Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 14-Aug-16 World View -- Wild celebrations in Manbij Syria, after major defeat for ISIS

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Wild celebrations in Manbij Syria, after major defeat for ISIS
  
• Manbij was known as 'Little London' because of British jihadists
  

****
**** Wild celebrations in Manbij Syria, after major defeat for ISIS
****


A man's beard is cut off in Manbij on Saturday (Reuters)

Men are shaving their beards and women are removing their burqas in
Manbij, Syria, today, after the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces
(SDF) declared the city fully liberated on Friday.

The so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) captured the
city of over 100,000 people in January 2014, turning what used to be
one of Syria's most liberal cities into a virtual hell. ISIS has
adopted one of the most psychotic interpretations of Sharia law, with
strict dress codes for both men and women, rules forbidding men and
women from mixing, rules forbidding smoking and music, mosque
attendance required five times per day, and a variety of punishments
for even small violations, including flogging, losing a hand, or being
beheaded.

The two months of heavy fighting killed more than 1000 people and
displaced thousands from their homes. The fighters also freed
hundreds of civilians the extremists had used as human shields.

The capture of Manbij is a significant defeat for ISIS because it lies
on a key supply route between Turkey's border and the city of
Raqqa, the de facto capital of the ISIS. Before ISIS took over, the
population of Raqqa was over one million, but many people have fled
the city, and it's estimated now that the population is between
250,000 and 300,000. ARA News (Syria-Kurdish) and Telegraph (London) and AP

****
**** Manbij was known as 'Little London' because of British jihadists
****

So many jihadists from Britain have traveled to Manbij to join
ISIS that the city has been nicknamed "Little London."

As many as 700 British citizens are thought to have traveled from
Britain to Syria to join ISIS between 2011-15, and half of them are
believed to have since returned to Britain. There are also jihadists
from Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria, but Britain has the
highest number.

Many of the British citizens re "jihadi brides" who traveled to Syria
to marry an ISIS fighter. I assume that these girls are turned on
erotically by men who cut off other people's heads. Telegraph (11-Jan) and Daily Mail (3-Jun)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Manbij, Syria, Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Turkey, Raqqa, Britain, Little London

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John J. Xenakis
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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Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 15-Aug-16 World View -- India, Pakistan celebrate independence day with vitriolic accusations about Kashmir

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• India, Pakistan celebrate independence day with vitriolic accusations about Kashmir
  
• Militants hoist Pakistani flags in Kashmir on Sunday
  

****
**** India, Pakistan celebrate independence day with vitriolic accusations about Kashmir
****


A masked Kashmir protester in Kashmir on Sunday waves a Pakistan flag next to a graffiti of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani. Wani was shot and killed by police on July 8, triggering weeks of riots, demonstrations and violence since then. (Hindustan Times)

On Sunday, Pakistan celebrated its 70th Independence Day. The first
Independence Day occurred on August 14, 1947, when Pakistan became an
independent state, because of the Partition that split the Indian
subcontinent into two nations, India and Pakistan. As I wrote last
week, Independence Days for India and Pakistan were followed by the
Partition war, one of the most massive and bloodiest wars of the 20th
century. ( "7-Aug-16 World View -- India's Narendra Modi finally hits out at Cow Protectors ('Gau Rakshaks')"
)

The Partition war was an "organic" generational crisis civil war
between Hindus and Muslims. That is, it came up from the people,
rather than coming about because one nation invaded another war. In
fact, the leading Hindu and Muslim politicians of the day were in a
state of denial, and were caught completely by surprise, and hadn't
expected the war to occur at all. And most of the "organic" slaughter
was centered in the provinces of Kashmir and Jammu.

The crisis civil war was settled with a compromise: Kashmir and Jammu
would be split into separate regions governed by Pakistan and India,
respectively, separated by a Line of Control (LoC).

Today, with India and Pakistan again in a generational Crisis era, the
leading Hindu and Muslim politicians are once in a state of denial,
not realizing how dangerous the situation is, and how a new, bloody,
massive "organic" civil war could begin in Kashmir once again.

Pakistan celebrated Independence Day on Sunday with commemorative
ceremonies held in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city, as well as at
the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, India's capital city.

In Islamsbad, the day began with a 31-gun salute in the federal
capital along with a 21-gun salute in each provincial capital. Flag
hoisting ceremonies were held in the provincial capitals and district
headquarters. The main ceremony of the day was held at Islamabad’s
Convention Centre, where President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif hoisted the national flag.

Nawaz Sharif opened the hostilities by announcing, "I dedicate this
year’s 14th August to the freedom of Kashmir." By "freedom," he means
that the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir should be given to
Pakistan, something that would not happen without a major war.

Pakistan's envoy to India Abdul Basit, the Pakistan High Commissioner
in New Delhi, said:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Pakistan will continue to extend its full diplomatic,
> political and moral support to the valiant people of Jammu and
> Kashmir until they get their right to self-determination. ...
>
> The only outstanding issue is how to liberate parts of J&K under
> illegal occupation of Islamabad. As far as Jammu and Kashmir is
> concerned, we are dedicating this year’s Independence Day to the
> freedom of Kashmir. And we firmly believe that the sacrifices made
> by the people of Jammu and Kashmir will not go in
> vain."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Indian officials criticized Basit's statement because, as Pakistan's
envoy to India, his job is to improve communications, not make
provocative statements that hinder communication. Jitendra Singh,
junior minister at the Prime Minister’s Office, shot back:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Our stand is very clear in the context of the J&K
> issue. If at all there is any outstanding issue with Pakistan, it
> is only on ways to liberate parts of the state which remain under
> the illegal occupation of Islamabad and make them a part of the
> Union of India."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

India's Home Minister Rajnath Singh also retorted in a similar
inflammatory manner:

> [indent]<QUOTE>Nawaz Sharif said that he is waiting for Kashmir to be
> handed over to Pakistan, he even wrote to UN Secretary General
> regarding this. I want to assert that no power in the world can
> wrest Kashmir from us. And if at all they want to have a dialogue
> with us, then we are ready. But it will be about Pakistan occupied
> Kashmir, not Kashmir."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

On Friday, Pakistan proposed sending supplies to the people of
Indian-government Kashmir. An official Indian government spokesman
said,

"I can only characterize [the proposal to send] supplies to the Indian
state of Jammu and Kashmir as absurd. India and others in the region
have already received enough of Pakistan’s trademark exports —
international terrorism, cross-border infiltrators, weapons, narcotics
and fake currency." Indian Express and Pakistan Today

****
**** Militants hoist Pakistani flags in Kashmir on Sunday
****

Violent clashes in Kashmir began on July 9, following the death on
July 8 of Burhan Wani, 22, a 22-year-old commander in the separatist
militia Hizbul Mujahideen (HM). Some 50 Kashmiris were killed and
over 1,900 injured. About 600 were blinded for life, having been shot
by the security forces with "non-lethal" pellet guns. The death of
Wani has triggered weeks of anti-India riots, demonstrations, and
violence in Kashmir. ( "21-Jul-16 World View -- India-Pakistan tensions grow over Kashmir issue"
)

On Sunday, India imposed a curfew in all major towns of the
Indian-controlled portion Kashmir and Jammu, in order to prevent
widespread celebrations of Pakistan's Independence Day, but the
celebrations occurred anyway.

Large pro-Pakistan rallies were held in several towns in southern
Kashmir on Sunday. Militants from Hizbul Mujahideen hoisted Pakistani
flags and saluted them.

In one town, nine people were injured when police and paramilitary
forces fired pellets on a rally. In another town, a pro-Pakistan
rally was dispersed by police, resulting in clashes in which at least
six people were injured. Police were pelted with stones in dozens of
towns. Indian Express and Geo TV (Pakistan) and Hindustan Times


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Pakistan, India, Kashmir, Jammu,
Partition, Nawaz Sharif, Abdul Basit, Jitendra Singh, Rajnath Singh,
Burhan Wani, Hizbul Mujahideen, HM

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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]

(08-15-2016, 12:53 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: > Irony - guess which ethnic group Shinawatra
> is from?

Hence the word "collaborator".

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 16-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey threatens EU migrant deal, saying EU is humiliating Turkey, not helping

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Truck bombing by PKK terrorists kills seven in southeastern Turkey
  
• Turkey threatens EU migrant deal, saying EU is humiliating Turkey, not helping
  
• Turkey's failed coup raises concerns about nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base
  

****
**** Truck bombing by PKK terrorists kills seven in southeastern Turkey
****


Aftermath of PKK terror attack in southeastern Turkey (Reuters)

A large truck bomb exploded outside a police station near Turkey's
southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Monday. Five police officers and
two civilians, including a child of one of the police officers were
killed, and another 21 were wounded.

No one has claimed credit, but since the Diyarbakir region is a
stronghold for militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),
there's little doubt that the perpetrators were from the PKK. Indeed,
the PKK attacked the same police station five years ago.

Diyarbakir police have been on high alert due to expectations that PKK
militants would carry out an attack on Aug. 15, as the date marks the
32nd anniversary of the PKK’s first armed attack in 1984. In
anticipation of a possible attack, police have been conducting
operations against the PKK for five days, and have detained a total of
161 people suspected of being PKK members. There were 37 more arrests
on Monday.

The PKK terrorist group has been fighting Turkey's government since
1984, and more than 40,000 people have been killed. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Al-Jazeera

****
**** Turkey threatens EU migrant deal, saying EU is humiliating Turkey, not helping
****

On July 15, there was a failed coup in Turkey, where hundreds of
soldiers using tanks, fighter jets and helicopters took control of key
areas of Ankara and Turkey. At least 246 people were killed , and
more than 2,000 injured. ( "17-Jul-2016 World View -- Attempted army coup in Turkey collapses within hours"
)

Since that time, over 22,000 people have been arrested and almost
8,000 more are suspects under investigation. Thousands of members of
the armed forces, police, judiciary, civil service and public sector
have been removed from their posts. Around 50,000 passports were
cancelled, journalists and academics have been arrested and more than
130 media outlets were shut down.

Western governments condemned the coup, but also expressed concern
over the extent of the crackdown, which seems to be an opportunity for
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to take on additional powers
and crush human rights. ( "22-Jul-2016 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan gives himself dictatorial powers, moving Turkey away from the West"
)

There has been a growing sentiment in Turkey that the West was more
concerned about those conducting the attempted coup, rather than
Turkey's democracy. These concerns have apparently caused the public
to put their political differences aside and unite behind Erdogan,
blaming the West for humiliating Turkey.

During a press interview on Monday, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut
Cavusoglu was asked about Turkey's application to join the European
Union:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The Turkish people are traumatized [by the failed
> coup]. Rather than helping Turkey, (European nations) are
> humiliating us. Turkey has made intense efforts like few other
> nations, to fulfill the conditions of accession to the EU. In
> return, Turkey has received only threats, insults and a total
> blockage. I ask myself, what crime have we committed? Why this
> hostility?"<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The major issue having to do with Turkey's relations with Europe is
the EU-Turkey migrant deal, which has sharply reduced the size of the
tsunami of Syrian refugees crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey and
arriving at Greece's islands. Under the terms of that deal, The EU
committed to visa liberalization by the end of June -- allowing any of
Turkey's 74 million citizens to be able to travel freely throughout
Europe's Schengen zone without a visa. Turkey's president Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said repeatedly that if visa liberalization isn't
granted, then he'll cancel the deal and allow the full flow of Syrian
refugees to Europe to resume.

The end of June came and went, and there was no talk in the press
about visa liberalization. Then the July 15 failed coup occurred in
Turkey, and the whole subject was shelved, both because of the general
chaos following the coup attempt, and because Erdogan's crackdown
following the coup attempt raised numerous human rights issues that,
according to the EU, had to be resolved before visa liberalization
could proceed.

During his interview on Monday, Cavusoglu once again raised the visa
liberalization issue, and set a new deadline -- October. He was asked
whether Turkey might cancel the migrant deal, and permit the tsunami
of Syrian refugees to resume:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"I don’t want to talk about the worst-case scenario
> but it is clear: either we apply all the agreements together, or
> we set them all aside. It can't be that we implement everything
> that is good for the EU but that Turkey gets nothing in
> return."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

There are many people in the EU who are opposed to visa liberalization
for Turks under any conditions whatsoever. Cavusoglu this month
referred to Austria as the “capital of radical racism” after Austrian
Chancellor Christian Kern suggested ending EU accession talks with
Turkey.

A major remaining issue is that Turkey is accusing Fethullah Gulen, a
76-year-old Turkish Muslim cleric, living in self-imposed exile in
America since splitting with Erdogan, of orchestrating the coup from
his desk in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. Erdogan has requested that
Gulen be extradited back to Turkey to stand trial for the coup. The
Obama administration said that it is willing to extradite Gulen, but
only after Turkey has provided suitable evidence that would withstand
a court trial showing a connection between Gulen and the coup. Such
evidence is probably not forthcoming, so this issue is far from
resolution.

Erdogan and other Turkish officials claim that they bent over
backwards to accommodate the West. They say that they've made
numerous changes to their laws to satisfy the human rights
requirements of the EU, and they signed and enforced the EU-Turkey
migrant deal. They believe that they've gotten nothing in return
except insults and humiliation. They will expect the West to meet
their legal commitments -- visa liberalization and extradition of
Gulen. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Yeni Safak (Ankara) and Independent (London) and Reuters

****
**** Turkey's failed coup raises concerns about nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base
****

A new report questions the wisdom of storing America's nuclear weapons
at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Although the Pentagon does not
discuss where its nuclear weapons are stored, it's believed that about
50 B61 tactical nuclear weapons are being stored at Incirlik.

According to the Stimson Center report, the United States first
deployed tactical nuclear bombs in Europe during the Cold War in the
late 1950s and early 1960s, to offset a buildup of Soviet tank armies
deployed in Eastern Europe. Although most U.S. tactical weapons were
withdrawn from Europe during the early 1990s, 180 of the tactical
versions of the B61s remain at six bases in Europe — in Belgium,
Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

The report claims that storing the nuclear weapons at Incirlik is
expensive. But more concerning is that the coup revealed
"unanswerable questions" -- whether the US could have maintained
control if the coup had succeeded, and whether the nuclear weapons are
safe from terrorist attacks.

Another report, from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), also
raises some concerns, but says the security situation is adequate, as
they are guarded by US troops, and are stored securely underground. To
steal or access these bombs, the report suggests, one would need to
overwhelm US and NATO forces on one of their own bases, and then come
up with some way to haul a 12 foot long, very heavy warhead.

Another analyst makes the point that even if they were captured, they
could not be used without codes held by the US military. Stimson Center and Federation of American Scientists and Saudi Gazette


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Diyarbakir, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Fethullah Gulen, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK,
Incirlik Air Base, Greece, Mevlut Cavusoglu,
Austria, Christian Kern, Stimson Center,
Federation of American Scientists, FAS

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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]

*** 17-Aug-16 World View -- Russia-Iran airbase agreement further isolates Saudi Arabia

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Russia-Iran airbase agreement further isolates Saudi Arabia
  
• Continuing Mideast realignment: Russia and Iran vs Saudi Arabia
  
• Generational alignments of the world's religions - hypothesis
  

****
**** Russia-Iran airbase agreement further isolates Saudi Arabia
****


Russian bombers take off from Iranian Hamedan air base on Tuesday (Mehr)

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that it's cleared the way for
Russian bombers to travel across Iraq's airspace traveling from an
Iran airbase to bomb targets in Syria.

On the same day, Iran announced that Russia's bombers will be
stationed at an Iranian airbase near Hamadan, a city in western Iran.
This will be the first time since World War II that Iran will permit
foreign military actions to be launched from Iran's soil.

According to Pentagon spokesman Col. Chris Garver:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"They informed us they were coming through, and we
> ensured safety of flight as those bombers passed through the area
> and toward their target and then when they passed out [of Syria]
> again."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Tuesday is not the first time Russia has launched airstrikes from
outside of Syria. Last October, Russia began launching long-range
rockets into Syria from the Caspian Sea. ( "8-Oct-15 World View -- Russia dramatically escalates Syria war launching cruise missiles from Caspian Sea"
)
Tuesday's announcement takes Russia's military dominance of the
Mideast one step further. VOA and AEI Iran Tracker and Russia Today

****
**** Continuing Mideast realignment: Russia and Iran vs Saudi Arabia
****

According to Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National
Security Council:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Cooperation between Tehran and Moscow to fight
> against terrorism in Syria is strategic and we exchange our
> capacities and possibilities in this regard. ...
>
> The conditions have grown difficult for the terrorists due to the
> constructive and extensive cooperation among Iran, Russia, Syria
> and the resistance front and this trend will continue with new and
> massive operations until their full annihilation."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

At the same time, Shamkhani was critical of Saudi Arabia:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"It is not acceptable for the Muslim world to see
> Saudi Arabia investing towards the empowerment of terrorist and
> takfiri groups [non-believers] instead of fighting the occupation
> by the Zionist regime [Israel]."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Shamkhani's use of "takfiri groups" is purposely ambiguous. For the
West, he undoubtedly wanted listeners to interpret "takfiri groups" as
a reference to so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
This is the game everyone is playing in the Mideast. Iran, Syria,
Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all claim that they're targeting ISIS,
but in fact Iran, Syria and Russia have done very little to target
ISIS, but instead consider all Sunni civilians in Syria to be
terrorists and takfiri, and have been targeting them.

Indeed, Syrian warplanes, aided by Russia, have for five years been
targeting schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods of ordinary Sunni
civilians, including women and children, whom they consider to be like
cockroaches to be exterminated, with huge barrel bombs laden with
explosives, metal and chemical weapons (chlorine). And on Tuesday,
Human Rights Watch reported that Syrian and Russian warplanes are
using incendiary weapons like napalm to create massive explosive fires
in civilian neighborhoods and other Sunni targets.

So when Shamkhani blames Saudi Arabia for "the empowerment of
terrorist and takfiri groups," he's referring to Saudi support for any
Sunnis in Syria, even women and children. The inference to be drawn
from Shamkhani's remarks is that the stationing of Russia's warplanes
on Iranian soil is directed at their centuries-old enemy, Saudi
Arabia, as well as anyone in Syria.

And indeed, that's obviously true. With the US in control of Iraqi
airspace, the Saudis could feel protected from an Iranian attack. But
now the US is giving way to Russia, as well as to Iran, and this will
only cause the Saudis to feel far less secure.

Once again, a new event is emerging that validates the Generational
Dynamics predictions made ten years ago. Long-time readers know that
Generational Dynamics predicts that in the coming Clash of
Civilizations world war, China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim
countries will be one side, and India, Iran, the United States and the
West will be on the other side. ( "8-Jul-16 World View -- Hard issues prevent full reconciliation between Turkey and Russia"
)

When I first made this prediction, years ago, it seemed almost
psychopathic to suggest that Iran was going to be America's ally.
However, regular readers know that for the last few years there have
been a regular series of events that move the Mideast along the
predicted trend line, with Syria, Russia and Iran more closely allied,
and with close cooperation from the US and the West. At the same
time, relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have been getting more
and more distant, as I've reported many times since the "Arab Spring"
in 2011. If you want to understand where the Mideast is going, then
follow the Generational Dynamics trend lines and forecasts, and you
will have the answer. FARS (Tehran) and AFP

****
**** Generational alignments of the world's religions - hypothesis
****

I've been writing for a long time that there's a centuries-old
historic alignment between Hindus and Shia Muslims. I'd now like to
expand that concept to discuss a hypothesis involving historic
religious alignments.

The first observation is that if Hinduism is aligned with Shia Islam,
then it makes sense that Buddhism is aligned with Sunni Islam. The
reason that this makes sense is that Hinduism and Buddhism are bitter
historic enemies, just as Shia and Sunni Buddhism are bitter historic
enemies. So if Shias and Hindus are aligned, it makes sense that
Sunnis and Buddhists should be aligned as well.

Also, for reasons that I'll explain below, I believe that Hindus/Shias
are aligned with Jews, Protestants and Orthodox Christians, while
Buddhists/Sunnis are aligned with Catholics.

To test this, I've gone to the CIA Fact Book, and made a list of
countries that are predominantly one of these religions:

• Hindu: Fiji (Protestant 45%, Hindu 27.9%), Guyana (Protestant
  30.5%, Hindu 28.4%), India (note: Buddhist:0%), Mauritius, Nepal,
  
• Shia Muslim: Iran, Bahrain
  
• Buddhist: Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, China (18.2%), Japan,
  North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Macau, Mongolia, Singapore, Sri Lanka
  (Sinhalese 70.2%, vs Hindu Tamils)
  
• Sunni Muslim: Indonesia, Malaysia

Examining this list, we can see that the hypothesis probably doesn't
apply to Japan, N. Korea or S. Korea, but this isn't surprising, since
I believe that this hypothesis mainly applies to Europe, the Mideast
and Central Asia, where the most wars have been fought between
Buddhists and Hindus or Muslims, which is not the case for Japan or
Korea, where the main wars have been fought with each other and with
China.

The next observation is that religions can be split into two groups:

• Universal religions: Catholicism, Sunni Islam,
  Buddhism.
  
• Targeted religions: Protestant Christianity, Orthodox
  Christianity, Shia Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism

By "universal religions," I mean religions that can spread to any
country, and have done so.

By "targeted religions," I mean religions that target a specific
regional or national population on a geographic basis. You can be a
"Catholic" anywhere in the world, but you can't just be an "Orthodox
Christian," unless you're a "Greek Orthodox" or "Russian Orthodox" or
some other branch. The same thing is true of the Protestant religion,
which has about 20 different churches in the United States alone, each
targeting a different group. There are only three religions that have
"gone viral" and become virtually universal: Catholicism, Sunni Islam
and Buddhism. For example, in China, you'll find plenty of Catholics,
plenty of Sunni Muslims, and plenty of Buddhists, but few Greek
Orthodox or Shia Muslims or Hindus.

So when we look at which countries will be aligned in the coming Clash
of Civilizations world war, the hypothesis is the "universal religion"
countries will be aligned against the "targeted religion" countries.

Obviously, this hypothesis is a very broad generalization, and there
are exceptions that one can point to. But in any generational crisis
war, these are the alignments that I expect to see.

The final observation is that these alignments would also apply
throughout history. We can therefore provide two lists of historical
dynasties that correspond to the above groups of religions:

• Dynasties for targeted religions: Parthian - Sasanian -
  Persian - Shia - Mauryan - Hindu - Slavs - Judaism
  
• Dynasties for universal religions: Seleucid - Bactrian -
  Arabian - Marwanians - Sunni - Khorasan - Abbasids - Mongols - Tartars
  - Turks - Ottomans - Buddhist

This is a first pass at a hypothesis relating the world's religions to
each other in a significant way. There are still details to be filled
in, and exceptions to be enumerated and explained, but I believe that
the core of this hypothesis is valid. And if it can be properly
defined, it will be a powerful generational tool in analyzing history
and in predicting future trends and events. CIA World Fact Book - Religions


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Iran, Hamadan, Hamedan,
Chris Garver, Iraq, Syria, Caspian Sea, takfiri,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Ali Shamkhani, Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch, napalm,
Hindu, Shia Islam, Jews, Protestants, Orthodox Chrstians,
Buddhists, Sunni Islam, Catholics,
universal religions, targeted religions

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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]

*** 18-Aug-16 World View -- Number of migrants reaching Greece surges since Turkey's attempted coup

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Number of migrants reaching Greece surges since Turkey's attempted coup
  
• Concern grows over unsafe conditions in refugee camps in Greece
  
• Fears grow that the EU-Turkey migrant deal will collapse
  

****
**** Number of migrants reaching Greece surges since Turkey's attempted coup
****


A dinghy full of migrants in the Aegean Sea is towed by Turkey's Coast Guard (Reuters)

After the EU-Turkey migrant deal was agreed in March, the number of
migrants traveling from Turkey to Greece fell almost to zero.

However, the number of migrants has surged since the July 15,
when there was an attempted government coup in Turkey. It's
now running close to 100 per day, which is still far smaller
than the average of 2500 per day last year in August.

Since the start of 2016, more than 160,000 migrants have
illegally traveled from Turkey to Greece. The figure was
more than one million in all of 2015.

So the number is still sharply lower than it was prior to
the EU-Turkey deal, the refugee situation is far from resolved.

A total of over 275,000 migrants have reached Europe this year,
including 101,000 arriving in Italy from North Africa.

Supposedly the "Balkan route" that migrants used to travel from Greece
to Germany was closed in March, but officials from Serbia are
reporting that an average of 300 new arrivals are entering the country
illegally every day. This number exceeds the 100 migrants per day
arriving in Greece from Turkey, so the other 200 must be coming from
refugee camps. BBC and B92 (Belgrade)

****
**** Concern grows over unsafe conditions in refugee camps in Greece
****

Although the number of migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey is far
smaller than the number last year, but for the 100 or so per day who
do make the trip, conditions are severely worsening, as are conditions
for the tens of thousands who are still living in Greek refugee camps.

Like last year, the migrants who arrive in Greece first arrive
in one of the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea --
Lesvos, Chios and Samos. But last year, Greece ran a ferry
to carry the migrants from the islands to Athens, from where
the migrants continued their journey north. This year,
there's no ferry and the Balkan Route is close, so there's no
way to travel north.

The result is that migrants are trapped in overcrowded refugee camps
on the islands, and are unable to leave. According to Save the
Children, the situation is almost "back to square one," from before
the EU-Turkey migrant deal:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"As the number of arrivals creeps up again, we're
> starting to see scenes reminiscent of last summer. Except this
> time, most asylum seekers are unable to continue their journeys,
> and are trapped on the islands, in overcrowded facilities, and
> under the blazing sun.
>
> Mothers with small babies are being forced to sleep on the ground
> in make-shift tents, children and breastfeeding women are
> suffering from dehydration due to water shortages in some camps,
> and tensions are increasing as basic services, such as toilets and
> showers, are stretched.
>
> Families who have fled violence and death in their homeland
> continue to live in fear and do not feel safe. They have told Save
> the Children staff that they are too scared to let their children
> out of their sight due to the frequent protests and a lack of
> security in the camps."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

There are similar problems with migrants trapped in the refugee
camp called "The Jungle" in Calais France. There are some
5,000 refugees trapped there, including hundreds of children.

The public has largely lost interest in the migrant problem since the
EU-Turkey deal, and there's little public concern for what's going on
in the refugee camps in Greece, France, and elsewhere. But public
opinion is fickle, and any day there could be something that calls
attention to the problem. Daily Mail (London) and CNet

****
**** Fears grow that the EU-Turkey migrant deal will collapse
****

In an interview earlier this week, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut
Cavusoglu repeated his demand that EU abide by its commitments in the
EU-Turkey migrant deal, specifically visa liberalization -- allowing
any of Turkey's 74 million citizens to be able to travel freely
throughout Europe's Schengen zone without a visa. ( "16-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey threatens EU migrant deal, saying EU is humiliating Turkey, not helping"
) According to Cavusoglu:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"I don’t want to talk about the worst-case scenario
> but it is clear: either we apply all the agreements together, or
> we set them all aside. It can't be that we implement everything
> that is good for the EU but that Turkey gets nothing in
> return."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Cavusoglu set October as a deadline. A previous deadline of
June has already been ignored, and few people believe that the
EU will approve visa liberalization by then.

The number of migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece has already
begun to surge since the July 15 attempted coup in Turkey. What this
illustrates is that Turkey can apply pressure on a gradual basis.
Turkey could allow the number of migrants daily to increase from 100
to 150 to 200 and so forth, continuing to demand that the EU meeting
its commitments.

Greece's government is also taking steps to prepare for a new wave of
migrants by lobbying the EU government to modify the 1990 "Dublin
Agreement," which specifies that a migrant can request asylum only in
the first EU country in which the migrant arrives. Since that country
is Greece most of the time, Greece is bearing most of the burden of
the refugee crisis. Greece would like to modify the agreement to put
into effect a plan to distribute migrants to all of the EU nations.
However, some eastern European countries have indicated that they will
refuge to receive any migrants at all, and diplomatic sources have
indicated that any change to the Dublin Agreement is unlikely during
Slovakia’s presidency of the EU, which finishes at the end of the
year.

According to some reports, Germany is planning to send some 3,000
migrants to Greece in the coming weeks, following the rules of the
Dublin Agreement. Kathimerini and Greek Reporter


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Greece, Balkan route,
Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Save the Children, France, Calais, The Jungle,
Mevlut Cavusoglu, Dublin Agreement

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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]

(08-18-2016, 11:43 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: > The East Bloc (called the SCO in its current "release") uses the
> scissors strategy to sow confusion on the part of the West. The
> way this works is - Russia creates one camp of loosely or tightly
> affiliated nations, and China creates another, competing
> camp. This deludes the West into thinking that ultimately Russia
> and China will come to loggerheads and will never form The Single
> Clenched Fist. This way, right on the eve of Great War, when the
> Single Clenched Fist moves into operational mode, the West will
> stand dumbfounded, realizing that Lucifer's Hammer will be twice
> as brutal as anyone might have imagined.

This is wonderful! You really should expand it into a short story or
even a full-length novel!! I'm sure it would do well.

How can you possibly believe that Russia and China are going to form a
"single clenched fist"? There's absolutely no history to support
that. They hate each other, they've been in massive bloody wars with
each other for centuries, and they were close to war as recently as
1970. China is totally disgusted with Russia for the collapse of
Russia's communist party. Their respective client states, India and
Pakistan, are close to thermonuclear war. They're competing for
resources in Russia's Far East and in Central Asia. Russia
is on Vietnam's side in the South China Sea.

They only have one thing in common. They're both imitating Hitler by
annexing regions belonging to other nations, they're both contemptuous
of the United States and the United Nations. Those "commonalities"
could dissolve at a moment's notice.

(08-18-2016, 11:43 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: > I know you pooh, pooh this view, and believe your own formulation
> is the superior one.

> The beauty of my formulation is, if I am wrong, then we will be
> overprepared.

> Whereas, if you (and the multitudes of conventional geopolitical
> analysts subscribing to similar notions) are wrong, we are so
> screwed.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I've said "we are so screwed"
no matter what happens, because China is developing massive numbers
of nuclear missiles that have no purpose except to destroy
American cities, American military bases, and American aircraft
carriers. They have every intention of launching those missiles
-- all of them -- irrespective of the SCO.

[Cynic Hero '86]

John X Trump Getting elected changes the ball game. Suppose if trump signs a Molotov-Ribbentrop type pact with Xi Jinping so that when China Attacks its missiles and Armies would be headed north toward Russia and Siberia. After which China would have very few missiles left to use against the US if we decide to enter the war later on.

[John J. Xenakis]

(08-18-2016, 03:59 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > John X Trump Getting elected changes the ball game. Suppose if
> trump signs a Molotov-Ribbentrop type pact with Xi Jinping so that
> when China Attacks its missiles and Armies would be headed north
> toward Russia and Siberia. After which China would have very few
> missiles left to use against the US if we decide to enter the war
> later on.

Wow! Think of a whole series of novels!

Still, this is a change -- no more clenched fist. Now you seem to
agree at least that China and Russia will be on opposite sides, even
though it's wishful thinking to believe that China will waste all its
missiles on Russia.

However, I do agree with you to this extent: Hitler made a complete
fool of Stalin, and Xi Jinping is currently making a complete fool of
Putin.

Incidentally, your remark about Trump makes me want to comment on
something.

I've been listening all day to the idiots comment on the appointment
of Steve Bannon as Trump's campaign manager. They describe Bannon as
a wild bomb thrower running the racist Breitbart news site.

This is absolutely hilarious. I know Bannon pretty well, as he's been
a big supporter of cross-posting my daily columns on the Breitbart
site, even though there are people there who don't like me, and
everybody knows that I'm no Trump supporter. He's no bomb thrower,
and he's no racist, and for that matter, Breitbart is not racist.
He's also one of the few people in the media who have studied what
I've written and who understand generational theory. He's a very
bright guy and could make a difference for Trump.

In other words, the idiots in the mainstream media are, as usual,
completely biased and so f--cked up that they don't have a clue what
they're talking about. They know how to spell Bannon's name, but
everything else they say is totally idiotic.

Meanwhile, speaking of blatant racists, we have stories coming out of
George Soros funding groups that want to destroy Israel. According to
the story, he was a very enthusiastic Nazi as a child.

** Not Shocking: George Soros Funds Progressive War on Israel

http://observer.com/2016/08/not-shocking...on-israel/


*************** Edit:

Oh wait, sorry. I got you confused with X_4AD_84. However, the rest
is still the same.

[Cynic Hero '86]

At the moment it looks like China and Russia would be on the same side. However if The China-Russia Partnership is hollow and they are revealed as bitter enemies as you say; Doesn't it make More sense for the US to arrange to sit out the earlier phases of the war and enter the war later on while facing relatively weakened enemies rather than Entering First and facing the enemy when they are still at full power.

[John J. Xenakis]

(08-18-2016, 04:35 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > At the moment it looks like China and Russia would be on the same
> side. However if The China-Russia Partnership is hollow and they
> are revealed as bitter enemies as you say; Doesn't it make More
> sense for the US to arrange to sit out the earlier phases of the
> war and enter the war later on while facing relatively weakened
> enemies rather than Entering First and facing the enemy when they
> are still at full power.

Oh, I think it would be absolutely fantastic if it were possible for
the US to play "Switzerland" and let them all kill each other while we
watch. But I don't by any means think it's possible.

FDR did stay out of WW II until Pearl Harbor. Perhaps that will be
repeated in some way.

But we do have mutual defense treaties with numerous countries: Japan,
South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, the Philippines, the ANZUS agreement with
Australia and New Zealand, a special treaty with Iceland, the NATO
agreement with all of Europe, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands
(RMI).

Even more important, there are a lot of people, in America and in the
world, who believe in American Exceptionalism, and who truly believe
that America has a moral obligation, or even an obligation dictated by
God, to do the right thing, so we won't stay out of a war very long.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 19-Aug-16 World View -- Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump's campaign
  
• Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad
  
• Six years of UN envoys and Syrian peace talks
  

****
**** Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump's campaign
****


Stephen K. Bannon

I've been listening all day to the idiotic comments on the appointment
of Steve Bannon as Trump's campaign manager. They describe Bannon as
a wild bomb thrower running the racist Breitbart news site.

This is absolutely hilarious. Former Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer
originally asked me in 2010 to start cross-posting my World View
articles on the Breitbart news site, and later Bannon took over. I
know Bannon pretty well, as he's been a big supporter of cross-posting
my daily columns on the Breitbart news site, even though I've been
highly critical of the rise of xenophobia and nationalism in countries
around the world in this generational Crisis era, including Trump's
remarks about Mexicans and Muslims. So I know for a fact that Bannon
is no bomb thrower, and he's no racist, and for that matter, the
Breitbart news site is not racist.

I worked pretty intensely with Bannon when I was being filmed for the
movie "Generation Zero." Bannon is one of the few people in the media
who have studied what I've written and who understand generational
theory and Generational Dynamics. Bannon is also one of the very few
people in the media who actually know a great deal about what's going
on in the world, a lot more than most politicians do, and certainly a
lot more than the media airheads who are writing about him. Bannon is
a very bright guy and is someone that Trump needs.

In other words, the airheads in the media know how to spell Bannon's
name, but everything else they've been saying has been pretty idiotic.
Real Clear Politics

****
**** Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria's Bashar al-Assad
****


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.

The UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura made probably the
strongest condemnations he's ever made about the situation in Syria.
Without mentioning Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, he excoriated
al-Assad's policies of wanton massacres of innocent civilians.

The context was a regular meeting of the international humanitarian
taskforce co-chaired by Russia and the United States. De Mistura cut
the meeting short after 8 minutes, saying that it made "no sense" to
continue, because of the fighting in Syria.

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Today we had a very short meeting of the Humanitarian
> Task Force. It lasted not more than 8 minutes. I decided to use my
> privilege as Chair to declare that there was no sense in have a
> humanitarian meeting today unless we got some action on the
> humanitarian side in Syria.
>
> Tomorrow is the World Humanitarian Day and in Syria what we are
> hearing and seeing is only fighting, offensives,
> counter-offensives, rockets, barrel bombs, mortars, hellfire
> cannons, napalm, chlorine, snipers, air strikes, suicide bombers.
>
> Not one single convoy has so far reached any of the humanitarian
> besieged areas this month, not one single convoy, and why? Because
> one thing, fighting."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

All of this happened in the context of a heartbreaking video of Omran
Daqneesh, a young boy who was pulled out of the rubble and woke up in
an ambulance, dazed and covered with mud and blood, a big gash on his
face, looking around confused, wondering how he got there. The video
has gone viral, and the picture above is a screen shot from the video.
Ironically, Omran is one of the "lucky" little boys, because he
survived.

De Mistura demanded an agreement for a 48-hour humanitarian pause in
the fighting. Later in the day Russia agreed, apparently because of
all the international pressure generated by the video of the young
boy. But whether Bashar al-Assad will agree is far from clear, and
even if does agree, his regime has repeatedly violated previous
ceasefires.

It's worthwhile to stop and review how we got here. When peaceful
anti-government protests began in Syria early in 2011, al-Assad
responded with a campaign of torture, massacres and genocide targeted
at all Sunni Muslims in Syria, and that genocidal campaign has
continued to this day, with full support of Orthodox Christian Russia
and Shia Muslim Iran.

The video posted today was not the first one. Shortly after al-Assad
started bombing Sunni civilians, a video surfaced of one of al-Assad's
atrocities. ( "1-Jun-2011 News -- Mutilated teenage boy becomes symbol for Syria's revolution"
)

The 2011 video showed a 13-year-old boy, Hamza al-Khatib, who was
beaten and tortured by al-Assad's security forces for over a month,
before the boy's swollen and mutilated body was dumped. At that time,
people were hoping that the video would shame al-Assad so much that he
would stop his genocidal campaign, but of course that never was going
to happen. And Hamza al-Khatib was soon forgotten.

In 2014, a military photographer who defected from al-Assad revealed
55,000 photos of how al-Assad used electrocution, eye-gouging,
strangulation, starvation, and beating on prisoners on a massive
"industrial strength" scale. ( "22-Jan-14 World View -- Western leaders sickened by Assad's 'industrial strength' torture in Syria"
).


Emaciated man showing wounds from repeated beatings by rod-like object. There are 55,000 photos like this, showing 11,000 corpses

Many people hoped that these photos would bring about some changes,
and there was even a Congressional investigation.
But those photos have also been long forgotten.

The al-Assad regime has used Sarin gas on its own population, with
impunity. The regime has continued to use chemical weapons. Regime
helicopters drop huge barrel bombs onto civilian neighborhoods. The
barrel bombs may contain explosives, screws, nails and other shrapnel,
plus canisters of chlorine and ammonia. When chlorine is inhaled, it
reacts with the moisture in the lungs, turning into hydrochloric acid
that literally burns the target to death from the inside out.

This is what the Orthodox Christian Vladimir Putin and the Shia Muslim
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei are supporting, and are responsible for.
Do not let anyone tell you that there is anything "holy" about either
of these men. They both deserve to go to the deepest ring of Hell,
along with al-Assad himself.

It's almost unbelievable how much destruction al-Assad has caused.
Thanks to al-Assad, Putin and Khamenei, there are about 50,000
jihadist fighters from 86 countries that have come to Syria, first to
join the rebels fighting al-Assad, then to join the al-Qaeda linked
Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS), and
the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Al-Assad
has created the al-Nusra front and ISIS. He's created millions of
refugees that have flooded into neighboring countries, and over a
million have poured into Europe.

Al-Assad has caused destruction and triggered wars that will last for
decades. And America is more and more closely allying itself with
Russia and Iran, and therefore to al-Assad. America is also giving
way to Russia as the principal power in the Mideast. ( "17-Aug-16 World View -- Russia-Iran airbase agreement further isolates Saudi Arabia"
)

Long-time readers are well aware that I've been saying for ten years,
based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran and Russia would
become our allies. In a way, it's similar to how we were allied with
Soviet Union genocidal dictator Josef Stalin after he'd massacred,
starved and tortured tens of millions of people. It's sickening to me
and to many others to see the Generational Dynamics prediction come
true in this way, but that's the way the world works. United Nations News and VOA and Telegraph

****
**** Six years of UN envoys and Syrian peace talks
****

As I like to point out, almost every day something new happens that a
few years ago you would have to have been crazy to believe would ever
happen. Whether it's in America, Europe, Africa, the Mideast or Asia,
things that could never happen are happening.

Many of those impossible things have occurred in Syria, and many are
related to the laughable peace talks, which have only made things
easier for al-Assad and his extermination campaign.

Kofi Annan, the virulently anti-American former Secretary-General of
the United Nations from Ghana, was the first UN envoy on Syria. Annan
formulated a farcical six-point 'peace plan'
which said absolutely nothing, but which al-Assad used
as a cover to continue exterminating innocent Sunni women and children
with impunity.

After Kofi Annan was repeatedly humiliated by Bashar al-Assad, the UN
appointed a new Syria peace envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi,
to replace Kofi Annan. Brahimi wasn't as much of
an idiot as Annan was, but he still resigned in disgust in May 2014,
after it became clear that
al-Assad really had no desire to do anything but exterminate Sunni
civilians.

So the next UN envoy was and is Staffan de Mistura, and I really can't
figure him out. Putin and al-Assad have repeatedly made a fool out of
de Mistura and made him look like an idiot, and yet he clings on as UN
envoy and makes moronic statements like, "This will not be tolerated."
Perhaps the current crisis will be his breaking point.

At any rate, this has been going on for over five years, with no end
in sight. It looks more and more that the Syrian war will not end
until the entire Mideast is engulfed in war.


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Breitbart News, Stephen K. Bannon, Donald Trump,
Peter Schweizer, Generation Zero,
United Nations, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Staffan de Mistura,
Russia, Vladimir Putin, Iran, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,
Omran Daqneesh, Hamza al-Khatib, Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front,
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS, Front for the Conquest of Syria,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Josef Stalin, Soviet Union, Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi

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]

*** 20-Aug-16 World View -- Zimbabwe launching a Soviet style command agriculture program

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Zimbabwe police violently disperse protests over new 'bond note' currency
  
• Zimbabwe launching a Soviet style command agriculture program
  

****
**** Zimbabwe police violently disperse protests over new 'bond note' currency
****


Protestor holds up a sign saying 'Old clueless Mugabe must go' (The Herald)

As protesters on Wednesday in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city, started
marching to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to submit a petition over
worsening cash shortages, heavily armed anti-riot police pounced on
them, resulting in the protestors running in different directions.
Some of the angry demonstrators pelted police officers with stones
resulting police firing teargas and using water cannons to disperse
them.

This is just the latest in widespread protests against Zimbabwe's 92
year old president Robert Mugabe, whose decades-long reign has
destroyed what was one of the strongest economies in Africa. ( "23-Jul-16 World View -- Christian pastor's '#ThisFlag' movement threatens Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe"
)

As recently as the 1999, Zimbabwe was a breadbasket of Africa,
exporting up to 500,000 tonnes (metric tons) of surplus food. By
2003, Zimbabwe was so starved that it had to receive 500,000 tonnes in
food aid from the U.N.'s World Food Program.

What happened during those three years was a Marxist socialist "land
reform" program by Robert Mugabe that confiscated 4,500 white-owned
commercial farms and redistributed the property to his cronies from
his own Shona tribe. Anyone from the hated Ndebele tribe who objected
was jailed, tortured or killed.

Unfortunately, Mugabe's cronies didn't know anything about farming.
Harvests of food staples plummeted by as much as 90%, livestock herds
dwindled and production of the main cash crop, tobacco, slumped badly.
The results were dramatic, and show how it's possible for one
dictatorial leader to destroy a country single-handedly. A formerly
well-fed country had rampant 80% poverty, and the inflation rate went
from 700% to 1000% to 10000% to 150000% and continued rising 500
billion percent.

In 2009, Zimbabwe switched to a dual-currency economy, accepting the
US dollar as valid currency. At that point, the Zimbabwe dollar
collapsed completely, and millions of citizens had their saving
destroyed.

But instead of ending the destructive land reform policies, Mugabe
added on a new one: Indigenization.

Indigenization required all Zimbabwe businesses to be majority owned
by Zimbabweans, again mostly cronies from Mugabe's Shona tribe.
Zimbabwe continues to shut down businesses, including foreign banks,
that do not comply with the indigenization requirements. Just as
Mugabe's "land reforms" destroyed the farm infrastructure, Mugabe's
indigenization law is destroying the entire business infrastructure.

But since Mugabe no longer has the power to print money, he's run out
of cash and is unable to pay salaries of public employees. To solve
this problem, Mugabe is introducing a brand-new Zimbabwean currency,
the "bond note." The bond note is expected to be introduced
in October, and one bond note is supposed to be the equivalent
of one US dollar.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has claimed that the new bond notes will
be perfectly safe because they'll only be used for limited purposes,
and no one will be forced to use them. Central Bank Governor Dr John
Mangudya said:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The intrinsic value of the export bonus or incentive
> scheme is to attract and enhance exports by Zimbabweans so that at
> the end of the day there is enough foreign currency in this
> country,” said Dr Mangudya.
>
> “If you are getting a $400 salary, you will still get $400 in
> United States dollars, bond notes, rand or euros. If you don’t
> want them then you use plastic money. We are not forcing anybody
> to use bond notes."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

This triggered the protests and demonstrations because most people
assume that Mugabe is lying. Some people are claiming that the
bond notes will be as worthless as toilet paper.

In fact, Mangudya has already been forced to retract those claims, as
he had to admit that public employees are going to be partially paid
in bond notes. However, he added that the bond notes will still be
perfectly valid, because they'll be backed by a $200 million loan from
the African Export-Import Bank.

But an opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) official
claimed last week that the $200 million loan will not last long, since
the authorities are planning to print as much as $2.5 billion in bond
notes, potentially triggering a new round of hyperinflation. The Herald (Harare) and VOA and News24Wire (Cape Town)

****
**** Zimbabwe launching a Soviet style command agriculture program
****


50 billion Zimbabwean dollar note from 2008 hyperinflation

Zimbabwe's 92-year-old leader Robert Mugabe, who destroyed much of the
country's agricultural capacity with a "land reform" program that
split up the farms and handed them to his cronies, is now launching a
"command agriculture" program similar to the agricultural
collectivization programs that failed so disastrously in Josef
Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao Zedong's China, causing tens of millions
of deaths.

The new "command agriculture" program will cost $500 million to start,
to purchase seeds, fertilizer, tractors and irrigation systems. Each
participating farmer will be given the seeds, fertilizer and equipment
for free. The farmers will work under strict supervision of the
government. Each farm will be required to produce five tonnes (metric
tons) of maize for each hectare of farmland.

The farmer will be permitted to keep for himself all the maize he
produces that exceeds five tonnes (metric tons) per hectare. There
has been no announcement of what happens to the farmer if his yield is
less than five tonnes per hectare, though we know that in the case of
the Soviet and Chinese command agriculture programs, farmers who
didn't produce were starved to death or were executed.

Zimbabwe's spring planting season begins in November (in the southern
hemisphere), and so this program is supposed to begin at that time.
At five tonnes per hectare, the government expects to produce two
million tonnes of maize on 400,000 hectares of land, which would
exceed the annual demand of 1.5 million tonnes.

According to Ryan Truscott, the Zimbabwe correspondent speaking
on Radio France Internationale (my transcription):

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Farming union officials say that that figure of five
> tonnes per hectare is far too ambitious. In a very few cases you
> can get five tonnes, or even as much as ten tonnes per hectare,
> but the average is just over half a tonne per hectare.
>
> So there's a very real possibility that the farmers won't reach
> the five tonne targets, and won't be left with anything for
> themselves. What happens in that scenario, for now we don't
> know."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Another issue is the question of where the $500 million is coming from
to fund this program. As we wrote in July, Zimbabwe currently owes
$10 billion to the IMF, World Bank and the African Development Bank,
with $1.86 billion in debt repayments in arrears, and is begging for
more investment money. ( "1-Jul-16 World View -- Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Puerto Rico - three amigos in Marxist economic destruction"
)

The government says that's all under control. Since the public banks
are no longer available for borrowing more money, Zimbabwe will borrow
from private banks, according to Zimbabwe's vice president Emmerson
Mnangagwa, who says that the money will be used to import farming
equipment from Brazil, Belarus, Russia and India.

The private banks have not been named, but according to Mnangagwa:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The program is not being run on the budget (so) we
> are raising funds from the private sector and we are quite
> advanced at securing these funds. This is a cost recovery
> program, nothing is going to be given for free.
>
> We cannot put a figure now. We are well advanced in negotiating
> such facilities and many private companies are coming forward to
> make offers because it is guaranteed that they will have a return
> from the loans that they may advance."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

If, in fact, Zimbabwe is unable to borrow the money from private
banks, then they may attempt to pay for the program with their new
"bond notes," and that will cause real problems. Zimbabwe Mail and The Herald (Harare)
and The Zimbabwean


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe,
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Shona, Nbdele,
John Mangudya, Movement for Democratic Change, MDC,
Command agriculture, Soviet Union, Josef Stalin,
Mao Zedong, China, Ryan Truscott, Emmerson Mnangagwa

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John J. Xenakis
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
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 21-Aug-16 World View -- US cuts military advisers to Saudis in Yemen as peace talks collapse

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Massive rally in Sanaa Yemen interrupted by Saudi warplane bombing
  
• Generational history of Shia Houthis in Yemen
  
• US military reduces support for Saudi coalition in Yemen
  

****
**** Massive rally in Sanaa Yemen interrupted by Saudi warplane bombing
****


Anti-Saudi rally in Sanaa Yemen on Saturday (Twitter)

An estimated 100,000 Yemenis attended a rally in Sanaa, Yemen's
capital city, on Saturday. The rally had been planned for weeks, so
people had come from many regions outside of Sanaa.

The purpose of the rally was to protest resumed air strikes by the
Saudi-led coalition following the collapse of peace talks early in
August, and to support a new "governing council" set up by the
Iran-backed Shia Houthis that had overthrown the Saudi-backed
government in a coup in 2014. Shortly after that, a Saudi Arabia-led
coalition began airstrikes with the intention of restoring the
internationally recognized government.

Although not all the protesters on Saturday were pro-Houthi, they were
all in favor of seeing the airstrikes end, supported the Houthi's
governing council as the way to do that.

There had been a three-month ceasefire while peace talks in Kuwait had
proceeded with no progress. The Saudis wanted to restore the
status quo ante with the pro-Saudi government, while the
Houthis wanted to retain control of the government following their
successful coup. Once the peace talks collapsed three weeks ago, the
Saudi-led coalition resumed airstrikes.

Saturday's huge rally was interrupted by Saudi warplanes passing
overhead and conducting bombing raids. Early stories on the BBC
reported that the Saudi warplanes had bombed the rally, as described
by a correspondent in Sanaa:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Suddenly the Saudi jets started circling on top of
> us, and as always, we thought they would just fly by, just trying
> to scare the crowd.
>
> Suddenly they started bombing and the crowd started running. I
> basically bolted out of the area. People started
> screaming... Because everybody's very well armed, they started
> shooting their AK-47s and their machine guns into the
> sky."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

However, later reports indicated that the warplanes had attacked
targets on a nearby mountain. BBC and
France24

****
**** Generational history of Shia Houthis in Yemen
****

The Houthis are a branch of Shia Islam that took hold in southern
Arabia (currently Yemen) in the century following the death of the
prophet Mohammed. In the decades following Mohammed's death, there
were conflicts as to who would succeed Mohammed as caliph of Islam.
One group insisted that any new caliph must be a direct descendant of
Mohammed himself, and they particularly selected Mohammed's grandson,
Husayn ibn Ali (626-680), often referred to as just Ali. The
partisans of Ali became known as Shia or Shiites.

Ali was killed in the seminal Battle of Karbala in a generational
crisis war that climaxed in 680, splitting the Muslim community, and
throwing the question of succession into chaos. In the following
decades, the group that won the war (the Umayyads) became known as the
Sunnis, and they selected caliphs by a variety of means, including
elections, inheritance, and wars.

The Shias formed a completely separate branch of succession, referring
to their leaders as Imams. They continued to insist that any imam
must be a direct descendant of Mohammed, and must therefore be a
direct descendant of Husayn ibn Ali. As it turned out, Ali had nine
descendants, with the last one, the 12th imam, disappearing in 873.

Today, Shia Muslims are still divided over which of these imams was
going to return as the messiah to avenge injustices to the Shia. This
belief is roughly equivalent to the Christian belief in the second
coming of Christ, or the Buddhist belief in the Maitreya -- that a new
Buddha is to appear on earth, and will achieve complete enlightenment.

One sect broke off in 740 and was known as the Zaydis, or "Fivers,"
because of their allegiance to the fifth imam. These are the Houthis
today.

Another Shia sect are called "Seveners," because of their allegiance
to the seventh imam.

Most Shias today are "Twelvers," because of their allegiance to the
12th imam, also called "The Hidden Imam," who disappeared in 873, as
described above. According to the Twelver belief, he did not die, but
disappeared, and will reappear at the appropriate time. Ayatollah
Rouhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 Great Islamic
Revolution, apparently claimed that he was the 13th imam, the
Allah-appointed successor to Ali and to Mohammed himself. (From
November 2009: "Theological split in Iran widens as opposition protests continue"
)

****
**** US military reduces support for Saudi coalition in Yemen
****

Saudi Arabia has been under increasing international pressure to end
the airstrikes in Yemen, and simply let the Houthis take over. Since
the Houthis are supported by their hated enemy Iran, that kind of
solution would be a major regional victory for Iran, and I would be
very surprised to see anything like that happen.

The aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors without Borders)
on Friday announced that they were pulling their staff out of six
hospitals in northern Yemen, giving as a reason that their staff were
not safe from the Saudis' "indiscriminate bombings," which sometimes
struck the hospitals in which MSF were working.

According to MSF:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Over the last eight months, MSF has met with
> high-ranking Saudi-led coalition officials on two occasions in
> Riyadh [Saudi Arabia's capital city] to secure humanitarian and
> medical assistance for Yemenis, as well as to seek assurances that
> attacks on hospitals would end. ...
>
> Aerial bombings have, however, continued, despite the fact that
> MSF has systematically shared the GPS coordinates of hospitals in
> which we work with the parties involved in the conflict. Coalition
> officials repeatedly state that they [honor] international
> humanitarian law, yet this attack shows a failure to control the
> use of force and to avoid attacks on hospitals full of
> patients. MSF is neither satisfied nor reassured by the Saudi-led
> coalition's statement that this [August 15] attack was a
> mistake."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

International rights groups have also criticized the United States for
providing support to the Saudis in the Yemen war. According to an
analyst interviewed on Saturday on the BBC, the US became part of the
Saudi coalition in the hope of working with the Saudis to guarantee
that Yemeni civilians would be protected, but that has been
unsuccessful.

U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey on
Saturday announced that the US military has been slashing the number
of intelligence advisers directly supporting the Saudi-led coalition's
air war in Yemen, because of concerns over civilian casualties. The
number of advisers has gone from 45 to "less than five." McConnaughey
said that the number of advisers could be increased again, "if the
need arises." Saudi Gazette and CNN and
AFP


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Yemen, Sanaa, Saudi Arabia, Houthis,
Shia Islam, Husayn ibn Ali, Battle of Karbala, Umayyads,
Zaydis, Fivers, Seveners, Twelvers, Iran, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini,
Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, Doctors without Borders,
Ian McConnaughey

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John J. Xenakis
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Phone: 617-864-0010
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Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 22-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan announces a complete U-turn on Syria policy

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Turkey's downward spiral continues with massive wedding terror attack
  
• Report: US military moving nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania
  
• Turkey's Erdogan announces a complete U-turn on Syria policy
  

****
**** Turkey's downward spiral continues with massive wedding terror attack
****


Ambulances arrive at the site of the Gaziantep terror attack (AFP)

The so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) is being
blamed for a "barbaric" terror attack on Sunday on a wedding ceremony
in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, killing 51 people and injuring
69 more. Gaziantep is a large Kurdish community just across the
border from Aleppo in Syria

The perpetrator was a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14. The
suicide bomber reportedly joined the crowd disguising himself as a
guest before blowing himself up.

Turkey appears to be in a downward spiral of instability following a
year of dramatic events, including multiple terror attacks by ISIS,
multiple terror attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and a
failed coup attempt on July 15 that Turkey. Turkey's president Recep
Tayyip Erdogan is blaming the coup attempt on the Fetullahist Terror
Organization (FETO), led by Fethullah Gulen, a 76-year-old Turkish
Muslim cleric, living in self-imposed exile in America since splitting
with Erdogan in 1999.

According to Erdogan, following Sunday's terror attack:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"There are strong indications that the attack was
> carried out by ISIL. A suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 blew
> himself up. We know that ISIL has been trying to gain ground in
> Gaziantep for a while now. ...
>
> [The] place where terror comes from doesn’t make any difference
> for us. ...
>
> There is no difference between the PKK, the FETO or Daesh
> [ISIS]. All of them are terrorists. ...
>
> Those who cannot defeat Turkey try to provoke people by abusing
> ethnic and sectarian sensitiveness, but they will not
> prevail."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Erdogan said the aim of such attacks was to sow division between
different groups in Turkey such as Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens.

American and European officials, who had previously been accused of
showing more sympathy for Turkey's attackers than for Turkey, rushed
to offer condolences. US Secretary of State John Kerry tweeted,
"Strongly condemn the barbaric terrorist attack in #Gaziantep. The US
stands squarely with our ally #Turkey against the scourge of
terrorism." Hurriyet (Ankara) and BBC and Daily Sabah (Ankara)

****
**** Report: US military moving nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania
****

As we reported last week, analysts are pointing out that if Turkey's
July 15 attempted coup had been successful, then America might have
lost control of the 50 or so B61 tactical nuclear weapons that are
being stored at Incirlik. ( "16-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey threatens EU migrant deal, saying EU is humiliating Turkey, not helping"
)

Even now, relations between Turkey and America are deteriorating so
rapidly, that concerns are increasing that Turkey's government might
change its policy and take control of the weapons, or that they might
be the target of a terrorist attack. Debka is reporting that America
is rejecting a demand from Turkey to take control of the weapons.

The US does not confirm that there are nuclear weapons stored anywhere
in Europe, but there are now several unconfirmed reports that the US
military is secretly moving the nuclear weapons to bases in Romania.

Russia and Romania are both Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, and
historically fought bloody wars against the Muslim Ottoman Empire
(Turkey) in World War I and previous wars. So moving the nuclear
weapons from Turkey to Romania carries a great deal of symbolic
significance to both countries.

On the other hand, Romania is not on such good terms with Russia
either. In World War II, Romania initially was forced to ally with
Nazi Germany, but in 1944 was forced to switch sides and ally with the
Soviet Union. The Soviets then brutally occupied Romania from 1944 to
1958. So even though Romania and Russia are both Eastern Orthodox
Christian countries, there is a great deal of mutual hostility.

The United States has deployed in Romania an $800 million missile
shield that was switched on in May. The nominal purpose of the
missile shield is protection from Iran, but Russia believes that its
existence makes Russia more vulnerable to attack from Nato.

Stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Romania, along with the missile
shield, is likely to infuriate Russia and raise security concerns.
There may be some kind of retaliation.

The reports of moving the nuclear weapons have never been confirmed,
and so there have been no public statements from Turkey, but it's
likely that Turkey will see moving the nuclear weapons to the military
base of its history enemy (Romania) as one more humiliation that the
West is inflicting on Turkey.

Romania has strongly denied that any nuclear weapons are being moved
there from Turkey. EurActiv and Balkan Insight and Debka

****
**** Turkey's Erdogan announces a complete U-turn on Syria policy
****

Turkey has announced a major change in its policy towards Syria. In
the past, Turkey has been insistent that Syria's president Bashar
al-Assad must go as part of any peace settlement. In the new policy,
al-Assad may remain in power for six months after the peace agreement
has been signed.

The change is being driven by increasing power of the Kurds. From the
point of view of Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Syrian
Kurds are terrorists, and are the Syrian branch of the PKK terrorists.
However, the United States has been using the Syrian Kurds as a
fighting force against ISIS, and the Kurds have been gaining control
of regions of northern Syria.

As we've written in the past, the nightmare scenario for Turkey is
that the Kurds take control of various regions in northern Syria and
link them together to form a large area in northern Syria along the
border with Turkey. The Kurds could then claim a Kurdish state in
Syria stretching from the Mediterranean to Iraq, along Turkey's border

This is also a nightmare scenario for the al-Assad regime, which would
then lose control of the entire northern Syria. It's also a nightmare
scenario for Iran, because Iran is fighting on the side of al-Assad in
Syria, and because Iran has a historic enmity with the Kurds in Iraq
and southeastern Turkey.

This is creating a temporary three-way marriage of convenience
involving Turkey, Iran, and the al-Assad regime.

Turkey's new alliance with al-Assad is a major turn-about, something
that would have been unthinkable even just a few months ago.

In describing the new policy to reporters, Turkey's prime minister
Binali Yildirim said the following:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Finding a solution is the most important thing for
> us. It is important that no more people die. If we are going to
> save those people, to heel the bleeding wound, the rest are
> [irrelevant] details. All the rest could be talked through and a
> solution could be found. As I said, al-Assad cannot be a uniting
> figure in Syria in the long run, it is just not possible. The main
> countries involved - the U.S., Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
> others - should come together and Turkey should make more effort
> on that."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

These things always sound so good when they come out of the mouths of
politicians, don't they. Then if you take a nap for three months,
when you wake up and see what's happened, you realize that everything
they said was total nonsense.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this change of policy
is strongly counter-trend, and so is meaningless. There will never be
a "peace deal" for Turkey, because al-Assad will never agree to
"peace" as long as there are any Sunnis left in Syria to exterminate.
Also, both al-Assad's Shia/Alawites and Iran's Shias are historic
enemies of Turkey, and so the marriage of convenience will end up in
divorce after the first major bump in the road.

The entire Mideast is headed for a major war involving the whole
region, along Israeli-Arab fault line, the Sunni-Shia sectarian fault
line, and various ethnic fault lines. When the war ends, there will
be a great international peace conference attended by politicians from
all the major nations, and they'll decide all the new boundaries. At
that point, in the distant future, the Kurds may or may not get their
Kurdish state. Hurriyet (Ankara) and BBC


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Gaziantep, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Iran, Binali Yildirim,
Fethullah Gulen, Fetullahist Terror Organization, FETO,
Incirlik air base, Romania, Eastern Orthodox Christians

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

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 23-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey begins to fully enter the war in Syria militarily

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• International Criminal Court gets conviction for 'cultural genocide' in Timbuktu Mali
  
• In an embarrassing turnaround, Russia removes its bombers from Iran
  
• Turkey begins to fully enter the war in Syria militarily
  

****
**** International Criminal Court gets conviction for 'cultural genocide' in Timbuktu Mali
****


Historic mosque and museum in Timbuktu, Mali

A jihadist, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, pleaded guilty on Monday to the
crime of "cultural genocide" in the International Criminal Court for
destroying religious monuments in the ancient city of Timbuktu in
Mali.

The desecration of Timbuktu by al-Qaeda was a big story in 2012.

Founded between the 5th and 11th centuries by Tuareg desert nomads,
Timbuktu became a meeting point between north, south and west Africa
and a melting pot of black Africans, Berber, Arab and Tuareg desert
nomads. The trade of gold, salt, ivory and books made it the richest
region in west Africa and it attracted scholars, engineers and
architects from around Africa, growing into a major center of Islamic
culture by the 14th century. Timbuktu is home to nearly 100,000
ancient manuscripts, some dating to the 12th century, preserved in
family homes and private libraries under the care of religious
scholars.

In 2012, the al-Qaeda linked terror group, Ansar Dine (Defenders of
Faith), were using shovels, hoes and chisels to destroy Sufi Muslim
shrines and mosques that were built centuries ago. It was feared that
Ansar Dine would also destroy the 100,000 ancient manuscripts. As a
result, many citizens of Timbuktu carefully hid any manuscripts they
had in their possession. Many were also sent to Bamako, Mali's
capital city, where they would be safe from Ansar Dine.

According to the charges brought by the ICC against Ahmad Al Faqi Al
Mahdi:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"It is alleged that, until September 2012, he was the
> head of the "Hisbah" (body set up to uphold public morals and
> prevent vice), set up in April 2012. He was also associated with
> the work of the Islamic Court of Timbuktu and participated in
> executing its decisions. It is alleged that he was involved in the
> destruction of the buildings mentioned in the
> charge."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

On Monday, al-Mahdi pleaded guilty to the crimes he was charged
with, and said the following at his trial:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"It is also my hope that the years I will spend in
> prison will be source to purge the evil spirit that took me and I
> will keep my hopes high that the people will be able to forgive
> me.
>
> I would like to give a piece of advice to the Muslims in the world
> not to get involved in the kind of acts that I did because it will
> give no good to humanity."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Al-Mahdi could get a sentence of up to 30 years, but it's expected
that he'll be sentenced to less because he confessed to the crimes.

The ICC considers this to be a historic trial because it was the first
time that a jihadist was charged by the ICC, and it's the first time
that the principal charge was destruction of cultural property.
CNN
and Swiss Info and ICC Case Information Sheet (PDF)

****
**** In an embarrassing turnaround, Russia removes its bombers from Iran
****

Last week we reported that Russia's bombers would be traveling
from the Hamadan airbase in Iran, across Iraq airspace for
bombing raids into Syria. This was considered an embarrassment
to the US because US military had not been notified in advance,
and had to approve travel through Iraq's airspace. ( "17-Aug-16 World View -- Russia-Iran airbase agreement further isolates Saudi Arabia"
)

Russia bragged that they would be permitted to use Iran's airbase "as
long as required." Well, "as long as required" apparently ended on
Monday, when use of the airbase came to an abrupt halt because it was
no longer required, according to Russia's Defense Ministry spokesman:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Russian military aircraft that took part in the
> operation of conducting air strikes from Iran's Hamadan air base
> on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all
> tasks.
>
> Further use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of
> Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the
> basis of mutual agreements to fight terrorism and depending on the
> prevailing circumstances in Syria."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Iran’s Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan blamed Russia for
bragging, saying that it was "a kind of show off and ungentlemanly."
He said in an interview:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Naturally the Russians want to show that they are a
> superpower and an influential country and are present in all
> regional and global affairs. ... Of course grandstanding and
> incivility were behind the announcement."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Allowing Russia to use the airbase was controversial within Iran's
government. Hossein Ruyvaran, an Iranian political analyst who
teaches at the University of Tehran, was quoted as saying:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The chief issue being discussed comes down to this:
> does allowing the Russian Aerospace forces use the capabilities of
> this airbase violate the Article 14b of the Iranian Constitution
> or not? Because according to this article, any form of leasing an
> airfield to a foreign power to be used as an airbase – even for a
> peacekeeping mission – is forbidden."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

This ties into some analysis that I've done in the past regarding
whether Iran would use a nuclear weapon on Israel. If you look at
Iran's history in the last century, including its two generational
crisis wars, the Constitutional Revolution of the 1900s decade and the
Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, combined with statements that they've
made, you see that they take pride in never attacking anyone else,
except in self-defense. Thus, I consider it almost impossible for
Iran to preemptively use a nuclear weapon on Israel, unless Israel
attacked first.

That doesn't make Iran the "good guy." Quite the contrary. Iran is
perfectly happy to do things like sponsoring terrorist acts around the
world through its puppet terrorist group Hezbollah, or supplying arms
to Palestinians for use against Israel, or fighting a proxy war in
Yemen, or supplying weapons and fighters to Syria's president Bashar
al-Assad for use in his genocidal extermination campaign on Sunnis,
making them war criminals. But the Iranian leaders still think that
they're wonderful people rather than war criminals because they don't
invade anyone.

So I see this Russian use of Iran's Hamadan airbase as crossing a red
line that challenges this "good guy" self-image, at least temporarily.
There will now be a debate in Iran's government that can go either
way. It's possible that Russia may again be permitted to use Iran's
airbase, but next time it will be done a lot more quietly. Russia Today (21-Aug) and AEI Iran Tracker and AP

****
**** Turkey begins to fully enter the war in Syria militarily
****

In a move that could once again change the direction of the war in
Syria, Turkey is beginning to fully enter the war in Syria. On
Monday, Turkey's military fired artillery shells across the border
into Syria, striking ISIS targets in one region, and striking Kurdish
militia targets in another region.

In addition, Turkey is preparing hundreds of Ankara-backed rebels for
an offensive against the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL
or Daesh). The Kurdish militias are also conducting an offensive
against the same ISIS targets, opening the possibility of a collision.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Daesh [ISIS] should be completely cleansed from our
> borders and we are ready to do what it takes for
> that."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

As we wrote yesterday,
a major
terrorist attack Sunday in Turkey has led to an announcement by the
government of Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to do a complete
U-turn on its Syria policy, allowing Syria's president Bashar al-Assad
to remain in power for six months after the peace agreement has been
signed. This change in policy was dictated by the increasing success
by the Syrian Kurds, whom Erdogan has said are terrorists linked to
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

In the past, Turkey has been very cautious about directly entering the
war in Syria. In particular, Erdogan wanted international agreement
to implement a "no-fly zone" or "buffer zone" in northern Syria along
Turkey's border, to provide a space for refugee camps for Syrian
cities fleeing from the violence. In retrospect, this kind of no-fly
zone might have prevented or lessened the surge of refugees traveling
through Turkey into Europe. Erdogan never implemented a buffer zone
because it was opposed by the United States.

But now, the policy "to do what it takes" military seems to be yet
another aspect of Turkey's complete U-turn in Syria policy. If this
is the start of a major Turkish offensive in Syria, the war could
change dramatically. Reuters/AFP and AP


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Mali, Timbuktu, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi,
International Criminal Court, ICC, Ansar Dine, Defenders of Faith,
Russia, Iran, Hamadan airbase, Hossein Dehghan, Hossein Ruyvaran,
Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Mevlut Cavusoglu

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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]

*** 24-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey prepares an army of 1,500 Syrian rebels to fight ISIS and Kurds in Syria

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Kurds, Assad forces, US and ISIS converge in Hasaka, alarming Turkey
  
• Turkey launches rebel army to fight both ISIS and Kurds in Syria
  

****
**** Kurds, Assad forces, US and ISIS converge in Hasaka, alarming Turkey
****


Kurdish fighters in Hasaka (Reuters)

Everyone involved in the fight in Syria is making use of a convenient
semi-fiction: Nominally, each one is there to fight the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). The fight against ISIS
is real, but it's also a cover for other military activities.

Central to many of sub-conflicts are the Kurds, particularly Syria's
Kurdish militias (the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG).

What we're seeing is a large convergence of forces in two Turkish
border towns in northern Syria: Hasaka and Jarablus. The fight
against ISIS in Hasaka has already involved several fighting forces
with different objectives:

• The YPG is fighting ISIS in the town of Hasaka. Also, the
  forces of Syria's regime president Bashar al-Assad are fighting ISIS
  in Hasaka as well.
  
  
• Not surprisingly, the YPG is also fighting the al-Assad forces in
  Hasaka, and has scored a major victory against al-Assad this
  week.
  
  
• Al-Assad's warplanes have been bombing the YPG around Hasaka.
  
  
• Last week, Syrian jets dropped bombs on Kurds in Hasaka, in an
  area where American troops were present in support of the YPG. The US
  scrambled two F-22s to confront the Syrian jets.
  
  
• The Pentagon warned the Syrian regime that the US would take
  action against the Syrian regime if US forces and its YPG partners are
  threatened:
  
  > [indent]<QUOTE>"We’re going to defend our forces where they are. We
  > advise them [the Syrians] to steer clear of where we’re operating.
  >
  > We're going to continue to provide support and provide defensive
  > support in particular to forces on the ground engaged in the
  > [ISIS] fight, and particularly those forces that are partnered up
  > with the coalition forces."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
  
  The Pentagon spokesman said this is "not a no-fly zone" in northern
  Syria, but "You can label it what you want."
  
  
• The Kurds are now demanding that al-Assad regime forces leave the
  Hasaka region altogether, giving the YPG and its political arm, the
  Democratic Union Party (PYD), complete control. Rami Abdulrahman,
  director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on
  the war, says, "Even if [regime forces] keep a symbolic presence, it
  is a big defeat for the regime in Hasaka."
  
  
• Turkey is becoming increasingly alarmed by the growing strength
  and success of the YPG.

The fighting between the YPG forces and the al-Assad forces is the
most violent since the war began in 2011. Syria's deployment of
warplanes against the Kurds was also a first, as was the American
response with its own warplanes.

The YPG now controls large regions of northern Syria, including an
uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border
from the eastern frontier with Iraq to the Euphrates river, and a
pocket of territory in northwestern Syria.

It is no secret that the Kurds would like to take control of the
region in between those two, and create an independent state called
Rojava. This is a nightmare scenario for both Turkey and the al-Assad
regime. Daily Beast and Daily Sabah (Ankara) and The Hill

****
**** Turkey launches rebel army to fight both ISIS and Kurds in Syria
****

Turkey is assembling a force of 1,500 Syrian rebel fighters in the
town of Gaziantep, preparing them to cross the border and launch an
attack on ISIS in the strategic Syrian town of Jarablus.

The Kurdish militias, the YPG, are also making preparations for a
final assault on ISIS around the same town, Jarablus.

Jarablus is a small town, but its importance lies in the fact that it
lies right on the border with Turkey, and ISIS has been using it as a
corridor to import supplies and people from Turkey. So it's important
to drive ISIS out of Jarablus in order cripple ISIS's supply lines.

The YPG, backed by American warplanes, could take control of Jarablus
from ISIS, but this would give the Kurds control of another
significant region in northern Syria along the border with Turkey, and
this is panicking Turkey.

Therefore, Turkey is assembling the 1,500 Free Syrian Army (FSA)
fighters in Gaziantep to try to take control of Jarablus before the
Kurds do. So that should be quite a battle.

According to an FSA spokesman, "The plan is to take Jarablus and
expand south ... so as to abort any attempt by the Kurds to move north
... and so that Kurds don't take more villages."

There's another subtext to this. Recall that there was a "barbaric"
terror attack on a wedding ceremony over the weekend, killing many
dozens of people including many children. The attack was attributed
to ISIS, and it's triggered a furious response from Turkey. ( "22-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan announces a complete U-turn on Syria policy"
)

The wedding terror attack occurred in Gaziantep, which is the same
town in which Turkey is assembling the 1,500 FSA fighters. It's
possible that ISIS selected that town for the attack exactly because
the FSA fighters were being assembled there.

Whatever happens in Jarablus, ISIS is sure to retaliate. AP and BBC


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Syria, Hasaka, Jarablus,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Kurdish People’s Protection Units, YPG,
Democratic Union Party, PYD, Abdulrahman, Free Syrian Army, FSA

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John J. Xenakis
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Phone: 617-864-0010
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Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 25-Aug-16 World View -- North Korea lays land mines to prevent soldiers from defecting

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• US VP Biden snubbed by Turkey's angry president Erdogan
  
• North Korea lays land mines to prevent soldiers from defecting
  
• UN Security Council has emergency meeting on North Korea missile tests
  

****
**** US VP Biden snubbed by Turkey's angry president Erdogan
****


US VP Biden meets with Turkey's angry president Erdogan

US Vice President Joseph Biden met on Wednesday in Ankara with
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an attempt to reverse the
rapidly growing anti-American sentiments that have been surging in
Turkey following the July 15 coup.

Sitting next to what some reports describe as a "stony faced Erdogan,"
Biden said:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"I want to make it unmistakably clear that the United
> States stands with our ally, Turkey. Our support is absolute and
> it is unwavering. ...
>
> The people of Turkey have no greater friend than the United States
> of America. As I said earlier, I want to offer my personal
> condolences and those of the president to the people of Turkey,
> for not only what they went through in the coup attempt, but
> shortly after that over 50 people murdered apparently from what
> we're told by ISIS a suicide bombing where 28 or 29 young people
> under the age of 18 were killed. The suffering of your people at
> the hands of ISIS at the hands of the PKK in the southeastern part
> of your country is beyond what any people should have to
> sustain."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Biden's entire visit was met with hostility, and was referred to by
some Turkish media as a "waste of time." There was particular
hostility between Erdogan and Biden over Turkey's desire to extradite
Fethullah Gulen, living in exile in a resort in Saylorsburg
Pennsylvania, whom Erdogan blames for the coup.

Biden explained that under the US system, Gulen cannot be extradited
until Turkey produces evidence to an American court of
Gulen's culpability. Erdogan responded that the US could
at least arrest Gulen, so that he can't be interviewed by news
media:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"According to the [1981] extradition treaty with US,
> we'd expect Gülen to be detained, however he still manages his
> terrorist organization freely."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Erdogan also criticized Biden's use of the phrase "Islamic State" to
describe what I call "the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL
or Daesh)", or just ISIS. Erdogan said that Biden should use the name
"Daesh" and added:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Islam is a religion of peace; it does not send
> children to blow themselves up as suicide bombers in the middle of
> crowds."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

This is a criticism that a number of Muslim authorities have raised,
saying that referring to this terror group as "Islamic State" makes as
much sense as referring to a Christian terror group like the IRA as
"Christian State." The BBC dealt with this debate about a year ago,
and refers to it as "the so-called Islamic State." I use the name
ISIS for the same reason. Bloomberg and Daily Sabah (Ankara)

****
**** North Korea lays land mines to prevent soldiers from defecting
****

When Thae Yong Ho, North Korea's deputy UK ambassador defected last
week to the UK with his family, North Korea's media labeled Thae to be
"human scum," and took the usual apoplectic turn:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"[Thae] should have received legal punishment for the
> crimes he committed, but he discarded the fatherland that raised
> him and even his own parents and brothers by fleeing, thinking
> nothing but just saving himself, showing himself to be human scum
> who lacks even an elementary level of loyalty and even tiny bits
> of conscience and morality that are required for human
> beings."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

North Korea is following up by laying more land mines on the border
between North and South Korea, in order to prevent defections of its
own soldiers. Land mines and barbed wire already cover almost all of
the border between North and South, but one location has been
previously left untouched -- Panmunjom, the so-called "truce village,"
where North and Korea agreed to a ceasefire on July 27, 1953. And
indeed, under the agreement reached in 1953, it's illegal for the
North Koreans to lay land mines around Panmunjom.

But now that's changed according to South Korean officials:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities
> detected last week that the North Korean soldiers were planting
> multiple mines north of the Bridge of No Return near Panmunjom.
> It is the first time that they witnessed the North’s land mine
> placement in that area since the Armistice Agreement was signed in
> July 1953. ...
>
> Under the regulations governing the truce, planting land mines is
> forbidden in the areas near the Panmunjom. The guards are banned
> from carrying heavy weapons. The United Nations Command strongly
> protested to the North about the move."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The Bridge of No Return was used for prisoner exchanges. Once the
prisoner crossed the bridge, he could never cross back.

It's believed that the land mines were laid to prevent North Korean
soldiers from defecting to the South. Independent (London) and Yonhap News (Seoul) and Joongang Daily (Seoul)

****
**** UN Security Council has emergency meeting on North Korea missile tests
****

The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on
Wednesday and held closed consultations on the latest North Korean
missile launch.

The ballistic missile that North Korea fired from a submarine on
Wednesday traveled 500 km (310 miles), the longest distance achieved
so far. With that capability, the missile could reach all of South
Korea, parts of Japan, and some American military bases, though not
North America. And because it can be launched from a submarine, it
would not be possible to detect a planned attack before liftoff.

Pretty much everyone -- Japan, South Korea, the US -- issued the
obligatory statement condemning the test, which was in violation of
international law. China also criticized the North Korean test, but
blamed it on the planned deployment by the US and South Korea of the
THAAD anti-missile system. ( "10-Aug-16 World View -- China's fury grows over South Korea's plan to deploy THAAD anti-missile system"
) Business Insider and AP and Global Times (Beijing)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Joseph Biden,
Fethullah Gulen, Fetullahist Terror Organization, FETO,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
North Korea, Thae Yong Ho, Panmunjom, Bridge of No Return

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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]

*** 26-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey's 'Operation Euphrates Shield' turns into full-scale invasion of Syria

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Turkey's 'Operation Euphrates Shield' turns into full-scale invasion of Syria
  
• US turns on Syrian Kurds as they're attacked by Turkey
  
• Debka: Israel in military action against ISIS in Egypt's Sinai
  

****
**** Turkey's 'Operation Euphrates Shield' turns into full-scale invasion of Syria
****


A soldier looks down on the town of Jarablus (al-Jazeera)

On Wednesday, Turkey began "Operation Euphrates Shield," and became
the first Nato member to invade Syria since the beginning of the war
that began in 2011. Turkish tanks, planes and special forces crossed
the border into Syria. They were backed up by around 1,500 anti-Assad
Syrian rebels called the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

We've been writing about Turkish plans in Syria for several days now,
following the horrific terror attack, blamed on ISIS, of a wedding
party in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, triggering a furious
demand for revenge. ( "22-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan announces a complete U-turn on Syria policy"
)

At first, the announced plan was for some kind of extended
humanitarian intervention for the people of Jarablus, a town in Syria
on the border with Turkey, who were under attack by the so-called
Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). It was assumed that the
FSA would disgorge ISIS from Jarablus.

By the time the attack began on Wednesday, it became clear that it was
a major invasion by Turkey's ground forces and air force, backed up by
the FSA, and that Turkey's forces are going to stay. There are now
multiple objectives:

• Block the expansion of the Syrian Kurds westward, and prevent
  them from linking up regions that they control. Turkey considers the
  Syrian Kurds to be linked to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party
  (PKK), and creating an independent Kurdish state is the nightmare
  scenario for Turkey.
  
  
• Provide a base for Turkish assault on the Syrian Kurds.
  
  
• Create a safe haven (or "buffer zone") for Syrian refugees in
  northern Syria.
  
  
• Push ISIS away from Turkey's borders, and deny ISIS the corridor
  its been using from Jarablus into Turkey to transport supplies from
  Turkey to ISIS, and to infiltrate terrorists back into Turkey to
  perpetrate terror attacks like the wedding attack in Gaziantep.
  
  
• Create a "no-fly zone" in the region in Syria around Jarablus,
  where only Turkish planes, but not Syrian, Russian, Iranian or
  American, planes would be allowed to fly.

The battle for Jarablus lasted 14 hours before the FSA announced on
its Twitter account that they captured the city. Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Hurriyet (Ankara) and Al-Jazeera

****
**** US turns on Syrian Kurds as they're attacked by Turkey
****

Up until last week, the American military's primary ally in Syria to
fight ISIS has been the Syrian Kurds. But in a dramatic turnaround
this week, the American administration has turned on the Syrian Kurds,
and is effectively allying themselves with the Turkish military
against the Syrian Kurds.

During US Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Turkey on Wednesday
that we reported on yesterday,

Biden said:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"We have made it absolutely clear that they
> [pro-Kurdish forces] must go back across the [Euphrates]
> River. They cannot and will not, under no circumstances, get
> American support if they do not keep that
> commitment."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Having been a major US ally in Syria, the Kurds cannot now consider
this to be anything but a major American betrayal of the Kurds.

As we mentioned above, one of the objectives of Turkey's Operation
Euphrates Shield is to block the expansion of the area controlled by
the Syrian Kurds. The Turkish forces are evidently doing much more,
in that they're attacking Kurdish positions. The army shelled Kurdish
forces south of Jarablus on Thursday.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that the Syrian Kurds regained
control of the city of Manjib from ISIS. ( "14-Aug-16 World View -- Wild celebrations in Manbij Syria, after major defeat for ISIS"
)

But on Thursday, Turkish forces shelled Kurdish positions in Manjib.
So a significant victory for the Kurds is now turning into a defeat at
the hands of ISIS. This is sure to have repercussions later.
Reuters and Hurriyet (Ankara) and AP

****
**** Debka: Israel in military action against ISIS in Egypt's Sinai
****

As long-time readers know, I like to reference Debka's subscriber-only
newsletter (sent to me by a subscriber), which is written from
Israel's point of view, because they have military and intelligence
sources that provide valuable insights. However, it's not unusual for
them to get things wrong.

So this week's addition has some startling claims: That Israel's
military (IDF) is conducting an extensive military action against the
ISIS affiliate in Egypt's northern Sinai, and that this has been going
on since August 16.

The terror group is called Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM - Ansar Jerusalem
- Champions of Jerusalem), which changed its name to Al Wilayat Sinai
(Province of Sinai) when it changed its allegiance from al-Qaeda to
the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

According to the Debka newsletter, the military action is closely
coordinated with Egypt:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"For almost two days, F-15 and F-16 jets and a variety
> of drones pounded ISIS-Sinai bases and infrastructure in every
> part of the Egyptian peninsula in which the terrorists had struck
> camp.
>
> Apache assault helicopters chased and picked off the jihadists as
> they fled the air strikes. And Israeli marine commandos, who
> landed from the Aqaba Gulf port of Eilat and from the
> Mediterranean via the Suez Canal, raided the ISIS networks
> embedded in Sinai's western coastal towns. They found the
> jihadists getting set to descend on the towns and ports of
> southern Egypt, as well as Jordan and Israel, and also planning to
> seize a ship vessel sailing in the Gulf of Aqaba, especially
> passenger liners for taking hostages.
>
> The vast Israeli offensive - on a scale the IDF had never before
> undertaken against the Islamic State - was conceived, organized
> and synchronized down to the last detail with the Egyptian army's
> general command. It represented the apex of the covert
> Egyptian-Israeli military-cum-intelligence cooperation ongoing
> since last year for crushing Islamic terrorists in their
> lairs."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

According to the Debka report, Israel is engaged in fighting ISIS in
at least eight foreign countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt,
Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Chad.

This is a description of a big operation. On the one hand, I can't
find any other report on it. On the other hand, it's big enough so
that it's hard to believe that Debka got it so wrong.

Still, if Debka got it wrong, it wouldn't be the first time. Also, if
Debka got it right, that wouldn't be the first time either, and this
story could be a big one. Debka subscriber-only newsletter


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Turkey, Operation Euphrates Shield,
Jarablus, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Joseph Biden, Gaziantep,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Jarablus, Manjib

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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]

*** 27-Aug-16 World View -- After 50 days of violence, unrest in India-controlled Kashmir is unabated

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Turkey's PM declares 'all-out war' after new PKK truck bomb attack
  
• After 50 days of violence, unrest in India-controlled Kashmir is unabated
  

****
**** Turkey's PM declares 'all-out war' after new PKK truck bomb attack
****


Aftermath of truck bomb explosion in southeastern Turkey on Friday (DHA)

The terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) took credit for a new
deadly car bomb attack that occurred on Friday in Cizre in
southeastern Turkey. A suicide bomber gammed a truck full of
explosives into a checkpoint near a police station, killing at least
11 police officers and wounding 78 other people.

In hostilities with the PKK in the last year, more than 600 Turkish
security personnel and thousands of PKK militants have been killed.
Some 40,000 people have been killed since the conflict started in
1984.

Turkey is in a state of chaotic turmoil verging on instability. In
the last week alone, Turkey suffered a huge terror attack at a wedding
in Gaziantep, perpetrated by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS
or ISIL or Daesh), causing a major change in Turkey's policy. ( "22-Aug-16 World View -- Turkey's Erdogan announces a complete U-turn on Syria policy"
)

As we described yesterday,
This
U-turn has led to a major military invasion of northern Syria, around
the town of Jarablus, attacking both ISIS and the Syrian Kurds.

So now, on Friday, there's a major new terror attack.

A furious prime minister Binali Yildirim declared "all-out war":

> [indent]<QUOTE>"No terrorist organization can enslave the Turkish
> Republic. We’ve declared all-out war against these terrorist
> groups. ...
>
> Like the Veteran [founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk]
> said during the War of Independence: 'Either independence or
> death.'"<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "This attack, which
comes at a time when Turkey is engaged in an intense struggle against
terrorist organizations both within and outside its borders, only
serves to increase our determination as a country and a nation."

If you look at the trend, you can see that these repeated terror
attacks, combined with the failed July 15 coup attempt, are making the
country increasingly belligerent. Friday's terror attack comes just
after an invasion of northern Syria, and now Yildirim is declaring
"all-out war." We may find out in the next few days what that means.
Hurriyet (Ankara) and AP

****
**** After 50 days of violence, unrest in India-controlled Kashmir is unabated
****

After 50 days of violence, curfews and lockdowns, the unrest in
India-controlled Kashmir shows no signs of letting up. More than 60
people have been killed and more than 5,000 injured in clashes with
security police since the protests began on July 9. Many of the
injured have been blinded, as security police have been shooting
pellet guns at protesters, often into protesters' eyes.

Indian-controlled Kashmir has a mostly Muslim-majority population, and
new large anti-government protest marches were scheduled to begin
after Friday prayers. India took a number of steps to prevent
violence from occurring:

• Additional curfews were announced in several districts in
  Kashmir.
  
  
• Two protest leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar
  Farooq, were arrested, to keep them from leading the marches. In
  addition, several more senior separatist leaders were either placed
  under house arrest or taken into preventive custody by the
  authorities.
  
  
• All the roads in the planned protest march route were sealed with
  concertina wires. In addition, forces were deployed along the
  routes.

Although the marches didn't take place, there were numerous protests
and clashes across the whole region.

The violence and protests show no signs of abating, and it appears to
be spiraling into full-scale violence.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the growth in
violence appears more and more to be following a similar path to what
happened in India's previous two generational crisis wars -- the 1857
Indian Rebellion and the 1947 Partition War. ( "9-Aug-16 World View -- Quetta Pakistan terror attack kills 75, while unrest grows in Kashmir"
)

The Pakistan reaction to the growing violence is to encourage the
separatists and incite more violence. The India reaction to the
growing violence is to deploy more forces and use bullet and pellet
guns coupled with curfews and restrictions. If there is anything
going on, in either Pakistan or India, that might be doing anything to
ease the unrest in Kashmir, so that a major new war won't occur, I'm
not aware of it. Tribune India and Al-Jazeera and Only Kashmir


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Turkey, Operation Euphrates Shield,
Jarablus, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Gaziantep, Cizre,
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, Binali Yildirim,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
India, Kashmir, Jammu, Pakistan, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq,
Indian Rebellion (1857), Partition War (1947)

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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