The negotiations between Turkey and Israel are proceeding as if running uphill through thick maple syrup. The Turkish Foreign Minister claims that the next high level meeting will end with an agreement. The Israeli negotiating team in London, England stated that these most recent negotiations showed no progress and that the impasses remain. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin recently stated matter-of-factly that there can be no rapprochement between Turkey and Israel until Israel ends the naval blockade of Gaza and ends the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands. This would appear to be a deal breaker making any return of normal relation impossible. We find this wonderful news as we believe that Israel normalizing relations with Turkey, a Muslim country which plays both ends of Islam against one another, is just one more sycophantic symptom of Israeli leaders belief they must please the whole world, even or especially their enemies. This game should become fun to watch as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is to visit Turkey this week and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman is also to be in Turkey starting from Monday. The presumed leader, or at least high ranking servant of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of Shia Islam is to visit Turkey at the same time as the presumed leader of the Sunni world visiting Turkey should provide some amusement. It should end up like a man handling his mistress while on a business trip where his wife arrived to surprise him.
On to Iraq and the failures of its government and the surprises when viewing exactly who is upset. The thought was that the Shiite population in Iraq with the assistance from Iran would be in a virtual; perfect world. There are a few problems with this situation which were not anticipated. The biggest problem is the really, really low oil prices. This is due to Saudi Arabia’s assault on Iran through flooding the market with low priced oil knocking the profit out of much of the world’s oil production. This low price has forced the closure of numerous fracking sites as the price of reaching the oil was too expensive even though the shipping costs were minimal. The actual aim by the Saudis was Iran and their allies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. The American Fracking concerns were a secondary target which the Saudis are more than happy to see abandoned as they became economically unviable. If the United States were playing the game long term they would have stepped in and subsidized their oil and gas industry in order to send a message to the Saudis that the United States will be in this game and not abandon being internally provided and succumbing to the Saudi pressure forcing them from viability just so the Saudis can raise prices later and have everybody dancing to their tune. The additional fact that the Russians are also caught in the vice of the Saudi ploy was simply icing on the cake.
When the legacy for the Obama administration is being written it will hopefully have a few chapters which will require waiting until the complete story had played out in Iraq. President Obama was handed an Iraq which was mostly a done deal and took a concerted effort to completely erase all the hard work which had led to that point and somehow President Obama managed to mishandle and fumble that handoff within two years. Why two years? That was because it took that long for graft and greed to destroy all the hard work which had all but solved almost every issue. All that was left to do was oversee the government and make sure that they did their jobs and did not steal everything which was not nailed down. There was also the little thing called treating the people fairly. The initial problem which would have signaled there was a problem would have been the Kurdish areas as they already had a regional government which was up and working and thus had a means of voicing their displeasures. The next area one could look was the Sunni areas which also had a built in warning system, namely the Sunni Ministers who were arrested or fled the government before being arrested and subsequently tortured or murdered. Even had all these gone by undetected, even a blind man should have picked up on the increasingly violent Shiite demonstrations rising against the Iraqi government and the return of Moqtada al Sadr to prominence. The last item would have been the acceptance of the Islamist terrorist entity ISIS growing to such prominence unopposed initially by the government in Iraq as they had warnings galore that all was not well in the central Sunni areas which were the first to show displeasure and finally did turn to the Sunni terror state which proved to be a nightmare but were unable to receive any support fighting ISIS when they might have been most easily defeated from the central government leading to the middle of the country to simply fall into the arms of the Sunni Islamists.
Another area which the Obama government got wrong was Egypt where President Obama gladly backed the Muslim Brotherhood and was so infatuated with their rule that they completely ignored the Egyptian people who rose up against the Muslim Brotherhood whose mismanagement of the economy and infatuation to the point of obsession with applying the Sharia and doing so as quickly as possible that they missed all the warning signs. When even Turkey’s President Erdogan tells you that you are attempting too radical an approach and agenda and that they would be better served to slow their pace of incorporating the changes, then you might have a problem. Their refusal to adjust led directly to the coup by the military which then installed a temporary government while elections were held. The military showed more sympathy for the people than had the government of the Muslim Brotherhood. This led directly to the ouster and outright banning of the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood who had simply tried to do too much too fast and won itself the ire of the people.
The next boondoggle was Libya and the terrorist overrunning of the Benghazi Consulate. This required the willful blindness of both the President and the Secretary of State. Of course both of these individuals were more concerned with the reelection of President Obama which largely led to their ignoring repeated pleadings for greater security and additional people in Benghazi. Then followed the dropping of the ball through a clumsy cover-up designed to put off any bad publicity by a willful media. The needless deaths of four Americans was something which screamed to be heard and was simply too great a tragedy to be swept under the rug. That did not matter as the reelection went as planned and the revelations about Benghazi slowly emerged and by that time the American people had moved on. Nothing was going to damage the administration this late in the game, but the end of Benghazi has not been heard from as it will most definitely return loud and clear should Hillary Clinton be the Democrat candidate for President this coming election cycle. The televisions will carry wall-to-wall video of Hillary before the Senate committee investigating Benghazi stating, “What difference now does it make.” That is when Benghazi might finally be felt.
In Israel it is everything normal all upsides down. Israel is still being accused of colonialism by the conquerors of their homeland from in the early seventh century. The Arabs were simply the last of a whole host of colonial enterprises all attempting to dislodge the Jewish People (the Israelites) from their native ground and capital city of Jerusalem. It started with the Babylonians who were felled by the Persians who gave way to the Greeks who morphed into Rome which split into the Byzantines who lost out to the Arab Muslims and now that the aboriginal peoples are returning to claim their homelands from the greatest colonialists who spread and even outdid the British and are crying foul. If anybody can find a people who are still a viable people who predate Kings Saul, David and Solomon and predate Joshua it would be quite interesting. The Arabs broke out of Arabia in the early seventh century and have been proudly declaring their intent to conquer the globe and they are calling the Jews colonials?
What could be more ludicrous than that? Additionally, in order to assure he has the title President for Life and to never hold another election for the “Palestinians” Abbas has now established a Kangaroo Constitutional Court to declare election are not possible because Israel did it. He has refused to hold elections knowing a snowball would last longer in Hell than he would in office if elections were held and he has a ready-made scapegoat which the European and United Nations are more than happy to blame along with him. How the Palestinian Authority refusing to hold election in the lands where they have been unfortunately granted a semi-autonomous rule can be somebody else’s fault is beyond logic, but since when did logic ever come into play if the Jews can be blamed.
Meanwhile Europe is in panic mode because their great plans on inviting anybody claiming to be a refugee from a conflict in the Middle East is not working out as planned. Imagine that. Who thought for a moment allowing herds of people whose standing is living in a governmental system where fair elections are the ones where they know the outcome only days in advance of the voting instead of years and the Europeans cannot understand what went wrong. Still, the Europeans continue to demand that the Israelis allow any and everybody who desire to vote and claim residence for their elections vote for their parliament, the Knesset, and cannot understand why Israel would balk at such a demand. Some people, and by this we are referring to the people who are in power and are completely unable to see what is plainly before them. Perhaps it is time to clean house Europe.
The American primaries are continuing and both parties are now wishing they had a viable alternative to their frontrunners. The Democrat elite are sold on Hillary because she and Bill still have the FBI files on most of them. The Republicans had seventeen candidates so have no one to blame but themselves for not straightening things out before it became Cruz or Trump or who are you kidding from Ohio where he won you know. If we had to pick the race now it would be Bernie feel the Bern Sanders against Cruz but as long as the Democrats pull the rug out from under Hillary once again thus making her honorary Charlie Brown and the Football award winner, then Bernie wins against either frontrunner of the Republicans. Yes, the Americans know he is a socialist and really do not care as he has the most experience in government yet is probably the most outsider of them all having never joined either Party. Yep, the democrats are going to nominate an Independent over the actual Democrat in the race. What next?
Oh, even Putin has pulled most of his troops out of Syria leaving in as many as required to protect the naval bases they have there and leaving Assad clinging to power and Iran equally hard. The Russians never were actually fighting the Islamic State and why should they as it is not their problem and the Islamic State is not so stupid as to tug on Superman’s cape or anger Putin, there is little difference except Russian revenge is swifter. That leaves Syria as the most dysfunctional nation on earth with Iraq right behind. The next after that are Pakistan, North Korea tied with Greece and Greece has a wider glimmer of hope named German Banks. The European Union is nervously awaiting the vote this fall by the British on whether to remain even loosely attached to the European Union and the Brits are really glad they continued to hold on to the Pound Sterling and only accepted Euros in trade. Meanwhile, I am sure there are politicians worth their salt in France and Germany thinking of returning to the Franc and the Mark. If they ever actually do that, the European Union is dead, done, fini!
China is in the midst of a quiet disaster waiting to happen as they have not met growth projections for a year and a half. They are reacting as one would expect, returning to the good old ways of managed economy with the central government reverting to their communist roots. This will simply exacerbate the problem and that will drive them further still from any capitalist economic engines and back to their five year plans. That will work exactly as it did when it drove them to try capitalism except this time it will be seen as saving them from capitalism. Somewhere along the way China came to believe that capitalism could never slow down and growth would be a constant ten percent or higher. That proved to be a tad too optimistic so they are slowly dismantling the entire effort and returning to what they know will fail, but at least they will control the failure and will blame it on capitalism and become even more draconian and this should tumble China from economic dynamo feeling a small crunch to economic basket case rushing headlong to the bottom but doing so in a controlled manner. Their controlled crash will resemble an Airbus A380 whole wings and tail rudder fell off at 35,000 feet. Anybody standing between China and rock bottom should look up and be prepared to dodge a falling giant.
More disjointed news next time we feel our minds slipping and have no actual subject for an entire article, Thanks for your patience.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 