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India says that Kashmir's law and order situation is improving
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Al-Qaeda's public relations department has announced that one of Kashmir's most popular militant leaders Zakir Musa, 23, has been appointed the head of Ansar Ghawzat-Ul-Hind, the al-Qaeda linked terrorist organization in India-controlled Kashmir.
Musa, an engineering college dropout, is the son of an engineer in the Jammu and Kashmir government and his brother is a doctor in Tral, about 30 km from Srinagar, the provincial capital of Kashmir. He took over as leader of the Kashmir separatist group Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) after its previous leader, Burhan Muzaffar Wani, was killed by Indian security forces last year.
Hizbul Mujahideen was formed in 1989, funded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. It's been very popular in Kashmir, with thousands of anti-India protesters, and is demanding that Kashmir be separated from India and made part of Pakistan.
However in May of this year, Musa split with HM because didn't have sufficiently grandiose plans for Musa. Musa said:
"I see that many people in Kashmir are engaged in a war of nationalism, which is forbidden in Islam. [The fight should] not be for the sake of Kashmir. It should be exclusively for Islam so that sharia is established here."
The Indian media is treating this as an extremely serious development, but it strikes me as rather comical. The thousands of young stone-throwing separatists in Kashmir believe that their lives would be better if Kashmir were separated from India and attached to Pakistan, but they have absolutely no desire to have a terror attack in Paris or to see Israel pushed into the sea.
Even more comical is another statement by Musa, declaring war on Pakistan:
"There is no Islam [in Pakistan] at present, so we are unhappy with it. We have to do jihad with Pakistan as well."
No wonder he flunked out of college.
The leaders of several separatist factions in Kashmir issued a joint statement blaming Musa's alignment with al-Qaeda on "Indian secret agencies," in order to bring a bad name to HM. According to the statement:
"Groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are non-existent in Jammu and Kashmir and there is no role for these groups within our movement which is local in nature and indigenous in character.By linking Kashmir movement with some global organizations, they (Indian agencies) are planning their roguish activities to influence the international community.
The peace-loving nations of the world have also acknowledged the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir and we are pursuing a peaceful movement for its resolution."
One wonders why Musa chose to link to al-Qaeda rather than ISIS. The reason may be that ISIS is being defeated in Syria and Iraq, and ISIS is no longer the glittering, highly fashionable terror organization it once was.
The situation is typical of the confusion that arises all to often today, when a local jihadist militant group decides to declare allegiance to al-Qaeda or to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). This declaration allows the group to claim that al-Qaeda or ISIS is now conducting terror attacks in the region, but in fact the pledge of allegiance is almost meaningless, except as a publicity stunt to impress the mainstream media, who always fall for it, hook, line and sinker. Guardian (London) and Hindustan Times and India Times and Pak Observer and India Times
Zakir Musa became leader of Hizbul Mujahedeen (HM) following the July 8 2016 death of HM leader Burhan Muzaffar Wani in a gunfight with the Indian army. Wani's death triggered large anti-Indian stone-throwing riots of the past year throughout the rest of the summer and fall, and resumed in Spring of this year. In the last year, almost ten thousand people were injured, and thousands of Kashmiris have been blinded in one or both eyes by pellet guns used by Indian security forces, and thousands of youths have been arrested.
India's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is now saying that the law and order situation is improving, with fewer stone-pelting incidents than in the past. According to the MHA, 95 terrorists have been eliminated, although 38 security personnel had lost their lives as well, while 89 were killed in 2016. Indian Express and Indian Express
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Jul-17 World View -- Indian Kashmir separatists split over announcement of Zakir Musa as al-Qaeda leader thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Jul-2017)
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What could trigger another world war?
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The ballistic missile that North Korea launched early on Saturday morning was sent from a truck-mounted mobile launcher. The missile flew for about 45 minutes, and reached an altitude of 3,700 km. The missile landed in Japanese waters in the Sea of Japan.
The missile was launched almost vertically, so that it would reach a high altitude, but would not travel beyond the Sea of Japan. If used in an actual attack, it would be launched closer to a 45 degree angle which could carry it possibly as far as the United States mainland, which would make it an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Some analysts are saying that missile could reach Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago. North Korean media claimed it could reach any target in the United States. Analysts doubt that this is true, but North Korea's missile capabilities are growing more rapidly than previously predicted, so the next missile development may be able to reach more targets.
The next challenge for North Korea will be to develop a nuclear weapon small enough to fit in the nose of the ICBM. Many analysts believe that the North Koreans will have that capability within a year or two. Guardian (London) and Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo) and NY Daily News
In a sharp reversal of policy, South Korea's president Moon Jae-in ordered talks on Saturday morning to consider permitting more units in the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system, deployed by the United States military.
Later reports indicate that additional THAAD units have been approved. Four additional launchers will be deployed, in addition to the two launchers that have already been deployed.
South Korea's previous conservative president, Park Geun-hye, approved the initial deployment, scheduled for the end of 2017. However, the schedule was speeded up for two reasons -- because of North Korea's aggressive development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and because polls indicated that Park would lose the presidential election. For that reason, the first THAAD units began deployment in March.
China reacted furiously to the deployment, even though THAAD is a purely defensive weapon, whose purpose is to knock incoming missiles out of the sky. However, THAAD comes with an extremely powerful radar system that would give the US early warning of a surprise Chinese missile attack on the US, which would reduce China's ability to launch a surprise missile attack. So China retaliated harshly against South Korea, banning South Korean goods for sale in China, banning South Korean pop stars and entertainers, and banning travel agencies from selling packaged tours to South Korea.
At times like this I always like to respond to the commonly held belief that there won't be a war because war is bad for business. If that were true, there would never be any wars. Actually, the opposite is true: If two countries have a trading and business relationship, then trade becomes just another weapon of war, as we're seeing in this case.
President Moon Jae-in is far more liberal than his predecessor, and when he took office in May, he put a hold on further THAAD deployment, and also announced that he would seek peace negotiations with North Korea. North Korea has completely rejected the peace negotiations, and repudiated them with even more aggressive ballistic missile development.
So Moon has now reportedly approved another set of THAAD launchers.
The THAAD system is deployed in southern Korea. According to analysts, it won't prevent a North Korean missile strike on South Korea's capital city, Seoul, which is only a few miles from the North Korean border, but THAAD will provide protection for southern Korea. This is important because in the case of a new Korean war, American troops would enter from the south, and so THAAD would provide protection for them. Yonhap News (Seoul) and Reuters
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One does not need Generational Dynamics to see that the world is becoming increasingly unstable, and is far less stable than it was 15 years ago. Still, some people think that world wars have been abolished, and one person recently wrote to me saying that a world war can't happen because country leaders are "rational actors"!!
There's no way to predict the scenario that will start World War III, since there are so many possibilities, but we can look at the scenarios that started previous wars and try to learn lessons from them.
Today, China is using the same "salami slicing technique" in the South China Sea and elsewhere, as it plans to take control of their entire region and control all access to it. At some point, China will take a step too far, and Vietnam or the Philippines or India or Australia or the United States will feel obligated to oppose the Chinese.
Another example is that North Korea is using a kind of "salami slicing technique" to develop a nuclear-tipped ICBM that could reach American soil. At some point, North Korea may conduct one more nuclear weapon test or one more ballistic missile test that will cause the US or China to decide to do something to stop further nuclear development, and that could trigger a war.
However, a "small action" doesn't always trigger a world war. There are numerous examples -- US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, US invasion of Iraq over fear of WMDs (58 year hypothesis), Israel's invasion of Lebanon because of Hezbollah's actions (58 year hypothesis), Saudi Arabia's invasion of Yemen, the proxy war in Syria, Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea, Russia's invasion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and so forth.
In 2011, Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, tried to reform the blasphemy laws, and was shot dead by his own bodyguard. So, if an official from India had been visiting Taseer that day, that same bodyguard might have decided to shoot and kill the Indian official, and that might have triggered retaliation or a war.
As another example, in December of last year in Ankara, a member of Turkey's security forces shot and killed Russia's ambassador to Turkey. Russia decided not to retaliate, but they might have.
As a final example, one country's "special forces" might infiltrate another country and kill the country's leader, and that could trigger retaliation and a war.
Today, some sort of legal issue in Taiwan might appear to Beijing to be moving Taiwan in the direction of independence, which would trigger a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Or we're seeing this crazy blockade of Qatar by four Arab countries, based on little more than legalisms. That could trigger some sort of war.
These kinds of situations would not have triggered a war during the 1990s because that was a generational Unraveling period, when the world was still being run by the Silent generation, survivors of World War II who had the sense to make sure it wouldn't happen again. Today, in a generational Crisis era, those generations of sensible survivors are all gone, and nationalism and xenophobia are increasing rapidly in countries around the world, so that situations like those described above could easily trigger a world war.
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There's one more possibility that's rarely mentioned because most people have the mistaken belief that Russia and China are allies. But they're only allies in the sense of "honor among thieves," where they support each other in the invasion and annexation of other countries' territories, following Hitler's example in 1939.
The Russians and the Chinese have hated each other at least since the 1200s. The 1206 victory of the Mongols over the Han Chinese still has enormous impact on Chinese thinking today. Han Chinese adopted much from Mongol culture, and many aspects of the two cultures merged -- culturally, not ethnically.
After the Mongols conquered the Han Chinese, they went on to attack the Russians. The Russian culture definitely did NOT merge with the Mongol/Chinese culture, and those hatreds exist today. In fact, Russia and China did have a border war in 1969, though it didn't last long. But today, in a generational Crisis era, it could spiral into full-scale war.
In 2014, Russia held the massive Vostok military exercises in the Far East, explaining that the military drills were necessary to prepare for war with the United States. And yet, the assets deployed during this exercise were more consistent with preparing for a defense of the Far East, a region that America would be unlikely to invade if it wanted to invade Russia at all. The only state actor that against which such a defense is needed is China. And so it appears that Russia and China claim that they're each preparing for war with the United States, but they're also preparing for war with each other.
In early June 2017, Russian media reported that the powerful road-mobile 9K720 Iskander-M missile system was installed in Russia's Eastern Military District. This joins three other major missile installations that took place in 2013, 2015 and 2016, respectively. These installations have very limited ability to strike American or Japanese targets. Their only logical purpose is to strike China.
So it seems evident that Russia is preparing for war with China, and that could be the trigger for World War III.
As I've been saying for years, Generational Dynamics predicts that the world is headed for a Clash of Civilizations world war pitting the United States, the West, India, Russia and Iran versus China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries. National Interest
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Jul-17 World View -- South Korea approves new THAAD deployment after North Korean missile test thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Jul-2017)
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North Korea launches another ballistic missile
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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France's nationalization of the STX shipyard to prevent Italy from taking ownership, when combined with sharp disagreement between the two governments over refugees and Libya, seems to indicate a rising hostility by Frances new president Emmanuel Macron towards Italy's prime minister Paolo Gentiloni.
The South Korean company STX, who owned 66% of Les Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard site in Saint-Nazaire, France, has collapsed, and the assets are up for sale. The shipyard is famous for having built giant ocean liners like the Queen Mary 2, but also can build warships.
Only one bidder came forward to buy the 66% share: Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri, for $92.6 million. The deal was accepted by France's previous president François Hollande, but with a modification that gave Fincantieri only a 51% share of the shipyard.
Macron took office in June after winning the presidential election on a pro-business platform, promising to liberalize much of the economy. However, over 7,000 jobs depend on the shipyard, and French politicians and labor unions have been complaining that if Italy has majority control, then French jobs would be the first to go, and Italian jobs would be protected. French politicians are also concerned about a shipyard site of such strategic and defense importance coming under the control of Italy’s state-owned Fincantieri.
Some politicians even complained that Fincantieri would transfer French technology and know-how to its partner in China. France's economy minister Bruno Le Maire said "We want to have all the guarantees that this know-how will not one day go to another big global economic power, a non-European one, to be precise."
Thus, pro-business and pro-EU Macron has now taken an anti-business and anti-EU position by demanding a further modification of the acquisition deal so that France and Italy would each have half ownership, and threatening nationalization otherwise. This demand infuriated the Italians, who don't see why a Korean company was allowed to own 66% of the shipyard, but Italy cannot even own 51%.
So Macron has decided that France will nationalize the shipyard, with the French government taking 100% control. According to Italy's media:
"It remains to be understood how the nationalization of STX to block Fincantieri will merge with the common framework of effort to favor greater European integration. The ministers are insisting on two points: agreements already taken with President Francois Hollande are being cancelled retroactively and it was France itself which asked Fincantieri to show interest. Rules should be respected, not changed along the way.Then there is the question of political dignity, which the government does not intend to to sell off to close the industrial deal at any price, which without shareholder control and control in the board could have more pitfalls than advantages, considering the high level of union conflict in the French shipyards. The à la carte protectionism of Macron, who speaks of Europe when it is necessary to protect oneself from unfaithful Chinese investments, does not convince."
Macron claims that this nationalization is "temporary," but no one really believes that the labor unions will permit the shipyard to go private once the nationalization is completed. France 24 and Guardian (London) and Italy 24 and EU Observer
One analysis claims that relations between France and Italy haven't been this bad since the 2006 World Cup final, when France's soccer captain Zinedine Zidane headbutted an opponent on Italy's team in the last minutes of the game.
Most of the tension is related to the flood of refugees from Libya that are pouring into Italy. Almost 100,000 refugees have crossed the Mediterranean and reached Italy so far this year. The way it works now is that human traffickers launch rubber dinghies filled with dozens of refugees from the Libyan coast, charging each of the refugees thousands of dollars. The dinghies are flimsy, and usually have just enough fuel to leave Libyan waters. The human traffickers tell the refugees that once they're out of Libyan waters, they should call a specific phone number in Italy, and Italy will dispatch a boat to save them from the rubber dinghy.
After saving the refugees from the rubber dinghies and collecting them, the government and NGO boats always then sail to an Italian port to deliver the refugees. Italy has been begging France and other countries to take some of the refugees and they've all taken refused, taking a kind of "screw you" attitude toward Italy.
Furthermore, there's an Italian border town of Ventimiglia where refugees go in the hope of crossing the border into France. those from Francophone countries like Mali and Chad often seek asylum and France. Others, like those from Eritrea, try to reach Britain.
In WW II Ventimiglia was the starting point for Jews escaping the Fascists to cross the mountains into France along the "Pass of Death." In WW II, if a Jew survived the hazardous trip along the Pass of Death and reached France, then he was safe. Today, if a refugee survives the trip along the Pass of Death, he's captured by the French border police and deported back to Italy.
All of these things infuriate the Italians, who believe that the French and other Europeans do not respect the Italians. Bloomberg and Guardian (London, 22-July) and Al Jazeera
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The latest insult occurred in the last couple of weeks, when Macron concluded a deal with Libya's two governments to set up "hot spots" in Libya where refugees can go rather than crossing the Mediterranean. Once again, Italy is furious, since they were not part of the deal. Libya was once an Italian colony, and Italian businesses and families still have many close connections in Libya. So for France to bypass Italy in Libya is just one more in a series of insults that Italy has had to deal with. VOA and AP and Human Rights Watch
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During the night on Saturday morning, North Korea launched a new ballistic missile test. Data from the test is still be analyzed, but initial estimates are that the missile may have a range of 10,400 km, which puts New York City in range of a path over the North Pole.
Leaders from South Korea, Japan, and the United States made the usual statements expressing outrage and calling the test "unacceptable." US and South Korean forces immediately conducted live fire exercises in response. BBC and 38 North
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Jul-17 World View -- France's Emmanuel Macron nationalizes shipyard to keep Italy out thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Jul-2017)
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South China Sea countries build larger navies, preparing for war with China
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says that the first mission of the UK's two brand new aircraft carriers will be to conduct freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, something that will infuriate the Chinese. Speaking to an Australian audience, Johnson said:
"One of the first things we will do with the two new colossal aircraft carriers that we have just built is send them on a freedom of navigation operation to this area, to vindicate our belief in the rules-based international system and in the freedom of navigation through those waterways which are absolutely vital for world trade."
The UK’s newest aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, is the largest ship ever built for the Royal Navy. It is undergoing its maiden sea trials off the coast of Scotland and is expected to be accepted by the navy towards the end of the year. The second ship in the class, the HMS Prince of Wales, is being fitted out in the Rosyth dock and will be officially named in September.
Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop responded to Johnson by reaffirming the close relationship between Britain and Australia:
"In a volatile and unpredictable world it is more important than ever to nurture the friendships that we know best and that matter to us the most and with people we trust the most. ...We had a long discussion about the Pacific and the opportunities for deeper British engagement in our part of the world. ... We also see the United Kingdom as being a natural partner with us in the development and security of the Pacific."
Boris Johnson's announcement comes at a particularly bad time for China's president Xi Jinping, because he's trying to strengthen his political position in the bloody back-stabbing leadership of the Chinese Communist Party ahead of the Party Congress that begins in October. Thus, Xi may feel pressured to take some kind of action or make some kind of threat in response to the UK announcement. Guardian (London) and Vice News
China's has always been following a "salami-slicing strategy" of lying about its intentions while building up a vast military naval power in the South China Sea, consisting of artificial islands and military bases that were originally claimed to be "environmental research projects." The 2016 ruling by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague completely eviscerated China's so-called 'Nine-Dash Line' claims to the South China Sea, and essentially made China an international criminal.
Each step in the salami-slicing strategy was supposed to be small enough not to raise alarms, but in fact it has raised alarms in all of China's neighbors. The result is that the entire region is militarizing, in preparation for war with China.
Vietnam in particular has been going on a weapons shopping spree from Russia. Vietnam recently placed a huge order for 64 T-90 Main Battle Tanks, four S-400 Triumf Surface-to-Air missiles and new fighter jets, likely MIG-35s, to replace their now-retired MiG-21s.
At the same time, there have been recent reports that the Trump administration has changed America's South China Sea strategy to one that's more assertive than the one that the Obama administration pursued. President Obama vetoed many "freedom of navigation operations" (FONOPS) in the South China Sea, for fear of angering the Chinese. But President Trump will approve frequent FONOPS, so that they'll be pursued on a frequent basis. The result is that there have already recently been three such operations in the South China Sea, starting with one on May 24.
Hitler tried a salami-slicing strategy in Europe in 1939, first annexing Austria and then Czechoslovakia. Those victories emboldened Hitler, who thought he could get away with anything. But then when Hitler invaded Poland, WW II began.
China's salami-slicing step by step Anschluss of the South China Sea has been very successful so far, but these successes have emboldened China, whose leaders think they can get away with anything. China is a highly militarized international criminal state, but at some point they'll go one step to far, and bring an enormous catastrophe on themselves and the world. Deutsche Welle (Berlin) and Raddington Report and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and Times of India
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Jul-17 World View -- UK to send warships to South China Sea, as China's neighbors militarize thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Jul-2017)
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Palestinian leaders incite protests and violence in Jerusalem and West Bank
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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What's becoming increasingly clear is that the large Palestinian protests at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem have gone way beyond the issues that initially provoked the protests.
On Tuesday, Israel's security forces met the demands of the Palestinian protesters at the al-Aqsa Mosque / Temple Mount in Jerusalem by removing the metal detectors and cameras that had been installed following the deadly gun attack by three gunmen in the mosque on Friday morning, July 14, that resulted in the deaths of two Druze policemen.
Removing the metal detectors and cameras was supposed to solve the problem, returning everything to the status quo ante. Instead, the removal seems to have energized the young protesters, declaring a major victory against "occupiers," and vowing to continue the protests.
One Palestinian is quoted as saying:
"Today is a joyful day, full of celebration and sorrow at the same time - sorrow for the people who lost their lives and were injured.We are under occupation and the al-Aqsa Mosque is a red-line to everyone in Jerusalem - actually, to everyone in Palestine, and all over the Muslim world - but much more for the people of [Jerusalem]. It's dearer than their own lives."
To a large extent, the Palestinian leadership is increasingly seen as irrelevant to the "Oslo generation" that grew up after the 1993 Oslo accords that were supposed to bring peace to the Mideast. Instead, the Oslo accords are perceived as having accomplished nothing, and that perception is completely correct. The Oslo generation see the so-called "Mideast peace process" as nothing more than a failed series of humiliations for Palestinians, and proof that Hamas leaders and Palestinian Authority leaders are worthless.
The desire for revenge against Palestinian leaders and Israelis is palpable, and is now being expressed by means of protests at the al-Aqsa mosque / Temple Mount. The National (UAE) and Al Jazeera (Qatar) and Times of Israel
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The al-Aqsa Palestinian protests are "organic," in the sense that they're coming from the people, mainly from the Oslo generation, and not because they're being directed by Palestinian leaders. Palestinian leaders are encouraging them, but it's increasingly clear that the leaders are following the people, rather than vice-versa, in the sense that this encouragement is for something that is going to happen anyway.
The Palestinian leaders can "see the way the wind is blowing," and are hoping to increase their own credibility and popularity by encouraging the protests and inciting violence.
Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouti said:
"We are on the threshold of a big shift. What is going on today is not random or transient. It could be the beginning of a third intifada that is different from the others. What is unique about this is that it’s not individual actions, but a popular movement capable of attracting huge numbers of people. This popular momentum could recharge the Palestinian people. It may take time but we are on the way. It will override the PA. They don't even know it exists. This will bring about a change in leadership."
Some 2,000 members of Hamas marched in the Gaza strip on Wednesday, declaring "victory" and calling for a new "day of rage" on Friday, not only in Jerusalem but throughout the West Bank.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Muslims to "intensify the popular struggle," and added:
"We support you and are proud of you and of everything you have done. You are caring for and guarding the Al-Aqsa compound, and guarding your lands and your dignity and your religion and the holy sites. This is the appropriate reaction to anybody hurting our holy sites. Jerusalem is our capital and is our sovereignty, and what you did was the right thing. You stood as one man and we support you and support everything you do."
Abbas has also called on his Tanzim militia for an escalation of the struggle and for large-scale demonstrations against Israel. The Tanzim faction has been known for violence against Israeli forces in the past.
There's also a larger subtext going on. As we've been reporting for weeks, there has been a major split in Arab world with Saudi Arabia and Qatar leading the two factions. Turkey is allied with Qatar, while Egypt is allied with Saudi Arabia.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has fantasies of restoring the ancient Ottoman Empire, and perhaps sees the al-Aqsa crisis as a way of gaining influence. On Tuesday, he urged all Muslims to visit Jerusalem to protect the holy places:
"Anyone who has the opportunity should visit Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa mosque. Come, let’s all protect Jerusalem."
At one level, this is an incitement to protests and violence, as he's encouraging all Muslims to travel to Jerusalem.
At another level, Erdogan's incitement is a lot more ambitious. The country Jordan is in a partnership with Israel to administer the al-Aqsa mosque. Jordan is allied with the Saudis in the Saudi-Qatar crisis. Turkey is allied with Qatar and Hamas. So Erdogan's incitement can be seen as a call for Turkey to replace Jordan as guardians of the al-Aqsa mosque. Middle East Eye and Times of Israel and Times of Israel
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Jul-17 World View -- Israel braces for new 'day of rage' at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on Friday thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Jul-2017)
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India says that it will remain 'firm and resolute' but 'reasonable'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The border dispute involving China, India and Bhutan over the Doklam Plateau is becoming increasingly dangerous. China is saying that it's running out of patience, and China's state-run media is escalating the military threats to India over the Doklam issue, to the point of threatening war.
We've been reporting a standoff between India's army and China's army on Doklam plateau in the tiny country of Bhutan. China is attempting to annex the region, and on June 16 sent Chinese troops and construction workers to begin road construction. Bhutan troops tried to prevent the Chinese troop incursion, but they were overrun. India sent in its own troops, saying that it did so when Bhutan invoked a treaty with India and asked for help. The result is a standoff, though no bullets have been fired yet.
An editorial in China's state-run Global Times began:
"The public's patience is running short with India's Doklam transgression. Nothing can stand in the way of China's and Chinese people's dignity. No government in the world can stand still doing nothing while its borders are being violated."
Right away we run into a problem, because China is violating borders and international law in the South China Sea, creating illegal artificial islands and turning them into huge military bases, and constantly lying about what they're doing. China was proven to be an international criminal by the 2016 ruling of the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague. That ruling completely eviscerated China's so-called 'Nine-Dash Line' claims to the South China Sea.
Because China has repeatedly lied about the South China Sea, it's impossible to believe anything they say about anything else. ("Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus.")
Still, the above statement is extremely dangerous because it refers to "the public's patience," invoking nationalism and xenophobia by the Chinese people, and seeking to incite it. The editorial continues:
"As India continues down this intransigent path, perhaps it is time that it be taught a second lesson. Their troops in Doklam could either withdraw voluntarily, be captured or may be killed when border disputes escalate, [according to] Liu Youfa, China's former consul general in Mumbai."
This is pretty much a direct threat of war.
The phrase "second lesson" alludes to the 1962 Sino-Indian war, a brief but bloody war between the two countries over the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern Himalayas. China is viewed as having won that war.
India's defense minister Arun Jaitley was recently asked about the 1962 war, and he responded: "If they are trying to remind us, the situation in 1962 was different and India of 2017 is different."
The editorial also threatens a Chinese invasion of India-controlled Kashmir:
"No matter what vassalage relationship India maintains with Bhutan, it baffles this author that India has the courage to transgress another country on its behalf. And in this case, Indian troops even entered into Doklam from the China-Sikkim border. Well, if this kind of logic holds, a third country can certainly enter into Kashmir, including India-controlled Kashmir, upon Pakistan's invitation. (This is not a far-fetched idea.)"
On Tuesday, China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement:
"On July 24, 2017 local time, when giving an interview to the press in Bangkok on China-India standoff incident, Foreign Minister Wang Yi noted that it is very clear who is right and who is wrong regarding this issue, and that even Indian senior officials have publicly said that Chinese troops have not intruded into Indian territory, which means that India admitted that it has entered into Chinese territory. The solution to this issue is simple, which is that the Indian troops back out honestly."
This statement is weasel-worded, in that Doklam Plateau is Bhutan's territory, not India's territory. If China is so sure of its claim, perhaps it should ask the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) to decide the matter.
So China is demanding that India withdraw its troops, and permit the Chinese army to annex Bhutan's Doklam Plateau unopposed. China says that it is running out of patience, and threatens to invade before long. Global Times (Beijing) and China's Foreign Ministry
India is responding to China's threats by saying that it will remain "firm and resolute" militarily, according to Indian media, and will thwart any attempt by China to “bully” Bhutan, while being “reasonable” at the politico-diplomatic level to resolve the ongoing troop stand-off with the People’s Liberation Army in the Doklam area in Bhutanese territory.
According to India's Army vice-chief Lt-General Sarath Chand on Tuesday"
"On the North, we have China which has a large landmass, huge resources and a large standing Army ... Despite having the Himalayas between us, China is bound to be a threat for us in years ahead."
Indian media says that it is reinforcing its military in the region:
"Much like the Line of Control with Pakistan, Indian soldiers are prepared for the long haul near the tri-junction with China as well. Apart from the already present 63 and 112 Brigades (over 3,000 troops each) in east and north-east Sikkim, the Army has moved up another 2,500 soldiers from the 164 Brigade to Zuluk and Nathang Valley in the state to further reinforce its military stance, as was first reported by TOIon July 11."
Both China and India are hardening their positions, both with words and with military reinforcements. The Chinese media are making it clear that if India does not withdraw soon, then China will invade. China believes that it will easily win, and India believes that "this time it's different." The situation is extremely dangerous, and could lead to war very quickly, either intentionally or through miscalculation. Times of India
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Jul-17 World View -- China escalates its military threats over its border dispute with India at Doklam Plateau thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Jul-2017)
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Massive car bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, targets Hazaras, kills 36
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A massive early morning car bombing in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, killed at least 36, wounded dozens more, and damaged 15 shops.
The blast occurred in a part of the city where the ethnic Hazara community live, near the house of the deputy government Chief Executive Mohammad Mohaqiq, also a Hazara. The Hazaras are Shia Muslims, and have often been targeted by Taliban groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The same area has been the scene of several attacks, including the suicide attack that killed prominent Shia Muslim cleric Ramazan Hussainzada on June 15. Hussainzada was also a senior leader of Afghanistan’s Hazara community.
Monday's massive attack occurred exactly one year after another massive Taliban attack on Hazaras in Kabul. At least 80 people were killed in what was considered the worst terror attack in Kabul since 2001.
The attack on Hazaras last year on July 24 energized the "Hazara Enlightenment Movement," an activist movement demanding an end to discrimination against Hazaras by the Pashtun government. There was a big march planned for Monday to commemorate last year's attack, but Afghan president Ashraf Ghani convinced the movement leaders to cancel the march, for reasons related to security. The march was cancelled, and then several hours later Monday's massive car explosion took place.
In the future, we can expect to hear more from the Hazara Enlightenment Movement. Tolo News (Kabul) and Reuters and Khaama Press (Kabul)
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There is a fantasy at large among politicians, generals, journalists and analysts in various nations around the world that the Taliban in Afghanistan can be convinced to enter peace negotiations, or that they can be defeated on the battlefield, or that they'll get tired of fighting. This is the sort of fatuous nonsense that politicians and generals tend to claim, when they're fighting the last war.
Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was the extremely bloody civil war fought between 1991 and 1996, filled with enormous atrocities, massacres, rapes, torture, and so forth. The war was fought mainly between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan.
The Pashtuns won that war. Radicalized Pashtuns called themselves the Taliban, and ruled Afghanistan brutally and viciously after the war. They also permitted their good pal Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan as a home base from which to launch international terror attacks. After 9/11/2001, the US-based coalition invaded Afghanistan and backed the Northern Alliance in quickly defeating the Taliban. Thus, the Pashtun victory in the civil war was snatched away and turned into defeat for the Pashtuns and victory for the Northern Alliance.
The reason that the Taliban lost the 2001 war so quickly was that everyone was traumatized and war-weary from the civil war in the previous decade, and had little will to fight another war. That's what always happens to the generations that survive a generational crisis war. They're traumatized by the atrocities the other side committed, but they're even more traumatized by the atrocities that they and others on their own side committed.
Today, 16 years later, a new, younger generation is coming of age, with no personal memory of the 1990s civil war. These young Pashtuns have not been told of the atrocities that their parents committed. They've only been told of the atrocities that the other side committed -- the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in the Northern Alliance. They want revenge for those atrocities, so they do things like set off car bombs in crowds of Hazaras in Kabul.
So those who are looking for a way to bring peace to Afghanistan are dreaming. There is no solution to this problem. And when I say "no solution," I don't mean that the politicians and generals simply haven't been clever enough to figure out the solution. What I mean is that no solution exists. Taliban is strongest today as it has been since 2001, and will continue to get stronger, as young post-war generations continue to grow and come of age.
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Monday's bombing makes clear that America, the World's Policeman, has a stark choice in Afghanistan: walk away and let the Taliban take over completely, or try a military solution with more American troops.
President Barack Obama, who never had a clue what was going on in the world, decided to go for a 30,000 troop surge. In December 2009, Obama gave a West Point speech where he announced the surge:
"As cadets, you volunteered for service during this time of danger. Some of you fought in Afghanistan. Some of you will deploy there. As your Commander-in-Chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined, and worthy of your service. And that's why, after the Afghan voting was completed, I insisted on a thorough review of our strategy. Now, let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war during this review period. Instead, the review has allowed me to ask the hard questions, and to explore all the different options, along with my national security team, our military and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and our key partners. And given the stakes involved, I owed the American people -- and our troops -- no less.This review is now complete. And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan."
Obama was heavily criticized for announcing an 18-month end date, which he had to extend several times. Obama announced the Afghan troop surge in the hope of duplicating the success of President Bush's troop surge in Iraq in 2007. I wrote a detailed comparison of the Afghanistan versus Iraq wars in mid-2009 in "American army general warns of imminent defeat in Afghanistan war,", showing that the Iraq "surge" strategy could not work in Afghanistan. This comparison was based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, and it turned out to be completely correct. In the end, the troop surge accomplished nothing. In interviews last 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.
Now President Donald Trump is faced with the same decision. One difference is that his close adviser, Steve Bannon, knows very well what is going on in the world. As I've described in the past, I've worked with Steve Bannon off and on for several years in the past, both on his movie "Generation Zero" and when I was cross-posting articles on the Breitbart National Security site. So I know that Steve Bannon is an expert on military history and world history, and he also has an expert understanding of Generational Dynamics and generational theory.
So Steve Bannon understands very well the generational analysis that concludes that there is no solution to the problem in Afghanistan, and has undoubtedly conveyed this conclusion to Trump. And this has thrown the administration's Afghan policy into confusion, with policy differences between those who are still fighting the last war and those who don't want to repeat Obama's mistakes.
What should a politician do when you have to solve a problem for which there's no solution in existence?
One interesting example to look at is Greece's financial crisis, when it became clear in 2009 that Greece had lied about its financials for years and was overwhelmingly and unsustainably in debt. The Greek crisis lurched from one last-minute fix to the next, with some sort of compromise often reached on Sunday night, before the Asian markets opened.
As I wrote many times, the Greek financial crisis had no solution. By that, I didn't mean the EU politicians and economists haven't been clever enough to figure out the solution. I meant there was no solution in existence. Indeed today, Greece is still overwhelmingly and unsustainably in debt.
So what happened? The EU politicians "kicked the can down the road." The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund loaned enough money to Greece to make all their bond payments for a few months, and then the crisis would rise again. These compromises did nothing to resolve the problem -- in fact, they usually made the problem worse by increasing Greece's debt. But "kicking the can down the road" allowed them to ignore the problem for a few months. Interestingly enough, they're still kicking the can down the road, but they've done it so often that it doesn't make news any more.
So presumably what the Trump administration needs to do in Afghanistan is to find a way to "kick the can down the road." In fact, there are reports that the Trump administration is considering sending 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Those troops would be no more effective than the 30,000 troops that the Obama administration sent, but they would "kick the can down the road" for possibly as much as a year or two, or at least until some military disaster occurs in Afghanistan. Daily Caller and Washington Post and Politico
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Jul-17 World View -- Massive Kabul bombing on Monday leaves US Afghan policy in tatters thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Jul-2017)
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Global Witness report finds most DRC mining revenue is wasted in corruption
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The norm in country after country in Africa is that country leaders refuse to step down when their mandates end. They demand money from Western nations for to end poverty or help with climate change or whatever, and then they put the money they receive into their own foreign bank accounts, or they use it to build mansions for themselves, or they use it buy weapons to kill their opposition. That's why, in 30-40 years of massive aid payments to African countries, most people are no better off than they were decades ago.
Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), appears to have brought this combination of raw exercise of power and raw corruption to new heights. A new analysis by the Congo Research Group at New York University and the Pulitzer Center shows that by channeling public money to himself and his family, he's made the Kabila family into billionaires
Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and his family own, either partially or wholly, more than 80 companies and businesses in the country and abroad. He and his children own more than 71,000 hectares (175,444) of farmland. His family owns diamond mines, a part of the country's largest mobile phone network, companies that mine mineral deposits, gold and limestone, a luxury hotel, stakes in an airline, a share of the country's banks, and a fast-food franchise.
With tentacles reaching into so many businesses, it's not surprising that Kabila is willing to use any method -- massacres, atrocities, jailings, torture -- to stay in power. His mandate ran out on December 19 of last year, at which time he was supposed to step down. Instead, he pulled a breathtaking stunt late last year by doing everything possible to prevent new elections from taking place, and then claimed that he couldn't step down because there hadn't been any elections to select a president to replace him.
In December there was a threat of civil war in DRC, but the Catholic Church intervened and brokered an agreement: Elections would be held in December of 2017 to choose Kabila's successor, and this time Kabila would really step down. However, the agreement was a farce: It was signed by members of Kabila's government, but it wasn't even signed by Kabila himself. Since then, it's been pretty clear that Kabila has no intention of stepping down.
Poverty and Kabila's massive corruption are being blamed for the increase in violence in DRC, especially in the central province of Kasai, where than 3,000 people have been killed and 1.4 million displaced in escalating violence blamed on a government-sponsored militia. The UN has identified more than 80 mass graves and said it had found toddlers with limbs chopped off and pregnant women with their bellies sliced open, their unborn babies mutilated.
Unfortunately, this is the norm in many countries in Africa, and the reason why many international agencies and businesses are no longer willing to invest in Africa, as the money just goes to waste. Furthermore, many people are concerned that Kabila's refusal to step down is resulting in violence that is destabilizing the whole region. NY University and Guardian (London) and Bloomberg
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A different report, this time by Global Witness, has found that more than $750 million in mining revenue that was supposed to go into DRC's national treasury has instead gone into the pockets of corrupt government officials. Canadian mining companies, such as Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. and Toronto-based Banro Corp., have been some of the biggest foreign investors in DRC mines, and have given millions of dollars in payments to official agencies and state enterprises in the country. They are now learning that the money was siphoned off by politically connected insiders, with some of the funds distributed among corrupt networks linked to President Joseph Kabila’s regime.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is Africa's biggest producer of copper and the world's largest supplier of cobalt used in batteries for electric cars. It is also rich in gold, diamonds and coltan, used in mobile phones, but its people remain among the poorest in the world.
A key culprit in this diversion of funds is the main state-owned mining company, Gécamines, a close ally of President Joseph Kabila. It receives more than a hundred million dollars annually from private companies in Congo’s mining sector, but appears to pass on just a tiny percentage of that to the state coffers. Gécamines’ most important and lucrative business relationships are with major international mining companies, which often have Western investors and pensions tied up in their profits and risks.
The Global Witness report, "The Regime Cash Machine," blames a toxic combination of corruption and mismanagement in DRC's revenues agencies and state mining companies. Instead of going to the regime, the money should have gone to basic services such as schools, hospitals and roads. Global Witness and Globe and Mail (Canada) and Bloomberg
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Jul-17 World View -- DR Congo's Joseph Kabila brings the art of power and corruption to new heights thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Jul-2017)
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Saudi-led coalition replaces its 13 demands with 6 principles
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Kuwait on Thursday expelled 15 Iranian diplomats and ordered the closure of several Iranian embassy missions. It's unclear whether Iran's ambassador, Alireza Enayati, was included in the expulsions.
The expulsions will further complicate the growing Arab crisis, where Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt are enforcing a land, sea and air blockade of Qatar, because of Qatar's alleged close relations with Iran. Kuwait has been trying to mediate among the parties and resolve the crisis, but that will presumably be more difficult now that Kuwait has expelled Iran's diplomats.
The expulsion stems from the discovery in August, 2015, of a large cache of weapons in a farm house in the village of al-Abdali, and the arrest of the three owners of the house. The three men were accused of being members Iran's puppet terror regime Hezbollah, and of being part of what has been nicknamed the "Abdali terror cell."
The cache of weapons was quite large, and included a total of 19,000 kg of ammunition, 144 kg of explosives, 68 weapons, and 204 grenades. The farm house is near the border with Iraq, and Kuwait said that Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) smuggled the weapons across the border from Iraq to be used in terror attacks against the Sunni Muslim government of Kuwait.
About 20 members of the Abdali terror cell were convicted on January 12, 2016, of working for Hezbollah and the IRGC, and of smuggling explosives from Iran. However, the an appeals court reversed the conviction later in the year.
Finally, last month, on June 18, Kuwait's supreme court, whose rulings are final, reversed the appeals court decision. The cell mastermind was sentenced to life in prison, while 20 other members of the cell, all Shia Muslims, were sentenced to between 5 and 15 years in prison.
Kuwait's information minister said on Friday,
"Following the supreme court ruling on the case ... the government of Kuwait has decided to take measures, in accordance with diplomatic norms and the Vienna Convention, towards its relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Iran's foreign ministry reacted angrily, saying that the accusations that it was behind a terrorist cell were baseless, and threatened revenge:
"Iran’s strong objection has been communicated to Kuwait’s chargé d’affaires. It was reiterated that Iran reserves the right to a reciprocal measure. ...It is regrettable that the Kuwaiti officials, are acting based on provocations raised by adventurist regional sides and are leveling accusations against Iran in the current sensitive conditions, instead of doing their best to reduce tensions."
However, not all of the convicts are in custody. A Kuwaiti newspaper on Monday reported that in the hours just after the Kuwait's Supreme Court handed down its decision, 14 of the convicts fled to Iran. They used small speedboats to leave Qatar and reach international waters, where an Iranian vessel was waiting to pick them up. Al Jazeera (14-Aug-2015) and AFP and Ahlul Bayt (Iran) and Gulf News
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Kamal Kharrazi, the head of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations said on Friday that Iran was open to “dialogue” with Saudi Arabia despite escalating tensions. Kharrazi said:
"We know they (the Saudis) have made many mistakes in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq and Syria, but we are still for dialogue."
A laughable statement like that shows why a resolution to the Qatar blockade crisis is still very far away.
On June 5, four Arab countries -- Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt -- imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar. The reasons given were Qatar's support for Iran, Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which the four countries consider to be a terrorist group, and Qatar's aggressive use of al-Jazeera to broadcast incitement to overthrow their governments.
The four countries listed 13 specific demands that would be necessary to resolve the crisis. The demands included: sever most ties with Iran; sever all ties to the Muslim Brotherhood; shut down al-Jazeera; terminate Turkey's military presence in Qatar; pay reparations and compensation for loss of life and other, financial losses caused by Qatar’s policies in recent years. France 24
In a televised address on Friday, Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani referred the four Arab countries enforcing the blockade as "perpetrators":
"The perpetrators have undermined our sovereignty and independence by fabricating false statements to mislead international public opinion. ...We are open to dialogue to resolve the outstanding problems [so long as Qatar's] sovereignty is respected."
Saudi Arabia has always said that its 13 demands were non-negotiable, but last week the Saudi-led coalition did appear to be softening its demands for resolving the crisis, when it announced that it was replacing the 13 specific demands with six broad principles. According to a Saudi analyst, "I don't see this as a softening of the quartet's position on Qatar per se, as much as a measure taken to restart the negotiation process. ... These six principles are best viewed as an effort to set the foundation for meaningful negotiation process."
The six principles are:
"1. Commitment to combat extremism and terrorism in all its forms and to prevent their financing or the provision of safe havens.2. Prohibiting all acts of incitement and all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred and violence.
3. Full commitment to Riyadh Agreement 2013 and the supplementary agreement and its executive mechanism for 2014 within the framework of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for Arab States.
4. Commitment to all the outcomes of the Arab-Islamic-US Summit held in Riyadh in May 2017.
5. To refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of States and from supporting illegal entities.
6. The responsibility of all States of international community to confront all forms of extremism and terrorism as a threat to international peace and security."
These extremely vague principles do provide a possible basis for compromise, but it's hard to see how anything will change in the long run. Qatar is going to continue to broadcast al-Jazeera, which is going to continue to air speakers from the Muslim Brotherhood, which Qatar supports, but which the four boycotting nations consider to be terrorists -- terrorists who are on al-Jazeera advocating the overthrow of their governments. This is a core difference between Qatar and the four nations, and it won't be resolved. And if it's papered over, it will become an issue again soon. Al Jazeera (Qatar) and The National (UAE) and BBC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Jul-17 World View -- Kuwait expels Iran's diplomats as Saudi Arabia softens Qatar demands thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Jul-2017)
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Power struggle over metal detectors as Mahmoud Abbas threatens to cut ties
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Thousands of Palestinians heeded the words of Muslim leaders and Palestinian political factions and came to Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque on Friday to protest the metal detectors that Israeli security forces had placed outside the al-Aqsa Mosque / Temple Mount compound. Three Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured in the worst Jerusalem violence in years at the al-Aqsa mosque, while three Israelis were killed in their homes by a knifing attack in the same time frame.
Thousands of Palestinians refused to enter the al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers, which would have required going through metal detectors. Instead, they filled the streets and prayed peacefully, facing Mecca. Israel had deployed 3,000 police and soldiers in and around Jerusalem’s Old City, in order to keep the situation under control.
But after the Friday prayers ended, many of the Palestinians confronted police, throwing stones and other objects, as police responded with stun grenades, water cannons and tear gas. Three Palestinians were shot dead in separate incidents during the clashes.
In a separate incident, a Palestinian teenager broke into an Israeli home in a West Bank settlement as the family were eating dinner and began stabbing family members, killing a man and two of his children.
A number of anti-Israel protests were held in capitals across the Middle East and Asia on Friday. Thousands gathered in Amman, Beirut, Istanbul and Kuala Lumpur Friday afternoon in solidarity with Palestinian worshipers in Jerusalem who have been protesting the metal detectors. BBC and Times of Israel and Reuters and Times of Israel
The metal detectors were installed last week after a deadly gun battle inside the al-Aqsa Mosque / Temple Mount compound on Friday morning, July 14. Three gunmen, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, killed two police officers.
Israeli officials point out that metal detectors are used in Jewish and Muslim holy sites around the worl, including at the mosques in Mecca and Medina. However, Palestinian activists insist that they can't be used at the al-Aqsa mosque. Some have accused the Israelis of a plot to take control of the al-Aqsa mosque, and of using the metal detectors as a step in that plot. One Israeli Islamic leader, Kamal Khatib, accused the Israelis of inserting chemical substances into the al-Aqsa Mosque wall to cause corrosion, and give the Israelis an excuse to take over the mosque as its walls deteriorate.
Israeli government officials themselves have been split on this issue, with some arguing that the metal detectors are so divisive that it would be better to remove them. However, the government made a final decision that they would not be removed.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas announced late on Friday that he was freezing all contacts with Israel:
"I, on behalf of the Palestinian leadership, announce... a freeze of all contacts with the occupation state on all levels until Israel commits to canceling all the measures against our Palestinian people in general and Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque in particular.[The measures were] falsely presented as a security measure to take control over Al-Aqsa mosque.
The steps taken by Israel are leading to a religious confrontation and an evasion from a diplomatic process."
Israeli security forces have announced that the metal detectors and other security measures are necessary for the safety of the worshippers, and will not be taken down.
So it appears that a major power struggle is in progress, and one side or the other will have to step down.
Abbas is very unpopular with the Palestinian people, who see him as a failed leader who has been unable to do anything to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank, despite having been in power for years. Friday's announcement was undoubtedly motivated at least partially to increase his popularity.
However, Abbas appears to have left ambiguous the question of whether "a freeze on all contacts" means that the security agreement that the Palestinians have with Israel will also be frozen. Under this agreement, Palestinian security forces arrest Palestinians in the West Bank who are suspected of planning terror attacks on Israel. This agreement has undoubted prevented many terror attacks, but it's very unpopular with the Palestinians, who see it as a way for the Palestinian security forces to be doing Israel's dirty work.
If the security agreement were suspended, it would mean that Israel would have to deploy thousands of its own police in cities across the West Bank, something that would be even less popular with Palestinians than the agreement itself. Abbas has threatened to end the security agreement in the past, but has never done so, probably for these reasons. Washington Post and Times of Israel and MEMRI
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Jul-17 World View -- Palestinian 'day of rage' in Jerusalem results in six deaths, hundreds injured thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Jul-2017)
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Turkey commemorates first anniversary of attempted coup
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The diplomatic crisis between Germany and Turkey deepened on Thursday when Germany's foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel told a press conference that it was no longer safe for German people and businesses to travel to Turkey. The announcement was triggered by Turkey's detention of a Germany human rights defender and two German journalists with no credible charges or supporting evidence.
Gabriel broke off his summer vacation and returned to Berlin to deal with the crisis that arose out of the arrests, particularly of German human rights activist Peter Steudtner for allegedly aiding a "terror" group.
Gabriel declared a “re-orientation” of Germany's Turkey policy, and said that the country’s actions show it's “departing from the basis of European values.":
"[Steudtner] never wrote about Turkey, he had no contacts in the political establishment ... and never appeared as a critic. ...One can’t advise anyone to invest in a country when there is no legal certainty and where companies, completely respectable companies, are presented as terrorists. I therefore do not see how, as the government, we can still guarantee German company investments in Turkey if, as has happened, arbitrary expropriations for political reasons have not only been threatened but have already taken place. ...
German citizens are no longer safe from arbitrary arrests in Turkey. We have no other choice -- because we are responsible for the protection of our citizens of our country -- but to adapt our travel and safety advisory to Turkey and let Germans know what can happen to them when they travel to Turkey.
We can’t go on as we have before. ... We have to be clearer than before so that those in charge in Ankara understand that such a policy won’t be without consequences."
Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said:
"We think these are domestic political statements for the upcoming elections in Germany. Unfortunately, this has become fashionable in Germany. People are being anti-Turkey and demonstrating their paranoid animosity against our president to score political points. ... We are strongly condemning suggestions that German nationals visiting Turkey would not be secure. We think that those unfortunate statements are an investment for internal politics aimed at the approaching elections in Germany.How come Germany tolerates this? When we talk about them, they respond ‘We have justice and independence.’ Well, why don’t they respect Turkish justice? This is disrespectful to Turkey. They will respect our justice. ...
There was direct interference in the Turkish judiciary and the comments used overstepped the mark. The comments again show the double standards in their approach to the law of those who prevent terrorists from being brought to justice while embracing members of terrorist groups who target our country."
Germany's actions were triggered by Steudtner's arrest, and also because Turkish authorities had, several weeks ago, handed their German counterparts a list of 68 German companies they accused of having links to Erdogan's enemy Fethullah Gülen. Deutsche Welle and Al Monitor and Hurriyet (Ankara)
Life in Turkey has changed dramatically in the year that's passed since the failed coup attempt on July 15 of last year. Well over 100,000 people have lost their jobs or been arrested with no credible charges and no supporting evidence.
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan says all of these people were involved in the coup attempt, because they had a connection to his former friend, and now enemy, Fethullah Gülen, the 76-year-old political enemy of Erdogan, living since 1999 in self-imposed exile in the Pocono Mountains in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, after splitting with Erdogan.
Gülen is a Muslim cleric with a worldwide network of schools and businesses, run by his followers. For Erdogan, this worldwide network was for many years a good thing, a sign of a progressive Turkey, fighting extremism, and providing education and jobs. But relations between Erdogan and Gülen started to sour in 2012, and were severed completely in 2013. Since then, this huge international network has turned in Erdogan's eyes from a good thing to a bad thing, promoting terrorism instead of fighting extremism. Erdogan now claims that last year's coup was planned and executed under the direction of Gülen and the Fethullah Terror Group (FETO).
Gülen's name is linked to large numbers of schools and businesses, and Erdogan is accusing anyone linked to these schools and businesses, as being linked directly to Gülen and to last year's coup. For example, anyone who has an account in the Gülen-linked Aysa Bank, who has placed children in Gülen-linked schools, who has participated in fund-raising events for Gülen linked humanitarian causes can be fired or arrested and jailed. Anyone having a phone with the encryption application BYLOCK, allegedly used by the Gülen organization, is also assumed to be guilty of participating in the coup.
There are many reasons why Erdogan's reasons for firing and jailing over 100,000 people do not make sense:
During the last year, Erdogan's Turkey has been arresting tens of thousands of Turkish citizens, and only occasionally a foreign national. The arrest of German national Peter Steudtner appears to have been a "last straw" for the Germans. Irish Examiner and Hurriyet (Ankara) and AFP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Jul-17 World View -- Relations between Germany and Turkey spiral into crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Jul-2017)
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The world is running out of sand
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Cambodia's Ministry of Mines and Energy has banned all sales and exports of sand to other countries. For years, the principal customer of Cambodia's sand exports has been Singapore, which has used the sand to reclaim land along its coasts. Using land reclamation, Singapore has expanded its landmass by more than 20% since its independence in 1965. During the same period, Singapore's population tripled.
The new decree, issued on July 10, bans all exports of "construction sand and mud sand" from southwestern Koh Kong province to overseas but stops short of outlawing domestic sales. Other southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, have implemented bans in the past.
Environmental groups have been pressing the government to stop the export of sand, saying the digging and dredging has had a serious impact on coastal ecosystems and surrounding land. In one Cambodian district where sand dredging had been taking place, nearly 200 people last month held a protest against the sand dredging. They called on authorities to take action after nine homes collapsed into the river, as a result of the dredging.
Cambodia had already suspended sand exports in November of last year, because of a corruption scandal. Singapore claims that it had imported 72.2 million tonnes of sand between 2007 and 2015, the Cambodian government officials said that only 16 million tonnes had been sent. In money terms, the UN said that Cambodia had exported $752 million in sand, but Cambodia claimed it was only $5 million worth of sand.
Environmental activists are skeptical that the new ban will be enforced. After Cambodia suspended sand exports in November of last year, illegal exports continued despite the order. Khmer Times and Khmer Times (12-June) and Radio Free Asia (2-Nov-2016) and AFP and Radio Free Asia (5-May)
In 2014, the United Nations Environment Program concluded that:
"Sand and gravel represent the highest volume of raw material used on earth after water. Their use greatly exceeds natural renewal rates. Moreover, the amount being mined is increasing exponentially, mainly as a result of rapid economic growth in Asia. ...Negative effects on the environment are unequivocal and are occurring around the world. The problem is now so serious that the existence of river ecosystems is threatened in a number of locations."
Sand and gravel are used for land reclamation, as in the case of Singapore, but for a lot of other things as well. They're the main constituents in concrete and asphalt that are used in building constructions, roads, and many other structures. A typical American house requires more than two hundred tons of sand, gravel, and crushed stone for the foundation, basement, garage, and driveway, as well as the section of street in front of it. A mile long highway requires 38,000 tons.
In the last four years, China has used as much concrete as the United States in one century, according to Pascal Peduzzi, the author of the UN report quoted above. In India, sand is so scarce that markets for it are dominated by criminal "sand mafias."
According to the UN report:
"Five countries — China (58%), India (6.75%), the United States (2%), Brazil and Turkey — produce 70% of the world’s cement. However, cement demand by China has increased exponentially by 437.5% in 20 years, while use in the rest of the world increased by 59.8%. Each Chinese citizen is currently using 6.6 times more cement than a U.S. citizen. Demand continues to increase with new infrastructure and renewal of existing infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, houses) — all dependent on the availability of aggregates."
UN's Peduzzi says that Lake Poyang, for example, is China's biggest freshwater lake but also its biggest source of sand, with estimates of over 230 million cubic meters of sand extracted each year. This is lowering the lake's water level, potentially damaging surrounding wetlands and affecting the flow of nearby rivers, including the Yangtze.
According to Peduzzi, the exponentially growing demand for sand cannot continue without substantially harming the environment, and the world needs a "reporting mechanism at the global level which allows recording the amount of sand and gravels used by countries." New Yorker (29-May) and UN Environment Program (PDF, 2014) and Nikkei
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Jul-17 World View -- Cambodia bans all sales of sand to Singapore thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(20-Jul-2017)
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The violence of generational Awakening eras
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Patriarch Abune Antonios, the 90 year old former head of the Eritrean Orthodox Christian Church, was trotted out from government prisons on Sunday to attend a mass for the first time since he was arrested in 2007.
The Eritrean government, which is possibly the most vicious and repressive government in the world, has been under international pressure from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the UN Special Rapporteur on Eritrea, the French government, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the European Parliament.
So they let Antonios out of prison for the first time in ten years, and let him participate in the mass on Sunday. Seeing the patriarch for the first time in ten years was considered a blessing by the worshippers, but the whole show was really a farce, and probably a humiliation to Antonios. They forbade him from saying a word, and after the mass they bundled him back to prison. These morons in the Eritrean government think that if the 90-year-old Patriarch Antonios were allowed to say anything, then it would bring down their government. What idiots. Christian Post and Independent Catholic News
In 2004, Eritrea's government decided that it disapproved of the religious beliefs of the Medhane Alem Orthodox Church, an evangelical offshoot of Eritrea's Orthodox Christian Church. They arrested three priests without charges, and sentenced them by a secret administrative procedure to five years each.
At that time, Patriarch Abune Antonios was head of the Eritrean Orthodox Church. Antonios protested the detention of the three priests, and in general for the government's interference in church affairs. The government demanded that Antonios close the Medhane Alem church, and that he excommunicate its 3,000 members. Antonios refused.
In January 2006, Antonios was notified that he had been dismissed from office, and on May 27, 2007, he was arrested and imprisoned in an unknown location. The Eritrean government has placed people of their own choosing in charge of the church.
The Eritrean government has always persecuted Christians, but in recent months that persecution has become particularly vicious. Police have been going from house to house, demanding to know the occupants' religious beliefs, and arresting them if they give the wrong answer. It's believed that hundreds of Orthodox Christians have been arrested since May.
So the worshippers were thrilled on Sunday to see Patriarch Antonios for the first time in ten years, but you really have to laugh at the Eritrean government bringing out Antonios on Sunday for mass, apparently thinking that doing so will make up for the vicious, repressive treatment of huge numbers of Orthodox Christians for no reason whatsoever.
Eritrea has one of the poorest human rights records in the world. Anyone can be arrested and tortured at any time on the unsupported charge of criticizing someone in the government, or for attending the wrong religious institution.
What is unique about Eritrea is the extent of military repression as practiced through a strictly-enforced conscription regimen and martial culture. Eritrea’s army is about 600,000 strong, which is one tenth of the population of about 6 million. Few countries anywhere, other than North Korea or the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge, have one tenth of their population in the army. Some people are forced to serve in the armed forces until age 50.
Many people are forced to work at government jobs essentially as slaves. The average monthly salary is $12. If someone escapes to Europe as a migrant to earn money, the remittances that the migrant sends back to his family are heavily taxed by the state.
That's why many of the migrants and refugees that are crossing the Mediterranean to reach Italy are from Eritrea. Christian Solidarity Worldwide and UNHCR (2-Mar-2015) and PJ Media (8-July) and Missionary Network News
A generational Awakening era begins about 15-20 years after the end of the previous generational crisis war, at the time when the first generation of children with no personal memory of the war come of age and begin to make themselves heard.
In their foundational work on generational theory in the 1980s and early 1990s, William Strauss and Neil Howe glorified generational Awakening eras as times for the birth of new ideas for society and even new religions, and a renewal of society and the nation. Strauss and Howe's work was limited to Britain and America since the 1400s, and their characterization of Awakening eras seems to make sense in those cases.
But as I've worked on Generational Dynamics for 15 years, and have extended generational theory to apply to all countries and societies at all times in history, I've found their characterization of Awakening eras to be wrong most of the time.
In the last 10-20 years we've seen one example after another where Awakening eras are a time of violence. In Syria, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Burundi, Thailand, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Cameroon, and so forth, and now Eritrea, the group that wins the civil war takes power and then uses torture, massacres and genocide during the Awakening era to keep from giving up power, reneging on promises of free elections made during the settlement of the civil war. What makes this violence different from the crisis war is that in the crisis wars the two populations really want to kill each other, while in the Awakening eras, the war-weary populations just want peace, while government leaders perpetrate everything from repression to jailings, torture and genocidal massacres, depending on the country, to stay in power.
As I described last year in a generational history of Ethiopia and Eritrea, mostly Christian Ethiopia and mostly Muslim Eritrea had an extremely bloody generational crisis war with heavy involvement by the Soviet Union. The war ended in May 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, Eritrea is in a generational Awakening era, and the government is close to a state of hysteria over the possibility that Christians might hold a prayer meeting, so they're using house to house searches, jailings and torture to combat a threat that exists only in their fantasies.
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is conducting a genocidal war against Sunni Muslims. In Burundi, the president Pierre Nkurunziza, a Christian Hutu, is conducting torture, sexual violence, arbitrary jailings, targeted assassinations and summary executions against his political opposition, almost all from the Christian Tutsi tribe. In Thailand, there's been sporadic violence by the army, backing the "yellow shirt" market-dominant light-skinned Thai-Chinese elite minority against the the "red shirt" dark-skinned Thai-Thai indigenous ethnics. And just today (Tuesday), South Sudan's president Salva Kiir declared a new three-month state of emergency, as he pursues tribal violence designed to keep himself in power. The situations in the other Awakening era countries listed above is similar. Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Jul-17 World View -- Eritrean government laughably uses Christian Patriarch as show prop thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Jul-2017)
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Indonesia defies China and renames part of the South China Sea
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China has banned Winnie the Pooh from Chinese social media because he looks too much like China's president Xi Jinping. On Weibo and WeChat and other Chinese social media sites, many bloggers posted comparisons between the two, and also referred to Winnie the Pooh's self description as the "bear of very little brain" in the comparisons to Xi Jinping.
After a 2013 California summit between Xi Jinping and Barack Obama, who was US president at the time, Chinese bloggers noticed an uncanny resemblance between a White House photo of the two presidents to a cartoon of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, and the two images side by side in the combined image shown above.
In 2014, Chinese bloggers took notice of an extremely uncomfortable handshake between Xi Jinping and Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe, and compared it to a cartoon image of Winnie the Pooh gripping the hoof of his gloomy donkey friend Eeyore.
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It turns out that China and Xi Jinping are going through one humiliation after another these days, and the humiliations are particularly stinging because a big Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress is coming up later this year. They include:
Xi Jinping and other CCP are international criminals for invading and annexing regions in the South China Sea belonging to other countries, in violation of international law, which is what Hitler did. China is building missile systems whose only purpose is to attack American cities, military bases, and aircraft carriers. China is preparing to launch on its neighbors, as well as on America, which it believes it will win. Instead, China will cause a catastrophe to itself and the rest of the world, and history will look back on China as a worse disaster to the world than the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese combined.
There have also been reports today that China is going to shut down all use of virtual private networks (VPNs) on the internet. VPNs were used by universities and businesses to bypass China's censors and communicate with universities and businesses outside of China. Xi Jinping is turning China into an isolated police state and jail.
So Xi Jinping is a good Nazi, but he can't stand the thought of anyone posting a picture of Winnie the Pooh on social media. That's why Xi Jinping is such a pathetic loser. As Winnie the Pooh described himself, he's a "bear of very little brain." Shanghaiist and AFP and Reuters
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Indonesia has announced that its renaming the portion of the South China Sea belonging to Indonesia's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as the "North Natuna Sea."
Indonesia says that every country has the right to name any area belonging to the country's territory. Indonesia will register the name through the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the United Nations.
The name change is symbolic, and won't make any difference to the Chinese, who will use their vast military power to try to kill anyone who tries to prevent them from annexing other country's territory.
In March of last year, a large Chinese coast guard warship entered Indonesian waters and rammed an Indonesian patrol vessel that was towing a Chinese fishing boat that had been illegally fishing in Indonesian waters around the Natuna Islands.
The Natuna Islands have always been sovereign Indonesian territory. They are far away from China, but because of the rich fishing grounds, there's little doubt that China will use its military power to seize the islands from Indonesia. Antara News (Jakarta) and The Diplomat and Global Times (Beijing) and CNN
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Jul-17 World View -- China bans Winnie The Pooh because Xi Jinping looks like him thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Jul-2017)
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Concerns grow of a new round of violence
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Muslim leaders are expressing outrage at the security measures taken by Israel at the al-Aqsa Mosque / Temple Mount compound in East Jerusalem, at its reopening after a two-day closure triggered by a deadly gun battle on Friday morning.
On Friday morning, three gunmen, killed two police officers. The gunmen were Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. The victims were two Druze policemen.
Immediately following the incident, Israeli police closed the mosque and prevented worshipers from entering the compound during Friday prayers for the first time since 1967. (There is some confusion about this point, because Israel closed the mosque for two days in 2014, after several days of violence. Apparently, this was the first closure during Friday prayers since 1967.)
During the closure, Israeli police swept for weapons, and installed security devices, including closed-circuit television cameras and metal detectors. Israeli officials say that the police sweep through the compound found knives, slingshots, batons, spikes and unexploded ordnance.
When the mosque was reopened on Sunday, Ahmed Omar al-Kiswani, director of al-Aqsa mosque, told Muslim worshippers not to go through the metal detectors:
"The closure of al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the occupation in itself and the prevention of the call for prayers are all unfair and unjust and constitute a violation to the United Nations resolutions and the international agreements.We hold the Israeli government responsible for the changes they have made in the al-Aqsa Mosque and taking its control away from us. We will stay outside the mosque until we get back the way it was taken from us. ...
We won’t agree to this violation of the status quo, and we will only return to the mosque once it is restored. We will not accept security checks at Al-Aqsa. ... Don’t go through the gates."
Muslim worshippers appear to be split. While dozens of worshippers did as al-Kiswani told them and refused to go through the metal detectors, and instead prayed outside the mosque, hundreds more did go through the metal detectors and prayed inside as usual.
Jordan and Israel have been jointly providing security to the compound, under an agreement reached in November 2014 after days of violent confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis. However, after Friday morning's shooting, Israeli security took complete control of the compound and shut out the Jordanian guards. According to some news reports, Jordan’s King Abdullah II telephoned Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening, and demanded that the mosque be reopened.
Now the mosque is reopened, but some Muslim leaders are saying that the metal detectors and security cameras that were installed without consultation with the Jordanians change the status quo of the mosque, and are part of an effort to completely shut out all Muslims from the compound.
According to analyst Daoud Kuttab:
"This is a very worrisome change. It sounds like it is going to be troublesome for the days to come. Those who killed the soldiers are not from the West Bank or Jerusalem. They came from Israel. They are Israeli citizens. Palestinians are being punished for what Israeli Palestinian citizens of Israel have done."
It would seem to me that the security measures are for the protection of both Muslims and Jews, but we live in a world today where everyone on all sides of any issue refuses as a matter of principle to make any sense. Times of Israel and Washington Post and al-Jazeera
When the al-Aqsa mosque was shut down for two days in October 2014, for the first time since 2000, Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas said that the move was "tantamount to a declaration of war" by Israelis on Palestinians. Those words indicate the explosive levels of tensions that exist.
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The al-Aqsa mosque compound is known to Muslims as Al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), which the golden Dome of the Rock shrine and Al-Aqsa mosque. It's the third-holiest site in Islam after the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, both in Saudi Arabia, and it's believed to be where the Prophet Mohammed made his night journey to heaven.
The Jews refer to the same compound as Har HaBayit, the Temple Mount, and is the holiest site in the Jewish religion, because it's believed that buried underneath the Mosque are the remains of the Temple at Jerusalem. In 66 AD, the Jews in Judea began a rebellion against their Roman colonizers. The Romans massacred tens of thousands of Jews and destroyed the city of Jerusalem including, in 70 AD, the Temple at Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem, including the compound, was seized and annexed by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, but this annexation has never been internationally recognized, and most news media refer to it as an "occupation."
In 2000, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon went to Temple Mount and prayed there, infuriating the Palestinians, and triggering the "second intifada," the Palestinian uprising against the Israelis that lasted until 2005. A compromise was devised that would permit Jews to visit Temple Mount as tourists, but not to pray there.
In 2014, East Jerusalem was the epicenter of increasing clashes between Palestinians and Israelis ever since the bodies of three Israeli teenage settlers were found weeks after they were abducted on June 10 by terrorists that Israelis believe were commissioned by Hamas. They were the subject of an extensive manhunt throughout the West Bank, during which hundreds of Palestinians, mostly members of Hamas, were arrested. Israel was shocked three weeks later, when the teens were found dead in a pit in the West Bank.
This was followed by a spiral of violence that led to the 57-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in July and August 2014. Even after the war ended, there were continuing clashes in East Jerusalem, especially around the al-Aqsa mosque. Israel shut down access to the mosque for two days in October, leading Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to call it "tantamount to a declaration of war," and Jordan to recall its ambassador to Israel.
Sporadic violence continued throughout 2015, when knife attacks by Palestinian teenagers on Israelis were becoming fairly common. Israeli security officials were baffled about how to prevent the knife attacks because, unlike suicide bomber vests, a knife can easily and openly be carried from place to place and wielded at a moment's notice. It was feared that the number of attacks would grow. However, by the end of the year it appeared that that the teenage knife attacks had run their course, despite encouragement from Hamas that they be continued.
Since then, there's been little international news about violence in Jerusalem, mainly because the "Israeli - Palestinian issue" has been pushed out of the news by other issues, particularly the war in Syria and, more recently, the split between Qatar and four Arab nations.
However, this state of affairs is not to the liking of many Palestinian leaders, who want the Palestinian issue once again to be the main topic of discussion and news reporting throughout the world.
One sign of the times is that few if any Palestinians leaders are willing to condemn the murders that took place on Friday morning, and indeed the chairman of Jordan's parliament, Atef Tarawneh, said, "May God have mercy on our martyrs who watered our pure soil." One gets the impression that Palestinian leaders would like to see more such murders take place. AFP and YNet News (Israel) and Jerusalem Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Jul-17 World View -- Tensions at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque / Temple Mount surge again thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Jul-2017)
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Italy's 'nuclear option' would force other countries to absorb refugees
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Reports are describing Italy's Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni with words like "furious" and "livid" over the fact that the European Union is refusing to help Italy deal with the massive refugee crisis the country is facing.
Almost 100,000 refugees, mostly crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, have landed on Italy's shores so far this year. In the last week of June alone, 10,000 more refugees arrived. Italy has been left entirely on its own to care for them. Instead of being helped, Italy finds itself constantly criticized for not doing enough. While 100,000 refugees have reached Italy, another 2,500 drowned while en route, and Italy is often criticized for not providing enough boats to prevent those drownings. Italy also receives criticism for not doing enough to care for the hundreds of thousands of refugees that the country is hosting.
What really infuriates Gentiloni and other Italian officials is that lots of politicians full of moral outrage criticizing Italy for not doing enough, but they refuse to accept any refugees into their own countries. In 2015, the EU agreed that 160,000 asylum seekers should be relocated from Greece and Italy to other member states, in the name of burden-sharing. To date, only about 22,500 of the 160,000 have actually been transferred. Several central and eastern European EU members - including large countries like Hungary and Poland - have absolutely refused to take in any asylum-seekers.
At best, EU countries pay lip service to helping Italy, and even sympathize with poor Italy's misfortune, but they refuse to take the step that would really make a difference -- distributing asylum-seekers to other countries.
One policy that the EU has tried is that of making sure that whoever rescues migrants from the Mediterranean stays long enough to burn down or otherwise destroy the boat that the human traffickers had used to transport them out of Libya. Pro-immigrant activists say that this is a dangerous policy because human traffickers have adapted. They're simply using cheaper, less secure boats, like expendable rubber dinghies that are purchases in large quantities from China. Activists say that the result of the boat-burning policy has been to make the trip more dangerous for refugees.
Another policy that the EU has been trying is to push the problem to Libya, by paying Libya's coastguard to prevent departures of refugee boats from Libya, by intercepting boats in Libyan waters and bring them back to Libya. Amnesty International has been strongly criticizing this policy, because the Libyan coastguard has reportedly been abusing the refugees that it captures.
Amnesty International is demanding that the EU pull its funding of the Libyan coastguard:
"Rather than acting to save lives and offer protection, European Ministers meeting today are shamelessly prioritizing reckless deals with Libya in a desperate bid to prevent refugees and migrants from reaching Italy.European states have progressively turned their backs on a search and rescue strategy that was reducing mortality at sea in favor of one that has seen thousands drown and left desperate men, women and children trapped in Libya, exposed to horrific abuses."
As usual with these activist organizations, there are only criticisms, never solutions, and only demands to spend an unlimited amount of money, even if doing so wouldn't make any difference.
The summer season is just beginning, and refugee flows across the Mediterranean have not yet reached their peak. As many as 100,000 more refugees are expected by the end of the year. CNN and Deutsche Welle and Guardian (London) and Amnesty International
Italy is considering two plans to relieve the refugee crisis for itself. The purpose of both of the plans under consideration is not necessarily to reduce the refugee flow, but instead to force other European countries to share the burden.
First, Italy is considering an 11-point code of conduct for NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that rescue most the refugees from the Mediterranean.
The way it works now is that human traffickers launch rubber dinghies filled with dozens of refugees from the Libyan coast, charging each of the refugees thousands of dollars. The dinghies are flimsy, and usually have just enough fuel to leave Libyan waters. The human traffickers tell the refugees that once they're out of Libyan waters, they should call a specific number in Italy, and a boat will be dispatched to save them from the rubber dinghy.
Italian officials are suspicious that the NGOs that receive funding to pick up refugees are cooperating by phone with the human traffickers, and even getting kickbacks from them. The NGOs vehemently deny these charges.
So Italy is expected in the next few days to present its 11-point code of conduct to nine NGOs that regularly deploy rescue boats to rescue refugees. The plan hasn't been officially released, but some of the rules have leaked out, and are already being criticized by pro-immigrant activists.
Italian officials claim that the NGOs are encouraging migrants to put to sea, and that the number of migrants would be reduced if they weren't being encouraged, if NGOs followed this code of conduct.
If any group refuses to accept the terms, they risk being barred access to Italian ports, meaning they would have to divert to other countries to disembark the refugees and migrants.
An official with Amnesty International says that if this code of conduct is enforced, then it will interfere with operations to the extent that it will put many lives in danger:
"Attempts to restrict NGO search and rescue operations risk endangering thousands of lives by limiting rescue boats from accessing the perilous waters near Libya."
Human Rights Watch says that the code of conduct is the wrong approach, and more must be done for the refugees:
"NGOs are out there in the Mediterranean rescuing people because the EU is not. Given the scale of tragedies at sea and the horrific abuses migrants and asylum seekers face in Libya, the EU should work with Italy to enhance robust search and rescue in the waters off Libya, not limit it."
An Amnesty International official said that the code of conduct proposals were part of a "concerted smear campaign" against NGO rescue ships by right-wing groups. Reuters and Independent (London) and EU Observer (7-July) and Deutsche Welle (7-July)
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni's fury at other EU countries for abandoning Italy and refusing to accept any refugees is being translation into consideration of what is being called "the nuclear option."
The plan would take advantage of a little-known and near-forgotten European Council Directive 55 from 2001, drafted after the Balkans conflict, to give temporary EU entry permits to "displaced people."
If implemented, Italy would give temporary visas to 200,000 migrants that it's currently hosting. This would permit them to travel freely throughout the 26 nations of Europe's Schengen Zone.
An analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations says that the result would be severe:
"If migrants continue to arrive and Italy decides to give them papers to cross borders and leave Italy it would be a nuclear option. Italians have lost any hope of getting help from the EU and may say, 'If you won’t make it a common challenge, we will.'"
The outcome would be a truly major political crisis across the EU. However, it's not known whether Gentiloni is really considering this option, or whether he's just bluffing to get concessions. The National (UAE) and The Sun (London) and Daily Mail (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Jul-17 World View -- EU countries refuse to help Italy deal with massive refugee crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Jul-2017)
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China responds with outrage at countries praising Liu Xiaobo
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Chinese censors and Chinese Communist Party officials have been working overtime to protect the Chinese people from learning anything about what happened to international peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who died of liver cancer on Thursday after Chinese authorities for weeks refused to allow him to travel outside of China to receive care that might have saved his life.
Liu Xiaobo was present at the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, where college students from all over the country had come for peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. By coincidence, CNN was in Beijing for another reason, and the protests could be seen worldwide. I still recall those scenes live on CNN, and listening to Bernard Shaw, who was on the air almost 24 hours a day, saying that this was the most amazing thing he had seen in his life.
On June 4, the peaceful protests came to an end. The Chinese army came in and massacred thousands of college students who had come to Beijing for peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. Liu Xiaobo's extremely courageous act was to negotiate with the military to allow several hundred student protests to have safe passage and leave, rather than be slaughtered mercilessly. Liu was jailed for 21 months for calling for political reforms and greater freedoms for the people of China.
Liu was repeatedly jailed after that for supporting democracy in China. In 2008, he was arrested for drafting a democracy manifesto, and was never again free.
In 2010, Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his long nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." At that point, his wife Liu Xia was also jailed, and has been in jail ever since.
Now that he's dead, the Chinese censors are working night and day to make sure that the Chinese people are kept in complete ignorance. Social media posts mourning him are banned. A simple phrase like "RIP" is banned. An image of a burning candle is banned. Online searches that reference any aspect of his life are banned.
You really have to laugh at this. Chinese officials like president Xi Jinping and the other Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials are good at a lot of things. They're good at raising enormous armies with huge weapons systems. They're good at invading and annexing other countries' regions in violation of international law, including in the South China Sea. They're good at threatening war and conducting war for anyone who doesn't do what they're told. They're good at torturing, killing and massacring people.
But Xi Jinping and the other CCP officials turn into whimpering fools at the thought of anyone in China commemorating the death of Liu Xiaobo. Or of posting an image of a burning candle. Or of wishing that he rest in peace. It's really amazing.
By the way, here's a small bit of historical trivia. Liu was not the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die while in prison. German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, died in a hospital while held by the Nazis in 1938. CNN and Asian Age (India) and Mashable
The United States, Germany, France, the European Union and the United Nations criticized Chinese officials after he died for not allowing him to receive medical care outside the country. Germany and the United States had offered to take him in for medical care.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that Liu should never have been given the Nobel Peace Prize:
"Conferring the [Nobel Peace] prize to such a person goes against the purposes of this award. It's a blasphemy of the peace prize."
The Chinese are calling the awarding of the peace prize "meddling" in China's national affairs. However, Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, says that argument is not valid, because human rights is an international affair, not a national affair:
"When it comes to the argument of interference, the point of view of the Norwegian Nobel Committee is that our task is to hand out the Peace Prize. And we hand out the Peace Prize to the most deserving person of that year, who has contributed who has contributed to worldwide peace. Now the standard of human rights is not a national affair; it is an international affair. People have basic human rights, because they are people, and so this is not a valid argument in my point of view. And Nobel Peace Prize formally been handed out to other critics of their regimes in smaller countries, for instance, Aung San Suu Kyi [of Myanmar] and Lech Walesa [of Poland]. And this time in 2010 it was Liu Xiaobo and it was the first time a citizen of such a world power was handed the peace prize for human rights struggle, and the struggle for democratic reforms. It would have been cowardly of the peace prize if we were hesitant because our candidate came from a powerful nation, and if we only awarded prizes to individuals from smaller nations. And we do not look to that."
Much to the consternation of Chinese officials, on Friday, a number of countries issued statements highly critical of the Chinese government's handling of Liu, and commemorating his death.
In addition, many foreign leaders are demanding that Liu's wife, Liu Xia, who has been under arrest since her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, should now be freed from prison, and permitted to leave China.
A spokesman for Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel quoted her as saying: “I mourn Liu Xiaobo, the courageous fighter for civil rights and freedom of opinion. Deep condolences to his family.” Foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel said, “She and her brother, Liu Hui, should immediately be allowed to leave for Germany or another country of their choice if they wish to."
France's President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “Tribute to Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Prize Peace Laureate, great freedom fighter. Thoughts and support to his relatives and his wife Liu Xia.”
Norway's Prime minister Erna Solberg said: “It is with deep grief that I received the news of Liu Xiaobo’s passing. Liu Xiaobo was for decades a central voice for human rights and China’s further development. My thoughts go now to his wife, Liu Xia, and his family and friends.”
Canada's foreign minister Chrystia Freeland said, “I offer my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Liu and to his many supporters around the world. In particular, my thoughts go to Mr. Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, herself a tremendous symbol of courage and poise, who remains under house arrest. We continue to call for the release of all political prisoners.”
These statements wouldn't be all that important if it were not for the fact that China is infuriated at them to the point of hysteria. Incredibly, China's ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that China was lodging official protests with these countries for interfering in China's "judicial sovereignty."
The European Union issued a statement saying, “We appeal to the Chinese authorities to allow his wife, Ms. Liu Xia and his family to bury Liu Xiaobo at a place and in a manner of their choosing and to allow them to grieve in peace."
Now, that's an interesting request -- allow Liu's family to bury him at a place of their choosing. This is something that the paranoid CCP officials would never allow, because they don't want Liu's grave to become a place where pilgrims can come and conduct vigils. Chinese authorities will want to dump Liu's body in as obscure a place as possible, and they may have him cremated.
Another interesting statement came from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen: “We hope that the Chinese authorities can show confidence in engaging in political reform so that the Chinese can enjoy the God-given rights of freedom and democracy. This will be a turning point in cross-strait relations. The Chinese dream is not supposed to be about military might. It should be about taking ideas like those from Liu Xiaobo into consideration. Only through democracy, in which every Chinese person has freedom and respect, can China truly become a proud and important county.”
One can only imagine the red hot fury of Chinese officials reading that statement from Taiwan's president. State-run media called Tsai's statement "dangerous" and "reckless," and quoted Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office:
"Taiwan authorities ... have made reckless remarks on the mainland's political system upon Liu Xiaobo's death. ...Ma said that the DPP and its leader had lifted the deceptive veil of "maintaining the current situation," attacked the mainland repeatedly and aggravated cross-strait conflicts, attempting to pull cross-strait relations back to tensity and turbulence.
"Such behavior is very dangerous," said Ma.
Only people on the mainland have the right to judge the mainland's political, economic and social development, said Ma, adding that the DPP should focus on and reflect on the chaos they have brought to the island and the harm they have done to cross-strait relations."
Americans have a special connection to Liu Xiaobo because he was living in America prior to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and returned to China at that time specifically to work for democracy in China. On Friday in Washington, Senator Ted Cruz is reintroducing a bill to change the name of the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington to "1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza." When similar legislation was being discussed last year, Chinese officials said that the bill would have "severe consequences" if passed. AFP and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and China Daily (Beijing) and Nikkei
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Jul-17 World View -- Paranoid China races to censor news of death of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Jul-2017)
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Turkey threatens the Kurds in Afrin, Syria, with Operation Euphrates Sword
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey has for months talked about an assault on the Kurdish-held city of Afrin in Syria's northeast, near the border with Turkey, and there are signs that the assault is imminent. (Afrin is in the northeast region shown in yellow on the above map.)
Turkish forces and Kurdish forces north of Afrin have been exchanging cross-border fire for weeks, and early this week a convoy of six military vehicles was sent as reinforcements to a city on Turkey's border with Syria. Over the weekend, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a press conference at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Kurds in Syria have links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been designated a terrorist group by America and countries in Europe, and which have conducted terrorist actions and low-level violence in Turkey for 30 years.
Erdogan considers all Kurds in Syria to be terrorists. He called Afrin a "threat" to Turkey and left little doubt that the assault on Afrin is going to occur:
"We will never remain silent or unresponsive to the backing and arming of terrorist groups, and the formation of terror islets right next to our border.We will not hesitate to use our legitimate right to defense against formations that threaten our country’s security. We will not allow a YPG threat. Afrin is a threat for us, we will give the necessary response.
As long as this threat continues, we will activate our rules of engagement and will continue to give the necessary answer to those in Afrin."
The military operation against Afrin and Kurdish enclaves and militias is called Operation Euphrates Sword, which has not yet begun, but may begin at any time. Turkey claims that the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and Free Syrian Army (FSA) allies have amassed a force of 17,000 fighters for the assault.
Last year, Turkey launched an earlier operation, Operation Euphrates Shield, whose purpose was to prevent the Kurds from taking control of Syria's entire northern border, and declaring an independent Kurdish state called Rojava. The result was that Turkish-backed rebel forces have control of the light blue area in the map above, on the border with Turkey, but separating the two regions controlled by the Kurds.
Although Turkey prevented the Kurds from taking control of that light blue area, Turkey is still concerned that the Kurds might still link the two yellow regions by going further south. The assault on Afrin will prevent that.
The assault on Afrin could be very difficult, long and bloody, according to some analysts. Afrin is heavily defended by Kurdish militias, and the terrain too rugged, covered with forests and olive groves, for easy movement of armored vehicles. AFP(9-July) and Reuters and Yeni Safak (Ankara) and Arab News
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As we've been reporting, the battle to liberate Raqqa from the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) is ongoing, led by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which contains some Arabs and mostly Kurds from the People's Protection Units (YPG).
According to some reports, some 3,000 fighters from Afrin are taking part in the operation to expel ISIS from Raqqa. If Turkey's assault on Afrin begins, those 3,000 fighters are expected to leave Raqqa and return to defend Afrin. This would put the Raqqa operation in jeopardy.
For this reason, the US has asked Turkey to delay the assault on Afrin as long as possible, so that the attack on Raqqa can be completed. Turkey sees this from the opposite direction. Turkish officials say that the Afrin assault has to take place as quickly as possible, while the Kurdish forces are still tied up in Raqqa.
The US is using the Kurds in Raqqa because they've proven to be the most effective fighting force against ISIS. This infuriated Turkish officials, who wanted to have their Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters lead the operation. They also strongly objected to giving US weapons to the YPG, because some will ultimately end up in the hands of PKK terrorists in Turkey.
Because the attack on Afrin has not yet taken place, there has been a great deal of speculation, including the following from different reports:
Much of this speculation will only be resolved if and when the military operations in Afrin and Raqqa are completed. Jerusalem Post and Kurdistan 24 and Daily Sabah (Turkey) and Sputnik News (Moscow)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Jul-17 World View -- Turkey's assault on Kurds in Afrin, Syria, may jeopardize the battle in Raqqa thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Jul-2017)
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Russia, India, Japan prepare for war with China
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ships carrying Chinese military personnel are being sent to Djibouti to set up a "logistics support base" to "ensure China's performance of missions, such as escorting, peace-keeping and humanitarian aid in Africa and west Asia." The base is clearly a military base, although Chinese media and officials are denying that. In fact, Western media are referring to it as China's first military base outside of China.
On Wednesday, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang denied that there was any military expansion:
"[The] establishment of this base is mainly aimed to enable China to better perform its escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters as well as humanitarian relief and to make greater contributions to the peace and stability of Africa and beyond. In addition, I would like to reiterate that China stays committed to the path of peaceful development and follows a defensive national defense policy. This remains unchanged."
Apparently Geng Shuang thinks that all of us in the West are so stupid that we don't remember that China told us exactly the same garbage about the South China Sea artificial islands. We were told that they were some sort of environmental project, with no military purpose whatsoever. Now those artificial islands are huge military bases bristling with missiles and aircraft, in clear violation of international law, as determined by a 2016 ruling by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, which declared China's activities in the South China Sea to be illegal Today, it's clear that China is planning further criminal activity in the South China Sea, including launching military assaults to take full control of the entire South China Sea.
So now Geng Shuang thinks we're going to believe the same laughable nonsense about the Djibouti military base. Even more laughable is that Chinese media are weeping and whining, complaining about media bias. The Global Times says that "Many of the Western media has described China's Djibouti facility as a military base and referred to the move as military expansionism," and quotes Xu Guangyu, a military official as saying that Western media reports on the base show their prejudice:
"China's base in Djibouti has basic differences with military bases of other countries in scale, function and equipment. Compared with the specialized function of logistics support of the Chinese base, other military bases station more troops and fighters and conduct military training. ...Whether a country needs to build an overseas base should come out of its own concerns and it merely involves bilateral talks with the other nation. Why do some Western countries make carping comments about China's first overseas base, while they already have many?"
Again, this is exactly the same kinds of things we heard from China when China was building illegal military bases in the South China Sea.
Ironically, what makes the above whining by Xu Guangyu even more laughable is that it's contradicted by Chinese language editions of the Global Times:
"People's Liberation Army in Djibouti base 11 was set up.... This is the People's Liberation Army overseas base zero breakthrough, and thus subject to a lot of attention.We note that the base of the People's Liberation Army in Djibouti was described as a "base of protection" and was not addressed as a "military base". It is worth pondering.
First of all, it is indeed the People's Liberation Army's first overseas base, where China will garrison. It is not a commercial supply point. It is justified by foreign public opinion that the base can support the Chinese navy to go further and thus be significant."
The Djibouti naval military base is the perfect endpoint to China's "string of pearls," commercial deep-water ports in the Indian Ocean that China could use in time of wars. Many of these ports were built and often are operated by Chinese companies. These include deep-water ports in Sri Lanka, in Colombo and Hambantota; Pakistan, in Gwadar and Karachi; Myanmar, in Sittwe; and the Seychelles, in Port Victoria. The Gwadar port in Pakistan is expected to be upgraded to a full Chinese military base soon.
China's base in Djibouti is at the southern entrance to the Red Sea on the route to the Suez Canal. Thus, in time of war, China will be able to block traffic through the Suez Canal.
Hosting foreign military bases is big business for Djibouti, which also hosts American, Japanese and French bases. Xinhua and CNN and China's Foreign Ministry and Global Times (Beijing) - (Trans)
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Each year since 1992, the United States and India have deployed warships, submarines and aircraft as part of the joint Malabar exercises in the Bay of Bengal, adjacent to India and the Indian Ocean. Because of the increased military threat from China, the military exercises are the largest in 22 years, and will include Japan for only the second time. The week-long series of war games will involve a total of 16 ships -- including the nuclear-powered USS Nimitz, India's INS Vikramanditya, a reconditioned Russian-built aircraft carrier, and Japan's JS Izumo, a helicopter carrier with an emphasis on anti-submarine warfare -- as well as two submarines and more than 95 aircraft.
Most readers won't find it surprising that India and Japan are preparing for war with China, but may be more surprised that Russia is also preparing for war with China.
If China and Russia have friendly relations, it's only because of a transitory "honor among thieves" phenomenon. Both of these countries are doing what Hitler did -- invading and annexing territories belonging to other countries -- and so they support each other's criminal activities in the UN Security Council. When Hitler did it, it led to World War II. China and Russia are no different. What China and Russia are doing is one of the factors leading to World War III.
However, the fact that Russia and China are supporting each other in criminal activities does not mean that they are going to be allies in any future war.
Russia and China have been historic enemies for centuries, at least since the Mongols conquered the Han Chinese in 1206, merged with them culturally, and then went on to brutally attack the Russians. Those wars are not forgotten today, and Russians and Chinese have deep hatreds for each other that will not be mitigated by a brief period of mutual support in the UN Security Council. In fact, China and Russia almost had a full scale war with each other in the 1960s.
In early June 2017, Russian media reported that the powerful road-mobile 9K720 Iskander-M missile system was installed in Russia's Eastern Military District. This joins three other major missile installations that took place in 2013, 2015 and 2016, respectively. These installations have very limited ability to strike American or Japanese targets. Their only logical purpose is to strike China. Indeed, the system’s ability to deliver a wide range of cluster munitions makes it particularly suitable for use against People’s Liberation Army (PLA) armor and infantry in the event of an armed confrontation.
In 2014, Russia held the massive Vostok military exercises in the Far East, explaining that the military drills were necessary to prepare for war with the United States. And yet, the assets deployed during this exercise were more consistent with preparing for a defense of the Far East, a region that America would be unlikely to invade if it wanted to invade Russia at all. The only state actor that against which such a defense is needed is China. And so it appears that Russia and China claim that they're each preparing for war with the United States, but they're also preparing for war with each other. CNN and The Diplomat and Lowy Institute (Australia)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Jul-17 World View -- China establishes its first foreign military base, in Djibouti thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Jul-2017)
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Thousands flee homes in Kashmir as Pakistan-India shelling escalates
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Thousands of people have fled their homes in the Pakistan side of the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and Jammu, because of continued shelling across the LoC between India and Pakistan. About 80% of four villages along the LoC have fled.
On the other side of the LoC, in India-controlled Kashmir, Indian security forces clashed with stone-throwing protesters on Saturday. Saturday was the one-year anniversary of the death on July 8, 2016, of Burhan Wani, 22, a 22-year-old commander in the separatist militia Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), after being shot in a gunfight with Indian security forces. Since then, dozens of civilians have been killed, thousands of Kashmiris have been blinded in one or both eyes by pellet guns used by Indian security forces, and thousands of youths have been arrested.
On Monday, India was shocked after Kashmiri militants killed 7 Hindu pilgrims traveling by bus to Hindu's holiest shrine, the Amarnath Temple. Each year, over 200,000 people make the Amarnath Yatra (pilgrimage) to the shrine, at an altitude of 3,888 meters. Terror attacks on the pilgrims have been extremely rare because both Hindus and Muslims respect the shrine.
Security personnel are expecting more violence tomorrow (Wednesday), when Kashmiri Muslims mark "Kashmir Martyrs' Day," the anniversary of the July 13, 1931, when dozens of Muslims were killed in a confrontation with British security forces.
Although there have been a continuing clashes between Kashmiris and Indian security forces, so far there hasn't been the explosion that some people have feared this summer, and many people are hoping that things will remain steady until winter comes and brings respite from the violence for another season.
Indian security forces have come under harsh criticism for failing to control the violence in the past year, and also for using pellet guns that blinded hundreds of people. In February of this year, the police tried a new policy -- meeting the parents of potential militants in the hope of gaining their cooperation in convincing these young people that violence is not the right path. At that time, an estimated 80 youths were believed to have joined militant outfits.
The plan was announced by Kashmir's Director General of Police (DGP) Shesh Paul Vaid, who said:
"We won't like to harm our own children. We are reaching out to the parents and requesting them to convince their children for shunning the path of violence. In few cases, we have achieved success also. We want that our children should fight in debates, competitive exams and not with guns.I have made appeals through my district Superintendents of Police and conveyed that all missing cases need to be verified on ground and corrective steps to be taken. Our first attempt is always humanitarian so that we can bring misguided children back. We have given an assurance that a lenient view will be taken in case the youths surrender voluntarily."
This approach appeared promising, but it has not been particularly effective. Last month, India announced Operation All-Out, a massive police operation "to deliver a lethal blow to terrorism ... with a long-term plan for a lasting peace in the trouble-torn Valley." This was never going to work, and encourages tit-for-tat violence.
As I've written several times, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Kashmir is replaying previous generations of violence according to a fairly standard template. India's previous two generational crisis wars were India's 1857 Rebellion, which pitted Hindu nationalists against British colonists, and the 1947 Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century, pitting Hindus versus Muslims, when the British colonists partitioned the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Kashmir is at the heart of a re-fighting of those two wars, and there is nothing that the Indian security forces can do to prevent it. AFP and Washington Post and South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) Times of India
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We've been reporting a standoff between India's army and China's army on Doklam plateau in the tiny country of Bhutan. China is attempting to annex the region, and on June 16 sent Chinese troops and construction workers to begin road construction. Bhutan troops tried to prevent the Chinese troop incursion, but they were overrun. Bhutan invoked a treaty with India and asked for help. India sent in its own troops, creating a standoff, though no bullets have been fired. Neither the Chinese nor the Indians appear ready to back down.
A Chinese official, Long Xingchun, is threatening to use the situation on the Doklam plateau as justification for China to invade Kashmir on the side of Pakistan:
"Indian troops invaded China's Doklam area in the name of helping Bhutan, but in fact the invasion was intended to help India by making use of Bhutan. ...India controls Bhutan's defense and diplomacy, seriously violating Bhutan's sovereignty and national interests. Indians have migrated in large numbers to Nepal and Bhutan, interfering with Nepal's internal affairs. The first challenge for Nepal and Bhutan is to avoid becoming a state of India, like Sikkim. ...
Even if India were requested to defend Bhutan's territory, this could only be limited to its established territory, not the disputed area. Otherwise, under India's logic, if the Pakistani government requests, a third country's army can enter the area disputed by India and Pakistan, including India-controlled Kashmir."
At this point, we have to remind readers that China is an international criminal, annexing the territories of other countries in the South China Sea, and building illegal military bases, in violation of international law as determined by a 2016 ruling by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, which declared China's activities in the South China Sea to be illegal. China has used extortion and military force against some Central Asian countries to annex territories. China had apparently hoped to bully Bhutan to give up its territory without a fight, and is now furious that India is defending Bhutan's territory.
So now China is threatening India, saying that if India can send troops into Bhutan, then China can send troops into Kashmir. It's hard to see any way that this can end well. Global Times (Beijing) and New Delhi TV and South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG - India)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Jul-17 World View -- China threatens military intervention in Kashmir on the side of Pakistan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Jul-2017)
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Israel OKs ceasefire, but expresses severe misgivings
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The United States and Russia have brokered a ceasefire in a "de-escalation zone" in southwest Syria. The agreement was reached in a meeting between US president Donald Trump and Russia's president Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg on Friday. This meeting was the culmination of weeks of secret negotiations held in Amman, the capital city of Jordan. The zone to which the ceasefire applies is on Syria's borders with Jordan and Israel. Jordan and Israel were consulted during the negotiations, and are included in the agreement. Syria and Iran have agreed to the deal.
According to the Russian press, the purpose of the de-escalation zone is to help "disengage" (whatever that means) armed opposition from groups recognized as terrorists by the UN Security Council. These include the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda linked groups like Al-Nusra Front (now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham).
According to Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, a monitoring center will be set up in Amman, Jordan, to be used to oversee the ceasefire:
"We agreed to use a monitoring center established by Russia, the US and Jordan in Amman to coordinate all the details of functioning of these de-escalation zones."
According to Lavrov, many of the details have not be worked out. However:
In this zone [southeastern Syria, in southern Daraa, Quneitra and As-Suwayda provinces] the ceasefire regime will take effect on July 9 starting 12:00 Damascus time. The US took an obligation that all the militant groups, located there, will comply with the ceasefire.At first, the security around this de-escalation zone will be maintained with the help of Russian military police in coordination with the Jordanians and Americans."
At the G20 summit on Friday, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson said at a news conference:
"I think this is our first indication of the US and Russia being able to work together in Syria, and as a result of that we had a very lengthy discussion regarding other areas in Syria that we can continue to work together on to de-escalate the areas."
The ceasefire took effect on Sunday at noon, Damascus time. Syrian ceasefires in the past have usually fizzled within a couple of weeks, but as of Monday evening, this ceasefire appears to be holding, with only scattered violations. Russia Today and Russia Today and Times Live (South Africa)
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Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave qualified approval of the ceasefire agreement:
"Israel will welcome a genuine ceasefire in Syria but this ceasefire must not enable the establishment of a military presence by Iran and its proxies in Syria in general and in southern Syria in particular.[We] had deep discussions about this last week with US Secretary of State Tillerson and with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both told me that they understand Israel’s position and will take our demands into account. ...
[These demands include the following:] Prevent the strengthening of Hezbollah via Syria, with emphasis on the acquisition of precision weapons, prevent Hezbollah – or Iranian forces – from establishing a ground presence along our border, and prevent the establishment of an Iranian military presence in Syria as a whole."
According to some reports, Netanyahu is opposed to Russia's military police taking sole responsibility for monitoring the ceasefire along Syria's border, and is demanding that United States forces be involved. Reading between the lines of Lavrov's statement (quoted above), Russia appears to concur.
Although Israel is committed to avoid getting involved in Syria's war, Israel has targeted Syrian weapons convoys headed for Hezbollah to be used against Israel, and has targeted Syrian launchers when mortar shells from Syria landed in the Golan Heights. Since Russia is such a close ally of Syria and Hezbollah, Israel is insisting that Russia not be the sole guarantor of the ceasefire along its border. Israel National News and Reuters and YNet News and Israel Rising
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For months, Russia and the Syrian regime have complained that America's military presence in Syria is a violation of international law, because unlike Russian forces, American forces have never been invited into Syria by the Syrian regime.
The response is that with Syria's ISIS conducting terror attacks around the world, including the US and Europe, and with Syria flooding Europe with millions of refugees, the West is perfectly justified under international law to enter Syria and kill off ISIS, for its own protection and self-defense. There's no reason why the West should just sit and wait for ISIS to conduct the next terror attack, since obviously al-Assad is incapable of stopping ISIS, and may be promoting the terror attacks on Europe.
These arguments may now be mooted by the ceasefire agreement. The agreement has been approved by the Syrian regime, and it specifically invites American forces into Syria. Therefore, I assume that America's military in Syria is fully supported by international law.
However, the other side of that observation is that American forces are getting more deeply involved in the war in Syria. If the war settles down into a nice friendly peace, then that would be no problem. However, it's far more likely that the current "ceasefire" is merely serving to allow all the various forces -- the Russians, the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, the Iranian forces, the remnants of ISIS, al-Nusra, the Free Syrian Army, the Turks, the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG), and probably others -- to replenish their weapons stores and reposition their forces, in preparation for the next battle after the ceasefire collapses. This is particularly true in Deir az-Zour in eastern Syria, which will be a major battleground in the months to come.
There has been the usual mainstream media criticism of president Donald Trump for having a chaotic foreign policy, and for working closely with Russia's president Vladimir Putin, whom many Americans see as an enemy.
For example, Richard Haas, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, was interviewed on the BBC on Monday, and was asked why this president "has been reluctant to be harsh on Russia and Putin." His response:
"I think that's still a mystery for which we don't have an answer. Whether it has something to do with that, or as you know there's any number of forms of speculation. All I can say is after a couple of years, Mr. Trump is has staked out what you would call a consistently benign or sanguine view towards Russian behavior. I don't understand it on the merits, so like a lot of other people, I keep wondering whether there's something that lies behind it, and if so what? ...I do not see [the Russians] as a natural partner of the United States in most situations."
Haas is wondering "whether there's something that lies behind it," and as regular readers are aware, there is definitely something behind it. Trump's foreign policy is not chaotic at all, but is completely consistent and principled, because his close advisor Steve Bannon deeply understands Generational Dynamics theory, and they are guided by that theory.
As I've been writing for years, Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, America and the West will be aligned with India, Russia and Iran, while China will be aligned with Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries. The Trump administration's "consistently benign and sanguine view" of Russia is guided by this analysis, and the fact that Russia will be our ally.
That's not to say that one can be sanguine about the situation in the Mideast. Everyone is united now in their determination to defeat ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, and in Raqqa, Syria. The Iraqi military declared "Mission Accomplished!" on Monday in Mosul, and victory in Raqqa is expected within weeks. After that, the increasingly vicious Shia-Sunni split will become more exposed, and any one of the warring parties in Syria may decide to take action. Washington Post/AP and Al Monitor and LA Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Jul-17 World View -- With ceasefire, American forces become more deeply involved in Syria's civil war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Jul-2017)
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Split grows between Iran's president Rouhani and hardliners
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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When Hassan Rouhani was reelected in Iran's presidential election on May 19, he clobbered his major opponent. Rouhani won 57% of the vote in a large turnout, a huge margin against 38% for hardline cleric Ebrahim Raissi, who was the favored candidate of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.
Rouhani's victory came from overwhelming support of young people, who came out in large numbers because of opposition to the hardline restrictions on dress, free speech, and gender relations.
Iran is in a generational Awakening era (like America in the 1960s), when there's a "generation gap" between the generations of traumatized survivors of the previous generational crisis war (WW II for America, the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution for Iran) and those in the generations growing up after the war, with no personal appreciation of the horrors of that war.
The people in Iran's young post-war generations are now in their 30s, they are generally pro-Western and pro-American, and they have nothing in particular against Israel. They do, however, share their parents' vitriolic hatred for Saudi Arabia. The younger generations support moderates like Rouhani, and the moderates become more powerful as their supporters in the younger generations grow older, and more reach voting age. The older generations support the hardliner geezers like Khamenei, and the hardliners become weaker as the older generations retire and die off.
So it should be no surprise that Khamenei and the other hardliners, including Iran/s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) are panicking and becoming increasingly desperate, as they see their power slipping away. Rouhani's overwhelming victory on May 19 was certain to trigger this panic, as well as desperate reprisals.
The relationship between Rouhani and the IRGC has become increasingly tense in the last couple of weeks. Rouhani has openly challenged the IRGC's outsized role in Iran's economy, and has attempted to limit the IRGC's economic and political influence.
The hardliners have struck back in the last few days. Khamenei has been comparing Rouhani to Bani Sadr, who was president of Iran in 1980-81, and was impeached by parliament. A prominent hardliner said, "Those who seek to weaken Iran’s security and the IRGC are enemies of the people." Judiciary Spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, a hardliner, views Rouhani in apocalyptic terms:
"Today, the destruction of the Basij [domestic security force] ... and the Judiciary has intensified. Looking back at past experience, a fitna [sedition, civil strife] is ahead."
All of this happened in the last couple of weeks. It's fairly certain that the rhetoric will become increasingly vitriolic, as the hardliner geezers become increasingly panicky, as they realize that they're losing power to the younger generations and the moderates.
Every generational Awakening era ends with a climax that resolves the "generation gap" with a victory of either the older or the younger generations. In America, the climax was Richard Nixon's forced resignation in 1974.
For that reason, Ejei's prediction of sedition and civil strife is interesting. Rouhani's democratic victory suggests that the Awakening era climax will end peacefully, probably with the death or resignation of Supreme Leader Khamenei. If there is violence, it will probably come from the hardliners and the IRGC, though I expect any such violence to fizzle fairly quickly. AEI Iran News (3-July) and AEI Iran News (6-July) and Al Arabiya (Riyadh) and Arab News (Riyadh)
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Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who speaks regularly with White House officials about foreign policy, said last month:
"The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran. I don’t see how anyone can say America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism."
Last month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the following in answer to a question during testimony to Congress:
Our policy towards Iran is to push back on [its regional] hegemony, contain their ability to develop, obviously, nuclear weapons, and to work towards support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government. ... Those elements are there certainly, as we know."
These two remarks, among others, have generated suspicion and outrage among some mainstream media commentators. Some say that this is another example of president Donald Trump's "boneheaded" or "chaotic" foreign policy, while others suggest that Trump is planning a coup or invasion of Iran.
As I've written in the past, I've worked in the past with Steve Bannon, one of Trump's closest advisors. Bannon is extremely familiar with Generational Dynamics and the work I've done, and I believe that Trump and Bannon are guided by Generational Dynamics principles and findings. In fact, I become more and more convinced of this every day, as Trump's foreign policy makes perfect sense to me from the point of view of Generational Dynamics. This is in contrast to Obama's foreign policy, when never made any sense to me at all.
Bannon and Trump are very well aware that "regime change" is coming with 100% certainty, as an Awakening era climax. Tillerson's remarks are consistent with that view, and presumably represent the views of Trump and Bannon. Tillerson was vague about his intentions for regime change, but I interpret his remarks to mean something on the level of "meddling" to encourage an awakening climax to occur sooner.
Cotton's remarks, on the other hand, do not make any sense at all. America is under no threat from the hardliners in Iran. As I've written many times, the hardliners use daily anti-American and anti-Western threats and rhetoric mainly for domestic consumption, without any intention of attacking anyone in the West, including Israel. If and when Iran attacks, it will be against Saudi Arabia.
So if we assume that Tillerson's remarks are administration policy, then what can be done to speed up the Awakening era climax, and encourage regime change? In my opinion, nothing. Some major event within Iran, such as the sudden death of Khamenei, might trigger the climax. (Or, it might not, if Khamenei is replaced by another hardliner.) I don't believe that "meddling" in Iran's affairs will do much good, but it probably won't do any real harm. However, anything more substantial, such as a coup, could badly backfire. Washington Post and Politico (25-June) and Just Security (26-June) and Asia Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Jul-17 World View -- Trump administration considers promoting Iran 'regime change' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Jul-2017)
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Recapturing Mosul from ISIS leaves the future of Iraq in question
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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After six months of bloody fighting, Iraqi military commanders now say that their forces are "tens of meters" away from recapturing the city of Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), which shocked the world by capturing the city in 2014 almost overnight, and took control of almost one-third of all of Iraq.
The US military is confirming that "an announcement is imminent. I don't want to speculate if it's today or tomorrow but I think it's going to be very soon."
However, there are still things that can go wrong. ISIS is claiming that it will "fight to the death" in the city. They're trying to do as much damage as possible by shooting civilians in the street, blowing up buildings, and laying IEDs to kill Iraqi soldiers.
As a diversionary attack on Friday, ISIS militants attacked Imam Gharbi village, a village south of Mosul, killing several people including two journalists.
There are still hundreds of ISIS militants remaining in Mosul, squeezed into a shrinking rectangle no more than 300 by 500 meters beside the Tigris river. It's estimated that more than 10,000 civilians remained trapped in the same region, many of whom are being used by ISIS as human shields. RFE/RL and Reuters and NRT TV (Kurdistan) and Daily Mail (London)
ISIS is expected to be driven out of Mosul, its Iraq stronghold, within the next few days, and out of Raqqa, its Syria stronghold, within the next few weeks. However, it doesn't mean the end of ISIS's influence, nor does it mean that Iraq is going to return to "normalcy."
Mosul itself remains a humanitarian disaster, with little food or water. From a city of two million people, thousands have been killed and almost a million have been displaced, many living in camps outside the city. It will be years before they can all return to their homes, as almost every building in the city has been damaged or completely destroyed. The United Nations predicts it will cost more than $1 billion to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul.
After being driven out of Mosul, ISIS will be forced into mainly rural desert areas west and south of the city where tens of thousands live. From there, militants can launch terror attacks on targets across Iraq. Many of these ISIS militants will be returning to their homes, where they lived before joining ISIS.
ISIS fighters will still be able to pursue new operations in Iraq, according to Canadian Armed Forces Brig.-Gen. D.J. Anderson:
"We’ve got a good 10-12 months' worth of business [ahead of us]. When I consider how much damage we’ve inflicted and they’re still operational, they’re still capable of pulling off things like some of these attacks we’ve seen internationally. [We] have to conclude that we do not yet fully appreciate the scale or strength of this phenomenon."
Finally, there are still unfinished business between the various groups fighting ISIS. The Turks, the Kurds, and the Shia fighters were excluded from much of the battle of Mosul. Shia militias were excluded because of fears that they may turn on Sunni civilians living in Mosul, as they did in other cities recaptured from ISIS. The Kurds did much of the fighting prior to the entry into Mosul, and now are talking about an independent Kurdistan. The Turks are still furious that they were excluded from the Battle of Mosul, since Turkey has a deep historic connect to Mosul and its people. All these groups were willing to stand aside as long as they had ISIS as a common enemy. Whether they'll continue to stand aside remains to be seen. Reuters and Saudi Gazette and Daily Caller and Daily Sabah (Ankara)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Jul-17 World View -- Iraqi forces are just 'tens of meters' away from retaking Mosul from ISIS thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Jul-2017)
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Border tensions grow between China and India
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The military standoff on the border between Chinese and Indian troops at the border between China and Bhutan is no nearer resolution than it was last month, and is becoming increasingly serious, as China hardens its position and makes vitriolic threats targeting both India and Bhutan, the tiny nation between China and India.
Chinese troops and construction workers have been constructing a road through Tibet. On June 16, a column of Chinese troops accompanied by construction vehicles and road-building equipment began moving south into the Doklam plateau, which is territory of the nation of Bhutan. Bhutan's army attempted to block the Chinese troops from entering Bhutan's territory, but the Chinese troops overran the Bhutan troops. Bhutan invoked a treaty with India and asked for help. India sent in its own troops, leading to a standoff with hundreds of troops on each side, with the potential of bringing thousands more troops if the standoff escalates.
According to reports, the soldiers on each side are still unarmed, and the Chinese and Indian troops reportedly clashed by “jostling”: bumping chests, without punching or kicking, in order to force the other side backwards.
China claims the Doklam plateau is Chinese territory, and points to an 1892 treaty signed by China and colonial Britain. However, Bhutan was not party to that treaty.
At this point we have to point out, as an aside, that China is an international criminal, annexing the territories of other countries in the South China Sea, and building illegal military bases, in violation of international law as determined by a 2016 ruling by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, which declared China's activities in the South China Sea to be illegal. China has used extortion and military force to invade and annex regions from other Central and Southeast Asian countries, including Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. China has even arrested, beaten, kidnapped and tortured its own citizens, peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. So China's reference to an 1892 treaty should simply be viewed with reference to China's past history, and treated most likely a hoax or lie or misrepresentation by self-justifying thugs. In fact, several analyses show that China's claims are invalid.
China is reduced to threatening both India and Bhutan with military violence. China is also trying to encourage some kind of "independence movement" in Bhutan, to sever all ties with India, and to put their faith in China.
China is also claiming that India has no right defend Bhutan. In fact, India was asked by Bhutan to send in troops to stop the Chinese. China likes to use its vast military complex to intimidate smaller neighbors, including Philippines, Vietnam, and some Central Asian countries. They would have succeeded in invading and annexing this region of Bhutan in the same way, if India had not come to Bhutan's aid.
Both India's prime minister Narendra Modi and China's president Xi Jinping attended the G20 summit in Hamburg, and that would have been a good place for Modi and Xi to have a meeting and try to resolve the situation diplomatically. However, China rejected the meeting because "the atmosphere is not right," presumably meaning that China wants to want for some kind of military victory. Global Times (Beijing) and India Times and Perspective (India) and Bhutan News Service (1-Jan-2013)
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No shots have been fired in military standoff so far, but China is demanding the India withdraw its troops unconditionally, which India is refusing to do. India and China had a major border war in this region in 1962, and China has been reminding India that India lost that war, and will lose the next one. India is preparing its own troop buildup in the region, and so this could break out into a major new border war at any time.
The dispute goes beyond China's attempt to annex Bhutan's Doklam plateau. The plateau, also known as Donglang in Chinese, lies at the junction of India, Bhutan, and China, near the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim. Doklam is strategically important due to its adjacency to the Siliguri Corridor, the so-called “chicken’s neck” connecting India’s seven northeastern states to its mainland. China is claiming much of these region as well, which would remove the only overland route between India and its northeastern states.
It's believed by many analysts in India that China is planning for war with India, and wants to annex these strategic regions belonging to India and Bhutan in order to gain a military advantage, in anticipation of that war. By using this kind of "salami slicing" technique, China gains control of larger and larger regions, one piece at a time. Chinese thugs have already done that in the South China Sea, where they annexed one region after another, always lying about their intentions, until now they have military control of most of it.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, China is preparing for war with the U.S., India, Russia, and several of its other neighbors.
I was watching the BBC today, and they were interviewing some pro-Beijing Hong Kong citizens about China's new aircraft carrier. These people were bubbling over with glee and enthusiasm, saying that the aircraft carrier is one more thing making China the most powerful nation in the world. The Chinese people are drunk with power, and are looking forward to war, and eagerly anticipating war, which they believe that they will win quickly against anyone in the world. In fact, they'll end up bringing devastation and destruction to most of the world, including themselves. BBC and India Times and Quartz and Australian Broadcasting and The Diplomat
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Jul-17 World View -- China and India have military confrontation over Bhutan's Doklam plateau thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Jul-2017)
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Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Generational Dynamics
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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When President Donald J. Trump gave his inauguration speech on January 20, I wrote that the speech links today's America to the 1930s, because it evoked the 1930s mood of nationalism and isolationism.
Thursday's speech in Warsaw Poland was even more strongly linked to the 1930s, suggesting that we're facing a Clash of Civilizations world war in the same way that Poland was devastated by World War II. The theme of isolationism was still present in remarks about the need to "protect our borders."
More interesting were the themes around nationalism. Themes about American nationalism -- pride in America and loyalty to American values -- have been broadened to encompass pride in Western civilization and loyalty to the values of Western civilization -- individual freedom, security, free speech, free expression, empowering women, striving for excellence, valuing human dignity, honoring God, treasuring the rule of law, putting faith and family at the center of our lives.
Trump gave the speech to a large, extremely enthusiastic and euphoric crowd in Warsaw, frequently chanting, "Donald Trump! Donald Trump! Donald Trump!"
The comparison is to candidate Barack Obama's speech in Berlin in July 2008. There was a large, extremely enthusiastic and euphoric crowd. As I wrote at the time in "Barack Obama in Berlin calls for greater European militarism", the lines that drew the greatest and most euphoric responses were the anti-American statements, like "Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?"
Trump must have had the speech in mind when he delivered Thursday's speech, with its emphasis on preserving and honoring Western civilization, and particularly when he said the following:
"This is my first visit to Central Europe as President, and I am thrilled that it could be right here at this magnificent, beautiful piece of land. It is beautiful. Poland is the geographic heart of Europe, but more importantly, in the Polish people, we see the soul of Europe. Your nation is great because your spirit is great and your spirit is strong."
We can be pretty certain that phrases like "the heart of Europe" and "the soul of Europe" were directed at Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Trump will be meeting on Friday. Merkel has openly taken on the task of proving that Trump is so awful that he is isolated in the world, and so saying that the Polish people are "the soul of Europe" is a preemptive strike.
Much of Trump's speech reminded that enthusiastic audience of the the horrors that Poland went through in World War II:
"In 1920, in the Miracle of Vistula, Poland stopped the Soviet army bent on European conquest. Then, 19 years later in 1939, you were invaded yet again, this time by Nazi Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. That's trouble. That's tough.Under a double occupation the Polish people endured evils beyond description: the Katyn forest massacre, the occupations, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the destruction of this beautiful capital city, and the deaths of nearly one in five Polish people. A vibrant Jewish population -- the largest in Europe -- was reduced to almost nothing after the Nazis systematically murdered millions of Poland's Jewish citizens, along with countless others, during that brutal occupation.
In the summer of 1944, the Nazi and Soviet armies were preparing for a terrible and bloody battle right here in Warsaw. Amid that hell on earth, the citizens of Poland rose up to defend their homeland. I am deeply honored to be joined on stage today by veterans and heroes of the Warsaw Uprising."
Trump then related those horrors to today's dangers to Western civilization:
"This continent no longer confronts the specter of communism. But today we're in the West, and we have to say there are dire threats to our security and to our way of life. You see what's happening out there. They are threats. We will confront them. We will win. But they are threats.We are confronted by another oppressive ideology -- one that seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe. America and Europe have suffered one terror attack after another. We're going to get it to stop.
During a historic gathering in Saudi Arabia, I called on the leaders of more than 50 Muslim nations to join together to drive out this menace which threatens all of humanity. We must stand united against these shared enemies to strip them of their territory and their funding, and their networks, and any form of ideological support that they may have. While we will always welcome new citizens who share our values and love our people, our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.
We are fighting hard against radical Islamic terrorism, and we will prevail. We cannot accept those who reject our values and who use hatred to justify violence against the innocent.
Today, the West is also confronted by the powers that seek to test our will, undermine our confidence, and challenge our interests. To meet new forms of aggression, including propaganda, financial crimes, and cyberwarfare, we must adapt our alliance to compete effectively in new ways and on all new battlefields."
Trump mentioned Russia's "destabilizing activities" and urged it to join in the fight "in defense of civilization itself." He did NOT mention the current growing crisis with regard to the North Korea, nor did he mention the growing belligerent militarization of China in the South China Sea and the development of advanced missile systems. However, he did say the following:
Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to defend ourselves and our societies."
I interpret the phrase "forces ... from the South or the East" as acknowledging that there are other existential threats to America and Europe, especially from North Korea and China.
Finally, he tied it all together by asking whether the West has the will to survive:
"We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will. Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?"
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Whenever I listen to a speech by Donald Trump, I'm always analyzing it from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, because I know that Generational Dynamics is heavily influencing the Trump administration.
Regular readers are aware that I've worked in the past with Steve Bannon, a principal Trump advisor. I worked with him on his documentary movie "Generation Zero," and I worked with him for years since I started in 2010 cross-posting my articles on the Breitbart National Security site, where he was the editor in chief.
As I've said many times in the past, Barack Obama came into office without any clue what was going on in the world, and after 8 years in office, I've seen no evidence that he's learned anything. Trump also came into office without any clue what was going on in the world, and the only relevant question is whether, unlike Obama, he's able to learn.
It was clear when I met Steve Bannon that he was already very knowledgeable about what was going on in the world, from serving as an officer in the Navy and from attending Georgetown University.
However, Bannon also became extremely knowledgeable about my work on Generational Dynamics. I know that Bannon is extremely knowledgeable about Generational Dynamics, and I know that Bannon is very knowledgeable about the conclusions of Generational Dynamics. And I believe (though can't prove) that he actually agrees with those conclusions -- that we're headed for a Clash of Civilizations world war, where the US, Japan, India, Russia and Iran will be pitted against China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim countries. And I believe that these conclusions are a big part of the motivation for Thursday's speech.
It's pretty clear to me that Trump's inauguration speech in January and his speech Thursday in Poland were completely consistent with the point of view of Generational Dynamics. Let's look at a couple of issues.
People my age have wondered all our lives how it was possible for Britain to be so thoroughly fooled by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler for years. It was perfectly obvious that the Nazi Germany was preparing for war with Britain, and Winston Churchill repeatedly warned about it, so how could British leaders have been so oblivious to the danger?
Today we know the answer, as we see how oblivious the West is to the danger from North Korea and especially from China, even though it's perfectly obvious.
For Bannon and Trump, this presents the problem that any recognition of this situation is met with mockery and ridicule by the mainstream media, just as happened to Winston Churchill. We might call this "the Neville Chamberlain effect," named after the person who declared "peace in our time" after meeting with Hitler in 1939.
So I interpret Trump's speech on Thursday as working around these problems. By giving a speech to a wildly enthusiastic crowd in Poland, and calling the Polish people "the soul of Europe," he's attempting to get around the mockery of the mainstream media, and at the same time show that Angela Merkel's views are not unanimously held among the G-20 leaders.
As long-time readers know, since 2003, There are some 4,000 articles on my web site containing hundreds of predictions, all of which have come true or are trending true. None has turned out to be false. There have been some cases, such as my analysis of the Mideast peace process in 2003, Lebanon in 2006, Sri Lanka in 2009, and Iran in the last ten years, when I've been right and pretty much the rest of the world has been wrong. There is no other web site, analyst, journalist, economist or politician in the world with a better predictive record than mine. A number of people have challenged this claim, and all have failed.
Generational Dynamics is the only methodology that tells what's actually going on in the world. Donald Trump may or may not know what's going on in the world, but Steve Bannon definitely does, and Bannon is Trump's principal advisor. It's very gratifying to me personally that Generational Dynamics is guiding the policy of America at this time of greatest peril in our history.
Trump and Bannon are trying to find a way to defeat the Generational Dynamics predictions -- by trying to goad China into blocking North Korea's nuclear development, by trying to challenge China in the South China Sea with freedom of navigation trips, and by trying to rouse the West into confronting the existential threats it faces, rather than falling into the easy Pollyannaish feelings of the Neville Chamberlain effect.
Trump said:
"Those heroes remind us that the West was saved with the blood of patriots; that each generation must rise up and play their part in its defense -- and that every foot of ground, and every last inch of civilization, is worth defending with your life."
I wish that I could say that Trump and Bannon will find a way to succeed at preventing the Clash of Civilizations world war, but Generational Dynamics tells us that's mathematically impossible. We can't even be certain that the US will survive the coming world war. The best we can hope for is that we will survive, and that history will look back at the America as having once again played its part in saving civilization.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Jul-17 World View -- Donald Trump's speech in Warsaw Poland evokes the Clash of Civilizations thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Jul-2017)
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Is the end of the Syrian war in sight?
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia's plans to lead all the factions fighting in Syria to reach a negotiated peace settlement appear to have collapsed on Wednesday, when Russia, Turkey and Iran failed to agree on details of four "de-escalation zones" or "safe zones" proposed by Russia at a meeting in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.
Wednesday's meeting was based on a peace plan that was signed two months ago. (See "9-May-17 World View -- Russia, Iran and Turkey announce yet another farcical new Syria peace plan".)
In that article, I listed the reasons why it was farcical. The principal reason is that it didn't include the actual parties to the Syrian war -- the Shia/Alawite regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and the Sunni opposition. In fact, none of these actual participants in the war agreed to the terms of the agreement. That's why the talks on Wednesday collapsed.
The three countries -- Russia, Iran, and Turkey -- are supposed to be the "Guarantors" of the agreement, providing whatever troops are necessary for the functioning of the checkpoints and observation posts as well as the administration of the security zones.
News reports gave several reasons why the Astana peace talks collapsed on Wednesday:
A new meeting of the three countries is to take place in Tehran on August 1-2, with a self-imposed deadline of the last week of August to work out all the details. Reuters and AFP and Sputnik (Moscow) and VOA
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The map of Syria above shows the four de-escalation zones on the left (western side) of the map of Syria appearing above. The four zones, taken together, are enclaves containing over 2.5 million Sunni civilians, mostly women and children, in areas controlled variously by al-Qaeda linked or moderate opposition rebels. These millions of civilians are people that al-Assad in the past has made clear that he wants to exterminate as if they were cockroaches, and so which is why neither Assad nor the the opposition rebels were willing to sign Russia's agreement.
Here are al-Jazeera's descriptions of the four zones:
There's little agreement among all the parties as to how the so-called "Guarantors" of de-escalation zones or safe zones are going to enforce the terms of the proposed agreement.
Russia had announced on Tuesday that they would deploy the Russian military police carrying light weapons within two to three weeks, but that plan is now on hold after the peace talks collapsed on Wednesday.
Because of the difficulty in getting agreement on whose military forces will be occupying each of the safe zones, Russia has asked two Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, to send some of their own soldiers as peacekeepers.
However, Kazakhstan has already refused, saying that an essential condition for sending Kazakh peacekeepers is the existence of a UN Security Council resolution and the corresponding mandate of the UN. Al-Jazeera and Sputnik News (Moscow) and Sputnik News
Last year, al-Assad's military, supported by overwhelming destructive force provided by Russia and Iran, was going to destroy the city of Aleppo. That was going to end the war because it would demoralize the opposition groups and jihadists so they would lose interest in fighting, and would go home.
At the time, Bashar al-Assad called it "history in the making":
"[The liberation of Aleppo was] history in the making and worthy of more than the word congratulations.History is being written in these moments. Every Syrian citizen is taking part in the writing. It started not today, but years ago when the crisis and the war on Syria began.
I think that after the liberation of Aleppo we’ll talk about the situation as ... before the liberation of Aleppo and after the liberation of Aleppo."
Bashar al-Assad has proven himself to be psychopathic genocidal killer, the worst war criminal so far this century, so it's not surprising that he was totally delusional about the outcome of his slaughter of the people of Aleppo.
I've written about any number of Syria peace plans over the years. Kofi Annan, the virulently anti-American former Secretary-General of the United Nations from Ghana, was the first UN envoy on Syria. Annan formulated a farcical six-point 'peace plan' which said absolutely nothing, but which al-Assad used as a cover to continue exterminating innocent Sunni women and children with impunity.
After Kofi Annan was repeatedly humiliated by Bashar al-Assad, the UN appointed a new Syria peace envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to replace Kofi Annan. Brahimi wasn't as much of an idiot as Annan was, but he still resigned in disgust in May 2014, after it became clear that al-Assad really had no desire to do anything but exterminate Sunni civilians. Now, the current UN envoy is Staffan de Mistura, who goes around all the time saying, "This will not be tolerated," but who accomplishes nothing except, again, to provide cover for Bashar al-Assad's atrocities.
All of these peace plans have failed because the psychopathic, delusional Bashar al-Assad doesn't want the war to end. The war will never end as long as al-Assad is in power.
The map at the beginning of this article shows how Syria is currently divided up among different militias. Russia's peace plan did not address any of this, except for four zones in the western region supposedly still controlled by al-Assad. There will be a particular dispute between Turkey and the Kurds, as the latter try to join the two yellow areas into a single Kurdish state called Rojava, and Turkey does everything possible to prevent it.
The latest fantasy about the end of the war is that the war will end in the next few weeks, due to the defeat of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) in its last two strongholds, Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq. According to this theory, the remaining opposition forces are located in small, geographically isolated enclaves, so they won't be able to coordinate their actions into a significant fighting force.
The problem with this reasoning is that the defeat of ISIS in Raqqa and Mosul is just a simple tactical victory. It does not address the core issues that started the civil war in 2011, when al-Assad began exterminating Sunni women and children who were simply peaceful protesters.
Furthermore, defeating ISIS does not mean the end of the fighters in ISIS. As we've been reporting recently, they can flee to Deir az-Zour in eastern Syria. Scattered Sunni rebel militias can unify for the same reason as before -- to fight against al-Assad. That's the reason that tens of thousands of jihadists from 86 countries around the world came to Syria, and ended up forming ISIS. We should expect to see new versions of al-Nusra and ISIS to be formed in the weeks to come. War on the Rocks
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Jul-17 World View -- Russian-led Syria peace talks collapse in Astana, Kazakhstan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Jul-2017)
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Turkey fears double-cross from US on arms for Syrian Kurds
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In a dramatic development, US coalition warplanes used "precision air strikes" to blow holes in two "small portions" of the heavily fortified wall surrounding the Raqqa's Old City in Syria, to allow Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter to enter.
According to a US Central Command (Centcom) statement:
"Overcoming heavy ISIS [Daesh] resistance, the Syrian Democratic Forces breached the Old City of Raqqa, July 3. Coalition forces supported the SDF advance into the most heavily fortified portion of Raqqah [Raqqa] by opening two small gaps in the Rafiqah Wall that surrounds the Old City. ...Conducting targeted strikes on two small portions of the wall allowed Coalition and partner forces to breach the Old City at a locations of their choosing, denied ISIS the ability to use pre-positioned mines, IED and VBIEDs, protected SDF and civilian lives, and preserved the integrity of the greatest portion of the wall. ...
Unlike ISIS who deliberately destroyed the ruins of Palmyra and the Al-Nuri mosque and uses sites such as the Rafiqa Wall, hospitals, schools and mosques as weapons storage facilities and fighting positions, Coalition forces are making a great effort to protect civilians and preserve these sites for future generations,"
Raqqa is the major stronghold in Syria of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), and has been in the past named by ISIS as the capital of its caliphate. The SDF have been preparing for months for this final battle to recapture Raqqa from the 2,500 to 3,000 ISIS fighters that remain in the Old City.
The 2,500 meter wall that surrounds the Old City was constructed between 771 and 775 AD. The breaching of the wall is being called the most important development to date in the battle for Raqqa, since it allowed SDF units to enter the Old City quickly and surprise ISIS forces, without having to enter at existing cracks in the wall where ISIS has planted mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
U.N. officials say 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remain in the city amid "dire" conditions. Estimates of how long the battle of Raqqa will take range from a few days to a few weeks. AP and Rudaw (Kurdistan) and Long War Journal
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The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) leading the fighting in Raqqa are led by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), with mostly Kurdish fighters and some Arab fighters. The US considers the SDF the best fighting force in the region to defeat ISIS.
Turkey has never hidden its opposition to using the YPG, which is linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is recognized as a terrorist group by the US and European countries. The PKK have conducted a 30-year separatist insurgency in Turkey, and in recent years have conducted some horrific terrorist attacks in Turkish cities. Turkey would have preferred to use Free Syrian Army (FSA) forced backed by Turkey for the Raqqa operation, as well as the Mosul operation in Iraq.
US forces have been supplying advanced weapons to YPG fighters for the Raqqa battle. Turkey says that the US promised that the US would take the arms back after the battle ended, so that the weapons could not be used against Turkey.
Now Turkish officials are furious that the US is apparently reneging on its promise to retrieve the advanced weapons. Even worse, from Turkey's point of view, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has left open the possibility of the opposite occurring: That the US will continue to supply the YPG with advanced weapons and equipment, even after Raqqa has been recaptured from ISIS.
Mattis said that some weapons would be recovered, but when asked about further arming of the YPG, he said, "Well, we’ll see. It depends what the next mission is. I mean, it’s not like the fight’s over when Raqqa’s over."
The criticism by Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been extremely harsh, complaining that it's a violation of the Nato treaty:
"We will be together in NATO, and you will act together with terrorist groups. What kind of business is this?In this case, the NATO treaty should be revised.
Those who think that they can fool Turkey by saying that they will get those weapons back will eventually understand the vital mistake they made, but it will be too late. We will call to account the real owners of those weapons for every drop of blood they shed with those weapons."
Turkey points out that there have been a series of US provocations against Turkey. They claim that US officials have repeatedly lied about YPG and PKK support in Syria. The US promised to withdraw the YPG/PKK from the Syrian city of Manbij after ISIS was defeated, but the US handed control of the city over to them anyway. After that, according to Turkish news reports, it became clear these promises were mere diversions.
Turkey is becoming concerned that the YPG/PKK are controlling larger and larger regions of northern Syria, along the border with Turkey. Last year, Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield, a military operation by the FSA backed by the Turkish military, to prevent the Kurds from taking control of the entire northern border of Syria, and declaring an independent Kurdish state of Rojava.
There have been reports that Turkey is planning further military action against the Kurds in northern Syria. Reuters and Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Yeni Safak (Ankara)
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It's expected that it will be only a matter of days or weeks before ISIS will be defeated in both of its main strongholds, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. What will that mean for the Syrian conflict?
It's well to remember how the Syrian war came about. The civil war in Syria was caused by president Bashar al-Assad when he unleashed his army and air force against peaceful protesters in 2011. Things really turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad launched a massive military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and children Palestinians. He dropped barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons onto innocent Sunni women and children, he's targeted bombs on schools and hospitals, and he's used Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He considers all Sunni Muslims to be cockroaches to be exterminated.
Thousands of young Sunni jihadists from 86 countries around the world traveled to Syria to fight al-Assad, and they formed ISIS. At the same time, local Syrian Sunni fighters opposed to al-Assad formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front, while Kurdish fighters joined Arabs and formed the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Al-Assad has driven millions of Syrians out of their homes, into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe. Other forces that have entered the war include Americans, Turks, Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah.
All of these groups have very different objectives, but they were unified by their opposition to ISIS. With the defeat of ISIS, they have no one left to fight but each other. In particular, the Syrian people against whom Bashar al-Assad has committed years of torture and atrocities will never agree to return to the way things were before 2011.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran.
The conflict in Syria is very far from ended. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the defeat of ISIS is not the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning. Atlantic Council and Straits Times and Hurriyet (Ankara)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Jul-17 World View -- In dramatic development, US warplanes smash fortified wall in Raqqa, Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Jul-2017)
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North Korea launches another ballistic missile
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Sunday was the original deadline set by the four countries Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt for Qatar to meet the 13 demands that these four countries say must be met in order for the June 5 land, sea and air blockade of Qatar to be lifted. The blockade has split the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a group of Arab nations (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)) on the Arabian Gulf.
However, at the request of Kuwait's 88-year-old emir ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al Sabah, the four countries have agreed to extend the deadline for two days, until Tuesday. Sabah has been trying to mediate an end to the crisis, as he did in another dispute in 2014 among the same parties.
The demands listed by the Saudi-led four-nation bloc include: sever most ties with Iran; sever all ties to the Muslim Brotherhood; shut down al-Jazeera; terminate Turkey's military presence in Qatar; pay reparations and compensation for loss of life and other, financial losses caused by Qatar’s policies in recent years.
Saudi Arabia has stated that the 13 demands are non-negotiable. Qatar has said that the demands are so harsh that they "were meant to be rejected." Some reports indicate that there's been a slight softening of positions on both sides, thanks to Kuwait's mediation, but that the two sides are still very far from agreement.
According to one analyst:
"The thirteen demands ... are viewed [by Qatar] as crossing all sorts of lines and essentially would see the surrender of Qatari sovereignty.This is not something Qatar is going to adhere to, whether the deadline is today, in two days’ time or a week’s time. [The extended deadline is] a way in which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can appear to be not as inflexible as their demands make out."
Qatar has particularly said that under no circumstances will al-Jazeera be shut down. Turkey's deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus ridiculed the list of demands, and said that Turkey has no intention to shut down its military base in Qatar: "Turkey’s base in Qatar is not just about Qatar’s security it is about the security of the region."
However, Mark Wallace of the Washington-based Counter Extremism Project says that Qatar harbors terrorists and is a funder of extremist groups: "Qatar has a long history of providing support for extremism and terrorism, including but not limited to vast financial and material support to internationally designated terrorist groups and willing accommodation of internationally designated or wanted terrorist leaders and financiers." Radio France Internationale and Reuters and AP and Politico
Qatar officials and supporters are claiming that Qatar is handling the blockade and sanctions fairly effortlessly. Qatar's only land border is with Saudi Arabia, and that has been closed by the blockade, but Qatar's stores are well-stocked with food and other consumer items that have been imported from Iran and Turkey, who have been supporting Qatar.
Furthermore, Qatar is an extremely wealthy country, with a great deal of foreign income coming from oil and gas industries. Qataris point out that the hundreds of billions of dollars in its sovereign wealth fund would cover more than a decade of imports from Iran, Turkey and other countries, even though there have been significant prices increases on groceries and other consumer items.
However, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt are planning to meet on Wednesday to discuss additional steps to take, including new sanctions. Saudi-based economist Hussein Shobokshi says that the new sanctions will be a "terrifying tsunami" for Qatar's economy. They potentially include the following:
According to Shobokshi, "Any Qatari funds, direct or indirect, public or private, are not welcome in these countries."
If the GCC counties pull their deposits out of Qatar banks, it may trigger a panic on Qatar's riyal currency. In fact, the first signs of this have already appeared: Several British banks have stopped dealing in riyal currency at all, for fear that a panic will cause the riyal to go into free fall, leaving the banks with big losses on their holdings of the currency. These banks include Barclays, Lloyds Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank. The Peninsula (Qatar) and Asharq Al-Awsat (London) and The Peninsula (Qatar) and The National (UAE) and Reuters
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On Tuesday morning local time, as this article is being posted, North Korea launched what appeared to be a new ballistic missile test.
South Korea's new president Moon Jae-in had hoped to resolve the North Korea nuclear missile crisis by means of peaceful negotiations, but Moon's Pollyannaish hopes keep getting disappointed by North Korea's actions, which make it clear that North Korea is not interested in any negotiations. Many analysts believe that North Korea will be able to deliver a nuclear weapon to American mainland soil within a year or two. Yonhap (Seoul)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Jul-17 World View -- Saudi Arabia threatens further sanctions against Qatar if demands are not met thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Jul-2017)
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Xi Jinping threatens Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters with 'Red Line'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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New satellite images show that China has added reinforced launch sites for illegal surface-to-air missiles on at least three of China's illegal artificial islands in the Spratly Islands: Fiery Cross, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef.
While unarmed launch sites are not, by themselves, a danger to anyone, they are one step away from armed launch sites. In December, China moved SA-21 anti-aircraft missile batteries with a 250-mile range to the island province of Hainan for training. For the time being, they remain inside China, but could be moved outside China to the illegal military bases in the South China Sea, where they could be used to target any aircraft, including American unarmed surveillance flights.
China has claimed the entire South China Sea as its sovereign territory, and has built artificial islands and military bases. However, these claims and activities were declared illegal in a ruling by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, in a case brought by the Philippines. So all of these activities by the Chinese are in violation of international law, although the Chinese don't care about international law except as it applies to the West.
Furthermore, China promised in 2014 that the artificial islands would not be used for military purposes. That was obviously a lie, and in fact any promises that Chinese officials make can be assumed to be lies, as has been shown this week by the situation in Hong Kong.
On Sunday, an American warship, the USS Stethem, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, which is part of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. Triton Island is clearly in international waters, and the Stethem was performing a "freedom of navigation operation" (FONOP). These operations have been going on for years in order to defy China's illegal annexation of the South China Sea, and to establish that the South China Sea is international waters through which any ship may pass.
However, China launched a protest, claiming that the Stethem violated its sovereignty.
According to a statement from China's foreign ministry:
"Under the pretext of ‘freedom of navigation,’ the US side once again sent a military vessel into China’s territorial waters off the Xisha [Paracel] Islands without China’s approval.The Chinese side strongly urges the US side to immediately stop such kind of provocative operations that violate China’s sovereignty and threaten China’s security. The Chinese side will continue to take all necessary means to defend national sovereignty and security.
China dispatched military vessels and fighter planes in response to warn off the US vessel. The Chinese side is dissatisfied with, and opposed to, the relevant behavior of the US side."
China actually has no sovereignty to be "violated" in that region, as the United Nations Hague Tribunal has ruled, but Chinese thugs do what they want irrespective of international law.
As regular Generational Dynamics readers know, China has been aggressively preparing for full-scale war with the United States for years. They've developed one nuclear ballistic missile system after another, and manufactured perhaps hundreds of those missiles, with no other purpose than to destroy American cities, military bases and aircraft carriers. In the South China Sea, China has been building illegal artificial islands and illegal military bases, clearly in preparation to declare war on its neighbors. Generational Dynamics predicts that, at a time of its choosing, China will launch a preemptive war against its neighbors and against the United States. Fox News and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and News.com (Australia)
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During his speech on Saturday at the 20th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, China's president Xi Jinping made the claim that the "One Country, Two Systems" was still in effect, meaning that Hong Kong residents still had freedom of speech free elections, press freedom, and an independent judiciary.
The claim is laughable, as we reported two days ago. In 2014, Beijing thugs triggered the anti-Beijing "Umbrella Movement" by blocking any future free elections. In 2015, Chinese thugs kidnapped five Hong Kong booksellers who had published material critical of Beijing's leadership. And just as Xi Jinping was making his laughable claim that "One Country, Two Systems" is still in effect, the Beijing foreign minister announced that it was repudiating the agreement with Britain that had described the "One China, Two Systems" agreement.
Hong Kong police have been harassing and jailing pro-democracy demonstrators all week, making sure that no freedom of speech will be permitted.
At his speech on Saturday, Xi Jinping drew a "Red Line," warning anyone that any attempts to undermine sovereignty or to challenge Beijing's power would be severely punished:
"Any attempt to endanger national sovereignty and security, challenge the power of the central government and the authority of the Basic Law of the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) or use Hong Kong to carry out infiltration and sabotage activities against the mainland is an act that crosses the red line, and is absolutely impermissible."
So Xi Jinping is just one more thug who threatens even peaceful pro-democracy protesters with severe punishment. Xinhua and LA Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Jul-17 World View -- China builds illegal surface-to-air missile sites in South China Sea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Jul-2017)
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Remembering Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairmen
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Janet Yellen, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the successor to Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan, held a press conference on Tuesday of last week, during which she said that she believes that there will be no new financial crisis "in our lifetimes":
"Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis?You know probably that would be going too far but I do think we're much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don't believe it will be."
Yellen said that the reason she believes that there won't be a financial crisis "in our lifetimes" is because the Fed is much more clever and vigilant now about detecting risks, having learned lessons from the last financial crisis:
"I think the system is much safer and much sounder. We are doing a lot more to try to look for financial stability risks that may not be immediately apparent but to look in corners of the financial system that are not subject to regulation, outside those areas in order to try to detect threats to financial stability that may be emerging.After the financial crisis, those who see the damage in that type of thinking have played a major role in ensuring that we have a more appropriate system of supervision and regulation, hopefully for a good long time."
This is such a bizarre, naïve statement, that it's hard to know what to make of it. Yellen is expressing precisely the attitude that's always been prevalent prior to every financial crisis in world history. Politicians say "This time it's different," and "We've learned our lessons," and "It can't happen this time." And it doesn't happen this time, until it does.
Actually, the lessons from the last financial crisis haven't been learned at all. The Fed and central banks around the world have been "printing" hundreds of trillions of dollars, and governments around the world have been borrowing that money and going into new debt at an exponentially increasing rate. We've recently been reporting that it's too late for Illinois and Puerto Rico, which have gone into so much debt there's literally no hope of every paying it off.
This is true all around the world. According to a new report by the Institute of International Finance, global debt has reached $217 trillion in the first quarter of this year, and that's 327% of gross domestic product for the whole world.
China in particular poses an enormous risk. China's total debt surpassed 304% of GDP as of May 2017, according to the IIF.
Janet Yellen apparently believes that all this is no problem, that if a problem does arise, then the Fed or some other central bank can just print another trillion dollars in free money and use it to patch up the problem. So we have nothing to worry about.
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I started paying attention to the Fed in 2002, after seeing a huge graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) from 1920 to the present in the Boston Globe. I took one look at the graph and could see that it was perfectly obvious that we were in a stock market bubble. Later, of course, I did the calculations and verified it.
There are many reasons why I believe that mainstream economists are airheads, and one of them is the belief that you can't detect a bubble until after it occurs. In the case of the DJIA, it's rather simple. If you analyze historical values of the DJIA, you find that in the 90-year period from 1904 to 1994 it grew at an average of 4.5% per year, including inflation. So since the DJIA started growing much more rapidly than 4.5% per year, starting in 1995, the you know that it's in a growing bubble. Today, the DJIA is at 258% of its long-term trend value, as determined by the 4.5% growth rate, so we can be sure that the DJIA is in an enormous bubble. In fact, it was at 255% of the trend value when the crash began in 1929, and fell to only 24% of the trend value by 1932, after several years of crashing.
Another thing that mainstream economists are incapable of grasping is the concept of "Reversion of the Mean." This means that the average (or mean) of a value must be the same in the future as it was in the past.
This is easiest to explain with the S&P 500 Price Earnings ratio (p/e ratio). The historic average value of the p/e ratio is 14, but since the 1990s, it's been well above the average, and today it's around 24.
Now, airhead economists use the erroneous phrase "Reversion TO the Mean," and they say you should be prepared for the p/e ratio to revert to its mean value of 14. This would be a significant stock market correction, but it's only a small part of the story.
If the p/e ratio only reverts to 14, then that means for the last 20 years, the average (or mean) value was well above 14. That doesn't satisfy the requirement that the average before 1995 was 14, and so after 1995 it also has to be 14. That's why we say "Reversion OF the Mean," which says that the average value must return to 14, which means that the p/e ratio would have to fall to around 5 for 20 years, just as it was well above 14 for the last 20 years. This portends major stock market crash.
The members of the Federal Reserve are some of the major economists of our time, each with huge staffs to do research. And yet, Janet Yellen says that the Fed has everything under control, and there won't be a financial crisis "in our lifetimes." It's just absolutely bizarre.
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The bizarre statement by current Fed Chairman Janet Yellen is inciting feelings of nostalgia in me to remember the days of her predecessors. Since I started writing Generational Dynamics analyses in 2003, there have been two prior Fed chairmen, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. Let's start with Greenspan.
Another reason why I consider mainstream economists, or at least mainstream economics journalists and analysts, to be airheads is because of how they covered the Alan Greenspan years at the Fed. Throughout the early 2000s, they would make a "Greenspeak" or "Fed speak" joke that when Greenspan gave a speech or statement he could not be understood because he used convoluted language. So the so-called economics experts would say that they simply couldn't understand what Greenspan was saying. That whole excuse was totally ridiculous. I didn't understand what he was saying all the time either, but then I would go to the Federal Reserve web site and read the transcript of his speech. After reading it three or four times, even the convoluted language made sense. So I formed the opinion that any economics journalist or economist who said that he couldn't understand Greenspan because of convoluted language was an airhead -- and there were a lot of people like that.
So I was carefully following Greenspan during 2003, 2004, and 2005 to see what he thought of the growing stock market and housing bubbles. All my articles are on my web site, but to summarize: Early in 2004, he said there were no bubbles. In August 2004, he said that there was a housing bubble, but that it was a good thing, because homeowners could mortgage their homes, borrowing money on their homes, and have extra money to spend. In November 2004, he had a front-page interview with the Wall Street Journal admitting that he had known since 1996 that there was a stock market bubble, but decided to ignore it, and deal with it when it began to grow. Early in 2005, he completely reversed himself, and repudiated his earlier reasoning, saying that the bubble was growing. By the end of 2005, and his tenure as Fed president, Greenspan was saying that high asset prices were becoming very dangerous, and that " history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums."
My web site was pretty much the only place in the world where you could read this description of Greenspan's change of mind, as it was going on. You'd think it would be big news when Greenspan repudiated his own reasoning early in 2005, but there was not a word in the mainstream media, apparently because the airheads at the Wall Street Journal and CNBC were too dumb to understand his "convoluted language."
The other amazing thing is that Greenspan himself is apparently too embarrassed to admit that he predicted the housing bubble. He clearly discussed it in his speeches in 2004-5, but never referred to those speeches later. Apparently he was afraid that if he admitted that he knew what was going on, then he'd be blamed for it.
To me, Greenspan's story is one of the most amazing of the 2000s decade.
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Alan Greenspan was born in 1926, and lived through the Great Depression, so when he became alarmed in 2005, it must have been because he recognized all the signs of impending disaster from his childhood.
Ben S. Bernanke was born in 1953 and grew up during the 1950s, when America had already defeated the Great Depression and defeated the Nazis, and no goal was out of reach. He was in college in the 1970s when high inflation was the major problem, so naturally inflation was his greatest concern as Fed Chairman.
As I described in my 2005 article, "Ben S. Bernanke: The man without agony", Bernanke was a complete contrast to Greenspan. Bernanke didn't believe in bubbles. He believed that the 1930s Great Depression was CAUSED by the Fed -- which could have poured some money into the economy and prevented the Great Depression completely.
Ben Bernanke's story is not yet completely over. In 2008, during the financial crisis, his policy was to "print" as much money as he thought necessary, and pour it into the banking system. He did that, and central banks around the world followed him and did the same.
That's why global debt has reached $217 trillion in the first quarter of this year, and that's 327% of gross domestic product for the whole world. The current Fed chairman Janet Yellen says that the Fed has this all figured out. If some segment of the world economy starts crashing, threatening a chain reaction that will cause a catastrophic global financial crisis, Yellen and the other central bankers will just print money and stop the chain reaction. So we have nothing to worry about.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Jul-17 World View -- Fed Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen says 'no financial crisis in our lifetimes' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Jul-2017)
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Hong Kong handover celebration marred by thuggish treatment of dissidents
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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No one really expected China to fully honor the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that led to the handover in 1997 of Hong Kong to China, after 152 years as a British colony.
In the Joint Declaration, China promised to honor the principle of "One Country, Two Systems." In particular, citizens of Hong Kong were to have civil liberties and fundamental rights such as political freedom, free elections, press freedom, freedom of speech, and an independent judiciary. The people of Hong Kong had enjoyed these fundamental rights as a British colony, and China committed to preserving them for at least 50 years following the handover, until 2047.
However, China's Foreign Ministry on Friday repudiated the 1984 agreement once and for all. According to spokesman Lu Kang:
"Now that Hong Kong has returned to the embrace of the motherland for 20 years, the Sino-British Joint Declaration – as a historical document – no longer has any practical significance.It also does not have any binding power on how the Chinese central government administers Hong Kong. Britain has no sovereignty, no governing power and no supervising power over Hong Kong. I hope the relevant parties will reckon with this reality."
Britain's Foreign Office responded:
"The Sino-British Joint Declaration remains as valid today as it did when it was signed over thirty years ago ... It is a legally binding treaty, registered with the UN and continues to be in force. As a co-signatory, the UK government is committed to monitoring its implementation closely."
The exchange of views followed a remark by Britain's Foreign Minister Boris Johnson: "I want to stress that Britain’s commitment to Hong Kong – enshrined in the Joint Declaration with China – is just as strong today as it was 20 years ago."
The US State Dept. also chastised China: "[China must uphold] Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and the crucial ideal of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, as codified in the Basic Law and the legally binding Sino-British Joint Declaration." Hong Kong Free Press and Reuters and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and iPolitics (Canada)
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With China's president Xi Jinping visiting Hong Kong to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China, Hong Kong police are taking special measures to suppress any sign of dissidence.
On Wednesday, about 30 young protesters were arrested after staging a pro-democracy sit-in at the site of the July 1, 1997, handover. In other actions, Hong Kong police warned journalists to avoid any actions unrelated to reporting, and said that digital media outlets will be barred from covering the celebrations.
Locking up peaceful protests could be considered one of the more benign actions of the thuggish Chinese government. In 2015, five Hong Kong book publishers mysteriously disappeared after publishing books critical of China's communist leadership. They resurfaced a year ago and described being abducted by thugs and kept for months in solitary confinement in a cramped cell in mainland China. They were tortured and required to confess to crimes they had not committed.
Other actions could be considered even worse. Chinese nationals living in the United States and Europe who posted criticisms of China's communist party have had their families back in China abducted and jailed.
This is the backdrop to Xi Jinping's speech on arriving in Hong Kong:
"After nine years, I am happy to step on Hong Kong land again. In two days, it will be the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland. This is a big event, a celebratory event for the country and Hong Kong.[I give] my warm congratulations to the great achievements over the 20 years since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region... [I give my] heartfelt blessing that Hong Kong will achieve new success.
For 20 years, the central government has given Hong Kong its strong backing. The central government will always support Hong Kong’s development and improve livelihoods.
We will review the extraordinary journey of Hong Kong over the past 20 years across all sectors, summarize the experience and plan for the future, to ensure ‘One Country, Two Systems’ will be stable and everlasting."
This is a politician speaking, and I don't think that even he is so delusional that he believes that that Hong Kong's form of government will be stable and everlasting. Like Taiwan, Hong Kong is deeply divided between those who are completely loyal to the government in Beijing, and those who are not, wanting anything from Western-style fundamental rights to full independence.
Xi and other Beijing officials are well aware that time is not on their side. Younger generation, particularly those who grew up after the horrific Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, where China's army massacred perhaps thousands of students who had gathered in Beijing to protest, are less and less loyal to Beijing and more and more supported of separation or independence. This trend is continuing in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, and Beijing officials are desperately trying to change the trend, either by self-serving speeches by Xi and others, or by bloody crackdowns by Chinese thugs.
Although China never really supported the "One Country, Two Systems" philosophy, the worst and bloodiest violence by Hong Kong police thugs occurred in the summer of 2014, when tens of thousands of Hong Kong citizens, mostly college age, staged a series of pro-democracy protests, bring central Hong Kong to a standstill.
The police attacked the protesters with tear gas, and the protesters defended themselves with umbrellas to protect themselves from the tear gas. The sight of bright yellow umbrellas became commonplace, and the protests have become known as the "Umbrella Revolution" or "Umbrella movement."
What sparked the Umbrella Movement was that Beijing reneged on its commitment to "one country, two systems," in particular to the commitment to free elections. For the approaching 2017 elections, the only candidates who will be permitted to be run have to be approved a "nominating committee" completely controlled by Beijing. So the effect is that the so-called "free" elections are rigged to guarantee that only candidates selected by Beijing can win the elections.
The Umbrella Movement was considered a complete failure by its participants because nothing has changed. The demands to allow free elections in 2017 were ignored, and it's clear to everyone, especially the young people who protested, that peaceful protests will not succeed in changing anything, and that something else must be tried. Washington Post and Guardian (London, 17-June-2016) and CS Monitor (29-Mar-2016) and Hong Kong Free Press
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Jul-17 World View -- China repudiates its Hong Kong 'One Country, Two Systems' agreement with Britain thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Jul-2017)
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