Turkey, Russia, China Following U.S. Plan for Syria

READ THIS ON MY NEW WEBSITE: http://www.kamkashem.com/2016/08/26/turkey-russia-china-following-u-s-plan-for-syria/

There are often key moments in the world of geopolitics where if missed, leave one detached from the reality and consumed by the false narrative portrayed by the media.

After the intentionally flawed coup attempt in Turkey, you would have come across vast analysis by independent journalists who talk about the Russia vs America paradigm and often we get consumed by this narrative when trying to fish for information that isn't Fox News or the BBC. It’s the narrative the American neocons want us to believe, so that if "America doesn't get there first, Russia will".

Articles and analysis were posted hours after the coup explaining that Turkey will swing to the East and create a stronger Russian block or even Chinese considering they’re now involved in the Syrian quagmire.

However now we can see quite clearly that Russia, China, and Turkey are all following the American plan for the region. The Americans were the ones who drafted a Kurdistan region. The Americans were the ones who drafted autonomous "safe zones" in Syria, i.e. carving sectarian lines between the Kurds, Alawites and the rest of the Sunni population.

What are they getting by following the U.S plan?

This plan goes against Turkey’s territorial integrity because the Kurdish region directly threatens Turkey. It won’t be long before the issues in Turkey will escalate into chaos and they’ll have to draw concessions with the Kurdish State and let them annex the Kurdish area within Turkey - or simply keep Turkey in check through constant warfare and border issues.

So how does Turkey benefit from following the American plan? The fact is, they don’t. Turkey is under the thumb and if America wanted it can stage a real coup and take away Erdogan’s position. The purposefully flawed coup was a hint to Erdogan to say “We have more control in your country than you’d think”.

However, Erdogan did get something out of it, even if he loses some part of Turkey in the process. He has consolidated his position, removed his opposition, destroyed the judiciary that would have never let him continue with the American plan and he’s now going to finish his White Palace and live in it as a Presidential figure while the country is run by his ex-party. America rewards their agents from time to time if it suits them to do so.

Let’s look at Russia. If they’re some huge superpower people think them to be, why did they do a tactical retreat when they were on the verge of reclaiming Syria for Assad? Because this was not the American plan and whenever they do manoeuvres that are against American wishes, their own internal issues “coincidentally” flare up.

America’s watchful eye is ever present on Russia and they’ve held them by the proverbial for far too long — Crimea is just one of many choke-holds.

The other Baltic regions will be consumed by NATO if Russia doesn't play ball. In fact, Russia know that if they did not get involved in Syria which was always seen as a Russian-allied state historically, then they’d have nothing left there as America would have consumed it and replaced the government with Western puppets. It will still be the case, but this time, Russia would like to at least maintain their arms deals, trade, and semi-influence there.

Finally, it is well known that ISIS are trading with the likes of Turkey and exist through illicit financing from the West and if Turkey were honestly upset about American involvement in the coup, they wouldn't kiss and make up over a single Joe Biden visit. The institution misled the Turkish people by using anti-Americanism as a smokescreen while they shake hands behind closed doors.

Instead, anti-Americanism should have led to anti-American vision for Syria by cutting the supply routes for ISIS so they can no longer function, closing Incirlik airbase to both Russia and America, intercepting more airplanes that kill Muslims indiscriminately in Syria and calling for unity in the Muslim world.

READ THIS ON MY NEW WEBSITE: http://www.kamkashem.com/2016/08/26/turkey-russia-china-following-u-s-plan-for-syria/

Is this the end of the American Civilization?

Testing the waters

An interesting debate has developed over the past couple of years. This debate argues that we are moving from a unipolar world whereby America, the sole undisputed world superpower, are losing its dominance in various parts of the world. They argue that other nations with ambitions to compete on a global scale are now testing the waters and standing up to this cut-throat hegemonic power, that is the U.S.

"Will the coming world order be the American universal empire?... The coming world order will mark the last phase in a historical transition and cap the revolutionary epoch of this century. The mission of the American people is to bury the nation states, lead their beheaved [sic] peoples into larger unions, and overawe with its might the would-be saboteurs of the new order who have nothing to offer mankind but a putrefying ideology and brute force. It is likely that the accomplishment of this mission will exhaust the energies of America and that, then, the historical center of gravity will shift to another people. But  this will matter little, for the opening of new horizons which we now faintly glimpse will usher in a new stage in human history... For the next 50 years or so, the future belongs to America." - U.S. Diplomat and Political Scientist Robert Strausz-Hupé (1957) 

 This U.S. political scientist made an accurate estimate of how the power will slowly begin to wane for the Americans fifty years on from the 1950's which brings us where we are today, although we can safely say that the power has not shifted away from them yet.

What is a unipolar world?

Unipolarity is the distribution of power whereby one nation or state exercises its influence in a economic, cultural, militaristic and political way unattested by any other state. This type of independent influence is something mankind has never seen before. A state that has access to the entire globe through its tactical capability, economic dominance and cultural indoctrination has never existed in the realm of life to this scale. The Roman Empire, nor the Islamic State had ever reached this level of total domination across the entire globe in so many aspects of life. However, the age of conflicts that we see today are signs of declining influence through the decreasing rate of expansion, class conflicts within their own society, imperialist wars and irrationality. 

The discussion of multipolarity has arisen in recent times, especially after the Middle East and North African uprisings. The 'vassals' of the American empire have begun to rebel and are increasingly formulating their own foreign policy. These 'vassals', such as those that have been incumbent upon IMF or other American imposed sanctions have turned to rival centres of power such as Moscow and Beijing for economic and political assistance. The U.S. National Intelligence Council in a report titled Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World professes that by 2025, "the international system will be a global multipolar one with gaps in national power."

Martin Jacques wrote in his work When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order that although China's global pre-eminence are economic, eventually China's political and cultural influence will be even greater and Mearsheimer in 2005 concurs that the "United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war." It can be noted that America's pivot to Asia, the Department of Defence announced plans to move 60% of its naval forces to the Pacific, which is by far one of its biggest military and strategic escalation after the Cold War. It is clear the American's are fighting a battle on many fronts, with the resurgence of the Islamic ideology being at the forefront, and astoundingly the intellectuals fail to identify it or write about it.

Buck-passing Policy of the U.S.

Mearsheimer (2001) mentions in his book titled The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that "buck-passing is a threatened great power's main alternative to balancing... to get another state to bear the burden of deterring or possibly fighting an aggressor while it remains on the sidelines". Which has been the policy for the U.S. Administration under Barrack Obama. It is a real sign of weakness of ones ideology, that it cannot express its culture freely without it causing internal problems for its own society. A state that is killing itself from within.

The Seven Stages of a Civilizations Rise and Fall

Carrol Quigley in 1961 published a book that studied the stages that all civilizations go through before its final decay and invasion. He concluded that there are seven stages, namely; mixture, gestation, expansion, age of conflicts, universal empire, decay and invasion. We can study where the American Empire currently stands in terms of these stages. 

The first stage of "mixture" is where all civilizations begin with a mixture of two or more cultures. "Such mixture of cultures is very common; in fact, it occurs at the boundaries of all cultures to some extent. But such casual cultural mixture is of little significance unless there comes into existence in the zone of mixture a new culture, arising from the mixture but different from the constituent parts. The process is a little like the way in which a mixture of chemicals sometimes produces a new compound different from the mixing chemicals. In the case we are discussing, the new compound is a new society with a new culture. The contributing societies may be civilizations or merely producing societies Such mixture of cultures is very common; in fact, it occurs at the boundaries of all cultures to some extent. But such casual cultural mixture is of little significance unless there comes into existence in the zone of mixture a new culture, arising from the mixture but different from the constituent parts. In the case we are discussing, the new compound is a new society with a new culture. The contributing societies may be civilizations or merely producing societies (agricultural or pastoral) or merely parasitic societies (with hunting or fishing). Of the millions of cases of such cultural mixture that are occurring all the time, only rarely does there appear a new society. And even more rarely does this new society become organized in such a way that it is a producing society with an instrument of expansion. In the rare case where this occurs, we have the first stage of a new civilization. The fact that there have been no more than two dozen civilizations in almost ten thousand years of cultural mixture of producing societies will indicate how rare this occurrence is." It is clear that the American civilization began in the 17th century but was not at this stage, an empire at a global scale.

The second stage, called the "gestation" stage is, by definition, a period in which "nothing sensational happens, it is not an easy period to discern in the prehistoric evidence. If we assume that the first agriculturalists came into Mesopotamia about 6000 B.C., we might postulate a period of mixture for about a thousand years and a period of gestation about half as long." One can argue that during this period the society is growing and the relationships amongst them are becoming common, whether that be remnants from a previous culture or a brand new one. One can conclude this gestation period lasted at most 50-100 years but ended definitely before the 19th century.

The third stage being the Age of Expansion, and in this period "some of the most significant advances in human history were either made or adapted to large-scale. This is quite clearly the period America went through in the 19th century. The industrial production doubled and the economy grew rapidly. All due to the fact the Europeans economies were exhausted in World War I. The age of mass production had arrived allowing the Americans to make full effect of it sooner than others.

The fourth stage, namely the Age of Conflicts, has been defined by Quigley "as extending from the date when the rate of expansion begins to decline to the period when one political unit establishes a universal empire by conquering the entire area of the civilization. In the earlier part of this period the whole core of the civilization may be conquered by one or more preliminary empires." Quigley goes on to state certain characteristics of the Age of Conflicts to be "(1) decreasing rate of expansion, (2) imperialist wars, (3) class conflicts, and (4) irrationality." During this Age of Conflicts, which one can safely assume was between 1900 up until the 1980's at the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist ideology. The class conflicts had caused many internal issues for America and its peoples but they would argue that this was a form of evolution, leading up to a more pure form of liberalism.

The fifth stage is the Universal Empire and as a result of the imperialist wars in the Age of Conflicts, the number of political units in the civilization is reduced to one. This can be seen at both a local level and a national level. Internal feuds and civil wars are quelled while other civilizations that are existent in the world are dominated.

When a universal empire is established in a civilization, the society enters upon a “golden age.” At least this is what it seems to the periods that follow it. Such a golden age is a period of peace and of relative prosperity. Peace arises from the absence of any competing political unity within the area of the civilization itself, and from the remoteness or even absence of struggles with other societies outside. Prosperity arises from the ending of internal belligerent destruction, the reduction of internal trade barriers, the establishment of a common system of weights, measures, and coinage, and from the extensive government spending associated with the establishment of a universal empire. But this appearance of prosperity is deceptive. Little real economic expansion is possible because no real instrument of expansion exists. 

The golden age is really the glow of over ripeness, and soon decline begins. When it becomes evident, we pass from Stage 5 of the Universal Empire to Stage 6 of Decay. One finds it difficult to put a finger on when this golden age actually transpired for the Americans, but one could argue that the day George W. Bush announced the "Global World Order". However this Universal Empire we can quite clearly see is dwindling, is it entering the penultimate stage of decay?

The sixth stage as already mentioned is the Stage of Decay. Quigley's explanation of the Stage of Decay can explain the situation of America and its peoples clearly. 

The Stage of Decay is a period of acute economic depression, declining standards of living, civil wars between the various vested interests, and growing illiteracy. The society grows weaker and weaker. Vain efforts are made to stop the wastage by legislation. But the decline continues. The religious, intellectual, social, and political levels of the society begin to lose the allegiance of the masses of the people on a large scale. New religious movements begin to sweep over the society. There is a growing reluctance to fight for the society or even to support it by paying taxes.

It is possible to break down these factors and apply them to America and the American people. In terms of the acute economic depression, America has suffered an astonishing 47 recessions since the 1790's, but if we are to look at all the recent recessions after the "Great Depression of 1929", they were all but a few due to economic policies or financial crises. 

In terms of the declining standards of living, America was turning towards a "knowledge society", meaning that it wished to pursue a 'post-industrial' society that instead of capital investment in productive activity in plant and equipment, its main feature was the creation of a "knowledge society," with a focus on technical dynamics and menial industrial labour was better suited to developing countries. However the truth of the matter is the vast majority of Americans have worked harder and longer hours. Wal-Mart, America's largest employer, pays less than a third of the level of wages and benefits auto-workers received. Also, under 'Obamacare' the health care in America has suffered a great deal which further proves the decline in the standards of living. 

In terms of illiteracy in the United States, a recent study conducted in April 2015 by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy states that 32 million adults in the U.S. cannot read, and that is 14% of the population. It goes on to state that the illiteracy levels have not improved for the last ten years, showcasing that illiteracy is not improving. One can state that if the people of America are not progressing, they are declining. 

The final stage of the rise and fall of a civilization is the Stage of Invasion which we can safely say has not occurred up until now. 

The most important point that many authors, political scientists and politicians fail to mention is that the Islamic revival of the Muslims in the world today, do not have a state mechanism, yet they provide the biggest challenge for all the actors in the world today. It is not de-industrialisation that causes a civilization to dwindle and die but rather it is the idea of those people that must be destroyed. The Islamic Empire was abolished in 1924 however the ideology remained in the hearts of the 200 million that lived in the world at the time and to this very day. These authors and political scientists write books upon books of the swaying influence, and how India or China or Germany will take the reign as the global superpower, yet these nations they state are struggling against the rise of Islam. It is either naivety or academic ignorance or outright propaganda that they fail to point the finger on the Muslims to be the next civilization that will unseat the rest of them. The only civilization that does not fit into the seven stages is the Islamic civilization that has remained since the demise of its state mechanism. 

However I leave it to the reader to decide whether the American civilization has either cemented itself firmly to survive for many more decades or whether they are fighting a losing battle. 

Written by Kam Kashem

Robert Strausz-Hupé (1957) - "The Balance of Tomorrow" Obris: A Quarterly Journal of World Affairs Volume 1, Number 1.
Zbigniew Brzezinski and John J. Mearsheimer, "Clash of the Titans" Foreign Policy, Jan/Feb 2005, 146
Mearsheimer (2001) - "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics"
Carrol Quigley (1961) - "The Evolutions of Civilizations"
Christopher L. Brennan (2015) - "Fall of the Arab Spring from Revolution to Destruction"

Turkey swings to the West and the Muslims lose hope in Islam

Just a decade ago Turkey had met the set of democracy and governance-related requirements as a candidate for the European Union. Their economy was booming and their policy of keeping peace with neighbours allowed them to trade with ease and efficiency. They were setting themselves as a model democracy for the Middle East and the Muslims.

However, there has been a growing call by the Muslims across the globe for Islam to be implemented politically and not just spiritually. In order to preserve the progress Turkey had made, She had to listen to these wishes in a way that would not send liberal democracy a death sentence.

Thus began the brandishing of the Holy Qur'an by Erdogan in order to quell the thirst of the Muslims. It included the introduction of interest-free banking and tougher laws on religious marriages and adultery.

However this move to a more 'Islamic'-coated democracy, which is far from Islam, has introduced other domestic issues which were kept quiet a decade ago. The once quiet neighbour policy of the Turkish government to an aggressive stance that heavily includes themselves in the Syria and Iraq quagmire as well as the forerunner in the refugee crises, has brought about terrorist attacks and a struggling economy that has now broken ties with Russia that supplied 60% of its countries energy after the downing of the Russian jet.

What has this new turn in Turkish politics achieved?

1. When the Muslims lose their high standard of living, it'll bring doubts into many that Islam cannot play any role in politics, even though currently this form of picking and choosing from Islam does not make a secular state into an Islamic state. 
2. The Muslims have experienced gradualism under the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and now a democracy led by 'Islamists' - both which have failed them domestically, in order to make the Muslims lose hope in Islam as a political ideology.
3. Turkey will fall into the arms of both the EU and the U.S. which will force it to abandon the little Islam it has in governance in return for a booming economy and strong alliance once again. 

The longer the AKP use a heavy hand on the Kurds the faster its popularity will diminish, allowing for the opposition to ride the waves of secular democracy devoid of any religious laws to take the front seat and affirm that Islam cannot achieve the basic needs of the people. No wonder Erdogan had sought to take a higher role that will make him immune to the coming changes? 

This also leads one to believe that this U.S and Russia antipathy towards each other, is but a farcical to delude and deceive their own masses in order to effectuate change. 

The U.S. has achieved more than it has bargained for with this new direction by Turkey. The abandonment of the Chinese missile deal and the reconciliation with 'Israel', as well as the improved cooperation with NATO means there will be closely aligned agenda on Syria and Iraq with the U.S. 

It will be interesting to see how the AKP fare domestically after this huge swing to the West for Turkey. 

What does it mean to be a Revisionist State?

I've always struggled to explain the term revisionist or revisionism until I came across this publication by RAND. It's titled "Mastering the Gray Zone: Understanding a Changing Era of Conflict".

I'm not going to discuss this publication as I've not yet had a chance to fully read it, however it summarises for me the term revisionist quite accurately and therefore I'd like to share this with you also.

The author starts off  explaining China's gradual and revisionist approach towards dominating the regions near to them.

In the remote reaches of the South China Sea in the Spratly Island chain, China is creating land. In order to bolster its claims to the waters of the region, Beijing is pouring millions of metric tons of sand and concrete onto submerged reefs, creating artificial islands.1 Island-building is merely one of the most obvious of many actions, ranging from propaganda to economic coercion and swarming fleets of fishing vessels, that China has been taking to solidify its assertion of territorial and resource rights throughout the region. Step by forceful step, China is laying the groundwork for a new order in the region that recognizes Beijing’s unquestioned primacy, and for an international system whose norms and institutions reflect China’s interests and preferences.

“China is biding its time,” one report recently concluded, “slowly eroding American credibility in the region, changing facts on the ground where it believes it can and carefully calibrating the coercion of its rivals in the South China Sea.”

The example of China is fitting for a revisionist state extending its reach into places it really has no authority due to the hand of the superpower that has it's fingers clenched into the soil across the entire globe.

Here the author explains revisionism  

This series of actions is a powerful example of an approach being used by more and more states with partial, but still obvious, revisionist intent—that is to say, states dissatisfied with the status quo and determined to change important aspects of the global distribution of power and influence in their favor. Unwilling to risk major escalation with outright military adventurism, these actors are employing sequences of gradual steps to secure strategic leverage. The efforts remain below thresholds that would generate a powerful U.S. or international response, but nonetheless are forceful and deliberate, calculated to gain measurable traction over time. In one important sense, they are classic “salami-slicing” strategies, fortified with a range of emerging gray area or unconventional techniques—from cyberattacks to information campaigns to energy diplomacy. They maneuver in the ambiguous no-man’s-land between peace and war, reflecting the sort of aggressive, persistent, determined campaigns characteristic of warfare but without the overt use of military force.

Terror in Mali: An Attack on China and Russia?

International media have now confirmed that at least nine of the 27 killed in the attack were Chinese and Russian. While this alone would indeed be curious, it is the identities and positions of those killed that is particularly striking. The three Chinese victims were important figures in China’s China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), while the Russians were employees of Russian airline Volga-Dnepr. That it was these individuals who were killed at the very outset of the attack suggests that they were the likely targets of what could perhaps rightly be called a terrorist assassination operation.

But why these men? And why now? To answer these questions, one must have an understanding of the roles of both these companies in Mali and, at the larger level, the activities of China and Russia in Mali. Moreover, the targeted killing should be seen in light of the growing assertiveness of both countries against terrorism in Syria and internationally. Considering the strategic partnership between the two countries – a partnership that is expanding seemingly every day – it seems that the fight against terrorism has become yet another point of convergence between Moscow and Beijing. In addition, it must be recalled that both countries have had their share of terror attacks in recent years, with each having made counter-terrorism a central element in their national security strategies, as well as their foreign policy.

And so, given these basic facts, it becomes clear that the attack in Mali was no random act of terrorism, but a carefully planned and executed operation designed to send a clear message to Russia and China.

The Attack, the Victims, and the Significance

On Friday November 20, 2015 a team of reportedly “heavily armed and well-trained gunmen” attacked a well known international hotel in Bamako, Mali. While the initial reports were somewhat sketchy and contradictory, in the days since the attack and siege that followed, new details have emerged that are undeniably worrying as they provide a potential motive for the terrorists.

It is has since been announced that three Chinese nationals were killed at the outset of the attack: Zhou Tianxiang, Wang Xuanshang, and Chang Xuehui. Aside from the obviously tragic fact that these men were murdered in cold blood, one must examine carefully who they were in order to get a full sense of the importance of their killings. Mr. Zhou was the General Manager of the China Railway Construction Corporation’s (CRCC) international group, Mr. Wang was the Deputy General Manager of CRCC’s international group, and Mr. Chang was General Manager of the CRCC’s West Africa division. The significance should become immediately apparent as these men were the principal liaisons between Beijing and the Malian government in the major railway investments that China has made in Mali. With railway construction being one of the key infrastructure and economic development programs in landlocked Mali, the deaths of these three Chinese nationals is clearly both a symbolic and very tangible attack on China’s partnership with Mali.

In late 2014, Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita traveled to China to attend the World Economic Forum in Tianjin. On the sidelines of the forum the Malian president sealed a number of critical development deals with the Chinese government, the most high-profile of which were railway construction and improvement agreements. Chief among the projects is the construction of an $8 billion, 900km railway linking Mali’s capital of Bamako with the Atlantic port and capital of neighboring Guinea, Conakry. The project, seen by many experts as essential for bringing Malian mineral wealth to world markets, is critical to the economic development of the country. Additionally, CRCC was also tapped to renovate the railway connecting Bamako with Senegal’s capital of Dakar, with the project carrying a price tag of nearly $1.5 billion.

These two projects alone were worth nearly $10 billion, while a number of other projects, including road construction throughout the conflict-ridden north of the country, as well as construction of a much needed new bridge in gridlock-plagued Bamako, brought the cumulative worth of the Chinese investments to near (or above) the total GDP for Mali ($12 billion in 2014). Such massive investments in the country were obviously of great significance to the Malian government both because of their economically transformative qualities, and also because they had solidified China as perhaps the single most dominant investor in Mali, a country long since under the post-colonial economic yoke of France, and military yoke of the United States.

It seems highly implausible, to say the least, that a random terror attack solely interested in killing as many civilians as possible would have as its first three victims these three men, perhaps three of the most important men in the country at the time. But the implausible coincidences don’t stop there.

Among the dead are also six Russians, all of whom are said to have been employees of the Russian commercial cargo airline Volga-Dnepr. While at first glance it may seem irrelevant that the Russian victims worked for an airline, it is in fact very telling as it indicates a similar motive to the killing of the Chinese nationals; specifically, Volga-Dnepr is, according to its Wikipedia page, “a world leader in the global market for the movement of oversize, unique and heavy air cargo…[It] serves governmental and commercial organizations, including leading global businesses in the oil and gas, energy, aerospace, agriculture and telecommunications industries as well as the humanitarian and emergency services sectors.” The company has transported everything from gigantic excavators to airplanes, helicopters, mini-factories, and power plants, not to mention heavy machines used in energy extraction.

And so, their killing, like that of the CRCC executives, is a symbolic strike against Chinese and Russian investment in the country. And perhaps even more importantly, the attack was a symbolic attack upon the very nature of Sino-Russian collaboration and partnership, especially in the context of economic development in Africa and the Global South.

It would be worthwhile to add that Volga-Dnepr has also been involved in military transport services for NATO and the US until at least the beginning of the Ukraine conflict and Crimea’s reunification with Russia. Whether this fact has any bearing on the employees being targeted, that would be pure conjecture. Suffice to say though that Volga-Dnepr was no ordinary airline, but one that was integral to the entire economic development initiative in Mali. And this is really the key point: China and Russia are development partners for the former French colonial possession and US puppet state.

To be sure, China is not offering such deals to Mali solely out of altruism and in the spirit of generosity; naturally China expects to enrich itself and ensure access to raw materials, resources, and markets in Mali now and in the future. This is the sort of “win-win” partnership forever being touted by China as the cornerstone of its aid and investment throughout Africa. Indeed, in many ways, Mali is a prime example of just how China operates on the continent. Rather than a purely exploitative investment model (the IMF and World Bank examples come to mind), China is engaging in true partnership. And, contrary to what many have argued (that China is merely a rival imperialist power in Africa), China’s activities in Africa are by and large productive for the whole of the countries where China invests, a few egregious bad examples aside.

China is a friend of Africa, and it has demonstrated that repeatedly throughout the last decade. And perhaps it is just this sort of friendship that was under attack in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako.


While the world has been transfixed by terrorism from the downing of the Russian airliner in Egypt, to the inhuman attacks in Paris and Beirut, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the attack in Mali. Perhaps one of the reasons the episode has not gotten the necessary scrutiny and investigation is the seemingly endless series of terror attacks that have transfixed news consumers worldwide. Perhaps it is simply good old fashioned racism that sees Africa as little more than a collection of chaotic states constantly in conflict, with violence and death being the norm.

Or maybe the real reason almost no one has shined a light on this episode is because of the global implications of the killings, and the obvious message they sent. While media organizations seem to have deliberately ignored the implication of the attacks of November 20th in Mali, one can rest assured that Beijing and Moscow got the message loud and clear. And one can also rest assured that the Chinese and Russians are well aware of the true motives of the attack. The question remains: how will these countries respond?

Source: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/terror-in-mali-attack-on-china-and.html#more