World View: Tension Grows Between Egypt's Al-Nour Party, Muslim Brotherhood

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com:

• Shia families in Quetta Pakistan refuse to bury bombing victims
• Tension grows between Egypt’s al-Nour party and Muslim Brotherhood
• Pollution spikes to ‘dangerous’ levels in eastern China
• Security experts recommend disabling Java on computers

Shia families in Quetta Pakistan refuse to bury bombing victims

Shia Muslims across Pakistan are conducting a remarkable demonstrationand are lashing out at the government and the army for taking no stepsto protect Shia Muslims for sectarian attacks by Sunni Muslimterrorists who target Shias. In Quetta, Shias are refusing to burythe coffins of the 100+ victims of Thursday’s horrific suicide bombingthat we reported two days ago,even though the bodies are decomposing. Instead, they’re using thecoffins to blockade the roads in protest, and they claim that theyblockade won’t end “until we get an assurance that the Pakistan armywill take over security and administrative control in Quetta,”according to a protest organizer. 

The year 2012 was the bloodiest year ever for Shia Muslims targeted bySunni Muslim terrorists, and with Thursday’s horrific attack it seemslikely that 2013 will be even worse. Mainstream politicians donothing to protect Shias from these attacks, possibly because they’reafraid of the Sunni terrorists, or because they support the Sunniterrorists, or because they simply don’t care how may Shias areslaughtered.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Pakistan and Indiaare headed for a major war re-fighting the bloody 1947 war betweenHindus and Muslims that followed Partition, the partitioning of theIndian subcontinent into Pakistan and India. For centuries, almostsince the time of Mohammed, Hindus and Shia Muslims have been alliedagainst Sunni Muslims in huge genocidal wars. Thus, the increasingbloody terrorist attacks by Sunnis targeting Shias moves Pakistanalong the trend line towards that new war. Furthermore, the epicenterof the 1947 was Kashmir, and as we’ve been reporting, there have been new flare-ups of violence betweenMuslims and Hindus in Kashmir across the international Line of Control(LoC). 

The al-Qaeda linked terror group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed creditfor Thursday’s bombing in Quetta. We’ve written aboutLashkar-e-Jhangvi several times in the past — a terrorist group thattargets Shia and Sufi shrines in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and who hasbeen responsible for hundreds of deaths of worshipers. (See “7-Dec-11 World View — Afghanistan shocked by coordinated suicide attacks targeting Shias”) Inaddition. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is connected to Jundullah, a terroristgroup that has perpetrated major attacks on Shia mosques andRevolutionary Guard stations in southeastern Iran. Express Tribune (Pakistan)

Tension grows between Egypt’s al-Nour party and Muslim Brotherhood

In last year’s parliamentary elections in Egypt, two Islamist parties,the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)and the more religiously conservative Salafist al-Nour party togethercame away with almost 75 per cent of the vote. 

Although the two parties are collectively referred to as “Islamist,”there are sharp differences between the two. The two partiescooperated brilliantly during the elections to decisively defeat thecompletely disorganized secular and liberal opposition, but now thatthe FJP is firmly in control of the government, tensions are growing,and the al-Nour party has announced that it plans to oppose the FJP infuture elections. However, the secular and liberal parties have alsolearned some very hard lessons from the elections, and they’re lookingfor ways to leverage the favorable attitudes of Western nationstowards them into greater political power. However, the real battlewill be between the Brotherhood and the extreme Salafists, some ofwhom consider the new constitution, written largely by theBrotherhood, to be in violation of God’s laws. Bloomberg and Hudson Institute

Pollution spikes to ‘dangerous’ levels in eastern China

Air pollution in Beijing, China, has spiked past hazardous levels, andair smells like coal dust and car fumes, according to peopleinterviewed. Normal breathable air should contain no more than 100micrograms per cubic meter of pollution particles. Official Chinareports put the pollution levels to over 400. But a popular web appprovided by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reports levels above 800.Most of China’s increasing energy needs are satisfied by burning coal,with resulting pollution. Last year, the Chinese government demandedthat the U.S. Embassy stop publicizing air pollution readings, butthey’ve continued anyway. 

All of eastern China is affected by the spike in pollution levels,because the weather has turned cold, and so a lot more coal is beingburned. To make matters worse in Beijing, the streets are choked withcars, and pollution emissions are poorly regulated. In 2008, when theOlympics games were held in Beijing, China actually had to shut downall traffic around Beijing, because some of the Olympics teams werethreatening not to compete because of the high pollution levels.china.org.cn and BBC

Security experts recommend disabling Java on computers

Computer security experts are recommending that users disable Java ontheir business and personal computers, because of a new surge ofhacker attacks that take advantage of a “zero-day vulnerability” inJava software. Java (which is different from Javascript) is one ofthe tools used by browsers to run complex visual applications, thoughrelatively few web sites actually use it. A “zero-day vulnerability”is one that’s been in the Java software for a long time, but was onlyrecently discovered by hackers, and is now being aggressivelyexploited to hack people’s computers. This warning applies to allbrowsers that run on Windows systems, MAC systems and Linux systems.The recommendation comes because of a surge of exploitations that werediscovered only four days ago, on Thursday. It’s now expected thatthe number of exploitations will grow dramatically, since over 400million computers are subject to the vulnerability. Oracle, thedeveloper of Java, has not announced if or when a patch will beavailable to repair the vulnerability. Information Week

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