the West plan their next steps after Crimea referendum thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(17-Mar-2014)
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China lambastes Malaysia for withholding MH370 flight information
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Ukrainian troops have been mobilized to oppose a Russian armed force attacking a gas facility in Ukraine's mainland, north of Crimea. The armed force consists of 80 Russian troops, backed by four helicopter gunships and armored vehicles. This comes amidst reports that the Russian military is moving surface to air missiles into Crimea.
Ukraine supplies almost all of the fresh water, electricity, gas and food that Crimea consumes, and so this may be only the first of several Russian invasions of the Ukraine mainland to secure Ukrainian facilities that supply these things.
A Russian official is justifying the invasion to guard against "terrorists," which is the code word used by Russia's president Vladimir Putin and by Syria's genocidal monster president Bashar al-Assad whenever either of them wants to use military force to exterminate an ethnic group. Telegraph (London) and AP
As expected, Russia exercised its veto on Saturday on a resolution that declares Sunday's Russian-sponsored secession referendum in Crimea as having "no validity." The United States was among 13 members that affirmed the resolution. The interesting case was China, which has stood by Russia in vetoing any resolution that even mildly criticized Syria's Bashar al-Assad. In this case, China abstained.
As I wrote last week in "10-Mar-14 World View -- Ukraine - Russia crisis presents problems for China", because any secessionist resolution that China approved might apply to secessionist provinces in China -- Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. So China was forced to abstain, leaving Russia completed isolated on its invasion of Ukraine.
After the Russian veto, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, said that the veto would not change the aspirations and destiny of the Ukrainian people:
"Nor can it change Crimea’s status. Crimea is part of Ukraine today; it will be part of Ukraine tomorrow; it will be part of Ukraine next week; it will be part of Ukraine unless and until its status is changed in accordance with Ukrainian and international law."
Some 30,000 protesters demonstrated in Moscow on Saturday against Russia's president Vladimir Putin, for the biggest anti-Putin protest in two years. The Ukraine invasion is the trigger for the protests, but they also protested against rising corruption, political repression and censorship under Putin.
However, an even bigger pro-Putin demonstration is expected on Sunday. Putin's increasingly nationalistic agenda is appealing to the public, giving Putin an approval rating at 70%. In a recent poll, two-thirds said they believed that not only Crimea but also mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine were "in essence" Russian lands.
Still, the large protest represents the second embarrassment, along with China's Security Council abstention, for Putin on Saturday. Putin had hoped that Russia would experience continuing good will from last month's Olympics games in Sochi, but whatever good will was gained has now been dissipated. Reuters
As one of China's neighbors in the South China Sea, where China is using its military might to confiscate properties that have belonged to other nations for centuries, China and Malaysia have already had a minor but tense military confrontation. ( "29-Jan-14 World View -- China's military moves to seize Malaysia's James Shoal" from January.)
So it's not surprising that China is furious with Malaysia over the investigation of the disappearance of flight MH370, which was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing carrying mostly Chinese passengers. According to a Saturday editorial from Xinhua:
"At a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak revealed a trove of new information that virtually made the massive rummage in South China Sea for the Boeing 777 aircraft and the 239 people on board a huge waste of valuable time and resources. ...But it is undeniable that the disclosure of such vital information is painfully belated -- more than seven excruciating days after the 227 passengers and 12 crew members lost contact with their beloved relatives and friends.
And due to the absence -- or at least lack -- of timely authoritative information, massive efforts have been squandered, and numerous rumors have been spawned, repeatedly racking the nerves of the awaiting families.
Given today's technology, the delay smacks of either dereliction of duty or reluctance to share information in a full and timely manner. That would be intolerable.
As the leader of the international search and rescue mission, Malaysia bears inescapable responsibility. Other parties that possess valuable data and information, including plane maker Boeing, engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce and intelligence superpower the United States, should also have done a better job. ...
With time ticking away and the fate of Flight MH370 still shrouded in mystery, it is vital and imperative that the Malaysian side work more thoroughly and efficiently and other major information holders -- not least the Unites States -- be more open and forthcoming."
It's somewhat laughable that China, with one of the most opaque governments in the world, is demanding that the United States be "more open and forthcoming." We wish that China would also be more open and forthcoming, especially about its preparations for a preemptive military attack on the United States. Xinhua
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Mar-14 World View -- Ukraine mobilizes troops to oppose Russian troops attacking gas facility thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Mar-2014)
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Germany's Angela Merkel warns of a 'catastrophe' and sanction war
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On Sunday, Ukraine's Crimea peninsula will hold a Russian-sponsored referendum on whether Crimea should secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. With thousands of Russian troops in Crimea, blockading all Ukrainian troops and arresting or beating anyone who demonstrates against the referendum, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that the referendum will pass. Russia's Duma is preparing a constitutional change that will allow Crimea to join the Russian Federation.
With tens of thousands of Russian troops in Russia along the border with eastern Ukraine, there is widespread fear that Russia will invade the rest of Ukraine. Since Ukraine supplies almost all of the fresh water, electricity, gas and food that Crimea consumes, Russia's president Vladimir Putin may well justify an invasion as being necessary to guarantee that these supplies reach Crimea.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who apparently have become BFFs, met for six hours on Friday, ending in disagreement. Lavrov said:
"As to practical measures foreign countries could take, we do not share a common view of the situation, disagreements remain but, of course, the conversation was useful.Russia has and can have no plans to invade southeastern regions of Ukraine. We assume that the rights of Russians, the rights of Hungarians, the rights of Bulgarians and Ukrainians should definitely be ensured and should be protected. ...
We have confirmed our stance stipulated repeatedly by the Russian president that we will respect the declaration of the will of the Crimean people during the coming referendum of March 16. ...
I'll be bold enough to assure you that sanctions are a counter-productive instrument and if such a decision is taken in Western capitals, it means it will be their decision. One thing for sure is that this will not help mutual interests, business interests, the interests of our partnership in general."
At the same press conference after the meeting, Kerry warned of "very serious" consequences if Russia uses the referendum as a "back-door annexation" of Crimea, including almost immediate economic sanctions against Russia, including travel restrictions and asset seizures of private Russian businessmen and officials close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kerry said:
"After much discussion, the foreign minister made it clear that President Putin is not prepared to make any decision regarding Ukraine until after the referendum on Sunday.If the referendum takes place, there will be some sanctions. There will be some response, let me put it that way.
I think, in fairness, Foreign Minister Lavrov is going to report that proposal back to President Putin as he did all of the proposals that we put on the table this afternoon. President Putin will be well aware of all the options.
We are prepared to respect his interests and rights and they can be fully respected.
We hope President Putin will recognize that none of what we’re saying is meant as a threat, it’s not meant in a personal way."
So the threat of sanctions is not a threat, and it's nothing personal. Voice of Russia and ABC News
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was not nearly as circumspect as John Kerry. According to Merkel:
If Russia continues down the course of the past weeks, it would not only be a catastrophe for Ukraine.It would not only change the relationship of the European Union as a whole with Russia. No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically."
The first round of sanctions have already been announced -- postponement of various meetings.
If a second round is necessary, high-ranking Russian officials will face EU visa restrictions and their EU-based bank accounts will be frozen.
The third round, if necessary, might freeze the assets and bank accounts of politicians, civil servants and military personnel, possibly to include Russian businessmen.
In response, Russia has threatened to "seize property, assets and accounts of companies in the United States and the countries that adopt the sanctions against us," according to a Russian official. Russia could also cancel big contracts with European companies. For example, Moscow could drop its proposed purchase of French naval helicopter carriers.
Some reports suggest that Russia is transferring its Treasury bond holdings out of the Fed, in order to protect them from an asset freeze. Deutsche Welle and Deutsche Welle and WSJ
A Saudi cleric named Saleh al-Fawzan has issued fatwa against all-you-can-eat buffets in Saudi Arabia. "Whoever enters the buffet and eats for 10 or 50 riyals without deciding the quantity they will eat is violating Sharia (Islamic) law," he said. Twitter users mocked the fatwa mercilessly: "What is going on in this world?! i am speechless really! Fatwa prohibits 'All You Can Eat' offers" and "Fatwa against all-you-can-eat buffets. You can't even parody this stuff. And we're supposed to respect it?" International Business Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Mar-14 World View -- Kerry threatens sanctions against Russia, but 'nothing personal' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(15-Mar-2014)
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Slovakia becomes the fourth euro zone country in deflation
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After years of neglect, Russia is upgrading and building up its Pacific fleet, president Vladimir Putin focuses on building up its eastern Siberian and Far East regions. During his December 12 Presidential Address, Putin said:
"This is our national priority for the entire 21st century. ... I am confident that Russia’s reorientation toward the Pacific Ocean and the dynamic development in all our eastern territories will not only open up new economic opportunities and new horizons, but also provide additional instruments for an active foreign policy"
Moscow is becoming increasingly concerned about Russia's Far East, where population has fallen 50% since the 1990s, allowing migrants from China to repopulate the region.
In addition to building new logistics vessels, oilers and transport ships to provide logistical support for extended operations of the Pacific Fleet in distant seas, Russia is also seeking other facilities, pursuing negotiations with Vietnam to lease the naval base in Cam Ranh Bay.
Starting on March 28, Russia will participate in the Komodo 2014 multilateral joint exercise, focusing on naval cooperation capabilities in disaster relief. It will involve 28 warships and 4,000 personnel from all ten ASEAN members as well as Russia, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the United States. (The ASEAN members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam.)
What's notable about this joint exercise is that it will involve countries with overlapping maritime disputes, including the following:
This is occurring as the United States' military begins to pivot 60% of its forces into the Pacific. Jamestown
The outcome of Sunday's Crimea referendum on seceding from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation as an independent republic seems now to be a foregone conclusion. Russia's parliament is rushing a special constitutional amendment to legalize the annexation of Crimea, and it's expected to be enacted within a day or two. There are Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea, but their bases have all been blocked by Russian forces. Anyone who advocates voting against the referendum risks arrest or being beaten up. Independent media in Moscow have been shut down or restricted.
On March 4, Russia's president Vladimir Putin stated that "Russia does not contemplate the possibility of annexing Crimea," but today it appears that Putin is contemplating more than Crimea, as all signs indicate that Russia is going beyond Crimea. Russia is increasingly on a war footing, with a big military buildup along Russia's border with Ukraine. According to a Ukrainian official in Kiev,
"[Russian forces include] over 80,000 personnel, up to 270 tanks, 180 armored vehicles, 380 artillery systems, 18 multiple-launch missile systems, 140 combat aircraft, 90 combat helicopters and 19 warships and cutters. ...Critical is the situation not only in Crimea, but along the entire north-eastern frontier. In fact, Russian troop units are two or three hours of travel from Kiev."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says that the only way out of the crisis is through diplomacy. Jamestown and Daily Mail (London)
Crimean banks have imposed a withdrawal limit of about $150 per day. Customers are forming long lines to withdraw cash while they can, before Sunday's referendum. CNBC/AP
Slovakia, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus are now in deflation.
Consumer prices in Slovakia fell 0.1% in February, on a monthly and yearly basis. According to a central bank official, the fall in prices is caused by low food prices and low demand.
In Portugal, prices fell by a monthly 0.3% after a 1.4% drop in January. In Greece and Cyprus price declines are above 1%.
Other Eurozone peripheral countries remain on the cusp of falling prices, with annual consumer inflation running at just 0.1% in Spain, 0.2% in Ireland and 0.5% in Italy. Cihan (Turkey) and EuroIntelligence
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Mar-14 World View -- Russia prepares to annex Ukraine's Crimea - and more thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(14-Mar-2014)
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Israel votes to draft ultra-orthodox Jews into the military
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The apparent stonewalling and confusion from Malaysia's government and air force are creating outrage among almost everyone -- the passengers' families, officials of Vietnam and other countries participating in the search, and the public in Malaysia, Vietnam and China. Malaysian authorities have given conflicting information about things they should know, especially when and where was the plane at the last time it made contact with anyone. At different times, Malaysia has said that the last contact occurred one hour after takeoff or two hours, and the plane was east of Malaysia and then west of Malaysia. With huge sums of money being spent by numerous countries to search for the plane, these confusing reports have meant that valuable time has been lost searching in the wrong place. At one point, furious Vietnamese officials discontinued their navy's search efforts for a brief period.
Malaysia is a mostly Muslim country that has a reputation of being hospitable to jihadist groups, so that they won't be angered and conduct terrorist attacks on Malaysia. (This is a strategy that's become a disaster for Pakistan.) So the theory is that Malaysian officials covered up any information they had because it suggested a terrorist act, and revealing that would anger whatever jihadist group perpetrated it.
In my opinion, what is most likely is that Malaysian officials were not being evil, but that they were simply incompetent. Malaysia Chronicle and CBS and Night Watch
Islamic Jihad is taking responsibility for a barrage of up to 55-90 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, some striking urban, civilian areas, although there were no reports of casualties, in the largest attack since the brief Israel-Gaza war in 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defense). The rockets were fired simultaneously from northern and southern Gaza. Within hours, the Israel Defense Forces retaliated by striking 29 "terror locations" in Gaza with artillery fire. Jewish Telegraphic Agency
For the first time in its history, Israel's Knesset on Tuesday voted to end the provisions of the controversial "Tal Law" that kept large numbers of ultra-orthodox men from being drafted into the military.
At Israel's founding in 1948, about 400 exemplary seminary students were exempted from military service to pursue full-time, subsidized biblical studies. Today that number has grown to about 100,000 full-time Torah learners of draft age, making up about 10% of Israel's eligible draftees in what many people are calling a welfare program. Ultra-orthodox Jews defend their exemptions, saying that they shouldn't have to serve, since they're already contributing to the state with their prayers. Arab Israelis have also been exempted, and they defend their exemptions by claiming that they are treated as second-class citizens in Israel. Israel's High Court triggered a political crisis in 2010 when it struck down the so-called Tal Law, which provides for national service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis. Orthodox Jews will have to begin serving in 2017. Reports don't indicate the status of Arab Israelis. Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Independent (South Africa)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Mar-14 World View -- Malaysia accused of coverup over lost MH370 airliner thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Mar-2014)
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Genghis Khan owes his Mongol Empire to global warming
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A study of tree rings in Asia shows that the meteoric rise of Genghis Khan's Mongol empire occurred during several decades of warm, moist weather in 1211-25, that followed a period of severe drought from about 1180-90. The warm, wet weather provided rich, productive pastures for the herds of war horses on which the Mongols and Khan's invading armies depended. According to the study's author:
"The transition from extreme drought to extreme moisture right then strongly suggests that climate played a role in human events. It wasn’t the only thing, but it must have created the ideal conditions for a charismatic leader to emerge out of the chaos, develop an army and concentrate power.Where it’s arid, unusual moisture creates unusual plant productivity, and that translates into horsepower. Genghis was literally able to ride that wave."
Each Mongolian horseman in Genghis’s army is said to have had up to five horses, which provided a supply of meat as well as transport. Higher grass yields would have also caused a boom in camels, yaks, cattle, sheep and other livestock. Independent (London)
Pretty much everyone has known from the beginning that the Obama administration inspired 9-month Mideast "peace process" never had a chance of reaching an agreement, but now that the nine months are almost up and a deadline is approaching, all parties are positioning themselves to blame someone else when the talks collapse.
The lynchpin that's kept the talks going for this long is that the Obama administration convinced Israeli leaders last July to release 104 prisoners, in four evenly spaced groups of 26, from Israeli jails. All the released prisoners had been convicted of terrorist acts prior to the 1994 Oslo accords. But they're treated as heroes by the Palestinians, and so the Palestinian negotiators are willing to continue the negotiations as long as the prisoners are being released. 78 prisoners have been released so far, and the last batch of 26 are scheduled for release on March 28. The "peace talks" then officially end on April 29.
Among the issues separating the two sides, there are two major ones:
The U.S. State Dept. appears to be siding with the Palestinians, in a statement by State Dept. spokesman Jen Psaki said:
"The American position is clear, Israel is a Jewish state. However, we do not see a need that both sides recognize this position as part of the final agreement."
Since there's no chance at all of a peace deal by the April 29 deadline, the Obama administration is looking desperately for a way to keep the talks going on past that date. Presumably, the Palestinians would have to have some other motivator to stay in the talks, once the prisoner releases have ended. Israel National News and Jerusalem Post and Russia Today
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Mar-14 World View -- Accusations fly as Israeli-Palestinian 'peace process' nears deadline thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Mar-2014)
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3D printing promises to revolutionize defense, aerospace industries
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North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un has won re-election to the Supreme People's Assembly, receiving 100% of the vote, with 100% turnout. According to the official news agency:
"This is an expression of all the service personnel and people's absolute support and profound trust in supreme leader Kim Jong Un as they single-mindedly remain loyal to him."
When you vote in North Korea, there's only one candidate on the ballot, and you're allowed to vote Yes or No. And the way you do that is to openly pick up the Yes ballot from one table or the No ballot from another table, in full view of everyone, and then drop the ballot into the ballot box.
The reason that North Korea even holds elections is because it allows the authorities to keep track of dissidents, as not being home to vote would put a dissident's life in danger. Independent (London) and AP
On March 3, terrorists carried out a terrorist suicide bombing on a courthouse in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, killing 11 people, including a judge, and wounding 23 others. According to reports, the terrorists entered the complex and opened fire indiscriminately at everyone, hurled hand grenades and later exploded their suicide vests.
This came just one day after the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban - TTP) announced a one-month "unconditional" cease-fire, to allow negotiations with the government to continue. As I indicated at the time, these cease-fire announcements are often used by terrorists to give themselves time to restock their weapons inventory. After the March 3 attack, a TTP spokesman said,
"We have already declared a ceasefire and we strictly adhere to our deal with the Government. Our colleagues in the organisation also cannot violate this agreement."
Well, apparently that doesn't apply to all of TTP's "colleagues." One of their colleagues is supposed to be Ahrar-ul-Hind (AH), a TTP splinter group, who claimed responsibility for the March 3 attack. According to an AH spokesman:
"We are an independent group and have no links with TTP. We were a part of TTP earlier but now we operate independently."
He said that the judicial system in the country was "un-Islamic" and that they would continue their "struggle" till Shariah law was enforced.
In Punjab province alone (the province where Islamabad is located), there are at least 57 extremist and terrorist outfits, out of which at 28 are homegrown. Punjab is also home to various foreign terrorists, including the Afghan Taliban and Uzbek terrorists. Security forces do little to stop these groups, for fear of being attacked themselves in retribution. Some of these groups, particularly Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), were originally created by Pakistan's security forces in the 1980s to fight the Indians in Kashmir or the Russians in Afghanistan. Today, those groups have turned against Pakistan, and are actively training to take control of Afghanistan once the Americans and Nato leave. South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India)
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Hundreds of children have died of malnutrition and disease in Pakistan's Sindh province in the last few weeks, because of the worst drought since 2000. On Sunday, 375 children were brought to a single hospital on one day. In just the last few days, thousands of families have been compelled to leave their homes in search of water, leaving hundreds of villages vacated. Finger-pointing has begun, with the federal government and the local Sindh government accusing each other of letting the situation get out of control. The Nation (Pakistan) and Gulf Times
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3D printers have gained worldwide attention for their ability to create all kinds of small objects, particularly guns, on the fly. However, 3D printing, also called "additive manufacturing," has been hampered so far because the plastic materials used in the process created items that broke under stress. But new, more advanced printers use metal-based substances, making it possible to manufacture hard-to-make items, such as brackets and tools for multi-million dollar programs ranging from satellites to jet fighters, revolutionizing the defense and aerospace industries. National Defense Magazine
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Mar-14 World View -- Terrorist bombings continue in Pakistan despite so-called 'cease-fire' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Mar-2014)
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Libya in chaos, war threatened over North Korean tanker
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Some commentators have said that China will face a difficult decision in the United Nations Security Council when it has to decide whether to side with Russia in its military intervention Ukraine's Crimea region. China always takes the moral high ground by declaring that no country should interfere internally with another country (which it ignores when it comes to interfering in African countries). Thus, no outsider should interfere with China's mass slaughtering of Tibetans, for example, since that's an internal matter. So now China wants to side with Russia, but has the dilemma of dealing with its "moral" position of non-interference.
According to one report that I've heard, China has resolved this moral dilemma by blaming the United States. According to China, it was the "biased mediation" by the U.S. that interfered with Ukraine by encouraging the original Maidan anti-government protesters to continue protesting peacefully. Thus, according to this reasoning, it's OK with China for Russia to invade Ukraine, because of the U.S. interference in Ukraine's affairs. VOA and Want China Times (Taiwan)
Oddly enough, China has close relations with Ukraine, with military, trade and agricultural partnerships. In 2012 Ukraine became the fourth-largest arms exporter in the world, with many of those exports going to China. Beijing's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was built in Ukraine.
Perhaps even more surprising is that China has a nuclear pact with Ukraine. On December 5, President Viktor Yanukovich signed an accord with a clause that says that in the event of a nuclear attack or so much as the threat of one, China would offer Kiev military support.
This pact is seen as sending a message to China's Asian neighbors that China is a nuclear power and a growing military power and, unlike the United States, is not afraid to use its military power to get what it wants.
What it wants is a great deal of territory in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and Asia, including regions that have belonged to other countries for centuries, that it would take immediately were it not for the United States. Speaking to the National People's Congress on Saturday, China's foreign minister Wang Yi said:
"We will not take anything that is not ours, but we will defend every inch of territory that belongs to us. We will never bully smaller countries, yet we will not accept unreasonable denunciation from smaller countries.There will not be any change to this position. We will more actively practice our neighborhood diplomacy guideline of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness. ...
We are also willing to listen to the voices from our neighboring countries and respond to the doubts about China’s neighborhood diplomacy. ... [With regard to the disputes with Japan,] on the two issues of principle, history and territory, there is no room for compromise."
I'm not sure what Wang Yi means by "We will never bully smaller countries." China has been bullying smaller countries in the South China Sea for years, and has already used its military might to annex territories that have historically belonged to the Philippines and Vietnam. It has clearly stated that it intends to use its military power to annex multiple regions belonging to other countries in the South China Sea, as well as the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands governed by Japan. China has also made repeated military incursions into India, threatening to confiscate regions along their common border.
It would seem that China and Russia are completely on the same page. Russia has invaded Ukraine's Crimea and will probably annex it to Russia, and China plans to invade numerous neighboring regions and annex them.
In fact, China is also threatening Russia's Far East. Population in the Far East has fallen 50% since the 1990s, while China has sent a flood of illegal migrants to repopulate the region, and take advantage of the rich natural resources. ( "22-Mar-11 News -- Russian offer of Japanese resettlement in Siberia raises xenophobic tensions")
This is consistent with what Generational Dynamics has been predicting for years -- that in the approaching Clash of Civilization world war, China, Pakistan and other countries will be allied against the U.S., India, Russia, and other countries. So the current relationship between Russia and China is a friendship of convenience. Russia and China were close to thermonuclear war in the 1960s, and they will be at war again.
American commentators and politicians constantly worry about the danger of war between Russia and the West, when there's actually little chance of that. In the meantime, China is spending billions of dollars every year developing and deploying new weapons systems that have absolutely no purpose other than to permit a preemptive nuclear missile attack on America's cities, aircraft carries, and military installations. Indian Express
Historically, the eastern and western regions of Libya have been in conflict, and during the 2011 revolution that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, eastern and western rebels fought with each other, as well as against Gaddafi forces. Now the eastern region, formerly known as Cyrenaica and now called the Barqa Region, are the rebels against the new government in Tripoli in western Libya.
On Saturday, a North Korean tanker, the Morning Glory, docked in As-Sidra in eastern Libya, and has been loaded with $38 million worth of crude oil from Libya's wells. Tripoli is saying that the sale is illegal, and has threatened to bomb the ship if it leaves port with the oil. The rebel government says that if any harm comes to the tanker, it would be "a declaration of war." Reuters and CNN
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Mar-14 World View -- Ukraine - Russia crisis presents problems for China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Mar-2014)
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Russia increases its military presence in Ukraine's Crimea
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A commercial vessel, the Klos-C, from Iran docked in Israel late Saturday. The Panamanian-flagged vessel had sailed a circuitous route from Iran, and was loaded with dozens of medium-range Syrian M-302 missiles destined for Gaza.
Israeli and U.S. intelligence had been tracking the ship for months. The missiles were flown from Syria to Iran several months ago. In late December, the Klos C sailed from the Black Sea through the Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf, docking in Iran around January 23. The weapons were stashed onboard, unknown even to the Turkish captain and the crew members of various nationalities. It departed on February 3, stopping at another port, finally sailing out of the Gulf, around Yemen, and into the Red Sea where it was intercepted by Israeli forces. The plan was to dock at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, from where the missiles could be transported overland to Gaza.
The entire allegation is a manufactured lie, created at the behest of Jewish lobbyists in the United states, according to a spokeswoman for Iran's foreign ministry:
"The claims and extensive anti-Iran propaganda were made while the Zionist regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington to attend the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)."
A Palestinian official said the following:
"The ship has been sailing for weeks and it is seized exactly when Netanyahu is in Washington. The entire operation and the reports raise many questions regarding the timing and whether the event was real or fabricated."
The M-302 rockets have range of between 90 to 190 kilometers, depending on their model type, and their arrival in Gaza would have represented a boost to the ability of Islamic Jihad to target Israeli cities with missiles. Jerusalem Post and Forbes and Fars (Tehran)
As the nuclear arms talks with Iran proceed, Israeli leaders are increasingly distrustful of the administration of president Barack Obama who, they fear, will continue to make numerous concessions to Iran and in the end will still allow Iran to continue development of nuclear weapons. Israel is pointing to the intercepted weapons shipment as proof that Iran cannot be trusted to keep its word.
In fact, reports from Lebanon media indicate that the U.S. is developing a closer relationship with Iran, but also with Hezbollah, the Lebanese group named by the U.S. and the West as one of the major terrorist groups in the world. At Qatar's request, a Lebanese security agency has been mediating between the U.S. and Hezbollah.
Areas of cooperation between Hezbollah and the CIA include intelligence information on al-Qaeda linked rebel groups in Syria, with the U.S. attempting to help Hezbollah evade terrorist attacks.
First reports of links began in 2012, with the number of meetings growing throughout 2013. By January 2014, the meetings have become very detail oriented, and cover topics such as the following:
The reasons for the growing relationship between the U.S., Hezbollah and Iran, despite Israeli objections, are in shared interests in fighting Sunni terrorist organizations, while disregarding the Shia terrorism promoted by Iran and Hezbollah. The U.S. seems to perceive Shia terrorism as a lesser danger to its security than Sunni terrorism.
It's ironic, as I've been writing for months, that it's these three entities, along with Russia, that have CREATED the Sunni terrorist threat in Syria and made it as large as it's become. This is because Russia has been supplying unlimited numbers of weapons to the genocidal monster president Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and supporting him, along with passive support of the Obama administration, as he conducts "industrial strength" torture and extermination on his own civilians, even using sarin gas against his own people, and particularly targeting innocent Sunni women and children. This has drawn Sunni terrorist jihadists from Europe, from Russia's Caucasus region, from northern Africa, from Pakistan, and even from as far away as Indonesia. Thanks to the U.S., Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, Syria has become the jihadist capital of the world.
However, what's really interesting about all this is that the Generational Dynamics prediction that I've been posting for almost ten years is coming true. When I started writing in the mid-2000s decade that India, Russia and Iran would be allied with the West against China, Pakistan, and the Sunni countries, it seemed almost fantastical that we would be allied with Iran. And yet, that's exactly the direction we're going. This is further proof of the validity of the Generational Dynamics methodology. Haaretz and Memri
Hundreds of military trucks transporting heavily armed soldiers are reinforcing Russia's presence in Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula. Many of them were seen in eastern Crimea on Friday night after apparently having crossed the Straits of Kerch, which separates Crimea from Russian territory. Different reports estimate that there are between 11,000 and 20,000 Russian troops in Crimea. In the week since Russia seized control of Crimea, Russian troops have been neutralizing and disarming Ukrainian military bases here. Some Ukrainian units, however, have refused to give up, and all Ukrainian bases have been blockaded. AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Mar-14 World View -- Growing U.S. - Iran - Hezbollah relationship alienates Israel thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Mar-2014)
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Russia escalates the conflict over Ukraine's Crimea region
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro has severed diplomatic relations with Panama, accusing the country of being a "lackey" for the United States in a conspiracy plot against his government. According to Maduro:
"There are maneuvers by the U.S. government plotting with a lackey government that has a right-wing president who is leaving in the next few months, who is not worthy of his people, who has been working actively against Venezuela."
The expulsion was triggered by a Panamanian request for a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) to discuss solutions to the unrest and violence in Venezuela. Maduro said:
"Nobody will conspire with impunity to ask for an intervention against our fatherland. Enough!"
Maduro expelled three U.S. diplomats recently, on accusations of recruiting students to hold violent, rock-throwing protests against him. Washington has rejected the claims as baseless. But Maduro is desperate to blame anyone he can for the disastrous economic situation in his country, which continues to worsen, especially since the death of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. The inflation rate at 56% is the highest in the world. The murder rate is 25,000 annually, one of the world's highest per capita rates, and 97% of the murders go unpunished. The supermarket shelves are bare, with shortages of everything from toilet paper to vegetables. Anti-government protests have been getting larger and more violent for a month.
However, Maduro's move may simply be a way to get out of paying a debt. Venezuela owes Panama about $1 billion, mostly from debts incurred related to use of the Panama Canal, and for COPA, the Panamanian airline.
According to Panama's president Ricardo Martinelli:
"I don't want to think that this is an excuse not to pay and that the Venezuelan state is a deadbeat.Venezuela would appear to be bankrupt, although it shouldn't be because it is a very rich country."
Martinelli suggested that despite breaking diplomatic relations, Venezuela "has no excuse" to not pay off its debts. Russia Today and CNN and AFP
Russia escalated the conflict over Ukraine's Crimea region both politically and militarily on Friday. In doing so, hopes that the crisis might end soon seem very unrealistic.
Although Russia still refuses to admit that there are Russian troops in Crimea, it was clear that Russian troops were tightening their grip within Crimea:
On the political front, there's been a lot of euphoria in Moscow after the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, and to hold a referendum on March 16. Russia is making plans to annex Crimea and Sevastopol as new members of the Russian Federation. It was announced that on March 21, the Duma will vote for a constitutional amendment to allow for the annexation of Crimea, making it the first addition to Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
It's only been a few days since Russia's president Vladimir Putin promised not to "consider" annexing Crimea. That promise was broken within two days by fast-moving events.
Three days ago, Russian troops that had been performing military drills along the border between Russia and Ukraine for several days were recalled to their barracks. As I wrote at the time, this was considered such good news that Wall Street was sent into a bubble-happy frenzy, pushing stocks up parabolically.
But in fact, something similar happened in 2008. There were massive military maneuvers on the border with Georgia, leading to fears that Russia was about to invade Georgia. Everyone breathed a sign of relief when the military exercises ended on July 31. But the invasion of Georgia began only eight days later, on August 8. If Russia follows the same pattern, then a full-scale invasion of Ukraine may be only a few days away. CNN and BBC and Jamestown
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Mar-14 World View -- Venezuela breaks diplomatic relations with Panama thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Mar-2014)
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Henry Kissinger says that Vladimir Putin wants a way out
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Henry Kissinger is the most brilliant geopolitical analyst that I've seen in my lifetime, so what he says, even when counter-intuitive, is likely to be correct. He was interviewed on TV by Charlie Rose on Thursday, and said the following:
"No Russian I've ever met finds it easy, or even possible, to consider Ukraine a totally separate country. It was part of Russia for 300 years. The history of Russia and Ukraine have been intertwined for several hundred years before that. So the evolution of Ukraine is a matter that moves all Russians."
As I described yesterday, Russia is claiming that there are no Russian troops in Crimea, and that the Russian-speaking troop-like people are really local militias over which Russia has no control.
As I said, this is a blatant lie, as many reporters have spoken to Russian soldiers in Crimea who SAY that they're Russian soldiers. According to some estimates there are 16,000 Russian soldiers in Crimea.
Kissinger says that lying about the soldiers is cynical, but it's a good sign, because it provides a way for Russia to back down. Russia's president Vladimir Putin is going to suffer a major loss of prestige over the Ukraine crisis, no matter how it turns out, according to Kissinger, and Putin knows this. So far, Putin has done what he was forced to do. But now, since he's said that there are no Russian soldiers in Crimea, he doesn't have to issue a public order for the Russian soldiers to evacuate. Instead, he can just allow them to melt into the population. Although Putin will suffer some loss of prestige from this outcome, it's not as bad as other scenarios, according to Kissinger.
Kissinger also commented on Thursday's hour-long phone call between president Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. Kissinger said that he's always advised presidents he's worked for not to talk to other heads of state, unless their staffs had done a lot of preparation in advance. "There's a danger when you put two egos together, and they talk unprepared. If they disagree about something, then to whom will they be able to appeal to get a resolution?"
Just when everyone was hoping that events in Ukraine were beginning to settle down, they took a dangerous new turn early on Thursday when the Parliament of the Autonomous State of Crimea voted to separate from Ukraine and become part of Russia. There will be a referendum on March 16 with two questions:
The question that receives more "yes" votes will be considered the "will of the people."
The interim government in Kiev immediately said the vote was unconstitutional, since regional governments can't vote to secede from the nation. According to acting president Oleksandr Turchynov:
"This will be a farce, this will be falsification, this will be a crime against the state, which was organized by the military of the Russian Federation."
Any attempt for Crimea to secede from Ukraine would be rejected by Kiev, and might trigger a violent confrontation between federal forces and regional forces, the latter supported by the Russians.
Most commentators are predicting that because of the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea, the choice to secede and join Russia will win the referendum. However, a BBC reporter in Sevastopol said on air that he'd spoken to a lot of ordinary people who said that they want Russia's protection, and they want Kiev to protect their rights, but they don't want to become part of Russia. He said that it's far from certain that the secession side will win the referendum. Kyiv Post
The sanctions that the United States and the European Union imposed on Russia on Thursday were pretty meaningless. Certain meetings have been canceled, certain individuals won't be allowed to travel to certain places, and so forth. It was all pretty symbolic.
What's interesting is that an emergency European Union summit on Ukraine that had been going on for several days would have ended on Thursday with no sanctions imposed whatsoever, if it hadn't been for the Crimean Parliament vote for secession. Leaders of EU member nations that had rejected sanctions because they would just inflame the issue further changed their minds, and the talk of the secession referendum ended up galvanizing Europe's response. The symbolic sanctions were approved, along with a statement that said that trade sanctions would be employed if Russia escalated further. (No one seriously believes that the EU would ever apply trade sanctions to Russia, since Russia would retaliate, with devastating results to both sides.) CNN
A group of Kashmiri students in an Indian university were charged with sedition on Sunday when they cheered for Pakistan at a big Pakistan-India cricket match, and then celebrated when Pakistan won. The sedition charges, which might have resulted in 3-year prison terms, were dropped on Tuesday, but other charges of "disrupting communal harmony" and "causing damage to public property" are still being investigate. However, the students have all been suspended as a "precautionary measure" for their own safety, and have been sent home. The suspension affects all 67 students in the Kashmiri community, since no one was willing to identify the specific few students who had
The suspended students are saying that the damage to property was done by the Indian team supporters, who vandalized their rooms. These charges are not being investigated. Hindustan Times (India) and Tribune (Pakistan) and BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Mar-14 World View -- Crimea votes to secede from Ukraine, galvanizing US and EU thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Mar-2014)
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China refers to the U.S. ambassador as a 'banana'
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Wednesday, Russia continued to mobilize its troops on Crimea, apparently preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Absurdly, Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov continued to insist that there were no Russian troops in Crimea. He said that they were all ethnic Russian militias over which he has no control. If Lavrov can sit there and make such a ridiculous lie, then assume that everything else he and Putin say is a lie. Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus.
If you believe in actions rather than words, then Russia is preparing for an invasion of Ukraine.
The rest of the day Wednesday was spent in fatuous diplomatic posturings on all sides. So nothing has changed since yesterday, and a major conflict could still break out at any time, and appears to be inevitable. Telegraph (London)
Since it was formed in 1981, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) alliance has always hid its internal differences from the public, so Wednesday's very public split qualifies as a significant event. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday after a stormy GCC meeting on Tuesday. Two other GCC members, Kuwait and Oman, took no position on the split, and may try to mediate.
The three countries issued a joint statement saying that the split occurred because Qatar allegedly refused to honor a security agreement that all GCC members approved last year on November 23 not to back "anyone threatening the security and stability of the GCC whether as groups or individuals - via direct security work or through political influence, and not to support hostile media." In particular, Qatar has refused to implement three specific provisions:
Qatar declined to withdraw its own ambassadors from the three countries, and defended its relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran:
"The move taken by the brothers in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain has nothing to do with the interests of the Gulf peoples, their security and stability.Qatar is very keen on maintaining brotherly links between the people of Qatar and all other Gulf peoples."
A Qatari official said that the split is really about Egyptian politics, targeting Egyptian general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who headed the coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government from the presidency last year:
"It is unfortunate that some of them [GCC countries] are trying to force Qatar to take certain policies which have nothing to do with the Gulf, nothing to do with Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain.The whole issue is really about Sisi. These countries, they are supporting a coup d’état where thousands of Egyptians are being killed in front of the whole world. And they want Qatar to support such a policy. But we will never support any regime which kills its own people.
I am sure in the days after that wisdom will come and these countries will realize that trying to impose the philosophy of my way or the highway will not work with Qatar."
Qatari officials are particularly infuriated because three al-Jazeera reporters in Egypt have been jailed for over two months, on charges of having reported news in a way favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood. Gulf News (Dubai) and Al-Jazeera (Doha) and AFP
A Chinese state media editorial has called Gary Locke, who is finishing up his tenure as U.S. ambassador to China, a "banana," and a "guide dog" that had stirred an "evil wind."
In China, the epithet "banana" is an ethnic slur. It's related to the American ethnic slur "Oreo," used by a black to refer to someone who is black on the outside and white on the inside, meaning "not black enough." Similarly, "banana" means yellow on the outside but white on the inside, meaning not Chinese enough. (Apparently, "coconut" is similarly used by Hispanics.)
Locke is of Chinese descent, but apparently he's more loyal to America and American values than to China and Chinese values. Hence, he's a "banana." To put it very simply: "America makes Chinese Americans, but China does not -- and does not particularly want to -- make American Chinese." CNN
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Mar-14 World View -- Russia prepares invasion, and Arab states have major split thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Mar-2014)
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Spam of the Day - from Ukraine, with Love and Care
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Early on Tuesday morning (ET), Russian troops along the border with Ukraine were recalled to barracks. That set Wall Street stock futures rising. Then, a few hours later, Russia's president Vladimir Putin gave a news conference saying that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine. That sent stocks parabolic, with a 228 point surge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations) on Friday (March 4) morning was 17.87, which is astronomically high by historical standards.
Here are some things that bubble-happy investors presumably didn't pay attention to:
Putin said that there were no Russian troops in Crimea, which is absurd.
The rest of the day was filled with tough talk from Western leaders, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Very little has changed since yesterday. Nobody has fired a shot yet, but even an accidental "incident" could occur at any time and spiral into a military conflict. FxStreet and BBC
Russia's president Vladimir Putin used the 2008 invasion to prevent Georgia from joining Nato, and with the recent invasion of Crimea, Putin has prevented Ukraine from signing an Association Agreement with the European Union. Now Putin is trying to prevent one more former Soviet republic from signing an Association Agreement with the European Union -- Moldova.
Moldova is a small country on the western boundary of Ukraine, while Russia is along the eastern boundary. The Moldovan government has been pro-European since 2009, and they're prepared to sign an Association Agreement with the EU in August. Putin has been using money and persuasion, funding anti-Europe referendums, pointing out the hardships borne by countries in the European Union. Putin has convinced Moldova's population to begin to turn against integration with Europe, with only 44% now favoring it.
Russia is particularly focusing on the breakaway republic of Transnistria, a region in the form of a strip of land along the border of Ukraine, which strongly favors Russia, and has a similar role to that of Crimea. Transnistria separated from Moldova in 1992 in a civil war, and Russia has been subsidizing the region with $30 million per year. Spiegel
At the end of her Monday tv broadcast on Russia Today's program "Breaking the Set," American-born RT anchor Abby Martin criticized RT's "misinformation" on the Ukraine crisis, and made an editorial comment criticizing Russia's military intervention in Ukraine:
"Just because I work here, for RT, doesn't mean I don't have editorial independence and I can't stress enough how strongly I am against any military intervention in sovereign nations' affairs. What Russia did is wrong.I will not sit here and apologize or defend military aggression. Furthermore, the coverage I've seen of Ukraine has been truly disappointing from all sides of the media spectrum, and ripe with disinformation.
All we can do now is hope for a peaceful outcome for a terrible situation, and prevent another full-blown cold war between multiple superpowers. Until then, I'll keep telling the truth as I see it. ...
I don’t know as much as I should about Ukraine’s history or the cultural dynamics of the region, but what I do know is that military intervention is never the answer."
As far as we know, Martin still has her job, and has not been sent to a hard labor camp in Siberia. RT issued a statement that Martin is free to express her own opinion, but not on the air. The statement said there will be no reprimand, but she'll be sent to Crimea "to give her an opportunity to make up her own mind from the epicenter of the story." Mashable
Here's a spam message that I received last week:
Good antibiotics made with love and care. In our online store http://iucxuvwabzjyp.[redacted].ua
The ".ua" suffix means that the web address is from Ukraine. I wonder whether the "love and care" is being done by Russians or Ukrainians?
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Mar-14 World View -- Wall Street goes parabolic on Russian troop pullback thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Mar-2014)
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Israel's Netanyahu rebukes Obama over Mideast peace process
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Several people have commented on yesterday's World View column with the title "Russia declares the Autonomous Republic of Crimea" by pointing out that Crimea has been the "Autonomous State of Crimea" since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The point I was trying to make with that headline was that Russia was taking over in Crimea, but the result was poorly worded. I apologize for the confusion.
Other readers pointed out that South Ossetia has a majority Orthodox Christian population. There is a sizable Muslim population, but it's not a majority. I apologize for the error.
Thanks for the corrections. Republic of South Ossetia
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No shots have been fired yet, but that may change soon. Thousands of Russian troops are pouring into Crimea, the southern peninsula of Ukraine, trapping Ukrainian soldiers in their bases and Ukrainian boats in their ports. There are 150,000 troops on Russia's Ukrainian border doing military exercises.
There were several reports on Monday of ultimata given by the Russians, demanding that the Ukrainians surrender or face a "military storm." One of these deadlines is for late Monday evening, ET. These reports have been denied by Moscow, and have described these claims of threats as "nonsense."
As tensions skyrocket in Ukraine, investors dumped the Russian stocks and the ruble currency. Russia's stock market plunged 11%, and the ruble fell 1.8% against the dollar, and a similar amount against the euro. Investors fear that Russia's energy exports will suffer, and that Ukraine's corn and wheat exports will also suffer.
The administration of president Barack Obama is pinning its hopes on these adverse economic reports as "costs" that Russia has to pay. According to Obama on Monday:
"Russia is on the wrong side of history. ...What cannot be done is for Russia, with impunity, to put its soldiers on the ground and violate basic principles that are recognized around the world.
What we are also indicating to the Russians is that if, in fact, they continue on the current trajectory that they're on, that we are examining a whole series of steps -- economic, diplomatic -- that will isolate Russia."
According to the administration, Russia has already suffered heavy "costs" of billions of dollars from the plunge in Russian stock shares and rubles. The administration is considering sanctions against Russia, such as restricting travel to the United States by Russian officials and oligarchs.
Even if the administration went ahead with some kind of sanction, chances are it would be meaningless. Sanctions cut both ways, and Russia has many billion dollars of trade with Europe and more billions with the U.S. Stocks didn't just fall in Russia on Monday. They plunged globally, with the farthest in Russia. Any meaningful sanctions would be so painful to everyone they would never be enacted.
However, according to the Washington Post's editorial board, which has always been a strong supporter, Obama's foreign policy is "based on fantasy":
"For five years, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which 'the tide of war is receding' and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s 'This Week' Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, 'It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.' ...Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power."
It's very hard disagree with anything in this editorial. After one foreign policy debacle after another, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and others, and after Monday's statement pinning hopes of vague "costs" to stop Russia in Ukraine, I can only repeat what I've said before: Typical of his Generation-X cohort, President Obama and his staff have no clue whatsoever what's going on in the world.
As of this writing, nobody has fired a shot in Ukraine, but that could change at any time. Russia is making threats, trying to get Kiev to overreact, so that Russia will have an excuse for military action. Perhaps Russia has no intention of military action, and is massing troops for the purpose of gaining a negotiating advantage. But if so, and even if Kiev continues to play it cool, even an accidental "incident" could occur at any time and spiral into a military conflict. AFP and Kyiv Post and Washington Post
In an interview late last week, President Barack Obama explained what he was going to say to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their Monday meeting. Obama said that he believes that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas "is sincere about his willingness to recognize Israel and its right to exist." However, Abbas has repeatedly demanded that Israel could exist only on condition of the "right to return," meaning that the grandchildren of Palestinians who lost their homes in the 1940s could reclaim those homes in modern Israel. Obama said:
"We are coming to a point, though, over the next couple of months where the parties are going to have to make some decisions about how they move forward. And my hope and expectation is that, despite the incredible political challenges, that both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Abbas are able to reach past their differences and arrive at a framework that can move us to peace.When I have a conversation with Bibi, that’s the essence of my conversation. If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who? How does this get resolved?"
Obama repeated an earlier threat that the U.S. would not be able to protect Israel from "international fallout," such as the Palestinians joining the International Criminal Court as the nation "Palestine," and use that platform to accuse Israel of war crimes. According to Obama,
"If you see no peace deal, and continued aggressive settlement construction -- and we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time -- if Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited."
In a joint press conference on Monday afternoon, Netanyahu issued a rebuke:
"The 20 years that have passed since Israel entered the peace process have been marked by unprecedented steps that Israel has taken to advance peace. I mean, we vacated cities in [the West Bank]. We left entirely Gaza. We’ve not only frozen settlements, we’ve uprooted entire settlements. We’ve released hundreds of terrorist prisoners, including dozens in recent months.And when you look at what we got in return, it’s been scores of suicide bombings, thousands of rockets on our cities fired from the areas we vacated, and just incessant Palestinian incitement against Israel. So Israel has been doing its part, and I regret to say that the Palestinians haven’t.
Now, I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but it’s the truth. And the people of Israel know that it’s the truth because they’ve been living it."
Generational Dynamics predicts that there will be a major regional war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the war that followed the 1948 partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. It really doesn't make any difference what Obama and Netanyahu say or do. Bloomberg and White House
Something I've heard a lot in the last couple of weeks is that Russia invades countries and the U.S. invades countries, and so there's really no difference. This deserves a response.
Historically, this comparison is completely wrong. When the U.S. "invades," it's for a police action in our role as policemen of the world, for what we believe to be a benevolent cause. We became policemen of the world in 1947 under the Truman Doctrine, which justified military police actions because they could prevent a new world war, and because their costs in blood and money are tiny in comparison to massive costs of World War II. This was later reaffirmed by President John Kennedy when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
However, when Russia invades, it's to annex territory for the Soviet/Russian empire.
The U.S. has never annexed Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq, and has no plans to annex Afghanistan. You might argue that the Vietnam war and other wars were mistakes, and that may (or may not) be true. But it's incontrovertible that we did so to save South Vietnam from Communism, and that we never had any intention whatsoever to annex Vietnam. So there's no "moral equivalence" between Russia and the United States.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Mar-14 World View -- West discusses sanctions, as Russia prepares for war in Ukraine thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Mar-2014)
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North Korea fires short-range missiles into the sea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It appears that Russia has taken control of Crimea without firing a shot, and is referring to it as the "Autonomous Republic of Crimea," presumably with the intention of making it a puppet state of Moscow.
Ukraine's government in Kiev is only a few days old, and seems to be in disarray. So far, they're avoiding any strong military overreaction that would provide Russia with an excuse for a further military invasion, perhaps into eastern Ukraine beyond Crimea. However, the government warned Sunday it was on the brink of disaster and called up military reservists to counter Russia's threat to Ukraine.
Russia has appointed Sergey Aksyonov to prime minister, and on Sunday he announced:
"I believe that this day will go down in history of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as the day that all law enforcement agencies were established in the autonomy, We will prove that the Crimeans are capable of protecting themselves and ensure the safety and freedom of our citizens. ...Today the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is formed as an independent, integral public authority. I am sure that all of us will prove that we did not just come into power and that we can give Crimeans what they expect from us.
We will never see 'Maidan' with their black smoke and burned tires here. I responsibly promise that Crimea by May will be calm, quiet, friendly. People of all nationalities will live here happily."
This last paragraph is actually pretty funny. Aksyonov has absolutely no clue whether Crimea will be "calm, quiet and friendly." No national leader at any time or place in history can be sure of avoiding widespread anti-government demonstrations that might result in "black smoke and burned tires." A government can use violence and torture to suppress demonstrations for a time, but even that doesn't always work (as we see every day in Syria). Sooner or later the pressure cooker explodes.
As I've written dozens of times, it's a basic principle of Generational Dynamics that even in a dictatorship, major policies and events are determined by masses of people, entire generations of people, and not by politicians. What politicians say or do is irrelevant, except insofar as their actions reflect the attitudes of the people that they represent, and so politicians can neither cause nor prevent the great events of history. So Aksyonov's claims are totally meaningless.
There have been many comparisons of today's situation in Ukraine to Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, where Russia annexed two Georgian provinces in much the same way that Russia is now annexing Crimea.
But there was something noteworthy about the Georgian war that rarely gets mentioned. Here's what I wrote in "Moscow Times: 'Russia Adds 2 New Countries to Its Map'" in 2008:
"What's become clear in these three weeks is that there isn't much visceral hatred between Georgians and Russians. The Georgians are furious that the Russians are occupying Georgian territory, but there's no genocidal fury between these two ethnic groups.What's also become clear, however, is that there is plenty of genocidal fury between Georgians and Ossetians. These two ethnic groups really hate each other, and either of them would gladly exterminate the other."
Those relationships turned out to be the deciding factors in what followed after the war ended. Russia and Georgia, both Orthodox Christian nations, have gotten along pretty well since then, while Muslim South Ossetia effective joined North Ossetia to become part of Russia's North Caucasus provinces. North and South Ossetia get along well with Chechnya and Dagestan and Russia's other North Caucasus provinces, even though the Muslim Caucasians as a whole and the ethnic Russians exhibit mutual vitriolic hatred, almost on a daily basis.
Likewise, the future of Ukraine is going to be determined by the relationships between the ethnic groups. There have been signs of hatred between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians at the government level: The new Kiev government voted to ban Russian as an official language in the country, while the government in Moscow has been referring to the Kiev government as "Nazis." But so far, I have not discerned a great deal of hatred at the level of ordinary Ukrainians and Russians (though it's early and it may simply not have shown itself yet).
If there were only ethnic Russians and a few ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea, then the hopes and dreams of Aksyonov for a "calm, quiet, friendly" future might actually have a chance. But that's not what you have.
You have 2 million ethnic Russians, and 300,000 Muslim ethnic Tatars living in Crimea. Russia's dictator Josef Stalin in 1944 deported 200,000 Tatars from Crimea, where they had lived for centuries, to central Asia, accusing them of collaborating with the Nazis. It was only in the 1980s and 1990s that the Tatars returned in large numbers to Crimea, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence. The Tatars are scared to death of being under the control of the Russians again, and so they're aligning themselves with the government in Kiev. And the references in Moscow to "Nazis" in Ukraine strike a very deep chord in the Tatar psyche. There is no way that this relationship is going to be "calm, quiet and friendly." Russia Today and AFP
One web site reader (BronxZionist) has kindly provided a list of some of the possible strategic consequences of the Russian conquest of Crimea:
North Korea fired two short-range Scud missiles into the sea off its east coast Monday, with a range of 500 km. This was the second such launch recently. On Thursday, North Korea fired four Scud missiles from the same area. According to South Korea's Defense Ministry, the missile firing are a reaction to the annual South Korean/U.S. joint military exercises, and that they're a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban use of ballistic missile technology. According to a South Korean spokesman:
"North Korea is taking a two-faced approach, showing the reconciliatory peace gesture on the surface, while launching provocations on the other hand," the spokesman said in a briefing. "We sound a serious warning to North Korea, urging it to stop provocations. ...In light of the border trespassing and short-range missile launches, South Korean and U.S. forces have stepped up their surveillance status to closely watch the North Korean military's latest moves. We are ready to strike back if provoked."
A North Korean statement blamed the U.S.:
"The United States is stepping up military provocations, going against the tide of peace and eased tension on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. does not welcome improved inter-Korean ties and is conducting all forms of maneuvers to intensify confrontations between the two Koreas."
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea. Yonhap (Seoul)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Mar-14 World View -- Russia declares the Autonomous Republic of Crimea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Mar-2014)
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The Charge of the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Friday, Russia said that the massing of Russian troops on Ukraine's border had nothing to do with the unrest in Ukraine. But on Saturday, Russia's president demanded and got approval from Russia's parliament for those troops to invade Ukraine. (Paragraph corrected. 2-Mar)
In response, Ukraine's acting president Oleksandr Turchynov announced that he put the country's armed forces on the highest alert status, because of the threat of "potential aggression" by the Russians.
Now analysts are trying to figure out what the Russians are going to do next. Few believe that Russia will try to take control of the entire country militarily, since since after they won they'd have to deal with a nasty, continuing insurgency by ethnic Ukrainians. Some suggested that Russia might take Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Others suggested that Russia might try to force the interim government in Kiev to accept a unity government where Russia's interests would be protected.
So far, the Kiev government has refused to fall into Russia's trap. Russia is apparently trying by any means possible to provoke violence against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, so that he can order a full-scale invasion of Ukraine "to protect Russian interests." AP
Few Americans know anything about World War I except the name, and even fewer have ever heard of the Crimean War. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these wars in America's non-crisis eras, which is why they're so poorly remembered. Those two wars were generational crisis wars for Russia and Turkey, where they're VERY well remembered.
Britain fought in both of them. In The Great War (WW I), the soldiers fought bravely, but there was a strong anti-war movement. Wilfred Owen, a 24-year-old soldier, wrote "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?" in "Anthem for a Doomed Youth." The British Generals botched the war so badly that veterans described the entire war as "Lions led by Donkeys." (See "Politicians commemorate Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916" from 2006.)
The Crimea peninsula has been the site of one extremely bloody war after another for centuries. It's right on the fault line between Russia and the Orthodox Christian civilization versus Turkey and the Muslim civilization, as well as on the fault line between various ethnic groups. Here, and in the Balkans and the Caucasus, many wars were fought to the death, and the 1850s Crimean War was one of them.
Britain also fought in the Crimean war, on the side of the Turkish Ottomans, with one battle well-remembered today, the one described by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his 1855 poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade." (When I first read this poem, in school, I thought a "light brigade" was a brigade of soldiers carrying lanterns. Actually, it's a lightly armed brigade on horses, with little more than sabers to fight with.) The Light Brigade was ordered by a British General to charge their Cossack and Russian opponents, and take away their guns and cannons. But "someone had blundered," and the Russians used their guns and cannons to massacre the British soldiers:
The "Valley of Death" still exists -- it's in Balaclava, right next door to Sevastopol in Crimea, where Russian soldiers are once again massing, preparing for what may be just another chapter in a never-ending series of Crimean Wars.
By the way, modern nursing began during the Crimean War, when British nurse Florence Nightingale led a team of nurses to treat wounded soldiers in Turkey. Spark Notes and BBC
At least 29 people were killed and 130 wounded late Saturday when a mob of terrorists used long knives to attack passengers in a crowded train station in Kunming in southern China. Chinese authorities said that "evidence at the crime scene showed that the Kunming Railway Station terrorist attack was carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces."
Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs live in northwestern China in Xinjiang province, which has been a source of activist violence and separatist demands. China has responded with violent crackdowns, and attempted to flood the province with Han Chinese transplants, in a failing attempt to pacify the Uighurs by diluting their population. On October 29 of last year, Uighur terrorists conducted a deadly car crash in Beijing's central Tiananmen Square, killing 5 people and injuring dozens. Saturday's attack was apparently timed to cast a shadow over the opening on Wednesday of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress. Xinhua
A Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban - TTP) spokesman says that the TTP will observe a one-month cease-fire, in order to allow the "peace talks" with the government to resume. According to the spokesman, the senior TTP leadership have instructed all of its splinter groups to abide by the ceasefire.
The offer comes just four days after Pakistan announced that it was reversing previous "peace talk" policies. Since then it's been pounding suspected Taliban handouts, and the army is massing for a "full-fledged clearing operation" on Taliban terrorists. ( "28-Feb-14 World View -- Pakistan reverses itself, plans large-scale military attack on Taliban")
The TTP cease-fire is a standard tactic used by terrorist groups to gain time to rearm. Now the government has to decide whether to go ahead with its military plans, or to fall for the tactic. VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Mar-14 World View -- Knife-wielding mob of probable Xinjiang terrorists kill 28 in southern China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Mar-2014)
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Burma accuses Doctors without Borders of bias towards Rohingyas
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
With Russian warplanes and over 2,000 Russian troops now invading Ukraine, Ukraine's acting head of state, Oleksandr Turchynov, said:
"They're playing the Abkhazia scenario. ...I am personally addressing President Putin to stop the provocation and call back the military from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and work exclusively within the framework of the signed agreements."
The "Abkhazia scenario" refers to Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, after which Russia annexed two of Georgia's provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Indeed, Russia appears to be following exactly the same pattern that it followed prior to the Georgia invasion.
President Barack Obama made a totally meaningless televised statement late Friday afternoon:
"However, we are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine. Russia has a historic relationship with Ukraine, including cultural and economic ties, and a military facility in Crimea, but any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing, which is not in the interest of Ukraine, Russia, or Europe.It would represent a profound interference in matters that must be determined by the Ukrainian people. It would be a clear violation of Russia’s commitment to respect the independence and sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, and of international laws. And just days after the world came to Russia for the Olympic Games, it would invite the condemnation of nations around the world. And indeed, the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine."
It's fair to say that Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who is guilty of war crimes every day by shipping arms to Syria's president Bashar al-Assad who's using them for crimes against humanity against his own people, could not care less that Obama is "deeply concerned" or that Russia might be committing "a clear violation" of international laws. Putin may well also believe that he's a better judge than Obama of what is and is not "deeply destabilizing." However, President Obama didn't take the opportunity to set any more red lines. Politico
At the same time that Ukraine's acting head of state, Oleksandr Turchynov, accused Russia of "playing the Abkhazia scenario," he also alluded to a 1994 treaty:
"I also remind that the United States, Russia and Great Britain are also guarantors of the national security of Ukraine. ...Because of Verkhovna Rada's [the parliament's] and my personal appeal, the United Nations Security Council is having a session right now. The whole civilized world supports Ukraine.
We demand to stop the provocation, we demand to normalize the situation. We're sure that Ukraine will preserve its territory, Ukraine will defend its independence and any attempts of annexation, intrusion will have very serious consequences."
The reason that the United States, Russia and Great Britain are also guarantors of the national security of Ukraine is because they all signed the 1994 "Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances."
This memorandum was signed shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The breakup left a collection of Soviet nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and there was international concern about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Under the memorandum, Ukraine promised to remove all Soviet-era nuclear weapons from its territory, and send them back to Russia. In return, Russia and the Western signatory countries essentially consecrated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine as an independent state.
Turchynov's point is that this agreement is now being violated.
Here's a philosophical question: Do treaties and memoranda between nations ever mean anything? Or are they just political appliances to be discarded by one side or the other as soon as they become inconvenient? RFERL
The government of Burma (Myanmar) has ordered the humanitarian agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF - Doctors Without Borders) to cease operations, because of bias towards Rohingyas. The context is that in the last three years, large mobs of Buddhists have massacred entire neighborhoods of Muslims in various regions of the country, mutilating, raping and killing hundreds, and displacing thousands from their homes. ( "3-Oct-13 World View -- Buddhist violence against Muslims in Burma/Myanmar continues to spread")
The massacres originally targeted Muslim Rohingyas in Burma's Rakhine State in 2012, near the border with Bangladesh. There have been recurrences, most recently in January, when Buddhists are alleged to have massacred Rohingyas, killing 48. Burmese authorities have been denying that there's any problem at all, and they particularly denied that any massacre occurred in January. However, MSF confirmed that their medics had treated 22 patients near the site of the alleged attack, infuriating Burmese officials. This led to the demand that MSF cease operations, presumably so that further massacres can occur without witnesses.
Since the violence erupted in June 2012, MSF has provided care in northern Rakhine, home to more than 1 million Rohingya, and they are also present in more than a dozen camps for the displaced people elsewhere in the state. For many of the sickest patients, the organization offers the best and sometimes only care, because travelling outside the camps for treatment in local Buddhist-run hospitals can be dangerous and expensive.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these kinds of ethnic hatreds often spring up during generational Crisis eras, and they eventually lead for a massive crisis war.
Nonetheless, some analysts try to find root causes for these genocidal urges. According to one analyst, Burmese Buddhists have a "siege mentality" stemming from a scripturally unsupported but widely believed "prophecy" that Buddhism will disappear 5000 years after the Buddha’s passing. As 1956 is considered the halfway point, the belief is that Buddhism is now declining irreversibly.
In addition, the "siege mentality" is further supported among Burmese Buddhists from being surround by large, populous countries -- China, India, Bangladesh -- with a combined population of over 2.7 billion, with a large-scale influx of migrant workers from all of these countries. So between the disappearance "prophecy" and being encircled by huge foreign populations, it takes little imagination to construct a narrative where these three populous countries are scheming to swallow up the country through demographic pressure. AP and BBC and RSIS
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Mar-14 World View -- Russian troops in Ukraine raise fear of 'Abkhazia scenario' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Mar-2014)
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