• China makes more delusional claims about the South China Sea
  
• China continues to operate within the Philippines exclusive economic zone (EEZ)
  
• China's military deploys bombers and closes part of the South China Sea
  

• Thousands in South Sudan flee to Uganda to escape violence
  
• The African Union proposes an all-African peacekeeping force for South Sudan
  
• Uganda's president opposes arms embargo on South Sudan
  

• Tensions rising between Pakistan and India over Kashmir issue
  
• Mastermind of 2008 Mumbai attack leads Pakistan protests against India
  

• Turkey's Erdogan gives himself dictatorial powers
  
• Turkey moves away from the West
  

• 7,500 soldiers have been detained, including 118 generals and
  admirals
  
• 8,000 police have been removed from their posts and 1,000
  arrested
  
• 3,000 members of the judiciary, including 1,481 judges, have been
  suspended
  
• 15,200 education ministry officials have lost their jobs
  
• 21,000 private school teachers have had their licenses
  revoked
  
• 1,577 university deans (faculty heads) have been asked to
  resign
  
• 1,500 finance ministry staff have been removed
  
• 492 clerics, preachers and religious teachers have been fired
  
• 393 social policy ministry staff have been dismissed
  
• 257 prime minister's office staff have been removed
  
• 100 intelligence officials have been suspended

• Christian pastor leads '#ThisFlag' demonstrations against Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe
  
• Zimbabwe war veterans suddenly turn on Robert Mugabe
  

• ISIS claims responsibility for attack on Shia Hazaras in Kabul Afghanistan
  
• Kabul attack targeted Afghanistan's repressed Hazara minority
  

• Migrants trapped in Serbia march toward border with Hungary
  
• The refugee problem continues, despite EU-Turkey deal
  

• ISIS takes credit for terror attack in Ansbach, southern Germany
  
• Germans in a state of shock after four violent attacks in one week
  
• Knife-wielding massacre near Tokyo Japan kills 19
  
• Germany's Der Spiegel asks: Is this the Apocalypse Now?
  

• Arab League in chaos as it fails to address Arab existential threats
  
• ASEAN in chaos as it fails to address South China Sea threats
  
• France's François Hollande declares war on ISIS after terror attack kills priest
  
• Turkey fears that Gulen will flee the United States
  

• China and Russia vociferously hostile to South Korea's THAAD deployment
  
• South Korea's fears of an attack from North Korea
  
• Problems, issues and capabilities surrounding the Thaad system
  

• The North is at a final stage of completing nuclear arms, and
  has made progress in miniaturizing them to place on missiles.
  
• It has 1,000 short, medium and long-range missiles.
  
• North increased multiple rocket launchers from 4,800 to
  5,500.
  
• It has 70 submarines and is developing new ones.
  
• The North increased its special operations forces from 80,000 to
  200,000.
  
• It developed hovercraft and new high-speed, wave piercing craft
  called Very Slender Vessels (VSVs).

• Syria's Al-Nusra splits with al-Qaeda, becoming Jabhat Fateh al-Sham
  
• Al-Nusra may have learned lessons from failures of ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq
  

John J. Xenakis[/quote Wrote:****
**** Syria's Al-Nusra splits with al-Qaeda, becoming Jabhat Fateh al-Sham
****


Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the smiling terrorist leader of Jabhat al-Nusra


The group's leader, Abu Mohamad al-Jolani, announced that the group
was changing its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Conquest
of Syria):

   [indent]<QUOTE>"We have stopped operating under the name of Nusra
   Front and formed a new body ... This new formation has no ties
   with any foreign party.

   [The change is intended] to remove the excuse used by the
   international community – spearheaded by America and Russia – to
   bombard and displace Muslims in the Levant: that they are
   targeting the Nusra Front, which is associated with
   al-Qaida.

   This new organization aims ...  to serve the Muslims, attend to
   their daily needs and ease the hardships in every possible way,
   [and to] unite the people of [Syria and] ensure security,
   stability, and a dignified life for the people."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

However, al-Jolani said he remained committed to implementing Islamic
law, and gave no indication that it was no longer a terrorist group.
Indeed, the U.S. immediately said that it would still consider the
group, under its new name, to be a terrorist group, with the
implication that targets associated with the group would still be
bombed.

The split with al-Qaeda was apparently friendly, suggesting that the
split may be part of a larger plan.  In an audio message, al-Qaeda
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said:

 
****
**** Al-Nusra may have learned lessons from failures of ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq
****

Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, was defeated in the aftermath of the Iraq war, first by an
American drone strike that killed al-Zarqawi, and later by president
George Bush's "surge" strategy that turned Iraqi Sunnis against AQI.
(See "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq" from 2007.)

Quote:The genocidal campaign of extermination against Syrian Sunnis by
Syria's president Bashar al-Assad drew tens of thousands of young
jihadists from all over the world for the fight against al-Assad,
leading to the creation of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or
ISIL or Daesh) in Syria, and then its spectacular success in taking
control of large regions of both Syria and Iraq.  But now, president
Barack Obama's bombing coalition strategy, in cooperation with Kurdish
and Shia Muslim fighters, has drastically reduced the regions under
ISIS control, and raised hope that ISIS is being defeated.

Quote:This is the context in which the al-Nusra - al-Qaeda split must be
viewed.  Both AQI and ISIS imposed harsh Sharia law on the people that
they governed, and tortured, killed or raped anyone who didn't comply.
It should not be a surprise to anyone that no government of that sort
is going to be popular, and indeed both AQI and ISIS lost control when
their own constituents turned against them.  In the end, even
dictators and terrorists must eventually have do what the people want.

Quote:This is a good time to recall the Generational Dynamics prediction for
where things are going and where the trend lines are, since there
seems to be a new event every week or two that moves us along that
trend line.  As I've been writing for years, Generational Dynamics
predicts that in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war, China,
Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim countries will be one side, and India,
Iran, the United States and the West will be on the other side.
( "15-Jul-2015 World View -- Arab views of Iran nuclear deal"

Once again, we have a major new event that moves us along this trend
line.  Over the past few years, we've seen events that move the US
closer to Iran and Russia, and we've seen the increasing alienation of
relations between the US and countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

(07-29-2016, 04:56 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: When the United States takes an action, it almost always has a
benevolent objective, where the US is playing its role as the
policeman of the world, following the policies laid down in the 1947
Truman Doctrine.  It's always possible for police actions to go wrong
and to be heavily criticized, but that's still completely different
from trying to exterminate an entire race.

[b Wrote:X_4AD_84][/b]
in foilers on both the Right and Left view the USA as "Amerika" and cast it as "an Empire." They believe in the man behind the curtain, in this case a cabal of Wall Street and large corporations. To be sure, such entities lobby and influence policy. However, government and the private sector are not merged, as they would be under a totalitarian system or absolute monarchy. But the tin foilers can't see beyond their Quiigleyesque conspiracy theories, and therefore, everything done by the US government is deemed the work of the man behind the curtain, and worthy of anarchy.

• Portugal and Spain will not be fined for breaching deficit rules
  
• Italy's Monte Paschi bank gets 5 billion euro bailout from other banks
  
• Earnings fall, but central bank liquidity floods markets, pushing up stocks
  

• The state (Italy) could bail out the bank out of public funds.
  What the experience with Greece has shown is that if the state bails
  the bank itself out of its financial crisis, then the state itself has
  a financial crisis. The Greece experience caused the ECB to issue
  regulations making it illegal for the state to bail out a bank.
  
  
• The people who purchased bonds and shares issued by the bank could
  "take a haircut," meaning that the values of the bonds would be
  reduced, while ordinary savings accounts would be spared. Italy
  actually used this method last year with four small regional banks,
  but it caused a major scandal because salesmen at these banks had
  aggressively sold high-risk subordinated bonds to people in lieu of
  savings accounts, saying that they were perfectly safe, as safe as
  savings accounts, with a much higher return. The result was that some
  130,000 shareholders and junior bond holders lost money in the rescue,
  including many pensioners.

• Philippines president Duterte cancels 'ceasefire' with Communist Party
  
• Generational history of the Philippines and the CPP-NPA
  
• FBI investigates alleged Russian hacking of Democrats' servers
  

• One possibility is that the Republican Party servers were
  better protected, and that the attack on them failed. The FBI
  recently accused Hillary Clinton of being "reckless" in protecting
  top-secret e-mail messages on servers, and it's possible that the same
  recklessness applied to all the Democratic Party servers, but not to
  the Republican Party servers.
  
  
• The other possibility is that the attack succeeded, but hasn't yet
  been revealed. Julian Assange, the accused rapist who is hiding out
  in the Ecuador embassy in London to avoid facing rape charges by two
  women in Sweden, has made a statement with respect to the e-mail
  releases by his "WikiLeaks" organization that there will be an
  "October surprise" with more e-mail messages. That's expected to be a
  release of more Democratic Party e-mail messages, but the "surprise"
  might be that it targets Republicans as well.

• Migrant Indian workers in Saudi Arabia face starvation
  
• India and Saudi Arabia move to warm relations with each other
  

• Italy rescues 8,000 migrants in 5 days crossing Mediterranean Sea from Libya
  
• US military in Libya launches airstrikes against ISIS
  
• Russia uses the 'Grozny Model' to pursue mass slaughter in Aleppo Syria
  

• Iran furious at Palestinian meeting with Iran opposition group
  
• Maryam Rajavi: Leader of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO)
  
• Negative interest rates creating increased anxiety
  

(08-02-2016, 10:15 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: > There is one country that has high debt, and is currently in
> "flipping off the world" mode - China. So, China it will be,
> telling her creditors "I dare you to come and get me!"