New Year's Eve Fears

I don't have high hopes for 2025.

* Trump.

* H5N1. Trump makes this a much, much more serious and more likely to be lethal risk. This is one mutation away from mass pandemic status and may be much more deadly than COVID-19.

* The war in Ukraine continues. It will be three years old in two months. Trump is eager to abandon Ukraine and please Russia. The rest of NATO will continue to support Ukraine. Russia's capacity to fight a conventional ground war has been dramatically degraded and its conventional naval forces have been revealed to be more vulnerable than widely believed beforehand. While Russia is incrementally gaining territory, longer range Ukrainian strikes and covert operations have put targets deep inside Russia's borders at risk. Russia continues to lose soldiers and hard to replace military equipment on a daily basis. Russia's economy is straining. It's secrets about how to conduct a war and its weaknesses have been broadcast to the world. Troops sent by North Korea to support it are getting slaughtered by the thousands.

* We will see what kind of regime emerges in Syria with the fall of Assad's regime.

* Israel's multi-front war with Iran and its proxies continues and it has indefinitely occupied some Syrian territory on its border in the wake of the fall of Assad's regime there.

* Gaza has been leveled.

Millions of Palestinians are still in Gaza because they have no way to go anywhere else. But this is unsustainable. It is basically impossible to make this a place that can sustain life for millions of people without mass deaths before this is done, and no one has the will and money to make that happen anyway.

At this point there are really only two possibilities: Either the number of deaths surges from a few tens of thousand to many hundreds of thousands or more, or many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are exiled indefinitely from Gaza, a burden that no one has been willing to accept in the necessary numbers. Still, my assumption is that sooner or later, hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza will be relocated, willingly or unwillingly. The West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan would be the most obvious places to move them, but there are endless possibilities. Iran, which created this problem by encouraging the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas is the country that should take in the people of Gaza, but it probably won't.

* The civil war in Sudan continues to be a shit show. Nobody even has more than a rough estimate of how many have died or been injured in the conflict. Neither side is good, but the side that is backed by the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide is worse and backed by Arab monarchies. There are no signs of short term improvement in this catastrophic war.

* Because Trump took office, a massive global trade war is imminent. It will drive up prices in the U.S. at the expense of U.S. consumers, and destroy the economy. It will do almost nothing to help U.S. companies.

* Trump's promise of mass deportations promises to destroy the U.S. economy (especially agriculture, construction, and hospitality), to be a humanitarian nightmare, and to test once again the rule of law in the U.S.

* Trump's threats of conquest directed at our allies poses a risk of war.

* Trump's extreme weakness, stupidity, and hostility towards China could encourage more warlike action by China against Taiwan and the Philippines. 

* Trump's promise to pardon the thousand plus people convicted or facing charged from January 6 will lead to a surge in right-wing terrorism in the U.S. and undermine democracy.

* Maybe, if we are lucky, Trump won't live to complete his term. He isn't young, he isn't healthy, he isn't careful, all of which could lead to his death from natural causes, and he seems to have advancing dementia as well. Also, lots of people would like to assassinate him and there were two serious attempts to do so in 2024 already. If Trump died from natural causes before January 20, 2025, this could save the United States as a country.

* We can expect a surplus of serious natural disasters and extreme weather in 2025 that will probably surpass 2024, due to global warming.

* We are close to the internal combustion engine/electric vehicle tipping point. If it isn't in 2025, it will happen soon, even though Trump's policies may delay it in the U.S.

* While the left and the middle of the American political spectrum agrees that health care in the U.S. needs sweeping reforms, if anything, the Trump administration will only make things worse.

* The political right in the U.S. is increasingly opposed to education and libraries at all levels. We've seen a preview with book banning efforts, anti-intellectual Florida mandates for educators, and the effective ruin of New College in Florida already. An all out attack on academia and education, which is particularly intense in red states, is likely to get worse during the Trump administration.

* It isn't at all clear what the future looks like for reproductive rights. Dobbs was a catastrophe, but referenda and courts in many states have clawed back some of the losses. Other states, like Texas, for example, are absolutely horrible, with the quality of women's healthcare generally destroyed.

* MAGA's efforts to scapegoat transgender people continues and is gaining ground. Fleeing red states and conservative controlled institutions look like the only options for now.

* MAGA has rekindled racism in the U.S. and made it more strident. This seems likely to continue.

* Right wing Christianity's hate and sexism seem likely to continue the exodus from Christianity which came to a brief pause.

* Tax cuts are likely to undermine infrastructure in the U.S.

* If the right's battle against Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other public benefit programs is successful, we are going to see tens of millions of new poor people struggling for survival (and sometimes failing). The Trump recession will make it even worse.

The U.S. Has Evacuated Its Embassy In Sudan

Sudan is dissolving into another civil war and as a result, the U.S. is evacuating its embassy there. As the Associated Press reports:

U.S. special operations forces carried out a precarious evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Sudan on Sunday, sweeping in and out of the capital with helicopters on the ground for less than an hour. No shots were fired and no major casualties were reported.

With the final embassy employee out of Khartoum, the United States shuttered its diplomatic mission indefinitely. Remaining behind in the East African nation are thousands of private American citizens. U.S. officials said it would be too dangerous to carry out a broader evacuation operation.

Battles between two rival Sudanese commanders had forced the closing of the main international airport and left roads out of the country in control of armed fighters. The skirmishes has killed more than 400 people. . . .

About 100 U.S. troops in three MH-47 helicopters carried out the operation. They airlifted all of roughly 70 remaining American employees from a landing zone at the embassy to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia also provided overflight and refueling support, said Molly Phee, assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

Biden said Djibouti and Saudi Arabia provided assistance, too. . . .

U.S. Africa Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, were in contact with the factions before and during the operation to ensure that U.S. forces would have safe passage to conduct the evacuation. John Bass, an undersecretary of state, denied claims by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Security Forces that it assisted in the U.S. evacuation.

“They cooperated to the extent that they did not fire on our service members in the course of the operation,” Bass said.

Biden had ordered American troops to evacuate embassy personnel after receiving a recommendation from his national security team, with no end in sight to the fighting.

“This tragic violence in Sudan has already cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. It’s unconscionable and it must stop,” Biden said. “The belligerent parties must implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, allow unhindered humanitarian access, and respect the will of the people of Sudan.”

Sudan’s fighting broke out April 15 between two commanders who just 18 months earlier jointly orchestrated a military coup to derail the nation’s transition to democracy.

The power struggle between the armed forces chief, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the head of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has millions of Sudanese cowering inside their homes.

The violence has included an unprovoked attack on an American diplomatic convoy and numerous incidents in which foreign diplomats and aid workers were killed, injured or assaulted.

An estimated 16,000 private U.S. citizens are registered with the embassy as being in Sudan. The figure is rough because not all Americans register with embassy or say when they depart.

The embassy issued an alert earlier Saturday cautioning that “due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens.”

The U.S. evacuation planning for American employees of the embassy got underway in earnest on Monday after the embassy convoy was attacked in Khartoum. The Pentagon confirmed on Friday that U.S. troops were being moved to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti ahead of a possible evacuation.

Embassy evacuations conducted by the U.S. military are relatively rare and usually take place only under extreme conditions. When it orders an embassy to draw down staff or suspend operations, the State Department prefers to have its personnel leave on commercial transportation if that is an option.

When the embassy in Kyiv temporarily closed just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, staffers used commercial transport to leave.

In several other recent cases, notably in Afghanistan in 2021, conditions made commercial departures impossible or extremely hazardous. U.S. troops accompanied personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, in an overland convoy to Tunisia when they evacuated in 2014.

Evacuating embassies, and when possible, other U.S. nationals, from countries plunged into war, is a small, but important and recurring, mission of the U.S. military. 

Sudanese Soldiers Still Rape, Pillage and Kill

Sudanese soldiers raped over two hundred girls and women (some under 11 years old), looted property and killed some people in a village in Darfur in October.  Sudan has previously engaged in a concerted campaign of genocide in Darfur.

Nuba In Peril

The country of Sudan recently broke into two nations, a predominantly Muslim and Arabic language speaking north and a predominantly animist/Christian population with more cultural similarity to sub-Saharan Africa in the newly formed nation of South Sudan.

This didn't leave rump Sudan in the North without ongoing ethnic conflicts. Ethnic affilates with the main Northern population have carried out genocidal campaigns in the part of Western Sudan called Darfur against a population that is substantial (probably on the order of 40% of the population), but a minority, in the region, which makes the simple expedient of granting the region autonomy a less helpful solution.

There is also a pocket of ethnically South Sudan-like peoples in the South Kordofan province which include the Nuba Mountains whose adjective, Nubian, has historically been applied to black South Sudanese people generally.

From the point of view of lingustics, prehistory and anthropology, the Nuba Mountains are among the places in the world, bar none. The Nuba Mountains are home to multiple waves of small populations of relict peoples who have retreated there and retained their languages and to some extent their cultures and traditions as well when invading populations have routed them or forced them to submit culturally in the lowlands of the region.

The oldest layer of the palmpiset that is the Nuba Mountains are the Kordofan language speaking peoples. The Kordofan languages are the Northernmost, Easternmost and quite possibly the most archaic form of the Niger-Congo languages that are dominant in West Africa, on of which, Bantu, spread across Africa in the Bantu expansion, replacing indigenous languages across sub-Saharan Africa in the process.

Understanding the many languages spoken in the Nuba Mountains is critical to understanding the historical roots of the Niger-Congo languages and their likely past geographical expanse, and the historical roots of subsequent Chadic, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic languages that have all intersected in the region. The cultural preservation of their language also makes the oral histories, traditions, legends and religious practices of these peoples likely to be closer to their ancient forms that those peoples immersed in more recent intrusive languages and cultures like Arabic speaking Islamic peoples whose cultural ties are traceable to 7th century Arabia rather than the Sahel, Chad Basin and Upper Nile basin.

Those vital human traditions are in grave peril because the military of rump Sudan, in an indiscriminate effort to punish the people of Southern Kordofan for their South Sudanese political sentiments and support of its rebellion are currently dropping more or less random bombs from planes into populated areas with no military targets, killing people going to market, in their homes, filling water from wells and so on. Many of the dead are women and children. Planes roar overhead many times a day and bombs drop out of the sky for no apparent particular reason for particular bombings.

Appeals have been made to the United Nations, but a world weary with global financial meltdown, mass starvation in Somolia, detentes reached over South Sudanese independence and reductions in violence in Darfur, the Arab Spring including ongoing military struggles in Syria and Libya, and more, are having trouble hearing the cries from Nuba for action as well.

Now Sudanese Rise Up

Mirroring similar efforts in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan, there have now been uprisings in [North] Sudan.

South Sudan Holds Independence Vote

A vote is being held today to create a new country of South Sudan, a predominantly Christian/animist part of the the predominantly Arab Muslim nation of Sudan, that has endured a long insurgency that has killed two million people. About four million people are expected to vote and the outcome is almost certain to be a vote for independence, assuming the orderly voting allows the quorum for the election to be secured. I share the view of almost everyone in the West that this is a positive development compared to what came before it.

The new nation would be oil rich, but short of the educated people needed to give a nation real hope. I've read that 80% of its people are illiterate and that only 2% complete elementary school. I have little doubt that among women, the percentages are even lower. The new people share a larger "macro-culture" but are divided by local languages and tribal affiliations. All of the usual horrors of sub-Saharan Africa are present there enhanced by the additional burden of a long period of war. Mostly locals hope that a sovereign government's military and security resources may better protect them than the Sudanese government has in the past.

The ethnic divide between Muslims predominantly in the North, and Christian/animists predominantly in the South, is found across Africa at roughly the same latitude. This shouldn't be construed to mean that the Christians are the good guys and the Muslims are the bad guys, however. Uganda, adjacent to the new landlocked country and its principal connection to the outside world, for example, if famous for its virulent Christianity based anti-gay fervor and Christian based violent political movements. Rwanda and Burundi which are part of the same larger Christian/animist layer of sub-Saharan Africa are famous mostly for their repeated waves of genocidal slaughter in Hutu-Tutsi clashes. Over in Nigeria, religious compatriots still burn witches.

The area seeking independence does not include Darfur in West Central Sudan where genocidal killings have taken place with the approval of the government, although not always with its direct involvement. Indeed, to some extent, the removal of Darfur allies with South Sudan's independence from the political scene may undermine Darfur politically, although it may also provide a place of refuge for those fleeing the Darfur region.

Together with the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt by violent Muslim extremists, and the wholesale exile of a large share of the Iraqi Christian population in the Iraq War and subsequent political and religious violence, it also marks of trend in which there are fewer Christian presences and those that remain are threatened, in predominantly Muslim nations.

International Developments

* Estonia has become the 17th country to use the Euro.

* South Sudan votes on independence on Monday. This does not include genocide plagued Darfur, but does include most of the animist/Christian minority in the country.

The Births Of Nations On Hold

At least two new nations are on the verge of being born.

New Sudan

One, South Sudan (possibly to be named "New Sudan") is likely to come into being around 2011. It is essentially full autonomous already and is acting like its own country, developing its own diplomatic ties via Kenya, and strong economic ties with Uganda. Final details largely concern its control over White Nile water and division of oil wealth. The largely Christian and animist region with relatively fertile farming has been autonomous since about 2005, after a long and deadly civil war that killed about 2 million people. It has sought autonomy from the military influenced, largely Islamic leadership of Sudan.

The Darfur region in the West of Sudan, which has provoked international outrage over genocidal efforts by local Arab militias and collusion with the national government is not part of South Sudan and poses separate issues. The Arab Muslim v. Christian/animist dynamic is essentially the same. But, ethically, Darfur is more mixed (or was before genocidal campaigns killed 200,000 people and sent another 2,000,000 into refugee camps), and economic survival in relatively barren Darfur is a dicey proposition in the best of times.

Kosovo

The other is Kosovo. There, about 90% of people in this autonomous region of Serbia are ethically Albanian Muslims, and only U.S. led NATO intervention and U.N. peacekeepers have prevented Serbian massacres (Serbia, of course, sponsored genocide largely directed as Bosnian Muslims in the Bosnian civil war, and is largely Orthodox Christian religiously).

Serbia has based its claim to Kosovo largely on a desire to protect sites important to Serbia historically and to protect a Serbian minority in Kosovo, but as much as anything else, it is a matter of national pride to hold onto Kosovo, as Serbia has been willing to cede almost everything be sovereignty in interminable negotiations over the province's status. The international community has held off on granting Kosovo independence over Serbia's objection essentially entirely due to Russia's objections. But, the international community is manuevering diplomatically to circumvent Russia's objections and give Kosovo the independence that its residents overwhelmingly desire.

Montenegro recently left its nominal federation with Serbia.

The situation in Bosnia, by the way, while stabilized for now, is still unfinished business. The U.N. still keeps the peace, and in practice, Bosnia is essentially two countries -- a Serbian region (mostly to the East and North), and a Muslim-Croat federation (mostly to the West and South). This division has religious dimensions as well. Croatia is largely Roman Catholic.

From an outsider's view, the obvious thing to do seems to be to grant Kosovo independence, while permitting the Bosnia Serb autonomous region to merge with contiguous Serbia proper (possibly merging a couple of islands of isolated Bosnian Croat federation territory on the Croatian border with Croatia). But, apparently, it isn't that easy, as the international community doesn't want to open the cauldron of changing national borders without mutual consent or appearing to reward genocidal tactics.

Iraq

One reason that the situations in Sudan and Kosovo matter in the larger world is that they create precedents for the international community that are relevant in the Middle East.

The Kurdish region of Iraq is in a similar de facto autonomous, but legally non-sovereign state to Kosovo and South Sudan, and like these two other regions would very much like to be its own state. Also, like South Sudan, water and oil right negotiations are relevant to its autonomy.

Independence for these regions would strengthen both the Kurdish case and the argument that the rest of Iraq ought to be partitioned as well.

Elsewhere

These aren't, of course, the only restive autonomous regions in the world.

In the developed world, politics seem to have calmed a number of autonomous areas by granting them sufficient autonomy. Quebec, Puerto Rico, Basque Spain, Castille, Galacia, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all seem willing to accept their lot for now. Taiwan's love-hate relationship with China seems to be swinging towards the love side, and Hong Kong seems to be managing despite the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over it. Cyprus, however, still seems to be taking baby steps towards harmony.

This isn't to say that all is well in the world. Columbia's central government and the region controlled by the FARC seem to be in a standoff. The last that I heard, Muslim majority areas in the Southern Philippines were as committed to a violent struggle for independence as ever. Strife between Muslims and non-Muslims also appears to be at the root of autonomy motivated strife in Thailand and Nigeria. Other West African nations have also experienced civil war and regional tensions rooted in splits between those in the Muslim North and those in Christian/animist Southern regions, but with civil wars reduced to a simmer or ended in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast, and averted in Mali, these fracture lines may not emerge again for some time. Of course, Israeli-Palestinian tensions continue unabated as they have for many decades now.

Kashmir in Northern India is not at peace, nor are the "tribal" regions of Pakistan content with their status vis the central government although political approaches have softened their usual disregard for central authority. And, the Kurds of Turkey still want out of the nation to form their own Kurdish country.

Somolia is largely a country without a government but seems to be well along in the process of reconsolidation with Ethiopian backing of a weak national government. Regional and religious separationist movements in Algeria and Morocco-Western Sahara seem to have quieted down lately. Unrest in independence minded Aceh, Indonesia is apparently easing, but I've heard no indications that Sri Lanka is near the end of its long standing bloody civil war.

Maoist insurgencies in Northeast India also appear to be alive and well, and while not an issue of national boundaries, the Maoist insurgency in Nepal also appears to be in full swing. Tibet appears irrevocably conquered by China with insurgency and independence efforts their crushed and migration from the East underway in part in an effort to wipe out the region's distinct identity.

Then, there are other messes left behind in the wake of the Soviet Union's dissolution. Russia appears to have strong designs on Belarus. Ukraine is deeply divided, largely on an East-West axis. Moldova also appears to be divided on similar lines, despite the fact that it is itself tiny. Chechnya still longs to be free of its Russian yoke. And, the other splinters of division in the Caucusus are too complicated to follow without a program. As Wikipedia explains:

The nation-states that compose the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and various parts of Russia. The Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Kalmykia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. Three territories in the region claim independence but are not generally acknowledged as nation-states by the international community: Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia.

I'm sure I've missed a few restive autonomous regions here and there. This isn't to say that there aren't consolidating influences afoot as well. The European Union is increasingly becoming a nation, rather than a mere alliance between fully autonmous nation-states. The Caribbean, Latin America and parts of Africa are trying to emulate the European Union's success on that score. But, on the whole, it seems like there are more pressures for division than national union afoot in the world.