24-Dec-11 World View — Syria's Regime May Be Responsible For Suicide Bombings

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com.

  • Syria’s regime may be responsible for suicide bombings
  • The ‘Great Successor’ Kim Jung-un takes over in North Korea
  • Turkey accuses France of genocide in Algeria

Syria’s regime may be responsible for suicide bombings


Syrian security services inspect the entrance of an intelligence agency building targeted by a suicide attack in Damascus (ETA)
Syrian security services inspect the entrance of an intelligence agency building targeted by a suicide attack in Damascus (ETA)

At least 44 people have been killed and more than 150 injured in two well-planned and coordinated suicide car bombings in the heart of Syria’s capital, Damascus. No one has claimed responsibility, but government officials immediately blamed al-Qaeda. This claim immediately raised suspicions, because al-Qaeda hadn’t made any such threats, and because it’s not believed that al-Qaeda could have perpetrated such a complex attack in the heart of Damascus, in view of airtight Syrian security. Furthermore, by apparent coincidence, these attacks come at exactly the moment when the first few Arab League monitors arrived in Damascus to report on the ongoing violence. As a result, many people believe that the Bashar al-Assad regime perpetrated the suicide bombings in order to justify the ongoing violence to the Arab League monitors. For almost any country, the idea that its regime would perpetrate suicide bombings on its own capital, killing dozens of people, would be completely unthinkable, but it’s not unthinkable for Syria, because the al-Assad regime has been mercilessly slaughtering thousands of its own innocent citizens. BBC and Telegraph

The ‘Great Successor’ Kim Jung-un takes over in North Korea

Little is known about Kim Jung-un, the man who will now succeed North Korea’s “Dear Leader.” He’s someone who had never made any public statements until last Monday. Dubbed the “Great Successor,” the rest of the world doesn’t even know whether he is 27, 28 or 29 years old. However, the chaos that foreign experts had been predicting for years did not materialize in the transition. It was almost as if the “Dear Leader” was still alive, and as if North Korea’s former godlike ruler were also directing the mass act of mourning in the capital Pyongyang, which always seems like the unreal set of a propaganda film. The regime had the country firmly under control, even down to the tears of its citizens. Anyone who was not weeping in North Korea risked incurring the wrath of the authorities. Two Chinese business travelers reported on the Internet that foreigners had been told to get off a train because they had not shed any tears. Spiegel

Turkey accuses France of genocide in Algeria


Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday
Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday

Turkey is reacting with increasing harshness over Friday’s action by France’s National Assembly to pass a crazy law that would make it a crime, punishable by a year in jail, to deny that Turkey had committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915. As we reported yesterday, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recalled Turkey’s ambassador to France, severed other relationships, and accused France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy of using Turkophobia and Islamophobia to gain votes in next year’s presidential election. On Saturday, Erdogan accused France of genocide in Algeria during their bloody war for independence from France from 1954 to 1962:

“In Algeria, an estimated 15 percent of the population had been subjected to the massacre of French from 1945 on. This is genocide,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a conference in Istanbul on Friday.

Algerians were burnt en masse in ovens. They were martyred mercilessly. If French President Mr. (Nicolas) Sarkozy does not know about this genocide, he should ask his father Paul Sarkozy. His father Paul Sarkozy served as a soldier in the French legion in Algeria in 1940s.”

Sarkozy responded, “In every circumstance we must remain cool headed and calm. France alone determines its politics. France does not ask for authorization. France has convictions: human rights, the respect for history. Every country must make the effort to revisit its past. France does not give lessons to anyone nor does it receive lessons from anyone.” CNN

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