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Russian troops threaten Ukraine's entire coastline
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Tens of thousands of activists in Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement are threatening an "Occupy Central" civil disobedience protest on Sunday. Threatened actions could include a boycott of university classes, wildcat street protests, strikes and a mass refusal to pay taxes.
They are objecting to China's apparent reneging on the 1997 agreement under which Hong Kong as a British colony reverted to Chinese control. The deal was known as "one country, two systems," meaning that Beijing would pursue Communism and Socialism, while Hong Kong would retain its democracy, its capitalist system, and its way of life. According to the agreement, this policy would be in effect for 50 years, until 2047.
However, now China is demanding that the schedule 2017 elections be tightly controlled. They will be "free" elections, but the only candidates who will be permitted to be run have to be approved a "nominating committee" completely controlled by Beijing. The city's population is split between the pro and anti-Beijing protesters, which could result in violence. Thousands of police are expected to be on hand on Sunday.
China says that it has "comprehensive jurisdiction" over Hong Kong, and that any attempt to implement "international standards" of democracy would only cause economic and social chaos, without bringing any benefit to the interests of the Hong Kong people. Reuters and BBC and Xinhua (Beijing)
Hundreds of people were injured in Islamabad on Saturday, as tens of thousands of supporters of political opposition leaders Imran Khan and cleric Tahirul Qadri continued the protest that began several weeks ago. ( "20-Aug-14 World View -- Pakistan's army called to quell massive anti-government protest")
The protesters began by storming Pakistan's parliament building, and then changed directions towards the house of prime minister Nawaz Sharif. At tis point, the police turned against the protesters, with the result of the worst violence in Pakistan's 67 year history.
It's suspected, though not proven, that army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif is supporting the demonstrations. The army chief has publicly taken a central role in the political crisis by offering to mediate, and the army chief is known to be furious at the prime minister for the latter's prosecution of former prime minister Pervez Musharraf for "high treason." Musharaff was an army general who became prime minister in 1999 by means of a coup that deposed and exiled the current prime minister Nawaz Sharif. After Musharaff stepped down, Sharif became prime minister again and imprisoned Musharaff, who is still under house arrest.
Saturday's riots raise concerns that Nawaz Sharif will now be forced to step down again, and the army will once again be in control of Pakistan's government, in what would essentially be an army coup. BBC and Dawn (Pakistan) and Guardian (London) and BBC
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Ukraine's army is bracing itself for an assault by Russian forces on the coastal port city of Mariupol. Russian separatist forces in Ukraine, bolstered by an invasion of thousands of Russian soldiers that have crossed the border from Russia, are established about halfway between Mariupol and the Russian border. Ukrainian forces are are reinforcing checkpoints and digging trenches in anticipation of an attack.
With thousands of Russian troops already taking part, European leaders are warning about an escalation. Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko calls it a "full-scale invasion."
Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite said, "Russia is at war against Ukraine and that is against a country which wants to be part of Europe. Russia is practically in war against Europe." European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso says that the situation "has worsened considerably," and added:
"We may see a situation where we reach the point of no return. If the escalation of the conflict continues, this point of no return can come."
However, Russia's president Vladimir Putin appeared to be mocking and threatening Europe with these comments on Friday when he said:
"Russia is far from being involved in any large-scale conflicts. We don't want that and don't plan on it. But naturally, we should always be ready to repel any aggression towards Russia.Russia's partners ... should understand it's best not to mess with us. Thank God, I think no one is thinking of unleashing a large-scale conflict with Russia. I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers."
Putin's message is simple: Russian forces have already attacked and annexed Crimea, Russian forces are preparing to launch an attack on Mariupol, and Russian forces will continue to whatever he wants them to do, and no one will stop them.
Barroso's comment about a "point of no return" is quite real. Putin is crossing one red line after another, and keeps getting away with it. But if he keeps doing that, then at some point he's going trigger what in generational theory is called a "regeneracy," a kind of panic that causes the population to put politics aside and unite, usually behind a military leader. A financial panic is similar. The panic is triggered because of a sudden fear that the society or its way of life is facing an existential threat that must be conquered.
This kind of panic could not have happened during the 1980s or 1990s, because survivors of World War II were still running the world, and when survivors of the previous generational crisis war are still in charge, then the society is resilient to this panic. But as the WW II survivors disappear, the society becomes less resilient, and the right kind of event can trigger a panic and a war. That will be the "point of no return" that Barroso is referring to.
I used to think that it would be China or the Mideast that would trigger the next world war. But as Putin crosses one red line after another in Ukraine and Syria as the world goes deeper into a generational Crisis era, it may well be that Putin is the one that history will blame for starting World War III. CNN and BBC and Reuters
Thousands of college students from West Africa, especially the countries of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, where the Ebola pandemic is out of control in some areas, may be subjected to screening for Ebola when they arrive at their colleges in the next couple of weeks. The odds any arriving students having Ebola, or of infecting anyone else, are almost nonexistent, but the screening process is considered a necessary precaution. "Parents are comforted to know that there is a screening process, that we are alert for it, that we are prepared for it," according to one college official. AP and Boston Public Health Commission (PDF)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Aug-14 World View -- Coup possible in Pakistan after night of violence thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Aug-2014)
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UK raises terror threat level, citing British citizen terrorists
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Saying that approximately 500 British citizens have traveled to fight in Syria, 200 of which have already returned home, Britain's prime minister David Cameron announced that the UK was increasing its terror threat level to "severe," meaning that a terror attack is "highly likely," but not necessarily imminent.
The announcement may have been triggered by a recent online video that depicted the gruesome beheading of American journalist James Foley. The video was posted by the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS), and the person carrying out the gruesome beheading is a jihadist speaking with a British accent. Cameron said Britons were "shocked and sickened" by the idea that Foley may have been killed by someone who is British. LA Times and Daily Mail (London)
In a recent video posted by the al-Qaeda linked Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab, and English speaker asks Muslims living in the West to give up their comfortable lives and join the jihad:
"Those who are living in the U.S., especially Minnesota, Great Britain, Germany, and many parts of the kufr [unbelief] world – you have a decision to make today. This decision [is] a decision that makes you successful in this dunya [life] and the hereafter, a decision that will have a great effect on your children and your grandchildren. This decision is hijra [emigration] fi sabilillah [for Allah's sake] to the lands of Muslims, such as Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many places in the Muslim world.If you chose to not make this decision and not answer the call of Allah, know that there is clear evidence against you in the Day of Judgment, in the court of Allah the Exalted. For what are you still living in dar al-kufr [abode of unbelief] for? Is it the schools, the jobs, and the nice settlements you have? ... Know that this was only temporary and the hereafter is internal [sic. eternal]. So save your own souls from the great punishment of Allah the Exalted and make hijra fi sabilillah."
The al-Shabaab video was probably triggered by the announcement of the death of an American named Douglas McArthur McCain in Syria, while fighting for ISIS. He was one of a number of jihadists who were recruited from Minnesota, which has the country's largest community of Somalis. The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis is sometimes called "Little Mogadishu."
The first wave of Somali refugees came to America in 1991 and were relocated to Minneapolis, where there was a need for workers. The refugees were so successful that their relatives soon followed, and today there are 40-80 thousand Somalis living in the region, including many that were born there and are American citizens.
Al-Shabaab received increased international attention and prominence last year as a result of the horrific three-day terror attack on the Westlake Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. It's recognized that the attack was extremely well-planned and executed, indicating a degree of high sophistication that was previously not recognized in al-Shabaab. Furthermore, two of the Westlake Mall terrorists were American citizens, from "Little Mogadishu" in Minneapolis. (See "23-Sep-13 World View -- Minnesota link to Kenya shopping mall attack raises U.S. fears") A number of Somalis are known to have gone to Somalia for terrorist training, and returned to the United States, where they can enter freely because they're American citizens. As a precaution, the Mall of America in Minnesota, the largest Mall in the United States, capable of holding almost 10,000 people, has been holding "lockdown drills" since 2009. Memri and CBS News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Aug-14 World View -- Al-Shabaab wants jihadists from UK, Germany and Minnesota thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Aug-2014)
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Canada's Nato delegation provides geography lesson to Russia
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Troops, tanks and weapons from Russia's army are pouring into Ukraine in support of anti-government militias in a new war front in the country's southeast. The initial Russian invasion conquered and annexed the peninsula of Crimea, which is insulated and extends south into the Black Sea. The annexation of Crimea has caused Russia economic problems, because there's no easy way to send supplies to Crimea. The apparent purpose of the new war front is apparently to annex addition Ukrainian sovereign territory in order to have control of a land bridge from Russia to Crimea. Having gone through many months of lies and evasions by Russian politicians and trolls, we can assume it's unlikely that Russia stop there.
Ukrainian anti-government militia leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko admits that there are 3-4,000 Russian citizens, including many soldiers, that have joined his militias in Ukraine. However, it's OK because they're "volunteers," according to Zakharchenko "There is no secret that among the volunteers from Russia there are many military men. They are fighting together with us because they understand that it’s their duty."
This is kind of nonsense that we're hearing from the Russian politicians, diplomats and trolls. It's as if a few thousand American soldiers drove columns of tanks and armored vehicles 50 miles south into Mexico and started killing people, but the Pentagon said, "It's OK. We didn't send them -- they're just volunteers."
According to Nato's Brigadier General Niko Tak:
"Over the past two weeks we have noted a significant escalation in both the level and sophistication of Russia's military interference in Ukraine. The satellite images released today provide additional evidence that Russian combat soldiers, equipped with sophisticated heavy weaponry, are operating inside Ukraine's sovereign territory.These latest images provide concrete examples of Russian activity inside Ukraine, but are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the overall scope of Russian troop and weapons movements.
We have also detected large quantities of advanced weapons, including air defense systems, artillery, tanks, and armored personnel carriers being transferred to separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine. The presence of these weapons along with substantial numbers of Russian combat troops inside Ukraine make the situation increasingly grave."
Ukraine's government is calling it a "full-scale invasion," but Nato and the U.S. are calling it an "incursion," since calling it an "invasion" would imply a state of war.
In a press conference, President Barack Obama said:
"I just spoke with Chancellor Merkel of Germany on the situation in Ukraine. We agree, if there was ever any doubt, that Russia is responsible for the violence in eastern Ukraine. The violence is encouraged by Russia. The separatists are trained by Russia. They are armed by Russia. They are funded by Russia.Russia has deliberately and repeatedly violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. And the new images of Russian forces inside Ukraine make that plain for the world to see. ...
I consider the actions that we've seen in the last week a continuation of what's been taking place for months now. As I said in my opening statement, there is no doubt that this is not a homegrown, indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine. The separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia.
Throughout this process, we've seen deep Russian involvement in everything that they've done. I think in part because of the progress that you had seen by the Ukrainians around Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia determined that it had to be a little more overt in what it had already been doing, but it's not really a shift."
BBC and Russia Today and Nato and Washington Post
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Ukraine's security service arrested 10 Russian soldiers who had crossed the border and were about 20 miles into Ukraine. Russian politicians, trolls and diplomats have been claiming that the Russian soldiers had crossed the border into Ukraine "by accident."
Canada's Nato delegation felt bad for the Russians, and wanted to help them out, as kind of an educational thing. To help the Russians, they tweeted:
"Geography can be tough. Here’s a guide for Russian soldiers who keep getting lost & 'accidentally' entering."
and provided the helpful map shown above. Business Insider
The sister of 2013 Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested in New York City on Wednesday, for threatening to blow up her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. Ailina Tsarnaeva alleged phoned the ex-girlfriend and said, "Leave us alone. I know people who can put a bomb on you." The ex-girlfriend called police.
Nothing about ideology here. Just female hormones. New York Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Aug-14 World View -- Russia widens its invasion of Ukraine thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Aug-2014)
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United Nations accuses Syria of continuing use of chemical weapons
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The number of migrants leaving Africa on unsafe smugglers' boats hoping to reach Europe has been surging this year. This year, 110,000 people have been rescued from drowning on the unsafe trip, hoping to reach the southern tip of Sicily. That figure is up from 42,000 in all of 2013. Some 1900 others have died this year during the perilous crossing. The numbers have surged this year because of the unrest in Syria and Libya. Last weekend, an Italian navy patrol boat found 73 migrants on board a rubber dinghy, along with 18 dead bodies.
There were two tragic shipwrecks last October in which more than 400 Eritrean, Somali and Syrian migrants drowned. ( "16-Oct-13 World View -- Sicily declares state of emergency as African migrants flood in")
After that, Italy began spending $13 million dollars per month on a program called "Mare Nostrum" to rescue drowning migrants trying to reach Sicily. The Italian program has had the undesirable consequence of motivating more migrants to risk making the trip, since they have a good chance of being rescued by the Italians in case of mishap.
In fact, critics are complaining that Italy's rescue program is making the problem worse. These are presumably no the same critics who, last October, were condemning Italy for doing nothing to keep migrants from drowning.
Italy has been demanding that the EU do more to help out, since most of the migrants want to settle in northern Europe, not in Italy. Unsurprisingly, northern European countries are not rushing to spend their own money on illegal migrants, since they can just leave Italy stuck with the entire bill, and because paying to save drowning migrants is politically unpopular.
Still, the European Commission agreed Wednesday to expand its Frontex border agency into a program called "Frontex Plus," which will take some of the load from Italy. EU member states will be encouraged to contribute planes, ships and personnel to the program, scheduled for launch in November. Euro News and AP and Daily Mail (London)
A new report by the U.N. Human Rights Council's independent commission of inquiry on Syria accuses the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of chemical weapons.
Both Syria's government and the opposing unnamed "non-state armed groups," presumably referring to the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS), or one of its predecessors, of massacres and war crimes.
However, the U.N. report singles out the al-Assad regime for the continuing use of chemical weapons:
"Government forces continued to perpetrate massacres and conduct widespread attacks on civilians, systematically committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance amounting to crimes against humanity. Government forces have committed gross violations of human rights and the war crimes of murder, hostage-taking, torture, rape and sexual violence, recruiting and using children in hostilities and targeting civilians.Government forces disregarded the special protection accorded to hospitals and medical and humanitarian personnel. Indiscriminate and disproportionate aerial bombardment and shelling led to mass civilian casualties and spread terror. Government forces used chlorine gas, an illegal weapon. ...
116. Witnesses saw helicopters drop barrel bombs and smelled a scent akin to domestic chlorine immediately following impact. Accounts of victims, and of medical personnel involved in administering treatment, provide descriptions of symptoms compatible with exposure to chemical agents, namely vomiting, eye a nd skin irritation, choking and other respiratory problems.
117. Chlorine gas is a chemical weapon as defined in the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction, of 1992. The use of chemical weapons is prohibited in all circumstances under customary international humanitarian law and is a w ar crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court."
As we've pointed out in the past, the policy of Russia's president Vladimir Putin to continue to provide masses of heavy weapons for the al-Assad regime to use against innocent civilians makes Vladimir Putin a war criminal as well.
Bashar al-Assad is a genocidal monster, the Adolf Hitler of the present day, though on a smaller scale. Al-Assad's actions, starting in 2011 against innocent protesters, including women and children, has turned Syria into a global "jihadist magnet," and has led to the creation of ISIS. If ISIS is now a danger to the al-Assad regime, then al-Assad has no one to blame but himself, although the rest of us have to suffer as well.
Nonetheless, with the U.S. now planning to target ISIS in Syria, al-Assad is now our good buddy and ally of the United States, in the fight against ISIS. U.N. report and Full Report PDF
Forces from the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) militias in southern Syria apparently overran Syrian regime forces and took control of the town of Quneitra, on the border with the Golan Heights, as well as the Quneitra border crossing into Israel. Mortar shells, apparently fired by al-Nusra, landed in Israeli territory, wounding one Israeli and damaging several vehicles.
Al-Nusra began as a rebel militia fighting against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, and later joined al-Qaeda. It's frequently fought against ISIS to gain territory, as often as it's fought the al-Assad regime. What appears to be happening is that the al-Nusra is gaining ground in southeastern Syria, defeating both ISIS and the Syrian regime.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) responded to the cross-border fire with artillery fire of its own. However, Israel has no intention to get involved in fighting over Quneitra, according to Yaakov Amidror, former head of Israelis National Security Council. According to Amidror, Israel will not get involved unless one of three red lines is crossed:
According to Amidror, "From our point of view there is a very clear red line, and this is the border. We should not interfere on the other side of the border to save [either] one of the two sides." Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Aug-14 World View -- Europe tries to deal with increasing flood of migrants from Africa thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Aug-2014)
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Egypt denies militarily intervening in Libya
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There are currently 75 hotels in Turkey, up from 5 in 2002, deliberately identifying themselves as "Islamic hotels" for "halal vacations." Demand for such hotels is soaring, and Muslims from around the world are coming to Turkey as the most Islamic-friendly destination in Europe.
These hotels strictly forbid alcohol and pork, and serve only halal (Islamic) meals. Families can have meals together, but the hotels emphasize segregation of men and women. Women have separate beaches, separate pools, and separate prayer rooms. According to one woman, "You don't have to worry about people taking photographs of you and ending up on Facebook or wherever. So you can be completely relaxed."
The halal tourism sector was worth 103 billion euros in 2013, representing around 13 percent of global travel expenditures. Zaman (Istanbul) and BBC
There are massive celebrations on the streets of Gaza on Tuesday, as leaders of Hamas declared "victory" over Israel in the recent war, claiming that Israel was forced to agree to a ceasefire since Hamas rockets could strike anywhere in Israel, and could force Israel's airport in Tel Aviv to shut down.
A number of Israeli politicians agreed, in that Hamas has not been demilitarized, which was supposedly Israel's major objective in the war. According to MK Eli Yishai:
"This will be time for Hamas to resupply itself with weaponry to use against Israel. Not demilitarizing Gaza will bring Israel to another round of fighting that will be even worse."
The terms of the cease-fire agreement are as follows:
One commentator on BBC pointed out that anyone in Gaza can build a rocket in his basement and launch it towards Israel, bringing retaliation from Israel.
Something that both sides insisted from the start of the war was that there would be no return to the status quo ante, and yet that's pretty much what has happened. Israel's concessions are largely largely symbolic, and can easily be reversed at any time, at the first sign of a terrorist act in Egypt's Sinai or in the West Bank. And Gaza can launch a new barrage of rockets at any time.
From the point of view of international geopolitics, Israel has been the target of an enormous amount of hostility because of the thousands of deaths in the Gaza Strip.
However, Hamas has also suffered internationally because of the rise of the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS), and the comparison of Hamas to ISIS. Last week, Hamas publicly beheaded several Palestinians who were alleged to be "collaborators" with Israel, which is exactly the kind of atrocity that ISIS has been conducting. And Hamas is committed to wiping out Israel in the same way that ISIS is committed to exterminating Yazidis and Christians in Iraq.
Politically, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost popularity as it's become clear that Israel was not meeting its objectives in the Gaza war, and may not even have had any clear objectives in the first place. Hamas was becoming very unpopular before the war began, but has become much more popular as a result of the war. They may lose those gains as soon as people realize that the Gaza war ended, with massive losses to the people and infrastructure of Gaza, but nothing has really changed.
Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major war between Arabs and Jews, re-fighting the genocidal war between Jews and Arabs that followed the 1948 partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Jerusalem Post and AP and Reuters
Egypt is vehemently denying that Egypt intervened militarily in Libya. The denial follows reports Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were responsible for the mysterious warplanes that bombed Islamist militias in Libya last week. According to Egypt's foreign ministry:
"What is being circulated in the media regarding military intervention in Libya are rumors. [Egypt supports] Libyan legitimacy and the needs and training of the Libyan armed forces."
However, this very carefully worded statement actually does not contradict the reports, which stated that UAE warplanes bombed Libya, while Egypt provided the airports and landing facilities that made the bombings possible.
UAE's aggressive behavior has been a big surprise to many outside the region. In fact, the UAE has emerged as the most assertive of the Arab Gulf monarchies, without the reticence of Saudi Arabia.
In some ways, the conflict in Libya is becoming a proxy war between UAE and Qatar. In 2011, both UAE and Qatar backed militias that opposed Muammar Gaddafi, but the two countries backed different militias. The UAE supported the more secular militias, especially the ones in Zintan in western Libya. Qatar, on the other hand, supported the Islamist brigades, especially in Misrata. These militias were all united against Gaddafi in 2011, but today they're fighting each other, and the UAE and Qatar are respectively supporting the same ones they supported in 2011. Al-Ahram (Cairo) and The Hindu
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Aug-14 World View -- Israel and Hamas agree to 'long-term' truce in Gaza war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Aug-2014)
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Frightened Syrian leadership asks for American help with ISIS
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we reported last week, warplanes bombed militia bases in Tripoli, the capital city of Libya, in the early morning hours of last Monday. The problem was that nobody knew whose warplanes they were, since Libyan warplanes don't have the sophisticated night vision or laser-guided technologies necessary to carry these precisions night-time strikes. The mystery deepened on Saturday, when the warplane strikes were repeated.
Now the mystery has been solved. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates secretly teamed to launch airstrikes against Islamist militias, led by ultraconservative Islamist Salah Badi, from the coastal city of Misrata. They're opposed by secular militias, former supporters of Muammar Gaddafi, mainly from the town of Zintan and led by former renegade colonel Khalifa Hifter.
The war in Libya is between militias along a major growing fault line that was exposed by the Gaza war of Israel versus Hamas. Hamas and the Islamists, including the Islamists in Libya and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, are aligned with Turkey and Qatar. The secularists, including the Libyan secularists and president Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, are on the other side of this fault line, aligned with UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Qatar and UAE have been supplying weapons to the opposing sides, the Islamists and secularists, respectively, in Libya, making it something of a proxy war. The warplane strikes used the UAE air force, considered to be one of the most sophisticated in the region, with logistics support from Egypt. However, the direct involvement of UAE and Egypt is a major escalation in the Libyan war because it changes it from a proxy war to a direct war. National Post/NYT and Gulf News
From the point of view of politics, the most important paragraph was the following, reported by the New York Times:
"The United States, the officials said, was caught by surprise: Egypt and the Emirates [UAE], both close allies and military partners, acted without informing Washington or seeking its consent, leaving the Obama administration on the sidelines. Egyptian officials explicitly denied the operation to U.S. diplomats, the officials said."
Even a few weeks ago, anyone bombing Libya would have coordinated with or at least notified the United States. But the bumbling, farcical foreign policy of President Barack Obama and his clownish Secretary of State John Kerry has made the Obama administration untrustworthy and irrelevant.
Probably the last straw for anyone occurred during the early days of Gaza war. Kerry went to a "peace conference" in Geneva, where he met with Hamas's allies, Qatar and Turkey, and drew up a "peace proposal" which was no more than a list of Hamas's demands. He then sent this proposal for comment to Israel and Egypt, who found it absolutely appalling.
This comes after years of overt hostility to Israel and to the secularists in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and overt friendliness to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, including veiled support for Hamas. The first major step in that direction, from the view of the Mideast, was throwing Egypt's long-time leader and ally Hosni Mubarak under the bus in 2011, particularly infuriating the Saudis, who simply do not trust Obama on any issue any more. The New York Times referred to Egypt and the UAE as "close allies and military partners," but that's wishful thinking.
There's been a lot of talk recently that President Obama seems "detached," plays golf all the time, doesn't enjoy his job, doesn't like governing. This is not surprising.
I'm going to retell something I've mentioned several times. When Obama was campaigning in 2008, he said a number of things that were truly crazy, the most famous of which was that when he was elected the earth would heal and the tides would recede. I thought statements like that were amusing, because they were the sorts of ridiculous empty promises that any politician would make during a campaign.
But I remember how truly shocked I was, after the election, when he kept saying the same things. It was then that I realized that he actually believed what he'd been promising, and I said to myself that he and the nation were in trouble.
It's hard to overestimate how disastrous Obama's experience has been to him personally. After 20 years of listening to Reverend Jeremiah Wright scream, "God Damn America! God Damn America! God Damn America!", Obama really believed that America was the source of all evil in the world, and that he could heal the world by apologizing and making things right. He also expected to become a national hero by implementing universal health care. According to some reports, he was expecting, as late as a few days before the Obamacare launch in 2013, that he would be hearing calls for him to run for a third term.
What has happened goes well beyond an ideological failure. This is a disastrous personal failure for the president. Obamacare has been a disaster, with the worst yet to come, and he knows it. Every foreign policy initiative has been a disaster or near-disaster, as the Libyan situation shows. And now, the worst disaster of all: Obama is being dragged back into the war in Iraq.
It's not surprising that he spends as much time as he can on the golf course, and openly couldn't care less what people think of his doing so. He's governing in a world that's completely foreign to him, where everything he's ever believed is turning out to be completely wrong and upside down. It's hard to identify a single policy area where Obama was not "wrong." So it's not surprising that he's "detaching" himself from his job. The golf course is the only place that makes sense, where he can escape from the intense depression and confusion that he must be suffering.
I recall that president George W. Bush said that prior to 9/11 he had no idea what he was going to do as president, and he was confused about how he was supposed to lead the nation. But after 9/11, he suddenly knew why God had made him president. He was going to lead the nation through this time of peril. His confusion had turned to certainty, and pursuit of a clear direction.
President Obama has gone through the opposite experience. He became president knowing exactly what he had to do and how he would do it. But every policy has turned back to indirection and confusion. Obama still has two and one-half years as president, and so far he's doubled down on many bad decisions that he's made. If he keeps doing so, he's going to make things a lot worse, for himself and the nation. National Post/NYT and Salon
The Ebola virus has been confirmed in two patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, this is a completely different strain from the Ebola virus that's out of control in West Africa, as if it were a completely different disease. Ebola was first identified in DRC near the Ebola river in 1976, and this has been the seventh outbreak since then. DRC has gained a lot of experience in dealing with Ebola during the last six outbreaks, and it's not expected that the DRC outbreak will spiral out of control. Guardian (London)
This story would be hilarious, if it weren't for the number of people who are being tortured or killed.
The forces of the regime of Syria's genocidal monster president Bashar al-Assad are losing ground to the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS), and they're asking for help from us, of all people. They want us to bomb ISIS targets in Syria, just as we've bombed ISIS targets in Iraq -- but only if we ask the al-Assad regime's permission for each target. You have my permission, Dear Reader, to enjoy a little bit of Schadenfreude. But only a little bit, because there are people being tortured and killed, many by the genocidal monster Bashar al-Assad, who's actions are responsible for the rise of ISIS. AFP
Some 480 Nigerian soldiers crossed the border into Cameroon after fierce fighting with Boko Haram militants.
The Nigerian government and army have been under extremely heavy criticism since April, when Boko Haram abducted over 200 schoolgirls, and the government and army seemed paralyzed for weeks, doing nothing about it. The girls have still not been recovered.
There have been numerous reports and rumors of Nigerian troops either supporting Boko Haram or afraid to engage Boko Haram. There have been reports that the Boko Haram militants are better equipped than Nigerian army troops.
So this time, the Nigerian government says that the 480 Nigerian soldiers were not just fleeing, but were engaging in a "tactical maneuver." The Nigerian defense ministry said that the soldiers were "charging through the borders [of Cameroon] in a tactical maneuver" after a sustained battle. Whether that explanation will be believed remains to be seen. BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Aug-14 World View -- Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE) enter the war in Libya thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Aug-2014)
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Violence flares on India/Pakistan border in Kashmir
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Two Indian soldiers and four militants were killed on Saturday, when terrorists from the Pakistan side of the Line of Control (LoC) in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) crossed the border into the Indian side and opened fire on India's Border Security Force (BSF).
India is blaming Pakistan for the incident, and claiming that Pakistani forces started firing across the border at Indian border posts, in order to provide cover so that the militants could sneak across the border.
Jammu and Kashmir were the epicenter of the 1947 war between Hindus and Muslims that followed Partition, the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into Pakistan and India, one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century. Since then, there have been frequent battles and skirmishes along the Line of Control separating the region of J&K governed by Pakistan from the region governed by India.
Terrorist activity reached a peak in the 1990s when the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) fought a full-scale jihad against India in J&K. LeT was funded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, before the Pakistan government banned LeT in 2002. However, LeT was still responsible for the horrific '11/26' three-day, 60 hour terrorist attack in Mumbai in November, 2008. That attack almost led to war between India and Pakistan, as India threatened to send its army to pursue LeT on Pakistani soil. War was avoided only by hard on-site negotiations by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. LeT continues to operate in J&K, and India believes that Pakistan's ISI continues to fund and support its activities.
Violence in J&K has been reduced in recent years, but it's feared that tensions are rising again, with the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister. Hindustan Times and BBC and Dawn (Pakistan)
Tensions and unrest have increased in J&K since the election of self-described Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi in May as prime minister. ( "24-Aug-14 World View -- Narendra Modi and rise of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) in India")
Modi has called for the repeal of "Article 370" in India's constitution, which guarantees a special status for J&K, and gives the province self-governance in many areas, but excluding defense and foreign affairs. Article 370 was part of the agreement in 1947 that allowed India to control its part of J&K. Proponents of the repeal say that citizens of J&K should have exactly the same rights and obligations as every other citizen of India, while opponents say that if J&K loses its self-governance, then it will cause anti-government demonstrations.
The India and Pakistan governments have held regular talks on the J&K problem, with a view to reducing the amount of violence. These talks were always pretty tense, but Modi canceled them completely last week, when a Pakistani government official traveled to Kashmir to meet with the leaders of Hurriyet Conference, an activist group promoting the separation of J&K from India. According to Hurriyet leaders, the people of J&K should have the right to self-determination, and Pakistan is the only country that fully supports their cause.
Generational Dynamics predicts that Hindus and Muslims will re-fight the bloody war that followed Partition in 1947, and that Jammu and Kashmir will once again be a flash point. Kashmir Media and Times of India and Dawn (Pakistan)
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), headquartered in Yemen, has issued a statement of support for the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS):
"We announce solidarity with our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the crusade. Their blood and injuries are ours and we will surely support them. We assert to the Islamic Nation [all Muslims worldwide] that we stand by the side of our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the American and Iranian conspiracy and their agents of the apostate Gulf rulers."
A union between ISIS and AQAP has been feared by analysts, because it would make the highly sophisticated bomb-making capabilities of AQAP available to ISIS, and to the thousands of young European and American men with clean passports who have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS.
The AQAP statement provides some hard-learned lessons to the ISIS terrorists:
"Based on our experience with drones, we advise our brothers in Iraq to be cautious about spies among them because they are a key factor in setting goals; be cautious about dealing with cell phones and internet networks; do not gather in large numbers or move in large convoys; spread in farms or hide under trees in the case of loud humming of warplanes; and dig sophisticated trenches because they reduce the impact of shelling."
However, this expression of brotherly love may run into serious political difficulties. AQAP is, as the name implies, a branch of al-Qaeda, and in fact is the leading branch of al-Qaeda these days. But ISIS is NOT a branch of al-Qaeda, and has severed connections with al-Qaeda. This has split the AQAP leadership in Yemen between those who support and those who oppose a liaison with ISIS. However, even with no formal relationship, there is already evidence that the two groups are sharing advice and providing training to each other. Yemen Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Aug-14 World View -- AQAP announces support for ISIS thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Aug-2014)
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Philippines to defy China by offering South China Sea sightseeing cruise tours
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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What was Russia's president Vladimir Putin really up to? His massive 227-truck "humanitarian aid convoy" crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine on Friday, without Ukraine's permission, and traveled to the anti-Ukraine separatist stronghold of Luhansk. Then the big white trucks left on Saturday, traveling back across the border to Russia.
Putin says that it was just humanitarian aid. Westerners point out that only 35 of the 227 trucks were inspected, and some of the rest may have been military supplies for the anti-Ukraine militias.
No one knows for sure, but Nina Khrushcheva, the granddaughter of 1960s Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, and associate professor of international affairs at the New School, was interviewed on al-Jazeera and said that it was a public relations coup for Putin. Here are some excerpts (my transcription):
"We don't know if [military equipment] was moved this time or some other time, because it's been documented that military equipment has been moving back and forth. So it may not be the case this time around, and military equipment is probably not associated with this convoy.Because I do believe that the white trucks are going to be white trucks, exactly what Putin says they're intended for -- humanitarian aid. This is public relations campaign. He'll say he's helping the Ukrainians, those who are in humanitarian distress, while [Ukrainian president Petro] Poroshenko is shelling his own citizens, and actually causing the humanitarian disaster, according to Putin. That's the narrative -- he'll say 'the West is out to get us,' which is what he always says in response to every accusation."
Ukrainian forces have been gaining ground on the anti-Ukrainian separatist militias. According to Khrushcheva, even if the convoy contained nothing but humanitarian aid, it still had a political value: "Even if the convoy was just humanitarian aid, the fighting will have to stop, there will be a ceasefire, so the separatists, the rebels, will have time to regroup." BBC and Reuters and Ria Novosti
The South China Sea saga is taking a bizarre twist.
China has been pursuing a "salami slicing strategy" to annex South China Sea territories belonging to other countries. China has annexed several islands and shoals in the South China Sea belonging to Vietnam and the Philippines, and is threatening to annex other territories belonging to Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan.
The chief of staff of the Philippines Armed Forces is planning to offer a sightseeing cruise service that will take tourists right through the islets, shoals and fishing grounds that China is annexing.
China is already offering a sightseeing cruise that takes tourists around the islands that China is annexing. However, China's military is opposing the Philippines' cruise service, saying that it would violate Chinese sovereignty and may trigger conflict. The Diplomat and Want China Times (Taiwan)
The recent election of Narendra Modi, a self-described Hindu nationalist, as India's prime minister is giving rise to controversies about Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. The most recently controversy was sparked last week by Mohan Bhagwat, head of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist activist group, supporting Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), when Bhagwat said:
"Hindutva is the identity of our nation.Hindustan is a country of Hindus.
The entire world recognizes Indians as Hindus, therefore India is a Hindu state. The cultural identity of all Indians is Hindutva and the present inhabitants of the country are descendants of this great culture."
He added that the world has now realized that Hindutva has been the only basis to keep India united since ancient days despite having plenty of diversities.
Modi's political opponents are furious. According to Digvijaya Singh of the opposition Congress Party,
"I thought we had one Hitler in [the] making but it seems now we have Two! God save India! ...A question to Mohan Bhagwat - Is Hindutva a religious identity? What is its relationship with Sanatan Dharma? Is a person who believes in Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism or any other religion also a Hindu? Would Mohan Bhagwat please clarify?"
While Modi hasn't publicly supported Bhagwat's endorsement of an all-Hindutva India, he hasn't disagreed with it either. Hindu nationalism is controversial in India because opponents associate it with "Hindutva violence," originally targeting British colonizers, but recently targeting Muslims. Modi himself became associated with Hindutva violence in 2002, when he appeared to be complicit in violence against Muslims. Hostility between the Hindu and Muslim populations has been a growing trend since the 1970s, and Modi has become extremely popular, either despite or because of his Hindutva connection.
While campaigning for the election several months ago, Modi made several statements targeting immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants. He particularly said:
"I want to warn from here, brothers and sisters write down, that after May 16, I will send these Bangladeshis [immigrants] beyond the border with their bags and baggages."
Modi was elected on May 16, but did not repeat his threats against the Bangladeshis. The Hindu and New Delhi TV and The Hindu
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Aug-14 World View -- Narendra Modi and rise of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) in India thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Aug-2014)
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In major escalation, Russia moves trucks, troops, artillery into Ukraine
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The Obama administration is launching a protest to China, after a Chinese fighter plane made three passes dangerously near a U.S. surveillance plane in international waters.
The incident is reminiscent of an April 2001 encounter, when a Chinese F-8 interceptor crashed into a U.S. surveillance aircraft off the southern China coast. The Chinese aircraft crashed into the sea, and its crew was killed. The U.S. plane made an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island, and its 24 crew members were imprisoned for 10 days.
In the current incident, a Chinese J-11 fighter jet, a version of the Russian SU-27, made three passes dangerously near the U.S. plane, and zoomed directly in front of the Navy plane at a 90-degree angle to reveal its belly, which was packed with weaponry, according to a Pentagon spokesman. At one point the Chinese warplane flew alongside the Navy aircraft, putting their wingtips as close as 30 feet apart. The encounter ended with the Chinese pilot doing a barrel roll over the top of the U.S. plane. Stars and Stripes and Washington Free Beacon
Politicians in Washington are scrambling to explain why they didn't foresee the rise of the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS). Apparently the White House talking points are that when President Obama referred in January to ISIS as "a JV [junior varsity] team," it's because no one could foresee what would happen in the eight months since then.
In 2011, when Syria's Alawite/Shia president Bashar al-Assad started exterminating innocent Sunni women and children, it was obvious to me and everyone that something was going to happen. As time went on, al-Assad turned Syria into a global "jihadist magnet," drawing jihadists and would-be jihadists from around the world. I wrote about that constantly, and how dangerous it was. No matter how obvious, Washington is filled with highly paid analysts and experts and politicians who apparently were incapable of seeing that coming.
Navi Pillay, the U.N.'s High commissioner for human rights, says that it was pretty obvious to her as well. On Friday, she strongly criticized the Security Council for allowing the situation in Syria to "metastasize" out of control:
"Short term geopolitical considerations and national interests, narrowly defined, have repeatedly taken precedence over intolerable human suffering and grave breaches of and long term threats to international peace and security. I firmly believe that greater responsiveness by this council would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. ...[Syria's conflict] is metastasizing outwards in an uncontrollable process whose eventual limits we cannot predict."
This remark was clearly intended to condemn Russia, not only for vetoing any attempt to even criticize al-Assad for trying to exterminate Sunnis, but even to provide a continuing supply of heavy weapons so that he can do the job more thoroughly. She stated the consequences of the Security Council's inaction, and she used a phrase that's worth remembering: Syria's conflict "is metastasizing outwards in an uncontrollable process whose eventual limits we cannot predict."
So now panic is setting in the White House -- panic that they're going to be blamed for doing nothing. The White House said on Friday that the U.S. would do "whatever it takes" to stop ISIS. They were talking about using air strikes to defeat ISIS, as they've been doing in Iraq for several weeks. But every analyst I heard said that ISIS would never be defeated with air power alone, and ISIS would never be defeated unless it were attacked in Syria, as well as Iraq.
So the White House sees itself being dragged back into an Iraq war, but this time involving Syria as well. The White House sees this as politically damaging to them.
The White House refused to exclude air strikes in Syria as well, raising the possibility of partnering up with the genocidal monster Bashar al-Assad to fight ISIS. Several analysts have pointed out that the Syrian regime has very sophisticated anti-aircraft capabilities, and there's a real risk that an American warplane would be shot down.
The larger picture is that in this generational Crisis era, there's a kind of "ping-pong escalation" going on. Each entity does something to raise the stakes, and then the other side has to go even farther. The is the "regeneracy" process described by generational theory. There is no realistic scenario that I'm aware of that would defeat ISIS without a full-scale war in Iraq and Syria. "Whatever it takes" is going to be a very great deal indeed.
The same kind of ping-pong escalation is going on in the Gaza war. Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that Hamas "would pay a heavy price" for the death of a four year old Israeli boy on Thursday, killed by a Hamas rocket from Gaza. An Israeli air strike on Thursday killed three top Hamas military advisers. Hamas promised revenge, even against its own people -- Hamas killed 18 Palestinian "collaborators" in Gaza.
There's little doubt where all this is going -- full-scale war in the Mideast. What a lot of politicians are worried about today is who is going to get the blame. Guardian (London)
Nato is reporting that Russian troops have moved artillery across the border into eastern Ukraine and are firing on the Ukrainian military from inside Ukraine's borders. This is a major escalation by Russia, and threatens a larger war between Ukraine and Russia. It's been known for some time that Russia has been surreptitiously supplying to the pro-Russian separatist militias heavy weapons, including the surface-to-air missiles that the separatists used to shoot down the Malaysian Airlines flight 17 passenger plane.
At the same time, Russia's massive 280-truck "humanitarian convoy" moved across the border from Russia into Ukraine, without the permission of the Ukraine government. The convoy was supposed to be coordinated with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who would take responsibility for overseeing the distribution of aid, but the convoy no longer has any connection with the ICRC. Ukraine's government is calling this a "direct invasion."
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued the strongest condemnation yet of Russia's actions:
"I condemn the entry of a Russian so-called humanitarian convoy into Ukrainian territory without the consent of the Ukrainian authorities and without any involvement of the International Committee of the Red Cross. This is a blatant breach of Russia’s international commitments, including those made recently in Berlin and Geneva, and a further violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty by Russia. It can only deepen the crisis in the region, which Russia itself has created and has continued to fuel. The disregard of international humanitarian principles raises further questions about whether the true purpose of the aid convoy is to support civilians or to resupply armed separatists.These developments are even more worrying as they coincide with a major escalation in Russian military involvement in Eastern Ukraine since mid-August, including the use of Russian forces. In addition, Russian artillery support – both cross-border and from within Ukraine – is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces. We have also seen transfers of large quantities of advanced weapons, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery to separatist groups in Eastern Ukraine. Moreover, NATO is observing an alarming build-up of Russian ground and air forces in the vicinity of Ukraine."
Rassmussen added that, "Instead of de-escalating the situation, Russia continues to escalate it."
Russia responded in the U.N. Security Council by criticizing Lithuania, a temporary member. for having requested an emergency meeting to discuss Ukraine, and for systematically opposing Russian initiatives. According to Russia's U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin:
"At times it seems there is no clear chain of command in Kiev, because some assurances are given (to Russia) at a very high level and then others do not give the orders which are required ... by the border police to let the (aid) trucks in. That game could not continue indefinitely.""We waited long enough and it was time to move," he added. "And this is what we did."
Washinton Post and Nato News and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Aug-14 World View -- Who's to blame for the rise of ISIS? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Aug-2014)
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Tunisia and Egypt cancel passenger flights to Libya
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The current Gaza war was triggered by events following the abduction of three Israeli teenagers on June 10. They were the subject of an extensive manhunt throughout the West Bank, during which hundreds of Palestinians, mostly members of Hamas, were arrested. Israel was shocked three weeks later, when the teens were found dead in a pit in the West Bank. Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the three were "kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by animals" and promised: "Hamas will pay." The abduction of the three teens started a spiral of violence that led to the current Gaza war, with no end in sight.
Now a Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri, is confirming that Hamas was responsible for the kidnappings, but said that there was no intention to start a war. Here's Memri's translation of what he said:
"In all honesty, we in the Islamic resistance movement did not intend to start a large-scale war at this time. We know that the enemy was not ready to start a large-scale war either. But Allah decided that this large-scale war would rage, in order to achieve things in accordance with the will of Allah.We wanted Gaza to serve as a strategic pillar, and to continue to amass strength in order to support the resistance all over Palestine. We wanted to activate the resistance throughout the land of Palestine: in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. ...
Our goal was to ignite an intifada in the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as within the 1948 borders. The activity of the people has broadened to include all the occupied land, reaching its peak in the heroic operation, carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades, in which three settlers were captured in Hebron.
There has been a lot of confusion regarding this operation. Some said that this was a conspiracy of the occupation. That's not true. Your brothers in the Al-Qassam Brigades carried out this operation to support their imprisoned brothers, who were on a hunger strike. The occupation wanted us to watch them die and to do nothing. The mujahideen captured these settlers in order to have a swap deal.
Then Israel wanted to strike a harsh blow to the resistance in the West Bank and Gaza, in order to shock the mujahideen and deter them from engaging in Jihad against the occupation. So it began to bombard Gaza, and to conduct arrests and wreak devastation in the West Bank.
But in these bombings, they killed six mujahideen. Thus, the fighting escalated. The mujahideen retaliated with missile strikes in the heart of the occupying entity. They were forced to escalate the fighting, and thus, an all-out war began.
So, according to al-Arouri, Hamas didn't want to start a war. They want to start an "intifida," like the ones that began in 1987 and 2000. They were characterized by Palestinians rioting, and throwing rocks at Israeli police, and an occasional terrorist act. But there was no full-fledged war, because there were Israeli and Palestinian leaders who were committed to avoiding a war.
This situation is exactly what generational theory is all about.
Everybody -- politicians, analysts, journalists, etc. -- remember the 1990s, and think that the 1990s was "normal," and that anything we do will work the same way as in the "normal" times. The belief is completely wrong. During the 1990s, the world was being run by people who had survived World War II and been traumatized by the war, and vowed never to let anything like that happen again. Today, those survivors are gone.
Here's what I wrote in May, 2003, in "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?":
"We are now in the early stages of replaying the extremely violent, bloody wars between the Jews and the Palestinians that took place between them from 1936 to 1949. So far the war has been little more than a series of skirmishes, as it was in the late 1930s. The full-fledged violent, bloody war is awaiting a generational change.There's an incredible irony going on in the Mideast today, in that the leaders of two opposing sides are, respectively, Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat.
These two men hate each other, but they're the ones cooperating with each other (consciously or not) to prevent a major Mideast conflagration. Both of them remember the wars of the 1940s, and neither of them wants to see anything like that happen again. And it won't happen again, as long as both of these men are in charge.
The disappearance of these two men will be part of an overall generational change in the Mideast that will lead to a major conflagration within a few years. It's possible that the disappearance of Arafat alone will trigger a war, just as the election of Lincoln ignited the American Civil War. (It's currently American policy to get rid of Arafat. My response is this: Be careful what you wish for.)"
So in the current situation, we have Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri saying that all they had wanted to do was repeat the "intifidas" of 1987 and 2000. Well, that's not how it works any more, because we're in a different generational era -- a generational Crisis era, quite unlike the generational Unraveling era of the 1990s, when the mood was to avoid conflict if at all possible.
Today, the mood of the Palestinians and the Israelis is completely different. Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat are gone, and the leaders on both sides have no fear of violence, and no appreciation of what's coming.
It's worth noting that there's still one leader who is a survivor of the 1940s war between Jews and Arabs, and that person is Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. It's no coincidence that this leader has for years tried both to negotiate peace with the Israelis and to keep Hamas under control. He's failed in both endeavors because he's dealing with much younger leaders who have no fear of violence.
Most people assume that the 2000s are like the 1990s, the 90s are like the 80s, the 80s are like the 70s, and so forth. If you believe that, then you're wrong.
History is not similar from one decade to the next. History is driven by huge generational tsunamis that last for decades and even centuries. These tsunamis dictate what events are going to occur, and the politicians have little control over more than a few details.
World War II launched a huge tsunami that's been traveling towards us for decades, and is reaching us now. That's why there are trouble spots in one country after another, in Africa, the Mideast, in Europe and in Asia. And every day there are fewer and fewer people around like Mahmoud Abbas who remember what it was like and want to prevent it from happening again. It's only a matter of time before one of these trouble spots explodes into full-scale war, and such an explosion becomes more and more likely every day, as the WW II survivors disappear. Memri and Reuters
As we reported yesterday, warplanes bombed militia bases in Tripoli, the capital city of Libya, in the early morning hours of Monday. The problem is, it's not known whose warplanes they were. The laser-guided technology was too sophisticated for any Libyan warplanes, and France, Italy, Egypt, the U.S. and Nato have all vehemently denied having anything to do with it. There are even concerns that the warplanes will be part of an external invasion of Libya.
Now on Thursday Tunisia and Egypt are halting passenger airline flights to and from Libya for security reasons. Egypt has canceled flights between Cairo and Libya, although flights between Alexandria and Libya would continue. AP and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Aug-14 World View -- Hamas says it didn't intend to start the Gaza War thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Aug-2014)
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Invasion of Libya feared following mysterious bombing of Tripoli
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Liberian police and soldiers exchanged fire with residents of the densely populated West Point seaside slum, in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, after security forces blocked roads leading in and out of the slum and a coast guard boat patrolled the waters offshore. Security forces also blocked off the Waterside Market, one of Monrovia's key market places, due to its proximity to the slum.
It's feared that Ebola is spreading rapidly out of control within the slum, after looters attacked an Ebola clinic last week, stealing supplies and blood-stained sheets and mattresses, permitting 37 Ebola patients to leave the clinic. There are 50-75,000 residents trapped within the West Point area.
Barricading an area to prevent people from leaving and spreading disease is sometimes called a cordon sanitaire.
During the Black Death bubonic plague epidemic, which spread through Italy in late 1347, victims of the plague would be sealed in their houses, locked and bolted from the outside. They could receive food only by lowering a basket from an upper window, allowing someone to put food into it.
During the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, many families would lock themselves in their own homes to avoid getting exposed.
It's doubtful that Monrovia's cordon sanitaire will prevent the further spread of Ebola. Many health officials are concerned that it's already too late to stop Ebola in Liberia, and that the disease won't be stopped until it's fully run its course. News24 (South Africa) and Daily Mail (London) and Temple University and New Republic
MP and business mogul Clive Palmer has shocked Australia with some rather raw remarks about the Chinese. He was appearing on a TV talk show, and was asked about a corruption charge by a Chinese company. He said, "It's not true, it's false," and said the Chinese wanted to take over Australian ports and control Australian resources, and added:
"I don’t mind standing up against the Chinese bastards and stopping them from doing it."
He startled the audience by calling the Chinese "mongrels," and said,
"I’m saying that because they’re communist, because they shoot their own people, they haven’t got a justice system and they want to take over this country."
Later, he tweeted a clarification: "My #qanda comments not intended to refer to Chinese people but to Chinese company which is taking Australian resources & not paying#auspol."
The Chinese embassy said Palmer’s words were "full of of ignorance and prejudice," and added,
"We believe that a sound China-Australian relationship serves the fundamental interests of both countries. It is and always will be supported by the two peoples."
Australian politicians called the remarks "hugely damaging" to Australia and to Australia-China relations. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop described the rant as "offensive, unnecessary and unacceptable for a member of Parliament."
No one is defending the "mongrel" characterization, but many people, including me, have repeatedly pointed out that China is openly preparing for a pre-emptive attack and war with America, and therefore with America's allies including Australia.
Colleague Senator Jacqui Lambie defended Palmer, saying, that she "strongly supports" Palmer's "general point ... about communist China's military capacity and threat to Australia." She added,
"If there’s one thing I’ve learnt after serving my country in the Australian defense force for 11 years and listening closely to our veterans, it’s this: the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.If anybody thinks that we should have a national security and defense policy, which ignores the threat of a Chinese communist invasion – you’re delusional and got rocks in your head."
Sydney Morning Herald and Guardian (London)
In the early hours of Monday morning, air strikes bombed militia bases in Tripoli, the capital city of Libya. The bombed the militia base that had been used to launch bombs on the nearby Tripoli airport.
The problem is: Nobody seems to know whose war planes they are. They were precision laser-guided strikes in the middle of the night, and Libya doesn't have warplanes with that technology or which can operate at night. Renegade former army general Khalifa Hifter (or Hafter) is far away in the eastern part of the country, and his war planes can't refuel in the air. Nonetheless, it's suspected that he's somehow behind the attacks.
There's no doubt that the air strikes took place, and the fear is that some third party was behind the strikes. Italy and France have quickly and vehemently denied that they were involved. It's possible that the war planes were from Algeria or Egypt. Nato, which monitors Libyan air space, will probably know. The fear is that, whoever it was, there's more to come, and that there may be an invasion coming. Middle East Eye
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Aug-14 World View -- Australian MP Clive Palmer shocks country with anti-China rant thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(21-Aug-2014)
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34 people killed in Central African Republic
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Pakistani opposition leaders Imran Khan and Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri attempted to force prime minister Nawaz Sharif to resign by leading tens of thousands of anti-government protesters to shut down Islamabad, the capital city. The police had attempted to block the protesters by erecting huge walls of shipping containers, but protesters crossed past them anyway, to enter the "Red Zone" and reach the parliament. Sharif had ordered the police not to shoot, in order to prevent violence, but when the protesters reached the Parliament building, Sharif called out the army.
Khan has been and continues to be a very divisive figure in Pakistan politics. He launched the march on Monday evening by calling for "civil disobedience" and taunted the prime minister by saying:
"Nawaz Sharif, you need to stop hiding behind the police and army. Face me like a man, and become a real tiger instead of circus tiger."
Actually, it's not clear who's heading up the circus. The Pakistan stories and editorials that I've reviewed are extremely critical of Khan. One called Khan a "confused" politician who led a "failed march," and said that "having abused his democratic rights, whipped up a crowd into a frenzy for blood, and after breaking faith over his written assurance to not enter the Red Zone, if protestors are arrested or violence occurs, the responsibility lies entirely on Imran’s head."
Imran Khan, a Pashtun born in 1952, was one of Pakistan's greatest cricket players of all time, and was once voted as the "Sexiest Man of The Year" by Australia Magazine Oz, turned to politics in the 1990s, and has become extremely colorful and extremely anti-American. He's claimed that the terrorist attacks in Pakistan were caused by American drone strikes on Taliban terrorists, and last year he got his followers to blockade the "Khyber pass," a major route into Afghanistan. This route was heavily used by Nato forces to truck equipment between the port of Karachi and Nato bases in Afghanistan, and is an essential part of the plan to move American and Nato forces out of Afghanistan by the end of the year. The blockade finally ended in February.
Sharif won the vote last year in an election that was widely described as fair. It was the first election in Pakistan's history that would lead to first peaceful transition from one civilian government to another, with the highest election turnout in decades.
However, there's a question whether Sharif will remain in office for his full five-year term. The army has ruled Pakistan for about half of its 65 year history, and in recent months there have been rumors of a new army coup, as the army has been getting impatient with civilian rule. By having to call out the army to quell Khan's protest, Sharif has had to give up some power. According to one unnamed government source, "The military does not intend to carry out a coup but ... if the government wants to get through its many problems and the four remaining years of its term, it has to share space with the army," meaning that Sharif will have to focus narrowly on domestic political affairs, and leave security and strategic policy to the army. Daily Times (Pakistan) and Pak Observer and Reuters
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Although the Central African Republic has been out of the news lately, thanks to the crises in Gaza, Iraq and Ukraine, the generational crisis war that we've described in the past is continuing with full force. Last week, fighters from Seleka, along with some herders and some Fulani, attacked villages located about 220 miles north of the capital city, Bangui, killing about 34 people. The villages lie along the informal border between the Muslim-dominated north and the Christian south. In response, the opposing "anti-balaka" militias carried out their own wave of sectarian killings, pushing thousands of Muslims northwards.
As I've explained in the past, 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 new war began last year when Muslim Seleka militias began committing atrocities. French Foreign Legion troops arrived to disarm the Seleka militias, but then the Christian anti-balaka militias "rushed into the vacuum," and began committing atrocities this year, for revenge. Thousands of French and African Union peacekeeping forces have succeeded in bringing the fighting under control in Bangui, but it's spread north and east to villages far beyond the grasp of the peacekeeping troops. As we've said repeatedly, whether it's in the headlines or not, this is a generational crisis war, and it will not end until it's run its course. Reuters and Daily Maverick (South Africa)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Aug-14 World View -- Pakistan's army called to quell massive anti-government protest thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Aug-2014)
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Kenya will block West African passengers from entering country
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Just before Monday midnight, when the latest Hamas-Israel Gaza truce was due to expire, the two sides agreed to extend the truce another 24 hours to continue negotiating a draft deal being discussed in Cairo.
According to Debka, the provisions of the draft deal include these terms:
However, any such deal will have to be approved by Israel's cabinet, which is very far from certain. Daily Mail (London) and Debka
Reports have indicated that a major objective of both Egypt and Israel in a potential peace settlement of the Gaza war is that Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA or Fatah) would play a major role, either replacing Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza, or at least serving as guards at an open Rafah border crossing connecting Gaza to Egypt. However, these proposals are an existential threat to Hamas as a political and military organization, so there's never been any serious chance that they would accept either of them.
The Palestinian factions Hamas and PA/Fatah have been bitter enemies since Hamas defeated Fatah in a 2008 war that wrested complete control of Gaza from Fatah. Theoretically, Fatah and Hamas have reconciled and are part of a "unity government," but unity has always been a fantasy, and the Gaza war has split them further.
Hamas has been cracking down on political opponents in Gaza for some time, especially Fatah. But now on Monday, Hamas has placed dozens of Fatah activists under house arrest, and has shot several in the legs for not staying indoors. Hamas leaders claim that they had nothing to do with the actions, and suggested that some Hamas activists had been acting on their own. This illustrates a major problem with the peace negotiations in Cairo -- Hamas does not have control of Gaza, or even its own activists, so it's not capable of making valid commitments.
Separately, reports indicate Israel's security services uncovered a Hamas plot to violently overthrow the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, coupled with large-scale terrorist attacks on Israel. The report claims that the plot was orchestrated from Istanbul, with the knowledge of Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, AP and Debka
According to a Sunday analysis by Kforce Government Solutions, Israel's prime minister is determined to avoid a repeat of a trap set by Egypt's president Anwar Sadat in the 1973 Yom Kippur war with Israel:
"Egyptian authorities indicated that today's negotiations would represent Egypt's final effort to mediate a lasting ceasefire. All parties appear interested in observing the ceasefire a day at a time, even in the absence of an omnibus agreement.Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel will not compromise on the security requirement that the Gaza Strip must be demilitarized. He also said that Hamas will not be permitted to obtain a political victory from its military defeat. If Hamas resumes rocket attacks upon the expiration of the ceasefire, Netanyahu promised massive retaliation.
What Netanyahu refers to is the Sadat Gambit that motivated the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Egyptian President Sadat knew that Egyptian forces could not defeat Israel in a war. The military objective was to gain enough territory to provide Egypt with leverage in the peace talks. In other words, lose the war to win the peace. It worked. Egypt did not with the war, but eventually became the second largest recipient of US military aid, second only to Israel.
The Palestinians, according to Netanyahu, tried a scaled back version of the Sadat Gambit, but failed because they were unable to cause significant casualties in Israel. The Gambit works when the side using it achieves sufficient, real battlefield success to afford it leverage in peace talks. The Palestinians fell short of attaining leverage because their rockets performed so poorly and so many Palestinians died.
The Israelis understand that ploy and will deny it to Hamas. The key point is that Hamas is continuing to fold. It is now willing to settle for a partial lifting of the Israeli blockade and to defer discussion of a seaport in Gaza, as long as Israel allows funds to be transferred by the Palestinian Authority to Hamas to enable it to pay the bills.
Another way in which Hamas has sustained a setback is that the Palestinian Authority appears to be asserting more authority over the negotiations, mostly because of Hamas legendary inability to govern and because the Authority has money and Hamas is broke.
One or other of the Palestinian groups may be expected to launch rockets by Tuesday, as a show of defiance. Israel will respond asymmetrically. The fighting is not finished."
KGS NightWatch and Boca Raton News - Oct 9, 1973
In a new blow to the economy of West Africa, Kenya said on Monday it will block passengers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea from entering Kenya, for fear that they might be carrying the Ebola virus. This is further isolating the region, threatening shortages of food and other supplies. The World Bank and the African Development Bank are planning to provide as much as $260 million in emergency aid.
As we reported yesterday, fears have increased that the spread of Ebola is out of control after looters attacked an Ebola clinic in the densely crowded West Point district of Monrovia, the capital city. The looters stole blood-stained sheets and mattresses, putting into danger anyone who comes into contact with those items. 17 Ebola patients left the clinic after the attack.
Reports yesterday indicated that authorities had found the 17 escaped Ebola patients, and moved them to a central Monrovia hospital. However, later reports indicate that the escaped patients have not been found. Also, the Monrovia police have been unable to enter the clinic, for fear of becoming infected. Once they've received shipments of protective equipment and suits, they'll be able to deploy to West Point. Zegabi (Kenya) and Bloomberg and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Aug-14 World View -- Israel, Hamas extend Gaza truce another 24 hours to negotiate deal thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Aug-2014)
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Attack on Ebola clinic in Liberia raises fears of out of control spread
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Kurdish Peshmerga forces say that they are close to taking control of Iraq's strategic Mosul Dam back from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS). The Kurds were aided by about two dozen U.S. airstrikes on ISIS forces, mainly targeting American armed vehicles and armored personnel carriers that ISIS had captured from store houses when the Iraq army retreated from Mosul.
In the hands of ISIS, the dam is considered as a "weapon of mass destruction." If the dam had been blown by ISIS, then the city of Mosul would have been flooded with water 20-30 meters deep, and Baghdad would have been flooded with water 5 meters deep three days later. ISIS would not have been motivated to blow the dam, since Mosul is ISIS's headquarters. But the fear was that if ISIS was close to defeat, then they would blow the dam as an act of revenge. And so recapturing the dam has been a major objective. BBC and VOA
With airstrikes having some success against ISIS in Iraq, people in the U.S. and Britain are calling for similar treatment against ISIS in Syria. There are two variations to these calls: One variation calls for supplying weapons to the "moderate" opposition to president Bashar al-Assad, and the other variation calls for a full-fledged partnership with al-Assad in defeating ISIS.
Partnering with al-Assad against ISIS would certainly be an amazing historical twist, since genocidal monster al-Assad actually created ISIS.
I've been writing about the situation in Syria since the war started three years ago, and I've repeatedly indicated what disaster it is that the Alawite/Shia president, Bashar al-Assad, is conducting genocide against innocent Sunni protesters. And al-Assad was and is being helped by unlimited amounts of heavy weapons provided by Russia, making Vladimir Putin a war criminal, along with al-Assad. Al-Assad has flattened entire Sunni villages with Russia's heavy weapons, he's killed children by sending missiles into exam rooms and bedrooms, he's killed dozens with sarin gas, and he's killed countless more with barrel bombs loaded with explosives, metals, and chlorine gas. In addition, he's used electrocution, eye-gouging, strangulation, starvation, and beating on tens of thousands of prisoners on a massive "industrial strength" scale, and does with complete impunity, and in fact with encouragement and support from Russia and Iran.
I've been writing about all these acts since the war began, and each time I've described how the devastating consequences to the region and world have continued to grow.
In the beginning, in 2011, I was writing that al-Assad was turning peaceful protests into a full-fledged civil war. Syria is in a generational Awakening era, so this civil war would never have developed if al-Assad hadn't forced it. Furthermore, the civil war would have fizzled quickly if either al-Assad had stepped down, or if Russia had stopped supplying him with weapons.
By 2012, I was writing about how al-Qaeda linked jihadists from other countries were coming to Syria to join the fight against al-Assad. By 2013, young men from Sunni Muslim countries from Pakistan to Algeria to Chechnya were coming to Syria to join the anti-Assad groups. Jihadist anti-Assad groups were formed, most notably Jabhat al-Nusra (Islamic Front), which was linked to al-Qaeda and which also linked up with the dormant al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But another group, which became today's ISIS, broke away from al-Qaeda, subsumed al-Qaeda in Iraq, and began fighting both al-Assad and al-Nusra. By 2014, it became increasingly popular with many would-be jihadists around the world, and now there have been thousands of young men from Europe and America that have gone to Syria to develop terrorist skills. These young men are American/European citizens with clean passports, so they represent the greatest Western terrorist threat today.
From the beginning, al-Assad was claiming that he wasn't exterminating innocent Sunni civilians. He claimed that he was fighting al-Qaeda terrorists. If there ever was an example of self-fulfilling prophecy, this is it. When he was just murdering innocent protesters, there were no al-Qaeda terrorists to speak of. Al-Assad created Jabhat al-Nusra and then ISIS by turning Syria into a global "jihadist magnet." The result is ISIS is an enormous danger to the region and to the entire world.
It's not exactly without historical precedent for America to partner with a genocidal monster. Josef Stalin was a genocidal monster who starved, executed and slaughter tens of millions of Russian people, but we partnered with him anyway in World War II, because he was the lesser of two evils -- Adolf Hitler was a WORSE genocidal monster.
It's far from clear that ISIS can be defeated. Hitler was defeated in the climax of a generational crisis war during a generational crisis era. But Syria is in a generational Awakening era. This means that some level of violence will continue, even if ISIS is defeated, and so al-Assad and Putin will continue with their program of genocide. The only things that could have prevented this situation would have been if al-Assad has been forced to step down during the beginning, or if Putin had stopped supplying weapons. As things stand now, there's no hope. Asharq Al Awsat (Riyadh) and USA Today and Russia Today and Al Jazeera
Concern that the spread of the Ebola virus in Liberia is out of control increased on Sunday, after looters attacked an Ebola clinic, stealing supplies, as well as blood-stained mattresses and sheets. The attack took place in the West Point district of Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia. West Point is an extremely crowded slum area, so the blood-stained bedding presents a real threat of causing Ebola to spread around the city. 17 Ebola patients left the clinic after the attack, though authorities have found them and moved them to a central Monrovia hospital.
In discussing the possibility of an out of control pandemic, authorities are beginning to make distinctions between West Africa, especially Liberia, and Western countries. In the United States and Europe, for example, there are plenty of isolation units and the public understands the kinds of medical precautions that have to be taken. And Ebola is not airborne, but is contracted by touching the fluids of an infected person.
But none of that is true in Liberia. Ignorance about the virus is extremely high, and people are reluctant to cooperate with health workers. Many in the public are suspicious of foreign health workers and believe that it's the health workers that are bringing Ebola to their villages. Many villages follow ancient burial rituals, without understanding that an Ebola corpse is extremely contagious. Clinics and hospitals are crammed full of patients. There's a shortage of even the most basic supplies, such as rubber gloves. Western health and aid workers are fleeing the country, for fear of becoming infected and dying, so there's a massive shortage of doctors and other health workers.
So it's feared that in Liberia, and possibly in Sierra Leone and Guinea as well, Ebola really is out of control, and will not be stopped for many months, until it's completely run its course. That would mean that sooner or later, everyone in Liberia would be exposed to the virus. About 50-60% will die, and the rest will live, and will be immune after that. BBC and Russia Today and Foreign Policy and Times of India/NYT
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Aug-14 World View -- Activists call for U.S. and Britain to partner with al-Assad against ISIS thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Aug-2014)
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Turkey allies with Hamas, Qatar and ISIS
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Israel after the deaths of nine Turkish citizens on May 31, 2010, in a confrontation between Israel's navy and the boat Mavi Marmara in a flotilla headed for Gaza in violation of Israel's Gaza blockade. Since then, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attempted find a way to meet the demands of Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to restore relations. He's apologized to Erdogan for the incident, and he's negotiated monetary payments to the families of the victims. But Erdogan's third demand, fully ending the blockade of Gaza, has not been met.
The 2010 flotilla was sponsored not by Turkey, but by a Turkish aid group, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH). Now the IHH has issued a statement saying that activists from 12 countries met in Istanbul and will send a new flotilla "in the shadow of the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza." Daily Sabah (Istanbul) and Jerusalem Post
Relations between president Barack Obama and Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have always been extremely frosty, but never more so since the start of the Gaza war. In the past, Obama has demanded that Israel stop building settlements, and unilaterally accept a return to Israel's 1948 borders. According to reports, White House officials view Netanyahu as "reckless and untrustworthy," and Israeli officials regard the Obama administration as "weak and naive." Last month, US Secretary of State John Kerry submitted a proposed ceasefire agreement, based on private discussions with Hamas's allies, Qatar and Turkey, that gave Hamas everything it wanted. Since then, Israel has shut the U.S. completely out of peace negotiations, and Egypt has assumed the role that the U.S. used to have as chief mediator.
Israel is particularly disturbed by the Obama administration's increasingly close ties with Iran, whom the Israelis consider to be an existential threat because of potential nuclear weapon development. Israel is forming increasingly close alliances with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, while Hamas has close relations with Qatar and Turkey.
Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has always had a fairly hostile attitude towards Israel, but it became extremely vitriolic following the 2010 flotilla incident. Erdogan has equated Zionism with racism, and compared Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler.
This attitude has spread to the public. Turkish Jews and Jewish tourists are experiencing increasing anti-Semitism. According to one businessman, Turks swear at Jews in the street, and one hotel warned in response to an e-mail message requesting to book a room that "for your further safety concerns it is our duty to inform you that the Palestine embassy is our next door neighbor and we do not have private security within the hotel." Jewish tourists are being warned not to visit Turkey.
Erdogan has been prime minister of Turkey since 2003, having been elected for three terms. Last month, Erdogan won election as president of Turkey. Ironically, the president has been little more than a figurehead in the past, but Erdogan plans to expand the powers of the president so he's more powerful than the prime minister in the future. He'll be sworn in as president on August 28. Zaman (Istanbul) and Fox News and Algemeiner and Debka
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Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi returned from a visit in Sochi with Russia's president Vladimir Putin. Relations between Egypt and Turkey have gotten so bad, the al-Sisi felt that it was unsafe to travel over Turkey's airspace. His plane also avoided Ukraine's air space, because of the recent shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. So al-Sisi's plane took a hugely circuitous route from Sochi to Egypt, graphically illustrating how much distance there is between al-Sisi and Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan is angry that al-Sisi last year ousted Egypt's former president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government, and then violently cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood movement, declaring it a terrorist organization, and killing or jailing thousands of its members. Erdogan's own AKP party is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas is an offshoot of MB, leaving him absolutely furious at the current Gaza war. Erdogan has even furiously blamed Israel for the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, presumably because it's more politically correct to criticize Israel than to criticize Egypt.
Turkey, Qatar and Hamas are strengthening their alliance versus Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia. However, Turkey is also developing cordial relations with the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS). This is partly because ISIS is fighting against Turkey's enemy, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. Another reason is that ISIS is holding as hostages 49 Turkish diplomats, including Turkey's consul general in Mosul, whose consulate serves as ISIS's headquarters.
Summary: Turkey + ISIS + Qatar + Hamas VERSUS Egypt + Saudia Arabia + Palestinian Authority + Israel.
Iran is playing a schizophrenic role in all this. Iran is Turkey's enemy with regard to Syria's Bashar al-Assad and ISIS, but Iran is Turkey's ally, along with Hamas, in the Gaza war. As I've written many times, when Iran is forced to choose sides in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war, they will be allied with the west. This is not simply because Mideast alliances, however. It's because Iran is closely allied with India and Russia, and they will be enemies of China and Pakistan. Hurriyet (Ankara) and VOA and War on the Rocks
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Aug-14 World View -- Erdogan turns Turkey even more against Israel and Egypt thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(17-Aug-2014)
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Ukraine says it partially destroyed Russian military convoy crossing border
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The Ebola panic is almost reaching the point where West Africa is being quarantined and cut off from the rest of the world, with travel bans increasing. Airlines are suspending flights to some West African cities. The Ebola crisis could also create shortages of food, fuel and other supplies because the nearest big port, Abidjan in Ivory Coast, has announced a ban on all ships from the Ebola-affected countries Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three hardest hit countries. Cross-border markets have been shut down and several major mining companies have scaled back their operations or postponed expansion plans.
With estimates of more than 1,060 deaths and 1,975 infected, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is already the deadliest ever. And the World Health Organization (WHO) says that the size of the epidemic may be "vastly underestimated," as there are rumors of entire villages being wiped out, and some infected people simply afraid to notify the authorities of their illness. One health worker was quoted as saying, "If you have people fly in to your village looking like Martians [because of the non-contamination suits], and everyone is getting sick, it's not hard to believe that the Martians are making you sick."
These panicked reactions are not only devastating the economies of West African countries, they're also making the problem of stabilizing the Ebola epidemic more difficult. According to WHO,
"WHO is disappointed when airlines stop flying to West Africa. Hard to save lives if we and other health workers cannot get in."
Nigeria has had eleven cases of Ebola and one death, but panic is spreading rapidly, particularly in the crowded city of Lagos, where it's feared that Ebola may be passed from person to person faster than authorities can stop it. The crisis is exacerbated by a strike by 16,000 of the country's doctors for better working conditions. Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan on Friday fired the striking doctors, for striking during a medical emergency.
Nigeria is already facing severe disruptions because of the Boko Haram terrorist group. One government official estimates that "3 million Nigerians are facing 'serious humanitarian challenges' because a breadwinner has been killed in the turmoil or they are too scared to plant the crops."
Now the Ebola panic is putting the entire country's economy at risk, according to the Moody's ratings agency:
"If a significant outbreak emerges in the Nigerian capital of Lagos, the consequences for the West African oil and gas industry would be considerable. Any material decline in production would quickly translate into economic and fiscal deterioration."
Globe and Mail and Sky News and Vice News and Barrons
As we reported yesterday, a convoy of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers crossed the border on Thursday evening from Russia, through a hole in the barbed wire fence separating the countries, into Ukraine. This was seen and photographed by Moscow correspondents of two London papers, the Guardian and the Telegraph.
On Friday, Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko bragged that his forces had destroyed part of that military convoy. There were several different Russian responses in different reports:
It's just too funny. The Guardian correspondent again travelled to the site, and found the dirt road to be well-traveled. He also witnessed at least 50 armored personnel carriers in the region, headed toward toward the border.
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters that Russia made an "incursion" into Ukraine and that Nato sees a continuous flow of Russian weapons into the country.
An interesting interpretation was heard by an analyst from Teneo Intelligence that I heard quoted on CNBC:
"The multiple crossings at Izvarino [border crossing] in daylight and within sight of the international press suggest that they wanted to be seen, most likely to test the reaction of the international community. ... The Russian separatists control several border crossings with no media presence. These could have used by military vehicles instead."
The implication is that Russia wanted the military convoy to be seen and attacked, possibly to provide an excuse for a Russian invasion. The truth is that nobody knows what the Russians are planning, but the increasing military activity near the Ukrainian border is causing many to believe that, with the pro-Russian separatists close to losing to the Ukrainian army, the Russians will take some military action to protect them.
Meanwhile, Russia's 280-truck "humanitarian convoy" remains parked near the Ukrainian border, and anything is possible this weekend. Guardian (London) and Bloomberg and VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Aug-14 World View -- West Africa at significant economic risk as Ebola panic intensifies thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Aug-2014)
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China's bank lending falls 64% in July
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Russia employs a sophisticated disinformation campaign to obscure facts when it violates international law. There is no more dramatic example of this than Russia's reaction to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 last month. It was, and is, almost universally believed that it was shot down with a Russian-supplied Buk surface-to-air missile system by pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine who believed that it was a Ukrainian air force warplane.
However, that narrative was unacceptable to Russia because it made the pro-Russian separatists look bad, and because it implied indirect culpability of the Russian armed forces, who are not supposed to be supplying ANY weapons to Ukrainian separatists, particularly highly advance surface-to-air missiles.
There followed a blast of Russian propaganda, attempting to confuse the issue and pin the blame elsewhere. The claims by Russia controlled media included:
Russia denied that troops had been sent to Crimea, although they had been sent and they had played in role in fixing the referendum that Russia used to justify annexation of Crimea. Russia has denied sending weapons and troops to separatists in east Ukraine, when there has been plenty of evidence that they had, including broadcast interviews with separatist leaders bragging that they had come from Russia. Russia has obscured its own military actions in east Ukraine by accusing the Kiev government of being "neo-Nazis" and "Fascists."
What's really remarkable is that the Russian people seem to completely believe anything that Vladimir Putin and the Russian-controlled media tell them. Putin himself has astronomical public approval ratings.
Putin has been increasingly cracking down on Russia's press. There have been several well publicized resignations from Russia Today in the last few months by people who said that they could no longer continue lying for the Kremlin.
In writing articles about Russia, I've noticed a big problem these days with Russian media. I used to be able to reference Russia Today and sometimes even Ria Novosti, but in the last few months they've become completely uncritical mouthpieces for Putin, in the same category as Xinhua for China and PressTv for Iran. So there's no longer any mainstream Russian media I can really count on. Moscow Times and Jamestown and Sydney Morning Herald
While Russia's president Vladimir Putin maintains an iron grip on the state-run media, the internet remains a big problem for Putin, as he's had little ability to control Twitter and other social media.
Putin has responded to this problem in a bizarre way. According to documents examined by an analyst firm, since April a Russian firm called the Internet Research Agency, with a 2014 budget of $10 million, has been hiring hundreds of "internet trolls" to challenge any online article critical of Russia.
Each troll is expected to post comments on blogs and news sites 50 times per day. The comments range from lies and disinformation to abuse and profanity. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook accounts, posting three times a day in each. On Twitter, they're expected to manage 10 accounts and tweet 50 times a day. The Atlantic and BuzzFeed
A column of 23 armored personnel carriers, supported by fuel trucks and other logistics vehicles with official Russian military plates, crossed the border into Ukraine late Thursday evening. The border between Russia and east Ukraine is long and porous, and so usually these military convoys pass back and forth undetected, allowing the Kremlin to lie about them. But in this case, this military convoy (different from the well-publicized 280-truck humanitarian convoy also approaching the border) was photographed by the Moscow correspondent of the Guardian.
The military convoy paused by the side of the road until nightfall, and then crossed into Ukraine on a dirt road passing through a gap in a barbed wire fence demarcating the border. According to the Guardian, this is incontrovertible evidence of Russian troops inside Ukraine's borders, despite Russia's repeated denials and disinformation.
At the same time, Russia has been increasing its military presence near the border with Ukraine, with an estimated 20,000 Russian troops currently deployed. Russian residents near the Ukraine border report seeing tanks and armored personnel carriers cross into Ukraine regularly. Guardian (London) and Business Insider and Reuters
The 280 vehicle "humanitarian convoy" that we've previously described ( "13-Aug-14 World View -- Mammoth Russian truck convoy heads for confrontation at Ukraine border") continued to approach Ukraine's border on Thursday.
During a one-day pause on Wednesday, the humanitarian convoy was joined by helicopters, surface-to-air missile systems, and possible anti-aircraft weapons systems, according to reporters who had viewed the convoy.
Supposedly, the convoy is supposed to arrive at the Ukraine border, and allow every truck to be inspected by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC would then take control of the convoy and oversee the distribution of aid. However, the ICRC reports that it's not being permitted to inspect the trucks, even though it's traveling under an ICRC flag. According to an ICRC spokesman:
"At the moment it is not an International Red Cross convoy, inasmuch as we haven't had sight of the material, we haven't had certain information regarding the content, and the volume of aid that it contains."
The travel route of the convoy is unclear. The convoy suddenly changed routes on Thursday to avoid a Ukraine-controlled checkpoint and enter Ukraine at a checkpoint controlled by the pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine.
It now seems likely that the convoy will cross the border and spread out to be used as a shield to protect the pro-Russian militias, who are currently losing to Ukraine's army. Business Insider and BBC
Ukraine border guards in Ukraine's west, along the border with Moldova's Transnistria, have reported instances of reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Transnistria violating Ukrainian air space.
Moldova’s Transnistria region is de facto under the control of Russian military forces. According to official figures, which are believed to be underestimates, the Russian military in Transnistria consist of some 1,500 troops of the Operational Group of Russian Forces (Operativnaya Gruppa Rossiyskih Voysk—OGRV), which are augmented by over 400 Russian "peacekeepers." These troops conducted a training exercise on the west Ukraine border earlier this year. When combined with local volunteers, it's likely that Russia could amass, in a matter of hours, at least 10,000-12,000 combat-ready military personnel.
Ukraine is concerned that this force is poised to invade Ukraine from the west in order to overrun the Odessa, Ukraine's only remaining sea port after Crimea was annexed. Like Crimea and east Ukraine, the Odessa sea port in southwest Ukraine is another region in Ukraine where Russia has expressed an interest in "protecting" Russian speakers. In executing this invasion, Russia could also use the 2,000-strong Cossack force that is subordinated to the Transnistrian KGB for initial infiltration of Odessa region, posing as "opolchenye" (people’s militia). Jamestown and Ria Novosti
China's banks made $62.53 billion in new loans in July, down 64% from June, while total social financial fell 86%. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) sought to reassure markets that the data was distorted by a lending binge in June. However, demand for loans has been weakening, and Russia's enormous housing bubble, far bigger than America's housing bubble of eight years ago, appears to be bursting. Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Aug-14 World View -- Russia threatens to invade Ukraine from East and West thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Aug-2014)
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Iraq is repeating the events of the 1930s
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
The Obama administration flip-flopped on Wednesday on whether to send troops to Mount Sinjar in Iraq to save tens of thousands of members of the ancient Yadizi sect, who had been trapped there by terrorist militias from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/Sham/theLevant (ISIS or ISIL) and who had threatened to exterminate them. At first, the US said that 130 troops would be landing on Mount Sinjar to aid the evacuation, but then late in the day said that troops would not be necessary, since the air strikes had been successful. This may be the same kind of flip-flop as we saw last year in Syria.
The political problem is clear. Many Western politicians supported the ground invasion of Iraq when it occurred in 2003, as it was almost universally believed that Saddam Hussein still had weapons of mass destruction, having previously used them against the Kurds and the Iranians. Then when the war was won but became unpopular anyway, these politicians flip-flopped and decided that it was a dumb war, and shouldn't have occurred. So now they're in danger of having to flip-flop again, and get dragged kicking and screaming into some kind of military action in Iraq. Based on our experience in Vietnam, the most likely result of this is that we'll be dragged into this war step by step.
Britain's prime minister David Cameron said that Britain will be sending ammunition to the Kurds, and added that, "The first thing is to deal with this desperate humanitarian situation with people who are exposed, starving and dying of thirst ... getting them to a place of safety." Presumably these plans will have to be adjusted as well, in light of America's change of plans.
France is going farther than Britain, and has already begun sending weapons to the Kurds. The office of France's president François Hollande said in a statement, "To meet the urgent needs voiced by the Kurdish regional authorities, the head of state (Hollande) decided in liaison with Baghdad to ship arms in the coming hours."
Possibly the strongest statement was issued by Australia's prime minister Tony Abbott:
"There is a darkening situation in the Middle East, in particular northern Iraq. There is a continuing humanitarian catastrophe in and around Mount Sinjar.The murderous hordes of ISIL, now the Islamic State are on the march. ...
[Australia will] provide what assistance we reasonably can to protect the people who are at risk not just from the elements, from starvation, from dehydration, from exposure on Mount Sinjar - but also who are at risk from ISIL forces.
We have seen over the last few months murderous intent ... towards everyone who does not submit. Plainly, as President Obama has pointed out, this is potential genocide.
“We should do what we can to protect people from potential genocide ... No one wants to stand aside in the face of a potential genocide."
Asked if that could include military action, Abbott said, "We certainly don’t rule that out." USA Today and Belfast Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald and France 24
The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/Sham/theLevant (ISIS or ISIL) has been spectacular, and their gruesome brutality has become legendary. But still there are reasons to suspect that ISIS's victory may be short-lived. Some of the issues facing ISIS are:
In 2007, I wrote "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq", and wrote at length about how the politicians and the mainstream media, many of whom were openly siding with al-Qaeda in Iraq against President Bush and the American troops in Iraq, were completely wrong, and that Iraqi Sunnis joining with the Shias in opposition to al-Qaeda in Iraq. As it turned out, these politicians and media sources were completely wrong, and disgraced themselves by opposing American soldiers in Iraq.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the key to understanding that is to look at Iraq's two generational crisis wars of the last century: The Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920, and the Iran/Iraq war that climaxed in 1988. In both of these crisis wars, Iraqi Sunnis and Shias put aside their differences and joined together to fight against outside enemies. For Iraqis, their Iraqi nationalism is more important than sectarian differences. They joined together once again in 2007, when they faced a major external enemy.
History does not support the view that ISIS will succeed in permanently biting off the Sunni portion of Iraq as part of its Islamic State. History supports the view that at some point, perhaps this year, perhaps next year or the year after, after the euphoria of victory has worn off, Iraqi Sunnis will eject ISIS.
Another lesson we can learn about Iraq today is to look at what happened in the 1930s. Iraq today is one generation past the end of the Iran/Iraq crisis war, and Iraq in the 1930s was almost one generation past the end of the Great Iraqi Revolution. In my 2007 article, I quoted at length the Library of Congress (LOC) article on the history of Iraq. Here is a brief excerpt from that quote:
"On October 13, 1932, Iraq became a sovereign state, and it was admitted to the League of Nations. Iraq still was beset by a complex web of social, economic, ethnic, religious, and ideological conflicts, all of which retarded the process of state formation. The declaration of statehood and the imposition of fixed boundaries triggered an intense competition for power in the new entity. Sunnis and Shias, cities and tribes, shaykhs and tribesmen, Assyrians and Kurds, pan-Arabists and Iraqi nationalists--all fought vigorously for places in the emerging state structure. Ultimately, lacking legitimacy and unable to establish deep roots, the British-imposed political system was overwhelmed by these conflicting demands. ...The arbitrary borders that divided Iraq and the other Arab lands of the old Ottoman Empire caused severe economic dislocations, frequent border disputes, and a debilitating ideological conflict. The cities of Mosul in the north and Basra in the south, separated from their traditional trading partners in Syria and in Iran, suffered severe commercial dislocations that led to economic depression. In the south, the British- created border (drawn through the desert on the understanding that the region was largely uninhabited) impeded migration patterns and led to great tribal unrest. Also in the south, uncertainty surrounding Iraq's new borders with Kuwait, with Saudi Arabia, and especially with Iran led to frequent border skirmishes. The new boundaries also contributed to the growth of competing nationalisms; Iraqi versus pan-Arab loyalties would severely strain Iraqi politics during the 1950s and the 1960s, when Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser held emotional sway over the Iraqi masses.
Ethnic groups such as the Kurds and the Assyrians, who had hoped for their own autonomous states, rebelled against inclusion within the Iraqi state."
What all this shows is that Iraqi Sunnis and Shias unite when facing a foreign enemy, but at other times are in total political chaos. By changing a few of the words, the LOC history could have applied to much of the last ten years.
Incidentally, the same cannot be said when you mix in the Kurds. To the Sunnis and Shias, the Kurds were enemies in these crisis wars, and bitter feelings run very deep because Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds.
People sometimes think it strange to make these historical comparisons. "Who remembers all that stuff from the 1930s," you may be thinking. But in fact almost every person reading this article has some knowledge of America's 1930s Great Depression, having been told by parents or grandparents. The same is true of the Iraqi people, except that their knowledge is about the 1930s in Iraq, the material in the LOC history above. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these generational histories are highly localized, and understanding a country's generational history tells a great deal about how they're going to behave today.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Aug-14 World View -- Western countries struggle with whether to send troops to Iraq thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Aug-2014)
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U.S. sends 130 more troops to Iraq as advisors
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia and Ukraine had reached agreement that a huge truck convoy will be permitted to cross the border from Russia into Ukraine, and then proceed to distribute humanitarian aid in areas of east Ukraine inhabited by a mostly Russian-speaking population.
According to Lavrov, the truck convoy will arrive at the Ukraine border in a couple days, at which time they will take on representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who will oversee the aid distribution. However, the ICRC has not said that it agrees to participate in this operation.
The convoy is mammoth, several miles long. According to Lavrov, there are 280 trucks. The convoy will be comprised of 262 vehicles, including 198 truck with material means and electricity generators with an overall weigh of 1,809.9 tonnes. The humanitarian aid includes: 69 electricity generator, 400 tonnes of cereals, 340 tonnes of canned meat, 30 tonnes of salt, 100 tonnes of sugar, 60 tonnes of canned milk, 0.8 tonnes of tea, 679.5 tonnes of bottled water, 62.4 tonnes of baby foods, 54 tonnes of medical equipment, and 12,300 sleeping bags.
The Russians are deeply distrusted by the West and by Ukraine, thanks to their illegal annexation of Crimea, and their thousands of invasion-ready troops, tanks and warplanes massed near the Ukraine border. The fear is that this mammoth truck convoy is like the mythical "Trojan Horse," carrying soldiers and weapons to armed anti-government militias in east Ukraine. Reuters and Itar-Tass (Moscow) and PRI
With the latest 3-day ceasefire scheduled to expire at midnight on Wednesday, officials from Hamas and Israel are in Cairo to decide on terms that might allow the ceasefire to be extended. The negotiations are being called "indirect," because Hamas and Israeli representatives are in different rooms, and are not talking to each other. Hamas does not recognize the nation of Israel, and Israel considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization. Instead, Egyptian representatives talk alternately to the Hamas and Israeli representatives, and carry messages and proposals back and forth between the two rooms.
According to leaks, no progress is being made on the major issues. Hamas will not agree to military disarmament, as Israel is demanding. And Israel will not agree to build an airport and seaport, and offer safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as Hamas is demanding.
However, the leaked reports suggest that some progress may have been made. In particular, the Israelis and Palestinians have agreed on the reopening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, provided that 1000 Palestinian Authority police officers are deployed at the terminal.
As I've written several times in the past, there's only one big thing that the two sides agree to: No return to the status quo ante. Israel will not tolerate a ceasefire if it means a continuing stream of rocket launches from Gaza into Israel. And if Hamas cannot get some major concession, such as the opening of all six border crossings from Gaza into Egypt and Israel, then then all the destruction that Gazans have suffered in the last few weeks will be lost. The logic of this situation indicates that the war will continue.
As long-time readers are aware, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major war between Arabs and Jews, re-fighting the genocidal war between Jews and Arabs that followed the 1948 partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Arab News and Jerusalem Post
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on Tuesday that 130 additional troops were being deployed in Iraq to act as advisors. According to Hagel:
"This is not a combat boots on the ground kind of operation. We're not going back into Iraq in any of the same combat mission dimensions that we once were in in Iraq."
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Aug-14 World View -- Mammoth Russian truck convoy heads for confrontation at Ukraine border thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Aug-2014)
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U.S. sending weapons directly to Kurds in Iraq
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Russia says that it will send a truck convoy with humanitarian aid across the border into east Ukraine, into the region around Donetsk, which is currently being held by pro-Russian separatist militias. The announcement said that the convoy will be non-military, and that the aid will be provided in conjunction with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC responded cautiously, saying, "[P]rior to the beginning of the operation, the ICRC should receive without undue delay from the authorities of the Russian Federation all necessary details concerning the aid, including the volume and type of items, and requirements for transport and storage."
The Ukraine government in Kiev has surrounded the pro-Russian militias in Donetsk, cutting off travel and supplies, with analyst opinions mixed about whether Kiev is close to defeating them. Thousands of people are believed to be short of water, electricity and medical aid due to the fighting. It's feared that Russia will use the humanitarian convoy as a pretext for military action to support the pro-Russian militias. Reuters and Ria Novosti (Moscow) and Itar-Tass (Moscow)
On Sunday, Hamas announced that it will severely restrict reporting of the Gaza war by foreign journalists, possibly in retaliation for the airing a week ago of a video of the assembly and launch of a rocket from a heavily populated area of Gaza. ( "10-Aug-14 World View -- New Delhi TV accidentally gets video of Hamas rocket launch in Gaza")
Hamas has been harassing reporters since the beginning of the war, and has threatened reporters with retaliation for publishing news that was not favorable to Hamas. On Sunday, Paul T. Jørgensen of Norway's TV2 reported that:
"[S]everal foreign journalists have been kicked out of Gaza because Hamas does not like what they wrote or said.We have received strict orders that if we record that Hamas fires rockets or that they shoot, we will face serious problems and be expelled from Gaza."
The Foreign Press Association on Monday denounced the new Hamas restrictions in a statement:
"The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.The international media are not advocacy organizations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.
In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media.
We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a "vetting" procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA."
According to the new rules, announced on Sunday, Hamas will require foreign journalists covering Gaza to provide information about Palestinian translators and fixers, as well as the address where they are staying. Camera.org and Jerusalem Post and Foreign Press Association
The U.S. is sending weapons directly to the Kurds in Iraq, to help the Kurdish Peshmerga forces fight militias from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS). ISIS hopelessly outguns the Peshmerga, since they have advanced American-made Humvees and other heavy weapons that were acquired from warehouses when ISIS captured the city of Mosul. The intention is that the U.S. weapons shipments will even things out a little, though the light arms being shipped are still no match for Humvees and tanks.
Army Lt. Gen. William C. Mayville Jr. on Monday said that nothing that America is doing, including airstrikes, is expected to have much effect on ISIS:
"I in no way want to suggest that we have effectively contained, or that we are somehow breaking, the momentum of the threat.They’re very well-organized, They are very well-equipped. They coordinate their operations. And they have thus far shown the ability to attack on multiple axes. This is not insignificant."
It's beginning to look like we're using what what might be called the "Vietnam strategy" for entering Iraq.
What I mean by that is that George Bush #1 took a firm decision, and fought Iraq to extract it from Kuwait. Bill Clinton took a firm decision, and bombed the hell of Iraq to protect the Kurds and prevent development of weapons of mass destruction. George Bush #2 took a firm decision, and invaded Iraq to get rid of Iraq's reported weapons of mass destruction.
However, no firm decisions are being made now with respect to Iraq, and we're being pulled into Iraq more and more in a reactive mode, one step at a time. This is how Presidents Kennedy and Johnson got us into the Vietnam War, and we appear to be repeating that strategy. Washington Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Aug-14 World View -- Russia to send 'non-military' aid truck convoy into eastern Ukraine thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Aug-2014)
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Belarus to be the big winner in Russia's food import ban
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At a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China firmly rejected a proposal by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to "freeze" all activity in the South China Sea. According to the proposal, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other nations would freeze all activity that raises tension in the South China Sea.
China has been pursuing a "salami slicing strategy" to annex South China Sea territories belonging to other countries. China has annexed several islands and shoals in the South China Sea belonging to Vietnam and the Philippines, and is threatening to annex other territories belonging to Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan.
An unnamed senior U.S. official said ASEAN countries' concern over China's maritime actions was at an "all-time high" based on private conversations, although their public statements were more guarded to avoid antagonizing China.
China's foreign minister Wang Yi blamed the United States for stirring up trouble:
"Someone has been exaggerating or even playing up the so-called tension in the South China Sea. We do not agree with such a practice. We have already found a method to solve this issue between China and Asean countries. The South China Sea has become stabilized now. No other issues have risen recently."
I don't have the vaguest clue what "method" Wang is referring to. Well, actually, I guess it's China's standard method: China tells its neighbor to do as commanded, or face being killed militarily. That stabilizes the situation.
Yi said that China will continue to exercise restraint, but will respond to provocations unequivocally and resolutely. He added that safeguarding its sovereignty over the South China Sea is unshakable.
As usual, John Kerry was in his own dream bubble, and claimed that the ASEAN meeting was a setback for China, because the final statement called for stepped-up talks with China. Kerry said that the communique's language "goes far enough" despite China's rebuff of the freeze proposal. Xinhua and Eleven (Myanmar/Burma) and VOA
Last week, Russia retaliated against western sanctions with a sweeping ban on food imports -- meat and poultry, seafood, milk and dairy products including cheese, fruit, vegetables and vegetable oil-based products -- from countries that have imposed their own sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea, including the U.S., European Union, Australia and Norway.
Belarus is planning to help the Russian people. According to a Belarus official: "We can make up for many Western-made food products. We can supply a variety of cheeses. ... we can replace Polish apples and Dutch potatoes, we have them all."
However, Belarus already has a record of reselling European goods to Russia with a Belarusian label, in order to avoid Russian import duties on European goods. This underground activity is expected to expand substantially under the European food import ban. Moscow Times
Security forces, tanks and Shia militia have surged into the streets of Baghdad, after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave a surprise nationally televised speech accusing President Fuad Masum, a Kurd, of attempting a coup to prevent him from running for a third term. Al-Maliki has been under tremendous international pressure to step down, because he's been a divisive figure in his harsh treatment of Sunnis since the withdrawal of American forces in December 2011. Even some of his allies recently have called for him to step down.
The exact reasons why al-Maliki called the troops and security forces into Baghdad are unclear, but the move is being declared as "ominous." At least, the troops are intended to be intimidating, but they may also mean that al-Maliki is going to declare martial law in case he fails. Several days ago, he said that any attempt to form a government without him would open the "gates of hell" in Iraq.
The increasing political chaos in Iraq comes just days after President Obama announced a campaign of air strikes in Iraq, possibly to continue for months, to prevent genocide of tens of thousands of minorities and to aid the Kurdish Peshmerga militias from attacks by ISIS. Obama has vowed that there will be no American "boots on the ground," but a number of analysts on Sunday expressed skepticism that he would be able to keep that promise. Daily Sabah (Istanbul) and CNN and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Aug-14 World View -- Iraq's PM al-Maliki orders troops and tanks into Baghdad thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(11-Aug-2014)
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'Salami slicing tactics' by Russia and China risk wider war
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Long-standing conflicts between Georgia and Armenia were inflamed two weeks ago over a parking incident, when a Georgian woman's complaint -- that her car was blocked by an Armenian clergyman's car -- turned into an ethnically and racially charged clash involving some 50 people. The clash occurred at the Surb Etchmiadzin Armenian Church, located in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. The Georgian Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church are among the most ancient in the world, going back to the dawn of Christianity, and have played a part in the formation of their respective nations, so it's not surprising that the Churches easily become involved in ethnic hatreds. The countries fought a major border war in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I, and discords have been particularly severe since 1989, when a Georgian cathedral in Tbilisi was built on land that the Armenians claim was an Armenian cemetery. In the latest incident, an investigation concluded that the parking incident was a purely personal matter, and had not risen to the level of hate crime. Asbarez (Armenia) and Jamestown
Both Russia and China have been practicing a "salami slicing strategy" to annex territories belonging to other countries. Russia has already annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, and is threatening to annex eastern Ukraine and Moldova's Transnistria region.
China has annexed several islands and shoals in the South China Sea belonging to Vietnam and the Philippines, and is threatening to annex other territories belonging to Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan.
In each case, the aggressor nation is counting on the fact that the annexation action is sufficiently small, that it can count on the West's weakness to do nothing about it. In the long run, the purpose of the strategy is annex larger and larger regions, based on the assumption that the West will just look on helplessly.
This assumption, however, is based on a misreading of how democratic politics interacts with security dynamics. Aggressors perceive -- correctly, in the short run -- that pluralism renders democracies risk-averse. Citizens tend to be apathetic towards distant events which appear to have little relevance to their lives. For democratic leaders, the political costs of firm action thus tend to prevent firm strategy. Initial successes in the salami slicing strategy encourage aggressor leaders to confuse apathy among democratic publics with an unwillingness to react to perceived security threats.
However, democratic public opinion can shift very quickly. Incorrect assumptions and initial successes may lead an aggressor to walk blindly into actions which, retrospectively, turn out to have crossed a line that's too threatening for the democratic public to ignore.
The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines 17 (MH17) illustrates how things can go wrong. The shootdown didn't lead to a wider war, but it might have. The salami slicing tactics might, at any time, have an unexpected consequence that spirals into full scale war. Lowy Interpreter
On the day before the beginning of last week's ceasefire in the Gaza war, a team of reporters from New Delhi TV (NDTV) in Gaza noticed a mysterious tent with a blue canopy that popped up just outside their hotel window. They surmised that the three men around the tent were constructing a rocket to be launched into Israel. They filmed the entire activity, from setup to launch. The launch was in a heavily populated area in Gaza city, and the activity put in danger the reporters themselves, as well as anyone living in the area, from Israeli missile retaliation. The reporters noted that there were several open areas nearby, so putting the launch site into a heavily populated area unnecessarily risked the lives of innocent Palestinians. The reporters decided that the story was too important not to air, even though they risked retaliation from Hamas. They also received severe condemnation from other journalists and officials who accused them of helping Israel. New Delhi TV and YouTube
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Aug-14 World View -- New Delhi TV accidentally gets video of Hamas rocket launch in Gaza thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(10-Aug-2014)
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Obama is dragged kicking and screaming back towards the Truman Doctrine
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The ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas ended at 8 am local time on Friday morning, and Hamas launched a barrage of rockets at targets in Israel a short time later. Israel walked out of the peace talks in Egypt, and re-launched its air attacks on Hamas targets in Gaza. So the Gaza war is back in full force.
Daniel Nisman, the president of Levantine Group, a Mideast analyst group, gave a very interesting interview on al-Jazeera on Friday morning. Here are some excerpts (my transcription).
"The [peace] talks are ... complicated. First, Israel is not talking to Hamas. Israel talks to Egypt, and Egypt talks to Hamas. [It] looks like the rocket fire that we saw this morning promptly after the ceasefire ended was actually sort of Hamas's negotiating tactics, to leverage their position. ...Egypt's been in an open conflict with the regional Muslim Brotherhood movement, which extends also to Turkey and to Qatar. So if you look at Hamas, Hamas is basically the only Muslim Brotherhood branch with its own military, so you can see for yourself how Egypt would relate to that.
There's no question in my mind -- and I don't think any one in Israel -- that as soon as the current government came to power [in Egypt], they sought to weaken Hamas using any means necessary, and even if that means have Israel do its doing work while absorbing the international criticism.
I would say that it was really Egypt that pushed Hamas into a corner by shutting off the [Rafah border crossing] and destroying all those tunnels [under the fence between Gaza and Egypt]. That ... put Hamas into a corner with no choice but to fight its way out, and that's what it's doing right now in the current conflict. This conflict is actually as much of a fight between Hamas and Egypt, as it is a fight between Hamas and Israel.
Which is why you see that some of these negotiations in Cairo broke down even before Israel could even step in to the picture. There's still a lot of bad blood between the Egyptian side and Hamas side. There's a lot of insulting going on, and it's clear to many that Egypt will not let this conflict finish with Hamas in power. Egypt wants to finish this conflict with the Palestinian Authority sitting across from the Rafah border. They've got a very, very big Suez Canal expansion project, and they don't want Hamas to have any demands like expanding a seaport, building a seaport which could allow weapons to flow from Gaza into the Sinai peninsula.
So this policy towards weakening Hamas I think has been a big reason why the conflict has persisted as long as it has, because Egypt and Israel -- Egypt even more than Israel -- has an interest in weakening Hamas, seeing it as an extension of its own Muslim Brotherhood adversary."
Hamas has been increasingly demanding a seaport where supplies can flow in and out of Gaza, without being under control of either Israel and Egypt, as the border crossings would be. And once a seaport were open to international shipping, it would be almost impossible to close it again. However, Nisman makes the point that Egypt, even more than Israel, will prevent any such seaport from being built.
The Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS) apparently has control of the Mosul dam, the largest dam in Iraq. This gives ISIS control of much of Iraq's electrical power.
However, many analysts are beginning to describe the dam as a "weapon of mass destruction." According to some reports, if ISIS blows the dam, then Mosul will be flooded with water 20-30 meters deep. The water will continue downstream, flooding many other villages. In three days, it will reach Baghdad, and flood it with water 5 meters deep. Millions of people would be killed.
There are other concerns as well, according to a 2007 report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Mosul dam is not built on solid ground. It's built on porous material that requires constant maintenance. If ISIS does not continue that maintenance, then the dam will collapse anyway. However, that event would be at least six months away, according to one analyst I heard. Gulf News and ABC News
The Kurdish Peshmerga militias have a reputation for being fierce fighters, but they've performed poorly against ISIS in the past few weeks. Peter Galbraith, a Washington analyst, was interviewed on the BBC on Friday, and gave four reasons why the Peshmerga have done poorly:
Other analysts have said that the days of the fierce Peshmerga fighters are over. All the fierce fighters from the 1990s are now in politics or the oil business.
Reports indicate that the Obama administration has authorized airstrikes to help the Peshmerga, but some analysts are saying that won't be enough without at least supplying the Peshmerga with weapons. Newsweek
As I've written many times, President Obama has been the first president since the end of World War II to repudiate the Truman Doctrine. As I wrote in 2006, President Harry Truman's Truman Doctrine of 1947 made America "policeman of the world," because the cost of a small military action was always better than a repeat of something as enormous as World War II.
President Obama's policy, as I understand it, has always been no military action at all if it can be avoided in any way. As problems have mounted in the Mideast, Obama has been forced to revise his doctrine. In recent weeks, I've heard analysts describe his doctrine as permitting military action if two conditions are satisfied:
This is already closer to the Truman Doctrine than Obama has been in the past, but it's still not there. The NY City police force has to fight crime every day all the time. A police action is taken if its important to the entire city, not just important to the police force.
The Truman Doctrine is not limited to military actions that directly benefit the United States. The criterion is whether it's important to the world.
Of course, the two are sometimes hard to distinguish. Obama supposedly rejected military action in 2011 to stop the genocide of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad because it was not essential for American security. However, that failure may have led to the rise of ISIS, which IS a threat to America's security.
On Thursday evening, Obama announced limited military action in Iraq, which he justified as follows:
"I’ve said before, the United States cannot and should not intervene every time there’s a crisis in the world. So let me be clear about why we must act, and act now. When we face a situation like we do on that mountain -- with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale, when we have a mandate to help -- in this case, a request from the Iraqi government -- and when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain."
So there are three criteria:
Once again, this isn't exactly the set of criteria that a NY City police force would use.
Obama added the following in his speech:
"I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these. I understand that. I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done. As Commander-in-Chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq. And so even as we support Iraqis as they take the fight to these terrorists, American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq. The only lasting solution is reconciliation among Iraqi communities and stronger Iraqi security forces."
So having stated three criteria for military action, Obama quickly rushes to back away from them.
Analysts repeatedly describe ISIS as: extremely wealthy, extremely well organized, and extremely well-armed -- because they've captured huge troves of weapons including armored vehicles that can roll over Iraqi army troops.
Obama continues to learn bitter lessons that have repeatedly shown that his naïve view of the world is wrong. His last paragraph indicates that he still has little idea what's going on in the world, and that he still has a lot to learn. Sooner or later, however, events will force him (and us) to regret that he repudiated the Truman Doctrine in the first place. White House
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Aug-14 World View -- Hamas is at war with Egypt more than Israel thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(9-Aug-2014)
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Concerns grow over possible Russian invasion of Ukraine
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President Obama on Thursday evening announced "targeted air strikes" in Iraq, to protect American soldiers in Iraq, and to prevent militias from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS) from committing genocide on 140,000 Christians and Yazidis in Iraq.
Almost three years ago, President Obama pulled all troops out of Iraq, saying, "We're leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq." However, with inaction by the United States in the three years since the war in Syria began, we've seen the genocidal actions Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, aided by an unlimited supply of heavy weapons from Russia, attempt to exterminate all Sunnis in Syria, turning Syria into a "jihadist magnet," drawing jihadists and jihadist trainees from around the world, including America and Europe. In the last few months, the jihadist opposition to al-Assad has metastasized into ISIS, a powerful jihadist army that's now in control of large swaths not only of Syria, but also of Iraq.
President Obama came into office with no foreign policy doctrine except to do the opposite of anything the President George Bush did, claiming that an "apology tour" and diplomacy would bring peace to the world. Obama has learned many, many harsh lessons since then, and the complete collapse of his Iraq policy, at the same time that his Afghanistan policy is threatened with collapse, is probably the most bitter lesson so far, with more to come.
President Obama has been practically paralyzed with fear of adverse consequences of military actions, but is now forced against his will to send the military back into Iraq because of the crisis is rapidly worsening in a way that he said was impossible when the US troops were withdrawn.
Major components of the worsening crisis are as follows:
The Obama administration says that there will be no "boots on the ground," a statement that ignored the hundreds of advisors that are already there. Analysts are mixed as to whether it will be necessary to introduce combat troops in the future. Washington Post and BBC
On Thursday, Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen visited Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and promised "unwavering" support for "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine." This claim is not particularly credible, since Russia has already annexed Ukraine's peninsula of Crimea, and the annexation is rarely even mentioned.
Rasmussen blamed Russia for continuing to destabilize Ukraine, having "massed large forces on the Ukrainian border ... to use any pretext to intervene any further." According to Rasmussen:
"So I call on Russia to step back from the brink. Step back from the border. Do not use peacekeeping as an excuse for war-making. I urge Russia to follow the genuine path to peace. To stop its support for separatists. To pull back its troops from Ukraine's border. And to engage in a sincere dialogue for a peaceful solution."
Nato's support for Ukraine is strong, and to prove it, Nato announced that it will hold a meeting next month. I assume that if Russia invades Ukraine, then Nato will retaliate by holding further meetings. Nato News
Russia retaliated against western sanctions with a sweeping ban on food imports -- meat and poultry, seafood, milk and dairy products including cheese, fruit, vegetables and vegetable oil-based products -- from countries that have imposed their own sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea, including the U.S., European Union, Australia and Norway. However, it may be that Russia's sanctions will punish Russia more than the West. Russia imports 40% of the food it consumes. It's likely that Russia does not have the know-how or infrastructure to keep and distribute fruit and vegetables during the long winter, while the Russian fish and sea food industry as well as the Russian dairy industry are too underdeveloped to effectively take over the market freed from Western producers. However, Russia hopes to cover the emerging gap by importing more from Brazil, Israel, Turkey, China and other Asian nations. Jamestown and LA Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Aug-14 World View -- U.S. military returns to Iraq, almost three years after withdrawing thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Aug-2014)
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Panic over Ebola grows as Nigeria declares state of emergency
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Militias from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS) have vowed to exterminate Christians, Kurds and Shia Muslims, and have taken action to do so. But now ISIS is particularly targeting 40,000 people of the ancient Yazidi sect who fled to the top of Mount Sinjar to escape them, and are now trapped on the mountain, surrounded by ISIS terrorists. Yazidis are ethnic Kurds who follow a monotheistic religion dating back to 600 BC. Over time they have incorporated aspects of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism into their beliefs. Much of the faith remains shrouded in mystery, with outsiders not allowed to convert and believers not willing to share details of their rituals. The 40,000 on Mount Sinjar have no food and little water. An international effort may be mounted to try to save the trapped Yazidis, at least by airdropping food. CS Monitor and Guardian
Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday that he's just received information that the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is "higher than it was several days ago." This comes after several days when Russia has been massing tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine's eastern border.
Russia's armed forces have been helping the separatists all along, providing weapons and special forces troops, and bombarding Ukrainian army troops from within Russia.
Some reports indicate that the pro-Russian rebel militias in eastern Ukraine are losing ground to the government forces, and may be close to defeat. The suspicion is that Russian troops will invade to prevent the defeat of the pro-Russian rebel militias, though this is very high risk because it would essentially be a declaration of war against Ukraine's government. Another possibility is that the Russian troops are planning to invade in order to provide a corridor for the pro-Russian militias to retreat to Russia. RFE/RL
Officials are declaring a state of emergency in Nigeria after five more people were diagnosed with the Ebola virus, and one more person died. A Liberian man who flew into Lagos last week died from Ebola two days after arriving, and all of the additional cases are people who had direct contact with that one man. Authorities are rushing to obtain isolation tents in anticipation of more infections.
The Ebola virus is not airborne, but spreads only through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, so panic over concern of a worldwide epidemic is completely unwarranted.
But Lagos has 21 million people, and it's feared that the Ebola virus could spread through contacts among health workers, family members, and even prostitutes. Also, Nigeria and other west African countries have a special problem that other countries don't have: Many Africans believe that it's health workers from Western countries that have brought Ebola to Africa, and are causing it to spread.
There is an experimental drug that has apparently helped two American missionaries that contracted Ebola. There is very little of this drug available, but there is a brewing political issue that some people are blaming America for using this drug only with white Americans, not with Africans. AP and ABC News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Aug-14 World View -- Russia appears poised to invade Ukraine, threatening war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Aug-2014)
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The Jews and the Spanish Inquisition
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been scathing in his recent criticism of Israel, but at the same time he's taken note recent spike in anti-Semitic incidents, especially in Europe. According to a statement from Ban:
"[Ban] deplores the recent upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks, particularly in Europe, in connection with protests concerning the escalation of violence in Gaza.The Secretary-General emphasizes that the conflict in the Middle East must not constitute a pretext for prejudice that could affect social peace and harmony anywhere."
In Paris, a pro-Palestinian protest turned ugly when several Jewish shops were burned, and demonstrators chanted, "Death to Jews" and "Gas the Jews" and "Hitler was right!" 1930s attitudes are returning in Germany. An analysis of anti-Jew hate mail in Germany found that most of it originated with "well-educated Germans, including university professors." In Europe, violent mobs are attacking synagogues, painting swastikas on Jewish buildings, and chanting anti-Jewish slogans is becoming increasingly common. Occasionally, an activist will make a distinction between being anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish, but there's little doubt that many of the mobs today are anti-Jewish.
The figures show that there was a big spike in anti-Semitism during the 2009 war between Israel and Gaza, and a new spike today with the Gaza war. But prior to the 1990s, there were relatively few anti-Semitic attacks, but the number has been growing steadily since then, and accelerated after the year 2000.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is no surprise at all. The people in the Silent Generation, who grew up during World War II, were in charge through the 1980s. The Boomers, who grew up after the war, starting taking charge in the 1990s, and Generation-X rose to leadership positions in the 2000s. The Silents well remember the lessons of World War II, and the incredible horrors that followed from the Holocaust. But the Silents are almost gone now, and the Boomers and Gen-Xers are far removed from WW II, knowing little about it except that their grandfathers went off to war somewhere in Europe or Asia. Vox.com and Israel National News and Globe and Mail
Much anti-Semitic material appears in Spanish newspapers such as El Mundo, and I'd like to quote an anti-Semitic rant called "The Chosen Ones?" by a Antonio Gala, a Spanish novelist:
"The Hebrew people, tested since antiquity by ups and downs and the intimate dealings with their God, could have done much good for humanity: due to their prudence, their wisdom and endurance, their apparent religious fidelity and their proven administration of money.What is happening is that suddenly humanity is sick and tired of them: a phenomenon that has been repeated throughout their history, as if they were not made to coexist with others.
This is how it is and will remain, as it always has been. No matter what the Jews call their civil or military leaders, they end up creating problems for everyone: it is ancient history. Now you must suffer their abuses in Gaza, and review it all with an apparent injustice. They are never clear."
There is, in fact, a grain of truth in this excerpt: Jews are the targets of anti-Semitic attacks on a cyclic basis, and have been for centuries.
There's a tendency to look for reasons why the Jews are unique in this regard. Perhaps it's because the Jews always cluster together in the same neighborhoods, even when they aren't forced into ghettos. Or perhaps it's because the Jewish religion has been designed, over the millennia, to be able to survive with no homeland, even though they've had a homeland for a few brief decades since 1948. Or perhaps it's because people consider them to be snooty for referring to themselves as "The Chosen Ones," as if God cares about no one but them.
But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, they aren't unique. The Holocaust was a unique event, to be sure, but that was just one component of World War II. If you look at the years from 1914 to 1945, then you have Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians slaughtering each other in the most brutal, bloody, and horrific massacres possible, so Christians are by no means excused. In fact, even the 1994 Rwanda genocide was Christian versus Christian.
Since the 1980s, it's been mostly the Muslims' turn at slaughter, and it's been getting worse every year. Today you have bloody massacres of Muslims killing each other in many countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Yemen, Libya, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China's Xinjiang province. The mutual genocide is highly racist and secular, as Sunnis kill Shias, Shias kill Sunnis, and Sunnis kill Sufis. The growing mutual slaughter of the Muslims is clearly headed for a massive, bloody crisis that will be devastating for everyone.
A few days ago, I was watching some of the commemorations being held on the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. I heard one politician intone, "Thank God we've solved all the problems of the world wars, and we understand what to do. Today, a war in Europe is completely unthinkable, and we owe that to the lessons that we've learned."
Well, this politician's slogan should be, "Don't know much about history." War was completely unthinkable prior to World War I as well. That was the time of "La Belle Époque," when everything was beautiful. War was not only unthinkable, it was thought to be impossible. In fact, many wars are unthinkable until they start, and then they suddenly become "thinkable." (For more on why World War I was unthinkable, see "The gathering storm in the Caucasus." from 2008.)
The growing anti-Semitism in Europe is more than just a simple social phenomenon. It's a sign that the old WW II fault lines are splitting open again. Another sign is the growing tensions in Ukraine, and the tensions between Greece and Germany during the financial crisis, which is far from over. Gatestone and El Mundo
I want to illustrate the cyclical nature of anti-Semitic attacks by returning to a Generational Dynamics analysis I've written about before, covering medieval Spain from the 1390s to 1492.
The 1390s civil war in Spain was marked by especially violent anti-Jewish pogroms that were triggered by a serious financial crisis for which the wealthy Jews were blamed. Almost every crisis war ends with some sort of imposed compromise that unravels some 80 years later, leading to the next crisis war.
The compromise that ended the 1390s civil war was an interesting one: The Jews would convert to Catholicism, or else would be expelled. During the next few decades, over half of the 200,000 Jews on the peninsula formally converted to Catholicism.
Compromises of this sort only work for so long, but the failure of this compromise was especially ironic. The Conversos, as the converted Jews were called, were now officially Christian, bringing them further wealth and status. A large part of the Castilian upper class consisted of Jews and Conversos, naturally generating a great deal of class jealousy among the lower classes. It's typical for riots and demonstrations to occur during a generational Awakening era, midway between two crisis wars, and that's what happened here. The riots against the Conversos began in 1449, and became increasingly worse as the old compromise began to unravel. Thus, an old fault line between the Catholics and the Jews was replaced by a new fault line between the old line Catholics and the Converso Catholics.
Those who remember America's most recent Awakening era in the 1960s and 70s will remember the fiery rhetoric that demonstrators used in the antiwar movement at that time. Johns Hopkins University professor David Nirenberg found that the "anti-Converso movement" rhetoric of 1449 and beyond was just as heated: "The converts and their descendants were now seen as insincere Christians, as clandestine Jews, or even as hybrid monsters, neither Jew nor Christian. They had converted merely to gain power over Christians. Their secret desire was to degrade, even poison, Christian men and to have sex with Christian women: daughters, wives, even nuns."
This is exactly what Generational Dynamics is all about. The generation of kids who grew up during the 1390s pogroms became risk-averse adults who were willing to look for compromises to avoid new bloody violence. Thus, there were anti-Converso riots during the 1450s and after, but that risk averse generation that grew up in the 1390s were still around to contain the problem, and look for compromises, to keep things from getting too far out of hand, despite the heated rhetoric. When that generation died, no one was left to look for compromises, and new pogroms began in the 1480s.
As the old compromise unraveled completely, the riots against the Conversos got worse, and a common charge against the Conversos was that they were "false Christians." The most common charge against Conversos was that of "Judaizing," that is, of falsely pretending conversion and secretly practicing Jewish rites.
This is what gave rise to the Spanish Inquisition. The idea was to have an official body empowered to determine whether those who had claimed to convert to Catholicism had really converted. As new pogroms began in the 1470s and 1480s, the Inquisition was particularly targeted to find the "Judaizers." At first, the Inquisition was directed specifically at Conversos, but later was extended to unconverted Jews. Thousands of Conversos and Jews were executed under the Inquisition, and entire Jewish communities were eliminated.
The new crisis war reached its climax in the year 1492, when three different things happened that affected Spain for the next century:
With regard to the last point, Muslims had crossed over to southern Spain from Africa as early as the 700s, and had conquered almost all of Spain. The Catholics had dreamed of reconquering Spain from the Muslims for centuries. The Reconquest was finally completed in 1492.
To summarize: The great compromise that settled the Spanish pogroms of the 1390s was that the Jews would convert to Catholicism. That compromise worked fine for a while, then began to unravel, and eventually became one of the issues in the next great crisis war.
The great compromise that settled the Holocaust of World War II was the creation of the state of Israel, which was supposed to settle the Jewish problem once and for all. That compromise worked fine for a while, but in the decades that followed, it began to unravel. What the next world war will do to Israel can't be predicted, but what can be predicted is that Israel will be a major issue in that war. (Two paragraphs added. 6-Aug)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Aug-14 World View -- Cyclic anti-Semitism surges in Europe thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Aug-2014)
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China reasserts its sovereignty over the South China Sea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Both Israel and Hamas have agreed to begin a 3-day humanitarian ceasefire to begin on Tuesday morning at 8 am local time. However, expectations are extremely low, because there have been several attempts at ceasefire in the past, and they all failed fairly quickly. The ceasefire proposal was put forth by Egypt, and it's apparently identical to the ceasefire proposal that Egypt proposed three weeks ago.
An Israeli spokesman said:
"Israel will cease all military operations against terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip. Israel will honor the cease-fire and will be watching to see if Hamas does to."
A Palestinian spokesman said:
"It's clear now that the interest of all parties is to have a cease-fire. It's going to be tough negotiations because Israel has demands, too."
As I've written several times in the last weeks, Israel and Hamas agree on little except one thing: Neither wants to return to the status quo ante. This means that Israel will not agree to a permanent ceasefire unless Hamas and other Gaza factions are demilitarized, and Hamas will not agree to a ceasefire unless the "siege" is ended, meaning that people and goods can flow freely in and out of Gaza. USA Today
Militias from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS), which have gained control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq, joined with some militias from al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra to attempt to take control of Lebanon by attacking the town of Arsal in northern Lebanon. Thousands of families have been forced to flee from their homes, as the battle raged between the ISIS militants and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). ISIS terrorists had been hiding out in the mountains surrounding Arsal after combined forces of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah drove them from border villages in Syria. Reports indicate that ISIS is preparing a military strategy to take over the region by repeating its successes in Iraq, where in the past few days it had scored a major victory by capturing Iraq's biggest hydroelectric dam.
Lebanon's population is about 40% Christian, 27% Sunni Muslim and 27% Shia Muslim, and Lebanon itself has been split along religious lines whether to support the Alawite/Shia regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad or his Sunni enemies. In the past, these religious differences have split the army, whose soldiers are drawn from the entire population, but the ISIS invasion of northern Lebanon appears to have united the army, at least for the time being, to join with Hezbollah to fight the invaders. Daily Star (Lebanon) and Al Monitor and Daily Star (Beirut)
China is aggressively asserting claims to the entire South China Sea, including regions that have historically belonged to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines. China is building a network of airstrips and military garrisons in the South China Sea in clear violation of international law, and refuses to participate in any United Nations mediation efforts. The South China Sea is believed to contain big oil and gas deposits, and rich fishing grounds. China has been using a "salami-slicing" technique of annexing one portion after another.
The Philippines is proposing a freeze on activity in the South China Sea, in order to prevent a dispute that might lead to a military confrontation. However, a high government official in Beijing has rejected the proposal, saying:
"The Spratly Islands are China's intrinsic territory, and what China does or doesn't do is up to the Chinese government. Nobody can change the government's position. ...Why is it that when other countries wantonly build airports, nobody says a word? But China has only this year started small and necessary construction, to raise living conditions on the islands - and so many people raise doubts."
I guess the answer to this question is that when other countries wantonly build airports, they do so on their own territory, rather than on someone else's territory. Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Aug-14 World View -- Syria war spills into Lebanon, as ISIS attacks town of Arsal thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Aug-2014)
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Israel faces harsh international criticism over shelling of UN shelter
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Terrorists with the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS) defeated Kurdish Peshmerga (militia) forces and took control of Iraq's biggest hydroelectric dam, located near Mosul. This gives ISIS control of the water supply and electricity of much of northern Iraq, and also the ability to flood major cities, threatening Baghdad. Earlier, ISIS militants successful.y captured an oil field and nearby villages, after fighting with Kurdish forces who had control of the area. Many analysts continue to remain skeptical of ISIS's long-term ability to control the huge swath of land it's captured in a series of lightning raids, but so far ISIS has not only held on to its gains, but continues to increase them. Al Arabiya and CNN
During the last three years, Iran has invested a significant portion of its military resources supporting the regime of president Bashar al-Assad of Syria, supplying Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), weapons and money both to Syria's regime and to Hezbollah militia from Lebanon who are supporting al-Assad in Syria. However, Iran has been caught by surprise by a major threat on its own doorstep, the rapid rise of the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS). ISIS is a Sunni Muslim terrorist organization with an objective of exterminating all Shia Muslims. ISIS is threatening Iran's allies in Iraq, as well as significant Shia religious sites in Iraq that Iran is committed to defending. Iran is known to be supplying weapons to Iraq's government. Iran has denied sending troops into Iraq, but some recent funerals of IRGC fighters killed in Iraq indicates the presence of at least a small number of Iranian troops. In addition, some Hezbollah forces that had been fighting in Syria, as well as Iraqi forces that had been defending al-Assad in Syria, have been redeployed to Iraq. Some reports indicate that ISIS in Syria has begun to engage the Syria army much more forcefully than in the past.
The result is that Iran finds that it's fallen deep into a quagmire (a term that Americans will recall from past wars). What was a relatively breezy level of military support for al-Assad in Syria has now turned into a two-front war facing an enemy that's threatening Syria's Alawite/Shia regime, Iraq's Shia government, and Iran itself. Reuters and Al Arabiya
On Sunday, Israel faced international criticism, including harsh criticism from the United States and United Nations, after an Israeli shell killed ten Palestinians just outside a United Nations school sheltering 3000 people who had fled there from earlier violence. United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon expressed "shock and disbelief" that this had happened three times in the last week, and said:
"The Israel Defense Forces have been repeatedly informed of the location of these sites. This attack, along with other breaches of international law, must be swiftly investigated and those responsible held accountable. It is a moral outrage and a criminal act."
U.S. State Dept. spokesman Jen Psaki said, "The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which ten more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed."
Israel says that it's investigating what happened. Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Al Ahram (Cairo)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Aug-14 World View -- Iran trapped in a quagmire supporting both Syria and Iraq thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(4-Aug-2014)
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Israel confirms the death of the abducted soldier
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The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday viewed a presentation by a defecting forensic photographer from regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. This was the same forensic photographer, nicknamed "Caesar," that we wrote about in January ( "22-Jan-14 World View -- Western leaders sickened by Assad's 'industrial strength' torture in Syria"). Wearing dark glasses and a hood to hide his identity, he told Congress what he had seen in Damascus. He described maimed bodies, people with eyes gouged out and skeletal remains, a litany of horrors that defy the imagination -- backed up by 55,000 photos that he had smuggled out over a two year period. They were similar to the images found in Nazi death camps after World War II, and show that al-Assad is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The validity of the photos was verified by three top war crimes prosecutors. And this was only the tip of the iceberg, as these 55,000 photos came from just one location out of many locations where this torture took place. This one photographer photographed almost 20 bodies every day, suggesting that there was "torture for pleasure" on a massive scale.
The al-Assad regime has used sarin gas on its own population, with impunity. The regime has continued to use chemical weapons. Regime helicopters drop huge barrel bombs onto civilian neighborhoods. The barrel bombs may contain explosives, screws, nails and other shrapnel, plus canisters of chlorine and ammonia. When chlorine is inhaled, it reacts with the moisture in the lungs, turning into hydrochloric acid that literally burns the target to death from the inside out.
Al-Assad is supported by Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who is a war criminal for providing unlimited supplies of heavy weapons to al-Assad to continue his genocide. Al Monitor and House Foreign Affairs Committee and Report on validity of Assad torture photos
Although the death of the abducted soldier, Hadar Goldin, is a tragedy for his fiancée and his family, it's a big relief to Israel's army in the sense that Hamas can no longer use Goldin for either political or military leverage. According to Israel's army, Goldin was abducted on Friday during operations to destroy an underground tunnel that ran under the border from Gaza to Israel, and extended a full two kilometers into Israel's territory. On the Gaza side, the tunnel began in an open area surrounded by homes. Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Aug-14 World View -- Congress reacts to photos of Assad's torture victims in Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(3-Aug-2014)
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Tunisia closes border to foreigners fleeing Libya
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Countries are closing borders in western Africa to try to stop the spread of the worst epidemic of the Ebola virus in history. The U.S. Peace Corps and other aid groups are evacuating their personnel. The World Health Organization (WHO) is launching a $100 million response plan, and the United States is providing material and technical support to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. WHO chief Margaret Chan told a meeting of presidents of western African countries, "The demands created by Ebola in West Africa outstrip your capacities to respond." Reuters
In yesterday's World View, I wrote that it didn't appear that Hamas had agreed that it was OK for Israel to continue destroying tunnels during the ceasefire, since it wasn't mentioned in the ceasefire announcement. And yes, that's exactly what happened. Apparently the negotiating geniuses John Kerry and Ban Ki-moon didn't bother to get agreement on this point, and left Israel to assume that they could continue destroying tunnels, and left Hamas to to assume that they couldn't.
Anyway, the ceasefire has been a disaster. Israel's army kept destroying tunnels. Suicide bombers popped out of one hidden tunnels, and killed two soldiers. Then, a team popped out of another tunnel, grabbed an Israeli soldier, Hadar Goldin, and dragged him back into the tunnel. The ceasefire ended in 90 minutes.
A kidnapped soldier is Israel's worst nightmare. Reports indicate that the army plans to "flatten" the entire area where the soldier might be held, even if it risks the soldier's life. In fact, Hamas is denying that it abducted anyone, and suggests that the soldier is dead, which is what some Israelis would prefer to an abduction.
So it's being called a "game-changer," with good reason. First, any kind of negotiations are now impossible, since Hamas would use the kidnapped soldier as a bargaining chip, which would be intolerable to Israel. Second, the already growing nationalism of Israel's (Jewish) population is soaring again, and the segment of the population that wants to see Israel's army crush Hamas is also growing. Third, this is an enormous psychological and political victory for Hamas, which Palestinians are celebrating, and leads many Palestinians to believe that Hamas has the upper hand and will win the war.
I wrote yesterday that the Palestinians and the Israelis agree on one thing: No return to the status quo ante. That was true yesterday, and even more true today. BBC
For the last few weeks I've been reading analyst reports predicting a ceasefire within a few days, just as there was in the 2008-9 and 2012 Gaza wars. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the difference between those wars and the current one is that the younger generations in both Gaza and Israel are less willing to compromise. It's been 66 years since the genocidal 1948 war between Arabs and Jews that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel, so there are almost no survivors left who remember the horrors of the 1948 war. On a purely statistical basis, most new crisis wars begin about 58 years after the end of the previous crisis war, and each additional year makes a new crisis war more likely. 66 years is a statistically high interval.
Mainstream analysts are pointing to several significant reasons why "this time it's different." One of the main ones is that this is no longer a war between Israel and Hamas. Instead it's a proxy war that's split the nations of the Mideast down the middle. Turkey, Qatar, Iran and Hezbollah are solid supporters of Hamas, while Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority are supporters of Israel. In the past, Egypt served as a mediator that both sides trusted, but no such mediator exists today.
As I've written many times in the last decade, Arabs and Jews are headed for a new genocidal crisis war, refighting the 1948 war, with a result that may not be favorable to Israel. It might spiral out of the current war, or it might happen in one year, two years or three years. At this moment, it's beginning to look more and more like the time is now. CNN and PRI
As the civil war violence in Tripoli, Libya, continues, thousands of foreign nationals living in and around Tripoli are trying to escape through Tunisia. But Tunisia has now closed the border, following an attempt to storm the border by "a massive number of people of different nationalities," according to Tunisian authorities, who said that there were "suspicious elements," including a large number of Egyptians without visas. In an attempt to restore order at one border crossing, Tunisian border guards fired into the air. Libyan guards on the other side of the border, thinking the Tunisians were firing at them, shot back, wounding the Tunisian head of security. Libya Herald and Khaleej Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Aug-14 World View -- Gaza ceasefire collapses with 'game changer' abduction thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(2-Aug-2014)
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The Rafah crossing becomes a major issue in the Gaza war
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon jointly announced on Thursday a 3-day ceasefire in the Gaza war, to begin on Friday morning. The ceasefire will allow time to provide humanitarian aid to Gazans.
Israeli and Palestinian delegations will go immediately to Cairo Egypt, with the aim of reaching "a durable ceasefire."
As I wrote yesterday, Israel and Hamas agree on very little, but one thing that they both agree on is that neither side will accept an agreement that restores the status quo ante. This observation leads to a number of issues and questions:
During the ceasefire, Israel's troops will remain in place in Gaza, according to the ceasefire announcement. However, the ceasefire statement left open the question of whether the Israeli army would continue military operations to destroy the Hamas tunnel network during the ceasefire. Israel's president Benjamin Netanyahu stated clearly, prior to the ceasefire announcement, that the army would continue these military operations "with or without a ceasefire." It's unclear whether Hamas was aware of these terms when they agreed to the ceasefire. It's also unclear what Hamas's reaction would be in case a Palestinian is accidentally killed during these military operations.
The ceasefire announcement came several hours after Israel announced that it was calling up 16,000 more army reservists. It's unclear what role they'll have now.
The "durable ceasefire" negotiations will begin as soon as all the parties arrive in Cairo. It's known that an Israeli delegation, a Palestinian delegation, the U.S. and Egypt will take part in the negotiations. BBC and Jerusalem Post
It's not entirely clear what the makeup of the Palestinian delegation will be. The U.S. and Israel insist that Hamas, which is viewed as a terrorist group, must not be given the same status as the other parties, and so the U.S. and Israel will not sit at the same table as Hamas. However, recall that the Palestinians recently agreed to a "unity government," joining the Palestinian Authority (PA/PLO/Fatah) and Hamas into a single government. The plan is for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to represent the unity government, including Hamas, as well as other Palestinian factions, such as Islamic Jihad. It will be interesting to see how that goes.
Israel's committed military objectives are to totally disarm Hamas by destroying all the rockets and tunnels. Since those objectives will not be reached, will Israel agree to extending the ceasefire beyond 3 days, if it even lasts that long?
And suppose by some miracle Israel succeeded in destroying every single rocket and every single tunnel. What would prevent Hamas from reconstructing them in the event of a permanent ceasefire? Reuters
Hamas's committed objective is to get the "siege" lifted, which would permit people and goods to flow freely out of Gaza. There are a few border crossings into Israel, but the most important aspect of this objective is opening the Rafah border crossing that connects Egypt and Gaza. If Hamas agrees to a ceasefire without getting the Rafah crossing opened, then Hamas will almost certainly not survive with Gaza. So Hamas needs the Rafah crossing open just for its own survival.
The Rafah crossing was closed in July of last year following an attack on Egyptian security forces by Islamists linked to Hamas. Since then it's been closed almost permanently. Even during the current war, Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing closed, except to evacuate wounded Palestinians and to allow the importation of food and medicines.
In fact, opening the Rafah crossing is a matter of considerable debate within Egypt itself. Many Egyptians are sympathetic with the plight of the Palestinian people living in Gaza, and would like to see their difficulties alleviated. Other Egyptians note that Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which is considered a terrorist organization in Egypt, and fear that opening the Rafah crossing would give a boost to the Muslim Brotherhood. According to one Egyptian columnist:
"As far as Hamas is concerned, opening the crossing – as a trade and economic route and not just for humanitarian purposes – is the only way to fundamentally change the existing situation. It is the last chance to ensure Hamas's control of the Strip. This is evident from the fact that agreeing to open the crossing is the only thing that could ensure an immediate end to all military action, even though opening it for commercial reasons has nothing to do with the struggle against Israel or the liberation of occupied lands in the [Gaza] Strip. This is a move related to something far more important as far as [Hamas] is concerned: its continued control over 'the liberated Gaza emirate'!Opening the crossing for commercial purposes does not align with Egypt's interests and strongly undermines its policy and national security needs, especially in the long term. Operating the crossing with Hamas on the other side means a full recognition of its rule in Gaza. This is Hamas's ultimate goal. If Egypt agrees to it, then it essentially agrees to a new country on its border – a country of 1.7 million people who suffer unemployment and are rife with ideas of jihad and takfir; a country ruled by an armed movement with regional alliances and political goals that totally contradict the basic foundations of Egyptian security. These foundations are based on respecting the peace agreement with Israel and spurring it to agree to a solution for its conflict with the Palestinians via peaceful negotiations, and in accordance with the principle of land for peace and the Two State Solution."
Those dreamers who fantasize that this ceasefire arrangement will last more than a couple of hours or a couple of days are hoping that some deal can be made where the Rafah crossing is opened and is guarded by Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah. Memri and Guardian (London-7/17)
There are unconfirmed reports that Hamas was planning a massive assault on civilians in southern Israel on Rosh Hashanah in late September. The plan was that 200 Hamas fighters would pour through the dozens of tunnels that Hamas has dug under the border between Gaza and Israel, and attack numerous Israeli communities, killing and kidnapping as many civilians as possible. According to the reports, they would have IDF (Israeli Defense Force) uniforms, causing further confusion. It's possible that Hezbollah might have joined in. The current unplanned war with Hamas inadvertently thwarted these plans, allowing the destruction of the tunnels, which made such an attack a possibility. Jewish Press
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Aug-14 World View -- The Gaza ceasefire: Things to watch for thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Aug-2014)
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