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Desperate John Kerry looks for a nuclear deal with Iran on Tuesday
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As an American, it's embarrassing to see Secretary of State so desperate to get a nuclear deal with Iran that he's willing to concede anything. The deadline is today (Tuesday) at midnight Switzerland time. It's thought that Kerry doesn't want the negotiations to past midnight, because then it would be called an "April Fool's Nuclear Deal."
Many people believe that Kerry's lack of restraint is his desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize. That may in fact be his motive, but to be fair, there's another reason: It there's no agreement with Iran, then the status quo remains: the sanctions continue while Iran continues to develop a nuclear weapons. What's not clear to me is why this is better than having a deal where the sanctions come off, and Iran continues to develop a nuclear weapon anyway.
According to an analysis by Memri, Iran has not backed down in any way from its positions at the start of the talks. As I reported yesterday, Iran has reversed a previous agreement to ship their stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia. Now they intend to keep it, so that it can be refined and developed into a nuclear weapon.
Memri lists the following Iranian positions that remain unchanged:
So it looks like Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon either way.
This is a good time to remind readers that we've been predicting for years, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran was going to get a nuclear weapon, because Iran's public is demanding it for defense. They've already been a victim of Saddam Hussein's WMDs, and the public believes that with Pakistan, Russia and Israel having nuclear weapons, they must have one too.
Still, with President Obama's and John Kerry's foreign policy record of an unbroken string of catastrophes, it cannot do the United States any good to see a servile John Kerry begging for a deal, just to see him later beg for a reward from the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Iran's Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei is demanding that all Western sanctions be removed completely immediately, or there will be no deal. In February, Khamenei made a statement affirming this, but also accused the West of duplicity:
"A scenario of agreement on general principles, and shortly thereafter agreement on the details, is not recommended, because our experience with the opposite side's conduct [in the negotiations shows] that a framework agreement will serve [them] as a tool for inventing a series of excuses in [the negotiations on] the details. If an agreement is to be reached, it must be a single-stage agreement, and it must include the general framework as well as the details. The agreement's content must be clear, and not open to interpretation. The agreement's sections must not be such that the opposing side, which is used to bargaining, will search for excuses on the various issues. The sanctions must be completely removed."
This paragraph may be alluding to a 2013 interim agreement between Iran and the west. The full text of that agreement was never published. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that under the agreement Iran had no right to enrich uranium, while Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gloated that Iran had preserved its right to enrich uranium. The White House published a "summary," but Iran completely rejected the White House summary as "not true." Then, in January 2014, Iran disclosed that there was a secret side agreement to the nuclear agreement. The White House first confirmed this, saying that the side agreement would be made public, and then denied that there was a secret side agreement
So Khamenei is demanding that any new agreement be published in full, that there be no side agreements, that there be no ambiguities, and that sanctions be removed completely, immediately.
So here are two questions: Is Khamenei so resolute that he won't compromise on any principle? Is Kerry so servile that he'll compromise on every principle? Perhaps we'll have an answer by April Fool's Day. Memri and VOA and AEI Iran Tracker
The Washington Post is saying that President Obama plans to create a new Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal, and to impose it on Israel and the Palestinians by mandating it through the UN Security Council. The "new" proposal would be an update of UN Resolution 242, whose latest incarnation is President George Bush's May 2003 "Roadmap to Mideast Peace," which the Obama administration has been trying and failing to impose on Israel and the Palestinians through negotiations.
Obama has already laid the groundwork by means of his vitriolic criticisms of Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although the details of the "new" proposal are not publicly known, it's expected that it will try to impose a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Most likely it would declare that Jerusalem would be the capital of both nations.
The plan would be silent on the means for protecting Israel from terrorist attacks from the West Bank and Gaza. The plan would also be silent on the question of Palestinian refugees and the "right to return," except to say that those details would be agreed on later. In other words, the "peace plan" would meet the Palestinians' demands, but would not even address Israel's concerns.
As in the case of the Iran nuclear negotiations, all I can do is shake my head at how laughably ridiculous this is. When George Bush proposed something similar, I wrote in May 2003 in "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?" that it would never work, because Generational Dynamics predicts that Arabs and Jews would be refighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
So President Obama, the smartest guy in every room, is about to launch into his next foreign policy catastrophe by regurgitating George Bush's old Roadmap to Mideast Peace plan with a new title and a shiny new cover. But this time it will not be a "proposal," but a "mandate," which will make no difference whatsoever, except that it will probably infuriate everyone, and may even start another war. Washington Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Mar-15 World View -- President Obama to update George Bush's 'Roadmap to Mideast Peace' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Mar-2015)
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Top Iranian journalist defects, criticizes US nuclear negotiators
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Amir Hossein Motaghi, a top Iranian journalist and close aide to Iran's president Hassan Rouhani, defected to the West on Friday, while reporting on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West. Appearing in a televised interview, he said:
"There are a number of people attending on the Iranian side at the negotiations who are said to be journalists reporting on the negotiations. But they are not journalists and their main job is to make sure that all the news fed back to Iran goes through their channels. My conscience would not allow me to carry out my profession in this manner any more."
Anyone in Iran who criticizes the regime in any way may be subject to imprisonment, torture or death. This was particularly evident following the 2009 presidential election, when there was blood in streets as peaceful student protesters were slaughtered by regime security forces.
Journalism in Iran is a particularly dangerous profession, since angering some regime politician can lead to imprisonment. One of the factors in Motaghi's decision to defect was the arrest of his friend Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American reporter for the Washington Post, who was brutally arrested on July 22 of last year, along with his wife. He's still in prison, and there have been no charges.
Motaghi says there's no point to being an Iranian journalist, since all you do is parrot with the regime tells you to say. He's also critical of Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. nuclear negotiating team: "The US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal." Telegraph (London)
Most annual Arab League summit meetings have as their top agenda item the problem of Israel and the Palestinian cause. But this year, the 26th Arab League summit was held in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, and the war with the Houthis in Yemen was pretty much the only major agenda item. Other important agenda items, including the Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), the unrest in Iraq, Libya and Syria and the Palestinian cause, were discussed only briefly.
The major decisions to come out of the Arab League meeting were:
The final draft resolution called on Arab countries to support Palestine's budget, and to pressure Israel to respect signed agreements and international resolutions.
The anger directed at Iran is palpable. The Houthi insurrection has done something that the Syria war, ISIS, and terrorism in Libya did not do: It unified the Arab nations, at least for the time being. Yemen is not seen as a local problem, but as Iran's grip on another nation, after Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, while at the same time making use of a "desperate" president Barack Obama.
This Saudi editorial seems to capture what a lot of Arabs are feeling today:
"If anything, the so-called Arab Spring had provided Iran with an unprecedented opportunity to boost its strategic presence in the Arab world. Indeed, Tehran has exploited every crisis in the Arab world to its advantage and to gain a foothold in the region. I will state the obvious and argue that Iran is a revisionist state.Many Saudis as well as other Arabs believe that Iran’s bullying knows no bounds. Hence, many Arabs are looking up to Saudi Arabia to effectively confront Iran’s expansionist designs in the region. While Riyadh had been working along with other like-minded states in a peaceful way to prevent unnecessary escalation, the Iranian leaders erroneously thought that they could destabilize Yemen, change the balance of power in the Gulf region, and get away with it. In such a situation, it was necessary to formulate a new strategy conveying a strong message to Iran and its ilk that Saudi Arabia could always resort to using military means if and when necessary to prevent an imbalance in the regional balance of power.
The same strategy could be seen currently at work in Yemen. The failure of diplomacy to encourage the Iranian-backed Houthis to negotiate with good faith compelled Riyadh to adopt this approach.
In a short period of time, Riyadh put forward a formidable coalition with one objective: To reverse the gains of the Houthis and to hit them hard so that they understand that their actions will not be tolerated and that they have to negotiate a political settlement.
The running argument within and without Saudi Arabia is that short of taking strong and decisive action against Iran’s proxy, Iran will not change course.
To have a better understanding of this strategy, one has to examine the wider context. Observers in the region agree that United States President Barack Obama is desperate to leave his legacy in the Middle East. Time and again, Obama made it perfectly clear that a deal with Iran topped his priority list. The problem, and herein the crux of the matter, is that such a deal is most likely to give Iran an elated status. It is as if you get the genie out of the bottle. A deal with Iran is likely to strengthen a revisionist Iran, a scenario that will be too risky. Furthermore, the prevailing perception in this part of the world is that the American appeasement of Iran will only hurt the interests of the Arab world in the long run."
This is only a few steps away from a call for war with Iran. Al Ahram (Cairo) and Arab News and AP
The self-imposed deadline for completion of nuclear negotiations is Tuesday, and it's believed by many that the Obama administration is desperate for a deal, possibly so that Obama and Kerry can share a Nobel Peace Prize.
A report late Sunday indicates that Iran is backing away from a previous agreement to ship their stockpile of atomic fuel to another country, presumably to Russia. This would make the stockpile inaccessible for making a nuclear weapon.
Another major area of disagreement is the removal of sanctions. Iran's Supreme Leader has vetoed any nuclear agreement that doesn't give Iran immediate relief from Western sanctions, as we reported two weeks ago. There is a disagreement among politicians in Washington whether Obama has the power to reduce or remove sanctions unilaterally, without a vote from Congress.
It's typical in a hard negotiating situation for compromises to be reached at the last moment. Daily Star (Lebanon) and Bloomberg
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Mar-15 World View -- Arab League meeting ends with promise for joint Arab military force thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Mar-2015)
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Arab League positions harden against Houthis and Iran
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A group of seven jihadist factions, led by the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front), appear to have seized the city of Idlib, dealing a major blow to the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, who recently declared that Idlib would be freed. The Syrian army forces collapsed rapidly after four days of heavy fighting, according to the jihadists. They were able to make use of American-made TOW missiles that the US had previously provided to friendly anti-Assad rebels. The TOW missiles were used to neutralize Syrian tanks.
Al-Nusra is an al-Qaeda linked group, and is in fact the "official" branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. It didn't join the Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) when the latter broke away from al-Qaeda two years ago. The al-Qaeda linked groups and ISIS are theoretically allies fighting the al-Assad regime, but they also get into battles with each other, and there may be a major battle shaping up over who's going to control more of Syria.
Idlib is a the capital of the northwestern province named Idlib. The city has 165,000 people and is close to the main highway linking Damascus to Aleppo and to the coastal province of Latakia, a stronghold of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad. The jihadists were jubilant after victory, posting videos of themselves taking down al-Assad posters, and yelling "Alluha Akbar!"
This is the second time in a week that al-Assad has been humiliated by an al-Nusra victory. Last week, al-Nusra captured the ancient and strategic town of Busra Sham in southern Syria.
Idlib is the second major provincial capital that the al-Assad regime has lost to jihadists. Al-Nusra captured another provincial capital, Raqqa, but it was subsequently seized from al-Nusra by ISIS, and has now become the headquarters of ISIS.
With the world focused on ISIS, al-Nusra has quietly consolidated its power in Syria. Al-Nusra now controls a large stretch of land from the border with Turkey to southern Syria. Control of Idlib means that jihadists can freely move back and forth between Turkey and Syria. Some analysts believe that Turkey is funding some al-Qaeda linked groups because its major objective is the defeat of al-Assad. The National (UAE) and Belfast Telegraph and Long War Journal
"Operation Decisive Storm," which is the name of the 8-country military operation to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, entered its fourth day on Saturday night.
Leaders of the Arab League nations used extremely belligerent language in referring to the Houthis and Iran, with the King of Saudi Arabia calling the Houthis the biggest threat to the stability and security of the region, presumably implying that they're more dangerous than the Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
The leaders backed up the belligerent language with commitments to continue the assault on the Houthis in Yemen. This indicates that positions are becoming extremely hardened.
Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, the president of Yemen who has been forced to flee the country, called the Houthis "stooges of Iran," and said:
"I call for the continuation of Operation Decisive Storm until this gang [the Houthis] announces its surrender, exits all occupied territories in the provinces, leaves state institutions and military camps. Operation Decisive Storm will continue until all the goals are achieved and the Yemeni people start enjoying security and stability."
Obviously, there's a lot of wishful thinking her, since the Iran-backed Houthis are not going to surrender without a great deal more bloodshed.
Egypt's president Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi said:
"This nation [Yemen], in its darkest hour, had never been faced a challenge to its existence and a threat to its identity like the one it's facing now. This threatens our national security and [we] cannot ignore its consequences for the Arab identity."
Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, who is leading the assault on the Houthis, said:
"Saudi Arabia did not spare any effort to address the situation in Yemen. Houthi intransigence, pursuit of power and control, rejection of all initiatives and their aggression against the Yemeni people led to the military operation. The Houthi militants elicited support of foreign powers to threaten the region’s security.We hoped not to resort to this decision (the operation) ... The Houthi’ aggression is the biggest threat to the stability and security of the region."
The Saudi kingdom has taken the lead with some 100 warplanes. Other coalition partners are providing additional warplanes, the coalition partners include the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan and Egypt. There are reports that Saudi ground troops may enter Yemen within a few days.
Egypt's al-Sisi is calling for a unified Arab force to deal with the increasing list of crises, including Libya and Syria. The proposed force would be made of up to 40,000 elite troops and will be headquartered in either Cairo or Riyadh, the Egyptian and Saudi capitals. The force would be backed by jet-fighters, warships and light armor.
Some analysts are expressing doubt that this Arab military coalition will last very long, dissolving within a few days or weeks. That's certainly a possibility, but from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, another view must be emphasized: If this were the 1990s, (a generational "Unraveling" era), then the coalition probably would dissolve quickly. But in today's generational Crisis era, the public mood is very different than it was in the 1990s. Today, with the survivors of World War II gone, the public mood is increasingly nationalistic, xenophobic, and belligerent. So it's quite possible (though not certain) that this coalition will become even more bellicose, and that the war in Yemen will spread to other sites. Generational Dynamics predicts that there will be a full-scale war in the Mideast, pitting Arabs versus Jews, Sunnis versus Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. Al Jazeera and CNN and AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Mar-15 World View -- Syria's al-Assad regime suffers major military setback in Idlib thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Mar-2015)
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Puerto Rico bankruptcy may be imminent, potentially a 'seminal event'
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Marilyn Cohen, the CEO of Envision Capital Management, appeared on Bloomberg TV on Friday to analyze the debt situation in Puerto Rico. According to Cohen, a $70 billion bankruptcy in Puerto Rico is a virtual certainty, as early as July.
Many people have invested in Puerto Rico bonds because they pay 10% interest (yields) and because under federal law they're "triple-tax free," meaning that you can earn 10% interest every year and not have to pay federal, state or municipal tax on the interest you collect. It's a sweet deal, provided that Puerto Rico doesn't go bankrupt, because if it does, then you lose most or all of your initial investment.
According to Cohen, the unemployment rate is 13.7%. Only 700,000 of the 3.5 million people, or 20%, work in the private sector. The other 80% either are on welfare, or they receive unemployment or other aid, or they work for the government. Year after year, Puerto Rico sells more and more bonds, and investors eat them up because of the high tax-free yields. But now their string has run out.
According to Cohen, the bankruptcy will hurt a lot of people. She compares it to the Detroit bankruptcy, which didn't really hurt too many people -- the bankrupt debt was $18 billion, but few ordinary people owned Detroit bonds, as most investors were institutions that hedged their purchases with credit default swaps.
But Puerto Rico's debt totals $70 billion, and she says that huge numbers of ordinary investors are going to be hurt. Even if they don't individually own PR bonds, they own them through their 401k's or other investment funds, which have been boosting returns by purchasing the PR bonds. These funds will all lose significant principal in a PR bankruptcy. According to Cohen, this bankruptcy will be a "seminal event."
After Detroit and Puerto Rico, Cohen says that the most likely next municipal bankruptcy will be Chicago, whose finances are "a mess."
By the way, if you'd like to ignore these warnings about Puerto Rico and move there, there are numerous tax incentives available to individuals there not available anywhere else:
So enjoy the free ride while you can. Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg (16-March) and Premier Offshore Investor
After Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas applied in January on behalf of the State of Palestine to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), Israel retaliated by withholding $130 million per month in tax collections from the PA. This is money that Israel collects administratively on behalf of the PA in taxes and fees.
Although there were the usual expressions of international outrage directed at Israel, everyone pretty much assumed that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made this decision to please his supporters during an election campaign, and that the funds would be released at some time in the future, after the election, and so it really wasn't considered too big a deal.
Well, the election is over, and "some time in the future" is now. Israel announced on Friday in a press release that it will release the money to the PA government in Ramallah.
In December 2012, Israel withheld $100 million in tax revenues from the PA in retaliation when Mahmoud Abbas applied to the United Nations General Assembly to create a state of Palestine with non-member observer status. However, the tax payments were reinstated shortly afterwards. Jerusalem Post and AP
Two days after an 8-nation US-backed coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, declared war on the Houthi insurgency in Yemen and began airstrikes at Houthi targets in Yemen, the countries of the Arab League are meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to decide what to do next.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait are particularly disturbed by the growing Iranian/Shia hegemony growing stronger in the region, and so are supporting the Saudis. Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt are traditional Saudi allies and are participating. So is the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.
For some countries, participation is a surprise, or at least mildly unexpected. In Bahrain, Sunnis are in a minority, but they still rule over the majority Shias. Qatar is considered the Persian Gulf's "problem child." It has many disagreements with Saudi Arabia, and has relatively strong channels of communication with Iran.
Sudan is the most intriguing Saudi supported. Sudan has had close relations with Iran, and Iran has used Sudan as a waypoint in the transfer of heavy weapons into the Gaza strip. Sudan has recently accused Iran of "spreading Shia ideology," and it's siding with the Saudis against Iran is a dramatic statement of intent.
Pakistan is also supporting the Saudis, though less actively. The Saudis have long had an agreement that Pakistan will supply Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons technology if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long had, or tried to have, good relations with Iran, but on Thursday said it supported the Saudi-led operation. According to Erdogan,
"Iran is trying to dominate the region. Could this be allowed? This has begun annoying us, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. This is really not tolerable and Iran has to see this. ...Iran has to change its view. It has to withdraw any forces, whatever it has in Yemen, as well as Syria and Iraq and respect their territorial integrity."
However, Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denounced Erdogan’s statement of support for the military strikes in Yemen and for suggesting that Iran is seeking to control the region. Zarif blamed Erdogan for fomenting regional insecurity and stated: "It would be better if those who have created irreparable damages with their strategic blunders [referring to Turkey’s role in the ongoing Syrian crisis] ... would adopt responsible policies." Zarif reiterated Tehran’s support for a political resolution in Yemen. YNet (Israel) and Arab News and AEI Iran Tracker
There are several countries that are opposed to the Saudi-led intervention.
Iran, of course, is the leading opponent, and is suspected of supplying weapons and support to the Houthis in Yemen. Iraq, whose government is a close ally of Iran, is strongly opposing the Saudi military intervention.
Lebanon's support is split, just as Lebanon itself is split between Shia and Sunni factions. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Iran back Shia faction Hezbollah, was particularly vitriolic on Friday. In some of his harshest comments to date, Nasrallah accused Saudi Arabia of sending suicide attackers to Iraq and of creating the Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Addressing Saudi Arabia, he said Iran had expanded its influence in the region because "you are lazy, losers, and you don't take responsibility."
Algeria is usually disinclined to get involved in regional crises, and opposes the military intervention. Oman stayed out of the alliance in the hope of acting as a mediator. Lately, Oman has played a significant role in the US-Iranian thaw that allowed nuclear talks to advance.
As Generational Dynamics has been predicting for years, the Mideast is headed for a major war between Jews and Arabs, between Sunnis and Shias, and between various ethnic groups, and this war is coming with 100% certainty as the survivors die off from the genocidal 1948 Mideast war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Think back to how relatively peaceful the Mideast was just five or six years ago, and you'll realize how quickly the Mideast is now descending into chaos, as more and more of those survivors die off. These trends have been accelerating even in the last few weeks, and it's hard to escape the feeling that all-out war cannot be very far off. YNet (Israel) and AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Mar-15 World View -- Mideast chaos worsens as countries line up for and against Saudi intervention in Yemen thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Mar-2015)
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Shia militias sidelined for Iraq's assault on Tikrit, with US help
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Saudi Arabia deployed 100 fighter jets, 150,000 soldiers and other navy units on Thursday, launching its "sweeping military operation" into Yemen.
Several Gulf Arab states -- Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait (but not Oman) issued a joint statement on Thursday that they decided to repel Houthi militias, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) from Yemen. Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Sudan also expressed their support, and readiness to participate.
The United States military is supporting the operation with air support, satellite imagery, and other intelligence, but is not taking part in the strikes. Al Arabiya and NBC News
Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif demanded an immediate end to the Saudi air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. According to Zarif:
We are calling for an immediate end to Saudi Arabia’s military operations in Yemen. ... We know that these actions violate the sovereignty of Yemen. This operation will result in nothing other than bloodshed, and we will provide all our efforts to defuse the crisis in Yemen. ... This operation will involve the region in much more tension."
Actually Zarif has it backwards when he says that the Saudi airstrikes violate the sovereignty of Yemen. The airstrikes were requested by Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, who is the internationally recognized president of Yemen, while the Houthis are the terrorists. So the Saudi intervention is perfectly legal, while any actions that Iran takes to support the Houthis would be supporting terrorism.
Hadi himself was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday, and is traveling to Cairo for an Arab League meeting.
Articles published on state-sponsored Iranian media are inciting the Houthis to further violence, telling them to counterattack Saudi Arabia on Saudi soil, and suggest joint operation with Iran to close two choke points in order to isolate Saudi Arabia. According to one article:
"The Attack on the Yemeni Revolution: The Arena Of Retaliation Stretches From Bab Al-Mandeb To The Strait Of Hormuz: Despite the fact that Saudi Arabia gathered several countries ... to ensure that the implications of its attack on the popular revolution in Yemen would be directed at a coalition of Arab countries, the consequences of this move will undoubtedly be directed at its own interests. The Saudi-Western front wants to restrict Ansar Allah to North Yemen and distance the Houthis from [the Strait of] Bab Al-Mandeb. [Therefore,] it is possible that they would go as far as splitting Yemen or occupying parts of the south to realize this goal... Now the Houthis also have the necessary pretext to launch military operations and retaliatory strikes deep inside Saudi territory, in Bab Al-Mandeb, the Red Sea, and even the Strait of Hormuz. The foremost high priority targets for them are the oil fields, tankers, and industry."
As shown in the map above, if Iran and the Houthis could close the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el Mandeb strait, then Saudi oil would be trapped in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.
Anticipating this move, the Egyptians on Thursday morning sent its naval and marine forces to take control of Bab el Mandeb. AEI Iran Tracker and Memri and Anadolu (Turkey) and Debka (Israel)
With the US now conducting airstrikes against Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) targets in Tikrit in Iraq, apparently some 20,000 troops from Iran-trained Shia militias will not be participating in the assault after all, leaving some 4,000 Iraqi regular army military troops as the only force on the ground.
There are two different sets of reasons being put out to explain why the Shia militias will no longer participate. According to the Americans, the US asked Iraq to withdraw the Shia militias so that the US wouldn't be making airstrikes in support of Shia militias. The Shias are saying that they pulled out of the Tikrit operation in protest against the American airstrikes.
Either way, the 20,000 Iran-trained Shia militias are gone, and so is Iran's legendary Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was supposed to have defeated ISIS in Tikrit weeks ago, within a few days. Now we'll get to see whether 4,000 Iraqi army troops, backed up by American airstrikes, can do what Soleimani and his Shia militias could not. AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Mar-15 World View -- Iran threatens retaliation against Saudi Arabia for Yemen strikes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Mar-2015)
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Obama administration continues to hail Yemen as a counterterrorism model
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we reported a couple of days ago, the attempt by Iraq's army, supported by Iran's Al Qods Brigades and its legendary commander Qassam Soleimani, to recapture Tikrit from the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) had reached a standstill even though it was supposed to be have been quick and easy, requiring only a few days.
Both Iraq and Iran had wanted to win this battle without any help from the US-led coalition, in order to gain a public relations victory. So when Iraqi army General Abdulwahab al-Saadi last week called for American help with airstrikes and intelligence, Hadi Al-Amiri, the head of the Badr Brigade of Iraq's Shia militias, slammed the request, calling al-Saadi a "weakling."
Well, apparently the humiliation for Iran and Iraq has been too much to bear, and they've requested American coalition air strikes. In addition, the US military will be providing intelligence and surveillance support for the Iraqis and the Iranians.
This is a major policy shift for Iran, but it's also a major policy shift for the US administration. The administration did not want to be seen cooperating with Iran for a couple of reasons. First, it did not want to be seen cooperating with Iran militarily, since many American politicians consider Iran to be an enemy. And second, they didn't want to further inflame the Sunni Arab states, who would be upset at seeing the U.S. and Iran conducting joint military operations.
Long-time readers are aware that ten years ago I wrote, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran would become America's ally as the generation of survivors of Iran's 1979 Great Islamic Revolution died off, and that the Sunni nations would be allied with Pakistan and China against America, India, Russia and Iran. Ten years ago, the prediction that Iran would be our ally seemed insane, so it's been fascinating and astonishing, in the last two years, to see that prediction come closer to reality every week. The Generational Dynamics methodology, which applies MIT's System Dynamics to flows of people through generations, has produced one correct analysis and prediction after another, with no failures. There is no web site, analyst, politician or journalist in the world with a better predictive success than the Generational Dynamics web site, as can be seen with the stunning outcome of the Iran predictions, made ten years ago. CNN
On Wednesday, Iran-backed Shia Houthi militias in Yemen who last year had taken control of the capital city Sanaa, continued to move south, took control of the airport in Aden, and were advancing to the interior of the city. Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, who last month fled from Sanaa to Aden and set up a competing government, is not getting enough support from the Sunni tribes in the south to defend against the Houthi invasion.
Some reports indicate that Hadi fled Yemen by boat on Wednesday, and so is no longer in Yemen. However, his spokesman denies this report, and indicates that he's in hiding somewhere in Aden.
Saudi Arabia has been massing forces on its southern border with Yemen, and on Wednesday evening Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz ordered a sweeping military operation against the Iran-backed Houthis. A Saudi official announced that a 10-country coalition was conducting air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. According to Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the US, the airstrikes target move than one city and more than one region. "We are determined to protect the legitimate government of Yemen. Having Yemen fail cannot be option for us or for our coalition partners."
A senior Arab diplomat said that that all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) except Oman will support military intervention in Yemen. However, the GCC consists of only six countries, and so some non-GCC countries will be involved.
Late on Wednesday evening, the White House announced that it will support the military operation in Yemen with air support, satellite imagery, and other intelligence.
It now appears that a Yemen civil war is well underway. In Iraq, the US will fighting alongside Iran, but it appears that in Yemen, US support will be opposed to Iran. Al Arabiya and CNN
A bizarre side story to the disintegration of Yemen is that the Obama administration continued on Wednesday to insist that Yemen is a model of counterterrorism campaign in its fight against ISIS and 29248 Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Last year in September, prior to Yemen's meltdown, president Obama said, "This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years."
But in the last few days, the U.S. embassy in Sanaa has been shut down, and several hundred US special forces were evacuated from Al Anad air base in southern Yemen, not far from Aden. The special forces in particular were an essential part of the counterterrorism strategy, which now appears to have collapsed.
However, according to Obama spokesman Josh Earnest on Wednesday:
"We have not seen that kind of progress in terms of strengthening the central government, I think you could make a pretty strong case that we've seen the opposite of that, but we do continue to enjoy the benefits of a sustained counterterrorism security relationship with the security infrastructure that remains. There are elements of the Yemeni government that we continue to be in touch with that continue to further our efforts to apply pressures to extremists that seek to operate in that country."
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Mar-15 World View -- US announces military operations: with Iran in Iraq, with Saudis in Yemen thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Mar-2015)
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Russia finally begins to grasp the danger posed by ISIS
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Almost all of the 436 mosques in the Central African Republic (CAR) have been destroyed by months of bloody fighting between Christians and Muslims, according to Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations.
The CAR sectarian war began in March 2013, when François Bozizé, the Christian former president of CAR, was ousted in a coup in March 2013 by Michel Djotodia, who became president and served until January 2014.
After Djotodia's coup took place in March 2013, Muslim Seleka militias began committing atrocities, particularly targeting the Christian constituencies of the deposed François Bozizé. In December 2013, French Foreign Legion peacekeeping troops arrived to disarm the Seleka militias, but then the Christian anti-balaka militias "rushed into the vacuum," and began committing atrocities in 2014, for revenge against the Selekas. Since then, both Christians and Muslims have been committing atrocities, and it's become a full-scale generational crisis war. Thousands have been killed, and millions have been displaced. Susan Rice called the destruction of almost all mosques in the country "kind of crazy, chilling."
A European Union one-year military mission in CAR that was launched in April 2014 is now coming to an end. General Philipe Ponties, who led the mission, said he was satisfied with the outcome:
"We are leaving a city [the capital city Bangui] to which peace has been restored and in which a political process is now in motion. People are now leaving the refugee camps and the internally displaced are returning to their homes. I have the impression that we have accomplished our mission. ...The mission was charged with securing the airport and parts of the capital, Bangui, and with providing assistance for the setting up of a UN mission in the country."
According to Ponties, these goals have been more or less achieved.
This is really an incredibly bizarre conclusion. Bangui may be the capital city of CAR, but it's just one city in a country with enormous land area, and atrocities are continuing by both Christians and Muslims across the entire country. Even in Bangui, there are still marauding gangs of murderers who will now have a free hand now that the EUFOR troops are leaving.
Just this weekend, there was massive violence in the central part of the country, near the town of Kaga-Bandoro. Violence broke out when Muslim herders noticed that their cattle had been stolen. In retaliation, Muslim Seleka militias ransacked several Christian villages, killing 11 people. In a country as vast as CAR, these kinds of attacks might occur every day, and the outer world would never know.
The worst is yet to come in CAR, and as in the case of every generational crisis war, the war will not end until there's some kind of explosive climax that will be remembered for decades or centuries. AP and Deutsche Welle and AP
Russia's government, whose unlimited support for the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad is a major reason for the existence of the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), is suddenly discovering that ISIS is a threat to Russia itself.
At a recent top-level meeting in Moscow of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev is quoted as saying:
"We should take extra care about the threat posed by militants involved in the conflict on the side of the terrorist groups and returning from those hot spots. It is no secret that a large number of mercenaries from Russia are fighting overseas today in the ranks of those bandit groups. [As] they return home, they might bring the skills of sophisticated terrorism to our land, including those characteristic of the group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant [ISIL]."
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was quoted as saying:
"[ISIS] does not respect state boundaries. ... It is like a cancer, a metastasis, growing in different directions. This is all very worrying and concerns us too, concerns the interests of our national security and that of our friends in the region."
Russian propagandists claim that the West finances ISIS militants to weaken Russia, while even ordinary citizens know that 90 percent of the militants’ resources are of local origin, such as racketeering, sharia taxes (zakat), voluntary contributions by sympathizers, payoffs from officials, etc.
In fact, Russia can take a great deal of the credit for the rise of ISIS in the first place.
ISIS was created in a very specific way: by turning Syria into a magnet for jihadists worldwide who wanted to fight al-Assad, after he started his genocidal assault on innocent Syrian women and children, starting in 2011. There are thousands of young men and women who are citizens of America and Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, who have traveled or are traveling to Syria to join ISIS. That problem didn't exist during the Bush administration, or in the first term of the Obama administration. That problem began specifically when al-Assad started slaughtering innocent Syrian women and children. And al-Assad would have been long gone by now, except that Russia provided him with billions of dollars in heavy weapons that al-Assad could use to slaughter innocent Syrian women and children.
That's the specific cause and effect that led to the creation of ISIS. The primary blame goes to Bashar al-Assad, who is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Secondary blame goes to Russia's president Vladimir Putin, for supplying heavy weapons to al-Assad, and also to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, for supplying troops and weapons to al-Assad. Both Putin and Khamenei are war criminals because they supplied the weapons and manpower to al-Assad, knowing full well that al-Assad was committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
So now Iran has to fight ISIS soldiers in Iraq, and Russia is finally noticing that ISIS soldiers from Syria are headed back to commit acts of terror on Russian soil. Both Russia and Iran deserve what happens to them. Unfortunately, it's going to happen to everyone else as well, and the rest of us don't deserve it. Jamestown
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Mar-15 World View -- Almost all mosques have been destroyed in Central African Republic thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Mar-2015)
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Greece's Tsipras visits Germany's Merkel and demands reparations
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Iraq's military operation to recapture the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) apparently stalled a week ago. The military operation, which began on March 2, comprise 10,000 troops from Iraq's army, aided by 20,000 fighters from Shia militias, as well as special forces from Iran led by Iran's legendary Al Qods Brigades chief, the Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The plan was to take Tikrit within a week or so, and then move on to a much larger battle to capture Mosul. The Iraqi forces reached the outskirts of Tikrit, and captured some neighboring villages, but were blocked from entering Tikrit, according to reports, by ISIS snipers and huge numbers of IEDs and bombs along the roads, causing hundreds of casualties.
There are a lot of reputations riding on a quick victory in Tikrit. At the beginning, the Iraqi soldiers dropped their arms and fled instead of fighting, and now some are saying that they're refusing to fight in Tikrit. A stalemate in Tikrit would be a major humiliation to Iran and to Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was expected to pull off a quick, brilliant victory, but who has now retreated to Tehran, according to reports. Finally, a stalemate would be an embarrassment to the president Barack Obama's administration, which is counting on a Tikrit victory -- or anything, anything, that might slow the continuing humiliation to the administration for seeing Iraq fall under the control of ISIS. Obama completely withdrew American forces, allowing ISIS to take control again, after president George Bush ejected al-Qaeda in Iraq with his "surge."
In fact, with Baghdad, Tehran and Washington all facing humiliation from a potential stalemate in Tikrit, the only group that would look like a winner if the stalemate continues would be ISIS. BBC and Newsweek
Iraqi officials point out that the military operation only began three weeks ago, so even if the initial projections were optimistic, there is still plenty of time for victory in Tikrit.
However, fundamental problems were exposed last weekend in the Iraqi effort.
From the start of the operation, both Iraq and Iran had explicitly rejected any help for US and coalition forces, such as air strikes. However, last weekend, as the operation on Tikrit hit a brick wall, Iraqi General Abdulwahab al-Saadi, who commands the Iraqi army forces in the area, indicated that he favored asking the Americans for help: "Of course... the Americans have advanced equipment, they have AWACS (surveillance) aircraft."
However, Hadi Al-Amiri, the head of the Badr Brigade of Iraq's Shia militias, slammed al-Saadi's remarks, saying:
"Some of the weaklings in the army... say we need the Americans, while we say we do not need the Americans."
If you have one part of Iraq's forces referring to the other part as "weaklings," then at the very least you have low morale and no unified command. The hodge-podge of Iraqi forces conducting the assault on Tikrit may simply not be up to the job.
If the stalemate continues, then someone will have to reassess, and throw more forces into the battle. These might come in the form of troops or airstrikes from Iran, or a request for troops and airstrikes from the American-led coalition. But there are too many reputations at stake for the situation in Tikrit to continue as it is. France24/Reuters and AFP and International Business Times
A reader pointed out that I made some mistakes in the details of France's elections in yesterday's report:
"They were in fact departmental elections: regional elections are scheduled for next December. France using a two-round system, the important day is next Sunday when the second round will take place. Constitutionally, the most important is that we are for the first time electing a pair of two councilors (a man and a woman) for each canton. Politically, the important questions are "will the Front National for the first time get the presidency of a département?" and how many départements the Left will keep (Hollande is so unpopular nobody expects the Left to win)."
Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras visited German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Monday, and after the meeting there were smiles and handshakes and apparent good will.
However, at the post-meeting press conference, Tsipras raised the issue of payment of reparations as compensation for Nazi atrocities during World War II. Merkel answered sharply, "In the German government’s view, the issue of reparations is politically and legally closed."
The disagreement comes during a major run on Greece's banks, with 1.1 billion euros flowing out of Greek banks in the last three days alone. Greece has to pay pensions and government employees, and it's believed that without an infusion of new bailout loans the country will go bankrupt early in April.
According to research by Der Spiegel, Greece may have a good case for demanding payments from the Germans. Besides possible compensation for Nazi atrocities, there may be payments due for forced loans that the Nazi occupiers extorted Greece's central bank beginning in 1941. By 1944, the forced loans may have totaled as much as 300 billion drachmas. The Greek currency suffered hyperinflation during WW II, so all in all, 300 billion drachmas may be worth something like $10 million, not really enough to solve Greece's financial crisis. Greek Reporter and Guardian (London) and Der Spiegel
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Mar-15 World View -- Iraq's battle for Tikrit reaches a standstill, humiliating Iran thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Mar-2015)
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France's center-right party edges out far-right National Front in elections
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Iran-backed ethnic Houthis that captured and occupied Yemen's capital city Sanaa last year are following up from Friday's announced military mobilization have seized much of the city of Taiz and the surrounding province. They've taken control of the airport and security and intelligence buildings in Taiz, and have set up checkpoints in the area.
Yemen's internationally recognized president Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi was forced last month to flee Sanaa, which is Yemen's largest city and is in in the north of Yemen, to Aden, which is Yemen's second largest city, and is a port city in the south of Yemen. Taiz is Yemen's third largest city, and it's located about halfway between Sanaa and Aden, so it's a critical waypoint on the Houthis' planned assault on Hadi's forces in Aden.
The Houthis have been using Yemen's air force for bombing strikes on Aden every day since Thursday. Now that the Houthis have control of Taiz airport, it's expected that further air strikes will be launched from there.
It now seems unavoidable that within the next few days there will be a sectarian civil war between the Shia Houthis versus Hadi's Sunni tribal militias. This will be further complicated by the presence in Yemen of two Sunni terrorist groups, the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
The Houthis are now in control of the army and air force, and they're backed by Iran which is suspected of shipping additional weapons to them. Saudi Arabia and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have expressed deep dismay at the Shia takeover of Yemen, but it remains to be seen whether they take any military action to counter it. If they do, then the result will be a sectarian proxy war in Yemen between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The National (UAE) and CNN and AFP and AP
Jordan called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Sunday to discuss the "rapid downward spiral" in Yemen. According to special Yemen envoy Jamal Benomar:
"Emotions are running extremely high and, unless solutions can be found, the country will fall into further violent confrontations. Events in Yemen are leading the country away from political settlement and to the edge of civil war. ...I urge all sides in this time of rising tension and inflammatory rhetoric to appreciate the gravity of the situation and deescalate by exercising maximum restraint. Peaceful dialogue is the only way forward."
According to one web site, "peaceful dialog" means "to create a consciousness among members of society – through multilayer dialogue – that they are responsible for peace and that they are vested with the right to demand peace. Peace Dialogue strives to create the conditions for mutual cooperation and support between members of conflicting societies who see no alternative except the peaceful resolution of conflicts. This is achieved through the development of civil peacebuilding potential, strengthening respect for human rights and democratic values, promoting civil peace initiatives, and advocating on behalf of victims of conflict."
So, now that the UN Security Council is on the job, advocating peaceful dialog, we can all feel relieved that the problems in Yemen are over. After all, as we all know, war never solves anything. United Nations and Anadolu (Turkey)
Marine Le Pen's far-right Front National party did well in Sunday's elections, but not well enough to defeat Nicolas Sarkozy's center-right UMP party in regional elections in France on Sunday. (The phrase "far right" has different meanings in Europe and America.) The stridently anti-immigrant, anti-EU, "anti-Islamization" Front National party has been surging in polls, and many European officials had been concerned that they would win.
President François Hollande and his Socialist Party government have been plummeting in the polls in recent months, so never expected to do well in these regional elections. So, in a surprise move, the Socialists teamed up with the UMP party to issue dire warnings about Front National. Marine Le Pen derided the tactic as "trying to lead a campaign against the people, a filthy and violent campaign that stigmatized millions of French voters."
According to initial projections, the UMP received 31% of the vote, National Front received 24.5%, and the Socialists received 19.7%.
However, this wasn't the final election. There will be a second election next Sunday, March 29, pitting the top two parties from this election, UMP and Front National. The winner of next Sunday's election will determine which leader, Nicolas Sarkozy or Marine Le Pen, will be most likely to win the 2017 presidential election.
Feminists should be jumping for joy over this election. Voters don't select an individual, but they select a pair of candidates, one man and one woman. This should guarantee that half of those elected will be women. AFP and VOA and AFP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Mar-15 World View -- Yemen's Houthis capture Taiz, advance south to fight Hadi's forces in Aden thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Mar-2015)
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Computer geek activists demonstrate against robots at SXSW
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Chanting things like, "You say robot, I say no-bot!" and "Humans are the future!", anti-robot activists protested against robots at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, last week.
The protesters expressed concern that robots would take over people's jobs, and other dangers associated with uncontrolled growth and development around artificial intelligence and robotics. However, they insist that they don't want to stop the progress of technology.
The protesters referred to statements by Stephen Hawking and Tesla found Elon Musk warning about the danger of a dark future with intelligent robots.
What the protesters are talking about is the Singularity, the point in time when computers will be more intelligent and more creative than humans. At that point there will be a sharp bend in the technology curve, since super-intelligent computers will be able to develop new technologies exponentially faster than humans, including technologies to make themselves faster. After that, they will essentially be running the world.
Ten years ago, I estimated that the Singularity would occur around 2030, and I have had no reason to adjust that estimate, as I wrote in 2010 in "27-Dec-10 News -- IBM vs Jeopardy! brings robotic warfare and the Singularity closer,".
However, it really makes no difference what these protesters say. The first use of any new technology is in warfare, it seems likely that robots will be making kill decisions on their own by the early 2020s. Even if the United States halted development of super-intelligent robots, development would continue in China, India, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere in the world. So the Singularity is coming whether the protesters like it or not. USA Today and Tech Crunch
Yemen's Iran-backed ethnic Houthis, who have been in control of the capital city Sanaa since late last year, have ordered for a "general mobilization," through a statement from their Supreme Revolutionary Committee. The call was for land, marine and air forces to confront and eradicate terrorism, referring to the double suicide bombing that killed 137 people during Friday prayers at two Shia mosques in Sanaa. However, it's believed that the real target of the mobilization is Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, the internationally recognized president of Yemen, who fled last month from Sanaa to the southern city of Aden, where he's being supported by Sunni tribes.
It's believed that the general mobilization means that Houthi forces, combined with militias loyal to former Shia president Ali Abdullah Saleh, will deploy to the south to attack Hadi and his forces. There have already been air strikes in Aden ordered by the Houthis, who have taken control of the air force. However, there have been reports that the pilots of the warplanes dumped their bombs into the water, indicating that they're not loyal to the Houthis.
Another possible complication is the present of two Sunni terrorist groups, the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). There have been reports of them fighting each other, and there have been other reports of them cooperating to target Houthis.
There's also a group of militias known as the "Southern Secessionist Movement" that are advocating splitting Yemen into two countries, South Yemen and North Yemen, as was the case prior to 1990. These militias are reported to be fighting alongside AQAP and/or alongside Hadi's supporters against the Houthis.
Fears are growing for a wider civil war in Yemen very soon. As I've been reporting, there is already a large, growing war of Muslims versus Muslims in northern Africa, the Mideast, and south Asia, and this war is going to continue to grow until it's a full-fledged sectarian war engulfing the entire region. SABA (Yemen/Houthi) and Press TV (Tehran) and Anadolu (Turkey)
The United States is evacuating the last of its troops and special forces units from Yemen, where they are stationed at Al Anad air base in southern Yemen, near the city of al-Houta. The reason for the quick withdrawal is that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) seized the city of al-Houta on Friday, raising concerns about an attack on the air base itself. The American forces have been training Yemen's military forces in counterterrorism operations, and have also been gathering intelligence to target AQAP terrorists and other militants from US airstrikes. CNN and NBC News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Mar-15 World View -- Yemen calls for general military mobilization, as US forces withdraw thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Mar-2015)
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Yemen suicide bombings bring sectarian civil war closer
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Suicide bombers on Friday in Yemen blew up two busy Shia mosques in the capital city Sanaa, during Friday prayers when the mosques were packed with people. At least 137 died, with 357 injured.
As I reported yesterday, the war in Yemen widened when Iran-backed Houthis, who took control last year of the capital city Sanaa, expanded the Yemen war by attacking targets in Aden in the south of Yemen, where Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, the Sunni internationally recognized president, had fled.
The Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) has taken credit for the attack. However, it's believed that the actual perpetrators were a local anti-Houthi terrorist group that has linked itself with ISIS. ISIS has become a brand name, and any terror group rebranding itself as ISIS gets them attention, money and recruits.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is headquartered in Yemen, condemned the attack because it targeted mosques. However, that al-Qaeda linked Taliban in Afghanistan regularly bomb Shia mosques.
Yemen is currently in total chaos, with two governments, two capitals, and with the army split between the two. Friday's bombings were the worst violence that Yemen has seen in years, and has raised sectarian tensions to an alarming level. AQAP is taking advantage of the chaos by targeting both sides. Yemen's Shia former president Ali Abdullah Saleh has allied with the Houthis and is fighting against Hadi and his Sunni tribe supporters. Iran is actively supporting the Houthis with weapons and forces, while Saudi Arabia is considering whether to support Hadi. As I've predicted many times, the Mideast is headed for war, and now Yemen may be close to a sectarian proxy war. Saba News (Yemen) and Toronto Star and BBC
I've been watching the political circus these last few weeks with a great deal of bemusement. I take no position on whether it was a good idea or bad idea for Republicans to invite Israel's prime minister to speak to Congress, and the same for Congress to send a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.
What's been astonishing is to watch the almost hysterical overreaction by the Administration. If they'd simply issued a statement like, "The Republicans have a right to do these things, but they're not helpful," then they would have scored points without embarrassing themselves and making themselves look like petulant teenagers.
The latest such incident occurred during the last minute campaigning in Israel's election, when Netanyahu said that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch:
"I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state and open up territory is giving radical Islam a space to attack the State of Israel. Whoever ignores this is burying his head in the sand."
This is actually a perfectly reasonable statement, based on Israel's experience since Gaza was evacuated in 2005. But, once again, the reaction from Washington was close to hysterical, with hints that the Administration might turn against Israel in the United Nations, or even cut off aid to Israel.
In fact, this is exactly what I've been saying time and again for 12 years. The very first Generational Dynamics analysis that I posted, in May 2003, was that President George Bush's brand new "Mideast Roadmap to Peace," which advocated a two-state solution by 2005, would fail, because the young generation of Palestinian militants would never allow it. That's been proven true time and time again, and today it's so evidently true that it's hard to believe that anyone could possibly believe that a two-state solution is possible. When I wrote it in 2003 it was a novel prediction, but today you'd have to be crazy to believe that a two-state solution is possible.
So now Netanyahu is saying what I've been saying for 12 years, and the reaction from the Administration is threats and hysteria.
This is highly personal for me, as I've discovered that as one Generational Dynamics prediction after another comes true, I become the target of scorn and abuse, usually by people who absolutely no idea what's going on in the world. Being right means nothing to these people.
So one might ask why Generational Dynamics is right in one analysis and prediction after another, while mainstream politicians, analysts and journalists are wrong at least half the time.
I've identified two major reasons why mainstream politicians, analysts and journalists continually get things wrong:
I see this all the time in mainstream articles. The author is too lazy to do the research necessary to support his article. I typically look at and save copies of 20-40 articles from multiple sources for each World View column. Also, I try to find articles that talk about what the PEOPLE are saying, not what the politicians are saying. So if I'm writing about an event in Pakistan, I'll read as many articles as I can find FROM PAKISTAN, as well as articles from other sources that I trust. It's particularly helpful to listen to on-site reports from reporters on BBC or al-Jazeera, because they often provide analyses that don't make their way into print. I don't want to risk the humiliation of getting anything wrong. And if I do make a mistake, I apologize and correct it immediately. Mainstream politicians, analysts and journalists do little research, and when they make mistakes they become defensive and abusive to anyone who points them out. I doubt that any of them could tell you anything about the Battle of Karbala, or about Iran's Constitutional Revolution. If you know nothing about these things, then you're going to make one stupid mistake after another, just as you would if you were writing about US politics, but know nothing about the Civil or Revolutionary wars. You will be incredibly stupid about the present if you know nothing about the past.
The reason that mainstream politicians, journalists and analysts are so frequently wrong is because they're too lazy to do research, so they listen to each other. I would tell these people (for all the good it will do) is that you have to do all the research, and you've got to stop listening to politicians and to each other.
I've seen this same behavior from Gen-X managers in the computer industry. As a software engineer, I know that the worst person to work for is a manager who's taken a couple of computer courses in college and thinks he's smarter than another else. These are the people who cause the disasters that are characteristic of Generation-X, and many Boomers as well. I've personally seen these disasters occur when I was working at General Dynamics, Digimarc, and Ability Networks. And the greatest IT disaster in history, Healthcare.gov, was filled with managers who pocketed almost a billion dollars on a $25 million project that still doesn't work right, for the same reason. I've written several stories about these and other disasters, and there are more stories that will come at the appropriate times. (Paragraph modified. 21-Mar)
Now with that background, I'll repeat a couple of Generational Dynamics predictions that I've been making for years:
Now let's apply all of the above to understand the Administration's hysterical and abusive reaction to Netanyahu's statement that there will be no Palestinian state on his watch.
The ancient Greeks understood how all of this works, which is why they created the story of Cassandra and the Trojan Horse. When the citizens of Troy not only ignored Cassandra but treated her abusively, they paid the price by being nearly exterminated. Today, I'm the modern day embodiment of Cassandra, and on this one issue, apparently Netanyahu is Cassandra as well.
Whether it's in the computer industry, or on Wall Street, or in politics, these policies of glorifying stupidity never end well, and produce the world's greatest disasters and the world's worst wars. Israel National News and CNN
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Mar-15 World View -- Benjamin Netanyahu's 'no Palestinian state' scandal exposes political fantasies thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Mar-2015)
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Greece's Alexis Tsipras threatens Europe with 'jihadists and terrorists'
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras called on European leaders to take "bold initiatives" save Greece on Thursday, after EU leaders continued to demand that Tsipras meet the commitments that he's already made. Last month, the Europeans gave Tsipras a four-month reprieve, on condition that he come up with a list of reforms to explain how it's going to meet the existing terms of its bailout agreement. The list of reforms would have to address a number of economic issues, including the bloated public sector, curbing tax evasion and corruption, privatizing public businesses, and adjusting generous pension and minimum wage policies. The list was due almost a month ago, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Tsipras is not going to provide any such list.
In fact, he's going in the opposite direction, sponsoring a "humanitarian bill" in the Athens parliament to spend additional government money to help Greeks in poverty.
In fact, Tsipras actually threatened EU leaders in recent comments by saying that an influx of "jihadists and terrorists" into Europe from Greece could be imminent, if bailout negotiations weren’t completed.
Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny responded harshly:
"People are very encouraged to give Greece support and to give it its time and space to come forward with sustainable solutions, but there’s a difference between political argument and disagreement and threats of releasing jihadists and terrorists in Europe. That’s not acceptable."
Greece's situation is increasingly desperate. There's a bank run going on, and 350 million euros were withdrawn from Greek banks on Wednesday alone. Next week, pensions and public sector salaries have to be paid, and Greece has no money to pay them. The yields (interest rates) on Greece's 3-year bonds rose to 20.44% on Thursday.
So when Tsipras asks for "bold initiatives," what he means is that he wants bailout money without have to make any reforms. In fact, he actually begged EU leaders to meet with him on Thursday evening, in the hope that they would approve more bailout money. Leaders of France and Germany did meet with him, but without making any decision.
So the atmosphere between Tsipras and the EU is extremely poisonous, with no compromise in sight at the present time.
As I've been saying for years, ever since Greece's financial crisis began, no solution exists for the Greek financial crisis. And by that I don't mean that no one has been clever enough to figure out a solution. I mean that no solution exists. Furthermore, the longer the situation is prolonged by "kicking the can down the road" time after time, the worse the crisis becomes, because Greece's debt burden keeps worsening. It's hard to avoid the feeling that a dénouement is very close. BBC and Irish Times and Telegraph (London)
Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is also the chairman of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, is raising the possibility of imposing capital controls on Greece to stop the bank run that's currently in progress. According to Dijsselbloem:
"It’s been explored what should happen if a country gets into deep trouble -- that doesn’t immediately have to be an exit scenario. [For Cyprus], we had to take radical measures, banks were closed for a while and capital flows within and out of the country were tied to all kinds of conditions, but you can think of all kinds of scenarios."
A Greek government spokesman reacted angrily:
"It would be useful for everyone and for Mr Dijsselbloem to respect his institutional role in the eurozone. We cannot easily understand the reasons that pushed him to make statements that are not fitting to the role he has been entrusted with. Everything else is a fantasy scenario. We find it superfluous to remind him that Greece will not be blackmailed."
With Dijsselbloem's remarks about capital controls, and Tsipras's comments about "jihadists and terrorists," it seems that there's a lot of blackmail in the air. Bloomberg and Kathimerini
Explosions were heard across Aden in the south of Yemen on Thursday, as Warplanes attacked the presidential palace in Aden, forcing Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, the internationally recognized president of Yemen, to go into hiding. Last year, the Iran-backed Shia Houthi tribes from northern Yemen invaded and took control of the northern city of Sanaa, the nation's capital city, forcing Hadi to flee south to Aden last month, where he's been supported by some Sunni Muslim tribes.
The Houthis have now allied with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, taken control of Yemen's air force, and are now in all out fighting in Yemen. Iran has started regular flights between Tehran and Sanaa, and is shipping weapons to the Houthis.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is headquartered in Yemen, is said to be taking advantage of the situation by attack both sides.
Yemen is on Saudi Arabia's southern border, and it's not expected that the Saudis will indefinitely tolerate an Iran-backed Shia kingdom on its border. In 2009, Saudi Arabia bombed the Houthis in their home governorate of Saada. The possibility exists of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
There are hundreds of thousands of Yemenis working in Saudi Arabia. As the war in Yemen worsens, they fear being deported back to Yemen. In 1990, Saudi Arabia deported 850,000 Yemenis.
As we've been reporting for months, there is a large and growing Muslim versus Muslim war throughout the Mideast, northern Africa and south Asia, killing 5,000-10,000 Muslims every month. These wars are both tribal and sectarian. Sooner or later, the West is going to be dragged into one of these wars, and it will be a full-scale war consuming the entire region. Yemen Post and AP and Reuters and Yemen Times
According to Secretary of State John Kerry, the United States is "deeply disturbed" by reports that forces from the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad attacked the town of Sarmin as a weapon on Tuesday. According to Kerry:
"We are looking very closely into this matter and considering next steps. While we cannot yet confirm details, if true, this would be only the latest tragic example of the Assad regime's atrocities against the Syrian people, which the entire international community must condemn."
I just have to wonder what the point of this is. The al-Assad regime has been dropping barrel bombs laced with chlorine for years, killing entire neighborhoods filled with women and children, and killed hundreds of people using Sarin gas, which triggered the Administration's disastrous flip-flop on its "red line" policy, and let al-Assad continue with chemical weapons with impunity. Now, suddenly, Kerry is "deeply disturbed." I never have the feeling that this administration has any idea what's going on in the world. Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Mar-15 World View -- Houthi airstrikes bomb Aden as Yemen war widens thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Mar-2015)
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Tunisia in shock after terror attack on museum in Tunis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Terrorist acts are occurring every day around the Muslim world, so you would think that no terrorist act in a Muslim country would be a surprise to anyone. But Tunisians thought that they had escaped the worst of the "Arab Spring" terror. The "Arab Spring" began in Tunisia on January 4, 2011, when a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi doused himself in gasoline, and lit a match, and burnt himself to death, in protest for government policies. Since then, Tunisia has been mostly non-violent, unlike Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, for example, and currently has a secular government.
So Tunisians were shocked on Wednesday by the first terrorist attack in Tunisia in over ten years. It was the worst attack in the country since an al-Qaida militant detonated a truck bomb in front of a historic synagogue on the Tunisia's island of Djerba in 2002, killing 21, mostly German tourists.
Two gunmen infiltrated security at the well-known Bardo Museum in Tunis, right next door to the parliament building. They took and killed 22 hostages, with 50 people injured. Almost all of the casualties were foreign tourists, suggesting that the terrorists are trying to cripple tourism in Tunisia, which is the country's biggest industry. The casualties were Tunisian, French, Italian, Polish, and Japanese.
Tunisia's president, Bej Caid Essebsi sayd:
"This is catastrophic for Tunisia. We need to stop those kind of people [referring to terrorists] for good. ...I want the people of Tunisia to understand firstly and lastly that we are in a war with terror, and these savage minority groups will not frighten us. The fight against them will continue until they are exterminated."
Twitter accounts associated with the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) were described as overjoyed at the attack. Tunis Times and AP
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack in Tunis. It might have been Ansar al-Sharia, the Libya-based terror group that was responsible for the murder of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians last month, and for the murder of American ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi in 2012. Or it might have been a terror group linked to Al-Qaeda on the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Tunisia has been the Arab Spring's number one success story, with a secular, democratic government, but beneath the surface there are problems. Tunisia has been the number one supplier of foreign fighters to ISIS: some 3,000 Tunisians have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS, more than any other country in the world. For years, the vast Tunisian desert has been home to training camps for various jihadist groups. And Tunisia has been awash with weapons, ever since vast weapons storehouses became available following the fall of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.
According to a family member of an ISIS member, Tunisian preachers are skillful at convincing young men to join ISIS:
"At Friday prayers, when a good number of Muslims get together in the mosques, after the prayers, the imams start to give them some advice to follow. They say, for example, 'You have to go to Syria to kill Bashar’s army. Even if you die, you’ll go to paradise after.' And in this way, Daesh [ISIS] got a large number of soldiers."
That's exactly the point. As I've been saying for several months, there is a large and growing war going on, and it's a war of Muslims versus Muslims. All across North Africa, the Mideast, and South Asia, Muslims are killing Muslims at the rate of 5000-10000 per month. By comparison, only a minuscule number of Westerners are killed by jihadists, usually a few dozen per month. And the few attacks on Westerners, such as the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris and Wednesday's attack in Tunis, are publicity stunts that are sensationally successful because they get a great deal of free publicity from Western media, which then attracts many more discontented young men and women to join ISIS. International Business Times (20-Feb) and Bloomberg
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Mar-15 World View -- Beneath the surface, Tunisia is a terrorist breeding ground thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Mar-2015)
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Questions continue to swirl in Russia over assassination of Putin's opponent Nemtsov
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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India's prime minister Narendra Modi has just completed a major tour of Indian Ocean nations with considerable strategic significance.
The event that triggered the trip was a trip by China's president Xi Jinping to the Maldives Islands, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, just southwest of the southern tip of India. Xi was the first Chinese leader ever to visit the Maldives, and the key outcome was agreements on a number of infrastructure projects, including bridges, roads and a new airport. There is a palpable fear in India that China will dominate the foreign investment sector in the Maldives, and turn the infrastructure projects into military installations that could put India itself in danger.
Modi was also scheduled to visit the Maldives during his travels beginning March 11, but political turmoil forced a cancellation. However, Modi is still traveling to Sri Lanka, Seychelles and Mauritius.
The Seychelles is a 115-island nation located off the eastern coast of Africa, just northeast of Madagascar. India was alarmed in 2011 at reports that Seychelles was offering China maritime bases for military purposes, once again because of the possibility of a military base. This is why Modi will be looking to increase its security cooperation with Seychelles.
Modi will also be traveling to Mauritius, an island nation just east of Madagascar. The country has been looking to attract investments from China, but India is providing a 1,300-tonne Indian-built patrol vessel to help it protect its coastline.
Sri Lanka, a large island located just south of the tip of India, has close historical and cultural linkages with India, but China has been strengthening ties.
The previous government, headed by Mahinda Rajapaksa, was developing closer and closer relations with China. In particular, China supported the governing Sinhalese during the recent civil war with the Tamils, while India has a large Tamil population. Rajapaksa awarded China with numerous infrastructure projects, and allowed the frequent docking of Chinese submarines in the port of Colombo, the capital city.
However, the new government, headed by Maithripala Sirisena, has pledged to "correct" Sri Lanka's perceived tilt towards China in the months to come. Lowy Institute (Australia) and The Diplomat
Anyone who's been reading World View for the last few days is aware that Boris Nemtsov, a high-profile political opponent of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, was assassinated right at the Kremlin's front door, and that five Chechens were charged with the crime, presumably under orders from Chechnya's strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Now, with Putin back from his 10-day vanishing, that whole theory has been thrown into question. The suspects are credibly claiming that they were tortured into making a confession, and other holes have been appearing in the argument.
It's clear from the nature of the assassination that it was done by Kremlin insiders, so now the public is beginning to speculate that if Kadyrov wasn't responsible, then Putin himself was responsible. There will be more to come. PRI
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Mar-15 World View -- India and China battle for strategic influence in the Indian Ocean thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Mar-2015)
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The talking points of the Russian and Chinese internet trolls
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia's president Vladimir Putin ended his 10-day disappearance on Monday by attending his scheduled appearance with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg. He was one hour late for the meeting, and different observers described Putin as looking "healthy," "fit," "puffy," "sweaty," and "pale," respectively, suggesting that he may have been ill. Putin himself offered no explanation for his absence, except to say that "Life would be dull without rumors."
No matter what the reason for Putin's absence, the disappearance has highlighted the potential leadership crisis in the fallout over the assassination of Putin's very high profile political opponent Boris Nemtsov, possibly under the orders of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya. According to one Moscow commentator, the problem is that only Putin should be able to violate any Russian law with impunity, and the assassination seems to mean that Kadyrov can do the same:
"The law of power is very simple. Power is the right to use force with impunity. Whoever is able to use force with impunity is therefore the ruler. The murder of Boris Nemtsov forces one to suspect that Putin is no longer the strongest man in Russia."
If a dictator is no longer able to maintain total control over the government, then it's a potential disaster for him.
Kadyrov's boldness may be a consequence of increasingly widespread questions about Putin's leadership, especially regarding the economy. Although his poll numbers remain high, the economy is crashing, largely because oil and gas prices have been crashing.
This brings the Ukraine situation into play. It's the first anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Crimea, and Putin has been bragging about how he fooled the West by lying about it. The occupation of Crimea is widely admired within Russia, but the war in east Ukraine is raising many questions, because there's no end in sight and it's costing Russia a fortune at a time of a plunging economy.
The combination of Putin's loss of control over Kadyrov and Chechnya, loss of control over the economy, and loss of control over east Ukraine are combining to make Putin appear increasingly weak, a problem that could only have been exacerbated by his mysterious, unexplained 10-day disappearance.
So Putin may be ripe for a coup or other ouster by his growing list of enemies, but that's not necessarily good news. Putin's successor would most likely be from the authoritarian regime that ran the Kremlin prior to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, any such successor regime could not risk showing weakness, so he's have to be even more aggressive in many ways, including in Ukraine, where the attack on Mariupol and all of southern Ukraine would be launched. Such a regime would also almost certainly tighten the screws even further on the Russian people. So, to anyone pleased with the prospect of the departure of Vladimir Putin: Be careful what you wish for. Irish Times and Interpreter/Paul Goble and Jamestown and Interpreter/Paul Goble
Anyone who, like myself, writes about Russia or China is likely to run into internet trolls who are paid by the respective nations to harass the writer and post favorable comments on forums, blogs, and news articles. The comments range from lies and disinformation to abuse and profanity.
Each of these trolls is given a list of talking points by the trollmaster who hires him. A study of these internet trolls reveals some interesting information, including their talking points.
Chinese trolls are nicknamed the "50-cent party," because it's believed that they earn 50 cents for each posted comment. Chinese trolls were first launched in 2004, and a 2013 estimate by researchers at Harvard University puts the total number at 250,000 to 300,000. A 2014 email leak included a list of the trollmasters' instructions and talking points:
As an aside, my web site has been attacked a number of times by Chinese hackers.
Few details are known about Russia's internet troll program, but an undercover operation in St. Petersburg revealed that trolls are paid about $36.50 for an 8-hour work day. According to information that we posted last year in "Russia uses an army of trolls on social media," each troll is expected 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.
Russia has an extremely aggressive troll organization known as the "G-Team." They are anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-liberal, and go further than simply trolling in some cases by threats of physical harm and even murder. The trollmasters' instructions and talking points include the following:
In the last year, a new talking point has been added: "labeling the Ukrainian government fascist." Geopolitical Monitor
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The above graph shows dramatically what's been happening with oil prices, which are now approaching $40 per barrel.
The green line shows Barrels of Oil Produced Daily (BOPD) in North Dakota, where there are many fracking rigs. The black line shows the price variations (dollars per barrel of oil = $/BO) since 1970.
New oil fracking technology has caused an explosion in output from US rigs, starting around 2010 when oil was at $120 per barrel, and oil production has been increasing hyperbolically since then. Oil prices have crashed in the last year, and it would not be surprising to see them fall to $30 per barrel or even $15 per barrel, a price last seen in 2000.
As oil prices have been crashing, the number of rigs has been falling steadily. But oil production has been continuing to increase because the best producing of the existing rigs have low marginal costs, and can make money even when oil is well below $40 per barrel. In fact, despite the tumbling number of active rigs, the U.S. is pumping more oil than any time since 1972.
This is a huge economic dislocation that's affecting not only Russia but many other countries as well. It's expected to go on for another one or two years. Some people will be winners and some will be losers, and there are certain to be unintended consequences. North Dakota Drilling and Production Statistics and Bloomberg
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Mar-15 World View -- Putin's return leaves more questions than answers for Russia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Mar-2015)
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Rumors abound in Russia on the disappearance of Vladimir Putin
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Violent riots by Christians followed the suicide bombing of two churches, one Catholic and one Protestant, in the predominantly Christian Youhanabad district of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province in eastern Pakistan.
The bombings themselves killed 15 people, including two policemen, injuring at least 70 others. At one church, a guard prevented the suicide bomber from entering the church, and was killed when the bomber detonated the explosive. The other explosion took place inside the church, causing most of the casualties.
Some 4,000 Christians later took to the streets in Lahore, many armed with clubs as they smashed vehicles and attacked a city bus. Two people were accused by the mob of being behind the explosions, and were attacked and killed by the mob. There was also rioting in other Pakistan cities, including Islamabad and Karachi.
Christians make up around 2 per cent of Pakistan’s mainly Muslim population of 180 million. They have been targeted in attacks and riots in recent years, often over allegations of blasphemy regarding the Koran or Mohamed. Sunday's attacks on Christians were the worst since September 2013, when a double suicide-bombing in Peshawar killed 82 people. That came months after more than 3,000 Muslim protesters torched some 100 houses as they rampaged through Joseph Colony, another Christian neighborhood of Lahore, following blasphemy allegations against a Christian man.
According to an editorial in the widely read Dawn news site:
"THE suicide attacks against two churches in Lahore yesterday could have been just another gruesome incident in the long list of horrors that has been inflicted on this country in recent years.The reaction by sections of the Christian community in Lahore and other cities of the country — with protesters taking to the streets and some turning to violence that resulted in two deaths — though suggests that the state’s halting response to the terrorism threat is leading to dangerous ruptures in society.
When non-Muslim and sectarian communities take to the streets in protest and turn to mob violence, it surely reflects the acute stress and intolerable strain that they are under. While all mob violence is deplorable, perhaps the lesson for the state here is that endless violence and horrors visited on a population lead to fear taking over and ugliness manifesting itself."
AFP and Express Tribune (Pakistan) and Dawn (Pakistan)
The terror group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attack in Lahore, and promised that there would be more attacks.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar was formed last year in September, when several terror groups splintered off from the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban - TTP) because of a major leadership dispute within the TTP. At that time, a group of TTP commanders formed Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, taking with them several Taliban factions from Pakistan's tribal areas.
In November, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed credit for 45 Pakistani deaths and 120 injuries when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a border crossing with India, near Lahore, at a time of day when there were crowds of people on the Pakistan side to watch a colorful flag-lowering ceremony. ( "3-Nov-14 World View -- Multiple Taliban groups claim credit for suicide bombing in Pakistan")
Last week, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and two other major terrorist groups rejoined the TTP, after a meeting in which the leadership issues were presumably resolved, although a new leader of the combined group has not yet been chosen. The spokesman for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar issued this statement:
"We congratulate the Ummat-e-Muslima [the Muslim community] in common and especially the Mujahideen of Pakistan for the coalition of strong Jihadi groups, Tehrik-e-Taliban [Movement of the Taliban] Pakistan, Jamaat ul Ahrar, Tehrik-e-Lashkar-e-Islam and Tehrik-e-Taliban on one name Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP] against the Taghooti [satanic], Infidel, Democratic, unIslamic system and the Na-Pak Murtad [a Muslim who rejects Islam] Army."
Dawn (Pakistan) and Long War Journal and Geo TV (Pakistan)
Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who has not been seen in public since March 5, is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg on Monday (today). Moscow has been a-buzz with rumors about Putin has disappeared, and a Monday appearance should bring some resolution.
Until then, here are some of the rumors going around:
The main speculation is that his disappearance is related to a major political crisis that I described days ago triggered by the assassination of Putin's very high profile political opponent Boris Nemtsov, possibly under the orders of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya. The most extreme version of this rumor is that Kadyrov's Chechen men are planning to kill other Putin opponents, and Putin is hiding for fear of retribution. Even if Putin makes an appearance in St. Petersburg on Monday, the rumors about a political crisis over the Nemtsov assassination will continue. Guardian (London) and Daily Mail (London)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Mar-15 World View -- Violent Christian riots follow bombing of two churches in Lahore, Pakistan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Mar-2015)
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Fighting heats up on Myanmar (Burma) border with China
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Speculation continues to swirl over the reason for the complete disappearance since March 5 of Russia's president Vladimir Putin from public view, including the cancellation of several long-scheduled meetings and ceremonies.
Now the New York Post is claiming with some certainty that Putin, 62, is in Switzerland for the birth of a new daughter by his long-time mistress Alina Kabaeva, 31.
Putin has angrily denied having Kabaeva as a mistress. In 2008, I wrote "Putin angrily denies divorce rumors and shuts down newspaper reporting them", and described how Russia's president Vladimir Putin terrorized a female reporter at a joint press conference with Silvio Berlusconi when she asked a question about a rumored affair with Alina Kabaeva, while Berlusconi helped out by gesturing with his hand pretending to shoot the reporter. Finally, in 2013, Putin divorced his wife, with whom he has two children, and continued to deny that Kabaeva is his mistress.
As I reported yesterday, many analysts are convinced that Putin's disappearance has a much deeper explanation, a Moscow political crisis related to the assassination of political opponent Boris Nemtsov. Putin's next scheduled public appearance is on Monday, when he's scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg. New York Post
China is threatening "decisive action" against Burma (Myanmar), after a bomb from a Burmese warplane fell into Chinese territory and killed four Chinese people. This comes days after a stray shell from Burma flattened a house in Chinese territory. Beijing has summoned Burma's ambassador, and has launched warplanes to patrol the border between the two countries.
The ethnic fighting in Burma (Myanmar) that began in early February is growing in intensity, and causing a confrontation between Burma and China. The fighting is taking place in Burma's Kokang Special Region, on the border with China, and it's between Burma's army and the Kokang people, who are ethnically Chinese.
Some 30,000 Kokang have fled across the border into China, where they live in refugee camps. Burmese officials claim Kokang attacks are being launched from Chinese territory, and that Chinese mercenaries are fighting in support of the Kokang. Burmese officials are demanding that China prevent this, but Chinese officials are denying that it's happening at all.
It's occurred to a lot of people that this situation is similar to the situation with Russia and Ukraine. Russia has justified its invasion and occupation of portions of Ukraine by the need to "protect" the Russian people living in Ukraine. Similarly, many people are wondering when China is going to send troops into Burma for the "protection" of the Kokang-Chinese people.
However, this presents a public relations problem for China. China likes to claim that no one should interfere with the "internal affairs" of another country. They say this particularly at times when Chinese security officials are butchering Tibetans and Uighurs in China, and they want to shut out the international community.
In the last year, they've already had to carve out several exceptions to this holier-than-thou rule. They've intervened in the internal affairs of Sudan when their own investments were threatened. And of course they've supported their partner in crime, Russia, as it interfered with the internal affairs of Ukraine.
The Chinese have already stated that the fighting in Burma is an internal affair of Burma, but they're under increasing pressure from their own Chinese people to do something. There have now been two incidents in the last couple of weeks of Burmese rockets and shells landing on Chinese territory, killing four people in one case. More such incidents would provide an excuse for China to invade Burma, with two possible outcomes -- a resolution of the conflict, or a spiraling into a larger war. Reuters and LA Times and Xinhua
A report in Debka's subscriber-only newsletter (sent to me by a subscriber) says that its intelligence sources have learned that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, after vacillating over the nuclear negotiations with the United States for months, has now come down firmly against any deal. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif have been working to complete a deal by the March 31 deadline, but Khamenei has now rejected the entire framework that they were developing. The intelligence sources say that Iran may shut down nuclear negotiations completely, unless the West first removes all sanctions, a request that will not be satisfied.
A major reason given is that dissent within Iran itself has been increasing. The dissent is spilling over from government critics to broad sections of Iranian society, such as academics and op-ed writers.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, none of this is surprising. As I've said many times, it's a core principle of generational theory that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people, and that politicians are irrelevant except insofar as they're implementing the wishes of the masses of people.
This is a good time to review Iran's strategy with regard to the nuclear issue, which I've stated many times in the last few years, based on a relatively straightforward analysis of Iran's history in the last century.
First, Iran will not be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran has already been victimized by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, and is now surrounded by potential enemies -- Pakistan, Russia, Israel -- that have nuclear weapons, with Saudi Arabia planning to obtain nuclear technology from Pakistan. The Iranian people overwhelmingly feel that they need nuclear technology for self-defense.
Secondly, however, Iran has no intention at all of using a nuclear weapon on Israel. If you look at Iran's major wars in the last century -- the Constitutional Revolution of 1908-09, the Great Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the Iran/Iraq war that climaxed in 1989 -- Iran did not attack any other nation, and takes pride in not having done so.
Another reason why Iran could not use a nuclear weapon on Israel is that doing so would kill millions of Palestinians, and Iran knows that the Arab backlash would be enormous, irrespective of what happened to Israel.
Furthermore, the younger generations of Iranians, the ones that grew up after the war, do not hate Israel, and do not wish Israel harm, and they would be particularly opposed to any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel.
The collapse of the Iran nuclear negotiations would be a major blow for the Barack Obama administration. The foreign policy of Obama and his clownish Secretary of State John Kerry has been one blunder and reversal after another, and they were hoping for a nuclear deal to burnish their legacies, and possibly to get Nobel Peace Prizes as a result. Look for them to blame it on the Republicans, but preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon was never a possibility.
By the way, Debka is also predicting that Benjamin Netanyahu's defeat in Tuesday's election is a foregone conclusion, and that unless something spectacular happens, Israel's next prime minister will be Yitzhak Herzog. Debka
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Mar-15 World View -- Report: Iran's Supreme Leader has already vetoed any nuclear deal thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Mar-2015)
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Fears grow of violence between Kadyrov's security forces and Putin's FSB
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we briefly reported yesterday, Russia's president Vladimir Putin on Thursday canceled a long-scheduled ceremony to sign a treaty annexing South Ossetia into Russia, amid rumors that he was seriously ill. Putin's health is apparently OK (though questions remain), but the fact still remains that Putin has not been seen in public for several days, with no satisfactory explanation.
Putin's next scheduled public appearance is on Monday, when he's scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg. Perhaps we'll get some answers then.
It's increasingly believed that his disappearance is related to a growing political crisis in Moscow following the February 27 assassination of Putin's political opponent, a liberal, Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov was out on a stroll with his girlfriend in a very high security area almost on the doorstep of the Kremlin in Moscow. Nemtsov was killed by gunmen who meticulously planned every detail. They knew where he would be, they knew how to evade security forces reaching him, and they knew exactly how to escape after the assassination.
There are two important facts related to Nemtsov's killing. First, it was not random. It was perpetrated by people who must have had a great deal of inside information about people and security around the Kremlin. And second, this is the highest profile assassination in Moscow in decades. It's fairly common for the Kremlin to order the assassination of unfriendly reporters or the massacre of any number of anti-government protesters, including women and children, but Nemtsov was very high profile. He was at one time the putative successor of Boris Yeltsin to be President. Nemtsov's high profile means that killing him does not benefit Putin, because Putin is immediately suspected of ordering the killing. In fact, many in Putin's opposition have been accusing Putin of exactly that.
Putin condemned the killing, and immediately took "personal control" of the investigation, insinuating that Americans or "foreign agents" had perpetrated the killing to make him look back. The FSB, the successor to the old Soviet KGB, took charge of the investigation, and soon identified the culprits as five Chechens, led by Zaur Dadayev. Dadayev is a close associate of Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin's hand-picked governor of Chechnya, suggesting that Kadyrov himself had ordered the assassination in order to embarrass Putin and the Kremlin.
Chechnya is, of course, a major Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus. In the 1990s, Kadyrov was a separatist rebel fighting against the Kremlin, but who later switched sides and pledged loyalty to Putin. Today, Kadyrov has his own army, known as the Kadyrovtsy, and last year he was filmed giving a long speech to thousands of armed Chechen police and special forces saying his men had pledged loyalty to Russia, and to Putin personally, and ended by shouting:
"Long live our great motherland Russia! Long live our national leader Vladimir Putin! Allahu Akbar!"
Moscow Times and Guardian (London) and Telegraph (London)
So what does all this have to do with the disappearance of Putin? According to an analyst Friday on the BBC world service, Putin has retreated because he has to find a way to deal with a potential conflict between two armies: the FSB, which is personally loyal to Russia, versus the Kadyrovtsy, Kadyrov's army of police and security forces, which is personally loyal to him. The word "personally" in each case is significant, because neither of these armies is loyal to Russia.
Zaur Dadayev and his four alleged Chechen accomplices were brought into court last Sunday (7-Mar), and there have been some political theatrics since then. Dadayev confessed to the assassination, and blamed it on Nemtsov's criticism of the terrorists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, saying that he (Dadayev) was personally very offended by the Mohammed cartoons that had been published.
Kadyrov confirmed Dadayev's claims by saying:
"Anyone who knows Zaur can confirm that he is a deep believer, and that he — like all Muslims — was shocked by the activities of Charlie Hebdo [newspaper] and by comments made in support of reprinting the cartoons. I knew Zaur as a true Russian patriot."
The political theatrics continued on Monday, when a Kremlin statement announced that Kadyrov had been awarded the Order of Honor for his "professional accomplishments, social activities and many years of diligent work."
The great fear is that Kadyrov is only paying lip service pledging loyalty to Putin, and that he's building up his Kadyrovtsy army in preparation for a new separatist battle with Moscow. Chechnya was ill prepared for the Chechen wars of the 1990s, and Russian forces put them down rather easily. Kadyrov is going to be much better prepared this time.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a major war between Chechnya and Russia is coming with certainty. Chechnya's last crisis war was World War II, climaxing with the wholesale deportation of the Chechen people by Russian army forces in 1944. It was not until 1957 when Nikita Khrushchev permitted the Chechens to return to their homeland, but this act was considered to be a Russian genocide of the Chechen people, and young Chechens today, many of whom are in Kadyrov's Kadyrovtsy army, are looking forward to the day when the get revenge, and Nemtsov's murder might have been the first step in getting revenge. Moscow Times and RFE/RL(19-Jan) and BBC Podcast (MP3)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Mar-15 World View -- Putin's disappearance may be part of a major Moscow political crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Mar-2015)
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South Ossetia discourages trips to Georgia for medical care
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Greece's government has threatened to seize German property in Greece as compensation for a World War II Nazi atrocity, the massacre of 218 civilians in the central Greek village of Distomo on June 10, 1944. In 2000, Greece's Supreme Court ruled that Germany owed the relatives of the victims of the Distomo massacre 28 million euros. The decision was not enforced at the time, and the Greek government is attempting to enforce it now.
Among possible assets that could be seized are property belonging to Germany's archaeological school and the Goethe Institute, a cultural association.
Germany rejects the claims, saying that the 1990 "Two Plus Four Treaty" settled the matter. One German political threatened reprisals if Greece seized German property: "The subject has been closed since the 1950s. If it came to Greek violations of German property, Germany would know how to defend itself."
Then there was a new development on Thursday.
Greece has lodged a formal complaint against Germany for an insult by Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. According to press reports, Schäuble called Greece's Yanis Varoufakis "foolishly naïve" in his dealings with the media following EU discussions in Brussels on Wednesday.
According to Greece's Foreign Ministry, "As a minister of a country that is our friend and our ally, he cannot personally insult a colleague." Greece is demanding an apology. Guardian (London) and EurActiv and Deutsche Welle (Berlin) and Kathimerini (Athens)
An embarrassment to officials in both occupied South Ossetia and Russia is that many South Ossetians travel to Georgia for medical care.
It's not an easy trip, either. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and occupied and retained control of two of Georgia's provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. However, Russia has closed the border between South Ossetia and Georgia, and so the only way for a South Ossetia to reach Georgia is to go north into Russia, and then travel back into Georgia. Thus, they have to cross the Main Caucasus Ridge twice, a particularly difficult journey in winter.
Leonid Tibilov, South Ossettia's Russian-appointed leader, says that "in the overwhelming majority of cases there is no need whatsoever for patients to go to the neighboring country. We have to develop our own medical centers and attract specialists. We are already doing it actively – we are launching construction of a modern medical center with relevant equipment." However, no modern clinic has appeared in South Ossetia since the 2008 invasion.
According to South Ossetia's healthcare minister, Grigory Kulidzhanov, most patients "are ignoring" the government decree:
"Often people appeal [to the healthcare ministry] insisting on sending them to hospitals in Georgia, ignoring offered alternative to receive medical treatment on the territory of Russia. Of course we can help a person when it is a life-and-death issue and we are doing it, turning a blind eye on political aspects, but in most of the cases requests for sending them to Georgia have no clear justification, meaning that similar treatment can also be provided on the territory of Russia, including in North Ossetia."
Kulidzhanov makes the point that if patients really want to leave South Ossetia for medical care, they could easily go to a hospital in Russia.
However, a Georgian official points out that Georgia has "a high-quality and non-corrupt healthcare system." Referring to Tskhinvali, capital city of South Ossetia, and to Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, he said, "in order to receive the same level of medical assistance, residents of Tskhinvali would have to go to Moscow or St. Petersburg, but that is very far away, while Tbilisi is only a 40-minute drive from Tskhinvali."
There is late news that Vladimir Putin has on Thursday canceled a long-scheduled ceremony to sign a treaty annexing South Ossetia into Russia. There are rumors that Putin is in ill health, but those rumors are being denied by a Kremlin spokesman. EurasiaNet and Jamestown and Civil (Georgia) and International Business Times
China will be building two of the most technologically advanced nuclear reactors in the world less than 20 miles from downtown Karachi, which has about 20 million residents. The port city of Karachi is considered to be the economic capital of Pakistan. According to one activist trying to get the project halted:
"You are talking about a city one-third the population of the United Kingdom. If there would be an accident, this would cripple Karachi, and if you cripple Karachi, you cripple Pakistan."
The world has already experienced three major nuclear accidents — at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, and the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. A disaster that these new nuclear plants could kill millions of people in Karachi. In addition, Pakistan suffers almost daily acts of terrorism from the Taliban, and so a terrorist attack would be of major concern. Dawn (Pakistan)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Mar-15 World View -- Karachi Pakistan fears 'nuclear nightmare' over planned nuclear reactors thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Mar-2015)
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Russia plans military development, including nuclear weapons, in Crimea
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Iraqi government forces entered Tikrit on Wednesday, driving out fighters from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), who fled the city, leaving behind hundreds of roadside bombs, according to Iraqi officials.
The Iraqi forces are not, for the most part, from the Iraqi army. Only a single Iraqi army brigade, about 3,000 soldiers, are involved. The bulk of the force are 20,000 fighters from Shia tribal militias, known as Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilization) forces. There are also about 1,000 Sunni tribesmen in the force.
This entire force is under the command of a Ghasem Soleimani, a top general in Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), supported by dozens of Iranian military advisers.
Tikrit is the home town of Saddam Hussein, and when he was in power, Saddam Hussein was violent and brutal to the Shias. I recall numerous stories of atrocities being committed by Saddam as one of the justifications of the 2003 Iraq war.
So today a massive Shia army, under Iranian command, is entering Saddam Hussein's home town, to expel ISIS and take control. As one analyst asked, will the Sunni people of Tikrit treat the Shia army to be liberators or invaders?
According to US Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, testifying before Congress on Wednesday:
"We are all concerned about what happens after the drums stop beating and ISIL is defeated, and whether the government of Iraq will remain on a path to provide an inclusive government for all of the various groups within it. ...There's no doubt that the combination of the Popular Mobilization forces and the Iraqi security forces, they're going to run ISIL out of Tikrit.
The question is what comes after, in terms of their willingness to let Sunni families move back into their neighborhoods, whether they work to restore the basic services that are going to be necessary, or whether it results in atrocities and retribution."
Fears of Shia on Sunni atrocities and retribution will not be unexpected. According to an Amnesty International report published last year in October:
"In recent months, Shi’a militias have been abducting and killing Sunni civilian men in Baghdad and around the country. These militias, often armed and backed by the government of Iraq, continue to operate with varying degrees of cooperation from government forces – ranging from tacit consent to coordinated, or even joint, operations. For these reasons, Amnesty International holds the government of Iraq largely responsible for the serious human rights abuses, including war crimes, committed by these militias.The victims were abducted from their homes, workplace or from checkpoints. Many were later found dead, usually handcuffed and shot in the back of the head. Reports by families of the victims and witnesses have been corroborated by Ministry of Health workers, who told Amnesty International that in recent months they have received scores of bodies of unidentified men with gunshot wounds to the head and often with their hands bound together with metal or plastic handcuffs, rope or cloth. Photographs of several bodies shown to Amnesty International by victims’ relatives and others viewed at Baghdad’s morgue, reveal a consistent pattern of deliberate, execution-style killings.
Some of the victims were killed even after their families had paid hefty ransoms. Several families told Amnesty International how they had received the dreaded call from the kidnappers, had searched frantically for the ransom money and had managed to pay it, only to discover that their loved one had still been killed. “I begged friends and acquaintances to lend me the ransom money to save my son, but after I paid they killed him and now I have no way to pay back the money I borrowed, as my son was the only one working in the family”, a grieving mother told Amnesty International.
Scores of other victims are still missing, their fate and whereabouts unknown, weeks and months after they were abducted."
These kinds of atrocities, Sunni on Shia, were the norm when Saddam Hussein was power. Once the US ended the war with the "surge," most of these atrocities ended. But once the US forces withdrew, the atrocities returned, this time Shia on Sunni.
During Wednesday's testimony before Congress, American officials spelled out six concerns that U.S. officials have about Iran:
The US is not taking part in the invasion or liberation of Tikrit, even with air strikes. But the US is expected to play an important role later, when the Iraqi forces move on to recapture Mosul from ISIS. USA Today and McClatchy and Amnesty International (Oct 2014) and Al Arabiya
In January, Russian officials said that they will be reinforcing the military on Crimea in 2015:
"In 2015, the Defense Ministry’s main efforts will focus on an increase of combat capabilities of the armed forces and increasing the military staff in accordance with military construction plans. Much attention will be given to the groupings in Crimea, Kaliningrad and the Arctic."
This week, Russia's Foreign Ministry added to the information by saying that nuclear weapons are on the table. According to Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Department for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Weapons Control, referring to Crimea:
"I don’t know if there are any nuclear weapons there at the moment and I am not aware of such plans, but in principle Russia can do this.Naturally Russia has the right to put nuclear weapons in any region on its territory if it deems it necessary. We hold that we have such a right, though Kiev has a different opinion on this matter."
This is typical of the kind of garbage that comes out of the mouths of Russian officials almost every day.
Ulyanov is head of Russia's Department for Nuclear Non-Proliferation, but he has no idea whether Russia has put nuclear weapons into Crimea? That's certainly credible, isn't it.
But Crimea is not Russian territory. It's a part of Ukraine that Russia's army has invaded and is occupying. It was just a couple of days ago that Russia's president Vladimir Putin admitted that he had lied last year about Russia's invasion of Crimea. It appears that Russia is planning a major military buildup in occupied Crimea in order to threaten all the nations bordering the Black Sea, including Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria and Romania. Russia Today
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Mar-15 World View -- Fears grow of Shia revenge killings in Iraq thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Mar-2015)
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Iran elects hardliner to head Assembly of Experts
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Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, born 1931, was elected on Tuesday to be chairman of Iran's Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that will choose Iran's next Supreme Leader, when the 76-year-old current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei dies.
The election was a surprise, because Yazdi is considered to be an extreme hardliner, and it's assumed that if Khamenei dies, then he'll be replaced by another hardliner.
Last week, I described significant possible policy changes in Iran that his death could trigger due to generational differences between the survivors of the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution and the generations that grew up after the revolution. Those policy changes can only take place if a representative of the views of the younger generation is chosen as the next Supreme Leader. It doesn't matter how old the selectee is. It only matters whether he holds the hardline views of the Great Revolution survivors or the views of the generations that grew up after the war. AEI Iran Tracker and BBC
Greece's consumer prices fell 2.2% in February, compared with a year earlier. On a monthly basis, prices fell 0.6% compared with January.
Housing prices led the plunge, falling 7.1%. The only product categories to show a rise were food, up 0.9%, and alcohol and tobacco goods, where prices rose 2.0%.
In the eurozone as a whole, consumer prices fell 0.3% in February, after falling 0.6% in January. In the US, the CPI fell 0.7% in January. In China, the economy is not yet deflationary, but the inflation rate is much lower than Beijing's target. In other words, much of the world is spiraling into deflation.
As long-time readers know, Generational Dynamics has been predicting a deflationary spiral for years, despite the insistence by almost every mainstream economist that, because of near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing, the economy would become inflationary or even hyperinflationary. It's worth taking a moment to review what's going on here, in case any mainstream economist is reading and wants to learn something (which, based on experience, is very unlikely).
In the 70s, 80s and 90s, the Fed could reasonably control inflation by setting appropriate interest rates. Generally speaking, lowering interest rates means that people can borrow more, and they use the money to buy things or to hire employees. This creates a demand for things and employees, which, by the law of supply and demand, means that prices and wages should go up, causing inflation. Quantitative easing, where the Fed "prints money" and pours it into the banking system, should create even more inflation. That's why mainstream economists keep talking about inflation.
I always like to make fun of the fact that mainstream economists cannot explain the tech bubble of the late 1990s -- why it occurred at all, and why it occurred then, instead of a decade earlier during the PC technology explosion, or a decade later. The answer is that the 1990s is exactly the time when the risk-averse survivors of the Great Depression all disappeared -- retired or died -- all at the same time, leaving behind younger generations having no clue what could go wrong with the economy. Mainstream economists are from these younger generations with no clue.
Mainstream economists (including those in the so-called "Austrian school") think that inflation is determined by the amount of money in circulation as set by monetary policy -- interest rates and quantitative easing. And you can find thousands of articles in the past decade explaining why continued low interest rates would cause inflation.
But anyone who's taken Economics 1.01 knows that inflation is caused by two factors: the amount of money in circulation times the velocity of money. You can google "velocity of money" for a full explanation, but it represents how frequently money is actually used to buy things or pay wages. The velocity of money has been plummeting in the last decade, meaning that all that money that the Fed has been spewing out in the form of low interest rates and quantitative easing has just been sitting in bank accounts, and not used for purchases and wages. Actually, it's been used by hedge funds and already-wealthy investors to invest in the stock market, pushing up the Wall Street stock bubble. With the velocity of money plummeting, inflation has been plummeting as well, defying the mainstream economists.
The size of the money supply is set by monetary policy, but it turns out that the velocity of money is set by generational changes. In a generational crisis era, like the 1930s and today, once a crisis occurs, like the 1929 crash or the 2008 housing crash, people's moods change dramatically. They pinch pennies, for fear of a new financial crisis, and they refuse to buy things, causing the velocity of money to plunge. After the 1929 crash, the mood didn't begin to lift until the 1950s. In Japan, there was a stock market crash in 1990, and Japan remains in a deflationary spiral to this day, 25 years later. So this generational mood is very deep and long-lasting.
So when you hear a financial "expert" on TV say that such and such and change in policy will encourage people to spend more money next year, you can be sure you're listening to a clueless mainstream economist. This deflationary spiral is going to continue and deepen for a long time, and will trigger a new stock market crash. Bloomberg and Market Watch and Dow Jones
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The European Central Bank (ECB) is taking desperate measures to end deflation by starting a massive quantitative easing program. On Monday, the ECB "printed" three billion euros and used them to purchase bonds issued by individual eurozone nations.
This huge purchase of bonds caused the prices of these bonds to up (by the law of supply and demand). In the case of bonds, when the price goes up, the corresponding bond yield (interest rate) goes down. So the result of the ECB's actions on Monday was to push many bond yields into negative territory. This means, in effect, that the ECB is lending money to individual governments, and paying those governments to take the money. I wish I could get that deal.
The second effect of the of the ECB's actions was to drive the value of the euro down relative to the dollar. Or, to put it another way, to strengthen the dollar relative to the euro.
This highlights another mistake that mainstream economists make when they're talking about inflation. There are two completely separate ways of looking at inflation: the internal inflation, as measured by consumer prices, and the international inflation, as measured by the value of the currency against other currencies. In this case, the euro is in a deflationary spiral internally, but it's losing value internationally. So it appears that the euro is going in two opposite directions at the same time, one of the many dysfunctions in today's global finance.
All this bad news in Europe affected Wall Street stocks on Tuesday, with a 333 point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations index) on Friday morning (March 6) was astronomically high at 20.50. This is far above the historical average of 14, indicating that the stock market is in a huge bubble that could burst at any time. Generational Dynamics predicts that the P/E ratio will fall to the 5-6 range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982, resulting in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower. Tuesday's stock market plunge has probably already pushed the P/E ratio down to the 18-19 range. Telegraph (London) and Reuters and Bloomberg
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Mar-15 World View -- Europe, America, China economies all continue in deflationary spiral thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Mar-2015)
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Europe to Greece: Stop wasting time and get serious about reforms
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Russia's president Vladimir Putin said in an interview in a forthcoming TV documentary that he ordered the invasion and annexation of Crimea weeks before it occurred, during a period of time when he repeatedly lied about the presence of Russian troops and about his intentions. He gives as a reason for his decision that Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had been ousted and his life was in danger, but he doesn't explain why that justifies invading another country and annexing its territory.
This whole situation has almost been a laugh factory. Based on news reports it was perfectly obvious to me and Nato officials and other that Putin was lying, but in the United Nations and other official forums it was necessary to play the game that Nato says this but Russia says that. And then there was Putin's army of paid Russian trolls, whose job was to harass people like me who were describing what was really going on. I had the honor of being targeted by no less than three of the trolls on different web sites, and one of them visited me just last week to say that it wasn't anti-government Ukraine Russians who shot down Malaysian Airlines MH17.
Putin's constant lying, and contempt for everyone else, has at least taken a toll. Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials have called Putin a liar. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who originally tried to remain neutral, has become the unlikely leader of the pro-Ukrainian cause, though still restricted to diplomatic means.
There is an increasing realization among European officials that the European experiment is failing, and not just because the euro currency is in trouble. The two world wars were a huge bloodbath across the entire continent, and the purpose of the European experiment was to make sure it didn't happen again. One cornerstone of that experiment was to prevent any dictator from unilaterally redrawing country borders again, as Hitler had done. And if the EU cannot stop Russia from redrawing its borders with Ukraine, then the European Union will, literally, be a failure. BBC and AFP and Reuters
Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the Eurogroup of eurozone financial ministers is telling Greece to "stop wasting time." Greece's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on Friday provided the Eurogroup with a list of reforms, but the list was vague, without any real reforms.
Greece's new radical left-wing government, headed by prime minister Alexis Tsipras, won a four-month reprieve two weeks ago, when the Eurogroup agreed to continue funding the Greek bailout until July, provided that Tsipras submits a detailed implementation plan for meeting the austerity commitments.
So far, Greece has made vague promises with no specifics. The Eurogroup met on Monday in Brussels and reviewed Tsipras's vague list. According to Dijsselbloem:
"We agreed there is no further time to lose. ... We have to stop wasting time and really start talks seriously. We’ve lost over two weeks — in which very little progress has been made. The real talks haven’t started yet. There has been no implementation."
So on Wednesday, the "institutions" will go to Athens to hammer out an implementation. The "institutions" are the organizations bailing out Greece -- the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These three organizations used to be called "the troika," but Tsipras hates the word "troika" and made a campaign promise that there would be "No more troika!". So, there's no longer a troika. Now there are "three institutions."
That's just about the only campaign promise he's kept. He promised other things, particularly that he would convince the Europeans to cut Greece's outstanding debt in half, and to allow a "significant moratorium" on debt repayments. Those and other promises have been completely abandoned. As a result, Tsipras is facing pressure from Greece's far left. Anarchist riots started again recently, and Syriza's political office was overrun by protesters over the weekend.
In fact, not only is Greece not meeting its commitments, it's slipping backwards, in an attempt to appease the hard left. Over the weekend, Tsipras said that he would be submitting legislation to provide free food and electricity to 300,000 poor households, stretching repayment terms for those behind on their taxes (with up to 100 installments!) and freezing home foreclosures.
There is a great deal of nervousness about the upcoming meeting in Athens on Wednesday. History tells us that they'll "kick the can down the road" again, but positions have been hardening, and it's possible they'll end up with blood on the floor.
If no agreement is reached, then Greece will be bankrupt in about three weeks. Kathimerini and Business Insider and Financial Post and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Mar-15 World View -- Vladimir Putin brags about how he lied about Russia's invasion of Crimea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Mar-2015)
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Are ISIS and Boko Haram 'far right' extremists?
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Three days ago I wrote "6-Mar-15 World View -- Khamenei's illness may signal generational policy change in Iran", in which I referred to media reports that Iran's 76 year old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has been hospitalized in critical condition with prostate cancer. I described significant policy changes in Iran that his death could trigger due to generational differences between the survivors of the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution and the generations that grew up after the revolution. Since then, the media reports have morphed into widespread rumors of Khamenei's death.
However, Khamenei was well enough on Sunday to participate in a meeting in his home with environmental activists. The television pictures that aired made him look comfortable and healthy. So it looks like we're going to have to wait a little longer for that policy change. The National (UAE)/AP
Northern Mali has been bloodied repeatedly starting in 2012, with a separatist rebellion by the ethnic Tuaregs, which was overtaken by terrorist attacks by the al-Qaeda linked Ansar Dine, and then further attacks by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Islamist attacks resulted in the destruction in Timbuktu of centuries-old shrines and mosques, along with tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts.
But through all of that, Mali's capital city Bamako, in southern Mali, has escaped the chaos, until Saturday. Residents of Bamako were stunned to hear that a masked gunman sprayed bullets into La Terrasse restaurant and bar killing five people, including a Frenchman and a Belgian. The AQIM-linked terror group Al Mourabitoun (The Sentinels), led by Algerian terroris Moktar Belmoktar, claimed responsibility, saying that it was "to avenge our prophet against the unbelieving West which has insulted and mocked him," and in revenge for the killing of a leader of the Al Mourabitoun group in a French-Malian military operation.
In addition to five deaths, there were seven people injured, including two international experts working for the United Nations. No sooner did the UN put out a statement condemning the attack in Bamako, terrorists attacked a UN base in northern Mali with 30 rockets and shells targeting the base, killing one UN soldier and two civilian children.
As I've been describing for months, there is a large and growing Muslim versus Muslim war in the Mideast, North Africa and South Asia, and it seems to worsen in one way or another every week. This is a strong historical trend, and at some point it will pull us and the West into it. Irish Independent and United Nations and AFP
Fawaz Gerges, London School of Economics, occasionally appears on news shows analyzing Mideast events. Appearing on al-Jazeera on Sunday, Gerges was asked to comment on Friday's announcement by Boko Haram that it was pledging allegiance to the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
The interview was interesting on a couple of levels. Gerges said that Boko Haram was so extremist, that al-Qaeda would not be interested, while ISIS has not been interested in the past, though may be changing its mind. The interview was also interesting for Gerges's bizarre characterization of ISIS and Boko Haram as "far-right extremists." My transcription:
"Ironically, in the last few months, ISIL has not really responded to the many messages by Boko Haram (BK) praising ISIL, and that tells me that even ISIL, one of the most extremist jihadist organizations, have viewed BK as a liability.But my take now if you ask me if Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIL, would accept the fealty of BK, I would say yes. Yes, because it's a win-win.
It shows ISIL as the leader of the global jihadist movement, that jihadists near and far, in particular militant activists, whether you're talking about Egypt or Yemen or Algeria or Afghanistan or Pakistan, and now Boko Haram, are basically praising and saying they want to be part of this winning horse. ISIL is being seen as a winning horse, as a powerful organization.
And even if ISIL accepts the allegiance or the fealty by BK, then little will change. Remember, BK is desperate for legitimization. It would like to be part of ISIL which is seen as a basically winning horse, but nothing would change on the ground.
But the reality is you're talking about ISIL and BK, two sides of the same coin, really on the far right of the jihadist movement, and would argue that Ayman al-Zawarhiri, the leader of al-Qaeda central, would really hesitate to accept any kind of allegiance from BK, because BK is seen as ISIL is seen as very extremist, very nihilistic, really on the far right of all militant organizations that exist today."
Gerges very clearly emphasized the phrase "far right," even repeating it, and so we have to assume that Gerges wants to burnish his own far left credentials. Gerges holds the Emirates Chair in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and in today's society, political scientists are almost always far left.
But what makes it so bizarre is that "right" and "left," as applied to politics, is a European concept, and it doesn't really make any sense outside of Europe (and North America) because politics is so different in other regions. In the Mideast, if ISIS is "far right," then who's "far left"? Al-Qaeda? Hezbollah? Iran? It's an almost meaningless question.
But it's also bizarre for another reason. In the French Revolution, where the terms "left" and "right" were first applied to politics, the extremists perpetrating the Reign of Terror were on the left, while the politicians on the right opposed it. So it's hard to see how ISIS and Boko Haram could be called "far right" in any conceivable sense.
I guess you can't trust anyone these days (except me) not to put an ideological spin on something where it doesn't even make sense.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Mar-15 World View -- Mali's capital city Bamako in shock after terror attack thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Mar-2015)
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Boko Haram declares allegiance to ISIS
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Even a couple of weeks ago, it was unthinkable that Libya's rival governments would be willing to sit down and talk to one another.
Libya's elected parliament is in charge of the government that is internationally recognized, and headquartered in Tobruk, in eastern Libya. The rival government is the General National Congress (GNC), headed by the Islamist-backed Libya Dawn faction, headquartered in Libya's capital city, Tripoli, in western Libya. Previous attempts by the United Nations to broker an agreement for a unity government have broken down because neither side wanted to talk to the other.
But in the last few weeks, the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) has taken control of Sirte, where there are now tanks in the streets and black ISIS flags are waving in the city center. There are fears that ISIS will take control of some oil facilities and export the oil to make money. Furthermore, the recent publicity stunt where 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians were beheaded, with the results shown in a gruesome posted video, have changed the mood of the leaders of the two governments.
Although an agreement on a unity government is considered unlikely, on Saturday representatives of the two governments were at least willing to sit down and talk to one another. The UN-sponsored meetings are taking place in Rabat, the capital city of Morocco. After Saturday's meeting, both groups will return to Libya for consultations, and then return to Rabat on Wednesday to sign a deal, if any.
If an agreement on a unity government is reached, then the European Union has said it is prepared to provide some military help in fighting ISIS. On Saturday, UN envoy Bernardino Leon called on the European Union to mount a naval blockade of Libya that would prevent the flow of weapons to ISIS and the illegal flow of oil from Libya. However, the EU has resisted calls in the past for another kind of blockade of Libya, to stem the flow of thousands of migrants from Libya to Italy. Al Arabiya and Deutsche Welle and AP
In recent years, under King Abdullah II, Saudi Arabia has been Egypt's greatest Arab supporter and benefactor. But Abdullah died in January, and his successor King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud has been tilting away from Egypt towards Turkey, as we've been reporting in the last few days.
The issue that's inflamed differences among the Arab states, especially since last summer's war between Gaza and Hamas, is the status of the Muslim Brotherhood and it's offshoot Hamas. Last year, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt considered the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization, while Qatar and Turkey supported the Brotherhood. But King Salman has been openly getting close to Turkey, potentially leaving Egypt out in the cold. Turkey and Egypt have extremely hard and opposing positions on the Muslim Brotherhood, and no one considers a rapprochement likely.
Egypt is the largest benefactor of UAE's aid, especially since the July 2013 coup that ousted Egypt's democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government. In addition to providing direct cash aid, the OPEC member has been building schools, clinics, wheat silos and tens of thousands of homes, possibly creating a million jobs in Egypt.
The relationship between UAE and Egypt may be deeper than just supplying aid. According to leaked audio tapes obtain by Turkish officials and released to the press, UAE was heavily involved in bringing about the coup that ousted Morsi. The ouster was triggered by huge anti-Morsi protests, and the leaked tapes indicate that the protests were fomenting using funds provided by the UAE. A leaked audio tape leaked last month contains a tirade by Egyptian official Abbas Kamel describing the Gulf countries as 'half states' and launching into a tirade of insults against the Qatari royal family. AP and Telegraph (London) and Daily Sabah (Turkey) (2-Feb)
58 people were killed and hundreds injured on Saturday in five coordinated suicide bombings in various parts of Maiduguri, the largest city in northwest Nigeria, and the city that Boko Haram has named as the intended capital city of its Islamic state.
The first bombing occurred when a female suicide bomber blew up her vest in a crowded fish market at 11:20 am. An hour later, there was another bombing at another crowded market. Shortly after 1:00 pm, a third bombing occured at a busy bus terminal. The Nation Online (Nigeria)
Also on Saturday, Boko Haram issued an audio statement declaring its allegiance to the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). "We announce our allegiance to the Caliph ... and will hear and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity, in hardship and ease," said the statement. Officials are concerned that as ISIS builds its international infrastructure, and gather resources and military capabilities, Boko Haram and other linked terrorist groups will be able to expand operations and control more quickly. Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Mar-15 World View -- Libya's two rival governments in unity talks to fight ISIS thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Mar-2015)
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After a year, experts still guessing about Malaysia Airlines 370
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Iran's influence in the Mideast has been increasing rapidly in recent weeks:
These fast-moving events are triggering fast-moving policy changes, and sharpening the Sunni-Shia sectarian divide in the Mideast, as it heads for a sectarian war.
Last week, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Saudi Arabia's capital city Riyadh, and on Monday met with the new King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif came to Riyadh later last week, also to meet with King Salman. According to press reports, the main subjects of discussion were plans to for Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, along with other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), to develop strategic plans to seek "Sunni unity" to oppose Iran and, at the same time, to fight ISIS.
The meetings will no doubt reaffirm previous agreements for Pakistan to supply Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable missiles, if Iran develops a nuclear weapon.
An additional area of apparent agreement between Saudi Arabia and Turkey is the need for a no-fly zone over Syria to prevent attacks by the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan has repeatedly demanded this, in order to fight both ISIS and al-Assad, while the Obama administration has firmly opposed it, wanting to fight only ISIS. Al Monitor and The Nation/AFP (Pakistan) and Debka
As we reported last week, reported last week, Egypt's president Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi was also in Riyadh last week visiting King Salman, but their paths didn't cross.
When Erdogan was asked whether he met with al-Sisi, he responded, "You've got to be kidding." Erdogan is still furious at al-Sisi for the 2013 coup that ousted Egypt's first popularly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, along with his Muslim Brotherhood government. "After the coup, I cannot justify sitting at the same table with him," he added.
Turkey's support for the Muslim Brotherhood has been a source of tension in the region, negatively affecting Turkey's relations not only with Egypt but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Salman's predecessor, King Abdullah II, who died in January, was firmly opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, and sided with Egypt. However, Salman appears to be moving away from Egypt and moving closer to Turkey, which could mean a change in policy towards the Brotherhood.
There is concern in Egypt of a cutoff of the billions of dollars of aid that has been coming from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait since the 2013 coup, if Salman turns against Egypt.
Long-time readers are aware that about ten years ago I predicted, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries would be the enemies of India, Russia, Iran, Israel and the West in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war. This prediction was completely reasonable based on a generational analysis that I've explained a number of times, but even so, ten years ago, this prediction seemed fantastical. So it's been quite startling, particularly in the last year, to see this prediction come closer and closer to fruition, step by step.
However, the role of Egypt in this alignment has yet to be determined. Recent trends indicate that Egypt will be aligned with the West rather than the Sunni Gulf countries, but it's also possible that Egypt itself will be split into warring factions. Al Ahram (Cairo) and Yeni Safak (Turkey) (trans) and Today's Zaman (Turkey)
It was a year ago, on March 8, 2014, that Malaysia Airlines flight 370, on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, simply disappeared, and has has not been found yet.
What I found most bizarre was the coverage of the disappearance by people who had no clue what had happened. CNN was the most spectacular about this, with 24x7 coverage. One "expert" would say it had crashed into the South China Sea, another said it was hijacked and had landed in the Mideast, and another said it was in the water just south of India. It was one meaningless guess after another, filling up hours of television. I turned it off pretty quickly, but not before wondering why the experts didn't just say that the Martians had gotten it, and leave it at that.
Still, the incident was a tragedy for Malaysia and for Malaysian Airlines. The families of the passengers are still waiting for some word, any word, about whether their loved ones had somehow survived, or were confirmed dead. China's official media criticized the Malaysian government's apparent incompetence in handling the investigations, and there were demonstrations outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing.
And, of course, Malaysia Airlines suffered another disaster several months later, when Russian-backed anti-government militias in eastern Ukraine shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17, using a missile supplied by Russia. Malay Mail Online and New York Daily News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Mar-15 World View -- Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan seek 'Sunni unity' versus Iran thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Mar-2015)
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Palestinians vote to end security agreement with Israel
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Several Arab media reports indicate that Iran's 76 year old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has been hospitalized, and is in critical condition after undergoing surgery for an advanced form of prostate cancer.
If the reports are true, and if Khamenei does not recover, then his death could trigger very significant changes in Iran's policies.
As I've been writing for almost ten years, Iran is a schizophrenic country. The old geezers, the survivors of the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution, are extreme hard-liners, trying to revive the widespread revolutionary fervor that followed the Revolution. A generational crisis war always unifies the entire population behind the leader, with the intention of making sure that nothing so horrible should ever happen again to their children or grandchildren. So they fall back on the old out-of-date formulas that won them the revolution -- particularly blaming everything on the United States.
The younger generations, who grew up after the war, think that the old geezers are completely full of crap. This has been obvious since the early 2000s, when Tehran college students started pro-Western demonstrations. The young people like the West, like America, and don't have anything against Israel. Furthermore, Khamenei has seemed increasingly out of touch with reality in recent years. The result is a chaotic political conflict between the generations that survived the war versus the generations that grew up after the war. This is what always happens during a generational Awakening era, like America in the 1960s.
The death of Khamenei would trigger a major political conflict between two groups of politicians representing, respectively, the two generational positions. If Khamenei's successor is another hardliner, then policies won't change. But it's quite possible that his successor would be another Revolution survivor, but still a reformist. For example, see "2-Nov-13 World View -- Growing power struggle in Iran may make Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani the Supreme Leader". In that case, significant policy changes would be a real possibility.
As long-time readers are aware, Generational Dynamics predicts that in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war, the "allies" would be the West, along with India, Russia and Iran, while the "axis" would be China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim countries. The death of Khamenei, when it occurs, would be a step in that direction. Jerusalem Post and Israel National News
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which governs the West Bank, has voted on Thursday evening to end a security co-operation agreement with Israel which dates back to the Oslo Accords of 1993. The announcement calls for
"[The suspension of] all forms of security coordination given Israel’s systematic and ongoing non-compliance with its obligations under signed agreements, including its daily military raids throughout the State of Palestine, attacks against our civilians and properties. ...Israel, the occupying power in Palestine, must assume all its responsibilities in accordance with its obligations under international law."
The final decision will be made by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
As bad as the relationship has been between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the West Bank, the security agreement has kept it from becoming even worse. The security agreement required the Palestinians for policing the West bank, so that Israeli police would not have to do so. It's possible that the Palestinian security forces have prevented some terrorist attacks on Israeli targets.
An end to the security agreement would be a major new crisis in the West Bank. There would be daily confrontations between the Palestinians and the Israeli security forces, with a good chance that the confrontations would spiral into a war, just as they have in Gaza.
The announcement is the latest in a string of tit-for-tat actions by each side against the other. When the State of Palestine joined the International Criminal Court (ICC) in December, Israel was infuriated and promised revenge.
In January, Israel retaliated by cutting payments to Palestinians of fees and tax monies that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians on a daily basis, something like $100 million per month. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the move an act of "piracy" and a "collective punishment" against the Palestinian people:
The PLO has been unable to pay the salaries of government employees, including the security forces, and so the new announcement is in retaliation for the non-payment of these fees.
Every move by either side has to be interpreted as an attempt to influence the Israeli elections that are coming on March 17. Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is withholding the funds in order to increase his popularity with his right wing. The PLO announced the end of the security agreement in the hope of get Netanyahu defeated. Things should become clearer after March 17. Guardian (London) and Jerusalem Post and Al Bawaba (Palestine) and BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Mar-15 World View -- Khamenei's illness may signal generational policy change in Iran thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Mar-2015)
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China continues its double-digit military spending increases
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A major battle of World War I was the Battle of Gallipoli, which ran from April 25, 1915, to January 9, 1916. Turkey has commemorated the battle in the past on April 25.
According to Armenia, Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) committed a genocide against Armenians, and the genocide began on April 24, 1915, when the Young Turks government began deporting Armenians. Turkey denies that there was a genocide. Armenia had scheduled a centennial commemoration of the start of the deportations for next month on April 24.
Turkey responded last month by rescheduling its commemoration of the Gallipoli campaign to April 24. Both countries have invited dozens of international country leaders to their respective commemorations, forcing every government to make a choice.
So far, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron have already accepted Turkey's invitation; meanwhile France's President François Hollande plans to attend the events in Armenia.
In this context, Armenia is canceling an American-mediated 2009 agreement, the "Zurich Protocols," which would re-establish diplomatic relations between the two countries, and re-open their mutual borders. The agreement was signed in 2009, but neither country has ratified, and now Armenia is canceling it once and for all.
A major reason why the Zurich Protocols were never ratified was opposition by Azerbaijan. From 1988 to 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave of Azerbaijan, which has a large Armenian population. Armenia won the war, and gained control of about 15% of Azerbaijani territory, creating hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani refugees. That was the time when Azerbaijan and Turkey closed their borders with Armenia and imposed a blockade, closing off Armenia's trade routes to Europe and Asia. Today's Zaman and Daily Sabah (Turkey) and Jamestown and News (Azerbaijan)
China announced on Wednesday that military spending will grow by 10.1% in 2015. With the country's slowing economic growth, this was lower than last year's growth rate of 12.2%, but it still comes after years of very rapid military growth through double-digit increases. The increases are thought likely to go towards increasing naval power with anti-submarine ships and aircraft carriers, to further China's strategy of using military power to annex territories in the East and South China Seas that have historically belonged to other countries.
According to China's premier Li Keqiang:
"We will comprehensively strengthen modern logistics, step up national defense research and development of new- and high-technology weapons and equipment, and develop defense-related science and technology industries."
Although America's military budget has been declining, China's aggressive military growth has spurred military budget increases in many countries in the region, with significant increases in India, Vietnam and Japan.
But China has been rapidly building its military for years with a variety of weapons and missile systems that have no other purpose than to preemptively strike American aircraft carriers, American military bases, and American cities. Generational Dynamics predicts that China is preparing to launch a pre-emptive full-scale nuclear missile attack on the United States. AP and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Mar-15 World View -- Turkey and Armenia schedule conflicting WW I centennial commemorations thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Mar-2015)
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Iran Revolutionary Guards commander leads Iraq's attack on Tikrit
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Unlike many stories that I tell, this one had a happy ending. The bird landed 20 meters in front of the photographer, and after a tumble in the grass, the weasel ran off. Daily Mail (London)
Europeans are aware, though Americans are not, that when Austria's Credit-Anstalt bank of Austria collapsed on May 11, 1931, the collapse triggered mass panic and bank failures throughout central Europe, and a worldwide banking crisis.
This isn't nearly as bad as the 1931 incident, but it's raising a lot of concerns. The government of Austria announced over the weekend that it was shutting down the Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank, rather than spending an additional 7.6 billion euros of taxpayer money to bail it out. 5.5 billion euros of taxpayer money has already been paid to the bank up to this point, and a decision was made to stop the bleeding.
Hypo is not an ordinary bank. It's a so-called "bad bank" that was set up to unwind bad debts that came out of the financial crisis in 2008. It has no depositors, so depositors will not lose any money. However, many bondholders will lose a great deal, possibly leading to a chain reaction of further bankruptcies.
One billion euros of the bank's debt is guaranteed by Austria's federal government, and that will supposedly be honored. The province of Carinthia, whose borrowing before 2008 was a large part of the cause of the original failure, has guaranteed 10.2 billion euros of debt, and it's doubtful how much of that will be honored. Finally, there's 9.8 billion euros of unsecured debt that's essentially junk. Of that 9.8 billion, almost one billion is due in March, so this crisis will spiral fairly quickly.
The phrase that's being used is "bail-in." That is, the Austrian government will no longer bail out the bank, and so all the investors will be "bailed in" to cover the losses. Most of the losses will be in funds managed by Pacific Investment Management Co., Deutsche Bank AG and UBS AG. It is not known who the end investors are, but it's thought that there will be repercussions, and possible further bankruptcies.
Depositors were not "bailed in" by this event, because the bank has no depositors. However, the action that the Austrian government took was under a regulation called the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD), which allows a government to force both investors AND depositors to lose their money.
Readers may recall that in March 2013, Cyprus was saved from bankruptcy by an EU bailout, on condition that 60% of the savings accounts of large depositors (mostly Russian oligarchs) be confiscated. One of the outcomes of the Cyprus crisis was implementation of the BRRD directive, which could permit ANY depositor's money to be confiscated, under the right circumstances.
I've repeatedly said that there is no solution to Greece's financial crisis -- not that no solution has been found, but that no solution even exists. No solution existed for Austria's financial crisis either, and so investors are going to lose billions of euros of their money, risking chain reaction bankruptcies. Sooner or later, something like that will have to happen with Greece as well, and it's good to remember that the current "compromise agreement" between Europe and Greece expires in July, with no hope of a suitable resolution at that time. Telegraph (London) and Forbes and Bloomberg
Ghasem Soleimani, a top general in Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), along with dozens of Iranian military advisers, is overseeing the Iraqi army's attack on Tikrit, with the goal of recapturing it from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
The situation is potentially explosive, because you have Shia militias fighting with Sunni tribes and militias over Tikrit, which was the hometown of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein.
Glaringly absent from the operation is participation by US forces, particularly US war planes, which have been striking ISIS targets since last summer. According to the Pentagon, the Iraqis never made any request for US air support.
News reports indicate that Iraqi forces are bogged down on the outskirts of Tikrit, unable to make much headway. ISIS is striking back with sniper gunfire and suicide bombings on Iraqi checkpoints to slow down any advance on the city. If the Iraq army does enter the city, then it will be street by street fighting by the Iranian-led Shia militias against the Sunni tribes and militias. Indeed, many Sunni citizens of Iraq have welcomed the invading ISIS militias as a better alternative to the Shia-led government in Baghdad. AP and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Mar-15 World View -- Failure of Austrian bank portends major new round of euro crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Mar-2015)
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Iran aids Iraq's army in attack to recapture Tikrit from ISIS
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The Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) on Sunday released 19 Assyrian Christians, 17 men and two women, among over 200 that were abducted last month. in the recent raid, ISIS overran more than a dozen villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority.
Everyone is wondering why? Some suggested reasons being reported are:
My personal view is generally quite different from any of these explanations.
First off, I don't view ISIS leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as any sort of religious person. In the Christian world, serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and many others, all claimed to be deeply religious Christians, and could even quote the Bible on cue. But nobody considered these men to any sort of Christian. Like Dahmer, Manson and Gacy, al-Baghdadi is simply a cheap thug, with charismatic skills in using religion to lead people to their deaths.
ISIS has killed a few hundred Christians, but has killed tens of thousands of Muslims. Al-Baghdadi and other ISIS leaders use a two-step process to kill other Muslims. First, they practice "takfir" -- they declare the people to be apostates for some trivial reason, then they kill them.
There is no way that Islam permits one Muslim to simply declare a village of people to be apostates for some trivial reason, and to kill them. That would give every Muslim a free pass to kill anyone else. A woman could declare that her husband's hair is uneven, and kill him.
Here's something I found on a Muslim web site:
According to a conversation recorded by a contemporary, Mohammed was once talking to an Ansar man:
Suddenly the Holy Prophet said loudly [about someone]: “Does he not bear witness that there is no god but Allah?”The Ansari said: “Yes indeed, O Messenger of Allah, but his testimony cannot be trusted.”
The Holy Prophet said: “Does he not accept that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah?”
He again replied: “Yes, he professes it but his profession cannot be trusted.”
The Holy Prophet said: “Does he not pray?”
He again said: “Yes he does, but his prayer cannot be trusted.”
The Holy Prophet said: “God has forbidden me to kill such people.”
So al-Baghdadi is no religious scholar, or any kind of religious person. He's a cheap murdering thug who killed tens of thousands of Muslims and who, according to Islam, will burn in hell.
So why did ISIS release the 19 Assyrians? Here's my theory:
ISIS leaders are cheap, murdering thugs who murder people for power and money. They've had spectacular successes in publicity stunts posting a few videos of killing a few Christians, because those videos being in recruits and money. But as beheading Christians becomes more commonplace, the publicity stunts become less effective. We've already seen a lot less international outrage of the Assyrian abductions than some previous abductions. One news story writes: "Igniting a live man in a cage; severing the heads of dozens; kidnapping, raping and selling women and children -- ISIS' shocking maltreatment of its captives has become regrettably predictable."
So, in my view, releasing the 19 Assyrians was just a new publicity stunt to get more attention. Like Jonathan Gruber bragging about the stupidity of the American people, I can imagine Abu Omar al-Baghdadi saying the following: "These Western reporters are idiots. Let's release 19 Assyrians to give them a 'glimmer of hope,' and then when we slit the throats of the other 200 Assyrians, we'll get a lot more publicity." Reuters and Christian Times and CNN and Muslim.org
American officials were caught by surprise on Monday when Iraq announced that an invasion of the city of Tikrit had begun, with the objective of retaking it from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). In particular, no U.S. air support will be provided, since none was requested. Instead, some Iranian forces are on the ground helping the Iraqis, though it's not known how many. Iraqi fighter jets will conduct air strikes.
The Iraqi security forces leading the invasion of Tikrit number around 30,000, including a mix of Shia militias, Sunni tribes, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and Iranian advisors. There are already sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias throughout the Mideast, and Iraq's last generational crisis war was the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, which will still be firmly in everyone's memory. It's feared that this highly combustible mix of fighters will reignite a wider conflict. Employing Shia militias to attack Sunnis in ISIS is almost certain to inflame the conflict.
The city of Tikrit is symbolic for being the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. US forces found the former president hiding in southern Tikrit eight months after the US-led invasion in 2003. Foreign Policy and BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Mar-15 World View -- Why did ISIS release 19 Assyrian Christian hostages? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Mar-2015)
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Al-Sisi and Erdogan miss in Riyadh, signaling stormy times ahead
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On October 1, 2013, the Healthcare.gov web site was launched as the greatest IT disaster in world history. ( "1-Dec-13 World View -- Obamacare: 500M lines of code, $500M, only 60% completed")
Now, almost 1-1/2 years later, the web site still doesn't work. Developers hired by the Administration have focused on making the user interface pretty, able to collect data, and display basic information screens. Once the web site gathers the data, it simply sends the data along as a kind of e-mail message to the appropriate insurance company.
At that point, the insurance company has to go through expensive manual procedures to register the patient. There are constant news reports of patients who never got registered, or who were incorrectly registered, or whose insurance was dropped when there was a change, such as a marriage or a baby. There are reports of massive errors in applying subsidies. These are typical of the kinds of errors routinely made in manual systems in pre-computer days.
So it's been about 5 years, almost $1 billion in development costs, and all we have is a simple shell program running as a web site, designed to look pretty to avoid embarrassment to the Obama administration, but with nothing underneath.
This is a very simple web application. I could have implemented it as a one-man project in about a year. With a small team of programmers and testers, this could have been implemented in 4-6 months for a cost of a few million dollars.
So start with a few million dollars, factor in huge amounts of government bloating, factor in extortion by labor unions, factor in sheer government stupidity and inefficiency, and you only come to about $50 million dollars or so.
So where the hell did that $1 billion go? Until I get an explanation of how a $50 million project cost $1 billion, then I have to assume that Administration is conducting massive government fraud here, padding the bank accounts of its cronies with tens of millions of dollars each. Why aren't the Republicans in Congress investigating? Most likely answer: The Republicans and their cronies are in on the gravy train. Everyone makes astronomical amounts of money, and the taxpayers get screwed.
After last year's disaster, a computer contracting firm, Accenture Federal Services, was issued a $91.1 million no-bid contract to fix the web site. So now, after spending another $91.1, we still have nothing more than this shell web site that I could have written by myself in a year, and all it does is collect information and e-mail it to insurance companies.
The administration is bragging that 11 million people have signed up to Obamacare. That's because the administration is paying them huge sums of money to sign up. In 2014, 87% of federal Obamacare enrollees got subsidies. For the silver plan, out of an annual $4,140 premium, the subsidy amounts to $3,132, leaving the patient only $828 to pay out of the $4,140. So the reason that a lot of people have signed up is that they're getting huge amounts of money from the administration to sign up.
And even with that, a typical deductible is $5,000-15,000, which means that most of these insured are effectively uninsured, since they'll have to pay all their own medical expenses anyway. And of the 11 million that signed up, 89% of the new enrollees last year were for Medicaid, which provides almost no effective coverage at all. So there may be more "effectively uninsured" people today than there were uninsured people in the past.
So this is what Obamacare amounts to. Pay astronomical amounts of money to developers to create Healthcare.gov, which is a piece of crap. And then pay astronomical amounts to individual people to sign up. And if millions more are effectively uninsured because of huge deductibles and Medicaid, then who cares? Certainly no the administration.
None of this would have happened before Generation-X came into power in the late 1990s. Today, with Generation-X in charge, criminal fraud is so entrenched in Washington, on Wall Street, and in our culture that no one has any shame, and no one cares about billions and billions of dollars being thrown away on Obamacare, which has accomplished nothing except to boost Barack Obama's ego. Politico and Free Beacon
The news just keeps getting worse about the massive data breach at Anthem Inc., where 80 million current and former customers had their personal information compromised, including birthdates, addresses, and social security numbers. Any current or former customer of the following health plans is potentially compromised: Anthem Blue Cross, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Amerigroup, Caremore, Unicare, Healthlink, and DeCare.
As we wrote last month, this includes millions of children of all ages. Birthdates and social security numbers never change, and hackers can dip into this treasure trove of data for years to create an unending flow of identity theft victims.
It now turns out that even 8.8 million non-customer of Anthem could be victims of the data hack, and future victims of identity theft. The reason is that Anthem is part of a national network of independently run Blue Cross Blue Shield plans through which BCBS customers can receive medical services when they are in an area where BCBS is operated by a different company, and so any customer of any BCBS insurance plan is potentially a victim. Reuters
As we reported yesterday, Egypt's president Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan are both visiting Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this week, to visit with the new King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud.
Speculation was buzzing that bitter enemies al-Sisi and Erdogan might meet one another, and Salman would mediate some kind of rapprochement between the two. Well, al-Sisi completed his visit on Sunday, and Erdogan is going to meet with Salman on Monday.
So instead of leading to a new Sunni Muslim world of harmony, the entire incident is very publicly exposing just how bitter the split is between Egypt and Turkey. Turkey and Egypt were friends when Mohamed Morsi was president of Egypt, and his Muslim Brotherhood was in charge, but now the presidents of Egypt and Turkey cannot stand to be in the same room with each other.
Egypt will be watching the meeting between Salman and Erdogan very nervously. Salman's predecessor, King Abdullah, had very strong policies against the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, causing a bitter realignment of Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the anti-MB side, versus Qatar and Turkey on the pro-MB side. So Egypt is concerned that Salman will reverse Abdullah's policy on MB, which would almost completely isolate Egypt -- though Israel would still be an ally.
Things may have gotten a lot worse over the weekend. As we reported yesterday, Egypt has now declared Hamas to be a terrorist organization. This is turning out to be more than just a simple act of adding Hamas to a list. It strikes at the very heart of giving lip service to Arab unity in the resistance against Israel, since now Israel's view of Hamas has been confirmed by Egypt.
The BBC has been running stories about a new building up of rockets, missiles and tunnels in Gaza, following last summer's Gaza war with Israel. Hamas was completely humiliated by that war since they were so thoroughly defeated by Israel, but now they're applying "lessons learned" to create a network of tunnels and rockets that they hope will draw a lot more Israeli blood.
It was last summer's Gaza war that exploded the fracture in the Arab world over the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. If, as the BBC reports suggest, Hamas is planning another war in the fairly near future, then the situation may be explosive. Middle East Eye and Saudi Gazette
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Mar-15 World View -- After almost $1 billion development costs, Healthcare.gov is still a disaster thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(2-Mar-2015)
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Egypt court declares Hamas to be a terrorist organization
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Various unconfirmed reports are emerging indicating that there may be joint international action planned in Libya as early as next week.
Egypt is already conduction air strikes against ISIS-linked targets in Derna, close to where Egyptian Coptics were massacred recently, as displayed in a gruesome video. Debka reports that Egypt's president Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi is planning further action in Libya, including more air strikes and possible ground troops, within a few days. According to the report, Egyptian commando and marine forces are preparing for sea landings to seize Derna and destroy the terrorist elements there. If this attack is actually launched, it will be the first time in modern times that an Arab country has sent ground forces into another Arab country.
Al-Jazeera television reports that the Italian navy is getting ready to carry off sophisticated military drills off the coast of Libya, as early as Monday. Although Italy claims that it's a regular exercise, there are many more vessels taking part in this year's exercise than have in the past, which Italy explains by saying that they're testing out sophisticated new technologies.
There are several reasons why Italy is pursuing this show of force:
Some reports indicate that Russia has indicated a willingness to participate in a naval blockade of Libya to prevent arm supplies from leaving Libya for other countries. Russia could play a role in this because it already has a naval fleet in the Mediterranean.
These are all unconfirmed reports of possible military action in Libya by Egypt, Italy and Russia. There are no reports of possible participation by Nato or the United States. Debka and Cairo Post
Egypt on Saturday became the first Arab country to name Hamas as a terrorist organization. The U.S. and the European Union have named Hamas as a terror group. An EU court took Hamas off the list in December 2014, ruling that the designation was not based on solid legal evidence, but the EU is appealing the court's decision.
According to a decision on Saturday from the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters:
"It has been proven without any doubt that the movement has committed acts of sabotage, assassinations and the killing of innocent civilians and members of the armed forces and police in Egypt.It has been also ascertained with documents that [Hamas] has carried out bombings that have taken lives and destroyed institutions and targeted civilians and the armed forces personnel. It has also been ascertained that this movement works for the interests of the terrorist Brotherhood organization [which Egypt has already declared to be a terrorist organization]."
About a month ago, the same court declared Hamas's military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, to be a terrorist organization. Saturday's ruling makes the political wing a terrorist organization as well.
A Hamas spokesman denied all the charges and said that the ruling was "dangerous":
"History has recorded Egypt’s support to national liberty movements in the Arab world and Africa, particularly in Palestine. ... This ruling serves the Israeli occupation. It's a politicized decision that constitutes the beginning of Egypt evading its role toward the Palestinian cause. This is a coup against history and an Egyptian abuse of the Palestinian cause and resistance, which fights on behalf of the Arab nation. We call on Egypt to reconsider this dangerous decision."
Al Jazeera and Al Ahram (Cairo) and CS Monitor and Al Resalah (Palestine)
By coincidence or by planning, the presidents of both Egypt and Turkey will be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this week. Egypt's Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan will both be visiting King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, the new king of Saudi Arabia, who has replaced King Abdullah II, who died last month.
It's not known whether Erdogan will ever be in the same room as al-Sisi. The two have been bitter enemies ever since a coup by al-Sisi ousted Egypt's elected president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013, and later declared MB to be a terrorist organization. Erdogan's own political party, the AKP, is an Islamist party like the Muslim Brotherhood, and they had good relations while Morsi was in power.
There has been some speculation that King Salman is going to completely reverse King Abdullah's policy on the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) had branded MB as a terrorist organization, but some are wondering if Salman is going to shift from that policy. The Saudi foreign minister recently said that his government has "no problem with the Muslim Brotherhood; our problem is with a small group affiliated to the organization," suggesting that shift is in the works.
Other problems make an Egypt-Turkey rapprochement unlikely: Erdogan vitriolicly hates Israel and supports Hamas. Al-Sisi vitriolicly hates Hamas and works closely with Israel on military matters, especially in North Sinai. So really, it doesn't seem likely that any meeting, if one even occurs, will be pleasant.
If King Salman is able to pull off a miracle and mediate a new relationship between Egypt and Turkey, then it would appear to be the establishment of a new "Sunni front" in the Mideast, to oppose Iran, Hezbollah and the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Al Arabiya and Kurdistan and Arab Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Mar-15 World View -- Reports indicate Egypt, Italy, Russia planning military action in Libya thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Mar-2015)
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