This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Europe’s Roma Gypsies fear racism after Maria mystery solved


Sasha Ruseva, left, the Bulgarian mother of ten children, dancing on Friday (AP)

For days, European officials have been wondering how to solve aproblem like Maria, and they’ve finally succeeded. Maria is thelight-skinned, blond, blue-eyed girl, about 5 years old, living with aRoma Gypsy couple in Greece until last week. That’s when authoritiesdecided that the dark-skinned Gypsy couple couldn’t possibly be theparents of Maria, and they decided that they must have kidnapped her. 

The Roma couple were put in jail, and Maria was put in the hands ofsocial workers, while authorities conducted an international searchfor Maria’s real parents. On Friday, a 35-year old Bulgarian woman,Sasha Ruseva, was shown by DNA tests to be Maria’s biological mother; she is also the mother to ten other children. Ruseva says she gave birth toMaria while working in Greece: 

“We gave her, we gifted her, without money. I didn’ttake any money. I didn’t have any food to give to the kid. I sawit yesterday and I’ve been sick. I haven’t eaten since lastnight.”

However, Bulgarian officials are assuming that Ruseva did, in fact,take money for Maria, which would be a crime. It’s possible thatRuseva went to Greece with the specific purpose of selling her newbaby. There are reports that Ruseva and Atanas, her husband, are injail. 

While the story of Maria was unfolding, Irish officials were alertedto another blond, blue-eyed girl living with Roma parents in Ireland.The police grabbed the girl and turned her over to social workers.However, a DNA test revealed that the Roma Gypsy couple were thechild’s parents after all, and the girl was returned to the parents’home. 

These cases have raised concerns among Roma activists who fear thatthese two cases, and the media’s handling of them, will lead toincreased racism and racial profiling against Roma Gypsies.According to journalist Niko Ago: 

“There are many losing from the development of thestory. Not that they care a lot, though. They’ll be waiting forthe next story, to prove their racist and intolerant theories,wondering ‘what has happened to this world where there are blondeRoma?’ There are blonde Roma, just as there are dark-skinnedamongst the advocates of the Nazi ‘Aryan race’theory.”

Toronto Star and CNN and BBC

Report: Palestinian leader Abbas signs peace deal with Syria’s Assad

Debka, which sometimes gets things wrong, is quoting its intelligencesources as saying that Fatah / Palestinian Authority (PA) leaderMahmoud Abbas has blindsided U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry andsigned a deal with the psychopathic genocidal president Basharal-Assad of Syria. The terms of the deal are that Abbas will convincethe Palestinians living in refugee camps in Syria to lay down theirarms and stop fighting al-Assad’s forces and, in return, al-Assad willorder his army to stop killing Palestinians. 

For Abbas, this dealgives him a political advantage over Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, who hadpreviously been al-Assad’s allies but broke ranks because al-Assad was massacring innocent civilians in Syria, including manyPalestinians. For al-Assad, this deal allows his army to concentrateon other rebel groups opposing him. 

What I keep watching for in all these stories is the trend line that’sleading to the coming sectarian war in the Mideast. At the highestlevel, this will be a war between Shia Muslims (Iran, Hezbollah inLebanon, al-Assad in Syria) versus Sunni Muslims (Saudi Arabia).However, it’s not for nothing that the ancient saying, “The enemy ofmy enemy is my friend” is attributed to Arabs. 

Among thePalestinians, Fatah/PA and Hamas have already been at war in 2008, andit’s possible that this deal between Abbas and al-Assad indicates atrend toward Fatah/PA siding with the Shias in the coming war. Then,as I’ve said many times, I expect Israel to be allied with Iranagainst the Sunnis, and we might see a peace treaty between Israel andFatah/PA leading to both of them allied against Hamas and SaudiArabia. Granted, all of this is speculation, but it’s well-informedspeculation and supported by Generational Dynamics trends that I’vebeen writing about for years. Debka

Ties between Hamas and Turkey grow stronger

The other half of the previous story is the trend line in Turkey’sMideast alliances. First, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan isa strong supporter of Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza; likeHamas, Erdogan is strongly opposed to any peace talks between Fatah/PAand Israel. 

Second, Erdogan’s hostility toward Israel has beengrowing steadily since the deaths of nine Turkish citizens on May 31,2010, in a confrontation between Israel’s navy and the boat MaviMarmara in a flotilla headed for Gaza in violation of Israel’s Gazablockade. He’s refused to normalize relations with Israel untilIsrael’s blockade of Gaza is lifted.  

Third, Turkey is supportingthe Sunni rebels fighting against the army of Bashar al-Assad, whoused to be Erdogan’s close ally prior to the Syrian civil war. On theother hand, Hamas, which also used to be al-Assad’s close ally, had itsheadquarters in Damascus, Syria, and who used to receive cash infusionsfrom Iran to fight Israel, is now in serious financial trouble and isdiscussing with Erdogan the possibility of moving its headquartersfrom Qatar to Turkey and getting aid from Turkey. 

The role of Qatar brings up another set of trend line issues in thecontext of what’s happening in Egypt. Hamas was formed in 1988 as anoffshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan is a strong supporterof the Muslim Brotherhood, and Qatar generously funded Egypt’sgovernment when the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi were inpower. When the army deposed Morsi on July 3, the geopoliticalbalance changed rapidly. 

Qatar stopped providing aid to Egypt, andthe slack was taken up by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), andKuwait. Qatar had also been funding the Muslim Brotherhood faction inSyria fighting al-Assad, but the Syrian opposition factions choseleaders favored by Saudi Arabia. However, Qatar has now startedproviding support to Fatah/PA, raising problems for Hamas having itsheadquarters currently in Doha, Qatar. 

So if we put all trend lines together, we can expect the comingMideast war to align Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Hamasversus Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah, with less certainty aboutQatar, PA/Fatah, and Egypt. We’ll have to watch and see how thesetrend lines evolve and what will happen when these countries areforced to choose sides. Al Monitor and Israel National News

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Roma, Gypsies, Greece, Maria,Sasha Ruseva, Bulgaria, Atanas Ruseva, Ireland, Niko Ago,Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas,Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,Mavi Marmara, Gaza, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi 

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