*** 12-Feb-16 World View -- US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria
• Russia launches massive military exercises, apparently targeting Turkey and Syria
• The vitriolic hatred of Bashar al-Assad

****
**** US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria
****


Russia's Sergei Lavrov and America's John Kerry in Munich on Thursday (AFP)

Russia, the United States, and other parties meeting in Munich reached
an agreement on the Syria war on Thursday. Not all details are known,
but press reports indicate that the following are the terms:

• The "cessation of hostilities" will go into effect "in one
  week's time." It's not being called a ceasefire.
  
• The cessation of hostilities will not apply to groups designated
  as terrorists, namely the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL
  or Daesh) and the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front).
  This will allow the U.S.-led coalition can continue airstrikes against
  their positions.
  
• Russia will also continue air strikes against what they claim are
  terrorist groups.
  
• A brand new committee will be formed to have meetings and discuss
  a full ceasefire.
  
• Humanitarian aid to besieged areas will be expanded and sped
  up.

It was just two weeks ago that peace talks began in Geneva. ( "25-Jan-16 World View -- Farcical Syria peace process 'proximity talks' to begin this week in Geneva"
.) Those peace talks collapses the day after they
started, largely because the anti-Assad groups did not want to
participate.

So here's the situation:

• Russia and the Bashar al-Assad regime consider all Sunni
  civilians to be terrorists (see below). So there will be no cessation
  of hostilities whatsoever on the part of Russia and Syria, and Sunni
  women and children will continue to be massacred and starved.
  
• Just as the anti-Assad groups didn't participate in the previous
  peace process, they didn't participate in this new agreement. So
  they'll continue doing whatever they want.

Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees continue to flee from Aleppo, as
Russian airstrikes slaughter large numbers of civilians, and as Syria,
Iranian and Hezbollah troops continue to encircle the town, preparing
for the final siege and mass slaughter. There are half a million
civilians living in Aleppo, and Russia says that they're all
"terrorists," so the slaughter is going to continue under this
farcical "cessation of hostilities."

You'd think that US Secretary of State John Kerry would be embarrassed
to be part of this ridiculous farce, but as we've seen over and over
and over, there is nothing too farcical to embarrass Kerry. Washington Post and LA Times

****
**** Russia launches massive military exercises, apparently targeting Turkey and Syria
****

Described by one Russian analyst as a "little message" to Turkey,
Russia has launched a massive surprise military exercise, involving
thousands of troops and hundreds of warplanes across southwestern
Russia for large-scale military drills. Up to 8,500 troops, 900
ground weapons, 200 warplanes and about 50 warships will be involved
in the drills.

According to the announcement from Russia, the purpose of the
exercises is to prepare an unexpected event in Ukraine. The invasion
of Georgia in 2008 and the occupation of Crimea in 2014 were preceded
by massive exercises similar to the current one. The present snap
exercises involve mass troop movement close to the Ukrainian border.

Instead, Russian military experts believe the present snap exercises
are aimed primarily at Turkey and its North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) allies, if they intervene in the fray. Russia's
order to “prepare massive air raids and repel massive air attacks”
does not seem to be directly aimed at Ukraine, which has a small
outdated air force, incapable of carrying out “massive raids” deep
into Russia to destroy strategically important targets.

The present snap exercise strongly resembles a massive combat prewar
troop deployment aimed to take on Turkey if it attempts to intervene
in Syria to curtail the Russian-led offensive in Aleppo, Idlib and
Latakia provinces. Jamestown and Rudaw (Kurdish) and CBS

****
**** The vitriolic hatred of Bashar al-Assad
****

Whenever I write about Syria's psychopathic president Bashar al-Assad
and his campaign of extermination of against Sunni Muslims, I almost
always get comments from al-Assad acolytes and paid Russian internet
trolls criticizing me and saying that the United States is the real
criminal.

However, one of them gave the game away several days ago when he
posted the comment:

<QUOTE>"There are no Sunni 'civilians.'"<END QUOTE>

Another commenter referred to the opposition groups as "roaches."

This epithet is very familiar to me from having studied the 1994
Rwanda genocide. The Hutus were incited to slaughter the Tutsis with
"You have to kill the Tutsis, they're cockroaches."

So, when someone says that "there are no Sunni civilians," then he
means that all Sunnis are terrorists. And when someone says that
they're "cockroaches," he means that they have to be exterminated.

What happened in Rwanda in 1994 is almost impossible for an ordinary
human to believe. Prior to the 1990s, Hutus and Tutsis had lived
together, intermarried, and had their children play with each other.
When the 1994 genocide occurred, a Hutu might pick up a machete, go to
the Tutsi home next door, or down the street, murder and dismember the
man and children, rape the wife and then murder and dismember her.
Almost a million Tutsis were killed.

In her book, World on Fire, Yale law professor Amy Chua
describes how, living in the Philippines, her Chinese ancestry gave
her family élite privileges not available to indigenous Filipinos.
Her family was wealthy, with numerous Filipino servants who slept in
the basement "sleeping on mats on a dirt floor [in a] place that stank
of sweat and urine, living on less than two dollars a day. When her
chauffeur murdered her aunt, the police investigated and found the
motive to be "Revenge."

Amy Chua says, "Each time I think of [the chauffer] Nilo Abique -- he
was close to six feet and my aunt was four-feet-eleven-inches tall --
I find myself welling up with a hatred and revulsion so intense it is
actually consoling."

Amy Chua described what happened in the 1990s in the Bosnian war:

<QUOTE>"My aunt's killing was just a pinprick in a world more
violent than most of us ever imagined. In America we read about
acts of mass slaughter and savagery; at first in faraway places,
now coming closer and closer to home. We do not understand what
connects these acts. Nor do we understand the role we have played
in bringing them about.

In the Serbian concentration camps of the early 1990s, the women
prisoners were raped over and over, many times a day, often with
broken bottles, often together with their daughters. The men, if
they were lucky, were beaten to death as their Serbian guards sang
national anthems; if they were not so fortunate, they were
castrated or, at gunpoint, forced to castrate their fellow
prisoners, sometimes with their own teeth. In all, thousands were
tortured and executed."<END QUOTE>

Compared to this kind of hatred, the "hatred" that Americans talk
about today are silly by comparison -- someone who opposes gay
marriage is guilty of "hatred."

So you have to wonder what was going on in Rwanda and Bosnia. If
you're going to kill someone, then just kill them. What's the point
of having one of them castrate the other with his teeth? Where does
this level of irrational, psychopathic behavior come from?

Well, it's part of the human DNA. It's not unique to any religion or
ethnic group. Under the right circumstances -- particularly during a
generational crisis war, -- any human being might act that way. I've
recently discussed this subject at length with respect to the act of
rape as a common act of revenge during war. ( "7-Jan-16 World View -- German 'Code of Conduct' for women shows pendulum swing on gender issues"
)

We've seen other recent examples of this kind of behavior. Al-Qaeda
and ISIS jihadists have torturing and killing people, especially Shia
Muslims, in this way. In Burma (Myanmar), Buddhist death squads have
been torturing and massacring ethnic Rohingyas and other Muslims in
the most brutal possible way.


Emaciated man showing wounds from repeated beatings by rod-like object. There are 55,000 photos like this, showing 11,000 corpses from Bashar al-Assad's psychopathic torture.

So now let's come back to Bashar al-Assad. It's been obvious to me
since 2011 that al-Assad wanted to exterminate all Sunnis, because of
his level of vitriolic hatred of all Sunnis. This was obvious when he
started responding to peaceful protests by massacring entire Sunni
villages and when his warplanes were bombing schoolchildren as they
slept in the dormitories.

It was even more apparent in 2014 when 50,000 photos emerged of 11,000
men who had been tortured with electrocution, eye-gouging,
strangulation, starvation, and beating on prisoners on a massive
"industrial strength" scale. They were similar to the images found in
Nazi death camps after World War II. ( "22-Jan-14 World View -- Western leaders sickened by Assad's 'industrial strength' torture in Syria"
)

As I've said in the past, Bashar al-Assad is the greatest genocidal
monster in today's world, comparable to Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin.
For years, he's been killing thousands of Syrian civilians every week
with complete impunity, using Russian-supplied barrel bombs on
civilian neighborhoods. And he's used sarin chemical weapons on
civilians. He uses the most gruesome forms of torture on a personal,
individual scale, as well as on a mass scale. There is no mass weapon
of destruction, nor any gruesome form of torture, that he won't use to
satisfy his psychopathy.

And he's being supported in his genocide and psychopathy by Russia's
president Vladimir Putin and Iran's supreme leader Seyed Ali Khamenei,
who are guilty of supporting the same psychopath and genocide, making
them war criminals.

Syria is in a generational Awakening era, meaning that the Syrian
civil war should have completely fizzled out long ago. In a sense it
has, because it's less a civil war than a proxy war. But what's kept
is going is the intense, vitriolic hatred felt by one person, Bashar
al-Assad, and by the willingness of his acolytes, Putin and Khamenei
to support him.

And that's how I knew that the peace process 'proximity talks' would
never succeed, and how I know that there will not be a ceasefire in
Syria, as long as Bashar al-Assad is in power, and can count on the
support of his acolytes and the war criminals Putin and Khamenei.


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Sergei Lavrov, John Kerry,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Aleppo, Turkey, Ukraine, Iran,
Northeast Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO,
Rwanda, Amy Chua, Philippines, Bosnia,
Burma, Myanmar, Buddhists, Rohingyas,
Vladimir Putin, Iran, Seyed Ali Khamenei

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*** 13-Feb-16 World View -- Increasingly desperate European Union threatens Greece over refugee crisis

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Increasingly desperate European Union threatens Greece over refugee crisis
• European Union in chaos over the refugee crisis
• Nato deploys warships to Aegean sea to deter people smugglers

****
**** Increasingly desperate European Union threatens Greece over refugee crisis
****


Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) appears to be wagging her finger at Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (AP)

European Union foreign ministers have given Greece a three-month
ultimatum to remedy "deficiencies" in controlling the influx of
migrants, most from Turkey. The European Commission is threatening to
remove Greece from the Schengen Zone of visa-free travel if Greece
fails to remedy the problem by mid-May.

The "deficiencies" found by the European Commission are that Greece
failed to properly register and fingerprint migrants when they arrived
at the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

The rules about registering migrants comes from the Geneva convention,
which was adopted by the EU in the "Dublin II" regulation of 2003. As
we reported in August of last year,
many migrants are refusing to be fingerprinted when they
arrive in Greece, because then they would have to apply for asylum in
Greece. If accepted, they could be required to stay in Greece, and if
rejected, they could be deported back to their countries of origin.
Instead, most migrants prefer to reach the wealthier countries such as
Britain or Germany, where they can take advantage of more generous
benefits.

When migrants began arriving in Lesbos and other Greek islands last
summer, Greece was overwhelmed by something like 3,000 migrants per
day. The migrants were stuck on the islands, and Greece was under
tremendous pressure from the EU because of the allegedly deplorable
conditions for the migrants on the islands. So Greece instituted a
ferry service from the islands to Athens, to comply with the EU
request.

However, then the migrants traveled from Athens to the border with
Macedonia, and started a tsunami of migrants to the north, with most
headed for Germany. So readers may recall the drama last year, as one
country after another began to close their borders, forcing the flood
of migrants to take another route. ( "20-Oct-15 World View -- As winter approaches, thousands of European refugees may be trapped in the cold"
)

Greece never did comply with EU demands that every migrant be
registered and fingerprinted while in Greece, and now the EU is
setting a three-month ultimatum.

Removing Greece from the Schengen Zone would be a new financial
disaster for Greece, as it would cripple Greece's tourist industry and
also make it a lot more difficult for Greece to visit other countries.
Furthermore, tens of thousands of migrants would be stranded in
Greece, as other countries completely closed their borders.

Greece's financial crisis is in a kind of remission, as it's been out
of the headlines for a while. But Greece still owes 200 billion euros
in loans and 50% of young people are unemployed. Capital controls on
banks are still in place, and Greek people can only withdraw a maximum
of 60 euros per day from their bank accounts. So the financial crisis
is far from over, and the mixture of the financial crisis and the
refugee crisis has the potential to be explosive. AFP and Kathimerini (Athens) and EU Dublin II Regulations

****
**** European Union in chaos over the refugee crisis
****

The refugee crisis has brought the European Union to almost total
political chaos. Even though it's still mid-Winter, there are still
about 2,000 migrants arriving from Turkey every day, and that number
is expected to increase substantially in the warm Spring weather.

The EU has tried one desperate measure after another, such as
suspending Schengen Zone rules in several countries and imposing
border controls. The most prominent measure was an agreement in
November to give $3.2 billion to Turkey in exchange for controlling
the flow of migrants to Greece. However, that money hasn't yet been
paid, and few people believe it will work anyway.

The EU has also promised to pay Greece one billion euros to set up and
operate relocation camps for migrants. Greek officials say that that
money will only be enough for six months or so, and anyway, that money
hasn't been paid yet either.

So now the EU is saying that the refugee problem is all Greece's
fault, and is trying a new desperate measure -- threatening to eject
Greece from the Schengen Zone. Few people believe that idea will work
either. Business Insider and Kathimerini

****
**** Nato deploys warships to Aegean sea to deter people smugglers
****

One more measure being adopted to try to slow the flow of migrants
from Turkey to Greece is being taken not by the European Union but by
the Northeast Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).

Three Nato warships are arriving in the Aegean Sea to deter people
smugglers transporting migrants from Turkey to Greece. Their jobs
will not be about "stopping or pushing back refugee boats," according
to Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg. Instead, they will be primarily
tasked to provide Turkish and Greek coastguards and EU border agency
Frontex with information on human trafficking and criminal networks
operating in the eastern Mediterranean.

The advantage of using Nato ships is freedom of movement. Greek ships
have to stay in Greek territorial waters, and Turkish ships have to
stay in Turkish territorial waters. But Nato ships can travel in
either.

Theoretically, the Nato ships will not participate in "search and
rescue" operations. If they spot a migrant ship in trouble, then they
will notify the Greek or Turkish coast guards, and will only take
action if it's required immediately to save lives. If refugees are
taken on board, then the plan is to return them back to Turkey,
something that Turkey has not yet agreed to.

According to Amnesty International, Nato ships MUST carry out
immediate search and rescue operations:

<QUOTE>"Any NATO ships that witness a boat in distress must
provide immediate life-saving assistance. Hundreds of refugees,
including many children, have already died this year attempting
the treacherous journey across the Aegean.

In no way must NATO forces become yet one more barrier between
refugees and the international protection they are legally
entitled to.

Intercepting refugees attempting to reach Europe and pushing them
back to Turkey – where 2.5 million are already hosted – would be a
serious violation of their right to claim asylum, and would fly in
the face of international law."<END QUOTE>

The mission will be performed by Nato's Maritime Command Standing
Maritime Group 2, which is under German command, and is comprised of
five ships from different allies. Three ships are being deployed
immediately, with Denmark and the Netherlands also planning to
participate in the mission. BBC and Foreign Policy and NATO Maritime Command and Russia Today


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Germany, Angela Merkel, Greece, Alexis Tsipras,
European Commission, Schengen Zone, Dublin II regulations,
Turkey, Aegean, Northeast Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO,
Nato Maritime Command Standing Maritime Group 2

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*** 14-Feb-16 World View -- Turkey's military strikes Kurdish positions in Syria, north of Aleppo

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Turkey's military strikes Kurdish positions in Syria, north of Aleppo
• Saudi Arabia and Turkey plan joint ground troop incursion into Syria
• The death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia

****
**** Turkey's military strikes Kurdish positions in Syria, north of Aleppo
****


Turkey's military on the border with Syria in 2015

Turkey's military shelled Kurdish YPG militia targets in northern
Syria near the Turkish border on Saturday. The shelling continued for
two hours. The attacks were triggered by the YPG capture of Menagh, a
former military air base near the town of Azaz. This is today's
military escalation du jour following last week's "peace
agreement" between the US, Russia, and other international leaders.
( "12-Feb-16 World View -- US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria"
)

There has been an increasingly bitter disagreement between Turkey and
the United States over the role of the YPG in Syria. The YPG have
links to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) in Turkey, a separatist
group that has conducted numerous terrorist attacks in Turkey since
1984. The stated goals of the YPG are to fulfill the PKK's separatist
goals in Syria by creating a de facto Kurdish state from west
Syria to east Syria and into Iraq, along Syria's northern border with
Turkey. Turkey says that the YPG is also a terrorist organization.
The United States designates the PKK as a terrorist organization, but
says that the YPG are not.

Although the Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims, the Kurdish militias are
politically on the far left, and are allied with Russia and the
Alawite/Shia government of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. The US
has supplied arms to the YPG in its fight against the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), after ISIS brutally
attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq last year. American support for
the YPG in Syria has led to vitriolic attacks by Turkish leaders on
America. ( "11-Feb-16 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan splits further with US, blaming it for a 'sea of blood'"

Turkey has repeatedly warned that a Kurdish attempt to take control of
the area on the Turkish border north of Aleppo, which would be a
strategic victory in the YPG goal of a Kurdish state, would be
entirely unacceptable to Turkey, and would trigger a Turkish military
response. Earlier in the day, a Turkish military source that
"PYD/PKK" forces had shelled Turkish targets.

According to Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu:

<QUOTE>"Today retaliation was taken under the rules of
engagement against forces that represented a threat in Azaz and
the surrounding area.

We will help our brothers in Aleppo with all means at our
disposal. We will take those in need but we will never allow
Aleppo to be emptied through an ethnic massacre. ...

Those who say PYD is not a terrorist organization either do not
know the region, or have ill intentions.

The terror organization PYD is in cooperation with Russia and
Assad, and is attacking Turkmens [in Syria]. If there is a threat
against Turkey, we will strike PYD like we did Qandil [PKK's HQ
located in Iraq]. ...

"Somebody needs to draw a line against Russia and raise their
voice."<END QUOTE>

US State Dept. spokesman John Kirby responded by saying that the US
would continue full support of the YPG in Syria:

<QUOTE>"‎"We have urged Syrian Kurdish and other forces
affiliated with the YPG not to take advantage of a confused
situation by seizing new territory. ...

Turkey and the YPG share a serious threat of ISIL poised just to
the east of the Azaz corridor. We continue to encourage all
parties to focus on this common threat, which has not subsided,
and to work towards a cessation of hostilities."<END QUOTE>

There was no statement from Russian officials regarding the attack on
the Kurds, but it's pretty certain that Russia will retaliate,
possibly even bombing military targets on Turkish soil. This would be
a major further escalation. Hurriyet (Istanbul) and Today's Zaman (12-Feb) and Anadolu Agency

****
**** Saudi Arabia and Turkey plan joint ground troop incursion into Syria
****

Saudi Arabia is sending 8 to 10 warplanes to Turkey's Incirlik air
base, saying that they will be used in cross-border attacks on ISIS in
Syria. (Everyone says that they're only attacking ISIS, no matter who
they're attacking.) Incirlik air base is already being used by the
U.S.-led coalition with Britain and France in cross-border attacks on
ISIS.

In addition, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are discussing plans for
a joint operation to deploy ground troops into Syria to fight
ISIS on the ground.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said, "There is
discussion on whether ground troops are needed against IS. If a
decision is taken to send in special units against IS, Saudi Arabia is
ready to take part."

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said,

<QUOTE>"Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been in favor of a
ground operation in the fight against Daesh. We have been saying
in all meetings of the [US-led anti-ISIL] coalition that there
should be a comprehensive strategy. We have said if such a
strategy is put in place, we, as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, can join
a ground offensive."<END QUOTE>

The discussion of Saudi and Turkey ground troops in Syria has drawn
sharp criticism from within Turkey itself, from Devlet Bahçeli, the
leader of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP):

<blocquote>"The government is of course required to protect
national security and to take deterrent measures in the face of
dangers emanating from outside our borders. But if a military
operation is being planned in the name of executing or assisting
some global projects and a cooperation is forged with Saudi Arabia
to that effect, the results could be terrible. It could lead to
unimaginably grave consequences.

Turkey will not be a proxy to execute scenarios of violence and
atrocity drafted in foreign capitals. Otherwise the outcome could
be catastrophic. ...

A ground operation without the approval of Parliament could cost
us a homeland."<END QUOTE>[/i][/indent]

As I've been writing for years, Generational Dynamics predicts that
the Mideast is headed for a major war between Shias and Sunnis,
between Arabs and Jews, and between different ethnic groups. Almost
every day there's a new event that moves the Mideast along that path.
It may not be very long now. Today's Zaman (Ankara) and Today's Zaman

****
**** The death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia
****

Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly on Saturday
while on a hunting trip. He was a conservative member of the Court,
appointed in 1986 by Ronald Reagan.

There has been hours of wall-to-wall news coverage of the reactions to
Scalia's death. As a public service to my readers, I'm providing you
with the entire story:

Republicans: Scalia's death is an enormous shock, and a profound loss
to the Court and the entire nation.

Democrats: We wish Scalia's family the best.

Republicans: The next president should pick a successor next year.

Democrats: Obama should pick a successor immediately.

That's it. That's the entire content of the news coverage of Scalia's
death. Now you can go back to reading about Kanye West and Taylor
Swift. Washington Post and E! Online

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Syria, Kurds, YPG, Azaz, Aleppo,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Ahmet Davutoglu, John Kirby, Saudi Arabia, Incirlik air base,
Britain, France, Adel al-Jubeir, Mevlut Cavusoglu,
Devlet Bahçeli, Nationalist Movement Party, MHP,
Justice Antonin Scalia, Ronald Reagan

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*** 15-Feb-16 World View -- Turkey doubles down on shelling Kurds in Syria

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Turkey doubles down on shelling Kurds in Syria
• Qatar says it will join Saudi Arabia, UAE sending troops to Syria
• John Kerry suggests that al-Assad and the Russians are delusional

****
**** Turkey doubles down on shelling Kurds in Syria
****


A woman makes her way through the rubble of damaged buildings after Syrian government airstrikes on Friday (Reuters)

Turkey continued shelling the positions of Kurdish YPG militia in
Syria on Sunday for a second day. YPG militias in Syria continued to
move closer to the border with Turkey, and Turkish officials claimed
that Turkey was responding to mortar fire from the Kurds in Syria.

The YPG is the military wing of the Kurds in Syria, and has links to
the PKK in Turkey, which is considered a terrorist organization by
both Turkey and the US. Turkey considers the YPG to be a terrorist
organization as well, and is in bitter disagreement with the US which
considers the YPG to be an ally in the fight against the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

According to Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the shelling
will continue until the YPG meets its demands:

<QUOTE>"The YPG will immediately withdraw from Azaz and the
surrounding area, and will not go close to it again. It will not
attempt to shut their corridor ever again. It will not have
delusions of using Menagh base to attack the
opposition."<END QUOTE>

A YPG spokesman said that Davutoglu's demands will be ignored.

Davutoglu said that when US Vice President Joe Biden visited
Istanbul last month, they agreed on some issues:

• "Firstly, the YPG should not cross the Euphrates River and
  should not do anything to bother Turkey."
  
• "Secondly, the Russian offensive on Aleppo should not turn into
  something that would trigger a wave of immigration."
  
• "Thirdly, we should jointly support the [Syrian] opposition’s
  offensive against Daesh on the Marea-Jarabulus line."

According to Davutoglu, "When Biden asked about the latest
developments, I told him there has been no development regarding these
three fundamental principles."

France is calling for an immediate end to all Syrian, Russian and
Turkish violence around Aleppo, including airstrikes and shelling. It
seems unlikely that anyone will do as called for.

The United States is pressuring Turkey to end the shelling of the YPG
in Syria. Other nations are expressing alarm that the shelling will
sink last week's "peace agreement" between the US and Russia.
Hurriyet (Ankara) and Al-Jazeera and Anadolu and dpa

****
**** Qatar says it will join Saudi Arabia, UAE sending troops to Syria
****

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar have all
announced that they would send troops to Syria to fight ISIS
if appropriate. There has been talk of a joint troop operation
by Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

According to last week's peace agreement, a full ceasefire is supposed
to begin in a few days, and the nations involved were supposed to
start to wind down their hostilities. ( "12-Feb-16 World View -- US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria"
)

Instead, all the nations involved have been intensifying their
hostilities. There are two ways of looking at this.

Some analysts take a Pollyannaish view that everyone is getting
one last burst of violence out of their systems so that they
can honor the cease fire.

Others take the view that everyone is using the ceasefire agreement
as a cover for more violence, and there is no chance at all
that the ceasefire will be honored.

We'll see in a few days which of these views is correct. Anadolu and NPR and Al Monitor

****
**** John Kerry suggests that al-Assad and the Russians are delusional
****

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at the 2016 Munich Security
Conference on Saturday, and chastised Russia and Syria's president
Bashar al-Assad by name for using "free-fall bombs" to kill civilians,
and suggested that they were delusional for thinking they could win
the war:

<QUOTE>"And the Security Council Resolution has demanded that
“all parties immediately cease any attacks against civilians.”
That, too, has not happened to date. And indeed, the violence by
the regime, as we all know, went up. Free-fall bombs are being
used, which are not precise. We all know civilians are being
killed. So we hope this week can be a week of change.

Now, some have argued that the reason humanitarian access has been
denied and has – and there’s been this bombing is because Assad
and his allies, including Russia, might believe that by defying
the will of the international community, they can win the
war. That is a proposition that is being discussed. If that is
what Russia and Assad think, then I believe they would be missing
the lessons of the last five years. The Syrians who have rejected
Assad have endured four years of shelling, barrel bombs, gas, Scud
missiles, chemical attacks, torture; and they may be pushed back
here or there, but they are not going to surrender. I don’t
believe there’s anybody who believes they will. And the countries
that have supported Assad and the countries that have opposed him
say they’re both committed to continuing that. That is not a
recipe, obviously, for a resolution.

So it is critical for all of us to take advantage of this moment
to make this cessation of hostilities work. And one thing I would
say is that the more successful people are in standing up Assad,
at the same time, the more successful they will be in attracting
more jihadis to the fight. That’s the perverse reality of what has
happened there."<END QUOTE>

Very often when Kerry speaks, he's so afraid to offend anyone that
his speech becomes completely muddled, sometimes even worthy
of being a skit on Saturday Night Live.

But in this speech he was very explicit -- accusing al-Assad of using
missiles, Sarin gas, chlorine gas, torture and missiles on civilians
-- and suggesting that if al-Assad thinks he can win the war then he
must be delusional.

He also makes the point that we've been making for years -- that young
jihadists from around the world have come to fight al-Assad resulting
in the creation of ISIS, and that they'll continue to come as long as
al-Assad keeps attacking innocent Sunnis in Syria. US State Department


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Syria, Kurds, YPG, Bashar al-Assad,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Ahmet Davutoglu, Joe Biden, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, UAE, John Kerry

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*** 16-Feb-16 World View -- Missile strikes on Syria's hospitals and schools called 'war crimes'

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Missile strikes on Syria's hospitals and schools called 'war crimes'
• China to substantially increase military budget as army restructures
• China's massive lending binge: four times as much as forecast

****
**** Missile strikes on Syria's hospitals and schools called 'war crimes'
****


MSF officials in rubble of Idlib hospital destroyed by airstrike missile on Wednesday (AFP)

Monday's missile attacks on hospitals and schools in Azaz, killing
dozens, are being called "war crimes." The missile attacks appear to
have been deliberate. The hospitals were run by Doctors without
Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF).

The U.S. State Department condemned the airstrikes, blaming the Syrian
regime headed by President Bashar al-Assad for the attack on Azaz.
Azaz, which is north of Aleppo near the border with Turkey, has been
under massive attack by Kurdish YPG militias, and by the Syrian and
Russian air forces.

Syria's al-Assad regime has a history of frequently deliberately
targeting civilians, including schools and hospitals, especially in
the Aleppo region:

• In November 2012, there was a demonstration by Aleppo University students,
  and the regime's
  response was a massive slaughter by security forces, who stormed the
  university, breaking down doors and using machine guns and rifles
  against students.
  
• In November 2013, missiles from al-Assad's warplanes struck a building at University of Aleppo where hundreds of students were taking exams,
  killing 82 and
  injuring 150 more.
  
• In December 2013, al-Assad's warplanes dropped at least 25 barrel bombs on neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo,
  targeting three districts and a school, killing
  dozens of civilians and at least 15 children. Al-Assad frequently
  uses barrel bombs loaded with explosives, metals, and chlorine gas on
  civilian neighborhoods in order to inflict mass slaughter on as many
  civilians as possible.

So deliberate missile attacks by al-Assad on hospitals and schools
would be standard operating procedure for al-Assad.

In a separate incident on Monday, four missiles from Russian warplane
air strikes struck another Doctors Without Borders hospital, this time
in Idlib in northern Syria. CNN and BBC

****
**** China to substantially increase military budget as army restructures
****

China is expected next month to announce another 10% increase in its
annual military budget, at a time when China's economy has been
slowing, indicating that the military remains a top priority. China
has been exponentially increasing its military budget every year for
years, as part of its aggressive multi-year military buildup.

There's something new this year -- a major restructuring of the
military, ordered by the president Xi Jinping. The People's
Liberation Army (PLA) is being restructured into five military battle
zone commands. The Northern Command will have the Korean Peninsula as
its main objective, along with Russia's Far East and Mongolia; the
Western Command is geared towards Central Asia and Indian
subcontinent; the Southern Command's objective is southeast Asia and
South China Sea; the Eastern Command is targeting Taiwan and Western
Pacific; and the Central Command acts as general strategic reserve.
There is no single command dedicated to Russia.

As part of revamping its cold war-era command structure, the PLA is
cutting 300,000 jobs. Reports indicate that this has caused quite a
bit of unhappiness in the ranks. According to one one senior
Beijing-based Western diplomat, "Where are the 300,000 going to go?
There's no information. Are the SOEs [state-owned enterprises]
supposed to employ them?"

In the restructuring, the navy is taking on greater importance, for
two reasons. First because of increased tensions in the South China
Sea, where China has been annexing regions historically belonging to
Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries. And second, because
Taiwan's elections in January brought to power a government
unsympathetic to Beijing. ( "17-Jan-16 World View -- Taiwan's pro-independence party wins historic presidential election"
)

The Eastern Command in the new command structure appears to be
specifically aimed at Taiwan. Beijing's policy is that if Taiwan
takes any move whatsoever towards independence, then China will invade
Taiwan. China has indicated that it will continue to tolerate
Taiwan's current ambiguous relationship with Beijing, but that it's
beginning to run out of patience. So the objective of the new Eastern
Command may well be to prepare for an invasion of Taiwan. Reuters and Aviation Week and Focus Taiwan

****
**** China's massive lending binge: four times as much as forecast
****

China's banks gave new loans in January for 2.51 trillion yuan ($385.6
billion). This was about four times the lending in December, and also
about four times as much as had been forecast by analysts.

As we wrote last week ( "9-Feb-16 World View -- Monday's stock market rout blamed on China's foreign currency selloffs"
), China has been selling of US Treasuries
and other assets denominated in foreign currencies in a desperate
attempt to keep the yuan (renminbi) currency from weakening into a
death spiral.

These new figures suggest that these desperation measures also extend
to "printing" trillions of new yuan. Normally "printing" currency has
the result of weakening (devaluing) the currency, and so it may be
that these two measures are meant to offset each other: The debt binge
would inject new money into the weakening economy, which the sale of
US Treasuries would attempt to hold the line against further yuan
devaluation.

January's lending binge has not been this high since the 2009 global
financial crisis. At that time, China was applauded for "saving the
world" by flooding China with trillions of newly printed yuan in order
to allow its economy to continue growing. Bloomberg and Reuters


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Aleppo, Azaz, Bashar al-Assad,
Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, Doctors without Borders,
China, Xi Jinping

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*** 17-Feb-16 World View -- China speeds rapid military buildup in South China Sea

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China speeds rapid military buildup in South China Sea
• China promises 'Peace in our time' at ASEAN conference

****
**** China speeds rapid military buildup in South China Sea
****


ASEAN meeting in California on Tuesday (AFP)

China's preparations for war appear to be speeding up, as the People's
Liberation Army (PLA) is rapidly militarizing the entire South China
Sea, developing a network of military bases across the Paracel and
Spratly islands.

New satellite pictures show that dredging operations are creating more
and more artificial islands in the Paracels and Spratlys, and that the
islands that have already been constructed are being armed to the
teeth with such things as anti-submarine warfare helicopters, runways,
and fuel bunkers. China's new military buildup appears to be
particularly targeting American submarines. With multiple military
bases across the entire South China Sea, a helicopter fleet would be
unconstrained by fuel range or limited numbers of ship-borne landing
berths, creating a continuous and contiguous web of surveillance and
response capability. Such a web would also have utility in surface
ship and aerial combat strategies in the region.

New satellite imagery shows that within the past week China's military
has deployed advanced surface-to-air missile systems and radar systems
on Woody Island, part of the Paracel Island chain in the South China
Sea. This has substantially escalated the level of military tension
in the South China Sea, as China prepares for war with its neighbors
and with the United States.

The Diplomat and Fox News and Bloomberg

****
**** China promises 'Peace in our time' at ASEAN conference
****

The publication of photos showing China's rapid and aggressive
military buildup across the South China Sea comes just as the
10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was meeting
at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California.

A major topic of discussion at the ASEAN summit was China's South
China Sea policy. China is following an extremely dangerous policy
that almost always leads to a major war, with the most obvious
historical example being Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia and
Poland.

China is claiming an enormous region as its sovereign territory, and
has been annexing regions historically belonging to Vietnam, the
Philippines, and other countries.

At the summit on Tuesday, President Obama gave the opening speech and
said:

<QUOTE>"Here at this summit, we can advance our shared vision
of a regional order where international rules and norms, including
freedom of navigation, are upheld and where disputes are resolved
through peaceful, legal means."<END QUOTE>

This was thought to be a message to China not to continue its military
buildup in the South China sea.

In addition, vice-Admiral Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the US
Navy’s Seventh Fleet warned China not to fly jet fighters from runways
on its new man-made islands in the disputed South China Sea, because
that would be destabilizing to the whole region. Aucoin said, “We are
unsure where they are taking us. So we are going to sail, fly,
operate throughout these waters. ... Like we have been doing for so
long,"

The Obama administration is claiming a bit of a moral victory, because
the Chinese agreed to sign a joint statement at the end of the summit:

<QUOTE>"7. Shared commitment to peaceful resolution of
disputes, including full respect for legal and diplomatic
processes, without resorting to the threat or use of force in
accordance with universally recognized principles of international
law and the 1982 United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS);

8. Shared commitment to maintain peace, security and stability in
the region, ensuring maritime security and safety, including the
rights of freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful
uses of the seas, and unimpeded lawful maritime commerce as
described in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)
as well as non-militarization and self-restraint in the conduct of
activities;"<END QUOTE>

These statements are farcical because China has already said that it
will ignore them, despite having committed to them. China has already
rejected "legal and diplomatic processes" to settle disputes, and is
obviously ignoring the pledges of "non-militarization and
self-restraint in the conduct of activities."

They say that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and we see
China repeating the mistakes of Adolf Hitler. After annexing
Czechoslovakia, Hitler thought that the UK was too weak to challenge
him.

Nazi Germany was then thoroughly humiliated in defeat in which its
entire infrastructure was destroyed, split into four regions
controlled by four different countries, not permitted to reunite for
almost 50 years, and forced to apologize for its behavior for many
decades after that.

Now China is doing pretty much the same thing, annexing other
countries' regions, with Obama as the modern day Neville Chamberlain,
to whom China is promising "peace in our time." It remains to be seen
who will win the war this time. White House and Reuters and White House


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, South China Sea, Paracel Islands,
Spratly Islands, Woody Island, Joseph Aucoin,
Adolf Hitler, Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain

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I'm going to repost a post I made at another section of the forum here and then add a paragraph specific to this section of the forum:

Hillary represents everything that embodies the delusions of the selfish boomers. Her obsession with globalism and world "human rights" is disgusting to most xers and millies. For that reason we like trump. The best american political leader in the current saeculum was Henry Kissinger, he conducted policy in order to advance american interests. If thousands or even millions of foreigners had to die, that was the price that just had to be paid. When Bangladesh rebelled against Pakistan in 1971 and Pakistani forces began systematic liquidation of entire categories of people among the local population, Kissinger with the approval of Nixon sent arms and military assistance to the Pakistani government. If a selfish boomer government like the ones we have now existed at that time that wouldn't have been possible. In order to restore greatness of the american people, millennials support leaders like trump to get things done.

Regarding foreign policy vs russia in the ukraine and in the mideast regions bordering russia's southern approaches and vs china in the maritime approaches adjacent to that country. Its obvious that boomers want to conduct policy autonomous to the will of the people. They are obviously afraid of what would happen if trump gets in. Hence they are willing to call Russia and China's bluff in those regions even if those bluffs are not bluffs. The tyrannical boomers never consider to consult and seek the general approval of the american people beforehand because if they do so the boomer leadership knows what the response would be from the populace: a big fat "NO" to these policies. The GI generation when boomers openly opposed their preferred policies sat down and listened to the grievances of the boomers and instituted modified policies that reflected the views of everyone. The Selfish boomer political class doesn't give a damn about the younger generations preferences because boomers always regarded kids as existing solely for the benefit of boomers. Boomers even hope for a national emergency so they can force the young to mobilize behind boomer ideological objectives. Xers and millies DO NOT oppose war in general even plunging into a world war; but they DO oppose going to war as long as boomers control the political and military leadership. Xers and millies despise the idea of a boomer political officer lecturing about how to conduct themselves while fighting while those generations are hitting the beaches. Xers and Millies prefer to hit the beaches as soldiers once their own generations are in charge of foreign, economic policies and policy making in regards to war and peace.

Boomers only care about their narcissistic vision of a world where every government in it is a representative democracy. The Alternative policy that trump advocates of signing spheres of influence agreements with Russia and China and creating nuclear armed buffer states between the US and those countries, while simultaneously conducting a policy of seizing control of newly developed economic regions of the world (mostly in the third world) that don't yet have military power to back up their economic strength and converting those regions into captive markets to serve the US economy. Selfish Boomers political hacks motivated by extreme selfishness and narcissism refuse to even consider this alternative policy because of ideological biases and declaring that proposed policy to be "immoral". As for the generational status of the current president; Obama is a boomers, his status as a boomer is obvious in how he tended to primarily associate with boomer political colleagues and how his primary political and economic strategists are all boomers. His formative mentors were all boomers as well, that is a dead giveaway of his boomer status: Most Xers and for that matter most early and mid-wave millies as well would NEVER seek casual relations with a boomer, the only time an xer or millie tends to associate with a boomer is when said Xer or Millie needs something from the boomer.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/...-donald-trump/

https://www.reddit.com/r/european/co...german_people/

http://www.getreligion.org/getreligi...lues-to-the-us

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...out-you-trump/

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...-wont-tell-you

http://www.globaltruth.net/why-obama...-at-all-costs/

http://europhobics.tumblr.com/post/1...people-be-like

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2016/0...utside-the-uk/

http://www.amerika.org/tag/immigration/

http://nationalism-against-globalism...heir-children/

*** 18-Feb-16 World View -- Car bomb attack on military in Ankara Turkey kills 28

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Car bomb attack on military in Ankara Turkey kills 28
• Erdogan slams US, UN policy, renews demand by Syria 'safe zone'

****
**** Car bomb attack on military in Ankara Turkey kills 28
****


Terror attack in Ankara

A car bomb exploded on Wednesday in Ankara, Turkey's capital city,
during rush hour at a busy intersection, near vehicles carrying
military personnel. The explosion occurred in what was supposed to be
a super-secure area in central Ankara that contains Parliament
buildings and military headquarters. 28 people were killed and 61
others were injured in the attack.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and there are two
possible perpetrators: the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) or the
so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

According to one analyst, "There's definitely many reasons why Turkish
reaction is going to be fierce."

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded angrily:

<QUOTE>"Our determination to respond in kind against such
attacks against our unity and future from outside and inside is
even more strengthened through such attacks. Turkey will not
hesitate to use its right to self-defense anytime, anywhere, and
in all situations. ...

Turkey's losses in its struggle against terrorism are challenging
its patience."<END QUOTE>

The PKK is a separatist group that has conducted numerous terrorist
attacks in Turkey since 1984. They've frequently attacked military
targets in the past.

Turkey was shocked last October when ISIS conducted a terrorist attack
in Anakra killing 97 people and injuring hundreds more. It was
referred to as the worst terrorist massacre in Turkey's history, or as
"Turkey's 9/11." ( "13-Oct-15 World View -- Turkey is seen as increasingly unstable after Ankara massacre"
)

Today's Zaman (Istanbul) and CNN
and Reuters

****
**** Erdogan slams US, UN policy, renews demand by Syria 'safe zone'
****

During the last week, as Kurdish militias in the YPG have gotten to
within 25 kilometers of Turkey's border, Turkey has been shelling YPG
positions. The US administration has been asking Turkey to stop the
shelling, but after Wednesday's terror attack in Ankara, nothing like
that has any chance of happening. According to Turkey's president
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "At the moment, I have difficulty in
understanding America, which still hasn’t called or still cannot call
the PYD and the YPG as terrorists and which says, ‘Our support for the
YPG will continue.'"

Erdogan has for years been demanding help from the US and UN to set up
a "buffer zone" or "safe zone," a strip of land in northern Syria
along the border with Turkey. As we wrote last week ( "10-Feb-16 World View -- Russia and Turkey head for clash on Syria border"
), Erdogan appears to be
taking advantage of the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees massed on
Turkey's border by setting up refugee camps in Syria, effectively
creating a de facto buffer zone.

In response to Wednesday's attack in Ankara, Erdogan said: “Oh
America! You did not say ‘yes’ to a ‘no-fly zone.’ Now the Russian
planes are running wild over there, and thousands and tens of
thousands of victims are dying. Weren’t we coalition forces? Weren’t
we supposed to act together?”

On Wednesday, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed support for
Erdogan's idea for a no-fly zone, saying that it would be a sign of
good will that could lead to a peace agreement Syria.

Remember when the US and Russia announced a "cessation of
hostilities?" It feels like it was months ago, but actually it was
only six days ago. ( "12-Feb-16 World View -- US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria"
) And now, after Wednesday's attack in
Ankara, it would seem that the cessation of hostilities idea is gone.
Hurriyet (Ankara) and AP


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Ankara, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, Syria, Russia, Germany, Angela Merkel

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*** 19-Feb-16 World View -- Russia's attacks on civilian hospitals in Aleppo follow the 'Grozny model'

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Six Turkish soldiers killed in explosion a day after Ankara attack
• New terrorist attacks cause further splits in US-Turkey relationship
• Russia's attacks on civilian hospitals in Aleppo follow the 'Grozny model'

****
**** Six Turkish soldiers killed in explosion a day after Ankara attack
****


Turkish security officials say that Russia bombing of civilian hospitals is following the 'Grozny model' used in Grozny, Chechnya(AFP)

Six soldiers were killed in southeastern Turkey on Thursday by a
roadside bombing that hit an armored military vehicle. Like
Wednesday's huge attack in Ankara, this appeared to be an attack
targeting military personnel. Turkish officials blame both attacks on
the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party).

The PKK is a separatist group that has conducted numerous terrorist
attacks in Turkey since 1984. They've frequently attacked military
targets in the past. Turkey's government and the PKK had agreed to a
ceasefire three years ago, but it collapsed last year, after a July 20
terrorist attack in the city of attack on Suruç
killed 33 people, mostly young pro-Kurdish
activists. Erdogan declared war on the PKK, and it appeared that
Turkey was slipping into chaos as violence spread across the country.

Since July, there have been months of military operations, curfews,
attacks and hundreds of dead and injured, especially in southeast
Turkey, which is the heart of the Kurdish separatist movement and home
to much of the PKK. CNN

****
**** New terrorist attacks cause further splits in US-Turkey relationship
****

No one has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's terror attack in
Ankara, in which 28 people, at least 20 of them military personnel,
were killed, with 60 injured. Many people suspect that it was
perpetrated not by the PKK, but by the so-called Islamic State (IS or
ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

The question of responsibility is causing a further split between
Turkey and the US. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, blames
the attack on the PKK and also on the YPG, the Kurdish militias
fighting in Syria. According to Erdogan:

<QUOTE>"Even if the leaders of YPG or PKK deny being involved
in the attack, there is evidence proving they were behind
it."<END QUOTE>

Erdogan would like to provide that evidence to the US and the west,
and finally settle on a joint policy to fight Kurdish terrorism.

Erdogan has for months been saying that the YPG is a terrorist
organization with links to the PKK. This presents a problem for
US-Turkey relations, since the YPG is the force that the Obama
administration is counting on to fight ISIS on the ground in Syria.

However, the YPG militias around Aleppo aren't fighting ISIS, and are
nowhere near ISIS. They're fighting so-called "moderate" rebels who,
incidentally, are also supposed to be US allies. The YPG militias,
backed by massive Russian and Syrian airstrikes that are targeting
civilian neighborhoods, schools and hospitals, are creating tens of
thousands refugees that are headed for the border with Turkey.

Already, Turkey has set up 8 refugee camps on the Syrian side of the
border. Turkey is accusing the YPG militias of being the foot
soldiers not in the fight against ISIS, but instead allied with the
Bashar al-Assad regime and the Russians with a strategy of forcing
tens of thousands of new refugees to enter Turkey, as a kind of weapon
of war.

So from Turkey's point of view, there is the PKK's long history of
terrorist attacks in Turkey, and there is the YPG's strategy to force
tens of thousands more refugees into Turkey, and according to Erdogan,
there is the evidence linking the YPG and the PKK to Wednesday's
horrific terror attack in Ankara.

Erdogan points out that when the Charlie Hebdo attack occurred in
Paris a year ago, there was widespread international sympathy for
France, but when Turkey suffers one terrorist attack after another,
the West doesn't seem to care, and some even blame Turkey, the victim.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this public attitude
towards Turkey is very interesting. Long-time readers know that ten
years ago I predicted, based on a generational analysis, that Russia
and Iran would become America's allies, and the Sunni Muslim countries
would become America's enemies, as everyone is forced to choose sides
in the approaching world war. Ten years ago, that prediction seemed
preposterous, and today no one is more astonished than I am to watch
it come to pass.

What's particularly startling to me is when people reading my articles
post comments making Bashar al-Assad into some sort of hero.

Bashar al-Assad is much worse than ISIS. When ISIS tortures someone
or forces the people in a village to pay taxes or be killed, the West
is horrified. But when al-Assad performs mass torture, or uses barrel
bombs to kill everyone in a village, then no one seems to care. When
ISIS attacks a school or hospital, everyone is horrified. But
al-Assad and the Russians attacked several schools and hospitals in
the last week alone, and many more in the past. As I've written
several times in the past, al-Assad is the genocidal monster of the
modern age.

People ask me how I could say that we could be allies with al-Assad
when I call him a genocidal monster. Well, we can see it happening
right before our eyes, can't we. And I always point to what happened
in World War II. Josef Stalin was responsible for the mass
starvation, torture, and mass slaughter of tens of millions of people.
Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong were the greatest
genocidal monsters of the twentieth century, and yet Stalin was our
ally because we had to choose. That's the way the world works, Dear
Reader.

So Erdogan would like to see greater support from the US and the West,
but Generational Dynamics predicts that that's not the way the world
is going. We can expect Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni nations
to become further estranged from the US, and we can expect the US to
be more closely allied with Iran, the great sponsor of international
terrorism, as well as Bashar al-Assad and Russia. Today's Zaman (Istanbul) and BBC and Today's Zaman and Washington Post

****
**** Russia's attacks on civilian hospitals in Aleppo follow the 'Grozny model'
****

The massive attack on the city of Aleppo by Syrian and Russian
warplanes pounding civilians with missiles and barrel bombs, in
conjunction with ground attacks by YPG militias, is said to be a
Russian army tactic known as the "Grozny model."

Turkish security officials say that in Russia's 1990s war with
Chechnya, Russian warplanes bombed schools and hospitals in order to
create a refugee crisis, and to empty the urban residential areas.
Once that was achieved, heavy weapons could be deployed to eradicate
opposing forces, entailing widespread destruction of homes and
infrastructure.

It's becoming increasingly apparent that the purpose of the "Grozny
model" strategy being followed by Russia and al-Assad is to create a
de facto Kurdish state in northern Syria along the border with
Turkey. This strategy is completely intolerable to Turkey, and even
if it succeeded, it would certainly lead to continued war.

However, even without succeeding, this Russian strategy is leading to
war. Turkey's tanks have been shelling YPG positions in Syria, as
we've reported several times in the last week.

And now there are new reports that hundreds of armed anti-Assad rebels
are crossing from Turkey into Syria. News reports don't explain where
these rebels are coming from, but the assumption is that they entered
Turkey from other parts of Syria. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Guardian (London) and EU Observer and Guardian


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Ankara, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, YPG, Syria, Russia, Aleppo,
Grozny model, Chechnya war

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*** 20-Feb-16 World View -- US warplanes strike suspected ISIS training base in Libya

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• US warplanes strike suspected ISIS training base in Libya
• US warplane attack on Libya raises question of ground troops
• Europe plans to expand Operation Sophia into Libyan waters

****
**** US warplanes strike suspected ISIS training base in Libya
****


US warplanes struck ISIS camp in Sabratha (WaPost)

US warplanes struck a suspected ISIS training camp in Libya, killing
at least 40 people, possibly including Tunisian-born Noureddine
Chouchane, a "leading ISIS facilitator." The camp was in Sabratha in
far western Libya, near the border with Tunisia.

Chouchane was linked to two major terrorist attacks in Tunisia last
year. In March, two gunmen infiltrated security at the well-known
Bardo Museum in Tunis,
right next
door to the parliament building, where they took and killed 22
hostages, with 50 people injured. In June, a gunman disguised as a
tourist opened fire at a Tunisian hotel in Sousse
, killing 37 people. In both cases, the victims
were mostly foreign tourists. The evident intent of the attacks was
to damage Tunisia's tourist industry.

The so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) has been
expanding powerfully in Libya, in the chaos that followed the removal
of Muammar Gaddafi from power. Libya is considered a launchpad for
attacks not only on African targets, but also on European targets.
According to American officials, the death of Chouchane would
represent a blow to ISIS's ability to launch such high-profile
attacks. The National (UAE) and Washington Post and CNN

****
**** US warplane attack on Libya raises question of ground troops
****

Friday's attack on the ISIS base by US warplanes comes days after
president Barack Obama said that there would be such attacks on ISIS:

<QUOTE>"With respect to Libya, I have been clear from the
outset that we will go after ISIL wherever it appears, the same
way that we went after Al Qaeda wherever they
appeared."<END QUOTE>

However, no one believes that an airstrike on an ISIS camp is going to
have much of an effect on the overall situation in Libya. In fact,
we've already seen in Syria and Iraq that attacking ISIS with just air
power is largely ineffective unless supported by ground troops.
Friday's attack will certainly have no effect on the ISIS
stronghold in Sirte.

ISIS has continued to grow increasingly powerful in Libya. Since
arriving in Libya from Syria, ISIS has set up bases around Sabratha
and farther east at Derna and Sirte. Sirte has become its Libya
headquarters, with the Pentagon estimating that 5,000-6,000 fighters
are now in the country, many from abroad. From Sirte, ISIS has now
occupied 240 kilometers of coastline and last month attacked the
nearby oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider, setting storage tanks on
fire.

As we've reported several times, there are plans for a Western
military invasion into Libya to attack ISIS. ( "29-Jan-16 World View -- US, Britain, France, Italy continue plans for Libya invasion against ISIS"
) The invasion,
if it occurs, would take place in early March.

The plan was that the invasion would be launched after the signing of
a UN-sponsored "peace deal" aimed at creating a unified representative
government in Libya, merging the two separate governments now in
existence. However, attempts to get agreement from the two
governments to merge have fallen apart. Vice News and Sputnik News (Moscow)

****
**** Europe plans to expand Operation Sophia into Libyan waters
****

Wikileaks has released a classified document describing European Union
plans to expand the existing Operation Sophia into a ground invasion.

Operation Sophia, named after a baby born on a German frigate to a
rescued Somali woman in August, was launched in October of last year
as one of the European Union's measures to slow the tidal wave of
refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. The operation is
targeted at human traffickers. Naval patrols board smugglers' boats
in international waters, after they've left the Libyan port, remove
the migrants, and remove the boat from service. With fewer boats
available for smuggling, the flow of migrants is reduced.

Operation Sophia has been somewhat successful in that many of the
wooden boats that human traffickers have been using to smuggle
refugees have been taken out of service. Wooden boats are now being
replaced by rubber dinghies, which smugglers have been importing in
quantity from China, transshipping them through Malta.

Operation Sophia is awaiting the right circumstances to transition to
a new phase of the project, to move from operating in high seas to
operating in Libyan Territorial Waters. Eventually, this would
lead to ground troops within Libya.

However, this new phase of Operation Sophia is also being put on hold,
because operating with Libyan territorial waters would require the
approval of Libya's government, which evidently is not going to be
given. Malta Today and International Business Times and Defense World


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Libya, Sabratha, Tunisia, Noureddine Chouchane,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Operation Sophia

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*** 21-Feb-16 World View -- Latest Syria peace plan officially fails

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Latest Syria peace plan officially fails
• Shifting alliances across the Mideast

****
**** Latest Syria peace plan officially fails
****


Walking through the rubble in Syria (AP)

There never was even the slightest chance that this latest peace plan
for Syria had any chance of succeeding, as I wrote when it was first
announced. ( "12-Feb-16 World View -- US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria"
)

In fact, as usual, the farcical peace plan did more harm than good,
because it provided motivation for the violence to increase.

Russian and Syrian warplanes have increased their pounding of
so-called "terrorists" -- by which they mean all Sunni civilians, whom
they apparently think of as cockroaches to be exterminated -- using
barrel bombs to flatten entire Sunni villages and using missiles on
schools and hospitals.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russia's president Vladimir Putin,
denied that Russia had bombed hospitals and schools this week, despite
numerous reports from all sorts of independent sources, including
Human Rights Watch (HRW), Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans
Frontières, MSF), Nato, the US State Dept., and various reporters.
According to Peskov, all of these sources are lying in unison to harm
Russia. Peskov told the BBC that the only reports he believes are the
ones that come from the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the president of
Syria.

Now that's a real laugh. Al-Assad is the alleged war criminal,
committing genocide on Sunnis by means of missiles, Sarin gas, barrel
bombs laced with chlorine gas, and any other mass weapon he can get
his hands on. So Peskov doesn't trust the independent sources. He
trusts only the alleged war criminal. This is the kind of crap we
always get from Russian officials, though I suppose it's only right
that the only person they trust is a war criminal, since the Russians
are war criminals themselves.

Then there's the Turks. They've chosen this period following the
peace agreement to begin shelling Kurdish YPG militia positions in
Syria north of Aleppo.

Well, they do have an excuse. There was a huge terrorist attack in
Ankara on Wednesday. No one claimed credit for a while, and the two
possible perpetrators were thought to be the so-called Islamic State
(IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Both ISIS and the PKK are considered to be terrorist groups by Turkey,
the US, and much of the West.

Then on Friday, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a Kurdish terror
group linked to the PKK, took credit for the Ankara bombing. The
Turks claim that the YPG militias in northern Syria are linked to the
PKK that carries out terrorist attack in Turkey, so the Turks aren't
about to stop shelling YPG positions any time soon.

We also heard this week from some of the Sunni Arab nations. Saudi
Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar all said this week that
they're ready to send their ground troops into Syria -- to fight ISIS.
By the way, that's the reason that everyone gives -- they're fighting
ISIS.

It's very hard to grasp the sheer size of the catastrophe that's
unfolded in Syria since 2011, when Sunnis started peacefully
demonstrating and Bashar al-Assad started exterminating them like
cockroaches.

The Syrian civil war has cost an estimated 500,000 lives and made some
11 million people refugees. Millions have ended up in Jordan, Lebanon
and Turkey and almost a million have fled to Europe. For instance,
more than 1 million people are considered to be under siege throughout
Syria in a war that pits numerous groups against one another.

And al-Assad and Russians keep making it worse -- more and more
deaths, more and more refugees, more and more misery. They're acting
like they're going to achieve victory in Syria, but they don't have a
snowflake's chance in hell of doing so.

Even if they capture more ground, this is a generational Awakening era
in Syria, and they will never get the Syrian opposition to surrender.
Nor will they get ISIS to surrender. What they will do is
increasingly isolate and panic Turkey, which will ally with the Saudis
and other Arab states to end up in a full-scale Mideast war, as
Generational Dynamics has been predicting for over a decade. Washington Post and CBS News and US State Dept. and Jerusalem Post

****
**** Shifting alliances across the Mideast
****

A web site reader wrote this comment yesterday:

<QUOTE>"Mr. Xenakis, for quite some time you have been
predicting a split between the U.S. and Turkey which will result
in the two countries becoming enemies. Since Turkey and the
U.S. are both members of NATO, I could never understand how this
could realistically happen until now. The wedge that will
irrevocably separate Turkey and the U.S. will be the issue of
U.S. support for the Kurds in Syria/YPG/PKK.

Here is a quote from [analyst] Charles Lister [appearing in The
Telegraph]: 'It is quite extraordinary that Obama administration
policy seems to be favoring a Kurdish militia group that is
incontrovertibly linked to the terrorism-designated PKK over and
above a fellow Nato ally, Turkey.'"<END QUOTE>

You say that you could never understand how this change could
realistically happen until now, and I have to say that the same is
true for me. The bizarre thing about this generational methodology
that I use is that it produces analyses and forecasts that often seem
not to make sense until they come true, and they always come true, and
that's always astonishing. (If you'd like to read more about how
generational reasoning works, read this: "9-Nov-15 World View -- Political crisis in Iran grows over nuclear agreement"
).

The quote from Lister is right. Indeed, one can go further. The
Obama administration is fighting on two conflicting sides in Syria.
The administration is cooperating more and more with al-Assad and
Russians, who are allied with the YPG Kurdish militia in Syria. The
administration is conducting airstrikes in support of the YPG in
eastern Syria, where they're fighting ISIS, and the administration is
passively supporting the YPG in Aleppo, where they're a clear enemy of
a Nato ally, Turkey.

If this shows nothing else, it shows how President Obama, who is
always driven to do the opposite of what President Bush would do, has
run into one disaster after another in foreign policy.

However, Dear Reader, perhaps you think I'm being unfair. I came
across a piece by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent in which he
explains that Obama's policy is not only coherent, but it's been right
all along.

The argument is that Turkey has been allowing people to pass through
Turkey into Syria, where they can join ISIS. The Obama administration
a year ago decided that if Turkey wasn't going to close the border on
its side, then he would support the YPG in closing the border from the
Syrian.

So much stuff today makes me laugh out loud. So Obama's whole policy
in Syria is to close the border with Turkey??? Obama has been unable
to close the border with Mexico. Greece can't close the border with
Turkey. But Obama's found a way to close the border between Syria and
Turkey? Where do these people come up with this stuff?

The fact is that the Turks are under attack from PKK Kurds within
Turkey, and they believe that they're under attack from YPG Kurds in
northern Syria.

President Obama believes that he can push Turkey as hard as he wants,
and Turkey will still be America's ally. But Turkey has other allies,
notably the Saudis and other Sunni Arabs. As the web site reader
quoted above suggests, when Turkey is forced to choose who its allies
are, America won't be one of them. Telegraph (London) and Washington Post and Independent (London)

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Russia, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Human Rights Watch, HRW, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, YPG,
Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, Doctors without Borders,
Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, TAK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Charles Lister, Nato, Patrick Cockburn

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*** 22-Feb-16 World View -- Delhi in crisis as India sends thousands of troops to quash Jat riots

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Delhi in crisis as India sends thousands of troops to quash Jat riots
• Jats demand entry into the 'reservation system' for jobs and education
• Bomb explosions strike Assad strongholds in Syria as Kerry speaks of 'provisional' peace

****
**** Delhi in crisis as India sends thousands of troops to quash Jat riots
****


Jat protests cause massive traffic jams blocking highways in Delhi (PTI)

India has deployed almost 10,000 troops in a massive show of force to
the province of Haryana on Sunday to quell riots that are creating
crisis conditions across Haryana and in the capital city Delhi.
Haryana surrounds Delhi on three sides, allowing the Haryana riots to
target Delhi's economy. There have already been 10 deaths and
hundreds of injuries.

The riot group are the Jats, a caste or a caste-like ethnic group with
a population of 80 million people across India. In Haryana province,
they make up 29% of the population. They're rioting because several
of the poorer castes by law are given preferential treatment for jobs
and education, and so the Jats are unable to get jobs themselves.

This issue has been simmering since the 1990s, when India's Supreme
Court ruled that the poorer castes have to be given preferential
treatment. Various political candidates have repeatedly made promises
to the Jats to improve the situation, but the politicians forget their
promises once in office. The Jats claim that they're now doing what
they have to do to be heard.

The protesters have damaged equipment that brings water to New Delhi,
which is now facing a water crisis. With much of Delhi now without
water, the Haryana government has rushed paramilitary and technical
team members of the Irrigation Department to restore water delivery.

In addition, the protesters have brought much business in Delhi to a
halt by blocking major roads and highways in and out of Delhi, and
damaging railway tracks to prevent rail traffic. In other actions,
the protesters have burned down homes and vandalized vehicles.
India Today and Times of India and Reuters

****
**** Jats demand entry into the 'reservation system' for jobs and education
****

The most prominent lower class in India are the Dalits. But India's
government classifies the Jats as "Other Backward Class" or OBC.

Thanks to a 1990s Supreme Court decision, India's government has had
to set up a "reservation system" in Haryana that gives preferential
treatment to certain poorer castes and classes, so that they can more
easily obtain jobs and educations.

The Jats are politically and economically better off than the groups
in the existing reservation classes, which is the reason given why
they haven't been admitted to the reservation classes. But since the
poorer castes are getting preferential treatment, many Jats are unable
to get jobs, even if they're better qualified than another candidate
who happens to be in the reservation group.

So that's what the protests are about. The Jats want to be added to
the reservation group. Currently, 50% of Haryana's population are in
the preferential reservation group. Adding the Jats, which comprise
29% of the population, would mean that almost 80% of the population
would be given preferential treatment. You don't have to be a rocket
scientist to see that that won't work. Scroll (India) and Times of India

****
**** Bomb explosions strike Assad strongholds in Syria as Kerry speaks of 'provisional' peace
****

When one peace plan collapses, it's good news, because a new peace
plan can begin. The peace plan ("cessation of hostilities") that US
Secretary of State John Kerry announced last week collapsed just two days ago.
On Sunday,
Kerry met with Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and then made
this announcement to the press:

<QUOTE>"We have reached a provisional agreement in principle,
on the terms of the cessation of hostilities, that could begin in
the coming days. It is not yet done, and I anticipate that our
presidents, president Obama and president Putin, may well speak
somewhere in the next days or so in order to try to complete this
next task."<END QUOTE>

I really don't know whether I should think that Kerry is a complete
fool for running around making these idiotic statements, or whether I
should instead feel sorry for Kerry because he's required to run
around making these idiotic statements. How many peace agreements has
Kerry announced in the past that have collapsed within a few days?
I've lost count. How may peace agreements has Kerry announced that
have succeeded? I can't recall a single one. What the hell is this
guy doing?

At any rate, in the same time frame that Kerry was announcing peace,
there were two massive terrorist attacks, each involving multiple
explosions, in two separate districts, both government controlled and
both highly secure and heavily protected by the army of Syria's
president Bashar al-Assad.

A series of blasts, a car bomb and two suicide bombers, ripped through
the Sayyida Zeinab suburb of Damascus, killing at least 83 people and
wounding more than 170. This suburb is a Shia stronghold.

Earlier in the day, two car bombs exploded in the Wadi al-Zaha suburb
of Homs, killing at least 34 people. This suburb is an Alawite
stronghold. Syria's president Bashar al-Assad is a Shia/Alawite.

The so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) has taken
credit for both terrorist attacks. ISIS has targeted both districts
in the past, to prove that they can strike anywhere in Syria they
want. Scotsman and Washington Post



KEYS: Generational Dynamics, India, Delhi, Jats, Haryana province,
Dalits, Other Backward Class, OBC,
Syria, John Kerry, Sergei Lavrov, Sayyida Zeinab, Damascus,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Wadi al-Zaha, Homs

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*** 23-Feb-16 World View -- China's military buildup neutralizes America's aircraft carriers

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China building powerful new radar system in South China Sea
• Report: China's military buildup neutralizes America's aircraft carriers
• John Kerry and Russia announce a new Syria peace plan

****
**** China building powerful new radar system in South China Sea
****


Aircraft carrier USS George Washington (2008). China's military buildup is neutralizing aircraft carriers.

Just days after satellite imagery showed that China's People's
Liberation Army (PLA) is rapidly militarizing the South China Sea by
deploying advanced surface-to-air missile systems, new imagery shows
that China appears to be building a an advanced radar system
potentially giving China control of the entire South China Sea.

China has been annexing regions in the South China Sea that have
historically belonged to other countries, and continues to use
belligerent military operations to enforce its seizures. China has
claimed the entire South China Sea, including regions historically
belonging to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and the
Philippines. China's claims are rejected by almost everyone outside
of China, and China refuses to submit them to the United Nations court
deciding such matters, apparently knowing their claims are groundless
and that they would lose.

The imagery is of Cuarteron Reef in the Spratly island chain. This
reef is one of those that China has expanded into an artificial island
using land reclamation, for the apparent purpose of building military
bases. The advanced missile and radar systems would broaden China's
control over the entire region, according to an analyst:

<QUOTE>"If it is an HF [high-frequency or over-the-horizon]
radar, then it would enormously boost China’s capacity to monitor
ships and aircraft in the South China Sea. Cuarteron is the
logical place for such an installation because it is the
southernmost of China’s features in the Spratlys, meaning that it
would be the best place if you wanted early warning radar to give
notice of ships or planes coming up from the Strait of Malacca and
other areas to the south such as Singapore.

This would be very important in a Chinese anti-access area denial
strategy that sought to reduce the ability of the U.S. to operate
freely in the South China Sea, including bringing forces up
through the South China Sea in case of any future crisis in
Northeast Asia."<END QUOTE>

The US Navy has been challenging China in the South China Sea by
conducting "freedom of navigation" air and sea patrols throughout the
region, including within 12 miles of China's artificial islands. This
has infuriated the Chinese, but US Navy officials argue that to do
nothing would be to allow China to prevent any foreign naval vessel
from traveling through the South China Sea, which is one of the
biggest commercial routes in the world.

US Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin is suggesting that it would be
"valuable" if Australia and other nations could join the US in these
freedom of navigation patrols. According to Aucoin:

<QUOTE>"What we're trying to ensure is that all countries, no
matter size or strength, can pursue their interests based on the
law of the sea and not have that endangered by some of these
actions.

It's up to those countries, but I think it's in our best interests
to make sure that those sea lines remain open, I'll leave it at
that."<END QUOTE>

Washington Post and Reuters

****
**** Report: China's military buildup neutralizes America's aircraft carriers
****

Countries such as China, Iran and Russia have spent years and a great
deal of money developing integrated systems of surface-to-air
missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, submarines, surface ships and
aircraft whose purpose is to prevent US aircraft carriers from having
freedom of movement, whether in the Persian Gulf, the eastern
Mediterranean, or the South China Sea.

According to the report from the Center for a New American Security:

<QUOTE>"Operating the [aircraft] carrier in the face of
increasingly lethal and precise munitions will thus require the
United States to expose a multi-billion dollar asset to high
levels of risk in the event of a conflict. An adversary with
A2/AD [anti-access/area denial] capabilities would likely launch a
saturation attack against the carrier from a variety of platforms
and directions. Such an attack would be difficult – if not
impossible – to defend against."<END QUOTE>

In order to avoid risk, a carrier would have to operate so far away
from the battlefield that the battlefield would be out of range that
the aircraft could travel without refueling. The report concludes
that the United States can either "operate its carriers at
ever-increasing ranges ... or assume high levels of risk in both blood
and treasure," and suggests that the days of the aircraft carrier may
be ending. Center for a New American Security and Washington Post

****
**** John Kerry and Russia announce a new Syria peace plan
****

I have to admit I'm totally baffled by what's going on here. Two
weeks ago, US Secretary of Defense John Kerry announced a new Syria
peace plan, after conferring with the Russians. ( "12-Feb-16 World View -- US and Russia agree to a farcical 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria"
)

The peace plan made absolutely no sense whatsoever for reasons I gave
at the time -- Russia and Syria will continue bombing what they claim
are terrorist groups, which are pretty much all Sunnis in Syria, and
the plan would not apply to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or
ISIL or Daesh) and the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra
Front). And sure enough, the "cessation of hostilities" collapsed in
less than a week. In fact, the peace plan actually worsened the
hostilities, since it provided cover for substantially increased
bombing and fighting from all groups.

Well, on Monday John Kerry consulted with the Russians and announced a
new peace plan -- and it contained exactly the same elements as the
old peace plan. What the hell do these people think they're doing?

I listened to the analysts, and I heard only two things mentioned that
make this different from the previous peace plan:

• Russian and American military forces are setting up a
  "communications hotline." That's the big difference, according to one
  analyst.
  
• Having been bombing for several months, Russia is running out of
  easy targets, and now wants some sort of truce.

A spokesman for the opposition rebels says that they won't stop
fighting unless Russia and Syria completely stop bombing. Well, they
said that they're going to continue bombing.

In fact, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad responded to Monday's peace
announcement by saying that he would respect the truce, except that he
reserved the right to attack "terrorists":

<QUOTE>"It's about stopping the fire ... but also about
preventing the terrorists from using the ceasefire or the
cessation of hostilities to improve their position. It's about
preventing other countries, especially Turkey, from sending more
recruits, more terrorists, more armaments."<END QUOTE>

In other words, al-Assad has no intention at all of respecting the
truce, since he considers all Sunnis to be terrorists, including women
and children.

And then there are the YPG Kurds fighting Sunnis north of Aleppo,
driving tens of thousands to flee from their homes and head for the
border with Turkey. Turkey considers the YPG Kurds, who are allies of
al-Assad, to be linked to the PKK Kurds, who are internationally
recognized terrorists, and therefore also terrorists. Turkey has been
shelling YPG Kurd positions for over a week now, but wasn't a part of
Monday's peace agreement announcement. So who's going to be the first
to stop fighting: Turkey or the YPG Kurds? The answer is: Neither.

So we have a "cessation of hostilities" which is almost identical to
the last one, with the same effect: No one is going to cease
hostilities. I have little respect for John Kerry and these
politicians, but I can understand how they could do this dance once.
But a second time? I'm baffled. CNN and
NPR and Foreign Policy


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, South China Sea, Spratly Islands,
Cuarteron Reef, high-frequency radar, over-the-horizon radar,
Joseph Aucoin, Center for a New American Security,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front, John Kerry, Russia,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad

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*** 24-Feb-16 World View -- Refugee crisis puts European Union's core principles at risk

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Macedonia closes borders to thousands of stranded Afghan migrants in Greece
• Belgium closes border to France after announcement to close Calais 'Jungle'
• Refugee crisis becomes devastating for Europe

****
**** Macedonia closes borders to thousands of stranded Afghan migrants in Greece
****


Razor wire installed by Austria on its border (AFP)

Thousands of Afghan migrants were left stranded in Greece on Monday,
after Macedonia abruptly closed its borders to Afghan. This was just
one of several border closing actions taken by European countries,
threatening open borders, one of the core principles of the European
Union.

It's only 53 days into the new year, and figures published by the
International Organization for Migration showed that 102,547 people
had arrived in Greece and another 7,507 in Italy so far this year,
even though it's still winter. In 2015, the threshold of 100,000 was
not reached until the end of June. This number could double as warm
weather arrives, and it's possible that well over a million new
refugees will flood into Europe this year.

Since November, European officials are attempting to deal with the
refugee crisis by distinguish between refugees from war zones in
Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, versus economic refugees from other
countries. Thus, the Balkan countries have been permitting only
migrants from these three countries to pass through their borders to
go north to Germany, Sweden, and other European nations where they
plan to apply for asylum.

Macedonia was also following this policy until Monday, permitting
migrants only from those three countries to cross the border from
Greece. However, Macedonia abruptly announced that Afghans would no
longer be permitted to cross, and some 12,000 were left trapped on the
Greek side of the border on Tuesday.

This situation was triggered by announcement on Friday by Austria that
it would introduce a cap of only 80 asylum-seekers per day, and would
only let 3,200 migrants pass through to Germany each day. 3,200
migrants per day is still more than one million per year.

Austria's announcement started a chain reaction that led to
Macedonia's announcement to close the border to Afghans.

Austria's announcement led Montenegro also to announce that it was
closing its borders. Montenegro has not in the past been on the main
route used by migrants, but "If the European countries dealing with
the consequences of the migrant crisis opt to close their borders,
what else is there for a country like Montenegro to do?" asked prime
minister Milo Djukanovic at a meeting in London.

Macedonia's announcement triggered riots along the border in Greece.
Greek police have been removing hundreds of migrants from a camp at
the country's border with Macedonia and putting them on buses bound
for Athens, where they will be housed in an army-built camp.

EurActiv and The Local - Austria

****
**** Belgium closes border to France after announcement to close Calais 'Jungle'
****

Belgium is implementing border controls with France, after France's
announcement that it would close a portion of its refugee camp in
Calais.

Migrants whose goal is to reach Britain usually travel to Calais, the
point in France closest to Britain. From there, they hope to
hitchhike on the truck traffic traveling through the tunnel to
Britain under the English Channel.

France has set up a notorious camp for migrants that has become known
as "The Jungle," where they can sleep in tents and receive free hot
meals. There are currently about 4,000-5,000 migrants living in the
camp, of which 205 are women and 651 are children.

Last week, officials in France announced that they would evict about
1,000 migrants living in southern part of The Jungle.

France's interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the eviction would
be done "progressively, by persuasion and with respect for people's
dignity." Evicted residents have been told they must choose between
moving into refitted shipping containers set up in the camp or to a
migrant accommodation center elsewhere in France. Many migrants are
balking at leaving, and are determined to stay.

Belgium officials fear that migrants evicted from the Jungle will
simply move on to Belgium hoping to cross the English Channel by boat.
Because thousands of migrants entering Belgium is a possibility,
officials are imposing border control. According to Belgium's
interior minister Jan Jambon, "They're already on their way here."
BBC and
France 24

****
**** Refugee crisis becomes devastating for Europe
****

According to one analyst, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't
show it, but she's furious with Austria for imposing further border
controls, because doing so left her alone on the refugee issue.

Merkel is a strong proponent of the principle of open borders, a right
that's at the core of the European Union. The Schengen Zone is a
group of 26 European countries that permit visa-free border crossings
among them. However, one country after another has been imposing
border control, under the "emergency situation" terms of the Schengen
rules. But with the mass of refugees growing, it's feared that the
emergency will last a long time.

East European countries, in some cases with strong cultural memories
of being dominated by the Ottoman Empire, have imposed the strong
border controls. Greek officials are complaining bitterly, because
they end up being responsible for the thousands of migrants that enter
Greece each day. There are fears that the entire Schengen Zone system
could collapse.

A study by Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation has found that if the
Schengen Zone collapses, it will cost the European Union 1.4 trillion
euros over the next decade, mainly because the EU's already weak
economic growth would be severely impacted by introduction of new
import fees and trade restrictions.

Beyond the economic implications, the political implications of the
refugee crisis are enormous. There may be two million migrants coming
into Greece this year. Migrants who are blocked from taking one route
will take another. Many will pay a great deal of money to people
smugglers to get them to Germany over back roads that aren't being
patrolled. These are problems that the European Union may not be
equipped to handle. It's a real question what will be left of the
European Union's core principles by the end of 2016. Deutsche Welle and Reuters and VOA and Deutsche Welle


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Greece, Macedonia, Afghanistan,
Germany, Sweden, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Montenegro,
Milo Djukanovic, Belgium, France, Calais, the Jungle, Britain,
Bernard Cazeneuve, Jan Jambon, Greece

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*** 25-Feb-16 World View -- Readers comment: Who would win a war between the US and China?

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China sends fighter jets to South China Sea
• Readers debate a war between the US and China
• Who would win a war between the US and China?

****
**** China sends fighter jets to South China Sea
****


Chinese Shenyang J-11 jet being deployed to Woody Island

China continues to speed up its rapid military buildup in the South
China Sea. In recent days, satellite imagery has shown that China's
People's Liberation Army (PLA) is deploying advanced surface-to-air missile systems
to Woody Island
in the Paracels chain, and also that China appears to be building an advanced high-frequency over-the-horizon radar system.

Now, US administration officials are confirming that satellite images
taken on February show that China is deploying Shenyang J-11s
(“Flanker”) and Xian JH-7s (“Flounder”) fighter jets on Woody Island.

As usual, China is claiming that the advanced military buildup
of missiles, radar, and warplanes is purely "defensive." According
to China's state media:

<QUOTE>"Non-militarization of the islands in the South China
Sea has been a common wish expressed by all parties in this region
-- including China. Top Chinese officials did say the recent
reclamation of islands and reefs is mainly aimed at providing
better services at sea. However, a commitment to
non-militarization doesn't mean zero military facilities. The US
seems to be interpreting China’s commitments in ways that suit
itself."<END QUOTE>

I'm not even sure what this means, other than it's doubletalk
to say that a military buildup isn't a military buildup.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Insanity in individuals is something rare -
but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
In 1860, America's southern states started the Civil War, even
though they had no chance against the North, which was three times
the size. In 1941, Japan started the Pacific war, even though
they had no chance against the US, which was five times the size.

Many Chinese believe that the US is too weak or too tied down in the
Mideast to fight back. This is insanity, and a disastrous historical
mistake. China is following the path of Adolf Hitler, militarizing,
annexing other countries' regions, promising "Peace in our time" in
one way or another. The Chinese are headed in the same direction as
Hitler. Fox News and Shanghaiist

****
**** Readers debate a war between the US and China
****

My recent article, "23-Feb-16 World View -- China's military buildup neutralizes America's aircraft carriers"
, generated spirited debate in comments by web site
readers over just how vulnerable American aircraft carriers are to
China's military.

With regard to China's advanced high-frequency over-the-horizon radar
system, "anthonyvop" wrote, "The idea of a 'radar system' giving China
control is laughable. I have radar on my boat. Does that mean I have
control over Biscayne Bay?" I don't know whether he was joking.

"Nemeshisu" gave a detailed analytical summary of China's
military preparations for war with the United States:

<QUOTE>"The Chinese have been preparing for the last 30 years
or so to get all 'Tsun Tzu' on ourass by making our strengths into
weaknesses. The Chinese have:

- An entire army group of hackers, PLA Unit 61398, ready to wage
cyber warfare which has routinely hacked into our networks (and
crashed them) for decades.

- The demonstrated capability to deliver anti-satellite weapons
on target which means they can blind us, cut our communications
and collapse our economy.

- They, along with Iran and Russia, have super-cavitating
torpedoes. We don't have this tech, nor a defense against
it. While our torpedoes travel at about 50 knots, these
torpedoes travel at 250 MPH. They don't touch the water as they
travel in a cocoon of bubbles and are capable of ripping a
carrier in half from the kinetic energy of the impact alone,
even if the warhead fails to detonate. You cannot maneuver or
deploy countermeasures against these torpedoes.

- They have an anti-ship ballistic weapon, the DF-21. We also
don't have this tech nor a defense against it. These ballistic
weapons are specifically designed to attack our carriers at
stand-off ranges of 1500-2000 miles. Our carriers will not be
able to operate in the western Pacific, much less get into range
to launch airstrikes when warheads rain down on the battle group
with pin point accuracy and at thousands of miles an hour.

- When we deregulated export restrictions on 5 axis milling
equipment (thanks conservatives in Congress), the Chinese got
the tech to mill silent submarine propellers. Prior to this,
their screws were noisy and easily detectable. The first lathes
to leave our shores went to China and within a couple of years,
they replaced the screws on their entire submarine fleet. If
you want to know what they can now do, google "The uninvited
guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise,
leaving military chiefs red-faced"

- Over the last 35 years, the Chinese acquired from Israel all
kinds of advanced weapons technology, from advanced missile
systems to tank armor technology and advanced avionics for their
shiny new air force. Israel sold this tech that we shared with
them on the condition that they not sell it to others, much less
to our potential adversary. Such awesome allies them Israelis. I
wonder if the conservatives asked Bibi about this last time he
was here."<END QUOTE>

"FederalFarmer" pointed out how vulnerable American aircraft
carriers are:

<QUOTE>"One mistake that is commonly made is preparing to
fight the last war again. The situation we face with China is very
different from that we faced with Japan. We need to start now to
prepare to fight them.

We can beat China, but we need to stop underestimating them and
start preparing to fight them. That means lowering our level of
involvement in the Middle East. We need to get out of the INF
treaty. We need to build more frigates and destroyers which have
both AA and ASW capability. In the initial phases of fighting, we
will probably be pushed back to Guam. We need to be able to both
defend Guam from missile attack and transport weapons across the
Pacific while we play to our strengths and blockade China from a
distance.

[An aircraft carrier can be simultaneously attacked] by hundreds
of guided missiles fired on several axis of attack including
ballistic warheads. A carrier's defenses can be overwhelmed by
volume.

In China, we are probably going to be fighting the most dangerous
and strongest adversary since Nazi Germany."<END QUOTE>

"MarchHare" responded that American aircraft carriers may be better
off than many people think:

<QUOTE>True enough, if you have "hundreds of guided missiles"
using hundreds of launchers to fire at every ship from every
compass-point at the same time, but that's unlikely, even for
China... US Navy Carriers are easily the best-protected, hardest
to hit target an enemy will ever face.... Just because China or
anyone lobs a missile at it, doesn't mean we won't have a say in
whether it hits or not. But I'm not saying the carrier is
invulnerable either...

Warships are complicated things... Some have survived insane
amounts of damage, while others were lost to relatively mi nor
hits by one or two lucky shots... No ship is unsinkable, I won't
dispute that... But saying a ship-class is obsolete because it can
be sunk is just as stupid a conclusion as saying a ship can't be
sunk... War is risk and loss... That's why we have more than just
one aircraft carrier in commission... This is (as I pointed out in
my original post) a very old story, and some nations have already
discovered that listening to know-nothings costs lives...

The British once had a huge carrier force and decided to go-small
with "through-deck-cruisers" ski-jumps and Harrier
jump-jets... The result was the Falklands which was a close call
for Britain... They probably would have lost if a Liberal
government was in power or if they had managed to scrap HMS Hermes
before Thatcher saved it and rushed it back into commission, but
what they had (Two light carriers) was still barely adequate to
the job... It was even worse for Argentina, BTW, because they only
had one carrier and no combat aircraft ready to deploy from
it... Even being relatively close to the Falklands gave them no
advantages, and this was 1980, not 1940... Since that time,
Britain is now building a new generation of carriers because they
realized that, if you don't have a carrier, you don't go to
war... period... Right now, there is no substitute for carrier
air-power, and a radar set does not change that... If carriers
weren't the answer, China wouldn't be building their own fleet of
carriers... Remember that..."<END QUOTE>

Popular Science

****
**** Who would win a war between the US and China?
****

If we want to understand what a war between the US and China would
look like, then we have to look at history.

Here's something that I've heard many people say: "If Hitler had won
World War II, then everyone in France would be speaking German today."
The assumption is that Germany would take control of France and force
everyone to speak German. But that doesn't make sense. Germany
didn't win the war, but Russia did win the war in eastern Europe, and
took control of much of eastern Europe. By the same logic, the people
of Poland should be speaking Russian, but they aren't.

Things like cultures, languages and national boundaries are remarkably
resilient. That's not to say that they never change, but they almost
never change.

Hitler had promised a 1,000 year empire. But he overlooked the
generational paradigm. If he had won the war and taken control of
France and other countries, then he would have had a mess on his hands
during the 1960s generational Awakening era, with massive student
riots across the continent. By the generational Unraveling era of the
1990s, his empire would have fallen apart, just as the Soviet empire
fell apart. My guess is that if Hitler had one the war, the world
today would look pretty much the same as it does now.

So when China launches war against the United States, it will launch
hundreds of missiles at American cities and bases. There will be
millions of refugees fleeing their homes, and many will die of
starvation. "Survivalists" who stock up on food, medicines and water
will do the best, at least for a while. Many others will be killed by
marauding gangs of thieves and murderers.

But the US will survive and fight back. Of course, American missiles
will inflict similar damage on Chinese cities. After several weeks,
all the intercontinental missiles will have been expended, and by that
time the ground war will have begun. But for China, it won't be a
ground war with the US. It will be a war with several of its
neighbors.

There are very few countries in the world with recent experience
fighting an external war. These include the United States, Britain,
France, Russia, and perhaps a couple of others. China has no
experience fighting an external war. Even worse, China will almost
certainly be fighting an internal civil war at the same time, just as
it did during World War II.

So, not only will the war not end overnight, as some people seem to
think; it will actually go on for several years, probably around five
years. I've estimated that the war will kill around 3-4 billion
people worldwide. That will include deaths from nuclear weapons,
missiles, disease, famine, and ground war.

After the war ends, there will be about 3-4 billion people still alive
to rebuild the world. At the end of every major "world war" in
history, there's always been a big international conference with
officials from all the nations of the world, who will adopt measures
to make sure that no such war ever occurs again. And it doesn't
happen again, until it does.


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, People's Liberation Army, PLA,
Paracel Islands, Woody Island, Shenyang J-11, Xian JH-7,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany,
Russia, Poland

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*** 26-Feb-16 World View -- Threats of retaliation abound as Europe's refugee crisis deepens

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Greece facing humanitarian crisis with thousands of refugees on Macedonia border
• Tsipras: 'Greece will not become a warehouse for souls'
• Greece recalls ambassador to Austria as refugee crisis worsens

****
**** Greece facing humanitarian crisis with thousands of refugees on Macedonia border
****


Refugee mother and child stand next to a large sign welcoming refugees ferried from Lesbos to the Greek port of Piraeus

Since Macedonia closed its border last week to Afghan migrants,
about 12,000 people have been
stranded in Greece. Migrants had been coming from Turkey, across the
Aegean Sea into Greece, and then across the border into Macedonia, on
the path north, usually with the intention of reaching Germany or
Sweden. But some countries have begun closing their borders to
migrants, creating a chain reaction of closed borders that have left
thousands stranded in Greece with no way to continue north.

Theoretically, migrants from Syria and Iraq, which are at war, should
be allowed to pass through the border to Macedonia, while migrants
from other countries are considered "economic migrants," and not
eligible for asylum in Europe. However, Macedonia is blocking even
them, because of border closures further north.

On Thursday, some 400 migrants from Syria and Iraq left a transit
camp provided by Greece, and are heading for the Macedonian
border to demand to be allowed through.

Some 4,000 migrants continue to arrive in Greece every day.
Authorities said 40 buses were stopped at various points along the
country’s main 500-kilometer (310-mile) highway leading north from
Athens. Traffic has also been slowed by tractor blockades by farmers
protesting bailout measures.

Greek officials are not hesitating that this is a growing catastrophe
that is getting worse every day, with no end in sight. It's expected
that the flood of refugees will grow larger as warm weather
approaches. AP and Bloomberg

****
**** Tsipras: 'Greece will not become a warehouse for souls'
****

Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras is threatening retaliation if
other EU countries do not do their share in accepting refugees:

<QUOTE>"We will not accept turning the country into a
permanent warehouse of souls with Europe continuing to function as
if nothing is happening.

Greece will not agree to deals (in the EU) if a mandatory
allocation of burdens and responsibilities among member countries
is not secured."<END QUOTE>

Tsipras did not specify what "deals" would be in jeopardy. According
to Tsipras:

<QUOTE>"We will not tolerate that a number of countries will
be building fences and walls at the borders without accepting even
a single refugee. Greece will demand the mandatory participation
of EU countries in the relocation of refugees. ...

"We did and will continue to do everything we can to provide
warmth, essential help and security to uprooted, hounded people.
We will either be in a union of common rules for all or everyone
will do they please: we will not accept the latter."<END QUOTE>

Greece's migration minister Yannis Mouzalas echoed Tsipras's words:
"Greece will not accept becoming Europe’s Lebanon, a warehouse of
souls, even if this were to be done with major (EU) funding."

The European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, a
Greek politician who formerly served as a Greek foreign minister,
emphasized that something must be done quickly:

<QUOTE>"In the next 10 days, we need tangible and clear
results on the ground. Otherwise there is a risk that the whole
system will completely break down.

We all have the responsibility to step up our efforts to apply the
agreed European solutions. There is no time for uncoordinated
actions. ...

Moving to the pressing situation in our neighborhood: the route
along the Western Balkans. The situation is very critical. The
possibility of a humanitarian crisis is very real and very near. 

We cannot continue to deal through unilateral, bilateral or
trilateral actions; the first negative effects and impacts are
already visible.

We have a shared responsibility – all of us – towards our
neighboring states, both EU and non-EU, but also towards those
desperate people.

We cannot continue with the wave-through policy – the European
Council was crystal clear on this.

And we cannot put caps on how many asylum seekers we receive. This
is simply not according to EU and international rules. I have
reminded Member States today, that everyone must respect and apply
the rules."<END QUOTE>

The reason that Avramopoulos specified a "10 day" time limit, is
because on Monday, March 7, there is an EU-Turkey summit meeting at
which demands will be made on Turkey to reduce the flow of migrants.

On the other hand, Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán warned that
an uncontrolled migrant influx brought the risk of "terrorism,
criminality, anti-Semitism and homophobia." He referred to the
alleged New Year's Eve sexual attacks by migrants in Cologne and said,
"I have four daughters and I don't want my children to grow up in a
world where Cologne could happen." Reuters and European Commission and Kathimerini and Deutsche Welle

****
**** Greece recalls ambassador to Austria as refugee crisis worsens
****

Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz on Wednesday led a one-day
conference in Vienna to make agreements about controlling the influx
of refugees along the "Balkan route." Austria and nine other nations
-- Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia,
Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia -- were invited to the conference.
The meeting targeted policies related to Greece and Germany, but both
of those countries were conspicuously not invited.

According to Kurz:

<QUOTE>"We invited all of the countries along the Balkan
route that will be affected by our decision. ...

We want to slow the influx. So far, refugees have been brought to
Central Europe. Now we simply cannot keep up with the numbers. We
have set a limit of 37,500 for this year; that is still a lot
compared to other European states."<END QUOTE>

On Wednesday, Greece issued a formal protest to Austria, and
on Thursday, Greece recalled its ambassador to Austria for
consultations.

Greece's foreign ministry said that a meeting of Balkan nations was
"rooted in the 19th century," referring to the politics of the 1800s,
and said that the recall was designed to "safeguard friendly relations
between the states and peoples of Greece and Austria."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that she is adamantly opposed
to further border fences in eastern Europe:

<QUOTE>"Do we really want to give up already and close the
Greek-Macedonian-Bulgarian border, with all the consequences this
would have for Greece and the European Union as a whole and
therefore the Schengen area?"<END QUOTE>

There have been some unconfirmed reports that German Chancellor Angela
Merkel threatened retaliation against east European nations in the
form of vetoing further aid. Deutsche Welle and AFP and The Local - Germany


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Greece, Port of Piraeus, Macedonia,
Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Aegean Sea, Alexis Tsipras,
Yannis Mouzala, Dimitris Avramopoulos, Hungary, Viktor Orbán,
Austria, Sebastian Kurz, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia,
Germany, Angela Merkel

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Pathetic boombers actually believe that Hillary and Angela Merkel will be our grey champions. Note the will of the people in the US and Europe and compare them with what Clinton and Merkel want: they don't match. Trump and Le Pen are the ones who are advocating what the majority of the populace actually believes in.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

So when China launches war against the United States, it will launch
hundreds of missiles at American cities and bases. There will be
millions of refugees fleeing their homes, and many will die of
starvation. "Survivalists" who stock up on food, medicines and water
will do the best, at least for a while. Many others will be killed by
marauding gangs of thieves and murderers.

But the US will survive and fight back. Of course, American missiles
will inflict similar damage on Chinese cities. After several weeks,
all the intercontinental missiles will have been expended, and by that
time the ground war will have begun. But for China, it won't be a
ground war with the US. It will be a war with several of its
neighbors.

There are very few countries in the world with recent experience
fighting an external war. These include the United States, Britain,
France, Russia, and perhaps a couple of others. China has no
experience fighting an external war. Even worse, China will almost
certainly be fighting an internal civil war at the same time, just as
it did during World War II.

So, not only will the war not end overnight, as some people seem to
think; it will actually go on for several years, probably around five
years. I've estimated that the war will kill around 3-4 billion
people worldwide. That will include deaths from nuclear weapons,
missiles, disease, famine, and ground war.

After the war ends, there will be about 3-4 billion people still alive
to rebuild the world. At the end of every major "world war" in
history, there's always been a big international conference with
officials from all the nations of the world, who will adopt measures
to make sure that no such war ever occurs again. And it doesn't
happen again, until it does.


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, People's Liberation Army, PLA,
Paracel Islands, Woody Island, Shenyang J-11, Xian JH-7,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany,
Russia, Poland

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Imagine the logistical nightmare of dealing with such levels of death. I was not exaggerating when I wrote earlier that the funeral pyres will be visible from space and perhaps visible from The Moon. Such a level of death will transform us forever. I will not attempt to predict what sort of society or set of societies will emerge from it all. Suffice it to say, whatever emerges is likely to be completely alien to previous human experience both in terms of format and moral compass. Many liberals say the living would envy the dead. I will concede that Enlightenment types will likely envy the dead and those who survive may contemplate suicide. Enjoy our brief moment of freedom and enlightenment. Nothing ever lasts forever.

*** 27-Feb-16 World View -- China and Cambodia hold military exercises amid South China Sea tensions

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• More on China's New Silk Road through the 'Caspian Trade Corridor'
• China and Cambodia hold military exercises amid South China Sea tensions

****
**** More on China's New Silk Road through the 'Caspian Trade Corridor'
****


The Caspian Trade Corridor is part of the New Silk Road connecting Asia with Europe

Georgia's Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili has concluded
negotiations to award a construction firm the contract to build a deep
water port in the town of Anaklia, a beach resort on the Black Sea.

The Anaklia deep water port is thought to be an important piece of
China's "New Silk Road" for transit of commercial goods between Europe
and China. Several weeks ago we described in detail the "Caspian
Trade Corridor," illustrated in the map shown above. ( "21-Jan-16 World View -- Azerbaijan forced to choose between Russia and Turkey"
)

The route from China to Europe was tested in December. A train from
eastern China traveled first through Kazakhstan. Then the cargo
traversed the "Caspian Corridor" when the containers were put on ships
and taken across the Caspian Sea to Baku, Azerbaijan. In Baku, the
cargo was put back on a train, which traveled on to Europe via
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Despite what looks like a complicated
route, this ground transportation alternative is much shorter than the
sea route that it replaces.

However, the awarding of the contract for the Anaklia port contained a
big surprise. Early last year, seven companies submitted proposals to
design and build the port, and in June Georgia's government selected
two candidates as "preferred applicants." It was expected that Power
China, backed by the Chinese government, would win the contract.

The surprise was that the contract was awarded to the other applicant,
the Anaklia Development Consortium, backed by funding from Georgian
bank TBC. A key figure in the winning consortium appears to be Timur
Korchava, a Russian billionaire of Georgian descent. Furthermore, it
appears that Korchava was backed by Russian government support.

It's thought that the Russian government has two major objectives in
supporting this project. First, Russia would like to force China, as
much as possible, to continue transporting goods through Kazakhstan
and then through Russia. And second, Russia will use the port to
deliver goods to Armenia, where a Russian military base is stationed.

Whatever Russia's motives, it appears that the Russians have snatched
victory from the Chinese. Jamestown and Georgia Online (13-Dec-2015-Trans) and Ros Business Consulting (Russia, 13-Dec-2015)

****
**** China and Cambodia hold military exercises amid South China Sea tensions
****

China and Cambodia conducted joint naval exercises for the first time
on Friday. Three Chinese navy warships with 737 Chinese sailors took
part, along with about 70 Cambodian sailors. Last week, both Chinese
and Cambodian officials said that there would be military exchanges,
friendly football matches, as well as a joint drill. According to
Cambodia’s deputy navy chief Vice Admiral Vann Bunneang, "This will be
a big cooperation and joint exercise training in rescue operations.
This is to boost readiness for when boats sink and natural disasters
occur." Very jolly.

China is the largest donor of military aid to Cambodia, including
jeeps, shoulder-fired rockets and helicopters, and help in running a
Cambodian defense academy.

Although Cambodian officials bristle at suggestions that they're doing
China's bidding, Cambodia has been the region's most reliable ally in
disputes involving Taiwan and the South China Sea. Unlike many other
southeast Asian countries, where students usually wish to learn
English as a foreign language, Cambodian students are learning
Mandarin Chinese. At a 2012 meeting of the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Cambodia vetoed attempts to even discuss the South China Sea issues.

Admiral Tea Vinh, commander of the Royal Cambodian Navy, revealed that
Cambodia was in negotiations to buy two 140-metre heavy warships armed
with modern weapon systems from China. "The Royal Cambodian Navy
needs two warships but communication is in process between the two
defence ministries. We will not use them for war – we will only use
them to protect our territorial sovereignty. Cambodia should not be
looked down on by its neighbors." This is the sort of thing that
China always says, although it's not clear to me how Cambodia will
"protect [their] territorial sovereignty" without ever going to war.

The ranking Chinese navy officer, Rear Admiral Yu Manjiang, said said
that China's visit to Cambodia showed their warm ties and was "like
visiting a sibling's home." That reminds me of a 2011 remark by
Pakistan's ambassador to China Masood Khan who said that Pakistan's
relationship with China was "higher than mountains, deeper than
oceans, stronger than steel, sweeter than honey, and dearer than
eyesight."

Here in these Generational Dynamics World View articles, we try on a
regular basis to discern who will be who's ally in the approaching
Clash of Civilizations world war. These days, it seems pretty clear
that Japan, Philippines, Vietnam and India will be allied with the
United States and Russia, while Pakistan and Cambodia will be allied
with China. Phnom Penh Post and Radio Free Asia and The Diplomat and Reuters


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Georgia, Anaklia, Giorgi Kvirikashvili,
China, New Silk Road, Caspian Trade Corridor, Caspian Sea,
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Power China,
Anaklia Development Consortium, Timur Korchava,
Cambodia, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN,
Tea Vinh, Royal Cambodian Navy, Yu Manjiang,
Pakistan, Masood Khan

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*** 28-Feb-16 World View -- Breitbart says that Fox News is taking 50% hit because of Trump

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• US debating military response to China's buildup in South China Sea
• Breitbart says that Fox News is taking 50% hit because of Trump
• Al-Jazeera America to go off the air on April 14

****
**** US debating military response to China's buildup in South China Sea
****


Satellite image showing construction of possible radar tower facilities in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea (Reuters)

US Navy and Marine Corps leaders have warned that China's rapid
military buildup in the Pacific Ocean could force the United States to
move ships and forces in response.

China's advances might require the United States to reassess its
attack submarine fleet. The Navy has said for years that 48 attack
submarines is what it needs to carry out its mission, but that may no
longer be enough According to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John
Richardson "That number is really based on analysis from 2006," but
with China's recent developments, "that's becoming a more urgent
situation." The Navy already wants to have 60 percent of its planned
fleet of 308 US warships committed to the Pacific by 2020.

Many concerns have been raised about the vulnerabilities of American
aircraft carriers. ( "23-Feb-16 World View -- China's military buildup neutralizes America's aircraft carriers"
)

Adm. Harry Harris addressed these concerns in testimony to Congress:

<QUOTE>"The DF-21 [anti-ship ballistic missile], which they
have developed, and the DF-26 [intermediate range ballistic
missile], which they're developing, could pose a threat to our
carriers. I think, though, that our carriers are resilient and we
have the capability to do what has to be done if it comes to
that. ...

"Short of war, I'm aware of the threat. I'll pay attention to the
threat, But that is not going to prevent us from flying, sailing
or operating wherever international law allows."<END QUOTE>

Stars and Stripes

****
**** Breitbart says that Fox News is taking 50% hit because of Trump
****

In an article entitled "Trump-Effect: Fox News Channel’s Brand Takes
50% Hit Among Republicans, Breitbart journalism reporter John Nolte
says that the Fox News Channel (FNC) "pro-Rubio/GOP Establishment
bias" is as manipulative and dishonest as the mainstream media's
left-wing bias, and that Republican are losing respect for FNC.
According to Nolte:

<QUOTE>"My job is to monitor the mainstream media, which is
something that eats up about 14 hours of a day that begins at 6
a.m. when the cable morning shows begin. Lying next to me, my good
sport of a wife suffers through about an hour of 'Morning Joe,'
whatever they call that left-wing garbage fire on CNN, and the
rest. Out of habit, before I head to my desk, without really
asking I always ask, 'You want me to put it on Fox?' ...

'No,' she replied. 'I’m done with Fox News.' ...

When I asked my wife why she is 'done' with Fox News, her answer
was simply, 'They’re just like all the rest.'"<END QUOTE>

In fact, CNN's president Jeff Zucker claims that it's rapidly closing
the gap with FNC, and hopes to surpass it.

But there are very good reasons why it will be impossible for FNC to
lose its leadership position anytime in the foreseeable future. An
analysis by Ad Week shows that Jeff Zucker is, if not lying, at least
shading the truth by "blending ratings" in a way that doesn't make
sense.

According to another media analysis at TheWrap:

<QUOTE>"Last weekend marked 20 years since Fox News Channel's
launch was announced, and CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes is probably
quite pleased with the network’s anniversary numbers.

Fox News has now been the No. 1 cable news network for 14
consecutive years after winning the month of January with a
dominating performance that included last week’s GOP debate. Fox
News’ streak began in Jan. 2002 when it surpassed CNN for the
first time.

Ailes’ network beat CNN and MSNBC combined in total day viewers
and had the top 14 individual programs in cable news among the key
25-54 age demo. 'The O’Reilly Factor' had its best month since
November 2012 and finished as the No. 1 program in cable news,
despite double-digit growth from 'The Kelly File.'"<END QUOTE>

The reasons why FNC cannot be beaten are based on demographics.
Consider the following:

• Half the country is left of center and half the country is
  right of center. If you don't believe this, then consider that this
  is the definition of the word "center."
  
• All the mainstream media -- CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, BBC,
  Al-Jazeera -- all of them are left of center. That means they're all
  competing with each other for 50% of the national audience.
  
• Only FNC is right of center. That means that FNC essentially has
  no competition whatsoever for 50% of the national audience.

I've been following this issue off and on for over ten years, and
except for an occasional blip it's always been the case that the
number of FNC viewers was about equal to the sum of the numbers of
viewers of all the other cable news stations combined. That makes
perfect sense. FNC gets 50% of the audience, while all the other
stations compete for the other 50%.

I watch all of these stations, on the left and on the right, and
there's no question that FNC is much less biased than the others.
Why? Because they don't need to be biased.

If CNN started becoming more balanced, say, broadcasting more news
critical of the Obama administration, then CNN would lose part of its
audience to MSNBC, and vice-versa. But FNC can broadcast a balance of
left-wing and right-wing opinions because their viewers have no place
else to go. Even if a Republican president takes office in January,
FNC can still broadcast some news critical of the president, knowing
that all the other stations will be vitriolicly attacking him.

The Trump situation has presented a novel problem for FNC, because
it's caused a split among its viewers. The mainstream media stations
have no such problem, because they're uniformly against Trump, and
they have an opportunity to grab viewers away among people like
Nolte's wife, who see FNC as becoming as biased as all the others.

But that bias is only temporary. The Trump situation is going to be
resolved in a few weeks, one way or another, and then I expect all the
right-wing viewers to go back to FNC, and the left-wing viewers to be
divided once again among the hash of left-wing mainstream media news
stations. Breitbart BigJournalism and Advertising Week and The Wrap

****
**** Al-Jazeera America to go off the air on April 14
****

Qatar-based al-Jazeera America permanently shut down its web site on
Friday, and will go off the air on April 14.

Al-Jazeera began as an Arabic news channel in 1996 targeting 370
million Arabic speaking viewers. In 2006, the company launched
Al-Jazeera English, an English language broadcast, targeting the rest
of the world, and available as an internet stream. I started watching
it almost as soon as it was available because it had the best coverage
of Mideast news, and I needed this kind of "inside baseball"
understanding of Mideast issues in order to do Generational Dynamics
analyses.

Is Al-Jazeera biased? Of course it is. But it's no more biased than
the New York Times or NBC News. The BBC was vitriolicly
anti-American during the George Bush presidency, but now they're
totally in the tank for President Obama.

As I've written in the past, the interesting thing about al-Jazeera's
biases is their attitudes towards the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
Hamas is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, so al-Jazeera loves Hamas,
and hates the Palestinian Authority. In fact, my perception is that
al-Jazeera hates the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas even more
than it hates Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu.

In August 2013, Al-Jazeera America (AJAM) debuted as a cable
television network. They got immediate cable network buy-ins by
paying $500 million to Al Gore for his defunct Current TV cable channel. That
was a total waste of money that probably doomed AJAM from the start.

I had been looking forward to AJAM, but I was very disappointed when
it came on the air. It was practically indistinguishable from CNN and
MSNBC and the other left-wing channels. It even had the same formats
-- a morning breakfast show, bland news shows during the day, and an
evening newscast. Furthermore, it was frustrating, because they
blocked the Al-Jazeera English internet stream to the United States so
that it couldn't compete. I thought it was crazy. Why would anyone
watch AJAM, when they could get exactly the same news on the
mainstream news channels?

The only time that AJAM was worth watching was for two hours per day,
when they broadcast the al-Jazeera English newshour. I made sure to
record those shows, because they contained valuable information that I
needed. However, even that was frustrating whenever some event
occurred in Washington, and AJAM switched to it, just as CNN, MSNBC,
FNC, and all the others switched to it. As I said, I thought that was
crazy.

As time went on, AJAM got better and better because they had low
ratings and had to cut many of the bland news shows, broadcasting
al-Jazeera English programming instead.

AJAM does claim that it had the best quality American journalism and
documentaries, and in many ways they are right. But no matter how
good they were as journalism, their news programs still all had the
same left-wing slant as all the other mainstream channels.

The company hasn't announced what will happen to their cable channel
after April 14. I'm hoping that they'll simply broadcast Al-Jazeera
English for 24 hours a day. This is a unique offering that only they
can provide, just as BBC World News channel has a unique offering that
only they can provide. Al-Jazeera and Variety and Al-Jazeera


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, John Richardson, Harry Harris,
Breitbart, John Nolte, Donald Trump, Fox News, CNN, Jeff Zucker,
Al-Jazeera, Qatar, Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, Israel,
BBC World News

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*** 29-Feb-16 World View -- Surprise victory of reformists in Iran signals bloody power struggle

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Surprise victory of reformists in Iran signals bloody power struggle
• 70,000 refugees may be trapped in Greece within weeks

****
**** Surprise victory of reformists in Iran signals bloody power struggle
****


A protester held up a bloody hands in the protests in Tehran following the 2009 elections (Getty)

"Tehran is now free" is just one of the gleeful remarks being posted
by young people on social media in Iran, after the surprise victory of
moderates and reformists in Friday's election for the parliament
(majlis) and for the Assembly of Experts. This is the next step in a
brutal generational power struggle that I recently described in "6-Feb-16 World View -- As Iran's election approaches, generational conflict becomes vicious"
.

Across the country as a whole, the conservative "principlists" (who
insist on adhering to the "principles" of the 1979 Great Islamic
Revolution), are doing well as votes are counted, but in Tehran, the
reformists have won overwhelmingly.

The reformists, representing the views of the younger generations that
grew up after the 1979 revolution, have won all 30 seats representing
Tehran in parliament. Nationwide, the vote counting is not yet
completed, but indications are that the reformists have won a little
less than one-third of all the seats in the 290-seat parliament, far
exceeding the 20 seats they have in the outgoing parliament.

The moderates, who hold the same conservative views as the
principlists but who favor gradual reforms, appear to be winning more
than one-third of the seats nationwide. The moderates and the
principlists are in the generations of hardline survivors of the 1979
revolutions, with the principlists being the most hardline of all.

Many people are attributing these victories to the extremely high
turnout for the elections, with something like 80% of eligible voters
voting. The high turnout, in turn, is being credited to the
widespread use of the hugely popular anonymous messaging app Telegram,
which the principlists had tried unsuccessfully to get banned.

In the Assembly of Experts, the reformists have won at least two seats
away from the most hardline of the principlists. The votes for the
rest are still being counted.

It now seems likely that the reformists and the moderates together
will hold a small majority in the parliament. If that's true, and if
they work together, they can push through some reforms that are
bitterly opposed by the principlists, including Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

Iran is in the midst of a generational Awakening era, like America in
the 1960s. In America there was sporadic violence, such as the "long,
hot summers" of street violence in the big cities, violence by the
"Chicago seven" at the Democratic convention in 1968, bombings by the
Weather Underground, and the shootings at Kent State University.

Iran has gone through tumultuous changes since the 1979 revolution,
and moderate president Hassan Rouhani is continuing them,
according to an unknown female analyst speaking on the BBC:

<QUOTE>"Rouhani has done a lot in terms of social reform.
Let me go even a little bit further back when I was growing up in
the 80s, every morning our bags were searched so that we wouldn't
take any kind of pop music tapes to school. That changed in the
90s, when Khatami was elected and the Ministry of Culture started
allowing certain musicians to release albums. Ten years ago, when
I was in Iran, there were no street bands, but now there are all
these street bands all over Tehran and other cities, and I think
they are now banning certain contents, instead of the music
itself, and this has happened under President Rouhani, the fact
that there are musicians openly on the streets. I think it's a
sign of huge social progress."<END QUOTE>

In Iran, the violence following the June 2009 presidential election
was bloody and massive. Largely peaceful street protests were met
with unrestrained violence by the police and security forces. Dozens
were killed, and 4,000 people were jailed. The police particularly
targeted journalists and other government critics with widespread
torture, beatings, and threats against family members. Many people
were jailed for years.

Now, six years later, the generation of young people who were
protesting in the Tehran's streets have now gotten older and more
powerful enough to take control of all 30 of Tehran's seats in the
parliament.

This is not going to go well. There's too much money and power at
stake. The young people who are posting messages like "Tehran is now
free" on Telegram quickly going to learn that Tehran is not free, and
they're going to threaten the power of the old geezer principlists.

The police and the security forces are still under the complete
control of the most conservative principlist of all, Ayatollah
Khamenei. Just as he didn't tolerate street protests in 2009, he's
not going to tolerate any challenges to his power in the weeks and
months to come. Tehran Times
and RFE/RL and AP and Human Rights Watch (2009) and BBC Newshour Extra - Is Iran Changing?

****
**** 70,000 refugees may be trapped in Greece within weeks
****

There are already more than 20,000 refugees trapped in Greece, with
the border to Macedonia closed. ( "26-Feb-16 World View -- Threats of retaliation abound as Europe's refugee crisis deepens"
)

Thousands of refugees continue to arrive in Greece from Turkey every
day, According to Greece's immigration minister Yannis Mouzalas, "We
estimate that we will have a number of people trapped in our country
which will be between 50,000 and 70,000" by the end of March. In the
warmer spring and summer weather, that number could grow
substantially.

The most immediate crisis was triggered last week when Austria
introduced a daily cap of 80 asylum seekers and said it would allow
just 3,200 migrants to transit the country per day. This caused a
chain reaction of other countries closing their borders. Greece has
recalled its ambassador to Austria in protest.

Austria's Chancellor Werner Faymann has accused Greece of "behaving
like a travel agency," simply allowing the migrants to pass through,
without protecting its borders or processing the asylum seekers.
According to Faymann, "Last year, Greece took in 11,000 asylum
seekers, and we took in 90,000. That can't be allowed to happen
again." AFP and AP and Guardian (London)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Iran, majlis, Assembly of Experts, Tehran,
Seyed Ali Khamenei, principlists, moderates, reformists, Telegram,
Greece, Macedonia, Yannis Mouzalas, Werner Faymann

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Japan and Russia are shrinking. The USA , partly due to immigration is doing OK.

Japan's population declines for first time since 1920s


http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...fficial-census


… "The decline of 0.7% to 127.1 million has been predicted by the government annually but the new statistics confirm the trend.
It is an indication that as the nation gets older, and people have fewer babies at a later age, a demographic crisis is looming.
According to the United Nations, Japan’s population is likely to shrink to 83 million by 2100, with 35% of them older than 65.”…

Here's one for all the Kremlin bootlickers:

http://www.businessinsider.com/watch...d-tanks-2016-2

I remember when this first came out back in the 80s. Still good after all these years.

The new ‘Greatest Generation’ ?

An Explanation of the Millennial Hatred


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew...b_9319646.html


… "Conveniently left out of this discussion are all of the sacrifices that were made and provided to the Baby Boomers and Generation X. One need only look at the economic climate that was present during their rise in the workplace. It's fair to say that from 1945-1980, the United States experienced unprecedented growth as a nation. In Michael French's book U.S. Economic History Since 1945, he noted that U.S. industrial production was 45% of world output in 1948 and its national incomes and productivity, especially in manufacturing, far out-stripped other economies. Furthermore, he noted that between the years of 1945 and 1969, levels of productivity in the United States were the international exemplar. This means that of any generation, Baby Boomers and Generation X had the most “coddling” in terms of financial stability.”…

*** 1-Mar-16 World View -- Pakistan unexpectedly executes murderer of liberal politician Salman Taseer

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Pakistan unexpectedly executes murderer of liberal politician Salman Taseer
• Generational changes of behavior
• Salman Taseer's son describes what's happened to Pakistan
• Greece turns into a huge refugee camp

****
**** Pakistan unexpectedly executes murderer of liberal politician Salman Taseer
****


Salman Taseer's murderer, Mumtaz Qadri, arrives in court in 2011, where he's showered with rose petals (AP)

Mumtaz Qadri was executed by hanging in Pakistan on Monday, after
having been convicted of murdering Salman Taseer, the liberal governor
of Punjab province in Pakistan, on January 4, 2011. The execution has
provoked widespread protests.

Qadri was Taseer's bodyguard. To make sure he was dead, Qadri shot
him in the chest 28 times. Qadri later said that he had shot Taseer
because Taseer had opposed blasphemy laws in general, and for speaking
out in favor of Asia Bibia, a Christian lady accused of blasphemy
because she was Christian, and sentenced to death.

After the murder, Qadri instantly became a national hero to many
segments of Pakistan's society. The day after the governor's death,
Qadri went to court and dozens of lawyers greeted him with a hero's
welcome. They even showered him with rose petals and put a garland
around his neck.

As I wrote in 2011,
500 Pakistani
religious scholars issued a statement praising Qadri for keeping alive
a "tradition of 1,400 years in Islam" which requires the killing of
anyone committing an act of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed.

Because of Qadri's popularity after the murder, it had been feared
that Qadri would never be punished for his crime, so Monday's
execution was something of a surprise. There were protests and riots
in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, although most rallies were dispersed
peacefully.

Blasphemy laws are not unique to Pakistan. As I described in 2012
after Charlie Hebdo
magazine published cartoons of Mohammed (one of the reasons given for
the attack in 2015), blasphemy laws in Britain and Ireland were in
effect into the 1900s, although they were rarely enforced.

They were rarely enforced in Pakistan as well, until the 1980s, when
something changed in public attitudes. Thousands of blasphemy cases
have been heard since then. BBC and The Nation (Pakistan)

****
**** Generational changes of behavior
****

This kind of rapid massive popular change in attitude is of interest
because it's usually generational, and often extremely destructive.
In this case, popular opinion accepts the fact that someone can be put
to death for merely accidentally saying the wrong thing, and popular
opinion can treat even a murderer as a hero.

A comparable thing happened in America when the rising Generation-X
generated the financial crisis by creating and selling billions of
dollars in fraudulent subprime mortgage backed synthetic securities.
Despite the fact that millions of people lost their homes and jobs,
not a single person has been criminally prosecuted for these crimes.

More recent examples are the sudden popularity of Bernie Sanders and
Donald Trump in their respective parties, although neither of these
men has shown the slightest sign of knowing what's going on in the
world. Trump became popular with many young people when he referred
to Mexicans as rapists and murderers, and Sanders became popular with
young people when he started talking about giving everything away for
free.

All of these examples -- treating the murder of Salman Taseer
as a hero, defrauding the public and creating the financial
crisis, the sudden popularity of Trump and Sanders -- are
the kinds of things that happen during a generational Crisis era,
when young people start looking for solutions the same way
that they look for rock stars.

The survivors of a generational crisis war, like World War II, are
well aware of what the world is like. There's massive rape and
slaughter, there are millions of refugees, there's massive starvation
and growth of disease.

These survivors, the GI generation and the Silent generation, vow to
never let anything like that happen again, and as long as they're
alive they protect the world from letting it happen again.

But today those generations are almost gone, and the protections
are gone as well. Young people are seeing the first signs
of the horrors of a crisis war -- atrocities by
the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh),
mass kidnappings of girls by Boko Haram, selling the girls
into slavery, millions of refugees pouring into Europe,
and a continuing financial crisis. Young people, who have
no idea why this is happening, are reacting by making mass
irrational decisions.

We've already seen one disaster from these kinds of decisions --
the financial crisis. As these mass irrational decisions
continue, there will be even worse disasters, including a new
world war.

****
**** Salman Taseer's son describes what's happened to Pakistan
****

Mass irrational decisions, like applauding the mass use of blasphemy
laws, has also caused disasters in Pakistan -- namely an unending
series of bloody terrorist attacks, particularly against Shia Muslims.
However, those weren't the only targets. In December 2014, Pakistan
suffered a horrific Taliban attack on a Peshawar army school,
killing over 130 schoolchildren. This
attack on an army school changed a lot of minds, and probably was the
event that made it possible for Mumtaz Qadri finally to be executed on
Monday.

Aatish Taseer, the son of Salman Taseer, was interviewed on the BBC
World Service on Monday. He said that Qadri's execution brought him
relief but no joy. He described the tumultuous relationship he had
with his father, and how it related to the country Pakistan as a whole
(my transcription):

<QUOTE>"The original reason for the estrangement was very
simple - my father was in politics in Pakistan, I was half Indian
and it would have been damaging for him to be in touch with me.
Later we had a very moving, very important kind of -- we sort of
Reunited. and for many years, things were very good between
us. And I would come and go from Pakistan. And around the time of
the London bombings, we started to have very different opinions
about the way that Pakistan was going."<END QUOTE>

Taseer is referring to the 2005 London subway bombings,
perpetrated by children of immigrants who
had received training over the internet by al-Qaeda clerics in
Pakistan.

<QUOTE>"I began to travel for my first book, I really saw on
the ground that the situation vis a vis Islam was going to get
much worse in Pakistan. My father was a very fierce patriot, and
didn't want to believe what I was saying to him. So this is what
we fought over. We fought over his defense of Pakistan, and my
feeling that an environment was building in that country that
would be very very toxic. And I think that the Pakistan that I
described in my book was ultimately the Pakistan that killed my
father. ...

I think that he came of age at the time of Bhutto, and of a kind
of socialist movement, and he imagined he was protected -- it was
almost a kind of upper class feeling that he knew this country and
nothing could touch him. And that if he could only speak to it in
his own way, then he would be all right. And I don't think that
he recognized how much this country had changed."<END QUOTE>

Taseer added that the fallout from the execution of Qadri is yet to
come. "Well, don't confuse what the government does with the actual
mood on the ground. I don't know if we've even seen the worst of the
fallout. ... [Is Pakistan a safe place?] As the Pakistan's High
Commissioner said to me, it's safe until it isn't." BBC World Service Newshour

****
**** Greece turns into a huge refugee camp
****

Several thousand migrants continue to pour into Greece every day, and
they immediately travel to the border with Macedonia, hoping to take
the trip north to Germany. Macedonia is allowing only 300 or so
migrants to pass through each day, so the overcrowded refugee camps in
Greece are becoming even more overcrowded. Protests are increasing,
and on Monday Macedonia's police used teargas on migrants trying to
push through the gate blocking the border. This is a disaster waiting
to happen. AP


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Pakistan, Salman Taseer, Mumtaz Qadri,
Asia Bibia, Aatish Taseer, Greece, Macedonia

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