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Generational Dynamics |
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Millions riot in Egypt as the West fears a Muslim Brotherhood victory
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is quoted by the Jerusalem Post as accusing al-Jazeers of trying to topple the Palestinian Authority government:
"They [Al-Jazeera] thought that Palestine was like Tunisia. They tried to spread lies because they thought that what happened in Tunisia could happen in Palestine. Al-Jazeera thought that they could finish us off, but the Palestinian people have responded to their lies and distortions."
I watched quite a bit of the al-Jazeera coverage of the Palestine Papers, and I reported on it in detail in several reports last week.
But I was really shocked by the lack of professionalism of al-Jazeera.
I'm not referring to the release of the previously secret papers. Any news organization would have done that, given the opportunity.
I'm referring to their own news coverage of the release. As I indicated in my reports, there was not a single positive word about the Palestinian Authority, and not a single negative word about Hamas.
I've complained about the bias of the New York Times over the years, and their strong anti-Americanism, sometimes siding with the terrorists during the Iraq war. But even the NY Times has token conservatives on its writing staff.
But al-Jazeera didn't even bother with a fig leaf. The people at al-Jazeera hate the Palestinian Authority, and they love Hamas, and of the many commentators I heard, not a single one expressed a different point of view.
Al-Jazeera has essentially become an arm of Hamas.
(This is my BigPeace article on the subject. It includes some material from my reports from the last few days.)
Some of the Western press is treating the riots in Egypt as a blessed event. "A new Egypt is likely to emerge from Revolution that seeks not Islam but Freedom," gleefully proclaims the New York Sun. At the other extreme, Der Spiegel, says that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt could take power and start supplying arms to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
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Many news stories deal endlessly with what the Obama administration should do. Needless to say, what the Obama administration does will have no predictable effect whatsoever on what happens in Egypt.
Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast region is headed for a major war, refighting the genocidal 1948 war between Arabs and Jews that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
Thus, my job in this article is to analyze, as accurately as possible, whether this particular event, the chaos in Egypt, is the event that's likely to trigger this war at this time.
I often characterize Gaza's population as a bunch of kids running around with guns and missiles. That's because the average age is 17, according to the CIA Fact Book, meaning that the majority of the population are from an earlier generation than the Hamas leadership.
Thus, it's not surprising that the latest poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) finds that these kids really have little faith in either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, and don't believe that either of them is telling the truth. These kids are like America's young Millennial generation (Gen-Y), who are sick and tired of the bitter, vitriolic fighting between Boomers and Gen-Xers, and don't particularly trust either of them.
The same kind of dynamic holds in Egypt. The median age is a little older than Gaza -- 24 -- but then again, the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood are older as well. And the young people in Egypt feel little connection with either the Mubarak government, or the main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood.
For the West, the major event of the 20th century was World War II. News stories constantly talk about the "post World War II era," as if the world had been created in 1945.
But for most of the Mideast Muslim world, WW II was just another war. There were two other wars that were far more important.
The first was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Istanbul Caliphate in 1922, leaving Turkey as a secular state. The effect on the Muslim world can be compared to the effect on the Catholic world if the Vatican were suddenly to become a secular organization, and the Pope decided to get married. Where there used to be an empire that tied all Muslims together, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Muslim world was nothing more than a collection of unconnected islands.
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, filled that void. The Brotherhood grew rapidly and had millions of members. Once again, there was a world Muslim community. The political goal was to expel the British from the Mideast.
Is the Muslim Brotherhood violent? They will tell you that outside of a couple of particular events, especially their involvement in the war between Jews and Arabs following the creation of the state of Israel, that they are not violent. They will tell you that they completely renounced violence in the 1980s. Others disagree, and many in the West consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned in Egypt, but with a huge membership, they are tolerated by the Mubarak government, as long as there is no violence. About 20% of the population belongs to the Brotherhood, and they field candidates in elections as "independents."
The second important 20th century war in the Muslim world was Iran's 1979 Great Islamic Revolution, followed by the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s. This war electrified the entire Muslim world because it showed that it's possible once again to have an Islamic state to replace the Ottoman Empire in leading the Muslim world. But the Iran/Iraq war showed something else: that Shia Muslim Iran could never be the leader of the Sunni Muslim world.
Just as the Muslim Brotherhood came out of the wreckage of the Ottoman collapse, al-Qaeda came out of the wreckage of the Iran/Iraq war. Osama bin Ladin rejected the non-violent doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood. His political objective was to expel the British, the Americans, and the Israelis from the Mideast. Any means possible could be used, but the first step would be to trigger a revolution in some Sunni Muslim country, to replicate the success of Iran's Great Islamic Revolution.
It's worth noting that al-Qaeda has eclipsed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood both have linked organizations in many Muslim countries, but the Brotherhood is mostly viewed as a political organization, while al-Qaeda is the brand name of choice for anyone who wants to blow something up.
In the Palestinian territories, there are three clearly identifiable generations, as I first described in 2006:
There's a smaller "youth bulge" in Egypt, but they too have little faith in either the Mubarak administration or in the Muslim Brotherhood. This has become clear from this past weeks riots, where the demonstrators are demanding change, the resignation of Mubarak, cheaper food and more jobs. But they have not so far named any political group to replace the Mubarak administration. In particular, they have not adopted the Muslim Brotherhood as their cause.
In fact, there are other political parties in Egypt. If Mubarak is forced to flee, as the protesters demand, then the Muslim Brotherhood will be an important political force, but not the only one.
Furthermore, the Egyptian army plays an important role. Every Egyptian male is required by law to serve in the army. This means that all the youthful demonstrators are quite comfortable with the army, and it also means that the army itself reflects the attitudes of the young demonstrators. Thus, there have been several news stories of demonstrators and soldiers talking and sharing food and water.
Such violence as has occurred in Cairo has apparently been at the hands Mubarak's security forces, who are apparently just as unpopular with the army as they are with the protesters.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, we make certain assumptions. Generally speaking, we assume that major policies in every country, including dictatorships, are made by great masses of people, entire generations of people.
Thus, we have to assume that 30 years of policies under the Mubarak administration must have had some kind of general approval from most of the general population.
I'm particularly thinking of the peace treaty with Israel, and the wall that separates Gaza from Egypt. The wall is portrayed in the mainstream press as a means of oppressing the Gaza people, and that may well be the case.
But I believe that if young Egyptians were opposed to the terms of the peace treaty with Israel, then it would have been repudiated by now, or at least they would be demanding that it be repudiated. And if they didn't want that wall there, then it would already have been torn down, or at least the rioters would already have demanded that it be torn down.
So I'm going to assume that the general population, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, believe that it's in Egypt's best interest to maintain existing policies with Israel.
And indeed, events on the ground confirm this. Protesters are demanding only one thing: the resignation of Mubarak. They're demanding "change," specifically regime change.
Thus, even if the Mubarak regime collapses, it seems very unlikely that the worst fears of the Israelis and the Americans, and the greatest hopes of Hamas, will be realized. Based on what I've seen so far, the young protesters and the army, the two major forces in Egypt today, do not feel that repudiating existing policies with Israel is in the best interests of the Egyptians themselves.
The army in particular will oppose any move that jeopardizes the annual $2 billion US aid that goes to Egypt, mostly to the military.
Thus, I don't see any particular danger from the political ascendency of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. An example of something that COULD spiral out of control would be a conflict along the fault line of Muslims versus Coptic Christians, who make up 10% of the population. I'm not saying that this is likely, or that there's any evidence whatsoever that it can happen, but I provide it as an example of the only kind of thing that might explode.
Still, the Generational Dynamics prediction is that the region is headed for a new war between Jews and Arabs, with absolutely certainty, and if the current situation in Egypt won't bring it about, then something else will.
In my opinion, the biggest threat to stability in the region today, and indeed in the world, is not riots in Egypt but surging food prices that are already at historic highs, and are expected to go even higher. High food prices were the trigger for riots in Tunisia and Egypt, and they're causing causing food riots in other countries.
High food prices could trigger in some country a popular revolt that morphs into a civil war. This does not appear to be a possibility in Egypt, but it could happen in other Arab countries, or in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or other countries.
As usual, this analysis of Egypt was based on clearly stated assumptions and can only be improved with additional information. If you're familiar with the situation in Egypt, and particularly if you've lived in Egypt, then I would welcome your comments, directed to me on my web site, in private comments or in the public forum.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 31-Jan-11 News -- Rift grows between Palestinian Authority and Al-Jazeera
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Jan-2011)
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Global food crisis continues to grow
Rioting in Egypt continued on Saturday, especially in the cities of Cairo, Suez and Alexandria. Almost 100 people have died, and 2,500 injured, according to the Telegraph.
Looting was widespread, as the police have apparently withdrawn. The army patrols are providing some protection, but not much. However, neighborhood watch groups are providing protection for homes and stores.
President Hosni Mubarak has refused to step down, further energizing the protesters. It's unknown whether Mubarak will order the army to use all force necessary to stop the riots and, if he does, whether the army will obey.
So far, there is little evidence that this rioting might spread into a larger war.
Protesters are demanding only one thing: the resignation of Mubarak. They're demanding "change," specifically regime change.
Journalists continue to expect the worst to happen. For example, the Jerusalem Post says:
"This year is turning into a critical one for Israel, which is becoming more isolated in the ME. Turkey is gone and Egypt appears to be on the way.The collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt is not yet about Israel but soon will be, depending on his successor.
If the Muslim Brotherhood grabs the reins in the massive Arab country, Israel will face an enemy with one of the largest and strongest militaries around, built on some of the most advanced American-made platforms.
The impact on Israel will be immediate – the IDF will need to undergo major structural changes, new units will need to be created and forces in the South will likely need to be beefed up. Since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the IDF has not had to worry about two fronts at once. Until now."
The substance of this article, that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated from its neighborsis true, and is consistent with the Generational Dynamics prediction that Arabs and Jews will be fighting a major new, refighting the genocidal 1948 war that followed the partitioining of Palestine and the creation of Israel.
However, there is little evidence that this particular event, the riots in Egypt, will be the trigger for this war.
So far, the riots in Egypt seem to be purely about Egyptian politics, not about the Israelis, Palestinians or Americans. And so far, the widespread concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood seem almost paranoid. However, the danger is far from over.
The crowd reactions that we're seeing in Egypt are typical of a generational Crisis era. We've seen this kind of crowd reaction right here in America, when Obama was campaigning. Obama drew huge, enthusiastic crowds of young people who didn't have the vaguest idea what Obama was saying, except that they heard the word "Change," and concluded that any change was better than what was going on.
The young people of Egypt are having a similar experience. They're demanding "change" -- specifically regime change -- without having any idea what kind of change they're demanding, or whether the change will make things better or worse.
In fact, it will almost certainly make everything worse -- global food prices are still surging to fresh historic highs, the riots will hurt the financial markets and increase unemployment, and in a worst case scenario, the Suez Canal will be shut down.
What will the young people do when it becomes clear that even regime change hasn't improved their lives? What "change" will they want next?
Perhaps at that point, the Muslim Brotherhood will be able to take advantage of the situation. But unless MB officials can convince the public that threatening Israel in some way will lower the price of food or lower unemployment for Egyptians, then it's unlikely that any such threat will materialize.
In my opinion, the biggest threat to world stability today is not riots in Egypt but surging food prices that are already at historic highs and are expected to go even higher. High prices were the trigger for riots in Tunisia and Egypt, and they're causing further riots in Jordan and Yemen.
On the one hand, some countries are imposing export restrictions on food. Thanks to a drought last year, Russia and Ukraine have both imposed export restrictions, according to Reuters.
On the other hand, some countries are stockpiling large amounts of food, according to the Telegraph. This is amounting to panic buying.
Algeria last week purchased 800,000 tonnes of milling wheat, enough to provide the country with a 12 month reserve.
Bangladesh is tripling its rice imports, and Indonesia this week bought 820,000 tonnes of Thai rice.
All of these factors are contributing to lower available supply of food, causing further higher prices.
According to an analysis by the Financial Times (Access), the signs of a full-scale food crisis are appearing.
According to the article, the 2007-2008 food crisis followed a chain of events that are being repeated today:
As these trends continue, shortages will become more evident, pushing prices higher, leading to outright panic buying. The result will be increased instablity in the Mideast and in developing nations around the world.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 30-Jan-11 News -- Rioting continues in Egypt, as young demonstrators demand 'change'
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Jan-2011)
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Will the turmoil in Egypt unleash Hamas to attack Israel?
Most of the mainstream press is treating the riots in Egypt as an almost blessed event. At last we'll have "regime change," goes the narrative, and Hosni Mubarak, who has been president for 30 years, will be forced to flee, just as Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had been forced to flee. "A new Egypt is likely to emerge from Revolution that seeks not Islam but Freedom," gleefully proclaims the New York Sun.
There are more sober appraisals, of course. One of them, put forth by Der Spiegel, is that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt could take power and start supplying arms to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist organization headquartered in Egypt, and linked to Muslim Brotherhood organizations in countries around the Muslim world.
Most news stories deal endlessly with what the Obama administration should do. Here's the statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
"SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we have been answering those concerns for quite some time. And as President Obama said yesterday very clearly, and as I said in Doha, it is absolutely vital for Egypt to embrace reform, to ensure not just its long-term stability, but also the progress and prosperity that its people richly deserve.Now, Egypt has been a strong partner of the United States on a range of regional and strategic interests. And as a partner, we believe strongly, and have expressed this consistently, that the Egyptian Government needs to engage with the Egyptian people in implementing needed political, economic, and social reforms. We have consistently raised this with the Egyptian Government over many years. We also have raised it with other governments in the region. And there is a constant concern about the need for greater openness, greater participation on the part of the people, particularly young people, which is something I was very clear about in Doha. And we want to continue to partner with the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian people.
Now, what will eventually happen in Egypt is up to Egyptians. But it is important for us to make very clear that as a partner of Egypt, we are urging that there be a restraint on the part of the security forces, there not be a rush to impose very strict measures that would be violent, and that there be a dialogue between the government and the people of Egypt. At the same time, we also would urge the protesters to engage in peaceful protests, which they have every right to do, and the deep grievances that they are raising deserve to be addressed.
But the real question we’re focused on is: How can we support a better future for the people of Egypt that responds to their aspirations? And as I’ve said before and as the President has also said, the Egyptian Government has a real opportunity in the face of this very clear demonstration of opposition to begin a process that will truly respond to the aspirations of the people of Egypt. We think that moment needs to be seized, and we are hoping that it is."
Clinton's statement had only the purpose of trying not to get blamed for doing the wrong thing, whatever happens. Still, the question of what the Obama Administration should do to make sure that democracy wins in Egypt has been a major topic of discussion on Friday.
Needless to say, what the Obama administration does will have no predictable effect whatsoever on what happens in Egypt.
I often characterize Gaza's population as a bunch of kids running around with guns and missiles. That's because the average age is 17, according to the CIA Fact Book, meaning that the majority of the population are from an earlier generation than the Hamas leadership.
Thus, it's not surprising that the latest poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) finds that these kids really have little faith in either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, and don't believe that either of them is telling the truth. These kids are like America's young Millennial generation (Gen-Y), who are sick and tired of the vitriolic fighting between Boomers and Gen-Xers, and don't particularly trust either of them.
The same kind of dynamic holds in Egypt. The median age is a little older than Gaza -- 24 -- but then again, the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood are older as well. And the young people in Egypt feel little connection with either the Mubarak government, or the main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood.
For the West, the major event of the 20th century was World War II. News stories constantly talk about the "post World War II era," as if the world had been created in 1945.
But for most of the Mideast Muslim world, WW II was just another war. There were two other wars that were far more important.
The first was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, leaving Turkey as a secular state. The effect on the Muslim world can be compared to the effect on the Catholic world if the Vatican were suddenly to become a secular organization. Where there used to be an empire that tied all Muslims together, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Muslim world was nothing more than a collection of unconnected islands.
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, filled that void. MB grew rapidly and had millions of members. Once again, there was a world Muslim community. The political goal was to expel the British from the Mideast.
Is the Muslim Brotherhood violent? They will tell you that outside of a couple of particular events, particularly their involvement in the war between Jews and Arabs following the creation of the state of Israel, that they are not violent. They will tell you that they completely renounced violence in the 1980s. Others disagree, and many in the West consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned in Egypt, but with a huge membership, they are tolerated by the Mubarak government, as long as there is no violence. They field candidates in elections as "independents."
The second important 20th century war in the Muslim world was the Iran's 1979 Great Islamic Revolution, followed by the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s. This war electrified the entire Muslim world because it showed that it's possible to have an Islamic state to replace the Ottoman Empire in leading the Muslim world. But the Iran/Iraq war showed something else: that Shia Muslim Iran could never be the leader of the Sunni Muslim world.
Just as the Muslim Brotherhood came out of the wreckage of the Ottoman collapse, al-Qaeda came out of the wreckage of the Iran/Iraq war. Osama bin Ladin rejected the non-violent doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood. His political objective was to expel the British, the Americans, and the Israelis from the Mideast. Any means possible could be used, but the first step would be to trigger a revolution in some Sunni Muslim country, to replicate the success of Iran's Great Islamic Revolution.
It's worth noting that al-Qaeda has eclipsed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood both have organizations in many Muslim countries, but the Brotherhood is mostly viewed as a political organization, while al-Qaeda is the brand name of choice for anyone who wants to blow something up.
In the Palestinian territories, there are three clearly identifiable generations, as I first described in 2006:
There's a smaller "youth bulge" in Egypt, as described above, but they too have little faith in either the Mubarak administration or in the Muslim Brotherhood. This has become clear from this past weeks riots, where the demonstrators are demanding change, the resignation of Mubarak, cheaper food and more jobs. But they have not so far named any political group to replace the Mubarak administration. In particular, they have not adopted the Muslim Brotherhood as their cause.
In fact, there are other political parties in Egypt. If Mubarak is forced to flee, as the protesters demand, then the Muslim Brotherhood will be an important political force, but not the only one.
Furthermore, the Egyptian army plays an important role. Every Egyptian male is required by law to serve in the army. This means that all the youthful demonstrators are quite comfortable with the army, and it also means that the army itself reflects the attitudes of the young demonstrators. Thus, there have been several news stories on Friday of demonstrators and soldiers talking and sharing food and water.
Such violence as has occurred in Cairo has apparently been at the hands Mubarak's security forces, who are apparently just as unpopular with the army as they are with the protesters.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, we make certain assumptions. Generally speaking, we assume that major policies in every country, including dictatorships, are made by great masses of people, entire generations of people.
Thus, we have to assume that 30 years of policies under the Mubarak administration must have had some kind of general approval from most of the general population.
I'm particularly thinking of the wall that separates Gaza from Egypt. This wall is portrayed in the mainstream press as a means of oppressing the Gaza people, and that may well be the case.
But I believe that if young Egyptians didn't want that wall there, then it would already have been torn down, or at least the rioters would already have demanded that it be torn down.
So I'm going to assume that the general population, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, do not want the large Gaza population to be able to pour into Egypt, possibly destabilizing the country further. Nor do Egypt's general population, I assume, want to allow Hamas to have unlimited access to weapons, which could be turned again Egyptians as well as Israelis.
Thus, even if the Mubarak regime collapses, it's far from clear that the worst fears of the Israelis and the Americans, and the greatest hopes of Hamas, will be realized. Based on what I've seen so far, the young protesters and the army, the two major forces in Egypt today, do not feel that opening the wall to Gaza is in the best interests of the Egyptians themselves.
The real danger in Egypt is not that the Muslim Brotherhood will take charge. The real danger is total anarchy, especially if the viability of the Suez Canal were put in danger. Global food prices continue to surge to fresh historical highs, and unemployment continues very high. These are factors that could lead to total war -- in Egypt and in many other countries as well. And no one knows where the young protesters of Egypt will turn next, when it turns out that things are just as bad, or worse, even after the Mubarak regime is gone.
As usual, this analysis was based on clearly stated assumptions and can only be improved with additional information. If you're familiar with the situation in Egypt, and particularly if you've lived in Egypt, then I would be interested in your comments, privately or in the forum.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 29-Jan-11 News -- Fears of Muslim Brotherhood victory in Egypt
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Jan-2011)
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Unrest in Tunisia spreads to Yemen and Egypt
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When the riots in Tunisia began, analysts wondered about "contagion" -- whether they would spread to other Arab countries. Indeed they have.
In Yemen, thousands of people turned out to demonstrate against the government, demanding change, though there were also pro-government rallies. No violence has been reported.
Violent protests continued across Egypt on Thursday, for a third consecutive day, despite a large deployment of security forces by the government, according to VOA. The protesters are trying to bring down the 82 year old President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power in Egypt for 30 years.
However, the turmoil was not just in the streets. The Cairo stock exchange index fell about 20% in the last few days, as investors panicked and lost confidence in the Egyptian financial markets, according to Reuters.
Egyptian security forces are braced for renewed riots and demonstrations on Friday, when the number of people may swell to the hundreds of thousands. Unlike Tunisia, Egypt is in a generational Crisis era, and so it's possible that the demonstrations could spiral into a civil war.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 28-Jan-11 News -- Egypt stock market crashes as riots spread through Mideast
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Jan-2011)
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Food aid to be withdrawn from Uganda
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Ten years' worth of previously secret documents on the Mideast peace process from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah have been leaked to Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera has been releasing them from Sunday through Wednesday as a series of "revelations." They were also released by the center-left London Guardian newspaper. The precise source of the 1600 documents was not disclosed, but it's thought that they were leaked from the private archives of chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat.
I listened to much of the commentary on Al-Jazeera English television, as I've been reporting daily on my web site.
Not surprisingly, the al-Jazeera commentary was very hostile to Israel and the United States. But what WAS surprising was that the commentary was even more hostile to the Palestinian Authority.
The major parties were portrayed as followed:
On Wednesday, al-Jazeera did discuss the question of bias, and read a statement claiming that they were totally impartial. That doesn't even remotely pass the smell test.
The result is that there's a major split growing between the Palestinian authority and al-Jazeera -- and their sponsor country, Qatar.
PA president Mahmoud Abbas was given a hero's welcome when he arrived in Ramallah on Tuesday, with hundreds of demonstrators criticizing al-Jazeera for publishing fake documents.
Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat also got a hero's welcome in a rally. He was loudly and bitterly critical of al-Jazeera for "dirty tactics," and the "worst smear campaign in the history of journalism." Erekat also accused Qatar, al-Jazeera's sponsor, of funding and supporting Hamas against Fatah.
As before, American and Israeli officials kept their mouths shut, except to answer questions by saying that the Palestine Papers have not yet been verified.
Here's a summary of the major points made by commentators that I've been reporting on in detail since Sunday:
Several commentators pronounced, with great contempt and bitterness, that the "peace process" was completely dead. Well, duh! I've been saying that for years. I wrote about this subject in 2003, when President Bush announced the Mideast Roadmap to Peace. (See "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?") As I wrote at the time, and have repeated many times since then, the Arabs and the Jews will be re-fighting the bloody war that took place after the partitioning of Palestine in 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel. This is an absolute certainty, and there's nothing that any of the players can do to prevent it. All the different negotiators can do is play their parts like actors in a scripted play that can end in only one way.
Despite al-Jazeera's repeated breathless claims of "explosive revelations," I don't believe that there's much that wasn't previously known, or at least strongly suspected. But seeing it all in print and in one place can still harden positions, especially between Hamas and Fatah, and by extension, between Israel and Iran. At a time of increasing turmoil in the Mideast region, including political chaos in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Lebanon, the release of the Palestine Papers can only add to the turmoil.
So what happens when al-Zarqawi gets to the Pearly gates? Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died. George Washington met him at the Pearly Gates. He slapped him across the face and yelled, “How dare you try to destroy the nation I helped conceive!”
Patrick Henry approached, punched him in the nose and shouted, “You wanted to end our liberties but you failed!”
James Madison followed, kicked him in the groin and said, “This is why I allowed our government to provide for the common defense!”
Thomas Jefferson was next. He beat al-Zarqawi with a long cane and snarled, “It was evil men like you who inspired me to write the Declaration of Independence.”
The beatings and thrashings continued as George Mason, James Monroe and 66 other early Americans unleashed their anger on the terrorist leader.
As al-Zarqawi lay bleeding and in pain, an Angel appeared. Al-Zarqawi wept and said, “This is not what you promised me.” The Angel replied, “I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you in Heaven. What did you think I said?”
The World Food Program (WFP) has supplied food to Uganda continuously since 1963. The result is that the people of Uganda are no longer able to grow their own food, and are totally dependent on the WFP. With global food prices soaring, the WFP has to reduce aid levels anyway, and so most food aid will be withdrawn from Uganda, to force the people to learn again how to grow their own food. BBC
South Korea's "get tough" policy against Somalia pirates is drawing threats of retaliation from Somalia pirates. LA Times
Following terrorist attacks targeting Coptic Christian Churches in Egypt in December, young Coptics have turned against the Egyptian government. Al Ahram
The Congressional Budget Office projected that the US deficit will reach $1.5 trillion in 2011, a new all-time high. This is half a trillion higher than their previous estimate, in August. This will fuel bitter partisan political battles. NY Times
Russia's "Vietnam War" was its war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which was basically a defeat for Russia (then the Soviet Union). But now, as US forces are planning a withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia is preparing to re-enter the country. Russia is planning economic development in Afghanistan, and is cautiously planning to provide security by training the Afghan army and providing helicopters and weapons. Jamestown
Russia has once again failed to fill its military conscript quota. Jamestown
Geologists are saying that the earth is changing rapidly in a region in northeastern Africa, in the Great Rift Valley, which stretches from Ethiopia to Mozambique. The desert floor is quaking and splitting open, volcanoes are boiling over, and seawaters are encroaching upon the land. Africa, researchers are certain, is splitting apart at a rate rarely seen in geology. Spiegel
In the wake of the Moscow airport bombing last week, with the perpetrators suspected as being from the North Caucasus, Russia's Caucasus policies are in tatters. And with terrorist attacks occurring almost daily in the North Caucasus provinces, Russia's hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi is being questioned. On Wednesday, at the world economic summit in Davos, Russia's President Dmitri A. Medvedev announced a Russian government plan to invest $15 billion in ski resorts and other tourist attractions in the North Caucasus, creating 100,000 jobs in the region. NY Times
When you do as I do and set up an alert for all web references to your name, you get strange things like this: "The complex chemistry between Red and Angel could hardly be improved upon, thanks to the best work I’ve ever seen from Amy Wada as the slightly plump Angel and the triumphantly plausible mix of cowardice and courage from Sam Crawford as Red. Karen Roberts-Caporino, as the drugged hippie who becomes progressively more and more uncomfortable with Teddy, and John Xenakis, as the proprietor of the filling station next door, are also pitch-perfect." Creative Loafing
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 27-Jan-11 News -- 'Palestine Papers' reveal major splits between Arab and Palestinian factions
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Jan-2011)
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Britain shocked by negative GDP report
For the past couple of days, we've been reporting on the massive leak to Al-Jazeera of ten years' worth of previously secret Fatah/Palestinian Authority documents on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
On Tuesday, I continued listening to the commentary on Al-Jazeera English, and the anger appears to be growing in all directions.
In the previous two days, the themes of the commentators were criticisms of America and Israel, and also criticisms of the Palestinian Authority for giving up too much to the Israelis in negotiations.
Those themes were advanced on Tuesday, but with the element of Hamas added to the comments. And it was very clear that the al-Jazeera commentators were taking the side of Hamas versus the PA/Fatah.
Here are some of the comments that I heard:
On the other hand, there's a major split growing between al-Jazeera and the Palestinian Authority.
PA president Mahmoud Abbas was given a hero's welcome when he arrived in Ramallah on Tuesday, with hundreds of demonstrators criticizing al-Jazeera for publishing fake documents.
Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat also got a hero's welcome in a rally. He was loudly and bitterly critical of al-Jazeera for "dirty tactics," and the "worst smear campaign in the history of journalism." He also suggested that the government of Qatar, the country that sponsors al-Jazeera, is supporting Hamas versus Fatah/PA.
As before, American and Israeli officials kept their mouths shut, except to answer questions by saying that the Palestine Papers have not yet been verified.
Britain's Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported on Tuesday that the country's GDP contracted by 0.5% in the last quarter of 2011, after growing by 0.7% in the previous quarter. London analysts had expected the fourth quarter GDP to grow by 0.1-0.7%, according to the Guardian.
Economists said that the figures were much worse than expected, even taking into account the harsh wintry weather that gripped Britain in December.
The center-left Guardian says that the austerity program being put into effect by the 8 month old center-right Conservative government will now be under fresh scrutiny.
The entire bailout strategy being followed by the European Union is based on the assumption that the European economy is going to grow rapidly so that only minor austerity programs will be necessary, and the debt will be paid off by growth. This is essentially the belief that the credit bubble of the mid-2000s decade will be reflated, and that's impossible.
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The Dhaka (Bangladesh) Stock Exchange reopened on Tuesday for the first time since last week on Thursday, when the stock exchange closed after five minutes. (See "21-Jan-11 News -- Bangladesh stock market crashes 9% in 5 minutes.")
The stock index rose 8% during the five hour session, and might have gone higher if it hadn't been for "circuit breakers" imposed on individual stocks, according to the Dhaka Financial Express.
The government has tried various things to try to "stabilize" the stock market, according to the Wall Street Journal (Access).
The regulators made it cheaper to borrow money to invest in stocks, but that only created a larger bubble. The regulators have tried various circuit breakers and trading halts as well.
Investors will be "crossing their fingers" on Wednesday, when the Dhaka Stock Exchange reopens for trading.
Suicide bombers attacked Shia Muslims in Pakistan's two largest cities, Lahore and Karachi, killing 12 people and wounding dozens. AP. Pakistan's intelligence officials and police officials are saying off the record that "some foreign forces are openly funding the terrorist organisations including the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to destabilise nuclear-armed Pakistan as the security forces are at war to flush out militants from the country’s soil." The article doesn't mention who the foreign sources are, but we can assume that they mean India. The Nation (Pakistan)
Hundreds of immigrants, mostly from northern Africa, began a hunger strike in Greeece, citing discrimination and demanding to be legalized. Greece has recently been cracking down on immigrants who come into Greece as a gateway into the rest of Europe. Greece has recently threatened to build a fence along the border with Turkey, saying that it would be similar to the border fence between the US and Mexico. Associated Press
Tens of thousands of young anti-government demonstrators filled the streets of Cairo, Egypt, on Tuesday, and clashed with police, calling for the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, who has been Prime Minister since 1981. The demonstrations were inspired by the demonstrations in Tunisia, and were fueled by continuing high food prices. Many commentators pointed out that these demonstrations were previously unheard of in Egypt. VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 26-Jan-11 News -- Anger grows over release of the 'Palestine Papers'
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Jan-2011)
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Tempers are flaring over the 'Palestine Papers'
It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about the surging xenophobia between ethnic Russians and people from the North Caucasus (Russia's southern provinces). Actually, it was four days ago. See "20-Jan-11 News -- Top Russian Orthodox priest warns women about rape by men from Caucasus."
Terrorists from al-Qaeda linked militants from the North Caucausus are suspected in Monday's suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo international airport, according to the BBC. 35 people were killed, and more than 100 were injured.
Last March, two female suicide bombers from Dagestan, in the North Caucasus, killed 40 people and injured more than 80 by exploding their bombs in the Moscow subway station during rush hour.
That the perpetrator of Monday's airport bombing was someone from the North Caucasus is not certain. Global Post quotes Russian news sources as saying that the perpetrator, who was decapitated, was a man of Arab appearance, aged between 30 and 35. If this turns out to be verified, it would put a very different political slant on the suicide bombing.
As we described last week, the Dhaka (Bangladesh) Stock Exchange (DSE) index fell sharply on Wednesday, and closed on Thursday after only five minutes. See "21-Jan-11 News -- Bangladesh stock market crashes 9% in 5 minutes."
The market was closed on Friday and Monday, and will reopen on Tuesday, according to the Dhaka Financial Express.
As we reported last week, the DSE circuit breaker failed miserably. It was supposed to stop trading as soon as the market fell 225 points, but it crashed through that limit within five minutes, forcing an immediate halt to trading.
Generally speaking, a circuit breaker does little to stop a full-scale panic. In fact, it may be counter-productive, in that it will force investors who want to sell to do so as quickly as possible, to beat the trading halt.
For that reason, the circuit breaker will be eliminated on Tuesday.
However, a modified form of a different type of circuit breaker will be left in place, according to the Daily Star (Dhaka). There will be a circuit breaker on each individual stock, halting trading on just that stock if its price falls 10%.
According to the Financial Express article, "Investors [are keeping] fingers crossed." I think it's more likely that they're keeping their fingers on the "Sell" key of their computers.
Yesterday we reported on the massive leak to Al-Jazeera of ten years worth of previously secret Palestinian Authority documents on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Listening to the commentary on Al-Jazeera English on Monday, it's clear that a lot of people are truly furious:
Al-Jazeera plans to release the third and final batch of Palestine Papers on Tuesday. Apparently it will include documents that indicate that Israel had informed the Palestinian Authority of its plans to invade Gaza two years ago.
[Correction: There will be additional releases after Tuesday.]
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 25-Jan-11 News -- Suicide bomber kills 35 people in Moscow airport
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Jan-2011)
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Release of secret 'Palestine Papers' will roil the so-called 'Mideast Peace Process'
"Tunisia-style uprisings" have been occurring, to a greater or lesser extent, in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen and Albania, in the wake of Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution" that has forced the dictatorial former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country. We can watch each of these countries in the next few days to see whether the uprisings fill expand or fizzle.
In Tunisia itself, the protests have taken a very significant turn: Tunisia's police joined with the protesters in anti-government demonstrations, according to Bloomberg. This means that the police will not be firing bullets at the protesters, which means that the protests can continue as political protests, rather than as bloody massacres. Therefore, this is very good news for the Tunisians and for the world.
From the point of view of generational theory, Tunisia is currently going through a particular passage known as an "Awakening climax." This is the climax of a political battle between the older generation of survivors of the previous crisis war, and the younger generation of kids growing up after the war. The Awakening climax resolves the political battle, and identifies a generational "winner." (See "Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology" for more information.)
America's last Awakening climax was the resignation of President Richard Nixon, in 1974, and event that clearly identified the young Boomers as political victors over the aging GI and Silent generations that had survived World War II.
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When a country's older generation "wins," it's usually a disaster for the country. If the older generation "wins," then it does so by morphing the "horizontal" split between old and young generations into a "vertical" fault line split between different ethnic or demographic groups. That's what happened, for example, in China's Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989, in Burma's 8/8/88 revolution and in Thailand last year. In those cases, the police turned on the young demonstrators and massacred them, creating a permanent violent fault line that will eventually lead to civil war.
Tunisia's last generational crisis war was the Algerian war of independence that ended in 1962. Since that was not a civil war for Tunisia, there is no clearly defined ethnic fault line in Tunisia. If there were, then the police would be taking one side or the other in the ethnic conflict (to prevent a new civil war), and the war survivors in the government would clamp down on the demonstrations violently, as we described in China, Burma and Thailand.
But in Tunisia, the police are joining with the demonstrators. This indicates that the conflict is remaining as a genuine generational split, and will be resolved by a victory by the younger generation, with a good chance for the survival of Tunisia's constitutional government.
This is all very exciting from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, because it provides for further analysis and development of some generational theories.
I'm often asked a question like, "Generational Dynamics is great, but what good is it? How can it be used to set policy and improve things?"
In most countries today, it's too late. Poor policies have led to decades of unmet needs, unpaid bills, and unresolved problems that can no longer be resolved. We're headed for a major financial crisis and a new world war that can no longer be prevented.
But in Sri Lanka, it's not too late, since their generational crisis civil war has just ended, and positions are still flexible. Here there is a clear example of how understanding generational theory can lead to better policy positions.
When the Sri Lanka civil war was reaching a climax, every analyst I read, including at Stratfor, NY Times, BBC, etc., said that an army victory over the Tamil Tigers would not mean an end to the war and terrorism, since it had already gone on for many years.
I predicted, based on generational theory, that the defeat of the Tamils would be similar to the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese in 1945, and the violence and terrorism would stop. The defeat of the Tamils would be the bloody climax of a generational crisis war, and the war would be over for good.
Sure enough, that's exactly what happened, and the Tamil Tigers renounced violence shortly after the war ended.
Now here's the point: A new civil war in Sri Lanka is IMPOSSIBLE at this time. And I don't mean that it's unlikely, or that it won't happen if the government does xyz, or it won't happen if the United States does xyz. I'm saying that it WON'T happen, no matter what anyone does. It can't happen, any more than a river can flow uphill. This is a conclusion of generational theory.
Now, if the Sinhalese government understood that, then they could be very generous with the Tamils, and unify the country, just as the U.S. became unified after the American Civil War.
But if, as I believe to be the case, the government officials believe that one wrong move will trigger more terrorist attacks and another civil war, then they'll adopt the wrong policies -- very oppressive policies, very discriminatory policies -- with the purpose of not triggering a new civil war.
By adopting these oppressive policies, they'll lay the foundation for the kind of ethnic hatreds that will lead to increased violence starting in 15-20 years, when the first generation of post-war children become of age. And their Awakening climax, unlike Tunisia's, will end badly. So, by not understanding generational theory, they'll produce exactly the results that they're trying to avoid.
This is a clear cut difference in policy, where understanding generational theory can be used to prevent violence, oppression and discrimination. Unfortunately, politicians only focus on the politics of the day, and never think about what's really going on.
WikiLeaks isn't the only game in town for releasing confidential government papers.
Ten years' worth of previously secret papers from the Palestinian Authority, now known as the "Palestine Papers," have been leaked to Al-Jazeera:
"Over the last several months, Al Jazeera has been given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. These documents – memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations – date from 1999 to 2010.The material is voluminous and detailed; it provides an unprecedented look inside the continuing negotiations involving high-level American, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials.
Al Jazeera will release the documents between January 23-26th, 2011. They will reveal new details about:
- the Palestinian Authority’s willingness to concede illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, and to be “creative” about the status of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount;
- the compromises the Palestinian Authority was prepared to make on refugees and the right of return;
- details of the PA’s security cooperation with Israel;
- and private exchanges between Palestinian and American negotiators in late 2009, when the Goldstone Report was being discussed at the United Nations
Because of the sensitive nature of these documents, Al Jazeera will not reveal the source(s) or detail how they came into our possession. We have taken great care over an extended period of time to assure ourselves of their authenticity."
The Al-Jazeera coverage has been, unsurprisingly, highly sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view.
Here, for example, are excerpts from an analysis by Robert L. Grenier, formerly Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations:
"I have spent many hours reading The Palestine Papers, the recent 10-year record of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The picture which clearly emerges from these pages of the Palestinian leadership and of the peace process negotiators themselves is that these are no quislings. For month after month, year after year, through endless, mind-numbing subcommittee meetings and plenary sessions, through interminable exchanges of letters and legal briefs, slogging from hotel meetings in Jerusalem to conferences in Egypt to “summit meetings” in Washington, the Palestinian negotiators tirelessly advocate on behalf of their people’s interests. In the face of Israeli condescension, obfuscation, and endless legalistic pettifogging they continually push back, insisting on application of relevant international law, despite the Israelis’ obvious contempt for their international obligations.They persist in the face of the Americans’ blatant advocacy on behalf of the Israelis, refusing to cave in to consistent American pressure designed to force the Palestinians to compensate for Israeli inflexibility with ever-greater concessions of their own. ...
All of us approach this record burdened with our own backgrounds and experiences. I assess them as an American, and as a former government practitioner. As an American, the reaction I draw, frankly, is one of shame. My government has consistently followed the path of least resistance and of short-term political expediency, at the cost of decency, justice, and our clear, long-term interests. More pointedly, The Palestine Papers reveal us to have alternatively demanded and encouraged the Palestinian participants to take disproportionate risks for a negotiated settlement, and then to have refused to extend ourselves to help them achieve it, leaving them exposed and vulnerable. The Palestine Papers, in my view, further document an American legacy of ignominy in Palestine."
I'm sure that the US government will respond to charges like this in the next few days, but there are a couple of points that I would make.
First, these are ten years of papers from Palestinian sources. If Grenier had access an equivalent collection of Israeli or American papers (where's WikiLeaks when you need them?), his conclusions might have been different.
But more important are the conclusions that I heard from other analysts, and I heard many of them on Al-Jazeera English television on Sunday.
The substance of the analysis was that the Palestinian Authority, its president Mahmoud Abbas, and its chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, were acting in an illegitimate manner. They had no right to make the concessions they did -- giving chunks of Jerusalem to the Israelis, or conceding the right of return -- without the approval of the Palestinian people themselves.
Grenier blames the Israelis for dismissing the Palestinian concessions without even considering them, but this commentary provides one possible explanations: The Israelis, like this commentator, may have concluded that the concessions weren't serious, since the Palestinian people would never approve of them.
In fact, some of the al-Jazeera commentary that I heard today implied that the real winners of this document release would be the terrorist group Hamas, since they would gain politically, as the Palestinian Authority was discredited.
Grenier claims that the Israelis have never made any concessions to the Palestinians. Well, that's obviously untrue, the clearest example being the return of the entire Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in 2005.
So I don't blame either the Palestinians or the Israelis -- or the Americans. I wrote about this subject in 2003, when President Bush announced the Mideast Roadmap to Peace. (See "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?") As I wrote at the time, and have repeated many times since then, the Arabs and the Jews will be re-fighting the bloody war that took place after the partitioning of Palestine in 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel. This is an absolute certainty, and there's nothing that any of the players can do to prevent it. All the different negotiators can do is play their parts like actors in a scripted play that can end in only one way.
Every now and then, someone asks me where they should move their families to be safe, and I really don't have an answer. Now I can refer them to a Business Insider article that lists the 12 places to if the world goes to hell:
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I can't say that I really endorse any of this. Some of these places are almost sure to be battle sites in a world war.
Also, "Gerald," in the Generational Dynamics Forum posted this response:
"I will assume the list is a joke. Living in some of these places could get nasty real quick - population vs resources issues. Recently I spent some time in Tierra del Fuego. Yes it is a beautiful location but the current population is dependent on resources coming in from the outside. It was originally founded as a prison colony because of the relatively hostile climate and its remote location. Currently it survives on tourism and is the major jumping off point for Antarctica. During the prison colony period much of the natural resources were depleted, the forests were clear cut, what worked then can't be done now. If a person wants to live at a subsistence, almost stone age level there are many places to go. One of the important things one should do is leave the areas between 20 and 60 degrees north latitude, that's where most people live. One should also enjoy eating fish and grubs, and not be bothered by dense clouds of blood sucking mosquitoes or flies. You can't imagine how bad it can be until you have experienced it. It has driven people to suicide."
Well, something to think about.
As of last week, 110 countries in the United Nations have extended diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine, on its pre-1967 borders. Palestine Chronicle
Homeowners are increasingly willing to walk away from "under water mortgages" -- situations where the price of their home has fallen so much that the value of the home is smaller than the amount owed on the mortgage. In may, only 31% of Americans said they would consider a "strategic default," even if they can afford to pay the mortgage, while the number has now risen to 48%, according to a RealtyTrac/Trulia surve. MLive
15 signs that the US housing market is headed for complete and total collapse. Lots of graphs. Business Insider
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Several cracks in the earth have opened up in eastern Sri Lanka. This looks pretty scary to me. Colombo (Sri Lanka) Page
In a story that appears to be out of Twilight Zone, a woman in New Jersey is being attacked by her own hand, after an operation. BBC
'Steampunk Palin' -- a comic book story based on Sarah Palin -- is more insane than you imagined. Comics Alliance
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 24-Jan-11 News -- Police join the protesters in Tunisia -- how this provides lessons for Sri Lanka
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Jan-2011)
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Sixteen reasons why a Wall Street panic may be close
Turkey had hoped to act as mediator between Iran and the international community in reaching some kind mutual agreement on nuclear development by Iran. To that end, the Turks convened a two-day meeting of European and Iranian officials in Istanbul.
The talks ended on Saturday, according to VOA, with the following announcement from European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton:
"We had hoped to embark on a discussion of practical ways forward, and have made every effort to make that happen. I am disappointed to say that this has not been possible. "We had hoped to have a detailed and constructive discussion of those ideas. But it became clear that the Iranian side was not ready for this, unless we agreed to preconditions relating to enrichment and sanctions. Both these preconditions are not the way to proceed."
Iran's top negotiator Saeed Jalili held a press conference on Saturday. Iran's Fars news agency quotes him as follows:
"We have always stressed that talks can be useful, successful and progressive only when they are based on a common logic.If you decide to use another instrument instead of common logic, this would result in dictation and not negotiation, and dictation does not deserve a kind of talks based on the nations' cultures.
On the very same basis, we proposed the Istanbul talks in the Geneva meeting because we believed that a majority of talks over international issues can be held on the basis of the Islamic civilization.
Our Geneva agreement included several key points, including talks for cooperation on common points.
This was our agreement in Geneva, which surely inspires everybody's mind with the idea that when cooperation on common points is the agenda of talks, such negotiations should advance and be progressive. When the decision has been made to talk over common points and talk for cooperation, then such talks can certainly be progressive, successful and constructive. ...
[The talks can be successful] when the requirements of this common logic are clear. When you speak of cooperation, you must avoid whatever causes confrontation and animosity towards a nation, when you speak of cooperation on common points, you must surely respect the nations' rights.
What has been enshrined in the international rules and regulations in a straightforward manner provides the necessary grounds for talks. I don't think that if you tell the international community and the world that talks should be based on the nations' rights, the world would interpret it as a precondition for talks.
Respect for the nations' rights provides the necessary grounds for negotiations.
Common logic can help provide a constructive ground for more talks and cooperation. On the same basis, we came to Istanbul with a positive look and initiative and with certain proposals. We thought and do think that Iran's capacities today are undeniable and can provide very good opportunities for cooperation at the international level and we entered the talks with a really constructive view and presented our proposals.
Jalili said Tehran has stressed during the talks that international rules and regulations should form the basis of a common logic for talks while both sides should respect the nations' rights and avoid wrong attitudes in the course of negotiations. ...
A rigid cooperation should be launched among nations to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons.
One of the basic discussions emphasized in these talks was the need for the recognition of the NPT member states. [i.e., states that have signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.] The NPT members are entitled to certain rights, and there should be a balance between the member states' rights and undertakings.
Lack of balance between these two would hurt the NPT.
These are not preconditions, rather they are requirements for talks and discussions."
And so, another international meeting has turned out to be an almost total waste of time, except to provide proof that these meetings are an almost total waste of time.
The thing to be watching in the weeks to come is how Israel will react to this collapse. International observers have expressed concern that the Americans or the Israelis will launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear installations.
In fact, Israel National News, in a story on the collapse of Iran talks, quotes former British PM Tony Blair as saying the following on Friday:
"Extremism can't be managed. It has to be confronted and changed. Iran is a looming challenge. It is negative and destabilizing. It supports terrorists,” Blair said, adding that Britain needed to stand as strongly against Iran as it had against Iraq."I say this to you with all of the passion I possibly can; at some point the West has to get out of what I think is a wretched policy or posture of apology for believing that we are causing what the Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing, that we have to get our head out of the sand. They disagree fundamentally with our way of life and will carry on unless met with determination and, if necessary, force."
And so, Dear Reader, anything might happen at this point.
"Higgenbotham" in the Financial Topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum was asked why he believes that a Wall Street panic could be near. Here are his reasons, from most important to least important:
He adds that, "Low stock prices convince most people that lower stock prices are to follow. High stock prices convince most people that higher stock prices are to follow. And it will forever be thus."
In response, forum member "vincecate" pointed to one more sign: Zero Hedge is pointing out that, for the first time in years, and possibly for the first time ever, there were no insider purchases of stock last week. That is, insiders sold $163 million worth of stock, but there was not one single purchase of stock by an insider.
Those insiders must be telling us something.
In a very significant development, Tunisia's police joined with the protesters in anti-government demonstrations. This means that the police will not be firing bullets at the protesters, which is a very good sign, and, as I said, very significant. UK Press Association
While protests continue in Tunisia, copycat protests are appearing in other Arab and Muslim countries. Dozens were injured when pro-democracy protesters clashed with police in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. In Yemen, hundreds of students held protests at Sanaa University in the capital city, Sanaa. In Egypt, a national day of action is scheduled for Tuesday, to protest the 29-year regim led by President Hosni Mubarak. Deutsche-Welle
At least three people were killed and dozens were injured in another "Tunisia style uprising," this time in Tirana, the capital of mostly Muslim Albania. VOA
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 23-Jan-11 News -- International Iran nuclear talks collapse
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Jan-2011)
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Korean Navy regains confidence by recapturing hijacked ship from pirates
Although it certainly is possible for a state to default on obligations, if it doesn't have the money to pay its debts, it's not possible for a state to restructure its debts by declaring bankruptcy. In this sense, states are different from cities and towns.
Now, with many states headed for default because of unfunded pension obligations, cadillac health care benefits, and excessive union contracts, the NY Times is reporting that policy makers in Congress are discussing how to make it possible for states to declare bankruptcy. The objective would be to permit a federal judge to repudiate all contracts and obligations, and force the parties to renegotiate.
Not surprisingly, a change this important is provoking a political battle between Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats are aligned with labor unions in opposing the concept. Unions would prefer federal government bailouts of the states, channeling money into labor union coffers.
Republicans are aligned with holders of state municipal bonds in supporting the concept. The fear is that in the case of a federal bailout, available money would go to unions, and bondholders would receive little or nothing.
The problem with not paying bondholders is that the states need them, in order to keep borrowing more money. Bond investors will not purchase state bonds if there's fear of default.
In fact, that's already happening, according to Reuters. Municipal bond funds suffered a record outflow of cash last week, some $3.6 billion. Fund-tracking firm EPFR Global is quoted as saying, "The combination of municipal and state budget woes, with some threats of impending bankruptcy and possible defaults, and a U.S. tax deal extending the Bush-era tax cuts for two years lessening demand for tax-exempt investments such as muni bonds are all weighing on investor minds."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, I don't believe that it will make much difference which way this issue goes. As the financial crisis deepens, pretty much everyone is going to be badly hurt anyway.
Since 2006, Nine Korean ships have been hijacked by pirates in the waters near Somalia, but Koreans hope that the Samho Jewelry, hijacked on January 15, will be the last.
In all previous cases, the Koreans paid the ransom to the pirates. Most recently, they paid $9.5 million in November to free a hijacked ship.
But public pressure changed things this time. JoongAng Daily quotes one government official as saying, "It would be troubling to give the pirates money so easily. They must realize that South Korea isn’t so soft."
A South Korean destroyer followed the Samho Jewelry ship, and conducted a surprise military strike on the vessel. After a gunfight between the Koreans and the pirates, there were four pirates dead and three Korean soldiers injured. All the hostages -- the crew of the Samho Jewelry -- were saved.
One of the reasons for the military operation was for the South Korean military to recover its self-confidence, after receiving criticism for their passive response to North Korea’s sinking of the warship Cheonan and shelling of Yeonpyeong Island last year, according to Donga Ilbo.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 22-Jan-11 News -- Congress discusses allowing states to go bankrupt
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Jan-2011)
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Thousands of investors riot in Dhaka as trading is halted.
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Police used batons and tear gas to break up violent protests by hundreds of Bangladesh stock investors, when prices collapsed, halting trading for a fourth day this month, according to Reuters.
This followed a "stupendous fall in share prices" -- 600 points or 9% in just five minutes, according to Financial Express (Dhaka).
There are 3.5 million investors in the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), many of whom have sold their possessions and borrowed as much money as they could to invest in stocks during last year's bubble growth. The stock index took a dip in December, but recovered, and people started pouring money in again. The DSE index fell about 15% in two days, early last week, causing riots and violence among investors.
As we reported last week, the government had attempted to stop the crash by removing all limits on borrowing money to put into the stock market. Stock prices steadied for a few days.
Government officials tried other things as well.
They shortened the trading day, opening at 1:00 pm instead of in the morning, so there's less chance of a crash. I really have to laugh as I type this paragraph, at the thought that shortening the trading day could prevent a crash. In this case, it took only 5 minutes for the index to fall 9%.
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Another attempt by the Bangladesh government officials was to institute "circuit breakers." Trading was to be halted automatically if the DSE index fell 225 points, according to the Daily Star (Dhaka).
That didn't work, of course. A full-scale panic occurred, and the index blew past the 225 point circuit breaker much faster than anyone could react.
What's happening in Dhaka these days is very similar to what happened on Wall Street in 1929. The following is taken from my Dow Jones historical page:
Date DJIA (Change) (% of trend) (% of 1929 high)
----------------- -------------- ---------------- ----------------
Mon 1929-10-21 320.91( -3.71%) (213% of 150.23) ( 84% of 1929-09-03)
Tue 1929-10-22 326.51( +1.75%) (217% of 150.25) ( 85% of 1929-09-03)
Wed 1929-10-23 305.85( -6.33%) (203% of 150.26) ( 80% of 1929-09-03)
Thu 1929-10-24 299.47( -2.09%) (199% of 150.28) ( 78% of 1929-09-03) Black Thursday
Fri 1929-10-25 301.22( +0.58%) (200% of 150.30) ( 79% of 1929-09-03)
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Mon 1929-10-28 260.64(-13.47%) (173% of 150.36) ( 68% of 1929-09-03) Black Monday
Tue 1929-10-29 230.07(-11.73%) (152% of 150.38) ( 60% of 1929-09-03)
Wed 1929-10-30 258.47(+12.34%) (171% of 150.40) ( 67% of 1929-09-03)
Thu 1929-10-31 273.51( +5.82%) (181% of 150.41) ( 71% of 1929-09-03) (half-day)
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Mon 1929-11-04 257.68( -5.79%) (171% of 150.49) ( 67% of 1929-09-03)
Wed 1929-11-06 232.13( -9.92%) (154% of 150.53) ( 60% of 1929-09-03)
Thu 1929-11-07 238.19( +2.61%) (158% of 150.55) ( 62% of 1929-09-03)
Fri 1929-11-08 236.53( -0.70%) (157% of 150.57) ( 62% of 1929-09-03)
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Mon 1929-11-11 220.39( -6.82%) (146% of 150.62) ( 57% of 1929-09-03)
Tue 1929-11-12 209.74( -4.83%) (139% of 150.64) ( 55% of 1929-09-03)
Wed 1929-11-13 198.69( -5.27%) (131% of 150.66) ( 52% of 1929-09-03)
Thu 1929-11-14 217.28( +9.36%) (144% of 150.68) ( 57% of 1929-09-03)
Fri 1929-11-15 228.73( +5.27%) (151% of 150.70) ( 60% of 1929-09-03)
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You can see the wild ups and downs, with the up days causing people to think that the worst was over, and the down days generating even more panic. In the period from September 3 to November 15, the market fell 40%.
Wall Street investors today are in dreamland, thinking that they're protected from a similar crash.
In fact, it's much worse in NY than in Dhaka because of of the heavy use of computerized trading. When computers sense a panic, their self-protection algorithms will kick into gear in nanoseconds, and they'll sell off, causing a panic much more rapid than if humans were doing everything. I'm always mindful of the old saying, "To err is human, but to really f--k things up takes a computer."
There's an additional wrinkle about computerized trading that makes this situation even worse for the small investor. You know that when you visit a web site, it can take a few seconds to get a response to a click. Well, that's true of programs, sitting in some stock broker's office, that are supposed to execute your stop order. But those computers will have to wait several seconds to get a response. Meanwhile, the big Wall Street banks have direct network connections into the NY Stock Exchange, and their sell orders will be executed more quickly, by nanoseconds or even seconds. That means that your sell order won't even be processed until the panic has been going on for a while.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the global financial crisis has only begun. Wall Street stocks are overpriced by a factor of almost 200%, as described in "Updating the 'real value' of the stock market." Price/earnings ratios have been well above historic norms continuously for 15 years, since 1995, and by the Law of Mean Reversion, they'll have to be equally below average for roughly 15 years. This means that the stock market will crash to below Dow 3000, and stay there for a long time. The people of Dhaka are learning their lesson now, and it will be the turn of Wall Street investors before long.
It's impossible to predict what will trigger this crash, because there are a number of possibilities. For example, there might be a panic by banks to sell off their shadow inventory of some 8 million foreclosed or troubled homes. Or there might be a collapse of the euro currency, which some mainstream analysts are predicting.
Or, another possibility is that the crash of the Dhaka Stock Exchange will spread to other Asian countries, where there are also huge bubbles, and that could cause a chain reaction that reaches Wall Street within a few months.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 21-Jan-11 News -- Bangladesh stock market crashes 9% in 5 minutes
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Jan-2011)
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Former Haiti president Jean-Bertrand Aristide coming home
A top official of the Russian Orthodox Church has called for an official Russia-wide dress code for men and women. Christian Century quotes Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin as saying:
"Vulgar external appearance and vulgar behavior is a straight path to misery. To empty `one-night stands.' To short marriages followed by rat-like divorces. To children with broken fates. To loneliness and madness. To catastrophes in life."
He added that a woman who is "barely wearing any clothes or is painted like a clown" in the hopes of meeting a man risks meeting a "drunk idiot" or at best a "sober idiot."
Chaplin, a top aide to Patriarch Kirill, was responding to criticisms for statements that he made last month, in the wake of racial riots in central Moscow:
"If she wears a mini-skirt, she might provoke not only a man from the Caucasus, but a Russian as well. If she is also drunk, she is all the more likely to provoke them. If she is also actively seeking contact and is then surprised that this contact ends in rape, then she is all the more wrong."
Chaplin's remarks triggered the usual outrage from feminist groups, but this statement, widely interpreted as implying that Muslims from the Caucasus are more likely to rape Russian women than Russian men are, has provoked charges of racism.
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The Moscow riots had resulted from surging xenophobic tensions between Orthodox Christian ethnic Russians and mostly Muslim ethnic groups from the North Caucasus (Russia's southern provinces). They were triggered by the shooting death of a Russian football (soccer) fan during a fight between football fans and Caucasian migrants. (See "14-Dec-10 News -- Medvedev warns that nationalist pogroms are destabilizing Russia.")
The controversy over Chaplin's statements comes after a year when Moscow's position in its North Caucasus provinces has worsened dramatically, according to an analysis from Jamestown. The number of militant actions against Russian authorities, as well as the number of people killed, rose substantially in 2010. Moscow's promises to invest large sums of money in the North Caucasus economy were not kept, with resulting increases in poverty and unemployment.
The dominant factor in the deterioration of Moscow's position in the North Caucasus is the intensified armed resistance movement. While in 2009, the violence and unrest was concentrated mainly in tiny Ingushetia, according to the article, it spread to several much larger provinces in 2010.
This has been particularly true among the Circassian ethnic group, who are outraged that Russia is holding the 2014 Olympics in the Sochi resort on the Black Sea. It was a Circassian stronghold until a well-remembered genocidal battle in 1864, where Russians exterminated many Circassians and expelled the rest. (See "30-Oct-10 News -- Caucasus terrorism / politics becomes embroiled in 2014 Olympics.")
In 2010, evidence mounted that nationalistic Circassian militant groups have become more active, bombing a train near Sochi in November. Caches of weapons have repeatedly been found in the Sochi area, and interethnic and inter-ideological tensions have been growing.
In addition to a growing insurgency, there's also been a generational change in the ideological Islamist portion of the insurgency, according to a Russian analysis described by Paul Goble.
Moscow is losing the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the Caucasians. The middle-aged Islamists of the last decade are being supplanted by young people who are being recruited for the long term. Some 1500 young people from Dagestan alone have gone to study in foreign Muslim centers, and about 500 have already returned, according to the article.
So we see a violent confrontation building up on both sides. In Moscow, we have violent ethnic Russians targeting migrants from the Caucasus, and in the North Caucasus provinces, we have violent young militants targeting Russian authorities.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is the buildup to a major genocidal civil war. It's somewhat comical that analysts are surprised that Moscow's position in the North Caucasus deteriorated in 2010, since it would have been a shock if the opposite had happened. This is a trend that's been in place for over a decade, in a region where bloody wars have been fought between Russians and Caucasians for centuries, so you can be certain that the situation will continue to deteriorate in 2011.
Returning now to Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin's remarks about a dress code for women, this is consistent with another trend: Increased modesty in women. During a generational Awakening era (like America in the 1960s), society demands gender equality, and moves in the direction of putting individual rights above survival of the society. In a generational Crisis era, like today, society increasingly places the survival of the society and its way of life above individual rights, and men and women adopt more stereotypical gender roles. See "'It's going to be the 1950s all over again'" for more information.
Yesterday we reported that former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier had returned to Haiti, amid the chaos, the violence, the earthquake destruction, and the cholera. But now another former leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, plans to return, "to contribute to serving my Haitian sisters and brothers as a simple citizen in the field of education." These people are coming out of the woodwork. What fun! NY Times
Iranians say goodbye to 10 cent per litre gasoline, as energy and food subsidies are phased out. Reuters
Amazon.com is selling a gastric bypass surgery kit, for just $264, cheap at twice the price. KIRO Radio (Seattle)
Uncensored Playboy Magazine coming to IPad in March. PC World
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 20-Jan-11 News -- Top Russian Orthodox priest warns women about rape by men from Caucasus
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Jan-2011)
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South Korea and U.S. discuss increasing limits on ballistic missiles
In the midst of discontent and violence resulting from an allegedly rigged election last month, surrounded by the devastation of a major earthquake a year ago, along with a cholera epidemic that's still killing people living in tent camps, former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier dropped from the sky, like a deus ex machina, on Sunday.
Duvalier is the son of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who ruled Haiti as dictator from 1957 until his death in 1971. At that point, Jean-Claude took over, where he was responsible for jailing, torturing and murdering thousands of people, according to the Guardian. Finally, he was forced from office in 1986, and he's been living in France ever since.
Duvalier flew into Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, on Sunday, with no advance warning and no explanation for why he was returning, though it's thought that he wants to take advantage of the confusion following the accusations of a rigged election, and perhaps return to power himself. However, he said, "I'm not here for politics. I'm here for the reconstruction of Haiti."
On Tuesday, police went to Duvalier's hotel and took him to court, where he was charged with government corruption, embezzlement of funds, money laundering, and assassination.
These are the same that Duvalier was charged with in 2008, but the case files were lost when the courthouse was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake, according to the Wall Street Journal (Access).
One of Duvalier's lawyers said that the government hadn't been able to reconstruct the legal dossier that was destroyed in the earthquake, and that "They have nothing."
The real danger in Haiti is a new civil war fought along the fault line between the two distinct ethnic groups -- the Creole-speaking dark-skinned "noirs" or blacks, the descendants of slaves imported from Africa by the French colonizers in the 1700s, and the French-speaking light-skinned "mulattoes," resulting from intermixing of French and slave bloods. The mulattoes are a market-dominant minority: under 5% of the population, but controlling over 50% of the nation's wealth.
Haiti is deep into a generational Crisis era, and so a full-scale civil war could begin at any time. This is being held off by the presence of international peacekeeping forces, as well has massive amounts of international food aid.
Tunisia's government is near collapse again, after four ministers resigned from the one-day old "unity government." Thousands of people protested in Tunis, and the protests have gotten more violent. Protesters said, "The dictator is gone, but the dictatorship is still here," referring to the fact that many people in the unity government were part of the old administration. VOA
South Korea has been operating under a treaty with the U.S. that limits the range and power of South Korea's ballistic missiles. The limitations were put in place in 1979 to prevent an arms race between South and North Korea. However, North Korea's capability already fax exceed the maximum permitted in the South, and so talks are on to discuss revising the 1979 agreement. Chosun Ilbo
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 19-Jan-11 News -- Haiti's former dictator returns for a visit
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Jan-2011)
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China to station troops in North Korea
 |
As shown by the adjoining municipal bond index graph from Bloomberg, muncipal bonds have been crashing since November, and appear to be in free fall.
Municipal bonds are a popular investment since, in most cases, any money earned is free of federal and state income taxes. They're issued by muncipalities as a way of borrowing money for such things as roads, schools, sewage treatment plants, and so forth.
The fall in the value of municipal bonds indicates that investors are increasingly afraid that many municipalities are going to go bankrupt, and the bonds will go into default.
Normally, few people pay attention to the municipal bond market, but this time there's a lot of interest because analyst Meredith Whitney appeared on the CBS show 60 minutes a month ago, where she said:
"There's not a doubt in my mind that you will see a spate of municipal bond defaults ...You could see 50 sizeable defaults. Fifty to 100 sizeable defaults. More. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defaults."
I saw Whitney on CNBC last week, and she was talking about how much anger is directed at her because she makes predictions that people don't want to hear. (I know the feeling very well.)
Whitney is famous for having predicting the failures of CitiBank and other large banks in 2007, at a time when analysts on CNBC were saying that the idea that these banks would fail was utter nonsense. Since Whitney turned out to be right, she's now taken more seriously.
Whitney was ridiculed for her prediction about CitiBank, and now she's being similarly ridiculed for her predictions about municipal bonds.
Her biggest critic is Bill Gross of PIMCO, the largest bond fund in the world, who disagreed with Whitney, according to Bloomberg:
"Ultimately, municipal bankruptcies will be at a lower level. I don’t subscribe to the theory that there will be lots of them."
Despite the fact that municipal bonds appear to be crashing, some analysts are still recommending that investors buy municipal bonds, calling the current crash a "buying opportunity."
For example, Deborah Levine, an analyst for MarketWatch, says that "History is on investors’ side when it comes to municipal-bond defaults. From 1999 to 2009, only 10 rated entities failed to make debt-service payments, resulting in an average annual default rate of 0.04%, according to Fitch Ratings."
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People who say such things aren't paying attention. We reported recently on a study of the Case-Shiller home price index by Peter Schiff in the Wall Street Journal (Access), which indicates that home prices have been increasing much faster than the historical trend during the last ten years, and that home prices are still going to fall sharply, by as much as 30%.
Since muncipalities depend on housing values for most of their revenue, the fall in housing values will cause Whitney's prediction to come true. In fact, her prediction will probably turn out to be optimistic.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the global financial crisis has only begun, and the collapse of the municipal bond market will be just one part of it. Stocks today are still overpriced by over 150%, as described in "Updating the 'real value' of the stock market." Thus, as bad as it's been, far worse is to come. It's impossible to predict what will trigger this crisis, but a municipal bond crash is one possibility.
Violence in Tunisia seems to have simmered down on Monday. The country's interim prime minister announced a national unity government, and promised to hold elections within six months. LA Times
China is in talks to station Chinese troops in North Korea, nominally to protect Chinese port facilities. But the location would give access to the Sea of Japan, and would allow intervention in North Korea in case of instability. AFP
The Palestinian Authority is expected to submit to the United Nations Security Council its long awaited resolution to declare Israeli settlements illegal and demand a halt to their construction. Associated Press
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 18-Jan-11 News -- Municipal bonds appear to be in free fall
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Jan-2011)
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IBM's supercomputer wins practice round against Jeopardy! champions
Gunfights erupted in major Tunisia cities on Sunday, two days after president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country from deadly protests, after 23 years in power. It appears that the gun battles were between the army and security forces loyal to Ben Ali, according to Al-Jazeera. The gunfights seemed to die down later in the evening.
There's widespread looting in the capital city, Tunis, according to the Telegraph. Food and fuel are in short supply, and with world food prices at historic highs, chaos is expected to continue.
However, the greater fear is that the instability will spread around the region, especially to other Arab countries that have a history of corruption and repression.
Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying, "The region in which we live is unstable. We see this at several points throughout the Middle East. I would say that there is a great island of instability in the geographic expanse in which we live. We hope that there will be quiet and security."
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There were riots in Algeria, and a man burned himself to death in an apparent echo of a suicide that began the Tunisian protests, according to Guardian.
The NY Times quotes leftist Beirut journalist Alfadel Chalak as follows:
"What we are witnessing is the collapse of the Arab state. Wherever we look across the Arab world, we see wars. We see civil wars, wars among ethnicities, wars between sects and ethnicities, wars among sects, and wars among authorities, sects, ethnicities and the poor. Wars among an Arab world that doesn’t have an elite or leadership that draws strategies and tactics that lead to salvation. Therefore, it looks as if we are going to witness for years and maybe decades to come a great deal of devastation, destruction and killing."
This is particularly true in North Africa (the Islamic Maghreb), according to Fordham University professor John P. Entelis, writing for CNN. "From Morocco to Egypt, North Africa has recently been rocked by a series of violent disturbances that have left scores dead, government leaders shaken and outside observers puzzled by the scope, timing and intensity of upheavals in a region normally viewed as stable, moderate and pro-Western."
As I wrote yesterday, countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, in generational Awakening eras, will not have prolonged violence beyond political chaos. But countries like Egypt, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, in generational Crisis eras, may react with civil wars of their own.
As for Tunisia itself, the country's last generational crisis war was the Algerian war for independence that climaxed in 1962, so Tunisia is in a generational Unraveling era. Thus, it's almost impossible for the violence to spiral into a full-scale civil war.
However, one reader, posting in the Generational Dynamics Forum, disagreed with me, saying that Tunisia's last crisis war was WW II. You can read my response, which I won't repeat here, but this is the kind of problem that requires a lot more research.
If you are familiar with Tunisia's history, especially if you've lived in Tunisia, then I would be interested in hearing from you on this subject, either through a comment or in the forum.
IBM's Watson supercomputer played a practice round of Jeopardy! against two former champions of the game and won handily, according to ZDNet. The actual contest will appear on television in February.
As I wrote last month, this event, if successful, marks a significant advance towards computer intelligence and the Singularity, the point in time, around 2030, when computers become more intelligent and creative and capable than human beings.
For details about history and algorithms, see "27-Dec-10 News -- IBM vs Jeopardy! brings robotic warfare and the Singularity closer."
The following video from Engadget is fun to watch. It shows the practice round, and you can see how Watson beat the two champions.
Israel is moving ahead with a project to build 1,400 new settlement homes in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, a development that is infuriating the Palestinians. The "peace process" was a dead as a door nail anyway, but this makes it an even deader door nail. Independent
The current international currency system, with the dollar’s primacy as a reserve currency and in trade is "the product of the past," according to China's president Hu Jintao, making a state visit to Washington this week. Bloomberg
The crippling childhood disease polio can be prevented with a few drops of bitter vaccine on a child’s tongue, but some Taliban groups have said the vaccine is un-Islamic, and so Pakistan has the highest incidence of polio in the world. Daily Times (Pakistan)
The federal National Rural Transit Assistance Program, of all people, has a pretty comprehensive guide to "generational dynamics" of customer service. Exceptional Customer Service Across Generations (PDF)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 17-Jan-11 News -- Gun battles erupt in Tunisia amid fears of regional instability
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Jan-2011)
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NY Times: Stuxnet attack on Iran was a joint U.S.-Israeli project
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was president of Tunisia for 23 years, but he fled the country on Friday in the face of huge riots and demonstrations, as we reported yesterday.
An interim president was sworn in on Friday, but it turned out that that appointment didn't satisfy the consitution. So a new interim president was sworn in on Saturday, promising to form a unity government, according to Al-Jazeera.
With the government in chaos, looting, deadly prison riots, and street violence have engulfed Tunisia. Some of the violence is thought to be coming from armed factions allied to Ben Ali.
Even so, Arabs around the world are rejoicing that the authoritarian regime of Ben Ali has been overthrown, giving hope that the revolution could spread to authoritarian regimes in other Arab countries.
That's in contrast to the more cautious reactions from Arab governments, according to AFP.
According to the article, the Arab League urged "all political forces, and representatives of Tunisian society and officials, to be united for the good of the Tunisian people and to achieve civil peace." And Egypt's government said that it "affirms its respect for the choices of the Tunisian people, and is confident that the wisdom of the Tunisian brothers will lead to restraint and will avoid descending the country into chaos."
But Egyptian demonstrators at the Tunisian embassy in Cairo said, "Listen to the Tunisians. It's your turn Egyptians."
A Kuwaiti opposition lawmaker is quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the uprising is "A lesson to all tyrants in the Arab world."
An editorial in Lebanon's Daily Star spells it out:
"After 23 years of his corrupt and authoritarian reign, the president has at last bowed to the serious and widespread popular pressure. Television footage around the world is showing tens of thousands of Tunisians disgruntled with Ben Ali’s tyranny, and dozens of citizens have died since the rioting and demonstrations began.This new picture of Tunisia could not clash more with the image that Ben Ali pushed for the last two decades; he regaled the world with tales of the honeyed and perfumed existence of his people. The portrait – sketched similarly in too many other Arab nations – was never convincing.
Aside from the economic hardship and near-total absence of human rights, Tunisians had to suffer silently as Ben Ali, his wife and many relatives became grossly – and illegally – wealthy. Ben Ali threw money at media campaigns to sugarcoat his country’s many ills and instead attract tourists to see its alluring shores; however, ignoring problems usually fails to make them go away. In the case of Tunisia and many other Arab states, the unspoken troubles have only grown. ...
Other Arab monarchs and presidents-for-life should learn the lesson unfolding on the streets of Tunisia: It is past time to institute democratic reforms in the Arab world, and the region’s leaders should do so before it becomes too late for them, as it has with Ben Ali."
The Tunisian uprising may well have lit a fire that could spread around the Arab world.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the effect of that fire in each country will depend on its generational era.
In countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, in generational Awakening eras, the Tunisian uprising may trigger riots and political chaos, but no prolonged violence.
In countries like Egypt, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, in generational Crisis eras, the uprising may trigger sustained violence, even a civil war.
My guess is that many Arab governments are hoping that the excitement from the Tunisian uprising will die quickly.
Stuxnet, a major computer virus, attacked Iran's nuclear power plants last year, causing centrifuges to spin wildly out of control and destroy themselves. (See "27-Sep-10 News -- Iran's nuclear plant attacked by Stuxnet computer virus.")
However, the origin of Stuxnet has been a mystery. The virus was too sophisticated to have been done by a lone hacker in his basement. In fact, reverse engineering on the virus indicated that it needed so many resources that only a government could have designed and launched it. There were many suspects, including the U.S., Israel and China, but it's remained a mystery.
Now the NY Times is reporting that the Stuxnet virus is the result of a joint project by U.S. and Israeli experts. The research was done at Israel's Dimona nuclear power plant, whose existence has not been admitted.
Stuxnet is thought to be a huge success, because it set back Iran's development of nuclear weapons by 2-3 years, thus delaying the need for a miltary attack on Iran's nuclear power plants.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 16-Jan-11 News -- Effects of Tunisia uprising spread around the Arab world
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Jan-2011)
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Greece's ratings are cut to junk status
The Arab world is shocked by the overthrow of Tunisia's dictator President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had held an iron grip on power since 1987. Ben Ali was forced to flee the country after an unprecedented popular uprising mobbed the capital Tunis with protesters, leading to riots and violent confrontations with the police, according to Associated Press.
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The riots were triggered by the mid-December suicide of a vegetable salesman when police confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling without a permit. The riots turned into food riots for a while, as the worldwide price of food has been surging to historically high levels, but they soon turned into a general protest against the government, because of the poor economy and high unemployment.
The departure of Ben Ali leaves open the question of "What's next?"
There's really nowhere to go now for Tunisia's caretaker government, which is controlled by Ben Ali's ministers. The price of food is still at historic highs, unemployment is still high, and the economy is still poor.
Thus, it seems that there's a pretty good chance that the violence will continue, and may get a lot worse.
Tunisia's last generational crisis war was the Algerian war for independence that climaxed in 1962, so Tunisia is in a generational Unraveling era. Thus, it's almost impossible for the violence to spiral into a full-scale civil war.
The situation in Tunisia reminds me of the violence that broke out in Kenya at the end of 2007, because Kenya at that time was at approximately the same point on the generational timeline (51 years after the end of their last crisis war) as Tunisia is today (49 years). (See "Post-election massacre in Kenya raises concerns of tribal war.")
The violence in Kenya became explosive for a while, resulting in numerous atrocities and massacres. But, as expected, the violence fizzled out after a few days.
That would be the pattern that we might expect in Tunisia today. It's possible that the violence will grow, but I would expect it to fizzle out in a relatively short period.
There has been some very interesting media commentary surrounding the overthrown of the Ben Ali -- namely that the same thing might happen in other Arab countries. Here's an interesting example from the Washington Post:
"Tunisia is a typical Middle East country in that its population is composed largely of young people. Half the population is under 25 years of age and so have known no leader other than Ben Ali, who is only Tunisia's second president since it gained independence from France in 1956.For decades, a host of Arab dictators have justified their endless terms in office by pointing to Islamists waiting in the wings to take over. Having both inflated the egos and power of Islamists and scared Western allies into accepting stability over democracy, those leaders were left to comfortably sweep "elections." Ben Ali was elected to a fifth term with 89.62 percent of the vote in 2009.
All around him is a depressingly familiar pattern. Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi (68 years old) has been in power since 1969; Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh (64) has ruled since 1978 and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (82) since 1981. Algeria's Abdelaziz Bouteflika (73) is a relative newcomer, having been in power only since 1999. Not so much fathers as grandfathers of their nations, these autocrats cling to office - and are increasingly out of touch with their young populaces.
No doubt, every Arab leader has watched Tunisia's revolt in fear while citizens across the Arab world watch in solidarity, elated at that rarity: open revolution.
"Goosebumps all over. I can't believe I lived through an Arab revolution!! Thank you, Tunisia!" Gigi Ibrahim, a young Egyptian woman whose handle is Gsquare86 tweeted. "The power of the masses is capable of toppling any dictatorship. Today was Tunisia. Tomorrow is Egypt, Jordan. LONG LIVE REVOLUTION!"
Indeed, these mass protests are already spreading. On Wednesday, thousands of people demonstrated in Amman and other cities of Jordan to protest rising food and commodity prices, unemployment and poverty, according to Al-Jazeera. However, there was no violence.
In fact, with food prices rising to historical levels, there may well be an increasing level of unrest in the developing world. If a man is unable to feed himself and his family, he will not just sit around twiddling his thumbs.
A running street battle between police and protesters broke out in a slum district of Haiti's capital on Friday. Unlike Tunisia, Haiti is deep into a generational Crisis era, and so a civil war is a real possibility. Reuters
Fitch Ratings downgraded Greece's ratings to BB+, which is junk status. Bloomberg
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 15-Jan-11 News -- Tunisia's president flees country after mass protests
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Jan-2011)
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Will the U.S. military reenter Lebanon?
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops stationed near the Lebanon border were put on high alert on Thursday, following the collapse of Lebanon's government on Wednesday. The fear was that the political turmoil might cause renewed violence that could spill over into Israel, according to Haaretz.
However, no reserves have been called up, as would be necessary if violence were immediately threatened.
The Prime Minister of Lebanon is Saad Hariri, the son of the national hero Rafiq Hariri, who was killed in 2005 by a terrorist bomb. (See "Massive Beirut explosion killing Rafiq Hariri puts Lebanon into state of shock" for more details.)
The terrorist group Hizbollah, supported by Syria and Iran, was assumed to have perpetrated the assassination. The United Nations appointed a "Special Tribunal for Lebanon" (STL), whose purpose was to investigate and determine guilt.
The investigation is now complete. The final report of the STL has been completed. The conclusions have not yet been made public, but it's widely expected that some high-level Hizbollah figures are going to be indicted.
In order to derail the STL report, the political wing of Hizbollah pulled its members out of Said Hariri's governing coalition on Wednesday, just when Hariri was visiting Washington, causing the government to collapse. Hariri is now the "caretaker prime minister," until a new government can be formed.
According to Debka, an analyst group that has contacts within Israeli intelligence but sometimes gets things wrong, the U.S. is considering getting involved in Lebanon for the first time since the 1980. At that time, American peacekeeping troops were in Lebanon, but in 1984, the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut killed 19 top CIA agents, and the bombing of the Marine headquarters killed 241 American troops.
According to the Debka report, the American military will "use force to defend the Saad Hariri government in Lebanon and if necessary deploy aerial forces and the marines to avert a Hizballah takeover in Beirut."
According to the report, "Over the weekend, the US president ordered US vessels to buttress the Sixth Fleet stationed in the eastern Mediterranean with the USS Enterprise carrier and its strike group with 6,000 sailors and marines aboard and 80 fighter-bombers." In addition, "The French fleet was also ordered to bolster its naval strength opposite Lebanon."
However, the Pentagon is denying the Debka report, and saying that no American warships had been sent to the waters off Lebanon, according to Naharnet (Lebanon) and AFP. The Pentagon spokesman added, "We continue to monitor the situation very closely,"
It's always difficult to know what to make of these Debka reports. On the one hand, they're highly authoritative, but on the other hand, they've often predicted imminent attacks by or on Iran, by or on Israel, and by or on Gaza, almost none of which have materialized.
Lebanon itself is in a generational Awakening era, and so an internal (civil) war is impossible, and indeed, Hizobollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is categorically saying that the government collapse won't lead to civil war, according to Haaretz.
However, there are still plenty of opportunities for war. Israel and Hizbollah already fought a war in 2006, and now Iran and Syria are playing a game of Let's You and Him Fight with a re-armed Hizbollah and a newly confident Israel and, just as happens with the sexual game, the erotic lure of one or both parties finishing up what they started in 2006 may be irresistible.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 14-Jan-11 News -- Israeli troops on high alert after Lebanon's government collapses
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Jan-2011)
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Baltic Dry Index seems to be crashing again
China's President Hu Jintao was possibly hugely embarrassed on Tuesday during a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in Beijing.
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The People's Liberation Army (PLA) conducted a major test of their J-20 stealth fighter on Tuesday. That alone would be a big signal to both Hu and Gates, given that it occurred just before their meeting.
But even worse, Hu appeared not to be even aware that the test had occurred when Gates asked him about it, according to the Wall Street Journal (Access).
Hu later acknowledged that the test flight had occurred, and assured Gates that the test was not directed at the U.S. The sequence of events indicates that hawkish elements in the PLA are taking control of military policy, overriding Hu's civilian control.
During their meeting, Gates also said that within five years, North Korea will likely have a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, according to VOA. Gates asked Hu for help with this situation but, not surprisingly, no such help was offered.
According to an analysis in the Washington Post, the surprise flight test incident illustrates the weakness of Hu as a leader:
"The bizarre drama that Gates - a former U.S. intelligence chief who has dealt with China for decades - witnessed highlights a significant trend in Chinese politics as the fourth handover of power in communist China's 62-year history approaches: the increasingly assertive voice of the People's Liberation Army in the country's foreign policy.Throughout the past year, the PLA has been a catalyst in a series of national security crises. Chinese fishing vessels have clashed with Japanese and South Korean coast guard cutters near disputed islands in the Western Pacific. PLA officers have engaged in verbal fisticuffs with senior American officials from Singapore to Beijing.
And PLA officers have appeared on Chinese state television, enunciating, much to the chagrin of China's senior diplomats, what appears to be an ever-expanding list of China's core interests. ...
To that end, the PLA has found a perfect foil in Hu - considered the weakest leader in communist China's short history, said Andrei Chang, editor of Kanwa Asian Defense magazine. Chang said Hu's apparent ignorance of the test was part of a "soap opera" that is unfolding as China changes leaders. Hu is slated to step down, and China's vice president, Xi Jinping, who met with Gates on Monday, is expected to succeed him."
Calling Hu "the weakest leader in communist China's short history" is an interesting statement, but one that I fundamentally disagree with in the form stated.
A more accurate description is that Hu is a fine leader but an anachronism, someone who would have been more successful ten years ago.
Hu, born in 1942, is a member of China's "Artist generation," having been born and raised during China's last crisis war, Mao's bloody Communist Revolution that climaxed in 1949. As such, he is like America's Silent Generation -- people who are mediators and conciliators and implementers, but not decision makers. (See "Basics of Generational Dynamics.")
Hu would never lead China's central committee to declare war on the U.S., but once such a decision were made, he would implement it ruthlessly, as I described in my 2006 report, "Eerie similarity: Chinese President Hu Jintao and Donald Rumsfeld."
Four years have passed since I wrote that report, and since that time, China's "Nomad generation," like America's Generation-X, have moved powerfully into middle management positions throughout society. And just as the West's Generation-X perpetrated the massive fraud in real estate securities that led to the global financial crisis (which is far from over and has barely begun), China's new middle managers are exhibiting similar nihilism and destructiveness in their increasingly hegemonistic military policy. Unlike Hu, they are almost oblivious to the consequences of launching a war, and they would not hesitate to do so.
The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) crashed in 2008, signaling a worldwide collapse of trade and transportation. It appears to be crashing again, but today it means something different.
The Baltic Dry Index is a measure of shipping costs for cargoes in "capesize" vessels -- vessels that are too large to fit through the Suez or Panama canals, and so must go around the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. These vessels transport the huge cargoes of copper, iron ore and other commodities.
In 2007-8, the BDI was strongly correlated to China's commodity purchases. And after the Beijing Olympics, China cut back on construction, and there was a worldwide collapse in trade and transportation, reflected in the BDI.
But today it's not clear that the BDI is related to a fall in trade and transportation. There are two OTHER factors pushing down the BDI these days. One is the floods in Australia that have shut down the coal mines. And the other is that a number of new ships are coming online -- these are ships that were commissioned during the 2008 bubble.
In fact, there's an amazing 20 mile long line of 132 ships floating off the coast of Australia, according to Bloomberg.
As a result, shipping rates are expected to plunge an additional 32% from where they are now. This means that the BDI should continue in free fall, but it's not completely clear exactly what that will be telling us.
They're popping champagne corks in Portugal on Wednesday, thanks to their "very successful" bond auction, where they borrowed €1.25 billion ($1.6 billion) by selling bonds, according to Financial Times (Access).
They had feared that they would have to pay yields (interest rates) at the head-crushing rate of 7%. But instead, they will only have to pay ... wait for it! ... just 6.71%!!
That's substantially higher than the 2-4% yields that are typical of such auctions, and will push Portugal ever deeper into systemic debt.
But apparently there's a very good reason why the yields came in just a hair lower than 7%. The European Central Bank (ECB) averted disaster by buying Portuguese bonds earlier in the week, according to the Guardian.
In fact, the worst is yet to come for Portugal, according to CS Monitor. Just to meet current debt payments, Portugal will have to borrow an additional $6 billion in March, and $8 billion more in April. And this is at a time when Portugal's economy is entering a recession.
This week's danger for the eurozone isn't over yet. On Thursday, Italy and Spain will both be going to the bond market.
The Dhaka (Bangladesh) Stock Exchange rallied a small amount on Wednesday, partially further recovering the huge loss when the market was in free fall on Sunday and Monday. The Bangladesh experience, along with similar but less severe experiences in India and smaller Asian countries, provides a warning to investors that these stock markets may have surged last year, but the risks are great. NY Times
One of the villainous practices of the credit bubble was the use of leverage, so that a small investment could yield huge profits. Once the real estate bubble started bursting, the high leverage had the reverse effect -- resulting in huge losses. Hedge funds were "deleveraging" early in the global financial crisis, but last year they started "releveraging" again, and now they're almost as highly leveraged as they were before. As I keep saying over and over, the same practices that led to the financial crisis in the first place are now being practiced more than ever. That's one of the ways that we know that the worst of the financial crisis is yet to come. CNBC
Just recently, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas seemed exhausted, ready to resign, and ready to dissolve the Palestinian Authority. But now Abbas's popularity has been increasing, and he appears to be "invigorated" and acting "like he's a young man again." The National (UAE)
Hamas held "urgent" talks with militant groups in Gaza on Wednesday to pass on a warning from Arab leaders that firing rockets into Israel is "very dangerous," and risks triggering a big counter-attack by Israel. The militant groups agreed to stop the rocket attacks, but maintained the right to "launch resistance attacks" if Israel invades Gaza Strip. AFP and Jerusalem Post
North Korea has repeatedly followed a well-calculated path of extortion to get whatever it wants, usually a lot of money. It creates a crisis, raises tensions with threats of war, and then when everyone is anxious, proposes "peace talks" to present its demands. This may not work next time, as the South Korean population has become increasingly bellicose after last year's North Korean attacks on South Korea. Asia Times
Last week's murder of Pakistan's Punjab governor Salman Taseer reveals the depth of Pakistan's extremist drift. Time
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 13-Jan-11 News -- Test flight embarrasses China's Hu Jintao in front of Secretary Gates
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Jan-2011)
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Bangladesh stock market rallies 15% in 78 minutes
On Tuesday, Prime Minister José Socrates of Portugal defended his country's economy, according to Bloomberg:
"The budget deficit will clearly be below forecast. The country is doing its job and doing it well. Portugal will not request financial aid for the simple reason that it’s not necessary."
According to on WSJ blogger, this denial is a sure sign that a bailout is coming soon, based on what happened last year:
"A look at what happened when Ireland and Greece officials made similar statements last year shows that when those two European sovereigns declared they were fine on their own, it took less than a week for them to start sounding a different tune. Within a month of their statements, both had done full about-faces and sought financial aid from the European Union and International Monetary Fund."
Indeed, there's plenty of reason not to believe Socrates. Portugal is going to go to the bond market on Wednesday to borrow 1.25 billion euros. The yields (interest rates) on Portuguese bonds has been steadily rising into crisis levels.
And not only Portugal: Belgium's bond yields have been surging as well. Higher bond yields mean that investors are increasingly betting that the country is going to default.
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As you can see from this graph, bond yields for Portugal are now at 7%. This was roughly the point where Greece and Ireland turned into crises last year.
Even more important, you can see the trend. Portugal's bond yields have been going up steadily for a year, and because of Portugal's budget deficit, there's absolutely nothing on the horizon that's going to improve the situation, other than hoping for a miracle.
As for Belgium, bondy yields have been exploding in the last few days, causing great alarm among the analysts. Belgium's bond yields appear to be where Portugal's were a year ago, so it will be interesting to see what happens next with Belgium.
Yesterday we reported that the Dhaka (Bangladesh) Stock Exchange appeared to be crashing, as panic selling for two days had caused sharp falls, resulting in thousands of investors rioting violently in the streets. Trading had to be suspended on Monday when the index fell by 660 points in 50 minutes.
On Tuesday, the index gained 992 points in 78 minutes, reversing the losses of the previous day, according to India Times.
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According to a WSJ blog:
"The recovery in the stock market comes after Bangladesh’s Securities and Exchange Commission extended the limit that investors could borrow from brokers, according to a statement on its website."
In other words, investors could borrow more money to pour into the stock market. This sounds like the perfect solution to a crisis!
The violent up/down moves are typical of a complete crash. For example, that's exactly what happened in the days of the 1929 crash of Wall Street, as you can see in my Dow Jones historical page.
Here is a short, frightening Al-Jazeera video of what's happening in Dhaka:
The reason that it's frightening is that there are 3.5 individual investors in the Dhaka Stock Exchange, and many of them have borrowed money and sold everything they have, and put the money into stocks. And they are going to lose most of it.
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A survey of German bankers by Spiegel reveals
The last statement appears to be wishful thinking. No one doubts that the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank in 2008 had wide consequences, and the default of an entire European country will have widespread effects.
The "Debt Burden" graphic shows that the USA is deeper in debt than the Eurozone. Notice that the budget deficit forecasts for 2011 for all three regions show budget deficits falling in 2011. This also appears to be wishful thinking.
We recently reported that Japan and South Korea, who were bitter enemies in World War II, are now allying militarily against North Korea and China. North Korea is criticizing South Korea for the agreement, calling it a dangerous plot to invade the North. Associated Press
The potential alliance between South Korea and Japan is causing consternation among some South Koreans, in view of their history, when Korea and China fought side-by-side against Japan in WW II. But they feel that it's a matter of necessity because China is becoming a "hegemonic power" who "ignores international law and international justice," as illustrated by their support of North Korea against South Korea, despite "seemingly irrefutable evidence of North Korean wrongdoing." JoongAng
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that only the convincing threat of military action headed by the United States will persuade Iran to drop plans to build an atomic bomb. Haaretz. I think it's safe to say that no such threat will be forthcoming.
The Stuxnet virus and international sanctions have had enough of an effect on Iran's nuclear program that it's now thought Iran's nuclear program has been set back a couple of years. The result is that the risk of an Israeli strike on Iran is receding. Reuters
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 12-Jan-11 News -- Euro crisis grows in Portugal and Belgium
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Jan-2011)
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Illinois may vote to increase income taxes by 75%
Almost the entire city of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, came to a standstill on Monday, as thousands of angry investors poured into the streets and staged violent demonstrations, according to Bangladesh News 24.
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The stock market had fallen 7.8% on Sunday, largest in the history of the Bangladesh stock market. It then fell an additional 9% on Monday during just the first hour of trading, after which trading was ended for the day. Rioting spread to other cities after trading was suspended.
There seems little doubt that the stock market was in a large bubble. The stock market index rose 80% in 2010, peaking on December 5 of last year. Then, on December 19, the market fell 6.73% fell, according to CNN. This trigger protests in Dhaka and around the country, though not as large as the new protests.
There are 3.5 million investors in the Bangladesh stock market, and this appears to be a full-scale panic. Regulators are trying to use every tool available to them stop the panic, but it has not yet been announced with trading will resume.
If you're an investor in the stock market, then you should understand that the same thing could happen to you at any time. There were several "mini-panics" last year, especially around the time of the bailout of Greece. The euro zone is going through another crisis this week, so be prepared for anything.
The state that's worst off financially -- even worse off than California -- is Illinois, with a deficit of at least $13 billion, more than $6 billion in unpaid bills to social service agencies, schools and funeral homes, and the most underfinanced state pension system. The Illinois legislature is now on the verge of voting to increase the state income tax by 75%. NY Times
It's been revealed that some time in September or October of last year, Chinese troops crossed the border to Indian-controlled Kashmir and forced construction workers to abandon their work. DNA India
Why Chinese mothers are superior. Wall Street Journal (Access)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 11-Jan-11 News -- Riots in Bangladesh as stock market appears to be crashing
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Jan-2011)
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Japan and South Korea unite against China and North Korea
US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced on Friday that the Pentagon is investing in a range of new weapons in response to China's military buildup, according to the NY Times. China has been rapidly building up its military since the 1990s, but this is the first time that the Pentagon has responded to China's buildup with more than words.
"The American weapons that Mr. Gates was referring to included investments in a new long-range nuclear-capable bomber aircraft, which the Pentagon had stopped developing in 2009, as well as a new generation of electronic jammers for the Navy that are designed to thwart a missile from finding and hitting a target. At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, Mr. Gates said that the jammers would improve the Navy’s ability to “fight and survive” in waters where it is challenged.Mr. Gates was also referring to continued investment in the Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon’s newest radar-evading fighter jet."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, China is arming and planning for a major war with the United States.
However, hope springs eternal. Secretary Gates arrived in Beijing on Sunday for discussions with China's president and defense minister. According to VOA, Gates says that he wants to persuade China to engage in regular military talks with the United States to prevent misunderstandings that could lead to conflict.
In ten days, China's president Hu Jintao will arrive in Washington for discussions with President Obama.
Japan and South Korea have had very bitter relations since the end of World War II, because Japan had colonized Korea during the first half of the 20th century, and because the Japanese army used Korean women as "comfort women" during WW II.
But now Japan and South Korea are faced with new realities. These include China's military buildup, North Korea's nuclear weapons buildup, and China's close relationship with North Korea.
As a result, Japan and South Korea are being forced to choose sides, and they're choosing each other, according to Bloomberg. Japan and South Korea are boosting military and economic ties in ways that would have been politically impossible just a few years ago.
Riots continued in Algeria for a fifth day on Sunday over high food prices and unemployment. Since they began on Tuesday, three young people have been killed, and more than 1,000 have been arrested, according to the Interior Minister quoted by Magharebia.
Fourteen people were killed on Sunday in clashes with security forces in Tunisia, near the border with Algeria, according to VOA.
In both countries, policemen were killed as a result of the clashes.
This comes as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announces that its food price index has reached its highest level since it was begun in 1991. Prices have risen 32% in just the last half of 2010.
High prices sparked worldwide food prices in 2008. Everyone hoped that food prices would come down, and they did for a while in 2009, and again early in 2010, but they really surged in the last half of 2010. They're now up to new highs, higher than in 2008, and governments around the world are looking for ways to head off problems.
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In Bangladesh, the Prime Minister announced a rationing system on Sunday, according to the Daily Star. Rice will be distributed to "the destitute and ultra-poor" at subsidized prices through ration cards.
India, which still has in effect from the 2008 crisis an export ban on rice, is also considering a plan to distribute food grains at subsidized prices to the BPL (people Below Poverty Line), according to Business Standard (India).
India's consumers have been particularly hit by a doubling of the price of onions in the last month, according to Sify (India). However, the General Secretary of the Vegetable Traders Association is quoted as saying that the rise in onion prices is only temporary, as a fresh crop is ready to be harvested.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what we're seeing is what I call the "Malthus effect," a continuing increase in the price of food as the population grows faster than the supply of food. (See "Food: Green revolution v Malthus effect.")
Food prices were steady or declining until 2002. Since 2002, food prices have been surging much faster than inflation.
The survivors of World War II (GI and Silent generations) were well aware of the horrors of famine and starvation that occurred during the war, and they developed the Green Revolution to make sure that everyone in the world would be fed.
The Green Revolution led to huge increases in food production in the 1960s and 1970s, but for some reason, many people believe that the Green Revolution is some magic potion that will last forever. In many ways it was a one shot deal -- improve crop yields by using a lot more water, fertilizer and insecticides. Since then, water has gotten scarcer, and fertilizer and insecticides have been overused. New, modern equipment that was made available in the 1970s is now worn out and rusting.
It's really not surprising that the surge in food prices occurred in the same time frame as the tech, real estate and credit bubbles that have developed into the current global financial crisis. The same generational greed and nihilism that led to the global financial crisis has also led to the collapse of the Green Revolution.
After a relaxing holiday season, the euro zone financial crisis is coming to the fore again. Germany, France and other euro zone countries are pressuring Portugal to seek a bailout from the EU and IMF to prevent Portugals financial problems from spreading to other countries. This is the same kind of game that was played with Ireland last year, and if it plays out in a similar way, then Portugal will stall on asking for aid in order to gain leverage in having to pay lower interest rates on the bailout money. Reuters
Tensions are also rising again in Thailand. On Sunday, some 30,000 red-shirt anti-government protesters filled the streets of downtown Bangkok in a peaceful demonstration. Red Shirt organizers say that they plan to hold regular demonstrations twice a month. CNN
165 Israeli academics are refusing to participate in academic functions at the Ariel University Center of Samaria, because it's across the "Green Line" in the West Bank, in territory claimed by the Palestinians. Jerusalem Post
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 10-Jan-11 News -- Defense Secretary Gates announces an arms race with China
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Jan-2011)
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Algerians cut duties to reduce food prices
Two people were killed and hundreds injured in the fourth day of food riots in Algeria on Saturday, according to VOA. An additional body was found in a hotel burned down by rioters.
The riots come as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food price index reached historic highs, higher than when the worldwide food riots occurred in 2008. World food prices have increased by 32% in just the last half of 2010.
The rioting began this week after the sudden price hike of food staples such as flour, sugar and oil.
A panicked Algerian government reacted by saying it will cut taxes and import duties on some staple foods, according to Al-Jazeera. Officials claim that this will reduce the price of sugar and cooking oil by 41%. However, many people claim that the riots go beyond high food prices to general discontent with the Algerian government.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 9-Jan-11 News -- Food riots kill two in Algeria
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Jan-2011)
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First anniversary of the daily news summary
Here's what I wrote exactly one year ago:
"Dear Reader, I'm going to try this for a while and see if it works for me. Ideally I'll produce a news summary every day, but that's probably unrealistic. I'll try to do it as often as possible.Every day I come across one or more stories that I believe are very important (or just amusing). Often web site readers refer such articles to me. But my work schedule keeps me from writing a full article on them. The news summary will briefly cover stories that I believe are of international geopolitical or financial significance, and will provide a link to one or more articles."
Much to my own amazement, I've only missed five days or so in the last year, even though I do this in addition to my full time job. (By that, I'm referring to my software engineering job that pays me a salary, as opposed to this full time job that pays nothing -- except for the donations that I receive from those of you who are kind enough to provide them.) Each evening as I write an article, I ask myself why the hell I keep doing this, and think it's about time to quit. But then I get the article written and posted, and it (hopefully) looks good, and then I decide that it was all worth it, for at least another day.
I should mention that even after all this time, I still respond to most e-mail and comment questions that I receive. However, I'm very often a few days or weeks behind, but in almost all cases I do respond (eventually). By the way, I give a higher priority to queries posted in the Generational Dynamics forum, since in that case the response is seen by more people.
I know that I've helped a lot of people, because many people have written to me thanking me for this service, which is entirely altruistic. The nation and the world are entering a truly terrible time, and I always say that you should treasure the time you have left, and use the time to prepare yourself, your family, your community and your nation. The purpose of this web site is to help you prepare, and I'm pleased to be able to provide that help.
Happy new year to everyone.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was appearing on Friday before the Senate Budget Committee, and was asked whether the Fed could provide money through quantitative easing to bail out state and municipal budgets.
It's a serious problem. States are collectively forecasting a budget gap of an enormous $113 billion for the fiscal year starting in July, according to Reuters.
I've heard several financial analysts and pundits say that there will have to be many municipal bankruptcies this year, especially in California. There's apparently a severe political compulsion that's going to lead to these bankruptcies.
The problem in many municipalities is that they're bound by enormous union contracts that demand cadillac salaries and cadillac benefits far in excess of corresponding salaries and benefits in the private sector. Most unions have been playing hardball and refusing to agree to any cuts whatsoever, under the assumption that either the state or the federal government will be forced to provide a bailout.
That's why so many municipalities are considering bankruptcies. The money to pay these salaries and benefits simply does not exist, and cannot be raised. By going into bankruptcy court, a municipality can ask the judge modify or eliminate the union contracts to affordable levels.
Naturally, this becomes a big issue for the Democrats in Congress, who are politically pressured to provide bailouts to the cities and states. The Reuters article referenced above points out that last year's $814 stimulus plan included the largest transfer of federal funds to states in U.S. history. There is little appetite to repeat this.
So Democratic Senators on Friday asked Bernanke if the Fed could bail out the states and municipalities. His response:
"They should not expect loans from the Fed. It's going to be difficult, but on the other hand there is some improvement in the economy and tax revenues have actually picked up. ..."I don't think the Federal Reserve has the authority. And I don't think it would be appropriate for us to do that. This is something that would take place over a period of time ... And there'd be plenty of time, I think, for Congress and for the state legislature to look at alternative solutions."
Almost all Republicans and many Democrats are coming out against any fiscal bailout of the states as well, according to Wall Street Journal (Access).
Republican House Budget Committee chairman said, "If we bail out one state, then all of the debt of all of the states is almost explicitly put on the books of the federal government."
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Friday ruled that two foreclosures were invalid because the paper trail for the too tangled, and the foreclosing banks could not establish clear ownership, according to the Boston Globe.
Although only two mortgages are involved, this court ruling could affect thousands of foreclosures, and may have national implications. As I described in "22-Oct-10 News -- Foreclosure mess turns into a major crisis," this problem may be good news for homeowners, who now will be able to stay in their homes a while longer, but it's bad news for the real estate market as a whole, since it puts many purchases of foreclosed homes into question.
The Washington Post quotes one analyst as saying that this case is "enough to put serious cloud on title through the whole system and that's a problem."
There's an SEC rule that says that once a privately held company has 500 investors, then the company is required to open its books and divulge financial information. This makes sense because you don't want a company to mislead or defraud thousands of investors.
However, as we're well aware, the people on Wall Street consider rules to be an annoyance to be avoided, and they've now found a way to get around this rule.
Well, Facebook is generating so much profit that a lot of investors want to invest in the company, but they don't want to have to divulge their financials, according to Reuters.
"No problem!" says Goldman Sachs, one of the leaders among the many banks that five years ago sold defective mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations to millions of investors, causing the global financial crisis.
Goldman has created a special investment vehicle in which investors can buy shares. The special investment vehicle will then use the money to invest in Facebook. Voilà! You can have thousands of investors, but there's only one investor in Facebook itself, so there's no problem.
As I keep saying on this web site, the global financial crisis was caused by massive fraud in almost every major financial institution in the world, perpetrated by nihilistic, greedy Gen-Xers, enabled by their incompetent, greedy Boomer bosses.
And the point is that the same people are still in the same jobs, looking for news ways to screw investors for their own personal gain. That's one way that you know that there's still a worse major financial crisis yet to come.
Even apart from this deal, Facebook looks to me like a disaster in the making. I don't have anything against the company -- as far as I know, they're a fine company run by a fine management team.
But Facebook appears to me to be a one-company bubble. It's a social networking web site with more than 500 million users, and it has rock star popularity. The problem is that there may be a different rock star next year, and the next generation of teenagers may decide to leave Facebook just as fast as they joined. The situation is even worse because the Goldman deal shows that they're willing to cut corners to make money unethically.
It wouldn't take much for that bubble to burst, causing investors to lose a lot of money.
As I've pointed out a number of times, financial pundits and analysts seem to believe that "prosperity is just around the corner," because they believe that the real estate and credit bubbles of the mid 2000s decade can be reflated. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is impossible, but that doesn't stop the analysts from predicting it.
Here's a Bloomberg article that says it explicitly:
"The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index will rally back up to “mid-2008 levels,” in part because conditions resemble those at the end of 2004, when shares gained almost three more years, said MKM Partners.The S&P 500 broke to new highs at the end of 2010, just as in 2004. In both years, the index’s Moving Average Convergence/Divergence line, calculated by subtracting the index’s average level during the past 26 months from the average over the past 12 months, rose above zero and its stochastics chart shows usually strong momentum. The similar pattern suggests the current bull market may have more room to rally, said Katie Stockton, MKM’s chief market technician.
“The uptrend is equally mature” as it was at the end of 2004, Stockton, who is based in Stamford, Connecticut, wrote in a note dated Jan. 2. “We are thus encouraged by the ability of the market to extend its uptrend from 2005 through 2007 and would not be scared away from the market simply because it has already seen two years of impressive gains.”"
Believe me, Dear Reader, this is a pile of crap. Katie Stockton, who is quoted in the article, doesn't have the vaguest idea what's coming, but she's developed this mathematical model that justifies her six or seven-digit salary, since it tells people what they want to hear.
It reminds me of the super-sophisticated mathematical models that were used to justify the sales of collateralized debt obligations five years ago. Those models, it turned out, were based on mathematically impossible assumptions. (See "Financial Crisis Inquiry hearings provide 'smoking gun' evidence of widespread criminal fraud.")
As I keep saying, over and over, the same people who caused the financial crisis in the first place are still in the same jobs, doing the same kinds of things, looking for new ways to skirt the rules and defraud investors. That's how we know for sure that the worst of the financial crisis is far from over.
Yields (interest rates) on the bonds of several European countries rose sharply this week, indicating that investors are betting that there will be defaults. The euro currency fell sharply against the dollar. The reason is that the euro is facing a major test next week: Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Portugal are all going into the bond market next week, seeking to borrow 20-22 billion euros. Reuters
Despite the fall in the unemployment rate to 9.4%, analysts are deeply disappointed by the Friday's jobs report, because employers added only 103,000 jobs in December, when analysts had predicted a figure closer to 200,000. The fall in the employment rate is apparently caused by a shrinkage in the nation's workforce by 260,000 persons from November, as more Americans retired, went back to school or simply gave up looking for jobs. LA Times
Financial superstar nation Brazil may be facing a financial crisis. Consumer credit has shot up fivefold since 2002, and the credit bubble is showing signs of being about to burst. Bloomberg
As we've reported, Greece has generated a great deal of controversy by proposing to build a fence (similar to the one on the US border with Mexico) along the border with Turkey, to prevent illegal migration. This has triggered a meeting between Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, at which they showed unity over the problem of illegal migrants. Reuters
Pakistan's government had been close to collapse this week, because a key party, the MQM, had pulled out of the PPP's governing coalition. The split had been triggered when Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had imposed a fuel surcharge as an austerity measure, so that Pakistan can avoid bankruptcy. Gilani has caved in and rescinded the fuel surcharge, and the MQM will rejoin the coalition. I guess the MQM is hoping for a bailout from either China or the U.S. What this shows, as much as anything, is that unpopular austerity programs will not survive long, until there's a crisis that forces austerity. Nation (Pakistan)
Older generations in Pakistan are mourning the loss of a once tolerant, relaxed nation. Associated Press
Food riots in Algeria spread into Tunisia on Friday, as protests and strikes driven by unemployment and high food prices swept across the country. Videos of demonstrations are appearing on the internet, despite attempts by Tunisia's government to control internet postings. LA Times
Tunisia's government is conducting a vigorous attack on internet users to prevent information unfavorable to the government from reaching the internet. The Tunisian authorities have allegedly carried out targeted "phishing" operations: stealing users passwords to spy on them and eradicate online criticism. Al-Jazeera
Muslim girls are often forced to lead double lives in Europe. They have sex in public restrooms and stuff mobile phones in their bras to hide their secret existences from their strict Muslim families. They are often forbidden from visiting gynecologists or receiving sex ed. In the worst cases, they undergo hymen reconstruction surgery, have late-term abortions or even commit suicide. Says one mother to her daughter, "An unmarried woman who has lost her virginity might as well be a whore." Spiegel
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 8-Jan-11 News -- Bernanke emphatically rejects bailing out states and cities
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(8-Jan-2011)
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China's military developments catch Americans by surprise
Riots over rising food prices and chronic unemployment spread across Algeria on Thursday, with youths torching government buildings and shouting "Bring us Sugar!" according to Associated Press.
The food price index of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has risen 32% in just the last half of 2010, according to Bloomberg.
Here's a graph that I posted in November, showing food prices through October:
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It had been hoped at that time that food prices would start to fall again, but they didn't. Instead, the price index continued to climb, reaching new highs in December.
 |
In India, food inflation increased to 18.32% for the week ending December 23, primarily due to a steep rise in onion prices, according to the Business Standard (Delhi). This was about twice the rate in November. Chief Economic Adviser Kaushik Basu said: "It is an utter mistake to think that it is fully within the control of the government to move prices of food up and down."
It had been hoped that food inflation would moderate in 2010, after a significant rise in 2009. During the summer it did moderate, but in recent weeks it's surged.
Pakistan's government, which is in near total paralysis after the assassination of Salman Taseer that we've been reporting on, banned onion exports to India over land routes on Thursday, in order to lower onion prices in Pakistan. This move, which was completely unexpected, is being criticized in both India and Pakistan, according to the Calcutta Telegraph.
Food prices are now higher than they were in 2008, when surging prices caused food riots around the world. Officials are claiming that the situation is not as bad today, since there are larger stocks of wheat and other commodities available. (However, I'm not sure why food prices are increasing, if there are these huge stocks available.)
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what we're seeing is what I call the "Malthus effect," a continuing increase in the price of food as the population grows faster than the supply of food. (See "Food: Green revolution v Malthus effect.")
As you can see from the above graph, food prices were steady or declining until 2002. Since 2002, food prices have been surging much faster than inflation.
The survivors of World War II (GI and Silent generations) were well aware of the horrors of famine and starvation that occurred during the war, and they developed the Green Revolution to make sure that everyone in the world would be fed.
It's really not surprising that the surge in food prices occurred in the same time frame as the tech, real estate and credit bubbles that have developed into the current global financial crisis. The same generational greed and nihilism that led to the debauched use of credit has also led to the collapse of the Green Revolution.
American officials have been caught by surprise by China's development of a stealth fighter, along with news of advances in anti-ship missiles. The fighter is only a prototype that won't see service for years, but the missile is nearly operational. As we've said many times, China is preparing to lead a new world war against the United States and the West. LA Times
The assassination of Pakistani Punjab's governor Salman Taseer by his "Elite Force" bodyguard is raising concerns in Washington and around the world that a similar assassination attack may give al-Qaeda linked terrorists access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Times of India
Thousands of Coptic Christians packed churches across Europe and the Middle East to celebrate Christmas Eve mass on Wednesday evening. Tensions were high after last week's bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, and continued internet threats by al-Qaeda linked groups that more churches would be bombed. Muslims had offered to visit churches in Egypt to act as "human shields" against further attacks, but church officials said that the presence of Muslims would be harmful to "the feelings and the sensitivities of the relatives of the victims." Al-Jazeera
Floods in Australia, the worst in 50 years, have affected about 200,000 people and caused $5 billion. The coal industry has been particularly hard hit, and coal exports have been brought to a standstill. Reuters
Homeowners who would like to reduce mortgage payments, but don't qualify for refinancing, can use a little-known strategy called "recasting" or "re-amortization." NY Times
New research says that when a woman cries, a man's sexual desire for her decreases. Australian
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 7-Jan-11 News -- Food riots begin again as food prices reach historic highs
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(7-Jan-2011)
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Muslims will attend Coptic Christmas mass in Egypt
Islamist lawyers showered Mumtaz Qadri with roses when he arrived in court on Wednesday to face charges of having assassinated Salman Taseer, the governor of the province of Punjab in Pakistan, according to Dawn (Pakistan). And MEMRI has translated a statement by 500 Pakistani religious scholars, mostly belonging to the terrorist organization Jamaat Ahle Sunnat Pakistan, praising Qadri for keeping alive a "tradition of 1,400 years in Islam" which requires the killing of anyone committing an act of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed.
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The assassination is only the latest in an almost weekly stream of terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda linked groups in Pakistan. Many of them have been particularly targeted shrines and worshippers of Sufi and Shia Muslim sects, considered by Islamists to be apostasies.
Pakistan has been a troubled nation since its birth, where there have been militias particularly targeting Indians in Kashmir.
Pakistan really began turning against itself in 2007, with the bloody confrontation between police and students in Lal Masjid or the Red Mosque in Islamabad. (See my 2007 article, "Pakistanis are increasingly joining forces with al-Qaeda.")
Trouble began when female students began wearing head-to-toe black burkas and, in a move heavy with sexual symbolism, began carrying bamboo sticks. They demanded that all the Islamabad prostitutes be arrested for violating Islamic law, but they weren't taken seriously until they began abducting prostitutes and locking them in the seminary. This led to a 36-hour siege and gunfight with police -- the male students were carrying guns, not bamboo sticks -- that ended up killing more than 100 people.
A seminary student interviewed before the gunfight said that she was prepared to die for God. After the six hour gun battle she said, "We are never afraid. One day all lives will end, and if this is the case, then why not give our life to Islam?"
Since then, there have been numerous news stories about boys and girls, having been trained in Islamist madrassas, saying that they were ready to become martyrs to Allah. Sunni Islamist groups in Pakistan seem to have an endless supply of young people willing to become suicide bombers.
Now let's contrast all this to what's happening next door in Afghanistan.
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On Monday, an influential Afghan tribe leader agreed to put a stop to Taliban attacks in the Sangin district of Helmand, according to McClatchy. The deal is being compared to the "Anbar Awakening" in Iraq, where Sunni Iraqis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq. This is raising hopes that there'll be a similar "Awakening" in Afghanistan, bringing the war to an end.
There's another major similarity to Iraq that, to my knowledge, has never been reported except on my web site.
According to a July, 2007, study by the Jamestown Foundation entitled "The Taliban Fedayeen: The World's Worst Suicide Bombers?":
"An analysis of the attacks carried out in the last two years reveals a curious fact. In 43% of the bombings conducted last year and in 26 of the 57 bombings traced in this study up to June 15, the only death caused by the bombing was that of the bomber himself. Astoundingly, approximately 90 suicide bombers in this two year period succeeded in killing only themselves. This number exceeds 100 when you factor in those who succeeded in killing only one person in addition to themselves. There was one period in the spring of 2006 (February 20 to June 21) when a stunning 26 of the 36 suicide bombers in Afghanistan (72%) only killed themselves. ... These statistics also represent a uniquely Afghan phenomenon that warrants investigation."
What almost nobody has noticed is that a very similar phenomenon occurred in Iraq.
In April, 2007, I wrote "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq." I was able to show by quoting documents from a variety of sources that the Iraqis themselves had little interest in fighting against each other, though al-Qaeda did everything possible to provoke them.
One of the most interesting examples was a letter of complaint from al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden, including the following:
"Jihad here unfortunately [takes the form of] mines planted, rockets launched, and mortars shelling from afar. The Iraqi brothers still prefer safety and returning to the arms of their wives, where nothing frightens them. Sometimes the groups have boasted among themselves that not one of them has been killed or captured. We have told them in our many sessions with them that safety and victory are incompatible, that the tree of triumph and empowerment cannot grow tall and lofty without blood and defiance of death, that the [Islamic] nation cannot live without the aroma of martyrdom and the perfume of fragrant blood spilled on behalf of God, and that people cannot awaken from their stupor unless talk of martyrdom and martyrs fills their days and nights."
It was shown that Iraqis were refusing to allow their children to become suicide bombers, and so al-Zarqawi had to import suicide bombers from Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq are dramatically different from what's happening in Pakistan, which is increasing turning against itself with its never-ending supply of young suicide bombers.
This dramatic difference has been possibly the most fascinating aspect of my development of Generational Dynamics over these last nine years. When a country has had a recent generational crisis war -- as in the case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon and Thailand -- then the population is strongly attracted away from violence. In particular, a civil war is impossible or, if one occurs, then it fizzles quickly.
But Pakistan's last generational crisis war was the genocidal war between Hindus and Muslims that followed Partition, the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan.
In many current and historical examples that I've studied, the pattern is overwhelmingly consistent. Even when a generational crisis civil war ends, there is little or no internal violence for about 25-30 years. We've seen this quite dramatically in Sri Lanka, whose civil war ended last year. Pundits and analysts predicted that fighting would continue, but there has been no fighting whatsoever.
After about 25-30 years after a crisis civil war, low level violence can begin. This violence gradually increases, often punctuated by short-lived peace agreements, until a new war begins decades later.
So what does this mean for the war in Afghanistan? Can that war wind down the same as the war in Iraq seems to be doing?
As I've said many times, the answer is no, because of two very important differences between the two countries.
The first difference is that Afghanistan's last crisis war was an extremely bloody civil war (1992-96), while Iraq's last crisis war as an external war (the Iran/Iraq war, 1980-88). This means that Iraq's Sunni and Shia population can comfortably form a shared government, at least for the time being.
With Afghanistan still in a generational Recovery era, there is almost no taste for war of any kind, even between people who, just 15 years ago, were literally slitting each others throats.
This is where the second difference becomes important. The Iraqi Sunnis were Iraqis first and Sunnis second, and had little identity with external Arab Sunni groups.
But the Sunni group in Afghanistan is the Pashtuns, and there is a strong identity group connection with the Pashtuns in Pakistan. The Taliban terrorist group is drawn from the Pashtun ethnic group. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is a fascinating research subject, since the Afghan Pashtuns are in a generational Recovery era, while the Pakistan Pashtuns are in a generational Crisis era.
But the Afghan Pashtuns will not be able to eject the Pakistani Pashtuns in the way that the Iraqis ejected al-Qaeda in Iraq.
This means that Pakistan's never-ending supply of suicide bombers becomes Afghanistan's never-ending supply of suicide bombers.
My expectation is that there will be more deals with Afghan tribal leaders like the one that was announced on Monday, especially in the western regions far from the Pakistani border.
But I expect no such deals near the Pakistani border, or if there are any, they will be quickly sabotaged by the Pakistani Pashtuns. If only the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan could somehow be closed, then the Afghan war would end quickly. But that's not possible.
The larger picture is that Afghanistan is to play a secondary role to the major war, the one between Pakistan and India. This will refight the 1947 war between Hindus and Muslims, with Pakistan itself torn between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
Pakistan has not yet recovered from last year's devastating floods that covered 20% of the country. That lawyers, supposedly committed to upholding the law, would be throwing rose petals at the man who killed the governor of Punjab is almost too much to believe. And this comes as the government is close to collapse because a political party has pulled out of the governing coalition. Pakistan is truly staring into the abyss.
Christmas is January 6 for Coptic Christians. After the bombing of the Coptic Christian church in Egypt last week, many Egypt Muslims are planning to attend the Christmas mass in sympathy with the Christians. Ahram
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 6-Jan-11 News -- Pakistan melts down as US/Nato forces struggle in Afghanistan
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Jan-2011)
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Egypt Christian church bombing blamed on Salafi terrorists
Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province and a senior politician in the governing Pakistan People's Party (PPP),was assassinated on Tuesday by one of his own bodyguards, significantly worsening Pakistan's financial and political crises.
This is the highest profile assassination since the the December, 2008, assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a leading Shia Muslim figure and daughter of the founder of the PPP. She was assassinated just two weeks prior to an election in which she was expected to win the office of Prime Minister.
After her death, her widowed husband, Asif Ali Zardari, became president of Pakistan. Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani, another PPP associate of Bhutto, later became Prime Minister. And Tasser became governor of Punjab, Pakistan's largest and most important province.
Taseer was shot in broad daylight on an Islamabad street by Malik Mumtaz Qadri, a member of the "Elite Force" that were supposed to protect him, according to Pakistan's Daily Times. Taseer was shot 27 times in the back. Qadri was arrested along with nine other members of the Elite Force, who had allegedly conspired with Qadri.
Qadri confessed to the killed, and blamed it on Taseer's opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy law, which forbids blaspheming Mohammed or Islam.
Taseer had been in the center of a major national controversy on this law. According to Dawn:
"Mr Taseer had few friends left in his last days. His outspoken defence of the Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy under questionable charges leveled against her by fellow Muslim villagers and who has been on the death row in a Punjab prison for over a year awaiting appeal in a higher court, made him a hate figure for extremist and Islamist outfits and parties. Major religious parties called out nationwide strikes on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve to demand Aasia Bibi’s execution under the controversial blasphemy law, and to condemn her sympathisers, Mr Taseer being one of the foremost public figures amongst the latter group and thus the object of hate."
In the past few weeks, the validity of Pakistan's blasphemy law in Islam has been debated by Pakistani scholars. Two articles have been translated by MEMRI, and summarized as follows:
"In the following two articles, Pakistani writers Abbas Zaidi and Dr. Mohammad Taqi debate the implications and rationale of the controversial blasphemy law in Pakistan. In the first article, titled "The Blasphemer Must Not Be Pardoned," Abbas Zaidi, a sociolinguist, argues that the clerics should not be allowed to have their way, as it will embolden the clerics, causing further such threats to the nearly five billion people who are not Muslim.In the second article, titled "Blasphemy Laws: What Does the Koran Say?" prominent writer Dr. Mohammad Taqi argues that the Holy Koran and Sunnah, i.e. the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, do not prescribe any punishment for a blasphemer. He reasons that the clerics are misusing a Koranic verse dealing with war and sedition to call for the death penalty for blasphemy."
What's always significant about these issues is that Islamist extremists are always justifying their mass murders, even of civilians, by claiming the most extreme interpretations of Islamic history and beliefs, and these interpretations are almost never supported by other Muslim scholars.
Pakistan has been the target of a steady stream of al-Qaeda and Taliban linked terrorist attacks, often targeting Sufi and Shia Muslim shrines and worshippers.
Pakistan is already in the middle of major financial and political crises. The government is close to collapse anyway, as two political parties pulled out of the PPP's governing coalition. Pakistan has a huge budget deficit, and the economy is also collapsing as well, according to Financial Times (Access). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stopped a payment of $3.5 billion of its $11.3 billion loan to Pakistan, because has not raised taxes as demanded by the IMF.
As if that weren't enough, major floods last year affected 20% of Pakistan's land mass, making 7.5 million people homeless. In Sindh province, the heart of the PPP, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into the port city of Karachi, making the city almost ungovernable. Hundreds were killed in the ensuing violence.
So it's not surprising that the assassination of Taseer has caused panic in Karachi, according to Dawn. Many stores were closed and people stayed at home, fearing a violent backlash against the assassination. However, no signficant violence has occurred so far.
Troubles just seem to just pile upon troubles in Pakistan. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Pakistan and India are headed for a genocidal ethnic and religious war, refighting the war between Muslims and Hindus that followed Partition, the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into Pakistan and India.
It's impossible to predict exactly what scenario will lead to that war, but the continuing deterioration of Pakistan is certainly part of it.
Saturday's bombing of a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, is being blamed on an al-Qaeda linked Egyptian terrorist group known as Salafis. They had been calling for violence against Christians, and they are thought to be behind online instructional videos explaining how to build a bomb, and providing the locations of churches to target, including the one that was bombed. Associated Press
Internal divisions within the Palestinian Authority are growing, as Former security strongman Muhammad Dahlan was interrogated on Tuesday on charges of planning a military coup against president Mahmoud Abbas. Jerusalem Post
One of the most peculiar facets of the recent collapse in Mideast peace talks was the story that the Obama administration offered Israel a squadron of jet fighters in return for a 90-day extension to the West Bank settlement freeze. The story at the time was that Israel refused the offer, but on Monday, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was willing to agree to the 90-day extension, but that U.S. officials withdrew the offer. "The Americans were right in saying that the settlement freeze will lead to a dead end, in which we would have entered an endless path of settlement freezes, but despite it all I agreed to go through with it," he said. Haaretz
A campaign to reverse the excommunication 110 years ago of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy has been refused by the Russian Orthodox Church, who blame him for aiding the Bolshevik Revolution. As the centennial anniversary of his November 20, 1910, death approached, the church issued a statement acknowledging Tolstoy’s “unforgettable, beautiful works,” and said that Russian Orthodox readers were allowed to say solitary prayers for him on the anniversary of his death. NY Times
On the heels of a record-cold December, long-range forecasts indicate that January could be the coldest across the United States since the 1980s. AccuWeather
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 5-Jan-11 News -- Pakistan's crisis worsens as senior politician is assassinated
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(5-Jan-2011)
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Palestinians to submit anti-settlement resolution to U.N. Security Council
Now that the Republicans are in the substantial majority in the House of Representatives, they're planning to cut spending, in order to reduce the budget deficit.
Here's what the Republicans plan to do, according to an analysis in the Wall Street Journal (Access):
"House Republicans are pledging to cut spending, and one early sign they're serious is the rules package they are bringing to the House floor tomorrow. More than the last time it held power, the GOP is changing the rules to make it harder to tax and spend. ...In their new rules, Republicans are giving paygo the heave-ho and substituting a rule called "cut as you go." From now on, increases in mandatory spending—for new or existing entitlements—will require that spending be cut by an equal or greater amount elsewhere in the budget. ...
These new rules are ... a welcome sign that Republicans understand their November mandate and are thinking strategically about how to fulfill it."
The article lists a few more rules changes that I've omitted, in order to avoid tedium.
So the Republicans are "pledging to cut spending," but nowhere in this sympathetic analysis is anything that points to any places where actual spending will be cut. The most that can be said is that in a few trivial cases, some small spending increases will be avoided.
In 2008, I wrote the article, "One, Two, Three ... Infinity," in which I compared to the ever-increasing government spending plans to a book by George Gamow that I read in school in the 1950s.
My use of that particular phrase was to convey the idea that American debt was on an exponential growth path that would not be stopped except by a major financial collapse and crisis.
A few rules changes will not stop the deficit's exponential growth path. The whole idea is a big joke, typical of the jokes that we always see in Washington.
It's easy now, at the beginning of 2011, to fantasize reducing the deficit. But it's politically impossible to cut any government spending program or to increase taxes. Therefore, the deficit will only increase.
Furthermore, there's no way of knowing what crises will occur during 2011. The global economy is far more fragile today than it was a year ago.
In the US, the shadow inventory of foreclosed and distressed real estate has grown to something like 7-8 million homes. Those foreclosed homes are being held off the market by bankers who are waiting for home prices to increase. Once it sinks in that home prices are only going to decrease, there's a possibility of a full scale panic, with a million or two homes suddenly dumped on the market.
China has a massive real estate bubble that could burst at any time. China's quantitative easing program has pushed up the prices of real estate and commodities, and I understand that food prices have increased 30% in the last year.
Europe's financial crisis has been out of the news for the holidays, but few people believe that there won't be major crises coming, like the ones that Greece and Ireland experienced last year, requiring bailouts. Pundits have also been pointing out that US states like California and Illinois may also go bankrupt in 2011.
As far as I can tell, the assumption that almost everyone is making is that the economy is going to take off in 2011. The next assumption is that this will cause all financial problems to simply melt away. But as we've said many times, what they're hoping for is a reflating of the real estate and credit bubbles of five years ago, and that cannot happen.
One way that we know that a major financial crisis is yet to come is because no serious effort is really being made to reduce the budget deficit. However, the deficit budget must come down, one way or another, and therefore a major financial crisis of some kind, probably forcing a US Treasury default, must occur.
The Palestinians are drafting a carefully worded resolution, to be presented to the U.N. Security Council, declaring that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are a major obstacle to ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The wording of the resolution will mirror criticisms of Israel by the Obama administration in recent months, so that the U.S. will be politically unable to veto the resolution in the Security Council. "It's a very moderate resolution by design because we don't want the U.S. to veto it," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday. "We want the international community to tell Israel that the settlements are against international law." LA Times
Following Saturday's bombing of a Coptic Christian church in Egypt, killing 21, Germany's Coptic Christian community has also reported receiving threats from radical Muslims. Spiegel
The government of Greece plans to build a 206 km (128 mile) wall along the land border between Greece and Turkey, in order to keep out unwanted migrants. Each month, thousands of migrants, many from Africa and Asia, have been crossing from Turkey into Greece, using it as an entry point into the European Union. Many of them have been put into detention camps that have been called "degrading." The fence will be modeled along the 1,050 km fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. EU Observer
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
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(4-Jan-2011)
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Home prices expected to fall another 30%
The year 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the completion of the King James Bible, possibly the most influential English language book in history.
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In his 2011 New Year message, the Archbishop of Canterbury said:
"When we try to make sense of our lives and of who we really are, it helps to have a strongly-defined story, a big picture of some kind in the background. As the King James Bible took hold of the imaginations of millions of people in the English-speaking world, it gave them just that - a big picture, a story in which their lives made sense."
An article in the Independent has collected together some of the common English language phrases that originally appeared in the 1611 edition of the King James Bible:
"Today it is a commonplace to note that the words and rhythms of the KJB and its source translations shape the speech of countless millions who never open a bible or enter a church. Somehow, the language of the 1611 version never falls from grace (Galatians 5.4) even if its message falls on stony ground (Mark 4.5). In a secular age where ignorance of religion goes from strength to strength (Psalms 84.7) among lovers of filthy lucre (1 Timothy 3.8) who only want to eat, drink and be merry (Luke 12.19), we know for a certainty (Joshua 23.13) that these resonant words endure as a fly in the ointment (Ecclesiastes 10.1) and a thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12.7) of the powers that be (Romans 13.1). They can still set the teeth on edge (Jeremiah 31.29) of those who try to worship God and Mammon (Matthew 6.24). But does this ancient book, proof that there is no new thing under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1.9), now cast its pearls before swine (Matthew 7.6), and act as a voice crying in the wilderness (Luke 3.4) – a drop in a bucket (Isaiah 40.15) of unbelief, no longer a sign of the times (Matthew 16.3) but a verbal stumbling-block (Leviticus 19.14) or else all things to all men (1 Corinthians 9.22) while the blind lead the blind (Matthew 15.14)?"
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the King James Bible was the product of a generational Awakening era. Awakening eras are those spectacular times of new ideas and new revolutions that appear midway between two crisis wars. Important Awakening eras in world history include the golden age of ancient Greece, the ministry of Jesus Christ, and the life of Mohammed and birth of Islam. (See Generational Dynamics: Great Awakenings in World History.)
When King James took the throne of England in 1603, England was just recovering from the previous crisis war with Spain, which had climaxed with the failed attack of the 'Invincible' Spanish Armada in 1588. The war was seen as confrontation between the Catholics and the heretical Protestants, and the Armada attack was strongly supported by the Catholics and seen as the will of God.
In the generational Recovery era that followed the disastrous collapse of the Armada attack, both sides concluded that the English victory was through divine intervention. In England, this resulted in the strengthening of the doctrine of divine right of Kings. The King would be second in authority only to God, and certainly not second in authority to the Pope in Rome.
King James particularly adopted this doctrine. But as always happens, the kids growing up after a generational crisis war rebel against the austere rules and institutions set up by the survivors, who only wish to guarantee that no such war will ever happen again. This leads to a "generation gap," such as happened in America and Europe in the 1960s, and in Iran in the last two years.
In 1603, this generation gap led to a remarkable event known as the Millenary Petition. Hundreds of Puritan reformist clergy expressed their outrage at what they called "popisms" -- rituals and procedures that too closely resembled the practices of the Pope and the Catholic Church.
At the heart of the political dispute were arguments over the best translation of the Bible into English. There were several translations available, including one favored by the Puritans and one favored by King James and the traditionalists.
In order to resolve the political dispute, the King created a committee of Puritan and traditional religious leaders, the Hampton Court Conference of January 1604. It soon became clear that none of the reforms requested by the Puritans would be granted. This led to the flight of Puritans to Amsterdam three years later, and after that to the migration to North America.
But there was one major reform that everyone at the Conference agreed on: An authoritative version of the Bible was required, something in every day English that anyone could understand. This led to the commissioning of a new Bible translation, resulting in the King James Bible in 1611.
The conflict over the doctrine of divine right of Kings did not go away, however, as Parliament was demanding greater power over taxation and policy. Disagreements between the King and Parliament led to England's next crisis war, the bloody English Civil War (also called the "Puritan Revolution") of the 1640s, climaxing in the beheading of King Charles I in 1649.
The monarchy was abolished, and England had no King until the monarchy was restored in 1660 with Charles' son, Charles II, as King, but with vastly reduced powers. The divine right of Kings remained in name only until the next generational Awakening era climaxed in 1689 with the Glorious Revolution. The relationship between the monarchy and Parliament was finally sealed for good in the next crisis war, the War of the Spanish Succession, of the 1700s decade.
In generational theory, great ideas are launched during Awakening eras, and either established or extinguished during subsequent Crisis eras. The Awakening era of the 1600s and 1610s decades was one of the most important in English history, resulting in the King James Bible and the Puritan Revolution. It was also important in American history, because it led to the Puritan migration to North America, and to the rejection of the monarchy that created the United States of America.
While researching this report, I came across the article from the Catholic New Advent encyclopedia on the Spanish Armada attack on England in 1588. The article describes how Catholics throughout Europe supported the Spanish Armada attack against the hated Protestant Queen Elizabeth. But the article contains the following paragraph:
"There is no doubt that all the exiles for religion at that time shared Allen's sentiments, but not so the Catholics in England. They had always been the most conservative of English parties. The resentment they felt at being persecuted led them to blame the queen's ministers, but not to question her right to rule. To them the great power of Elizabeth was evident, the forces and intentions of Spain were unknown quantities. They might, should, and did resist until complete justification was set before them, and this was in fact never attempted. Much, for instance, as we know of the Catholic clergy then laboring in England, we cannot find that any of them used religion to advance the cause of the Armada. Protestant and Catholic contemporaries alike agree that the English Catholics were energetic in their preparations against it."
According to another source, an English Catholic nobleman, Viscount Montague, led the defense against the Armada.
In other words, the supposedly fanatical, ideological English Catholics, at war with the heretical Protestants, sided with their nation against the Catholics.
I've previously mentioned that German-Americans overwhelmingly sided with America against the Nazis in World War II.
(Another example is that millions of Catholics go to Church every Sunday, but they still use birth control at home.)
We should be careful before we condemn all Muslims who are citizens of America or Europe. These people are going to be on our loyal allies, and we're going to need their help when the time comes.
|
Home prices will have to fall another 30% from their current values, according to an analysis of the Case-Shiller home price index by Peter Schiff. Historically, US home prices have increased an average of 3.35% per year, just a little bit more than the rate of inflation. But since 1998, home prices have risen an average of 19.2% per year, putting them way above the long-term trend line, as shown by the adjoining graph. Home prices would have to decline 20% just to get back to the historic trend line, but Schiff says they're likely to overshoot the trend line, and fall by 30%. (This is an application of the Law of Mean Reversion.) According to Schiff, if the government hadn't intervened in the housing market, and had allowed prices to fall, then a lot more people would be able to afford homes now, and the real estate crisis would end sooner. Wall Street Journal (Access)
Bubble real estate prices in Beijing are putting homes out of reach of college graduates. It used to be that college graduates with degrees in English, international trade and computer science were in high demand. But now supply has surpassed demand, and the average monthly wage of a recent graduate from a top Chinese university is around $400 per month -- just enough to buy half a square meter of an apartment in downtown Beijing. CNN
Anarchist and left-wing violence are on the rise in Europe. Time
Dozens of Coptic Christians clashed with Egyptian riot police in Cairo on Sunday, following the Saturday bomb attack at a church in Alexandria that killed 21 people. Coptic Christians will be celebrating Christmas on January 6. Bloomberg
The six-month rotating presidency of the European Union has just been assumed by Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whom some call the last dictator in Europe. Orban has vowed to solve the "Roma problem" in Europe, but Hungary itself has a bit Roma Gypsies problem, with discrimination and numerous hate crimes directed against the Roma Gypsies. Spiegel
German officials suspect that mosques in Berlin are becoming the targets of arson and hate crimes. Spiegel
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 3-Jan-11 News -- Britain celebrates the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Jan-2011)
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Accusations of a pattern of attacks against Christians
Raw sectarian tensions in Egypt have been exposed by the car bombing of a Coptic Christian church that killed 21 people in Alexandria, Egypt, according to Al-Jazeera.
The bombing sparked violent protests by furious Coptic Christians, and clashes with police in Alexandria. Coptic Christians make up about 10% of Egypt's 80 million population.
Politicians and Muslim leaders throughout the Middle East condemned the bombing, according to VOA. Hamas issued a press statement condemning the bombing, according to Al-Ahram.
However, many politicians in the West saw this as part of a continuing pattern of radical Muslim extremist attacks on Christians. An LA Times analysis points to recent terrorist attacks on Christians in Iraq, Nigeria and other countries, and point out that Christian communities in countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iran are shrinking, as Christians emigrate.
A terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda is suspected of being responsible for the Alexandria bombing, according to Ynet.
The accusation that al-Qaeda is attacking Christians is true, but it's only a small part of the picture. Al-Qaeda linked groups attack Shia Muslims, Sufis, Sikhs, Hindus and other religious groups in different countries.
As we've said many times, the al-Qaeda strategy is to replicate Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, in order to turn another country into an Islamic state, this time a Sunni state. They've tried this, and continuted to try it, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries, and now Egypt.
The methodology is to trigger violence on the left and xenophobia on the right, and al-Qaeda appears to be succeeding.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 2-Jan-11 News -- Terrorist attack on Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Jan-2011)
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Updating the home page Conflict Risk Graphic
Today we have a couple of reports that will set the stage for the new year. Happy New Year everyone!
| Conflict risk level for next 6-12 months as of: 11-Aug-2008 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W. Europe | 1 | Arab Israeli | 3 | |
| Russia Caucasus | 3 | Kashmir | 3 | |
| China | 2 | North Korea | 2 | |
| Financial | 3 | Swine/Bird flu | 3 | |
| ||||
On the right you see my little Conflict Risk graphic that appears on the home page of this web site. The last time that I updated it was in August, 2008, and today it's sadly out of date. It's time to update it.
For each of the six regions named in the graphic, the risk level is supposed to reflect the level of risk that a war will occur in that region in the next six to twelve months. The six regions were chosen because, unlike other regions of the world, any local war in one of the six regions is likely to escalate into a world war a few months later. (See "Six most dangerous regions in world.")
The Conflict Risk Level is not a Generational Dynamics prediction. It summarizes my personal views of the chances of war in each of the regions specified.
In 2008, it seemed that full scale war could break out at any time in the Mideast, in the Caucasus and in Kashmir (between India and Pakistan). That's why, in all of these cases, I assigned a risk level of 3, the highest level.
Today I have a slightly different view of those three regions. I've reduced the risk level to 2, but not because the underlying problems are any closer to resolution in any of the three regions. To the contrary, the underlying problems are much worse today, and when war finally comes, it will be worse than it would have been if it had started in 2008.
What HAS happened is that I've become very impressed with the ability of world institutions to rush to any crisis and paper over the problems. Thus, crises in Kashmir, the Mideast and the Caucasus have all been quieted by means of such things as money or appeasement. There was a brief war in Gaza in early 2009, but it was kept carefully contained by world institutions.
Thus, I have to conclude that there is not a high risk of war in the three regions in the next 6-12 months. I have to conclude that the chances are that any crisis that might occur will be papered over again.
Or course, "medium risk" is not a trivial matter. Each of those regions is susceptible to a full-scale war that cannot be stopped by international institutions. But, in my opinion, the likelihood is medium, not high.
Korea is a different matter. The North Koreans have made clear their intentions to provoke a full-scale war with the South.
You can see the international institutions rushing to try to prevent such a war. The North Koreans seem to attack the South at will, and the response from the U.N., the U.S., Russia and China is to tell the South Koreans to sit still and not overreact. The Chinese even refuse to blame the North Koreans for their military attacks.
Nonetheless, in my opinion, the North Koreans appear to be determined to thwart all of these international institutions. Therefore, the Conflict Risk Level for Korea is 3 (high).
With regard to the global financial system, the ability for international institutions to paper over problems using quantitative easing, bailouts, and other measures, has been mind-boggling. These steps have held off financial panic so far, but they've created enormous new bubbles and distortions, so that when full-scale panic comes, it will be much worse than it would have been if it had happened in 2007 or 2008.
However, financial crises in Europe and Asia are worsening, and Generational Dynamics predicts that a full-scale panic must occur. Thus, the risk for a major financial crisis is High, level 3.
Finally, in 2008, World Health Organization (WHO) were warning of a coming H1N1 swine flu pandemic that winter. The worst didn't happen, but the risk level remains at Medium, level 2, since a severe pandemic could occur during this winter season.
Here is the revised Conflict Risk graphic:
| Conflict risk level for next 6-12 months as of: 1-Jan-2011 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W. Europe | 1 | Arab Israeli | 2 | |
| Russia Caucasus | 2 | Kashmir | 2 | |
| China | 2 | North Korea | 3 | |
| Financial | 3 | Swine/Bird flu | 2 | |
| ||||
In my opinion, the only high level dangers during the next 6-12 months are in Korea and in the global financial system.
However, there are numerous medium level dangers. And if any one of these turns into a major crisis, then all of the others will immediately turn to risk level High - level 3.
As readers know, I've been cross-posting many of my articles on the site BigPeace.com , run by Andrew Breitbart, who is generally described by the press as a "right-winger." I requested an interview with Breitbart, and ended up with a very interesting discussion of his view of how the mainstream press is handling the problem of Islamist terrorism.
My article has already appeared on BigPeace, and it drew a number of comments. The general tenor of these comments is that unless we expel all the Muslims, then the Muslims are going to replace American law with Sharia law. As I discussed in "American xenophobia on the Left and on the Right," I have no idea what these people are talking about, or how they think this change is going to occur. On the other hand, the comments are probably no crazier than what we see and hear every day in Washington and on Wall Street.
Once again, I have to quote Friedrich Nietzsche: "Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
Here is the article that I posted on BigPeace:
According to Andrew Breitbart, two of the bravest people in the world are Irshad Manji and M. Zuhdi Jasser, because they're outspoken Muslims who are standing up to the standard pro-Islamist narrative adopted by much of the mainstream media. Breitbart says that he started the BigPeace.com site because he wanted to provide a platform for other important narratives.
 |
He contrasts Manji and Jasser to Ibrahim Hooper, the National Communications Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR):
"Ibrahim Hooper has the ability to wield cultural Marxism, to cow reporters and newsrooms. He understands America's susceptibility to this brand of Orwellian newsthink - and uses alleged rights and illegitimate demands for "tolerance" in order to shut people up. These are rights that Muslim countries don't grant their own citizens. Their collective attacks use the American systems as a weapon against our own country, when they don't stand up to their own people's rights.This is a war in the broad sense of the term. Our way of life has been effectively challenged by a pervasive radical Islamist mindset that's going unopposed by Western societies. That war is being fought in a sophisticated way using media and technology and civil rights in the United States, and it's being used in the United Nations. We're at war in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent now in Iraq, because of this greater often unspoken philosophical battle. It's a war against modernity that's being waged in countless ways. People claim plausible deniability that this war is not happening, and I refuse to accept that premise."
Breitbart says that many Westerners are afraid to challenge this Islamist mindset. Not all Muslims are terrorists, he says, but just saying that some Muslims support terrorism is enough for the mainstream media to label you as a hater and intolerant.
"You can't be on a college campus and challenge the Islamist mindset without being shouted down. We're in a world that's in a constant state of something akin to permanent warfare. We're in multiple cold wars right now. And the mainstream press is self-editing itself to conform to the peace and love gobbledy-gook of the 60s and 70s that I disagree with.Do I believe that every Muslim is a terrorist? Of course not. I have Muslim friends. But they are afraid to stand on a soapbox and criticize their own religion for fear of their own lives. It's taken immense courage for Muslims like Irshad Manji and Zuhdi Jasser to criticize the radical mindset."
Irshad Manji is a Muslim feminist and author of a PBS documentary called "Faith Without Fear." She criticizes the culture of Islam that condones death threats against any Muslim who exhibits independent thinking, thus stripping Muslims of their God-given right to free expression. Manji herself has received death threats as a result of her work.
M. Zuhdi Jasser is a devout Muslim, and President and Founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). He founded AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States as an effort to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Consitution, liberty and freedom, and the separation of mosque and state. He was a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, and received the Meritorious Service Medal.
Breitbart says that he created BigPeace.com, to provide a platform for other narratives avoided by the mainstream press, and he contrasts it to his other web sites, BigHollywood, BigJournalism.com, and BigGovernment.com.
"BigPeace is the one web site that I knew that I would have the least hands on involvement. So that's why I teamed up with three entities -- Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, the military bloggers at BlackFive, and Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Insitution.The contributors to BigPeace are people you can trust because they have a "peace through strength" attitude. It's certainly not a site for doves.
I'm a media guy, a cultural guy, a media analyst. I complain about a country where there's a 2 to 1 ratio of conservatives to liberals, and the majority is treated like a marginal minority. Only in the state of Israel is the situation worse - which constantly puts Israel on the defensive - they're held to a much higher standard than their adversaries.
I created BigPeace because the press, especially during the Bush administration, put national security by the wayside. So there was a lot of stuff that needed to be corrected, and there needed to be more streams of information coming in.
I certainly see the pervasive matrix of political correctness, making it impossible for certain narratives to come out, because of the multicultural Marxist attitudes that create a chilling effect in America's newsrooms. They're able to dictate what we can report, and dictate through pop media what our policies are."
Breitbart referred to a 2003 controversy where CNN News exec Eason Jordan admitted that CNN had withheld news stories of Saddam Hussein's brutality. CNN says that it had been protecting individual sources. But Breitbart sees it as part of the larger picture of distortions by the mainstream media.
"Saddam Hussein benefited greatly through intimidation of his own people, and he was able to even bribe CNN. Eason Jordan admitted that he wanted to keep the status of having CNN as the sole Bagdhad bureau, so he did Saddam's bidding. CNN treated Saddam with more respect and dignity than they did the President of the United States, and also [Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu."
My conversation with Andrew became most spirited when I suggested that the media have much less policy making power than he presumes. This is the Generational Dynamics view that major policies are driven by massive generational changes in attitude, and that journalists and politicians are followers, not leaders. However, Breitbart insists that this isn't true, and that the internet is a major world-changing phenomenon:
"So my big problem is the structure of the media, and how they're easily cowed. They have a much stronger position in fashioning policy than politicians do. The politicians react to the narrative. I'm less worried about politicians than I am about anchors and news reporters. And the more you realize how the sausage is made in the media, you realize that the media is the problem. I want them to get out there and start telling the truth - tell stories that the corrupt old media don't want to tell.The internet allows bloggers and citizen reporters to tell the truth. It has been an exceptional boon to the spread of democracy around the world. And the press, which should be at the forefront of celerating these advances, are opposed, because it encroaches on their monopoly."
In explaining why he created BigPeace.com, Breitbart vividly describes hidebound, traditional mainstream journalists unable to escape the old ideas that they formulated in their childhoods in the 1960s and 1970s. They're now doubling down on these outdated ideas because they're no longer working.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these outdated ideas, and the political conflicts that result, are going to continue until a "regeneracy event" occurs, an event that regenerates civic unity for the first time since the end of World War II. (See "Basics of Generational Dynamics.")
Whatever this regeneracy event may turn out to be -- perhaps a new massive terrorist attack on American soil, or perhaps a disastrous military defeat overseas -- it will immediately terminate the political bickering and unite all Americans for the preservation of the United States and its way of life.
And on that note, Happy New Year!
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the 1-Jan-11 News -- Andrew Breitbart: Even Muslims are afraid to stand up to Islamists
thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Jan-2011)
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1=Low risk
2=Med
3=High
4=Active