North Korea, Nuclear at 75

On Saturday, October 10, 2020, North Korea will parade the fruits of 30 years spent above ground and in secret underground tunnels developing a nuclear ICBM deterrent, possibly including advanced multiple independently targetable missiles and missiles that can maneuver in flight and on re-entry. North Korea is suspected of paying for its 2020 nuclear-related purchases with $275 million in hacked cryptocurrency. When Pyongyang commemorates the 75th anniversary of Stalin's founding of North Korea's communist Workers' Party, the world will be able to identify contributions countries, such as Russia, Ukraine and Iran, made to Saturday's military models, just as the world saw how Pakistan helped develop the uranium enrichment process on display in North Korea's first 2006 nuclear bomb test. Saturday, the world also might see evidence of Iran's hand in a North Korean submarine capable of launching solid-fueled ballistic missiles. These missiles, known as Pukguksong, again were paraded on January 14, 2021. Activity at North Korea's Sinpo South shipyard suggests development of such submarines. The 1989 collapse of the USSR was both a loss and a blessing for North Korea. Boris Yeltsin withdrew North Korea's Russian protection in 1991, but Pyongyang found it could recruit unemployed Russian and Ukrainian experts needed for its nuclear and missile program. Porous sanctions failed to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. Saturday's parade will demonstrate North Korea is, not only a nuclear power, but also a source able to supply weapons eagerly desired by would-be members of the nuclear club. With an economy crippled by sanctions and crop damage from unusually heavy typhoon rain, North Korea is likely to look for such a deal and, by using cryptocurrency, the transactions would be nearly impossible to trace. In one sense, North Korea finds the US and South Korea pitted against Russia and China, but global dynamics are more complicated. After North Korea and the US seemed on the brink of war in 2017, South Korea and China recognized, at the very least, such a nuclear confrontation destabilized the area. Just a year later, when the US and South Korea began improving relations with North Korea, Beijing made overtures to Chairman Kim designed to block greater US involvement on the peninsula. By 2000, Vladimir Putin took control in Russia and he too reached out to restore relations with North Korea. North and South Korea also have an on-again, off-again relationship. In June, 2020, the two countries cut off communication with each other, and Pyongyang blew up their joint liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea. Two months later, Chairman Kim was reported to be in a coma. In September and October, 2020, he was wishing President Trump a COVID-19 recovery and apologizing to Seoul for killing one of South Korea's officials in waters North Korea controls in the Yeonpyeong islands. Detailed disclosure about the incident compromised South Korean-US joint intelligence methods. Finally, just weeks before Saturday's parade of military hardware, a North Korean spokesperson said Pyongyang was satisfied with its military deterrent and planned to focus on economic development in 2021.

Big Projects Combat Climate Change

"Oddly, few modern educational systems spend much time teaching systematically about the future," David Christian writes in his book, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything. A teach-in, modeled on the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, did inspire the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. What those students learned in the past half century is: environmental converts relapse. Efforts to promote fossil fuel alternatives, recycling, foregoing plastic, and organic farming have produced only marginal results.

     While enlightened solutions to environmental mischief need to continue, ideas for major projects required to combat the effects of unchanged behavior on global warming also need to begin. Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry expects temperatures of 115 degrees Fahrenheit to be five times more likely by 2050 than they were when extreme temperatures spiked in 2000. In 2016 and 2017, Kuwait and Iran began competing to break the highest reliably recorded temperature.

     

     Do work and education have to take place in the heat of the day? For religious reasons, business already is conducted at night in Muslim countries during Ramadan. Research shows teens need more sleep than they get when their bodies want to stay up until 11 pm or later and schools expect them to arrive at 7:30 am or 8. In Las Vegas, I understand some students already attend classes at night. While living in Jamaica, Noel Coward wrote a song based on his observations.

At twelve noon the natives swoon

and no further work is done.

But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. 

     Working and learning during hotter climate changing days will require more and more air conditioning to keep people from dying from the heat and rats and insects from devouring and contaminating harvested food. To reduce the greenhouse gases and ozone pollution that air conditioning generates requires the difficult tasks of developing less toxic refrigerants and reducing the need for electricity. It would be much easier and faster to move the time for work and study to a cooler time of the day.

     Trees are recognized as climate change saviors. They produce shade, reduce pollution, and sop up greenhouse gases. China is planting a tree wall to protect Beijing from sand/dust storms from the Gobi Desert. To produce these benefits, trees (as well as crops) need a system for channeling excess monsoon water their way.

     Try asking kids who are building with blocks or computers to design a system to carry too much water from hurricanes and monsoons to drought areas. Why not locate pieces of aluminum pipe in various parts of the world that governments can fit together like LEGOs to make temporary pipes that channel overflowing lakes and rivers to forests and crop land suffering from drought? In Origin Story, Christian writes about moments in history when "Goldilocks conditions" are just right, like Baby Bear's porridge, for transitions in evolutionary change. Often these moments are "aha" insights when someone combines things that already exist in a new way.

     In an earlier post, "Gone Fishin'," I reported on the long floating plastic boom designed to collect plastic and other debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as "the blob" between California and Hawaii that forms the warm water that seems to nourish the warm, dry winters dehydrating forests along the northwest coast of North America. Could this plastic garbage be melted for use in 3D printers? Maybe it could provide insulation and furniture for the 3D houses printed for the world's 68.5 million refugees now living in makeshift camps. (See more about "building" 3D houses at the earlier post, "Necessity: Introduce Students to New Technologies.")

     Invite kids who are not bound by what is and what always has been to think about ways to solve the new challenges climate change does and will continue to present. How can solar and wind energy be stored and distributed? What can be done to reduce the amount of stuff ending up in methane-generating dumps? Students who love science fiction also might look into the solar geoengineering ideas that involve improving the ability of clouds to block or reflect sun rays. Insect control without dangerous chemicals, endangered animals, shipping and public transportation, drought-resistant crops and farming methods, all need big new plans for the best future. 

      

   

China's Domestic Economic Belt

Less well known on the world stage than China's land and sea "One Belt, One Road" and "Maritime Silk Road" is China's Domestic Economic Belt along the Yangtze River from densely-populated and heavily-polluted Shanghai, west to the lake region around Wuhan (where COVID-19 originated), and still farther southwest to Chongqing, population over 30 million, larger than Shanghai and Beijing (home to OneSpace, China's solid-fueled commercial spacecraft industry, specializing in launching small satellites) and Chengdu, where police just raided an underground church about to commemorate the June, 1989 democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square. (This is an opportunity for students to trace the Yangtze River on a map of China.)

Attention to ecology along this Yangtze River route is a priority in China. It entails:

•  Closing polluting chemical plants
•  Restoration of lakes and wetlands 
• Sewage treatment 
• Regulating the fishing industry
• Developing clean air technology (See earlier post,"How to Meet the Clean Air Challenge.")
• Integrating non-polluting energy sources into the existing power grid'
• Building new eco-friendly communities (See earlier post, "Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels.")

A new project in China's far western reaches demonstrates Beijing's focus on developing non-polluting energy sources. Where the Yangtze is known as the Jinsha Jiang River, the new Lawa hydroelectric dam will generate two billion watts of power, the same energy supplied by the U.S. Hoover Dam, on the border between Sichuan and the Tibetan Plateau.

     Development along the Yangtze also indicates China's interest in technological progress.  Economic assistance is going to the Donghu New Technology Development Zone east of Wuhan. The zone houses the FiberHome Technology Group, an optic fiber communications center, and the Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Producing memory chips for China's semiconductor industry has become a personal priority of President Xi Jinping.

The U.S. Commerce Department's April, 2018 7-year ban on sales of chips to ZTE, the high-tech firm in China's integrated circuit and Smartphone industry, exposed dependence on exports from Qualcomm in California. Once again the consequences of cheating played a part. False statements and missing export records showed ZTE violated a 2017 settlement by illegally using U.S. chips in telecommunications equipment shipped to Iran and North Korea. Although ZTE had settled the 2017 case by paying a $1.2 billion penalty and promising disciplinary actions against 39 employees involved in illegal conduct, ZTE took no personnel measures. To restore Qualcomm's sales to ZTE, the company agreed to install a new management team and to let the U.S. staff a compliance unit that would report to the U.S. Commerce Department for the next ten years. At first the US Congress still rejected the plan, until President Trump and Chinese President Xi reached a separate agreement. 

Violations of the original ZTE technology agreement and other cases of Chinese infringement on intellectual property rights concern the U.S. about China's interest in stealing chip research, development, and manufacturing know-how, not only how work in these areas is progressing at the zone in Donghu. With nearly 350,000 Chinese students in the United States, universities are warned to lock their labs, and legal interns from China are being kept away from sensitive antitrust cases. (See the post concerning Foxconn's intended facility in Wisconsin in the later post, "Unmask Inscrutable Chinese Intentions.") 

China Stretches a Napoleon-Style Belt

Emperor Xi Jinping gained open-ended power, when China's Communist Party scrapped his two, five-year term limit in February, 2018. He already had launched an ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative to connect China to Europe and a Maritime Silk Road (MSR) that will join China to Africa. The Silk Road term, not coined until the 19th century by a German, is well suited to the OBOR and MSR initiatives which mimic the ancient variety of land and sea routes that carried silk and other goods, as well as ideas, between Asia, Europe, and Africa. Many have observed, however, that besides a means to facilitate trade, China's port projects could serve as a way to establish worldwide influence and naval bases for China's expanding navy.

     In pinyin, the form of Chinese characters described in Roman letters, the One Belt, One Road Initiative is called yidaiyilu. The worldwide use of English and the U.S. dollar rankles China. Beijing's Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies claims globalization is now causing many words, such as xiongmao, the pinyin word for giant panda, to be recognized outside of China.

     Ever since Romans built the Appian Way, leaders have recognized how transportation binds an empire together. Yet, China's infrastructure projects will test the tight control Beijing now maintains over its citizens' telecommunication and face-to-face contacts with the outside world. Like the Chinese employees who built the railroad in Kenya, those building the new container terminal and nearby oil storage installation at Walvis Bay in Germany's former African territory of Namibia, are sealed off from the local community. They live in a closely monitored compound of barracks imprisoned by a wall topped by electrified barb wire.

     Stretching thousands of miles from Beijing, work on the OBOR and MSR cannot help but require ongoing contacts with local government officials, financial institutions, suppliers, laborers, religions, and academics in the countries the roads pass. Already, the China Democratic League, one of China's eight non-communist parties, submitted a proposal to the advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, suggesting cultural exchanges along the routes are as important as trade.

      Singapore-based Broadcom's failed hostile bid for the San Diego company, Qualcomm, might, however, signal China's determination to maintain control over vast areas by using high-speed optic fiber communications and Smartphone communication and data exchange. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) cited national security issues to block Broadcom from access to Qualcomm's wireless chips and 5G (fifth generation) high-speed mobile network technology and standards. In April, 2018, the U.S. Commerce Department placed a 7-year ban (now lifted) on sales of chips, all from Qualcomm, to China's ZTE, because the company violated a 2017 agreement not to send telecommunications equipment containing Qualcomm chips to Iran and North Korea. In Australia, (and later in the UK and Sweden) China's Huawei telecom companies remain banned from 5G networks.  Before its US-blocked acquisition of Qualcomm, Broadcom transferred its headquarters from Singapore to San Jose, California, and later purchased Manhattan-based CA Technologies, a chipmaker in the infrastructure software field. In July, 2018, China would block Qualcomm's acquisition of China's NXP semiconductor company.

     Noticeably missing from China's One Belt, One Road initiative was any reference to North Korea. But that was before members of the women's hockey players in North and South Korea agreed to play together in the 2018 winter Olympics; and U.S. President Trump accepted Kim's invitation to meet on June 12, 2018 in Singapore. Suddenly, on March 25, 2018, North Korea's dark green train carried Kim to China for a strategy session prior to the upcoming US-North Korean meeting, from which China was excluded. Subsequently, Beijing agreed to Liaoning province's $88 million plan to build roads on the North Korean side of the Friendship Bridge that connects the two countries at Dandong.

     Whether China's strategy in Africa is considered part of the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) or an extended One Belt-One Road-One Continent strategy, China already has shown interest in the Continent by its trade, military base in Djibouti, the dam its Export-Import Bank built in Uganda, and railroad projects in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria. Other current and proposed Chinese port, rail, and airport projects ring Africa in the following countries:

• Seychelles
• Mauritius
• Tunisia
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Rwanda
• South Sudan
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Gabon
• Cameroon
• Ghana
• Senegal

Plain Talk about Nuclear North Korea

If you haven't seen the current TIME magazine article (Feb. 12, 2018), it sheds light on how North Korea's so-called hermit kingdom became a nuclear power while no one was looking. Pakistan helped North Korea understand how to enrich uranium for a nuclear warhead, but TIME didn't say where North Korea obtained its uranium. Pyongyang recruited unemployed missile experts (as well as chemical and biological weapons' experts) from Russia and Ukraine in 1991 after the USSR collapsed and later from Iran and Pakistan. A missile engine stolen from the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine also could have ended up in North Korea.

Russia is happy to keep the U.S. distracted, the TIME issue reported. No wonder Moscow stands idly by as sanctions on North Korea make selling its nuclear technology to Syria and other would-be nuclear powers an attractive income producing option. Yet, Russia has shown concern about the nuclear fallout that a US nuclear attack on North Korea could send its way. Moscow strategists state the purpose of their nuclear missiles is to inflict enough devastation on enemies to bring them to the negotiating table. Of course, it makes more sense to avoid all devastation by negotiating before inflicting harm. Hope that is what Kim Jong Un and President Trump are about to do.

At nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap, which was mentioned in the earlier post, "Nuclear Straight Talk," it is possible to predict the extent of fallout from a nuclear detonation in any city.

Look and Read for International Surprises

"They're all wearing jeans," a friend said back in 1979, when Iranian militants were storming the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. That observation introduced me to what can be learned by looking at the details in media photos and also by looking for unexpected information in novels and other publications.

The clothes and expressions on people used to illustrate articles say a lot. When criminals or terrorists are captured, we don't see them well-groomed, wearing well-tailored business suits, or smiling at the camera, because pictures are chosen to help tell the same stories as the articles tell.

Some times pictures unexpectedly generate funny ideas instead of the serious ones they are intended to communicate. Draperies/curtains made into clothes is a device we've seen in Gone With the Wind, Sound of Music, and Enchanted. Seeing China's President, Xi Jinping, dwarfed by the enormous red drape behind him at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party, all I could think of was how many gowns could be fashioned from that material.

Then, there is the information that turns up in unexpected places. While reading the class notes about alumni in a secular university's magazine, I saw a former student wrote a book about a Roman Catholic priest, Bernhard Lichtenberg, who was martyred for speaking out on behalf of Jewish citizens against Nazi practices.

When I was listening for stock market tips, Jim Cramer, a stock analyst and the host of "Mad Money" on CNBC, mentioned he once heard a professor say, if you wanted to learn about reality, read novels. Sure enough, I was reading the latest novel, The House of Unexpected Sisters, by Alexander McCall Smith, the British author who writes a series set in Botswana, Africa, when, on page 151, I saw he wrote about a store that sold furniture made from Zambezi teak and mukwa wood, "none of this Chinese rubbish." I hadn't expected the controversial subject of African wood, a subject I discussed in the blog post, "Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels," to turn up in a novel.

2017's Unanswered Security Questions

Information about North Korea, the so-called Hermit Kingdom, is particularly sparse. Who can name any city there besides the capital, Pyongyang? Yet the country seems to have cyber, chemical,  biological, nuclear, and long-range missile warfare capabilities. The West knows how to track strategic materials and components, but it seems international intelligence services have not been paying attention to these dangerous goods reaching North Korea. When the US did pay attention, it spotted ships from China and the Maldives delivering oil and supplies in defiance of UN sanctions. (Also see the later post, "Plain Talk about Nuclear North Korea.")

Can February's Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, avoid becoming another Boston's Patriots Day? Or might North Korea's interest in the Olympics give South Korea an opportunity to deflect Kim Jong un's determination to deploy his nuclear missiles?

Then, there is the question of how Michael Flynn, a U.S. General and Intelligence Officer, became a Russian pawn. Did he give into the temptations of any ambitious, hardworking adviser who lacks the West Point credentials and wealth of those he saw rising to the top in Washington, DC?  If so, there are many such bright, ambitious young men and women whom the U.S. can overlook and fail to compensate at its own peril.

Finally, the nagging question of why President Trump continues to whitewash Vladimir Putin remains. We know Putin uses the technique of quieting his opponents by staging their deaths and ordering their assassinations. In the UK, a former Russian military spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter barely survived their March 4, 2018 poisoning attributed to the Kremlin. Putin also threatens the relatives of opponents. Oleg Navalny is in a penal colony in Russia to punish his brother, Alexei, for using his blog to mobilize anti-corruption rallies. Has Putin won Trump's goodwill by threatening the attractive women in his life?

"Don't Give Up On Us...."

Skeptics scoff at the activists in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Turkey who still cling to the belief that democracy and dignity will overcome the authoritarian rule that triumphed following the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011-2013. How can today's Rohingya Muslims fleeing their burning villages in Myanmar envision democratic rule when they lack support from Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner whose civilian party won a parliamentary majority in 2015, after the country's military regime released her from house arrest in 2010?

Perhaps the key to never giving up on democracy is believing it is not a sure thing, but, as the demonstrations in Iran suggested on New Year's Eve, 2017, neither is democracy's defeat a done deal.

Since 1961, Amnesty International has been keeping track of those subjected to human rights violations. If you have as few as five minutes to help alleviate suffering, go to amnestyusa.org and find out what you can do.

U.S. citizen Joshua Holt, a former Mormon missionary charged with spying, and his wife were arrested in Venezuela in June, 2016 when guns were planted in their apartment. U.S. citizen Alan Gross could tell them political conditions can change for the better. He was released in Cuba in 2014, when relations between the two countries improved. Mr. Holt and his wife were released in 2018.

St. Andrew Dung-Lac and his companions were martyred trying to convince North Koreans of their worth before God, but the current regime could not kill Oh Chung-Sung, the North Korean soldier who was seriously wounded when he ran to freedom across the border in November, 2017. The long tapeworms, tuberculosis, and hepatitus B his South Korean doctor found in the 24-year-old soldier tell how wounded North Korea's army already is.

China feels the need to prevent engineers building railroads in Africa from having any local contacts and to control internet access by its citizens at home. Nobel Peace Prize poet, Liu Xiaobo, and his wife had to be confined to their home to keep his pro-democracy works from inciting the public. But a year after Mr. Liu died, his widow, Liu Xia, was released and allowed to go into exile in Germany.

Hong Kong's young pro-democracy activists, who carried on knowing they faced repeated arrests after leading a 2014 protest, triumphed when an appeals court overturned their sentences in February, 2018. Despite the threat of receiving a prison term of up to three years, Hong Kong soccer fans bravely turned their backs on the playing of China's nation anthem, "March of the Volunteers," in October, 2017. Hong Kong protests that began in early June, 2019, aimed to eliminate the threat of transferring domestic criminals to the China mainland for trial. As demonstrations continued into August, both demands for democratic reforms and police intervention increased. China's slowing economy already raises Beijing's fear of an inability to control mainland dissatisfaction with a declining standard of living and seems to restrain the Xi government from further aggravating conditions by using military force against its citizens in Hong Kong. Unknown is how much broadcast and social media coverage of the Hong Kong protests reaches the restive Tibetan and Muslim populations in western China and what impact the news might be having.

In Russia, Putin's prosecutors have to rely on bogus accusations to keep the Navalny brothers, Oleg and Alexei, from running for President and using social media to mount anti-corruption proptest marches, not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia. Communist politicians lost elections in 2018, when Russia's senior citizens began protesting Putin's plan to raise the age when they could retire and claim pensions.  In TIME magazine (the May 1/May 8, 2017 issue), former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said, "I am convinced Russia can succeed only through democracy."

Classic World War II Christmas carols retain their meaning during this holiday season. We think about the spread of democracy and sing, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas...Next year all our troubles will be miles away...Some day soon we all will be together, if the fates allow."

Youth and Social Media Fuel Democracy

Young leaders in both China and Russia show they are not buying into the Communist indoctrination their elders accepted with little or no question. Fear of arrest, prison terms, the gulag, and being sent to a penal colony now have to compete with exposure to the alternative future social media describes for young digital pros.

     Sparks of democratic fervor have erupted before social media existed. The Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Czechoslovakia's 1968 reforms, and the pro-democracy movement that brought students to China's Tiananmen Square in 1989 were unsuccessful. But activists persisted and broke up the U.S.S.R. in 1991. Now they have the social media that helped fuel the 2009 Green Movement named for the campaign color of the losing presidential candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi,  in Iran; the Arab Spring; the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong; and anti-corruption rallies in Russia.

     When the three under-30-year-olds who led Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement were sentenced to prison terms in August, 2017, they said they considered their arrests a threat, rather than an end to confrontation. China shows it recognizes the threat of social media by trying to monitor who is saying what on the internet and by demanding ID verification for posts. Beijing's leaders refused to allow Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize winning leader in Tiananmen Square, to leave China for treatment of liver cancer. In the West, unlike in China, they knew he would be able to share his poems about democracy in person and on social media.

     It should be mentioned that not only social media, but also travel and education connect the world's democracy advocates. In  Hong Kong, for example, the Penn Club is a network of the University of Pennsylvania's alumni, families, and friends. Students from Penn and the families that sent them there recognize the university's home in Philadelphia also is the location where the US Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written to inspire the American Revolution. Recently, faculty visitors from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a Global Forum in Hong Kong that brought business and government leaders together with alumni to consider the key issues facing global business. Who knows what else these leaders could have discussed when they got together. Hong Kong protests that began in early June, 2019, aimed to eliminate the threat of transferring domestic criminals to the China mainland for trial. As demonstrations continued into August, both demands for democratic reforms and police intervention increased with no end in sight.

     In Russia, corruption by the select group that has benefited from the country's newly found oil and gas wealth motivates anti-government marches and rallies. Led by the blogger, Alexei Navalny, young protesters risked arrest to take to the streets throughout Russia in March and June, 2017. When Navalny was sentenced on a false charge in 2013, 10,000 protesters marched in Moscow to secure his early release. Russia's leaders can only imagine how many more protesters social media will bring out to welcome Alexei's younger brother, Oleg, when he finally is released from a false charge that sentenced him to a penal colony for three and a half years.

     For protection, in April, 2016, Vladimir Putin created a Russian National Guard loyal to him alone. By creating his private cadre of as many as 300,000 troops, however, Putin also created a prime target for infiltration by anyone out to do him harm. It is no wonder that, as head of the Guard, Viktor Zolotov, Putin's long-time personal bodyguard, is in a position to monitor those authorized to get close to Putin, and Putin is in a position to monitor Zolotov's activities. In September, 2018, whether from irritation or real fear, Zolotov challenged Alexei Navalny to a duel.

     But what will China's and Russia's students find when they go West for advanced educations in the United States and England? They'll meet President Obama's daughter at Harvard and Nobel-prize-winning Malala at Oxford. Students from Hong Kong, who attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, found they could sit on a bench next to a statue of Ben Franklin, and they probably ventured downtown to tour Independence Hall and to visit the Liberty Bell. Democracy stands ready to outlive the current leaders in China and Russia.

(Also, check out earlier posts: China's Manifest Destiny East, West, and South; Hong Kong Update, Remember Liu Xiaobo, Russia's Alternative to Putin, and 29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People.)

       

New Year's Resolution for Dictators

President-elect, Adama Barrow, who ended the 22-year reign of Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia, said colonists handed over executive power peacefully, so we should be able to show our children (an even) better example.

Yahya Jammeh and Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had an opportunity to follow the model of Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria, but instead they have clung to power like Mobuto Sese Seko and Robert Mugabe.

Ahead of Iran's scheduled May 19, 2017, election, Supreme Leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei, who heads what has been called a "clerical dictatorship," began helping the radical opposition led by Ebrahim Raisi, by criticizing the lack of economic improvement current President Hassan Rouhani promised the country when the nuclear deal was ratified. Nonetheless Rouhani won in a landslide. The public continues to resent Iran's jailing of opposition leaders, banning of newspapers, and cancellation of concerts. Business leaders come to Iran looking for opportunities but leave when they consider the political climate.

     In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a "Muslim democrat," when he gained power in 2001, but as the winner of a constitutional referendum in 2017, he claimed authoritarian powers unknown in the years after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded a secular republic.

Conditions are similar in the Congo, where President Kabila's Republican Guards arrested opposition leader, Frank Diongo, and the popular opposition leader, Moise Katumbi, who owns a successful soccer club. Etienne Tshisekedi, opposition leader of the Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress party died at 83 in February, 2017. Despite being known as a country rich in minerals, poverty, inflation, a lack of jobs, corruption, and crime plague the economy. Social media is cut off. Although the Constitution bans presidents from seeking a third term, Kabila's second 5-year term as president ended December 19, 2016, without plans for a new election until possibly 2018.

In The Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh, a Muslim who came to power as an army lieutenant in 1994, at first accepted defeat in the country's December 5, 2016, election. He then decided to contest the results before his term expired January 19, 2017. When a coalition of West African countries threatened to use military force to oust him, Jammeh left Gambia on January 21, 2017.

Adama Barrow, the victor in The Gambia's December election delivered a Christmas message calling for "peace and tranquility." In contrast to Jammeh's condemnation of homosexuality and gay rights, Barrow promised to "protect the right of each Gambian to hold and practice the religion or creed of one's choice without any hindrance or discrimination." From the beginning of his presidency in 2011, Jammeh was criticized for his repression and intimidation of the opposition. Media criticism was met with death threats to and arrests of journalists. The editor of a Gambian newspaper, The Point, was murdered in 2004.

Under Barrow, a truth and reconciliation commission hopes to recover millions of dollars Jammeh is accused of stealing from The Gambia, recipient of $3 million a year in US aid. Barrow also plans to establish a team of experts to design a blueprint for The Gambia's poverty eradication and economic development. Two winners of a Student Inspiration Award at the University of Pennsylvania used their $25,000 prize money to travel to The Gambia to do research and conduct a feasibility study for a goat dairy farm that would improve community nutrition and generate revenue for a local hospital now under construction..

Peaceful transfers of power, what a great New Years Resolution

 for world leaders and the people they lead.

All Eyes on OPEC Meeting

The 12 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), formed in 1960, and non-members, such as Russia, Brazil, and Kazakhstan, all had a major incentive to reach an agreement to reduce oil output and stop what has been a major collapse in crude oil prices since 2014. Compared to the $753 billion in revenue from exports then, revenue is expected to be $341 billion in 2016. OPEC members, Iran and Iraq, have been reluctant to cut production, with Iran also engaged in tit for tat charges with Saudi Arabia (See the earlier post, "Mixed Messages from Saudi Arabia.")

      At OPEC's November 30, 2016 meeting, members agreed to cut daily oil production by 1.2 million barrels beginning on January 1, 2017. Iran is allowed to increase its production to 3.8 million barrels a day as it recovers from sanctions imposed to block its nuclear program. Non-OPEC members are expected to cut 600,000 barrels a day from their production, with Russia accounting for half of the 600,000 barrel reduction. Large producers, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE, have a good record of compliance; compliance by other revenue-starved OPEC members will be closely monitored.

    The production cuts are designed to increase the price of a barrel of crude from under $50 to at least the range of $55 to $60, a welcome boost for oil-dependent economies in countries such as Angola, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Russia. Oil was selling in the low $50s in February, fell below $50 in early March, 2017, and rebounded in early April, 2017 to $52 a barrel. At the beginning of May, 2017, oil again had dropped to $45.5 a barrel and by June, 26-27. 2017, it was at the $43-$44 level.

     Nigeria provides an example of the devastating effect falling oil prices have had on an OPEC member. Banks are in trouble because of failing loans for investments in new local oil producers. Generating electricity is more costly. Currency controls have been imposed to limit the amount of foreign currency available to purchase imports and to foster local manufacturing; and the government has implemented a number of unsuccessful reforms to encourage unemployed urban residents to return to the farm (See the earlier post, "Nigeria's New Beginning.").

     Even with the OPEC agreement, it is feared oversupply will continue to dampen oil prices. US producers are in a position to increase output when prices rise and to shut down when oil is selling in the mid-$40 a barrel range or below. With higher prices, of course, more US shale oil production is also profitable.

Mixed Messages from Saudi Arabia

I like watching CNBC, because a station that follows the stock market has to keep up, not only with economics, but also with political and social trends. Following the U.S. presidential election, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman and controlling shareholder of Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding Company and one of the largest foreign investors in the US, told CNBC host, Jim Cramer, "We look at you (your country) as being the vanguard and being the leaders of the world."

     Prince Alwaleed reminded me of the time I began teaching a section on Medieval Italy by asking students to list what they knew about Italy. Roman Empire, pizza, pasta, and home of the Pope helped initiate a discussion of how fragmented the country was before unification in 1870. Now, I asked myself, "What do I know about Saudi Arabia?" Lots of oil, little water, home of 9/11 terrorists, Muslim, women not allowed to drive, considers Iran an enemy. I need to know more.

     The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not formed until 1932. In the 1950s, the US participated in the country's oil boom through Aramco, the Arabian American Oil Company.  US heavy machinery companies also participated in the oil-financed construction boom that transformed a desert into a wealthy country with ports, roads, schools, hospitals, and power plants.

     Despite these close US-Saudi connections, some Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia, as well as those from the enemy Shi'ite branch of Muslims in Persian Iran, harbored hatred of the US for its support of Israel against the Palestinians and resented the US presence in Saudi Arabia. At present, Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen fire long-range missiles into Saudi Arabia.

     Although Osama bin Laden's family came from poor South Yemen, his father won favor with Saudi's king and gained lucrative construction contracts. Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia and spent most of his early life there in Jeddah. Due to the Muslim terrorist activities he inspired from his later headquarters in Sudan, including a suspected attempt on the life of Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, Saudi King Fahd was pressured to revoke bin Laden's citizenship and passport in March, 1994. He left Sudan for Afghanistan in May, 1996.

     Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US were Saudi nationals. Senior Saudi officials denied any role in the attacks and the 9/11 commission found no evidence linking the Saudi government with funding for the operation. Nonetheless, in September 2016, the US Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) that gives the families of terrorist victims the right to sue governments suspected of playing a role in a terrorist attack on US soil. Congress overrode President Obama's veto of the bill and JASTA became a law which potentially undermines the close US-Saudi relationship and counter terrorism cooperation between the two countries.

     In Saudi Arabia, cuts in salaries and subsidies due to falling oil prices are understandably unpopular with the Saudi public. Saudi's Vision 2030 economic program is designed to reduce the country's dependence on oil revenues. On CNBC, Prince Alwaleed told Cramer that he is a member of a group looking into energy alternatives to oil.

     Besides the importance of oil in Saudi Arabia's future economy, succession to the Saudi throne also bears watching. Currently, King Salman of the House of Saud supports both Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, his 57-year-old nephew and minister of interior who is next in the line of succession, and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 31-year-old contender who could leapfrog past his cousin. Speculation heightened when Crown Prince Muqrin bin Aldulaziz resigned his position in April, 2015, to make room for the Deputy Crown Prince.

Muslim Perspective: Conclusion of a 3-Part Series

What was the Muslim perspective after World War II? At first, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen agreed with Britain's suggestion to form an Arab League to protect their independence from outside threats, especially from the Soviet Union. But a common opposition to the new Israeli state proved to be a stronger unifying force. Muslim countries that had no part in murdering Jewish prisoners in the Holocaust were unwilling to recognize Israeli independence. They responded with a declaration of war, when a UN resolution ended Britain's Palestinian Mandate and created the new state of Israel on May 15, 1948. The United States, with the largest concentration of Jewish people outside of Israel, went to the aid of Israel.

     After Mohammed's death, Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims took different directions and became bitter enemies (For an explanation of the rift, see the section, Mohammed's Legacy, in the earlier post, "This We Believe."). Both Muslim sects had splinter groups determined to annihilate Israel, and, by extension, Israel's ally, the United States. The new fundamentalist Shi'ite regime that took over in Iran in 1979 permitted militants to hold 62 Americans in the U.S. embassy for over a year. Israel viewed exiled Palestinian Sunnis and Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shia in Lebanon as terrorists. To rid its northern border of the threat posed by both groups, Israel supported the 1982 raid by Maronite Christian militias that resulted in a refugee camp massacre.

     Seen as an ally of the Israeli forces behind the 1982 raid, the United States became an Hezbollah target. After a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in April, 1983, Iran directed another suicide operation that killed 241 at the U.S.Marine barracks there in October. Tel Aviv, which had destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, pressured Washington to see that Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear bomb would not succeed.

     Only because of a blatant invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 was President George H.W.Bush, with UN backing, able to assemble the international force that took just four days to defeat Iraq and liberate Kuwait. In other circumstances, the U.S. was a target in 1993 for Muslim terrorists who set off a bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center in New York and for the terrorists, trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, who bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. With a successful "business plan" in hand, the Muslim mastermind behind these attacks traveled to Sudan in 1995 to remind Osama bin Laden how effective suicide bombers could be against Americans. (For additional information about the Muslim perspective, see the earlier post, "Why Do They Hate Us?")



   

Muslim Perspective: Part 2 of a 3-Part Series

In a continuing effort to learn more about the Muslim perspective, the second part of a 3-part series follows:

After defeating Napoleon, England was not willing to stand by while massacres and atrocities by Turkish oppressors in the Ottoman Empire led to revolts that gave outside powers reason to intervene. France's Emperor Napoleon III and the Russian Tsar both vied to protect Christians living under Turkish rule. Tsar Nicholas I, who called the Ottoman Empire's Sultan the "sick man of the East," was intent on liberating fellow Slavs in Bulgaria and other Balkan areas that the Turks controlled. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which also saw an opportunity to expand into the Balkans, annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Britain had no interest in the Balkans, but London was determined to prevent Russia from interfering with its profitable spice trade in India and, eventually, its access to Middle Eastern oil. Knowing that revolutions in 1848 had weakened both Austria's and Hungary's ability to prevent Russian expansion toward Constantinople and the Dardanelle Straits, Britain was willing to prop up Turkey and to join France in what became known as the 1856 Crimean War.

     Although the Ottoman Empire survived the Crimean War, a little over 20 years later, Russia forced the Sultan to recognize the independence of his Balkan possessions in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro. The Ottoman Empire's North African territories were victims of the European scramble for colonies in the late 19th century. France claimed Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco and, by 1869, opened Egypt's Suez Canal.

     Britain, which viewed France as its major colonial rival in Africa, saw the canal as a vital link to India. When Egypt's Turkish ruler needed funds to pay interest on the European loans that had financed canal construction, England eagerly bought shares in the Suez Canal Company. As a result of Britain's financial interests, Egypt became a British Protectorate in 1882. Throughout half of the 20th century, Great Britain continued to maintain a strategic military base in the Suez Canal Zone.

     During World War I, Britain captured Palestine, Iraq, and Iran. It was in 1917 that Lord Balfour, Britain's foreign minister, first raised the possibility of carving an Israeli state, what he called "a small notch," out of Palestine. By making Palestine a British Mandate on September 11, 1932, the League of Nations took the first step to implement Lord Balfour's plan. After World War I, the UK also won League of Nations support in its dispute over the Mosul oil fields in northern Iraq, but England's position in the Middle East deteriorated following World War II. In 1951, Iran's government nationalized the joint Anglo-Iranian oil company on the Persian Gulf at Abadan.

   

   

How Do Films Depict Countries?

Renowned film authority and co-author of the film bible, Film Art: An Introduction,  Kristin Thompson, once said, "I think you tend to get interested in films from countries you've visited." After I saw a Persian/Iranian film at a foreign film festival this weekend, I would rephrase her observation to read, "I think you tend to get interested in countries from films you've seen."

     According to Film Art, the elements that directors put into each frame of their films, their mise-en-scene, are: setting, costumes, lighting, and the actors' expressions and movements. The movie I saw this weekend used these elements to show me an Iran without terrorists. Instead, waves lapped along a beach at the Persian Gulf, where the humid climate caused structures to rust and fog reminded me of San Francisco and London. The setting also showed a country with a mix of gated single-family homes, a modern high rise apartment, and many low small rundown dwellings. A female actor's costume changed from a plain brown headscarf to a colorful flowered one, when she went to meet her boyfriend. Male actors wore jeans, but women didn't. Dim lighting set a somber tone of a troubled relationship. Unlike what we might expect in a Muslim culture, unchaperoned men and women stood and walked close together when they were dating, men and boys freely gambled on games and sports, and children misbehaved and talked back to their parents.

     At this weekend's foreign film fest, I also saw a movie where actors in the role of German business consultants in Pakistan and Nigeria found their glib solutions didn't work when confronted by terrorists.

     Often foreign films aren't suitable for children, but in earlier posts, "See the World in Oscar-Nominated Films" and "See the World at the Movies," I identified some that were. Since movies offer an excellent glimpse of other countries and cultures, keep looking for children-suitable ones like the upcoming Pele: Birth of a Legend. Seeing Brazil in the film will provide an interesting way to compare the movie's setting, costumes, lighting, and actors' expressions and movements with the real life we'll see in this summer's Olympic games in Rio.

Nuclear Straight Talk

We talk casually about nuking our lunches until the remains of a bird or cat are found in a microwave oven. However small the amount, until the lingering radiation from the 2011 meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant in Japan was measured on the West Coast of the United States in 2015, proponents lauded energy from nuclear power plants as clean compared to that from fossil fuels.

     Ever since the first atomic bombs killed over 100,000 almost instantly and another 90,000 to 140,000 from radiation in Japan seventy years ago, world leaders have both worked to eliminate death and destruction from atomic and hydrogen bombs and worked to acquire these weapons. While it is tempting to walk away from exasperating talks with an Iran or North Korea, the need to stave off a nuclear attack or Chernobyl-type accident demands persistence at the negotiating table.

     The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed by Iran, five permanent members of the UN's Security Council, and Germany on July 14, 2015, aims to prevent Iran from enriching uranium at Natanz and from developing a bomb at its nuclear facility at Qom. The unanimous UN Security Council approval of sanctions on Kim Jong-un's North Korea on March 2, 2016 were designed to cut off financing for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile program. Yet "artificial seismic waves" detected at North Korea's Punggye-ri atomic test site caused a 5.0 magnitude earthquake on September 9, 2016. , Despite past cyber attacks that have caused North Korea's missile launch software to fail, in March, 2017, the country successfully launched four missiles that threatened Japan and claimed it had the west coast of the United States in its sights. In July, 2017, North Korea launched a long-range missile that made good on its claim. In addition to increasing the range of its weapon-carrying missiles, North Korea is working on mobile and submarine launchers that make it more difficult to detect pending missile tests/attacks.

      It might be wise to monitor travel from Iran to North Korea and back to make sure Iran is not using North Korea as a proxy to get around its agreement to discontinue its nuclear program. After all, Iran financed the transfer of North Korean nuclear technology to al-Kibar, Syria, where an Israeli air strike attacked Syria's nuclear reactor in September, 2007.

     At the website nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap, students can select target cities and see the widespread effect, in terms of casualties and radioactive fallout, of various atomic and nuclear weapons.

     In an article in the Novembver, 2015 issue of the alumni magazine of American University in Washington, DC, Koko Kondo, an atomic bomb survivor known as a hibakusha in Japanese, described the human suffering caused by the first mid-air detonation of an atomic bomb. With nine nuclear states (USA, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, North Korea, Israel) and the forty countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and have the capability to develop nuclear weapons, Kondo knows how important it is to abolish all nuclear weapons.

     When President Obama came to Hiroshina on May 27, 2016, he laid a wreath at the Peace Memorial and said, "the voices of hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness....But memory...fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change."

     Kondo's memory of the August, 1945 attack starts with seeing a blueish-white flash and the collapse of a building on top of her. There were fires everywhere. People were staggering around holding fists full of charred skin, and their hair was standing straight up. The eyeballs of those looking at the sky when the bomb detonated melted.

     Speaking at the memorial service in Hiroshima's Peace Park on August 6, 2015, the mayor urged, "People of the world...contemplate the nuclear problem as your own."

Summer Project: Adopt a Country

Your country could be a big one, like China or Russia, that is always in the news or a small one, like Papua New Guinea, that you didn't know existed. Whatever country you choose, there are resources to help you explore your choice (See some suggested sources of country information in the earlier post, "See the World.") I took my own advice and decided to learn about Malaysia. Unfortunately, I only got as far as looking at a map and deciding Malaysia must have a complicated history, It shares the slim Malay Peninsula with three other countries: Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, and Singapore, and the nearby mountainous Borneo island with Brunei and Indonesia.

     Those who plan to put more effort in learning about a country can begin their project by buying a scrapbook or notebook and labeling pages with titles, such as "Maps," "Government leaders," "Sports," "Key industries," "Agricultural products," and so forth.

     On the first page, "Maps," include a map of your country and a world map with an arrow pointing to it and to your country. (For sources of maps and other information about maps, see the earlier blog post, "You Are Here.") When I had an Atlas out to look for Malaysia, I also decided to see where Iran's secret nuclear facilities probably were located. It was easy to spot the long swath of Zagros Mountains that run along Iran's western border. Eye-in-the-sky satellites could know where to look for activity indicating the construction of new facilities that violated its nuclear agreement with UN Security Council members and the EU.

     Your second page could be labeled, "Flag," Find a colored picture of your country's flag in a World Almanac at the library or elsewhere. Countries put a lot of thought into their flags, because they symbolize a country's important characteristics. Saudi Arabia's flag is almost all green, because the Muslim faith is important to its people and green is the color associated with Mohammed, founder of the Muslim religion. South Africa's flag is much more complicated than Saudi Arabia's. For example, it has red and black for the struggle its population had for freedom and gold for a source of its wealth. (More information about flags is in the earlier blog post, "A Salute to Flags.")

     On a page titled, "Population," list how many people live in your adopted country. How does the size of this population compare to the population of your home country? Is it two times larger or less than a tenth the size of your country? Also include pictures of your country's government leaders and its people. List names of people in your adopted country that may be very different from those of your classmates (Some sources of people and place pictures are listed in the earlier blog posts, "Picture the World" and "Getting to Know You.")

     A page for "Places" is a good one for photos of cities, especially the country's capital. Photos also will show mountains or flat land, snow or beaches, rivers and farms, how people live in cities, and what sports they play. If you know relatives or friends will be visiting your adopted country, remind them to send you postcards to include in your scrapbook.

     Not every country has the same animals that live where you do, so be sure to have a page labeled, "Animals." If you go to a zoo, see if you can find an animal whose native home is your adopted country. The zoo's brochure may have a photo of this animal that you can add to your scrapbook.

     Your interests may lead you to look into your country's music: folk songs and classical composers, current tunes and performers, various instruments.

     What products does your adopted country produce, minerals does it mine, and crops does it grow? Find photos.

     As a student, you will be interested in "Education."Do all children attend the same types of schools? What do they study at what ages? A new book, Playgrounds, shows what recess looks like in some countries (See the earlier blog post, "Recess Differs Around the World.")

     Subjects such as "Food," "Religion," and "Language" could all have separate pages. You may be lucky to find foreign money and stamps from your adopted country, an interesting book about your country, a souvenir from an Olympic or World Cup games held in your country, or a doll dressed in native garb. Recently, when the founder of my granddaughter's 4H club spoke at a meeting, she told how she had 80 dolls from the 80 countries she and her husband had visited.

     The best thing about filling a scrapbook or notebook with information about an adopted country is beginning to think about traveling there some day.

Why Do They Hate Us?

Let's begin by recognizing that Indonesia, a country where 86% of its estimated 252,812,245 population is Muslim, is a democracy with a traditional commitment to religious diversity. Despite opposition from extremists, Time magazine (April 27/May 4, 2015) noted that Indonesia's President Joko Widodo appointed a Christian woman as a district chief in Jakarta. In other words, hate for the West is not an emotion shared by all Muslims.

     Zak Ebrahim, whose father murdered a militant Jewish Defense League rabbi and helped plan the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, observed in his book, The Terrorist's Son, "murderous hatred has to be taught...forcibly implanted. It's not a naturally occurring phenomenon." It is, therefore, not to justify or condemn the feelings of Muslims who hate the West but to lay out the reasons Ebrahim's father, El-Sayyid Nosair, and those in Lawrence Wright's book, The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, give to explain why they hate the West.

     Wright reminds us that Muslims went in two different directions after the death of Mohammed. The vast majority of Mohammed's followers are Sunnis who believe caliphs, Islamic clerics, should be elected. In contrast Shia Muslims, such as the Iranian Muslims who are Persians rather than Arabs, expected a hereditary caliphate, rule of Islamic clerics, to begin with Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib. Within the Sunni majority, a fundamentalist subset of Salafists believe the only valid Islamic practices are the "early Muslim" (Salaf) ways followed during the time of Mohammed (See a description in the earlier blog post, "This We Believe."). In Egypt, Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brothers in 1928 in order to form an Islamic state where the government, a Sharia legal code based on 500 immutable verses from the Quran, and lives would be centered on God. The Muslim Brotherhood came to be seen as a social service agency that provided jobs, schools, and hospitals and as an organization willing to achieve an Islamic state through the political process and compromise. Within the Brotherhood, a "secret apparatus," or army, also was formed to achieve this aim by violent means. The Ayatollah Ruhollan Khomeini, who formed a rigid theocratic state in the wealthy, modern country of Iran in 1979, sanctions this kind of terror and the use of the sword by warriors in a jihad, holy war, against infidels. Iran became a model for those who would impose religious dictatorships by force.

     To devout Muslims, infidels are those who practice a full array of godless, immoral behavior: homosexuality, adultery, divorce, the sexual freedom of women who flirt and wear enticing colors, close male and female dancing, jazz that arouses primitive instincts, drinking liquor and drunkenness, racism, violent sports, individualism, and materialism. Muslims believe Islam will triumph over both capitalists and communists, because modernity in the West, rather than focusing all aspects of life on God, has separated the secular and sacred, mind and spirit, state and religion, and science and theology.

     However, Muslim aspirations for forming an Islamic theocracy in Egypt were crushed by the secular regime of Gamal Abdul Nasser; Israel's swift victory in the 1967 Six Day War; and Anwar al-Sadat's secular democratic state, his ban on religious student organizations and traditional Islamic garb worn by university women, and Egypt's peace agreement with Israel. When a military plot to kill Sadat was successful in 1981, thousands were imprisoned in a 12th century dungeon where they were severely tortured. Among the prisoners was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a member of an underground cell that kept alive the idea of a jihad movement that would establish an Islamic state. When Zawahiri, who was a doctor, first went to Pakistan in 1980 to care for Afghan refugees who fled across the border following the Soviet invasion, he noted the training received by the Afghan freedom fighters or holy warriors, the "mujahideen," and how the area could serve as a base for recruiting an army of jihadists to take over Egypt and ultimately the West, considered to be the enabling force behind the Egyptian regime and state of Israel. Zawahiri's organization, which was strapped for money, would join forces with Osama bin Laden in the well financed al-Qaeda organization.

     The divide between supporters of secular governments and Islamic theocracies shows itself in a variety of countries. In Bangladesh, the secular Shahbag movement squares off against Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh, a group with ties to al-Qaeda in India. Al-Qaeda is taking credit for the May 12, 2015 murder of Ananta Bijoy Dash, who wrote for the Free Mind website that promotes secularism in Bangladesh.. Earlier, other Bangladesh bloggers, Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rhaman, and Ahmed Rajib Haider also had been killed by young Islamic activists. Dash had told friends that he did not expect anyone to kill him in his home in Sylhet.

     It should be noted that religion is not the only cause for the rise of what has become known as Islamic fundamentalism. Racism, and in some cases colonialism, has had an impact on non-whites.
In Egypt, for example, the poverty, disease, and illiteracy of the local population stood in stark contrast to the sporting clubs, hotels, bars, casinos, movie theatres, restaurants, and department stores that catered to the English upper classes and troops who began coming to Egypt when it became a British Protectorate in 1882. In fact, British troops continued to maintain a base in the Suez Canal Zone throughout half of the 20th century.

Hearing Voices from Mexico and Russia

Journalist Sam Quinones in his book, Dreamland, challenged me to think about where we get the news of the world that we tell our children. He wrote, "Mexican media rarely covered the stories of anyone outside the upper classes...." A few days later, I read in Time magazine (March 16, 2015) that RT (Russia Today) beams President Vladimir Putin's view of the world to 700 million people in at least 100 countries. Mikhail Lesin, who was credited with inspiring the creation of RT, was found dead in a Washington, DC hotel on November 5, 2015. Although the Russian embassy claimed Lesin died of a heart attack, in March, 2016, DC's chief medical examiner said the cause of his death was blunt force trauma to the head. His body also showed injuries to his arms, legs, neck, and torso. When the US imposed financial sanctions on Putin's closest associates after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Lesin failed to comply with an order to bring home his foreign assets and those of his children.

     Quinones tells the story of the well-mannered farm boys from Xalisco, in the Mexican state of Nayarit, who are much different from the imagined image of heroin dealers. Instead of cold, conniving cartel killers or thugs; they don't use drugs; and they crave all things American: cars, action heroes, McDonald's, and girls.

     The stories Quinones finds among U.S. immigrant communities would make for an illuminating family dinner table conversation about U.S. immigration legislation and executive orders. A question like, "Did you know Cambodians don't know what doughnuts are?" could lead to the story of the Cambodian refugee, Ted Ngoy, who now runs an empire of doughnut shops in the Los Angeles area. Ngoy brought his nephew to the U.S. only after the young man escaped from a Cambodian re-education camp, walked through the jungle while being stalked by panthers, feared ambush by Khmer Rouge gunmen every step of the way, and spent a year in a Thai refugee camp.

     Russia as victim and the West as villain is an ongoing theme on RT. Protests led by Zoran Zaev in Skopje, Macedonia, were blamed on the West. Albanians who make up nearly a quarter of Macedonia's population, demanded greater rights, and Zaev's opposition demands the resignation of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevaki. His administration is being charged with wiretapping the press, judiciary, elected officials, and religious leaders. When these recordings were released, they appeared to show vote rigging and a murder cover-up.

     In February, 2015, RT viewers heard that the murder of dissident Boris Nemtsov, while he was walking near Red Square, was the work of enemies determined to discredit the Russian government. In later developments, TIME magazine (June 28, 2015) reported a Russian deputy commander of an elite Chechen battalion was charged with Nemtsov's murder. (Chechen hit men also were accused of murdering Anna Politkovskaya. See the earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future.) A re-education campaign once changed Russia's Chechnya rebels into fighters willing to follow orders from President Putin. Chechen forces took over part of Ukraine as volunteers acting for Putin, By tattooing his name and address on his arm, Lesin had avoided a similar deployment in Angola in an unmarked uniform. If his dead body were found there, Russia's clandestine involvement in this 1970s Cold War proxy conflict would have been exposed. Currently, Ramzan Kadyrow seems free to act on his own agenda in Chechnya. After Nemtsov's murder, dissidents in Russia realized they have to fear both Chechen assassins and Putin's security forces.

     Apparently Moscow also fears some of the returning volunteers, who went to Ukraine to defend ethnic Russians, consider Putin's government ineffective and corrupt. (See mention of Putin's corruption in regard to Litvinenko's assassination in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future.") Realizing these troops are combat trained and capable of leading protests, they are being closely monitored and any weapons they are trying to smuggle home are being confiscated at the border. In a reaction to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, the U.S. has plans to deploy missiles in Poland and Romania.

     At the time of Nemtsov's assassination, Russian TV viewers did not see the Moscow march protesting Nemtsov's murder, because RT showed a documentary about U.S. racial abuses. Reports of Nemtsov's murder failed to mention he was compiling information to challenge President Putin's claim that Russia was not supplying military equipment and regular Russian army troops to support separatists in Ukraine. Although 80% of older Russians receive their news from state-television, where anti-Putin activists and journalists are not allowed to appear, during Putin's 17 years in power, the younger generation has slipped away to watch YouTube and other social media outlets that show authorities with millions in assets and Russian troops seizing Crimea. Technically, we now know some of the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine were volunteers who had temporarily resigned from Chechen's regular army. Coffins returned to Russia following battles at a strategic rail hub in Ilovaisk and at Debaltseve in Ukraine. Some of Nemtsov's information came from relatives of dead Russian soldiers who had not received the compensation that they had been promised.

    Using online video to inform scattered dissidents of opposition protests is an aim of Open Russia, a foundation founded by exiled oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom Putin issued an arrest warrant for in December, 2015. Just as Putin, in his annual question-and-answer session on TV, was claiming that Russia's oil and gas based economy, which has shrunk 4.6%, would recover in two years and downplaying the conflict in Ukraine, security forces from the anti-extremism office of the Interior Ministry raided the Moscow offices of Open Russia. On May 26, 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza, the coordinator of Open Russia and an adviser to Nemtsov, had collapsed in his office as a result of being poisoned by a toxin that shuts down a whole body in six hours. That attempt failed as did another in early 2017. Kara-Murza, who holds dual UK-Russian citizenship, believes he is targeted due to his successful effort to pass the Magnitsky Act in both the US and UK. The Act, which is named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax expert, sometimes characterized as a lawyer, who died in a Russian prison in 2009, prevents powerful Russians who abuse human rights at home from keeping their wealth in Western banks. Kara-Murza also believes athletes should attend competitions, such as the 2018 World Cup, in Russia but western democracies should not honor Putin by sending their leaders to such games.

     Russia, which planned  to deliver S-300 surface-to-air defense missiles to Tehran, along with  the United States, China, France, the UK, Germany and the European Union, negotiated what Iran calls the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to impose restrictions on Iran's nuclear program. Once Putin determined ISIS brought down Russian Flight 9268 over the Sinai peninsula in October, 2015, Russia agreed to join the US and French bombing ISIS positions in Syria. But  Russian bombers also operated against forces fighting Syria's dictator rather than ISIS. In March, 2016, Putin announced Russian troops would leave Syria before the cost escalates, but Russia would keep a naval base, air base, and air-defense systems there. In April, 2017, Syrian civilians died from chemical poison dropped on them from a Russian-made airplane which may or may not have been piloted by a Russian.

     Voices abound in this age of apps, the Internet, broadcast and cable TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, books, and movies. The more we see, hear, and read, the better we are able to help children form an accurate view of their world and ours.