Generational Dynamics World View

[Warren Dew]

(09-29-2017, 10:15 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Bannon and Kissinger share the view that China and America are headed
for a world war, and both are them are (in my view) desperately
looking for a way to avoid it, by means of an economic alliance.

From where I stand, that may be accurate for Kissinger, but exactly wrong for Bannon; he seems to want to start a trade war with China that will necessarily lead to a hot war with China.

Quote:From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, avoiding this world
war is impossible.  In every century for millennia, every continent of
the world has had massive wars that have killed half the population.
In the last century, there were two world wars, plus additional
massive wars in Africa, China, South America and South Asia.  That
this will happen in this century is 100% certain.

Avoiding the world war is impossible, but minimizing its impact on the US is not.  Your view that the US will necessarily be on the opposite side from China is, as I've pointed out before, based on misreadings of Chinese history; the last time you claimed this, it was on the basis that China was the successor state to the mongols.  In reality, the successor state to the mongols, to the extent there is one, is Kazakhstan, or more broadly the central Asian Islamic states.  A crisis war that starts with them may actually be relatively benign to the US, since it hits Asia first, and allows us to wait and step in on the appropriate side to maintain a balance of power.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 2-Oct-17 World View -- Cameroon police shoot and kill English-speaking protesters on Sunday

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Cameroon police shoot and kill English-speaking protesters on Sunday
  
• Catalonia's leader says the region has 'won the right to statehood' from Spain
  

****
**** Cameroon police shoot and kill English-speaking protesters on Sunday
****


Cameroon police with riot shields in the Anglophone region on Sunday (AFP)

With separatist movements growing in Spain's Catalonia region and in
Iraq's Kurdistan region, activists in the marginalized Anglophone
(English-speaking) regions of Cameroon are demanding independence for
Ambazonia, the name that the separatists give to the Southern
Cameroons, the home of most of the Anglophone people of Cameroon.

Cameroon's majority Francophone (French-speaking) government has
responded by sending in troops to into the Southern Cameroons to stop
the protests with force. Over the weekend, soldiers shot and killed
at least seven people and wounded dozens others in several cities in
the confrontations.

Unrest began late last year when Anglophone lawyers protested that the
legal and court systems are biased toward Francophones, with many laws
passed without even being translated into English. Anglophone
teachers also went on strike last year, protesting that all courses in
the schools had to be taught in French, and that any use of English
was forbidden.

The police and the army violently dispersed the demonstrators at that
time. Several people were severely beaten, dozens of others were
arrested and at least two people were shot dead, leading to riots.

On December 8, a pro-government rally was organized in the Anglophone
regions, leading to violent clashes with local Anglophones. Four
died, several were wounded and around 50 arrested. Demonstrators set
fire to a police station, government buildings and vehicles. The
government responded to the demonstrations by placing the region under
military control. The violence continued with further incidents in
January and February. Now violence is rapidly increasing once more.

The Southern Cameroons were originally a British colony ("British
Cameroons"), while the remainder of the country was originally a
French colony ("French Cameroun"). In 1961, after a bloody internal
war, Cameroon became an independent country, containing both regions,
under an agreement under which Anglophones and Francophones would
would be equal. However, the Francophone majority has failed to keep
many promises it made at that time, and they've increasingly made the
Anglophones a disadvantaged and marginalized minority,

According to a recent report by the International Crisis Group and
published two months ago:

<QUOTE>"If a lasting solution is not found, the next
resurgence of the Anglophone problem could be violent. The haughty
attitude and cynicism of senior government officials, notably when
they say that “as long as the Anglophones do not take up arms, the
current strike does not worry [us] unduly”, could promote
instability. ... “What can the Anglophones do? If they don’t
want to go to school, so much the worse for them”, added a senior
official. ... They are mistakenly relying on the strike losing
impetus and the emergence of divisions among strikers, because
although the campaign has weakened since May and even if it
fizzles out, the fundamental problem will remain and people will
continue to feel dissatisfied."<END QUOTE>

In the two months since the report was published, there has been a
resurgence of the problem, and it has been violent.

The description of the "haughty attitude and cynicism of [Francophone]
senior government officials" towards the Anglophone people reminds of
the attitudes of the French towards the English during the Napoleonic
period and during the War of the Spanish Succession. France and
England were united against Germany during the two world wars, but
over the centuries they never really have gotten along very well. The
crisis in Cameroon seems more and more to reflect this ancient
difference between the English and French cultures. AFP and BBC and International Crisis Group (2-Aug) and Crux Catholic News

Related Articles

• Cameroon's army to force English-speaking children to attend school (31-Aug-2017)
  
  
• Cameroon: One person killed in English-speaking vs French-speaking civil unrest (23-Nov-2016)
  
  
• Cameroon's president finally caves in, restores internet to English speakers (21-Apr-2017)
  
  
• Cameroon shuts down internet for English-speakers protesting French-speakers (15-Feb-2017)
  

****
**** Catalonia's leader says the region has 'won the right to statehood' from Spain
****

Spain's national police resorted to substantial violence on Sunday to
prevent citizens of Catalonia from casting a vote in the poll for the
independence referendum. Police smashed their way into polling
stations, and used force to remove people from the buildings. Video
showed people being kicked and thrown and women pulled by their hair
away from the polling stations.

Catalonia's government is claiming that 90% of those who were
allowed to vote were in favor of the referendum. Live interviews
with Catalan people indicated that some who were opposed to the
referendum voted in favor of it anyway, as a protest against
the Madrid government's violent treatment of ordinary people who
were simply trying to vote.

In a televised address, Catalonia's leader Carles Puigdemont said,
"With this day of hope and suffering, the citizens of Catalonia have
won the right to an independent state in the form a republic."

Left-wing activists and labor unions are planning a widespread
strike on Tuesday. This crisis is far from over.
BBC

Related: Catalonia referendum poised to go ahead despite Spain's harsh repressive measures (01-Oct-2017)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Cameroon, Southern Cameroons,
Anglophones, Francophones, British Cameroons, French Cameroun,
Ambazonia, Liberation Movement of Southern Cameroons
Spain, Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont

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Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
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[John J. Xenakis]

*** 3-Oct-17 World View -- Kirkuk becomes the flash point after the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Kirkuk becomes the flash point after the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum
  
• Significant differences in the three recent independence movements
  

****
**** Kirkuk becomes the flash point after the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum
****


Voting on the Kurdistan independence referendum on September 25 in Erbil (AFP)

Kurdistan has not yet declared independence from Iraq, but it may
happen as a result of a September 25 independence referendum that
passed overwhelmingly, according to Kurdistan president Masoud
Barzani. However, Barzani says that at this time rather than declare
independence, he wants simply to negotiate with the Baghdad.
Nonetheless, if there is any violence in Kurdistan, it will be over
Kirkuk.

Starting in 2014, Kirkuk has been under frequent attack by the
so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), and ISIS has
always been repelled by the Kurdish Peshmerga militia forces. Now
that ISIS has been expelled from Mosul and the danger to Kirkuk from
ISIS has passed, Kurdistan's leader Masoud Barzani is saying that
Kirkuk belongs to a Kurdistan.

Iraq's parliament has responded by voting to give a mandate to Iraq's
prime minister Haider al-Abadi to deploy troops in Kirkuk, and take
control of the city from the Kurds. The deployment would be in
response to the independence referendum, and the fear that Barzani
would declare independence.

The commander of the Peshmerga units in Kirkuk says:

<QUOTE>"We cannot agree with the decision of the Iraqi
authorities to send troops to Kirkuk. If the Iraqi Army enters
Kirkuk it will face our stiff resistance.

The defense of Kirkuk has taken the lives of hundreds of Peshmerga
fighters and city residents. Now, the Kurdish forces and civilians
in Kirkuk are ready to continue defending the city. There isn’t
such a force in the world that could take Kirkuk away from the
Kurds."<END QUOTE>

Kurdistan produces over 600,000 barrels per day of crude oil, mostly
from oil fields around Kirkuk, and this oil production forms the
greatest part of Kurdistan's income. Kurdistan sells the oil through
a pipeline that passes through Turkey. Turkey's president Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to close the pipeline, but hasn't done
so yet.

The fact that Kirkuk is oil-rich is just one of the reasons why it's
become a flash point. The other reason is that, in addition
to Kurds, the city is heavily populated with Arabs and Turkmens,
and these populations do not wish to live under Kurdish control.

According to reports, Iraqi Shia militias loyal to Iran would like to
go into Kirkuk and displace the Peshmerga militias. However, we've
already seen this week how heavy-handed military forces in Catalonia
have hardened the demands for independence, and the same thing would
happen in Kirkuk. Since these Shia militias are controlled by Iran,
al-Abadi may not be able to prevent them from attacking Kirkuk.
Foreign Policy and Sputnik News (Moscow) and Oil Price and Quartz

Related Articles

• Israel may be the only country recognizing the Iraq Kurdistan referendum (27-Sep-2017)
  
  
• Concerns grow over chaos in Iraq after ISIS is defeated in Mosul (22-Mar-2017)
  

****
**** Significant differences in the three recent independence movements
****

During the last few days, I've reported on three different
independence movements -- in Catalonia from Spain, in the Anglophone
Southern Cameroons from Francophone Cameroon, and in Kurdistan from
Iraq. The Kurdistan case is substantially different from the other
two.

In Catalonia, Spain's national police resorted to physical violence to
keep people from voting. Video showed people being kicked and thrown
and women pulled by their hair away from the polling stations.
Reports from other parts of Spain suggest that many people outside of
Catalonia say that the violence on Catalans was deserved.

In Anglophone Southern Cameroons, Cameroon's Francophone national
police shot and killed at least seven people over the weekend and
wounded dozens of others in an attempt to stop peaceful
demonstrations. An official was quoted as saying, "What can the
Anglophones do? If they don’t want to go to school, so much the worse
for them."

In both of these cases, we clearly see a resurgence of vitriolic
xenophobic attitudes that gave rise to previous generational crisis
wars -- the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, and the bloody civil
war in the Cameroon colonies in the late 1950s, respectively.

However, we're not seeing anything remotely like that in the Kurdistan
separatist movement in Iraq. Nobody tried to prevent the independence
referendum that took place in Kurdistan on September 25. Kurdistan
president Masoud Barzani says that the referendum passed
overwhelmingly, but Barzani says that rather than declare
independence, he wants simply to negotiate with the Baghdad. Baghdad
and Iran are sending troops to the Kurdistan border, but there's no
sign that they plan to cross the border.

These are the kinds of things that one looks for when doing a
Generational Dynamics analysis of a country or event. There is no
apparent xenophobic vitriol between the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi
Shias, as there was between the two pairs of groups in Spain and
Cameroon, respectively. And, as usual, what's important in a
generational analysis is not the behaviors and attitudes of the
politicians, but the attitudes and behaviors of entire populations or
generations.

So the most likely outcome of the independence referendum in
Kurdistan, based on the information so far, is that there will be
political posturing and threats, but no actual violence or military
confrontation. Of course, this could change at any time, especially
if Shia militias controlled by Iran invade Kirkuk to displace the
Peshmerga. But without something like that, violence is not expected.

It's doubtful that the situations in Catalonia or Southern Cameroons
will lead to independence either, but the difference is that we can
expect to see more than political posturing, including actual
violence. And if fact there's been violence already, and the level of
violence is likely to grow. Daily Sabah (Turkey) and Rudaw (Kurdistan)
and Tehran Times and Al Monitor

Related Articles

• Cameroon police shoot and kill English-speaking protesters on Sunday (02-Oct-2017)
  
  
• Catalonia referendum poised to go ahead despite Spain's harsh repressive measures (01-Oct-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Iraq, Kurds, Erbil, Kurdistan Region,
Masoud Barzani, Turkey, Syria, Iran,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Haider al-Abadi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kirkuk, Peshmerga,
Cameroon, Southern Cameroons, Spain, Catalonia

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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

[Warren Dew]

Interesting point about Iraq and Kurdistan. They're not in a crisis era, are they?

[John J. Xenakis]

(10-01-2017, 07:20 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > From where I stand, that may be accurate for Kissinger, but
> exactly wrong for Bannon; he seems to want to start a trade war
> with China that will necessarily lead to a hot war with
> China.

I don't believe that's what's going on. I believe that Bannon is
using "trade war" as a metaphor for a real war, and is using the
metaphor to raise the alarm about China so that the US won't be
unprepared the way the US was when Japan struck Pearl Harbor.

(10-01-2017, 07:20 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > Avoiding the world war is impossible, but minimizing its impact on
> the US is not. Your view that the US will necessarily be on the
> opposite side from China is, as I've pointed out before, based on
> misreadings of Chinese history; the last time you claimed this, it
> was on the basis that China was the successor state to the
> mongols. In reality, the successor state to the mongols, to the
> extent there is one, is Kazakhstan, or more broadly the central
> Asian Islamic states. A crisis war that starts with them may
> actually be relatively benign to the US, since it hits Asia first,
> and allows us to wait and step in on the appropriate side to
> maintain a balance of power.

You may be right that world will first break out in Central Asia. But
if so, it will soon pull in India, Pakistan, Iran and Russia.
Pakistan will be on the side of China, India will be at war with
Pakistan and China, and in that war, the US, Russia and Iran will be
on the side of India. So the US will be at war with China. "All
roads lead to Rome."

(10-03-2017, 08:21 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > Interesting point about Iraq and Kurdistan. They're not in a
> crisis era, are they?

The last crisis war was the Iran/Iraq war, which climaxed in 1988
when Saddam used mustard gas on the Iranians and the Kurds.
So Iran, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan are in a generational Awakening
era.

Furthermore, it's possible that the reason that relations are
relatively friend between Erbil and Tehran is because they were both
enemies of Saddam.

However, Turkey is definitely in a crisis era, and the Turkish army
may assert itself in Kirkuk, "for the protection of the Turkmens."

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 4-Oct-17 World View -- Jihadist attacks in Mali surge with rise of al-Qaeda linked JNIM

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Jihadist attacks on UN peacekeepers surge in Mali
  
• JNIM (Group for Support of Islam and Muslims) takes credit for attacks
  

****
**** Jihadist attacks on UN peacekeepers surge in Mali
****


Djenna Mosque in Timbuktu, Mali, built around 1300

On September 24, jihadists attacked a convoy of UN peacekeepers in
Kidal, in the region of Gao in Mali. The peacekeepers were all part
of the UN peacekeeping force with the cumbersome name Multidimensional
Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA). The attack killed three
Bangladeshi peacekeepers and injured four others.

This was just one of a surge of new jihadist attacks in the region,
across Mali and into Niger and Burkina Faso. The surge in attacks
threatens the entire United Nations peacekeeping strategy for Africa's
Sahel (the strip of Africa just below the Sahara desert, separating
the Arab north from Black Africa to the south).

The security situation in Mali has "significantly worsened," according
to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. In the four months since
June, extremist groups carried out 75 attacks: 44 against Malian
forces, 21 against the UN’s MINUSMA operation and 10 against France's
Operation Barkhane, mostly in northern Mali, with Mali's forces
suffering most of the casualties. This rate of attacks is double
those of the same period last year.

The United Nations has 13,000 peacekeepers in Mali, which ranks among
its biggest and costliest missions. France has 4,000 troops serving
across the Sahel region in five countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina
Faso, Niger and Chad) in Operation Barkhane, launched in 2014. France
would like to withdraw its troops, and replace them with 5,000
soldiers and police in the "G5 Sahel Force, funded by the UN.
However, "funded by the UN" means "mostly funded by the US," and
President Trump vetoed the proposal.

Instead, the proposal was changed to consist of troops from the same
five countries, with an annual budget of $496 million (423 million
euros) a year. But so far only about $127 million (108 million euros)
has been pledged.

So a shortage of funding for peacekeeping is being combined with a
surge in jihadist attacks, putting the entire UN peacekeeping plan in
jeopardy. According to the UN's Guterres, Mali’s peace process must
be salvaged to prevent "a descent into a vicious cycle of violence and
chaos, jeopardizing the future of Mali and its chances for lasting
peace." United Nations (25-Sep) and Relief Web (28-Sep) and African Union (26-Sep) and Long War Journal

****
**** JNIM (Group for Support of Islam and Muslims) takes credit for attacks
****

An al-Qaeda linked group formed early this year, the "Group for the
Support of Islam and Muslims" (JNIM, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam
wal-Muslim) took credit for the August 24 attack in Kidal, as well as
a number of other attacks, and released video as proof.

JNIM was formed by a merger of four Mali-based al-Qaeda linked groups,
including Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al
Murabitoon, and Katibat Macina (Macina Liberation Front).

These individual groups were responsible for a combined total of 250
al-Qaeda linked attacks in 2016, up 150% from 2015. Ansar Dine
claimed over 80 attacks, while AQIM claimed 21. The majority were
never claimed, but were attributed to the jihadists.

The surge in jihadist attacks in 2017 is being attributed to the rise
of JNIM. JNIM has performed some large attacks, made possible because
the members of the merged organization are able to take advantage of
each other's resources. The JNIM merger is considered an ominous sign
of things to come for all of West Africa.

Separately, many attacks in Burkina Faso are thought to be the work of
Ansaroul Islam, a newly formed jihadist group led by an ally of Mali's
Ansar Dine. Long War Journal (18-Mar-2017) and AFP and Long War Journal (18-Apr)

Related Articles

• France promotes 'G5 Sahel' peacekeeping force in west Africa after jihadist attacks (16-Aug-2017)
  
  
• Acting unilaterally, France sends army and air force into Mali (12-Jan-2013)
  
  
• Did France kick a hornet's nest with military intervention in Mali? (18-Jan-2013)
  
  
• France pulls out of Central African Republic as sectarian violence grows (01-Nov-2016)
  
  
• France's new president Macron commits troops to Mali 'as long as necessary' (20-May-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Mali, Kidal, Gao, Niger, Burkina Faso,
Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission, MINUSMA,
António Guterres, France, Mauritania, Chad, G5 Sahel Force,
Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims,
JNIM, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim,
Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM,
Al Murabitoon, Katibat Macina, Macina Liberation Front,
Ansaroul Islam

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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]

*** 5-Oct-17 World View -- Russia considers taking on a huge financial burden - Venezuela

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Russia considers taking on a huge financial burden - Venezuela
  
• Maduro has 'plans A, B and C' if US imposes further sanctions
  

****
**** Russia considers taking on a huge financial burden - Venezuela
****


Starving teen in Caracas searches through garbage dump for food (Latin American Herald Tribune)

As Venezuela's Socialist paradise sinks into an ever deepening black
financial hole, Russia's president Vladimir Putin must decide in the
next few days whether to take on the hugely expensive financial
long-term burden of continuously bailing out Venezuela's economy.

Venezuela has an estimated $63 billion of bond obligations. In the
next two months, Venezuela has $3.5 billion in debt servicing payments
due in October and November. About $0.6 billion of that will be owed
to holders of Venezuelan government bonds, and $2.9 billion to holders
of bonds issued by Venezuela's nationalized state oil and natural gas
company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).

In the past, Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro Moros or his
predecessor Hugo Chávez would simply issue more bonds and borrow more
money to meet debt obligations. (This is known as borrowing on your
Visa credit card to make payments on your Master Card.)

However, that possibility has been blocked since August 28, when US
president Donald Trump imposed sanctions that prevent further
borrowing, either by the Venezuelan government or by PDVSA. Three
days later, Fitch Ratings Service downgraded Venezuela's bonds from
CCC down to CC, meaning that even if Venezuela could borrow more, the
interest rates would be significantly higher.

One option available to Venezuela is to default on its bond payments,
and turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for future loans.
However, the IMF would demand significant economic reforms that the
maniac Maduro would never agree to. It's thought that this option
would require Maduro to step down, which could result in violence in
the streets.

So the other choice is to get Russia to bail Venezuela out -- and not
just today, but on a continuing basis. This would mean helping
Venezuela make $3.5 billion in debt payments this year, $3 billion
more in the spring, and another $3 billion more at the end of 2018.

Russia has helped Venezuela three times in the last 24 months to make
billions in debt payments — in February 2016, October-November of 2016
and then again April-May of 2017. Then in August, Russia's
nationalized oil producer, Rosneft, loaned $6 billion to PDVSA in the
form of pre-payments for PDVSA crude and other products to be
delivered in the future.

One unnamed Trump administration official says that the US is just
going to sit back and watch to see what happens:

<QUOTE>"Will they want to be throwing all sorts of money into
a sinking ship. Frankly if they do, I’m not sure from a
geopolitical perspective that we wouldn’t be happy to sit back and
watch. For the Russians, it’s going to be bad money for them. It’s
going to be a sinking investment that is going to derail Russia
even more."<END QUOTE>

Maduro met with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday at the Russian Energy
Week conference, and seemed to imply that the financial support would
continue:

<QUOTE>"I thank you for all the support, political and
diplomatic, in difficult times which we are living through. I‘m
very thankful for the agreement on grain, it has helped keep
consumption in Venezuela stable."<END QUOTE>

The administration official adds: "Essentially, you [Russia] take
ownership of the situation if you come in and rescue them now."
Miami Herald and Deutsche Welle and Reuters and Latin American Herald Tribune (25-Sep)

****
**** Maduro has 'plans A, B and C' if US imposes further sanctions
****

The US administration supposedly has an “escalatory road map” that
outlines a series of increasing sanctions that could be imposed,
including the so-called “nuclear option” – oil sanctions – that could
deprive the oil-dependent government of desperately needed cash.

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 19, president
Trump suggested that plans are in the works for further sanctions:

<QUOTE>"We have also imposed tough calibrated sanctions on
the socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela, which has brought a once
thriving nation to the brink of total collapse. The socialist
dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and
suffering on the good people of that country.

This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation, by imposing a
failed ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it
has been tried. To make matters worse, Maduro has defied his own
people, stealing power from their elected representatives, to
preserve his disastrous rule. The Venezuelan people are starving,
and their country is collapsing. Their democratic institutions are
being destroyed. The situation is completely unacceptable, and we
cannot stand by and watch. ...

The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime
accountable. We are prepared to take further action if the
government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose
authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people. ... The problem in
Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but
that socialism has been faithfully implemented.

From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true
socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish
and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these
discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering
of the people who live under these cruel systems. America stands
with every person living under a brutal regime."<END QUOTE>

Speaking at the Russian Energy Week conference in Moscow on Wednesday,
Maduro said that he doesn't fear further US sanctions on Venezuelan
oil sales:

<QUOTE>Big names are trying to negotiate at very high levels
and avoid such decisions that are wrong and are quite
unclear. Venezuela has its plan A, plan B and C, and other
alternatives. ...

Oil is tradable, and if there is some decision to go after the oil
of my country, I think the same will happen to the consumers in
the US. And the companies who are our counter parties and have
been such for the last 50 years will probably also suffer.

The biggest companies in the world are interested in buying our
oil and oil products. Naturally we will be creating the conditions
necessary to cover the needs and demands of those companies. I'm
quite firm about this."<END QUOTE>

It's amazing how thoroughly Socialism has destroyed Venezuela's
economy. Venezuela is sitting on the largest oil reserves in the
world, but oil production under the Socialist government has fallen
almost 3% this year. The diastrous Socialist economy is in disarray,
and its refineries run at less than 50% of the available capacity
because debt-ridden PDVSA can’t afford proper maintenance.

In fact, PDVSA's own experts say that its refineries were running at
45% capacity in July, dropping to 44% in August, because seven out of
12 crude distillation units were out of service due to extended
maintenance work. S&P Global Platts and Reuters (1-Aug) and Oil Price (27-Sep)

Related Articles

• With Trump's sanctions in place, Venezuela expected to go bankrupt soon (21-Sep-2017)
  
  
• Venezuela's mestizo president Hugo Chavez dies of cancer (06-Mar-2013)
  
  
• Hugo Chávez dismantled Venezuela's businesses on purpose to create Socialist Paradise (29-May-2016)
  
  
• Venezuela's Socialist government arrests bakers because of bread shortage (20-Mar-2017)
  
  
• Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Puerto Rico - three amigos in Marxist economic destruction (01-Jul-2016)
  
  
• Venezuela economy close to collapse as Maduro orders jailing of factory owners (15-May-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, Hugo Chávez,
Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., PDVSA, Fitch Rating, Rosneft,
Russia, Vladimir Putin, International Monetary Fund, IMF

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100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
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Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
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[John J. Xenakis]

*** 6-Oct-17 World View -- Syria's war resumes in full, as 'de-escalation' agreements unravel

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• International Red Cross: Fighting in Syria worst since Aleppo
  
• Analyst gives a chilling analysis of where the Syrian war is going
  

****
**** International Red Cross: Fighting in Syria worst since Aleppo
****


From August 2016: Five year old boy, Omran Daqneesh, sitting confused in an ambulance in Aleppo after being pulled from the rubble of one of Bashar al-Assad's airstrikes. To al-Assad, this boy and others like him are just cockroaches to be exterminated.

Syria's president Bashar al-Assad promised last year that when his air
force was finished killing as many people as possible in the battle of
Aleppo, then the Syrian war would be end, because his opponents would
have nothing left to fight for.

A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
indicates not only that the war has not ended, but that in fact the
level of fighting across much of Syria has reached the levels of the
battle of Aleppo.

Much of the fighting is around the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, which
is one of the last strongholds in Syria for the so-called Islamic
State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). There are many groups fighting
ISIS in Deir al-Zour: The Syrian army backed by the Russian military,
Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias, and mostly Kurdish Syrian
Democratic Forces (SDF), which have been supplied weapons by the US
military.

However, there is also fierce fighting in three "de-escalation zones"
-- Idlib, rural Hama and eastern Ghouta -- that were set up in a
series of "peace talks" held in Astana, Kazakhstan. The participants
in the meetings were Russia, Iran and Turkey, but most noticeably did
not include the Syrian regime, or any of the opposition groups to
Bashar al-Assad. The result is that it appears that the de-escalation
zones are unraveling, to no one's real surprise.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 3,000 people,
including 955 civilians, were killed during September, making it the
deadliest month of the conflict so far this year. More than 70% of the
civilians were killed in air strikes. Furthermore, as many as 10
hospitals have been damaged during the last 10 days, cutting hundreds
of thousands of people off from access to basic healthcare.

In a separate development, al-Assad's air force is once again using
Sarin nerve gas civilians, based on laboratory analyses of samples
taken from the north Syrian town of Ltamenah which was bombed by
Syria's air force. The Syrian air force bombing injured around 50
people, although nobody was believed to have been killed. The finding
was announced on Thursday by the by the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

According to Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations:
"For years the Assad regime has used chemical weapons to murder and
terrorise innocent Syrian civilians. Unfortunately, it’s clear that
the Syrian regime not only lied about the extent of their chemical
weapons programmed, but that they will continue to refuse to cooperate
with watchdog organizations like the OPCW."

As I've written many times in the past, Bashar al-Assad is the worst
genocidal monster so far this century. The Syrian war began in 2011
when al-Assad ordered his army and air force to attack peacefully
protesting civilians, including women and children. Things really
turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad launched a massive
military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian refugee camp in
Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and children
Palestinians. He dropped barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine,
ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons onto innocent Sunni women
and children, he's targeted bombs on schools and hospitals, and he's
used Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He considers all Sunni
Muslims to be cockroaches to be exterminated.

After the attack on the Palestinian refugee camp, thousands of young
Sunni jihadists from 86 countries around the world traveled to Syria
to fight al-Assad, and they formed ISIS. Thanks to al-Assad, millions
of Syrians have fled to neighboring countries to escape the violence,
and over a million have fled to Europe. The amount of global
destruction that al-Assad has brought about is truly breathtaking.

As I've written many times, al-Assad is a delusional psychopath, and
from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, his delusions are
based on the experiences of his father, Hafez al-Assad.

Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war
between the Shia Alawites versus the Sunnis. That war climaxed in
February 1982 with the destruction of the town of Hama. There had
been a massive uprising of the 400,000 mostly Sunni citizens of Hama
against Syria's Shia/Alawite president Hafez al-Assad, the current
president's father. He turned the town to rubble and killed or
displaced hundreds of thousands. Hama stands as a defining moment in
the Middle East. It was so shocking that it largely ended the war.

That worked because at that time, Syria was in a generational crisis
era, and the destruction of Hama was the climax of the war. The
reason for Bashar al-Assad's delusions is that he thought that the
destruction of Aleppo last year would end the war in the same way that
his father's destruction of Hama ended the war. But this is a
generational Awakening era, and that kind of outcome doesn't work.
The reason that it doesn't work is that there are many survivors who
were shocked by the destruction of Hama in 1982, but are no longer
shocked by similar actions since they've seen it all before. So the
destruction of Aleppo did not end the war, as Bashar al-Assad
delusionally hoped, and now the war is back in full force. BBC and
International Committee of the Red Cross and Reuters and The National (UAE)

Related Articles

• US increasingly expresses total disgust with Syria regime for Bashar al-Assad's atrocities (21-Sep-2016)
  
  
• Western leaders sickened by Assad's 'industrial strength' torture in Syria (22-Jan-2014)
  
  
• Syria's air force deliberately targets hospital in Aleppo, killing dozens (29-Apr-2016)
  
  
• From 2013: The history of how Syria's Bashar al-Assad created ISIS (07-Sep-2016)
  

****
**** Analyst gives a chilling analysis of where the Syrian war is going
****

As I've written many times, the war in Syria will never end as long as
Bashar al-Assad is in power. Syria is in a generational Awakening
era, with little desire for war, as the survivors of the 1982 are
still war-weary from what happened at that time. This war would have
ended long ago, except that Bashar al-Assad, along with Russia, Iran
and Hezbollah, have forced it to continue. Bashar al-Assad is a
delusional psychopath who will never allow the war to end, and
apparently Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are willing to shed blood and
treasure to support him.

Last year, al-Assad claimed that the battle of Aleppo was "history in
the making":

<QUOTE>"[The liberation of Aleppo was] history in the making
and worthy of more than the word congratulations.

History is being written in these moments. Every Syrian citizen is
taking part in the writing. It started not today, but years ago
when the crisis and the war on Syria began.

I think that after the liberation of Aleppo we’ll talk about the
situation as ... before the liberation of Aleppo and after the
liberation of Aleppo."<END QUOTE>

Well, that didn't happen.

Joshua Landis, from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at
University of Oklahoma, is an expert on Syria. He was interviewed on
the BBC on Thursday, where he gave a chilling analysis of what's to
come. Landis was asked why there's been a spike in violence in Syria
(my transcription):

<QUOTE>"In the south of Syria, near the Jordanian border, it
has largely been controlled. But in the north of Syria, there is
intense fighting around Deir az-Zour, major provincial capital,
held by ISIS, both pro-US Kurdish forces and the Syrian army are
trying to take that city, and trying to take the Euphrates, all
the way down to the Iraqi border. And there's a scramble to
destroy ISIS as quickly as they can, and to grab as much
territory. This territory has lots of oil wells in it. It's very
important for the future of both the Kurds and Syria. So this is
causing a spike in the amount of deaths , because they're trying
to go as quickly as they can, they're not being very
discriminatory.

Then in the west of Syria, the northwest, near the Turkish border,
there's been a lot of fighting and a lot of bombing, by the Syrian
air force and the Russian air force, of rebels, largely extremist
Muslim rebels. and so this doesn't entirely put paid to the
de-escalation zones, but on the other hand it shows how delicate
they are, and that the war is far from over."<END QUOTE>

Landis said that the agreements that created the de-escalation zones
are unraveling, and that Syria wants to destroy the hospitals that the
Syrian air force has been attacking:

<QUOTE>"This has unraveled. And there's a lot of fingers
pointing to whose fault it is. There was an attack from Idlib
province towards Hama, that gave the Russians and Syrians an
excuse to go after these militias in the Idlib province, but now
they've gone on for weeks, and they've bombed many hospitals in
the region, and they've escalated far beyond a tit for tat basis.

Well, a lot of those hospitals are being maintained by western
NGO's, by Syrian charitable organizations and so forth, and I
think the Syrian govt wants to destroy them in the northwest of
Syria. Idlib province, a rebel-held province, has become a
dumping ground for all kinds of rebel groups, and Syria, as well
as the Russians, I think hope that they drive a lot of those
rebels out into Turkey.

It wants to make the region uninhabitable, and inhospitable, to
all groups, so that they flee, making it easier for the Syrian
army to push back into the region."<END QUOTE>

If Landis is correct, this is really a dramatic development. It took
months for al-Assad to make Aleppo "uninhabitable and inhospitable,"
and Landis says that al-Assad wants to do the same for all of Idlib
province. Based on the Aleppo experience, this would involve months
of extremely bloody fighting

Landis was asked: If ISIS is defeated in the east and in the north,
can we expect the Syrian government and its allies to shift their
focus to some of the opposition-held regions that are relatively
peaceful right now?

<QUOTE>"Absolutely. And this is a problem with these
de-escalation zones. The United States I think has sold them as
something that could be permanent, but Bashar al-Assad has said in
no uncertain terms that he plans to take back all of Syria. And
the Russians have said that they do not intend to partition Syria.

So for both of them, deescalation zones are a temporary fix. It
allows them to fight ISIS now, in the northeast of Syria, but as
soon as that fight is finished, they're gonna swing back, and
they're gonna begin to mop up rebel-held territory in other parts
of Syria. So those truces are temporary, and some of them are
breaking down, as you say today."<END QUOTE>

This is astonishing. According to Landis, al-Assad is going to "swing
back and mop up" other parts of Syria, so that he can have control
once again of all of Syria. I personally don't believe that this is
even possible and that it's all part of al-Assad's delusion, but if it
did happen, it would take years of bloody war, with continuing support
from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, pretty much the only
way that a war can end is with an explosive climax at the end of a
crisis war during a generational Crisis era. Examples are the 1982
destruction of Hama, or the 1945 nuking of Japan. Awakening era wars
can only end with an armistice or peace agreement which is typically
violated a few months later. With the delusional Bashar al-Assad in
power in Syria, there is no chance at all that the Syria war will end
any time soon. Al Jazeera

Related Articles

• Syria and Russia see 'the light at the end of the tunnel' after Aleppo victory (18-Dec-2016)
  
  
• US and Iran headed for military confrontation in Deir az-Zour in eastern Syria (09-Jun-2017)
  
  
• Russia uses the 'Grozny Model' to pursue mass slaughter in Aleppo Syria (02-Aug-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Aleppo, Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh
Deir Ezzor, Deir al-Zour, Deir ez-Zor, Deir Azzour, Ltamenah,
International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC,
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Nikki Haley,
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, OPCW,
Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, Idlib, Hama, Ghouta,
Russia, Iran, Turkey, Astana, Kazakhstan,
Hafez al-Assad, Joshua Landis

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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

[Cynic Hero '86]

LOL the notions you posted in yesterdays update is biased, inflammatory nonsense. In wars there are always at least two two sides, who are all responsible for the bloodshed. Yet you consistently deny this aspect of war in syria and instead blame everything on Assad. The caption attached to the picture with the child is simply shows your inflammatory and obvious bias.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 7-Oct-17 World View -- Burma's Rohingya crisis merges with the Kashmir crisis, inflaming the entire region

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Bangladesh builds huge refugee camp for 800,000 displaced Rohingyas from Burma (Myanmar)
  
• Rohingya crisis expands into Kashmir, creating a mega-crisis
  

****
**** Bangladesh builds huge refugee camp for 800,000 displaced Rohingyas from Burma (Myanmar)
****


Hindu nationalist National Panthers Party billboard demands that Rohingyas 'Quite Jammu', or else be deported. (Hindustan Times)

Some 500,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees have crossed the border from
Burma (Myanmar) into Bangladesh since August 25, when Burma's army
launched a full-scale scorched earth ethnic extermination campaign on
the Rohingyas in Burma's Rakhine state. According to Bangladesh
authorities, some 4,000-5,000 additional Rohingyas were
crossing the border each day, with 10,000 more waiting at
the frontier.

Bangladesh had originally allocated 2,000 acres of land to set up a
refugee camp to accommodate 500,000 refugees, but with the flood of
refugees continuing, officials have set aside another 1,000 acres for
the new camp, to expand the camp to house 800,000. Rohingyas have
already set up 23 makeshift camps along the border, and Bangladesh
will move them all into the new camp.

This is an extremely serious situation, as it has been "the largest
mass refugee movement in the region in decades," according to the
United Nations.

After several years of these atrocities by Burma's army, Rohingya
activists have formed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which
conducted terrorist attacks on August 25 and triggered the current
round of "clearance operations" by Burma's army. Burma's ethnic
cleansing is radicalizing many young men in the Rohingya population,
with plans growing for retaliatory attacks on the Burmese population
and army.

Regular readers are aware that Generational Dynamics predicts that the
world is headed for a Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the
US, India, Russia, Iran and the West against China, Pakistan and the
Sunni Muslim nations. It's impossible to predict the exact scenario
that will lead to that war, but today there are two clear crises that
could escalate into world war: The North Korea nuclear missile crisis,
and the enormous Rohingya Sunni Muslim refugee crisis. Guardian (London) and Reuters and NPR

****
**** Rohingya crisis expands into Kashmir, creating a mega-crisis
****

For years, there's been a community of several thousand Rohingya
Muslims living peacefully in India-governed Jammu and Kashmir. That
number has increased by over 6,000 between 2008 and 2016. J&K is
thousands of miles from their original homes, but the Rohingyas say
that they were forced to be there, according to 35-year-old Mohammad
Yusuf, the head of a camp for Rohingya refugees:

<QUOTE>"We are in India because of some compulsions, and not
out of choice. We know this is not our land. We will leave on our
own once those compulsions are addressed by the global community
and we get justice.

We were boarded into a train and asked to embark at the last
station when the whole train gets empty. We were not aware that it
is Jammu. We came to know at the railway station that some
Rohingyas were living here and met them. This is how we reached
here."<END QUOTE>

The Rohingyas co-existed peacefully, and even received money and
supplies from other residents last year when a large fire in the
refugee camp destroyed all their belongings.

But apparently some residents harbored underground resentment of the
Rohingyas, because this resentment suddenly exploded into full-scale
xenophobia and hostility in April.

At that time, the Hindu nationalist Jammu and Kashmir National
Panthers Party began putting up large billboards asking residents to
"wake-up" and "save the history, culture, and identity of the
Dogras". The billboard directed Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees to
"quit Jammu."

The National Panthers threatened to launch an "identify and kill
movement" unless the government deported the refugees. They also
demanded that any resident renting out a room to Rohingyas should be
arrested and sent to jail under a law that allows detention without
trial for six months.

The Rohingyas say that they're just trying to survive with their
families. "We are not involved in any criminal activity and are doing
odd jobs to make our living. Most of us work as wage laborers,
rag-pickers, scrap-dealers and a few are working at railway stations
as sweepers."

India has taken the side of Burma and supports Burma's atrocities,
rapes, slaughter, and "clearance operations" of Rohingyas. Indian
officials say that Rohingyas in Kashmir and elsewhere in India are
being radicalized by terrorist groups from Pakistan, training the
Rohingyas for terror attacks in India.

Pakistan has always taken the view that it's India that's committing
atrocities against Muslims in Kashmir, and that the Rohingya crisis
has now given India one more weapon to use against Pakistan
in Kashmir.

It appears that the Rohingya crisis between Burma and Bangladesh has
merged with the Kashmir crisis between India and Pakistan, resulting
in a much larger crisis. As hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas are
forced to leave Burma because of its ethnic cleansing program, the
entire region is becoming more destabilized, with the possibility of
triggering a war.
Scroll (India, 8-May)
and Pakistan Observer and First Post (India, 20-Aug)

Related Articles

• Burma's (Myanmar's) leaders may be inspired by Pol Pot's Cambodian 'Killing Fields' genocide (29-Sep-2017)
  
  
• Burma's (Myanmar's) ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas leading to humanitarian catastrophe (15-Sep-2017)
  
  
• India's 'Operation All-Out' brings Kashmir closer to all-out war (24-Jun-2017)
  
  
• Kashmir violence surges as India launches massive house-to-house sweep (06-May-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Burma, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Rohingyas,
Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, ARSA,
India, Jammu, Kashmir, Mohammad Yusuf, National Panthers Party,
Pakistan

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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]

(10-06-2017, 09:05 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > LOL the notions you posted in yesterdays update is biased,
> inflammatory nonsense. In wars there are always at least two two
> sides, who are all responsible for the bloodshed. Yet you
> consistently deny this aspect of war in syria and instead blame
> everything on Assad. The caption attached to the picture with the
> child is simply shows your inflammatory and obvious bias.
>

Really? How would you describe the two sides in the Nazi Holocaust?

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 8-Oct-17 World View -- Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) blamed for deaths of US troops in Niger

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) blamed for deaths of US troops in Niger
  
• Jihadist ambush in Niger forces a review of military operations in Africa
  

****
**** Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) blamed for deaths of US troops in Niger
****


Ambush of US soldiers occurred near Niamey, the capital city of Niger

Four US troops, along with five Nigerien soldiers, were killed on
Wednesday in an ambush in Niger near the border with Mali. This was
the first time that US forces have died in Niger.

The 12-member US team was leaving a meeting in unarmored pick-up
trucks, when they were lured into an ambush and began taking from
small arms, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

There were 50 attackers, believed to be part of a Mali jihadist group
linked to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
The service members, including multiple Army Special Forces soldiers,
exited the vehicles, ran for cover, and began returning fire, killing
some of the attacking militants. In addition to the four deaths, two
service members were injured, and were evacuated to a hospital in
Germany.

Note: "Nigerien" refers to Niger, while "Nigerian" refers to Nigeria.

After the ambush, US officials realized that one of the US service
members were unaccounted for, and it was feared that he might have
been taken prisoner. A large-scale search-and-rescue operation
involving US, French and Nigerien troops was launched, and US Navy
SEALs were flown to a US military base in Sigonella, Sicily, in
anticipation of a possible rescue attempt. However, they never went
to Niger as the body of the fourth dead soldier was found on Friday.

No one has claimed responsibility for the ambush, but there are two
major choices, one linked to al-Qaeda and one linked to ISIS. The
first is the "Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims" (JNIM,
Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim) that we described at length
several days ago. JNIM and its
al-Qaeda predecessors have conducted many other operations in Niger,
including kidnappings and suicide attacks.

However, the US military believes that this ambush was performed by
“Islamic State in the Greater Sahara” (ISGS), which is linked to ISIS.
Little is known about ISGS, since it's overshadowed by the al-Qaeda
linked jihadists, and competes with them. They have links to Boko
Haram in Nigeria, and their fighters are believed to be nomadic
people, such as the Tuaregs. CNN and SOFREP and Long War Journal and Washington Post

****
**** Jihadist ambush in Niger forces a review of military operations in Africa
****

In 2013, Barack Obama informed Congress that 100 troops would be
deployed to Niger. They set up a drone base near Niamey to assist the
French with surveillance and intelligence, and also began serving in a
train, advise and assist role with Nigerien forces. The U.S. had
already been providing the French with aerial refueling for its Mirage
and Rafale warplanes. Since then, that number has grown to 800
troops.

On September 24, the Pentagon and AfriCom said armed U.S. drones had
conducted several "precision strikes" on an ISIS training camp in
Libya, killing 17 militants.

Despite these attacks on ISIS targets, Wednesday's ambush apparently
caught the US military completely by surprise. Africom spokesman
Colonel Mark Cheadle said:

<QUOTE>"This was not expected. Had we anticipated this sort
of attack we would have absolutely devoted more resources to it to
reduce the risk and that's something we are looking at right
now. ...

It was not meant to be an engagement with the enemy. The threats
at the time were deemed to be unlikely, so there was no overhead
armed air cover during the engagement."<END QUOTE>

The American troops in Africa are there to train Nigerien troops in
anti-terrorism tactics to battle violent extremists, including
counterterrorism, intelligence and security techniques. But in this
case they were carrying out a joint patrol with Nigerien forces,
suggesting that they were taking part in military operations, and yet
were unprepared for the ambush.

Cheadle added that Africom was reevaluating its force protection
procedures for its advisory missions.

It's little reported, but the US military is increasing its
presence in Africa, with counterterrorism operations in mind.
The largest U.S. base on the continent is in
Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, which gives U.S. forces the ability
to launch airstrikes and special operations raids into nearby Yemen
and Somalia while also covering the critical Bab el-Mandeb waterway
that leads into the Red Sea.

There are bases in Somalia and Kenya, for the fight against
al-Shabaab. Tunisia has an American drone base that can strike
al-Qaeda and ISIS offshoots in Libya. There are American forces in
Chad and a drone facility in Cameroon, both helping the fight against
Boko Haram. US involvement in Africa is slated to grow. Military.com and NPR and Reuters and Foreign Policy

Related Articles

• Jihadist attacks in Mali surge with rise of al-Qaeda linked JNIM (04-Oct-2017)
  
  
• France's new president Macron commits troops to Mali 'as long as necessary' (20-May-2017)
  
  
• US sends dozens of troops to Somalia, first time since Black Hawk Down (15-Apr-2017)
  
  
• Did France kick a hornet's nest with military intervention in Mali? (18-Jan-2013)
  
  
• Mali hotel terror attack highlights al-Qaeda's strength in Africa (21-Nov-2015)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Mali, Niger, Tuaregs,
France, Mauritania, Chad, G5 Sahel Force,
Africom, Mark Cheadle,
Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims,
JNIM, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim,
ISGS, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara

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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]

*** 9-Oct-17 World View -- Turkey announces major military operation in Syria's Idlib province

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Turkey announces major military operation in Syria's Idlib province
  
• Turkey's success in Idlib is far from certain
  

****
**** Turkey announces major military operation in Syria's Idlib province
****


Idlib Syria today (AFP)

Turkey announced that it is beginning a military operation in Syria's
Idlib province. It will follow the terms of an agreement made in
Astana Kazakhstan by Turkey, Russia and Iran to create four
"de-escalation" zones in Syria with the objective of ending the war.
Turkey's military operations will be in the Idlib de-escalation zone,
which includes Idlib, Latakia, Aleppo and Hama, and is bordered by
Homs and Turkey itself.

The purpose of the operation will be to eliminate that al-Qaeda linked
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). However, Turkey has an additional
objective: To prevent the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG),
currently controlling the city of Afrin north of Idlib near Turkey's
border, from entering Idlib and thereby controlling a corridor in
northern Syria along Turkey's border.

The terms of the operation are as follows:

• The ground troops will be from the Free Syrian Army (FSA),
  which are moderate rebel militias opposed to Syria's president
  Bashar al-Assad, and under Turkey's protection.
  
  
• Turkey's army will support the FSA on the ground with artillery
  strikes.
  
  
• Turkey may send its own troops into Idlib to fight alongside the
  FSA. In fact, Turkey has been massing tanks and special forces troops
  along the border, without having entered Syria.
  
  
• Russia will support Turkey and the FSA with air strikes. Turkey's
  air force will not be involved.
  
  
• After HTS has been evicted from Idlib, Turkey will send in
  military monitors to implement a ceasefire in the de-escalation
  zone.

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the deployment on
Saturday and said that Turkey would not allow a "terror corridor" on
its border with Syria, referring to Kurdish objective to establish the
state of Rojava in northern Syria as a corridor along the border with
Turkey. Erdogan said:

<QUOTE>"There’s a serious operation in Syria’s Idlib today
and it will continue. For now Free Syria Army is carrying out the
operation there. Russia will be protecting outside the borders
(of the Idlib region) and we will handle inside.

Russia is supporting the operation from the air, and our armed
forces from inside Turkey’s borders."<END QUOTE>

The phrase "from inside Turkey's borders" is interpreted to mean that
Turkey's army will not (again) enter Syria, for the time being.

Erdogan also said that Turkey would not be "cornered by any threats
from Syria and Iraq." He referred to the three million Syria
refugees currently being hosted by Turkey, and said:

<QUOTE>"We are not intervening in the domestic affairs of any
country. We are just trying to secure our own home affairs... How
safe we can be when there is chaos in Syria? ... Can we escape
from the results of developments in Syria?"<END QUOTE>

There has already been a firefight between Turkey's troops and HTS.
Early on Sunday, Turkey's military was removing sections of a border
war between Turkey and Syria, and HTS began firing on a Turkish
bulldozer. Turkish artillery returned fire.

Another major Turkish objective is to prevent the chaos of more tens
of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing into Turkey to escape bombing
by Syrian and Russian warplanes, and joining the millions of Syrian
refugees already in Turkey.

In a harbinger of things to come, on Sunday morning warplanes from the
Syrian regime military struck a marketplace within the Idlib
de-escalation zone, killing at least six people. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Anadolu (Ankara) and Reuters and Yeni Safak (Turkey)

****
**** Turkey's success in Idlib is far from certain
****

Idlib province is currently under control of al-Qaeda linked Hayat
Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). However, there are also thousands of civilians,
including many women and children, who fled from Aleppo last year when
the Bashar al-Assad regime, with help from Russian airstrikes, was
trying to make Aleppo uninhabitable.

There have been two jihadist groups formed in Syria following the
brutal attacks by al-Assad's Shia/Alawite regime on peaceful Sunni
Muslim protesters, starting in 2011, particularly following al-Assad's
completely unprovoked attack on a Palestinian refugee camp in August
2011, killing many women and children.

That attack triggered the arrival of tens of thousands of young Sunni
Muslim jihadists from over 80 countries around the world, from
southeast Asia, from Africa and from Europe and Russia's Caucasus.
Those jihadists formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL
or Daesh). In the last year, ISIS has been the target of all the
other militias -- the Americans, the Syrians, the Russians, the Kurds,
the Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Iraqis. The presence of ISIS allowed
all these other entities to adopt a joint strategy of fighting ISIS,
while keeping out of each other's way.

One difference in Idlib is telling the good guys from the bad guys.
Since ISIS consists almost entirely of foreign fighters from over 80
countries, it's fairly easy to distinguish an ISIS fighter from an
ordinary Syrian. But HTS is consists of Sunni Muslim Syrians, as does
almost the entire population of Idlib province.

Even within the anti-Assad rebel groups, there are differences. HTS
was formed from the merger of a number of rebel militias, after Jabhat
al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) broke off its allegiance to al-Qaeda, since
many moderate rebel groups want to oppose al-Assad, but want nothing
to do with al-Qaeda. This has caused clashes between the former
al-Nusra militias with the moderate rebel militias, and there are
reports that the moderate rebel militias are leaving HTS. This hugely
complicates Turkey's job in evicting HTS, since it's far from clear
what HTS is.

The fight against ISIS is coming to an end, and now all the entities
now fighting ISIS are scrambling to gain control of as much territory
as possible. In eastern Syria, almost everyone wants control of all
the oil fields around Deir az-Zour.

In Idlib, Turkey wants to provide protection to all the Sunni Muslims
living there, especially since Bashar al-Assad considers them all to
be cockroaches to be exterminated. Although Idlib is a de-escalation
zone, Bashar al-Assad has made it clear that he considers the
de-escalation zones only a temporary solution, and when ISIS is
defeated he plans to turn his military around and take control of the
entire country, including Idlib. This scenario would result in the
population of Idlib fleeing into Turkey, which Erdogan has said he
will not permit.

Turkey has been promising for months that when its military operation
in Idlib was completed, and HTS was evicted, then Turkey would
build mass housing in Idlib, so that all the civilians will
stay there, and not try to flee to Turkey.

I believe you can see, Dear Reader, the huge conflicts that are
approaching as the fight against ISIS ends. Turkey will not tolerate
the destruction of Idlib, and Russia has agreed with Turkey about
that. Syria will not permit Turkey or anyone else to be in control of
Idlib, and Russia has agreed with al-Assad about that as well,
although it contradicts the previous agreement. Al-Assad promised
last year when he destroyed Aleppo and made it uninhabitable that
doing so would end the war, but there is no sign now that the war is
anywhere near an end. Yeni Safak (Ankara) and Sputnik News (Moscow) and AFP and Al Jazeera

Related Articles

• Syria's war resumes in full, as 'de-escalation' agreements unravel (06-Oct-2017)
  
  
• US and Iran headed for military confrontation in Deir az-Zour in eastern Syria (09-Jun-2017)
  
  
• Syria's air force deliberately targets hospital in Aleppo, killing dozens (29-Apr-2016)
  
  
• From 2013: The history of how Syria's Bashar al-Assad created ISIS (07-Sep-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Aleppo, Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh
Deir Ezzor, Deir al-Zour, Deir ez-Zor, Deir Azzour,
Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, Idlib, Hama, Latakia,
Russia, Iran, Astana, Kazakhstan, Latakia, Aleppo, Hama,
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front,
Kurds, Rajova, People’s Protection Units, YPG,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Afrin, Free Syrian Army, FSA

Permanent web link to this article
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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]

*** 10-Oct-17 World View -- UAE official says Arab blockade was engineered to prevent Qatar hosting 2022 World Cup

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• UAE official says Arab blockade was engineered to prevent Qatar hosting 2022 World Cup
  
• Numerous controversies surround FIFA's award of World Cup 2022 to Qatar
  
• A new 'risk report' raises doubts about Qatar hosting World Cup 2022
  

****
**** UAE official says Arab blockade was engineered to prevent Qatar hosting 2022 World Cup
****


Al Wakrah Stadium, with a 45,120 capacity, and a state of the art cooling system, is under construction and scheduled for completion by the end of 2018

I usually don't do sports stories, but this bizarre sports story has
geopolitical implications.

A Sunday tweet by Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan, head of Dubai Security for
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said:

<QUOTE>"If the World Cup leaves Qatar, the crisis will go
away ... because the crisis is created to break it."<END QUOTE>

The "crisis" refers to the land, air and sea blockade of Qatar that
was imposed on June 5 by four Arab countries -- Saudi Arabia, UAE,
Egypt and Bahrain. Nobody expected the blockade to last for more than
a few days, but now four months have passed, and there's no end in
sight.

The four countries listed 13 specific demands
that would be necessary to resolve the crisis. The demands
included: sever most ties with Iran; sever all ties to the Muslim
Brotherhood; shut down al-Jazeera; terminate Turkey's military
presence in Qatar; pay reparations and compensation for loss of life
and other, financial losses caused by Qatar’s policies in recent
years.

So now, a UAE official is saying that none of those demands was
relevant. The purpose of the blockade was to force Qatar to give up
hosting the 2022 World Cup, and that "if the World Cup leaves Qatar,
then the crisis goes away."

The World Cup, or world football (soccer) championship, refers to what
is probably the most prestigious sporting event in the world,
exceeding even the Olympics. It's sponsored by the International
Football Federation (FIFA, or Fédération Internationale de Football
Association).

The UAE official did not say why the Gulf states were seeking to
prevent Qatar from hosting the 2022 World Cup. Perhaps it's because
Qatar defeated Saudi Arabia on November 26, 2014, to win the Gulf Cup
of Nations that the Saudis had been favored to win. Since then, Saudi
officials have complained frequently that Qatar won the competition to
host the 2022 World Cup through bribery and corruption. AP and Gulf Times (Qatar) and Al Bawaba (Palestine) and Peninsula Qatar and Arab News (27-Jun)

Related Articles

• Qatar and Saudi Arabia have vitriolic exchange at Arab League meeting (13-Sep-2017)
  
  
• As Hajj approaches, Iran and Qatar remain in dispute with Saudi Arabia (27-Aug-2017)
  
  
• Egypt calls Qatar an 'enemy state' (30-Jun-2016)
  
  
• Gulf Arab states have major split over Egypt and Iran (06-Mar-2014)
  

****
**** Numerous controversies surround FIFA's award of World Cup 2022 to Qatar
****

From the day in 2010 that FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar,
it's been extremely controversial, and has had numerous scandals.

Qatar itself is not really a football (soccer) playing country. At
the time of the award, FIFA ranked Qatar as 113th in the world. Today
its rank is 109. The Qatar team has never reached the World Cup
final.

A major scandal was that Qatar's proposal to host the World Cup
apparently lied about the country's intentions for handling the summer
heat. The event is supposed to take place in June or July, when
Qatar's weather is sweltering, with high temperatures typically
ranging from 105F to 120F. In its proposal, Qatar wrote the
following:

<QUOTE>"Each of the five stadia will harness the power of the
sun's rays to provide a cool environment for players and fans by
converting solar energy into electricity that will then be used to
cool both fans and players at the stadia. When games are not
taking place, the solar installations at the stadia will export
energy onto the power grid. During matches, the stadia will draw
energy from the grid.

This is the basis for the stadia's carbon-neutrality. Along with
the stadia, we plan to make the cooling technologies we’ve
developed available to other countries in hot climates, so that
they too can host major sporting events."<END QUOTE>

This was close to a science fiction fantasy. After Qatar received the
award, it demanded that the dates of the World Cup be changed from
June-July to November-December. FIFA finally agreed to the change
over many objections from individual football clubs that they would be
forced to make major changes to their own schedules.

Another major scandal has to do with the building of stadiums and
other infrastructure required for the event.

By some estimates, the World Cup is going to cost Qatar approximately
$220 billion, which is about 60 times the $3.5 billion that South
Africa spent on the 2010 FIFA World Cup. This has always been an
issue, but now with the Arab states' blockade on Qatar, Qatar's
economy has been suffering, and this cost may be prohibitive.

Human rights have become an even more explosive issue. Qataris are
the richest people in the world, on a per capita basis, because
of the country's oil wealth, and so the Qatari people are used to a
life of leisure, with servants drawn from the huge number of migrant
laborers coming from countries like India, Nepal, Philippines, Sri
Lanka, and Pakistan. There are said to be five migrant workers in
Qatar for each citizen. Hundreds of thousands of those same foreign
workers would be the laborers building the stadiums and other
infrastructure.

Being a migrant worker in Qatar has been described as close to slave
labor. A Qatari boss sponsors the migrant worker, and then has total
control over him or her. The worker is not permitted to leave change
jobs, or leave jobs, or return home, without the permission of the
boss, and must work as much as 21 hours per day if required, with no
overtime pay. An unpaid worker has little recourse.

This is known as the "Kafala system," used throughout the Gulf region.
It's so abusive that it's described as a system of modern day national
slavery. Because of the World Cup controversies, Qatar was forced to
announce in December 2016 that it was abolishing the Kafala system,
giving migrant workers additional rights to change jobs or leave the
country, but the main abuses of the Kafala system are still in place.

A final major scandal were the allegations of corruption -- that Qatar
was awarded the 2022 World Cup because of bribes paid to various FIFA
officials. An independent investigation was conducted, but FIFA
refused to release the final report when it was completed in
September, 2014, only releasing a summary that said that Qatar was
cleared of wrongdoing. In June of this year, the full report was
finally released to the press. It raised a lot of questions, but did
not prove wrongdoing.

Those are the major scandals. One minor scandal had to do with
alcohol consumption, which is illegal in Qatar. Qatar has said that
alcohol consumption by non-citizens will be permitted under strictly
controlled circumstances. City AM (London, 25-Feb-2015) and BBC (8-Apr-2015) and
Special Broadcasting Service (Australia) and BBC (13-Dec-2016)

Related: Migrant Indian workers in Saudi Arabia face starvation (01-Aug-2016)

****
**** A new 'risk report' raises doubts about Qatar hosting World Cup 2022
****

The tweet by the UAE minister saying that the Gulf crisis was
engineered to prevent Qatar from hosting World Cup 2022 may have been
triggered by a report issued two days earlier by a British consulting
firm, Cornerstone Global.

The report is entitled "Qatar in focus: Is the Fifa World Cup 2022 in
danger?" and it says that thanks to pressure from the Gulf blockade,
the chances have increased substantially that Qatar will not host the
event. In particular, logistics costs for construction of the
stadiums and other infrastructure have increased 20-25% because of the
blockade. The report contains these excerpts:

<QUOTE>"Western diplomats have privately stated they do not
know whether or not the tournament will take place as planned.

The reasons for this are many and include open allegations of
corruption - both in the bidding process and in the infrastructure
development.

Qatar is under greater pressure regarding its hosting of the
tournament... the current political crisis has seen - or at least
raised the possibility of - a Qatari opposition movement emerging.

This means an increased risk for those working on, or seeking
contracts for World Cup 2022 infrastructure... with a risk of
non-payment and no realistic ability to enforce any legal
contracts.

Given the current political situation... it is certainly possible
that the tournament will not be held in Qatar.

Any cancellation of Qatar hosting the World Cup 2022 will likely
be abrupt and will leave contractors involved in a precarious
situation that may not be easily resolved.

Construction sources in Qatar have informed us that companies
working on the World Cup, whilst not panicking yet, are already
feeling the impact of the sanctions, with logistics proving costly
and challenging to re-organise in light of the border closures
with its neighbours.

A group of five project managers working for a variety of small
multi-national companies, all with government contracts related to
World Cup construction, told us in July 2017 that their costs have
increased by between 20 and 25% due to logistical problems. ...

Sources within the project have indicated that several members of
the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee have threatened to resign over
excessive interference by senior officials on spending and
allegations of corruption."<END QUOTE>

Qatar officials have responded by saying: "In the context of the
current political situation we question the motives of an organization
- which makes no secret of its affiliation to the countries blockading
Qatar - of publishing a report based entirely on media reports and
anonymous sources." BBC and Arab News

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt,
United Arab Emirates, UAE, Gen. Dhahi Khalfan,
FIFA, International Football Federation, World Cup 2022,
Fédération Internationale de Football Association,
India, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
Kafala system, Cornerstone Global

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]

wsj Wrote:> America’s retailers have a new target customer: the 26-year-old
> millennial. That age bracket, bigger than any other—numbering 4.8
> million—is part of a generation radically different from its
> predecessors that is pushing brands to develop new products and
> overhaul marketing. Many millennials are on the verge of
> life-defining moments such as buying a house and having
> children. But companies looking to be part of that have run into a
> problem. “They’re much more of a ‘do-it-for-me’ type of customer
> than a ‘do-it-yourself’ customer,” says Joe McFarland, executive
> vice president of J.C. Penney stores. In response, companies
> including Home Depot and Sherwin-Williams are hosting classes and
> online tutorials to teach such basic skills as operating a lawn
> mower, tape measure, mop and hammer.

Wow! Millennials need education on how to operate a mop and a hammer!
No wonder the country is headed for war.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Xenakis the current generation required basic skills training because the boomers refused to teach them those skills. The boomers refused to teach those skills to millennials because allowing such education fosters self-sufficiency which the boomer refused to allow because the millennial would have then carried out a lifecourse that was contrary to the boomer's prefences. The responsibility for the current generation's lack of education rests with the boomers. American and western european boomers have always been tone-deaf to such matters. Look at boomers sticking there noses in other people's business toward the Syrian and Burmese governments handling of insurrection in those countries. Even though boomers have at no point been granted permission to intervene by either government.

[John J. Xenakis]

(10-10-2017, 02:21 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > Xenakis the current generation required basic skills training
> because the boomers refused to teach them those skills. The
> boomers refused to teach those skills to millennials because
> allowing such education fosters self-sufficiency which the boomer
> refused to allow because the millennial would have then carried
> out a lifecourse that was contrary to the boomer's prefences. The
> responsibility for the current generation's lack of education
> rests with the boomers.

So has anyone explained to you yet how a hammer works? Or do
need to take an 8-week course to figure it out?

Don't forget to sign up for lab work.

[Cynic Hero '86]

(10-10-2017, 02:33 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(10-10-2017, 02:21 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: >   Xenakis the current generation required basic skills training
>   because the boomers refused to teach them those skills. The
>   boomers refused to teach those skills to millennials because
>   allowing such education fosters self-sufficiency which the boomer
>   refused to allow because the millennial would have then carried
>   out a lifecourse that was contrary to the boomer's prefences. The
>   responsibility for the current generation's lack of education
>   rests with the boomers.  

So has anyone explained to you yet how a hammer works?  Or do
need to take an 8-week course to figure it out?

Don't forget to sign up for lab work.

American and western european boomers have always been tone-deaf to such matters. Look at boomers sticking there noses in other people's business toward the Syrian and Burmese governments handling of insurrection in those countries. Even though boomers have at no point been granted permission to intervene by either government.

[John J. Xenakis]

(10-10-2017, 02:42 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > American and western european boomers have always been tone-deaf
> to such matters. Look at boomers sticking there noses in other
> people's business toward the Syrian and Burmese governments
> handling of insurrection in those countries. Even though boomers
> have at no point been granted permission to intervene by either
> government.

You know, if I were you, I don't think you should brag too much about
not knowing how a hammer works, and then blaming your parents for not
explaining it to you. It makes you look pretty bad, though looking
bad isn't something you worry about anyway.

By the way, when Boomers were young, they were smart enough to figure
it out by themselves. Millennials don't bother. Millennials just
spend the day texting and whining, and waiting for someone else to do
all the work.

[Cynic Hero '86]

(10-10-2017, 03:03 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(10-10-2017, 02:42 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: >   American and western european boomers have always been tone-deaf
>   to such matters. Look at boomers sticking there noses in other
>   people's business toward the Syrian and Burmese governments
>   handling of insurrection in those countries. Even though boomers
>   have at no point been granted permission to intervene by either
>   government.

You know, if I were you, I don't think you should brag too much about
not knowing how a hammer works, and then blaming your parents for not
explaining it to you.  It makes you look pretty bad, though looking
bad isn't something you worry about anyway.

By the way, when Boomers were young, they were smart enough to figure
it out by themselves.  Millennials don't bother.  Millennials just
spend the day texting and whining, and waiting for someone else to do
all the work.

How is that world geopolitical situation helping out for you boomers. I'm soooo sure the boomer dominated government will pull through with a solution, NOT.