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Cash stored in vaults as negative interest rates spread
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As I wrote last week, central banks around the world are committed to "printing money" and making it available to wealthy investors and institutions in order to forestall forced selling following global financial shocks following Brexit. A major tool for doing this is quantitative easing -- purchasing corporate or sovereign bonds. But central banks are being limited by the huge amount of debt based on negative interest rates (yields). ( "25-Jun-16 World View -- Fallout from Brexit: Impact on geopolitics, economics, and stock markets")
A new report by Finch Ratings indicates that negative interest rates are spreading rapidly. As of June 27, $11.7 trillion of sovereign debt globally was based on the purchase of bonds and other assets with negative yields. This is up by $1.3 trillion from the end of May.
The way that this works in "normal" times is that an investor pays $95 for a bond that will pay $100 when it expires. But in today's "new normal," the demand for bonds is surging, and by the law of supply and demand, the prices of these bonds are also surging. So the investor is forced to pay $105 for the same bond that will pay only $100. That's a negative yield.
The demand for bonds has been surging from two sources. As volatility and uncertainty increases, investors are seeking safe havens in which to park their money. And central banks are purchasing bonds as part of a quantitative easing program. Japan, Germany and France were the leaders in June of increases in sovereign debt with negative yields.
In "normal" times, banks make money by borrowing money at low interest rates and lending it out at high interest rates. But in today's low and negative interest rate environment, it's impossible to lend it out at high interest rates, except to the riskiest borrowers, the subprime borrowers most likely to default.
For financial institutions looking for a place to park their money, some of them are returning to the old days when banks stored their money in vaults. Money in a vault earns no interest, but it also doesn't lose value.
When American outlaw "Willie" Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks, he replied, "I rob banks because that's where the money is." Somewhere there may be a modern day Willie Sutton who's thinking the same thing. Fitch Ratings and Bloomberg and Seeking Alpha and Bloomberg and FT Adviser and Telegraph (London)
Today's meeting was "about us," according to one EU official, not about the UK. So 27 European Union members met for an EU summit, the first one in 40 years from which Britain was excluded.
The key phrase was "there will be no single market à la carte." The meaning of this phrase was stated repeatedly by different EU officials. If the UK wants access to the EU Single Market, then they must also be willing to guarantee the EU's four freedoms: freedom of movement for people, goods, capital and services.
In particular, this will mean that the UK would have to permit the free movement of people, which was the major motivation for the successful Brexit vote in the first place. That would be ironic. And it's worth mentioning again that the opposition to free movement of people are just as opposed to free movement of Catholic Poles and Hungarians as they are opposed to free movement of Syrian Muslims. Guardian (London)
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and the country's that sponsor MB -- Qatar and Turkey -- have reacted furiously to the actions on June 18 by an Egyptian court to sentence former president Mohamed Morsi to 40 years in prison for conspiring to harm Egypt's national interests in what has been called the "spying for Qatar" affair. Morsi's co-defendants included a reporter from Qatar-based al-Jazeera.
The judge reading out the verdict said that Morsi and his co-defendants endangered national security, which is "worse than killing a person or opposing God’s laws." He added:
"They are more dangerous than spies. Spies are usually foreigners, but unfortunately the defendants are Egyptian."
Qatar denounced the verdicts, saying they set a dangerous precedent in relations between Arab nations:
"The verdict issued by the Cairo Criminal Court is baseless and goes against justice and the realities on the ground, because it includes a litany of misleading claims that contradicts the policy of the State of Qatar towards all its sisterly nations."
Egyptian media responded harshly. According to Muhammad Amin, editor of the Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Yawm:
"The sentence in the case of the spying [for Qatar] sends a message no only to the MB but also a special message [meant] to reach the Qatari Emir. The message to the MB is that the [Egyptian] state will not stop pursuing the movement and is not interested in holding talks [with it] or reassessing its attitude towards 'the state of the [MB] General Guide.' ...I believe this affair means Qatar has become an 'enemy state' and can no longer be a sister country, [since] siblings do not spy on each other. I am speaking of the rash [Qatari] leadership. This leadership managed to deceive a foolish president [Morsi] in order to receive [from him] documents [pertaining to] national security. He who sells out his homeland sells out his good name and his honor."
As long-time readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that, in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, Iran, India and Russia will be allied with the West against China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Arab nations. ( "15-Jul-15 World View -- Arab views of Iran nuclear deal")
However, that's very broad prediction. It's clear that the Sunni Arab nations are not monolithic, and historically they've fought against each other, as well as against Shia Iran. The 2014 Gaza war revealed sharp fault lines among the Sunni Arabs, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the West Bank Palestinians on one side, and Hamas, Qatar and (non-Arab) Turkey on the other side. ( "3-Sep-14 World View -- Mideast realignment continues following the Gaza war") It would be possible through analysis and interviews to produce a much more detailed and accurate prediction of the expected activities of the different ethnic groups, but this would require more resources than are available to me. However, this could be a good project for a college student thesis. Daily News Egypt (18-Jun) and Al-Jazeera (Qatar - 18-Jun) and Memri
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Jun-16 World View -- Egypt calls Qatar an 'enemy state' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Jun-2016)
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Mutual UK-EU loathing at the European Parliament in Brussels
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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While not threatening an immediate spiral into a global crisis, The Brexit situation continues every day to cause a great deal of geopolitical deterioration and damage of a kind that's likely to lead to a serious crisis in time.
Britain's government melted down further on Tuesday, as far-left Labor Party chief Jeremy Corbyn was given a big vote of no-confidence, with 172 Labor MPs voting no confidence, while only 40 supported him. However, he was elected leader last year by a wide margin among Labor MPs, and he says he won't step down. This leaves both British parties without effective leadership.
The real action on Tuesday occurred at the meeting of the European Parliament in Brussels. Nigel Farage, who is the head of Britain's anti-immigrant anti-Europe Ukip party, is also an MEP (member of European parliament). In Brussels on Tuesday, he stood to speak and he used the time to gloat:
"Funny, isn't it. You know, when I came here 17 years ago, and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well I have to say, you're not laughing now are you?"
He also accused all the other 700 MEPs of never having done a hard day's work in their lives, or of ever creating a job.
Parliament president Jean-Claude Jüncker accused Farage of lying repeatedly during the Brexit campaign, and said "You were fighting for the exit, the British people voted in favor of the exit - why are you here?"
EU officials are described as sad and angry, and they're especially angry at David Cameron for even allowing the referendum in the first place. Jüncker said clearly that Brexit was "a fact," and there would be no going back. He also ordered all the MEPs not to conduct any negotiations with British officials, until Britain's government invokes "Article 50," which launches the two-year negotiation process. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that there would be no "cherry picking," meaning that Britain would not be permitted to pick and choose which EU regulations it obeys if it wants to be part of EU's Single Market.
The UK government is still in chaos, and still lost in the wilderness, and has no idea what to do next. Both Scotland and Northern Ireland are demanding that a way be found to keep them in the EU. The Scottish MEP Alyn Smith reminded the Brussels Parliament that Scotland voted overwhelmingly against Brexit: "We will need cool heads and warm hearts but please remember this - Scotland did not let you down. I beg you: do not let Scotland down now."
Jüncker and other EU officials seem resigned that Britain will not invoke Article 50 at least until September 9, when David Cameron will be replaced by a new Prime Minister. Jüncker's nightmare scenario is that the UK will keep stalling indefinitely, without invoking Article 50, leaving the EU in unending limbo. On Wednesday, there will be a meeting of the leaders of 27 EU members and, for the first time in 40 years, the UK will be excluded.
There is a real feeling of mutual disgust and loathing between EU and UK officials now, and that the negotiations will be harsh and bitter.
On the other hand, in view of the chaos and bitterness, fears of other EU countries trying to conduct their own exit referendums seem diminished now. Nobody else wants to go through the same thing. BBC and Guardian (London) and BBC
At least 36 people were killed on Monday by three coordinated suicide bombings in Ataturk National Airport on the European side of Istanbul, Turkey. No one has claimed responsibility, but Turkish officials say that the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) was responsible.
The Ataturk airport is a major international airport. Not only is it the biggest commercial hub in Turkey, it's one of the largest airports in the world, and a major international traffic hub.
The bombing comes just one day after Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan completed two diplomatic initiatives. First, the reconciliation with Israel was announced after Erdogan softened his demand that Israel end its blockade of Gaza, and agreed to a compromise, as we described on Sunday.
Second, it was revealed that Erdogan finally apologized to Russia for shooting down the Russian warplane last year. Russia's president Vladimir Putin has demanded that Erdogan apologize and provide compensation to the families of the victims. Whether it was an accident or on purpose that both diplomatic announcements occurred on the same day, it certainly appears that Erdogan is changing some of his hardline attitudes.
There's a third major diplomatic issue reaching a potential crisis this week. June 30 is the deadline set by Turkey for the European Union to lift visa restrictions on Turkey, so that any of Turkey's 72 million citizens can travel freely around Europe's Schengen zone. This is Turkey's requirement in exchange for the EU-Turkey migrant deal. This deal has been extremely successful, in that it's reduced the flow of migrants entering Greece from Turkey to dozens per day, down from hundreds or thousands per day.
EU officials have said they won't lift the visa restrictions unless Turkey improves its human rights record, particularly by not using anti-terrorism laws to jail journalists. Turkish officials have said repeatedly that if the visa restrictions aren't lifted, then Turkey will renege on the migrant deal, and allow an unrestricted flow of migrants to cross the Aegean Sea again to Greece.
Turkey has refused in the past to weaken the anti-terrorism laws, and Tuesday's airport attack can only redouble that resolve.
There have been no recent statements from Turkey about reneging on the migrant deal, so right now it looks like Thursday is going to come and go with no change in the status quo. If so, it will be the third time this week that Erdogan will have backed down diplomatically. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Observer
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Jun-16 World View -- Bombing of Turkey's airport affects a swirl of diplomatic actions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Jun-2016)
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Rating agencies downgrade Britain's AAA credit rating
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The fallout from the UK's shock approval of the Brexit referendum, mandating that the UK leave the European Union, continued on Monday with a new stream of events.
The Russia, Standard & Poors (S&P) ratings agency cut the UK's credit rating by two notches, from AAA to AA+ and then to AA. The S&P said that Brexit could lead to "a deterioration of the UK's economic performance, including its large financial services sector."
Fitch ratings agency followed suit, lowering its rating from AA+ to AA. On Friday, Moody's ratings agency cut the UK's credit rating outlook to negative.
The main reason that this might be significant is that it could lead to forced selling. Many fund managers are only allowed to own AAA debt, and the ratings downgrades may force many of these fund managers to sell the downgraded assets. If the asset has lost value as a result of Brexit, then these funds could lose substantial amounts of money. This could lead to the vicious cycle that I described last week -- where asset values fall, leading to forced selling, causing asset values to fall, leading to more forced selling, and so forth.
On the other hand, central banks are acting quickly to "print money" and make it available to wealthy investors and institutions so that there will be as little forced selling as possible.
Meanwhile, Britain's government has become almost non-existent, as both parties are in chaos. David Cameron, leader of the government Conservative party, is to be replaced as leader early in September. The two most likely choices are the flamboyant pro-Brexit leader Boris Johnson, and the demure anti-Brexit Home Secretary Theresa May. However wins the leadership election for the party will automatically become Prime Minister until the next general election.
In other developments on Monday, there is a great deal of tension among EU leaders as to how quickly UK leaders have to "invoke Article 50" of the Lisbon Treaty, referring to the event that will launch two years of negotiations to work out the details for the divorce between the UK and EU.
UK pro-Brexit leaders don't have a plan or a clue what they want to do next, so the "plan" is to stall as long as possible, and not invoke Article 50 until it becomes absolutely necessary. This is driving some UK leaders crazy since they're unable to make their own plans due to the uncertainty of what will happen to the UK, and some of them are demanding that the UK invoke Article 50 as quickly as possible. However, the Lisbon Treaty is clear that the EU cannot force the UK to do so, and UK leaders are lost in the wilderness, so will stall as long as they can, at least until a new Prime Minister is selected.
Another question plaguing EU leaders is how harsh they should be in the negotiations. On the one hand, the UK is an important ally, and they don't want to be seen as screwing the UK. On the other hand, they don't want other countries to look on and say, "If it's that easy, then we'll leave the EU too." So many EU leaders are talking about being as harsh as possible in the negotiations, to discourage other members from doing the same.
The EU will have a great deal of leverage because the UK will want to continue to belong to the "EU Single Market," or the European Economic Area (EEA). The EEA is considered to be one of Europe's greatest post-war achievements, and its creation was led by Britain. Britain will desperately want to continue to be part of the EEA, and this is possible, because Norway is in the EEA, but not a member of the EU.
However, in return for that access to the single market, Norway pays a contribution to the EU budget and has to sign up to all the rules of the club - including its common regulations and standards. If Britain negotiates to stay in the EEA, then EU negotiators will certainly demand as large a contribution to the EU budget as possible. Furthermore -- and this will be the ultimate irony -- the common regulations and standards will be set by the hated EU regulators, but after leaving the EU, Britain will have no say in how the regulations are set. Guardian (London) and Independent (London) and BBC
A wave of multiple suicide bombings struck the predominantly Greek Orthodox Christian village of Al-Qaa in northern Lebanon near the border with Syria. The first wave of four suicide bombings occurred outside a church in the village before sunrise on Monday morning. Then on Monday evening, as residents were preparing for funerals for the morning's suicide bombings, three suicide bombers riding motorcycles blew themselves up in the same village. At least five people were killed and 15 wounded.
No one claimed credit, but it's believed that the bombings were perpetrated by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). The region around Al-Qaa has had numerous al-Qaeda and ISIS attacks since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011.
Lebanon hosts more than 1.1-million Syrian refugees, in a country with a population of just four million. The refugees have put an enormous strain on the economy and on the army. Al Manar (Lebanon-Hezbollah) and AFP and Business Day (Johannesburg)
A bomb has exploded in Beirut Lebanon on June 12, outside the headquarters of the Blom Bank, the second largest financial institution in Lebanon. The bomb destroyed the façade of the building, but did not cause any deaths. Lebanon's police arrested two suspects who had been pictured on surveillance video. They were part of a group linked to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is a powerful political force in Lebanon, but it's also a terrorist puppet funded and directed by Iran. Under Iran's direction, Hezbollah militias have been fighting alongside the army of the regime of president Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
In December 2015, the US Congress passed the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act, which provides for sanctions against any foreign or domestic bank that helps Hezbollah with loans, fundraising, money laundering, or other activities.
In the weeks before the bombing, Hezbollah began a campaign of harshly criticizing Blom bank and its governor Riad Salameh, as well as other Lebanese banks. Hezbollah accused the banks of being too eager to implement the US sanctions, and appeared to be inciting violence, and did not condemn the bombing after it occurred.
Several Lebanese newspapers known to be critical of Hezbollah called the organization "bank bombers," and said that Hezbollah intended the bombing as a "message" to banks complying with the US sanctions. Congress.gov and Reuters (6/12) and Memri and Gulf News (Dubai - 6/16)
In a speech on Friday, Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in which he defended Hezbollah against the accusation of being responsible for the Blom bank bombing, saying that the law passed by Congress has no effect on Hezbollah:
"Well, at the time, I said that even if the Lebanese banks comply with this law, ... we as a party and as an organization and jihadist movement consider the law pointless and we will not be hurt or affected by it.Yes, it is true that the law puts some moral pressure on us but it will not have any financial impact on Hezbollah. I have previously explained why but I will remind those idiots of the following. We do not have any business projects or investments via banks.
Let me be very frank and I do not think anyone in the world would dare to say this publicly. We are open about the fact that Hezbollah's budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran. ... Our allocated money is coming to us, not through the banks. As long as Iran has money, we have money ... Just as we receive the rockets that we use to threaten Israel, we are receiving our money. No law will prevent us from receiving it.
Some people might have objections. We do not care. By the way, the resistance [to Israel], its sons, audience, and people thank the imam of the nation, His Eminence Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei, may God grant him a long life. We also thank the Islamic Republic of Iran, its president, government, parliament, reference, religious authorities, and people for the kind support provided to us during the years of resistance and that continues to date."
The interesting thing about this speech is that Nasrallah does not deny that Hezbollah was responsible for the bombing, which makes the whole speech rather silly. It appears to be a message to the US Congress to convince them to lift the sanctions because they don't do any good. However, that message is not likely to be heeded. The National (UAE) and Al Manar (Lebanon-Hezbollah)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Jun-16 World View -- Hezbollah defends terrorist actions by saying it gets all its money from Iran thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Jun-2016)
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Nationalistic tensions increase as UK and EU drift towards Brexit
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The successful Brexit referendum vote, calling for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island to leave the European Union, has unleashed powerful nationalistic forces in both the UK and the EU, as we've been describing for years in nations around the world in a generational Crisis era. Furthermore, it's torn wide open new political fault lines within both the UK and EU, making resolution of the issues less likely and chaos more likely, and making both unions considerably weaker.
The latest developments are as follows:
PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON: "The British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path. And as such, I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction. I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination. This is not a decision I’ve taken lightly, but I do believe it’s in the national interest to have a period of stability and then the new leadership required. In my view, we should aim to have a new prime minister in place by the start of the Conservative Party Conference in October. And I will do everything I can to help. I love this country, and I feel honored to have served it. And I will do everything I can in future to help this great country succeed."
The impact of Cameron's statement is that he will step down by October, and leave it to his successor to invoke the EU Lisbon Treaty Article 50, which starts the clock on the two-year process for Britain to leave the EU. Like the Labor party, the Conservative party is in chaos.
David Cameron will be traveling to Brussels on Tuesday for a long-planned meeting of leaders of the 28 EU countries. But on Wednesday, he will be excluded from an all-day meeting of leaders of the other 27 EU countries, as they try to figure out what to do next. Guardian (London) and Democracy Now (London) and Breitbart News (London)
The unexpected success of the Brexit referendum caught many investors by surprise, and has shocked the markets. ( "25-Jun-16 World View -- Fallout from Brexit: Impact on geopolitics, economics, and stock markets")
Investors quickly moved into "safe havens," including dollar-denominated investments and, even more, into yen-denominated investments. This created a new global demand for yen, pushing the value of the currency higher, exacerbating Japan's deflationary spiral.
The Bank of Japan and other government officials are holding an emergency meeting on Monday to evaluate the situation and to decide whether to "print money" and pour more liquidity into the banking system in order to prevent the vicious cycle that we described two days ago.
The European Central Bank would also like "print money" by buying bonds (quantitative easing), but according to one analyst, the ECB will have a problem doing this. The reason is that there are $8 trillion in bonds in the market at negative yields (interest rates), and the ECB is running out of bonds to buy. ( "15-Jun-16 World View -- German 10 year bund yield goes negative, as deflationary spiral continues")
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) also announced a substantial weakening of the renminbi (yuan) currency, though they did it a different way. The yuan currency is pegged to a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar, and on Monday morning the PBOC weakened the yuan currency by 0.9%, its weakest fixing level since December 2010.
Meanwhile the favorite topic of all the tv financial talk shows has suddenly taken a dramatic twist. For months this year, these shows would debate for hours and hours each day whether the Fed would increase interest rates three times or two times or one time this year. Increasing interest rates would strengthen the US dollar, causing more deflation. So over the weekend sentiment has changed, and now analysts are expecting the Fed to lower interest rates, not raise them.
During the 1930s Great Depression, there was a "race to the bottom," as countries kept devaluing their currencies in order to gain a competitive advantage against other countries. Ever since the "financial crisis" of 2007-8, it's been widely feared that it could happen again, and the current situation is raising those concerns again. Dow Jones and Japan Today and Business Insider (Australia)
Multiple media sources are saying that Israel and Turkey are announcing a reconciliation agreement on Monday, bringing to an end the deterioration in relations that followed the Mavi Marmara confrontation in 2010. (See "23-Jun-16 World View -- Turkey drops lifting of Gaza blockade demand for normalization with Israel")
According to press reports, the details of the agreement are as follows:
These have been difficult compromises for both sides.
According to a former minister to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
"Israel will pay Turkey reparations for the Marmara? I hope the reports are untrue. If they are true, this would be national humiliation and an invitation for further flotillas and libels by haters of Israel."
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt ÇavuSoglu said the following:
"Saying that Turkey has given up one of its two remaining conditions, which is lifting the embargo and blockade on Gaza, would mean humiliating the people’s intelligence. If Turkey had given up these [conditions], then relations would have been normalized by now."
The deal will be announced on Monday, and the agreement will be signed in July, according to reports. Jerusalem Post and Hurriyet (Ankara) and Al-Jazeera (Doha)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Jun-16 World View -- Israel and Turkey announcing a reconciliation agreement on Monday thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Jun-2016)
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In new escalation, China cuts communications hotline with Taiwan
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China is following up on last month's ominous demands that Taiwan's new president Tsai Ing-wen must explicitly affirm that Taiwan is part of China. The threatening demands were made just four days after Tsai took office. ( "26-May-16 World View -- China demands new Taiwan leader explicitly affirm that Taiwan is part of China")
On Saturday, China announced that it was cutting a communication hotline with Taiwan that was set up last year in the waning days of the previous Ma Ying-jeou administration.
Ma is leader of the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) party, which supports the "1992 Consensus" that there is "one China," leaving it ambiguous what that means. KMT favors the "one China" principle and unification with mainland China, and which has fully supported all of China's claims in the South China Sea.
Ma and China's president Xi Jinping held a highly publicized landmark meeting in Singapore on November 7 of last year. The purpose of the meeting was for Xi to support Ma Ying-jeou's bid for reelection in the upcoming January elections. The support didn't help, as Ma's opponent Tsai Ing-wen won overwhelmingly, and took office in May.
One outcome of the November 7 meeting was to set up a high-level hotline between Taipei and Beijing to handle emergencies. The hotline was used for the first time on December 30, when officials for both countries exchanged New Year's greetings.
The new president, Tsai, is the leader of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which in the past has favored Taiwan independence from China. When the DPP was in power prior to 2008, relations between China and Taiwan were so bad that in 2005 Beijing passed an "anti-secession law" saying that China would take military action against Taiwan if there were any moves or speeches in the direction of Taiwan independence from China.
In her inauguration speech last month, Tsai said that she "respected" the "common understanding" between Taiwan and China, but did not say what the common understanding was. This infuriated the Chinese. According to Beijing state media, Tsai made "a painful effort not to answer one important question..., whether or not to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus embodying the one China principle."
So on Saturday, China shut down the hotline that had been set up for emergencies as a result of last year's meeting between Xi and Ma. According to a Chinese official:
"Because the Taiwan side has been unable to confirm the 1992 consensus that embodies the common political foundation of the one-China principle, the mechanism for contact and communication between the two sides has already been suspended."
This infuriated Taiwanese officials who said that they will not give in to China's "blackmail and coercion."
China's action to shut down the hotline was probably triggered by another incident. On Friday, 25 Taiwanese in Cambodia, accused of telecommunications fraud, were extradited to China rather than to Taiwan. China demanded that Cambodia send them to China, since sending them to Taiwan would acknowledge Taiwan's existence as an independent entity.
Taiwan responded on Friday by using the hotline to protest the extraditions to China, and accused China of "abducting" Taiwanese citizens saying, "It is inappropriate for China to impede cooperation to fight crime for political factors." One day later, China shut down the hotline. Shanghaiist and AFP and China Post (Taipei - 31-Dec-2015)
The success of Britain's Brexit referendum was a shock to the Chinese as much as anyone, but it has special significance for China. If the UK can hold a referendum and leave the European Union, then why can't Taiwan and Hong Kong hold their own referendums and leave China?
Wu Ping-jui, an official in the administration of the new president Tsai Ing-wen, said that when China shut down the communications hotline in order to force the Taiwanese to accept its version of the "1992 Consensus," it was tantamount to "blackmail and coercion." He said that China's actions would simply "toughen up Taiwanese determination."
Wu then referenced the Brexit referendum. If China demands that Taiwan accept the 1992 consensus, "do they mean for us what to choose? This is not done in any democratic country." He cited the Brexit referendum, in which each and every British citizen was able to show his or her will.
An official from the opposition KMT party, which favors Taiwan integration with China, also congratulated Britain on the Brexit referendum. However, he said that no similar referendum could be held in Taiwan, because referendums could only be held on matters of crucial national interest, and because "the requirements of our Referendum Law need not be relaxed at this time, despite attempts by pro-independence legislators to do so." China Post (Taipei) and China Post
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Millennials in Britain are expressing fury that their futures have been ruined by the passage of the Brexit vote by the Boomer generation, meaning that Britain will no longer be part of the European Union, and the Millennials will be denied the benefits that their parents had.
According to YouGov exit polls, Millennials voted overwhelmingly for the "Remain" side, meaning that the UK would remain in the EU, while Boomers voted for the "Leave" side. The breakdown by age group was:
Yorkshire Post columnist Grant Woodward wrote:
"Brexit will come to be seen as the Baby Boomers’ ultimate betrayal of younger generations and those that will follow. A knee-jerk response to a series of red herrings, a protest vote with the potential for long-term catastrophe that they won’t be around to endure."
Typical tweets were as follows:
"So all the old people gave us a future we didn't want. You've all had your careers, why screw it up for us""I'm scared. Jokes aside I'm actually scared. Today an older generation has voted to ruin the future for the younger generation. I'm scared."
"I'm actually really upset how selfish the older generations have been"
"The fact that the older generation have whole heartedly made a decision that the youth of today DO NOT WANT seems strange, yes I'm bitter"
Among the American politicians, Donald Trump is on the "Leave" side, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on the "Remain" side. Daily Mail (London) and Telegraph (London)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Jun-16 World View -- Britain's Millennials are furious at Boomers for Brexit vote thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Jun-2016)
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Global stock markets plummet after Brexit surprise
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Few people doubt that the surprise passage of Britain's "Brexit" referendum, directing that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should withdraw from the European Union after being a member since 1975, will cause a great deal of political chaos in the next few weeks and months. Pro-Brexit politicians claim the chaos is only temporary, and it will soon settle down, and the result will be better for the UK.
Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing pro-Brexit Ukip party, said exuberantly, "Let June go down in history of our independence day!" Others pro-Brexit politicians shouted, "We've taken our country back!"
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the wish that the chaos will end is fantasy. The "financial crisis" of 2007-2009 set in motion generational forces that have caused the chaos to increase every month, every year. That's true in Europe, with the euro crisis, the migrant crisis, and the Ukraine crisis; it's true in the Mideast, with the Arab Awakening, the Syria war, the Yemen war, the rise of ISIS, the collapse in Iran-Saudi Arabia relations, and the meltdowns in Libya and Egypt; and it's true in Asia with China's belligerence in the East and South China Sea. This is worldwide trend that's been growing for a decade, and in this generational Crisis era, it's literally impossible for the growth in chaos to stop.
As I've been writing for years, nationalism, racism and xenophobia have been growing in countries around the world, as they do in every generational Crisis era. All these factors played into the surprise Brexit vote, in the form of anti-German, anti-French and anti-migrant sentiment. Furious voters wanted to get revenge against the élite in both the UK and the EU and "send a message" that they're not going to take it anymore. There have been some reports of "buyer's remorse" -- that at least some of the pro-Brexit voters wanted to send a message, but didn't really want to leave the EU. Nonetheless, the deed appears to be done.
So the pro-Brexit people who expect the EU and the UK to settle down into a non-chaotic "new normal" are making major misjudgments. They're especially overlooking the following: Just as they were angry, just as they were expressing their nationalism, racism, and xenophobia, just as they wanted revenge, the people who lost are also angry, and also will want to get revenge by expressing their nationalism, racism, and xenophobia.
The question really is not WHETHER they're going to seek revenge. The question is HOW they're going to seek revenge. Here are some possibilities:
If you were to ask a UK or EU politician whether any of the events in the above list are likely to happen, he would tell you, "No, no chance whatsoever!" However, if you had asked a UK or EU politician a few months ago (or even a few days ago) whether the UK would leave the EU, you would have gotten a similar response.
As I like to point out, almost every day, something new happens that a few years ago you would have to have been crazy to believe would ever happen. Whether it's in America, Europe, Africa, the Mideast or Asia, things that could never happen are happening.
In fact, every one of the items listed above is quite reasonable, once you realize how angry, how nationalistic, and how xenophobic people have become in many countries. That anger could be translated into anything from an election referendum to a war in a matter of days.
The European Union was formed after two world wars and the Great Depression. Institutions were put into place with the specific purpose of preventing a new war between European nations, and preventing the financial abuse that led to the Great Depression. Today, with the survivors of World War II gone, anger, nationalism, xenophobia, and stupidity are back in full force.
I can't tell you which of the above events will actually happen, but I would be very surprised if none of them happened. At the very least, expect more chaos, and one new crisis after another. Guardian (London) and Reuters and BBC and Vox and TRT World (Istanbul)
A global stock selloff occurred on Friday, following the Brexit vote. The plunge began in Asia, spread across Europe, and then to North America. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 600 points. Britain's sterling currency fell 10% against the US dollar, to its weakest value in 31 years. Money poured into safe havens, notably US Treasury bonds. The demand for the bonds increased their prices, which therefore lowered their yields (interest rates) dramatically.
The question is: What happens next? Will stock prices continue to fall when the markets open again on Monday? Are we in a stock market crash?
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First off, we have to say that it's possible. As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that we're headed for a global financial panic and crisis. According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations index) on Friday morning (June 24) was at an astronomically high 24.22. This is far above the historical average of 14, indicating that the stock market bubble is still growing, and could burst at any time. Generational Dynamics predicts that the P/E ratio will fall to the 5-6 range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982, resulting in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower.
Second, let's take a look at the 1929 stock market crash. The DJIA fell 24% on October 28-29, but then regained 18% on the next two days. That would more accurately be called a "panic" rather than a "crash." The actual crash continued for years, until mid-1932, when it had fallen to 90% of its peak value on September 3, 1929.
So when we say that "it's possible," we mean that there might still be some sort of panic next week, but a real crash would take place over a longer period of time.
The way it works is through forced selling. What happened in 1929 is that investors had borrowed money (on margin) to purchase stocks. When the price of stocks bought on margin start to fall, then the stock broker gives the investor a "margin call," which means that the investor has to come up with more money. This usually means selling some stock, and if a lot of investors are forced to sell, then stock prices fall again, and there's a vicious cycle of stock prices falling, margin calls, stock selling, stock prices falling, and so forth. This can go on for years, and it did from 1929-1932.
To this day, nobody knows what triggered the panic of 1929, and there's certainly no way to tell what will trigger the next panic, or whether Brexit will do so.
What we do know is that the current stock market bubble will burst, because every bubble in history always has, despite claims that "this time it's different." So it's possible that Brexit will be the trigger that causes the current global stock market and credit bubble to burst.
What's important about the current situation is that thousands of investors were caught completely by surprise by Brexit referendum win. Many of them had invested heavily in sterling currency and the stock market, expecting that the values of these investments would increase when the Brexit referendum lost. So many investors were forced to sell when the Brexit referendum won in order to service debts that they'd incurred to make the investments in the first place, just like the 1929 margin calls.
So it's possible that enough investors were caught by surprise and a new vicious cycle will occur. It has to happen sometime, and it may or may not be now.
However, there's one other thing we know. Central banks around the world are well aware of this vicious cycle possibility, and reports indicate that they're "printing money" and pouring into the markets in order to head off exactly this kind of vicious cycle. The Bank of England, European Central Bank and the People's Bank of China have already said they were ready to provide liquidity if needed to ensure global market stability. However, one sign that they're running out of the ability to do that is the huge amount of debt based on negative interest rates. ( "15-Jun-16 World View -- German 10 year bund yield goes negative, as deflationary spiral continues")
So maybe the central banks will succeed this time or maybe they won't. We'll have to wait until next week to find out. Reuters and Washington Post and CNBC and AAP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Jun-16 World View -- Fallout from Brexit: Impact on geopolitics, economics, and stock markets thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Jun-2016)
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Cognitive dissonance and doubling down in China
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Any day now, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a United Nations international court in the Hague is supposed to issue a ruling on a case brought by the Philippines against China on the merits of China's claims to the entire South China Sea. The case is brought under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which China claims doesn't apply to them.
China always says that its claims "are indisputable," and this is clearly a lie, since the claims are widely disputed. In fact, China's claims are at least delusional, and may even be fabricated, as we reported a few days ago. ( "22-Jun-16 World View -- China's 'ironclad proof' of South China Sea claims revealed as hoax")
Not only is China delusional about some of their evidence, it now appears that they're also delusional about the kind of support they're getting from the international community.
Even though the Court's ruling would be little more than symbolic, and even though there would be no way to enforce the Court's ruling against China, and even though China has already said that it will ignore any ruling, and even though China has bitterly complained about and even threatened the Philippines for even going to the Court in the first place, it's clear that Chinese officials are close to a state of panic over a possible ruling against them.
Out of anxiety, China is resorting to a full-court press in the propaganda realm, and are doing everything they can to convince other countries to endorse their position. In particular, China is targeting many distant countries and land-locked countries, with no direct interest in the South China Sea.
Last week, at China's regular Foreign Ministry press conference, the following bizarre exchange took place:
"Q: We notice that the governments of Sierra Leone and Kenya have recently joined in the chorus supporting China's South China Sea position. Nearly 60 countries have publicly endorsed China's stance, and more and more countries have shown their support to China. Is the Chinese government behind this? Is the Chinese government trying to extend its "circle of friends" on the South China Sea issue?A: The South China Sea issue is supposed to be an issue between China and a few littoral countries of the South China Sea. ... [Further comments evading the question]
Q: First question, how many countries have publicly endorsed China's position on the South China Sea issue up to now? The previous press conference mentioned 40, but just now a journalist said nearly 60. ...
A: On your first question, a journalist just mentioned that nearly 60 countries support China. Compared with seven or eight countries that hold the opposite position, I think the figure itself speaks volumes."
According to the first questioner, unnamed but presumably from Chinese media, said that Sierra Leone and Kenya, as if it matters whether two African country are for or against China.
In the second answer, the Foreign Ministry spokesman makes official China's belief that it's supported by 60 countries, with only seven or eight opposed. As we'll see below, these claims are delusional.
Why are these numbers even relevant? There is some suggestion that China is trying to line up countries on its side, so that if the Court rules against China, then China can go to the United Nations General Assembly and try to get a vote rejecting the Court's decision. If successful, China could then claim that the United Nations itself has rejected the decision of a United Nations court.
Anything is possible, but I would be surprised if anything like a majority of the United Nations members voted to reject the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS is a part of international law that has been used to settle many disputes and keep the peace since the end of World War II, and if UNCLOS is rejected in this case, then it will open up many disputes that were previously thought to be settled. South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and China's Foreign Ministry (14-Jun)
China claims to completely reject the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and has said that this international law may not apply to China's claims in the South China Sea.
And yet, in a completely different dispute, China's Foreign Ministry cited UNCLOS in support of its view on the status of Okinotori Islands in relation to a disagreement between Taiwan and Japan. The details of the dispute are not important to us, but here's the beginning of the quote from the Foreign Ministry spokesman:
"Q: On May 23, the Taiwan authority said that "it does not take a particular stance in legal terms" on whether Okinotori is an island or a reef. It is commented that the new Taiwan administration has gone backwards on the issue of Okinotori, undermining the rights and interests of Taiwan fishermen. How do you comment?A: Okinotori is an isolated reef in the west Pacific distant from the Japanese soil. Pursuant to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Okinotori cannot have the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf. Waters off 12 nautical miles of it are high seas, where all countries are entitled to freedoms on the high seas such as fishing and so forth. On April 2012, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) adopted the recommendations in regard to the submission made by Japan on the outer limits of its continental shelf, rebuffing Japan's illegal claims based on Okinotori."
It's striking that China is appealing to UNCLOS when it's convenient, just a few weeks before a Court decision that it has already rejected, along with UNCLOS. If, as suggested above, China goes ahead with a plan to try to get the UN General Assembly to strike down UNCLOS, you can be certain that the debate will mention China's position on Okinotori.
This just adds to a growing picture that Chinese officials are delusional regarding their claims to the South China Sea. China's Foreign Ministry (24-May) and The Diplomat
China is claiming that 60 countries are on China's side, with only seven or eight opposed. However, an analysis by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has done the actual research on this issue. AMTI has searched publicly available, official statements in an effort to determine the real positions taken by countries.
What does it mean to be "on China's side"? What AMTI was looking for was not whether countries take one side or the other on China's claims in the South China Sea, but whether countries take one side or the other on whether the Court's ruling will be binding.
AMTI has identified 57 countries that China appears to believe are its supporters. Of those, 8 have publicly confirmed their support, 4 have denied Beijing’s claim of support, and 45 have remained publicly silent or have issued statements that are considerably vaguer than indicated by China. In contrast, 11 countries plus the European Union have said that the arbitral award will be legally binding and have called on both China and the Philippines to respect it.
The AMTI has divided these countries into four groups:
Afghanistan, The Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Niger, Sudan, Togo, Vanuatu
Algeria*, Bahrain*, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Brunei, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros*, Djibouti*, Egypt*, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Iraq*, Jordan*, Kuwait*, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon*, Libya*, Malawi, Mauritania*, Morocco*, Mozambique, Pakistan, Palestine*, Qatar*, Russia, Saudi Arabia*, Serbia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Somalia*, Sri Lanka, Syria*, Tanzania, Tunisia*, Uganda, United Arab Emirates*, Venezuela, Yemen*, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Cambodia, Fiji, Poland, Slovenia
Albania, Australia, Austria*, Belgium, Bosnia&Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria*, Canada, Croatia*, Cyprus, Czech Republic*, Denmark*, Estonia*, Finland, France, Germany, Greece*, Hungary*, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia*, Liechtenstein, Lithuania*, Luxembourg, Malta, Oman*, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands*, New Zealand, Poland*, Portugal*, Romania*, Slovakia*, Slovenia*, Spain*, Sweden*, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam
So China's Foreign Ministry has it backwards: Lots of nations provide no support for China, while only seven are supporting China.
Two of these nations, Afghanistan and Lesotho, are landlocked. Four of them, The Gambia, Kenya, Niger and Sudan, are far away in Africa. Vanuatu is a South Pacific island, once again far from the South China Sea. Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) and The Diplomat
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, cognitive dissonance explains many of history's greatest disasters.
The term "cognitive dissonance" refers to the mental problems that occur when deeply held beliefs are contradicted by real life events. The literature contains numerous examples of what happens. Some of the most dramatic examples are those who believe that God will end the world on a specific day, and only true believers will be saved. In many cases, people quit their jobs, sell all their belongings and settle all their affairs, and then wait for the named day.
When the world doesn't end, they have to deal with the consequences of their actions. According to psychologist Leon Festinger's 1957 book "A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance," there are two kinds of behaviors that are common. Some admit they were wrong and devote themselves to returning to their previous lives.
Others "double down." They say that they were right all along, but that God decided to give the world one more chance. They then devote their entire lives to proselytizing. It's possible that several religions began this way.
China's cognitive dissonance is an extremely dangerous situation. China's population apparently widely believes that China's South China Sea claims are "indisputable." This is already clearly wrong, and will be publicly proven wrong if, as expected, the Court rules against China. As we described a few days ago, China has put forward "ironclad proof" in the form of evidence that's at best delusional and at worst fabricated. And China's rejection of UNCLOS is, in my opinion, not going to be widely supported, especially after China itself has cited UNCLOS when convenient.
A commenter to my last article wrote the following:
"Since Sun Tzu introduced his Art of War in the 5th century BC, making false claims, as a form of deceiving an opponent to gain advantage, has been prevalent in China since his time. In particular, to eliminate the influence of Indian Buddhism in China in the Three Kingdom Period (220-280), Chinese historian Yu Huan stated in his work ‘Weilue’ (lit: ‘A Brief History of Wei’): ‘The Buddhist Sutra are on the whole similar to the Canon of Lao-tzu in content. That is because when Lao-tzu left the passes in the west, he traversed the Western Regions and reached India, where he converted the barbarians into Buddhists’ (see Kenneth Ch’en’s ‘Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey’ published by Princeton University Press (1964, page 51). In this context, China’s "Ironclad Proof" is no exception. However, it is a clear indication that Beijing has been so desperate to use whatever it could imagine to support for its nine-dash line claim."
This commenter confirms what we've already known: China is doing everything to prepare for war, and probably already considers itself to be at war.
There is no chance at all that Chinese officials will admit that they've been wrong, or that its population will change its opinions. China is already heavily militarizing the South China Sea, and is already attacking Vietnam's and Philippines' ships with its military. China will react to its cognitive dissonance by doubling down. At best, this will mean a great deal vitriolic anger on the part of Chinese officials. Eventually, it will mean an irreversible military action that will spiral into full-scale war. Wired (Aug 2010)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Jun-16 World View -- South China Sea: China's list of supporters is found to be delusional thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Jun-2016)
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Russia improves military ties with Israel, will not veto relationship with Turkey
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Reports indicate that Turkey and Israel are close to restoring diplomatic relations which deteriorated sharply in 2010 after the "Mavi Marmara" incident, during which nine citizens of Turkey were killed by Israel's military.
Turkey was the first Muslim country to formally recognize the state of Israel in 1949, and relations where generally good for decades. When Turkey's current president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came to power in 2002 as prime minister, relations became more tense, but still cordial.
Relations seriously deteriorated, starting in 2008, over Israel's relationship with Gaza. Israel imposed a total blockade of Gaza, and Egypt also closed the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Israel, triggering violent protests by the Gazans. (From January 2008: "In dramatic scene, 60,000 Gazans pour into Egypt through holes blasted through border wall")
Tensions grew in Gaza through 2008. Hamas, the terrorist group governing Gaza, was launching dozens of rockets into Israeli territory every day, while Israeli air strikes struck weapons sites in Gaza, but also killed dozens of Gazans. In December, the exchanges of fire escalated into a full-scale war (Operation Cast Lead), beginning with air strikes followed by a full-scale ground invasion.
At the end of January 2009, Israel's president Shimon Peres and Erdogan got into a passionate debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos. After a heated exchange, a furious Erdogan walked out of the meeting, and went home to a hero's welcome when he returned to Turkey.
In June 2010, international activists send an aid flotilla to Gaza to break Israel's blockade. Israel's military intercepted the flotilla and boarded the lead boat, the Mavi Marmara. In the ensuing fracas, nine Turkish citizens were killed. The entire incident was a disaster for Israel. ( "1-Jun-2010 News -- Wide condemnation of Israel over Gaza flotilla")
As a result, Turkey effectively cut off almost all relations with Israel. It's only now, six years later, that reports indicate that a formula has been found for reconciliation.
It's believed that the situation in Syria has caused Erdogan to be more willing to compromise than he has been in the past. There are three reasons:
These reasons have apparently convinced Erdogan to compromise with Israel. Negotiators from Turkey and Israel are expected to complete a draft agreement in the next few days. Jerusalem Post and Washington Post and AP (30-Jan-2009)
Erdogan has consistently made three demands of Israel before relations could be restored. Israel would have to formally apologize to Turkey, and Israel did that in 2013. Israel would have to pay compensation to the families of the Turks who died in the Mavi Marmara confrontation, and reports indicate that Israel has agreed to pay $20 million.
The third requirement was that Israel must lift the blockade of Gaza. Turkey has repeatedly said that this is an absolute requirement. Israel has repeatedly said that lifting the blockade was absolutely impossible.
According to a report on RFI, the Turkey has dropped the requirement to lift the blockade, based on a compromise:
Jerusalem Post and Hurriyet (Ankara) and i24News (Israel) and Deutsche Welle
The third item in the list above, the proposal for an offshore seaport has been around for a while, and is extremely controversial.
The proposal was first put forward in 2011 by Israel's transportation minister Yisrael Katz. The seaport would be built in international waters, located on a 5-km-long artificial island. The port will be connected to the land by a detachable bridge, which will be under Israeli supervision. Israel would be able to close the bridge at any time, if necessary.
According to Katz:
"I do not think it is right to lock up two million people without any connection to the world. Israel has no interest to make life harder for the population there. But because of security concerns we can’t build an airport or seaport in Gaza."
However, there are plenty of critics.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is said to be opposed to the project, since it would cut the final strings connecting Gaza to the West Bank. Palestinians criticize the project as another excuse to delay removing the Gaza blockade.
An Israeli commentator, Martin Sherman calls the proposal "so glaringly absurd that it transcends what you mistakenly believed was the pinnacle of imbecility," and says that it would encourage further terrorism. Oil Price and Washington Post and Israel Hayom (27-May)
At a meeting in Moscow on June 7, Russia's president Vladimir Putin and Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to strengthen military ties, and to hold joint naval and air military exercises during the summer.
At the same meeting, Putin said that he felt "exceptionally positive" about efforts to restore relations between Israel and Turkey. Putin said, "We believe that any movement of these states and peoples toward each other will have a positive impact on the international situation in general. We welcome this process." Bloomberg (8-June) and Debka (10-June)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Jun-16 World View -- Turkey drops lifting of Gaza blockade demand for normalization with Israel thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Jun-2016)
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A request to readers: Protect the Generational Dynamics legacy
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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An investigation by the BBC reveals that a Chinese claim of "ironclad proof" of China's South China Sea claims is apparently a hoax.
For several weeks, China's state media has been making a big deal about an "ancient book," 600 years old, that proves that Chinese fishermen were fishing in the Paracel Islands and beyond. From there, according to a leap of logic that isn't clear to me, China says that this is "ironclad proof" that the Paracel Islands belong to China.
Here's the description from Chinese media:
"Su Chengfen has spent all his life fishing in the reef-filled South China Sea, guided by a handwritten book more than 600 years old that depicts routes to various remote islands from Hainan province.The former fishing vessel captain, who lives in the town of Tanmen, cherishes the book, wrapping it in layers of paper even though at 81 it is impossible for him to return to the sea.
He has always known it is precious, as it contains detailed information handed down over the generations, but at first he had not realized its true significance.
Specialists say the information the book contains is undeniable proof of China's sovereignty over Huangyan Island.
"Unlike other versions, it depicts the exact route to Huangyan Island. It clearly proves that generations of Chinese fishermen have worked on the island," said Zhou Weimin, a retired professor at Hainan University."
Another Chinese official says, "It is ironclad proof. ... We can deduce China's historic fishing and sailing rights in the South China Sea, as well as ownership."
Huangyan Island is China's name for Scarborough Shoal, a reef that is a little less than 200 kilometers from Subic Bay, well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone or EEZ. So there's absolutely no way that that this book provides "ironclad proof" of anything. Even if the book is as described, it only proves that Chinese fishermen were fishing in Philippine waters centuries ago. It wouldn't be surprising if someone discovered that Philippines fishermen fished in Chinese waters centuries ago, but that doesn't mean that China is Philippines' sovereign territory.
In the sixth decade BC, Julius Caesar's army conquered France, as he described in his Gallic Wars. But that doesn't mean that France is the sovereign territory of Italy. So Su Chengfen's book, even if it existed, would have no value whatsoever that I can see.
However, the BBC sent its China correspondent, John Sudworth, to visit 81 year old Su Chengfen in the town of Tanmen on Hainan island. He wanted to speak to Su, and see this wonderful book for himself. According to Su:
"It was passed down from generation to generation. From my grandfather's generation, to my father's generation, then to me.It mainly taught us how to go somewhere and come back, how to go to the Paracels and the Spratlys, and how to come back to Hainan Island."
OK. So Sudworth asked to see the book, but Su tells him the book doesn't exist.
"Although the book was important, I threw it away because it was broken.It was flipped through too many times. The salty seawater on the hands had corroded it... In the end it was no longer readable so I threw it away."
According to Su, the book was thrown away in the late 1980s.
So apparently the whole thing is a hoax. The picture from Chinese media, shown at the top of this article, is some other book. The layers of paper, in which the "cherished book" was wrapped, don't exist either. The "cherished book" was simply thrown out, according to Su.
In particular, all the stuff depicting the "exact route" to the Scarborough Shoal is a 30 year old memory in the head of the 81 year old Su.
Some Chinese media reports claim that there are other books, but look again at the paragraph quoted above:
"Unlike other versions, it depicts the exact route to Huangyan Island. It clearly proves that generations of Chinese fishermen have worked on the island," said Zhou Weimin, a retired professor at Hainan University."
So the other books do not depict the route to Scarborough Shoal.
So China's "ironclad proof" consists of a book that doesn't exist, that may or may not have ever existed, and whose contents if it existed can only be guessed at. And even if it did exist, it only proves that Chinese fishermen were fishing in waters belonging to the Philippines, much as they're doing today. BBC and China Daily (24-May) and Julius Caesar - Gallic Wars - 58-51 BC
The above story is so crazy and farcical that I would barely believe it happened if I hadn't verified that the claims were made on several Chinese media sites and were refuted on the BBC site, as well as on the televised BBC World News, which showed Sudworth's actual interview with Su. And yet it did happen.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a generational Crisis era is in many ways similar to a human being's midlife crisis. A man may have a happy home with a wife and kids, but suddenly he becomes obsessed with a woman at work and has to have an affair with her, and does, using any ridiculous or bizarre reason to justify it, and ends up wrecking the lives of everyone around him. China is displaying the same kind of destructive and self-destructive behavior as a nation.
A 2014 book called The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia by Bill Hayton is a detailed analysis of all of China's claims to the South China Sea and finds them, to no one's surprise, invalid. If they had any validity, then China would not hesitate to ask the relevant United Nations court to rule on them. Instead, China has angrily refused to let any court tell them what to do, and instead is spending billions of dollars in a vast military buildup that can only lead to war.
Presumably, China is doing this for economic reasons, but Hayton quotes oil industry experts who say that they're skeptical that the South China Sea contains immense reserves of oil and gas, and that the fish stocks are becoming depleted.
Instead, the South China Sea has become a highly nationalistic symbol, backed up by highly irrational, farcical and bizarre justifications, like the alleged 600 year old book described above, and by the widespread belief that the United States is too weak or too tired of war to fight, or that China will win such a war within a few days. This is the same kind of irrational belief that caused America's South to attack Fort Sumter, even though the North was three times as big, or that caused Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor, even though the US was five times as big. In all cases, including China today, these beliefs have been totally delusional and disastrous for everyone.
China always says that its claims "are indisputable," and this much at least is a total lie since the claims are very much in dispute, and are currently being adjudicated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a United Nations international court in the Hague, which is expected to rule on counterclaims by the Philippines in the near future. China has huffed and puffed and blustered on this issue, saying that the court has no right to adjudicate or that any ruling would be ignored, sounding like nothing so much as that middle-aged man caught having an affair.
Irrational beliefs that lead to world wars are typical of generational Crisis eras. The 600 year old book won't be the last one and the Chinese themselves, the ones who survive, will regret it most of all. Asia Sentinel and Economist (13-Sep-2014) and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
The military buildup in the South China Sea is not exclusively on China's side. The US Navy has been conducting Freedom of Navigation patrols in the South China Sea, and Japan has sailed warships into Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay seaport, for the first time since Japan was forced to withdraw from Vietnam at the end of World War II.
France's defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is calling for the European Union to get involved in the South China Sea dispute. According to Le Drian:
"If we want to contain the risk of conflict, we must defend this right, and defend it ourselves.If the law of the sea is not respected today in the China seas, it will be threatened tomorrow in the Arctic, in the Mediterranean, or elsewhere. ...
This is a message that France will continue to be present at international forums. It’s also a message that France will continue to act upon, by sailing its ships and flying its planes wherever international law will allow, and wherever operational needs request that we do so."
France's navy is already involved, as it has already been deployed three times in the South China Sea so far this year. France has also signed a $40 billion deal in April to sell advanced submarines to Australia. Le Drian would like European navies to have a "regular and visible" presence in the region, to uphold the law of the sea and freedom of navigation.
China's aggressive and virtually unsupported claims to the South China Sea are not the local or regional issue that one might expect, but are quickly expanding to become worldwide international issues. Foreign Policy and Bloomberg and Straits Times (Singapore)
The text and images for all the 4000 articles that have appeared on the Generational Dynamics web site since 2003 -- over six million words and 4,000 images -- are now available to be downloaded. This includes PDF files for the three books that I've written. They're now available on the download site http://www.generationaldynamics.com/dl/.
With the worsening situation in the South China Sea, with several wars going on in the Mideast, with more displaced refugees in the world today than in decades, just one miscalculation by one person could result in a war that spirals into something really major. The entire internet, including my web site, could instantly become unavailable.
Add to that the fact that I, like anyone else, could be hit by a bus tomorrow. Any one of these events could mean the immediate disappearance of my web site and almost 15 years of work that I put into developing Generational Dynamics would be gone.
So I've posted a download page providing downloads of all the major documents and files, over six million words of text. I would like to ask as many people as possible to download these files and save them somewhere, so that if ten years from now someone is looking for the information about Generational Dynamics, then somebody somewhere will still have a copy, and the work will survive.
The purpose is to protect the Generational Dynamics legacy, and to make sure that this work is preserved, and available to researchers who write books, professors who teach courses, and governments that make policy. Please download these files now. Generational Dynamics download page
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Jun-16 World View -- China's 'ironclad proof' of South China Sea claims revealed as hoax thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Jun-2016)
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Iran reacts to a series of repeated anti-Shia moves by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia
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Bahrain has revoked the citizenship of the kingdom's most prominent Shia cleric, Sheikh Isa Ahmed Qasim, accusing him of promoting "sectarianism and violence."
Bahrain's population is 2/3 Shia Muslim, but the country is led by an oppressive Sunni government closely allied with Saudi Arabia. In the days following the "Arab Spring" protests in 2011, Bahrain's security services overreacted with extremely violent and bloody massacres of unarmed protesters, backed up by troops from Saudi Arabia. The protests began in Bahrain on February 14, 2011. Dozens of protesters were killed, over 1,600 were arrested, and thousands were injured.
According to a statement issued by Bahrain's government on Monday:
"Accordingly, the citizenship of Isa Ahmed Qasim has been revoked. Ever since he received the Bahraini nationality, Qasim has established organizations that follow an external religious political authority, played a major role in creating an extremist sectarian environment and worked on dividing the society alongside sects and in accordance with subordination to his orders.Qasim has also adopted theocracy and emphasized on the absolute allegiance to the Religious Clerics. Through his sermons and “fatwas”, he exploited the religious pulpit for political purposes to serve foreign interests. He also encouraged sectarianism and violence. Qasim has kept his decisions and positions, which he dictated as religious rituals, dependent on his continuous communication with hostile foreign organizations and parties. In addition, Qasim collected funds without complying with the provisions of the law.
On several occasions, Isa Qasim has violated the supremacy of the law by issuing edicts (fatwas) that affected the elections and its processes. He influenced voters’ decisions using religious sentiments. This extends to all aspects of public affairs, undermining the rights of the people and the rule of law. He also rallied many groups to prevent the issuance of the second section of the Family Law (Jafari Section)."
The phrase "to serve foreign interests" presumably refers to Iran and Hezbollah. Although the 2011 protests were finally put down by massacring the protesters, there have been sporadic protests since then, and the Bahrain government evidently is afraid of a repeat of 2011's full scale anti-Sunni riots.
The government of Iran, which is an equally bloody regime that massacres innocent protesters, issued a statement criticizing the revoking of Qasim's citizenship, and appeared to threaten Bahrain's government with a coup. The statement begins by reciting crimes of Bahrain's regime, the same crimes that Iran's regime regularly commits:
"The oppressed Muslim nation of Bahrain had been under the cruel, biased, unfair, and illegitimate regime of Al-Khalifa for long years. Despite furious acts which included unashamedly racist discrimination, arrest of their religious leaders, imprisoning and torturing women and children, stripping citizenship, violation of their rights without any qualms and several other crimes, this patient people have exercised patience; tightening the pressures has never distracted Bahraini people of their non-violent approach. ...Seemingly, the Al-Khalifa regime has underestimated and misinterpreted the scope and magnitude of the public wrath; encroachment of the religious leader's rights is definitely a sure redline for the public the crossing of which would set the region ablaze, leaving no alternative than resorting to armed resistance.
The consequences of the possible conflict would be beyond estimation and would rewrite the history through toppling the despotic regime. The supporters of the regime in Manama should accept responsibility for legitimizing the brazen rulers of Bahrain for any bloody confrontation."
The last sentence can and will be interpreted as encouraging a coup in Bahrain, and suggests that Iran would support a coup.
Iran's puppet terror organization, Lebanon-based Hezbollah, issued its own threatening statement, criticizing Bahrain's action, and "[calling] on the Bahrainis to decisively express their rage and discontent in face of the regime's action against Sheikh Qasim." Bahrain News Agency and BBC and Mehr News (Tehran) and Al Manar (Beirut-Hezbollah)
Normally, Iran is publicly silent about Bahrain's regime, lest it be accused of meddling in Bahrain's affairs, and thereby inviting outsiders to meddle in its own affairs. Furthermore, Bahrain's Shia leaders prefer that Iran stay out, because they like to maintain the public pretense that Iran is not supporting Bahrain's Shia anti-government clerics.
However, the action of revoking the citizenship of Sheikh Isa Ahmed Qasim appears to have been a kind of "last straw" for Iran, after a series of actions by Saudi and Bahrain officials targeting Shia leaders in their respective countries.
The most explosive action occurred in January, when Saudi Arabia executed 47 alleged terrorists -- 46 Sunnis and one Shia, Mohammad Baqir Nimr al-Nimr. Iran and Shias were infuriated because the execution 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")
Last month, Bahrain's courts sentenced Shia opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, after he had been found guilty of charges relating to "publicly inciting hatred, an act which disturbed public peace, inciting non-compliance with the law and insulting public institutions." Salman's Al Wefaq National Islamic Society issued a statement calling the decision "an alarming politically-motivated verdict [that] only deepens the political and constitutional crisis in Bahrain."
Early last week, Bahrain's government shut down the Al Wefaq National Islamic Society.
Then on Thursday, a Bahrain court sentenced eight people to 15-year jail terms for forming a "terror group." They also had their citizenships revoked, after convicting them of "establishing and raising donations to fund a terror organization named 'Bahraini Hezbollah'." The implication is that "Bahraini Hezbollah" is a terror group funded by Iran.
Then on Monday, Bahrain revoked the citizenship of Sheikh Isa Ahmed Qasim, Bahrain's leading Shia cleric, and a leader of the opposition.
Perhaps, under "normal" circumstances, this court action would have been ignored by Iran and everyone else. But after so many actions of the same kind, Iran's leaders may have felt they had to do SOMETHING, and they made their veiled threat of a coup, even though they know that an actual coup could lead to full-scale war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. BBC (30-May) and Al Wefaq (30-May) and Al Arabiya (17-Jun) and Press Tv (Tehran, 17-Jun)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Jun-16 World View -- Iran threatens coup, after Bahrain revokes citizenship of Shia cleric thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Jun-2016)
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History of Catholic and Orthodox Christian 'Ecumenical' Councils
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It's been in the planning stages since it was first announced in 1961, and now that it's taking place, the news is more about the defections and controversies than the event itself.
It's called the "Great and Holy Council (GHC) of the Eastern Orthodox Churches," and it's meant to be the first ecumenical meeting of all the Orthodox churches since 787. At that time, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were still together, and they held the Seventh Ecumenical Council of (almost) all the Christian Churches to decide such important issues as whether it's sacrilegious to display images and icons of Jesus Christ in churches.
Since 787, the Orthodox and Catholic churches have been split. In the "Schism of 1054," the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other, and in 1204 the Catholic Crusades attacked, sacked and plundered the Orthodox church in Constantinople.
So Sunday was the first day of the Great and Holy Council, hosted in Crete by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, considered "first among equals." It would be the first ecumenical meeting of Orthodox churches since 787. It would bring together the leaders of all 14 independent Eastern Orthodox churches, representing more than 300 million Orthodox Christians.
Unfortunately, there have been several disagreements and defections.
The first disagreement was that Russia and Bulgaria did not want to recognize Bartholomew as "first among equals," so they insisted that the meeting be held at a round table. That issue was resolved, but Bulgaria pulled out anyway, citing a lack of "particularly important" topics on the agenda.
The Damascus-based Antioch Patriarchate also pulled out because of a dispute it was having with the Jerusalem Patriarchate over which of them had jurisdiction over the small Orthodox community in Qatar. The Georgian Orthodox Church pulled out over a doctrinal issue.
One of the most divisive issues in Orthodoxy is the relationship with the Catholic church. Some groups want to have closer relations with the Catholics, while others consider them heretics, citing particularly the 1204 Catholic sacking of Constantinople.
But the most divisive issue of all right now is that the Russians want their Patriarch Kirill to displace Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople as the "first among equals."
When the Ottoman Muslims sacked Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, Russia chose to take on the mantle of being "the third Rome," and head the Orthodox Church. Whatever traction was gained by that plan was thrown away by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, where Nicolai Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) led the destruction and sacking of the Russian Orthodox Church, and turned Russia and the Soviet Union into atheistic states.
So now Vladimir Putin is in power in Russia. He wants to ignore the historic role of Constantinople and also ignore Lenin's destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, and put Moscow in the leadership of Orthodox churches worldwide.
So Russia has also announced that it will not be attending the ecumenical council in Crete this week.
Another controversy overshadowing the Great and Holy Council is that Putin used Orthodox religious history as a justification for the Russian invasion and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula. ( "20-Mar-14 World View -- Russia's annexation of Crimea splits the Russian Orthodox Church")
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has for centuries been a part of the Russian Orthodox Church, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea have led to a debate as to whether the Kiev Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be recognized as an independent church, separate from Russia. Patriarch Bartholomew is believed to be in favor of recognizing it, something that the Russians would angrily oppose. Although that issue has been officially removed from this week's agenda, it may return. Christian Today (2-June) and AP and Guardian (London) and Kiev Post and Tass (Moscow)
Christianity's first Ecumenical Council was held in 325 AD in Nicea, an ancient city just east of today's Istanbul (Constantinople). The Council of Nicea was a meeting of all Christian churches, led not by the Pope but by the Emperor Caesar Flavius Constantine of Rome. The objective of the meeting was to unify the different regional branches, and to resolve some important questions.
At that time, many questions of Christian theology had not yet been decided. One of the most important was the divinity of Jesus Christ. If Jesus was born, then how could he be divine? Although there was debate, the Council ratified the view that he was a man, but was God in the form of human flesh.
The details of how it makes sense that Jesus was both human and divine were extremely controversial. It was discussed further at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381, again in the Third Ecumenical Council, held in Ephesus, an Aegean sea port, in 431. By the time of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, held Chalcedon, near Constantinople, in 451, the differences on this issue were extremely vitriolic.
This was the time of the first major split within Christianity, as six branches of Christianity refused to recognize the Fourth Ecumenical Council, in a controversy that has never been resolved. Today, these are usually called the "Oriental Orthodox Christian" churches, comprised of the Ethiopian, Coptic (Egyptian), Armenian, Syrian, Indian and Eritrean Churches. These were all churches that had existed since apostolic times, and the major political issue was that they didn't wish to be controlled by Rome. The Fifth Ecumenical Council (in Constantinople in 553) and the Sixth Ecumenical Council (in Constantinople in 680) attempted without success to resolve the split.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council, in Nicea in 787, is the last one that was recognized. At this one, the major controversy was was between the "iconoclasts" and "iconophiles." "Iconoclast" means "image smasher" or destroyer of religious icons and monuments. The iconoclasts, who were outvoted, said that religious art was idolatry and must be destroyed. If Jesus is divine, is it not sacrilegious to worship an icon of Jesus as if it were Jesus himself? The iconophiles loved icons, and argued that they were man's dynamic way of expressing the divine through art and beauty. The latter argument won out.
There's also reason to believe that the argument over icons was heavily influenced by the rise of Islam at that time. The Charlie Hebdo terror attack in Paris in January 2015 was supposedly motivated by prohibited artistic representations of the Prophet Mohammed, and this prohibition was coming into effect at the time of the Seventh Ecumenical Council.
That was the last time there was sufficient unity in the Christian churches to hold a worldwide Ecumenical Council, although there were smaller regional meetings.
In 1054, the Pope in Rome sent a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople demanding that the latter submit to the Pope as head of all the churches. The Patriarch refused, and so the Pope and the Patriarch excommunicated each other on July 16, 1054. The "Schism of 1054" has never been healed.
Things got much worse in 1204 during the Crusades. The Catholics, on their way to fighting the Muslims in Jerusalem, sacked Constantinople, and placed a prostitute on the Emperor's throne at the church of St. Sophia. It was not until 2001 when the Pope John Paul visited Athens and, encountering large anti-Catholic protests, that the Catholics apologized for the sacking of Constantinople, and made a plea for forgiveness. ( "25-May-14 World View -- Pope Francis visits Mideast to reconcile with Jews, Orthodox, and Muslims")
The Orthodox Christians were generally excluded from the Ecumenical Councils held by the Catholics over the centuries, but they were controversial nonetheless, even in modern times. The Second Vatican Council held by the Catholics in 1962-65 created a new split within the Catholic Church, when the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) refused to recognize the legitimacy of its edicts. Pope Francis is currently working to heal this rift.
It was at the time of the Second Vatican Council that plans for an Ecumenical Council of all the Orthodox Churches was announced in 1961.
So in view of that history, it should not be surprising to anyone that the attempt to create a new Orthodox Christian Ecumenical Council, a Great and Holy Council (GHC) of Eastern Orthodox Churches, announced in 1961, has run into a great deal of controversy, as controversy has always been the norm, since the beginning.
It's also interesting to note that it's the norm for religions to target small regional or national populations. You can be a "Catholic" anywhere in the world, but you can't just be an "Orthodox Christian," unless you're a "Greek Orthodox" or "Russian Orthodox" or some other branch. The same thing is true of the Protestant religion, which has about 20 different churches in the United States alone, each targeting a different group. There are only three religions that have "gone viral" and become virtually universal: Catholicism, Sunni Islam and Buddhism. For example, in China, you'll find plenty of Catholics, plenty of Sunni Muslims, and plenty of Buddhists, but few Greek Orthodox or Shia Muslims or Hindus. Orthodox Wiki and Catholic World Report and World Council of Churches and National Catholic Register
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Jun-16 World View -- Historic Orthodox Christian gathering in Crete exposes sharp divisions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Jun-2016)
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Pakistan reopens border crossing with Pakistan after week of gunfights
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Pakistan reopened the Torkham border gate, a major border crossing with Afghanistan on Saturday, after keeping it closed for almost a week amid cross-border gunfights that killed at least one Afghan border police officer and one Pakistani army major.
Thousands of vehicles normally pass through the Torkham crossing every week, making it a vital trade link between the countries. During the last week, there have been long lines of trucks backed up and waiting at the Torkham gate, on both sides of the Khyber Pass, a well-known mountainous transit route linking the two countries.
The border between the two countries has been tense for years. It's been particularly ironic that for many years the headquarters of the Afghan Taliban was in Pakistan, while the headquarters of the Pakistan Taliban was in Afghanistan. Each group would cross the border to commit terrorist acts, and then would flee back across the border to escape approaching security forces.
A turning point for Pakistan was reached after a horrific January 20 terror attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda in northwest Pakistan, killing 21 lives including a professor. Investigation showed that the perpetrators had crossed the border from Afghanistan, and then crossed back. Pakistan's army decided that it was necessary to build a fence along the border, and to control the border crossings.
Afghanistan opposed this plan because hundreds of trucks and thousands of people cross the border every week for trade, work and medical care, and because the location of the border is in dispute. Pakistan went ahead with the construction of the border gates, and that lead to the gunfights last week.
Pakistan finally reopened the border crossing on Saturday, but will only allow people to cross from Afghanistan to Pakistan if they have the proper documents - a visa and a valid passport. Since thousands of people have been crossing the border for years with no documents, this crisis is far from over.
Thousands of Afghans conducted protests earlier this week in two Afghan cities, Jalalabad and Lashkar Gah, chanting "Death to Pakistan." Afghanistan's ambassador to Pakistan, Dr. Omar Zakhilwal, has threatened to resign. "I don't see any reason for me to continue my current job" unless Pakistan suspends its construction of new installations pending negotiations.
However, a Pakistan official says, "This gate (is) considered essential to check and verify documentation of all border crossers." CNN and Dawn (Pakistan) and Khaama (Afghanistan) and Al-Jazeera
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According to Pakistan's military, "In order to check movement of terrorists through Torkham, Pakistan is constructing a gate on (our) own side of the border as a necessity to check unwanted and illegal movement." According to Pakistan, the Torkham border gate is being built 37 meters within Pakistan. However, Afghanistan disagrees, saying that the gate is being built one kilometer within Afghanistan.
The disagreement is over the border line separating the two countries. In 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand, Britain's Indian foreign secretary at the time, signed an agreement with Abdur Rahman Khan, the Amir of Afghanistan, defining the 2640 km border, known as the "Durand Line."
However, after the 1947 Partition war that partitioned the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan, Afghanistan reneged on the agreement, and asserted claims to additional territory with Pakistan. Since then, efforts to renegotiate the agreement have been torpedoed by both sides. Since 9/11/2001, the Durand Line has taken on special significance, because of Afghan war and by the bombing by American warplanes and drones of Taliban targets in Pakistan's tribal area.
It seems pretty certain that the border crossing crisis is far from over. Thousands of people are going to be inconvenienced by Pakistan's requirement that anyone crossing the border must have a visa and valid passport, and anyway, Afghanistan is certain to renew is claim that the Durand Line is not valid, and Pakistan's new border crossing is actually on Afghan territory. AFP and The Diplomat and The Nation (Pakistan)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Jun-16 World View -- Pak-Afghan border crisis revives controversy over 120 year old Durand Line thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Jun-2016)
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Médecins Sans Frontières announces it will reject further European aid
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A report by Unicef has found that sexual exploitation of children living in refugee camps in northern France is common on a daily basis. Many young boys are raped, and many young girls are raped and forced into prostitution.
The study was based on interview with 60 unaccompanied children aged from 11 to 17 between January and April. There are 500 unaccompanied children in camps in Calais and Dunkirk at the end of March.
Many of them have family members in the UK who are waiting for them to arrive. However, processing of children has been very slow, and only 30 of the 500 unaccompanied children have so far been brought to the UK.
In order to reach France, human traffickers have already charged them $3,000 to $12,000. They are forced to pay an "entry fee" before they're allowed to live in the camps. Once in the camp, traffickers are charging another $6,000 to cross the channel into Britain, a higher price than ever before.
The Unicef report quotes one 16 year old girl as saying "I know that if I pay or offer sex, I will cross more quickly. I have been asked to do this. It’s hard to say no." A boy says that he's "gassed and beaten here" in France.
For these unaccompanied children, there's little protection from the cold and no access to schooling, and they are subjected to sexual exploitation, violence and forced labor on a daily basis. There's also evidence that they're being forced to commit crimes.
Unicef is demanding that, at the very least, unaccompanied children with families in the UK should be processed more quickly and allowed to travel to their families.
This is an explosive situation. On the one hand, you a massive humanitarian disaster involving children on a daily basis, in one modern, developed country, France, wishing to travel to another modern, developed country, Britain, to see their families. On the other hand, you have European populations in Europe that are increasingly resistant to allowing refugees into their countries under any circumstances whatsoever. This situation will not change if the "Brexit" referendum passes, and Britain leaves Europe, and almost certainly will worsen, because France will no longer be under any obligation to prevent refugees in Calais from crossing the Channel to Britain.
Those who don't like these conclusions shouldn't blame me. Think of me as the weatherman. I'm not saying whether the category 5 hurricane is good or bad, but I'm only telling you that it's coming. There is no happy ending to this crisis. Unicef and Christian Today and Belfast Telegraph
In a move that my mother would probably have called "cutting off your nose to spite your face," the international aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF - Doctors without Borders) announced on Friday that they will no longer accept money from the European Union because of its "shameful" response to the refugee crisis, especially as the EU-Turkey refugee deal is being implemented.
According to International Secretary General Jerome Oberreit:
"For months MSF has spoken out about a shameful European response focused on deterrence rather than providing people with the assistance and protection they need. The EU-Turkey deal goes one step further and has placed the very concept of “refugee” and the protection it offers in danger. ...Is Europe’s only offer to refugees that they stay in countries they are desperate to flee? Once again, Europe’s main focus is not on how well people will be protected, but on how efficiently they are kept away. ...
Europe’s attempt to outsource migration control is having a domino effect, with closed borders stretching all the way back to Syria. People increasingly have nowhere to turn. Will the situation in Azaz where 100,000 people are blocked between closed borders and front lines become the rule, rather than the deadly exception?"
The last sentence refers to Azaz, a city in Syria with 300,000 people, of which 200,000 are already displaced. The forces of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) are now within 5 km of Azaz, and have threatened a huge massacre if they take control of the city.
It's not clear what MSF is advocating for Azaz. The city is close to the border of Turkey, and perhaps the point of Oberreit's statement is that he wants those 300,000 people to be permitted to flee to Turkey, and perhaps from there to Europe.
This is a total fantasy on MSF's part. As I read the situation, ISIS is going to torture, massacre and slaughter tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Azaz, and nobody is going to stop them. Those people are already as good as dead, and the dead ones are the lucky ones.
Oberreit is turning down something like $50 million in aid from the EU that it could use to help people as part of its mission. By turning this money down, Oberreit apparently hopes to shame Turkey and the EU into permitting those 300,000 refugees to flee reach the EU. Instead, they're just going to lose $50 million in aid for no reason at all. Médecins Sans Frontières and Reuters and Middle East Eye
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Jun-16 World View -- Pressure mounts on European Union to resume admitting Syrian refugees thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Jun-2016)
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Saudi Arabia is condemned for Yemen's humanitarian disaster
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The United Arab Emirates' involvement in more than a year of war in Yemen is "practically over", a top diplomat was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
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 a number of cities.
15 months ago, on March 26 of last year, Saudi Arabia announced that a 10-country coalition, led by the Saudis, would "free Sanaa and the rest of the northern cities" from Houthi control.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has one of the best-equipped militaries in the region, and has been a major contributor to the Saudi-led coalition. However, the UAE have suffered numerous losses in the past year. 80 UAE soldiers have been killed, including four pilots killed in two separate helicopter crashes this week. In September, 45 UAE troops were killed by a Houthi missile attack, marking the deadliest day for the UAE military in its 44-year history.
In March, the Saudis announced that it would 'end major combat operations' in Yemen, claiming that they've met most of their objectives. However, 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.
UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, gave a speech saying "Our standpoint today is clear: war is over for our troops; we’re monitoring political arrangements, empowering Yemenis in liberated areas." He then elaborated online:
"[The UAE will remain] a capable and honest ally alongside Riyadh in the military and political realm.This is a partnership that was reinforced by the Yemen crisis and it is essential for the future. The Riyadh-Abu Dhabi axis will emerge out of this crisis with more strength and effectiveness, and the strategic requirements of the region make this imperative.
Responsibility lies with the Yemenis - of all their components, to build bridges of communication and to reach an agreement on the state and its institutions. A spirit of national responsibility is needed for success."
Most of this appears to be wishful thinking, because the outcome has been a disaster for both Saudi Arabia and UAE. The Saudis have received international condemnation for the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, and yet the Houthis are still in control of Sanaa and much of Yemen.
It appears to be at least a partial victory for Iran, since Iran has reportedly provided the Houthis with weapons and other support. However, if it's a victory at all then it's a Pyrrhic victory because Yemen has been practically destroyed by the fighting.
It may be that the real victors are the two jihadist groups, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Both organizations have taken advantage of the chaos to gain territory. However, although AQAP is firmly enmeshed in Yemen's tribal networks, ISIS is perceived as foreign.
Despite UAE's announcement, fighting is continuing in Yemen on several fronts, with dozens of people killed and wounded in the the last couple of days. Gulf News (Dubai) and AP and Council on Foreign Relations (19-Apr)
Although the blame for the damage to Yemen is shared by all the participants, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, AQAP and ISIS, the Saudis are receiving the bulk of the international condemnation because of its bombing campaign. There have been repeated stories in the last year that bombs from the Saudi coalition have struck schools, hospitals, and civilian homes. There have also been reports that some Saudi bombs have been US-made cluster bombs, which are considered illegal.
According to the UN, at least 6,200 people - about half of them civilians - have been killed and 2.8 million others have been displaced.
At the beginning of June, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a report condemning both the Saudis and the Houthis for killing and maiming children in Yemen. According to Ban's report, the Saudi coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries last year, killing 510 and wounding 667.
"Grave violations against children increased dramatically as a result of the escalating conflict.In Yemen, owing to the very large number of violations attributed to the two parties, the Houthis/Ansar Allah and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals."
Saudi Arabia was added to an annual blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children's rights during conflict.
However, the Saudis protested and said that the casualty figures were "wildly exaggerated." Saudi Arabia's permanent representative to the UN, Abdullah al-Mouallimi, complained to Ban about the report, and said, "If there are any casualties from the coalition side, they would be far, far lower." He added that used "the most up-to-date equipment in precision targeting."
So a few days later, Ban removed Saudi Arabia from the list. Human Rights Watch sharply criticized the removal, saying that Ban's office had "hit a new low." A UN spokesman says that Saudi Arabia was removed from the list pending an investigation of the numbers in the report.
However, this isn't the time something like this has happened. In the 2014 report, Israel and Hamas were put onto the blacklist, and then removed a few days later. Al-Jazeera and Reuters and BBC
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Jun-16 World View -- UAE backs out of Saudi coalition in Yemen, saying 'War is over' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Jun-2016)
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Obama administration reevaluates plans for Afghanistan troop withdrawal
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Foreign ministers at the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing China's actions in the South China Sea, though without directly naming China:
"We expressed our serious concerns over recent and ongoing developments, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and which may have the potential to undermine peace, security and stability in the South China Sea. ...We emphasized the importance of non-militarization and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities, including land reclamation, which may raise tensions in the South China Sea.
We stressed the importance of maintaining peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)."
Within hours, apparently under pressure from China, Malaysia's foreign ministry announced that the ASEAN statement was being withdrawn"
"We have to retract the media statement by the ASEAN foreign ministers... as there are urgent amendments to be made."
However, a day later, neither Malaysia nor any other ASEAN member has issued an updated statement, or explained what the "urgent amendments" are.
This is a major embarrassment for ASEAN. If they issue a new statement with the South China Sea language watered down or missing, then the media will say that ASEAN is a China puppet.
China has been following Hitler's example by annexing regions of the South China Sea that have historically belonged to other countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia.
ASEAN has ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Of these ten nations, Cambodia has been China's most reliable ally. At a 2012 meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Cambodia vetoed attempts to even discuss the South China Sea issues. That's easy enough for Cambodia, since China isn't confiscating any region belonging to Cambodia.
For a long time, Laos sided with Vietnam on the issue, but last month, Laos flip-flopped and sided with China. That's also easy enough for Laos, for the same reason as Cambodia.
Singapore has been trying to act as a mediator between China and the other countries, but the withdrawal of the original ASEAN statement apparently has angered Singapore, as Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan walked out of a press conference he was co-chairing with China's foreign minister, Wang Yi.
Laos will be hosting the next ASEAN meeting in July, and fireworks are expected. The Star (Myanmar) and The Diplomat and AFP
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a meeting at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday the Obama administration is reevaluating its previous plans to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016.
There are currently 9,800 American troops in Afghanistan. The plan was to reduce that level to 5,500 by the end of 2016, but now that plan is apparently about to be changed, much to the surprise of no one.
This new announcement comes just four days after another administration reversal. ( "11-Jun-16 World View -- In a reversal, Obama allows US troops in Afghanistan in combat roles")
Here's what President Obama said in a speech in December 2009, just one week before he was scheduled to leave to accept his Nobel Peace Prize. He referred to a "review" of the situation in Afghanistan that his administrations had been conducting:
"This review is now complete. And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.
Obama was bitterly criticized by military analysts for setting an 18-month deadline, and of course the analysts were right and Obama was dead wrong. Obama has been forced to backtrack on his 18-month commitment multiple times, and Wednesday's speech by Ash Carter indicates that the next flip-flop is about to occur.
When Obama took office in 2008, he had expected to be able to direct the American withdrawal from Iraq and then quickly win in Afghanistan. Those promises are in shambles, as are all Obama's policies for Afghanistan and the Mideast. This is what happens when we elect a president with absolutely no clue what's going on in the world, and it looks like it's going to happen again. Washington Post and Washington Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Jun-16 World View -- ASEAN makes humiliating South China Sea reversal under pressure from China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Jun-2016)
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Brexit: The polls versus the bookies
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The interest rate paid by Germany's Bundesbank (central bank) if you deposit money with them for ten years has gone negative. That means that if you deposit money with them, then you'll get less money back, instead of more money, as would happen in "normal" times.
That's the meaning of the announcement that the yield (interest rate) on Germany's 10-year bund (bond) fell briefly on Tuesday to -0.033%, before closing at the end of the day at -0.028%. It also means that if the Bundesbank lends money to someone, then they'll pay you to take their money, rather than charge you.
Of course, ordinary citizens can't borrow money from the central bank, but regional banks can. The Bundesbank wants to encourage regional banks to borrow money, and then lend that money out to businesses to stimulate the economy. That's the reasoning behind negative interest rates.
Germany is just the most recent country whose central bank has adopted negative interest rates on 10 year bonds. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) have done the same.
Other countries still have positive interest rates for 10 year bonds, but have negative interest rates on shorter term bonds. (As a general rule, a shorter-term loan pays a higher interest rate than a longer-term loan because a shorter-term loan is considered less risky.)
Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, France, Denmark and Belgium have negative interest rates on 4 or 5 year bonds, while Finland has negative interest rates on 3 year bonds.
The yields on UK gilts (bonds) are still positive, but they fell to 1.18% on 10 year gilts on Tuesday, a record low in more than 3 centuries of trading.
All of these countries' central banks are adopting negative interest rates in the hope of inflating their currencies and promoting growth. Instead, growth is flat, and the currencies are increasingly deflationary.
Generational Dynamics predicted that all of this would happen, as I've been writing since 2003. Mainstream economists have repeatedly been wrong about all this, time after time.
In fact, in the early 2000s, when interest rates were decreasing to around 2%, mainstream economists began predicting inflation or hyperinflation. They've continued predicting that high inflation would begin next quarter for quarter after quarter, and they've been wrong every time. Mainstream economists have consistently been clueless about what's going on.
The fact is that Keynesian economics is dead wrong because it doesn't take generational theory into account. Monetarist economics is dead wrong because it doesn't take generational theory into account. Austrian school economics is dead wrong because it doesn't take generational theory into account. None of these branches has predicted correctly for at least 15 years.
As I've pointed out many, many times, mainstream economists didn't predict and can't explain the tech bubble of the 1990s, didn't predict and can't explain the huge credit and real estable bubble of the mid-2000s decade, and the real estate collapse and credit crisis after 2007. In almost all cases, they didn't even know that there'd been a real estate bubble until around 2009, two years after it had started to burst.
As I've been writing since 2003, the global financial system is in a deflationary spiral. High inflation and superinflation, which many economists have incorrectly predicted for years, is not going to happen. Instead, deflation is growing and will continue to grow. Central bankers are finally beginning to grasp this, which is why they're adopting negative interest rates as a move of total desperation to stop the deflationary spiral.
Generational Dynamics predicts that the world financial system is headed for a global panic and crash, with 100% certainty. Deutsche Welle and CNBC and Bloomberg
There was a global selloff of stocks on Tuesday. This is consistent with the falling yields (interest rates) on bonds. When people sell stocks and put the money into bonds, then by the law of supply and demand, the price of the bonds goes up, which means that the yields go down.
Since stocks are considered to be more risky than bonds, some analysts are calling Tuesday's actions a "rush for safety." Investors who fear that stock prices will fall can sell their stocks and use the money to purchase bonds, even at negative interest rates, just so their money will be safe.
Many analysts are blaming this rush to safety on the fact that on June 23, UK citizens will be voting on the "Brexit" referendum, to decide whether the UK should leave the European Union. What's happened in the last couple of weeks is that a number of new polls have come out indicating that more and more Britons are favoring the "leave" option. A Guardian/ICM poll gave "leave" a 7 point lead on Monday, while a Times/YouGov poll gave "leave" a 5 point lead. Many investors believe that a vote to leave the EU will cause financial chaos, at least in the short run. According to analysts, this is the reason for the "rush to safety."
However, many people believe that the polls are wrong. Many people are reluctant to admit to pollsters that they're going to vote for a "politically incorrect" choice, so they tell pollsters one thing and then vote the other way in the privacy of the voting booth.
So it's perhaps not surprising the bookies and betting firms are placing a 60% or better chance that voters will choose the "remain" option in the Brexit referendum vote.
However, only a month ago, bookies were placing an 80% probability on "remain." So although the bookies still favor "remain," the probability has been falling, and may go below 50% by referendum day. Bloomberg and Reuters and Bloomberg and ZeroHedge
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Jun-16 World View -- German 10 year bund yield goes negative, as deflationary spiral continues thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Jun-2016)
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Generational history of Ethiopia and Eritrea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Heavy clashes have broken out along the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Although there have been occasional exchanges of gunfire ever since a two-year border war ended with a peace deal in 2000, these are the first involved heavy artillery and masses of troops.
Eritrea's ministry of information blamed Ethiopia, saying on Sunday, "Ethiopia unleashed an attack against Eritrea on the Tsorona Central Front."
Ethiopia blamed Eritrea, saying, "Eritrean forces started shelling our positions, including civilian ambulances, and we responded."
It's not known what triggered the new violence. Eritrea is currently celebrating 25 years since it achieved independence from Ethiopia in 1991, and perhaps those celebrations triggered the violence.
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a report accusing Eritrea of repeated human rights violations, including crimes against humanity. According to the report:
"The commission finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Eritrea since 1991. Eritrean officials have engaged in a persistent, widespread and systematic attack against the country’s civilian population since 1991. They have committed, and continue to commit, the crimes of enslavement, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, other inhumane acts, persecution, rape and murder. ...The commission has heard of no plans to hold national elections. ...
The commission finds that the gross human rights violations it documented in its previous report persist, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, killings, sexual and gender-based violence, discrimination on the basis of religion and ethnicity, and reprisals for the alleged conduct of family members. In addition, many of those subjected to enforced disappearance in the past remain unaccounted for. ...
Eritreans continue to be subjected to indefinite military/national service. The Government has recently confirmed that there are no plans to limit its duration to the statutory 18 months. Conscripts are drafted for an indefinite duration of service in often abusive conditions, and used as forced labor."
Some observers are accusing Eritrea of starting the border war with Ethiopia to distract from the human rights report. International Business Times and AFP and UN Human Rights Council
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These two countries have been linked since at least the second century AD.
Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century, and was a tribal society ruled by emperors until the 1800s. However, a split between Ethiopia and Eritrea occurred in the 700s with the rise of Islam and the Arab trade along the Red Sea, and what is now Eritrea became part of the Islamic Empire, and later the Ottoman Empire.
Italy colonized the region in the 1860s, in the so-called Scramble for Africa, so named because after it was discovered in the 1850s that malaria could be controlled with quinine, England, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Germany all competed with each other to colonize different parts of Africa.
In 1869, the Suez Canal opened, connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea, and Italian shipping firms became active. Large stretches of Eritrea's coastline were acquired from the local sultans and transferred to Italian control. By the mid-1880s, the Italian army moved into Eritrea, displacing the Ottomans, and challenging the Ethiopian empire.
In 1889, Menelik II rose to the position of Emperor of Ethiopia. The "Italian-Ethiopian War" (1889-1896) was a generational crisis war for Ethiopia. Menelik inflicted on Italy the most humiliating and bloody defeat ever experienced by a colonial power in Africa. In the outcome, Italy retained Eritrea as a Red Sea colony, populating it with thousands of Italian settlers, developing road and rail transport, but doing little to improve the lives of Eritreans.
Ethiopia gained independence, and by 1914 and the beginning of WW I, all of black Africa except Ethiopia and Liberia were European colonies.
By 1935, Eritrea was a colony of Italy, and Ethiopia had a new emperor, one who had taken the title Haile Selassie, meaning "Might of the Trinity," emphasizing the fact that Ethiopia was a largely Christian country.
In October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini ordered an invasion of Ethiopia, partly in revenge for Italy's humiliating defeat in 1896. Mussolini announced the establishment of a new Italian empire, including Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, under the name Italian East Africa. Haile Selassie fled the country.
When Mussolini brought Italy into World War II on Hitler's side, in June 1940, Haile Selassie won the cooperation of Britain in launching a counterattack against the Italian forces in Italian East Africa. By 1941, Haile Selassie was once again emperor of Ethiopia. After the war, the United Nations made Eritrea a part of Ethiopia, an autonomous federal province with its own constitution and elected government, something that the Muslims in Eritrea strongly opposed.
From the above description, one can see that although World War II was a generational crisis war for Italy and Britain, with part of the war fought on Ethiopian soil, it was not a crisis war for Ethiopia itself. In fact, with the previous crisis war having climaxed in 1896, this was a generational Unraveling era for Ethiopia. In such an era (like America in the 1990s), there is little appetite for war among the general population, except perhaps for quick police actions. Although Ethiopia and Eritrea changed hands several times during the WW II time period, the fighting was mostly between foreign armies, and did not heavily involve the local population.
In the mid-1950s, the region entered a generational Crisis era, and the fault line between Muslims and Christians began to inflame. In 1958, Eritrea's Muslim leaders formed the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), consisting mainly of students, intellectuals, and urban wage laborers. Low-level warfare continued throughout the 1960s.
In the 1970s, the Eritrean independence movement took another turn with the formation of a powerful Marxist offshoot of the ELF, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). Haile Selassie was toppled in 1974, after which factional warfare began to increase.
This might have led to a full-scale generational crisis war, but there was a major development: In 1977, the USSR allied with the Ethiopian government, took control of Eritrea's Red Sea ports, and provided Ethiopia's government with huge supplies of arms, enough to suppress the EPLF guerrillas. (This is what Russia has been doing in Syria for several years.)
The guerrilla war fought by Marxist rebels against the well-armed Ethiopian government climaxed in May 1991 with the collapse of Ethiopia's government, coincident with the collapse of the USSR. Eritrea finally declared independence. By that time, there were 500,000 refugees that had fled to refugee camps in Sudan, and they had to be resettled in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
In 1998, a new border war broke out between Eritrea and Ethiopia. This was a non-crisis war, with a quality very similar to World War I, where trenches were dug, mines were laid, and bodies of dead soldiers were strewn about. Of the 400,000 men who fought on both sides, 50,000 soldiers died.
A peace deal in 2000 ended the two-year border war, but it was never fully implemented, and is still in dispute. There have been occasional border incidents ever since then.
Both countries are now in the midst of a generational Awakening era, and the rhetoric on both sides is heating up again. Expect political conflict, riots, demonstrations, low-level violence and police actions, but a full-scale all-out war, which many international observers fear, is not going to happen at this time. HistoryWorld - Eritrea and HistoryWorld - Ethiopia and Library of Congress - Ethiopia
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Jun-16 World View -- Heavy fighting along Eritrea-Ethiopia border raises fears of war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Jun-2016)
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Al-Qaeda leader swears allegiance to Taliban's new leader
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The rise of a major competitive jihadist group, the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), is forcing al-Qaeda and the Taliban to reassess their strategic directions.
That may be one of the reasons that on Saturday, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a 14-minute online audio message, pledged allegiance to the new head of the Afghan Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada.
Both of the terrorist organization leaders have something major in common: They both rose to their current positions after their predecessors were killed by the US military. Al-Zawahiri became the new head of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by US Navy Seals in 2011. Akhundzada became the new leader of the Afghan Taliban after his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed by US drone strike in Pakistan three weeks ago.
According to Saturday's online audio message, which has not yet been confirmed, al-Zawahiri said:
"As leader of the al Qaeda organization for jihad, I extend my pledge of allegiance once again, the approach of Osama to invite the Muslim nation to support the Islamic Emirate [of Afghanistan]. ...We pledge allegiance to you on jihad to liberate every inch of the lands of the Muslims that are invaded and stolen - from Kashgar to al-Andalus, from the Caucasus to Somalia and Central Africa, from Kashmir to Jerusalem, from the Philippines to Kabul, and from Bukhara to Samarkand."
The logic behind this pledge is that al-Zawahiri is a military leader, an Egyptian doctor-turned-militant, while Akhundzada is an Islamic legal scholar. The audio message alludes to the fact that when the Taliban were sheltering Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, bin Laden also pledged his allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader. However, bin Laden ended up bringing the Taliban a lot of grief in the form of the US war in Afghanistan that defeated the Taliban and threw them out of government after bin Laden set the 9/11/2001 attacks in motion.
Today, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are uniting because they are both concerned about the rise of ISIS. Although ISIS operates mostly in the Mideast, some Afghan insurgent commanders have broken away from the Taliban to pledge support to ISIS, and ISIS has been displacing the influence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, and also of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in northern Africa, especially in Egypt, Libya and Nigeria.
To make matters worse for al-Qaeda, there has been infighting between different Taliban warlords and factions in Afghanistan, and this has helped ISIS. Thus, the pledge of support may be a desperate call for unity against ISIS.
Another development is that the death of Akhundzada's predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, has exposed a relationship between the Taliban and Iran. This is a "marriage of convenience" between Sunni terrorists and Shia terrorists, who are concerned about a common enemy: ISIS. Khaama Press (Kabul) and Deutsche Welle and Long War Journal and Reuters
The so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) has been claiming credit for Sunday's Orlando Florida nightclub terror attack, but we know that the gunman Omar Mateen was acting as a "lone wolf," without any known contact with ISIS. Nonetheless, ISIS may have indirectly caused the attack by its announcements in the last few weeks asking "lone wolves" to strike soft targets in Europe and America during the month of Ramadan, which started last week.
A year or two ago, an exuberant ISIS was making enormous gains, capturing huge swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq, raping women and chopping off people's heads to gain international acclaim, and making money by selling oil from captured facilities. There were thousands of young jihadists coming from all over the world to Syria to join ISIS and to fight against the genocidal Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
But now losses are mounting in Syria and Iraq. It's losing much of the territory it had gained, losing finances, and losing prestige. The number of foreign fighters joining the flailing ISIS is dwindling, and there are even reports of infighting within ISIS resulting in executions of junior officers.
Last month there were reports that ISIS was regrouping in Libya, setting up a base in its stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte, but now there have been new reports that troops from Libya's unity Government of National Accord (GNA) have been advancing against Sirte more quickly than expected.
ISIS is very far from defeated, but these setbacks are forcing the terror organization to rethink its strategy. A part of that strategy is to encourage lone wolf attacks and then take credit for them. They've taken credit for killings in Bangladesh which they had nothing to do with ( "12-Jun-16 World View -- Bangladesh government arrests 3,192 people to stop terrorist killings"), and now they've done the same with the Orlando night club shooting. These may well be moves of desperation.
Although many people are taking pleasure in the troubles of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS, you should not assume that the defeat of either of these organizations (something that's probably not even possible) would bring peace and an end to the terrorist attacks. This is a generational Crisis era for the Sunnis in the Mideast and south Asia, and the terror attacks and rising tensions are occurring organically, not under the control of any politician. No one could have predicted the rise of ISIS five years ago, and some new, even worse organization could rise at any time. Just as the Holocaust and WW II would still have occurred even if Hitler had been killed in 1935, the Mideast is headed for a major regional war with or without ISIS or al-Qaeda. And the Orlando nightclub shooting may be just the start. CS Monitor (27-May) and Rudaw (Iraq-Kurds) and Washington Times and AFP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Jun-16 World View -- Orlando nightclub terror attack may be result of ISIS and al-Qaeda troubles thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Jun-2016)
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History of Bangladesh's 'BNP-Jamaat clique' goes back to massive 1971 ethnic war
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Bangladesh's government has launched an anti-terror campaign, and begun by arresting 3,192 persons, including 37 militants belonging to outlawed radical jihadist groups.
Most of the militants arrested were members of the outlawed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the outfit believed to have carried out a series of attacks on Hindus, Christians, bloggers, activists, professors and people from different other professions, leaving them hacked to death in broad daylight. The other militant groups swept up by the mass attacks are Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina said that the police would stamp out this violence:
"Where will they hide in Bangladesh. No one will get away. Bangladesh is a small country. It's not a tough task to find them. They will be brought to justice.Each and every killer will be brought to book as we did after the 2015 mayhem (and) all their sources, financiers and patrons would be unearthed and brought to justice as well."
When she referred to "all their sources, financiers and patrons, she was referring to the "BNP-Jamaat clique," an alliance of opposition parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat), that she has repeatedly accused of being behind the violent attacks. In particular, she has repeatedly accused the BNP-Jamaat clique of supporting Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the jihadist terror group responsible for the killings.
In a speech in May, she said, "BNP-Jamaat clique is now selectively killing imams of mosques, priests of temples, fathers of churches and teachers of universities alongside common people to create instability in the country."
BNP secretary general Fakhrul Islam Alamgir accused the government of using the massive crackdown to suppress political dissent. He rejected the allegation that BNP and Jamaat were behind the attacks and accused the government of arresting "hundreds of opposition activists in the name of crackdown against Islamist militants." BDNews (Dhaka) and India Times and Daily Star (Dhaka) and Dhaka Tribune (29-May)
Although the extremely bloody 1947 war between Hindus and Muslims that followed Partition, the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan, was a generational crisis war for western India and what is now Pakistan, it was a far less brutal non-crisis war for eastern India (Bihar and West Bengal provinces) and what is now Bangladesh (East Bengal). Because of its enormous size, east and west India are on different generational timelines.
For east India and the current Bangladesh, the extremely bloody generational crisis war occurred as an ethnic civil war in 1971 between Biharis and Bengalis. At that time, Pakistan was split into West Pakistan and East Pakistan (East Bengal), and the outcome of the 1971 war was that East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
Both the Bengalis and the Biharis are mostly Muslim, although the Biharis also include a small population of Hindus. The Bengalis are the indigenous majority ethnic group of Bangladesh, and speak the Bengali language. The Biharis are mostly Urdu-speaking people who crossed the border from India and settled in East Pakistan during the 1947 Partition war.
Although the Bihari population was much smaller than the population of indigenous Bengalis, the Biharis became a "market-dominant minority," allied with the West Pakistan government, in control of the major business and government organizations, while the indigenous Bengalis were most laborers.
The 1971 war between the Biharis, supported by Pakistan's army, and the Bengalis was extremely bloody and genocidal on all sides.
Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (Jamaat) was formed in 1941, and in 1971 it was on the side of the Biharis and Pakistan's army in opposing the anti-government uprising by the Bengalis. In the 1980s, it allied with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), forming what the prime minister is calling the "BNP-Jamaat clique."
Today, there are hundreds of thousands of Biharis living in refugee camps in filthy conditions, with the largest camp just north of Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital city. These are certainly a large part of the motivation for Bihari jihadist groups to continue terrorist attacks. Today they're often referred to as "the stranded Pakistanis," because in 1971 Pakistan promised to transport them back to Pakistan, but later reneged on that promise.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina is the leader of the Bangladesh Awami League, which is a Bengali political party originally formed in 1949. The Awami League led the anti-Pakistan rebellion in the bloody 1971 civil war between Biharis and Bengalis.
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) is a violent jihadist terror group formed in 1998, reaching a peak of violence in August 2005 when it detonated 500 bombs at 300 locations throughout Bangladesh.
So when prime minister Hasina accuses the "BNP-Jamaat clique" of supporting JMB, what she's really doing is accusing the Biharis of attacking the Bengalis in revenge for losing the 1971 war.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is not surprising at all.
As I've written many times, most recently with respect to Kenya ( "7-Jun-16 World View -- Increasing violence in Kenya revives fears of tribal war") but previously in articles about Rwanda, Lebanon, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and other countries, countries that experience an internal ethnic civil war follow the same pattern.
Among generational crisis wars, an external war is fundamentally different than an internal civil war between two ethnic groups. If two ethnic groups have lived together in peace for decades, have intermarried and worked together, and if then there's a civil war where one of these ethnic groups tortures, massacres and slaughters their next-door neighbors in the other ethnic group, then the outcome will be fundamentally different than if the same torture and slaughter had been rendered by an external group. In either case, the country will spend the Recovery Era immediately following the war setting up rules and institutions designed to prevent any such war from occurring again. But in one case, the country will be unified in the decades to follow, while in the other case, the country will be increasingly torn along the same ethnic fault line.
That's what's going on today in Bangladesh. Starting in the 2000s, which was a generational Awakening era for Bangladesh, the Bihari-based Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) began conducting terrorist activities targeting the Bengali-based Awami League, and Bengalis in general. The Bengali-led government is responding by cracking down on the Biharis. This pattern of terrorist violence met with violent government crackdown continues in cycles, with each cycle worse than the previous one. This is a pattern that occurs in all countries that go through an ethnic generational crisis civil war, and it always ends up in new crisis civil war several decades later. Meri News (India) and South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) and Global Security (Washington)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Jun-16 World View -- Bangladesh government arrests 3,192 people to stop terrorist killings thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Jun-2016)
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Change in policy was resisted because of political implications
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In a significant reversal of policy, president Barack Obama's administration will now all American soldiers to fight alongside Afghan troops in combat situations, and will allow close air support in combat. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter confirmed the change in policy, and said,
"This is using the forces we have ... in a better way, basically, as we go through this fighting season, rather than being simply reactive. This makes good sense. It's a good use of the combat power that we have there."
By "fighting season," Carter is referring to the fact that the Taliban are most active during the summer months.
The change in policy comes one day after John Sopko, appointed by Obama as Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said that the situation in Afghanistan is continuing to deteriorate:
"The bottom line is too much has been wasted in Afghanistan. Too much money was spent in too small a country with too little oversight. And if the security situation continues to deteriorate, even areas where money was spent wisely and gains were made, could be jeopardized."
He said the planned drawdown of U.S. troops could compound the reconstruction effort's problems and add to the amount that already has been wasted, which he estimated is in the billions of dollars.
Since the end of 2014, US forces have been in Afghanistan only in an "advisory" role, and were only authorized to hit Taliban targets for defensive reasons, or to protect Afghan troops. The change in policy appears designed to stop the deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan. Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said:
"Our army is capable of fighting, the only thing we need is air support. We welcome this decision from America and it will boost the morale of the Afghan army."
The Afghan army may be capable of fighting, but with the US restricted to an "advisory" role before now, the Afghan army has been losing to a resurgent Taliban.
According to Obama's original timetable, all US troops should have left Afghanistan by now. Obama has been forced to reverse himself several times, and there are currently 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan. The schedule calls for a reduction to 5,500 troops as the president leaves office in January, but this reduction is opposed by many military analysts and by the Afghan government. The Hill and AFP and AP and Reuters
According to reports, the Obama administration had been debating this policy for months because it had been requested by military generals, but vetoed for political reasons for fear of damaging Obama's legacy. During the 2008 campaign, Obama criticized his predecessor, George Bush, for being at war, and promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But he's botched that commitment in both countries, and the NY Times has noted that as of May 6 of this year, President Barack Obama officially became the U.S. president to have been at war the longest — longer than Lyndon Johnson, longer than Abraham Lincoln and certainly longer than George W. Bush. Obama is virtually certain to be the only U.S. president to spend a full eight years at war.
In interviews earlier this year, all three of Obama's former secretaries of defense confirmed that the Obama administration ignored military advice, and made military decisions based on inexperience and ideology. This criticism is not ideological. I've been following these issues for years, and non-partisan military analysts have always been overwhelmingly critical of Obama's decisions, rarely if ever defending them.
Former defense secretary Robert Gates wrote in his book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," that Obama "doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out." Instead of getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, what Obama is discovering is that basing military decisions purely on politics and left-wing ideology is a sure way to get in deeper. Daily Caller and Washington Post (7-Jan) and Daily Caller (7-Apr)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Jun-16 World View -- In a reversal, Obama allows US troops in Afghanistan in combat roles thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Jun-2016)
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Turkey bans fertilizer sales after two terror bombings
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we described yesterday, Turkey suffered two major terror attacks in two days, a bombing in Istanbul on Tuesday, and a bombing on police headquarters in the province of Mardin in southeast Turkey on Wednesday.
Both bombings targeted the police. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has taken credit for Wednesday's bombing, but no one has taken credit for Tuesday's bombing in Istanbul.
Both bombings were perpetrated by means of fertilizers containing ammonium nitrate. Turkey's authorities have seized over 60,000 tons of fertilizer containing ammonium nitrate, and have temporarily suspended the sale of fertilizers containing ammonium nitrate after a series of bomb attacks across the country. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Deutsche Welle
Israeli authorities have identified the perpetrators of the shooting rampage in Tel Aviv on Wednesday as two cousins, Khaled Mohammad Makhamrah, 22, and his cousin Mohamad Ahmad Makhamrah, 21, from the West Bank town of Yatta, near the city of Hebron. One was wounded during the gunfight, and both have been arrested.
Since the attackers were "lone wolves," not part of Hamas or any other organized Palestinian group, Israel's response options were limited to actions which take "collective punishment" on Palestinians in general.
It's thought that the attacks were timed for the start of the Islam's holy month of Ramadan, and there are concerns that other terror attacks are planned for Ramadan. Israel's military is deploying hundreds of additional troops to the West Bank, including soldiers from infantry and special forces units. Among other actions, the Israeli troops completed blocked roads leading in and out of Yatta.
Normally, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are permitted to enter Israel during Ramadan to visit relatives, or to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. However, 83,000 permits have been canceled. Entering or leaving will only be permitted for humanitarian and medical cases.
The two cousins belong to the large Makhamreh clan. Israel's government is suspending 204 work permits used by the Makhamreh clan to enter Israel.
Because Israel's options are so limited, these "collective punishment" responses have been implemented, but they're likely to further infuriate Palestinians who will not be able to visit their families or work during Ramadan. This will inevitably lead to more terror attacks and more collective punishment.
On the other hand, Israelis have been infuriated by the celebrations of many Palestinians in the streets of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and on social media. Hamas published a statement terming the attack the first good tidings of Ramadan, while promising that more such tidings would come. YNet News (Israel) and AP and al-Jazeera
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In yesterday's article, I quoted a news source as saying that the attackers "used improvised firearms: an imitation of the Swedish-made Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, which was used primarily in the 1950s and ’60s, and which is known on the Palestinian street as the Carlo."
Several readers wrote to me to point out that that's not possible. The Carl Gustav recoilless rifle is an 84mm antitank weapon, generally requiring two men to operate, shooting rocket-boosted warheads.
The actual weapon used by the attackers was a homemade clone of the 9mm Carl Gustav M/45 submachine gun, developed by Swedish state-owned Carl Gustav Arms company in 1945. It has a relatively simple design, requiring little more to build than two steel tubes welded together, along with other spare parts. In the West Bank, it's known by its street name "Carlo," with hundreds of the guns in circulation. They've been used several times by Palestinians attacking Israelis.
Israeli security forces are cracking down on metal workshops in the West Bank suspected of manufacturing the Carlo. The quality of the workmanship varies from gun to gun, depending on the materials and the manufacturer. But in the last few months it's emerged as as the weapon of choice for Palestinian attackers, including the Tel Aviv attackers on Wednesday. AP and World Guns (Russia) and World Guns
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Jun-16 World View -- Israel deploys hundreds of troops to West Bank, cancels entry permits thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Jun-2016)
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West Bank Palestinians reject call to end security cooperation with Israel
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Many times in the past, jihadists have scheduled terror attacks for the beginning of Ramadan, and that may be the reason for the three Mideast terror attacks in the last two days, one in Tel Aviv and two in Turkey.
Four people were killed and five injured on Wednesday night when terrorists dressed as Hasidic Jews opened fire at a popular market complex in Tel Aviv. Two Palestinian subjects were arrested.
The attack was apparently well-planned. Since the price of firearms in the Palestinian territories is prohibitively high, both of the gunmen in Wednesday night's attack apparently used improvised firearms: an imitation of the Swedish-made Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, which was used primarily in the 1950s and ’60s, and which is known on the Palestinian street as the Carlo. This has been the weapon of choice of Palestinian assailants in the recent spate of terror attacks.
Correction: Several readers have pointed out that there are two "Carl Gustav" guns, and the paragraph above identifies the wrong one. The "recoilless rifle" is actually a large antitank weapon, too large to carry into a restaurant. The weapon used in the attack was a clone of the Carl Gustav 9mm submachine gun dating to 1945. [Paragraph added 9-Jun-2016]
Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the attacks cautiously:
"We gathered to discuss a number of steps, both defensive and offensive, that we will take in order to act against this very severe phenomenon of shooting attacks. It definitely poses a challenge to us, but we will respond. ...We are at the peak of a difficult period. We will act with resoluteness and with intelligence."
A couple of months ago, there was a spate of knifing attacks on Israelis by Palestinians. Those knifing attacks have all but ended, and Netanyahu's caution may have been from a desire not to further inflame relations. Wednesday's attack was the first major terror attack in several weeks. Haaretz (Israel) and Jerusalem Post
I've reported on three or four occasions in the last couple of years that some Palestinians have called on the West Bank Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to end all security cooperation with Israel, forcing Israeli security forces to take responsibility for policing the entire West Bank, rather than sharing that burden.
On May 4, the PLO Executive Committee announced that it decided "to immediately begin implementing the Palestinian Central Council's decisions regarding limiting the political, economic and security relations with the occupation authorities [i.e., Israel]," and this due to "Israel's disregard of signed agreements and its insistence on destroying the two-state solution." The decision was motivated by Israel's rejection in April of the French initiative for convening an international conference on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
However, the decision has sparked a great deal of criticism among Palestinian leaders, and no steps have been taken to implement it.
Former Nablus mayor and Executive Committee member Ghassan Al-Shak'a responded as follows:
"The decision taken by the Palestinian Central Council in its latest session [on March 2015], namely that relations with Israel must be severed, was an emotional decision, since most of the Central Council members came from abroad, from Chile, Romania, Australia, America and other countries, and their view of the Palestinian issue is more emotional than it is practical and realistic – unlike [the view taken by] us, the members [who live] inside Palestine...[I maintain that] we kid ourselves when we say we are able to boycott Israel or sever our relations with it, especially in the two domains of security and economy, which are fundamental to the lives of the Palestinian people and the residents of the occupied West Bank... [If we sever these relations] how can we bring fuel and flour [into our territories] and how can we keep the power running, etc.? Israel controls us on land, in the sea and in the air. If we decided, hypothetically, to sever our economic relations with Israel and cancel the Paris Protocol on economic [relations], could we actually live without them? That is the question we must put to those who demand day and night to end the economic and security coordination and to sever the relations with Israel...
When Israel wants to enter a village, city or refugee camp, it does not care whether they are in area A, B or C, because we have no sovereignty over the land, with or without security coordination. Security coordination serves our interest. If the PA wants to launch a security campaign to enforce law and order, as it did in Nablus when it brought in 1,500 security officers [from all over the West Bank] – would it be able to do this without security coordination with Israel? Of course not. [Furthermore,] there are 1,000 individuals wanted [by Israel] who are [held] in bases of the [Palestinian] security apparatuses throughout the West Bank. If we suspend the security coordination, Israel will surely arrest them immediately, and that will be to the detriment of our young people..."
There were two major terror attacks in Turkey this week, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. It's thought that the attacks, along with the attack in Tel Aviv, were scheduled to coincide with the start of Ramadan.
On Tuesday in Istanbul Turkey, a car bomb was detonated around 8:35 am just as a police bus was passing near a policy station. The bomb killed 11 people, six of whom were police officers, while wounding 36 others. Seven people have been arrested, including the four that rented the car.
Turkey has been hit by a spate of terrorist bombings in recent months. In some cases, the perpetrators were the the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), and in other cases the perpetrators were terrorists from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), or it terrorist offshoot the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK).
Turkish officials say that Tuesday's suicide bomber was a Syrian refugee that had come to Turkey, and that the refugee had links to ISIS. Police are investigating other connections to ISIS.
On Wednesday at 11 am, a car bomb attack targeted police headquarters in Turkey's southeastern province of Mardin, killing five people, including two police officers, and wounding around 30. In this case, Turkish officials say that they've identified they've identified the perpetrators as terrorists from the PKK.
Southeastern Turkey is a stronghold of ethnic Kurds in Turkey, and terror attacks occur regularly, leading police to take extra precautions. Authorities say that Wednesday's attack would have had a much higher death toll, but that was prevented by safety measures and barricades already in place. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Hurriyet
In a way, the two terror bombings in two days in Turkey strengthens Turkey's hand in the continuing negotiations over the EU-Turkey refugee deal. After all, if one of the bombings was perpetrated by an ISIS-linked Syrian refugee, then Europe will be all the more desperate to keep out unvetted Syrian refugees.
So far the EU-Turkey deal has been incredibly successful according to what the EU wanted to accomplish. In 2015, 800,000 refugees crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece, and there were thousands of drownings. But 5,000 have crossed the Aegean Sea in the last two months, and there were no refugee drownings. So Turkey has been meeting its obligations under the deal.
But if Turkey has been meeting its obligations, the EU has not:
The EU is also demanding that Turkey liberalize its anti-terrorism laws, especially those targeting ordinary Kurdish citizens. The two terror bombings will strengthen Turkey's claims that it's not possible to liberalize the laws.
We're now well into June, and there's been little public discussion of the EU-Turkey deal in the past few weeks. My guess is that European and Turkish officials have tacitly agreed not to discuss this issue until after Britain's June 23 "Brexit" referendum -- whether Britain should leave the European Union -- in order not to inflame the immigration issue further in the Brexit campaigns.
If that's true, then the last week of June is going to be a period of crisis negotiations between the EU and Turkey, no matter how the Brexit vote turns out. Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Washington Times and Foreign Policy
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Jun-16 World View -- Three terror attacks in Turkey and Israel mark start of Ramadan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Jun-2016)
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Colorado health insurance in crisis as Obamacare continues to collapse
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There were two new developments on Tuesday that indicate an increasingly dangerous situation in Kenya.
As I wrote about at length yesterday about the upsurge in violence related to next year's election, raising fears of a repeat of the 2008 tribal violence following the December 2007 election, resulting in 1200 people killed and 600,000 forced from their homes. ( "7-Jun-16 World View -- Increasing violence in Kenya revives fears of tribal war")
The Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD), led by Raila Odinga of the marginalized Luo tribe is protesting against the government led by president Uhuru Kenyatta of the market-dominant Kikuyu, and against the government-created Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), whose job it is to oversee the 2017 elections. Protesters are claiming that the IEBC is biased, and will rig the election in favor of Kenyatta, as has allegedly happened in the last three elections.
The two new developments on Tuesday are as followed:
First, the government issued regulations banning any protests against the IEBC.
"To avert further violence, destruction of property and loss of life, from today the government prohibits all unlawful demonstrations in the country. ...It is extremely dangerous for anybody to challenge the government decision. The consequences are grave."
It's hard for me to imagine any government action that's more likely to infuriate the protesters. They're now threatening to expand their protests from once per week to twice per week. In view of the anger and bitterness over the bloody 2008 violence, and the shooting of protesters in Kisumu on Monday by police, there is absolutely no chance at all that the ban will be obeyed.
The second development is that the protesters on social media are uniting behind the hash tag #JusticeForBabyJeremy, referring to Jeremy Otieno, a six year old boy who was hit by a stray bullet and killed by police in Kisumu on Monday. The boy was not even participating in the protests, but was shot in the back outside his home. The hash tag was retweeted thousands of times on Tuesday, in a sign of growing anger at the police.
The next election is still many months away, but already positions have hardened irreparably and violence is increasing. As I wrote yesterday, things have changed a great deal in Kenya since the 2008 violence. At that time, Kenya was in a generational Unraveling era, and only 52 years had passed since the climax of Kenya's last generational crisis war, the Mau-Mau Rebellion. Today, Kenya is well into a generational Crisis, and it would not take much to trigger a full-scale crisis civil war that could kill hundreds of thousands of people. The Star (Kenya) and Radio France Internationale and Deutsche Welle
Albinism is a condition where someone lacks the pigment melanin that gives hair, skin and eyes their color. Malawi has an estimated 8-10,000 people with albinism in a population of 16 million -- a prevalence of more than 12 times that of North America and Europe.
Although albinos have always faced discrimination because of their startling appearance, the discrimination in Malawi has taken a macabre turn since 2014, when Malawi's economy took a deep dive. Since then there's been a surge in attacks on albinos, fueled by witchcraft and by promises of large sums of money by idiots who believe that albinos' bones contain gold or have special powers that bring wealth and success.
The speculation has driven the price of albino body parts up astronomically. According to media reports, one 17-year-old albino boy was worth $66,000 to witch doctors, for use in potions.
According to the World Bank, Malawi is currently the poorest country in the world, and a severe drought affecting the region has caused major food shortages. The lure of big money is thought to be the main reason for the upsurge in abductions and murders of albinos.
The upsurge in violence is a personal crisis in the life of any of the 10,000 albinos in Malawi. As the number of murders increases, it's thought that albinos may face total extinction. Nyasa Times (Malawi) and Newsweek and BBC
Premiums for individual health-insurance policies are rising by as much as 41% in Colorado next year as four insurer pull out of all or some markets in the state.
UnitedHealthcare and Humana Insurance already announced that they would not offer individual plans in Colorado next year. In addition, Rocky Mountain Health Plans and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Colorado are severely restricting their offerings.
About 92,000 people with individual plans will need to find other coverage during the open enrollment period, Nov. 1, 2016–Jan. 31, 2017, representing approximately 20 percent of the 450,000 Coloradans who get their insurance through the individual market,
According to Colorado Insurance Commissioner Marguerite Salazar:
"Companies are still figuring it out — where to sell, how to sell, how to price — which is why we’re seeing some companies pull back on individual plans or requesting significant increases, while still other companies are coming into the market. Some companies have done a better job of figuring out how to operate in this new environment and compete for people’s business, while others must step back and reevaluate their approach. ...I’d rather these companies continued in the individual market. But in the larger picture, what’s taking place is a market correction; the free market is at work. And it is important to recognize that this is a market correction taking place on a national scale, not just in Colorado. While it was good initially to have so many companies offering so many individual plans, this could be an indication that there were too many options for the market to support."
The problem is that it's not a free market at all. It's the most f--cked up regulated market possible, thanks to the disastrous Obamacare legislation. And Salazar is correct that the same kind of disaster is "taking place on a national scale, not just in Colorado."
As long time readers are well aware (because I've repeated it many times), in July, 2009, when Obamacare was first announced, I wrote that Obama's health plan is a proposal of economic insanity. I compared it to President Richard Nixon's wage-price controls, and I predicted that it would just as much an economic disaster as Nixon's price controls. I wrote about it most recently in "26-Apr-16 World View -- Obamacare continues death spiral as Britain's NHS faces strike".
Obamacare should have collapsed by now, but instead Obama has found ways to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of other money into Obamacare to prop it up. Meanwhile, the health care industry continues to be destroyed. Obamacare was supposed to reduce health costs, but instead health costs have skyrocketed.
This is what I predicted would happen, because that's what happened with Nixon's price controls. They were supposed to reduce inflation from 4% to 2%, but they screwed up the economy so much that that inflation increased to 12%. Obamacare is screwing up the economy today in exactly the same way.
Obamacare was supposed to eliminate uninsured people, but instead it's created millions more effectively uninsured people -- people who pay insurance premiums, but can't find a doctor or who have astronomical deductions, and so effectively have no insurance whatsoever. As Jonathan Gruber said, Obamacare passed because of the stupidity of the American people, and as I like to point out, he wasn't referring to me, but to Obamacare supporters. Obamacare may well be the stupidest economic policy in American history. Denver Business Journal and Colorado Division of Insurance
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Jun-16 World View -- Kenya protests take an increasingly dangerous turn thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Jun-2016)
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Kenya facing fierce criticism over closing the world's largest refugee camp
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In Kisumu, Kenya's third largest city, police opened fire on demonstrators on Monday, killing at least two. Another 61 people were injured in the clashes, 20 of whom were hospitalized with wounds from bullets or sharp objects. One of the wounded was a five-year-old child.
Police then used tear gas and water cannon to quell the protests as news of the deaths spread. Word of the shootings fueled heavy clashes in the center of Kisumu. There were widespread scenes of looting and two supermarkets were destroyed.
Protests have been occurring across the country since early April. Clashes with police have been increasing, but Monday's violence in Kisumu was the worst so far. Kisumu, a port city in western Kenya on Lake Victoria, is considered a hotbed of anti-government protests.
The protests are related to the presidential election scheduled for next year. After the election in December 2007, the entire country suffered from tribal violence that killed 1200 people, and forced 600,000 from their homes. (Jan 2008: "Post-election massacre in Kenya raises concerns of tribal war") The ethnic violence was started, according to many sources, by youthful activists in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), an anti-government Luo ally supporting Odinga for President. The worst known atrocity occurred when 30 people died in a church fire. Dozens of people had gone to the church to escape increasing violence, when a youthful gang set the church on fire, trapping people inside. This atrocity drew international attention.
There are many tribes in Kenya, including the Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin, Kisii of western Kenya, and the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru (GEMA) people from the Mount Kenya area.
The two most prominent tribes are the market-dominant Kikuyu tribe and the disadvantaged Luo tribe. In the last three elections, the two leading candidates were Kikuyu and Luo, respectively, and the Kikuyu candidate always won. The violence after the 2007 election was triggered because of widespread accusations that the Kikuyu government had rigged the election, to score a new victory.
The same issue is propelling the new rounds of protests and violence. The current president is Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, and his principal challenger is Raila Odinga, a Luo.
The Kenyatta government has created an Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), whose job it is to define the rules and procedures for next year's election. The opposition, led by Odinga, has formed the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD), which is conducting the nationwide protests that triggered Monday's violence. CORD is accusing the IEBC of rigging the election so that Kenyatta will win again next year.
The protests are becoming increasingly violent. The concerns are that the violence will continue to increase, and there will a new round of widespread violence, no matter who wins next year's election. Coast Week (Kenya) and The Star (Kenya) and Al Jazeera and AFP
What's happening in Kenya is a pattern that I've described many times when a generational crisis war is an internal civil war.
Among generational crisis wars, an external war is fundamentally different than an internal civil war between two ethnic groups. If two ethnic groups have lived together in peace for decades, have intermarried and worked together, and if then there's a civil war where one of these ethnic groups tortures, massacres and slaughters their next-door neighbors in the other ethnic group, then the outcome will be fundamentally different than if the same torture and slaughter had been rendered by an external group. In either case, the country will spend the Recovery Era immediately following the war setting up rules and institutions designed to prevent any such war from occurring again. But in one case, the country will be unified in the decades to follow, while in the other case, the country will be increasingly torn along the same ethnic fault line.
Kenya's last crisis war was the "Mau-Mau Rebellion." Britain had been exerting a fairly heavy hand as a colonial power, starting from the 1850s. An independence movement began in earnest in the late 1940s, leading to the rebellion that began in 1952 and climaxed in 1956. In the Recovery Era that followed, Kenya finally gained independence in 1964. As population increased over the decades, the Luos, with traditional lifestyles as fishermen, had land conflicts with the Kikuyus and were marginalized.
When I wrote about the violence in 2007-8, I wrote that it was POSSIBLE but UNLIKELY that the violence would spiral into a full-scale civil war at that time. The reason is that the previous crisis war, the Mau-Mau Rebellion, had climaxed in 1956, only 52 years earlier. After 52 years, there would still be many survivors of the Mau-Mau Rebellion with personal memories of the war. They may have been only children at the time of the rebellion, but they would have had experiences that scarred them for life, and they would do everything possible to prevent anything like that from happening again. So in 2008, there would still have been enough of these survivors in senior positions to prevent the violence, as bad as it was, from spiraling into a full-scale civil war. This analysis turned out to be completely correct in 2008, as the violence fizzled within a few weeks. (Feb 2008: "Kenya settles into low-level violence on the way to Rwanda")
As I explained at that time, historical research and analysis had shown that a new crisis war starts to become increasingly likely at a point 58 years past the climax of the preceding crisis war. That seems to be the time when the survivors of the preceding crisis war lose their ability to prevent a new one. This is because children younger than five would not have any personal memory of a crisis war, and the children five years old and older become 63 year old and older after 58 years have passed.
Many Kenyans believe that nothing has changed and that any new violence that breaks out after next year's election won't be any worse than the 2008 violence. But that's not true, because there have been major changes since then. Eight more years have passed since the 2008 violence, and it's now 60 years past the climax of the preceding crisis war. This means that the survivors of the Mau-Mau Rebellion have almost completely disappeared, and will no longer be able to exert enough influence to prevent a major new civil war. This means that a new civil way is not CERTAIN, but it's far more LIKELY than it was in 2008. The Nation (Nairobi) and Open Democracy
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Kenya has announced that it will close the Dadaab refugee camp later this year, and require the residents to return to their home country, which is almost always Somalia.
Kenya is the world's largest refugee camp, home to 350,000 people. It was opened in 1991, at a time when people in Somalia were fleeing civil war, lawlessness and recurrent droughts. (Recall that 1993 was the year of the famous "Black Hawk Down" incident, where Somali militia fighters shot down two American helicopters using rocket-propelled grenades. Mobs then hacked the fallen pilots to death with machetes and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets as trophies.)
At its peak in 2012, the Dadaab refugee camp housed nearly a half-million people. Many children had been born there and grown to adulthood without ever leaving the camp. Since then, some Somalis have left the camp and returned home voluntarily.
Kenya has given two reasons for closing the camp. One reason is the enormous expense of supporting hundreds of thousands of refugees, with little or none of the financial support promised by the EU or the US having actually been provided. And second, it's believed that Somalia's terror group, al-Shabaab, is using the camp as a base to launch terror attacks on Kenya. (See "3-Apr-2015 World View -- Al-Shabaab kills 147 mostly Christian students in Kenya school" and "23-Sep-2013 World View -- Minnesota link to Kenya shopping mall attack raises U.S. fears")
Human rights organizations are taking action to prevent Kenya from closing the camp. There's little doubt that forcing 350,000 people to leave their homes and move somewhere else is the stuff of historical genocides, and closing the camp will not be smooth in the best of circumstances. Anadolu (Turkey) and AFP and VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Jun-16 World View -- Increasing violence in Kenya revives fears of tribal war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Jun-2016)
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Islamist militants in Bangladesh kill police officer's wife in revenge
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At least ten people were killed on Sunday when suspected Islamist militants conducted a series of attacks on targets in the city of Aktobe in northwest Kazakhstan, near the border with Russia. The armed gang first attacked a hunting supplies shop, then commandeered a bus and used it to ram the gates of a military base in the city. Inside the base, they opened fire indiscriminately, killing and wounding several servicemen.
Many of the details are unknown, because Kazakh authorities have closed off the area and have shut down all communications, including the internet.
Kazakhstan is a mostly Muslim country, and jihadist attacks are rare, although Aktobe was the scene of a suicide bombing in May 2011. Kazakh authorities are hesitant to admit the Islamist militancy is a problem in Kazakhstan, although northwest Kazakhstan, where Sunday's attack occurred, is a hotbed of militant activity.
Authorities have estimated that between 200 and 400 citizens of Kazakhstan have left the country, along with their wives and children, to take up arms alongside groups the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) in Iraq and Syria. ISIS reportedly has issued several video messages targeting Kazakhstan.
General economic unrest is increasing in Kazakhstan because of the collapse in global commodity prices, especially oil, and the ripple effect caused by Russia's recession. Kazakhstan's currency, the tenge, has lost 50% of its value against the US dollar, and other currencies in the region have suffered similarly.
As we reported last month, there were protests across the countries in response to announced land reforms by the government. Protesters feared that the changes would make it easier for large Chinese agribusinesses to take control of vast swaths of farmland. According to one protester, "We can't give land to the Chinese. If they come then they won't leave!" This atmosphere usually provides fertile ground for the spread of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups. EurasiaNet and Astana (Kazakhstan) Times and Reuters
Islamist militants on Sunday killed Mahmuda Aktar, the wife of a decorated police officer, as she was taking her son to school. The militants arrived on motorcycle, stabbed her nine times, then shot her in the head before driving off. The child was not hurt.
There have been at least 35 similar attacks carried out in the span of 14 months. Of those, 23 have been claimed by an Islamist terror group.
Sunday's attack occurred in the seaside town of Chittagong, which is close to Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma), and is a hotbed of Islamist terrorism (like northwest Kazakhstan). As I wrote last month in "24-Apr-16 World View -- Bangladesh in shock after university professor hacked to death", a recent string of militant attacks may be related to continued ethnic tensions between the two sides in Bangladesh's last generational crisis war, the incredibly bloody and brutal 1971 civil war that made the former state of East Pakistan into the independent nation of Bangladesh.
Police officer Babul Aktar, whose wife was killed in Sunday's attack, had conducted some very effective investigations that led to busting a hideout of banned outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and arrest of its military wing chief Md Javed in October last year.
It's believed that Sunday's attack was a revenge attack targeting Aktar's wife because the militant organizations had been unsuccessful in attacking Aktar directly. BDNews24 (Dhaka) and CNN
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Jun-16 World View -- Kazakhstan and Bangladesh in shock after terror attacks on Sunday thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Jun-2016)
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Khameini accuses 'evil' Britain of fabricating the BBC report
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An analysis by the BBC of a trove of newly declassified US government documents - diplomatic cables, policy memos, meeting records - shows that in 1979 Iran's new leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tricked the administration of president Jimmy Carter into supporting the Great Islamic Revolution.
That Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, had ruled Iran since 1941, and was a staunch ally of the United States, though he was heavily criticized by liberals for human rights abuses. A rebellion against the Shah began in 1978. Since the Shah's army was heavily dependent on American arms and advice, President Carter could have done a great deal to keep the Shah in power, and prevent Khomeini from coming to power. Carter has been accused of refusing to support the Shah in the rebellion, allowing Khomeini to come to power, because of the human rights abuses, although he's denied that accusation.
The new declassified documents reveal that Khomeini courted the Carter administration, sending quiet signals that he wanted a dialogue and then portraying a potential Islamic Republic as amenable to US interests. Said Khomeini:
"You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans, [and the new Islamic Republic will be] a humanitarian one that will benefit the cause of peace and tranquility for all mankind."
The documents reveal that, in return for Khomeini's assurances, the US said that they were not opposed in principle to the new government, and the US provided key intelligence information about Iran's military leaders. Carter administration officials advised Iran's army generals to simply let a coup occur.
The Great Islamic Revolution was a generational Crisis war, and as such was driven by powerful generational forces that would not have been affected by a bit of intelligence. The rebellion was a major civil war between the Shah's security forces and a growing population of revolutionaries supporting radical clerics, led by Khomeini.
At any rate, once Khomeini was in power, he did a 180 degree U-turn, and immediately became a vitriolic enemy of the United States. In particular, Khomeini created the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis by allowing students to storm the American embassy in Tehran and take the 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days.
What the documents reveal has powerful symbolic significance even today. Khomeini's successor, Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei, is widely believed to have repeatedly lied to American negotiators to get agreement last year on the nuclear deal that resulted in the lifting of Western sanctions. BBC and NY Post
Whether by coincidence or design, the BBC report was published on the 27th anniversary of the June 3, 1989, of the death of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
In a speech on Friday commemorating Khomeini's death, Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei said that Britain was "evil" and the US is "Satan." He denounced the BBC report as fake "propaganda":
"Britain’s malice against the Iranian nation has never stopped. ... The same enmity continues as the British government’s propaganda apparatus spreads propaganda against the dear Imam of the Iranian nation [Khomeini], with the help of the Americans and forged documents, on the anniversary of the great and holy Imam [Khomeini’s] death. ...The enemies are increasing their pressure on Iran because they are afraid of the Iranian nation’s ‘Revolutionary spirit’ - a legacy of the late Imam Khomeini. Before Revolution, the United States and the UK were ruling over us. Our grand Imam changed Iran’s path and changed the rail-track. Imam Khomeini guided country toward great objectives that can be summarized in Divine religion and they are uprooting ignorance and oppression as well as establishing Islamic values system."
In the same speech, he called trust in the U.S. a "big mistake" and asserted that U.S. interests are "180 degrees opposed" to those of Iran. He said that he had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with these enemies.
Khamenei's speech was interesting for another reason -- his call to maintain the same revolutionary fervor of 1979: "If we act Revolutionarily, progress is certain; otherwise, as Imam said “Islam will be slapped in face. ... I will mention five characteristics for being revolutionary and we have to create and maintain them in ourselves." These five characteristics are:
Khamenei referred to himself as an 'old revolutionary' person, so "now every modern youth can become even more revolutionary than me." Perhaps he was joking, or perhaps he was desperate.
This is wishful thinking on Khamenei's part. As I've written many times, this kind of "revolutionary fervor" will not be maintained, because Iran is in a generational Awakening era, one generation past the end of the Great Islamic Revolution and Iran/Iraq war, just like America in the 1960s-70s, one generation past the end of World War II. In fact, Iran has been fraught with many anti-government pro-American and pro-Western demonstrations by college students, just like America in the 1960s, as I described in "18-Jan-16 World View -- Pakistan tries to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran".
That explains why Khamenei, in his speeches, keeps returning to these themes of maintaining an anti-American "revolutionary" spirit, but he's fighting a losing battle because the "revolutionary" spirit of the generational Crisis era in 1979 cannot be maintained by the next generation, as it rebels against the harsh restrictions of the revolution in an Awakening era. That's why Khamenei's government has had send out the security forces to massacre, torture and kill peaceful demonstrators.
(In a recent article, "29-May-16 World View -- Hugo Chávez dismantled Venezuela's businesses on purpose to create Socialist Paradise", I described Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, which ended up killing tens of millions of Chinese. Mao's motivation for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution that followed was exactly the same as Khamenei's motivation -- to invigorate the "revolutionary spirit," and end the anti-government demonstrations by college students.)
The point, as I've said in the past, is that those college students in pro-American demonstrations of the early 2000s are now in their 30s and increasingly in positions of power. Just as America's Awakening era climaxed with the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, Iran's Awakening era climax will bring about the end of the hardline regime of the old geezers in Khamenei's generation, and result in a pro-Western victory for Iran's younger generation. BBC and IRNA (Tehran) and Mehr News (Tehran) and AEI Iran Tracker (3-June)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Jun-16 World View -- How Iran's Khomeini fooled Jimmy Carter before the Great Islamic Revolution thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Jun-2016)
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'Tiananmen Mothers' commemorate China's Tiananmen Square massacre
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Cerveceria Polar breweries, the firm that makes about 80% of the beer in Venezuela, has announced that it will resume production in July.
As we described last month, Polar was forced to close down its four domestic breweries, because it was unable to import the ingredients, especially the malted barley, because Venezuela's bolivar currency has become almost completely worthless. ( "15-May-16 World View -- Venezuela economy close to collapse as Maduro orders jailing of factory owners")
Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás Maduro Moros has found a solution. He threatened to take over the factory and jail its owner, Lorenzo Mendoza, unless it started producing beer again.
Apparently Maduro's threats were successful. Mendoza obtained a $35 million loan from the Spanish bank BBVA, putting up other assets as collateral. In Maduro's Socialist Paradise, everybody's assets belong to Maduro. Pan Am Post and Reuters and AFP
According to a report in Lebanon's Hezbollah-linked newspaper As-Safir, Hezbollah is preparing for its next conflict with Israel by digging attack tunnels and positioning its large arsenal of rockets along the northern border with Israel. The tunnels include underground ventilation systems which prevents moisture from damaging equipment, and include an electricity network and enough food to feed combatants for weeks.
Ever since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, there have been regular reports that Hezbollah was building tunnels to infiltrate into Israel, and so the new report is nothing new. According to the report, the purpose of the current article is symbolic, to make Israelis nervous: "Resistance fighters are watching, making preparations and digging tunnels so enemy soldiers and settlers are losing sleep."
It's unlikely that Hezbollah will be going to war with Israel any time time. As we reported last week, Iran has ordered Hezbollah to suspend operations against Israel and to target Saudi Arabia instead. ( "28-May-16 World View -- Report: Israel and Saudi Arabia are allying against Iran and Hezbollah")
There are two major factors that Hezbollah has had to suspend operations against Israel. The first reason is that Hezbollah is bogged down in Syria, and has lost half its fighting force in support of the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad.
The second reason is the growing hatred and animosity between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Although the Palestinians hate Israelis, the people of Saudi Arabia and Iran do not. For that reason, Iran has ordered its puppet, Hezbollah, to concentrate on operations against Saudi Arabia rather than Israel. Jerusalem Post and Israel Today
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Saturday is the 27th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre, where China's army massacred thousands of peacefully protesting college students.
"Tiananmen Mothers" is a group of activist mothers whose children were killed in the massacre. They've written a letter accusing the Beijing government of "white terror" in refusing to account for the deaths of their children. China's government forbids all mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and uses force to suppress any mention of it. News.com (Sydney) and Human Rights in China - Tiananmen Mothers
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Jun-16 World View -- Hezbollah building tunnels into Israel to prepare for next war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Jun-2016)
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Germany's genocide vote seems timed to coincide with EU-Turkey refugee deal
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In a move considered highly controversial because of its timing, Germany's parliament voted on Thursday to recognize the deaths of Armenians in 1915 during World War I at the hands of Turkey's Ottoman Empire as an act of "genocide." However, the vote was purely symbolic, as there are no legal consequences associated with the vote.
For Germans, one possible motivation for the vote is that Germany and the Ottomans were allies in World War I, and Germany may share some of the guilt for the deaths of the Armenians. The resolution emphasizes that Germany is aware of the "uniqueness" of the Nazi Holocaust and it "regrets the inglorious role" of Germany, the Ottoman Turks' main military ally at the time of the Armenians' killings, of failing to stop the "crime against humanity."
Armenia's foreign minister to Germany Edward Nalbandian praised the decision:
"Germany's valuable contribution not only to the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, but also to the universal fight for the prevention of genocides, crimes against humanity."
The vote was overwhelming, with only one MP voting against, and only one abstention. Bettina Kula, who voted against the resolution, did not dispute the claim of genocide, but said that "It’s not the duty of the Federal Parliament to evaluate historical events that took place in other countries."
Members of Turkey's government were furious at the vote, and declared it "null and void." Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was on a visit to Kenya, where he condemned the vote and announced that he was recalling Turkey's ambassador to Germany "for consultation." This was considered a mild action, one that's easily reversed. Last year, Turkey temporarily recalled its ambassadors to Austria and the Vatican after Austria and Pope Francis described the killings as genocide.
According to the Turkey's deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus:
"The fact that the German Parliament approved distorted and baseless claims as genocide is a historic mistake. The German Parliament’s approval of this bill is not a decision in line with friendly relations between Turkey and Germany. This decision is null and void for Turkey.This is an issue that scientists and historians need to reach a conclusion on, not politicians or parliaments. As Turkey, we will surely give the necessary response to this decision in all platforms."
Most analysts outside of Turkey consider the evidence of genocide overwhelming.
Armenia says that as many as 1.5 million people were killed by Turkish forces in World War I between 1915 and 1917, and says that the mass killings were genocidal. According to Turkey, something like 500,000 Armenians and 500,000 Turks were killed in the massive civil war that occurred when the Armenians rose up against the Ottoman rulers, and so it wasn't a genocide. However, in February 1919, a court-martial found a number of top Ottoman officials guilty of war crimes, including against Armenians, and sentenced them to death. Deutsche Welle (Berlin) and Hurriyet (Ankara) and AFP
The Armenian genocide question is a century-old issue, so it seems surprising that the German parliament is raising the issue at exactly this time, at the height of the negotiations over the EU-Turkey refugee deal.
The European Union desperately needs the deal to continue. Last year, there were thousands of Syrian refugees crossing the Aegean Sea every day to Greece's islands, creating an existential crisis for the EU. Thanks to the deal, Turkey has reduced that flow from thousands per day to dozens per day. This has permitted the EU to go its merry way without being threatened with the tsunami of refugees.
However, the EU has obligations under that treaty. The EU is obligated to pay Turkey 3 billion euros in aid for refugees, followed possibly by 3 billion more. None of that money has been paid, and is way overdue.
Possible most critical is the commitment to visa liberalization: Any of Turkey's 74 million citizens must be able to travel freely throughout Europe's Schengen zone without a visa. The deadline for this change is the end of June, and there are many forces in Europe that are bitterly opposed to visa liberalization for Turks. However, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said repeatedly that if visa liberalization isn't granted, then he'll cancel the deal and allow the full flow of Syrian refugees to Europe to resume. It's quite possible that there are hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees currently in Turkey just waiting for the deal to be canceled, and preparing to travel as soon as it is.
So this vote on century-old Armenian genocide issue arguably is coming at the worst possible time, at the height of tensions over the EU-Turkey deal. The suspicion is that the issue was brought to a vote at this time by people who would like to sabotage the visa liberalization.
A German official in the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel said hopefully, "Despite some of his rhetoric, we believe Erdogan has a strong interest in making the migrants deal work and will not allow this to get in the way."
Over a thousand Turks demonstrated against the resolution on Saturday in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin and some German lawmakers say they have been bombarded with hate mail and insults on social media for supporting the resolution. Reuters and LA Times
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Jun-16 World View -- Turkey recalls German ambassador after vote recognizes Armenian genocide thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Jun-2016)
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China close to imposing an air defense ID zone (ADIZ) in South China Sea
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A new poll in Taiwan shows that an overwhelming majority of Taiwanese people reject eventual unification with China. This comes a week after Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of the Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), took office as president of Taiwan, having won an overwhelming and decisive electoral victory in January. ( "17-Jan-16 World View -- Taiwan's pro-independence party wins historic presidential election")
According to the new poll, 66.4% oppose unification and only 18.5% are in favor, while 15.1% remain noncommittal. The poll found that people in younger generations were more likely to favor Taiwan independence. In the 20-29 age group, 72% supported independence.
This is consistent with a trend I've reported on in the past. The graph at the beginning of this article comes from 2005, and it shows that the portion of Taiwan's population describing themselves as "Taiwanese," as opposed to "Chinese," had risen from 18% to 42% over the previous ten years. If we assume that being "Taiwanese" corresponds to favoring Taiwan independence, then that amount has risen from 42% to 66.4% in the 11 years since then.
This almost certainly means that the trend is highly generational. Older generations, especially those with some memory of the 1949 flight from Mao Zedong's army to Hong Kong and then to Formosa, have clung to the hope that one day Taiwan and Beijing would reunite into a single China governed by Taiwan's Nationalist government. People in younger generations understand that this scenario isn't even remotely possible, and that reunification would mean being governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing, the same CCP that massacred thousands of college students in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and who have become increasingly authoritarian in Hong Kong, breaking their explicit public promise, when Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, that they could have fully free and fair elections.
If I could figure all this out, then it's certain that the officials in the CCP have also figured it out. Just last week, just after Tsai Ing-wen took office as president, Chinese media demanded that Tsai explicitly affirm that Taiwan is part of China, something that Tsai is refusing to do.
In 2005, during the time when Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party was last in power, Beijing enacted an Anti-Secession law that required Beijing to invade Taiwan militarily if Taiwan took any steps to move towards independence, or even encourage independence in political speech. China is becoming increasingly nationalistic, and increasingly less willing to tolerate Taiwan's independent streak. The new poll shows that time is not on Beijing's side, and at some point, possibly soon, the military invasion of Taiwan will take place. Taipei Times
The Hong Kong based South China Morning Post is quoting China's military sources as saying that China is close to announcing an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in South China Sea, "pending US moves."
An official is quoted as saying:
"If the US military keeps making provocative moves to challenge China’s sovereignty in the region, it will give Beijing a good opportunity to declare an ADIZ in the South China Sea."
The "provocative moves" are an allusion to the US Navy's completely non-threatening freedom of navigation patrols, in which US patrol vessels simply sail through the South China Sea. China has announced that it is annexing the entire South China Sea, including regions that have historically belonged to other countries, much as Adolf Hitler annexed portions of eastern Europe in 1939, and is demanding that any American patrol vessel request permission from China before entering the South China Sea. However, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has repeatedly said that "The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world."
The announcement of an ADIZ would substantially escalate the tensions in the region. China has already been aggressively militarizing the South China Sea in preparation for the ADIZ. This includes creation of seven artificial islands and turning them into military naval and air force bases.
Just as China is preparing for war with Taiwan, China is also preparing for war in the South China Sea. The increasingly nationalistic Chinese people will not wait much longer before demanding that their leaders attack. South China Morning Post and India Times and The Diplomat
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Jun-16 World View -- New Taiwan poll shows overwhelming support for independence from China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Jun-2016)
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Death of Afghan Taliban leader exposes Iran-Taliban links
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we reported earlier this month, Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed by a US drone strike as he was traveling by car in Pakistan's Balochistan province, not far from the border with Iran.
It now turns out that Mansour's car was returning from a trip to Iran. Iran's foreign ministry has said, "The concerned authorities in Iran reject that such a person had entered Pakistan via Iran’s border at the stated date," but Western reporters arriving at the site of the drone strike have seen Mansour's Pakistani passport, with entry and exit stamps showing that he had traveled into Iran and back again that day.
It's not known where or why Mansour went inside Iran. It's not known whether he had some secret relationship with Iran's government, or whether he was just visiting Taliban cells within Iran, without Iran's knowledge.
However, this discovery has generated some examination of Iran's relationship with the Taliban. Iran is a hardline Shia state, and the Taliban is a hardline Sunni organization, so their relationship could never be more than a "marriage of convenience" that could be dissolved by either side at any time.
Iran had staunchly opposed the Taliban in the 1990s and had almost gone to war with it after Taliban forces massacred Iranian diplomats and local Shia Muslims in the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif in 1998. Since 9/11, there has been some cooperation between Iran and the Taliban over the US presence in Afghanistan.
Since 2014, when the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) began to infiltrate Afghanistan, Iran and the Taliban have shared a common interest in wanting to repel ISIS.
There are still plenty of unanswered questions about the drone strike that killed Mansour. Mansour's whereabouts were a closely guarded secret, and yet US intelligence officials were apparently absolutely certain, at the time of the drone strike, that they knew what car he was traveling in. How did they know?
James Cunningham, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan says:
"Pick your conspiracy theory. How did his passport survive? Did [ISIS] shop him to the US? Did the Iranians tip us off? We likely will never know. But the Taliban must be wondering, too.What needs to be debunked is the Pakistani line that Afghanistan is the fault of the United States and the international community, and that the killing [of Mansour] blocks the [Afghan-Taliban] peace process. "There is no peace process; Mansour made clear there was no intent to negotiate."
Guardian (London) and VOA and Al Monitor
American Marines endured some of the bloodiest fighting of the Iraq War in Fallujah in 2003-2004, fighting against Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). After the "surge" in 2007, AQI was expelled from Iraq, including Fallujah, but the withdrawal of all American forces in 2011 created a vacuum that was filled by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). ISIS captured large swaths of Iraqi territory, including Fallujah in 2014, and now there's a new battle of Fallujah, fought mainly by ISIS against Iraqi army forces, the latter backed by US airstrikes.
Baghdad has been hit by a seemingly unending stream of terrorist attacks and bombings that have killed hundreds of civilians in recent months. Fallujah if 40 miles west of Baghdad, and ISIS has been using it as a base to launch these attacks. The Iraq government sees the recapture of Fallujah as keep to stopping these attacks and stopping ISIS itself.
For more than a week, Iraqi forces have been surrounding Fallujah and preparing for troops to enter the city, and now the battle was finally launched on Tuesday. The ISIS forces have no way to escape, and so the fighting is fierce.
It's feared that a massive humanitarian disaster is in the making. The problem is that there are also 50,000 civilians in the city, and many have no way to escape either, though they've been advised to flee. ISIS forces have booby trapped many of the roads and buildings and they're using civilians as "human shields," hoping to slow down the Iraqi forces.
Iraq is increasingly facing a huge internal refugee problem, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis forced to flee their homes in one battle after another. If the Iraq army ever attempts to liberate Mosul from ISIS, that will put its 600,000 civilians at risk.
There is a related issue that's growing in complexity. Since the invasion by ISIS, many of the internally displaced Iraqi civilians have fled to the relative safety and security of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The KRI is supposed to hold a referendum on independence later this year, something that the Iraq government opposes, and it's possible that the Iraq government is not unhappy that a huge influx of Iraqi Arab refugees will complicate the referendum. Rudaw (Iraq/Kurds) and USA Today and VOA and Chatham House (London)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Jun-16 World View -- 50,000 civilians in danger as Iraq tries to liberate Fallujah from ISIS thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Jun-2016)
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