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Central Africa Republic votes for new president and legislature
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Puerto Rico's Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced at a press conference in San Juan on Wednesday a series of financial maneuvers to avoid default in January, when more than $1 billion in bond payments are due.
Over $100 million in cash reserves that had been set aside to pay other debts will be part of a $357 million payment of interest due on Puerto Rico's general obligation debt, thus avoiding default.
However, two payments, also due on January 1, will not be paid. One is a $35.9 million payment on debt issued by the Puerto Rico Infrastructure Financing Authority, and the other is a $1.4 million payment on Public Finance Corp. bonds.
According to a spokesman for the US Treasury Dept.:
"Today’s announcement that Puerto Rico will miss additional payments demonstrates the gravity of the Commonwealth’s fiscal crisis and the need for Congress to act now. Puerto Rico is at a dead end, shifting funds from one creditor to pay another and diverting money from already-depleted pension funds to pay both current bills and debt service."
The Treasury Department, the Obama administration, and Puerto Rican officials are pressuring Congress to to pass legislation enabling the commonwealth to seek Chapter 9 protection from creditors or create a financial control board that would have enough authority to coerce recalcitrant bondholders to join a restructuring plan. The word "recalcitrant," which is used in news reports describing this proposed legislation, indicates why bondholders strongly oppose this plan. Republicans also oppose the plan, fearing that it would force the bondholders to bail out Puerto Rico, and would allow the commonwealth to continue its practice of unlimited debt and spending that gave rise to the current situation in the first place.
As we wrote two weeks ago ( "20-Dec-15 World View -- Puerto Rico negotiates restructuring after Congress fails to allow Chapter 9 bankruptcy"), a Puerto Rican default would have widespread negative impact on ordinary American investors, because of the massive size of the investments in 401k's and ordinary investment funds.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has refused to push the bankruptcy legislation, but has promised to create a legislative package by the end of March to deal with Puerto Rico's financial problems. If this is accomplished, then it will be done just in time to avoid a full default in May, which otherwise is all but certain. Bloomberg and Washington Post
International officials are hoping and praying that Wednesday's presidential and legislative elections in Central African Republic (CAR) will turn the page for the country, end the violence, and bring happiness to all.
In other words, the hope is that Christians whose villages were burned to the ground by Muslim militias, and Muslims whose families were raped, murdered and dismembered by Christian militias, will all put aside any desire for revenge, and all that will be required is that the new government take office.
Many people are particularly hopeful because there were long lines to vote in the capital city Bangui, but no violence. Interim President Catherine Samba-Panza was very pleased:
"Many thought this day, this vote would not be possible for security and organizational reasons. But, you see, we all are voting in dignity and peace and I am proud."
Aisha Laraba Abdullahi, the African Union's commissioner for political affairs added" “With the election held today, we are confident that the transition in the Central African Republic is coming to an end, and that this would usher in peace and stability and prosperity to the Central African Republic."
However, as we wrote three weeks ago, when a new constitution was adopted, the elections may actually worsen Muslim-Christian violence. Either the Muslim side or the Christian side is going to come out ahead, and the other side may not tolerate it.
There will be plenty of excuses for either side to pursue renewed violence. There were a number of irregularities in Wednesday's elections. There were some errors in printing the ballots, and ballots didn't arrive in time in some parts of the country.
Indeed, CAR is a huge country, and the capital city Bangui is only a tiny dot on the map of the country. All the news reports so far about a violence-free election came from Bangui, where thousands of African Union and United Nations peacekeepers have been brought in to make sure nothing happens. By contrast, there are no peacekeepers in vast regions of the country, some warlords (both Muslim and Christian) have declared that they won't abide by the election, no matter what the result. Out of a population of five million, there are about one million who have been driven from their homes, and many of those will have had no chance to vote. There have been reports of continuing violence between Muslims and Christians in some parts of the country.
The vote count is expected to take several days, and the presidential vote is expected to go to a run-off on January 31.
As I've written in detail several times in the past ( "2-Oct-15 World View -- Violence resurges in Central African Republic crisis war"), CAR is deep into a generation Crisis era and in the middle of a generational crisis war. A new constitution and a new election are not going to stop the huge generational forces that are pushing the Muslims and Christians into this war of mutual extermination. The war will not end until it's run its course, and apparently still has a long way to go. AFP and VOA and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Dec-15 World View -- Puerto Rico avoids default with partial bond repayment thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Dec-2015)
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ISIS may be linked to massive suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A meeting of the Central American Integration System (SICA), a political and economic organization for Central American countries, has reached agreement to help thousands of Cuban migrants, stranded in Costa Rica, to reach the United States. The migrants were stranded in Costa Rica after Nicaragua closed the border, refusing to let the migrants pass through.
US law has "wet foot, dry foot" policy with respect to Cuban migrants traveling by boat from Cuba to Florida. According to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, if the US Coast Guard intercepts them before reaching Florida ("wet foot"), then they can be sent back to Cuba. But once they set foot on American soil ("dry foot"), then they are allowed to stay and can apply for asylum after a year.
However, Cuban migrants have found an alternate route that takes advantage of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy -- by traveling overland through Central America, through Mexico, then to the United States to apply for asylum.
Cubans who take this alternate route begin by flying to Ecuador, which had no visa requirements for Cubans entering the country. From there they travel on foot overland through Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica to the Nicaraguan border. They then continue on foot through Nicaragua and north, eventually reaching Mexico and then the United States. Once they reach the US, they can apply for asylum.
Few Cuban migrants attempted this route in the past, but the numbers sharply increased since December 2014, when the Obama administration announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, for the first time since the Cuban Revolution of 1960 and the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.
Since the restoration of diplomatic relations, many Cubans feared that the US would end the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, and that they would be just all the other Latin American migrants, treated as illegal immigrants when they enter the US. So Cubans have been rushing to beat any possible change, and the number of migrants has gone as high as 1,000 per week in recent months.
Since Nicaragua closed its border in mid-November, the migrants have been stranded in Costa Rica. There are now as many as 8,000 Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica. SICA has had several meetings since then, asking Nicaragua to provide a "humanitarian corridor" through which the migrants can travel north.
Pope Francis has called for a quick solution:
"I invite the countries of the region to renew with generosity all necessary efforts in order to find a rapid solution to this humanitarian drama."
Nicaragua has refused to allow any "humanitarian corridor." It's believed that the reason is that Nicaragua is a close ally of Cuba, and Cuban authorities have been demanding that the US end the "wet foot, dry foot" policy which has allowed so many Cubans to leave for the United States. A couple of weeks ago, Nicaragua withdrew from SICA membership, rather then be pressured.
So in its Monday meeting, SICA came up with a kind of "plan B": The migrants will be put in a plane and flown from Costa Rica to El Salvador, where they will then be ferried toward Mexico by bus.
There are still some hitches that have to be worked out. It's not known who will pay for this transportation, and Mexico, which is not a member of SICA, has to sign off on the plan. A pilot program will begin as early as next week, when 250 Cuban migrants will be flown from Costa Rica to El Salvador.
When word spreads that a deal has been reached to bypass Nicaragua, it's fear that there will be a new surge of Cuban migrants trying to take advantage of the new opening. Prensa Latina and Reuters and BBC
A suicide bomber on Tuesday blew himself up outside a government building in Mardan in northwest Pakistan, near Peshawar. 26 people were killand and dozens wounded. The casualties would have been much higher, but a security guard stopped the suicide bomber from reaching a crowd of 400 people queued up to get papers.
Terrorist group Jamaat ul-Ahrar (JuA, Assembly of Freedom) has claimed responsibility for the bombing. JuA has long been one of the terrorist groups under the umbrella group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). JuA split off from TTP in the middle of 2014 in a disagreement caused by TTPs plans to hold peace talks with Pakistan's government. JuA has rejoined TTP this year, but has also declared allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), which would make Tuesday's bombing the first major terrorist attack linked to ISIS in Pakistan.
It's thought that JuA perpetrated Tuesday's attack because it's the one year anniversary of the horrific Taliban attack on a Peshawar army school, killing over 130 schoolchildren, for which JuA is also responsible.
Pakistan's people over the years have exhibited an accepting attitude towards the Taliban, even when they conducted terror attacks on Pakistani soil. A lot of this acceptance occurs because many of the attacks were on Shias, whom most Pakistanis don't care about, and many other attacks were against targets in India and Afghanistan of Indians, whom many Pakistanis hate.
However, last year's Peshawar attack targeted innocent dozens of innocent army schoolchildren, and was so devastating, that many minds were changed. Pakistan's military stepped up attacks on Taliban targets in Pakistan's tribal areas, and also began hangings for convicted terrorists. This has infuriated the Taliban, and it's feared that Tuesday's terrorist attack was part of a growing spiral of revenge. The News (Pakistan) and Dawn (Pakistan) and VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Dec-15 World View -- Central Americans reach agreement on letting Cuban migrants reach the US thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Dec-2015)
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Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Many analysts consider 2015 to have been a breakthrough year for Artificial Intelligence (AI), not because of any single achievement, but because of achievements across the board in so many different areas.
Companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are now operating their own AI labs. In areas such as image recognition, computer vision, face recognition, voice recognition and natural language processing, there are a wealth of new products (think of Siri or OK Google) that are becoming increasingly reliable and increasingly available.
Several companies are testing self-driving cars, and they're expected to be available commercially by 2020. Robots in the military are becoming more common, from robots on wheels to pilotless drone warplanes. All of these robots still require constant human intervention and control, but they're slowly migrating away from human control to algorithmically based decision making and control. Robot form factors are improving, with some robots looking almost human.
In 2011, I wrote how the news that IBM's Watson supercomputer bests human champions on Jeopardy! advances AI significantly, because it shows how, within a few years, computers will be able to "read" everything on the internet and learn from it. Today, IBM has Watson-based applications in multiple industries, from retail to healthcare. IBM also has a program to allow developers to incorporate Watson into mobile phone apps. Bloomberg and World Future Society and IBM
The development of technology leading to the Singularity cannot be stopped. Even if the United States passed a law, or the United Nations passed a resolution, that would not stop China, India, Europe and other countries from continuing this technological development.
In fact, it wouldn't even stop the United States development. A university scientist who's working on a better self-driving car is not going to stop development because that technology might be used in the Singularity. The Singularity is coming, whether anyone likes it or not.
That hasn't prevented a debate on how to save the world from AI. Elon Musk, the founder of electric car company Tesla Motors, has been one of the leaders in making that argument. He's formed a non-profit artificial intelligence research company call OpenAI. This company will develop AI technology as open source, available for anyone in the world to download. Google and Facebook are also open-sourcing some of their AI technology. According to Musk's partner, Sam Altman: “Developing and enabling and enriching with technology protects people. Doing this is the best way to protect all of us.”
If Musk and the others really believe that open-sourcing will protect the world from the domination of super-intelligent computers, then they're living in a total fantasy. The concept is supposed to be that with many people around the world working on AI software, they'll check each other and prevent the development of software that will dominate humans. The whole concept is so absurd, it's hard to know where to start. Probably the best thing is to simply point out that making AI technology available to anyone gives everyone a head start. A jihadist in Karachi or a military scientist in Shanghai will be able to download the OpenAI technology and build on it to create intelligent robots that can conduct terrorist attacks or war.
In fact, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation has nominated Elon Musk for the 2015 Luddite of the Year.
In 2015, the US Department of Energy awarded $200 million for the next generation supercomputer. It will be commissioned in 2018, with a performance of 180 petaflops (thousand trillion operations per second) of processing power. We're already beyond the processing power of the human brain, which is estimated to be 38 petaflops. Computer power is doubling every 18 months. This is known as Moore's Law, formulated by Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of the Intel in 1965. Moore's Law has been valid for 50 years, through several technologies, and is expected to continue.
It's the doubling of computing power every 18 months that makes it all but certain that the Singularity will occur by 2030, whether we like it or not. Wired and Washington Post and Defense One and Government Executive and Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and US Department of Energy
Politicians and climate change activists like to say that the claims about climate change have been endorsed by 95% of all the scientists in the world. This claim is a total fraud, because it confuses two things.
First, we have the claims by scientists that the earth is warming because of human activity. Arguably, that HAS been proven by scientists. But that's all.
The second part is predictions about the future, which are mostly total crap, and certainly not science. In fact, climate change scientists have been making predictions for 25 years, and they've almost completely turned out to be wrong. The truth is that scientists who claim to know what the earth's temperature will be in 2100 can't even predict what the weather will be next month.
During my lifetime, I've seen any number of hysterical environment disaster predictions. My favorite was the prediction in 1970 by far left-wing Ramparts Magazine that predicted that the oceans were becoming so polluted that by 1980 the world's oceans would be covered by a layer of algae. It didn't happen.
One way to know that the climate change activists are wrong is that these climate change scientists never mention the Singularity or future technology. There is a very powerful historical precedent that they all ignore. In the late 1800s, streets in large cities were full of horses (think of a traffic jam in any large city, with horses instead of cars). These horses were producing huge volumes of urine, manure, flies and carcasses -- not to mention cruelty to horses. By 1900, there was 1,200 metric tons of horse manure per day. There were international conferences (like today's climate change conferences) that accomplished nothing. But within 20 years, the problem took care of itself because of new technology - the automobile.
History shows that new technology, including new AI technologies, will solve the "climate change" problem, and that politicians will have absolutely nothing to do with it, except to take the credit when something works, and to blame someone else otherwise. Daily Caller and From Horse Power to Horsepower and The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 and Great Moments in Failed Predictions
The Singularity is the point in time when computers will be more intelligent, more able, and more creative than humans. Ten years ago, in 2005, I wrote an article called "The Singularity," in which I forecast that the Singularity would occur around 2030. Today, I see no reason to change that forecast.
There is now an updated version of that article available: "Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity by 2030". The contents are as follows:
For those interest in computer software algorithms, the article contains the Intelligent Computer (IC) algorithm in the article is as follows:
The article also contains a proof (under reasonable assumptions) that every intelligent species in the universe must follow the same Generational Dynamics cycles as humans is outlined as follows:
This article is available online at this location: "Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity by 2030".
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Dec-15 World View -- Artificial Intelligence breakthroughs in 2015, the Singularity by 2030 thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Dec-2015)
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Japan aggressively expands its military defense of the Senkaku Islands
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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According to Japan's coast guard, an armed Chinese coast guard vessel entered Japanese waters off the disputed Senkaku Islands for the first time on Saturday. That ship and two others had been sailing in the area since Tuesday. The Japanese government protested to the Chinese embassy in Tokyo and to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing.
China's sovereignty claims over islands in the South China Sea have been in the news a lot this year, but China also is in a simmering dispute with Japan over the issue of sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands (called the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese) in the East China Sea. In 2005, the dispute became so bitter that military action was being threatened on both sides. (See "China and Japan head for military confrontation over disputed islands.")
In November 2013, China escalated the confrontation by announcing the creation of an "East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone" (ADIZ), claiming administrative responsibility for the entire East China Sea region, including the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands that have historically belonged to Japan.
China has been annexing regions in the South China Sea belonging to Vietnam and the Philippines without interference from the United States. But the situation in the East China Sea is potentially very different. The US and Japan have a Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, signed on January 19, 1960. It commits the United States to help defend Japan if Japan came under attack, and it provides bases and ports for U.S. armed forces in Japan.
So the question arises whether the US would intervene militarily if China attempted to take the Senkaku Islands by military force, as it's done in the South China Sea. In 2014, it was widely noted that the Obama administration was failing to clarify that commitment, despite several opportunities to do so.
Then, in April 2014, President Obama visited Japan and said that the US would defend the Senkaku Islands:
"At the same time, the United States is going to deal directly and candidly with China on issues where we have differences, such as human rights. I’ve also told [China's] President Xi [Jinping] that all our nations have an interest in dealing constructively with maritime issues, including in the East China Sea. Disputes need to be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy, not intimidation and coercion. The policy of the United States is clear -- the Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan and therefore fall within the scope of Article 5 of the U.S. -- Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. And we oppose any unilateral attempts to undermine Japan’s administration of these islands."
China frequently runs patrols in territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands, but this is the first time that an armed Chinese vessel has entered waters claimed by Japan. Japan Times and Shanghaiist
Japan has announced an aggressive new military policy to defend the Senkaku Islands from Chinese incursions. Japan is preparing to deploy thousands of troops and build anti-aircraft and anti-ship missile batteries on 200 islands in the East China Sea located roughly 870 miles from the Japanese mainland toward Taiwan.
The announcement follows adoption by the Japanese of new "collective defense" laws, partially departing from the pacifism that Japan adopted in its constitution after World War II. The old self-defense clause of the constitution permits military action only when Japan itself is being attacked. The new laws reinterpret the self-defense clause to include "collective self-defense," which would permit military action under some circumstances when an ally (such as the United States) is attacked. I discussed the meaning of "collective self-defense" in detail last year in "5-May-14 World View -- Japan debates 'collective self-defense' to protect America and Japan".
Along with the collective defense laws, the Obama administration has been encouraging Japan to take greater responsibility for its own defense, in view of China's growing military aggressiveness, reducing its dependency on the United States military. This announcement appears to be in response to the administration's request.
Chinese ships sailing from their eastern seaboard will be forced to pass through this string of islands with its seamless barrier of Japanese missile batteries to reach the Western Pacific, access to which is vital to Beijing both as a supply line to the rest of the world's oceans and for the projection of its naval power. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's broader goal is a strategy to dominate the sea and air surrounding the remote islands. Reuters and International Business Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Dec-15 World View -- Japan says that armed Chinese ship infiltrates its territorial waters thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Dec-2015)
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'The Big Short' today versus 'The Three-Penny Opera' in pre-Hitler Germany
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In yesterday's article, " "'The Big Short' - an infuriating movie about the financial crisis"," I reviewed the movie "The Big Short," based on Michael Lewis's bestselling book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine," describing the financial crisis of the past decade.
As I wrote, the movie did not sugar-coat anything. It unequivocally painted investment and mortgage bankers, financial managers and real estate brokers as crooks and bastards, but they were only financially rewarded by the Justice Department. It ended by making clear that the same people are doing the same things today, and that the financial crisis is far from over.
It seems pretty clear that the director David McKay had the objective of making a political point: That people should be a lot more outraged about what happened, with millions of people losing their jobs and homes and going bankrupt, and that they should demand that some of these crooks should be prosecuted rather than rewarded.
There's a historical analogy to this objective. Bertolt Brecht's 1928 play "The Three-Penny Opera" (music by Kurt Weill) had a similar objective - to portray the corruption and criminality of the day in order to provoke outrage and bring about change. (If you haven't heard of the play, you may be familiar with its most popular song, "Mack the Knife".)
In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt describes how that objective completely backfired:
"Particularly significant in this respect was the reception given Brecht's Dreigroschenoper [[Bertolt Brecht's The Three-Penny Opera]] in pre-Hitler Germany. The play presented gangsters as respectable businessmen and respectable businessmen as gangsters. The irony was somewhat lost when respectable businessmen in the audience considered this a deep insight into the ways of the world and when the mob welcomed it as an artistic sanction of gangsterism. The theme song in the play, "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral," [["First comes gluttony, then comes morality."]] was greeted with frantic applause by exactly everybody, though for different reasons. The mob applauded because it took the statement literally; the bourgeoisie applauded because it had been fooled by its own hypocrisy for so long that it had grown tired of the tension and found deep wisdom in the expression of the banality by which it lived; the élite applauded because the unveiling of hypocrisy was such superior and wonderful fun. The effect of the work was exactly the opposite of what Brecht had sought by it. The bourgeoisie could no longer be shocked; it welcomed the exposure of its hidden philosophy, whose popularity proved they had been right all along, so that the only political result of Brecht's "revolution" was to encourage everyone to discard the uncomfortable mask of hypocrisy and to accept only the standards of the mob."
Arendt's description, "The play presented gangsters as respectable businessmen and respectable businessmen as gangsters" is what closely ties the two dramas together. Corruption was massive in 1928 Berlin and today's Washington. Both plays equated gangsters and businessmen -- and also equated gangsters and politicians. But the Three-Penny Opera simply amused and delighted those involved in the corruption, and seemed to endorse it.
"The Big Short" portrays the delight that the bankers took in making millions of dollars while making millions of people homeless. Some of the characters even bragged about it. If the politicians and bankers and journalists who watch the movie have the same sense of fun that Arendt describes, then McKay's message will indeed have backfired. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarism and The Three-Penny Opera
After reading " yesterday's article, many reader comments expressed outrage in political terms:
"It's disgraceful that the people responsible for the crash were never prosecuted. It is beyond belief.""Makes me ashamed in every way."
"They will never be prosecuted....why????? Obama and his cronies are all in on it and crooks..."
"All financial authority should be on notice that the public institutions who rely on their "veracity" can and should demand clarity and proof on a daily basis. Selling your ratings, is not the same as giving your ratings."
"This is exactly why Trump and his adjustable rate mortgages on over-priced New York real estate will be broke by the Presidential Election and Trump will be on food stamps and New York Medicaid, poor fool. Trumps so-called wealth is all on paper and Bloomberg reports that New York real estate bubble is bursting and has dropped every month since February 2015 with no end in sight."
"There is another aspect to the "big theft" that is usually left out. The influx of Mexicans et al to build the houses in the first place. We did not have the workers to build those houses to bet against."
"Bush back in 2006 tried to get congress to do something and the usual suspects in the Democrat party dismissed the fears! Thanks community organizing leftists!"
One person, a mortgage underwriter, described his own experiences:
"Mr. Xenakis, a Belated Merry Christmas to you. Did my own research back when I first came across your site, years ago, and still sing your praises.The problem with our entire society is the head in the sand/kill the messenger mentality that is a cancer on reason and logic. I don't like delivering bad news but in my profession I must on occasion and am floored by some of the responses I get. Had one that actually paid money for an attorney that she could have used for ultimately getting approval- I am a mortgage underwriter- and close. I told the parasite to get phuqed and call his congressman- that's who it would have taken to get the lending laws changed like he wanted them- and hung up.
There is an reactive, unconscious vindictiveness in people that I had never encountered before. Just boggles the mind how fundamentally unequipped people have become. I tried to call her afterwards, just to try and explain how she had just blew up everything and most likely lost even her earnest money, and still all she could do is scream and threaten me. This was, for me anyway, the most extreme and early example of the 'sense of false entitlement'.
Keep your head up, keep in mind what my dear departed father used to say; 'phuq 'em if they can't take a joke'. Works on about anything, other than jokes. And don't get too worried about the future, the Chinese are going to bow US into the stone ages. Might I suggest some of the urban survival courses? Online, YouTube. If nothing else you start seeing your neighborhood in a whole new way."
A stockbroker of 30 years wrote to say that the warnings put forth in "The Big Short" are frighteningly accurate:
"John, may I first say that Generational Dynamics is frightenly accurate. I have been a daily reader for approximately 10 years. I can say with certainty that you are correct in your assessments. The future Gen Dyn predicts scares the hell out of me. I too watched The Big Short on Christmas Day. I too see that our financial system has not learned anything from the past. In fact it is by far worse. I have been a stockbroker for the past 30 years. You may hate me and lump me in with the others but I have always been honest in my career and honest with my clients. My upper management of the firms I have been associated with over the years are complete idiots. All they care about is shareholder value and their bonus not the client's best interest. Over the years I have seen these same upper management morons continue to make millions and do nothing about the situation of product layering. I agree that government has turned away from prosecution of the fraud. I do think it is not a red vs blue political issue. It is much bigger than that. It is the ultra wealthy vs the rest of us. Two of my clients, one on the red team and one on the blue team gifted money to their families again this year from profits of their investments. Each are multi billionaires. They give children, grandchildren, great grandchilren and various LLC's and trust they control millions each year. Each contribute millions to their red PAC and blue PAC which is now easier with the Supreme Court ruling. My conclusions are based on what I experience daily. Management in all brokerage firms are idiots. Racism exists and is strong in the south. Most importantly, the Ultra rich control government. God bless you and anyone else who can see the truth. Prepare yourself for the future Gen Dyn predicts."
Another person, a college professor, has also been reading my web site since 2007 and says the reason that her students -- and many of their professors -- didn't see what was coming at that time was that they don't know how to think:
"It's not that people can't see what's coming. It's that they don't have critical thinking skills.Some people are corrupt and taking advantage of other people, and when people walk away with all the money, it's not accidental.
But I teach with some of the academics and I can tell you that even people that I know that are straight couldn't see what I could saw in 2007, and one of them was a finance professor.
Talking to the generation that's now in their 30s, they're clueless. They have no sense of threat, they have no understanding of what's coming at them."
A couple of people wanted to give me investment advice:
"John, wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Although I don't agree with all of your predictions, I find them insightful nonetheless. I hope that you invest based on your analysis. For a little unsolicited advice, I was told once to invest small sums for risky bets. I treat my political donations the same way!!""Some of us are listening. Based on your advice, I liquidated half of my Roth IRA last year. And sometime in January or February of 2016, I'm going to sell the other half of my shares. I'm doing this because I am heeding your warning of the coming stock market crash. Thank you for raising the alarm."
"I read your tirade today, wanted to give you some reassurance. I’m just an average guy, but I’ve read your blog every morning for years. I don’t take it as gospel, but I am more inclined to believe it than pretty much any other internet source. I can’t be the only one. Keep it up."
"John, thanks to you & Harry Dent I've been in cash equivalent investments for years. And I plan to stay that way for a while. In spite of our spats in the past, I still love your work John."
One person (writing to a third person) tells what happened with his own Generation-X children, something that other older parents may enjoy reading:
"As you know I've been reading John X., your friend's newsletter now for years. He drew my interest originally when I read him because his thinking was so close to mine; we largely mirrored each other. I called my thinking generational churn. In which in changing generations the newer generation in part forgot or deliberately ignored what the previous generations tried to pass on.It happened between me and my children. They are Gen X and I saw on a personal level what happened tho as it was happening I didn't truly appreciate the process at the time.
They were called the "can do" generation. The generation that would clean up the messes of previous generations. They were the first truly electronic & digital generation. Influenced in a way no prior generation had been. Weaned on gizmos and gadgets unavailable to previous generations. They didn't have a generational war previous generations had had so they were more homogeneous than prior generations had been. United by all those factors.
You can't tell them a damn thing because they have all the answers. Imbibed at the common cafeteria they all grew up on. A centralized common source connected by the electronic and digital grid of an increasingly centralized educational, entertainment, news, corporate, political, and governmental complex.
They knew they were right because the people influencing them told them they were right. They are in their later 30's to very early 50's & they still play with toys. Their president is known for dealing with crisis by playing golf.
As a parent of that generation I thought I was a good parent. I didn't fully appreciate how all these forces were and would overwhelm the lessons I tried to pass on."
Finally, here's a quote from someone from a person on the Millennial/Generation-X cusp who blames it all on Boomers:
"Tyrannical boomers shove money-grubbing ideology down our throats saying that the purpose of life is to accumulate wealth. Boomers saw the potential of Xers and millies decades ago, and decided to tyrannically suppress them so that the country would continue in the direction of a wealth based and feelings based society. Even though doing so violated first Xers and the Millies rights. Xers and Millies can clearly see the patheticness of the current generations of leaders and see the competent governance in their national rivals, Russia and China, now the boomer elite wants to end any possibility of reform by shoving Bush and Hillary down our throats. What's with the boomer love affair with weaklings? Trump is advocating a completely different form of government than what has traditionally existed in this country."
This is why we refer to "the nihilism, destructiveness and self-destructiveness of Generation-X."
I forgot to add this to yesterday's article. Alan Greenspan went through an amazing flip-flop in 2004-5, when he was Fed Chairman, as I wrote about in several articles at the time:
I traced this reversal of opinion by reading and reporting on Greenspan's speeches. Those speeches are still on the Federal Reserve web site, for anyone who wishes to confirm this. But, strangely enough, Greenspan has never admitted, to my knowledge, that he recognized the asset bubbles in 2005, and no one else, to my knowledge, has ever reported on his reversal of opinion. Alan Greenspan speech (26-August-2015)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Dec-15 World View -- Reader comments on 'The Big Short' and the financial crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Dec-2015)
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Criminality in Washington
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I saw the movie "The Big Short" yesterday (Christmas), and found myself becoming increasingly upset and infuriated as it went along.
The movie is a description of the financial crisis, based on Michael Lewis's bestselling book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine."
The main characters are money managers Michael Burry (Christian Bale) and Mark Baum (Steve Carell), who foresaw the crisis and found ways to make over a billion dollars profit from it. They foresaw that the housing market and the supporting subprime mortgages were going to crash, and they found a way, using credit default swaps, to bet that the housing market would crash, and they won.
Along with them is a supporting cast of stupid, sleazy bankers and real estate brokers who sold subprime mortgages, created the fraudulent subprime mortgage backed synthetic securities, and defrauded investors.
In many ways the movie is a comedy because the material is presented in a clever way. For example, the movie might cut to a girl taking a bubble bath who looks into the camera and describes a type of investment; or to a chef who chops up three-day-old fish (representing rancid investments) and throws them into a pot to make fish stew (representing collateralized debt obligations or CDOs). A lot of the movie takes place in Las Vegas, so there are a lot of pretty semi-dressed girls as backdrop. The purpose was to make this super-dry financial stuff interesting enough to make it interesting to the audience. Those who see the movie and want to understand the mathematics behind CDOs and credit default swaps can read my January 2008 article, "A primer on financial engineering and structured finance".
In the movie, Baum spoke to mortgage consultants who bragged about selling huge subprime mortgages to people with no jobs, no income, and absolutely no chance of meeting the mortgage payments. The bank lends the money for the interest-only mortgage and the banker gets a huge commission; the mortgage consultant gets a huge commission; the mortgagor gets to move into his new house, and will stay there until the interest-only period ends, and then he gets evicted and screwed. The total immorality of the mortgage consultants and bankers, bragging how they screwed people, is clear.
Baum visited a stripper who had gotten a mortgage through the consultants. He had to pay her fee for an hour of her time in order to interview her. He told her that her mortgage payment would soon double or triple. After learning that, she was no longer pretty.
Baum went to Florida and found developments with hundreds of houses, almost all abandoned because the owners had been foreclosed. The few people left looked like they were staring death in the face.
Baum also visited a money manager who had merged thousands of faulty subprime mortgages, knowing that they would default, and created the CDOs and CDOs-squared and other fraudulent securities that he sold to investors as AAA investments.
Baum visited someone at the S&P Rating Service to ask why the synthetic bonds were still rated AAA, even after large numbers of subprime mortgages had gone into default. He was told that the banks had paid them to give them the AAA rating, and that if they refused, the bank would go to Moody's, a competitor. In other words, the S&P Rating Service did not actually rate the fraudulent bonds; they simply gave an AAA rating because they were paid by the bank to do so.
I saw all this stuff going on and I became angrier and angrier. As long-time readers know, I've been writing about the housing bubble since 2004, and how it was going to cause a financial crisis. (From July 2004: "Real estate is in an overpriced bubble all over the world") I've been angry for years about what was going on, and what this movie did is bring back all that upset and anger in one huge clump. (Don't worry. I didn't go ballistic, but fumed in silence.)
And there were so many levels on which this movie infuriated me.
First, this movie was full of crooks, some of whom made thousands and other who made hundreds of millions -- on the backs of families who lost their homes and jobs and went bankrupt. But now, in 2015, not one goddam one of them has even been prosecuted and sent to jail.
The Obama Justice Department has adamantly refused to prosecute anyone, because they all used a portion of their fraudulently obtained millions to make large contributions to the Obama campaign or projects sponsored by Obama. Not one single person has been prosecuted. They're all in the same jobs, able to find new ways to defraud people -- as we've seen in the Libor and Forex scandals -- and continue to pay off the Washington politicians.
Prior to the 2000s, I would never have believed that this massive level of corruption and criminality was possible in the United States. Maybe in Russia, maybe in China, but not in the United States. It was only made possible with the rise of Generation-X in the 2000s.
The second infuriating thing is that so many mainstream economists and bank managers and politicians claim they never saw the financial crisis coming. They didn't even know there was a housing bubble until well after the financial crisis began.
And my question, the one that I've asked myself over and over for years, is: If none of these people knew that there was a housing bubble, then how the frigging hell did I know it in 2004? And why, year after year, did people I tried to explain it to treat me as a pariah? (Yes, this has gotten very personal for me.)
The fact is that I've concluded long ago that they weren't caught by surprise at all. The Gen-Xers who created the fraudulent synthetic securities had by and large graduated with Masters degrees in Financial Engineering in the 1990s. Many Gen-Xers (including Obama himself) were children of divorce and hated their fathers and their fathers' generation. There's huge amounts of stuff on the internet about this. So when the Nasdaq crash occurred in 2000, they blamed it on their fathers' generation, and purposely sold them fraudulent securities to get even with them.
What about the bank CEO and other top-level bank managers. Did they know that they were defrauding the public?
Yes of course they did, and I'll explain why. In April 2010, Congress interviewed numerous financial executives, including former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince and former Citigroup Chairman Robert Rubin, who was also the Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. (See my April 2010 article: "Financial Crisis Inquiry hearings provide 'smoking gun' evidence of widespread criminal fraud")
Based on the testimony, the Committee concluded that these banks had made investment claims that were mathematically impossible. In brief, they had taken B and C rated securities, sliced and diced them into CDOs, and came up with AAA rated securities with the same nominal value, which is mathematically impossible. Commission member Byron Georgiou said:
"Yesterday I likened it to the medieval alchemy, and today, as I study it more, I'm beginning to believe that maybe it was hallucinatory."
Georgiou went on to summarize the "smoking gun" figures that proved that fraud was committed, and that Charles Prince and Robert Rubin must have known this. Prince and Rubin could not have understood the mathematics behind the creation of the synthetic securities created by Masters of Financial Engineering, but they certainly must have known that when B-rated securities are turning into AAA-rated securities of the same nominal value, then something illegal must be going on. In other words, the Committee proved that Charles Prince and Robert Rubin had committed criminal fraud, and that they should be prosecuted and, if convicted, sent to jail.
After I wrote the 2010 article on the Commission hearings, I waited for the investigations and prosecutions to begin. And of course they never did. It was too lucrative for the Obama administration, who needed those campaign contributions for the 2012 reelection campaign. So all the criminals are still walking the streets or, more likely, at their jobs criminally defrauding more people.
Going back to "The Big Short" movie now, the movie does not attempt to sugar coat what happened. Although the movie does not name names of bankster criminals, Baum and the others repeatedly make it clear that these bankers and politicians know they're committing fraud, and they're going to do nothing about it. In fact, probably the most depressing moment for Baum in the movie is when he realizes that the Justice Department is not only not going to prosecute these criminal bankers, but is going to go further and bail them out with taxpayer money, rewarding these crooks for their criminality.
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The end of the movie also makes clear what I've been saying for years: That crisis is far from over, and there's going to be a new round of job loss, homelessness, and financial ruin for millions of people.
As I've repeated many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that we're headed for a global financial panic and crisis. According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations index) on Friday morning (December 24) was at an astronomically high 22.95. 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.
This brings me to the final reason why this movie so infuriated and upset me, and this is extremely personal. As I said, I knew in 2004 that there was a housing bubble, and I wrote about it many times. Other people (such as Baum in the movie) figured it out and were able to make millions of dollars, but all I get for getting it right is to be treated as a pariah. My web site, using generational analysis, has for years correctly predicted what would happen in the Mideast, in Afghanistan, in Russia, in China, and so forth. There is no web site or analyst or journalist in the world with anything like the predictive and analytical success of my web site. But not only is this apparently not of value to anyone, but it's brought me nothing but misery, as I'm hated and shunned by many people, in some cases even people I've known for years.
My story is the story of the mythical Cassandra. After her predictions all came true and Troy was massacred, Cassandra was raped and assaulted. My only hope is that when everything that Generational Dynamics predicts comes true, my demise will be a lot quicker and a lot less painful. For me, that's the lesson of "The Big Short." Variety and USA Today
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Dec-15 World View -- 'The Big Short' - an infuriating movie about the financial crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Dec-2015)
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Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza, Belated Happy Hanukkah, Ramadan, Winter Solstice!
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah leader promised revenge against Israel, "and we will pick the time, place and manner to do so," in retaliation for Israel's assassination of Samir Kuntar, a former Hezbollah commander. Kuntar was killed on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the suburbs near Damascus, the capital city of Syria.
The airstrike represented a fairly significant achievement, in view of the intelligence required to identify the safehouse where Kuntar was located, and to coordinate the airstrike with Russia, which controls the air space over Damascus. We wrote about this coordination earlier this month ( "6-Dec-15 World View -- Israel bombs targets in Syria with Russia's tacit cooperation"), and there is increasing evidence that Russia and Israel are sharing intelligence. Israel has allegedly conducted other airstrikes in Syria, usually targeting convoys delivering Iranian weapons to Hezbollah.
Nasrallah has suggested that revenge would take the form of another war against the Zionist entity, but a war at this time may not be possible.
First, Hezbollah is still heavily engaged in Syria, where some 1,300 to 1,500 of its fighters have been killed in battle, and about 5,000 injured. In July, Israel Radio reported that Hezbollah had arrested 175 of its own fighters after they refused to take part in battles in the Syrian city of Zabadani, close to the border with Lebanon. So Hezbollah may simply not have the manpower at this time to even attempt a new war with Israel.
Second, Israel's airstrikes in Syria bombing Hezbollah and Iranian targets, and they have been met with the approval, or at least the tacit approval, of Russia. This suggests that any Hezbollah war with Israel will not be supported by Russia, and may even be opposed by Israel and Russia as allies. Russia is in Syria for Russia, not for Iran and not for Hezbollah. In fact, Iran is actually losing territory in Syria that it thought it had gained. The Russia-Israel coordination of Israel's strikes at Iran-Hezbollah targets must be a bitter blow to Nasrallah.
However, all-out war is not Nasrallah's only choice. The revenge could take the form of terrorist attacks or border attacks. In fact, shortly after the Israeli airstrike killing Kuntar, three rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards Israel. Israel retaliated with some eight rounds of 120mm mortar, but no casualties were reported from either side.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced great concern today over Monday's firing of rockets from South Lebanon towards Israel, calling it “a serious violation” of the ceasefire. He noted Israel’s retaliatory mortar attack, and urged maximum restraint.
Whatever form Nasrallah's revenge may take, Israel's military is warning Nasrallah that Nasrallah and Hezbollah would be making a big mistake if they perpetrated a lethal terror attack in an attempt to avenge Kuntar's assassination, and they promised a "disproportionate response" to any Hezbollah attacks. CNN and Times of Israel and Lebanon Now and YNet (Israel) and United Nations
Ever since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah ended, things have been pretty quiet between the two.
In fact, the 2006 war was pretty much a surprise to both sides and a disaster for both sides.
The war was triggered when two Israeli soldiers were ambushed and kidnapped while on patrol near the border with Lebanon. Israel panicked and launched the Lebanon war with Hezbollah within four hours, with no plan, no objective, and no idea what was going on. The Israelis then blundered from one objective to the next, until the war finally ended.
Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said after the war that he had underestimated Israel's response to the ambush. Many Lebanese people blame Hezbollah for causing the war, which resulted in huge destruction to much of Lebanon's infrastructure, and Nasrallah apologized to the Lebanese people. Lebanon was split between those favoring Israel and those favoring Hezbollah, but no matter which side they were on, they didn't want anything like it to happen again.
It's now been almost ten years since then, and there have been plenty of "lessons learned" on both sides. Both sides have much more advanced weaponry, and both sides will be much more militarily aggressive.
In 2006, Hezbollah was launching a little more than 100 rockets a day into Israel, and mostly into neighborhoods in northern Israel. Since then, Iran has supplied Hezbollah with a huge stockpile of much more accurate and powerful rockets that can reach all the way into southern Israel, including airfields, headquarters, and economically important sites. In addition, Hezbollah will use the same kinds of tunnels and deep weapons stores that Hamas used effectively in the 2014 Gaza war.
In 2006, Israel considered itself to be at war with Hezbollah, and targeted Hezbollah infrastructure and assets in its airstrikes. In a new war, Israel will be at war not just with Hezbollah, but with all of Lebanon. According to one analysis, the international community will turn against Israel very quickly, as it always does, and so Israel must attack the Lebanese army and the infrastructure of Lebanon, including the airports and seaports, and destroy as much as possible within a few days.
Most analysts believe that there will be another war between Israel and Hezbollah, with certainly. However, this time it will not be a surprise. It will be well planned by both sides, and a lot deadlier and more destructive than last time. YNet (Israel) and Washington Institute (29-Jan-2015)
Zamir Kabulov, a Foreign Ministry department head and President Vladimir Putin's special representative for Afghanistan, says that Russia and the Taliban are sharing information in the fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). According to Kabulov:
"The Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours in the fight against ISIS in Afghanistan. I have already said earlier that we and the Taliban have channels for exchanging information."
Russia has also been reported to be supplying weapons to the Afghan government as well as to India. Russia appears to be extending itself substantially. Washington Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Dec-15 World View -- Israel and Hezbollah may be close to war again thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Dec-2015)
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Syrian refugees in Lebanon increasingly face starvation
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Lebanon's government approved a decree on Monday to export the garbage generated by the citizens of Beirut and Mount Lebanon to Europe. This would include much of the trash that has accumulated around the capital region, last estimated in November to exceed 100,000 tons.
There will be two firms under contract: Howa BV, of Holland and Chinook Urban Mining International of Britain. It has not yet been announced where the garbage will be dumped after it leaves Lebanon. The two European firms will charge Lebanon $212 per ton to remove the garbage, about $60 per ton more than Lebanon used to pay the Lebanon's garbage contractor, Sukleen.
The garbage crisis began on July 17 when Lebanon's dysfunctional government simply closed Beirut's main landfill, without providing any alternative. With no place to go, residents simply piled the garbage in the streets. The smell has become increasingly putrid. Every time it rains, streams of garbage flow down the streets. One video that went viral showed uncollected garbage being swept down a flooded street in Beirut. The filth is seeping into the drinking water, and dysentery is feared.
Lebanon's government became officially paralyzed and dysfunctional on May 24, 2014, when Lebanon's last president, Michel Sulaiman, ended a six year term, and officials were unable to select a successor president. Hezbollah and various political coalitions continually boycotted meetings and sabotaged processes, rather than risk have an opposing party or coalition win the presidency. There is still a cabinet, and the ministers in the cabinet are empowered to make some decisions, but that's largely dysfunctional as well.
By August, tens of thousands of demonstrators were filling the streets of Beirut in the new "You Stink" campaign, where the protesters were using the epithet to describe both the garbage and the government. That led to violence, as Lebanon's security forces fired weapons, sprayed tear gas and water cannons, and arrested dozens of protesters.
Out of desperation, the cabinet did finally reach a decision on Monday to contract to the two European firms to haul the garbage away.
One politician patted himself on the back:
"The Cabinet has turned a new page today and lifted a great weight off the backs of the people."
However, another politician was more direct:
"We’ve gotten to the point where we’ll agree to anything. We have no choice but to finish with this garbage, exports or otherwise."
However, the crisis is far from over. Exporting trash is governed by the United Nations Basel Convention which requires exporters to declare the hazardous content of their waste, something that Lebanon may not even be capable of. Another problem is that no decision has been made as to where the money will come from to pay the garbage export contractors. So even in the rosiest scenario, garbage exports won't begin for weeks or months.
And Lebanon still has no president. Daily Star (Beirut) and Gulf News (Dubai) and Daily Star (Beirut) and The National (Dubai)
Lebanon, with a population of less than 5 million people, is hosting more than one million refugees from Syria. International contributions to aid the refugees have been dwindling, and food insecurity is mounting. In 2014, 49% of the refugees were below the poverty line of $3.84 per day, but now some 70% are below the poverty line, according to the United Nations.
According to the UN report:
"With the Syrian conflict now in its fifth year, the refugees face severe restrictions on accessing the Lebanese labor market, their assets and savings are increasingly exhausted, their debts are mounting and they must fulfil specific requirements to legalize their stay in Lebanon."
With refugees generally forbidden by law to take jobs in Lebanon, some refugees are making money on the side by growing and selling cannabis. According to one landown and grower of cannabis: "Any job in Lebanon makes you $700 per month, but working with drugs can get you $10,000 a day." United Nations and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Dec-15 World View -- Paralyzed Lebanon decides to export its garbage to Europe thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Dec-2015)
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Number of migrants entering Europe this year passes the one million mark
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we wrote two days ago, Taliban forces in Afghanistan are scoring victory after victory in Helmand province. Some reports indicate that the crucial city of Sangin has been captured, and that all of Helmand province is in danger of falling.
To bolster desperate Afghan government forces, Britain said on Tuesday that it was sending some forces back to Helmand province. A unit of about 30 soldiers from Britain's elite Special Air Service (SAS) and up to 60 U.S. special forces have been sent to bolster the Afghan forces to defend the town, but the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said that they were not sent there to fight, but only to advise.
Britain ended combat operations in Afghanistan last year, but before then it was British troops that were mainly fighting the Taliban in Helmand. Sangin became known as “the most dangerous place in Helmand” because of the ferocity of attacks that claimed the lives of 106 British service personnel. The body count rose as the first UK units endured the most intense ground fighting since the Korean war, fighting for control of a district that was a major prize for Taliban fighters because of its lucrative opium trade.
Many UK mothers are now expressing concern that everything that the British troops fought and died for was for nothing.
The BBC interviewed a mother of a soldier who lost both his legs while serving in Afghanistan, and who was asked how she felt about the decision to send troops back to Helmand:
"Sadness, anger, but most of all a desperate, desperate sense of waste and fear that we are still not learning the lessons and that it's British troops that are going to pay the price for that failure to learn.'[The lessons learned are] that you don't get yourself involved in an under-funded, under-defined, under-supported war in an isolated position, that these issues have got to be global and that there has got to be support from the Muslim world, throughout the world, and that we cannot - we don't have the resources to - take on these issues by ourselves."
Besides its importance for its lush opium trade, it's also a major transit point and close to a major highway that cuts across Helmand. If the Taliban take control of Sangin, then will the Afghans will be unable to resupply its forces in southern Helmand. Daily Mail (London) and Telegraph (London) and Reuters
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 1,005,504 migrants have entered Europe this year as of December 21, and they're still arriving at the rate of 4000-5000 per day.
According to the IOM, the numbers by country of entry are as follows:
Country Total Sea Land
-------- --------- ------- -----
Greece 821,008 816,752 4,256
Bulgaria 29,959 29,959
Italy 150,317 150,317
Spain 3,845 3,845
Malta 106 106
Cyprus 269 269
TOTAL 1,005,504 971,289 34,215
The total of migrant/refugee deaths now stands at 3,692.
Over half of the migrants were refugees escaping the war in Syria.
Germany, the most economically powerful country in the European Union, has led the way in extending a welcome to migrants, and is expecting to take in a million asylum-seekers.
At the other end of the spectrum is Hungary, led by prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has become increasingly popular since his right-wing Fidesz party government has been conducting anti-migrant media campaigns against the flood of migrants. According to Orbán:
"Mass migration is threatening the security of Europeans, because it brings with it an exponentially increased threat of terrorism. ...We know nothing about these people: where they really come from, who they are, what their intentions are, whether they have received any training, whether they have weapons, or whether they are members of any organization. Furthermore, mass migration also increases crime rates."
Syria's neighbors are bearing most of the burden of flood of Syrian refugees. Turkey is hosting 2.5 million, Lebanon and Jordan are each hosting more than a million. International Organization for Migration (IOM) and BBC and CNN
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Dec-15 World View -- UK bitterly sends troops back Afghanistan's Helmand province thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Dec-2015)
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Azerbaijan's currency devalues 32%, following Russia and Kazakhstan
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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When peaceful anti-government demonstrations began in Syria in 2011, Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad responded with a genocidal series of airstrikes on innocent Sunni civilians, using heavy weapons supplied by Russia. This resulted in a worldwide movement of young Sunni jihadists from almost 100 countries, traveling to Syria to fight al-Assad. This resulted in the creation of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), which is still benefiting from a large influx of jihadist volunteers from around the world.
Now Russia is directly taking part in the war, and is substantially increasing the massacres of innocent Sunni civilians. Russia's warplanes have added a new layer of carnage, reportedly killing at least 600 Syrian citizens, including 70 in Idlib on Sunday. In Syria’s north and in opposition-held parts of the cities of Hama and Damascus, the destruction wrought on civilian infrastructure and population centers over recently is more intense than at any point in almost five years of war.
Human Rights Watch is reporting that Russia's massive extermination bombings have extensively used cluster bombs, whose use is considered a war crime. A cluster bomb contains dozens or hundreds of bomblets and are fired in rockets or dropped from the air. The munitions are capable of killing even long after the initial attack, especially when unexploded bomblets detonate. They aren't militarily effective, but they cause many civilian casualties, including many women and children.
However, as the US has learned in Iraq and Syria and Saudi Arabia is learning in Yemen, airstrikes alone are not enough to win a war without ground troops. Now Russia is learning the same lesson, as reports indicate that Russia's massive airstrikes are accomplishing little beyond the slaughter of innocent civilians.
When Russia began its airstrikes 12 weeks ago, Syria's army was supposed to supply the ground troops that would make the airstrikes effective. But as we reported earlier this year, Syria's army was nearing a complete collapse, which is one of the factors that led Russia to intervene. Syria had been losing one city after another, as massive desertions had crippled al-Assad's army.
The al-Assad regime is now in a desperate program to conscript new people into the army. A man from Damascus is quoted as saying that four of his friends were taken from their homes to an army base in the city early last week. “There are trucks driving around with loudspeakers ordering men and boys to join,” he said.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Syria is now in total chaos. The American-led coalition has mostly evacuated Syria since Russia intervened, but there are still many groups participating in the war -- Russia, the Kurdish YPG militia, most of the important rebel groups, including radical Sunni organizations tied to Al Qaeda, such as the Nusra Front and Ahram al-Sham, Iran and Shiite Hezbollah, and ISIS. Guardian (London) and ARA News (Syria) and Debka (Israel)
Despite internal divisions among the European Union members, the European Council of all 28 EU member states renewed for six more months the sanctions against Russia that were set to expire later this month.
The sanctions had been imposed last year, after the Russians invaded and occupied east Ukraine, annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, and later shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with a missile.
Many Europeans are still shocked by Russia's actions, because they have historical memories of European leaders appeasing Hitler and the Nazis with the Munich Pact ("peace in our time"), after Adolf Hitler's Nazi army had invaded, occupied and annexed a portion of Austria (the Anschluss) on March 12, 1938.
There was internal dissension among EU nations over renewing sanctions, especially from Italy, which has traditionally close times with Russia, which criticized Germany for having an energy deal with Russia, while other EU countries were being asked to sacrifice their national interests. France and Bulgaria had similar objections.
The sanctions renewal comes after the end of a year in which it seemed that the EU was facing one existential crisis after another, including Greece's financial crisis and the massive refugee crisis. AFP and Washington Post
Russia's Foreign Ministry called the extension "illogical," and added: "Instead of building constructive cooperation in countering the key challenges of our time, such as international terrorism, EU authorities in Brussels prefer to continue to play the short-sighted sanctions game."
Russian also then played the "short-signed sanctions game" by immediately retaliating against Ukraine and announcing a ban on imported Ukrainian food, effective January 1. Ukraine has signed a free trade agreement with the EU, set to take effect on January 1, and Russia claims that if Ukrainian food were freely allowed into Russia, then Ukrainian distributors would simply purchase EU food via the free trade agreement, and then relabel it and export it to Russia.
One reason that Ukraine is going ahead with its free trade agreement with the EU is because of what happened when the previous Ukrainian government did exactly that, late in 2013. ( "3-Dec-13 World View -- Ukraine again in crisis as anti-government rioters demand president's resignation")
At that time, at least 100,000 anti-government protesters packed Independence Square ("the Maidan") in Kiev on a single Sunday, demanding the resignation of then-president Viktor Yanukovich. More than 200 people were hurt when police used tear gas and flash grenades, after some marchers tried to storm a government building. Video has emerged showing police brutally beating protesters and journalists with clubs. The riots continued through the night and into Monday evening, forcing riot police to line up to protect the office of the president.
The riots were triggered when Yanukovich did a highly visible flip-flop on signing a trade agreement with the European Union, evidently because of pressure by Russia's President Vladimir Putin. So this time, the current government is not going to do a similar flip-flop. Russia Today and BBC and Tass (Moscow) and Politico (EU)
Until Monday, Azerbaijan's currency the manat pegged at a fixed rate against the US dollar. But the dollar has been getting stronger and stronger on foreign exchange (FX) markets, while the price of one of Azerbaijan's chief exports, oil, keeps plunging to new lows. The result is that Azerbaijan has lost over half of its foreign currency reserves. A year ago, Azerbaijan had $14.9 billion US dollars, but the reserves are now at $6.2 billion, a "critical level." Oil and gas account for 95 percent of Azeri exports and 75 percent of government revenues.
The result is that the manat currency has now fallen 32% against the dollar. This means, for example, that any imported goods denominated in U.S. dollars will be much more expensive. Something previous costing $100 will now cost $147 (=$100/(1-.32)). However, Azerbaijan's exports are now 32% cheaper on world markets, making the country's products more competitive.
As we wrote earlier this month in "7-Dec-15 World View -- Azerbaijan faces rising radical Shia Islamist insurgency", Azerbaijan has been facing both Shia and Sunni jihadist insurgencies, largely among population groups at the worst poverty levels. With prices of many goods now increasing by almost 50%, which is almost a "hyperinflation" rate, this currency devaluation is going to further destabilize the country.
Kazakhstan scrapped its currency peg for the tenge against the dollar in August, and Russia has devalued its ruble several times, because of the oil price plunge and the international sanctions.
What everyone is watching for is what Saudi Arabia will do. The Saudi government needs oil prices of $90 per barrel to balance its budget, and no one expects prices like that again for a long time. However, the Saudis have plenty of foreign exchange reserves, thanks to previous years of high oil prices, and would not be forced to abandon its dollar peg for four years, according to estimates. Reuters and The Street
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Dec-15 World View -- Russia's Syria airstrikes kill many innocent civilians, but otherwise appear futile thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Dec-2015)
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Obama's 30,000 troop Afghan 'surge' strategy now in seventh year
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Defense Secretary Ashton Carter paid a surprise visit on Friday to a remote army base near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, and warned of the threat of deteriorating security in Afghanistan from a resurgent Taliban and a growing number of fighters allied with the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
The warning comes after a year that saw Afghan army and police suffer more than 5,000 casualties. U.S. commanders estimate that ISIS has 1,000 to 3,000 fighters here, many of whom apparently are former Taliban members who shifted allegiance.
Carter's remarks reflect a major new Pentagon report on the war in Afghanistan, which states:
"In the second half of 2015, the overall security situation in Afghanistan deteriorated with an increase in effective insurgent attacks and higher ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] and Taliban casualties. Though the insurgency remains resilient, the Afghan government remains in control of all major population centers and continues to deny the Taliban strategic ground throughout the country. The Taliban have remained active in their traditional strongholds, namely in Helmand in the south and Logar and Wardak in the east, and also created a sense of instability for brief periods of time in other parts of the country, such as in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the Taliban were unable to hold territory they had wrested away from ANDSF control. The ANDSF consistently retook ground they had temporarily lost to the Taliban. Although the ANDSF maintain a significant capability advantage over the insurgency, insurgents are improving in their ability to find and exploit ANDSF vulnerabilities, making the security situation still fragile in key areas and at risk of deterioration in other places."
As stated below, even this assessment is being challenged by the governor of Helmand province as being far too optimistic, and this may force a further retrenchment in Obama's withdrawal plan, which has been repeatedly revised since Obama's original commitment of total withdrawal in 2014. In the latest version of the withdrawal plan, the US will maintain its current force of 9,800 in the country through 2016, and after that will leave a force of 5,500 troops in place to train Afghan forces and conduct counter-terrorism missions. LA Times and DOD Dec 2015 report on Afghanistan (PDF) and Long War Journal
The Taliban have been defeating Afghanistan's National Army (ANA), taking over districts in Helmand province, and appear close to a victory that will give them control of the entire province. In the latest victory, on Sunday, Taliban forces have taken control of the Sangin district, and claim to have surrounded around 150 fleeing ANA soldiers.
During a Taliban assault on Sangin in November, more than 60 Afghan soldiers were killed while another 70 defected to the insurgency. The crucial district had been one of the deadliest places in Afghanistan for NATO troops who fought for years to secure the volatile poppy growing region.
Sunday's Taliban victory came after a desperate plea appeared on the Facebook page of Deputy Governor Mohammad Jan Rasulyar, writing to Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani. Rasulyar said that he knew of no other way to contact the government in Kabul, and wrote:
"Your Excellency, Helmand is standing on the brink and there is a serious need for you to come. Be quick and act on this! Please save Helmand from tragedy. Ignore those liars who are telling you that Helmand is secure. ...Helmand will collapse to the enemies and it's not like Kunduz, where we could launch an operation from the airport to retake it. That is just impossible and a dream."
The reference to Kunduz indicates that the situation is similar to the situation that led up to the fall of the northern city of Kunduz in late September, when Taliban fighters seized and held on to for several days before government troops regained control. ( "29-Sep-15 World View -- Afghan Taliban capture of Kunduz has major repercussions for Central Asia")
The desperate plea highlights the dangers faced by the Afghan government as the US-led coalition withdraws from the country. The Ghani government has been claiming that the Afghan security forces have been controlling the insurgency, but a series of Taliban victories have put that claim in doubt.
In fact, there have been unconfirmed reports in the last week that the US has once again been committing troops to Helmand, and that there are more American troops fighting there than at any time since President Obama last year announced a formal end to combat operations in Afghanistan. According to the NY Times:
"The extent of the American role has been kept largely secret, with senior Afghan officials in the area saying they are under orders not to divulge the level of cooperation, especially by Special Operations forces on the ground. The secrecy reflects the Pentagon’s concern that the involvement may suggest that the American combat role, which was supposed to have ended in December 2014, is still far beyond the official “train, advise and assist” mission."
This is the latest in a series of escalations that have forced the Obama administration to repeated renege on its commitment to remove American forces by the end of 2014. VOA and Reuters and Independent (London) and NY Times
In fact, it was just six years ago this month that President Obama gave a speech at West Point announcing the troop "surge" in Afghanistan:
"As cadets, you volunteered for service during this time of danger. Some of you fought in Afghanistan. Some of you will deploy there. As your Commander-in-Chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined, and worthy of your service. And that's why, after the Afghan voting was completed, I insisted on a thorough review of our strategy. Now, let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war during this review period. Instead, the review has allowed me to ask the hard questions, and to explore all the different options, along with my national security team, our military and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and our key partners. And given the stakes involved, I owed the American people -- and our troops -- no less.This review is now complete. And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan."
That was in December 2009, the same month that Obama went to Oslo to accept his Nobel peace prize, and then went on to Copenhagen to give a speech to a farcical climate change conference.
The West Point speech was sharply criticized on both the left and the right as I wrote at the time. ( "People are shocked! shocked! at Obama's war plan in Afghanistan.") People on the left criticized it because it was another escalation of the Afghan war. People on the right criticized it because of the 18-month deadline.
Indeed, people on the right have been bitterly criticizing Obama's strategy from the day it was announced. By giving an 18-month deadline, Obama was giving the enemy a huge strategic advantage, since they could plan their military campaign based on Obama's unilateral withdrawal announcement. And Obama has been repeatedly criticized for ignoring and overriding the recommendations of his own army generals, even though Obama has no clue what's happening in Afghanistan.
Obama has had to repeatedly extend the 18-month deadline, which is a surprise to no one. Now that Obama is being forced to send additional troops back into Helmand province now, six years later, it's clear that the critics were right, and the 18-month deadline was a disaster.
A worse irony is that President Obama's Afghan war strategy is modeled after President Bush's "surge" strategy in Iraq, something that Senator Obama bitterly opposed before it turned out to be successful. However, I wrote a detailed comparison of the Afghanistan versus Iraq wars in mid-2009 in "American army general warns of imminent defeat in Afghanistan war,", showing that the Iraq "surge" strategy could not work in Afghanistan.
As I described at length in that article, there are important differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq's previous generational crisis war was an external war, the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, where Sunni and Shia populations were united to defeat the Iranian enemy.
The situation in Afghanistan was always very different. Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was the very bloody 1991-96 civil war between different Afghan ethnic groups. The Sunni Muslim Pashtuns in the south fought against what later became known as the "Northern Alliance" -- Shia Muslim Hazaras, as well as Tajiks, Uzbeks and other ethnic groups in the north. Iraq has a long history in generational crisis wars of uniting against a common external enemy, while Afghanistan has a long history of internal generational crisis civil wars of fighting each other.
An even worse difference is that Afghanistan is right next door to Pakistan, which is in a generational crisis era. As I pointed out at the time, ethnic Pashtun Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan would cooperate with each other, and that's what happened, as Taliban forces in Afghanistan conduct attacks and then flee across the border, where they're safe from Afghan government forces. No such similar situation existed in the Iraq "surge," as I described in my 2007 article, "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq". Obama's surge strategy is failing for precisely the reasons that I detailed in 2009, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis. White House (1-Dec-2009) and CS Monitor (2-Dec-2009) and CNN (22-Jun-2011)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Dec-15 World View -- Taliban victories in Helmand put Obama's Afghan withdrawal policy in doubt thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Dec-2015)
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Delusional claims made during the Democratic debate
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Congress has passed the humongous $1.1 trillion spending bill for next year, and President Obama has signed it. It will completely bust the sequestration that has kept governing spending down for several years, and now we can expect that federal deficit to really explode in size next year. (See "2-Feb-15 World View -- Washington joins the world in explosive spending splurge")
But one Christmas present left out of the bill was an Obama-favored proposal to allow Puerto Rico, much of whose economy is close to debt default, to take advantage of chapter 9 bankruptcy laws. According to Puerto Rico governor Alejandro García Padilla:
"By not acting now, Congress has opted for the U.S. commonwealth to default on its obligations and unfold into chaos. Once again Wall Street has demonstrated its control over Congress; Wall Street rules Congress."
Puerto Rico faces an enormous $72 billion debt, $900 million of which it must pay to bondholders on Jan. 1. According to Padilla, Puerto Rico will default on its debt in January or May.
In many ways, Puerto Rico has gotten a free ride from Congress for years. Congress granted Puerto Rico investments a "triple-tax free" tax rate. This means that you can invest in Puerto Rico's bonds and earn 10% interest every year, and not have to pay federal, state or municipal tax on the interest you collect. There were other major tax benefits granted exclusively to those investing in Puerto Rico.
The money that investors paid for these bonds has been essentially "free money" to Puerto Rico, since nobody apparently believed that it would ever have to be paid back. As a result, Puerto Rico has felt free to spend huge amounts of money on social programs, with bills that are only now coming due.
Detroit defaulted on its debt several years ago, but it didn't really hurt too many people, because the bankrupt debt was $18 billion, and few ordinary people owned Detroit bonds, as most investors were institutions that hedged their purchases with credit default swaps.
A Puerto Rican debt default is likely to be much more widespread. The triple-tax free 10% interest deal has drawn massive amounts of money from 401k's and other ordinary investment funds. These funds will all lose significant principal in a Puerto Rico default.
Almost all Republicans were opposed to giving Puerto Rico retroactive bankruptcy protective protection, since that would only benefit the bondholders who took advantage of the triple-tax free 10% deal. However, House Speaker Paul Ryan promised to come up with a "responsible solution" by March 31. According to Ryan, "While we could not agree to include precedent-setting changes to bankruptcy law in this omnibus spending bill, I understand that many members on both sides of the aisle remain committed to addressing the challenges facing the territory."
Foreseeing the likelihood that Puerto Rico would not get debt relief from Congress, negotiations have been proceeding. On Friday, Puerto Rico's electric utility reached a tentative agreement with insurance companies MBIA Inc. and Assured Guaranty Ltd., along with some bondholders, to restructure the utility's $8.2 billion of debt, This potentially averts a default on January 1, and raises hopes that there will be no default in May either. NBC News and The Bond Buyer and Bloomberg
China's military went on high alert two weeks ago on December 10, when two American B-52 bombers flew into the airspace within two miles of one of China's artificial man-made islands in the South China Sea.
According to China's Ministry of National Defense on Saturday,
"Such actions have severely threatened the safety of Chinese personnel and facilities as well as peace and stability of the region. ...The actions by the U.S. side were a serious military provocation, creating complex conditions in the South China Sea and even militarization in the region."
The Pentagon said Friday that the two bombers flew closer than planned to Cuateron Reef in the Spratly Islands and that the incident is being investigated.
The Navy's 7th Fleet, based in Japan, regularly patrols the South China Sea. According to one analyst:
"We need to remind ourselves that [the] U.S. Navy ... has been conducting freedom of navigation operations since Jimmy Carter was in office. If you simply acquiesce to somebody else's claims, you could lose your rights."
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has repeatedly said that "The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world." Xinhua and USA Today and Navy Times
I watched the Democratic debate on Saturday evening, and want to comment on a couple of delusional claims that I've written about many times before.
Delusional claim #1: We should protect Americans by passing gun control laws.
This is delusional for several reasons:
According to one analyst, "The [number one] driver of firearms sales is fear-- primarily, fear of registration restrictions, banning and things like that."
So gun control talk only increases the number of guns being sold and used.
Delusional claim #2: The 2003 Iraq war was the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history. Also, according to Bernie Sanders, it caused the destabilization of the entire Mideast.
As I've written many times, Bernie Sanders and anyone who thinks that the Iraq war was a mistake should be held accountable for his willingness to allow Saddam Hussein to kill tens of thousands of people with weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam had already attacked Iran with WMDs in 1988, so Iran knew that Saddam would not hesitate to do it again, if given the chance. During the recent nuclear negotiations, it emerged that Iran had been developing nuclear weapons for decades, but Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei ended that development in October 2003, and that would not have happened if the Iraq War had not proved that Saddam was no longer developing nuclear weapons. ( "29-Oct-15 World View -- Iran's government splits over implementation of nuclear deal")
So the Iraq war was not only not a blunder, but may have prevented a nuclear war between Iran and Iraq.
As for destabilizing the Mideast, the Arab Awakening was triggered by the death of a street vendor in Tunisia, which had nothing to do with Saddam. And whatever you think about the Libya intervention, it had nothing to do with Saddam. BBC and PJ Media and Politico (22-Jun-2015)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Dec-15 World View -- Puerto Rico negotiates restructuring after Congress fails to allow Chapter 9 bankruptcy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Dec-2015)
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Burundi calls planned African Union peacekeeping force 'an attack'
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There is one and only one country in the entire world (and China says that it isn't even a country) that agrees with and supports all of China’s legal claims in the South China Sea. That country is Taiwan, though China says that Taiwan isn't a country, but only a rogue province of China that will return to Chinese control as soon as possible.
For the last few years, Taiwan has been governed by the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) party, which favors the "one China" principle and unification with mainland China, and which has fully supported all of China's claims in the South China Sea.
But Taiwan is about to hold new elections on January 16, and the KMT party is expected to lose to the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Of Taiwan's two major political parties, China has always been very friendly with KMT, and very hostile with DPP. China has frequently threatened military action if Taiwan's leaders take any political steps towards independence from China, and those threats have almost always been directed at the DPP.
From a generational point of view, the supporters of the KMT are mostly older generations, including the remaining survivors of Mao Zedong's bloody Communist Revolution civil war that climaxed in 1949. The supporters of DPP tend to be in the younger generations who have no personal memories of the Communist Revolution, and who are increasingly distant from mainland China as the years go by. As the older generations die off, Taiwan's people are likely to support independence more and more each year, which could well trigger a military invasion China.
China has been annexing regions in the South China Sea that have historically belonged to other countries, and continues to use belligerent military operations to enforce its seizures. China has claimed the entire South China Sea, including regions historically belonging to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines. China's claims are rejected by almost everyone outside of China, and China refuses to submit them to the United Nations court deciding such matters, apparently knowing that they would lose.
Tsai Ing-wen, the DPP leader and likely next president of Taiwan, has not specifically said that she would oppose China's claims. In fact, she has carefully avoided stating what her policy will be with respect to the South China Sea when she takes office in May, four months after the election.
However, DPP statements in the past have taken the position that the South China Sea disputes have to be handled peacefully, according to international law, namely the United Nations Commission on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) convention. This would require the disputes to be submitted to the United Nations international court in the Hague, something that China has bitterly refused to do. Taipei Times and Lawfare Blog and Focus Taiwan and Taipei Times (27-June-2015)
The government of Burundi is responding angrily to an African Union proposal to send 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi, saying it would be "an attack" on Burundi.
International officials are becoming increasingly alarmed that Burundi will see a repeat of the 1994 genocidal war between Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi and Rwanda that led to the slaughter of almost a million Tutsis in a three month period. The U.S. special envoy to Africa's Great Lakes Region, says that in Burundi he could feel a "palpable sense of fear or concern" on the streets. According to Perriello:
"I think you see across the region and across the world a much greater sense of needing to come together to solve this thing — that the fears of a civil war are very real, we still have time to stop it, and the people of Burundi still want to get back to that decade of progress of post-conflict reconciliation."
The African Union's Peace and Security Council stated that “Africa will not allow another genocide to take place on its soil."
U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said on Thursday “Burundi is at bursting point, on the very cusp of a civil war."
As I've written many times, there is no chance whatsoever of a repeat of the 1994 war because there are too many survivors of that war, and they won't allow it to happen. What's happening instead is that Burundi's president Pierre Nkurunziza, whose announcement last spring that he would run for an unconstitutional third term triggered the violence, has been following in the path of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Syria's Bashar al-Assad by conducting genocidal violence against his own people in order to stay in power.
The worst violence so far occurred last week in the capital city Bujumbura, when Nkurunziza's security forces killed over 80 people, and left their corpses piled in the streets, to be discovered by ordinary homeowners when they woke up in the morning and looked out their windows.
It's possible that the proposed African Union 5000 man peacekeeping force could turn Burundi into another Syria, where external forces turn a civil war that might otherwise fizzle into an international proxy war. Nkurunziza's opposition has been calling for a peacekeeping force, Nkurunziza himself has said any such peacekeeping force would be an "attack," suggesting he would order his military to respond, repeating the Syria scenario.
What happened in Syria was that peaceful protests in 2011 were met by the Bashar al-Assad regime with genocidal attacks on innocent Sunnis, using heavy weapons obtained from Russia and even Sarin gas. Sunni jihadists from almost 100 countries around the world poured into Syria to fight al-Assad, and they ended up forming the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
Hutus and Tutsis are almost entirely Christian, so it would seem to be unlikely that Sunni jihadists would identify with either side in Burundi. However, it is possible that an al-Qaeda linked or ISIS-linked terror group might take advantage of the chaos in Burundi and conduct terror attacks, in the same way that they have in in Paris or San Bernardino or other places. Foreign Policy and VOA and IRIN (United Nations)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Dec-15 World View -- Taiwan may reverse South China Sea policy and oppose China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Dec-2015)
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Turkey announces plans to build a military base in Qatar
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Thursday, Russia's president Vladimir Putin gave one of his marathon voter call-ins, answering people's questions for three hours.
Apparently he was feeling good because he finally admitted that there were Russia troops in Ukraine, essentially also admitting that he lied about it in the past, but we all knew that anyway.
What was more significant was that he all but accused the United States and President Obama of a secret deal with Turkey: Turkey would shoot down a Russian plane, and America would get a part of Iraq:
"We do not know it for sure and we do not know whether it was right or wrong if somebody in the Turkish authorities decided to lick Americans in a certain place.Firstly, I do not know whether Americans need it or not. Perhaps there were some agreements at a certain level, that ‘we shoot down a Russian plane and you close your eyes on it,’ and that we, let’s say, enter Iraq and occupy some part of Iraq.
I do not know, but maybe such exchange did take place, however, we do not know it for sure."
If Obama had wanted to occupy some part of Iraq, he would have done so months ago. Obama has repeatedly made it clear that he doesn't, and Putin knows that, so Putin knows that his remark is completely full of crap. Putin's remarks are simply a new lie.
Putin's technique is that when something goes well, he takes the credit, and when something goes wrong, he blames it on America. This is the same kind of technique that President Obama uses, taking credit when something goes right, and blaming President Bush when something goes wrong.
With regard to Ukraine:
"We never said that there weren’t people there [in Ukraine] dealing with certain tasks, including in the military sphere.But that doesn’t mean there are regular Russian forces there. Feel the difference."
In fact, Putin repeatedly denied that there were no military role in Ukraine, so this is an admission of past lies. Keep in mind we already know that there were thousands of Russian troops in Ukraine, because last year it was reported by multinational sources, including British and European reporters, Nato, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the U.S. State Dept.
In fact, several Russian officials were forced to admit that Russian soldiers were participating in the invasion of Ukraine, but they always insisted that they were "volunteers."
This is another joke. Last year we quoted the Moscow Times as saying:
"About 190,000 members of the 760,000-strong Russian army are currently serving upon their own volition. The rest are conscripts."
So when Russian officials refer to "volunteers," they're referring to the 190,000 "volunteers" in the Russian army. By the way, the American army is 100% "volunteers," so when we send soldiers to Afghanistan, they're just "volunteers."
Two weeks ago, I made list of several of Russia's recent lies about Ukraine and Syria: Russia lied about its invasion of Crimea, Russia lied about invading east Ukraine, Russia lied after shooting down a passenger plane over Ukraine, Russia lied about Syria's president al-Bashar Assad's use of Sarin gas on his own people, Russia lied about the purpose of its military intervention into Syria as being to attack ISIS.
A number of web site readers, including several paid Russian trolls, complained that I was being unfair repeating Russian lies. My response is that if Putin and other Russian officials keep lying over and over and over, then they can't expected to be believed in the future. I recommend that these people read the Aesop Fable about the Boy Who Cried Wolf for further information. The moral to the fable is that nobody believes a liar, even when he tells the truth. Tass (Moscow) and Moscow Times (1-Sep-2014) and Telegraph (London) and Aesop: The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Donald Trump has repeatedly praised Russia's president Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail. During his marathon voter call-in, Putin returned the favor:
"It is not our business to determine his merits, that is up to US voters. But he is the absolute leader in the presidential race. He is a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt."
So if we apply the rule that Putin never tells the truth except by accident, then we have to assume that this statement is meaningless except that Putin wants to do one two things:
Does Putin want Trump to be president, or not? We'll have to see what he says in the future. BBC
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Israel and Turkey have reached a proposed agreement to normalize relations, including the return of ambassadors to both countries, according to an Israeli official. The agreement was apparently reached at a secret meeting in Switzerland.
Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Israel after the deaths of nine Turkish citizens on May 31, 2010, in a confrontation between Israel's navy and the boat Mavi Marmara in a flotilla headed for Gaza in violation of Israel's Gaza blockade. Since then, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has specified three conditions that Israel would have to fulfill, in order to restore normal relations. First, Israel would have to apologize, and Israel did so in March 2013, under intense pressure for president Barack Obama.
Second, Israel would have to pay monetary compensation to the families of the victims. According to the Israeli report:
"The two nations agreed on a number of steps: Israel will found a compensation fund for victims of the raid on the Marmara; all charges against Israel will be cancelled; the ambassadors will be returned to work; and high-ranking Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri will be banned from entering Turkey."
Reports indicate that the compensation fund will contain $20 million, provided by Israel to Turkey.
Erdogan's third condition was the lifting of the blockade of Gaza. News reports on the agreement do not mention this condition, and it's unlikely that any such proposal would be acceptable to either Israel or Egypt. Today's Zaman (Ankara) and AP
Turkey has announced that it will build a military base in Qatar, to help the two countries confront "common enemies." This will be Turkey's first Middle East military base outside of Turkey itself. Plans are to station 3,000 ground troops, as well as air and naval units, military trainers and special operations forces.
More than other Middle East countries, Qatar has had the closest relationship with Turkey in the past. After the 2014 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, there was a major split among the Arab countries, with Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority allied against Hamas, Qatar and Turkey. ( "3-Sep-14 World View -- Mideast realignment continues following the Gaza war")
That split has largely healed since then, but Qatar and Turkey still have many common interests not always shared by other Mideast countries. They both support the Muslim Brotherhood, they both oppose the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, both have condemned Russia's intervention in Syria, and both have opposed Iran's increasing influence in the region.
According to Ahmet Demirok, Turkey's ambassador to Qatar:
"Turkey and Qatar face common problems and we are both very concerned about developments in the region and uncertain policies of other countries. We confront common enemies. At this critical time for the Middle East cooperation between us is vital."
Demirok said that the establishment of the base was a renewal of the “historic and brotherly ties” between the two countries, referring to the days of the Ottoman Empire.
Qatar is also home to the largest US air base in the Middle East, Al Udeid, which serves around 10,000 personnel. Middle East Eye and Al Bawaba and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Dec-15 World View -- Another Putin lie: America wanted Turkey to shoot down Russia's plane thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Dec-2015)
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Russia and Ukraine escalate mutual trade sanctions over occupied Crimea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia on Wednesday announced plans to launch a second electric power supply cable from Russia directly to occupied Crimea.
Crimea, which was occupied and annexed by Russia last year after its invasion of Ukraine, declared a state of emergency in November after the entire peninsula was plunged into darkness because the transmission towers (pylons) carrying electricity lines from Ukraine were sabotaged. It's believed that the perpetrators were ethnic Tatars who had lived in Crimea prior to the Russian annexation. Ukraine's government in Kiev promised to restore electricity within four days, but that was delayed because of blockades set up by the Tatars.
The Crimean Peninsula’s only land border is with Ukraine, which means that Russia cannot use trucks to transport goods from Russia to Crimea. However, Russia's territory of Krasnodar has its own peninsula that stretches into the Black Sea, below the Sea of Asov, so that it's only a few miles across the Kerch strait to the eastern edge of Crimea. So Russia has is building its electric cables across the Kerch strait, and has also been ferrying supplies in the same way.
Since Russia annexed Crimea last year, Ukraine and Russia have been in tit-for-tat escalating sanctions with each other. Russia has announced an embargo on food imports from Ukraine, to begin in January. Ukraine announced that it was planning to end all commercial trade with occupied Crimea, and this week on Wednesday, Ukraine officially announced that in 30 days, "all supplies of work, goods and services from the temporary occupied territory to the other territory of Ukraine and/or from the territory of Ukraine to the temporary occupied territory of Ukraine, except for personal belongings of citizens, socially important foods and humanitarian assistance, are banned."
After the electricity supplies from Ukraine to Crimea had been cut off, there were warnings that Russia might retaliate by haling coal shipments from Russia, resulting in winter blackouts all over Ukraine. Some observers are suggesting that a secret backroom deal occurred -- Ukraine would resume electricity supplies to Crimea in exchange for resumed Russian coal shipments to Ukraine. Jamestown and Russia Today and International Business Times and Reuters
The United States announced the sale of $1.83 billion in weapons to Taiwan, under the terms of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which was passed to ensure that Taiwan can maintain a credible defense in case of an attack from China.
The timing of the announcement is interesting for two reasons.
First, tensions between the US and China in the South China Sea have been increasing. China has claimed the entire South China Sea, and is annexing regions that have historically belonged to other nations. China appears to be in the process of building a massive military base on artificial islands, and the US and other countries have been confronting China simply by sailing and flying in the vicinity of the artificial islands, which are considered international waters, despite loud and aggressive Chinese warnings not to do so.
Second, Taiwan is about to hold new elections on January 16, and the current governing party, the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) party, is expected to lose to the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). According to China, Taiwan is Chinese sovereign territory, and China has frequently threatened military action if Taiwan's leaders take any steps towards independence from China. China and the KMT party are very friendly towards each other, while China and the DPP feel vitriolic hatred towards each other.
In view of the expected change of government, it's thought that the US announced the arms sale now, since after January 16 it would be seen as a hostile signal to China that the US was rewarding the DPP for its victory.
Even so, China expressed its fury at the arms sale. China's Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang on Wednesday summoned Kaye Lee, chargé d'affaires of the U.S. embassy in China, and made this statement:
"Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. China strongly opposes the U.S. arms sale to Taiwan.The arms sale severely goes against international law and the basic norms of international relations, severely goes against the principles in the three China-U.S. joint communiques, and severely harms China's sovereignty and security interests.
To safeguard our national interests, China has decided to take necessary measures, including imposing sanctions against the companies involved in the arms sale.
No one can shake the firm will of the Chinese government and people to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to oppose foreign interference."
However, according to one Chinese expert, the weapons will not make any substantial change because the weapons are outdated. LA Times and Xinhua
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Dec-15 World View -- Despite China's disapproval, US will sell $1.83 billion in weapons to Taiwan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Dec-2015)
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Japan and South Korea leaders attempt to rewrite history textbooks
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Japan's prime minister Abe Shinzo is proposing that school history textbooks be rewritten to stop over-emphasizing Japan's colonial past, and stop presenting a negative image of Japan, and instead to instill a sense of national pride among Japanese citizens.
South Korea's president Park Guen-hye is proposing that school history textbooks be rewritten so that they won't be so ideologically biased, and instead to instill a sense of pride among the South Korean citizens.
This appeal to nationalism in both countries is typical of the grown in nationalism in countries around the world, as the world enters a generational Crisis era, as the survivors of World War II continue to die off.
But for both Abe and Park, these attempts to rewrite history go beyond their country's nationalism, and are extremely personal.
Abe's grandfather, Nobusuko Kishi, worked under prime minister Hideki Tojo during World War II, enslaving thousands of Koreans and Chinese, and ended up serving three years in jail as a Class A war criminal, before later becoming the prime minister of Japan in 1957. Since assuming office, Abe declared his intention to restore the honour of his grandfather as well as other wartime veterans.
Park's father, Park Chung-hee, led South Korea from 1961 until 1979, when he was assassinated. He brutally crushed democracy protests during his reign in which thousands were killed, and also carried out massive human rights violations in the name of economic development in South Korea. Park believes that her father's history should more greatly emphasize his accomplishments.
All of these proposed changes are extremely controversial, and many people and scholars in both countries strongly oppose attempts by the government's leaders to revise school textbooks to reflect their own biases. Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS - India) and BBC and Japan Times and Korea Herald
A lot of people believe that Russia and China are close allies, because they both annex other countries' territories, because they both support each other in the United Nations Security Council and veto the same things, and because they both oppose the West in general and the United States in particular in many areas.
Countering that view is that Ukraine is the world's fourth-largest arms exporter (behind the U.S., Russia and China), and that China is one of Ukraine's most important customers.
Ukraine and China have just agreed that a Ukraine firm will open manufacturing plant in Odessa next year to manufacture China's Hongdu L-15 light attack aircraft.
There are many ironies in this situation. When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, many Soviet military assets were split up among the 15 newly independent countries. Since then, Ukraine has continued manufacturing jet engines and supplying them to Russia for some of Russia's warplanes.
However, after Russia illegally invaded, occupied and annexed Crimea in March 2014, Ukraine embargoed exports of the jet engines to Russia. Now those same jet engines will be components of the Hongdu L-15 warplanes being sold to China. Russia in the meantime has had to develop and manufacture its own variants of the same jet engines.
It's not just military hardware that China is importing from Ukraine. 90% of China's imported corn and 95% of imported sunflower oil comes from Ukraine. There are plans for China to invest in Ukraine's energy industry, infrastructure and construction.
As regular readers know, I've been writing for years that Generational Dynamics predicts that Russia will be our ally and China will be our enemy in the next world war. In brief, China will be allied with Pakistan, while the US will be allied with India, which will be allied with Russia and Iran. (See "15-Jul-15 World View -- Arab views of Iran nuclear deal")
Since being isolated internationally after invading Ukraine, and because of crashing oil prices, Russia's economy has been collapsing, and Russia has desperately turned to China for help, signing energy deals highly favorable to the Chinese. China's growing relationship with Ukraine illustrates the China really doesn't care what Russia thinks, and history shows that Russia and China are much more certain to be enemies than allies. Jamestown and Kiev.ua (Ukraine) and Xinhua
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Dec-15 World View -- China and Ukraine develop closer ties, as Russia looks on thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Dec-2015)
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Egyptian scholar: The original al-Aqsa mosque may not have been in Jerusalem
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In a recent TV interview, Egyptian scholar Youssef Ziedan said that the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Palestine is not the Al-Aqsa Mosque referred to in the Quran. Citing ancient scholars, Ziedan said that the Al-Haram Mosque and Al-Aqsa Mosque were "on the road from Mecca to Ta'if." "Neither we nor the [Jews] have anything to do with it," he said. "It's all politics."
Ziedan is quoted as saying:
"Hamiqdash ["the temple"] is a Hebrew word. This is a Hebrew concept. The Christian [name of Jerusalem] is "Aelia." The Al-Aqsa Mosque, in my view, is not the one [in Jerusalem]. It cannot be. ...Our ancient religious scholars ... said that the Prophet Muhammad, ... went to the city of Tai'f. On the road to Ta'if, there were two mosques: Al-Adna Mosque ["the nearest"] and Al-Aqsa Mosque ["the farthest"]. The Quranic verse [17:1] ... says: "Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from the Al-Haram Mosque to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the surroundings of which We have blessed." At that time there was no prayers yet. So it was a place of worship. The place was well known. Otherwise, its location would have been specified. Therefore, ... these two mosques were on the road from Mecca to Ta'if. ...
The Al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] did not exist back then, and the city was not called "Al-Quds." It was called Aelia, and it had no mosques. ... The Al-Aqsa Mosque represents a political game by [Caliph] Abd Al-Malik ibn Marwan."
So I did some checking on Caliph Abd Al-Malik ibn Marwan. Abd al Malik was Caliph from 685 to 705, several decades after the death of Mohammed. He was clearly not only a conquering military leader, but also a politician. He centralized power in the capital at Damascus, he was responsible for establishing Arabic as a standard language, he centralized the control of minting money by standardizing coins of remarkable uniformity, and he even established a postal service.
He also oversaw the construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which celebrated the location of the ascent of Prophet Mohammed and proclaimed Islamic dominance over Jerusalem, the holy city of Judaism and Christianity. The Dome of the Rock was also meant to compete with the great Byzantine holy sites in the region.
It's this last accomplishment that's being challenged by Egyptian scholar Youssef Ziedan. If I understand what Ziedan is saying, Abd Al-Malik was a politician who named Jerusalem as the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque and the ascent of Mohammed for purely political reasons, when the real al-Aqsa Mosque was hundreds of miles to the south, near Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
It's an interesting theory, and makes for good political talking points during the various "peace process" negotiations. But whether it's true or not, it won't make any difference. Jerusalem is the epicenter of the growing conflict between Jews and Palestinians, and nothing that Ziedan says is going to change that. Memri and Oxford Islamic Studies and Metropolitan Museum of Art and Islam Laws
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has repeatedly said that "The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world."
In pursuit of that pledge, the U.S. has repeatedly flown, sailed and operated close to China's artificial islands in the South China Sea, despite warnings from China. Apparently Australia has done the same.
Last week, BBC reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, with a small crew, hired a plane in the Philippines, and flew past China's artificial islands. At the first set of artificial islands, the pilot got nervous and turned away. After hours of negotiation, the pilot agreed to stay on course in traveling near the second set of artificial islands.
There was a radio conversation between the Chinese Navy and the pilot:
China: "Foreign military aircraft in north-west of Meiji Reef, this is the Chinese Navy, you are threatening the security of our station! In order to prevent miscalculation leave this area immediately!"Pilot: "Chinese Navy, this is Philippine civilian aircraft en route to Palawan, carrying civilian passengers. We are not a military aircraft, we are a civilian single-engine aircraft."
China: "Foreign military aircraft in north of Meiji Reef, this is the Chinese Navy!"
The loud and aggressive Chinese warnings continued until the plane left the region.
According to Wingfield-Hayes:
Below us we could see the lagoon teeming with ships, large and small. On the new land, cement plants and the foundations of new buildings.Then, as we rounded a cloud, we got the first clear view of the new runway China is building here, just 140 nautical miles from the Philippine coast. I did a quick calculation. A Chinese fighter jet taking off from here could be over the Philippine coast in as little as eight or nine minutes."
He adds, "[China] is building new runways, high-powered radar stations and deep-water port facilities." It's clear that China fully intends to militarize these artificial islands. And once they're completed, there's little doubt that they'll be used for military action against neighboring countries. As has been clear for years, China is preparing for preemptive war, and will trigger World War III unless Russia beats them to it. What's most worrying is that the Chinese are deluding themselves into believing that, in the end, no one will challenge their military takeover of the South China Sea, and that there won't be a war. This is a disastrous self-delusion that China and the whole world will regret. BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Dec-15 World View -- BBC reporter confronts China's military in South China Sea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(15-Dec-2015)
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Central African Republic elections may worsen Muslim-Christian violence
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The fall of Constantinople and the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire to the Muslim Ottomans in 1453 triggered a major turning point in Russia. Russia would become an Orthodox Christian state, and the protector of Jerusalem from the Ottomans.
The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was a bloody repudiation of that decision, resulting in the near-destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church and the declaration that Russia and the Soviet Union were an atheist state. The Russian Orthodox Church only began to seriously revive again during World War II, when Josef Stalin discovered that he needed the help of the Church to fight the Nazis. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Vladimir Putin has led the way for the full restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and Russia's government. (See "Russian Orthodox Church reunites 80 years after Bolshevik Revolution" from 2007.)
In 1997, Russia enacted the Freedom of Conscience Law, which enacted separation of church and state, making Russia a secular state, not an atheist state, with freedom of religion. Since then, the law has been amended so much that there is little freedom of religion now, except for the Russian Orthodox Church.
Now Russia's Duma is going farther. Led by Abbot Serapion, the deputy head of the Church's missionary department, the Duma is considering going after "sects and destructive cults" which challenge Russia's national security.
In the past, "destructive totalitarian sects" referred to Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, the Unification Church (Moonies), and Hare Krishna, and were thought to be undermining the state.
But today, the main enemies, according to Serapion, are the "Protestants (Christians - Baptists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, Adventists), Jehovah's Witnesses, in the company of neopagans and Wahhabi extremists." While the Russian Orthodox Church fully supported the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, many of these "sects and cults" opposed the Ukraine actions, making them enemies of the state.
According to the new proposed amendments to the 1997 law, any group of ten or more believers must notify the authorities of their existence, lists of members, meeting places, and the amount of income.
It appears that Russia is abandoning its secular identity and returning to its traditional identity prior to the Bolshevik Revolution -- a Russian Orthodox state.
In the current world, there's talk of an Islamic State, a Muslim state, a Jewish state, a Palestinian state, a Hindu state, and so forth. So a Russian Orthodox state fits right into this increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic world as the generational Crisis era deepens. Eurasia Review - Paul Goble and Slavic Center for Law and Justice (SCLJ) - Roman Lunkin - Part I translation and Part II translation and CNS News
Central African Republic (CAR) voted on a new constitution on Sunday, but there were many problems with the referendum, and combined with the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for on 27 December, it's feared that the elections will cause more anger and more violence. Heavy gunfire has already broken out in the Muslim district of Bangui, the capital city, during the referendum.
It was just two weeks ago that Pope Francis visited Bangui to propose "a renewed attention to the idea of a respectful urban integration, as opposed to elimination, paternalism, indifference or mere containment." ( "28-Nov-15 World View -- Pope Francis to visit Central African Republic in middle of civil war")
The two elections were supposed to be the mechanism by which this "respectful urban integration" would take place -- that is, the Muslims and the Christians would stop killing each other.
However, the elections have already been postponed from the original scheduled date of October 27, and they are still fraught with severe problems:
As I've written in detail several times in the past ( "2-Oct-15 World View -- Violence resurges in Central African Republic crisis war"), CAR is deep into a generation Crisis era and in the middle of a generational crisis war. A new constitution is little more than a piece of paper, and it's not going to stop the huge generational forces that are pushing the Muslims and Christians into this war of mutual extermination. The war will not end until it's run it's course, and apparently still has a long way to go. BBC and African Arguments Forum
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Dec-15 World View -- Russian Duma goes after Protestant churches as 'sects and cults' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(14-Dec-2015)
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Worst violence in months in Burundi's capital city Bujumbura
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Residents in several neighborhoods of Bujumbura, that capital city of Burundi, were horrified to leave their homes early Saturday morning and find dozens of corpses scattered in the streets. The military said that they had killed 79 "enemies" who had attack their army base, killing eight soldiers and policemen.
This is the worst violence in Bujumbura since two-term President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans to seek an unconstitutional third term, and then won an election that many observers have said was rigged. Analysts say nearly 250 people have been killed since then, and that some 200,000 residents have fled to nearby countries to escape the violence.
As we wrote just three days ago ( "10-Dec-15 World View -- Burundi's Nkurunziza continues down Mugabe-Assad path of genocide"), Nkurunziza appears to be using an increasing amount of violence to stay in power illegally, and may be going down the same path as Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, both of whom have used massive genocidal violence to stay in power. VOA and AP
China appears on the path of building a massive military presence by means of the artificial islands it has created around the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
China has been annexing regions in the South China Sea that have historically belonged to other countries, and continues to use belligerent military operations to enforce its seizures. China has claimed the entire South China Sea, including regions historically belonging to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines. China's claims are rejected by almost everyone outside of China, and China refuses to submit them to the United Nations court deciding such matters, apparently knowing that they would lose.
China already has one airfield, and satellite photos show work on two or three additional airstrips. Having military airbases in this region would significantly change the balance of power in the region.
The airfields would allow Chinese aircraft to refuel, repair and if necessary, rearm without having to fly the more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the nearest Chinese air base on Hainan island. On the other hand, they would also be highly vulnerable to bombing in an actual conflict.
Just as important, the airbases give China military control over the vast mineral deposits and fishing fields in the region. According to one analyst, "If we start to see satellite evidence of fuel storage going in on a large scale in the artificial islands, that will be the clearest indicator that China is planning to develop them as active air bases." International Business Times and AP
China's continuing rapid military expansion in the South China Sea is causing countervailing responses on the part of several countries.
The United States has been challenging China by sending surveillance planes and ships into the regions near the artificial islands. China has angrily warned that such incursions are illegal, but Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has repeatedly said that "The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world."
On Monday of last week, Singapore and the U.S. issued a joint statement that a P8 Poseidon spy plane would be deployed in Singapore. The move is clearly aimed at China, and is likely to anger China.
In another development targeting China, Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe has visited India, and a joint statement with India's prime minister Narendra Modi said:
"In view of critical importance of the sea lanes of communications in the South China Sea for regional energy security and trade and commerce which underpins continued peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific, the two Prime Ministers noting the developments in the South China Sea called upon all States to avoid unilateral actions that could lead to tensions in the region."
Modi and Abe have issued joint statements before, but this is the first time that they've explicitly mentioned the South China Sea which, once again, is going to infuriate China.
In response to a similar statement in September, China issued this statement, which describes "The Five Persistences":
"China enjoys indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha (Spratly) Islands and their adjacent waters as well as sovereign rights and jurisdiction over relevant seabed and subsoil,” the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs had told HT in a written statement. ...We have always adhered to the principle of 'Five Persistence,' which stands for
- persistence in maintaining the peace and stability of South China Sea;
- persistence in settling disputes with the party concerned according to the International laws via bilateral negotiation based on respect for historical facts;
- persistence in relying on rule-based system to control disputes;
- persistence in sustaining the freedom of flight and navigation in South China Sea;
- persistence in practicing a win-win policy via cooperation."
It sounds good, and one might almost be tempted to believe some of it, if it weren't for China's aggressive military buildup and belligerent military actions in the South China Sea. China's message has always been, as far as I can tell: We want to have harmonious relations with you. Just do exactly as we order you to do, and we'll have harmonious relations. If you don't, then we'll kill you, and after that we'll have harmonious relations that way. Reuters and Indian Express and Hindustan Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Dec-15 World View -- India, China, U.S. react to China's S. China Sea military expansion thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Dec-2015)
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The mirror images: Donald Trump and Barack Obama
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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With the dispute between Russia and Turkey showing no signs of ending, Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has called Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane a "casus belli" (justification for war), although he added that full-scale war is not planned. ( "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars")
Russia already has soldiers stationed in a Russian military base in Armenia, near the border with Turkey, and those Russian troops have been put on high alert. Seven Russian Mi-24P attack helicopters and some Mi-8 transport helicopters have been delivered to another Russian military base in Armenia.
Even before the downing of the Russian plane, plans had already been announced for a unified air defense system, where Russia would extend its air defense system to Armenian airspace in order to contain Turkey in particular, and Nato more generally.
To add to the tensions, the day after the plane was downed, Russia's Parliament introduced a bill that any individual who denies that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915 is to be fined 500,000 rubles (more than $7,500). The Armenian genocide accusations have been infuriating Turks for decades.
Armenia is a long-time ally of Russia, but Armenia is concerned that it's going to be dragged into the Russia-Turkey against its will. According to Manvel Sargsyan head of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies, Armenia's close relationship with Russia has gone on for many years, but:
"Now, it causes big problems. At this point we can not abandon that policy; instead, the desire to create a unified air defense system will further those relations. Armenia has allowed Russia to use its air defense units. ... Of course, the new situation in the region, and will deepen these processes, which contains many dangers."
Even worse, Armenia is being blackmailed into becoming a pawn in the conflict, because Turkey will encourage its ally Azerbaijan to provoke Armenia via the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. (See "7-Dec-15 World View -- Azerbaijan faces rising radical Shia Islamist insurgency")
According to Sargsyan:
"One thing is clear. The conflict that arose between Russia and Turkey ... makes use of the various factors involved. And if Russia so demonstrably raises the issue of the [Armenian] Genocide, it is natural that Turkey should remember the [Nagorno-]Karabakh issue to the parties involved in the conflict. Firstly, this is blackmail, but it would have meant that both sides are trying to involve Armenia in the conflict. And it creates a difficult situation for Armenia, taking into account Armenia's and Russia's strategic relationships, attachment to each other."
Sargsyan added that Turkey had hoped that Nato would defend Turkey's claim that the Russian plane had entered Turkey's airspace before being shot down. According to Sargsyan, Nato's member states were opposed to defending Turkey, and so it was left to Nato's Secretary General to make a statement defending Turkey. Thus, Turkey has created problems for Nato.
Now, according to Sargsyan, Turkey "is doing everything in order to be able to come out of this hole," and so it's involving other countries, including Armenia. Jamestown and Deutsche Welle and Armenia Now (26-Nov) and First News (Armenia, 1-Dec) (Trans)
Obama and Trump are mirror images of each other, and both are embarrassments to the United States.
Years ago, John Kenneth Galbraith developed the concept of "countervailing power" in labor markets -- large corrupt corporations give rise to large corrupt labor unions. In the same sense, Obama has given rise to Trump.
Obama never accomplishes anything, but never tires of implying that the entire country is mean and racist, never tires of inciting black violence against cops, never tires of disparaging and offending Christians, never tires of blaming innocent gun owners for the crimes of Islamist terrorists, or of making moronic remarks like blaming terrorism on climate change, while his foreign policy has been one disaster after another.
Trump has no clue what's going on in the world, and thinks that foreign policy consists of insulting any racial or religious group or person he dislikes by treating them as he would any incompetent jerks who work for him. His money has made him powerful, and his power has gone to his head and made him completely corrupt. He thinks that he can buy anything or fire anyone, leaving him free to be as destructive and offensive as he wants to other people. His recent statements about banning Muslims are a disgrace to America. However, people are supporting Trump because they're sick and tired of being constantly offended, insulted and lectured to by Obama, while accomplishing nothing.
Obama is the cause of Trump, and is to blame for Trump, by the principle of "countervailing power." But it's neither Obama nor Trump, but the rest of us who will have to pay the consequences. EconLib: John Kenneth Galbraith: Countervailing Power
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Dec-15 World View -- Russia and Turkey try to 'blackmail' Armenia into their conflict thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Dec-2015)
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Greece transports migrants from Macedonian border back to Athens
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On Wednesday morning, Greece used 45 buses to transport 2,400 migrants from the Macedonia border back to Athens, dropping the migrants off in front of the Taekwondo stadium, one of the decaying relics left over from the ill-fated 2004 Athens Summer Olympics. The Taekwondo stadium is reportedly nearing maximum capacity and other asylum seekers are being taken to other stadiums or to Ellinikon, the former Athens airport.
Athens has been scrambling to find shelter for migrants, and began using old Olympics stadiums in October. The stadiums are ideal solutions, because they're athletic venues, so they have such things as toilets and showers.
Many people blame cost overruns and delays of the $10 billion Athens 2004 Olympics as major contributors to Greece's debt crisis in the last few years. Once the games ended, there was no money left for investment and development, so the stadiums have been overrun with weeds.
The migrant crisis has given new life to the stadiums. According to Manos Eleftheriou, deputy mayor of Galatsi, "They move on every couple of days. Here we give them food, medical care, clothing. We provide theater, music, Spanish food, country music. We're trying to show them the diversity of the Europe they are going to." Kathimerini and CityLab (11-Aug-2014) and LA Times (12-Nov)
Greek police have removed about 2,400 migrants stuck on the border with Macedonia, and has transported them by bus back to Athens, housing them in the decaying stadiums left over from the 2004 Summer Olympics.
In months past, migrants would travel from Turkey to Greece to Macedonia for the trip north, hoping to reach the imagined Nirvana of Germany or Sweden. According to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), nearly 770,000 migrants have entered Greece so far this year -- 58% men, 26% children, 16% women. About 3,500 have drowned this year.
The flow has been slowing down as winter approaches, but only slightly. An average of 3,800 per day arrived so far in December, compared to 4,560 per day in November.
Almost all of them arrived first by paying a human smuggler to transport them from Turkey, across the Aegean Sea, to one of Greece's islands. This trip is fraught with danger. A major international news story on Thursday is about a man who lost his wife and seven children because the human smuggler lied and put all of them on a boat that could not survive the Aegean Sea.
Once the migrants reach the Greek islands, Greece has been ferrying them to the continent, and from there they've been making their way to the Macedonian border.
Much of Europe has been overwhelmed by the massive flow of migrants. Many people blame Time Magazine Woman of the Year German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the size of the flow, because of her remarks months ago that migrants would be welcome in Germany.
Overwhelmed countries have been reacting by erecting razor-wire fences and imposing border controls, making the trip north harder and harder for migrants.
Macedonia has now erected its own fence and border controls to allow only migrants from war-torn Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan to pass through. Thousands of others are being designated "economic migrants," and they've been stuck on the border for weeks. Greece has been transporting them back to Athens. However, they're not being imprisoned in Athens, and they're free to leave. AFP and Washington Post and AFP
The migrants being transported back to Athens are from countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Morocco, Somalia, Eritrea and Algeria. Since these countries are not a war, Macedonia considers their citizens to be economic migrants, not refugees.
While the migrants transported back to Athens are not being imprisoned, they face difficult choices. They have several options:
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Dec-15 World View -- Decaying stadiums from 2004 Athens Olympics have new lives housing migrants thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(11-Dec-2015)
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EU-Burundi peace talks collapse amid worries of new Hutu-Tutsi genocide
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In Burundi's capital city Bujumbura in the last 24 hours, police and security courses controlled by Hutu president Pierre Nkurunziza killed seven additional people who opposed Nkurunziza's unconstitutional third term. At least 240 people have been killed since April, when Nkurunziza announced his candidacy, and about 215,000 others, thought to be almost all Tutsis, have fled to neighboring countries. The latest killings included the wife and child of an assistant pastor of an Anglican Church.
I've heard several analysts say that there are no signs of anything like a repeat of the 1994 Rwanda-Burundi Hutu-Tutsi genocide, and that's absolutely correct. It's only been 21 years since event occurred, a genocide so horrific that it's considered one of the worst of the century, comparable to the Nazi Holocaust. Since only 21 years have past, there are many, many people still alive who are in the generations that survived that event, and who will not let it happen again.
However, there may be a different kind of genocide in progress, far smaller, and far less memorable, but a genocide nonetheless. As I've written in the past, it appears increasingly that Nkurunziza is planning to copy the technique of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is best known for his 1984 genocidal pacification campaign known as "Operation Gukurahundi" (The rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rain). During that campaign, accomplished with the help of Mugabe's 5th Brigade, trained by North Korea, tens of thousands of people, mostly from the Ndebele tribe, were tortured and slaughtered. So far, Nkurunziza hasn't gone as far as Mugabe, but he is systematically slaughtering and torturing peaceful protesters from the Tutsi tribe who oppose his grab for power.
We see the same thing happening in Syria, where Shia/Alawite genocidal monster president Bashar al-Assad transformed peaceful protests in 2011 into a genocide against innocent Sunnis. Like Nkurunziza and Mugabe, he's willing to slaughter any number of people, just to stay in power.
Nkurunziza is starting on the same genocidal path as Mugabe and al-Assad, but hasn't yet gone so far that he can't turn back. However, there are no signs that he will. AP and Reuters
Despite the Burundi government's release of 100 jailed political prisoners, as a kind of good-will gesture to the EU, negotiations between the European Union and Burundi representatives collapsed on Wednesday, according to a European Commission statement:
"The European Union considers that the essential elements have not been met by the Republic of Burundi.Following the consultations held in Brussels on 8 December, the European Union took note of the replies given by the Burundi Government and its commitment to provide clarifications to questions and to accelerate certain judicial procedures. Nevertheless, the European Union considers the positions expressed do not help to improve the breaches of the essential elements of its partnership with the Republic of Burundi."
The "essential elements" referenced include progress on human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law specified in an EU-Burundi agreement. Presumably "not killing peaceful protesters" is in there somewhere as well.
According to Adama Dieng, the United Nations special adviser on the prevention of genocide, there is a serious risk that if the violence in Burundi isn't stopped there could be a civil war:
"I would not say that tomorrow there will be a genocide in Burundi. But there is a serious risk that if we do not stop the ongoing violence, this may end with a civil war and following such civil war everything is possible."
Now, everyone who reads my World View columns regularly knows how cynical and jaded I am, so you won't be surprised to read that I'm the Christmas Grinch who points out that although we all know how wonderful the United Nations is, and although Adama Dieng may be a truly wonderful, decent person, and although his mission statement is wonderfully benevolent:
"The Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide acts as a catalyst to raise awareness of the causes and dynamics of genocide, to alert relevant actors where there is a risk of genocide, and to advocate and mobilize for appropriate action.The Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect leads the conceptual, political, institutional and operational development of the Responsibility to Protect."
But as wonderful as Dieng and his mission are, his budget depends on how many genocides and almost-genocides and potential-genocides he can identify, so it's to his benefit to exaggerate the possibility of genocide.
As I wrote above, a 1994-style civil war is not occurring, and from the point of view of Generational Dynamics can't occur during a generational Awakening era. The 1994 genocide came "from the people": For example, a Hutu who has lived next door to a Tutsi family in peace, and their children had played together and all that, suddenly picks up a machete, goes next door, kills and disembodies the husband and children, then rapes the wife and kills and dismembers her. Nothing like that is happening in Burundi, or could possibly happen, since the survivors of the 1994 war won't let it happen. Today's genocide is all political, all from Nkurunziza.
The UN has been pitifully irrelevant in stopping the genocides in Rwanda-Burundi and Syria. Dieng won't stop it, unless Nkurunziza decides he wants to stop it. Episcopal Digital Network and UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Dec-15 World View -- Burundi's Nkurunziza continues down Mugabe - Assad path of genocide thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Dec-2015)
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About 700 women from Tunisia are thought to have joined ISIS
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The foreign fighter phenomenon in Syria and Iraq is a truly global phenomenon, with at least 86 countries worldwide seeing one of their citizens or residents travel to Syria to fight for extremist groups there, primarily for the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). (Paragraph corrected. 9-Dec)
The number of foreign fighters traveling to Syria has doubled in the last year, reaching 27,000-31,000.
But the flow is neither uniform by region nor by country, regardless of the pool of residents who may be susceptible to the Islamic State’s appeal. That's because The motivation for people to join violent extremist groups in Syria and Iraq remains more personal than political. There have been "hotbeds of recruitment" scattered around the world, which exist because of the personal nature of recruitment.
Some of these hotbeds are:
As hotbeds develop, recruitment through social media becomes less important than via direct human contact, as clusters of friends and neighbors persuade each other to travel separately or together to join the Islamic State. Soufan Group (PDF) and The National (UAE)
Tunisia has suffered two major terrorist attacks this year. Terrorists attacked the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March, and a gunman disguised as a tourist opened fire at a Tunisian hotel in Sousse on Friday, killing 37 people. ( "27-Jun-15 World View -- Terror attacks in Kuwait, France, Somalia and Tunisia highlight growing sectarian war")
Of all the countries in the world supplying foreign fighters to ISIS in Syria, Tunisia has supplied the most, between 5,000 and 6,000.
According to Tunisia's minister for women Samira Merai, many of those foreign fighters are girls and women:
"We have noted a development in the phenomenon of terrorism. Today there are 700 (Tunisian) women in Syria, and there are women in Tunisian prisons [on terrorism charges]."
In Soviet times, authorities used a registration system that made it almost impossible for people to move from one region to another without approval from the Soviet authorities. This meant that rural residents stayed in the villages, and migration between Soviet countries was prevented. All of this is now changing quickly, threatening Russian security. In Russia's North Caucasus provinces, young Muslims can move from villages to larger cities or to Moscow, leaving them disconnected from their traditional ethnic communities and then easily mobilized by radical Islamists.
The form of "migration" that is generating the most concern involves those who have gone to the Middle East to fight for ISIS or other radical groups and who are then returning home, where they will continue their fight or recruit others. Russian officials say that there are only 500 North Caucasians in the ranks of the ISIS, but local experts say the figure is 5,000 or even more.
Russian officials have not yet figured out a good strategy to cope with the jihadists returning from Syria and ISIS. With unemployment very high and wages very low in the North Caucasus, draconian counterterrorist operations are proving counterproductive, driving more North Caucasians into the arms of the radicals rather than breaking their will. Jamestown/Paul Goble
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Dec-15 World View -- Number of foreign fighters joining ISIS in Syria doubles to 31,000 thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Dec-2015)
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Kazakhstan may be forced to choose between Russia and Turkey
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Oil prices fell over 5% on Monday, with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prices crashing below $40 per barrel to $37.65.
The oil markets have changed substantially in the last few days, because a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) collapsed on Friday, without reaching any agreement on capping production levels.
Historically, OPEC members have collectively owned about two-thirds of the world’s proven petroleum reserves and account for two-fifths of world oil production. OPEC was formed in 1960 in order to gain control over oil prices by limiting the production of oil. It gained notoriety by tripling oil prices late in 1973, during and after the Yom Kippur war between Egypt and Israel, and continuing to raise prices throughout the remainder of the 1970s.
OPEC has had its ups and downs over the years, but now appears to be falling apart completely, mainly because of Iran's nuclear deal with the west. Iran expects to the West to lift sanctions that have prevented Iran from selling oil. As a result, Iran plans to come to market with a tsunami of oil next year, which may push the price of oil down into the 20s.
Up till now, one of the main factors in the fall of oil prices has been the fracking (hydraulic fracturing) revolution in the United States, which initially created the oil glut that caused prices to decline from a high of more than $110 in June 2014.
Iran and other OPEC members wanted to Saudi Arabia to boost oil prices by cutting its production. But the Saudis have been saying for a couple of years that they are going to continue full production in order to put the US drillers out of business. Fracking isn't profitable unless the price of oil is above $60, and the strategy has been working, as U.S. rig counts have fallen substantially.
Saudi Arabia at last week's OPEC meeting had proposed to reduce output provided that everyone else did as well. "We cannot cut alone," said an official. "Everyone has to contribute to that – Iran, Iraq, and the rest outside OPEC." However, Iran and Russia rejected the plan.
With sanctions lifted, Iran expects its own oil production to surge. Iran's oil minister said that setting production levels "is our right and anyone cannot limit us. ... [W]e do not expect our colleagues in OPEC to put pressure on us. ... It is not acceptable, it’s not fair."
That was the end of any hope for a deal. Now, "Everyone does whatever they want," according to the oil minister of Iran, which plans to increase exports by a million barrels a day next year.
The huge fall in oil prices has been disastrous for the economies of oil producing countries, including Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria. As I've been writing for over ten years, Generational Dynamics predicts that the world is in a deflationary spiral, and the collapse in oil prices, and prices of other commodities, appears to be accelerating that deflationary spiral. Oil Price News and Bloomberg and CNN and CNBC
On the one hand, Kazakhstan is a member of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which also includes Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, and of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia is Kazakhstan’s largest trade partner.
On the other hand, in the last ten years, Turkey's businesses have invested $1.8 billion in about 1500 businesses in the Kazakhstan economy, particularly in the areas of construction, retail commerce, the processing industry and pharmaceuticals.
Kazakhstan is a Turkic country, and was one of the republics of the Soviet Union. When it collapsed in 1991, Turkey was the first country to recognize Kazakhstan's independence.
So Kazakhstan in a difficult situation, and stands to lose from the Russia-Turkey conflict, no matter what it does.
The worst case scenario for Kazakhstan is that war breaks out, and Turkey closes the Turkish straits (Bosporus and Dardanelles channels) -- the waterways that connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea -- to both Russia and Kazakhstan. ( "4-Dec-15 World View -- Russia and Turkey increasingly on a war footing")
Like Turkey and Russia, Kazakhstan is one of the countries that border the Caspian Sea, and most Kazakh oil is exported to the world market through the Turkish straits, so their close would be a catastrophe. That's why Kazakhstan is trying to remain neutral between the countries, and is struggling to formulate a coherent message that refrains from offending either side. We'll have to see how long that will work. Jamestown
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Dec-15 World View -- Oil prices crash and OPEC collapses over Iran-Saudi rivalry thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Dec-2015)
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Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh surges again
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On November 26, Azerbaijan officials killed five "radical Islamists" and arrested 32 others, all members of the radical "Movement for Muslim Unity," in the village of Nardaran, near the capital city Baku, for allegedly plotting a coup to establish the "Sharia State of Azerbaijan."
It sounds like a familiar story that you've read over and over since the "Arab awakening" began on 2011, but there's one big difference: The radical Islamists are Shia Muslims, and the Movement for Muslim Unity is a Shia organization.
Azerbaijan's population is about 80% Shia Muslim, 15% Sunni Muslim and 3% Christian. The government is secular. Nardaran is an extremely poor village, and a stronghold for Shia Muslim Islamists.
On November 25, the Azerbaijani police arrested Taleh Bagirzadeh (also known as Bagirov), leader of the Movement for Muslim Unity. As many as 500 residents of Nardaran came out to the city’s main square to protest his arrest and demand his release. Clashes with the police broke out, resulting in five deaths among the demonstrators and two among the police; 14 people were arrested. The city residents then threw up barricades and demanded negotiations about those arrested and the return of the bodies of the dead. At that point, the authorities shut off power and telephone lines to Nardaran.
The charges were:
"An armed radical Islamic group was preparing a series of acts of provocation, terrorist attacks and mass riots. The interior ministry has taken the necessary measures to neutralize this group. ... [They were] planning a forcible change of the constitutional order and the introduction of Sharia law in the country."
Jamestown and AFP and Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Ironically, Azerbaijan also has a Sunni Islamist problem. There are communities in Azerbaijan’s north where the Salafist influence is on the rise. Although Sunnis are a small percentage of the population, it's believed that hundreds of them have been to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) to fight the Shia/Alawite regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. The fear is that they'll return to Azerbaijan with their newly developed terrorist skills and use it against their Azeri Shia institutions.
In recent years, developments in Azerbaijan have favored the growth of both Shia and Sunni Islamists insurgencies. Poverty is extensive. Corruption is widespread, and the gap between rich and poor is growing wider every day. The government has become increasingly oppressive, muzzling non-governmental organization representatives, independent journalists and rights activists, most of whom happen to be committed secularists.
Azerbaijan’s "rust city" of Sumgayit is a hotbed of Sunni Islamic radicals that is thought to have supplied hundreds of jihadists to ISIS. Towns in northern Azerbaijan near the border with Russia’s Dagestan, a region long troubled by Islamic militancy, also are a frequent source of Syria-bound jihadists.
Azerbaijan would be an attractive target for returning ISIS terrorists. It is one of the few countries in the world with a Shia Muslim majority population. On a geopolitical level, going after Azerbaijan would also seem attractive for the ISIS, given the country's links to Russia, the United States and Iran, three countries that are among the ISIS's chief antagonists. EurasiaNet (12-Aug-2015) and EurasiaNet (31-Oct-2014) and Freedom House and Guardian (London)
Azerbaijan is not lacking in problems. Not only does the mostly Shia Muslim country have both Sunni and Islamist Muslim insurgencies, but also one of its provinces, Nagorno-Karabakh, is occupied by the Orthodox Christian (Armenian Apostolic) Armenians. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a very bloody war that ended in 1994 with Armenia gaining control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Since then, hostilities between the countries have been "frozen," but simmering. In fact, Azerbaijan is a country split into two non-connected parts, as shown in the above map. The enclave on the left is Nakhchivan, which has been the subject of past conflicts involving Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The war that ended in 1994 has been mostly frozen since then, but hostilities have suddenly been growing.
According to Azerbaijan's defense ministry, Armenian armed forces have broken the ceasefire with Azerbaijan 105 times in various parts of the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies over the weekend.
According to the Armenia's defense ministry, 110 ceasefire violations by Azerbaijani armed forces were registered in the reporting period, with over 1600 shots fired from various caliber artillery weapons.
If the "frozen conflict" suddenly becomes unfrozen, as appears to be happening, then a renewed conflict would pit Armenia, Russia’s ally, against Azerbaijan, NATO-member Turkey’s ally. This would be just like the situation in Syria, where a potential war could emerge between Russia and Turkey directly. Trend (Azerbaijan) and Pan Armenian and EurasiaNet
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Dec-15 World View -- Azerbaijan faces rising radical Shia Islamist insurgency thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Dec-2015)
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NY Times Page One calls for laws to confiscate some gun owners' guns
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As I've written several times, the National Rifle Association should present an award to President Obama for his endless threats to impose gun control, because each time he does so, sales of guns and ammunition surge. Based on my conversations with gun owners, they do this because:
Now, the New York Times, which never misses a chance to suck up to the Obama administration, is going even farther than Obama by writing an editorial that encourages the government to confiscate guns:
"Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens."
What makes this editorial newsworthy is that it appears at the top of page 1. The last time the NY Times had a page 1 editorial was on June 13, 1920, expressing disapproval of Warren G. Harding’s nomination as the next Republican presidential candidate.
Obviously the NY Times editors don't care how many people buy guns, just as the Black Lives Matter politicians don't care about black lives and the feminists don't care about women. All of these politicians swim in the worst political sewers, advocating ways to make problems worse so that their organizations can get more money or votes.
Nobody opposed to gun control, least of all gun owners, is going to care what the NY Times thinks, so all this is going to do is sell a lot more guns. I wonder if the NY Times editors own stock in gun companies?
The Washington Post wrote its own editorial, "The folly of the New York Times pleading for gun control on page 1," saying the following:
"Republicans have relentlessly accused the "mainstream media" (of which the Times is a flagship member) of advancing a liberal agenda. What they often fail to recognize — or deliberately ignore — is the separation of news and opinion. They'll read a column, blog or editorial that is critical of their policies and then angrily tell supporters that they can't get a fair shake in straight news reports. Most of the time, their complaints are unfounded or greatly exaggerated.In this case, however, the Times has (at least temporarily) knocked down a wall by placing an editorial in a spot normally reserved for news. That does not mean the paper's political reporters will suddenly abandon all sense of fairness as they cover candidates who staunchly back gun rights. But it does give those candidates new cause for suspicion — a cause they will almost certainly exploit on the campaign trail."
You don't have to be a Republican to see pretty clearly that the NY Times reporters are fawning lapdogs for President Obama, or that Obama's political agenda is never separate from "news" on the NY Times front page, so in that sense the new editorial isn't much different than a NY Times "news" story. But the WaPost editors are right about one thing: The NY Times has given Obama's opponents a new weapon on the campaign trail -- a page one editorial urging the confiscation of some gun owners' guns -- and they're going to point to this NY Times editorial over and over.
And of course, that's just going to cause more people to buy guns, which obviously is perfectly OK with all these liberals, because they'll get more money for their organizations. NY Times and Washington Post and Politico
In a television interview on November 10, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked whether Israel would intervene in Syria. His reply:
"I’m not sure how to intervene, but I’m sure of this: First, if Syria fires on us, we fire back. Second, if Hezbollah establishes a position on Golan Heights, we’ll take action against that, as we have. Third, if Hezbollah wants to transfer weapons through Syria, we’ll take action, as we have. Fourth, if we don’t see it but it went through, we’ll take action on Syria on weapons that we do see to degrade weapons caches that could be transferred later."
In particular, Netanyahu has repeated his threat to use airstrikes to take out any Syrian regime convoys traveling from Syria to Lebanon that are suspected of carrying sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah.
A lot has happened in the four weeks since Netanyahu made that statement. Turkey's warplanes shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber on November 24, and Russia has responded savagely against Turkey, with massive sanctions and by bombing every possible Turkish target in Syria, especially Turkmen enclaves. In addition, Russia is implementing a massive military buildup in Syria, with a sophisticated S-400 air defense missile system that can "see" any Turkish, American or Israeli planes, and destroy them if desired. ( "29-Nov-15 World View -- Russia's military buildup a game-changer in Syria")
However, Israel has continued to conduct numerous airstrikes on Syrian regime targets within Syria.
These Israeli airstrikes in Syria have received no known objections from Russia, even though they're striking at Russia's ally, the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, as well as al-Assad's ally, Hezbollah.
Times of Israel (10-Nov) and Jerusalem Post (24-Nov) and Times of Israel(29-Nov) and Times of Israel(4-Dec)
Last week, a Russian warplane entered Israeli airspace but, unlike a similar situation in Turkey, the warplane was not shot down.
Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said that after the November 24 shootdown of Russia's warplane by Turkey, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu met with the Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, and agreed to open a channel for coordination between them "to prevent misunderstandings." According to Ya’alon, "The jet penetrated about a mile into our territory. We established radio contact with it and it immediately returned to Syrian airspace."
Ya’alon added a comment that sounded fairly snarky, following the incident in Turkey:
"Russian planes don’t intend to attack us and therefore there is no need to automatically, even if there is some kind of mistake, shoot them down. ...Just as we don’t interfere with their operations and we don’t get involved, as a policy, in what is happening in Syria, they also don’t interfere with us flying and acting in accordance with our interests."
This is somewhat surprising, especially after a senior IDF officer said on Friday:
In our worst nightmares, we never dreamed we would have the S-400 system in our backyard with Syria, or that there would be cruise missiles here,” the member of the General Staff told Israeli defense correspondents at a briefing this week, the Walla website reported.[But, the IDF] does not currently view the S-400 as a threat to Israel."
Nonetheless, Ya’alon's statement indicates that airstrikes that Israel has made in the last couple of weeks, with targets belonging to Syria's al-Assad regime and Hezbollah, have the tacit approval of Russia, by agreement, at least for the time being.
According to Debka's subscriber-only newsletter (sent to me by a subscriber), Israel and Russia have a secret deal:
"In a weird quirk of the Syrian conflict, all foreign air traffic flying over Syria has been suspended excepting over its eastern edge, but for Russian and Israeli warplanes. The US, Britain, France and Turkey initially discontinued their air strikes when Russia posted the fearsome S-400 anti-air missile system Syria in the wake of the downing of its warplane by Turkey.This week, some Western air strikes were resumed, but only after circling around to strike from the east.
Even Bashar Assad takes care to consult the Russians before ordering aerial missions.
DEBKA Weekly's military sources report that Israel received the personal go-ahead from President Vladimir Putin to carry out air strikes over Syria without fear of interference by Russian missiles or jets."
I like to reference Debka's newsletter, which is written from Israel's point of view, because they have military and intelligence sources that provide valuable insights. However, it's not unusual for them to get things wrong.
With that caution, the Debka newsletter also says that Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin also have a secret deal about handling Syria and Iraq:
"Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin reached a quiet agreement in November to split up between the US and Russia the northern Syrian-Iraqi front against the Islamic State. ... The two halves are populated almost entirely by Kurds and hinge heavily on their coveted fighting prowess.Divided by the Euphrates, the two leaders assigned all Kurdish areas in Syria and Iraq east of the river valley to the US and the Kurdish districts to the west, to Russia.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will be more apoplectic than ever over this secret deal, which undoubtedly boosts Kurdish separatist aspirations, especially in Syria. ... Russian sponsorship of the Kurds will no double promote the merger of the three Kurdish enclaves into a single national entity."
Assuming that these reports are true, then Russia is pretty much running the show in Syria and Iraq, Israel and the United States are going along, as is Iran, and Turkey is being shut out.
Long-time readers will recall that I've been writing for years that Generational Dynamics predicts that Iran, Russia and India will be American allies in the next world war, with enemies that include China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries. (See for example "9-Nov-15 World View -- Political crisis in Iran grows over nuclear agreement") Step by step, week by week, that prediction is coming true. Guardian (London, 29-Nov) and Times of Israel (4-Dec) and Times of Israel (4-Dec) and Al Monitor (2-Dec) and Al Monitor (2-Dec) and Debka
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Dec-15 World View -- Israel bombs targets in Syria with Russia's tacit cooperation thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Dec-2015)
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Venezuela likely to end 16 years of Socialist government
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Nicolás Maduro, the Socialist president of Venezuela and successor to the Sainted Socialist God, the dead Hugo Chávez, is expected to lose his majority in the National Assembly in elections on Sunday. This will be the first time in 16 years that the ruling United Socialist Party have not been in power.
Oil is the main export of Venezuela and provides most of the country's foreign currency. Venezuela should be one of the richest countries in the world, with the world's largest proven oil reserves controlled by nationalized Venezuelan oil companies. For years Chávez, and then Maduro, took advantage of high international oil prices to buy votes by creating huge socialist spending programs, with large welfare payments and heavily subsidized and price controlled food, gasoline, and other goods.
However, the price of oil has plunged by 60%, and the economy is a wreck, with severe shortages, and inflation running over 30% per month. The government-run oil companies are drenched in corruption. Shoppers have been breaking into supermarkets to see scarce consumer staples including milk, rice, flour, ketchup, diapers, and toilet paper. Crime and violence are becoming rampant. And the fall into hell has been rapid -- 75% of Venezuelan homes now live in poverty, compared to 27% just two years ago.
Although the Socialists' vote-buying programs have made them wildly popular in past years, the Socialists' supporters have been turned off by the governments almost unbelievable stupidity and incompetence.
Opinion polls indicate almost certain victory by the opposition parties. The opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, leads the ruling United Socialist Party and its allies by as much as 35 percentage points. Maduro’s own popularity has been hovering around 20 percent. Miami Herald and The Atlantic
It's a recurring theme in history that many leaders are willing to use torture, violence and even violence to stay in power. We've seen this in recent times with Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, and in the last century in Germany's Adolf Hitler and Russia's Josef Stalin.
So many people are fearing the worst -- that Maduro will join the ranks of al-Assad, Putin, Mugabe, Stalin and Hitler, and use violence to stay in power if he loses his parliamentary majority in Sunday's election.
Maduro has signaled that he wouldn't hesitate to use violence if his wishes weren't followed:
"Imagine if they dominated the National Assembly. I wouldn't allow it, I swear, I wouldn't let my hands be tied by anyone. I'd take to the street with the people."
Last month, Maduro said he was activating an "anti-coup plan" in case he lost the elections. "This revolution will not be betrayed nor surrendered," he said, warning that rightist forces at home and abroad (i.e., Americans) are planning a "counter-revolutionary coup."
Maduro has already exhibited his willingness to use abuse and violence during the campaign. Opposition figures have been jailed, and one was gunned down in the street. Non-government controlled news agencies, including foreign news agencies, are being severely restricted.
If the Socialists lose on Sunday, Maduro will still be president, and will still have the army, security forces and all state institutions under his control. Maduro will simply find ways to bypass the National Assembly, to ignore any laws it passes, or to bring retaliation and retribution to any legislator he doesn't like.
Still, the opposition is excited by the possibility of having a majority, although the size of the majority will dictate what they're able to do. With a simple majority, the opposition can pass amnesty laws to try to free incarcerated politicians, embarrass the government with investigations, and wield budget approval; with a three-fifths majority, it could theoretically fire ministers after a censure vote.
According to one opposition leader:
"If the result is close, the government could be tempted to sort of barricade the new National Assembly, to use the control it has over the Supreme Court, the state prosecutor, the ombudsman's office, to try to block it off."
Despite the vast lead the opposition has in opinion polls, Maduro still has control of the polling places and vote-counting processes, and so Maduro could still win on Sunday. Reuters and Fox News and Guardian (London)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Dec-15 World View -- Violence feared in Venezuela after probable Socialist loss on Sunday thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Dec-2015)
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Russia cancels Turkey gas pipeline, prepares for Bosporus closure
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who is not Muslim, invoked the name of Allah to push up the threat level at Turkey even farther on Thursday for shooting down a Russian warplane last week:
"Only Allah knows why they did it. And I guess Allah decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by stripping it of its sanity. ...We will not saber-rattle or take dangerous, hysterical actions. But those who hope we will be content to [stop trade in] tomatoes or constrain some construction work after they committed a war crime by killing our men, are wrong -- we will remind them time and again and they will regret it, time and again."
In his "state of the nation" speech on Thursday, he also repeated the vitriolic personal accusations directed at Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying that Erdogan's son Necmettin Bilal Erdogan is a terrorist sponsor supporting the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) by arranging for the purchase of large quantities of oil from ISIS, on behalf of Turkey.
Unfortunately, nothing that comes from Putin or the Russians can be believed. Russia lied about its invasion of Crimea, Russia lied about invading east Ukraine, Russia lied after shooting down a passenger plane over Ukraine, Russia lied about Syria's president al-Bashar Assad's use of Sarin gas on his own people, Russia lied about the purpose of its military intervention into Syria as being to attack ISIS. So any "evidence" produced by the Russians that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS is worthless.
In other words, Putin could swear on a stack of Orthodox Christian bibles that the proof Russia is showing as evidence wasn't Photoshopped, but he still can't be believed, and any evidence that the Russians present about anything can be assumed to be worthless dross.
Beyond that, accusations are flying.
Russia says that Turkey is supporting terrorism by buying oil from ISIS. Turkey says that Russia is supporting terrorism by buying oil from ISIS. Last week, the US and Germany both said that the al-Assad regime is supporting terrorism by buying oil from ISIS. Also, Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is being quoted as saying that the ISIS trucks in the photos that Russia is producing as "evidence" are not ISIS trucks at all, but are KRG trucks, transporting oil legally.
So maybe ISIS is selling oil to Turkey and/or to Russia and/or to al-Assad, and eventually we'll know which of those if any is true, but for now the important thing is the accusations themselves, the growing, vitriolic war of words between these centuries-old mutually hated enemies, and the possibility that these words could lead to actual war. Breitbart and Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Independent (London) and Daily Sabah (London) and Anadolu (Ankara) and Jamestown
Many analysts have pointed out that all the sanctions that Russia imposed on Turkey -- food imports/exports, tourism restrictions, etc. -- would hurt both economies, but were not sufficiently serious to be significant. What would be REALLY significant, according to several analysts, would be the cancellation of joint projects to build gas pipelines that would carry Russian gas from the Caspian Sea to Turkey and to the European Union. That would mean that Putin REALLY wanted to hurt Turkey as much as possible.
Well, Russia on Thursday announced that further plans for the TurkStream gas pipeline project have been canceled indefinitely. Russia had begun work on the pipeline in May. In addition, Russia's Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant project in southern Turkey was canceled.
Gas shipments from Russia to Turkey through the existing Blue Stream trans-Black Sea gas pipeline will continue, for the time being. However, Turkey is preparing to survive without any Russian gas, if necessary.
Russia, meanwhile, is doing its own preparing to survive if Turkey takes a much more drastic step in retaliation -- closing the Turkish straits (Bosporus and Dardanelles channels), the waterways that connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
As we reported a few days ago in "1-Dec-15 World View -- Putin's Syria intervention hobbled by weak Russian economy," Turkey is bound by the 1936 Montreux Convention ao allow Russian commerce ships to pass freely through the straits; only warships may be regulated. I wrote that if Turkey closes the straits to Russia, that may be the trigger that launches a war, and that's true. Nonetheless, Russia is making plans to bypass the Bosporus if necessary.
Currently 32-35 million tonnes of Russian oil pass through the straits each year. 8 million tonnes per year could be transported by rail. It could also transport 13-15 million tonnes through the Baku Azerbaijan - Tbilisi Georgia - Ceyhan Turkey - Odessa Ukraine - Brody Ukraine pipeline. However, Russia does not have too many friends along that pipeline's path, so there may be problems.
A potentially more serious problem for Russia is that essential supplies of armaments and munitions are transiting through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to Russian troops and Russian allies in Syria; this supply mission could be seriously affected if Turkey curtails sea transit trough the Straits. BBC and Jamestown and Tass (Moscow) (Trans)
Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russia "did not threaten Turkey in any way," prior to shooting down Russia's Su-24 bomber. But from Turkey's point of view, that's far from true, and it's worthwhile listing some of Turkey's grievances against Russia, prior to the shootdown:
I've seen and heard several analysts refer to Russia and Turkey as "friends" who are now at a temporary impasse. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As I wrote in "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars", the Russian population and Turkish population have a deep mutual hatred of each other that goes back many centuries, through many bloody generational crisis wars.
Sometimes countries that fight generational crisis wars are able to move past the hatreds that led to previous war and become friends. For example, this appears to have happened to America and Japan after World War II, also deep hatreds still exist between the Japanese and Chinese.
Russia and Turkey were never going to become friends. As I've been writing for years, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major, bloody sectarian crisis war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, and that America would be allied with Russia, Iran and the Shias. Russia and Turkey have appeared to be friends, but that would have to change.
It's truly amazing how quickly things have changed. In less that a month, any veneer of friendship between the two countries has been wiped away, and we're seeing a trend of bitter, vitriolic words, backed by punitive actions that worsen almost every day. A week ago, I wrote "26-Nov-15 World View -- Russia and Turkey move closer to the brink of war," and that's even more true today. It's not a question of "if"; it's a question of "how soon?"
In this generational Crisis era, these two countries are only going to become even more nationalistic and xenophobic than they already are. This is clear a path to war -- not a new war, but a revival of an old war that has already been going on for centuries. Generational Dynamics: History of Islam versus Orthodox Christianity (2003)
With regard to the San Bernardino mass shootings: Until we get climate change under control, these things are going to keep happening. The Federalist
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Dec-15 World View -- Russia and Turkey increasingly on a war footing thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Dec-2015)
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NATO formally invites Montenegro to join the alliance
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Bahrain's Sunni government is still targeting innocent Shia protesters and reporters with arrests, murders and torture, and has not implemented any reforms since the bloody massacres by Bahraini security forces and Saudi troops in the capital city Manama in 2011. These are the findings in a new report by Human Rights Watch. ( "15-Mar-11 News -- Bahrain uprising becomes explosive as Saudi troops arrive")
The world was shocked in the days following the "Arab Spring" protests by the extremely violent and bloody overreaction of the Bahrain security services, backed up by troops from Saudi Arabia. The protests began in Bahrain on February 14, 2011. Dozens of protesters were killed, over 1,600 were arrested, and thousands were injured. A report published later that year by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) said that the National Security Agency and the Ministry of Interior “followed a systematic practice of physical and psychological mistreatment, which in many cases amounted to torture, with respect to a large number of detainees in their custody.” Many Shias were arrested and held for months with no charges, merely because they had been suspected of protesting. Even after the protests ended, Bahraini security forces continued to arrest dozens of Shia professionals, including lawyers and doctors.
After the report was published, Bahrain's government promised reforms, but recent interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch indicate that the Bahrain regime has continued to be just as brutal and bloody as ever.
At a meeting on Wednesday, Bahrain's Interior Ministry Undersecretary Major-General Khalid Salem Al-Absi said that Bahrain has always been a gathering of religions and civilizations and a symbol for moderation and tolerance under the reforms launched by His Majesty the King.
Unfortunately, this is laughable. Besides the Human Rights Watch reports, Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters without Borders) reported that on Tuesday, Bahrain sentenced a reporter to ten years in jail on charges of terrorism. The crime was that he gave mobile phone SIM cards to protesters, and photographed anti-government protests.
Bahrain has a Sunni Muslim government, which maintains control and doesn't permit opposition, even though the country's population is 2/3 Shia Muslim. Bahrain is also the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. Human Rights Watch and Alwefaq.net and Bahrain News and Reuters
NATO has formally invited Montenegro to join the alliance, a move that's spurred threats from Russian officials. Montenegro's President Milo Djukanovic tweeted:
"Today, we proudly receive a #NATO membership invitation. This is a historic day for #Montenegro. The most important (since) the 2006 (independence) referendum."
The 2006 referendum refers to Montenegro's secession from Serbia, a close Russian ally. All three are Orthodox Christian countries.
Montenegro is a tiny country on the Adriatic Sea, which separates it from Italy by only a couple of hundred miles. Montenegro is thus much closer to Italy than to Russia, and yet the Russians are extremely upset that Montenegro might join Nato.
Historically, Montenegro has had a close relationship with Russia, and has been a close and faithful ally in the Balkans. Both of them are Orthodox Christian countries. Russian companies have invested millions in Montenegro, which has also become a favorite tourism destination, and Russians have been buying property along the Adriatic sea. According to reports, Russia has offered Montenegro several billion dollars to build a Russian naval base on Montenegrin coast. Montenegro is a very poor country, and so the money was tempting. But Montenegro has refused, preferring instead to join Nato.
According to a Montenegrin official, the country has never considered Russia's offer seriously:
"For as long as I have been a member of the Commission for Defense and Security, and this is already my second term, this topic has never been discussed. It was not mentioned during the commission’s sessions. I believe these are irrelevant stories, and our stance regarding our national priorities has not changed in the past ten years. Our main national and state priorities are NATO membership, and after that membership in the European Union. That is something Montenegro will not give up on."
Russia is threatening to withdraw all its investment projects from Montenegro. According to Sanda Raskovic Ivic, the leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia:
"I think that NATO made a big mistake inviting Montenegro. The issue of NATO has already divided the country and created an atmosphere of an imminent bloodshed. ...It may complicate the situation in Montenegro, because a lot of people are already against that, and do not want to indulge that situation and support [Prime Minister Milo] Djukanovic in the direction to NATO. People want a referendum on NATO in Montenegro, and that should be done."
Montenegro is already involved in NATO's efforts in Afghanistan and has actively cooperated with the alliance in other ways. AP and CNN and Radio Slobodna Europa / Radio Liberty
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Dec-15 World View -- HRW: Bahrain's Sunni government continues abusing and torturing Shia majority thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Dec-2015)
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Germany may deploy 1200 soldiers to Syria to fight ISIS
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Germany's cabinet voted on Tuesday to recommend sending military support to Syria to fight ISIS. The support would include 1,200 soldiers, along with Tornado reconnaissance aircraft and the naval frigate Sachsen.
Four to six Tornado jets would be stationed at two locations. are underway with Jordan and Turkey about using the airbases in Incirlik and Amman. The frigate would be assigned to help protect the French flagship Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, from where fighter jets carry out bombing runs.
However, defense minister Ursula von der Leyen said, "The top line is: there will be no cooperation with [Syria's president Bashar] al-Assad and no cooperation with troops under his command."
Many Germans are wary of external troop deployments, after the Nazi experience in World War II.
According to a YouGov poll, 71% of Germans fear a terror backlash due to Germany supporting France in its military campaign against ISIS.
Dietmar Bartsch, chairman of the Left party, expressed skepticism that there was a military solution to the conflict:
"We have to impede ISIS, but that means, for example, through financial means, through the flow of weapons. We must put an end to the smuggling of oil in this area. We can't defeat ISIS with bombs. ...I don't understand why the federal government, why other countries, have learned nothing from Afghanistan."
Green Party chairwoman Simone Peter said, "This deployment also has no political goal, no political concept and that's why it's irresponsible."
A final vote by the Parliament is scheduled for Wednesday.
Until now, Germany's biggest foreign mission has been in Afghanistan, but that has gradually wound down to a force of just under 1,000. Last week, Germany agreed to send 650 soldiers to Mali, to join 1,500 French troops deployed to fight IS militants. Deutsche-Welle and BBC and DPA and Sky News
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced on Tuesday that the US military will be sending an unspecified number of special forces troops to Iraq and Syria, beyond the 3800 that have already been sent, and that they will for the first time be conducting combat operations against the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh):
"Next, in full coordination with the Government of Iraq, we're deploying a specialized expeditionary targeting force to assist Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces and to put even more pressure on ISIL. These special operators will over time be able to conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence, and capture ISIL leaders."
This is the second major troop escalation by the Obama administration in a month. On October 30, the White House announced that, for the first time, special forces troops would be on the ground in Syria, as well as Iraq. At that time, press secretary Josh Earnest said:
"The President does expect that they can have an impact in intensifying our strategy for building the capacity of local forces inside of Syria for taking the fight on the ground to ISIL in their own country. That has been the core element of the military component of our strategy from the beginning: building the capacity of local forces on the ground."
Blah, blah, blah. Earnest also said that "These forces do not have a combat mission." Well, with Tuesday's announcement, now they do.
According to analyst Michael O'Hanlon at the liberal Brookings Institution, commenting on the 10/30 announcement:
"Clearly, our Syria strategy has been failing for four years. The renewed tensions in U.S.-Turkey collaboration, the lack of progress in establishing a safe zone in the north and working together with the Kurds, and now the Russian intervention have underscored how much of a dilemma we face.So while some of us have viewed the situation in Syria as very serious for a long time, it is increasingly hard for the administration even to attempt to argue otherwise."
Let's recall what President Obama said on Sept 12, 2014:
"But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. 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. And it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order."
This is what happens over and over. A president starts out with "advisors" or "special forces," and ends up in a war.
On Tuesday, President Obama was speaking at the "climate change" conference in Paris, making his self-delusional statement that climate change is the cause of terrorism. A couple of commentators pointed out that Obama seemed to be very "sad" and "depressed" as he was speaking. Why was he depressed? Possibly because every foreign policy initiative he's tried has been a disaster, and now he has "boots on the ground" in both Iraq and Syria, proving that his contempt for President Bush and for Boomers was also self-delusion. Rudaw (Iraq) and CNN (10/30) and NBC News (10/31)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Dec-15 World View -- In major new escalation, US special forces will conduct combat in Iraq and Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Dec-2015)
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France demands that Russia target only ISIS in Syria
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russian officials have been claiming that their warplane targets in Syria are all targets owned by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). We know from the Ukraine experience that Russian officials and media never tell the truth except by accident, and so any claim by Russian officials about warplane targets can simply be ignored.
In fact, there are been numerous Western media reports indicating that Russia's warplanes are hitting an occasional ISIS target, but Russia is mostly leaving ISIS alone, which seems odd when Russia's president frequently talks about how dangerous ISIS is. Instead, Russia has been targeting non-ISIS rebels fighting the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad.
Reuters has done an analysis of data available from Russia's Defense Ministry, and found that Russia's own data supports the Western media reports.
Instead, Russia has been targeting regions have no ISIS presence, but whose population is largely ethnically Turkmen, who are Syrians of Turkish descent, descended from groups who began moving from Turkmenistan in Central Asia into present-day Syria in the tenth century.
Furthermore, Russia has been targeting these Turkmen regions long before Turkey shot down the Russian warplane.
On Thursday of last week, France's president François Hollande traveled to Moscow to meet with Russia's president Vladimir Putin. Hollande said that Putin had agreed that Russian attack should only hit ISIS and "similar jihadi groups" in Syria. There is no evidence that Russia is abiding by this statement which, like most of Putin's statements, is really meaningless.
On Friday, a spokesman for France's former ministry was asked about Russian airstrikes on Turkmen areas. The spokesman, Romain Nadal, said:
"There can be no possible ambiguity on the objectives being pursued, which must only target the destruction of Daesh (ISIS)."
According to the Reuters data analysis, however, Russia's warplanes are still heavily targeting ethnic Turkmen areas. Reuters and Independent (London) and Reuters
There are two sides to this story, both sides filled with wishful thinking. On one side, Russia's military intervention in Syria and the new sanctions imposed on Turkey are so expensive that Russia cannot afford them for long.
On the other side, Putin is determined to continue his Syria policy, irrespective of the cost. This view was express by Henri Barkey of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, being interview on al-Jazeera (my transcription excerpts):
"Putin wants to make sure that Erdogan really pays a very heavy price for this.This is clearly a case where Erdogan overreached. It was a mistake to shoot down the airplane. Initially after the shooting down, Erdogan was very bombastic about it, and said he would do it again.
And so Putin has ratcheted up the pressure on Erdogan. The Turks are now realizing that this was a huge mistake, and I think everyone now realizes it. A Turkish airplane was shot down in Syria three years ago, and Erdogan had said at the time a minor violation of the airspace is no reason to attack. And now he does exactly the same thing for a 17 second violation. So the Russians are understandably upset. Even Turkey's Nato allies are upset, because this has given Putin the excuse to bring huge amount of military equipment into the region, including S-400 very sophisticated anti-air missiles.
And this is going to make American and allied bombing raids over Syria much more difficult, because they have now to worry about this very sophisticated system, even if the Russians have no intention of shooting down American airplanes. So this has been a terrible mistake on the part of Erdogan, a completely unnecessary one, and now he's paying the price for it. Putin is probably enjoying this, and wants to make Erdogan even more humiliated as he can."
However, Turkey-Russian commerce is worth an estimated $31 billion annually, with Russian wheat and gas and Turkish agricultural products making up the bulk. Russia's economy has already been battered by European sanctions and the collapse in the price of oil, and is suffering from severe inflation that is approaching 20% per year. According to one Israeli analyst, Russia's companies will suffer from Russia's sanctions even more than Turkish companies, especially since Russia is so much more isolated, while Turkey is being pushed into the arms of Europe.
Russia's military adventures in invading and occupying Ukraine and annexing Crimea have been extremely expensive for Russia, and Russia has already been forced to cut back his military in eastern Ukraine in order to transfer troops and equipment to Syria.
Russia's military intervention in Syria is now hobbled for a non-economic reason. He would like to strike back at Turkey militarily, but that would result in a confrontation with Nato, which would be forced to support Turkey.
Turkey has one powerful sanction that it could use against Russia: According to the 1936 Montreux Convention, Turkey must allow Russia and other Black Sea states to send ships of commerce and of war through the Turkish straits (the Bosporus and Dardanelles channels), which connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Ocean. The Montreux Convention has been very important to Russia following its recent military occupation and annexation of Crimea, and its plans for a major expansion of its naval base at Sevastopol, which it's Black Sea fleet is based. If Russia strikes too hard at Turkey, either militarily or through sanctions, then Turkey may close the Bosporus to Russian ships. That would be a powerful sanction, but it would probably trigger a new war such as those that the Turks and Russians have been fighting for centuries. ( "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars")
Jamestown and Debka and Jerusalem Post and International Business Times (12-May-2014) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Turkey)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Dec-15 World View -- Putin's Syria intervention hobbled by weak Russian economy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Dec-2015)
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