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Libya's Government of National Accord sails into port of Tripoli
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Starting in February 2107, the US military will deploy three fully manned US combat brigades in eastern Europe, near the border with Russia. Each brigade has about 4,500 soldiers, bringing with them military vehicles and other equipment. The deployment is in response to "an agressive Russia."
In recent years, Russia has invaded Georgia and Ukraine, and occupied and annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, all without invitation or UN Security Council approval.
Because of those actions, Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov lacked credibility when he said:
"Stories are being spread that Russia will send its tanks into the Baltic states, into Sofia or into Budapest. No one intends to do that. There are no such plans, nothing. Russia does not want war. The very idea of it is ridiculous."
The new deployment is meant to calm fears of eastern European nations, some of whom fear that they will be Russia's next target. AP and BBC and Reuters
This is another one of those bizarre stories that are so common in today's Bizarro world.
On Wednesday, Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) arrived in Tripoli, the capital city of Libya. The government was created by Libya Dialogue, a UN-managed body. The prime minister of the GNA is Fayez Sarraj. He has appointed a 32-member cabinet. The government has been headquartered in a hotel in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, which is right next door.
The existing government in Tripoli has warned Sarraj not to set foot in Libya, or he would be arrested. The Tripoli government even shut down the airport to prevent Sarraj from flying into Tripoli, but Sarraj and seven of his ministers arrived by boat on Wednesday at the port in Tripoli, ready to take over and start governing.
When the 2011 Western military intervention occurred, Libya's long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi predicted that once he was gone there would be chaos, which is certainly true. There has been a lot of retrospective criticism of that intervention, based on revisionist history. What most people have forgotten was that Libya was already in total chaos from the "Arab Spring," as I described recently in "5-Mar-16 World View -- A look back at Libya in 2011 as the West debates another military intervention".
Today there are nearly 2,000 militias running different parts of Libya. There are also two major "national" governments, as well as two major jihadist groups, one al-Qaeda based and one ISIS-based.
The major players are:
So this is the situation into which Fayez Sarraj and the the seven ministers of his Government of National Accord (GNA) sailed on Wednesday.
According to Martin Kobler, the United Nations special representative to Libya:
"I commend the courage, determination and leadership of the Presidency Council under its president Fayez Serraj in moving forward with the implementation of the Libyan political agreement and the aspiration of the overwhelming majority of the Libyan people. The international community stands firmly behind them and is ready to provide the required support and assistance."
Although some factions in both governments favor the GNA, the leaders of both governments oppose the GNA. And of course neither of the two jihadist groups favors the GNA.
As we reported yesterday, Europeans expect hundreds of thousands of migrants from Libya. Some European governments would like to mount a military operation to enter Libya to remove ISIS and find a solution to the migrant problem. However, Western governments do not want to attempt such an operation without either a UN Security Council resolution, opposed by Russia, or an invitation by the Libyan "government," and the latter requires getting the Government of National Accord accepted by everyone, something that currently does not appear to be likely. Al Jazeera and BBC (11-Jan) and United Nations and AFP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Mar-16 World View -- US military will deploy three brigades to eastern Europe to counter Russia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Mar-2016)
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Human traffickers sell routes through Europe for 5000 euros
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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With some 50,000 migrants trapped in Greece, thanks to the closing of the "Balkan route," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is reporting that human traffickers are now offering trips to northern Europe along new routes.
The phone numbers of traffickers are in Facebook. The migrants travel for days hidden below deck on a merchant ship, at the mercy of the weather. The new route leaves from southeast Turkey and reaches Greece without detection by the Nato patrols. From Greece they travel to Albania, and from there they can go north by car, or cross the Adriatic Sea to Italy.
Another alternative route is through Bulgaria. Serbia's border is closed, so refugees go to Romania and the treacherous Carpathian mountains, and travel north along the border with Moldova to Ukraine and Poland.
People traffickers charge 3000-5000 euros to make these trips, which are far more difficult and dangerous than the trip used to be across a few miles of the Aegean Sea, before the Balkan route was closed. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Trans)
European officials are predicting that 500,000 to 800,000 migrants will arrive in Europe from Libya this year, now that the trip from Turkey through Greece has been effectively closed.
On March 20, the EU-Turkey deal to send migrants back to Turkey came into effect, and the so-called "Balkan route" north from Greece was closed almost completely. Since then the number of migrants arriving in Greece has been falling sharply, with only 1,000 people arriving in all of last week, while there were 2,000 a day in previous weeks.
At the same time, the number of migrants arriving from Libya has been increasing, albeit slowly so far. There were 13,829 registered arrivals so far this year, compared with 10,075 in the same period in 2015. But numbers are increasing rapidly as Italy's coast guard reported that it had rescued 1,482 migrants off the Libyan coast over the weekend. The stream of migrants is expected to grow quickly within the next month as the weather warms.
Once the migrants are in boats in the Mediterranean Sea, they head for Italy, but they're more likely to be stopped by any of a number of ships in Italy's navy and coast guard, or vessels with the Europe's Sophia and Frontex border control anti-people trafficking operations. A principal objective of these operations is to prevent shipwrecks and avoid disasters like the ones that saw 1,200 people drown over a few days in April last year.
Another difference between last year and this is the significantly expanded role of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) in Libya. Many in the West would like to launch a military operation into Libya to bring ISIS under control, but there is reluctance to do so. ( "13-Mar-16 World View -- Despite rapid growth of ISIS in Libya, West cannot agree on a strategy")
There are widespread fears that ISIS will use the growing flow of migrants from Libya to Europe to smuggle militants into Europe. Others discount this worry, saying that there are easier and less risky ways to smuggle militants into Europe.
Once migrants arrive in Italy, they are allowed to apply for asylum, a process that can take as long as 18 months. During that period, Italy holds them in "reception centers." There are now 106,000 people in these centers.
There are currently 8,000 people in centers run by the state, 20,000 in local council-run centers, and 78,000 in temporary centers run out of hotels or similar buildings by private entities that receive government funding. Italy has run out of space in its existing centers, and is now searching across the whole country for facilities that can be used for that purpose, to hold perhaps hundreds of thousands more migrants. France 24 and EU Observer and AFP and EurActiv and AFP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Mar-16 World View -- Europeans expect hundreds of thousands of migrants from Libya thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Mar-2016)
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Lahore Easter attack gives army even greater control of Pakistan
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Pakistan is again in a state of shock, following Sunday's massive terrorist attack on a children's park in Lahore, killing more than 70 people, including many women and children, and injuring hundreds. Jamaat ul-Ahrar (JuA, Assembly of Freedom) said that they were targeting Christians on Easter, but most of those killed were Muslim.
Pakistanis are demanding to know why these kinds of attacks keep on happening, and why the government and the army don't put them to a stop. There's widespread suspicion in Pakistan and internationally, and especially in India, that Pakistan's government is supporting these terrorist militias for use in India and Afghanistan, and that now the Pakistani government is reaping what it sowed.
Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif gave a nationwide televised address on Monday:
"I understand that at this moment the entire nation is grieving the loss of innocent lives in Lahore tragedy and what message these terrorists want to convey by hitting soft targets.It is our legal and constitutional responsibility to protect the state of Pakistan. We will bring those spreading religious hatred and sectarianism to justice. ...
My brothers and sisters, today again I am here to renew my commitment that we will avenge every drop of the blood of our martyred people and we are doing that, and we will not rest until we have accounted for everything to the end.
We will not let them raise their heads again, we will not allow them to play the lives of the people of Pakistan. This is my resolve, this is my government's resolve and this is the resolve of the 200 million people of Pakistan.
God willing, no terrorist can put a dent in our resolve."
It was a great speech, but few believed it, because it's been said so many times before, and nothing is ever solved.
According to Husain Haqqani, former Pakistan ambassador to the US, appearing on the BBC (my transcription):
"Every few years, Pakistani leaders announce that they are now going to crack down on terrorists, but multiple crackdowns later, the fundamental situation hasn't changed. Pakistan since 9/11 has had 8 prime ministers, 3 army chiefs, 7 heads of intelligence. But the problem seems to be that instead of fighting extremism, they always get distracted, either by regional politics, or domestic politics. ...There are parts of the government that do not want to go after all [terrorist] groups, because they think that these groups also represent Pakistan's interests in the region. For example we understand that the Taliban in Afghanistan have never been the target of Pakistan's operations because they are useful to Pakistan. Similarly, group's like Lashkar-e-Toiba ... which operate in Kashmir and India have been spared.
The problem is that the groups that are spared then end up becoming the protectors of the groups that are being targeted, because as far as these groups are concerned, their ideology is one. All they want is a particular type of Islam ideology."
Sharif's televised address did not convince a lot of people. One Pakistani editorialist described these as "The Darkest of Days" for Pakistan:
"Once again, a not-so-small group of psychotic bigots have seized the narrative. Once again, a minority group has been the all-too-easy-to-hit target and once again the government is left floundering in the bloody wake and blathering platitudes right, left and center. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan were quick to board the bandwagon of dignitaries paying visits to hospitals and chairing meetings to mumble over the latest failure of the state to discharge its statutory duties, in this instance to protect the citizenry. Nothing of substance will come from their threadbare sympathies and calls for the perpetrators to be hunted down wherever they are, are of no more substance today than they were in the past.The fact is that the perpetrators are all around us, hiding in plain view, and if there was a poll conducted among those protesting outside parliament, it may be found that some at least had sympathies with those who butchered women and children. After all, the persecution of minorities figures large in their list of 10 demands currently awaiting ratification by default as a weak government is unable to do anything much beyond a little light tear-gassing.
In any other country, the Lahore atrocity would be seen as a watershed moment for the government of the day. Not so in Pakistan, where wholesale butchery is standard fare in 2016. ..."
The reference to "those protesting outside parliament" alludes to another part of Sunday's story, where some 10,000 people in Islamabad were protesting the execution of the murderer of a Pakistani official who tried to protect a woman from being executed for blasphemy because she was a Christian. Among the demands of the protesters were the immediate execution of the woman, and that all five million members in Pakistan of the Ahmadi branch of Islam be expelled from the country. The editorialist says that it seems reasonable to believe that many of these protesters were themselves supporters of the terrorists that had committed the massacre on Sunday in Lahore. Pakistan Observer and ITV (London) and Express Tribune (Pakistan)
In an operation that sounds a little bit like "Round up the usual suspects," Pakistan's army on Monday arrested a number alleged supporters of terror groups in the Southern Punjab district of Punjab province. According to an army PR spokesman: "A number of suspected terrorists and facilitators have been arrested during the five raids which were conducted in Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan after the Lahore suicide explosion." He added that a "huge cache of arms and ammunition" were also recovered.
Lahore is located in northeastern Punjab, but the Southern Punjab district is Pakistan's hotbed of jihadist activity. It's economically one of the poorest regions of Pakistan. The local government is riddled with corruption. And it's crowded with over 7,000 madrassas and seminaries, where young people go to be educated in extremism by militant leaders who operate with impunity.
According to the BBC's Pakistan correspondent Owen Bennett-Jones, there are about 100,000 of these militant leaders, so rounding all of them up is not a simple problem. Express Tribune (Pakistan) and The News (Pakistan)
Owen Bennett-Jones, the BBC's correspondent in Pakistan, gave a lengthy analysis of the relations between the government, the army and the Taliban. He says that prime minister Nawaz Sharif is completely controlled by the army, since the army has the ability to force him out of office, as it did in a military coup in 1999 the last time Sharif was prime minister
Bennett-Jones says that the army is using terrorism to take greater and greater control of the government, leaving the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, with less and less power. A major turning point was the December 2014 horrific Taliban attack on a Peshawar army school, killing over 130 schoolchildren.
Bennett-Jones was interviewed on the BBC on Monday (my transcription):
"Sharif was kicked out by the army last time he was prime minister. His top priority during this term of government was to get civilians running things, that has totally failed.The army, after the Peshawar school attack just completely took over in all sorts of domestic areas. They already had control of foreign policy and nuclear policy, they then took over the legal system, they have military courts, and whole areas of domestic policy.
And now there's another encroachment by the area into a civilian area. They're now operating in Punjab, the prime minister's own province. It's part of a trend. The prime minister can only agree with the army. Otherwise he fears they will kick him out.
There are militant groups in Pakistan trying to launch attacks in India, in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, there are groups that are fighting for Islamic State, for Islamic law, and there are some fighting for sectarian reasons.
I think they're targeting in this sweep of southern Punjab Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which is a group they're already in confrontation with. Most of the groups the state is not taking on, and many would say indeed is cooperating with, but the army doesn't think it take them all on at once. There are some big groups, they are very strong, they have different objectives, but if they all turned against the state at the same time, the state would have a problem. So they have to pick and choose whom they fight."
Lashkar-e-Janghvi (LeJ) has publicly stated that its goal is the extermination of all Shia Muslims in Pakistan, and has been methodically setting off bombs in order to achieve that goal. An LeJ statement issued in 2011 says:
"Our mission [in Pakistan] is the abolition of this impure sect and people, the Shias and the Shia Hazaras, from every city, every village, every nook and corner of Pakistan. Like in the past, [our] successful Jihad against the Hazaras in Pakistan and, in particular, in Quetta is ongoing and will continue. We will make Pakistan their graveyard-- their houses will be destroyed by bombs and suicide bombers. ... Jihad against the Shia Hazaras has now become our duty. ... We will rest only after hoisting the flag of true Islam on the land of the pure -- Pakistan."
It could be considered somewhat amazing that an internal Pakistani group implementing a plan to exterminate all Shia Muslims in Pakistan could still exist, but according to Bennett-Jones, many of these Taliban-linked organizations are too big to fight.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Mar-16 World View -- Pakistan's army declares war on Taliban in Punjab province thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Mar-2016)
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Thousands protest violently over execution of murderer of blasphemy reformer
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The federal government called in the army on Sunday night to attempt to control around 10,000 people protesting the execution of Mumtaz Qadri in front of Pakistan's parliament building in Islamabad when the protests turned violent turned violent. ( "1-Mar-16 World View -- Pakistan unexpectedly executes murderer of liberal politician Salman Taseer")
Mumtaz Qadri was executed by hanging last month, after having been convicted of murdering Salman Taseer, the liberal governor of Punjab province in Pakistan, on January 4, 2011. Qadri was Taseer's bodyguard. To make sure he was dead, Qadri shot him in the chest 28 times. Qadri later said that he had shot Taseer because Taseer had opposed blasphemy laws in general, and for speaking out in favor of Asia Bibia, a Christian lady accused of blasphemy because she was Christian, and sentenced to death.
The blasphemy laws in Pakistan are absolutely crazy. If someone doesn't like you, he can claim that you said something that offends Islam or Mohammed, and you can be convicted of blasphemy, sometimes without a trial, and executed. The blasphemy laws are widely used without proof, and executions are becoming increasingly common.
At first those protesting the execution of Qadri on Sunday were peaceful. Then the crowd started throwing stones, and riot police used tear gas and batons to disperse them from the high-security zone outside the parliament building. Then the protesters set a metro bus station on fire, and also set containers on fire outside the Parliament House. A fire brigade vehicle dispatched to the scene was also set on fire.
A statement by the terrorist group Sunni Tehreek claimed that the government had turned the protests violent by attacking "Prophet-loving patriots," and vowed that the protests would continue.
The terrorists gave the government a list of ten demands. The list called for immediate execution of Asia Bibi, the Christian woman mentioned above whom Taseer tried to protect. The also demanded that Qadri be officially declared to be a "martyr," and that all five million members in Pakistan of the Ahmadi branch of Islam be expelled from the country. Pakistan Today and AFP and Dawn
Another day, another terror attack.
At least 69 people, mostly women and children, were killed and more than 300 injured in a suicide bombing attack in a park in Lahore, Pakistan, crowded with Christians celebrating Easter Sunday. The suicide bomber was apparently targeting children, as the explosion took place in a children's playground, near swings and other rides.
Jamaat ul-Ahrar (JuA, Assembly of Freedom) claimed responsibility. According to a spokesman, "Members of the Christian community who were celebrating Easter today were our prime target. [However,] we didn't want to kill women and children. Our targets were male members of the Christian community."
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 TTP's plans to hold peace talks with Pakistan's government. JuA has rejoined TTP last year, but has also declared allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
On March 15 of last year, JuA claimed responsibility for suicide bombers at two churches, one Catholic and one Protestant, also in Lahore, killing 15 people and injuring 70.
After last year's attack, some 4,000 Christians later took to the streets in Lahore, many armed with clubs as they smashed vehicles and attacked a city bus. Two people were accused by the mob of being behind the explosions, and were attacked and killed by the mob. There was also rioting in other Pakistan cities, including Islamabad and Karachi. ( "16-Mar-15 World View -- Violent Christian riots follow bombing of two churches in Lahore, Pakistan")
There have been no reports of similar violence this year, but it's no coincidence that Sunday's attacks on Christians occurred almost on the one year anniversary of last year's attacks and subsequent riots. Dawn (Pakistan) and NBC News and Business Standard (India)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Mar-16 World View -- Pakistan Taliban branch takes credit for Easter massacre of Christians in Lahore thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Mar-2016)
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Loss of Palmyra in Syria highlights setbacks for ISIS
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Bashar al-Assad's Syrian army, backed by heavy airstrikes by Russia's warplanes, is close to recapturing Palmyra from the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), according to Syrian state media. Russian jets carried out 40 air sorties near Palmyra in the past day, hitting 158 targets and killing over 100 militants.
ISIS invaded and captured in May of last year, and caused worldwide outrage by destruction of monuments and antiquities that were millennia old. Syrian officials claim that many of the destroyed antiquities will be restored.
At the same time, Iraqi forces, aided by airstrikes from American and Turkish warplanes striking ISIS positions, overran a string of ISIS-controlled villages in northern Iraq.
According to Lt. Gen. Abdul-Ghani al-Assadi, commander of Iraq’s counterterrorism forces, ISIS defenses are crumbling and fighters are fleeing:
"They don’t fight. They just send car bombs and then run away. And when we surround them, they either surrender or infiltrate themselves among the civilians.Their morale is shaken. We listen to them on their communications devices. Their leaders are begging them to fight, but they answer that it is a lost cause. They refuse to obey orders and run away."
According to Col. Steve Warren, the U.S. military’s spokesman in Baghdad:
"As time goes on, as our systems mature, we’re becoming more effective. We’ve become much better at spotting them. Anytime they try to move, we’re able to find and finish them. They can’t move, haven’t won any battles for a long time, and they’ve got difficulty leading because we’re hitting their leaders."
It's not surprising that there's little will to fight among ISIS fighters. Most of them have come from countries around the world, and there's little reason for a jihadist from Indonesia or Algeria to want to give up his life in Iraq or Syria.
ISIS fighters captured Mosul two years ago by entering the town and standing aside to allow the Iraqi army to flee for their lives. Now, operations have begun to recapture the town of Mosul from ISIS, but the operation is not expected to be successful before next year. Washington Post and LA Times and AP and Guardian (London)
The Iraq ground invasion in 2003 succeeded within about three months, mainly because Saddam Hussein's army really didn't want to fight. After their defeat, there was relatively little direct fighting beyond responding to IEDs and suicide bombers. But as I wrote in 2007 in "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq", the Iraqis never had their heart in fighting the Americans, and al-Qaeda in Iraq had to depend on foreign fighters. But even they were ejected by the Iraqi Sunnis with the help of President George Bush's "surge," which largely stabilized the country.
The victory in Iraq was squandered by the withdrawal of all American forces in 2009, but even so, when the war in Syria began in 2011, it should have ended within a year or so, and I said so at the time.
Both Iraq and Syria are in generational Awakening eras, where there are still plenty of people alive who survived the extremely horrific Syrian civil war and the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, the latter climaxing with the use of chemical weapons by Saddam in 1988. The 1991 Iraq war ended quickly, the 2003 Iraq war ended quickly, and the 2011 Syrian war should have ended quickly, all for the same reasons: a generational Awakening era.
The reason that Syria was anomalous was because of one man, president Bashar al-Assad, who acted as a sociopathic genocidal monster, supported by Russia and Iran, targeting innocent protestor civilians as if they were cockroaches to be exterminated.
Another difference between the Syria war versus the two Iraq wars was that America fulfilled its role as policeman of the world and stopped them. In 1990, Saddam Hussein tried to annex Kuwait, just as Hitler tried to annex territories in 1939. but the first Gulf War forced Saddam to retreat. In 2003, fear of WMDs led to the second Gulf War, that forced Saddam out of office. President Obama could have stopped al-Assad on a couple of occasions, but he refused to do so, referring to the Iraq war as a disaster, despite its successful conclusion. As a result, al-Assad was not stopped, and has created the biggest catastrophe since World War II -- millions of refugees, and the rise of ISIS.
So among these wars that I've been describing, the leader was stopped in two of them, and the leader was allowed to continue with impunity in the third. But what all three have in common was the soldiers have little will to fight, which is what you would expect in a generational Awakening era.
Reports are that we're seeing the same thing happen in Iraq, among Iraqi soldiers who are supposed to be conducting the operations to retake Mosul from ISIS. According to one report, Iraqi soldiers fled in panic over fear of mortar attacks from ISIS. Few stood their ground.
According to another report, an American Marine unit has been sent in to revive the moral of Iraq's 15th Division, many of whose troops had been seen fleeing into the mountains over fear of ISIS. In fact, this is the purpose of Marine firebase that I reported on a few days ago. ( "21-Mar-16 World View -- Pentagon to expand a secret military firebase in Iraq after Marine was killed")
President Obama has said many times that there would never be "any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground." Like many of his campaign promises, his promises of complete withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan have not been kept. Instead, he's being forced to commit more and more troops to Iraq, and to delay troop withdrawals in other places.
To the contrary, his total withdrawal from Iraq and his unwillingness to stop al-Assad, even after he'd used Sarin gas on his own people, is increasingly teaching Obama a lesson that many people have had to learn in history: "We have to fight them there, so we won't have to fight them here." Independent (London) and Daily Beast
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Mar-16 World View -- Iraqi army fleeing for their lives again thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Mar-2016)
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Iran and Pakistan agree to open border crossings and improve trade
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Flush from having economic sanctions lifted, thanks to last year's nuclear deal with the West, Iran is anxious to move as quickly as possble to increase trade ties with regional neighbors. Thus, Iran's president Hassan Rouhani paid a visit on Friday to Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, and met with Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
The two agreed on plans to increase plans, and to complete a $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline whose development was halted because of the sanctions. Iran is interested in Pakistani textiles, surgical goods, sports goods and agricultural products.
Pakistan will open two new crossing points on its border with Iran, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Friday, helping to encourage trade hampered by years of Western sanctions against Tehran. Dunyan News (Pakistan) and Press Tv (Iran)
Pakistan has always had close ties with Saudi Arabia, and so its ties with Iran have been strained because of the recent hostility between the two countries, especially after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed and firebombed in January. Pakistan has tried to remain neutral in this dispute, and can point to the fact that it's refused to provide military support to the Saudis in their proxy war with Iran in Yemen. Pakistan has diplomatically supported the Saudis in that war, but when called upon by the Saudis to provide troops, they refused, angering the Saudis. ( "18-Jan-16 World View -- Pakistan tries to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran")
However, the hostility between Pakistan and Iran goes far deeper than just a split triggered by the Yemen war.
Following World War II, Iran and Pakistan were generally secular states, with little Sunni-Shia hostility. But this began to change abruptly in the late 1970s.
In Pakistan in 1977, the sectarian government of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown in a bloodless military coup by Sunni General Zia-ul-Haq, who then executed Bhutto two years later.
In 1979, Russia invaded Afghanistan, viewed as a mostly Christian army invading a Muslim country. This energized Zia and allowed him to form militias to fight the Russians. These militias later became the Taliban.
Also in 1979, Iran's Great Islamic Revolution turned the country into an explicitly Shia state.
These three events moved Pakistan and Iran in opposite sectarian directions, and hostility between the two countries has been growing.
In recent years, there have been numerous clashes along their common border. Two branches of the Pakistani Taliban, Jundullah (Soldiers of God) and Jaish-ul-Adl (Army of Justice), have committed themselves to the extermination of all Shias, and have conducted numerous terrorist acts on Iranian soil. Iran has repeatedly accused Pakistan of supporting these terrorist groups and attacks, an accusation that Pakistan's government denies.
So terrorism was a major theme of Rouhani's visit to Pakistan, as he said:
"It is the will and the resolve of the two countries to firmly combat against extremists and the terrorist groups not to allow them to threaten our shared borders."
This is an interesting statement, because Pakistan has been unable to control terrorist acts against Shias within its own borders, so there's little chance that it can control terrorist attacks against Shias in Iran. To the contrary, in fact, Jaish-ul-Adl leaders may even now be planning an attack in Iran just to derail this new Iran-Pakistan détente.
This appears to be one of those situations where two nations avoid potential war by building up trade, so that any war would be bad for business. But as usual, the opposite will almost certainly turn out to be true. Some incident will cause Iran and Pakistan to renew hostilities, and one of the first hostile acts will be a trade boycott on one side or the other. Trade is never an impediment to war, only an additional weapon of war.
The other in play here is that Iran has very good relations with India, as Hindus and Shia Muslims have been allied against Sunni Muslims in numerous wars as far back as the 680s decade. That alliance surpasses any ephemeral business dealing when it comes to choosing sides.
As I've written many times (see "15-Jul-15 World View -- Arab views of Iran nuclear deal"), Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the US, India, Russia and Iran will be allies, and China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will be allies. Deutsche Welle and Tasnim News (Iran) and Diplomat (23-Oct-2014) and Dawn (Pakistan, 6-Jul-2012)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Mar-16 World View -- Iran and Pakistan attempt to erase 40 years of sectarian hostility thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Mar-2016)
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Growth of Christianity in India attributed to proselytizing by missionaries
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Mob violence by Hindu nationalists (hindutvas) are being blamed for 30 incidents of violence against Christians in India in the first two months of 2016.
In many of the incidents, police just stand by and allow the violence to continue. For example, police stood idly by on January 29 in the province of Tamil Nadu when a mob of 30 Hindu activists attacked and beat a Catholic priest and three Church officials.
Many people blame the rise of anti-Christian violence on ambiguous attitude of India's government against religious intolerance, especially since the 2014 election of avowed Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi. Constitutionally, India is a secular state that welcomes all religions, in addition to Hinduism, but intolerance to Christianity, Sikhism, Islam and other religions has been growing since Modi's election.
Hindu nationalism is controversial in India because opponents associate it with "Hindutva violence," where the Hindutva movement began in 1923, led by terrorist Veer Savarkar (Vinayak Damodar Savarkar), mostly as a movement against British colonization. (See "'Hindutva' terrorist violence against Muslims shocks Indians" from 2008.) Modi became associated with Hindutva violence in 2002, as Governor of the Gujarat province, when he allegedly looked the other way when a train with Hindutva activists attacked a group of Muslims, triggering sectarian violence that led to hundreds of deaths and displacing more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslim. ( "15-Sep-13 World View -- Hindu nationalist nominated as India's prime minister")
According to Savarkar, Hinduism means people born in the "land of India" (Hindustan), who recognize the land as the holy place of their ancestors. They make up an ethnic entity united by the love for this common homeland and by common blood. The hindutva doctrine defines Muslims, Christians and other "heretical" minority groups as those whose land of origin is elsewhere and who, therefore, cannot love the land of India, thereby providing activists with a rationale for discrimination, or expelling them from India or, in recent years, killing them.
Although Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party have not supported or praised the attacks against Christians, they haven't spoken out against them either, according to David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, a Christian nonprofit organization:
"The central government [of India] has refused to speak out against the atrocities – thus further encouraging radical Hindus to step up their discrimination against Christians. The government's tolerance -- if not promotion -- of discrimination against Christians has led to a marked rise in the number of people within India openly pushing for a completely Hindu India."
Modi's unwillingness to speak out against anti-Christian violence is leading to charges that Modi is implicitly supporting the hindutva violence against Christians, as he allegedly implicitly supported the hindutva violence against Muslims in 2002.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, xenophobia and nationalism are growing in almost all countries around the world, as the survivors of World War II die off. Those survivors learned the lesson of how xenophobia and nationalism lead to the most horrific of wars, but the lessons they learned are almost completely forgotten today, as we go deeper into a generational Crisis era. Fox News and South Asia Terrorism Portal (2001) (SATP - India) and Zee News (India)
Last month, eight American senators and 26 members of the House of Representatives wrote to India's prime minister Narendra Modi expressing "particular concern" over the treatment of Christians, Muslims and Sikhs in India. This was the latest action by US officials targeting Modi's religious intolerance.
In 2005, Modi was denied entry to the United States on grounds that he bore a share of responsibility for the massacre that resulted from Hindutva violence in 2002, when he was Governor of the Gujarat province, as described above. The ban was kept in force until 2014, when Modi was elected prime minister.
If violence by Hindu activists continues to grow, this will continue as a political issue. Economist
Demographic figures for India show what is apparently a contradiction, when comparing the population of Sikhs with the population of Christians. During the period 1991 to 2011, the fertility rate for Sikh women was 3.9 children per woman, while it was 3.8 children per woman for Christians.
And yet, during that same period, the Sikh population grew at an average rate of 1.2% per year, while the Christian population grew at the rate of 1.9% per year. Based on the relative fertility rates, the population of Sikhs and Christians should have been growing at around the same rate, but the Christian population grew much faster.
The difference is believed to be due to conversions. Sikhs do not proselytize, while Christian missionaries do proselytize, and convert people of other religions to Christianity. By comparing the growth rate of the two populations, and assuming that the differences are due to proselytization, then it's possible to compute that Christian missionaries in India have converted to Christianity 170,000 people of other religions, including Hindu and Muslim religions.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that a large percentage of the converts to Christianity are in the "untouchable" Dalit caste. According to Hinduism, Dalits are outcasts at the bottom of the spiritual scale of human worth, resulting in social stigma, denial of education, bullying and discrimination in housing and jobs.
People who are considered unfit to enter a Hindu temple are converting to a religion where they are welcome.
Apostasy is among the greatest of sins in almost every religion, including Christianity. In Pakistan, apostasy is given as a reason by terrorist groups of mass slaughter of Shia Muslims. Someone converting from Hinduism to Christianity is considered an apostate. If the reports are true that Christian missionaries are converting huge numbers of Hindus to Christianity, then anti-Christian nationalism and violence is very likely to grow among hindutva activists. Indian Express (1-Sep-2015) and Charisma News (Christian)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Mar-16 World View -- Christianity grows in India despite anti-Christian violence from Hindu activists thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Mar-2016)
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US and Philippines agree on access to five military bases
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On Saturday, a large Chinese coast guard warship in Indonesian waters rammed a vessel that was being towed by an Indonesian patrol vessel. The vessel being towed was a Chinese fishing boat that had been illegally fishing in Indonesian waters around the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. Another large Chinese warship arrived on the scene and forced the Indonesians to release the fishing vessel. However, the 8-member crew of the Chinese vessel had already been arrested, and are still in custody.
The Natuna Islands have always been sovereign Indonesian territory. They are far away from China, but because of the rich fishing grounds, China would like to use its military power to seize the islands from Indonesia. ( "21-Oct-14 World View -- Tensions grow with China over Indonesia's Natuna Islands")
For years, Indonesia has had a "war against illegal fishing" around the Natuna Islands. In recent years, Indonesia has captured and destroyed around 120 fishing ships that have been caught poaching in the country’s territorial waters. These ships have been from several nations besides China.
According to Indonesia's Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti:
"The Chinese government does not want to see its ships being sunk. Although the ship has gone, we did manage to arrest its crew for prosecution. It [China] should have not have behaved in such a way because a national government should not step in to support illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing."
The government says that it will formally protest China's "arrogant" actions.
China is claiming the entire South China Sea, and is using its massive military force to confiscate regions that have historically belonged to other nations, especially Vietnam and the Philippines. China is building artificial islands and converting them to military bases with advanced missile and radar systems. ( "23-Feb-16 World View -- China's military buildup neutralizes America's aircraft carriers")
China’s Foreign Ministry said that the fishing trawler was carrying out “normal activities” in “traditional Chinese fishing grounds":
"On March 19, after the relevant trawler was attacked and harassed by an armed Indonesian ship, a Chinese coast guard ship went to assist.The Chinese side immediately demanded the Indonesian side at once release the detained Chinese fishermen and ensure their personal safety."
Indonesia's foreign policy has been devoted "maintaining peace" in the South China Sea by serving as an "honest broker" between China and other disputants. That's why the threat of making a formal protest, if carried out, would be out of character for Indonesia, since the Indonesians are afraid of souring relations with China. However, the prosecution of the fishermen would certainly turn into a major incident.
This ramming incident has clearly shocked the Indonesians. After meeting with Chinese embassy officials, Pudjiastuti was clearly angry:
"We feel interrupted and sabotaged in our efforts. We may take it to the international tribunal of the law of the sea."
In recent years, several south Asian countries, including Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia, have all been growing their naval capabilities in the region, in response to China's military bellicosity in the South China Sea. At the very least, this new incident is likely to trigger an additional naval buildup by Indonesia. Jakarta Post and Reuters and Diplomat
Two years after the the Philippines agreed in principle to give U.S. ships access to Philippine military bases, the two countries have announced a deal giving access to five bases. The final deal faced activist opposition, a vote by the Philippine Senate, and approval by the Philippine Supreme Court, which was granted in January. ( "28-Apr-14 World View -- Philippines agrees to major return of U.S. military to counter China")
The U.S. had military bases in the Philippines for 94 years, since the early 1900s, following the Spanish-American war, and the bases played a crucial role for America in World War II and the Vietnam war. Subic Bay and Clark became America's largest military bases outside the U.S., but due to a substantial growth of anti-Americanism, The Americans were thrown out in 1991.
The new agreement, which will be valid for ten years, does not allow for permanent US bases as occurred in the past. It allows the U.S. increased military presence in the Philippines rotation of ships and aircraft for humanitarian and maritime security operations, the latter referring to countering China. In addition, the US will provide $50 million in aid, mostly to help the Philippines improve radar and other South China Sea monitoring capabilities.
The five bases are: Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air Base, Fort Magsaysay, Lumbia Air Base and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base.
China's foreign ministry warned that the agreement threatened regional peace and stability: "The U.S.-Philippines cooperation should not target third parties, harm the sovereignty or security interests of other states, or hamper regional peace and stability." Manila Bulletin and VOA and Xinhua
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Mar-16 World View -- China's coast guard warship rams vessel in Indonesian waters thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Mar-2016)
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Gone With The Wind
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The so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in Brussels, Belgium, that killed 31 people and wounded 230. There were two explosions at the American Airlines terminal of the Brussels airport at around 8 am local time, and another explosion at a nearby Metro station in central Brussels. Brussels is capital city of the European Union, and one attack occurred within sight of the European Commission building, so the symbolic nature of the attack is obvious.
For me, and for regular readers of Generational Dynamics World View, Tuesday's terror attack in Brussels was not a remarkable or unusual event. In fact, looking at the bigger picture, it was just the latest in a string of similar attacks.
Last weekend, there was a major suicide bombing attack in Istanbul Turkey, and this followed a terror attack in Ankara two weeks ago, another one three weeks ago, and another one in October. Egypt has been suffering numerous terror attacks including, most spectacularly, a Russian passenger plane blown out of the sky over Sinai last year. Pakistan has had so many terror attacks that many are too commonplace to report. Six of the world’s 10 deadliest terrorist attacks of 2015 took place in Africa, in faraway places with such strange-sounding names like Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, and Egypt, with smaller attacks in Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali.
Generational Dynamics looks at this situation from a global point of view, instead of just a European or American point of view. And from a global point of view, there are going to be three or four major terror attacks every month, and they'll be scattered around different countries and continents.
And that doesn't even count the countries at war -- like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. As I've written many, many times, there is no Muslim war against the West. There is a major war, or several wars, of Muslims against Muslims. The number of Westerners killed by Muslims is minuscule compared the tsunami of Muslims being killed by other Muslims. As horrific as the attacks in Brussels and other places are, they are collateral damage to the real wars going on -- Muslims against Muslims.
Much of this comes from Syria, as I've written many times before. The amount of damage that Syria's sociopathic Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad has done to the world, with the support and help of Russia's Vladimir Putin and Iran's Seyed Ali Khamenei, is almost beyond belief. By treating peacefully protesting Sunnis as cockroaches to be exterminated, al-Assad has created a conflict like no other seen in decades, with millions of refugees pouring into other countries and Europe.
Thanks to al-Assad, Putin and Khamenei, there are now 30,000 jihadist fighters from 86 countries that have come to Syria, first to join the rebels fighting al-Assad, then to join the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front), the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), according to estimates by the left wing Center for American Progress.
Of those 30,000 jihadists from 86 countries, 5,000 are from European countries, and are citizens of European countries, probably having been born in a European country, and so are free to move around Europe as they wish. On a per-capita basis, Belgium has the largest share of its Muslim population leave to fight in Syria than any other Western country.
Now, it's probably not correct to say that these 5,000 people are all jihadists. We know that many people who go to Syria come back because they learn that they don't want to be any part of ISIS or other jihadist group, and don't wish to be suicide bombers or any kind of bomber. But probably at least a few hundred have been sufficiently radicalized that they are willing to conduct terror attacks. There may be more terrorist attacks in Belgium. So some of these people are going to conduct terror attacks, and there's no way to stop it.
About 30,000 Europeans die in traffic accidents each year, far more than have died as victims of terrorist attacks, at least so far. That comparison may not help much in solving the problem, but it might help you understand how to accept the reality of what's going on. Expatica Belgium and Washington Times and Center for American Progress
Listening to Tuesday's broadcast coverage of the Brussel's terror attack, I heard one woman say the following:
"I can hardly wait for all of this to be over, and for things to return to normal, the way they used to be."
She may have been thinking of the 1990s, when there were no existential threats, and there was plenty of money around, thanks to the tech bubble.
Even terrorist acts didn't seem so bad. Ireland's "Provisional IRA" conducted multiple bombing attacks in Ireland and England, killing 1,800 people since the late 1960s into the 1990s. Britain listed the Provisional IRA as a terrorist group, but the U.S. did not. This massive string of terrorist attacks did not generate a fraction of the panic that attacks by al-Qaeda and ISIS have done. In fact, they were referred to by a fairly mild name, "The Troubles."
There's a very good reason why attacks by the Provisional IRA didn't raise anywhere near the same level of panic as ISIS attacks, and the reason isn't because the IRA is Catholic and ISIS is Muslim. That's not the reason.
The reason is that in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the world was still being governed by the GI Generation and Silent Generation, the survivors of World War II. Londoners in particular had suffered the equivalent of 9/11 three times a day for years, as Nazi bombers attacked every day. For these survivors, a car bombing or hotel bombing in London might be a horrific, bloody event, but it's nothing compared to what they lived through in the 1940s. Any WW II survivor still living today might feel the same way about the ISIS attacks -- that they're nothing compared to the Nazi bombing of London.
So the woman who quoted above, saying that she wanted "for things to return to normal, the way they used to be" is dreaming of a time in the past when the Silent Generation was running the world, keeping things under control and in perspective.
But returning to the way things used to be is impossible, because the Silent Generation is gone. The Boomers and Gen-Xers of today don't have a fraction of their wisdom and skills, and their ability to govern the world.
A similar kind of transition occurred because of the American Civil War, and it's described by the title card of the 1939 movie about that transition:
"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind..."
Those who are wishing for a return to "normal," for a return to the 1990s, should understand that the 1990s world is gone now, nothing more than a dream, a civilization that is gone with the wind. Council on Foreign Relations and Internet Movie Database
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Mar-16 World View -- Generational view of Tuesday's terror attack in Brussels, Belgium thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Mar-2016)
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Humanitarian agencies condemn the EU-Turkey refugee deal
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The EU-Turkey refugee deal took effect on Sunday, and so far the outcome has been chaotic. ( "19-Mar-16 World View -- Desperate European Union leaders sign refugee agreement with Turkey")
Since the agreement took effect, over 3,000 new migrants have crossed the Aegean Sea and reached Greece's islands. According to the terms of the deal, each of them must be processed individually. Each must be given an individual hearing before a magistrate in order to determine whether he's eligible for asylum. The asylum process will require interviews with each refugee and inspection of documents. Each refugee will be photographed and fingerprinted. If he's refused asylum, then he will be able to appeal. If he loses the appeal, then he will be sent back to Turkey, and in return, Europe will select, accept and resettle one refugee from Turkey's Syrian refugee camps, up to a maximum of 72,000, a quota that will be exhausted by June.
The European leaders hope that when Syrian refugees in Turkey hear about the EU-Turkey deal, then they'll give up and stop trying to reach Europe. However, as spring approaches and the weather warms, the flow of migrants may not decrease substantially, and may increase.
In order to process all the refugees that arrive on the islands, starting on Sunday, it's estimated that Greece will need 4,000 workers for the asylum process, the appeals process, and the return process, as well as for security and transportation. The asylum process alone will require 200 caseworkers and 400 language interpreters for refugees who can't speak Greek and who have documents in other languages.
So the EU and Turkey are scrambling to find those 4,000 workers from Greece and other countries as quickly as possible. In the meantime, Greece is rapidly building new refugee camps such as the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos pictured above.
From Greece's point of view, the other European countries are forcing Greece to handle the refugee crisis alone, without providing help, as Austria and the Balkan countries have closed their borders. There are 50,000 refugees stranded in Greece, with some 12,000 still camped out in the filthy camp Idomeni on Greece's closed border with Macedonia.
The economic cost of the refugee crisis to Greece last year was over $675 million, and Greece the time is approaching for a new round of the bailout crisis. Greece has to pay 3.8 billion euros in debt servicing between March and June. Even if Greece scrapes up the money to pay that, there's another 2.8 billion euro payment due in July, and there's no way the Greek government can make that payment without more bailout money. Greece's lenders are demanding a reduction in pension payments, but now Greece has a powerful negotiating tool: Give us the bailout money, or stop processing refugees. Kathimerini and International Business Times and ABC News
"Life or death, whatever it is, I’m going to go," says Huseyin, a 24-year-old former teacher in Turkey. He's paid a middleman $1,000 to get to Europe, and he's waiting for a call from a smuggler. His objective is to join family members in Spain. "If I have to swim, I’ll swim,” he said. “What do I have to lose?"
The media are full of stories of refugees who have staked their lives on reaching Europe, often to reach family members, and they consider being sent back to Turkey the equivalent of a death sentence.
According the UNHCR, the EU and Greek authorities are rushing into the agreement too quickly. "The Greek state lacks the necessary capacity to assess large numbers of asylum claims and needs to be reinforced."
Already there are reports that Turkish police and coast guard members are becoming increasingly violent with refugees that are trying to cross the Aegean Sea to reach Greece. Some refugees claim that Turkey returning them to Syria, rather than keeping them in refugee camps in Turkey.
Amnesty International has condemned the EU-Turkey deal, saying that it violates both EU human rights legislation and international laws. Last month, Amnesty International released a report that said Turkish security forces had shot and wounded civilians. The report said those injured included children, who were trying to flee Syria by entering Turkey.
However, the EU says that it's fully complying with international laws. "The return of those who do not have the right to international protection will proceed in full compliance with EU and international law."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this has been a mass migration of historic proportions that can be neither caused nor prevented nor predicted by politicians, and it still has a long way to go. Kathimerini and Bloomberg and VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Mar-16 World View -- EU desperation continues on second day of EU-Turkey refugee deal thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Mar-2016)
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Whom to support for President?
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Banks in Greece are collecting a commission of 1.5% when changing 500-euro bills for notes of lower denominations. The charge is 3-5 euros (depending on the bank), while the maximum charge comes to 200-250 euros.
During last year's Greek bank crisis, when people feared that they would lose all their savings, many people withdrew their savings in 500-euro notes, because large notes are easier to store under mattresses. So now they want to cash those 500-euro notes in, but are being charged a commission to do so. The banks say that the administrative cost of supplying their branches around the country with smaller banknotes is unusually high at present with the capital controls still in place. Kathimerini
On Saturday, Sgt. Louis F. Cardin of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Camp Lejeune, was killed in Iraq by a rocket fired by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) from 15 km away. Several other Marines were wounded. A second rocket fell harmlessly to the ground.
The Pentagon had initially announced Cardin's death as being from "indirect fire," but the death has revealed the existence of a previously secret firebase in Iraq, occupied by a "couple of hundred" Marines living in tents near Makhmour in northern Iraq. ISIS had apparently identified the firebase by observing soldiers moving around. The Pentagon plans to expand the firebase further with Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit to fight ISIS.
A "firebase" is a small remote location designed to use its artillery to support infantry troops at forward locations. The Pentagon says that they had planned to reveal the existence of the firebase later this week.
President Obama has said many times that there would never be "any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground." Like many of his campaign promises, his promises of complete withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan have not been kept.
Cardin is the second American that has been killed in combat with ISIS in Iraq since the U.S. reentered the country in late 2014. In October of last year Master Sergeant Joshua L. Wheeler was killed by enemy small-arms fire during a raid that freed 70 hostages from ISIS captivity in northern Iraq. Washington Post and CNN and "ABC News
In response to my recent article, "15-Mar-16 World View -- Saudi's Prince Faisal sharply rebukes Obama's 'free riders' accusation", a web site reader has posted a response:
Whom to support for President of the US?? Let's see our choices are:
- A woman who should be elected just because she's a woman even though she has thrown any and all fellow women under the bus if they've had any involvement with her husband - including rape! Oh and by the way she's being investigated by 100+ FBI agents for a variety of things - things that if any normal person had done they would be in prison for now. A GREAT choice.
- Another narcissist - one of the most insulting and inflammatory individuals I've ever seen in politics. Any time any one disagrees with him - he responds with personal attacks. He has no coherent policy - but a great slogan. Oh.. and although most Republicans really aren't racist, he actually is. And people love him because he tells it like it is.
- A loonie but nice old fellow who has never had a real job. Who thinks money grows on trees and the rich ought to just give everything they have to the government. Oh.. and he thinks all our wars are caused by global warming and the solution to our problems is go to deeper into debt. But he does seem to be the most honest and sincere of the candidates - maybe..
- A fellow who really hasn't been in government long enough to do anything productive - but he sure has figured out how to piss all his colleagues off by his insistence of following his own set of rules and looking out for what's best for him. So much so, that behind the scenes several seem to be saying that they would rather have the opponent win. But hey - it's not like the President of the US has to actually get along with anyone and compromise right? I mean President Obama sure hasn't made that a priority.
- Another fellow that hasn't had much of a real job, and doesn't show up to vote for the job he currently has either - because he's too busy trying to get a promotion. He looks pretty, talks nice, spends personal money like there's no tomorrow and likes his perks. I'm pretty sure within 48 hours he's going to hang it up anyway and go do something else (likely on a government paycheck) with his life. Ain't America great?
- A seasoned politician that seems to mostly like the status quo. The status quo that has the citizens so upset they are mostly lining up behind two crazies. He mostly talks nice, has something of a decent record - at least he hasn't totally screwed his state up. Of course he's pretty much in last place.
Yep a great set of choices we have.
It's an exercise for the reader to match up the descriptions with the candidates.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Mar-16 World View -- Pentagon to expand a secret military firebase in Iraq after marine killed thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Mar-2016)
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Israel participating in investigation of Istanbul attack
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Five people were killed and 39 others were injured in a suicide bomb attack on Saturday in the heart of the business district in Istanbul, Turkey. Among those killed were foreign nationals: three Israeli citizens and one Iranian.
This is only the latest in a series of major terrorist attacks in Turkey's cities in the last few months.
There was a suicide car bombing in Ankara last Sunday that killed 37 people, and another one in Ankara on February 17, killing 30 people. Both of those attacks were claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a splinter group from the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in violence with the Turkish government for three decades.
On October 10 of last year, there was a massive terror attack at a 'peace rally' in Ankara that killed 103 people. It was referred to as the worst terrorist massacre in Turkey's history, or as "Turkey's 9/11." In that case, the attack was blamed on the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). ( "13-Oct-15 World View -- Turkey is seen as increasingly unstable after Ankara massacre")
So either TAK or ISIS may be responsible for Saturday's attack in Istanbul, though neither has yet claimed responsibility.
However, Turkish authorities suspect that the suicide bomber was Savas Yildis, a 33 year old terrorist. Authorities have detained Yildis' father and obtained a blood sample in order to verify that Yildis was among those killed in the bombing. Yildis was a suspected ISIS member and is suspected of involvement in two previous attacks in Turkey last year, in the cities of Mersin and Adana. Hurriyet (Turkey) and Times of Israel and Daily Mail (London)
Because three Israelis were killed in the attack, the investigation will attempt to determine whether Israelis were specifically targeted. The Israelis were reportedly part of a group of 14 Israeli tourists on a culinary tour.
Saturday's attack was clearly targeting tourists. If the PKK/TAK was responsible, it would represent a change in tactics. In the past, PKK violence has attacked military targets, so civilian targets are a new tactic. The TAK have warned foreigners about supporting the country's tourism industry which the group says feeds the Erdogan regime.
In December, Israel and Turkey reached an agreement to normalize diplomatic relations between the two countries. 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: Israel would have to apologize, pay monetary compensation to the families of the victims, and lift the blockade of Gaza. December's agreement mentioned only the first two of these three conditions.
The Mavi Marmara incident was a major news story for a long time in 2010, but now with a thousands of people being killed every day in Syria, with millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey attempting to reach Europe, and with hundreds of Turkish citizens being killed in a series of terrorist attacks by the PKK/TAK and ISIS, the Mavi Marmara incident is but a footnote to the events of the 2010s decade.
In the last year, Turkish resorts have become a popular destination for Israeli tourists, especially during the spring vacation. This is especially true now, after the shootdown by Turkey of a Russian warplane on November 25 of last year, sharply reducing the number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey. International Business Times and CS Monitor and Debka and Foreign Policy
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Mar-16 World View -- Istanbul terrorist attack is the latest in a string of attacks on Turkey thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Mar-2016)
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EU will start returning migrants to Turkey on Sunday
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Desperate to find a solution to the migrant crisis, the European Union agreed to numerous demands by the government of Turkey and signed an agreement that few believe will actually solve the migrant crisis.
Some of the terms of the agreement are as follows:
"All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands as from 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey. This will take place in full accordance with EU and international law, thus excluding any kind of collective expulsion. All migrants will be protected in accordance with the relevant international standards and in respect of the principle of non-refoulement. It will be a temporary and extraordinary measure which is necessary to end the human suffering and restore public order.Migrants arriving in the Greek islands will be duly registered and any application for asylum will be processed individually by the Greek authorities in accordance with the Asylum Procedures Directive, in cooperation with UNHCR. Migrants not applying for asylum or whose application has been found unfounded or inadmissible in accordance with the said directive will be returned to Turkey."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that the deal will hit the people smugglers' business model hard and send a "clear message" to dissuade would-be migrants to Europe. BBC and Reuters and Hurriyet (Ankara)
The Office of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) immediately issued a statement saying:
"Today’s agreement clarifies a number of elements. Importantly, it is explicit that any modalities of implementation of the agreement will respect international and European law. ...Ultimately, the response must be about addressing the compelling needs of individuals fleeing war and persecution. Refugees need protection, not rejection."
Around 90% of those arriving in the Greek islands say they are fleeing conflict, primarily from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. Under international law, each person's case must be heard on an individual basis, not as a group, because they may have very good reasons for seeking protection.
Turkey is not a full member of the Geneva Convention. It does not offer Syrians asylum, only a lesser form of international protection. And other groups like Iraqis and Afghans don't even have that option in Turkey. So while returning Syrians is questionable, returning non-Syrians may be even more problematic.
Many officials on the EU side are objecting strongly to the agreement. Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán has said that it must be possible for a country (Hungary) to opt out of receiving any Syrian refugees. Officials in France and other countries fear strong anti-immigrant backlash if visa-free travel is permitted. The deal could also affect the "Brexit" referendum vote on June 23 over whether Britain should exit the European Union. As a separate issue, Turkey will have to recognize the Greek-Cypriot government in Nicosia, which it has not done to date.
Other officials are concerned that Turkey is becoming an increasingly authoritarian government, as president Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to amass more and more power. Europeans were especially shocked earlier this month when Erdogan's government seized the country's largest opposition newspaper. ( "6-Mar-16 World View -- Turkey's 'shameful day for free press' as government seizes Zaman media")
Some people claim that the EU-Turkey deal may help in the short term, but will have little or no impact on the long term.
There are about 3 million Syrian refugees living in squalid conditions in refugee camps in Turkey. Many of them are determined to reach Europe. If they can't reach Europe via the Greek islands, then they may take other routes, including a boat trip from Libya across the Mediterranean. Whatever international law permits about returning refugees to Turkey, the law is going to be much stricter about returning refugees to Libya.
Another problem is that the agreement really only covers Syrian refugees. There are thousands of refugees from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also traveling through Turkey to Greece, and there are refugees from countries in Africa as well. No solution has been proposed for these refugees. United Nations and AP and BBC
Reports indicate that incidents of violence and fights between groups are increasing in Greece's refugee camp at Idomeni. Idomeni is a small village on the border with Macedonia, where thousands of refugees who had hoped to cross the border into Macedonia and proceed northward to Germany have been blocked.
Conditions have gotten significantly worse in the last few days because of several days of rain, creating six inches of mud, while portable toilets are becoming increasingly foul.
Greece's interior minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis says that the Idomeni camp is a modern version of the Dachau camp operated by the Nazis in Germany. He blamed the problem on the European countries that have closed their borders.
After Friday's refugee between the EU and Turkey was signed, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged migrants to leave the Idomeni camp:
"I want to take the opportunity to tell the refugees at Idomeni that they should trust the Greek government and move to other accommodation where the conditions will be significantly better. ... From there, Greece will put asylum procedures in motion or redistribution to other European countries will take place."
Many refugees have risked everything because they wish to reach a specific country, usually Germany. Moving to the "other accomodation" would require applying to asylum and risking remaining in Greece or being sent back to Turkey. Kathimerini and Lawfare Blog and AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Mar-16 World View -- Desperate European Union leaders sign refugee agreement with Turkey thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Mar-2016)
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Over 100 civilians killed in Saudi airstrike in Yemen
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Saudi Arabia's Brig. Gen. Ahmad Al Assiri announced on Thursday that major combat operations in Yemen are coming to an end, after which the Saudi-led coalition will work on “long-term” plans to bring stability to the country.
It was almost exactly a year ago, on March 26, that Saudi Arabia announced that a 10-country coalition was conducting airstrikes in Yemen.
Up until late 2014, Yemen had been governed by a government closely allied with Saudi Arabia. In late 2014, the Iran-backed Shia Houthi militias from northwest Yemen moved south and took control of the capital city Sanaa, and then continue to move south, capturing portions of the port city of Aden.
At the time, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the US, explained the airstrikes: "We are determined to protect the legitimate government of Yemen. Having Yemen fail cannot be option for us or for our coalition partners."
After a year of war, most observers consider the war to have been a failure. The Houthis are still in control of Sanaa, while other parts of the country have gone back and forth between control of the two sides. Furthermore, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has made strong gains in the last year, and the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) is establishing a presence.
Still, the Saudis claim that they've met most of their objectives. According to Yemeni army spokesperson, Brigadier Samir Al Haj:
"Actually, we are at the threshold of fighting the final battle to free Sanaa and the rest of the northern cities, as well as Taiz.Most probably, we don’t need major combat operations, and this is a confirmation to the statement of Brigadier Al Assiri. ...
We are just few kilometers away from Sanaa."
It's hard to know what this means, since no analyst I'm aware of believes that the Yemeni army and Saudi airstrikes have a serious hope of recapturing Sanaa.
However, there have been reports in recent weeks of secret talks between the Saudis and Houthis, and it's possible that Al Haj's remarks are related not to a Saudi victory in Sanaa but to a peace agreement, establishing some sort of unified government. Gulf News (Dubai) and Middle East Eye and VOA
The death toll from three air strikes on Tuesday by the Saudi-led coalition on an outdoor market in Houthi controlled Hajjah province in northwest Yemen has risen to more than 100. Most of the casualties were civilians, including 22 children.
This was one of the most deadly attacks by the Saudi-led coalition. The Saudis insist that they never target civilians, but according to the United nations, more than 6,200 people, half of them civilians, have been killed in Yemen’s conflict since the Saudi-led intervention began. Reuters and CNN and Independent (London)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Mar-16 World View -- Saudi Arabia says it will 'end major combat operations' in Yemen thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Mar-2016)
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Bomb blast in bus in Peshawar Pakistan kills 15
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As American and Nato forces withdraw from Afghanistan, an important lynchpin of the "peace process" to bring peace between the Afghan government and the Afghan Taliban is that the Pakistan can pressure the Taliban to accept a peace deal. The Pakistanis have leverage over the Taliban since the Afghan Taliban depend on safe havens in Pakistan where they can avoid hot pursuit by Afghan security forces.
Pakistani officials met with the Taliban Supreme Council in a secret meeting about two weeks ago, and threatened to expel Afghanistan's Taliban from its bases in Pakistan if they did not join the Afghan peace talks scheduled for early March. Instead, the Taliban rejected the demands.
The reason is that, by this time, Pakistan's threat is pretty much an empty threat. When the Nato and American forces were fully engaged in Afghanistan, the Taliban had nowhere to hide in Afghanistan, and had to flee to Pakistan. (The irony was that the the headquarters of the Afghan Taliban was in Pakistan, while the headquarters of the Pakistan Taliban was in Afghanistan.)
However, as American and Nato forces have been drawn down, the Taliban have been taking control of more and more of Afghanistan. This means that safe havens in Pakistan are not needed as much.
As we reported in December, a Department of Defense assessment found that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating, and this deterioration has continued. The Taliban insurgency has expanded since foreign troops left the country in 2014 and as Afghans have become increasingly fed up with a government seen as weak and corrupt. Afghan army, police personnel and security forces have suffered from heavy casualties, desertions and low morale since then.
In November 2009, President Obama announced the "surge" that would last for 18 months: "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."
To the surprise of no one, President Obama has been repeatedly forced to extend the 18-month deadline. 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.
Currently, U.S. commanders in Afghanistan can strike the Taliban only when its fighters pose a direct threat to U.S. forces or when Afghan troops are in grave danger of being overrun. Gen. John F. Campbell, the outgoing commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, has made a request to broaden authorities to once again permit offensive strikes against the Taliban. The request has apparently been rejected by the White House, exposing what may be a major rift between the military and senior administration officials over the U.S. role in the war in Afghanistan.
For the Taliban, this is particularly bad timing for a "peace process," since the warm weather is coming and the Taliban are about to launch their annual fighting season. According to one senior Taliban official:
"We already have started focusing on the spring offensive, and that's why the majority of the fighters and commanders are going there (Afghanistan)."
The Taliban plan is to gain more territory. Whether the Afghan Taliban will even need their safe havens in Pakistan in the fall remains to be seen. Reuters and Washington Post and South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India)
In Pakistan, terrorist bomb explosions are almost as common as traffic accidents, and Wednesday was no exception. A powerful bomb, detonated by a timing mechanism, exploded in a bus carrying government employees in Peshawar on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people and causing injuries to 25.
Lashkar-e-Islam, a militant group allied with the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was to avenge a military court's sentencing of 13 militants to death on March 15.
The bus is normally parked overnight at a petrol station, and that may be when the bomb and timer were inserted. The police didn't inspect the bus before it left on its route because it was privately-owned, and it was the responsibility of the contractor to perform security checks.
Peshawar has seen scores of attacks on civilians as well as law enforcement personnel in the past. The city is also the home to the XI Corps, an administrative corps of the Pakistan Army which manages all military activity in KP and is currently engaged in a full-blown operation against the Taliban in North Waziristan. Pakistan Today and Dawn (Pakistan) and RFE/RL
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Mar-16 World View -- Taliban reject Pakistan pressure on Afghanistan peace process thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Mar-2016)
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Vladimir Putin may be sick of Syria and sick of Bashar al-Assad
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Catching almost everyone by surprise, Russia's president Vladimir Putin issued the following statement on Monday:
"I believe that the objectives set before the Defense Ministry and the Armed Forces have on the whole been achieved. I therefore order the Defense Minister to begin the withdrawal of the main part of our task force from the Syrian Arab Republic starting from tomorrow. ...Meanwhile our bases, the naval one in Tartus and the air one at the Humaymim aerodrome, will operate as before. They should be reliably protected from the ground, from the sea and from the air. This part of our military task force was traditionally stationed in Syria, for many years before, and these days it will have to perform the very important function of monitoring the ceasefire and creating conditions for the peace process."
Russia will keep its two military bases, and will continue to launch air strikes as before. Other reports indicate that Russia will leave its advanced S-400 air missiles would stay in Syria. These missiles have a range of 400 km, which covers a great deal of Turkey, Iraq and Israel. In addition, Russia's warships in the Caspian and Mediterranean seas are expected to remain and be prepared to launch cruise missiles. This means that Russia can re-deploy at any time, if desired. Reuters and Eurasia Review
Putin says "that the objectives set before the Defense Ministry and the Armed Forces have on the whole been achieved," but nobody I heard seriously believes that. The major stated objective was to "end terrorism" in Syria, but al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) and the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) are both still active in Syria.
In fact, Russia never really targeted either al-Nusra or ISIS. Since 2011, when Syria's Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad began massacring innocent Sunni women and children as if they were cockroaches to be exterminated, Russia has simply joined in the slaughter, flattening entire Sunni villages with missiles and chlorine-laden barrel bombs, leaving the al-Nusra and ISIS free to continue.
There's no question that one of Putin's objectives was a larger influence and military presence in the Mideast, and with two military bases in Syria protected by advanced S-400 missiles, he's certainly met that objective. Another objective was to save Bashar al-Assad's army from defeat, as the army was near collapse before the Russians intervened.
But there were huge downsides for Russia as well, as I described last year in "13-Sep-15 World View -- Russia opens a dangerous new chapter in Syria and the Mideast".
The Russians have no desired to be involved in another quagmire like the one they were in during the 1980s in Afghanistan. The 1980s war was portrayed by Salafists as a Christian country invading a Muslim country. Many Salafists in Saudi Arabia went to fight Russia in Afghanistan, and that led to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Today, Saudi Salafists portray Russia's intervention into Syria as, once again, a Christian invasion of a Muslim country. This time, many jihadists from Chechnya are receiving training in Syria, and are prepared to use those skills back in Russia, and Putin may believe that a partial withdrawal will slow that trend down.
Another issue is how long the fighting is going to go on. Russia's economy is under severe pressure, and the government is rapidly depleting its foreign reserves because of the collapse in the price of oil. Russia simply cannot afford another military quagmire, even if Putin wanted one.
Furthermore, now that Russia has its bases and missiles in place, Putin may feel that there's no further need to continue fighting. There have been many, many stories in the past few weeks that Putin and the Obama administration are united in pushing the current Geneva peace talks to bring the fighting to an end. As a byproduct, it's hoped that this would bring an end to the tsunami of Syrian refugees flooding into Turkey and the European Union.
This development has has implications with the regimes in both Syria and Iran. According to some reports, neither al-Assad nor the Iranians want to end fighting. Recall that al-Assad started massacring peacefully protesting Sunni civilians in 2011 for reasons that are hard to discern. If al-Assad wanted to massacred Sunni civilians in 2011, then he would want to massacre Sunni civilians today, for the same reason.
Iran is no different. Iranians have not forgotten the brutal treatment they received from Saddam Hussein and the Sunnis in Iraq during the 1980s Iran/Iraq war, and Iran's Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei may well have the same motivations as al-Assad.
Finally, it may be that even Vladimir Putin is sickened and disgusted with supporting the greatest sociopath of the modern era. As I've written many times, Bashar al-Assad is the greatest genocidal monster in today's world, comparable to Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and Stalin from the last century. For years, he's been killing thousands of Syrian civilians every week with complete impunity, using Russian-supplied barrel bombs on civilian neighborhoods. And he's used sarin chemical weapons on civilians. He uses the most gruesome forms of torture on a personal, individual scale, as well as on a mass scale. There is no mass weapon of destruction, nor any gruesome form of torture, that he won't use to satisfy his psychopathy.
Putin and Khamenei have enthusiastically aided and supported these horrendous crimes against humanity, but one possibility that we have to consider is that Putin, at least, can take only so much of al-Assad's sickening sociopathy. So that's a possible personal motive of Putin in announcing the partial withdrawal.
However, Syria's army was losing ground before Russia's intervention, and Syria's army may start losing ground again. This is going to make al-Assad and Khamenei very unhappy, and so it's possible that this Russian withdrawal is not only partial but also temporary. Guardian (London) and Deutsche Welle (Berlin) and Debka and American Enterprise Institute
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Mar-16 World View -- Analysts wonder why Russia announced a partial withdrawal from Syria now thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Mar-2016)
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The World View of President Barack Hussein Obama
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki bin al-Faisal Al Saud has written an article strongly rebuking President Barack Obama's remarks branding as "free-riders" who "aggravate" him several of America's allies, including Britain, France and Saudi Arabia. The accusations appeared in a lengthy Atlantic article by Jeffrey Goldberg, entitled "The Obama Doctrine - The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world."
According to Faisal:
"No, Mr. Obama. We are not “free riders.” We shared with you our intelligence that prevented deadly terrorist attacks on America.We initiated the meetings that led to the coalition that is fighting Fahish (ISIS), and we train and fund the Syrian freedom fighters, who fight the biggest terrorist, Bashar Assad and the other terrorists, Al-Nusrah and Fahish (ISIS). We offered boots on the ground to make that coalition more effective in eliminating the terrorists. ...
Your treasury department officials have publicly praised Saudi Arabia’s measures to curtail any financing that might reach terrorists. Our King Salman met with you, last September, and accepted your assurances that the nuclear deal you struck with the Iranian leadership will prevent their acquiring nuclear weapons for the duration of the deal. You noted “the Kingdom’s leadership role in the Arab and Islamic world.” The two of you affirmed the “need, in particular, to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities.”
Now, you throw us a curve ball. You accuse us of fomenting sectarian strife in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. You add insult to injury by telling us to share our world with Iran, a country that you describe as a supporter of terrorism and which you promised our king to counter its “destabilizing activities.”
Could it be that you are petulant about the Kingdom’s efforts to support the Egyptian people when they rose against the Muslim Brothers’ government and you supported it? Or is it the late King Abdullah’s (God rest his soul) bang on the table when he last met you and told you “No more red lines, Mr. President.”
Or is it because you have pivoted to Iran so much that you equate the Kingdom’s 80 years of constant friendship with America to an Iranian leadership that continues to describe America as the biggest enemy, that continues to arm, fund and support sectarian militias in the Arab and Muslim world, that continues to harbor and host Al-Qaeda leaders, that continues to prevent the election of a Lebanese president through Hezbollah, which is identified by your government as a terrorist organization, that continues to kill the Syrian Arab people in league with Bashar Assad?
No, Mr. Obama. We are not the “free riders” that to whom you refer. We lead from the front and we accept our mistakes and rectify them. We will continue to hold the American people as our ally and don’t forget that when the chips were down, and George Herbert Walker Bush sent American soldiers to repel with our troops Saddam’s aggression against Kuwait, soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder with soldiers. Mr. Obama, that is who we are."
According to the BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner, Obama's criticism of the Saudis was "an extraordinary thing to say ... the Saudis are really stung by this, and the fact that it's Turki al-Faisal saying this needs to be taken seriously."
The BBC reporters have always been fawning idolaters of Obama, and the easiest way to see this is to look back at the BBC's attitudes towards President George Bush -- BBC reporters openly ridiculing Bush with jokes to make him appear dumb, and even Tony Blair blasting the BBC's anti-Americanism. The contrast between the vitriolicly hateful BBC then and the breathless adoration of Obama today is enormous.
So Gardner chose his words very carefully when he was asked on the BBC World News why Obama had made such a remarkable criticism of the Saudis (my transcription):
"Well, President Obama wants his Middle East legacy to be that he's the guy that made peace with Iran, and brought Iran in from the cold, and in a Middle East context, it's sort of like Nixon reaching out to China. And he sees Saudis as being the stumbling block in this. He's pretty fed up and feels that they are being obstinate. He just wants to put the Saudis and the Iranians in a room and say, guys, make peace, end your rivalry. And that isn't going to happen, because if you look at the map -- Saudi Arabia feels as I mentioned they feel pretty much surrounded actually. If you look at the map, there's Hezbollah, which is the Iranian proxy in Lebanon, and they're also present in Syria, and that's a war where you've got Shia militia loyal to Iran in Iraq, so the Saudi fear is that Iran effectively controls five capitals in the Middle East."
Just to be clear, the five capitals that Gardner refers to are Tehran Iran, Baghdad Iraq, Damascus Syria, Beirut Lebanon, and Sanaa Yemen. The Saudis are surrounded on all sides by Iranian proxies, a concept to which Obama appears to be oblivious.
This is what I mean when I say that President Obama came into office having no clue what's going on in the world, and after seven years still has no clue what's going on in the world. It's almost as if pieces of his mind are missing. He blames the Israeli leadership for preventing him from solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, apparently not even aware that Hamas and Hezbollah are building tunnels and amassing rockets to attack Israel, and he blames the Saudis because the Saudis and Iranians don't get along. It simply boggles the mind that he has no grasp of these things.
Just to be clear for new readers, I wrote in May 2003 in "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?" that it would never work, because Generational Dynamics predicts that Arabs and Jews would be refighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. I said that President Bush's peace plan would fail, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that I'm pointing out that President Obama's peace plan is failing. However, you would think that twelve years later, after multiple Mideast wars between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah, and Fatah and Hamas, that Obama would begin to understand these things, but he's totally oblivious to them. The Atlantic and Arab News and NBC News
The 22,000 word Atlantic article was apparently originally intended to be more idolatrous praise of President Obama's foreign policy views, but it turned out to unintentionally expose a great deal of ignorance, balanced by arrogance and contemptuousness.
I'll take one of the most important examples, the flip-flop about striking Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime when he killed hundreds of people with Sarin gas, after Obama had said the use of chemical weapons were a "red line" that would demand a response.
Obama says that the American experience in Vietnam influenced him: "So we dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II, and yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaughter, and authoritarian governments that finally, over time, have emerged from that hell."
The story has been told many times. Obama took a walk around the White House lawn, and during the walk he decided to renege on his commitment. He says:
"I'm very proud of this moment. ... The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America's credibility was at stake. And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically."
So President Obama was mainly worried about politics. But credibility was more than a perception. America's credibility WAS at stake. But the decision to fight in Vietnam left behind "chaos, slaughter, and authoritarian governments," but it never even occurs to him that his flip-flop on chemical weapons ALSO caused "chaos, slaughter, and authoritarian governments." The loss of American credibility emboldened the jihadists that were coming from all over the world to fight against al-Assad, and those jihadists formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). But it never occurs to him that it was his flip-flopping, and loss of American credibility, that was a major contributor to the formation of ISIS.
Instead, he blames it on the French, the British, and the Saudis, saying: "Free riders aggravate me." It's now been three years since the flip-flop occurred, and Obama apparently has no idea what happened.
Here are some other comments on the Atlantic article.
For CNN, Frida Ghitis wrote a generally laudatory article on Obama's policies, but wrote:
"Syria is a total catastrophe, with nearly half a million dead, millions more displaced, the region destabilized, refugee flows at levels not seen since World War II and a terrorist group continuously surpassing its own level of brutality. No, if Obama wants to talk about his accomplishments, he should steer clear of Syria. ...Obama clearly thinks highly of himself, as he should. ... In a telling anecdote, Obama is sitting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is lecturing him about the Middle East. He interrupts him to say, "I'm the African-American son of a single mother, and I live here, in this house. I live in the White House. I managed to get elected president of the United States. You think I don't understand what you're talking about, but I do."
Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson wrote a lengthy point by point critical analysis of the Obama doctrine in the Atlantic, beginning with this:
"It is a criticism I have heard from more than one person who has worked with President Obama: that he regards himself as the smartest person in the room -- any room. Jeffrey Goldberg’s fascinating article reveals that this is a considerable understatement. The president seems to think he is the smartest person in the world, perhaps ever.Power corrupts in subtle ways. It appears to have made Obama arrogant. As described in Goldberg’s story, he is impatient to the point of rudeness with members of his own administration. His response to Secretary of State John Kerry when he hands him a paper on Syria is: “Oh, another proposal?” “Samantha, enough,” he snaps at [Samantha Powers], the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “I’ve already read your book.” We learn, too, that he “secretly disdains ... the Washington foreign-policy establishment.”"
Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute writes:
"The Obama that emerges from the Atlantic interview is preternaturally icy, contemptuous of both his adversaries and his own staff, thin-skinned, angry, and oddly self-satisfied. That character portrait aside, it would have been nice if the article had shed light on the worldview that governs Obama’s decisions. Rather, it illuminated the fact that he doesn’t have a worldview. Instead, the president of the United States has opinions, and lots of them. And people he really doesn’t like, and lots of them. And countries he thinks don’t count, like those that make up the Sunni Middle East. ...And seven years into his presidency, Obama clearly also still defines himself as the anti-George W. Bush. One thread that emerges in this portrait of the president is that seven years in, when confronted with a challenge, he still silently asks himself, “What would Bush do?” — and then does the opposite."
As I've written many times, I was fooled by Obama. When Obama was campaigning in 2008 and said incredibly stupid things ("the earth will heal and the tides will recede"), I assumed that those were just silly campaign promises, and that if he won the election he'd become more sensible. But what I didn't fully understand is that, as is the case of many Gen-Xers, his hatred of Boomers and his father's generation is so deep that it trumps everything else, which has led to one major foreign policy disaster after another. To this day, Obama has no idea what's going on in the world, except that Bush is at fault. Prince Faisal's remarks suggest as much.
Obama was going to unify the nation and make the world love America again. He's failed disastrously, because somebody who is so driven by hatred is going to make one stupid decision after another, and allow campaign promises to become irrelevant. This is something that you should think about, Dear Reader, as you decide whom to support for President. The Atlantic and CNN and American Enterprise Institute
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Mar-16 World View -- Saudi's Prince Faisal sharply rebukes Obama's 'free riders' accusation thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Mar-2016)
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AQIM takes credit for armed terror attack on Ivory Coast beach resort
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A suicide car bomb exploded in central Ankara in Turkey on Sunday, killing at least 34 people and wounding 125.
Turkey has been reeling from a series of suicide bombing attacks in the last five months. On February 17, 29 were killed in a car bombing targeting the Turkish military in Ankara. A branch of the Kurdish separatist terror party, PKK, took credit. On January 12, a suicide attack blamed on the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) killed eleven German tourists in Istanbul. On October 10, 103 people were killed in twin suicide bombings targeting a pro-Kurdish peace rally in Ankara.
After a massive terror attack in July of last year in the town of Suruç on the border with Syria, Turkey declared war on PKK, ending a ceasefire agreement that had been in effect since 2012. Turkish troops began attacking PKK strongholds in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq, and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised to defeat the PKK. Now, after several further massive terror attacks on an almost monthly basis, Erdogan is becoming increasingly belligerent.
Two weeks ago, Turkey shut down the main opposition newspaper. ( "6-Mar-16 World View -- Turkey's 'shameful day for free press' as government seizes Zaman media")
That act obviously did nothing to prevent Sunday's terror attack on central Ankara, although it does make it more difficult anyone to know what's going on in Turkey. That was all the more clear on Sunday when the government shut down access to social media, including Facebook and Twitter.
Either the PKK or ISIS is the likely perpetrator. Nobody has claimed credit yet for Sunday's attack, but Turkish officials are suggesting that the bomb was similar to the bomb used in the February 17 attack, for which a branch of the PKK claimed credit. Erdogan issued this statement:
"Our state will never give up its right to self-defense against all kinds of terror threats.Terror organizations and their pawns are targeting our innocent citizens in the most immoral and heartless way as they lose the fight against our security forces.
Terror attacks - which intend to target the integrity of Turkey, unity and solidarity of our people - do not diminish our will to fight against terror, but further boost it.
[The country's fight against terrorism will] successfully conclude by bringing down terror to its heel."
I doubt that anyone seriously believes that. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Anadolu (Turkey) and Reuters
Al-Qaeda on the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the North African branch of al-Qaeda, claimed credit for an attack by armed gunmen at a beach resort in the town of Grand-Bassam in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) on Sunday. There were 14 civilians, two special forces, and six assailants killed in the assault and subsequent gunfight when security forces arrived.
Tourists are increasingly under attack by jihadists in Africa. ISIS was responsible for several terrorist attacks in Tunisia last year. AQIM, whose roots are in Algeria, has been focusing on tourist sites in former French colonies. It attacked a hotel in Mali in November, and then a hotel and cafe in Burkina Faso in January. Côte d'Ivoire borders both of those countries, and it was feared that AQIM would strike there next, as happened on Sunday.
AQIM had been slowing down its activities until recent months. The escalation of AQIM's operations coincides with the rise of ISIS in Libya, and it's thought that AQIM and ISIS are in competition. CNN and AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Mar-16 World View -- Yet another terrorist bombing in Ankara Turkey kills 34 thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Mar-2016)
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Google's AlphaGo computer defeats world champion at game of Go
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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World Go champion Lee Se-dol was forced to resign the third game of a five-game match against Google's AlphaGo computer and software in Seoul on Saturday, handing the victory for the whole match to the computer. As I wrote several weeks ago, this victory by a computer at the game of Go is a significant step on the road to the Singularity, the point in time where computers become more intelligent than humans, with an uncertain future for humanity. ( "28-Jan-16 World View -- China's game of Go beaten by Google's AI software, bringing the Singularity closer")
The reason that this is a very big deal is because artificial intelligence (AI) experts had not expected to reach this milestone for another ten years. This means that those researchers that had estimated that the Singularity would not occur until 2040 or 2050 now have to recalibrate their timelines. My own estimate of 2030, which I originally published in 2005, still stands, and increasingly appears to be the best estimate.
World Go champion Lee Se-dol apologized for losing to the computer, and responded to questions about whether computers are already smarter than humans:
"I don’t know how to start or what to say today, but I think I would have to express my apologies first. I should have shown a better result, a better outcome, and better content in terms of the game played, and I do apologize for not being able to satisfy a lot of people’s expectations. I kind of felt powerless. If I look back on the three games, the first one, even if I were to go back and redo the first game, I think that I would not have been able to win, because I at that time misjudged the capabilities of AlphaGo. The second game, I think, would have been the make or break.If you look at the beginning of the second game, the game did flow the way that I have intended, and there were a [number of opportunities] which I admittedly missed. Looking at the third match, yes, I do have extensive experience in terms of playing the game of Go, but there was never a case as this as such that I felt this amount of pressure. So I was incapable of overcoming the amount of pressure that I was experiencing.
And lastly, since I lost the third match, there is now a clear winner. However, when it comes to human beings, there is a psychological aspect that one has to also think about. So as I play the fourth and fifth match, I do ask that you continue to show interest and follow what happens. ...
I do apologize for not being able to satisfy people's expectations. Lee Se-dol is the one who lost today, not humanity."
If Lee were able to win at least one of the two remaining games, then it would be significant because it would show that computers still have plenty of room for improvement.
However, even if Lee won both of the two remaining games, it would still be a Pyrrhic victory. Computers have been doubling in power every 18 months or so, and will continue to do so. Software engineers will continue to take advantage of this computer power to write more and more sophisticated brute force algorithms and solve larger and larger pieces of human intelligence, until finally all of human intelligence can be surpassed. Korea Times and Venture Beat and The Verge
Any thought of a Western military action to destroy the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), as has been in the planning stages for several months, has been put on indefinite hold because the two governments in Libya are unable to form a single "unity government," or Government of National Accord (GNA), that would approve the intervention.
This is despite the fact that there are now 5,000 ISIS fighters in Libya, according to Italy's foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni:
"According to our analyses, there are today around 5,000 Daesh fighters in Libya.They are concentrated particularly in the area of (the city of) Sirte but from there they have the capacity to carry out dangerous incursions (into neighboring states)."
These remarks followed a terrorist attack on Monday on an army barracks and police and national guard posts Tunisian town of Ben Guerdane on the border with Libya. Tunisia is blaming ISIS for the attack, and says that their security forces have killed 43 suspected jihadists since the attack.
According to a United Nations report, the political and security vacuum in Libya is being exploited by ISIS, which has "significantly expanded" the territory it controls. While ISIS has not been able to exploit oil installations in Libya for revenue, many young jihadists from around the world who had been going to Syria to fight are now going to Libya for training in terrorist skills.
Some analysts have advocated, in lieu of a Western military intervention, supplying weapons to non-ISIS militias in Libya that are fighting ISIS. According to one analyst:
"In Libya there are many such forces who oppose ISIS, but these forces and a coalition of convenience can be made, and the Libyan nation can be rebuilt by bringing together these main fighting forces to work together against ISIS."
However, Ibrahim Al Dabashi, Libyan Ambassador to the UN, opposes such a plan:
"I would like to warn against any attempt to bolster the capabilities of Libyan militias based on the assumption that, if equipped, they will fight ISIS in Sirte. ... Such an attempt would [would only lead to] more complications of the Libyan crisis."
The fear is that once the military intervention ended, ISIS could quickly regain control in Sirte, and the militias that had been fighting ISIS would use the weapons to fight each other.
The West's last military intervention in Libya is being widely described today as a disaster. This is the nature of politics. But at the time of the 2011 intervention, a major refugee crisis had already begun in Tunisia and Libya, with hundreds of thousands of people pouring into neighboring countries, and thousands crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. It was this refugee crisis that caused Libyans to demand a no-fly zone, and for the Arab League to do the same, after which the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone, which turned into the 2011 military intervention. ( "5-Mar-16 World View -- A look back at Libya in 2011 as the West debates another military intervention")
Nobody seems to doubt that ISIS is rapidly getting stronger in Libya, and no analyst that I've seen claims that doing nothing will lead anywhere except to a crisis. But after the 2011 experience, the West is paralyzed. It seems fairly likely that a military intervention will be taken at some point, but only when the crisis becomes so great that it's a full scale emergency, and intervention cannot be avoided. UN Security Council and AFP and VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Mar-16 World View -- Despite rapid growth of ISIS in Libya, West cannot agree on a strategy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Mar-2016)
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U.S. blames Iran for cyber attack on a New York dam
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Sectarian tensions in the Mideast took another surge on Friday, when the Arab League in Cairo declared Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization. As we recently reported, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) made the same declaration last week. The GCC is an organization of Arab nations (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)) on the Arabian Gulf. Friday's decision extends the designation to the Arab League, with 22 members, reaching as far as Morocco and Algeria in northwest Africa.
The Arab League decision was not unanimous, according to a statement issued after the meeting, which said that Lebanon and Iraq had "expressed reservations."
The objections were much stronger than mere reservations. Lebanon, of course, Sunni and Shia power centers, the latter represented by Hezbollah, with large militias well-funded by Iran. And Iraq's government is also well-funded by Iran, and is heavily engaged in a war with the country's Sunni majority, including the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
In fact, the Saudi delegation stormed out of the Arab League meeting when Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari praised Hezbollah, along with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization forces (PMF):
"PMF and Hezbollah preserved the dignity of the Arabs and whoever accuses them of terrorism they are themselves terrorists."
Syria would undoubtedly have also opposed the Arab League declaration, but Syria was expelled from the League in November 2011.
It had been reported several days ago that Morocco and Algeria didn't support the GCC decision, but there was no indication that they opposed Friday's Arab League decisions.
The GCC and Arab League declarations firmly polarize the entire Mideast along sectarian lives. For years, the Arab world was largely unified on most issues, especially in support of the Palestinians against Israel. But that's no longer true, with the Sunni Arab world is firmly aligned with Saudi Arabia, leaving most of the Shia Arab world aligned with Iran.
Even in the years since 2011 when the Syrian civil war began, there have been political differences, but the Arabs were able to paper them over, or kept secret. Israel's 67 day war with Hamas in Gaza in 2014 caused a temporary breach in Arab relations, but those differences were largely resolved.
But now the Arab world is clearly coming apart along sectarian lines, especially after two events in the last year that have substantially destabilized the entire Mideast. One is Iran's nuclear deal with the West, which is widely regarded in Saudi Arabia as America and the West siding with Iran against the Saudis. And the second was Russia's military intervention in Syria, reinforcing Bashar al-Assad genocidal extermination of Sunnis, and reviving memories of Russia's war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The storming and firebombing of the Saudi embassy in Tehran in early January, causing Saudi Arabia and several Arab countries to terminate relations with Iran, indicates that a point of no return has pretty much been reached.
After the Arab League meeting, Saudi's ambassador to Egypt Ahmed Kattan said that the Gulf states would be taking further measures against Hezbollah:
"We will deal with Hezbollah as we deal with any terrorist organization. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries have begun preparing measures it will take against that terrorist party and they will be announced at the right time."
According to reports, the Obama administration has been warning Saudi Arabia not to "overreact" in Lebanon, and risk destabilizing the country. However, after the Obama administration has treated the Saudis largely with contempt for most of the past seven years, it's unlikely that they'll pay any attention.
There are a lot of people who think that somebody is going to wave a magic wand and things will return to the "normal" of ten years ago, but in this generational Crisis era, that's not going to happen. AP and Reuters and Al Manar (Lebanon/Hezbollah)
A probe by the Justice Department has determined that Iran was responsible for a 2013 cyberattack on the Bowman Avenue Dam, a small structure in Rye Brook, about 20 miles north of New York City. The dam is used for flood control. An indictment is expected in the next few weeks. It wasn’t clear whether the indictment would charge specific people within the Iranian government, or Iran itself.
Reports conflict as to whether the hackers accessed the control system, or only back office systems that are not part of the operational systems of the dam. CNN and AP and Washington Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Mar-16 World View -- Arab League brands Lebanon's Hezbollah a terrorist organization thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Mar-2016)
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North Korea liquidates all commercial projects with South Korea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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North Korea says it will liquidate all South Korean assets in joint projects that have served over the years the dual purpose of, first, providing foreign currency to North Korea, and second, providing "hope" that the two countries wouldn't restart the 1950s Korean War between the North and the South, which official is still ongoing but ended in an armistice (armed truce) in 1953.
This announcement came after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Thursday in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. In a hard-hitting response, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that he was "gravely concerned," and he called on North Korea to "cease destabilizing acts."
North Korea tested a nuclear weapon on January 6, an act condemned by the US, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United Nations. ( "9-Jan-16 World View -- China-North Korea tensions high after nuclear test")
Following the nuclear test, the United States, South Korea and China have all agreed to impose sanctions on North Korea. These have particularly required that all goods sent from other countries to North Korea be subject to inspection -- a requirement that even China has been complying with.
North Korea has responded with almost daily threats of war, including the threat to destroy South Korean capital city Seoul, and has fired short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean several times.
Thursday's announcement marks further deterioration in the relationship of the North and South. The North Koreans have announced that all economic agreements between North and South will now be invalid, and that South Korean assets in the North will be liquidated.
The principal effect will be to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which is a major source of foreign exchange to North Korea.
Kaesong Industrial Complex was built in North Korea in 2004 as a joint venture between the North and South, and was considered a symbol of peaceful cooperation, with over 100 South Korean companies working there, employing some 53,000 North Korean workers. In April 2013, The North Koreans suddenly withdrew their workers from the project, effectively shutting the complex down. Kaesong was a major source of hard currency for the North Koreans, tens of millions of dollars per year, so it wasn't surprising that the complex reopened in September of that year. After international sanctions were imposed in January following the nuclear test, North Korea announced that it was limiting entry to the Kaesong complex, once again shutting it down. According to Thursday's announcement all the South Korean assets will be seized and liquidated, representing several hundred million dollars worth of investment by South Korean companies.
Also affected is the Mount Kumgang resort, another joint project, a mountain resort set up mainly for South Korean tourists to visit the North. It's been closed since 2008, but was occasionally used for reunions of families that were split by the 1950s war. Thursday's announcement effectively brings an end to all economic cooperation between the two Koreas, and any hope of further family reunions.
It's hard to know what to make of all this. North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un is a total loon who has practiced this kind of brinksmanship before with no serious consequences. Still, in this generational Crisis era, it's quite possible that Kim and his advisors might fantasize that if they start a war, then they'll end up governing both the North and South. Unfortunately, this kind of insanity is not uncommon throughout history, and always leads to disaster. Reuters and AP (20-Oct-2015)
The European Central Bank (ECB), facing a continuing deflationary spiral that it hasn't been continually unable to control, announced what is being described as a "bazooka," an attempt to flood the banking system with huge new amounts of "printed" money, in an attempt to reverse the deflationary spiral, and raise the inflation rate to the target rate of 2%.
According to the ECB, the 2016 inflation rate is now forecast for 0.1%, versus a previous forecast of 1%. The inflation rate was -0.2% in February 2016, compared with 0.3% in January.
ECB President Mario Draghi on Thursday made several dramatic announcements. One set of announcement had to do with lowering interest rates:
Lower interest rates usually target only banks, so there was another set of announcements having to do with quantitative easing (QE). QE targets other institutions besides banks, by purchasing bonds issued by those entities, so that the entities can use the money for hiring or purchases or investment or construction. Draghi's announcements were:
There were also announcements of targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO II), and expanded versions of previous targeted operations.
According to Draghi:
"While very low or even negative inflation rates are unavoidable over the next few months, as a result of movements in oil prices, it is crucial to avoid second-round effects by securing the return of inflation to levels below, but close to, 2% without undue delay. ...The risks to the euro area growth outlook remain tilted to the downside. They relate in particular to the heightened uncertainties regarding developments in the global economy, as well as to broader geopolitical risks."
A typical analyst quote I heard was, "Draghi must think that the economy is in very serious trouble to have made this announcement."
In "normal" times, the ECB might announce a change in one interest rate or one QE policy. The fact that Draghi announced reductions in its three key interest rates PLUS an expansion of the quantitative easing program PLUS the inclusion of corporate bonds in the QE program was view as a move of desperation. And indeed, with the euro in a continuing deflationary spiral, the desperation may well be justified. Market Watch and Reuters and Business Insider
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Most people, including most economists, believe that the inflation rate is determined solely by the amount of money in circulation. But in fact the inflation rate is determined by two factors -- the amount of money in circulation and the velocity of money. You can google "velocity of money" for a full explanation, but it represents how frequently money is actually used to buy things or pay wages.
If a bank lends out a billion dollars, and people just store that money in their matresses or bank accounts, then there won't be any inflation. Money has to be used and reused to generate inflation.
The amount of money in circulation is determined by the central bank. The velocity of money depends on the moods and behaviors of the entire population, and in fact it's a generational variable, in that it varies predictably with the generational cycle.
The above graph shows that the velocity of money has plummeted three times in the last century: During the Great Depression of the 1930s, following World War II in the 1940s, and during the financial crisis of the 2000s.
Thursday's "bazooka" ECB announcement is attempting to change history by pouring so many trillions of euros into the economy that the liquidity will somehow overcome the generational trend in the velocity of money. But it's hard to see how that will change the behaviors and moods of entire generations of people. It's just as likely that people will see the ECB as panicking, and become even more reluctant to spend what little money they have.
Indeed, last week the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) issued a warning that negative interest rates will suffer from the law of diminishing returns, and reach a "tipping point" where they're no longer effective. Many analysts are alarmed by the use of negative interests rates because banks and other financial institutions depend on higher interest rates to make money. Thus lower interest rates undercut the entire business model of financial institutions and introduce instability into the banking systems. There have already been signs of a selloff in bank stocks.
Negative interest rates have been set in central banks in Denmark, the eurozone, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. These moves have had the effect of weakening these currencies internationally, making these countries more competitive internationally, and at the same time strengthening the US dollar, making the US less competitive. There is some fear that the world is on the verge of a "currency war," where a currency devaluation by one country is countered by currency devaluations in other countries, in a tit-for-tat downward spiral.
One thing is certain: The velocity of money has continued to plummet, and there are no signs that this trend will be reversed. As I've been writing for years, Generational Dynamics predicts that the world is headed for a global financial crisis and stock market panic and crash. Thursday's ECB announcement pushes the financial system one step closer in that direction. Sydney Morning Herald and CNBC and Bank of International Settlements (BIS)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Mar-16 World View -- In desperation move, European Central Bank further lowers negative interest rates thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Mar-2016)
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Deep Saudi-Lebanon crisis widens the Mideast's sectarian fault line
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Monday, an official delegation from Lebanon was denied a visa to travel to the Saudi Arabia's ally United Arab Emirates (UAE) amid reports that Saudi Arabian Airlines has ordered a stop in ticket sales to Lebanon.
This is only the latest in a string of increasingly bitter blows to the relationship between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Last month, Saudi Arabia announced it was cutting $4 billion in aid to the Lebanese army and security forces, a decision that could severely cripple Lebanon's economy at a time when it's already reeling from having to host millions of Syrian refugees, to the point where there is one refugee for every 3 or 4 Lebanese.
The heart of the Saudi dispute with Lebanon is Hezbollah, which is recognized as a Shia terrorist group by the West, funded and supported by Iran and committed to the destruction of Israel, but is also a powerful political force in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Lebanon got along well for years, as long they could agree that Israel was the bad guy. But things started deteriorating in 2011 when Syria's Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad started attacking innocent Sunni protesters as if they were cockroaches to be exterminated, and and Hezbollah's militias began fighting in Syria in support of al-Assad's army.
In the meantime, Saudi Arabia's relationship with Iran has also been deteriorating rapidly. Iran's nuclear deal with the west, which removed sanctions and freed billions of dollars to be returned to Iran, has infuriated the Saudis, who believe that Iran will use the money to provide further funding to Hezbollah and to fund Saudi Arabia's Houthi enemies in Yemen. Undoubtedly, the new availability of this money to Iran is one of the motivations for ending aid to Lebanon, since presumably Iran will be forced to use some of the freed sanction money to replace the missing Saudi aid money.
In January, Saudi Arabia executed 47 people who had been convicted of terrorism -- 46 alleged Sunni terrorists and one alleged Shia terrorist, Mohammad Baqir Nimr al-Nimr, a cleric well respected in Iran. The execution triggered mass Shia protests throughout the Mideast and even in Shia communities in India and Pakistan, and the firebombing of the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran, and several other Arab countries followed, but Lebanon refused to do so, further infuriating the Saudis.
Then last Wednesday, the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of six Arabian Gulf nations led by Saudi Arabia, formally declared Lebanon-based group Hezbollah to be a terrorist group, and began to take steps to blacklist Lebanon, including asking tourists not to visit Lebanon. However, two Sunni Arab states, Algeria and Tunisia, opposed the blacklisting.
The situation has become extremely alarming. With the unprecedented deterioration in the ties between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, Lebanon's prime minister Tammam Salam took the extraordinary step of asking Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah to stop making verbal attacks on the Saudis:
"Hezbollah played a role in resisting Israel before going abroad and interfering in the affairs of other countries [referring to Syria]. I call on Sayyed Nasrallah to stop attacking the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. ...I tell the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, that the historic ties between us and them will continue and will remain strong and we are exerting efforts to consolidate them.
We admit that a mistake has happened and has strained the relation between us and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries [referring to the refusal of Lebanon to condemn Iran's firebombing of the Saudi embassy in Tehran]. We have not been successful in implementing the dissociation policy in a proper manner. ,,,
The current government cannot compel any group to do anything and consensus must govern all issues. ...
We will not allow Lebanon's collapse and I don't think that the GCC states do not want the presence of a government in Lebanon although they have the right to address remarks to us.
We cannot unravel the relation we have now in the cabinet [referring to Hezbollah's presence in the cabinet] because that would subject Lebanon to collapse."
The relationship is becoming increasingly toxic. In recent days, Arab coalition spokesman Ahmad Al-Asiri wrote on his Facebook page:
"[Saudi Arabia] respects Lebanon's sovereignty over its territory, but if the need arises, we will target any organization that poses a direct threat to Arab national security, while coordinating [our actions] with the countries in which these organizations are located."
As we've been saying since 2003, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war between Arabs and Jews, between Sunnis and Shias, and between various ethnic groups. It seems now that every week brings this prediction a major step closer. Memri and Al Bawaba (Palestine) and Naharnet (Lebanon)
Seagate Inc. has confirmed that the W-2 tax documents of several thousand current and former employees of the company ended up in the hands of fraudsters after an employee fell victim to a phishing attack.
I read stories like this almost every day. Hackers get into company databases and steal trade secrets or customer credit card information. It could be any kind of information that could be traded for money. I decided to write about this one because I thought that the angle of acquiring W-2 tax form information was interesting.
What almost all of these kinds of hacker attacks have in common is that they begin with a "phishing" or "spear phishing" attack. If you're not familiar with these terms, you really should be.
A phishing attack is less a computer attack than a human on human attack, with the objective of getting you to click on something dangerous. A phishing attack is straightforward: The attacker sends out a million e-mail messages promising money or sex or a wrinkle free face or a cure for cancer or a Hawaiian vacation or reverse brain aging, and all you have to do is click on this link. (I read that list off some of the most recent messages in my spam folder.)
A spear phishing attack is far more sophisticated. The attacker spends several days gathering information about you personally by searching through the internet. They'll check your Facebook page and everything else they can find, to collect a portfolio of information about you. They'll know who you are, they'll know your family, your boss, your coworkers and your job. They'll use that information to carefully craft an e-mail message designed to trick you into thinking it's a real message. "Frank, download the attached report, check it over, and send it to Marty for approval. Thanks." If you're fooled, then the attack has succeeded.
That's the first part of the attack. Once you've clicked on the malicious link, then any of several things can happen:
According to the statement by Seagate:
"The information was sent by an employee who believed the phishing email was a legitimate internal company request. When we learned of the incident, we immediately notified the IRS which is now actively investigating it along with federal law enforcement. At this point we have no information to suggest that employee data has been misused, but caution and vigilance are in order. We deeply regret this mistake and we offer our sincerest apologies to everyone affected."
Since the breach only came to light on March 1, it's likely that the hackers haven't had time yet to do much with the information from thousands of W-2 tax forms. The hackers could sell it to other hackers, who could then use it for identity theft.
Seagate claims it’s in the process of making changes to prevent future incidents. Haha, this is funny. In the recent past, I advised a company to encrypt the social security numbers in their database, and told them how to do it easily, so that if the data is stolen, it would be useless to a hacker. But the harsh reality is that protecting social security numbers doesn't generate any new sales, so most companies ignore all warnings until the data is stolen. Then the company puts out a statement saying that they're in the process of making changes to prevent future incidents. Haha.
As I said, I read stories like this all the time, and those are only a small fraction of the actual corporate breaches, since most companies keep the breach from the press. I know that nobody's going to pay attention to this, but I'll write it anyway: If you have responsibility for a corporate database containing such things as names, addresses, social security numbers, medical information, and so forth, then put other things on hold and immediately launch a project to encrypt each critical data element, even it means losing a few sales. Haha. Security Week and Ars Technica
The Bangladesh Central Bank blamed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for a lack of security that made it easy for the unidentified hackers to steal $100 million from its bank account. The money has been traced as far as a casino in the Philippines, before most of it disappeared. New York Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Mar-16 World View -- Hackers steal thousands of employee W-2 tax documents from Seagate Inc. thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Mar-2016)
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Europe faces two additional major crises: Grexit and Brexit
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Leaders from the European Union and Turkey met long into the night at the Brussels summit on Monday night, but failed to reach any agreement because Turkey and Hungary played hardball, as we reported yesterday.
And yet, they declared victory with a "breakthrough agreement" that would bring the "irregular flows of migrants along the Western Balkan route ... to an end."
Apparently, the person who really wanted to be able to announce this "breakthrough" was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, because she is facing three key regional elections this weekend, with polls predicting huge gains for the anti-immigrant AfD party. So she needed a victory on the migration issue. For that reason the "breakthrough" deal is only an outline, and supposedly the details will be worked out in a new Brussels summit meeting on March 17-18. If it collapses at that time, the election will be in the past.
Having a negotiating advantage, Turkey on Monday demanded 6 billion euros in aid for Syrian refugees in Turkey, visa-free travel in Europe for Turkish citizens starting in June, and a speed-up of the accession talks for Turkey to become a member of the European Union.
However, Turkey's arch-enemy Greek Cyprus is firmly opposing the speedup of the accession talks. And several EU countries are said to oppose paying any more money to Turkey.
But the big headline-grabbing part of the breakthrough deal was the bizarre one-for-one refugee swap agreement.
Under the plan, all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey would be be sent back to Turkey, where they would be put into a refugee camp. Then, an equal number of Syrian refugees in Turkish refugee camps would be put on a plane to be distributed to EU countries.
Last year, almost a million migrants reached the EU. So, for example, if 5,000 migrants from Turkey arrive in Greece one day, then then security forces would gather them up, and force them onto boats to be sent back to Turkey. What could possibly go wrong with that??
And then 5,000 migrants from Turkey would be piled onto planes to be distributed to EU countries. But Britain won't take them. Hungary and the East European countries won't take them. Opposition has been building in Germany to admitting more migrants.
At any rate, the reason given why this is a "breakthrough" plan is that it will eliminate incentives for migrants to come to Greece by boat.
According to Iverna McGowan, Amnesty International:
"EU and Turkish leaders have sunk to a new low, effectively horse trading away the rights and dignity of some of the world's most vulnerable people."
Vincent Cochetel, United Nations Refugee Agency, says:
"An agreement that would be tantamount to a blanket return of any foreigners to a third country is not consistent with European law."
This breakthrough deal was born of desperation, the fear that the EU is facing an existential crisis because there's no way to get control of the refugee crisis. Hurriyet (Ankara) and BBC and EurActiv and BBC
The refugee situation isn't the European Union's only existential crisis. The EU is also facing two other major crises: Grexit and Brexit.
"Grexit" refers to the proposal for Greece to exit the euro currency.
As I've been writing for years, the Greece financial crisis has no solution, and all the numerous bailouts have done is "kick the can down the road." The time is now approaching for a new bailout payment crisis. Greece has to pay 3.8 billion euros in debt servicing between March and June. That money isn't readily available, but the Greek government can do what it's done in the past -- confiscate money from banks and take other emergency measures to meet those payments.
But there's another 2.8 billion euro payment due in July, and there's no way that the Greek government can make that payment without more bailout money. For that, it will need the next tranche of the bailout by its "troika" of lenders -- IMF, European Commission, ECB. Inspectors are already returning to Greece to verify that Greece has complied with previous austerity demands required to receive the next tranche. What they're going to find is that Greece has NOT met those requirements, especially with respect to pension payments, which Greece's government does not wish to curtail. Therefore, there's going to have to be a big negotiation with all the parties, and the IMF and Europe are feuding over who is going to bear most of the burden. That's why, once again, Grexit is on the table, and Greece may be forced to leave the euro currency and return to its historic drachma currency.
"Brexit" refers to the proposal for Britain to exit the European Union.
On Thursday, June 23, Britain will hold a referendum to decide whether Britain should remain in the European Union.
Many people are predicting that if Brexit occurs, it will be devastating for both economies -- the British and European. Mark Carney, the head of the Bank of England, says that "Brexit is biggest domestic risk to financial stability" for Britain." Others claim it will make no difference whatsoever.
People who support Brexit are usually motivated by the migrant issue, and it's not just the issue of migrants from Syria. Many Britons are equally opposed to allowing EU citizens from Poland and other eastern European countries to come to Britain.
Those who support Brexit believe that it will "solve" the migrant problem. Many of those who oppose Brexit claim that it will worsen the migrant problem, because France will no longer be obligated to slow the flow of migrants through Calais to Britain.
With these three major crises -- the refugee crisis, Grexit and Brexit -- we can use the "perfect storm" cliché to say that the European Union is going to have to fight hard in 2016 to stay in existence. Kathimerini and Reuters and Kathimerini and Guardian (London) and BBC and Mirror (London)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Mar-16 World View -- Bizarre EU-Turkey one-for-one refugee deal meets strong opposition thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Mar-2016)
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With summer approaching, European politicians may be close to panic
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Monday's summit in Brussels between leaders of the European Union and Turkey ended in failure, after Turkey and Hungary played hardball, dashing the hopes and dreams of the desperate European leaders that Turkey would solve the refugee crisis for them.
Turkey started the ball rolling by making some additional demands:
The issue of EU aid to Turkey was already contentious because Turkey claimed that the three billion euros should have been paid four months ago. EU rejected the claim, saying that the money had been held up because Turkey had not fulfilled its own commitments under the agreement. Turkey justified its new demands for an additional three billion euros because there were many more Syrian refugees in Turkey, with many who are not in designated refugee camps.
The purpose of the one-for-one refugee swap plan was to provide a disincentive for people smugglers. Any Syrian who came to Europe illegally would be sent back to Turkey, while Syrians resettled in Europe would come from legal Turkish refugee camps.
Hungary vetoed the one-for-one refugee swap plan, because it would presumably mean that Syrians from Turkey who resettled in the EU would be distributed among the EU nations, including Hungary. However, how the resettled refugees would be distributed would be subject to negotiation, and Hungary might be able to opt out. Kathimerini and AP
Theoretically there shouldn't be a major problem. The EU has 500 million people so absorbing one or two million refugees really shouldn't be so hard. But the painful lessons of World War II, incorporated into the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which led to the creation of the European Union, are forgotten. In this generational Crisis era, xenophobia and nationalism are rampant in Europe and in many countries around the world, as they were before WW II.
So now the numbers, tiny compared to the size of the entire EU population, seem staggering:
As a result, discussions among European leaders are becoming increasingly toxic. Last week it got to the point where Greece withdrew its ambassador from Austria. Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico in turn warned Greece that if the country didn't move to secure its borders that, "there will be one single hotspot and it will be called Greece." Perhaps, he added, it may be necessary to sacrifice Greece for the sake of Europe's well-being.
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has been taking the lead in attempting to set Europe's refugee policy. Last summer she announced that Germany would welcome refugees, but she's been widely condemned for making the refugee problem worse with that statement. Now she's changed her policy completely, to focus on getting an agreement with Turkey to stop the refugee exodus to Europe.
Merkel has opposed the policies of Austria and the Balkan states to close their borders, and she's been warning of the EU's disintegration "into small states" that will be unable to compete in a globalized world, as well as of the possibility that border controls might soon be reintroduced all across Europe. Merkel also wants to prevent Greece from drifting into chaos: "We did not keep Greece in the euro to abandon the country now."
The problem is that Europe's refugee crisis worsens significantly every day, and no one realistically has the vaguest idea how to fix it. BBC and Der Spiegel and Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Mar-16 World View -- Turkey and Hungary play hardball at EU-Turkey refugee summit thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Mar-2016)
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Death of Nancy Reagan reminds us of generational differences
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In January, women and children made up 54% of the arrivals in Greece and Italy, while men made up 46%. Those figures are a significant reversal from just six months earlier, when women and children represented 26% and men 74%.
It's believed that this substantial surge in the number of female refugees is occurring because male refugees who were granted asylum in Europe last year are now telling their wives and families to follow and make the trip themselves. Unfortunately for them, things have changed drastically, borders along the "Balkan route" closed, and thousands of women and children now stranded in Greece on the border with Macedonia. Deutsche Welle
Expect tempers to flare on Monday when officials from EU countries and Turkey meet in Brussels for a summit meeting on the refugee crisis.
The EU Commission has already promised 700 million euros ($769 million) in emergency aid to Turkey. Whether that money will materialize remains to be seen.
With 2,000 migrants continuing to arrive in Greece from Turkey every day, Turkey clearly has by far the better negotiating position. Europe wants Turkey to prevent the vast majority of refugees within Turkey's borders from leaving for Greece. Whether it's even possible for Turkey to slow the flow of refugees, and whether they're will to do so are two questions that also remain to be answered.
The timing of the summit is bad because European officials are in shock over Turkey's shutdown of the country's major opposition newspaper, the largest newspaper in the country. ( "6-Mar-16 World View -- Turkey's 'shameful day for free press' as government seizes Zaman media") European Parliament President Martin Schultz has said the storming and closure of an anti-government newspaper show that "Turkey is in the process of gambling away the historic opportunity for rapprochement with Europe."
There may also be a confrontation at the summit between Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Austria's Chancellor Werner Faymann. Merkel has accused Faymann and the Balkan countries of tipping the EU into crisis by closing their borders, and holds him jointly responsible for the chaos in Greece.
Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras has also criticized Faymann for "ruining Europe." Tsipras also has high hopes for financial aid from Europe to provide for new refugee camps for 50,000 or more refugees. It also remains to be seen whether that money will be provided. Deutsche Welle and Kathimerini and BBC
Coverage emphasizes how he was an American first, considering himself a true liberal. He famously had an excellent personal relationship with another Irishman, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, the most important Democrat of the time. Could we imagine President Obama having any remotely cordial relations today with any Republican?
In the 1980s, the Silent Generation, the generation of people who had grown up during the horrors of World War II were running the country. They remembered the bloody battles, massacres, rapes, genocides and atrocities that had occurred, and they remembered the nationalism and xenophobia that had brought them about, and they knew the important of America's role as Policeman of the World. They understood the importance of compromise, truthfulness, ethics and honesty.
In the 1980s, the Republicans and the Democrats cooperated with each other to change the Social Security system to make it a sounder system. After that, they cooperated again to specify new rules to control the budget deficit. Compromise was still possible in 1996, when Democratic President Bill Clinton, saying that "the era of big government is over," cooperated with the Republican congress to eliminate the welfare entitlement. But there isn't a single such issue on which compromise is possible today.
So everything they say about Nancy and Ronald Reagan's kindness, generosity and loving relationship were true, but it's also true that they were a product of their generation, the GI Generation, a generation that still understood how the world worked.
Things started changing around 2000 with the rise of Generation-X, reacting to the excesses of the Boomer generation that grew up after the war. While the Boomers passively accepted the values of the Silent generation, the Gen-Xers, and the Millennials in the generation that followed were openly contemptuous of those values, and considered people in the Silent and GI generations to be full of crap.
We've already had one major national disaster: Generation-Xers who became "financial engineers" in the 1990s, and used their skills to knowingly create trillions of dollars in phony synthetic securities, and knowingly defrauded investors, thinking they were screwing their fathers' generation. People were defrauded of trillions of dollars, causing millions of people to lose their homes and jobs and savings. And worse, President Obama and other Gen-Xers don't even seem to care about this, as not a single one of these criminals has been prosecuted, leaving them with their fraudulent winnings and able to defraud other people.
By contrast, President Bush #1 and President Clinton reacted to the Savings and Loan crisis by prosecuting thousands of bankers. President Bush #2 reacted to the Enron scandal by prosecuting several top managers. But President Obama has prosecuted nobody. Things have changed with the new generation of politicians. That's why, for ten years, I've been writing about the destructiveness and self-destructiveness of Generation-X, and the worst is yet to come.
According to Pepperdine Law Professor Linnea McCord, in her book The Wisdom of Ants:
"Over the past four decades, we have strayed far from the simple and clear ethical standards of the ... ethics-based American Rule of Law. We have forgotten (or never learned) that long-term prosperity, peace, stability, and security require ethical conduct. Unethical conduct leads to economic failure, political instability, social disharmony, and insecurity from internal and external threats. It's not complicated."
If you're in Generation-X and you hate the values of the Silent and GI generations, then you may wish to consider the fact that they weren't born with those values. What you don't understand is that your generational predecessors -- the Lost Generation before WW II and the Gilded Generation before the Civil War -- were exactly like you -- few morals or ethics, but willing to see anyone screwed. They learned bitter lessons in the wars that followed, and most didn't survive. So if you hate the Silent generation, then understand that they got that way because they and their parents were just like you and learned their lessons the hard way. If you're even still alive ten years from now, you'll be just like them.
On Sunday, analysts talking about Nancy Reagan's death wondered why the political climate was so different today than in the 1980s. The Democrats blame the Republicans, and the Republicans blame the Democrats. But it's not the political parties that are to blame. It's the generations of people in them. But don't worry. The people in both political parties are soon going to learn all about the lessons of morals and ethics, in the same way that their great-grandparents did.
But if you end up being just like Ronald and Nancy Reagan, that wouldn't be so bad, would it. AP and The Hill (12-Mar-2015)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Mar-16 World View -- EU and Turkey summit in Brussels to discuss refugees, as number of women and children surges thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Mar-2016)
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Felhullah Gülen: One of the most powerful Muslim clerics in the world
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An angry Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has ordered a government takeover of Turkey's most important opposition media, the Zaman media group, publishers of Turkey's largest newspaper Zaman, its English language version, Today's Zaman, plus the Cihan News Agency and Aksiyon magazine.
After obtaining a court ruling on Friday favorable to the government Turkish police forcibly entered the Zaman building, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters who had gathered outside. Later, police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters.
The newspaper released its final edition ahead of the raid declaring the takeover a "shameful day for free press" in the country. The newspaper will now be controlled by a government appointed "trustee council," which will presumably take orders from Erdogan. A statement by the Turkish Journalists’ Association (TGC) board said, "The mentality that has been silencing the media through detentions, arrests, Internet bans and heavy fines, now burdens newspapers and TV channels and destroys them via trustee panels."
Zaman is owned by a political enemy of Erdogan, an exiled Muslim cleric Felhullah Gülen. They once were allies but in 1999 Erdogan accused Gülen of trying to overthrow the government Gülen fled to the United States in 1999, and has lived in Pennsylvania since then. Erdogan's government has declared Gülen to be a terrorist and has asked the US government for extradition, but has been refused.
According Human Rights Watch, the raid on Zaman was "nothing but a veiled move by the president to eradicate opposition media and scrutiny of government policies." BBC and Hurriyet (Ankara) and Reuters
For all the obsessiveness that Americans have about Muslims and especially Muslim clerics, it's surprising that so few people have hear of Felhullah Gülen.
Gülen heads the powerful Hizmet movement, a worldwide network of millions of Muslims in over countries.
The Gülen empire has schools in over 140 countries, the huge Zaman media organization in Turkey (now under direct control of Erdogan's government), a hospital, banks and other financial institutions and hundreds of interfaith and intercultural dialog and charitable institutions around the world. "We are the first movement in the history of mankind that is completely and utterly devoted to charity," says Mustafa Yesil, a Gülen confidant in Istanbul.
Gülen's critics sometimes refer to him as a cult leader. They point to the residences in many countries for schoolchildren and university students, often free of charge, but dictating a strict daily routine of work, prayer and sleep, and a demand that they devote their lives to "Hizmet," or service to Islam.
In his book "Fasildan Fasila," (From Time to Time) Gülen writes that a pupil must be "on the go day and night" and cannot be seen sleeping. "If possible, he sleeps three hours a day, has two hours for other needs, and must devote the rest entirely to hizmet. In essence, he has no personal life, except in a few specific situations."
Within the Muslim community, he's been accused of violating the principles of the Koran. According to Gülen, "My efforts for interfaith dialogue were criticized as softening Muslims' perspectives on Jews and Christians. I have not done anything that I did not believe to be in the footsteps of the Prophet Mohammed. He was the one who stood for a funeral procession of a Jewish resident of Medina, showing respect for a deceased fellow human being."
Erdogan has repeatedly pledged to crush Gülen's conservative religious movement, which he said has infiltrated the police, judiciary and bureaucracy since his party won power in 2002. Erdogan particularly declared war due to a corruption investigation targeting him, led by police believed to be Gülen followers. Saturday's raid on Gülen's media empire, turning Turkey's leading opposition newspapers into state-sponsored media equivalent to Moscow's Sputnik News or the Tehran Times or China Daily, is a blow to Turkey's free press and to Turkey's relations with the West. There's certain to be blowback, and I doubt that it will end well. AFP and Der Spiegel (8-Aug-2012) and The Atlantic (14-Aug-2013) and Debka
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Mar-16 World View -- Turkey's 'shameful day for free press' as government seizes Zaman media thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Mar-2016)
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Police in Turkey use force to shut down opposition newspaper
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Two Italian construction workers among four that have been held hostage by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) in Libya last July, and have been held ever since, were killed on Wednesday in a gunfight. The other two hostages were freed within 48 hours. Local militias claimed credit for freeing the two during a raid.
The death of the two Italian hostages at the hands of ISIS has given added urgency to calls for Italy to intervene militarily in Libya. There have been discussions among Western nations -- the US, Britain, France, and Italy -- to intervene militarily to stop the growth of ISIS in Libya, and to prevent the capture of Libya's oil fields by ISIS. Serious planning has been made on this military intervention since January.
For weeks, there have been increasingly alarmist headlines in Italy about imminent military action in Libya. Britain, France and possibly America have already sent dozens of special forces to Libya, and John Phillips, the US ambassador to Italy, said in an interview, "Italy has made a commitment to provide in the range of 5,000 troops" as part of an international force to stop ISIS. American warplanes have been bombing ISIS targets in Libya. ( "20-Feb-16 World View -- US warplanes strike suspected ISIS training base in Libya")
A military intervention in Libya is a particularly sensitive subject in Italy because Libya was a former colony of Italy, and there are still many personal and familial ties between the two countries. Furthermore, Italy has for five years been the recipient of a flood of refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean from Libya.
The plans for an international military intervention in Libya were always contingent on approval by a unity government in Libya. There are two governments in Libya, an internationally recognized government in the east, headquartered in Tobruk, and a rebel government in the west, headquartered in Tripoli.
So a full-scale military intervention has not gone ahead because the two governments have refused to approve the military intervention. And indeed, Khalifa Haftar, the head of the government in Tobruk, scored a victory against ISIS in Benghazi this week, and is claiming that his forces can defeat ISIS with no outside military intervention.
Haftar's confidence does not quell the fears of Westerners that before long ISIS is going to achieve a point of no return in taking control of Libya's "oil crescent" in the Sirte basin south of Benghazi, with billions of barrels of oil of estimated reserve. At that point, ISIS will be sufficiently entrenched that it would be much harder to dislodge than it would be now, and it would more easily allow ISIS to use as a launching pad for terrorist attacks on Europe. . AP and Reuters and AFP and Bloomberg and Guardian (14-Mar-2011)
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A web site reader commented on one of my articles by accusing accused America of causing the Syrian and European refugee crisis by its decision to bomb Libya in 2011. It's a bizarre accusation, based on the usual technique of starting by making up facts that fit the agenda.
As it turns out, I'm in a good position to evaluate this claim, since I was writing about the Arab Spring in 2011 almost every day. So I went back to read all the articles I had written in the first months of 2011 to see what happened.
What's clear is that the accusation is completely backwards. It wasn't American bombing of Libya that caused the refugee crisis. The refugee crisis was already in full swing when the bombing began. It was the refugee crisis that brought about the American bombing and the Libyan military intervention in 2011.
This trip back through time turned out to be pretty fascinating, because the events of that time were so incredible. The "Arab Spring" was one of the major generational events since WW II, and it's actually still going on if you count the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Here's a summary of what happened:
The interesting thing is that the accusation that American bombing in Libya caused the refugee crisis is exactly backwards. The refugee crisis had already begun in Tunisia and Libya, with hundreds of thousands of people pouring into neighboring countries, and thousands crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. It was this refugee crisis that caused Libyans to demand a no-fly zone, and for the Arab League to do the same, after which the UN Security Council passed a resolution.
So the refugee crisis created the demand for the no-fly zone, and the bombing by the West. A lot of the motivation for the West to get involved was the fear of a flood of refugees crossing the Mediterranean, and they hoped to stop that. That didn't work.
For those who would like to go into more detail, I've created a lengthy posting on the Generational Dynamics forum with pointers to all the original articles, along with some excerpts from many of them. The posting can be found on the Generational Dynamics forum
The web site reader who posted the comment accusing American bombing in Libya of causing the Syria refugee crisis had anti-American agenda, and was probably a paid Russian internet troll.
The commenter was parroting Russian state media as illustrated by this claim:
"Five years after the brutal murder of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, the country that was once an oasis of regional stability now has two competing governments and is actively being colonized by Daesh terrorists as they seek to relocate their headquarters to Libya."
This "oasis of regional stability" had Gaddafi declaring war on peaceful protesters, forcing hundreds of thousands of refugees to flood into neighboring countries and across the Mediterranean. Sputnik News (Moscow)
Freedom of the press in Turkey suffered a major blow on Friday when government forces used force to shut down Zaman, the major opposition newspaper. Police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters as they stormed the Zaman offices in Istanbul. There are now more than 30 journalists behind bars in Turkey. BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Mar-16 World View -- A look back at Libya in 2011 as the West debates another military intervention thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Mar-2016)
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China threatens Australia with economic retaliation for criticizing it
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Australia's government last week released the 2016 Department of Defense White Paper, which has become controversial because it heavily criticizes China's military buildup in the South China Sea and proposes large military spending increases.
Australia's new defense plan emphasizes a major naval buildup over the next 10 years, include twelve long-range submarines, nine new frigates and twelve offshore patrol vessels. In addition, the plan honors existing commitments to acquire 72 F-35A Joint Strike Fighters, Air Force capabilities will be boosted by fifteen P-8A maritime patrol aircraft, twelve EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft and seven Triton surveillance drones. Furthermore, the paper stresses the need for Australian forces to be able to operate seamlessly with US forces at sea and in the air.
The emphasis on naval strength has been triggered by China's actions in the South China Sea, where freedom is navigation is vital to the commercial trade of Australia and other countries. The report is specifically critical of China's land reclamation activities in the South China Sea:
"2.77 Australia does not take sides on competing territorial claims in the South China Sea but we are concerned that land reclamation and construction activity by claimants raises tensions in the region. Australia opposes the use of artificial structures in the South China Sea for military purposes. Australia also opposes the assertion of associated territorial claims and maritime rights which are not in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) .2.78 Australia has called on all South China Sea claimants to halt land reclamation and construction activities, which involves the dredging of sea floor material for use as landfill in creating artificial structures . Australia has also called on all claimants to exercise self-restraint, take steps to ease tensions and refrain from provocative actions that could increase tension and uncertainty in the region . Australia is particularly concerned by the unprecedented pace and scale of China’s land reclamation activities."
China responded with heavy criticism of the white paper:
"We are seriously concerned about and dissatisfied with the white paper’s negative statement on issues concerning the South China Sea and the development of China’s military strength.It is hoped that the Australian side would take a correct and positive view of China’s development and strategic intention, take concrete steps and make joint efforts with China to increase mutual trust and safeguard regional peace, stability and growth.
We definitely do not want to see tensions or arms race in the region. We hope that the Asia-Pacific would be a region where people from all countries enjoy peace, stability, development and prosperity, and that relevant parties would stop the so-called joint military drills and patrols, and cease constant reinforcement of military buildup in the Asia-Pacific."
The naval buildup is in one sense a reaction to several years of former prime minister Julia Gillard's Labor government, which did not consider China to be a military threat, and which substantially cut defense spending. The current prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, whose government produced the new white paper, is making Australia a part of a military buildup that's occurring throughout the Pacific.
Japan has recently reinterpreted the "defense-only" clause of its constitution to permit "collective self-defense," which would permit foreign wars. The Philippines has invited the US Navy back to its Subic Bay naval base after throwing us out in the 1990s. India is about to deploy its first nuclear-armed submarine. Vietnam is preparing for a repeat of its 1979 border war with China. Basically, China is scaring the crap out of everyone in the region, and they're all beefing up their militaries to prepare for war.
The white paper contains the words "rules-based" 57 times, indicating an anxiety over the fact that China is not following the established international rules. Australia is looking to the United States to be the one to enforce the rules:
"2.8 The United States will remain the pre-eminent global military power over the next two decades. It will continue to be Australia’s most important strategic partner through our long-standing alliance, and the active presence of the United States will continue to underpin the stability of our region. The global strategic and economic weight of the United States will be essential to the continued stability of the rules-based global order on which Australia relies for our security and prosperity. The world will continue to look to the United States for leadership in global security affairs and to lead military coalitions that support international security and the rules-based global order. The United States is committed to sustaining and advancing its military superiority in the 21st century, including through its Defense Innovation Initiative."
In other words, Australia expects the United States to continue to be Policeman of the World, even if some American politicians don't. Australia Defense White Paper (PDF) and Sydney Morning Herald and S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and Guardian (London) and Lowy Institute (Australia)
Many people believe that China will never go to war with anyone because it's bad for business. If that principle were true there would never be any wars. In fact, the opposite is true, as China showed in September 2012, when China declared economic war on Japan. Chinese media is now hinting at economic reprisals against Australia as retaliation for criticizing China:
"Unsettled by the rapid rise of China, in recent years Australian officials such as foreign and defense ministers have switched from discretion to blatant criticism of China and enhanced coordination with the US and Japan. However, at the same time Canberra walks a fine line by promoting strategic and economic cooperation with China given the latter's sizable market and investment capability. ...How can these politicians believe that they can benefit enormously from relations with China and meanwhile feel free to castigate China in disputes? ...
[S]uch hypocrisy will amount to nothing but harm to Australia's relationship with China."
However, any suggestion of economic sanctions may be an empty threat because China is highly dependent on business with Australia. Australia is a major supplier of commodities to China, and China has plans to use the large ports and railways of the Australian firm Asciano as a crucial part of its logistics chain in its "One Belt, One Road" initiative. Global Times (Beijing) and Reuters and Asia Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Mar-16 World View -- Australia's defense plans stress huge naval buildup targeting China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Mar-2016)
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Mideast Sunni-Shia split grows as GCC says Hezbollah is terrorist organization
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The 6,000-ton 110-meter long nuclear submarine Arihant, developed by India over the past three decades under a secret government program, is ready to become fully operational and could be commissioned in a few weeks, after completing in secret five months of deep sea diving drills and weapons launch tests.
India says that the Arihant is "indigenously built." It's believed that work began in the 1980s with help from the Soviet Union, particularly on the vessel’s miniaturized reactors. A Russian diving support ship -- the RFS Epron that arrived on October 1 -- has been accompanying the Arihant on its deep sea dives and launch tests.
The deployment would complete India’s nuclear triad, which means that it could deliver atomic weapons from land, sea and air. Only the U.S. and Russia are considered full-fledged nuclear triad powers now, with China and India’s capabilities still largely untested. India would become the sixth country to have nuclear-armed submarines in operation, after the US, UK, France, Russia and China.
As we reported six weeks ago ( "27-Jan-16 World View -- India deploying 'submarine killer' planes to counter China's submarines"), India has detected Chinese submarines in the Bay of Bengal, close to India's territorial waters around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Since the islands are largely undefended, India has been concerned that a lightning attack by the Chinese would be successful. With both Chinese and Indian nuclear submarines patrolling the Bay of Bengal, the possibility of dangerous miscalculations is growing. India Times and Bloomberg
Philippine officials report that China's warships are taking over yet another traditional fishing ground of Philippine fishermen in the South China Sea, and are preventing them from fishing there. The new acquisition is Quirino or Jackson Atoll, which has been a rich source of catch for a long time.
According to China's foreign ministry, China is doing the Philippine fishermen a favor:
"According to information from relevant departments in China, at the end of the year 2015, a foreign vessel was grounded near Wufang Jiao of China's Nansha islands. The owner of the vessel tried many times to tow it away but failed. He then decided to abandon the ship and dismantled and took away its main equipment. If the vessel was left aground for a long time, it might cause possible impediment to navigation safety and damage to the marine environment. Therefore, China Rescue and Salvage of Ministry of Transport recently sent salvage ships to tug the grounded vessel out of the shallow water for proper disposal. During the operation, the Chinese side advised fishing boats near the waters to stay away for navigation security and operation safety. The Chinese ships have returned after the operation."
It's unclear whether China's actions are really temporary. China has repeatedly said that it's planning to use its military to take control of the entire South China Sea, including the vast regions that have historically belonged to other countries, so it's unlikely Philippine fishermen are going to be doing much more fishing in this area, if any. Philippine Star and China's Foreign Ministry and The Diplomat
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Wednesday declared Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization. The GCC is an organization of most.y Sunni Arab nation, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based Shia political and militia organization, funded and supported by Iran, recognized as a terrorist organization by the US and other Western countries, and now by the GCC.
Sectarian Sunni versus Shia tensions have been rising continuously since 2011, when Syria's Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad began his genocidal attacks on innocent Sunni protesters in Syria.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran took a major step towards increased hostility in January, when Saudi Arabia executed 47 alleged terrorists -- 46 Sunnis and one Shia, Mohammad Baqir Nimr al-Nimr, infuriating Iran and Shias because it implied that Shia terrorism is equivalent to Sunni terrorism. Iranian mobs firebombed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and attacked the consulate in Meshaad. Saudi Arabia and Iran broke diplomatic relations as a result. Other Saudi allies followed suit. ( "18-Jan-16 World View -- Pakistan tries to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran")
According to Wednesday's announcement, the GCC took its actions because of hostile acts being carried out by elements of those militias to recruit young people of GCC member states for carrying out terrorist acts, smuggling of weapons and explosives, and inciting sedition, disorder and violence in a flagrant violation of their sovereignty, security and stability:
"The GCC states consider Hezbollah militias' practices in the Council's states and their terrorist and subversive acts being carried out in Syria, Yemen and Iraq contradict moral and humanitarian values and principles and the international law and pose a threat to Arab national security."
Up until a few months ago, the Gulf states had a good relationship with Hezbollah, especially as long as they could talk about a common enemy, Israel. But Hezbollah's alliance with Bashar al-Assad, attacking Sunni civilians in Syria, has turned them into enemies.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that Saudi Arabia seeks to instigate "strife" between Shias and Sunnis in the region. Arab News and Saudi Press Agency and Al Manar (Lebanon)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Mar-16 World View -- India about to deploy its first nuclear-armed submarine, in challenge to China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Mar-2016)
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Bulldozers bury the 'Jungle' refugee camp in Calais France
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Two weeks ago, officials in France announced that they would evict about some or all of the 4,000-5,000 migrants living in "The Jungle," the refugee camp in Calais, France's closest point to Britain, where migrants come in the hope of hitching a ride to Britain to seek asylum and take advantage of the welfare benefits.
France's interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the evictions would be done "progressively, by persuasion and with respect for people's dignity."
So that isn't exactly what happened on Monday and Tuesday when the bulldozers arrived. There have been violent clashes at the site, where French police have been forcibly evicting migrants from their tents and shanties. Migrants retaliated by setting tents on fire and throwing rocks at the police, resulting in several arrests and the use of teargas to disperse the migrants.
According to Cazeneuve on Tuesday:
"The activism of a few No Borders militants, radical and violent, cannot stop it: This operation will go on in the next days, with calm and discipline, and will offer each and every (migrant) a spot as the government promised."
However, it's not always clear where evicted migrants, many of whom are women and children, are supposed to go, or where the government's "spot" can be found.
French authorities say that it wants people to move either into an adjoining compound of converted shipping containers, or to take buses to accommodation centers elsewhere in France. However, many migrants are afraid to take advantage of any "official" refugee accommodations provide by France, because they would be required to register and request asylum in France, which would preclude them from requesting asylum in Britain. CNN and Guardian (London) and Independent (London)
On Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Adrian Edwards said:
"Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis.The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. As we all saw yesterday, tensions have been building, fueling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers."
The accusation that the crisis is "self-induced" is the kind of bizarre thing that one hears from the United Nations, as if Greece, which is going through a major ongoing economic crisis, could ever have predicted that a million migrants would have poured into Greece in the last year. If the UNHCR made such a prediction a year ago, I'd like to see a link to it.
According to the testimony of Nato commander Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the UNHCR should actually be blaming Russia for the continuing refugee crisis. Breedlove says that Russia and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad are "weaponizing" the refugees by using barrel bombs on civilian villages in Syria. According to Breedlove:
"Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.I can't find any other reason for [barrel bombs] other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else's problem."
According to Breedlove, the barrel bombs have no military value except to worsen the refugee crisis.
In January, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that Bashar al-Assad is a war criminal, for his massive use of "atrocious acts" and "unconscionable abuses" against civilians. Al-Assad has been continuing his war crimes with attacks on entire civilian villages by regime warplanes and Russian warplanes, indiscriminately dropping barrel bombs loaded with explosives, metals and chemical weapons.
Breedlove's comments indicated that the continued perpetration of these war crimes have no military purpose except to flood Europe with refugees.
About 131,000 refugees have reached Europe so far this year, two to three times the 2015 rate. It's expected that the rate will increase even further as the warm spring and summer weather approaches, and there may be well over one million more migrants headed for Europe by the end of the year. This is a pressure cooker waiting to explode. Reuters and LA Times and US Dept. of Defense
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Mar-16 World View -- Russian and Syrian war crimes are 'weaponizing' the refugee crisis for Europe thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Mar-2016)
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Greece turns into a huge refugee camp
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Mumtaz Qadri was executed by hanging in Pakistan on Monday, after having been convicted of murdering Salman Taseer, the liberal governor of Punjab province in Pakistan, on January 4, 2011. The execution has provoked widespread protests.
Qadri was Taseer's bodyguard. To make sure he was dead, Qadri shot him in the chest 28 times. Qadri later said that he had shot Taseer because Taseer had opposed blasphemy laws in general, and for speaking out in favor of Asia Bibia, a Christian lady accused of blasphemy because she was Christian, and sentenced to death.
After the murder, Qadri instantly became a national hero to many segments of Pakistan's society. The day after the governor's death, Qadri went to court and dozens of lawyers greeted him with a hero's welcome. They even showered him with rose petals and put a garland around his neck.
As I wrote in 2011, 500 Pakistani religious scholars issued a statement praising Qadri for keeping alive a "tradition of 1,400 years in Islam" which requires the killing of anyone committing an act of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed.
Because of Qadri's popularity after the murder, it had been feared that Qadri would never be punished for his crime, so Monday's execution was something of a surprise. There were protests and riots in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, although most rallies were dispersed peacefully.
Blasphemy laws are not unique to Pakistan. As I described in 2012 after Charlie Hebdo magazine published cartoons of Mohammed (one of the reasons given for the attack in 2015), blasphemy laws in Britain and Ireland were in effect into the 1900s, although they were rarely enforced.
They were rarely enforced in Pakistan as well, until the 1980s, when something changed in public attitudes. Thousands of blasphemy cases have been heard since then. BBC and The Nation (Pakistan)
This kind of rapid massive popular change in attitude is of interest because it's usually generational, and often extremely destructive. In this case, popular opinion accepts the fact that someone can be put to death for merely accidentally saying the wrong thing, and popular opinion can treat even a murderer as a hero.
A comparable thing happened in America when the rising Generation-X generated the financial crisis by creating and selling billions of dollars in fraudulent subprime mortgage backed synthetic securities. Despite the fact that millions of people lost their homes and jobs, not a single person has been criminally prosecuted for these crimes.
More recent examples are the sudden popularity of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in their respective parties, although neither of these men has shown the slightest sign of knowing what's going on in the world. Trump became popular with many young people when he referred to Mexicans as rapists and murderers, and Sanders became popular with young people when he started talking about giving everything away for free.
All of these examples -- treating the murder of Salman Taseer as a hero, defrauding the public and creating the financial crisis, the sudden popularity of Trump and Sanders -- are the kinds of things that happen during a generational Crisis era, when young people start looking for solutions the same way that they look for rock stars.
The survivors of a generational crisis war, like World War II, are well aware of what the world is like. There's massive rape and slaughter, there are millions of refugees, there's massive starvation and growth of disease.
These survivors, the GI generation and the Silent generation, vow to never let anything like that happen again, and as long as they're alive they protect the world from letting it happen again.
But today those generations are almost gone, and the protections are gone as well. Young people are seeing the first signs of the horrors of a crisis war -- atrocities by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), mass kidnappings of girls by Boko Haram, selling the girls into slavery, millions of refugees pouring into Europe, and a continuing financial crisis. Young people, who have no idea why this is happening, are reacting by making mass irrational decisions.
We've already seen one disaster from these kinds of decisions -- the financial crisis. As these mass irrational decisions continue, there will be even worse disasters, including a new world war.
Mass irrational decisions, like applauding the mass use of blasphemy laws, has also caused disasters in Pakistan -- namely an unending series of bloody terrorist attacks, particularly against Shia Muslims. However, those weren't the only targets. In December 2014, Pakistan suffered a horrific Taliban attack on a Peshawar army school, killing over 130 schoolchildren. This attack on an army school changed a lot of minds, and probably was the event that made it possible for Mumtaz Qadri finally to be executed on Monday.
Aatish Taseer, the son of Salman Taseer, was interviewed on the BBC World Service on Monday. He said that Qadri's execution brought him relief but no joy. He described the tumultuous relationship he had with his father, and how it related to the country Pakistan as a whole (my transcription):
"The original reason for the estrangement was very simple - my father was in politics in Pakistan, I was half Indian and it would have been damaging for him to be in touch with me. Later we had a very moving, very important kind of -- we sort of Reunited. and for many years, things were very good between us. And I would come and go from Pakistan. And around the time of the London bombings, we started to have very different opinions about the way that Pakistan was going."
Taseer is referring to the 2005 London subway bombings, perpetrated by children of immigrants who had received training over the internet by al-Qaeda clerics in Pakistan.
"I began to travel for my first book, I really saw on the ground that the situation vis a vis Islam was going to get much worse in Pakistan. My father was a very fierce patriot, and didn't want to believe what I was saying to him. So this is what we fought over. We fought over his defense of Pakistan, and my feeling that an environment was building in that country that would be very very toxic. And I think that the Pakistan that I described in my book was ultimately the Pakistan that killed my father. ...I think that he came of age at the time of Bhutto, and of a kind of socialist movement, and he imagined he was protected -- it was almost a kind of upper class feeling that he knew this country and nothing could touch him. And that if he could only speak to it in his own way, then he would be all right. And I don't think that he recognized how much this country had changed."
Taseer added that the fallout from the execution of Qadri is yet to come. "Well, don't confuse what the government does with the actual mood on the ground. I don't know if we've even seen the worst of the fallout. ... [Is Pakistan a safe place?] As the Pakistan's High Commissioner said to me, it's safe until it isn't." BBC World Service Newshour
Several thousand migrants continue to pour into Greece every day, and they immediately travel to the border with Macedonia, hoping to take the trip north to Germany. Macedonia is allowing only 300 or so migrants to pass through each day, so the overcrowded refugee camps in Greece are becoming even more overcrowded. Protests are increasing, and on Monday Macedonia's police used teargas on migrants trying to push through the gate blocking the border. This is a disaster waiting to happen. AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Mar-16 World View -- Pakistan unexpectedly executes murderer of liberal politician Salman Taseer thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Mar-2016)
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