Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 17-Mar-17 World View -- Russia denies reports of Russian special forces in eastern Libya

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Russia denies reports of Russian special forces in eastern Libya
  
• Russian intervention comes as fighting between Libya's militias increases
  
• E-mail problems
  

****
**** Russia denies reports of Russian special forces in eastern Libya
****


Khalifah Haftar (dpa)

According to a news report from Reuters, both American and Egyptian
sources are saying on background that a 22-member Russian special
forces unit and drones have been deployed to the Sidi Barrani airbase
in Egypt, about 60 miles from the border with Libya. The Egyptian
sources added that Russian military aircraft in February had flown
about six military units to an Egyptian seaport base in Marsa Matrouh
before the aircraft continued to Libya about 10 days later.

Both Russia and Egypt are known to support Khalifa Haftar (or Hifter),
a "renegade" leader who controls much of eastern Libya. Hafter
visited the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov when it was
leaving the Syrian coast for Russia. An earlier report confirmed that
a force of several dozen armed private security contractors from
Russia had operated in Libya in support of Haftar. Analysts are
suggesting that Russia wants to infiltrate Libya in the same way that
Russia infiltrated Ukraine and Syria.

A Russian state media report claims that Egypt's Defense Ministry has
denied reports that Russian troops are in Libya. The report quotes
Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov as saying:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"There are no Russian special forces in Sidi
> Barrani. Certain Western media have been stirring the public with
> such mud-slinging from anonymous sources for years."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

So what's the truth here? What we have a history of what happened in
Ukraine and Syria, where almost every statement that came from the
Russia and Russia's president Vladimir Putin seemed to be a lie.

Russia lied about invading east Ukraine when it had Russian troops in
east Ukraine. Russia lied about invading Crimea, and Putin said
Russia had no intention of annexing Crimea, but then annexed Crimea a
few days later and gave medals to the military officers who had
invaded Crimea. Later, in a televised interview, Putin bragged that
he had ordered the invasion and annexation of Crimea weeks before it
occurred, and then lied about it. Russia also lied after shooting
down a passenger plane over Ukraine.

For Syria, Russia lied about Syria's president al-Bashar Assad's use
of Sarin gas on his own people, Russia lied about the purpose of its
military intervention into Syria as being to attack the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

Even worse, Russia hired hundreds of paid internet trolls to attack
and harass people like me who write about what Russia was actually
doing in Ukraine and Syria.

So now we may be seeing the same thing happen all over again.
Perhaps, as Jean-Claude Jüncker famously said, "When it's serious, you
have to lie," but like Aesop's fable about the boy who cried "wolf,"
Russia has lied so many times that they won't be believed even if, by
chance, they happen to be telling the truth. Reuters and Deutsche Welle and Reuters and Sputnik News (Moscow) and Aesop: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Related Articles

• Vladimir Putin brags about how he lied about Russia's invasion of Crimea (10-Mar-2015)
  
  
• Reader comments and questions on Syria, Russia, and Russian trolls (08-Oct-2016)
  
  
• BBC reporters attacked by Russian thugs after finding evidence of new Ukraine invasion (19-Sep-2014)
  
  
• Russia threatens to invade Ukraine from East and West (15-Aug-2014)
  

****
**** Russian intervention comes as fighting between Libya's militias increases
****

Libya's government under Muammar Gaddafi was relatively stable until
the "Arab Spring" of January 2011, which was triggered by the death of
a Tunisian food vendor, resulting in violent protests in Tunisia,
Egypt, Yemen, and then in Libya. By February, the bloodbath in Libya
had spread from Benghazi and Tobruk in the east to Tripoli in the
west. Muammar Gaddafi declared war on the protesters. He threatened
to shoot to kill protesters, and said he would crush any enemy. By
April, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Libya were pouring into
neighboring countries, and thousands were crossing the Mediterranean
to reach Italy. The Arab League asked the West to intervene, as
Gaddafi was threatening a bloody massacre in several cities,
especially Benghazi. The West did finally intervene, and ousted
Gaddafi, leaving the country at the mercy of warlords and al-Qaeda.

Today there are several governments in Libya:

• General National Congress (GNC) or National Salvation
  Government, seated in Tripoli, composed of militias that lost the
  elections in 2014. The most power of these militias is al-Qaeda
  linked Libya Dawn.
  
• The Government of National Accord (GNA), also in Tripoli, which
  was created by the United Nations in 2015 in the hope of unifying the
  country behind it. However, neither of the other two governments
  recognizes it, and it's at war with the GNC.
  
• The Libya National Army (LNA), or Operation Dignity, headed by
  Maj-Gen Khalifah Haftar, seated in Tobruk, in control of portions of
  eastern Libya. a secular government that fled from Tripoli in 2014.
  Haftar's army has been fighting ISIS in Benghazi and nearby oil
  fields.

Fighting and violence have been increasing in both the east and the
west. Thousands of armed men from all sides have been converging on
Libya's main oil shipping terminals. Some of the bloodiest fighting
in three years is going on now, mainly to gain control of oil fields.
The fighting may cause global oil prices to rise.

Officials in America and Europe suspect that Russia is planning to
take advantage of the chaos in Libya and take control of the country
by acting as it did in Ukraine and Syria.

Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of U.S. Africa Command, testified
to Congress last week: "Russia is trying to exert influence on the
ultimate decision of who becomes, and what entity becomes, in charge
of the government inside Libya." Italian politicians say Russia’s
mounting interest in Libya appears be part of a larger bid to rekindle
Soviet-era influence in the Middle East and North Africa.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based military analyst, said:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Russia's relationship with Haftar is the result of a
> very simple equation. Russia backs Egypt, Haftar's main supporter.
> General Haftar has declared war on terrorism and this coincides
> with Russia's main objective in the region: wiping out the
> terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State. ...
>
> Russia is not sending its troops to help Haftar and is unlikely to
> do so in the near future. We are rather relying on private
> military contractors and mercenaries. We are already using
> contractors in Syria, where they are suffering serious losses,
> because they are doing the real fighting instead of Russian
> servicemen. Private contractors are very convenient because they
> have no political strings attached.
>
> Contractors are cheaper [than servicemen] and we need to use our
> financial resources as best as we can. With the conflict in
> Donbass simmering, Crimea, the war in Syria still under way,
> Russia doesn't have the appetite or the resources to go into
> Libya," Felgenhauer said. "Russia is keen on establishing a
> foothold in Libya and have some influence there, but committing
> resources is a different matter."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Felgenhauer didn't deny reports that Russia is negotiating with Egypt
to build a Russian military base in Egypt on the border with Libya, in
return for providing economic aid to Egypt. Egypt Independent and Military Times and VOA and Al Jazeera and Hurriyet (Ankara)

Related Articles

• A look back at Libya in 2011 as the West debates another military intervention (05-Mar-2016)
  
  
• Massive refugee crisis in Libya increases international calls for intervention (02-Mar-2011)
  
  
• With Libya in chaos, migrant deal with Italy collapses (16-Jan-2017)
  

****
**** E-mail problems
****

My web site's e-mail server was down for much of the last two
days. Any e-mail messages sent to me should be re-sent. Sorry
for the inconvenience.


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Libya, Italy, Mediterranean Sea,
Russia, Vladimir Putin, Egypt, Sidi Barrani, Marsa Matrouh,
Admiral Kuznetsov, Igor Konashenkov, Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Aesop,
Muammar Gaddafi, Libya Dawn, General National Congress, GNC,
Libya National Army, LNA, Khalifah Haftar, Tobruk, Benghazi,
Government of National Accord, GNA,
National Salvation Government,
Thomas Waldhauser, Pavel Felgenhauer

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 18-Mar-17 World View -- Taiwan says it must defend against increasingly threatening China

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Taiwan says it must defend against increasingly threatening China
  
• China responds harshly to Taiwan's defense report
  
• Taiwan's government responds to China's threats
  
• China begins construction on Philippines' Scarborough Shoal
  

****
**** Taiwan says it must defend against increasingly threatening China
****


Taiwanese soldiers stand next to home-made Tien Chien surface-to-air missiles during an annual drill in Tainan, January 17, 2017. (AFP)

A major Taiwan government defense report, the "2017 Quadrennial
Defense Review" (QDR), says that China's accelerated military
development and recent activity by its military aircraft and ships
around Taiwan pose an increased threat to the self-ruled island. This
is the third QDR published by Taiwan, with the first two published in
2009 and 2013, respectively.

According to the 2017 QDR:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The recent activity of Chinese jets and ships around
> Taiwan shows the continued rise in [China’s] military threat
> capabilities. In addition to posing a military threat to our
> country, it also has a negative impact on regional stability. ...
>
> The country’s military development and Taiwan’s freedom and
> prosperity are the same living body. ...
>
> With the rapid growth of China’s defense budget, the People’s
> Liberation Army has made considerable progress to modernize and
> reform its military. It has the ability to blockade Taiwan,
> launch combined operations, and seize and hold Taiwan’s outlying
> islands. ...
>
> [If China invades, Taiwan will] resist enemy troops at their home
> bases, strike them at sea, destroy them as they approach Taiwan’s
> coastlines and annihilate them on the beaches."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Taiwan plans to acquire stealth jet fighters as a deterrent. However,
the report acknowledges that Taiwan cannot compete with China's army,
in view of its explosive growth in power and equipment, and so Taiwan
must look for asymmetric ways to provide a defense, using a
"multi-deterrence" strategy that presents the enemy with multiple
dilemmas. According to the report, Taiwan will boost its cyberwarfare
capabilities, ensure the security of its command-control and
information infrastructure, and strengthen joint counterattack
readiness. Reuters
and Taipei Times and Straits Times (Singapore) and Russia Today

****
**** China responds harshly to Taiwan's defense report
****

China's premier Li Keqiang said that China was resolutely opposed to
Taiwan's independence:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"No matter how the situation on the island may evolve,
> the fraternal bond between the two sides cannot be severed and
> will not be able to change history or the fact that both sides
> belong to one and the same China."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

A highly nationalistic editorial appeared in China's state-run Global
Times explaining that Taiwan's QDR has no military value, because
China's military is so strong that even with support of the United
States, Taiwan's military have no will to fight:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The "multi-deterrence" strategy aims to force the
> enemy into multi-dilemmas. As ambitious as it is, it has almost no
> actual military value.
>
> With the development of military strength on the Chinese mainland,
> the will of Taiwan's military to confront their mainland
> counterparts has almost collapsed. No soldiers believe Taiwan
> forces are capable to defend the island if the People's Liberation
> Army (PLA) launches a comprehensive offensive against Taiwan.
>
> The new QDR claims that the PLA is capable of seizing Taiwan's
> offshore islands. But isn't it an easy thing for the PLA to seize
> the whole island of Taiwan?
>
> The Taiwan military cannot match the present-day PLA. The
> mainland's military budget is more than 10 times that of Taiwan,
> and the PLA has superior strategic tools and systemic combat
> capabilities that their Taiwan counterparts don't have. ...
>
> Taiwan has taken deterring the mainland as a key strategy, and
> constantly changed its deterrence tactics. But there is no need
> for the island to deter the mainland, as the mainland cherishes
> peace and won't resort to force unless it's absolutely
> necessary. If Taiwan is controlled by radial pro-independence
> forces, Taiwan's military, even with the help of the main US
> military forces, will not be able to deter the mainland.
>
> Therefore, the most important thing for Taiwan is not to provoke
> the one-China policy. This is the correct political way to protect
> the island's security."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The last paragraph refers to China's "anti-secession law," which China
passed in 2005. The law says that China will invade Taiwan even if
there's no more than talk of independence. Last year's election of
Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen, of the Democratic Progressive Party
that has historically favored independence, and then last year's phone
call between Tsai and candidate Donald Trump have enormously increased
tensions. Arguably, the necessary conditions to trigger the
anti-secession law have already occurred.

Nonetheless, the above editorial is typical of the really stupid
things that people say during a generational Crisis era. China has
been illegally annexing other countries' territories in the South
China Sea, the kind of thing that Adolf Hitler did, and nobody is
confronting China. In 1988, China easily won a naval war with Vietnam
in the Spratly Islands. The Chinese people no longer have any memory
of being defeated by an enemy, as they were by the Japanese in World
War II until America saved them. So with decades of mostly military
success, with a belief that other countries do not have the will to
fight, and with an explosively growing military capability, many in
China believe that China's military can do anything it wants with
impunity. This is the kind of mistake that leads to generational
crisis wars, and it's a historic mistake by the Chinese that will lead
to disaster for China and disaster for everyone else as well.
Global Times

Related Articles

• China and Taiwan: Understanding two different war paradigms (23-Apr-2008)
  
  
• No war erupted from Trump's ten minute phone call with Taiwan's Tsai Ing-wen (05-Dec-2016)
  

****
**** Taiwan's government responds to China's threats
****

Taiwan's government responded to China's threats, but the response was
just as delusional. Taiwan's Lt. Gen. Chiang Chen-chung noted that
the Chinese army base closet to Taiwan under China's Eastern Theater
Command is only 250 kilometers away from the coastline of Taiwan, with
the most distant 1,380 km away from Taiwan. Chiang said that China's
military had the ability to strike China's army bases with missiles.
The implication was that China wouldn't attack Taiwan, because that
would risk having their bases attacked.

Taiwan's former deputy defense minister Lin Chong-pin said that it was
pointless to try to compete with China's military, and so the military
should focus on urban guerilla warfare and adopt a "war of paralysis"
against the Chinese military. "It will be too expensive, too messy,
and any bloodshed would do great damage to China's claim of peaceful
reunification... that would be a very effective deterrent."

So we have two delusional populations headed for war with each other.
That's how history's greatest catastrophes begin. China Post (Taiwan) and Taipei Times and Straits Times (Singapore)

Related Articles

• China demands new Taiwan leader explicitly affirm that Taiwan is part of China (26-May-2016)
  
  
• Taiwan's president responds to military threats from China (01-Jan-2017)
  
  
• China's 'Anti-secession law' provokes massive Taiwan riots (27-Mar-2005)
  

****
**** China begins construction on Philippines' Scarborough Shoal
****

A Chinese Communist Party official is being quoted by Chinese media as
saying that China will begin building permanent structures in the
Scarborough Shoal and other South China Sea islands, and that this
work will be one of the government's top priorities in 2017.

Last year, the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration
handed China a humiliating defeat by declaring its activities
in the South China Sea to be illegal. Nonetheless,
China has continued annexing other countries' regions and building
illegal artificial islands and military bases.

Last year, President Barack Obama warned China's President Xi Jinping
last year against building an artificial island at Scarborough Shoal.
A Chinese military base on Scarborough Shoal would put Chinese fighter
jets and missiles within easy striking distance of US forces that are
stationed in the Philippines, as well as the Philippines' own forces.
The shoal also commands the northeast exit of the sea, so a Chinese
military outpost there could stop other countries' navies from
traveling through the South China Sea.

Well, to nobody's real surprise, China is now preparing to
build an "environment monitoring station" on Scarborough Shoal.
And nobody really believes that it's purpose is just to monitor
the environment.

During his Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex
Tillerson said that China's access to its artificial islands should
not be allowed.

So now, as continues to militarize the South China Sea in preparation
for war, we'll have to see whether the United States follows through
on its promise to block China's access to Scarborough Shoal and its
artificial islands, which will lead to a world war, or whether the
United States will just stand by and let China continue to militarize
the South China Sea with impunity, which will also lead to a world
war. That's a variation of what's known as "Hobson's Choice."
AP

Related Articles

• China-Philippines détente unravels over Scarborough Shoal (19-Feb-2017)
  
  
• China preparing to install long-range missiles in South China Sea (23-Feb-2017)
  
  
• US will upgrade Philippines military bases, despite Duterte's threats (31-Jan-2017)
  
  
• Philippines humiliates China in harsh Hague Tribunal ruling over South China Sea (13-Jul-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Taiwan, China, Li Keqiang,
Quadrennial Defence Review, QDR,
Tsai Ing-wen, Lin Chong-pin, Chiang Chen-chung,
Vietnam, South China Sea, Spratly Islands,
United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration, PCA,
Philippines, Scarborough Shoal, Rodrigo R. Duterte,
Rex Tillerson

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 19-Mar-17 World View -- Israel and Syria have unprecedented missile clash over Jordan

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Israel and Syria have unprecedented missile clash over Jordan
  
• Russia summons Israeli envoy to demand an explanation
  
• Jordan has to live with increasing threats from Syria and Israel
  

****
**** Israel and Syria have unprecedented missile clash over Jordan
****


Map of region. Israeli warplanes struck Lebanon-bound convoy near the T-4 airbase near Palmyra. Syrian Russian-made S-200 ground to air missiles targeted the Israeli planes without success. One was intercepted by Israel's Arrow missile system. This map also depicts a claim by Debka that Hezbollah may be planning an attack on Israeli-held Mount Hermon. (Debka)

The most serious incident between Israel and Syria since the Syrian
civil war began six years ago occurred early Friday morning when
Syrian anti-aircraft missiles were shot down by Israel's Arrow 3
anti-missile defense system. The Syrian missiles were targeting
Israeli warplanes attacking a convoy of trucks carrying advanced
weapons from northern Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel's warplanes were attacking a convoy of trucks leaving Syria's
T-4 airbase near Palmyra in northern Syria. The trucks were believed
to be carrying advanced weapons systems to be delivered to Hezbollah
in Lebanon for use in its attacks on Israel. The advanced weapons may
have included precision rockets, advanced anti-aircraft missiles and
surface-to-ship missiles.

Israel has attacked weapons convoys traveling from Syria to Lebanon in
the past, but the first thing that's unprecedented about this attack
is that it has been confirmed by Israel's military. In the past,
Israel has refused to comment on its attacks on weapons convoys.
However, in April 2016, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
admitted for the first time that Israel had in the past attacked
dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for
Hezbollah,

The second unprecedented thing is that the regime of Syria's president
Bashar al-Assad launched three or four ground-to-air missiles to
attack the Israeli warplanes. In the case of past attacks on weapons
convoys, there were no such anti-aircraft missile attacks.

The missiles were apparently outdated Russian-made S-200 (SA-5)
surface-to-air missiles. Syria launched them when Israel's warplanes
were in Israeli airspace. According to one report, it's possible that
the missile attack on the convoy was launched from the warplanes while
they were still in Israeli airspace. Syria claims to have downed one
Israeli plane, but Israel says that none of its planes was hit.
However, at least one of the missiles was headed for Israeli
territory.

The third unprecedented thing is that Israel launched an Arrow-3
anti-missile missile to intercept the incoming missile before it
reached Israeli territory. This is the first time that the Arrow
system has made an operational appearance.

Israel would have liked to keep its use of the Arrow system secret,
but when it intercepted the incoming Syrian missile, it made a
deafening bang that could be heard for more than 150 km. The Syrian
missile was intercepted over the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, and
parts of the missile landed in Jordan, doing little or no damage.

This unprecedented clash between Israel and Syria may indicate that
the rules have changed. Israel has attacked weapons convoys in the
past, but only when there were major weapons systems being delivered
to Hezbollah, as was apparently the case this time. Weapons convoys
with smaller weapons have not been attacked.

But while the al-Assad regime has threatened in the past to retaliate.
After another Israeli airstrike in January, that al-Assad regime said
that it would no longer tolerate any such incursions on Syrian
airspace. This this is the first time the threat has been put into
action. This may signal that al-Assad, secure in support from Russia
and Iran, may now try to shift the war to Israel. Haaretz (Israel) and
CNN and Debka and SANA (Damascus)

Related Articles

• Syria says that Israel bombed al-Mazzeh military airport near Damascus (14-Jan-2017)
  
  
• Hezbollah building tunnels into Israel to prepare for next war (04-Jun-2016)
  
  
• Hezbollah suffers blow in death of top commander Mustafa Amine Badreddine (14-May-2016)
  
  
• Deep Saudi-Lebanon crisis widens the Mideast's sectarian fault line (10-Mar-2016)
  

****
**** Russia summons Israeli envoy to demand an explanation
****

On Friday, Russia summoned Israel's ambassador to Moscow Gary Koren
and demanded an explanation for the attack. According to a statement
by Russia's Foreign Ministry, "recent developments in Syria" were
discussed.

Israel's attacks on weapons convoys in the past could only have taken
place with Russia's approval, though obviously not with the approval
of the al-Assad regime, Hezbollah or Iran. Russia considers itself to
be an ally of both Syria and Israel, and does not wish to allow a war
to develop between them, so therefore tolerates the Israeli attacks on
weapons convoys going to Hezbollah.

In this case, Russia may have been concerned because the airstrikes
occurred near the T-4 airbase that houses Russian weapons, warplanes
and helicopters, and is a landing field for Iranian supply planes.
What's not clear at this time is whether Russia wants to change the
rules of the game and limit Israel's attacks on such convoys.

However, after Koren met with Russian officials, a defiant Israeli
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would not change
its policy:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"When we identify attempts to transfer advanced arms
> to Hezbollah, and we have intelligence information and we have the
> operational plan, we act to prevent it. That's how it was
> yesterday and that's how we shall continue to act.
>
> We are fully determined and the evidence of that it that we are
> acting. Everybody must take that into account —
> everybody."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

By "everybody," we can assume that he's referring to Russia, as well
as to Syria, Hezbollah and Iran. Generational Dynamics predicts that
the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Jews against
Arabs, Sunnis against Shias, and various ethnic groups against each
other. France 24 and Western Journalism and AFP

****
**** Jordan has to live with increasing threats from Syria and Israel
****

A strategic analyst in Jordan said on Saturday that Jordan will have
to live with security threats, as long as the war in Syria continues.
He was responding to the situation where shrapnel from the
Syria-Israel missile exchange landed in Jordan.

According to Rt. Major General Fayez Dweiri

> [indent]<QUOTE>"This is a violation of Jordan’s airspace from both
> the Israeli and the Syrian sides. Jordan does not possess the
> military capability to prevent such attacks.
>
> The Kingdom has to live with this situation. What it can do is to
> manage the situation, to neutralize any threats as much as it can
> under the circumstances."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Jordan Times

Related Articles

• Jordan's King demands more refugee aid from international community (03-Feb-2016)
  
  
• Jordan's King Abdullah tells Congress that Palestinian issue is the core issue (08-Mar-2007)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Israel, Syria, T-4 airbase, Palmyra,
S-200 SA-5 missiles, Arrow 3 anti-missile,
Russia, Gary Koren, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Jordan Valley, West Bank, Jordan, Rt. Major General Fayez Dweiri

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 20-Mar-17 World View -- Venezuela's Socialist government arrests bakers because of bread shortage

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Venezuela's Socialist government arrests bakers because of bread shortage
  
• Venezuela's political opposition now publishing inflation data
  
• Suspicions grow that Kim Jong-nam's Malaysia assassination was not with VX nerve gas
  

****
**** Venezuela's Socialist government arrests bakers because of bread shortage
****


This is a baker in Caracas being arrested by a government inspector, with his illegal croissants in plain sight (BBC)

Just when you think that Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás
Maduro can't make himself look more like a total moron than he already
has, something like this comes along: Bakers are being arrested.

Because flour is in short supply in the Socialist economy,
Maduro has ordered bakeries to produce only French bread,
white loaves, or pan canilla. Furthermore, all of these items
are price-controlled, which means that they must be sold at
the government-dictated price.

Bakers are now being arrested for the following crimes:

• Producing croissants or brownies or other "luxury" items that
  are not price-controlled, and so can be sold at any price.
  
• Producing a loaf of bread which is smaller than the
  government-dictated size.
  
• Selling a loaf of bread at higher than the government-dictated
  price.
  
• Not producing bread all day long, from 7 am to 7 pm, even if
  there's no flour to make it with.

Inspectors are visiting all the bakeries to make sure that these rules
are followed, and violators are arrested. Over 700 bakeries
were inspected in Caracas.

For example, the bakers working in two different bakeries in the
capital city Caracas were arrested over the weekend for selling bread
loaves smaller than the government-dictated size. According to
William Contreras, the head of Venezuela’s consumer protection agency,
SUNDDE:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"A loaf should weigh 180 grams. These gentlemen here
> produce [their bread loaves] as 140 grams, and charge it as though
> it were 180."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

While they're in jail, state-appointed bakers, probably one Maduro's
political cronies, will run the bakery.

Venezuela's Socialist economy has been a disaster for years. Citizens
have to queue for hours to get basics like milk, rice, flour, ketchup,
diapers, and toilet paper. Crime and violence are rampant. 75% of
Venezuelan homes are living in poverty. The government has ordered
the jailing of factory owners if their factories cannot produce
products as ordered. Venezuelanalysis and Bloomberg and BBC and Miami Herald

Related Stories

• Venezuela's currency becomes worthless, as Zimbabwe introduces new currency (08-Dec-2016)
  
  
• Venezuela's economic crisis is hitting Cuba hard (06-Aug-2016)
  
  
• Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Puerto Rico - three amigos in Marxist economic destruction (01-Jul-2016)
  

****
**** Venezuela's political opposition now publishing inflation data
****

Venezuela's inflation rate is the highest in the world. In fact, it's
gotten so high, that Venezuela's Socialist government has ordered the
central bank to stop reporting it.

This has led to something new. At the beginning of this month,
Maduro's political opposition in congress has started publishing its
own inflation rate. They've enlisted economics students to collect
price data, and they've enlisted economics students to collect price
data in five cities and asked former central bank employees to process
it using the central bank's methodology.

Their measurements show prices rose 741 percent in the 12 months to
February, 20.1 percent last month alone and 42.5 percent in the first
two months of 2017. Reuters (9-Mar)

Related Stories

• Hugo Chávez dismantled Venezuela's businesses on purpose to create Socialist Paradise (29-May-2016)
  
  
• Venezuela economy close to collapse as Maduro orders jailing of factory owners (15-May-2016)
  

****
**** Suspicions grow that Kim Jong-nam's Malaysia assassination was not with VX nerve gas
****

Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea's child dictator Kim
Jong-un, was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia on
February 13, minutes after two women each rubbed his face with a cloth
in the middle of the airport.

An autopsy by Malaysian doctors concluded that the poison that killed
him was VX nerve gas. Touching just one drop of VX can kill you
within minutes, which appears to have happened to Kim Jong-nam. The
problem is that questions were immediately raised about why the two
women who applied the poison weren't also killed, and why nobody else
in the airport was harmed, including the medics who initially treated
Kim.

A month has passed, and the Malaysian authorities have released
no forensic evidence to back up the VX claim, and indeed almost
no forensic evidence at all. This is raising suspicions that
something doesn't add up. According to one expert:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"I cannot see how the accused women would have
> administered a fatal dose of VX directly to the victim without
> sustaining corresponding life-threatening injuries themselves.
>
> There is also no report of any trace of VX - or of any cloths or
> containers carrying traces of it - at the 'crime
> scene'."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

However, there is one explanation that might make sense. A "binary"
version of VX, called VX2, has two components that are individually
harmless, but lethal when mixed. There were two women involved, and
each one could have applied one of the components to the victim's
face, so that they were only mixed on the victim's face.

That doesn't explain everything -- like how the medics who treated Kim
escaped contamination. Straits Times (Singapore) and Guardian (London)

Related Articles

• Malaysia expels North Korean ambassador as relations deteriorate (05-Mar-2017)
  
  
• Malaysia - N. Korea relations turn toxic over assassination of Kim Jong-un's half brother (24-Feb-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros,
William Contreras,
Malaysia, North Korea, Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-un,
VX nerve gas, Singapore

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[Galen]

(03-19-2017, 09:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: *** 20-Mar-17 World View -- Venezuela's Socialist government arrests bakers because of bread shortage

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Venezuela's Socialist government arrests bakers because of bread shortage
  
• Venezuela's political opposition now publishing inflation data
  
• Suspicions grow that Kim Jong-nam's Malaysia assassination was not with VX nerve gas
  

****
**** Venezuela's Socialist government arrests bakers because of bread shortage
****


This is a baker in Caracas being arrested by a government inspector, with his illegal croissants in plain sight (BBC)

Just when you think that Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás
Maduro can't make himself look more like a total moron than he already
has, something like this comes along: Bakers are being arrested.

I see that Venezuela is truly enjoying the benefits of socialism.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 21-Mar-17 World View -- Pope Francis apologizes for Catholic Church's role in 1994 Rwanda genocide

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Pope Francis apologizes for Catholic Church's role in 1994 Rwanda genocide
  
• A century of genocides
  

****
**** Pope Francis apologizes for Catholic Church's role in 1994 Rwanda genocide
****


Pope Francis meets Rwanda's president Paul Kagame on Monday (CNA)

In 1994, there were two major ethnic groups in Rwanda -- the Hutus and
the Tutsis. They had lived together for decades, had intermarried,
had their kids play games with each other and so forth.

The iconic genocidal war between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and
Burundi in 1994 was the culmination of centuries of generational
crisis wars between the two tribes, where the Tutsis were the herders
who controlled the land, and the Hutus were the farmers who worked for
the Tutsis.

On April 6, a plane crash killed Juvenal Habyarimana, the president of
Rwanda, a Hutu, when the plane was shot down by an unknown assailant.
Next, a Hutu leader announced over the radio, "Cut down the tall
trees," referring to the Tutsis, who were generally taller than Hutus.
The radio announcement, which was heard all over the country, was some
sort of prearranged signal. On cue, each Hutu did something like the
following: Picked up a machete, went to the Tutsi home next door, or
down the street, murdered and dismembered the man and children, raped
the wife and then murdered and dismembered her.

Close to a million Tutsis were tortured, raped and murdered in a three
month period. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this
is the purest modern example of an "organic" or "indigenous" genocide,
as opposed to a government-ordered genocide such as is occurring today
in Syria. And in Rwanda, it made no difference that almost everyone
is Christian, mostly Catholic. All humans, of whatever religion, have
the same DNA.

Since 1994, relations between Rwanda and the Vatican have been stormy,
with the Tutsis accusing the Church of being close to the Hutus, and
for having participated in the massacres. Although some Hutu clergy
members helped the Tutsis, in other cases, Hutu clergy were
perpetrators. In some cases, the Hutu clergy ushered Tutsis into
church buildings, promising them security, and then allowed them to be
slaughtered.

On Monday, Pope Francis met at the Vatican with Rwanda's president
Paul Kagame, and issued a statement apologizing on behalf of the
Catholic Church for the Church's involvement in the 1994 Rwanda
genocide:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"In this context, the Pope conveyed his profound
> sadness, and that of the Holy See and of the Church, for the
> genocide against the Tutsi. He expressed his solidarity with the
> victims and with those who continue to suffer the consequences of
> those tragic events and ... he implored anew God’s forgiveness for
> the sins and failings of the Church and its members, among whom
> priests, and religious men and women who succumbed to hatred and
> violence, betraying their own evangelical mission. In light of the
> recent Holy Year of Mercy and of the Statement published by the
> Rwandan Bishops at its conclusion, the Pope also expressed the
> desire that this humble recognition of the failings of that
> period, which, unfortunately, disfigured the face of the Church,
> may contribute to a “purification of memory” and may promote, in
> hope and renewed trust, a future of peace, witnessing to the
> concrete possibility of living and working together, once the
> dignity of the human person and the common good are put at the
> centre."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Pope Francis referred to a statement published by the Rwandan Bishops
on November 20, 2016:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"We apologize for all the wrongs the Church
> committed. We apologize on behalf of all Christians for all forms
> of wrongs we committed. We regret that church members violated
> (their) oath of allegiance to God’s commandments. ...
>
> Forgive us for the crime of hate in the country to the extent of
> also hating our colleagues because of their ethnicity. We didn’t
> show that we are one family but instead killed each
> other."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

While the Bishops' statement was welcomed last November, the
government of Rwanda issued a stinging rebuke:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"This step is welcome, as individual expressions of
> remorse. However, its profound inadequacy only serves to highlight
> how far the Catholic Church still remains from a full and honest
> reckoning with its moral and legal responsibilities.
>
> First, as they apologize on behalf of a few unnamed individuals,
> the bishops appear to take the extraordinary step of exonerating
> the Catholic Church as a whole for any culpability in connection
> with the Genocide. Everything in the historical record contradicts
> this divisive claim. ...
>
> Finally, given the scale of the crimes, there is ample
> justification for an apology from the Vatican, as has occurred
> repeatedly with other cases of lesser magnitude."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

This rebuke led to the Pope's apology on Monday. Vatican Press Release and Catholic News Agency (21-Nov-2016) and Govt of Rwanda (23-Nov-2016)

Related Articles

• Kenya settles into low-level violence on the way to Rwanda (01-Feb-2008)
  
  
• Rwanda's president Kagame becomes another leader refusing to leave office (19-Nov-2015)
  
  
• Burundi's Pierre Nkurunziza follows Syria's Bashar al-Assad on path to genocide (13-Oct-2016)
  
  
• Herders invade ranches in Kenya, ambush and kill British ranch owner (07-Mar-2017)
  

****
**** A century of genocides
****

It is to the credit of the Catholic Church that the Pope is willing to
apologize for its part in the Rwanda genocide, even if it take over 20
years for the apology to occur.

However, the Rwanda genocide should remind us that what Generational
Dynamics tells us is true: That when it comes to genocide, every
ethnic group, every religious group, every geographic group, is the
same as every other. Indeed, if some religious or ethnic group
refused to commit genocide, then in a matter of one or two centuries
they would be exterminated by another group that wasn't so fastidious.

Whether a particular demographic group is involved in or inclined to
genocide or ethnic cleansing or atrocities depends on which
generational era its in. A group in a generational Awakening era,
like America in the 1960s, would be very reluctant to commit
atrocities, because the atrocities from the previous generational
crisis war would still be well remembered by its survivors. But as a
group goes deeper into a generational Crisis era, as the survivors of
the previous crisis war die off, as do the memories of the atrocities
that occurred during that war, then the population is more willing to
commit atrocities, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

People of the Muslim faith are most closely identified with atrocities
in the current era, which isn't surprising since almost every atrocity
in the news these days is almost always perpetrated by some Sunni
Muslim jihadist group. However, it's worth pointing out that of the
1.6 billion Muslims in the world, there are only a very small number,
probably in the thousands or tens of thousands, that support the
al-Qaeda and ISIS atrocities.

From the point of view of generational theory, this situation is
attributable to the fact most Sunni Muslim countries are deep into a
generation Crisis era, much more so than the Christian nations. The
reason is that their last crisis war for many Sunni Muslim nations was
not World War II, but was World War I, including the destruction of
the Ottoman Empire. This means that there are absolutely no Sunni
Muslim survivors remaining who remember the horrors and atrocities of
WW I, and the younger generations have no fear of repeating them.

People who say that there's a war by Muslims against Christians are
completely missing the point. It's true that jihadist groups
sometimes target Christians, but these are almost always little more
than gruesome publicity stunts. The number of Christians being killed
by Muslims is minuscule compared to the number of Muslims being killed
by Muslims. Jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda or to the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) are overwhelmingly
targeting other Muslims, and rarely Christians.

The genocide being perpetrated by Syria's president Bashar al-Assad
serves as an example to distinguish between government-perpetrated
atrocities, for which al-Assad is responsible, and "organic"
atrocities, such as those committed by ISIS fighters or the Hutus in
Rwanda. As I've been reporting many times over the last couple of
years, al-Assad's army is supporting him only half-heartedly, with
massive numbers of desertions. Al-Assad himself said in 2015 that his
army was near defeat, but was saved by the Russians. Syria is not in
a generational Crisis era. It's in a generational Awakening era, and
the public supports the war half-heartedly, just as the American
public half-heartedly supported the Vietnam war in the 1960s.

From the point of view of generational theory, it's rare for a
genocide or ethnic cleansing to be purely organic or government-led,
but in an Awakening era it's going to be almost completely
government-led, while in a Crisis era, it will be "organic," whether
or not it's government led. In an Awakening era, the atrocities are
often perpetrated by a leader who refused to lead office, such as
we're seeing in Syria, Burundi, and Zimbabwe.

Two modern special cases are worth mentioning. In the Central African
Republic (CAR), there are atrocities being committed on both sides, by
both Muslims and Christians. CAR's last crisis war climaxed in 1932,
so the country is well into a generational Crisis era, and that
affects both the Christian and Muslim population.

The other special case is occurring in Myanmar (Burma), in the early
stages of a generational Crisis era, where Buddhists, led by Buddhist
monk Ashin Wirathu and his "969 movement," are conducting atrocities
targeting the Rohingya Muslims, including rapes, torture and other
atrocities committed by Buddhists, targeting the Rohingyas. The
Rohingyas have a darker skin than Burmese, and they speak a Bengali
dialect. The actions by the Buddhists were similar to the actions by
the Nazis against the Jews.

So it's good that the Catholic Church has apologized for its
participation in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, although it took over 20
years for the apology to be forthcoming. Perhaps in another 20 years,
some Muslim clerics will apologize for the atrocities being committed
today in the name of Islam.

Related Articles

• Do news organizations ignore jihadist attacks on Christians? (29-Dec-2014)
  
  
• Attack on Islam's holy site in Medina caps end-of-Ramadan jihadist carnage (06-Jul-2016)
  
  
• Saudi Arabia's Grand Mosque, site of huge construction accident, has links to 9/11 (12-Sep-2015)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Pope Francis, Vatican, Rwanda, Paul Kagame,
Hutus, Tutsis, Juvenal Habyarimana, al-Qaeda,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Central African Republic, Burundi, Zimbabwe,
Myanmar, Burma, Ashin Wirathu, 969 movement, Rohingyas

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 22-Mar-17 World View -- Concerns grow over chaos in Iraq after ISIS is defeated in Mosul

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• UN's humanitarian agencies overwhelmed as hundreds of thousands flee Mosul
  
• Concerns grow over chaos in Iraq after ISIS is defeated in Mosul
  

****
**** UN's humanitarian agencies overwhelmed as hundreds of thousands flee Mosul
****


Iraqi security forces advance during fighting against ISIS militants in western Mosul (AP)

Iraq's government forces continue to make territorial gains in west
Mosul as they continue to battle to flush fighters from the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) out of their last urban
stronghold in Iraq. West Mosul is the densely populated portion of
the city located on the west bank of the Tigris River, which divides
the city.

Iraq army began its Mosul offensive in October, with support from US
artillery. The fight to eject ISIS from east Mosul has already been
mostly completed.

Mosul had an estimated population of two million before ISIS took it
over in June 2014 in a lightning assault. Since then, many Iraqis
have fled, but somewhere between 750,000 and one million are thought
to remain in west Mosul. Many of these people are trapped in west
Mosul, because ISIS is shooting and killing any families that try to
leave.

Unlike east Mosul, the streets in west Mosul are too narrow for
armored vehicles, and any use of heavy weapons puts civilian lives in
danger. So extremely bloody house to house fighting is required, with
many homes booby-trapped with bombs by ISIS.

More than 180,000 people have already fled west Mosul. About 111,000
have sought shelter in refugee camps. The government says that it can
accommodate a further 100,000 displaced people in camps.

However, the UN is saying that the numbers could rise far above that,
and could overwhelm the UN's humanitarian agencies. According to the
UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
"Humanitarian agencies are bracing for the possibility that an
additional 300,000-320,000 civilians may flee in coming weeks."

According to Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq:
"We have been preparing for the Mosul operation for months, but the
magnitude of the crisis has exceeded our expectations, but we will do
our best to ensure that people are helped.

Grande says that the situation in east Mosul was different:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The main difference is that tens of thousands of
> families stayed in their homes in the east. In the west, tens of
> thousands are fleeing.
>
> If the number of people leaving the city increases faster than we
> can construct new plots, the situation could deteriorate very
> quickly."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Analysts expect the fighting in Mosul to last a few more weeks, if not
months. Middle East Monitor and AFP and Euro News and Gulf Times

****
**** Concerns grow over chaos in Iraq after ISIS is defeated in Mosul
****

The American-led coalition that fought the Iraq war in the early 2000s
was blamed and continues to be blamed for the crisis that followed the
war, which was attributed to inadequate planning. Fears are
increasing that the same problem will occur after ISIS is defeated in
Iraq.

Australian analysts are expressing the fear that ISIS jihadists will
go back to their home countries or to other countries and continue the
fight there. According to Greg Barton, professor of Global Islamic
Politics at Deakin University:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"We’re looking at a very grim future for the Middle
> East. If the government of Iraq can get its act together, they
> have half a chance of making things better, but we have every
> reason to worry that won’t be the case.
>
> “We may well see ISIS forces coming back as we’ve seen Taliban
> forces in Afghanistan. We’ve been constantly underestimating
> strength and capacity, I think we’ll be repeating that error again
> and again."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Canada has been supporting the Kurdish peshmerga forces in Iraq with
training, weapons and equipment, and now face the possibility that
this support will backfire on Canada.

With Canadian support, the Iraqi Kurds have taken control with land
regions during the fight to eject ISIS from Mosul, and they are not
going to be willing to give them back. In November 2015, Canada's
prime minister Justin Trudeau was warned about the potential long-term
consequences of supporting the Kurds:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Should the (ISIS) threat recede, Baghdad will have to
> contend with a range of land disputes with the (Kurdish regional
> government), as well as strengthened Iraqi Kurdish forces, which
> have received training and equipment from coalition members,
> including Canada."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Three months later, the government announced it would triple the
number of Canadian military trainers in northern Iraq and provide
weapons to the Kurds.

Many in Canada are watching to see whether the Kurds plan to demand
independence from the rest of Iraq, as their leaders have promised.
This would lead to a major political crisis in Iraq, and possibly
another war.

Furthermore, it will cause political chaos in Canada as well. It will
be used as an argument for activists in Canada's own sovereigntist
movement (Mouvement souverainiste du Québec), which is demanding
independence for the province of Quebec. News.com (Australia) and CTV (Canada)

Related Articles

• Iraq in major crisis after catastrophic fall of Mosul to ISIS (11-Jun-2014)
  
  
• US-backed Iraqi army launches major new offensive in western Mosul (20-Feb-2017)
  
  
• Iraq, ISIS and the West prepare for the Great Battle for Mosul to begin soon (01-Oct-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Iraq, Mosul, Tigris River,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Lise Grande, Australia, Greg Barton, Kurdish peshmerga,
Canada, Justin Trudeau, Mouvement souverainiste du Québec, Quebec

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 23-Mar-17 World View -- Massive China-Pakistan CPEC energy project said to end energy crisis 'soon'

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Massive China-Pakistan CPEC energy project said to end energy crisis 'soon'
  
• Skeptics claim that CPEC will only benefit China, not Pakistan
  
• Pakistan will use dark financing to cover the cost of protecting Chinese workers
  

****
**** Massive China-Pakistan CPEC energy project said to end energy crisis 'soon'
****


Chinese coal-fired power plant (Reuters)

Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Planning and Development,
says that Pakistan's energy crisis will soon be over, thanks to the
announcement of the first project in the $55 billion 20-year
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

At a ground-breaking ceremony for two 660-megawatt coal-fired power
plants in Pakistan's Balochistan province, he welcomed China's initial
$2 billion investment, and said that they would be completed within
two years. He said that these power plans would be equipped with the
latest technology to generate electricity at low costs. The plants
will burn 3.8 million tons of coal per year, and would generate 9
billion kWh of electricity per year.

“We are grateful to the Chinese for their help,” said Iqbal,
describing CPEC as a "colossal project" that would be an important
milestone not only for Pakistan, but "for the entire region."

Over 10-20 years, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project
will build a network of roads, railways and energy pipelines aiming to
connect western Chinese cities, starting from Kashgar in China's
Xinjiang province, to the sea port in Gwadar on the Indian Ocean. It
will have both economic and military components. Power generation,
transport, commerce, R&D and the defense of Pakistan all will be
increasingly tied to Chinese investment, supplies and interests.

As long-time readers are aware, Generational Dynamics predicts that in
the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, China, Pakistan and
the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the US, India,
Russia and Iran. The development of CPEC is one more step along that
trend line. Pakistan Today and Express Tribune (Pakistan) and Dawn (Pakistan) and MWC

****
**** Skeptics claim that CPEC will only benefit China, not Pakistan
****

Many Pakistanis are pointing to a similar "gift" by China to Sri Lanka
that turned into a financial disaster for Sri Lanka. As we described in January,
China invested
$1.2 billion in a Sri Lanka seaport on the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka had expected to repay the debt through profits earned by the
port, but instead the port lost money, and the government faced a
disastrous debt. Sri Lanka's government was forced to give China a
99-year lease to take over the port, as a debt repayment. In
addition, China will lease 15,000 acres in the region for an
industrial zone for Chinese factories. Opponents say that thousands
of people will lose their homes because of the project. They say that
China will establish a "Chinese colony" on Sri Lankan soil that will
grow and can never be removed.

With Sri Lanka's experience in mind, senator Syed Tahir Hussain
Mashhadi said that the Chinese and Pakistan governments had failed to
spell out what benefits would come to Pakistan. "China is our brother,
but business is business."

Mashhadi said that Pakistan should repeat the mistake it made with
Nato in conjunction with the Afghanistan war. Military supplies for
Nato arrive at Pakistan's port in Karachi, and then travel in huge
trucks and tankers over Pakistan's highways and roads, ruining them,
according to Mashhad, with Pakistan getting nothing in return for the
damage they caused. According to Mashhadi:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Thousands of vehicles will cross the CPEC and there
> must be an agreement as to who will bear the roads and highways
> maintenance cost.
>
> It should also be made very clear as to who would get job
> opportunities in CPEC-related projects. Would Pakistani laborers
> and youth get jobs or mostly Chinese people would be engaged and
> get jobs in CPEC-related projects?"<END QUOTE>[/indent]

In fact, he was informed that only Chinese industrialists would be
allowed to set up their industries in the proposed economic zones
along the corridor.

Further studies by Pakistani analysts had led to the conclusions that,
based on interest rates normally charged by China Development Bank and
China EXIM Bank, the cost of borrowing will surge to 13%, including
insurance costs.

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Where will the benefit be for Pakistan? Will the
> Chinese give us some share of the profit? We are informed that
> Chinese banks charge us more interest than any other international
> bank."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The CPEC project will also bring about substantial demographic changes
in the province of Balochistan. The Baloch people are Shia Muslims of
Iranian descent, and have been the targets of numerous bloody
terrorist attacks by terror groups linked to the Pakistan Taliban and
to al-Qaeda. In addition, they've suffered economic discrimination
within Pakistan itself.

According to estimates from the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of
Commerce and Industry, the CPEC project will result in an inflow of
more than 600,000 Chinese people -- Chinese workers and their families
-- diluting that Baloch population. Baloch activists claim that
whatever economic benefits the CPEC project will bring to Pakistan,
most of the benefits will go to the favored Punjab province. The CPEC
project will use up all of Balochistan's natural resources, and the
Baloch people will get nothing from it.

These are issues and questions whose resolution may not be
forthcoming, in the current euphoria over the ground-breaking for the
two 660-megawatt coal-fired power plants. Dawn (Pakistan, 1-Mar) and
India Tribune and South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) and Newsgram

Related Articles

• Violent protests in Sri Lanka over China's takeover of Hambantota seaport (08-Jan-2017)
  

****
**** Pakistan will use dark financing to cover the cost of protecting Chinese workers
****

On October 24 of last year, at least 61 people, mostly fresh police
recruits, were killed and 117 injured in a terror attack on a Police
Training cottage in Quetta, the capital of the province of Balochistan
in Pakistan, and close to the location of the future coal-fired power
plant. The attackers were thought to be Afghan Uzbeks, affiliated
with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

ETIM is only one several jihadists terror groups that have been
attacking Shia Muslim targets in Balochistan. Besides groups
affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban, there are other groups
affiliated with ETIM, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU), the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), and
other activist groups from the Uighur community in China's Xinjiang
province, where the CPEC corridor will originate.

With 600,000 Chinese workers entering Pakistan every year, CPEC
projects and Chinese workers will with certainty be a target of ETIM.
Pakistan is creating a Special Security Division (SDD), a special
force of 15,000 police, army and paramilitary troops, charged with the
"security of Chinese on CPEC and non-CPEC projects." A successful
terrorist attack on CPEC could halt the project for months.

All this security is going to cost $155 million. In order to raise
this money, Pakistan plans to add these costs to people's utility
bills.

Security has been a major concern for the Chinese, and they have
emphasized this repeatedly. Dawn (Pakistan) and Daily Times (Pakistan) and Dawn (12-March)

Related Articles

• India and Pakistan in vitriolic accusations at the UN over Kashmir and Balochistan (18-Sep-2016)
  
  
• Terror attack in Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan, kills 75 (09-Aug-2016)
  
  
• Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) continues plan to exterminate Shias (03-Nov-2015)
  
  
• Iran closes border with Pakistan after terror attack in Balochistan (10-Jun-2014)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Pakistan, Balochistan, Baloch, Ahsan Iqbal,
China, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC,
Kashgar, Xinjiang, Gwardar port, Sri Lanka,
Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, Nato, Karachi, Afghanistan,
Pakistan Taliban, al-Qaeda, East Turkestan Islamic Movement, ETIM,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 24-Mar-17 World View -- With Egypt's contraceptive shortage, Cairo becomes the world's fastest growing city

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Cairo, Egypt, becomes the world's fastest growing city
  
• Shortage of contraceptives and culture of large families spur Egypt's population growth
  

****
**** Cairo, Egypt, becomes the world's fastest growing city
****


Downtown Cairo on March 9 (Reuters)

Cairo, the capital city of Egypt, already has a population of 22.8
million people, and is set to grow by another 500,000 in 2017, making
it the world's fastest growing city.

Egypt as a whole has a natural population growth of 2.4% per year,
double the average of other developing countries. Its current
population is 92 million.

The "good" economic news is that Egypt's surging population growth has
made the country the world's fastest-growing real estate market, with
an expected annual expansion of 18.9% mortgaged households in 2017
alone. The world's second and third fastest growing real estate
markets are Algeria and Nigeria, respectively. Africa and the Middle
East are home finance hotspots, due to their large and growing
populations seeking infrastructure and residential units to resolve
urban housing shortages.

The "bad" economic news is that Egypt's surging population growth,
combined with overdevelopment of the Nile Delta, and the looming
completion of Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam, which could affect the flow
of water in the Nile River, will cause Egypt to face critical
countrywide shortages of freshwater and food by the year 2025.

According to a study by the Geological Society of America:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"About 70% of water flow reaching Egypt is derived
> from the Blue Nile and Atbara River, both sourced in
> Ethiopia. Over the past 200 years, rapidly increasing human
> activity has seriously altered flow conditions of the
> Nile. Emplacement in Egypt of barrages in the 1800s, construction
> the Aswan Low Dam in 1902, and the Aswan High Dam in 1965 has
> since altered water flow and distribution of nourishing
> organic-rich soil in the delta.
>
> Egypt's population has recently swelled rapidly to about 90
> million, with most living in the soil-rich Lower Nile Valley and
> Delta. These two areas comprise only about 3.5% of Egypt's total
> area, the remainder being mostly sandy desert. Due to
> much-intensified human impact, the delta no longer functions as a
> naturally expanding fluvial-coastal center. Less than 10% of Nile
> water now reaches the sea, and most of the nutrient-rich sediment
> is trapped in the delta by a dense canal and irrigation
> system. ...
>
> [Furthermore,] saline intrusion is now reaching agricultural
> terrains in central delta sectors -- the coastal 20 to 40 km of
> delta surface will be underwater by the end of this century.
>
> There is an additional looming danger of considerable importance:
> Ethiopia, itself energy-poor and undergoing drought conditions, is
> shortly (in 2017) to complete construction of the largest
> hydro-electric dam in Africa, its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
> (GERD). The large reservoir behind the dam is to be filled over a
> three- to five-year or longer period, during which it is expected
> that the amount of Nile flow to the Sudan and Egypt and its delta
> will be substantially reduced.
>
> This down-river decrease of Nile fresh water will produce grave
> conditions. The pre-GERD Nile flow now barely supplies 97% of
> Egypt's present water needs with only 660 cubic meters per person,
> one of the world's lowest annual per capita water
> shares."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The report concludes that Egypt will have critical countrywide fresh
water and food shortages by 2025. Egyptian Streets and Reuters and Geological Society of America

Related Articles

• Egypt accused of 'dirty deal' to sabotage an Ethiopian dam project (05-Feb-2017)
  

****
**** Shortage of contraceptives and culture of large families spur Egypt's population growth
****

Egypt must import almost all medicines or their components, which
makes the cost of these medicines dependent on the foreign exchange
rate of the Egyptian pound currency versus the US dollar. After Egypt
floated the pound in November, inflation has been soaring, and the
inflation rate jumped to a record 31.7% in February. The result is
that import prices of medicines have soared as well, with drug prices
now out of reach for many families.

Some medicines are price-controlled by the government, but this has
created shortages and hoarding. So even if a family can afford the
cost of a drug, in many cases it's completely unavailable.

In particular, this has resulted in a shortage not only of
contraceptive pills, but of all birth control methods in general.

However, there's also a social culture in Egypt that encourages
families to have many children. According to surveys, About 90
percent of Egyptian women and 87 percent of men between the ages of 15
and 49 believe that contraceptives should only be used after the first
child.

An article quotes a poor Cairo resident of being pressured to have
more children, after he'd already had four. After being taunted by
his neighbors, insulting his manhood, he persuaded his wife to go off
birth control. Over the next four years, they had three more children.
He says:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"My father had many, many children, my grandfather had
> many, many children, and everyone here has many children. It’s
> not easy to do something different."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

He regrets these decisions, however, as his small salary is barely
enough to feed his family, which subsists on stewed fava beans and
bread, and his children can't afford to go to school.

A 2015 study by Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population found the
following:

• While around 9 in 10 women and men approve of the use of
  family planning after the first birth, only 8% of women and 10 percent
  of men believe it appropriate for a couple to use family planning
  before they have their first child.
  
  
• Around 4 in 10 women and men think it is ideal for children to be
  born two years or less apart; children born at such closely spaced
  intervals have a much higher risk of dying in early childhood than
  children born at longer intervals after a prior birth.
  
  
• The mean ideal number of children among men is 10% higher than
  women’s ideal number (3.4 and 3.1 children, respectively).
  
  
• The average preferred family size among men in rural Upper Egypt
  and in the three surveyed Frontier Governorates is 3.9 children.
  
  
• Three in four women and men think it is best for a girl to marry
  by age 20, while only 13% of women and 19% of men think a man should
  marry by that age.

Egyptian Streets and Newsweek and Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population (PDF)

Related Articles

• Sunni Muslim population growth exacerbates food crisis (22-Nov-2010)
  
  
• Egypt fears more social unrest after sharp devaluation of currency (05-Nov-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Egypt, Cairo, Ethiopia, Renaissance Dam,
Aswan Low Dam, Aswan High Dam

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 25-Mar-17 World View -- US resettlement of refugees from Australia's detention centers is about to begin

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Analysts skeptical of ISIS claiming responsibility for London terror attack
  
• US resettlement of refugees from Australia's detention centers is about to begin
  

****
**** Analysts skeptical of ISIS claiming responsibility for London terror attack
****


Khalid Masood before converting to Islam (ITV)

On Wednesday, at 2:30 pm local time, Khalid Masood ploughed the car
into a crowd of pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. He then smashed it
into the railings encircling the Palace of Westminster. He jumped out
of the vehicle and, armed with two large knives, fatally stabbed an
unarmed police officer as he entered the grounds. He ran towards the
palace, but was shot dead by another police officer.

Khalid Masood was born in 1964 in Kent, England, to a single mother,
and named Adrian Russell Ajao at birth. He used the alias Khalid
Choudry after converting to Islam, and later adopted the name Khalid
Masood. He was married with several children.

The so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) claimed
responsibility for the attack, calling Masood a "soldier" of the
caliphate who "carried out the operation in response to calls to
target the people of coalition nations."

ISIS has been developing a pattern of claiming responsibility for
terror attacks in Afghanistan, Taliban, Bangladesh, and other
countries, when it had nothing to do with them. In some cases, the
indigenous group carrying out the attack had pledged allegiance to
ISIS, but in no case that I'm aware of has ISIS leader Abu Omar
al-Baghdadi told some of his thugs in Syria to pack their bags and
travel to another country to blow up a marketplace.

In the case of Masood, there's no evidence that he had ever
communicated with ISIS, or that ISIS had ever heard of him before
Wednesday. Some evidence could still emerge, of course, but until it
does we have to assume that the ISIS claims are just bloviation.

ISIS is facing an existential crisis, under attack by American, Iraqi,
Syrian, Russian, Free Syrian Army, and Kurdish forces in Iraq and
Syria. ISIS has lost much of the territory it formerly controlled,
and is now under attack in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria. The battles
in these two cities are far from over, and may be extremely bloody for
months to come.

But ISIS appears to have lost its magic power to continue to attract
young jihadists from around the world to come and fight Syria's
president Bashar al-Assad. Instead, it's using desperation measures,
claiming credit for any terror attack, in order to try to
bolster its prestige.

The worry today is that the jihadists that traveled to Syria from over
80 countries to join ISIS are now returning to their home countries to
continue their fight there.
ITV (London) and NBC News

Related Articles

• US military commitments grow in Afghanistan and Syria (11-Mar-2017)
  

****
**** US resettlement of refugees from Australia's detention centers is about to begin
****

Officials from the US Department of Homeland Security have been
distributing documents to refugees in Australia's offshore detention
centers informing them of the application process for resettlement in
the United States.

This appears to be the first step in fulfilling a promise made in a
deal in November between President Barack Obama and Australia's Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull to allow 1,250 refugees being held in
Australia's refugee centers to be resettled in the United States.

The refugees, from countries like Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan, are
living in two "detention centers" on Pacific islands, one on Papua New
Guinea's (PNG's) Manus Island, and one on the island nation of Nauru,
under agreements that Australia reached with both countries. However,
the United Nations and international refugee activists have condemned
the refugee camps, saying that under international law, valid asylum
seekers should be resettled on Australian soil. Australia has
resisted that in order to discourage human trafficking of refugees to
Australia.

Early in February, President Donald Trump called it "the worst deal
ever," but promised to honor the deal because he was bound by
agreements made by the previous administration. He confirmed that the
US will take in up to 1,250 of these refugees, after subjecting each
of them to "extreme vetting."

Although things have been moving slowly, it now appears that the
application process for the refugees is about to begin. The process
will begin when US officials travel to Manus and Nauru Island to
collect fingerprints from refugees applying for resettlement in the
United States. They'll arrive on Nauru this week, and on Manus Island
in April. After that, the refugees will sit through face-to-face
interviews, security assessments and medical checks.

The document being distributed is titled: "US Refugee Admissions
Program (USRAP), Case Processing on Nauru and Manus, Resettlement
Support Center (RSC) Interviews."

Resettlement Support Centers (RSCs) are US State Dept. funded
organizations that process resettlement applications from refugees
around the world. There are nine RSCs in countries around the world,
funded by the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. According to the
program's web site, the average time for an application to be
processed is 18-24 months, although that time will probably be reduced
under the agreement between the US and Australia. Australian Broadcasting and US State Dept. Refugee Admissions Program and US Refugee Admissions Program document (PDF)

Related Articles

• Trump will honor Australia refugee deal, despite calling it 'worst deal ever' (06-Feb-2017)
  
  
• Hundreds of Australian migrants to be resettled in the United States (11-Nov-2016)
  
  
• Australia to send 'boat people' to Papua New Guinea (21-Jul-2013)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Britain, Westminster,
Khalid Masood, Khalid Choudry, Adrian Russell Ajao,
Iraq, Mosul, Syria, Raqqa, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, Papua New Guinea, PNG, Manus Island, Nauru,
Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan,
State Dept., Resettlement Support Centers, RSC, Refugee Admissions Program

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 26-Mar-17 World View -- Iraq halts Mosul operation after US coalition airstrikes kill hundreds of civilians

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• US confirms that US coalition airstrikes on Mosul killed hundreds of civilians on March 17
  
• Iraq halts the Mosul operation under international pressure
  

****
**** US confirms that US coalition airstrikes on Mosul killed hundreds of civilians on March 17
****


A boy rides his bike past destroyed cars and houses in a neighborhood recently liberated by Iraqi security forces on the western side of Mosul on March 19, 2017. (AP)

The US Central Command confirmed on Saturday that multiple airstrikes
on March 17 had killed dozens of civilians, while other reports claim
that the number killed was as high as 200. The airstrikes were
launched at targets belonging to the so-called Islamic State (IS or
ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) in western Mosul in Iraq. The United Nations
expressed profound concern, saying it was "stunned by this terrible
loss of life."

The military operation to free Mosul from ISIS is now in its sixth
month. The operation has recaptured the entire eastern side
of Mosul, east of the Tigris River, and about half of the
western side. Iraq's Shia army are leading the operation
on the ground, backed by coalition airstrikes.

Stories have been surfacing in the last few days of the civilian death
from the airstrikes. The US military investigated, revealing that the
coalition had struck fighters and equipment in an area in western
Mosul that matched the reports of civilian casualties. Saturday's
announcement said:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"At the request of the Iraqi Security Forces, the
> Coalition struck ISIS fighters and equipment, March 17, in West
> Mosul at the location corresponding to allegations of civilian
> casualties. ...
>
> The Coalition respects human life, which is why we are assisting
> our Iraqi partner forces in their effort to liberate their lands
> from ISIS brutality.
>
> Our goal has always been for zero civilian casualties, but the
> coalition will not abandon our commitment to our Iraqi partners
> because of ISIS’ inhuman tactics terrorizing civilians, using
> human shields, and fighting from protected sites such as schools,
> hospitals, religious sites and civilian
> neighborhoods."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The announcement didn't identity which country's aircraft conducted
the airstrikes. Warplanes from Australia, France, Belgium, Britain
and the United States have all been heavily engaged in the Mosul
operation.

According to reports from residents, ISIS is using civilians as human
shields. The tactic is to gather dozens of civilians into a building,
and then take up positions on the roofs, firing at Iraqi soldiers.
When the Iraqi forces request a coalition airstrike targeting the ISIS
fighters, the civilians in the building are vulnerable.

In the case of the March 17 strike, some reports indicate that the
airstrike hit explosions that had been laid in the house by ISIS, and
the explosion collapsed the entire building, trapping or killing the
civilians inside.

The assault on ISIS in western Mosul is only just beginning,
with the worst yet to come. The urban warfare is extremely intense.
According to one Iraqi commando:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The fighting is at much closer quarters. It was
> street-by-street — now it’s house-by-house. We are often
> literally in the same house, on the roof, and [ISIS] is
> downstairs. Sometimes we drop grenades. If there are civilians,
> families in the homes, we shout to them to take cover inside a
> room."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

There are still some 600,000 civilians believed to remain in ISIS-held
areas. These civilians are essentially trapped. If they remain, then
they may be killed by an airstrike or in the crossfire in the fighting
between the Iraqis and ISIS. ISIS is refusing to allow them to leave,
and any civilians that try to leave can be shot on sight by ISIS.
News.com (Australia) and Reuters

****
**** Iraq halts the Mosul operation under international pressure
****

The civilian death toll in the Mosul operation is being described by
as "a humanitarian catastrophe," and pressure is growing to change
tactics.

Lise Grande, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq
issued the usual kind of laughable statement that's always coming out
of the United Nations:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"We are stunned by this terrible loss of life and wish
> to express our deepest condolences to the many families who have
> reportedly been impacted by this tragedy.
>
> Nothing in this conflict is more important than protecting
> civilians. International humanitarian law is clear. Parties to
> the conflict – all parties – are obliged to do everything possible
> to protect civilians.
>
> This means that combatants cannot use people as human shields and
> cannot imperil lives through indiscriminate use of
> firepower."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

We can imagine ISIS leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi saying, "Oh no! I
didn't know using human shields violated international humanitarian
law. We'll stop doing it immediately!"

However, pressure is also growing from Iraqi politicians and
international activists. The result is that Iraq has ordered the
Mosul operation to be halted immediately, until the situation can be
reassessed. According to an Iraqi Federal Police spokesman on
Saturday:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The recent high death toll among civilians inside the
> Old City [of Mosul] forced us to halt operations to review our
> plans. It's a time for weighing new offensive plans and
> tactics. No combat operations are to go on.
>
> We need to make sure that taking out [ISIS] from the Old City will
> not cost unwanted high casualties among civilians. We need
> surgical accurate operations to target terrorists without causing
> collateral damage among residents."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

President Donald Trump in January issued an executive order demanding
a new plan to defeat ISIS from his military. The new plan arrived on
his desk in February but has not been detailed in public. Some
activists are suggesting that a change in the rules of engagement
under President Trump is leading to an increase in civilian
casualties. Independent (London) and Rudaw (Kurdistan)

Related Articles

• Concerns grow over chaos in Iraq after ISIS is defeated in Mosul (22-Mar-2017)
  
  
• Unrealistic expectations surround the battle to recapture Mosul from ISIS (20-Oct-2016)
  
  
• Iraq in major crisis after catastrophic fall of Mosul to ISIS (11-Jun-2014)
  
  
• Iraq, ISIS and the West prepare for the Great Battle for Mosul to begin soon (01-Oct-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Iraq, Mosul, US Central Command,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Australia, France, Belgium, Britain
Lise Grande, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 27-Mar-17 World View -- Thousands are arrested in Russia as tens of thousands protest in cities across country

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Thousands are arrested in Russia as tens of thousands protest in cities across country
  
• Massive protests were triggered by opposition leader Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption drive
  

****
**** Thousands are arrested in Russia as tens of thousands protest in cities across country
****


Opposition leader Alexei Navalny arrested during Sunday's protests (EPA)

In the largest protests that Russia has seen since 2012, demonstrators
in cities across Russia held large anti-government demonstrations,
protesting government corruption. Ekho Moskvy, an independent Moscow
radio station, estimated a total of 60,000 people participated in 82
protests around the country.

Officials said that there were 8,000 protesters in Moscow's Pushkin
Square, while activists claim that the number of protesters was closer
to 20,000.Police used truncheons and pepper spray to disperse the
protesters, and close to 1,000 were arrested. Russian state TV did
not cover the protests, showing soap operas and nature films instead.

In St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, about 5,000-10,000
protesters assembled in the Mars Field park, shouting slogans
including "Putin resign!" and "Down with the thieves in the Kremlin!"
More than 100 were arrested.

About 2,000 gathered in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, carrying
signs such as "No to corruption." 1,500 people turned out in each of
the Siberian cities of Krasnoyarsk and Omsk. In the Urals city of
Yekaterinburg, about 1,000 people turned up. In Russia's Far East,
about 700 people turned up in the city of Vladivostok, where at least
25 people were arrested. Bloomberg and Russia Today and BBC and Politico EU

****
**** Massive protests were triggered by opposition leader Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption drive
****

One of the people arrested in Moscow on Sunday was Alexei Navalny,
head of Russia's Progress Party, and Russia's main opposition leader.
Navalny triggered the protests earlier this week by publicly calling
for marches across the country to protest corruption at Russia's top
level.

Three weeks ago, Navalny released a 50-minute slickly produced
Youtube video, accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of controlling a
property empire containing mansions, yachts and vineyards, through a
shadowy network of nonprofit organizations.

The video is in Russian, but has English subtitles and is quite
entertaining to watch. It describes how Navalny conducted a
three-year investigation that purports to show how Medvedev used his
twitter account to mask millions of dollars in illegal gifts, passing
through "The Foundation For Socially Important Projects." According
to Navalny, it was the silliness of that name that triggered further
investigation.

The video has been watched some 13 million times. Navalny is also a
master at the use of social media, which explains why he was so
successful in bringing out tens of thousands of protesters in cities
across Russia on Sunday.

Some of the demonstrators on Sunday held up yellow rubber ducks.
That's because one of the enormous estates that Medvedev allegedly
owns has many buildings, including a sanctuary for ducks.

Navalny plans to run for President against Vladimir Putin next year,
though technically he is not eligible to run because of a previous
criminal conviction.

Daily Mail and Moscow Times and YouTube - Navalny documentary and Moscow Times (15-Sep-2016)

Related Articles

• Hundreds of thousands in Moscow in pro- and anti-Putin rallies (05-Feb-2012)
  
  
• The 'Pussy Riot' trial in Russia becomes a defining political event (12-Aug-2012)
  
  
• Russian police in Moscow arrest hundreds of protesters (08-May-2012)
  
  
• Russia's nationalists turn against Putin (05-Nov-2012)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Moscow, Vladimir Putin,
Dmitry Medvedev, The Foundation For Socially Important Projects,
Ekho Moskvy, Alexei Navalny, Progress Party

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 28-Mar-17 World View -- Bangladesh recovers from a four-day terror attack in Sylhet

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Bangladesh recovers from a four-day terror attack in Sylhet
  
• ISIS claims credit for Sylhet Bangladesh terror attack
  

****
**** Bangladesh recovers from a four-day terror attack in Sylhet
****


Apartment building in Sylhet were terror attack took place (ISPR)

Bangladesh's army on Monday said that all militants involved in a
four-day terror attack in Sylhet, in northeastern Bangladesh, have
been killed. The army says that the anti-terrorism operation has not
yet been completed, because the building may be booby-trapped with
numerous improvised explosive devices.

The army commandos on Monday shot dead the remaining militants wearing
suicide vests. The militants were equipped with small arms,
explosives and grenades, and laid out booby traps at different corners
of the building, creating a situation which slowed down the operations
progress at the building.

The four-day siege began on Friday. On Saturday, two powerful bombs
exploded, killing six people, including two police officers, and
injuring about 50, including two army officers. Since Friday, 12
people have been killed.

One of the dead militants was a woman, part of an increasing trend in
the participation of female jihadists. Bangladesh's police crime
management believes that the use of women is a sign of desperation, as
the militant groups become weaker:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Militants now cannot carry out their activities in an
> organized way as they've got scattered due to repeated crackdowns
> by Police and RAB. So, they're now desperate and preferring to
> conduct suicide attacks. As they're getting alienated from their
> own groups, the militants are now trying to motivate their family
> members to indulge in militant activities."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The Bangladeshi authorities discovered the first female jihadist unit
in July 2016, and arrested four female militants, including the
"advisor" of the women's unit.

Dhaka Tribune and India TV News and South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India)


****
**** ISIS claims credit for Sylhet Bangladesh terror attack
****

There are numerous indigenous militant groups in Bangladesh, most
notably Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which has taken credit
for a number of terrorist attacks. In recent months, terror attacks
in Bangladesh have killed at least 70 Bangladeshis and some
foreigners.

No indigenous jihadist group has taken credit for the Sylhet terror
attack, although JMB is suspected as the perpetrator. On the other
hand, the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) has
taken credit for it, through its public relations agency Amaq
al-Akhbariyah.

The ISIS question has stirred a debate in Bangladesh. The government
says that ISIS has not come to Bangladesh, and that all terror attacks
are indigenous. Some journalists are ridiculing this position. One
particularly telling example occurred in July of last year, at the
Holey Artisan in Dhaka, where five gunmen killed 29 people. ISIS's
public relations agency posted pictures of some of the dead victims on
its web site while the terror attack was still in progress.

So what does it mean for ISIS, which is a Syrian organization, to take
credit for a terror attack halfway around the world in Bangladesh? No
reports indicate that there were any Syrians in Bangladesh taking part
in any of these attacks. The militants were all Bangladeshi. So what
does it mean for ISSI to take credit?

We know that some militant groups "pledge allegiance" to ISIS,
whatever that means. Obviously, in the case of the Holey Artisan
attacks, indigenous militants can be in contact via mobile phones to
ISIS's public relations agency. Perhaps ISIS is providing money to
some indigenous militant groups, but that seems unlikely, given that
ISIS in Syria has little money to spare for its own operations.

There's a creeping fear that ISIS taking over the world, when in fact,
as far as I know, ISIS is simply taking credit for any terror attacks
it can, even though it has nothing to do with them. That's a great
public relations stunt, but it seems more like a sign of desperation
than anything else.

However, as I've written several times in the past, many of these
terror attacks are an outcome of the bloody civil war of 1971 that
created the nation of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan. There are
two ethnic groups in Bangladesh, the dominant Bengalis and the
subservient Biharis, an outcome of the the 1971 civil war. Today,
there are hundreds of thousands of Biharis living in refugee camps in
filthy conditions, with the largest camp just north of Dhaka. This
situation is a breeding ground for terrorists, and is a better
explanation for what's going on than ISIS. Daily Star (Dhaka) and Dhaka Tribune and VOA and AP

Related Articles

• Bangladesh tries to recover from Dhaka terror attack, the worst in 40 years (03-Jul-2016)
  
  
• Bangladesh in shock after university professor hacked to death (24-Apr-2016)
  
  
• Bangladesh government arrests 3,192 people to stop terrorist killings (12-Jun-2016)
  
  
• FBI will aid Bangladesh investigation of border guard officer massacre (04-Mar-2009)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Bangladesh, Sylhet, Dhaka,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Amaq al-Akhbariyah, Bengalis, Biharis,
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, JMB, East Pakistan

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 29-Mar-17 World View -- Asians in Paris, France, riot for two nights after police kill Chinese man

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Asians in Paris, France, riot for two nights after police kill Chinese man
  
• French-Chinese xenophobia appears to be growing in Paris
  

****
**** Asians in Paris, France, riot for two nights after police kill Chinese man
****


Asian community protests on Tuesday evening in Paris against police killing of Chinese man (AP)

A 56-year old Chinese man, Shaoyo Liu, was shot to death by police
during a raid on his apartment on Sunday.

Two policemen from the "anti-crime brigade" (BAC) came to the
apartment in response to reports of a "family dispute." According to
the police, Liu ran to one of the policemen carrying a pair of
scissors, and stabbed one of them in the chest. He was saved only
because he was wearing a bulletproof vest. At that point, the other
policeman shot him, leading to his death minutes later.

Liu was the father of five children. His family disputes the police
version of the story, and says that Liu came to the door carrying
scissors because he had been using them to prepare fish for dinner,
but didn't stab anyone. According to one of Liu's daughters in tears:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"About eight o'clock, my little sister heard knocking
> at the door. She looked at the hole in the door and saw two men
> and an armed woman. My father came to the door with the scissors
> he had to take care of the fish he was cooking. The blows at the
> door became stronger and stronger. I shouted 'Calm down,' make
> less noise, but nothing made it. They smashed the door, the shot
> was gone and my father found himself on the ground."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

On Monday evening 200 members of the Asian community gathered in front
of the police station to protest the killing. The protest began
peacefully, but then individuals broke the window of a police car and
threw an incendiary device inside, creating a fire that bured the
vehicle out. 35 people were arrested.

On Tuesday evening, hundreds of protesters returned to the police
station to demonstrate, chanting "police assassin," "police murderer"
or "injustice, injustice." The crowd turned violent, and the police
fired teargas to disperse them.

According to one protester, "There are two versions, that of the
police which speaks of self-defense and that of the family which says
that it is a crime. What is happening, there is no reason to believe
the police."

China's foreign ministry lodged an official protest, urging a full
French investigation and for Chinese people's "security and rights" to
be protected. Le Parisien (Paris) (Trans) and Europe1 (Paris) (Trans) and BBC

****
**** French-Chinese xenophobia appears to be growing in Paris
****

The incident has sparked a diplomatic row with Beijing. On Tuesday,
the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned a French diplomat and urged the
French authorities to investigate the killing thoroughly and to ensure
the safety of Chinese nationals on French soil.

In 2008, in the lead-up to the Olympics games to be held in China, the
Olympic torch was being carried through Europe by Jin Jing, a pretty
27 year old girl from Shanghai confined to a wheelchair, part of
China's national wheelchair fencing team. As I wrote in 2008, anti-Chinese xenophobia was
extremely high, as there were intense protests in London and Paris
against allowing Jin Jing to carry the torch in Europe. British
politician Lord Sebastian Coe, himself a former Olympic athlete,
condemned the army of Chinese "thugs" accompanying Jin Jing, referring
to the security personnel protecting her. An article in the German
magazine Der Spiegel referred to the Chinese with the
headline, "There's no way people like that should be allowed on our
streets." In Paris, on April 7, a Tibetan separatist attacked Jin
Jing as she was carrying the torch down a Paris street.

There are about 392,700 Chinese in England and Wales, and about
600,000 in France, which has the largest Chinese population in Europe.
Chinese people in Europe claim that racism against Chinese is
widespread, and that complaints to the police about physical and
verbal abuse are ignored. According to a poll, there's a general
belief in the Chinese community that reporting crime is futile, and
half the people say that they don't trust the police.

As I've been writing for over ten years, America and much of the world
are in a generational Crisis era, which is always accompanied by a
rise in nationalism and xenophobia. The survivors of World War II
were well aware how dangerous nationalism and xenophobia can be, and
they put in place rules and institutions to prevent it from occurring
again.

This past weekend was the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the
Treaty of Rome that formed the basis for the European Union. In 1957,
the traumatized leaders of the day had suffered through two world wars
in Europe, and were determined to form a new unified Europe that would
guarantee that no such war would occur again. Few people are missing
the irony that Britain was missing for the weekend's celebration of
the Treaty of Rome, since Britain, one of the original signers, is
leaving the EU because of the Brexit vote.

Nationalism and xenophobia are extremely dangerous, but as the
survivors of the previous generational crisis war die off, the younger
generations have no fear of nationalism and xenophobia, and they begin
to increase again, eventually leading to a new generational crisis
war. I've documented numerous examples in country after country of
the rise of xenophobia and nationalism in the current generational
Crisis era -- the rise of xenophobia and nationalism. This has
happened in China vs Japan, China vs Vietnam, India vs Pakistan,
Europe vis-à-vis the Muslims and the Roma, and America vis-à-vis the
Muslims and the Mexicans. These attitudes cannot be stopped. They
come from masses of people, not from the leaders, whose job becomes to
deal with these populist attitudes in a way that does the least amount
of damage.

Still, the anti-Chinese riots are part of a global trend that cannot
be stopped, and it will take another world war for people to learn how
dangerous nationalism and xenophobia can be. Daily Mail (London - 8-Apr-2008) and BBC (1-Jun-2015) and Global Times (Beijing) and Washington Post

Related Articles

• Chinese embarrassment and anger grows over Tibet and Olympics (12-Apr-2008)
  
• American xenophobia on the Left and on the Right (07-Nov-2010)
  
  
• The global rise of xenophobia (22-Aug-2010)
  
  
• Protests grow over Trump's executive order to restrict immigration (29-Jan-2017)
  
  
• Angela Merkel tries to unify a fractured Europe on its 50th birthday (25-Mar-2007)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, France, Paris, anti-crime brigade, BAC,
China, Shaoyo Liu, 2008 Olympics, Jin Jing, Lord Sebastian Coe

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-28-2017, 10:20 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: *** 29-Mar-17 World View -- Asians in Paris, France, riot for two nights after police kill Chinese man
<snip>
****
**** French-Chinese xenophobia appears to be growing in Paris
****

<snip>
As I've been writing for over ten years, America and much of the world
are in a generational Crisis era, which is always accompanied by a
rise in nationalism and xenophobia.  The survivors of World War II
were well aware how dangerous nationalism and xenophobia can be, and
they put in place rules and institutions to prevent it from occurring
again.

This past weekend was the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the
Treaty of Rome that formed the basis for the European Union.  In 1957,
the traumatized leaders of the day had suffered through two world wars
in Europe, and were determined to form a new unified Europe that would
guarantee that no such war would occur again.  Few people are missing
the irony that Britain was missing for the weekend's celebration of
the Treaty of Rome, since Britain, one of the original signers, is
leaving the EU because of the Brexit vote.

Nationalism and xenophobia are extremely dangerous, but as the
survivors of the previous generational crisis war die off, the younger
generations have no fear of nationalism and xenophobia, and they begin
to increase again, eventually leading to a new generational crisis
war.  I've documented numerous examples in country after country of
the rise of xenophobia and nationalism in the current generational
Crisis era -- the rise of xenophobia and nationalism.  This has
happened in China vs Japan, China vs Vietnam, India vs Pakistan,
Europe vis-à-vis the Muslims and the Roma, and America vis-à-vis the
Muslims and the Mexicans.  These attitudes cannot be stopped.  They
come from masses of people, not from the leaders, whose job becomes to
deal with these populist attitudes in a way that does the least amount
of damage.



John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum:    http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

And... So, John, here's why I'm a nationalist:  Have you ever considered that globalism has totally ruined the lives of lots of Americans?  As some may recall, I lost my job to some stupid H1-B. I think a better way of expressing the drivers of nationalism are resentment towards elites, my own economic distress caused by globalism.  Nationalism is the solution to that. It's not perfect, but the only way I see to address said resentments. In fact, I'd like the US to become an economic autarky. The US has a sufficient array of technology and natural resources to go that way. The way I see it, is that the elites would suffer greatly from autarky. It goes like this John, they fucked me over and I want revenge and a chance at something better. Face it, if you're a prole, the current arrangement has lots of better outcomes.  And... so I say again, shut down the MIC! I really don't give a shit if the shipping lanes are not defended by my tax dollars. If the exporting nations want to send their crap here, let THEM PAY, and if not, just let the whole rotten system collapse.

Fuck the MIC, fuck the oligarchies who benefit from my tax dollars going to defend THEIR shipping lanes. If said oligarchies want to import crap, LET THEM PAY, I want nothing of it. In fact, I opt out as much as I can to further the cause of collapse.  The US is just like the Soviet Union. The elites serve only themselves, period.  So.. I think elite overreach is the proximate cause of nationalism/xenophobia.

[John J. Xenakis]

(03-28-2017, 11:43 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: > And... So, John, here's why I'm a nationalist: Have you ever
> considered that globalism has totally ruined the lives of lots of
> Americans? As some may recall, I lost my job to some stupid
> H1-B. I think a better way of expressing the drivers of
> nationalism are resentment towards elites, my own economic
> distress caused by globalism. Nationalism is the solution to
> that. It's not perfect, but the only way I see to address said
> resentments. In fact, I'd like the US to become an economic
> autarky. The US has a sufficient array of technology and natural
> resources to go that way. The way I see it, is that the elites
> would suffer greatly from autarky. It goes like this John, they
> fucked me over and I want revenge and a chance at something
> better. Face it, if you're a prole, the current arrangement has
> lots of better outcomes. And... so I say again, shut down the
> MIC! I really don't give a shit if the shipping lanes are not
> defended by my tax dollars. If the exporting nations want to send
> their crap here, let THEM PAY, and if not, just let the whole
> rotten system collapse.

> Fuck the MIC, fuck the oligarchies who benefit from my tax dollars
> going to defend THEIR shipping lanes. If said oligarchies want to
> import crap, LET THEM PAY, I want nothing of it. In fact, I opt
> out as much as I can to further the cause of collapse. The US is
> just like the Soviet Union. The elites serve only themselves,
> period. So.. I think elite overreach is the proximate cause of
> nationalism/xenophobia.

What's MIC?

I understand your feelings, and I even share some of them, though not
with your vitriolic fervor, and even though one commenter once called
me a "globalist scumbag."

What I'm saying is that your feelings are becoming increasingly
common, especially among younger generations, and that nationalism and
xenophobia are both occurring in nations around the world in this
generational Crisis era, that these feelings can't be stopped, and
that they're going to lead to a world war.

[Kinser79]

MIC=Military Industrial Complex.

[John J. Xenakis]

(03-29-2017, 01:38 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: > MIC=Military Industrial Complex.

Thanks!

Ike must feel honored to be so well remembered.

[Cynic Hero '86]

(03-29-2017, 01:43 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(03-29-2017, 01:38 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: >   MIC=Military Industrial Complex.

Thanks!

Ike must feel honored to be so well remembered.

The MIC should have been implemented even more and expanded, Ike blundered by putting it under civilian supervision. Then the boombers embracing the selfish and decadent values of "world peace" and globalism began dismantling it altogether. Trump wants to convert the nation into a military state but boomer elites refuse to allow him to do so.

[John J. Xenakis]

(03-29-2017, 03:04 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > The MIC should have been implemented even more and expanded, Ike
> blundered by putting it under civilian supervision. Then the
> boombers embracing the selfish and decadent values of "world
> peace" and globalism began dismantling it altogether. Trump wants
> to convert the nation into a military state but boomer elites
> refuse to allow him to do so.

Once again, consistent with your glowing view of the "highly capable
and efficient" nature of Hitler's Nazi government.