World View: Knife-Wielding Mob of Probable Xinjiang Terrorists Kill 28 in Southern China

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Tensions escalate between Ukraine and Russia
• The Charge of the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death
• Knife-wielding mob of probable Xinjiang terrorists kill 28 in southern China
• Pakistan’s Taliban announce one-month cease-fire

Tensions escalate between Ukraine and Russia

Russian troops in Crimea on Saturday (AP)

On Friday, Russia said that the massing of Russian troops on Ukraine’sborder had nothing to do with the unrest in Ukraine. But on Saturday,Russia’s president demanded and got approval from Russia’s parliamentfor those troops to invade Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

In response, Ukraine’s acting president Oleksandr Turchynov announcedthat he put the country’s armed forces on the highest alert status,because of the threat of “potential aggression” by the Russians.

Now analysts are trying to figure out what the Russians are going todo next. Few believe that Russia will try to take control of theentire country militarily, since since after they won they’d have todeal with a nasty, continuing insurgency by ethnic Ukrainians. Somesuggested that Russia might take Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Otherssuggested that Russia might try to force the interim government inKiev to accept a unity government where Russia’s interests would beprotected.

So far, the Kiev government has refused to fall into Russia’s trap.Russia is apparently trying by any means possible to provoke violenceagainst ethnic Russians in Ukraine, so that he can order a full-scaleinvasion of Ukraine “to protect Russian interests.” AP

The Charge of the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death

Few Americans know anything about World War I except the name, andeven fewer have ever heard of the Crimean War. From the point of viewof Generational Dynamics, these wars in America’s non-crisis eras,which is why they’re so poorly remembered. Those two wars weregenerational crisis wars for Russia and Turkey, where they’re VERYwell remembered.

Britain fought in both of them. In The Great War (WW I), the soldiersfought bravely, but there was a strong anti-war movement. WilfredOwen, a 24-year-old soldier, wrote “What passing-bells for these whodie as cattle?” in “Anthem for a Doomed Youth.” The British Generalsbotched the war so badly that veterans described the entire war as

The Crimea peninsula has been the site of one extremely bloody warafter another for centuries. It’s right on the fault line betweenRussia and the Orthodox Christian civilization versus Turkey and theMuslim civilization, as well as on the fault line between variousethnic groups. Here, and in the Balkans and the Caucasus, many warswere fought to the death, and the 1850s Crimean War was one of them.

Britain also fought in the Crimean war, on the side of the TurkishOttomans, with one battle well-remembered today, the one described byAlfred Lord Tennyson in his 1855 poem, “The Charge of the LightBrigade.” (When I first read this poem, in school, I thought a “lightbrigade” was a brigade of soldiers carrying lanterns. Actually, it’sa lightly armed brigade on horses, with little more than sabers tofight with.) The Light Brigade was ordered by a British General tocharge their Cossack and Russian opponents, and take away their gunsand cannons. But “someone had blundered,” and the Russians used theirguns and cannons to massacre the British soldiers:

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:

Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,

All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade ?
O the wild charge they made!

All the world wonder’d.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

The “Valley of Death” still exists — it’s in Balaclava, right nextdoor to Sevastopol in Crimea, where Russian soldiers are once againmassing, preparing for what may be just another chapter in anever-ending series of Crimean Wars.

By the way, modern nursing began during the Crimean War, when Britishnurse Florence Nightingale led a team of nurses to treat woundedsoldiers in Turkey. Spark Notes and BBC

Knife-wielding mob of probable Xinjiang terrorists kill 28 in southern China

At least 29 people were killed and 130 wounded late Saturday when amob of terrorists used long knives to attack passengers in a crowdedtrain station in Kunming in southern China. Chinese authorities saidthat “evidence at the crime scene showed that the Kunming RailwayStation terrorist attack was carried out by Xinjiang separatistforces.”

Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs live northwestern China in Xinjiangprovince, which has been a source of activist violence and separatistdemands. China has responded with violent crackdowns, and attemptedto flood the province with Han Chinese transplants, in a failingattempt to pacify the Uighurs by diluting their population. OnOctober 29 of last year, Uighur terrorists conducted a deadly carcrash in Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square, killing 5 people andinjuring dozens. Saturday’s attack was apparently timed to cast ashadow over the opening on Wednesday of the annual meeting of theNational People’s Congress. Xinhua

Pakistan’s Taliban announce one-month cease-fire

A Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban – TTP) spokesman says that theTTP will observe a one-month cease-fire, in order to allow the “peacetalks” with the government to resume. According to the spokesman, thesenior TTP leadership have instructed all of its splinter groups toabide by the ceasefire.

The offer comes just four days after Pakistan announced that it wasreversing previous “peace talk” policies. Since then it’s beenpounding suspected Taliban handouts, and the army is massing for a

The TTP cease-fire is a standard tactic used by terrorist groups togain time to rearm. Now the government has to decide whether to goahead with its military plans, or to fall for the tactic. VOA

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail