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Taiwan's prime minister says that Taiwan is an 'independent sovereign state'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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According to an interview in Bloomberg Businessweek, Steve Bannon and Henry Kissinger have had several meetings, and are preparing a project to sound the alarm about what Bannon views as the primary economic threat to America:
"If we don’t get our situation sorted with China, we’ll be destroyed economically. The forced technology transfer of American innovation to China is the single biggest economic and business issue of our time. Until we sort that out, they will continue to appropriate our innovation to their own system and leave us as a colony—our Jamestown to their Great Britain, a tributary state."
This is a bit of hyperbole, referring to England's Jamestown Colony of Virginia, formed in 1607, but it illustrates the fear that Bannon is presenting of a reversal of roles between China and America, with China becoming the dominant world economic power.
Henry Kissinger, 94, was the Secretary of State in the administration of Richard Nixon whose "secret meeting" with China in 1971 permitted Nixon to "open China to the West" and invigorate US-China relations. As an international consultant, Kissinger has visited China more than 80 times since then. He's considered by many to be the most brilliant geopolitical strategist of our time. Most recently, Bannon met with Kissinger twice in September at Kissinger's country home in Connecticut.
Both Bannon and Kissinger are experts on world and military history, and Bannon is also an expert on Generational Dynamics, so he understands that a new war between China and the US is approaching. As regular readers know, I've worked with Steve Bannon off and on for almost ten years.
Bannon frames the conflict with China in economic terms. He says that China is harming the U.S. by engaging in unfair trade practices, such as the forced transfer of U.S. technology to Chinese companies. According to Bannon, China’s historical disposition toward trading partners is exploitative and potentially ruinous:
"There have been 4,000 years of Chinese diplomatic history, all centered on ‘barbarian management,’ minus the last 150 years. ...It’s always about making the barbarians a tributary state. Our tribute to China is our technology -- that’s what it takes to enter their market, and [they’ve taken] $3.5 trillion worth over the last 10 years. We have to give them the basic essence of American capitalism: our innovation."
What does Henry Kissinger think of all this? As it happens, Kissinger spoke at a Columbia University conference earlier this week. Possibly with his meetings with Bannon in mind, his speech emphasized that America and China must have been economic relations to avoid World War III and global destruction:
"China’s Belt and Road Initiative, in seeking to connect China to Central Asia and eventually to Europe will have the practical significance of shifting the world’s center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific and will involve the cultures of Eurasia, each of whom will have to decide what relationship to this region they will see, and so will the United States.It is said by many scholars that never before has a power grown in one region as China is doing and that its interaction will lead to tensions and maybe even war. We do not have this choice. That would be a road to the disaster and would do to the world what World War II did to Europe."
Bannon and Kissinger share the view that China and America are headed for a world war, and both are them are (in my view) desperately looking for a way to avoid it, by means of an economic alliance.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, avoiding this world war is impossible. In every century for millennia, every continent of the world has had massive wars that have killed half the population. In the last century, there were two world wars, plus additional massive wars in Africa, China, South America and South Asia. That this will happen in this century is 100% certain. Bloomberg Businessweek and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
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With the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) 19th Party Congress set to begin in Beijing on October 18, China's president Xi Jinping is facing a new embarrassment, as Taiwan's prime minister William Lai Ching-te said on Tuesday to Taiwan's Legislative Yuan (Parliament) that Taiwan is an "independent sovereign state."
Lai, 57, took office on September 8. His long-held views on Taiwan's independence from China were certainly well known to Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen when she appointed him, and it's even possible that the timing was chosen now, just before the Party Congress, to annoy Xi Jinping.
Lai delivered his first policy report to the legislature on Tuesday, and said:
"“I am a political worker who advocates Taiwan independence, but I am also a pragmatic pro-Taiwan independence theorist.We are already an independent sovereign nation called the Republic of China. We don't need a separate declaration of independence."
There was immediately a great deal of media speculation, in Taiwan and in China, as to what this means, and whether it indicates a change in Taiwan policy.
President Tsai Ing-wen issued a statement saying that her administration has never changed its position that "the Republic of China is a sovereign independent country," nor has it changed its dedication to peace in the region and maintaining stability in the Taiwan Strait.
However, both Lai and Tsai have refused to endorse the "One-China policy," also called the "1992 Consensus," which states that there is only one China, and leaves some ambiguity as to what that means. Furthermore, Tsai has said in the past that "We won't allow our sovereignty to be challenged or be exchanged for anything." It was Tsai's implicit support for independence that allowed her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to win decisively in January 2016.
China's government responded on Wednesday:
"The mainland and Taiwan belong to China, and their relations are never state-to-state relationships, nor one China, one Taiwan. As an inseparable part of the Chinese territory, Taiwan is never a country, and can never become one.Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, has never been a country and can never become a country.
The mainland side resolutely opposes any form of ‘Taiwan independence’ words or action, and will never allow the historical tragedy of national separation to repeat itself. The consequences will be reaped for engaging in Taiwan independence separatism."
This threat of "consequences" is based on China's "anti-secession law." This law, passed by the Chinese Communist Party in 2005, requires China to invade Taiwan if Taiwan makes any move toward independence, whether by word or by deed. Arguably, the preconditions for such an invasion have been met repeatedly since Tsai took office.
As the 19th Party Congress approaches, Xi Jinping has suffered several recent humiliations and setbacks, including the decision for China's army to stand down from invading Bhutan's Doklam Plateau, rather than risk a war with India at this time. Perhaps even more significant, the belligerent actions by North Korea have forced Xi to take actions that support the United States over North Korea. This new humiliation over Taiwan certain cannot be pleasant, and he may feel forced, after the Party Congress, to take some action over the political need to score a win. Reuters and Xinhua and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and China Post (Taiwan) and New Bloom (Taiwan)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Sep-17 World View -- Steve Bannon and Henry Kissinger form project to sound alarm on China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Sep-2017)
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Burma's ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims passes a major milestone
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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According to the United Nations, the Rohingya crisis in Burma (Myanmar) passed a major milestone on Thursday, in that the number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since August 25, when the latest Burmese army military "clearance operations" began, has now topped 500,000, making it "the largest mass refugee movement in the region in decades." UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the crisis "the world's fastest developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare."
Counting the refugees who had fled earlier, there are now believed to be "well over 700,000" Rohingyas in Bangladesh. And since the systemic violence by Burma's army is continuing there could be 250,000 more fleeing into Bangladesh in the next couple of months.
Burma's army has been conducting a scorched earth attack on Rohingya Muslims, burning down thousands of homes and buildings, and hundreds of entire villages. The army committed massacres, torture, rapes and other atrocities that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people, with hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives, crossing the border into Bangladesh.
Burma's government, led by the ethnic cleanser-in-chief and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has been denying that any ethnic cleansing is taking place, and is making the laughable claim that Rohingyas are burning down their own villages and killing each other.
For years, as these military operations were taking place, Burma refused to allow any foreign investigators into Rakhine state. Journalists, NGOs, UN investigators have all be blocked by Burma from entering the region.
Burma has been internationally pressured to allow investigators in, or risk losing aid or having sanctions applied. Finally, Burma agreed to a visit by United Nations officials and other diplomats to take play yesterday (Thursday). At the last minute Burma canceled the visit, refusing to give any explanation, but several hours later said that it was "because of bad weather." Burma claims that the visit will be rescheduled.
The visit was to have been tightly controlled, allowing the UN officials to see only the things that Burma's army wanted them to see. However, that strategy failed disastrously earlier this month, as we reported at the time. There was a tightly controlled visit by BBC reporter Jonathan Head, but then they happened to see some smoke going up through the trees. Head's minders lost control as Head and his cameraman ran towards the fires, where they able to question a Buddhist Burman who admitted to burning down the buildings.
So after that experience, it's not surprising that the Burmese government canceled Thursday's UN visit.
This is an extremely serious situation. The Burma Rohingya crisis is creating a huge refugee crisis and is energizing jihadist groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Asia, and the Mideast. After several years of these atrocities by Burma's army, Rohingya activists have formed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which conducted terrorist attacks on August 25 and triggered the current round of "clearance operations" by Burma's army. This crisis is extremely destabilizing to the entire region, and is just as likely as the North Korea nuclear missile crisis to trigger a war that could escalate into a world war. AP and WHO - Bangladesh situation report and Independent (London)
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Every time I write one of these articles about Buddhist Burma's ethnic cleansing and genocide of Rohingya Muslims, some commenters always get confused and think that I'm writing about Rohingya Muslims raping, torturing and murdering Buddhist Burmese. But no, let me be clear, this is about Buddhists murdering, raping, and torturing Muslims, not the other way around.
The phrase "religion of peace" gets thrown around a lot these days. Every time there's a terrorist attack by a Muslim jihadist group, some Muslim leader insists that Islam is a "religion of peace," a claim that infuriates many people in the West.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Islam is NOT a religion of peace. In fact, there's no such thing as a religion of peace. In fact, no religion would exist for long as a "religion of peace," since its population would soon be exterminated by people of other religions who do NOT follow "religion of peace" policies.
On the other hand, many people who comment on my articles seem to believe that Buddhism is a "religion of peace," and claim that Buddhists are somehow congenitally unable to murder, rape and torture Muslim Rohingyas or anyone else. A typical comment is that "Buddhists would never harm anyone, so the Rohingyas must have done something particularly harmful to deserve what's happening to them."
And so, many commenters seem to believe that Buddhism is a "religion of peace." And yet, the Buddhist society of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in 1975-79, led by Pol Pot, perpetrated one of the three or four top mass genocides of the 20th century, comparable to the huge Christian genocides in Russia and Germany in the two world wars, or the huge Muslim genocides in the Mideast coming out of the collapse of the Ottoman empire, or the huge African genocides in the 60s and 70s, or the huge Chinese genocides in the 40s and 50s. Genocide and sex are driven by DNA, not by religion, and all religions have the same DNA.
The Buddhist Cambodian killing fields genocide, 1975-79, killed something like 1.7 to well over 2 million people, out of a population of 8 million. So around 20% of Cambodia's population were killed, making it possibly the worst genocide, on a percentage basis, of the 20th century. By contrast, the Nazi Holocaust killed around 5 million, which was less than 3% of Germany's population. Pol Pot was trying to imitate Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in China, which was a genocide that killed millions of people out of some two billion, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot may be comparable in their genocides. In all cases, these millions of people were the subject of almost unimaginable atrocities, including torture and rape.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Buddhism is a "religion of war," just like Islam and every other religion. No "religion of peace" would survive more than a few decades, if it weren't willing to become a "religion of war."
So now looking more closely at the Buddhist Cambodian Killing Fields genocide, it may well be that the Buddhists in Burma may be borrowing some techniques from their Buddhist cousins in the 1970s Khmer rouge. This would be a historic example of one group of genocidal Buddhists learning genocide from another group of genocidal Buddhists. This comparison became even more dramatic on this week, when Burma's government announced that the government will take over the land that contained the villages that Burma's army burned down, making the ethnic cleansing permanent.
Right now, this is speculation, and there is no public evidence of this connection between the Buddhist cousins. Perhaps someday, when ethnic cleanser-in-chief and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi writes her memoirs, we'll learn more about whether there is a connection. UC Santa Barbara and Reuters and Al Arabiya
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Sep-17 World View -- Burma's (Myanmar's) leaders may be inspired by Pol Pot's Cambodian 'Killing Fields' genocide thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Sep-2017)
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Thailand's Yingluck Shinawatra sentenced in absentia to five years in jail
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For the last two days, lawmakers in Uganda's parliament in the capital city Kampala have exchanged kicks and punches, and assaults with chairs and microphone stands. At least two female lawmakers being carried out after collapsing.
The disagreements were over changing the constitution remove the age limit for a presidential candidate. The change would permit Yoweri Museveni, who has been president for more than three decades, to run for another term, seen by many as a Museveni power grab. The constitution has an age limit of 75 years, which would make Museveni ineligible to run again in the next election, in 2021.
Museveni's government attempted to prevent opposition lawmakers from even attending Wednesday's session, by sending security forces to surround their homes to prevent them from leaving.
One MP, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, a musician turned politician, described his experience this way:
"The police surrounded my home in order to prevent me from going to parliament today [Tuesday]. I was too smart for them, I instead spent the night somewhere in the ghetto.[When the police found him and tried to arrest him,] I instead jumped onto a boda boda [motorcycle taxi]; they tried to grab me off the boda but the riders fought them off. Then police officers jumped onto a boda boda to chase me but the boda guys refused to carry the police officers."
Several MPs had similar experiences and marched to parliament. Before the fighting started, opposition lawmakers filibustered and sang the national anthem repeatedly. One opposition lawmaker accused another MP of carrying a gun, and that led to the brawl. The speaker ordered that opposition MPs had to leave, and when they refused, plain-clothes security operatives stormed parliament and dragged them out.
This was carried live on television and on the internet. The result was that the government's Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) banned all live broadcasts as of 8 pm on Wednesday. A statement by the UCC said:
"The Commission has noted with concern that both radio and television broadcasting operators are relaying live broadcasts which is inciting the public, discriminating, stirring up hatred, promoting a culture of violence amongst viewers and are likely to create public insecurity or violence.The Commission reminds broadcasters that such live broadcasts are in breach of the minimum broadcasting standards as laid down in section 31 of UCC Act 2013."
Amnesty International issued a statement condemning the ban on live broadcasts, saying, "Ugandans have a right to know what their elected representatives are doing, a right the authorities must facilitate rather than hinder." The Observer (Kampala) and The Independent (Kampala) and New Vision (Kampala) and Amnesty International
Uganda is following a familiar generational pattern that I've described in many other countries, both in Africa and outside. When a country's generational crisis war is a civil war between two ethnic groups within the country, then in the decades following the end of the war, especially during the next generational Awakening era, the ethnic group that won the war and took power begins new violence, atrocities, rapes, and arbitrary jailings and executions against the ethnic group that lost the war.
Outside of Africa, we see this for example in Syria, where the president Bashar al-Assad has for decades been using sociopathic forms of torture on his enemies, and has used everything from Sarin gas to barrel bombs containing metal and chlorine on marketplaces and residential neighborhoods to kill and torture his political enemies.
Uganda's president is from the Hima tribe, which is closely allied with the Tutsi tribe. For decades, and perhaps centuries, ethnic Tutsis and ethnic Hutus have been conducting brutal wars with each other, the most well-known of which is the Rwanda genocide of 1994, where Hutus killed almost a million Tutsis in a period of three months.
Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, 73 years old, allied with the Tutsis, took part in many of these gruesome atrocities and slaughter. By any reasonable measure, he's just as much as a sociopathic monster as Bashar al-Assad.
The same is true of Rwanda and Burundi, the other two countries that were heavily involved in the 1994 Hutu-Tutsi genocide. The current president of Rwanda is Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, while the president of Burundi is Pierre Nkurunziza, a Hutu.
All three leaders are using repressive measures to stay in power long after their mandate has ended. But Nkurunziza in particular has been using torture, rape, beatings, arbitrary jailings and summary executions to suppress the Tutsis, resulting in over 500,000 refugees in neighboring countries, including Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania.
All three countries are in a generational Awakening era, meaning that there is no chance at this time of anything like the huge 1994 genocide. But there will be continuing government violence, torture and arbitrary jailings in all three countries, and these patterns will get worse as time goes on. Guardian (London, 12-Sep)
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On Wednesday, a court in Bangkok, Thailand, found Thailand's former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra guilty of graft in absentia, and sentenced her to five years in jail.
As we reported last month, Yingluck fled to Dubai rather than face an all-but-certain guilty verdict and jailing for alleged graft in the rice stock sales program that she initiated. Yingluck supporters believe that the charges are purely political.
This is worth mentioning in this article because Thailand is also in a generational Awakening/Unraveling era, following Thailand's last generational crisis war, Pol Pot's Cambodian Killing Fields war in the late 1970s. Yingluck and her brother Thaksin were both extremely popular as prime ministers, supported by majority dark-skinned indigenous Thai-Thai "red shirts," but opposed by the minority market-dominant light-skinned Thai-Chinese "yellow shirts."
Just like the leaders of Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Syria described above, the élite in Thailand, led by the army, are using violence, army coups and dubious criminal charges to keep them out of power, and allow the minority Thai-Chinese élite to continue in power.
Thailand's police chief announced on Wednesday that he is conducting a manhunt for Yingluck, and is asking Interpol to find her and bring her to justice in Thailand. Bangkok Post
Related: Thailand's former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra flees to Dubai (26-Aug-2017)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Sep-17 World View -- Uganda lawmakers throw fists and chairs at each other over Museveni's power grab thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Sep-2017)
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Iraqi Kurds' independence referendum appears headed for big approval
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Thousands of ethnic Kurds in Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, were dancing in the streets and setting off fireworks on Tuesday, celebrating what is apparently an overwhelming YES vote on the non-binding referendum for Kurdistan independence.
Voters were asked to answer either YES or NO on the ballot asking them just one question in Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and Assyrian: "Do you want the Kurdistan Region and Kurdistani areas outside the (Kurdistan) Region to become an independent country?"
An estimated 78% of the more than five million eligible voters cast a ballot. The ballots are still being counted, though some reports indicate a YES vote around 90%.
The reasons that they were celebrating is that they were hoping, probably delusionally, that the successful referendum may be the first step in the creation of an independent nation of Kurdistan, something that's been a frustrated hope for at least a century.
Although the referendum took place in Iraq, there are large populations of Kurds in several countries in the Mideast and the South Caucasus. There are 20 million Kurds living Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and other countries, making it an anomaly that they're one of the largest ethnic groups that didn't get their own state after two world wars in the last century.
The reason that the this particular time was chosen for the referendum is because the Kurds believe that they have leverage for their role in fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), which began occupying Iraq with the the catastrophic fall of Mosul to ISIS in June, 2014.
Since then it's been the Kurds that have been the main fighting force against ISIS. The Kurds protected Iraqi refugees, including Yazidi refugees, from ISIS, and played an important part in expelling ISIS from Mosul earlier this year. The Iraqi Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, was emboldened by the Kurds' success in fighting ISIS, and felt that it was necessary to move quickly before the international good will dissipated. Reuters and AP and Atlantic (24-Sep)
Iraqi leader Massoud Barzani may have been hoping for some gratitude from the international community, especially the United States, for the Kurds doing such a great job fighting ISIS in Iraq, and even for the great job that the Kurds are doing fighting ISIS in Raqqa in Syria. Unfortunately, those hopes are not being fulfilled.
Secretary-General António Guterres voiced concern over the referendum in a statement:
"The Secretary-General respects the sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of Iraq and considers that all outstanding issues between the federal Government and the Kurdistan Regional Government should be resolved through structured dialogue and constructive compromise.The Secretary-General expects that United Nations-mandated activities across Iraq, including in the Kurdistan region, will be allowed to continue unhindered."
There are many countries in the world today with ethnic sub-populations that would like to form an independent region. Many people in Scotland would like to leave the United Kingdom. The Catalonia region of Spain would like independence. China has multiple separatist problems, in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan.
So none of these countries is going to support an independence referendum in Iraq, since doing so would energize the separatist forces in their own countries.
Iraq's prime minister Haider al-Abadi will not even negotiate with the Kurds:
"We are not ready to discuss or have a dialogue about the results of the referendum because it is unconstitutional.Most of the problems of the [Kurdish] region are internal ones, not with Baghdad, and will be increased with the calls for separation. The economic and financial problems the region is suffering from are the result of corruption and mis-administration."
The United States, the European Union, Turkey and Iran all fear that the referendum could destabilize the region. Turkey, Iraq and Iran are all sending troops for exercises near the Kurdistan border. Iraq is threatening to cut off air travel. Turkey is threatening to close the pipeline that goes through Turkey, and which the Kurds use to sell oil to international markets. Closing the pipeline would cut Kurdistan's major source of revenue. In fact, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Barzani of "treachery," while Iranian officials have called the referendum "evil."
So with almost universal rejection of the referendum results, it may be considered surprising the Israel supports the independent state of Kurdistan. Several times in the last few years, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has supported independence, saying that the Kurds are a "brave, pro-Western people who share our values." Many Israelis feel that they have a lot in common with the Kurds, in that Jews also had to fight to create the state of Israel.
This has led Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei to issue a statement calling the independence referendum a "Zionist plot" meant to fuel violence in the Mideast.
With almost every nation in the world opposing an independent Kurdistan, with only one major exception, Israel, it seems pretty certain that there will not be an independent Kurdistan. United Nations and Al Jazeera and BBC and Jerusalem Post (13-Sep) and Times of Israel
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Sep-17 World View -- Israel may be the only country recognizing the Iraq Kurdistan referendum thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Sep-2017)
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Is there a strategic explanation for Trump's statements and tweets?
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ri Yong-ho, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, said that Donald Trump had declared war on North Korea, and that therefore North Korea had the right to shoot down US warplanes, even over international airspace. According to Ri:
"The world, including all member states currently attending the United Nations General Assembly, must clearly remember that this time, America declared war on us first. The U.N. charter acknowledges all member states' independent rights to self-defense.Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make counter-measures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country."
Ri was probably alluding to the American warplanes that flew over international airspace just east of North Korea over the weekend. Pentagon spokesman Dana White described these flights: "This is the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea's coast in the 21st century."
White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to Ri's threats as follows:
"We have not declared war on North Korea and, frankly, the suggestion of that is absurd. ... It's never appropriate for a country to shoot down another country's aircraft when it's over international waters.Our goal is still the same. We continue to seek the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. That’s our focus, doing that through both the most maximum economic and diplomatic pressures as possible at this point."
The events of the past three days follow months of increasingly vitriolic threats and exchanges. Recently, America's UN ambassador Nikki Haley said that North Korea was "begging for war." Russia's president Vladimir Putin said that North Korea would "rather eat grass" than end its nuclear program.
The claim of "declaration of war" is a response to president Donald Trump's speech last week at the United Nations, where he ridiculed North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un by calling him "Rocket Man," and saying he was on a "suicide mission":
"No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing, and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That's what the United Nations is all about. That's what the United Nations is for. Let's see how they do."
Kim responded with an equally personal insult directed at Trump:
"I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue. I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire."
Trump tweeted in response to Ri's threat: "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!"
Could North Korea actually shoot down a US warplane? Most analysts believe not. North Korea is believed to have thousands of Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles, but those are old technologies that US warplanes could presumably avoid. However, North Korea has produce its own KN-06 surface-to-air missile, and perhaps Kim believes that it could be successful in shooting down an American warplane. NPR and Washington Post and Foreign Policy
What's going on here between the US and North Korea? Is this just two countries stumbling into war, or is there some strategy in operation? There are thousands of attempted explanations on the internet. This is mine.
America faces a very stark choice. Many people are suggesting that we do nothing, which would mean appeasement.
If we do nothing, then North Korea will build an arsenal of nuclear missiles pointed at Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Even if those missiles are launched, they can be used for blackmail. Kim would threaten US forces in South Korea, Guam, and elsewhere. Kim would demand that all of those forces be withdrawn, and he would have the support of China and Russia. He would also be supported by the same people who are advising appeasement now.
When the North Koreans make a nuclear threat, it's quite possible that they would carry it out. In 2010, the North conducted two acts of war targeting South Korea -- in May, North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan, killing dozens of South Korean crew members, and in November, North Korea killed South Korean civilians by shelling Yeonpyeong Island. In both cases, the South Koreans chose not to respond, but it's pretty clear that they might have.
So I believe that doing nothing, appeasing North Korea, would lead to war, and I believe that the Trump administration has the same view.
Many of the analyses in the mainstream media start with the assumption that Kim Jong-un is correct in calling Trump a "dotard" and a "madman" with his finger on the nuclear button. These opinions are idiotic, but they are extremely common.
Donald Trump and the US are facing a stark situation. Doing nothing, appeasement, leads to war. Therefore, something must be done. Therefore, we can assume that Trump is following a strategy. I do not for a second believe the idiotic statements by mainstream reports that Trump's name-calling is random and uncontrolled. I believe that Trump's actions, including his tweets, are all part of a strategy. This is my opinion as to what that strategy is.
Part of the strategy is, of course, using strong sanctions, in the hope that North Korea will end its nuclear program. I don't think anyone serious believes that it will since, as Putin said, North Korea would rather eat grass. However, it's possible that the sanctions and threats of military action are really directed at the Chinese. It's apparent that Russia and China have absolutely no objection to North Korea having an arsenal of nuclear missiles targeting the United States, since they won't be targeting China or Russia. However, sanctions and military threats might convince the Chinese to force Kim to stop his nuclear missile program. So that's part of the strategy.
But in the end, no one seriously believes that any of these diplomatic strategies will work. If the US wants to prevent North Korea from having an arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at South Korea, Japan, and the US, then military action will have to be taken. After Monday's threat to shoot down an American bomber, the Pentagon said that it is preparing military options for Trump.
Many analysts have said that no military action is possible without putting millions of people in Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, at risk. However, several days ago, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was asked whether there were any military options the United States could take with North Korea that would not put Seoul at grave risk. Mattis said: “Yes there are. But I will not go into details.” So I don't know if Mattis was telling the truth, but whether he was or not, some military action must be taken.
Several weeks ago, China said that if the US attacked North Korea first, then China would join North Korea in fighting the US. But if North Korea attacked first, and the US responded, then China would not defend North Korea.
So my explanation for Trump's strategy is that he's trying to provoke a military attack by North Korea. In 2010, the North Koreans attacked South Korea by torpedoing the warship Cheonan and by shelling Yeonpyeong Island, as described above. My belief is that Trump is trying to provoke North Korea to do it again, by means of the name-calling and by flying American warplanes just outside of North Korea's airspace. If the North even tries to shoot down an American warplane, then a counter-attack would be justified, and China has promised not to defend North Korea.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, we're seeing a typical pattern that historically has preceded any generational Crisis war, where each side "crosses the line," and the other side responds by "crossing the line" further, in a tit-for-tat ping pong of responses and counter-responses, eventually leading to war. As regular readers know, the world is headed for a Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting America, India, Russia, Iran and the West against China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries. Unfortunately, this is inevitable, no matter what strategy the US pursues in Korea. Fox News/AP and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Sep-17 World View -- US adopts strategic response to North Korea's threats to shoot down US warplanes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Sep-2017)
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Angela Merkel scores weak win in German national elections
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It appears that Angela Merkel has won a fourth term as Chancellor of Germany, although the relatively weak win will make it difficult for her to form a governing coalition. Turnout was high, at 75%, compared to 71% in the 2013 election. But perhaps the biggest news from Sunday's election is not Merkel's victory, but rather the rise of the far-right AfD party. (The phrase "far-right" has different meanings in Europe and America.)
Angela Merkel's center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU/SDU), has won a plurality of the votes in Germany's national election on Sunday, with 33% of the votes (according to exit polls), down 8.5 percentage points from 41.5% in the 2013 election. The CDU has been the governing party for most of the decades since the end of World War II, having positioned itself at the party of Christian democracy, while shedding the Nazism of the 1930s, but this is its weakest post-war showing.
Merkel's CDU has only 33% of the votes, which is not a majority, which means that if she wants to govern as Chancellor, then she must form a governing coalition with other parties. In the past, the center-right CDU has joined in a coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). The SPD received 20.5% of the votes in this election, and so the CDU and SPD could, once again, form a majority coalition. But the SPD leaders said that they will refuse to form a coalition with the CDU, and the rise of the AfD is one of the reasons.
The far-right party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany), received 13% of the votes, gaining 8.5 percentage points since 2013. This is extremely significant in German politics, because it means that AfD is surging past the 5% minimum required to be represented in Germany's Bundestag (parliament).
The AfD is considered nationalistic and xenophobic because of its policies that are anti-European Union, anti-immigrant, and anti-Islam.
The party was formed in 2013 when Germany led the EU in bailing out Greece. The bailout turned into an extremely vitriolic war of words between Germany and Greece, and the AfD was formed as an anti-EU party. They took their name from a phrase Merkel used in 2013, "There is no alternative," meaning that there was no alternative to bailing out Greece.
Then, in 2015, when Angela Merkel approved the arrival of over a million Syrian refugees with the slogan "Wir schaffen es" ("We can do it"), the AfD became anti-Islam and anti-immigrant, though its leaders say that it's not opposed to immigration, only to a flood of immigrants. In the current election, its election posters showed young women on the beach with the slogan "Burkas? We’re into bikinis," and a young pregnant white woman with the phrase "New Germans? Let’s make them ourselves."
Supporters of the AfD sometimes are quoted as saying, "The AfD is the new CDU." By this they mean that after WW II, the CDU became the party of a Christian democracy in Germany, while shedding the Nazi past. AfD supporters see the CDU as having abandoned the Christian heritage, and see the AfD as the new guarantor of a Christian Germany, while ironically ignoring the return to the 1930s style of nationalism and xenophobia.
So if Merkel's first-place CDU forms a governing coalition with the second-place SPD, then third-place AfD will become the major opposition party, which would give them a special status in the Bundestag. For that reason, apparently, the SPD is rejecting a coalition with Merkel's CDU, so that the SPD can be the main opposition party, and prevent AfD from achieving that special status.
So Merkel will have to form a coalition from some of the smaller parties. The Greens (Die Grüne, at 9%) are advocating strong environmental regulations. This contrasts strongly with the Free Democratic Party (FDP, at 10.7%), which is business-friendly. So Merkel would have to perform some difficult political juggling to form a three-way coalition with those two parties.
That leaves Die Linke (the Left, 9.1%), which is the current incarnation of the 1930s Communist Party. Party leaders said on Sunday that they wanted to stay out of a coalition, so that they would be free to vote on their issues.
So Sunday's election is over, but the chaos is just beginning. It's not an absolute certainty that Merkel will come out of all this as the Chancellor for a fourth term, but analysts consider it to be a very likely. Deutsche Welle and Guardian (London)
As I've been writing for years from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, we're deep into a generational Crisis era, and nationalism and xenophobia have been increasing in most nations around the world.
Whenever I write about this, many people believe that I'm writing about xenophobia directed at Muslims. While that's true in the case of Germany's AfD, the target varies widely from country to country, and the target is usually a target of political convenience.
A good example is the UK, which voted for Brexit largely because of immigration issues related to the EU rules about "freedom of movement." In the EU context, "freedom of movement" refers to EU citizens being able to move freely from EU country to EU country, and although immigration of Syrian refugees was a part of the Brexit motivation, the main issue was actually European Union citizens from eastern European countries like Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. So the UK's xenophobia was directed mostly at Christians from eastern Europe. In the United States as well, there is xenophobia directed at Mexicans, who are also Christian.
In Japan, the xenophobia is directed at China. In China, the xenophobia is directed at Japan and the United States. In India, it's directed at Muslims in Pakistan. In Pakistan, it's directed at Hindus in India. So nationalism and xenophobia are not narrow attitudes directed at just one group, but are an organic part of every population during a generational Crisis era, and may be directed at any religious or ethnic group, depending on the country.
In the case of Germany, many Jews are concerned that the rise of the AfD means a possible new Holocaust at some time in the future. There are some 200,000 Jews living in Germany, and post-war Germany has gained a reputation as a safe, tolerant place for Jews to live, although Jews point to official data reporting 681 anti-Semitic crimes reported to police so far this year.
As the saying goes, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." What this means is that in each generational Crisis era, there are behaviors that are similar in kind to the behaviors of the previous generational Crisis era, in this case the period leading up to and including World War II. Like most countries, Germany does seem to be on a trend line of increasing nationalism and xenophobia, and if this trend continues, Germany could witness widespread racist hate crimes, as in the 1930s. However, for what it's worth, we don't yet know whether this will be directed at Jews, as it was in the 1930s. However, even if it's directed just at Muslims it would be equally disastrous, and historians of the 2030s may look back and say that there were two Holocausts in the preceding century, one targeting the Jews and one targeting the Muslims. Der Spiegel and Deutsche Welle and Reuters and Jerusalem Post and Foreign Policy (11-Sept)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Sep-17 World View -- Rise of far-right AfD party in Germany raises international alarm bells thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Sep-2017)
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Chinese and Indian behavior a study in contrasts during Doklam crisis
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The military confrontation began suddenly and unexpectedly on June 16, when China sent troops and construction workers to begin road construction in Bhutan's Doklam Plateau, with the apparent intention of annexing the region. The crisis ended just as suddenly and unexpectedly on August 28.
During those 73 days, it appeared that China and India were on the verge of a major border war, repeating a 1962 border war in which India was defeated.
Initially, 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, resulting in a standoff.
There were no bullets fired, but there were reports of Indian and Chinese soldiers bumping each other with their chests to push each other back.
The Indian media were restrained, rarely saying anything that might inflame the situation or further anger the Chinese.
The Chinese media were the opposite, with extremely belligerent and vitriolic editorials setting deadlines for India, threatening a Chinese military invasion of India that would destroy India's army, and warning India that its defeat would be even worse than the defeat in the 1962 border war.
The international community was demanding that China and India hold negotiations to settle the dispute peacefully. Among the vitriolic threats during the crisis, China said that there couldn't be negotiations until India unilaterally withdrew its troops, and that China's army would destroy India's army if India didn't withdraw.
So it was a big surprise on Monday, August 28, when China and India announced that they had agreed to pull back troops, to end the Doklam crisis. Even more surprising, it turned out that there had been secret negotiations going on for weeks, despite China's repeated insistence that negotiations were impossible until India unilateral withdrew its troops. Yale Global (14-Sept)
So who won? A lot of people believe that India won, because China was forced to back down and negotiate a mutual withdrawal. Others claim that China won in a different sense -- by proving that its army could strike at any point along the 2000 km border between China and India. There have also been reports that China will increase the number of troops stationed near the Doklam Plateau, so that it can be invaded and annexed later, when the time is right.
In fact, a number of analysts believe that China backed off for now simply because the timing wasn't right. When China sent in its troops on June 16, they may have expected to overwhelm Bhutan's defenses and annex the region quickly and easily, but were surprised when India sent in troops to come to Bhutan's defense.
Who would have won a military confrontation? I've seen analysts on both sides of this issue. One thing is certain: If it were a victory for China, it would not be an easy victory, and the conflict could spread to a naval battle in the Indian Ocean, or to other parts of the China-India border.
There are several reasons why the timing was very bad for China to risk getting involved in a larger conflict with India.
One problem is that there was a BRICS summit scheduled for September 4-5 in Xiamen, China. China invests a great deal of prestige in these international summit conferences when they're held in China, and wanted this conference to show China's importance in the world. BRICS is an acronym for five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) that are considered to be emerging economies. If the Doklam crisis had not been settled, then India's prime minister Narendra Modi would probably have boycotted the BRICS summit, which would have been an embarrassment to China's president Xi Jinping. It's no coincidence that the Doklam announcement was made just a few days before the BRICS summit.
Another issue for China is that the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee is scheduled for October 19. A blunder in Doklam could result in a brutal power struggle that forces Xi to step down, in the worst case scenario. Xi may still face criticism at the Congress for having to back down in Doklam, but probably not as much as in other scenarios.
China's aggressive, belligerent policies in the South China Sea and elsewhere may have won praise among editorial writers in China, it leaves Xi Jinping with numerous questions about where he's leading China. Relations between China and its neighbors -- Japan, Vietnam, sometimes the Philippines -- are acrimonious. It's becoming increasingly apparent that there will be no peaceful reunification with Taiwan, and no political peace in Hong Kong. And the blistering North Korea nuclear missile crisis presents extreme risks to China, as well as to the US.
All of these issues mean that the time was simply not right for a border war with India. China can send troops into the Doklam Plateau any time it wishes, as suddenly as it did on June 16, and with everything else going on, and with the BRICS summit and the CCP Congress approaching, it was wiser to wait until next year. South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG - India) and Rand (9-Sep) and Asia Times (6-Sep) and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong, 30-Aug)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Sep-17 World View -- Analysts draw lessons from the China vs India Doklam border standoff thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Sep-2017)
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Spain's government mounts massive crackdown to prevent
Catalonia independence referendum
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The government of Spain is facing its biggest political crisis in decades, since the wealthy region of Catalonia is demanding independence from Spain, and is planning to hold an independence referendum next week on October 1.
Catalonia's parliament passed a measure in September officially announcing its plan to hold a referendum on October 1. The parliament said that if the referendum passed, then it would declare independence from Spain within 48 hours.
Tens of thousands of Catalans have taken to the streets in Barcelona, protesting the Spanish government and expressing support for the planned vote on Catalan independence.
The Madrid government, backed up by Spain's Constitutional Court, has declared the referendum to be illegal. Spain's King Felipe and Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy have both publicly called on Catalans not to vote. Earlier this week Madrid began a major crackdown on Catalonia institutions to prevent the referendum from taking place
On Tuesday, Madrid took to court 700 Catalan mayors for allowing preparations to go ahead.
On Wednesday, the Guardia Civil, Spain's national police, stormed ministries and buildings in Barcelona belonging to Catalonia's regional government, including the economy department, foreign affairs department, and social affairs department.
Fourteen high-ranking Catalan officials were arrested, infuriating the public.
This was after the police went from building to building, raiding printers, newspaper offices and private delivery companies, searching for election materials, confiscating vote record forms, ballot boxes, and almost ten million ballot papers, as well as and campaign leaflets.
It's quite possible that this crackdown will prevent the referendum from being held, although Catalonia official Oriol Junqueras said that there will be a vote, possibly using ordinary sheets of paper as ballot papers.
However, it almost doesn't matter any more whether the referendum is held or not. Madrid's crackdown, which many criticize as an enormous overreaction, has infuriated the Catalans, and is leading to continuing anti-Madrid street protests. More than 40,000 people have gathered in Barcelona to protest over the arrests and the intervention of the Spanish government in the Catalan independence vote. Reuters and New Europe and El Periodico (Barcelona) (Trans) and Express (London)
The Madrid government has flooded Catalonia with almost ten thousand police officers, has stormed Catalonia's government buildings, has confiscated thousands of ballot papers, and arrested Catalonia government officials. To those with long memories, this looks a lot like the beginnings of policies that led to the Spanish Civil War.
In the 1930s, during Spain's Second Republic, the government had granted Catalonia a fair amount of autonomy, though there were occasional bloody street fights between Anarchists and Communists. However, that autonomy changed with the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), which was one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century, and a prelude to the much larger World War II.
Generalísimo Francisco Franco's fascist nationalism, aided by Italy and Germany, led to massive atrocities in Catalonia, with entire villages completely flattened by Benito Mussolini’s Italian air-force and the German Luftwaffe. Franco imprisoned, tortured and executed tens of thousands of Catalan people. At the same time, there were extremely bloody wars between the Anarchists and Communists. The war climaxed with the Battle of Ebro (July to November 1938), in which 15,000 pro-Republic Catalans died, resulting in victory for Franco.
Franco marginalized the Catalans after the war ended, but during the generational Awakening era of the 1950s, Catalan groups were forming underground resistance and opposing Franco. Franco's death on November 23rd 1975 signaled the full beginning of the generational Unraveling era, with calls for renewal of democracy and self-rule in all regions of the country. In 1977, more than one million Catalans marched through the streets of Barcelona and asking for freedom, amnesty and self-rule. But only limited self-rule was allowed.
Today, Spain is well into a new generational Crisis era, and as the survivors of the last crisis war die off, the fault lines that led to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 are reemerging. Catalonia's demand for an independence referendum, and Madrid's overreaction and crackdown on Catalonia last week resulted in little or no violence, but they represent a growing renewal of the tensions that separated Catalonia from Madrid in the 1930s. Guardian (London) and Catalonia Votes and This Is Spain
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Sep-17 World View -- The 1930s Spanish Civil War fault lines explode again over Catalonia independence referendum thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Sep-2017)
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North Korea threatens a 'Pacific Ocean nuclear test'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order imposing a new round of sanctions on North Korea. The new sanctions were approved by the UN Security Council on Monday of last week, and attempt to leverage the power of the US financial system. On the same day, the European Union reached agreement to ban EU investment in North Korea.
To my knowledge, no one seriously believes that these new sanctions will have any major effect on North Korea, any more than previous sanctions have, or that they will motivate the North Koreans to end its nuclear missile development program.
President Trump's sanctions can apply to persons in any country outside of North Korea. The executive order calls for sanctions on persons involved in:
Sanctions may be imposed on any foreign financial institution in any country, if the institution conducts or facilitates trade with North Korea. The White House says that "Foreign financial institutions must choose between doing business with the United States or facilitating trade with North Korea or its designated supporters." Reuters and White House and Reuters
According to the White House:
"The [Executive Order] directly targets North Korea’s shipping and trade networks and issues a 180-day ban on vessels and aircraft that have visited North Korea from visiting the United States. This ban also targets vessels that have engaged in a ship-to-ship transfer with a vessel that has visited North Korea within 180 days. North Korea is dependent on its shipping networks to facilitate international trade."
Ships and aircraft that have visited or traded with North Korea will be banned from entering the United States for 180 days.
However, this is far short of the kinds of sanctions that Trump had wanted to impose. According to the draft resolution that the US submitted to the Security Council two weeks ago, any U.N. member state would be authorized to inspect North Korean ships suspected of carrying banned cargo and to use "all necessary measures to carry out such inspections."
The banned cargo would include any "crude oil, condensates, refined petroleum products, and natural gas liquids," as well as textiles. The draft resolution called for an end to the hiring of North Korean nationals, which provide North Korea with hard currency.
This would be an effective trade blockade on North Korea. Although any nation would be authorized to carry out the forced inspections, as a practical matter it's expected that only the US would actually do so. If a North Korean ship resisted the inspection, then there might be an exchange of fire that might escalate into war, putting Seoul, South Korea, into great risk.
It was those fears of escalation that caused Russia and China to threaten to veto the resolution. In order to overcome the objections, the US agreed to water down the resolution to the point where it will have no effect at all on the North Korean regime.
Earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was asked whether there were any military options the United States could take with North Korea that would not put Seoul at grave risk. Mattis said: “Yes there are. But I will not go into details.”
Guardian (London, 11-Sep) and Bloomberg (13-Sep) and Reuters (18-Sep) and Washington Examiner
In a statement a couple of days ago, North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un threatened the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history" against the United States.
North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho was asked on Thursday what that meant, and he said,
"It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific. We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un."
This action, if taken, would be just as much an escalation towards war that the proposed military blockade of North Korea would be. The hydrogen explosion would threaten shipping and planes flying overhead, and would release a great deal of radiation and cause environmental damage.
So the United States and West have two possible paths forward -- a "peaceful" diplomatic approach (sanctions), amounting to appeasement, and a confrontational approach (blockade). The appeasement could trigger war from the North Korean side, while the blockade could trigger war from the American side.
Either action leads to the same outcome. For almost 15 years, I've been writing Generational Dynamics analyses that predict that the world is headed for World War III, pitting the US, the West, India, Russia and Iran versus China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries.
The World War could be predicted, but the timing and the exact scenario leading to that war could not be predicted. But now we seem to be rushing toward war over North Korea, and neither Russia nor China seem willing to take steps to prevent it.
As an additional note, there is a report that Steve Bannon had a secret meeting with a senior Chinese Communist Party official in Beijing last week. Bannon is an expert on world history, and is also an expert on Generational Dynamics. He was recently ousted from the White House as Donald Trump's chief strategy, but according to reports, he still has the president's ear. Bannon fully understands that the world is headed for a world war. Perhaps he hopes that by meeting with the Chinese, he can find a way to prevent it, although Generational Dynamics says that it can't be prevented. Yonhap (South Korea) and Sky News (Australia) and Washington Examiner
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Sep-17 World View -- Trump's North Korea sanctions stop short of military blockade thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Sep-2017)
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Maduro tells Venezuelans to breed and eat rabbits
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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An economic analyst is advising Venezuela's government on ways to move Venezuela's assets out of reach of American and other international courts, if Venezuela defaults on its national bond payments, effective declaring national bankruptcy.
Venezuela has met all its debt repayment obligations so far, but some analysts are predicting that Venezuela will default on bond payments before the end of 2017. Venezuela has an estimated $63 billion of bond obligations.
The probability of default has increased substantially since August 25, when US president Donald Trump imposed sanctions that prevent further borrowing, either by the Venezuelan government itself, or by the nationalized state oil and natural gas company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). With both the government and PDVSA severely restricted in borrowing more money to make payments on existing debts, it's believed that there will be a default. On August 31, the Fitch Ratings service downgraded Venezuela's bonds from CCC down to CC, to reflect the increased chance of default after the new sanctions were imposed. Reuters (26-Aug) and Latin America Herald Tribune (31-Aug)
A lengthy analysis by Mark Walker of Millstein & Co, co-authored by Richard Cooper at Cleary Gottlieb provides a roadmap for Venezuela to keep state out assets out of the reach of creditors. In particular, it describes methods for keeping the assets of PDVSA, the nationalized state oil company, away from its own creditors and the government's creditors.
According to the analysis:
"As the humanitarian, economic, financial and political crisis intensifies in Venezuela, so too does the complexity of the tasks the country must accomplish to reverse the 18 years of mismanagement and policy distortion that marked the presidencies of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The difficulty of reforming the economy in the aftermath of these failed policies is compounded both by the need to carry out this reform in what is likely to be a wrenching change in the political landscape and by the fact that there are stakeholders in Venezuela with a strong interest in maintaining the status quo. That said, Venezuela has no other choice but reform and political change. The current government has openly opposed the reforms necessary to stabilize the Venezuelan economy and create the conditions for sustained growth. It has lost legitimacy and credibility internationally as well as domestically. The President and many of its senior representatives are isolated from discourse by sanctions imposed by the United States, and the acquisition and trading of new debt is now prohibited by the same U.S. sanctions, with other countries likely to follow. Accordingly, we start from the premise that the only Venezuelan government that will be able to carry out a restructuring of Venezuela’s liabilities is a government—which could be a caretaker or transitional government—that demonstrates a credible commitment to the necessary reforms and can undertake binding obligations in a restructuring whose validity under applicable laws is not subject to challenge."
It's good that Walker and Cooper get these assumptions out of the way, because in my opinion the assumptions are unrealistic. In my opinion, Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás Maduro Moros will never "demonstrate a credible commitment to the necessary reforms." This is the psychopathy we see today in governments around the world -- Syria's president using Sarin gas and barrel bombs on innocent women and children, the governments of Eritrea and Burundi using arrest, rape, murder and torture at will of anyone who expresses opposition to the government, or Burma's government using genocide and ethnic cleansing to eliminate a million Rohingyas.
In my opinion, Maduro's government is headed in the same direction as the governments of Syria, Eritrea, Burundi or Burma, and not in the direction of "a credible commitment to the necessary reforms."
Walker and Cooper agree with that, but make an even more unlikely assumption -- that Maduro will step down and give control to "a caretaker or transitional government -- that demonstrates a credible commitment to the necessary reforms."
So having said that, let's look at the actual proposal:
"Accordingly, we see as the first step and priority in any restructuring process the implementation of measures to protect the country’s assets, particularly those vulnerable to seizure, such as the proceeds from the sale of oil, while it simultaneously commences discussions with the IMF, bilateral lenders such as China and Russia and market participants -- a process that will take several months at the least. Once the nation’s assets are secure, Venezuela will be able to enter into good faith negotiations with the official sector and its creditors, use its scarce foreign exchange in the best interests of the country and stop immediately the pursuit of dangerously uneconomic transactions whose sole purpose is to avoid a bond default. ...Knowing that a default is both inevitable and necessary, Venezuela must have as its highest priority the objective of protecting PDVSA’s cash generating assets located outside Venezuela."
Maduro in "good faith negotiations"? I don't think so.
Anyway, Walker and Cooper suggest several methods from Venezuela and PDVSA to effectively declare bankruptcy. They recommend that Venezuela modify its existing Venezuelan Public Sector Revitalization Law so that it will be recognized by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court as "a collective judicial or administrative proceeding in a foreign country," where "collective" means "one that considers the rights and obligations of all creditors" in allocating PDVSA's assets. This would mean, for example, that the law could not could not favor Maduro's friends -- Russia and China, who are owed $37.2 billion -- over American and other Western creditors. This would require an independent entity outside of Maduro's control allocating PDVSA's assets among creditors and, once again, in my opinion Maduro would rather eat mud than agree to anything like that.
As a last resort, Walker and Cooper advise that if all else fails, then Venezuela should try to get the bankruptcy processed by a UK court, taking advantage of English law which may be more lenient.
Finally, the Walker and Cooper paper returns to the assumption of a transitional government:
"Our premise, however, is that the current regime cannot today restructure its debt and that the Venezuelan Public Sector Revitalization Law will be enacted by a government that is attempting to overcome a humanitarian and economic crisis of historic proportions created by prior administrations. Far from imposing sanctions, we assume that at such time U.S. policy will be to promote a restoration of Venezuela’s economy and the revival of its democratic"
So, the idea is that Maduro will agree to hand power over to an independent transitional government, and the U.S. courts will be extra-lenient, in order " to overcome a humanitarian and economic crisis of historic proportions created by prior administrations. Far from imposing sanctions."
Well, stranger things have happened. And even if Maduro doesn't voluntarily step down, maybe Venezuela's army will finally force him to step down, for the good of the country.
What the Walker and Cooper proposals really show is that Venezuela is at a fork in the road. If Maduro steps down and lets someone else govern, then some of the proposals discussed here could be implemented.
It's tempting to say that never happens, but in fact Communist and Socialist governments did end peacefully in Cuba, East Germany and Russia, and returned to at least a semi-capitalist free economy.
The other alternative is that Maduro refused to step down, and the streets are flowing with blood. Reuters and SSRN papers
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Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás Maduro Moros has inflicted enormous pain and humiliation of the country's people, with empty store shelves and shortages of everything from toilet paper to medicines to vegetables, jailing owners of closed factories, jailing bakers who make croissants or brownies instead of bread, accusing Twitter of attacking his government, one of the highest murder rates in the world, and an inflation rate of 33% per MONTH, forcing many people to forage for food in garbage cans.
Now Maduro is announcing a "rabbit plan" to help out starving Venezuelans. He announced on state television, "For animal protein, which is such an important issue, a 'rabbit plan' has been approved because rabbits also breed like rabbits."
However, the rabbit plan faced an early setback. Freddy Bernal, the head of Maduro's food program, distributed baby rabbits to families in 15 communities, as a pilot project.
However, instead of eating the rabbits, people kept them as pets. According to Maduro, "When he came back, to his surprise he found people had put little bows on their rabbits and were keeping them as pets, it was an early setback to Plan Rabbit."
Bernal is telling Venezuelans to get over their love of rabbits. People need to understand "that the rabbit is not a pet, but two and a half kilos of meat with high protein and no cholesterol put on the table of Venezuelans." BBC and Daily Mail (London) and VOA
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Sep-17 World View -- With Trump's sanctions in place, Venezuela expected to go bankrupt soon thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Sep-2017)
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Russia's 'telephone terror' forces evacuation of over 200,000 people
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Dozens of Russian cities have been the target of hundreds of bomb scares, starting on Sunday, September 10. Police cleared two dozen buildings in the city of Omsk, including cinemas, schools, malls and City Hall. In Ryazan later that day, eleven malls and several cinemas and restaurants were evacuated.
On Monday, there were 42 bomb scares in four cities. On Tuesday, 45,000 people were evacuated from 205 buildings in 22 cities across Russia. The bomb scares have continued every day. It's estimated that over 200,000 people have been evacuated in cities across Russia so far, costing the authorities about $5.2 million. And the end is nowhere in sight.
The Kremlin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the bomb threats "telephone terrorism." The hoaxes are being perpetrated by unknown individuals calling in bomb threats from internet phone systems. Since the internet is everywhere, the bomb threats could originate from anywhere in the world.
One report from an unnamed source says that the internet phone calls were tracked to an IP address in Ukraine. However, other sources in the Russia's Interior Ministry say that the hackers may be based in Brussels.
Other theories are that the hoax phone calls are from the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), presumably by Russian citizens from Chechnya or Dagestan who went to Syria to fight Bashar al-Assad.
Russian authorities say that they're doing all they can to find the perpetrators, but for the time being, the authorities are stumped. Window on Eurasia and Moscow Times and Tass (Moscow) and Moscow Times
When Kenya's Supreme Court declared that the August 8 election was "invalid, null and void" because of electoral committee irregularities, it gave the government 60 days to hold a new election.
A new election was scheduled for October 17, but Safran Identity and Security, the French IT consultants that provide electronic election management system, says that it will not have its systems ready by then, and is requesting that the election be postponed at least until October 26.
The key players are unable to agree on the details of how to run the new election, and these disagreements raise doubts that any credible election can be held.
The incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta, who was reelected in the election declared invalid, has called the four Supreme Court judges who voted to nullify the election "crooks," implying that they were paid off by the opposition. Kenyatta's supporters have been protesting in fron the Supreme Court building, claiming that they stole the election from Kenyatta.
The opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, blames the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), which oversaw the first election. Odinga is demanding that its members resign, claiming that the rigged the first election in favor of Kenyatta, and that he was proven right when the Supreme Court nullified the election.
Because of numerous threats of violence, Supreme Court judge David Maraga issued a statement on Tuesday:
"1. You will recall that four weeks ago, the Judicial Service Commission addressed Kenyans through a press conference at this very place over the increasing incidence of attacks by various groups of people who were given to making threats and demands intended to interfere with the work of the Judiciary.2. Since the Supreme Court delivered the judgement on the 2017 Presidential Election Petition on September 1, 2017, these attacks have become even more aggressive, culminating in lengthy uninterrupted demonstrations right outside the Supreme Court Building yesterday and today.
3. Whereas we recognise and respect the rights of citizens to picket as provided in the Constitution, these demonstrations have bordered on violence and are clear, intended to intimidate the Judiciary and
4. Further, in a particularly unfortunate incident yesterday in Kirinyaga County, Hon. Martha Karua was blocked by demonstrators from accessing the Kerugoya Law Courts for the hearing of her own petition. This amounts to intimidation of petitioners and should never be allowed to happen."
The Supreme Court has said that on Wednesday (today), the Supreme Court would provide details of the reasoning behind its ruling nullifying the August 8 election. Standard Media (Kenya) and Bloomberg and Chronicle (Zimbabwe) and Twitter - David Maraga
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Sep-17 World View -- Kenya's government in chaos as it faces a new election delay thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(20-Sep-2017)
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Stanislav Petrov, 'The man who saved the world,' dies at age 77
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Secularists in Turkey are outraged that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is to be removed from high school textbooks and curricula on biology, and replaced with claims that forms of life are unchanged. Supposedly, mechanisms like adaptation, mutation and natural and artificial selection will still be taught, but students apparently will not be permitted to conclude that these mechanisms cause life forms to evolve.
At the same time, there will be more classes on Sunni Islam religion, and the new textbooks have increased emphasis of the importance of jihad or holy war, saying that it means "love of homeland."
The new curriculum will also have much less information about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Ataturk declared that Turkey would be a secular state, with freedom of worship for people of all religions, including Jews and Christians.
The reason being given for all of these changes is that they're necessary for the protection of Turkey, following the aborted coup attempt on July 15, 2016. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared that he wants to create a "pious generation," and these changes are necessary.
However, as usual for Erdogan, that's a lie. For years, starting long before the coup attempt, Erdogan has been aggregating power to himself, and has been changing Turkey's character from a secular state to a conservative Islamist state.
In June of last year, a month before the coup attempt, there were a wave of protests in hundreds of schools across Turkey over restrictions on student freedom on overtly religious grounds. Students protested restrictions on holding concerts at school, on not allowing girls' hockey teams, and on secular literature or poetry societies. They feared that ordinary high schools would turning in strict religious schools, where girls and boys are segregated, with increased emphasis on teaching Sunni Islamic religion and religious practices.
Since the coup, Erdogan has ordered the firing or jailing of well over 100,000 people in all professions, from waitresses to judges. This purge has included the firing of more than 33,000 of the nation's teachers, about 4%. In addition, nearly 5,600 academics have been dismissed and some 880 schools closed for alleged links to terror groups. AP and Hurriyet (Ankara) and BBC (21-June-2016)
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It's been revealed that Stanislav Petrov died on May 9 at age 77, though his death only became widely known this month.
Petrov is credited as being "The man who saved the world," because of events that transpired on September 26, 1983.
Petrov was on duty at a Russian nuclear early warning center, when a siren sounded, and he received a computer readout saying that the United States had launched a missile. The big, back-lit red screen had the word "launch" on it. According to Petrov in 2013:
"A minute later the siren went off again. The second missile was launched. Then the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Computers changed their alerts from 'launch' to 'missile strike'."
Petrov was frozen in place. He believed that if he passed the aler up the military chain, then the Soviet Army would immediately launch a retaliatory missile strike. Instead, he debated with himself what to do, and ended up doing nothing:
"Twenty-three minutes later I realized that nothing had happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief."
Petrov violated military protocol, but he was not reprimanded for doing so. Instead, he received an official reprimand not correctly updating his log book.
It's possible, as many people believe, that Petrov's hesitancy saved the world from a nuclear war, but I actually doubt that conclusion. Russia was in a generational Unraveling era, where the entire Soviet bureaucracy, just like Petrov, would have been extremely hesitant to take the word of a computer that a war had begun. I think that it's most likely that the military leadership would have taken a few minutes to verify the attack before launching a counterattack, and war would have been averted anyway. But that's just my guess. We'll never know for sure. Russia Today and BBC (26-Sep-2013)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Sep-17 World View -- Turkey removing evolution from textbooks, adding more on jihad thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Sep-2017)
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Egypt forces Hamas to capitulate to Fatah and reconcile
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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We've heard this several times before: Hamas and and Fatah (Palestinian Authority), the two Palestinian groups, have agreed to reconcile and form a "unity government." The new government will contain ministers and MPs from both Hamas and Fatah, and will govern both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
The Palestinians took control of the Gaza Strip in 2005, after Israel voluntarily withdrew in a move to promote a new step in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. However, the terror group Hamas took control of Gaza and used it as a launchpad for attacks on Israel. In 2007, Fatah attempted to use force to take control of Gaza, with the plan to form a "unity government" between Hamas and Fatah. But the entire Mideast was shocked when Hamas overpowered and defeated the much more powerful Fatah forces. This brief war was punctuated by many atrocities and a great deal of vitriol, resulting in what seems a permanent split between Hamas and Fatah.
Israel and Hamas had brief wars early in 2009, and again in 2014, and these wars triggered renewed calls for a unity government between Hamas and Fatah. A particularly forceful attempt in 2014 raised hopes, but ended quickly.
So Hamas's statement on Sunday morning saying that it was ready to reconcile with Fatah, form a unity government, and hold general elections came as a surprise.
However, there's little reason to believe that reconciliation will last any longer this time than it has in the past, since neither Hamas nor Fatah have kept their promises in the past. Times of Israel and Palestinian News Network and Arab News (Saudi Arabia) and Al-Jazeera (Qatar)
The reconciliation announcement was brought about through the determination of Egypt's president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who called Fatah and Hamas delegations to meet in Cairo last week for reconcilation talks. According to reports, the Hamas delegation refused to be in the same room as the Fatah delegation.
Hamas had refused to reconcile with Fatah in the past, but was forced to do so now for several reasons:
All of this has lead to a financial crisis for Hamas. So with a financial gun to its head, Hamas was forced by Egypt to announce a capitulation, and an agreement to reconcile with Hamas.
How long this magnanimous feeling of reconciliation will last is anyone's guess, but even if it succeeds, there may be unitended consequences. Since the US, Europe and Israel list Hamas as a terror organization, the West may be restricted from negotiating with or providing aid to a unity government. Going further, if there are elections, it's quite possible that Hamas would win the elections giving it governing control of both Gaza and the West Bank. Asharq Al-Awsat (London) and Al-Ahram (Cairo) and The National (UAE)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Sep-17 World View -- Hamas announces it will reconcile with the Fatah and Palestinian Authority thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(18-Sep-2017)
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UN identifies three causes of increase in world hunger
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Hunger is a major source of geopolitical instability, whether on a regional or a global level. If a man is unable to feed his family, then he may feel he has no choice but to join an army or militia that will give him money that he can send to his family. And if the army or militia is fighting someone whom the leaders or the politicians blame as being the cause of high food prices and hunger, so much the better if he gets to kill those people.
Food prices surged throughout the 2000s decade, and then began to fall as the global financial crisis forced to buy less expensive foods, such as cereals and sugar instead of meat. However, food prices began to spike again in 2016, raising concern among UN officials. Food prices fell slightly in August, but they're still significantly higher than in August of last year.
Regional food shortages are even worse. The situation is unprecedented in recent times, with four countries simultaneously facing a food crisis.
South Sudan was officially declared to be in a state of famine in February 2017, the first such declaration in six years. Some 100,000 people in South Sudan are facing famine, while 4.9 million people are classified as facing a food crisis.
In Yemen, 17 million people, or two-thirds of the population, are estimated to be food insecure, with the risk of a famine declaration very high.
In northern Nigeria, 8.1 million people are facing acute food insecurity conditions, and in Somalia, an estimated 2.9 million people have been severely food insecure from six months ago.
Other countries are in near-crisis condition: Afghanistan, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Myanmar and Syria.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, food shortages and increasing food prices are major factors in leading to the next generational crisis war, or world war. After World War II, officials sought to end hunger forever through the Rockefeller Foundation's "Green Revolution," which brought modern agricultural techniques and technology to countries around the world. These technologies included new hybrid and genetically modified seed varieties and the use of pesticides.
Today, however, the advantages of the Green Revolution have been dissipated. Pesticides and fertilizers have been overused, and have been damaging the land and environment. Genetically modified seeds and foods have generated political controversy, and have plateaued in effectiveness.
And finally there's the unavoidable problem that population keeps increasing. More people means there are more mouths to feed, and more people mean that farmland is used up by urban sprawl, so there's less food production for more people.
If men cannot feed their families, then they will go to war rather than starve. The "good thing" about this is that a generational crisis war kills a lot of people, making more farmland available, and leaving fewer people to be fed. That's the way the world works. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) Food Price Index and United Nations and Guardian
Some 815 million people were hungry in 2016, about 11% of the world population, an increase of 38 million from 2015. Of these, 489 million hungry people live in countries affected by war.
In an interview with the BBC, Kostas Stamoulis of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that they've identified three reasons for the sharp increase in the number of undernourished people from 2015 to 2016 (my transcription):
In his last point, Stamoulis is certainly referring to, among others, Venezuela, which wasted billions of dollars building a "Socialist Paradise" when oil prices were high, with the result that happens 100% of the time: A "Socialist Catastrophe," where people starve and, in the case of Venezuela, can't even afford toilet paper. United Nations and World Food Program
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Sep-17 World View -- Global food price increases affecting world political stability thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Sep-2017)
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Equifax and the rise of Generation-X
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Here's something that I wrote in my Feb 26 2013 World View article:
"Apparently, Equifax's networks and databases have been hackedI use different e-mail addresses for almost everything. That way, I know whether a company is using my e-mail address for spam.
In 2005, I registered with the Equifax web site to do some research for a brief period. Starting about a month ago, I've been receiving several spam messages a day to that e-mail address.
Therefore, I conclude that Equifax's networks and data bases have been hacked, and e-mail addresses have been stolen at the very least. Whether Equifax's credit card databases have also been hacked is something I have no way of knowing."
I still receive spam messages to that e-mail address. The latest one was from someone named Natasha who is writing to "foreigners as they are fascinated by the beauty and simplicity of Slavic women," and by the "simplicity and the intense aura of emotions which we have." Tempting, huh?
Apparently, Equifax didn't take network security seriously, even after they'd already been hacked. This doesn't surprise me in the least. When I was working for Ability Networks, their servers were hacked by a combined Phishing/Ransomware attack. No data was stolen, but I warned my employer that they should at least encrypt the social security numbers in their main data base. My warnings were ignored because spending money on security doesn't generate sales.
So here it is over four years later, and Equifax's data bases have been the target of possibly the worst data breach in history. Some 143 million people had their personal information stolen, including social security numbers names, driver's license numbers, dates of birth, and so on. Most of the people are Americans, but some are from Canada, Britain and Europe, and possibly other countries as well.
Somebody who had all that information about you could take out a big loan in your name, commit fraud in your name, or steal your entire identity.
Somebody now has a copy of all that Equifax information in their own database. They can start selling it to other people, or they could use it for other purposes. Since social security numbers can't change, this can happen for years to come. Economist and Fox Business
I got a phone call today from a perky-sounding girl who said that I qualify for a big discount on the vacation of my dreams, and all she needs is a little information. This is a typical scam for collecting information, sometimes to augment additional information available to the hacker, to get a complete picture to be used for fraud or identity threat. Do not, under any circumstances, give any information to anyone under such circumstances, even the name of your pet cat.
A variation is a "Spear Phishing" attack. You receive an e-mail message from someone you know, perhaps your boss or a friend or coworker or your bank or your broker. The message contains personal information, proving that the message is legitimate. It asks to click on a link, which ends up infecting your computer with malware, allowing the hacker to steal your banking information. The e-mail information was carefully crafted to fool you, perhaps combining information from several sources, such as the Equifax hack, plus your Facebook page, plus a scam phone call. If you receive an e-mail message that asks you to download something, even if it's from someone you know, then contact the supposed sender, and ask him why the hell he's so stupid that he's sending you something so dangerous and inappropriate.
For the protection of your computer, you should make sure that you have anti-virus and anti-malware software installed, and that it's up to date.
For protection from identity theft, you might consider getting a "credit lock" or "credit freeze." This is a service offered by each of the three credit reporting agencies, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian, for about $10 per year each. Equifax is waiving its fee for one year, but you'll still have to pay the others. This service prevents someone from getting your credit report without your permission, blocking them from taking out a loan in your name. It's a pain in the neck to administer, but you may consider it worth the trouble.
The following are links to articles that provide additional information on the above and other steps to protect yourself: Federal Trade Commission and CBS News and NPR and CNBC and Engadget
As I wrote above, Equifax obviously didn't really care much about network security. In my experience, Gen-Xers ignore warnings about things like security if the warnings come from a Boomer, of whom many Gen-Xers are often contemptuous.
Having been in the computer industry my entire life, I've seen several disasters for exactly that reason. At Computer Sciences Corp., a Gen-Xer sabotaged someone's code. At a couple of places, including Fidelity and CACI, managers fired people who warned that the project was headed for failure, and then the project failed anyway. Every disaster of this type that I've personally seen has always involved a dysfunctional action by a Gen-Xers to sabotage a Boomer. I've written about this on my web site dozens of times over the years, and it apparently stems from their anger at their parents' divorce in the 1980s.
The most amazing example is what happened on the afternoon of October 1, 2013, when President Obama stood up at a press conference to launch Obamacare. When a reporter asked why so few people could log on, he answered that millions of people were enrolling for insurance, so the web sites were slow. As it turned out, only six people across the country were able to enroll on that day.
How is it possible that Obama and the entire White House were so completely blindsided by the disaster that was already unfolding that they didn't even know what was going on hours after the launch had begun? How many people had to lie? How many people had to commit fraud? How many people had to be silenced or fired? How many layers of management were lied to, to prevent Obama from knowing the size of the disaster, hours after the disaster was already in progress?
I wrote about this at length in "Healthcare.gov -- The greatest software development disaster in history". As I described, the reason that Obama was completely blindsided on Oct 1, 2013, is because the thousands of people on the healthcare.gov project all lied, every one of them. Obama got what he deserved, and the rest of the country got screwed.
This is the world we live in now, where black is white and white is black, whether you're in the mortgage industry, the computer industry, the newspaper industry, or any other industry, and anyone who talks about what's really going on is subjected to being silenced, one way or another.
Here's something that a web site reader recently wrote to me:
"I have spent my entire adult life in mortgage lending and the amount of corruption is stunning. I have in the past tried to report issues. What I got was referred to agency after agency to ending in frustration. There was even one time that after getting my personal info the guy started asking me if I had some kind of grudge. I said no but asked how that would matter anyway if the information was correct. He then started just burrowing into me, didn't ask a thing about the subject I called about.It's like there is this secret club with wholesalers and government workers. Like nothing I had seen before. Scared me; thought I was going to be targeted."
These things were almost unthinkable prior in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Silent and Boomer generations were in charge. They only became possible with the rise of Generation-X.
So now getting back to the situation at Equifax, it's even a lot worse than described above.
Equifax learned about the hack on July 29, but didn't inform the public for several weeks. Two days later, on August 1, three Equifax executives sold $1.8 million worth of shares, allegedly to avoid losing money from the stock price falling when the breach was made public. Equifax claims that they were going to sell the shares anyway, and didn't know about the breach.
Equifax itself is in serious trouble for incompetence in protecting consumers' personal data. The attackers breached Equifax's server in April because of a vulnerability in the "Apache Struts" web application software. The Apache Software Foundation had released a patch for the vulnerability in March, but Equifax didn't bother to install the patch, which would have taken minutes.
So Equifax is in trouble for multiple reasons: They didn't install the patch; when the breach was discovered, they didn't notify anyone for weeks; and executives sold their shares, possibly violating insider trading laws. And we won't even both to list the ways in which Equifax botched the announcement of the breach. Based on my experience and years in the computer industry, these are the actions of a bunch of dumb, incompetent kids who think they know everything and really know nothing. They're getting what they deserve. Law.com and Wired and Engadget
Related: Obamacare: 500M lines of code, $500M, only 60% completed (01-Dec-2013)
I've been writing for years that it was mathematically provable that the banks had committed massive fraud in knowingly selling defective subprime mortgage backed synthetic securities, causing the financial crisis. These fraudulent synthetic securities were created by Gen-Xers who earned Master's degrees in "financial engineering" in the 1990s, and applied their skills to defraud their fathers' generation in the 2000s. It's provable that the fraudulent securities were created by Gen-Xers, since their Boomer bosses had no clue how to do it. But it's also provable that their Boomer bosses knew what was going on, because the financial engineers were taking B-rated securities, slicing and dicing them, and magically converting them into AAA-rated securities, which was mathematically impossible. I wrote about all this in my 2010 article, "Financial Crisis Inquiry hearings provide 'smoking gun' evidence of widespread criminal fraud".
I've repeatedly accused the Obama administration of purposely covering up this criminal activity, and instead allowing JP Morgan, Citibank, and other banks to contribute billions of dollars to Obama's campaigns and pet projects, effectively becoming co-conspirators in the massive criminal fraud that caused the financial crisis.
A 2013 memo from the Obama Justice Department, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, was just released, and it proves that these accusations were all true:
"By this action, the United States seeks to recover civil penalties [against JPMorgan Chase] for a fraudulent and deceptive scheme to package and sell residential mortgage-backed securities [that the bank] knew contained a material amount of materially defective loans. ...JPMorgan knowingly securitized and sold billions of dollars of mortgage loans that were originated in material violation of underwriting guidelines and law."
Other revelations in the 92 page memo include:
The 2010 article that I wrote was about Citibank, and it proved mathematically that Citibank must have committed exactly this kind of criminal fraud. The memo about JP Morgan shows that the Obama Justice Department was fully aware of this criminal fraud, and was committed to using the Justice Department to cover up the criminal fraud in return for billions of dollars in payments and contributions.
This week there's a lot of stuff coming out about the Obama administration, such as Susan Rice's illegal unmasking of political opponents, confirmation that the Lois Lerner's IRS illegally targeted political opponents. I'm a pretty cynical person. I look upon this as happening because the Obama administration had a Generation-X culture, with little regard for the law or common sense. Let's hope that the Boomer culture of the Trump administration does better. Vanity Fair
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Sep-17 World View -- What you should do about the huge Equifax data breach thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Sep-2017)
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Rohingya genocide forces India to choose between Burma and Bangladesh
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingyas in northern Rakhine state by Burma's Buddhist army continues.
According to the United nations, 389,000 Rohingyas have fled into Bangladesh since August 25, 10,000 in just the last 24 hours. 60% of those arriving are children. Dozens are being killed or losing limbs by tripping land mines placed by Burma's army on the border with Bangladesh.
Within Bangladesh, there's a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Bangladesh officials are restricting NGOs from delivering food, water and other humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, because that would only encourage them to stay. Bangladesh officials are insisting that Burma must take back all the Rohingyas that have fled across the border. Burmese officials are refusing, or saying that they'll only take back the ones who have papers proving Burmese citizenship -- which none of them have.
Starting in 2011, Buddhists have been attacking Muslims in villages across Burma, particularly the 1.1 million ethnic Rohingyas in Rakhine State. Mobs of Buddhists have attacked Muslims, conducting atrocities including torture and rape, killing hundreds and forcing hundreds of thousands to leave their homes to flee from the attacks. Buddhist civilians have joined the Burmese army in burning down entire Rohingya villages to the ground. On August 25, Rohingya activists retaliated with carried out coordinated attacks against 30 Burma police outposts. This triggered massive violence by Buddhist civilians and the Buddhist army.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that the attacks by Burmese security forces on Rohingyas are "completely unacceptable." He told reporters:
"The humanitarian situation it is catastrophic. When we met last week there was 125,000 Rohingya refugees who had fled into Bangladesh. That number has now tripled to nearly 380,000. Many are staying in makeshift settlements or with those communities who are generously sharing what they have. But women and children are arriving hungry and malnourished.[Question: Is this ethnic cleansing?]
A third of the [Rohingya] population had to flee the country - can you find a better word to describe it?"
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the word "catastrophic" certainly does apply to this situation, not just because of the humanitarian aspects, but because of the explosive nature of this event for entire region.
Long-time readers are aware that I keep pointing out that it's a core principle of Generational Dynamics that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people. The attitudes of politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they represent the attitudes of the people. So, for example, the Holocaust and World War II would have occurred with or without Adolf Hitler. It was the masses of German people who brought about the Holocaust, not Adolf Hitler.
So it's true that Burmese officials, including Aung San Suu Kyi, are to be condemned for supporting and conducting genocide and ethnic cleansing targeting the Rohingyas. But it's the masses of Buddhist Burman people who are bringing about the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas, as we described last week, as acts of revenge for what happened in World War II. At that time, the Buddhists were on the side of the Imperial Japanese, fighting the British colonists and the Rohingyas. There were massive atrocities committed on all sides, and those atrocities by the Buddhist Burmans, by the Muslim Rohingyas, and by the Christian British, are now being paid back. As that article describes, the murderous Buddhist hatred for the Rohingyas is deep and entrenched, and cannot be changed by some vote in the UN Security Council.
So that's why statements by Britain's Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a press conference in London on Thursday are naïve to the point of being delusional.
Boris Johnson said (my transcription):
"To answer directly your point about Daw Suu state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi - let's be clear. She led Burma after a period of decades of repression by a military junta. And I yield to no one in my admiration of what she stood for, and the way she fought for democracy. I think many people around the world share that admiration. But I think it's now vital for her to use that moral capital and that authority to make the point about the suffering of the people of Rakhine.And I think - nobody wants to see a return to military rule in Burma. Nobody wants to see a return of the generals. But it's also vital that the civilian government and that is Daw Suu - for whom as I say I have a great deal of administration - but it is vital for her now to make clear that this is an abomination, and that those people will be allowed back, to Burma - and that preparation is being made, and that the abuse of their human rights and the killings hundreds, perhaps even thousands, the killings will stop."
For an example of very deep historical irony, read Aung San Suu Kyi' "Nobel Peace Prize Lecture" when she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012: Nobel Prize Foundation
Boris Johnson obviously has great affection for Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he calls by a familiar name Daw Suu, but if Daw Suu were suddenly to express any sympathy for the Rohingyas, and for the atrocities, rapes and murders that her government is perpetrating on the Rohingyas, she would probably raped or murdered herself. As Leo Tolstoy says, describing Napoleon's invasion of Russia, where "millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other": "Had Napoleon then forbidden [his soldiers] to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because it was inevitable."
So now let's turn to Rex Tillerson's statement:
"With respect to the horrors that we are witnessing, occurring in Burma, I think it is a defining moment in many ways for this new emerging democracy - although it is a power sharing arrangement - we all clearly understand that - and so we appreciate the difficult and complex situation Aung San Suu Kyi finds herself in, and I think it is important that the global community speak out in support of what we all know is the expectation is towards the treatment of people, regardless of their ethnicity, and that this violence must STOP, this persecution must STOP, it's been characterized by many as ethnic cleansing - that must STOP. And we need to support Aung San Suu Kyi and her leadership, but also be very clear and unequivocal to the military power sharing in that government that this is unacceptable, and this is going to many ways define the direction that Burma will take. They need our strong support, we should give them our strong support."
This statement is just a delusional as Boris Johnson's statement. The violence will not stop, the persecution will not stop, and the ethnic cleansing will not stop. Even if some agreement could be reached for a ceasefire, it would be only a temporary ceasefire.
Except for North Korea, the situation with the Rohingyas is probably the most dangerous in the world right now, the most likely to trigger a major war.
It's expected that hundreds of thousands more Rohingyas will flee Burma for Bangladesh, where they're not wanted. This is going to bring about a great deal more Rohingya activism, and terrorist attacks in Burma. At some point, Bangladesh may feel it necessary to take military action to force the Rohingyas back to Burma, the only alternative being to set up huge new refugee camps. Jihadists from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia are taking notice of the atrocities that the Buddhists in Burma are perpetrating on the Muslim Rohingyas, and it's almost certain that there will be backlash from al-Qaeda. Telegraph (London) and AFP and Reuters
Related: Burma's ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas witnessed by BBC reporter (09-Sep-2017)
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi initially took a position completely on the side of Burma, with the foreign ministry saying that India stands firmly with Myanmar in its "fight against terrorism."
This came on the heels of an announcement by the home office that India would deport its entire Rohingya population, thought to number about 40,000.
According to an Indian analysis, there are several reasons why Modi sided so heavily with Burma, and against Bangladesh and the Rohingyas:
It's significant that Myanmar has announced categorically that its territory will not be allowed to be used for militant activities against India.
However, Narendra Modi has had to slightly modify his policy, by acknowledging the seriousness of the situation caused by the flow or refugees. The reasons are:
India is walking a tightrope between Myanmar and Bangladesh, but has not yet been able to condemn Myanmar’s excessive use of force in the Rakhine state. Live Mint (India) and Swarajya (India) and BBC (5-Sep)
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As I'm writing this on Thursday evening ET, North Korea has launched another ballistic missile.
Several leaders and analysts have come out with strong hard-hitting statements like, "This is completely unacceptable," and "No one's going to tolerate this sort of thing."
The United Nations Security Council will have another emergency meeting on Friday. Korea Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Sep-17 World View -- Burma's (Myanmar's) ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas leading to humanitarian catastrophe thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Sep-2017)
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China kidnaps and tortures Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-che for sham confession
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Lee Ming-che, a community college teacher in Taiwan who has posted criticisms of the mainland Communist Party of China (CCP), was kidnapped by Chinese authorities on March 19 in Macau, as he was traveling to China to visit a friend. There was no word of his fate until March 28, when Chinese authorities confirmed that he had been jailed on charges of "pursuing activities harmful to national security." Lee is the first Taiwanese to be accused based on a new law that specifies harsh punishment for CCP critics.
Lee was not permitted visits by his family, and he had no lawyer except one appointed by the CCP. Only when his trial began, on Monday, September 11, were his wife and mother permitted to see him in the courtroom.
On Monday, the CCP released videos of Lee confessing to his alleged crimes, referring to comments written in an instant messaging group:
"I spread some attacks, theories that maliciously attacked and defamed China’s government, the Chinese Communist Party and China’s current political system, and I incited the subversion of state power."There are few people who doubt that Lee's "confession" was coerced, probably by means of torture.
Lee’s wife Lee Ching-yu said to the Taiwanese media, "Please forgive Lee Ming-che if you see him doing or saying something disturbing in court under duress. That is just the Chinese government skillfully extracting a 'guilty confession.'" Taipei Times (28-Mar) and Reuters and News Lens (Taiwan)
The Chinese kidnapped, jailed, tortured, coerced a confession from and tried in court someone who was effectively a nobody, and nothing that he said could possibly have done any harm to the Chinese government. So the question arises why China would spend millions of dollars to do this with no apparent purpose.
According to Taiwanese Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Kao Jung-chih, the timing of the trial was deliberately set for Monday to stop Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu, from traveling to Geneva, Switzerland, on Sept. 10 and reporting on her husband’s case at a meeting of the UN working group on arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, since the court trial disqualified Lee Ming-che as a victim of enforced disappearance, which international law treats as a crime against humanity.
Many analysts believe that China is using the Lee case to send a warning that a crackdown on Taiwan is coming. According to one analyst:
"Beijing has been in the mode of demonstrating that China is not happy with Taiwan and can cause Taiwan pain in a variety of ways. In that sense, Beijing welcomes a deterioration of relations with Taiwan."
Taiwan's premier William Lai begged China to return Lee to Taiwan: "Lee works at a non-profit organization as a human rights advocate. There is no way he could subvert the Chinese government. I felt sorry for Lee being forced to confess at a trial in a manner nobody could accept." Sentinel (Taiwan) and VOA and Taipei Times and News Lens (Taiwan)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Sep-17 World View -- Kidnapping and sham trial of Lee Ming-che brings China-Taiwan relations to another low thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Sep-2017)
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Donald Trump promises to solve the Gulf crisis 'fairly easily'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
On September 7, at a press conference at the White House with the emir of Kuwait, president Donald Trump promised to end the Gulf crisis that began on June 5 when 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, especially the Arabic channel, to broadcast incitement to overthrow their governments.
Kuwait had been attempting to mediate the crisis, and at the press conference, he indicated that he would welcome help from the United States. Trump said:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: "While I do appreciate and respect the mediation, I would be willing to be the mediator. I was telling the Emir before that if I can help between UAE and Saudi Arabia, where I have a very great relationship -- I spoke with the King yesterday, King Salman, who is a friend of mine, and we spoke on unrelated subjects, but we had a long conversation. If I can help mediate between Qatar and, in particular, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, I would be willing to do so. And I think you’d have a deal worked out very quickly.I think it’s something that's going to get solved fairly easily. Kuwait has been really the leader of getting it solved, and we appreciate that very much. But I do believe that we’ll solve it. If we don't solve it, I will be a mediator right here in the White House. We’ll come together. Very quickly, I think, we’ll have something solved."
So Trump phoned the leaders of both Qatar and Saudi Arabia and asked these two leaders to speak to each other and resolve the issues. Early on Saturday, Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a phone conversation. It was their first conversation since the crisis began, Unfortunately, no issues were resolved. Instead, they got into a public spat about who initiated the call, and who wanted it more than the other.
On Tuesday (yesterday), Trump called the leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, stressing the need to end terrorism. Tuesday’s call is Trump's third to bin Zayed since the crisis began in June. Trump has also called Saudi King Salman five times, and the emir of Qatar two times. White House (7-Sep) and The National (UAE) and Bloomberg (9-Sep)
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If any proof was needed that the Gulf crisis will not be solved "fairly easily," and in fact will not solved for a long time to come, it was provided at the Arab League meeting held in Cairo on Tuesday.
Qatar's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi immediately threw down the gauntlet by referring to Iran as an "honorable country," and saying that ties had warmed since the blockade began.
The increasingly belligerent relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the increasingly friendly relationship between Qatar and Iran, have become perhaps the biggest difference at the core of the acrimonious Saudi-Qatar relationship.
Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia became explosive early in 2016 when Saudi Arabia executed 47 alleged terrorists -- 46 Sunnis and one Shia, Mohammad Baqir Nimr al-Nimr. Iran and Shias were infuriated because the execution implied that Shia terrorism is equivalent to Sunni terrorism. Iranian mobs firebombed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and attacked the consulate in Meshaad. Saudi Arabia and Iran broke diplomatic relations as a result. Other Saudi allies followed suit, including Qatar.
However, Qatar restored diplomatic relations with Iran last month. This is a move that was made since the June 5 blockade began, and shows that the crisis is today less likely to be resolved than it was just a few weeks ago.
So at the Arab League meeting, when Qatar's al-Muraikhi said that Iran was an "honorable country," he was really rubbing Saudi Arabia's nose in the disagreement.
In response, Ahmed al-Kattan, Saudi Arabia's envoy to the Arab League, said:
"Congratulations to Iran and soon, God willing, you will regret it.If the brethren in Qatar think they may have a benefit in their rapprochement with Iran, I'd like to say that they have this evaluation wrong in every way. The Qataris will be held responsible for such a decision. ...
The coming days will prove them wrong because we know that the Qatari people will never accept the Iranians to play a role in Qatar."
That sounds like a threat to me.
UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said:
"[The Gulf crisis continues] due to Qatar's unwillingness for peace.Their direction needs to change and we will continue our policies until Qatar changes its policies of aggression against the four boycotting countries, as long as Doha [Qatar] supports and funds terrorism and intervenes in the Middle East countries' internal affairs."
So Qatar's al-Muraikhi said that the crisis started when UAE-backed hackers hacked the Qatar News Agency, posting fake news. He added:
"Then we saw this vicious media campaign against Qatar, waged by rabid dogs backed by some regimes. [UAE minister] Anwar [Gargash] forgot to mention that the four blockading countries tried a military action against my country in 1996."
Reuters and Al Jazeera (Qatar) and Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Sep-17 World View -- Qatar and Saudi Arabia have vitriolic exchange at Arab League meeting thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Sep-2017)
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Pakistan says that there is 'no terrorist wing at Karachi University'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Karachi police investigators and intelligence officials last week conducted a raid on Ansar-ul-Sharia Pakistan (the supporters of Islamic law in Pakistan, or ASP), capturing or killing almost all of the members of the terror group.
Acting on a tip, police did a house-to-house search for members of the group, and in the ensuing gunfight, four ASP members were killed and several others injured. One cop was also killed, and another injured, with the rest taken into custody. However, the ASP group's mastermind Abdul Kareem Sarosh Siddiqui was injured in the gunfight, but escaped.
Siddiqui had studied Applied Physics at the University of Karachi, where his father is a professor. A Siddiqui associate, Abu Saleh, was captured by police yesterday. A search of his home resulted in one laptop, two mobile phones, and a hard disk.
The group was made up of 10 to 12 highly educated people who had studied at at well-known universities, including University of Karachi, the Nadirshaw Eduljee Dinshaw University of Engineering and Technology (NEDUET), and the Dawood University of Engineering and Technology (DUET), all in Karachi, and three of the most prestigious universities in the country.
ASP may have been formed as early as 2015, and obtained training from al-Qaeda groups in Afghanistan and Syria. The group only became active earlier this year, when they gunned down a policeman in February, and then claimed responsibility for killing a retired colonel in April. As ASP conducted additional targeted killings, they became more confident, and they began killing once per month, and later almost on a weekly basis.
As in the case of a TV crime drama where the FBI agents profile the perps, police knew that the ASP militants were getting careless, and that soon they would make a mistake that would allow them to be captured. On September 2, they attempted an assassination of a politician Khwaja Izharul Hassan, because he is a "pro-American MQM leader," referring to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement–Pakistan (MQM-P) political party. Hassan was unhurt by the assassination attempt, but it led to the tip that allowed the ASP militants to be captured. South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) and Dawn (Karachi) and The News (Pakistan)
Arrests of highly educated terrorists are proving an embarrassment to Karachi universities and is raising alarm bells, raising the question whether students are receiving terrorist training at these universities.
At meetings of university officials last week, there were suggestions that students should be vetted and cleared by police with "character certificates" before being permitted to attend university, and that student's personal registration data should be turned over to intelligence agencies for investigation. Reportedly, some teachers said that police verification wouldn’t be fruitful given the low credibility of police department.
Karachi University (KU) Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Muhammad Ajmal Khan expressed pride in the students and faculty of the university, adding that the issues being faced by the varsity were blown out of proportion. He denied that there was any connection between the University and terrorists:
"We do not want to irritate students and their parents. ... Provision of security is the job of law enforcers. There is no terrorist wing in [Karachi University]. We are standing by the side of law enforcement agencies but no decisions have been taken regarding handing over students’ data to intelligence agencies and demanding character certificates."
Another professor said that it was obvious that the university education of ASP terrorists was irrelevant:
"The primary reason is that the network in question – triggering scrutiny of university students – was being run via religious institutions and activities in Gulzar-e-Hijri area. Although Sarosh [Sidiqqi] and other members were university students, which most of the urban youth are, they hardly attended the universities. So, it is more than evident that university culture or formal education is not responsible for their deeds. The only institutions that need scrutiny are the religious ones."
Dawn (6-Sep) and Saama TV (Pakistan) and The Nation (Pakistan) and Xinhua
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Sep-17 World View -- Pakistan alarmed as highly educated students become terrorists thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Sep-2017)
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Saakashvili to 'march on Kiev' and challenge Poroshenko government
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Mikhail Saakashvili, the man who is stateless, no longer the citizen of any country, "invaded" Ukraine from Poland on Sunday, despite attempts by Ukraine's government to keep him out. Saakashvili is variously described as colorful, ambitious, arrogant, divisive, headstrong, and an egomaniac, has had his citizenship revoked in two countries, Georgia and Ukraine, mainly because he's constantly pissing people off.
Saakashvili, who has been based in Poland's capital city Warsaw, had vowed to return to Ukraine on Sunday, and challenge the government or president Petro Poroshenko:
"I'll go through to the end, until victory. But it won't be my own victory, but that of the people over oligarchy."
Poroshenko has declared Saakashvili to be persona non grata in Ukraine, and said that Saakashvili would be prevented from entering.
So on Sunday morning Saakashvili took a train to Ukraine. But when it reached the Polish town of Przemysl, the woman in charge of the train said that she had been ordered by authorities to stop the train there until Saakashvili got off. Saakashvili told journalists on the train that authorities were effectively holding hundreds of passengers hostage. He said: "Can you imagine what kind of idiots we’re dealing with?"
After several hours of delay, Saakashvili got off the train, and got onto a bus that took him to the border of Ukraine, intending to walk across. Polish border guards allowed him pass. But a line of Ukrainian border guards stood arm-in-arm to block Saakashvili from crossing the Ukrainian checkpoint.
All of these shenanigans were being covered live in the news, and thousands of Saakashvili supporters had gathered at the border crossing. In early evening, Saakashvili and his supporters broke through the line of border guards, and entered Ukraine.
The Ukrainian border service said in a Facebook post that the crowd broke through a checkpoint and that fighting broke out when guards tried to block Saakashvili's supporters. Deutsche Welle and AP and VOA and Reuters
Mikhail Saakashvili has had an extremely colorful career.
In 2003, at age 36, Saakashvili became president of the Republic of Georgia, in the "Rose Revolution," massive public demonstrations that brought down the pro-Russian president Eduard Shevardnadze, and brought Saakashvili to power.
Saakashvili remained in power until 2013, but in the midst of that period, he and Georgia suffered a major humiliating loss, when Russian troops under Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, and captured two Georgian provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are still under Russia's control.
Saakashvili was praised for fighting corruption, he adopted authoritarian policies that he said were necessary to continue fighting corruption, but which became increasingly unpopular.
Finally, Saakashvili was removed from the presidency in 2013. In May 2015, Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko made him a Ukrainian citizen, which resulted in the loss of his Georgian citizenship.
Saakashvili and Poroshenko had a lot in common. Saakashvili came to power in the Rose Revolution of 2003. Poroshenko came to power in 2014 in a popular revolution similar to Ukraine's Orange Revolution of 2004. Just as Saakashvili had replaced the pro-Russian president Eduard Shevardnadze, Poroshenko replaced the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.
One more thing they had in common: Russian troops under Vladimir Putin in 2014 invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimea province, just as they had invaded and annexed Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia provinces in 2008. So Saakashvili and Poroshenko became friends.
So in May 2015, Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili governor of the southern Ukrainian port city Odessa, with the direction to end corruption and crime in the city. That didn't work out too well. Saakashvili and Poroshenko started out as friends, but Saakashvili's fight against corruption brought him into conflict with Poroshenko, whom he accused of blocking the efforts to stop corruption. The two then became enemies, and in November 2016, Saakashvili resigned from his job in Odessa.
In November, Saakashvili announced the creation of a new political party, the Movement of the New Forces, to oppose Poroshenko. In July of this year, Poroshenko revoked Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship, leaving him stateless, a man without a country. However, Saakashvili claims that the revocation is illegal, since under international law it's illegal to revoke someone's citizenship if it would leave him stateless.
So on Sunday, Saakashvili returned to Ukraine, to lead his new political party to the presidency of Ukraine. He will have many hurdles to overcome, not the least of which is Poroshenko's threat to extradite Saakashvili back to Georgia, where he's wanted on criminal charges over alleged misappropriation of property and abuse of power.
Saakashvili has some powerful allies. When Saakashvili pushed through the border guards into Ukraine on Sunday, there were several Ukrainian politicians there to greet him. One was Yulia Tymoshenko, who also had been a ally of Poroshenko, and then turned against him. On Sunday, she said, "We've come to defend Mikhail, but we're also here to defend Ukraine," saying that she wanted Poroshenko to be ousted, just as Yanukovych had been ousted. BBC and AP and Deutsche Welle (11-Nov-2016)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Sep-17 World View -- The colorful Mikhail Saakashvili 'invades' Ukraine from Poland and threatens revolution thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(11-Sep-2017)
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Indonesia blocks China's repeated attempts to annex
Indonesia's Natuna Islands
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
China is demanding that Indonesia rescind its decision to rename its own territorial waters in its own exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
In July, Indonesia announced that it's renaming the portion of the South China Sea belonging to Indonesia's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as the "North Natuna Sea." Indonesia is making the name change official by registering the name name through the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the United Nations.
This has freaked the Chinese out to the point of throwing a temper tantrum:
"The China-Indonesian relationship is developing in a healthy and stable way, and the South China Sea dispute is progressing well. Indonesia’s unilateral name-changing actions are not conducive to maintaining this excellent situation.[Changing] an internationally-accepted name had resulted in the complication and expansion of the dispute [and undermines] the peace and stability of the region."
As usual with China, this is total farce. China is undermining peace and stability in the region by building artificial islands and turning them into huge military bases, bristling with missiles, radar 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.
According to one international relations analyst:
"In fact, the territorial waters of China is only to the boundaries of its territorial sea recognized by international law. On the other hand, Indonesia also has its own territorial sea territory, and therefore has the right to give a name to the territorial sea of Indonesia."
China's military belligerence has caused India, Vietnam and Japan to form an alliance opposing China in the South China Sea. Because of China's illegal activities, tensions have escalated substantially in the South China Sea, threatening the "peace and stability" of the region. But that's because of China's belligerent military actions, not because Indonesia is renaming its own territorial waters. Channel News Asia (2-Sep) and The Diplomat and Asia Times and Netral News (Indonesia)
The region that Indonesia is renaming is in its territorial waters around the Natuna Islands, a region rich in fish and oil fields. The region is also strategically important, being located at the southern tip of the Malacca Strait that connects the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Indonesia is very, very far from China. There is no possibility whatsoever that the region in question every belonged to China. But, just like Adolf Hitler in 1939, China's president Xi Jinping sees something that he wants that belongs to someone else, and plans to use China's vast, powerful military to steal it.
There have already been several incidents, with Chinese fishing vessels illegally fishing in Indonesia's territorial waters.
In March of last year, an Indonesian patrol vessel had captured a Chinese fishing boat and was towing back to a port where it could be destroyed, after the 8-member crew had been arrested and were being held in custody. The patrol vessel was deep into Indonesia's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), when two large Chinese warships showed and forced the Indonesians to release the fishing boat.
This incident caused a great deal of outrage among Indonesians, including calls for a more confrontational relationship with China. However, Indonesia's president Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has chosen to continue a steady course, trying to maintain good relations with both China and the United States. To this end, Indonesia has maintained what one analyst calls a "delicate equilibrium" with respect to the South China Sea issue, engaging China diplomatically, while also pursuing a range of security, legal and economic measures designed to protect its own interests.
It's undoubtedly Joko's diplomatic engagement that caused China, in its recent threatening note, to say that the "China-Indonesian relationship is developing in a healthy and stable way." China considers a relationship healthy and stable only if the other party is doing what China is demanding.
Unfortunately, however, China continues to pull stunts like the most recent one, demanding that Indonesia rescind its decision to rename its own territorial waters, with the usual implied threat that Indonesia had better comply, or there will be eventually military retribution. The Diplomat (24-Mar-2016)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Sep-17 World View -- China demands that Indonesia end plans to rename its own territorial waters thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(10-Sep-2017)
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Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi under fire for allowing Rohingya
ethnic cleansing
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Burma (Myanmar), and other Burmese government officials have been saying that the Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State have been burning down their own villages and killing each other, presumably to embarrass the government. This claim by Aung San Suu Kyi is typical of the kind of garbage we hear from other international criminals and war criminals, such as Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and China's Xi Jinping.
Aung San Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and lately other Nobel Peace Prize winners, including Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai, have been demanding that Suu Kyi either stop lying or resign from the government. The Nobel Prize committee has announced that it's not their policy to take back a Nobel Prize, once it's been awarded.
Desmond Tutu wrote a letter to Suu Kyi, saying:
"As we witness the unfolding horror we pray for you to be courageous and resilient again. We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of your people. We pray for you to intervene in the escalating crisis and guide your people back towards the path of righteousness again."
And "unfolding horror" is an apt description. Starting in 2011, Buddhists have been attacking Muslims in villages across Burma, particularly the 1.1 million ethnic Rohingyas in Rakhine State. Mobs of Buddhists have attacked Muslims, conducting atrocities including torture and rape, killing hundreds and forcing hundreds of thousands to leave their homes to flee from the attacks. Buddhist civilians have joined the Burmese army in burning down entire Rohingya villages to the ground.
In the last year, Rohingya activists have formed a separatist group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). Last month, ARSA carried out coordinated attacks against 30 Burma police outposts.
This has triggered a new tsunami of violence by Buddhist civilians and Burma's army against the Rohingyas. In the last two weeks, 270,000 refugees have been forced to flee across the Naf River into Bangladesh, joining the 400,000 refugees already there. They're living there in terrible conditions, may sleeping out in the open in the pouring rain, with shortages of food. BBC and Guardian (London)
Foreign officials, including reporters and humanitarian organizations, have been requesting for years to visit Rakhine state, in order to determine what's really happening and whether the government is lying. Burma's government has strictly forbidden such visits, which is all but a guarantee that Burma's government is lying.
Jonathan Head is the South East Asia Correspondent for BBC News, and he was granted permission to visit Rakhine state under the control of Burmese army minders, who would control what he saw and who he spoke to. He gave a lengthy interview on the BBC World News. Interview does describe exactly what's going on in Rakhine state, but only portions of what Head says are in BBC printed news stories.
Head's interview contains a great deal of valuable information not available anywhere else. It's an absolutely fascinating as a piece of modern history and generational history, so I transcribed it and am posting most of it here.
The Burmese minders' attempts to control what Head saw and here were a total farce. The minders were caught in obvious lies, including fabricating a photo with a Hindu actor and Hindu women wearing tea towels, pretending to be Muslims burning down the Muslim villages. Things like this prove the massive stupidity of Aung San Suu Kyi and other Burmese leaders.
Head was first asked what he saw on the trip:
"A lot more than we were supposed to.It was a government controlled trip, and I think the idea was to show us aspects of the conflict in northern Rakhine State that would reflect better on the government. And so initially we were shown displaced people who talked about how the Muslims had burned them out of house and home, and we were shown various photographs supposedly showing Muslims setting fire to their own homes, although those photographs have turned out to be fakes. A man who's a Hindu in a display center has admitted acting, and a few women put tea towels on their heads.
It wasn't a very convincing show. We found there was so much fear. We were surrounded by officials and armed police the whole time, that it was impossible for people to speak freely, and even then quietly on a few occasions when we could meet Muslims, they all expressed their deep fear of the government. The government was willing for us to be able to see destroyed villages. And I have to say I was staggered by the extent of it. You cover large distances, and there are whole areas that have been emptied out, where villages have been burned, but even where villages haven't been burned, they're empty.
One village we saw, dogs had killed a goat, because they were starving, they hadn't been fed. Rice had been left untended. Boats abandoned. Really extraordinary scene of depopulation.
We were told by the remaining police and soldiers, who are the only people you'd meet there, that this is Muslims and Muslim militants destroying their own villages."
Head then described how his minders lost control of him when he ran across a rice field to a burning village that they didn't want him to see:
"Well, on the way back from one of those visits, we happened to see some smoke going up through the trees, and you could see it was fresh, the smoke and flames were just going up.We managed to get the vans to stop, and before our minders could stop us, we dashed off through the rice field, they kind of lost control of us. And as we arrived in this village, you could see houses just beginning to go up, and there were young men, Rakhine Buddhists, and they identified themselves as such, very muscular, carrying swords and machetes, hanging around. There was nobody else there.
As we arrived, they departed, they didn't want to talk, although one of them did admit to a colleague that they had set fire to the buildings, and he said he'd been helped by the police.
And as we walked further into the village, we just watched house after house going up in flames. We saw a madrassa go up in flames. Pages of Muslim textbooks had been torn out and left all over the park. There were women's clothes, personal possessions everywhere. We've seen people walking out with trolleys full of looted stuff.
There was no sign at all of the inhabitants. It's a Muslim village. We simply don't know where the people who lived ther had gone."
Head was asked, Was this ethnic cleansing?
Absolutely. You can't mistake it really. And when you actually go and talk to Rakhine Buddhists, the hatred you get from them is a horrible echo of other communal conflicts that we've seen and experienced.I spoke to one man, and he was foaming up inside about the Muslims. They're very fearful of them too. And of course, the new factor we have now, is that after decades of marginalization and discrimination, Rohingya men have now armed themselves. They're not very well armed, but they've certainly armed themselves and large numbers even with just knives and machetes have joined the armed insurgents.
And they did launch very well coordinated attacks, although the authorities tell us they knew the attacks were coming or prepared, and it seems that most of the casualties in these attacks were on the militant side. But it's made the Rakhine Buddhists even more angry and nervous towards them, and they said simply they can never live here again. They made no bones about it.
They want them out. They will do anything to get them out. They LOATHE them. They say that "We HATE them. We absolutely HATE them."
And so it's no surprise they're joining in this destruction of villages. Once the Muslims have been chased out the destruction of villages is meant to make sure that they never come back."
Head was asked, Where does that hatred come from?
"There's a lot of history involved.Rakhine itself has a sense of identity as an original Buddhist kingdom, which was then basically forcibly joined to Burma under British rule, but has always been cut off from the main economic heartland of Burma by a range of mountains and it's very impoverished. The Rakhine Buddhists themselves had to put up with a great amount of Bengal migration into Rakhine State, under British rule, to serve the new market for labor, for rice fields, and that tension became particularly bitter during the Second World war when there was an active front line, and the Muslims by and large supported the British forces, and the Rakhine Buddhists supported the Japanese.
And every time the line shifted, there were massacres, mutual massacres of each community, and it was around that time Muslims became the majority in the very northern part of Rakhine state, which is where all this trouble is happening now, and where in effect we're seeing a rebalancing of the population going on, where Rakhine Buddhists after 70 years are redressing the balance, and pushing Muslims out.
And that hatred, it is mutual, but the Rakhine Buddhists enjoy a great deal of sympathy from other Burmese Buddhists, and even from the government. The local authorities make absolutely no bones about the fact that they dislike Rohingyas, that they don't think belong there, that they're illegal immigrants. It's an absurd claim, as Bangladeshi officials said to me, in 70 years of history, the government of Myanmar has never once asked the Bangladesh to take back or repatriate anybody that could have come illegally into Myanmar.
But inside Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine state, there's a deep-seated belief that the Rohingyas are illegal, they shouldn't be there, and they should be wiped out."
Burma's genocide and ethnic cleansing follows a generational pattern that's probably been repeated a million times throughout history. Jonathan Head's interview provides a good deal of information about what happened.
In 1942, Japan invaded Burma to oppose the British. Burma sided with the Japanese, while the British actually pulled out, leaving behind a population of Muslims who had been performing services in the rice fields.
There was an extremely bloody generational crisis war between the Burmese Buddhists and Muslims, with huge atrocities on both sides. After the war ended, new generations of children on both sides grow up with no personal memory of the war. What they hear from their parents is stories about the bravery of their hero parents, and about the atrocities committed by the other side. Parents always forget to mention the atrocities that their side committed.
So the children learn to hate the other ethnic group. This is what always happens. As new generations grow up, there are riots, demonstrations, and sporadic violence, but the traumatized survivors of the war make sure that nothing like that happens again.
Today, all those traumatized survivors of the 1942 massacres and atrocities are all gone, but the hatred remains, as described by Jonathan Head. The younger generations are not traumatized, and have no personal memory of the massacres and atrocities 70 years ago, and have no fear of repeating those massacres and atrocities.
We see the same kinds of hatreds turn into violence in other situations, whether Jews versus Arabs in the Mideast, Sunnis versus Shias in the Mideast, Christians versus Muslims in Central African Republic, Tamils versus Buddhists in Sri Lanka, and so forth. This is how the world works.
The Burma Rohingya situation is an absolute disaster. We know that World War III is coming soon, but we don't know how it will be triggered -- whether in the South China Sea, North Korea, the Mideast, or elsewhere. But the rapidly escalating violence in Burma puts that situation near the top of the list.
As I understand the figures, there are (were) 1.1 million Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, and now almost half of them have fled into Bangladesh, where they're living in disgusting refugee camps or just in open fields. Now presumably the Burmese plan drive the rest of the Rohingyas out, and burn their villages down as well, so that they can't return.
Then presumably the Burmese plan repopulate the area with Buddhists. So you're going to have a million Muslims just across the Naf River from a million Buddhists, living in the Muslims' old places. Is there anyone who seriously believes that's a stable situation?
This has now caught the attention of Muslims in other countries. Muslims in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are talking about a "jihad" targeting the Buddhists in Burma.
Furthermore, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), declared as early as 2014 that Burma is a place that's ripe for infiltration of ISIS militants. RSIS (Singapore) and Rohingya.org (2006)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Sep-17 World View -- Burma's ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas witnessed by BBC reporter thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Sep-2017)
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UN report confirms al-Assad's massive Sarin gas attack on April 4
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A UN report confirms Syria's air force conducted a massive Sarin gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikoun in Hama province on April 4, killing at least 83 civilians. The report, by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, says that the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad conducted over 20 chemical weapons attack in the past four years.
Readers may recall that on April 6 of this year, American ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea launched dozens of cruise missile attacks at the Shayrat Airbase in Syria. This airbase was chosen because it was the airbase from which the April 4 Sarin gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun took place. The Syrian regime claimed at the time that the Sarin gas attack never took place, but the new UN report now confirms that it did, and that the Syrian regime was responsible:
"The commission finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Syrian forces attacked Khan Sheikhoun with a sarin bomb at approximately 6.45 a.m. on 4 April, constituting the war crimes of using chemical weapons and indiscriminate attacks in a civilian inhabited area."
The Syrian regime is still claiming that the attack never took place, despite the 83 civilian deaths. According to pro-regime political commentator Marwa Osman, an MIT professor looked at photos and said that "the attack could not have happened":
"I think this is just the last case, or the last scenario in the hands of the West, especially the US-UK and its EU friends who were against the Syrian government, the Syrian army from the beginning of the crisis. But if you want to talk about the report, the actual information that was given by the report. If you go back to April 2017, just after Khan Sheikhoun, we had a professor, an actual expert on chemical attacks, an MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] professor called Theodore Postol, who actually managed to look at the video and photos that were sent. And just by looking at those photos he literally said this attack could not have happened. And he presented evidence, given the fact that the people were not dressed well for any sarin poisoning, especially after the attack. He presented evidence concerning the people who were there without any gloves, without even any shoes on their feet."
Osman says that the only reason for the UN report was to undermine the regime's military successes in Deir az-Zour.
The UN report also documents chemical weapons attacks by the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra front, as well as other militant groups. The report documents 25 incidents of chemical weapons use in Syria between March 2013 and March 2017, of which 20 were perpetrated by Syrian regime forces and used primarily against civilians. United Nations and Canadian TV and Russia Today
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The Syrian regime says that Israeli warplanes fired rockets from Lebanon's airspace and hit a military facility, the Al-Tala’i Scientific Studies and Research Center, near Masyaf in Hama province.
Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, said that the strike was "not routine," and that:
"[The target was a] Syrian military-scientific center for the development and manufacture of, among other things, precision missiles. ...The factory that was targeted in Masyaf produces the chemical weapons and barrel bombs that have killed thousands of Syrian civilians."
Syria's army said that the Israeli rockets targeted "military positions" and killed two army personnel, causing "material damage" to the site. The army statement said that the attack was in support of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh):
""This aggression comes in a desperate attempt to raise the collapsed morale of the ISIS terrorists after the sweeping victories achieved by the Syrian Arab Army against terrorism on several fronts, and it affirms the direct support provided by the Israeli entity to the ISIS and other terrorist organizations,” the Army Command said in a statement.The Command warned against the dangerous repercussions of such hostile acts on the security and stability of the region, reiterating determination to eliminate terrorism and uproot it from all the Syrian territories whatever the type of support provided to these terrorist groups is."
Israel is becoming increasingly concerned that Iran's puppet Hezbollah militia, based in Lebanon, is planning a new attack on Israel after being freed from the heavy commitment to fight side-by-side with the al-Assad regime in Syria. According to Israeli sources, it was believed that Hezbollah had planned to take control of the targeted facility, with the manufactured weapons, including chemical weapons, to be used against Israel.
Israel has been particularly concerned that weapons from Syria, including chemical weapons, could be transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon for use against Israel. Former Israel Air Force chief Amir Eshel recently said that Israel carried out at least 100 strikes over the past five years against the transfer of advanced arms, including chemical weapons, from the al-Assad regime to Hezbollah. SANA (Damascus) and BBC and Jerusalem Post and Long War Journal
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Sep-17 World View -- Israeli warplanes strike Syrian weapons site, as UN confirms al-Assad's Sarin use thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Sep-2017)
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Violence by the Imbonerakure, Burundi government's 'visionary' youth wing
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A final report issued on Monday by a special UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi has found massive human rights violations by the government of president Pierre Nkurunziza, and ethnic Hutu, to the level of crimes against humanity.
The report was based on interviews with more than 500 people among the over 500,000 who had fled the country from the violence. The violations included torture, rape, beatings, arbitrary jailings and summary executions. The investigators were not permitted to enter the country for the investigation.
A year ago, there was an initial United Nations report on Burundi, documenting torture, sexual violence, arbitrary jailings, targeted assassinations and summary executions. The targets of this massive violence were mostly political opponents.
Nkurunziza's reaction to that report was to ban the United Nations from Burundi, and to withdraw Burundi's membership from the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, a withdrawal doesn't take effect for a year, and the year is not up until October. For that reason, the UN is strongly recommending that the ICC take up an investigation immediately, before the withdrawal takes effect. Reuters and United Nations and Deutsche Welle
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The violence began in June, 2015, after Nkurunziza announced that he was going to run for a third term as president, in violation of the country's constitution. There were peaceful protests, which Nkurunziza countered by killing anyone who protested. Tens of thousands fled to neighboring countries to escape the violence.
Today, there are almost 500,000 registered refugees in neighboring countries, including 237,000 in Tanzania, 86,000 in Rwanda, 35,000 in Uganda, and 37,000 in Democratic Republic of Congo. Three-quarters of the refugees are Tutsis.
In the 1994 Rwanda genocide, which also took place in Burundi, the ethnic Hutus slaughtered close to a million Tutsis in a three-month period. Today's targets of Nkurunziza's violence are not necessarily Tutsis, but are anyone who is politically opposed to Nkurunziza. However, the vast majority of the targets are the Tutsis, since most of Nkurunziza's political opposition comes from Tutsis.
The UN found that the crimes that violate international law were committed by members of the National Intelligence Services, Burundi's national police and the army.
A major participant in the violence are the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of Nkurunziza's political party. The word Imbonerakure means "visionaries," and for these kids, being "visionary" means raping women and beating people with iron bars. Reports in 2015 indicated that Nkurunziza's police would select targets in the opposition, and would give kids in the Imbonerakure police uniforms, along with instructions to go to the homes of the targets, kill the men with iron bars, rape the women, and then kill the women and children.
Burundi is in a generational Awakening era, following the 1994 genocide. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, we've seen this time after time, in Syria, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Burundi, Thailand, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Eritrea, and other countries, where leaders in generational Awakening and Unraveling eras use arbitrary jailings, violence and atrocities to keep the opposition ethnic group out of power. Over a period of years, the violence worsens until it turns into a full-scale generational crisis civil war when the next generational crisis era arrives.
It's worth recalling what happened during America's last generational Awakening era in the 1960s-70s. There was plenty of street violence by young people in Los Angeles, Detroit and Chicago, during the "long hot summers." There was also targeted violence by left-wing and anarchist groups such as the Weather Underground. There was similar violence in Europe and other countries during the "Revolution of 1968." UN OHCHR (18-Apr) and "Stand Now and NPR (7-July-2015)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Sep-17 World View -- UN: Burundi's Hutu government attacks on Tutsis are crimes against humanity thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Sep-2017)
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North Korea threatens the United States with 'gift packages'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia's president Vladimir Putin commented on the North Korea situation, and the statements by American's UN ambassador Nikki Haley, saying that North Korea is "begging for war," and that the strongest possible sanctions must be used as quickly as possible.
Putin said that additional sanctions would be "useless," and could lead to a "planetary catastrophe."
He said that North Korea had learned the lessons of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, both of which, according to Putin, occurred only because the leaders had given up their weapons of mass destruction. The lesson, according to Putin, is that North Korea needs a nuclear arsenal to protect itself from an American invasion:
"Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end. It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue. ...We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. His children were killed, I think his grandson was shot, the whole country was destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged. ... We all know how this happened and people in North Korea remember well what happened in Iraq.
As I told my colleagues yesterday, they will eat grass but will not stop their (nuclear) program as long as they do not feel safe. What can restore their security? The restoration of international law."
I have to laugh when this war criminal Vladimir Putin appeals to international law. He invaded and annexed Crimea, and he supplies weapons to Bashar al-Assad, who uses them to kill innocent women in children in hospitals and schools, and who kills his own people with Sarin gas. Supplying weapons to a war criminal makes Putin a war criminal as well.
The Libya analogy is nonsense. At the time of the 2011 intervention, a major refugee crisis had already begun in Tunisia and Libya, with hundreds of thousands of people pouring into neighboring countries, and thousands crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. Muammar Gaddafi declared war on the protesters and was threatening genocide, especially in Benghazi. It was this refugee crisis that caused Libyans to demand a no-fly zone, and for the Arab League to do the same, after which the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone, which turned into the 2011 military intervention. ( "5-Mar-16 World View -- A look back at Libya in 2011 as the West debates another military intervention") The invasion of Libya had nothing to do with genocide and millions of refugees, and had nothing to do with giving up WMDs.
The Iraq analogy is even more ridiculous. Apparently Putin is a total idiot, or he thinks all of us are, because the lesson from the Iraq war is exactly the opposite of what he's claiming. The justification given for the Iraq invasion was that Saddam Hussein was developing WMDs, and would use them to kill perhaps millions of people.
So Kim Jong-un is doing exactly what Saddam Hussein did, and if there's an invasion of North Korea, it will be for exactly the same reason as the invasion of Iraq. So if Kim Jong-un wants to learn a lesson from Iraq, it should be to stop doing what he's doing, which is the opposite of what Putin apparently believes. By inciting a new Korean War, Kim is inviting an invasion. That's how stupid Putin is.
So this brings us to what Putin is recommending: He's not recommending sanctions. He's not recommending a military solution. He's saying that the North Koreans would rather "eat grass" than end their nuclear development.
So what's the bottom line? Putin wants North Korea to develop its nuclear arsenal, aimed at the United States, and not Russia. Putin would like to see the US military tied down to defending against NK's nuclear arsenal, or even have a repeat of the 1950s Korean War. Putin may even believe that that's the route to restoring a new Soviet empire. As I said, the guy's an idiot. Russia Today
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On Tuesday, North Korea's UN ambassador, Han Tae Song, said:
"I am proud of saying that just two days ago on the third of September, DPRK [North Korea] successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test for intercontinental ballistic rocket under its plan for building a strategic nuclear force.The recent self-defense measures by my country, DPRK, are a ‘gift package’ addressed to none other than the U.S.
The U.S. will receive more ‘gift packages’ from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK."
So Han says that North Korea is developing a nuclear arsenal to use against the United States for defense. Defense from what? An American invasion? North Korea already has an arsenal of conventional weapons lining the border with South Korea that could be used to destroy Seoul, and that would deter an American invasion if any were even contemplated.
Han's statement is a clear incitement to war or, as Nikki Haley put it, North Korea is "begging for war." As I described yesterday, this has been going on for a long time. In 2010, the North conducted two acts of war targeting South Korea -- in May, North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan, killing dozens of South Korean crew members, and in November, North Korea killed South Korean civilians by shelling Yeonpyeong Island. In both cases, the South Koreans chose not to respond, but it's pretty clear that they might have.
North Korea's ambassador Han Tae Song could have made a more conciliatory statement, but his threat of "gift packages" cannot have any possible outcome except to increase the probability of war.
As I wrote yesterday in my Generational Dynamics analysis, North Korea is not afraid of war, and is encouraging war, apparently believing that they'll win because of support from China. Furthermore, in this generational Crisis era, the people in both the US and China believe that they'll win any war quickly. That's a recipe for "a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life," as Putin has suggested, though his solution of "dialog" won't prevent it.
It's hard to see how Donald Trump has any choice. If North Korea is permitted to build a nuclear arsenal, and the US just sits there and does nothing to stop it, then it will be an enormous humiliation to Trump and to the United States, and will soon lead to war anyway. The die seems already to be cast. Reuters
Related: America's UN ambassador Nikki Haley says North Korea is 'begging for war' (05-Sep-2017)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Sep-17 World View -- North Korea and Russia continue to incite a new Korean War thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Sep-2017)
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Trump approves more powerful weapons sales to South Korea
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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During an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Monday, called as a response to North Korea's weekend hydrogen bomb test, US ambassador Nikki Haley said that North Korea is "begging for war" and that the US does not have unlimited patience.
Here are some excerpts from her statement (my transcription):
"To the members of the Security Council, I must say enough is enough. We have taken an incremental approach, and despite the best of intentions, it has not worked. Members of this council will no doubt urge negotiations, and a return to talks.But as I've just outlined, we have participated in numerous direct and multilateral talks with the North Korean regime, and time after time they have not worked. The time for half measures in the Security Council is over. The time has come to exhaust all of our diplomatic means, before it's too late. We must now adopt the strongest possible measures. Kim Jong-un's actions cannot be seen as defensive. He wants to be acknowledged as a nuclear power. But being a nuclear is not about using those terrible weapons to threaten others. Nuclear powers understand their responsibility. Kim Jong-un shows no such understanding.
His abusive use of missiles and his nuclear threats show that he is begging for war. War is never something the United States wants; we don't want it now, but our country's patience is not unlimited; we will defend our allies and our territory."
Haley said that negotiations and diplomatic measures have failed repeatedly for decades. Therefore, if diplomatic measures are to be tried again, then all of the most powerful diplomatic measures must be used now, and quickly, as a last resort:
"The time has come to exhaust all diplomatic means, to end this crisis. And that means quickly, enacting the strongest possible measures here in the UN Security Council.Only the strong sanctions will enable us to resolve this problem thru diplomacy. We've kicked the can down the road long enough. There is no more road left.
This crisis goes well beyond the UN. The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to the reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions.
And what we do on North Korea will have a real impact on what other outlaw nations who seek nuclear weapons choose to conduct themselves in the future.
The stakes could not be higher. The urgency is now. 24 years of half-measures and failed talks is enough."
Haley is proposing a maximal round of extremely harsh economic sanctions on North Korea, as a last-ditch attempt to stop North Korea by diplomatic means.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the phrase "begging for war" is an interesting one, because it describes a widespread attitude that can prevail during a generational Crisis era, but not elsewhere on the generational timeline.
For America and other countries during the 1960s-90s (generational Awakening and Unraveling eras), for most people war was to be avoided. That's because the survivors of World War II were still in power, and they recall the horrors, the atrocities, the rapes, the famines, the genocides, and so forth, and they will do anything to keep it from happening again.
Today, those WW II survivors are gone, and people in most countries are increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic. They think that they can easily win any war -- that's certainly the attitude of people in the US, China and North Korea.
So leaders in the 1990s do anything to avoid war, because they have personal memories of the horrors of WW II, leaders today have never experience any such horrors, and with their nationalism and xenophobia, they consider war acceptable or even desirable. North Korean leaders have been taking this one step further, seeming trying to actually provoke war. Hence, "begging for war."
It's well to remember that North Korea has been "begging for war" for years. In 2010, the North conducted two acts of war targeting South Korea -- in May, North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan, killing dozens of South Korean crew members, and in November, North Korea killed South Korean civilians by shelling Yeonpyeong Island. In both cases, the South Koreans chose not to respond, but it's pretty clear that they might have.
The concept of "begging for war" can take other forms as well. My father, who was a Greek immigrant, told me when I was a kid that in the 1930s the violence by labor unions and communist groups was so great that he thought that America might not survive. I wish I had asked him for more details, but unfortunately I didn't. But we can see the same thing today in America, with the 2006 movie "Death of a President" inciting the assassination of George Bush, labor union boss James Hoffa during the Obama administration repeatedly inciting violence against the Tea Party and other Obama opponents, organizations like Black Lives Matter inciting violence against policemen, and organizations like Antifa violently beating and assaulting anyone they disagree with -- all with the encouragement of Democratic party leaders who have no memory of WW II and its horrors. These kinds of things occur during generational Crisis eras, and are a form of the "begging for war" concept.
The phrase "begging for war" is extremely startling when coming from a diplomat, because it's a concept that can be understood only through generational theory. For that reason, I'm tempted to think that it had its roots in the days when Steve Bannon was in the White House, as Bannon is an expert on both world/military history and Generational Dynamics. VOA
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Haley's call for a maximal round of extremely harsh economic sanctions on North Korea would fall most heavily on China, as 90% of North Korea's trade is with China. China is scrambling in every way possible to shift all the responsibility back to the United States.
A couple of days ago the BBC interviewed a Moscow analyst in Russia's government. He said that really Russia and China don't care if North Korea builds a nuclear ballistic missile, since it will be aimed at the U.S. rather than at either of them. Good to know.
So China's UN ambassador Liu Jieyi followed Haley at the UN Security Council, and responded to Haley's calls for harsh economic sanctions. His statement was almost meaningless babble, but it did put all the responsibility on the United States:
"The situation on the peninsula is deteriorating constantly as we speak, falling into a vicious circle. The peninsula issue must be resolved peacefully. China will never allow chaos and war on the peninsula. The parties concerned must strengthen their sense of urgency, take due responsibility, play their due roles, take practical measures, make joint efforts together to ease the situation, restart the dialog and talks, and prevent further deterioration of the situation on the peninsula.The proposal by China and Russia of a two-track approach, which promotes the denuclearization of the peninsula, and the establishment of a peace mechanism in parallel the suspension initiative which calls for the DPRK to suspend its nuclear missile activities and for the United States and the Republic of Korea to suspend their large scale military exercises and the step by step conception from Russia are the basis on which both countries currently propose a roadmap to resolve the peninsula issue."
However, this meaningless babble did contain the "freeze for freeze" proposal that Russia and China are advocating. Under this proposal, the United States and South Korea would end their annual joint military exercises. The whole idea is a big joke, since North Korea would simply continue nuclear weapon and missile development in underground bunkers, and then as soon as Donald Trump said something they didn't like, they'd say that they have to resume testing again.
Nikki Haley did respond to Liu's statement by calling it "insulting":
"The idea that some have suggested the so-called "freeze for freeze" is insulting. When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon, and an ICBM is pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard. no one would do that, and we certainly won't."
It's very hard to see where all this is going to go, except to war.
North Korea is not going to stop developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles under any circumstances, despite sanctions or proposals for negotiations. It's a done deal.
China is playing the extremely dangerous game "Let's You and Him Fight." It's quite possible that Chinese leaders believe that if there's a new Korean war, then China will be the victor. That's typical of the stupid fantasies that people believe during a generational Crisis era.
The Trump administration, as far as I can tell, has clearly committed itself to stopping North Korea from developing a nuclear ICBM, using military means to do so, even if it results in a war that will involve South Korea. This was already clear from yesterday's article, and it was reinforced very forcefully on Monday by Nikki Haley. Eric Berne - Let's You and Him Fight
Not surprisingly, North Korea's weapons tests are provoking Japan and South Korea to consider developing their own nuclear weapons, as defensive measures.
South Korea is conducting a massive live-fire drill simulating a possible attack on North Korea. The purpose is symbolic -- to expose North Korea's vulnerability.
South Korea's new president Moon Jae-in suspended deployment of the American-supplied Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems when he took office several months ago, because he didn't want to anger China. China is alarmed by the THAAD installation, but not because of the missiles, which are purely defensive, but rather because the THAAD systems have very powerful radar capabilities that can peer deep into China.
Since then, the North Korean crisis forced Moon to approve the deployment of a single THAAD launcher, much to the anger of China. Now, on Monday, Moon authorized the deployment of four more THAAD launchers. Presumably that won't infuriate the Chinese even more, because the additional missile launchers do not provide any additional radar capabilities.
US president Donald Trump also took steps on Monday to help South Korea strengthen its military. Trump agreed to remove decades-old restrictions on the maximum payload of South Korea's missiles, as an effective counter-measure to the North's hydrogen bomb test. Trump also said he would approve arms sales worth "many billions of dollars" to South Korea.
South Korea hosts 28,500 US troops to defend it, and it is banned from building its own nuclear weapons under a 1974 atomic energy deal it signed with Washington, which instead offers a "nuclear umbrella" against potential attacks. Stars and Stripes and AFP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Sep-17 World View -- America's UN ambassador Nikki Haley says North Korea is 'begging for war' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Sep-2017)
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Will the United States take some military action against North Korea?
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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North Korea claimed on Sunday to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, the country's sixth nuclear test. The detonation produced 10 times more power than the fifth nuclear test a year ago, based on earthquake monitoring measurements.
According to Kune Y. Suh, a nuclear engineering professor at Seoul National University in South Korea:
"That scale is to the level where anyone can say (it is) a hydrogen bomb test. North Korea has effectively established itself as a nuclear state. This is not just a game changer, it’s a game over."
North Korea claimed in state media that they have the capability to produce as many hydrogen bombs as they want, and that they have the ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) technology to reach almost any part of mainland United States.
However, many experts point out that North Korea has not yet proven that it can weigh down a ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon, and still have the power to reach mainland United States. But even if they don't yet have that capability, the extremely rapid development of their nuclear and ballistic missile technology indicates that they will have that capability soon. Tribune Media (India) and 38 North (S. Korea) and KCNA (N. Korea)
Many world leaders gave laughable expressions of outrage that we've heard dozens of times before, repeatedly over many years.
South Korea's president Moon Jae-in said:
"North Korea has made an absurd tactical mistake, by committing a series of provocations such as launching ICBM missiles, and conducting a nuclear test. This has heightened tensions on the peninsula and is threatening world peace. It will isolate them further."
Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe said that the test was totally unacceptable:
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe initially said, "The North's nuclear test, if it turns out to be true, could never be tolerated." Later, his office issued a statement saying:
"In addition, given the fact that North Korea has belligerently conducted ballistic missile launches repeatedly this year, the UN Security Council has strongly condemned these actions. Under such circumstances, this nuclear test, which North Korea conducted today despite these calls, is totally unacceptable.Taking into consideration that North Korea has enhanced its capabilities through its six nuclear tests, including the one today, as well as more than ten launches of ballistic missiles conducted this year, which could serve as a means to deliver weapons of mass destruction, including the two ICBM-class ballistic missile launches in July and the ballistic missile launch in August that flew over the Japanese territories, North Korea’s nuclear and missile development has entered a new level of threat - more grave and imminent - against Japan’s national security and seriously undermines the peace and security of the region as well as the international community."
The nuclear test was conducted near China's border, and the Chinese have announced that they are test some border towns for nuclear fallout.
Even worse, the test appears to have timed specifically to embarrass China's president Xi Jinping. Xi is hosting the opening of a major BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) conference, and North Korea's test came hours before Xi was scheduled to give his welcoming address.
China's Foreign Ministry said:
[North Korea] disregarded universal opposition of the international community by conducting the test. We strongly urge North Korea side to face up to the firm will of the international community on the denuclearization of the peninsula, abide by relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council, stop taking wrong actions that exacerbate the situation and are not in its own interest, and return to the track of resolving the issue through dialogue."
All of the above statements are just hot air, and totally meaningless.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to augment his equally meaningless statements with a threat of sanctions:
"I am going to draft a sanctions package to send to the president for his strong consideration that anybody that wants to do trade or business with them would be prevented from doing trade or business with us. People need to cut off North Korea economically. This is unacceptable behavior."
Once again, this is completely laughable. North Korea has ignored sanctions for decades, and will continue to do so. Sanctions, negotiations, bilateral talks, six-party talks, have all been tried and have all failed, and they will again.
President Donald Trump tweeted:
"The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea."
This is presumably targeted at China, but it's a completely empty threat. At most there might be some tiny symbolic sanctions directed at some of China's banks. If any real sanction is attempted, China will announce counter-sanctions. Either way, North Korea won't be affected. CNN and Japan's government and CNN Money
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Some people are suggesting that if North Korea becomes a nuclear power, it's OK. After all, China and Russia are nuclear powers, so why not North Korea? Let them have their nuclear ICBMs that can reach any part of the US mainland, and then everything will settle down, according to these experts.
The problem with that reasoning is that the testing would never stop. North Korea would continue developing bigger and more powerful missiles and nuclear weapons, launching one nuclear ballistic missile after another, presumably resulting in a nuclear explosion in the Pacific Ocean. North Korea's child dictator is obviously having too much fun to want to "settle down" after one nuclear weapon is successful.
President Trump has said, "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen." This is being viewed by many observers as having defined a "red line," similar to Obama's "red line" threat over Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons. Trump followed through on Obama's threat after Obama didn't, and now everyone is watching to see whether Trump will back down the way Obama did.
A month ago, Senator Lindsey Graham said that he had spoken with Donald Trump, and said that it is inevitable that war is coming with North Korea:
"I’m saying it’s inevitable unless North Korea changes because you’re making our president pick between regional stability and homeland security.If there’s going to be a war to stop him [Kim], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And he [Trump] has told me that to my face."
On Saturday, hours before the nuclear test took place, Graham said the following in a BBC interview:
"I am 100% certain that if Kim Jong-un continues to develop missile technology that can hit America, if diplomacy fails to stop him, there will be an attack by the United States against his weapons systems. I'm assuming the worst. I'm assuming that if we drop one bomb, he fires at South Korea, and maybe Japan. Let me tell you have the war ends. It ends with his utter destruction. Thousands of people could be killed or maimed. There's a lot at stake here. And let me ask you - why would the world, given his track record, the North Korean leader, allow him to get a hydrogen bomb with a missile to deliver it anywhere in the world? Why would we do that?"
On Sunday, Defense Secretary James Mattis met with Donald Trump, Mike Pence and top national security advisers, and promised "a massive military response" to any threat from North Korea against the United States or its allies, including Japan or Guam.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that we're headed for a Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries versus India, Russia, Iran and the West. It's impossible to predict the scenario that will lead to this world war, but right now it looks like the most likely scenarios involved North Korea. BBC and CNN and RFE/RL
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Sep-17 World View -- Will we have to accept a world in which North Korea is a nuclear power? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Sep-2017)
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Burmese Buddhist attacks on Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar
becoming full-scale genocide
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Some 45 million people in a region stretching from Nepal and Bangladesh through India to Pakistan are dealing with "catastrophic" floods from two months of continuous torrential rain in the worst monsoon season in years.
Worldwide media have been heavily covering the floods in Texas from hurricane Harvey, but the floods in South Asia have been far more disastrous.
Wide-scale flooding stretching across the Himalayan foothills has caused landslides and washed away tens of thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland. At least 1,400 people have been killed. Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of homes have been damaged or destroyed, and many people are facing starvation. In Bangladesh, 1,300 cases of water-borne diseases have been reported. In Mumbai, a multi-story residential building collapse claimed 33 lives, left 15 injured and dozens more buried in the rubble. In Karachi, at least 23 people have died, mostly due to electrocution. New Daily (Australia) and Reuters
Related: Pakistan appeals for international help with floods (08-Aug-2010)
As we described yesterday, Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta was initially restrained on Friday, after Kenya's Supreme Court declared that his presidential election victory was "invalid, null and void" because of electoral committee irregularities. Kenyatta said that he respected the court's decision, and called for peace. But that didn't last long, as he began calling the judges "crooks," saying that there was problem with the court, and promising to "fix it" after he was reelected.
Isaac Okero, the president of the Law Society of Kenya, on Saturday condemned Kenyatta's remarks:
"Ominously declaring that they (judges) should wait for him (President Kenyatta) after he is successful in the coming fresh election is unfortunate and wholly inappropriate remark from the Head of State who under the constitution is a symbol of national unity, enjoys immunity from criminal and civil proceedings and must promote and enhance the unity of the nation."
It's not clear what Kenyatta meant when he said that he would "fix" the problem with the court once he's elected, but if I were one of the judges, I would be looking for a way to get out of the country quickly. The Nation (Kenya)
Related: Kenya's Supreme Court issues 'historic' ruling, overturning presidential election (02-Sep-2017)
Attacks by Burmese Buddhists, led by Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, since 2011 as we've been reporting, are now clearly crossing the line into full-scale genocide.
Buddhists have been slaughtering Rohingyas, raping women and burning down villages in a policy to exterminate them. Bangladesh, which already hosts 400,000 Rohingya refugees, earlier refused to allow any more to enter, but they've reversed that policy. In the last few days, 60,000 more Rohingyas have crossed the Naf River into Bangladesh to flee the Buddhist violence, and more are crossing every day. However, even that path is dangerous, as Burma's army on foot and in helicopters are shooting dead any Rohingyas they seen fleeing to Bangladesh, leaving numerous dead bodies in the river.
When the Rohingyas do reach the Bangladesh side, they can turn around and see their villages being burnt to the ground, and other Rohingyas being shot to death.
This is rapidly turning into a full-scale genocide, similar to last century's Nazi Holocaust of the Jews, Stalin's Holodomor in Ukraine, and Pol Pot's Killing Fields in Cambodia. The only difference between these is the methods used to implement the "holocaust." BBC
Related: Violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar/Burma escalates dramatically (28-Aug-2017)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Sep-17 World View -- Floods in South Asia kill 1,400 people in four countries thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Sep-2017)
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John Kerry and other election observers come under harsh criticism
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Kenya's Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the August 8 re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta was invalid, and that a new election must be held within 60 days. The court found that Kenyatta "was not validly elected," rendering the result "invalid, null and void." The ruling was a victory for opposition leader Raila Odinga, who had brought the case, claiming that the election had been rigged.
The ruling was a complete shock to everyone, including both Kenyatta supporters and opposition, but no one had expected the court to rule against Kenyatta. Corruption is so pervasive in African countries, including Kenya, that normally judges will rule in whatever way the president pays them to rule, and everyone expected Kenya's Supreme Court judges to do the same in this case, irrespective of the evidence.
In fact, the ruling is being called "historic," because it's the first time that a legal challenge to a presidential election has ever been successful in the entire history of Africa. Odinga said:
"It’s a very historic day for the people of Kenya and by extension the people of Africa. For the first time in history of African democratization a ruling has been made by a court nullifying irregular elections for the president."
Kenyatta said:
"I personally disagree with the ruling that has been made today but I respect it. Millions of Kenyans made their choice but six people [the judges] have decided that they will go against the will of the people."
Supporters of Odinga were ebullient, and celebrated in the streets for hours. Odinga himself added:
“It is now clear that the entire edifice of the (election board) is rotten. Clear evidence shows that the commission was taken over by criminals ... they must face criminal prosecution. ... We are ready but cannot repeat the election with this commission."
It's thought that the reasons for the court's ruling included the following:
The court will provide detailed reasoning for its decision within 21 days.
The court ruled that a new election must be held within 60 days. However, an election is enormously expensive, and Kenya is deeply in debt. Furthermore, after the last election fiasco, it will be hard to convince people that the next election will be fair. Standard Media (Kenya) and The Nation (Kenya) and Reuters
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After the August 8 election, and Uhuru Kenyatta had been declared a provisional winner, his opponent Raila Odinga began claiming that the election had been rigged.
At that point, John Kerry, who had been former president Barack Obama's Secretary of State, and who had led the Jimmy Carter Center's election observer mission in Kenya, said:
"Kenya has made a remarkable statement to Africa and the world about its democracy and the character of that democracy. Don’t let anybody besmirch that."
Well, now that Kenya's Supreme Court has besmirched it, Kerry and other election day observers are coming under attack in Kenya. They're being accused of blindly endorsing the election to produce the outcome desired by the government, and of completely ignoring the concerns raised by the opposition.
Muthoni Wanyeki, who served as Amnesty International’s East Africa Regional Director, supports these accusations against "the election observer industry," and goes further:
"I feel a real anger about the way they treat us. I’ve had diplomats say to my face that, speaking in the light of history, this election was an improvement [from past elections]. I’m sorry we do not live in history, we live in the here and now and we have a right to free and fair elections. Their attitude in condescending, neocolonial and by saying that things are improving, they’re treating us like small children. Hopefully this ruling is like egg on their face."
John Kerry on Friday said then that while there were "little aberrations here and there," the election was not rigged. France 24 and CNN and Foreign Policy
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Sep-17 World View -- Kenya's Supreme Court issues 'historic' ruling, overturning presidential election thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Sep-2017)
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Vietnam protests China's military drills near the
Gulf of Tonkin in South China Sea
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Vietnam on Thursday protested China's military drills in waters off the month of Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea.
In reply to reporters’ queries about the move of China, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that all activities of foreign countries in the waters belonging to Vietnam’s sovereign right and jurisdiction should comply with Vietnam’s legal regulations and international law, especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
It's doubtful that China will honor any international law. China repeatedly violates other countries' sovereign territories and threatens to use its massive military to kill anyone who doesn't do as they demand.
In July, Vietnam again protested China's military drills violating Vietnam's sovereignty, and as usual they were ignored.
In June, China demanded that Spanish company Repsol, under contract with Vietnam, stop drilling for oil and gas in a block that clearly belongs to Vietnam under international law. Vietnam refused. A month later, China threatened to use military force against Vietnamese targets, and Vietnam was forced to step back. Even worse, Vietnam may now be forced to pay Repsol hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Despite this setback, what's becoming clear is that little Vietnam is becoming the only country around the South China Sea willing to stand up at all to gargantuan China.
The Philippines used to stand up to China, but under president Rodrigo R. Duterte, the country has simply given up, with the attitude that China is going to win anyway, so why fight? Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, which previously had expressed some opposition to China's belligerence, have also given up.
China even gloated about this three weeks ago in a China Daily editorial, following the meeting of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). According to the article:
"It seems, however, that Vietnam almost put a spanner in the works by attempting to push its own agenda during the meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers.According to media reports, Hanoi struck a less harmonious note by hypocritically trying to insert tough language criticizing China's island building in the South China Sea, something Vietnam did first, resulting in a delay to the issuing of their joint statement on Saturday.
But with none of the other ASEAN members being like-minded, Vietnam's proposed phrases were not included in the communiqué released on Sunday."
China's island building in the South China Sea is a clear violation of international law, as decided in July 2016, when a Tribunal at the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague eviscerated all of China's claims to the South China Sea. ( "13-Jul-16 World View -- Philippines humiliates China in harsh Hague Tribunal ruling over South China Sea")
China is an international criminal that has repeatedly lied about its claims in the South China Sea. And yet, they won a victory in ASEAN removing any mention of China's criminal activities from the final statement. Even the Philippines, which won the Tribunal ruling last year in July, has almost completely given in to China.
It seems that only Vietnam, among the South China Sea nations, is still willing to stand up to China. Vietnam Plus and Reuters and Vietnam Plus (23-Aug) and CNN (14-Aug) and China Daily (7-Aug)
Of course, Vietnam is not completely alone in confronting China. Japan is very confrontational with China, and has discussed allying with Vietnam against China.
The United States conducts Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea, sailing intelligence-gathering ships near China's illegal man-made islands, infuriating Chinese officials. The US is also confronting China in Central Asia. As we reported in last week's analysis of Donald Trump's speech on Afghanistan, the US is confronting Pakistan in Afghanistan, and is also maintaining its two air bases, in Bagram and Kandahar International Airport, as forward bases in any future war with China. India and the US recently signed a logistical support agreement.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what's most interesting is that the US, India and Vietnam, along with Japan, appear to be forming a military alliance to encircle and confront China. India has good reason to ally with Vietnam in confronting China. They share concerns about China's control of the South China Sea, and China's access to the Indian Ocean.
India is already providing Vietnam with a $100 million line of credit, and has sold Vietnam four offshore patrol vessels that are likely to be used against China in the South China Sea. India is helping Vietnam to build capacity for repair and maintenance of its defense platforms, and the armed forces of the two states have started cooperation in areas like information technology and the English-language training of Vietnamese Army personnel. India has also accepted Vietnam's invitation to drill for oil in the same region that Repsol abandoned.
The most intriguing issue has to do with the possible sale by India of sophisticated BrahMos anti-ship cruise missile systems to Vietnam. Such a sale would dramatically change the power balance in the South China Sea. Vietnam has been asking India since 2011 to purchase the BrahMos systems, but India has refused, fearing to anger China.
In 2016, India's prime minister Narendra Modi made it clear that it was no longer as hesitant. The Modi government last year directed BrahMos Aerospace, which produces the missiles, to expedite this sale to Vietnam. Two weeks ago, the government of Vietnam appeared to confirm that it had acquired the missiles from India. However, sources at India's Defense Ministry denied selling the missiles to Vietnam. After that, Vietnam's Foreign Ministry gave an ambiguous statement that neither confirmed nor denied the sale.
What we now know that we didn't know then is that India and China were having back-channel negotiations to back down from the standoff on Bhutan's Doklam Plateau. In public, Chinese media were making vitriolic and offensive threats and accusations at India, saying that China's military would wipe out India's military unless India withdrew, and also saying that no negotiations were possible unless India unilaterally withdraw. That all turned out to be China's usual hot air, because the negotiations were already in progress, and resulted in a mutual pullback.
So India's denial of the BrahMos sale to Vietnam came at a time when those negotiations were going on, and we still don't yet know whether India denied the sale because they had completed the same but didn't want to upset the negotiations, or because they really hadn't sold the missiles. Asia Times and The Diplomat (22-Aug) and New Delhi TV (23-Aug)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Sep-17 World View -- As other Asian nations back down, India and Vietnam become allies confronting China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Sep-2017)
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