LyrArc Article Gist
Efforts to setup an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria based on the model set by the Autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. An opportunity for Kurdish people to be able to live with their own language and culture within the framework of a federal state in Iraq and Syria. The Kurdish Autonomous region based in Erbil has acted as a mediator between Sunni and Shiite interests and worked within the framework of a federal state in Iraq. Turkey still fears the minority Kurds within its borders and seeks to assimilate them into Turkey. The government of prime minister Erdogan has shifted the political stance with Kurds by seeking Kurdish support in elections. There is the example in Europe and Asia of people in certain regions working within a federal state that tolerates the culture and language of the people within the state- the Catalans and Basque people in Spain are one example. This has come after years of repression of language and culture, and it has only changed as a new spirit of tolerance has prevailed in Europe after the pain of the period between the wars. A range of other communities with distinct language and culture have learned to function and prosper within a federal state- French Quebec within Canada is another example in N. America. In Asia, the best example is India, which is a federal state with many languages and cultures, varied enough to be amazing. A properly functioning democracy and economic system, with educational systems that support tolerant attitudes, provides the framework for this to happen. It is challenging at times but it is a better alternative to generations of conflict....

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The dangers to Turkey from external short term borrowings to finance its current account deficit. Turkey's current account deficit reached 10% of GDP in 2011. It is 8% in 2012 and is considered high by experts. The problem is short term borrowing from overseas which is sent through its banks for increasing levels of personal and housing loans. Were this flow to dry up because of a sharp downturn in the Eurozone economies it would damage Turkey's financial position. Bank short term external debt has doubled in 2011-2012 to $70.3 billion, or 9% of GDP, according to Capital Economics. The U.S. Fed and the ECB have eased global liquidity concerns, but risks are high as long as Turkey relies on short term borrowing. An escalation of the conflict with Syria also poses risks with fears of scaring away investors.

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The lack of U.S. leadership and slow response by the Obama administration to the rapidly developing situation in the region risks spillover effects from Syria to affect the entire Middle East. Russia's stakes are minimal in the region because it is simply trying to retain some of its old influence in the region, yet it is having an outsized influence in the region through its early military assistance to the Assad regime. The stakes are much higher for the U.S. because of the decade spent and resources invested in Iraq, higher for Iraq with its need for civil harmony between Shiite and Sunni communities, for Turkey with its large Kurdish minority and flow of refugees from the border with Syria, for Saudi Arabia as a defender of Sunni interests. Without active U.S. leadership the situation is allowed to drift and young people of the Free Syrian Army are basically taking on the bulk of the role of resolving the situation. France's Sarkozy and Britain's Cameron offered this kind of leadership in Libya as Libya's young people struggled to resolve the situation there. ...

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U.S. officials confirm the use of Iraqi airspace by Iran to supply arms to the Assad regime in Syria. It showed the lack of U.S. leverage in Iraq as the U.S. leaves Iraq without an agreement.

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The war in Syria enters a new phase in Feb. 2013 with the effort to send heavy weaponry to moderates and the Free Syrian Army and shift the focus of the war to the south and Damascus. The source of the weapons are moderate Muslim nations, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Quatar, and western nations.

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Tom Donilon, is national security advisor to President Obama. His experience includes working as chief of staff for Warren Christopher in the Clinton administration, and 8 years as an executive at Fannie Mae before being brought into the Obama circle by Rahm Emmanuel as deputy to national security advisor Gen. Jones. Robert Gates view was that Donilon would be "a disaster." His early experience as a political operative for the Carter campaign to his work for the 1988 Biden presidential campaign, and work at Fannie Mae as a business executive, suggests lack of experience in foreign affairs needed for this role. A focus on efficiency and being able to sync with Obama's thinking on foreign affairs may not be the qualities needed in this critical role.

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Egyptian president Morsi's address at the UN General Assembly as "the first Egyptian civilian president elected democratically and freely." On the Egypt-Israel treaty he said: "we are committed to what we have signed on." He defended the Syrian people, who he said were trapped in "the tragedy of our era." For Syria, Morsi has formed a contact group of Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to defuse tensions in the region. Egypt backs the initiative of the Arab League and the UN led by an experienced diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who recently visited Syria.

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In this essay in Der Spiegel, Charles Hawley says that the Trump movement has become a movement of patriotic downtrodden whites, with a whole range of interests-of extreme right talk show hosts, Tea Party politicians, white power supremacists, those left out by globalization in the working class especially in the midwestern states. The danger he says is that this movement of which Trump has become a part, rejects the narrative on which America is based of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers establishing a country based on principles of "the inalienable rights of man," that have evolved through the years to include black people, women, and minorities.  To put this in perspective, president Obama writing for The Economist magazine in October 2016, puts this movement in a different context- that of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Know Nothing Movement of the 1800's, the anti-Asian sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, periods when anti-immigrant or anti-foreign sentiment gained prominence. Obama's view is that it is not fundamentally economic. In this he is right in that some of the forces on the far right do not stem from globalization. Yet he would be missing a great deal if he did not address the economic problems for the middle and working class that have given such views the support of a broad segment of the population, especially in some midwestern and older industrial states compared to say the economy of California or New York. Obama is aware of the problems in his essay as he points to the problems of workers trying to get a decent wage, of job losses through globalization, and the aggravation of these problems by the financial crisis of 2008 when some of the potential physicists and engineers as he calls them went into the financial sector to create faulty mortgages. Yet he goes back to the free trade and global networks of supply chains as having reduced global poverty, without showing a keen awareness of how it has through a combination of events and decades of policy indifference to manufacturing communities in the U.S.- as documented by experts and shown in Lyrarc, with David Autor and Gordon Hansen in the WSJ, 2016- 08-16. A Gallup Study, WSJ, 2016-05-16, supports Obama's assertion by showing that many of Trump supporters are actually self-employed and not in economic distress. Yet the movement would not have taken its proportions without the merging of different groups particularly largely disadvantaged working class voters, and fortunately Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, have a better sense of this than the president. It is by their efforts that income and wealth disparities can be tackled in a way that restores the social fusion of all parts of society- in Hillary Clinton's emphatic words in the final debate by "growing the middle," growing the middle class. This is the task of the next decade, or possibly two decades. (For Gallup study see WSJ, How Economic Anxieties Explain Trump's Appeal- And Where They Fall Short, Nick Timiraos, 08-16-2016. And for Autor, Hanson, see Tallying the Toll of U.S.-China Trade, Justin Lahart, 08-27-2011)   ...

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Questions being raised about the Obama administration's approach to the war in Syria.

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Efforts to repair strained Saudi ties with a visit by U.S. president Obama in March 2014.

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Sectarian conflict in Iraq between Shiites and Sunnis following the U.S. withdrawal. Efforts by former Baathist party members and officers in the Saddam regime to aggravate sectarian tensions.

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WSJ's Trofimov talks to some of the 2.5 million refugees and displaced people in the sectarian conflict in Iraq in 2015. He finds a mood of despair and resignation to a permanent partition of the country following sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. The situation is being dictated by the facts on the ground as the refugees see little prospect of returning to their homes, and the different regions controlled by Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish forces with borders.

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A Syrian opposition group describes the mislabeling of opposition groups in Syria by the Obama administration.