What connects these three events?
Answer: Money.
A whole chain of events that can be tied to some ill-thought policies of Alan Greenspan and others like him lead to the sub-prime crisis. The US economy started unpacking its house of cards from one corner (the housing market). Fortunately, the US is already an advanced country and so it does not need extra housing. If a housing collapse were to happen in a developing country like India, etc. there would have been a civil war. Nevertheless, the sub-prime crisis brought down the level of the sea of greed and exposed people who were initially thought to be unaffected by the unfolding crisis.
Most notable among them was Bernard Madoff who was safeguarding 50 billion dollars which did not exist. But other failures disguised themselves as "institutional" failures (Lehman Brothers, etc.) and tried to escape attention. But they were equally bad failures. Many rich jews were Madoff's clients. Madoff's adventures and other downfalls in the US also rippled into Europe where an erstwhile rich country (Iceland) is literally pan-handling for survival from Russia and other countries. Many have committed suicide.
The once powerful Eagle is no longer landed, nor is it soaring. It is barely flying with a broken wing.
Terrorism has a nefarious connection with the rich and sometimes famous. The connections cannot be established very immediately and even to explain the connections would require the skills of the likes of Frederick Forsythe or John le Carré. But the linkages exist all right. The collections from the rich trickle down through possible do-good volunteer organizations and get into hot spots such as the Palestine, Sri Lanka and Israel. (Well, I suspect some of the money even goes quite directly to Israel without even being hidden because the US government used to be quite blatantly pro-Israel)
The economic collapse hastened not just the exit of an unworthy president but even the concept of a Republican is considered bad news nowadays. Enter Obama. The Jews have lost much of their money and the prospect of getting the economy to work back in their favour is also not very clear. To them Obama is literally a dark horse: They are not very sure how he may react to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He seems to utter a lot of comforting and do-good words that refer more to Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and their ilk. "Is he a hidden socialist perhaps?" Hmmm... perhaps... bad news for the Israelis. Thus; before Obama came in as a president legally, they decided to bomb the sh*t off the Palestinans at Gaza. They even got a favourable "agreement" signed by Condeleezza Rice just a few days back. So everything is signed, sealed and delivered as per their agenda and their larger motivations.
And now we come to the LTTE. The Sri Lankan army has also got a serendipitous opportunity: (Sri Lanka was once labeled as "serendip" in a book by Horace Walpole. Hence the word "serendipity") The economic collapse has also stripped money from the Tamilian diaspora who collected money for their revolution in the scenic island country at the foot of the Indian sub-continent. With the money disappearing, the LTTE can no longer afford fuel and ammunition required to keep a constant vigil against the Sri Lankan army.
The LTTE is therefore on the run, with an injured eagle flying overhead. I dread the time when the eagle will land and get its wing fixed. More money will flow back into terrorism and these hot-spots. What should have been resolved conflicts will again open up for more blood-letting.
We are living in complex times; indeed!
