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Analysis by NIH of black hate crimes against Asian American women
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Early on Tuesday morning, during rush-hour at a Brooklyn subway station, a man in a construction vest carrying a backpack reached into his backpack and donned a gas mask, then reached into his backpack and set off an explosive smoke canister, and then pulled out a gun and shot at least 16 people. All the injured people are recovering. The suspected shooter, Frank R. James, is the subject of a manhunt.
The incident took place in the Sunset Park neighborhood, predominantly home to Asian and Hispanic communities.
The suspect, Frank R. James, is a 62 year old black man.
The police have said that the motive is unknown, but the fact that the perpetrator is black and the target is an Asian neighborhood, means that this act of violence fits an increasingly familiar pattern -- black men targeting Asians, especially Asian women. Asian women have been attacked by blacks, whites and Hispanics, but the majority have been by blacks, according to a report by the National Institutes of Health.
In March of last year, there was a mass shooting of Asian women in Atlanta. The shooter was white, but it gave rise to questions about what was going on.
I wrote an article on the subject, based on a posting in January by the National Institutes of Health, which used data from the Department of Justice to "examine the nature and characteristics of hate crimes against Asian Americans." The report compared hate crimes against Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics.
The following is an edited version of what I wrote in that article.
The most important finding of the report is that perpetrators of hate crimes against Asians are most likely to be blacks, for economic reasons. This is something that's been known anecdotally for a long time, but the NIH report confirms it. It's also clear that the writers of the NIH report don't want you to easily find this result, probably for fear that if they expose the truth, they'll get fired or canceled.
You have to go far into the report to find the results (search for "Table 3" or "Findings of this study, however, also provide support to the minority-specific model"), but the findings are clear:
"Hate crimes against Asian Americans are more likely than hate crimes against either African Americans or Hispanics to be committed by non-White offenders."
"This finding may be attributed to animosity toward the “model minority” from other minority groups. As aforementioned, the “model minority” stereotype assuming Asian Americans’ success in economics, education, and other opportunities generates potential competition or threats by members of other racial groups, which in turn may lead to resentment to be further acted upon through hate crimes."
"Offenders of other minorities of color targeting Asian Americans might fit the category of “reactionists." ... Instead of acting impulsively, the “reactionists” are motivated by protecting their resources from competitors.... This finding might also lend indirect support to the perspective of racial competition motivating hate crimes, which argues that when members of a racial group perceive that their access and privileges to material resources are threatened by other racial groups during economic downturns, racial conflict and hate crimes may occur."
So now we return to Frank R. James, the 62 year old black "person of interest" in Tuesday's Brooklyn subway shooting. James is still at large, so we still can't be sure that he was actually the shooter, we still can't be sure whether he had help, and we still can't be sure what his motive was. We can imagine that James has built up 62 years of hatred and resentment against the American system, and against Asian Americans in particular, as suggested by the NIH report, but we may not know for sure for many days or weeks.
All we can say at this time is that we see a familiar pattern, which becomes worse every month, identified by the National Institutes of Health, of Asian American women being victims of hate crimes by blacks, and that problem still has to be recognized and solved, whether or not Frank R. James is Tuesday's shooter.
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(13-Apr-2022)
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Ukraine war causes global food and fuel prices to spike
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
In 2011, sharp increases in global food prices led protests that started in Tunisia and spread like wildfire across the entire Mideast in something called the "Arab Awakening." There were coups in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and wars in Yemen and Syria are continuing to this day.
With global food and fuel prices spiking, unrest is growing in several Asian nations, and there is the prospect of a new wildfire spreading across Asia.
Ukraine has been the largest wheat exporter in the world, with countries in Asia, the Mideast and Africa largely dependent on Ukraine's exports through the Black Sea. But now Russia has shut down ports in the Black Sea, with the result that there are massive stockpiles of wheat in Ukraine that can't be exported. Russia's port blockade is creating global shortages of wheat, corn and cooking oils, resulting in food shortages and high food prices.
Fertilizer and fuel prices have also been spiking globally. This is also caused by Russia's attack on Ukraine, but is also caused by President Biden's fanatical attack on the the American fossil fuel industry.
Sri Lanka is in the midst of its worst economic crisis in decades, with shortages of food and fuel, and steep price rises. There are daily power cuts, and people have to queue for hours to get cooking gas and diesel.
This has led to days of sometimes violent anti-government protest, with demands that president Gotabaya Rajapaksa step down.
Watching the street protests on al-Jazeera, I saw many protesters carrying signs with slogans. Two of the most amusing slogans that I noticed were the following:
Sri Lanka has become the poster child for China's "debt trap diplomacy," typically signing deals with the following terms:
In 2008, Rajapaksa signed the agreement with China to build the Hambantota seaport. This was China's first major "debt trap" deal, putting Sri Lanka into so much debt that it had to hand control of the seaport over to China. Furthermore, China not only has control of the Hambantota seaport, but it also has control of a large enclave of Chinese workers and their families who are employees of the seaport. The seaport project has been a disaster for Sri Lanka.
Today, Sri Lanka is still in so much debt that it will never be paid back. This debt crisis is on top of the spike in food and fuel prices, and is triggering large anti-government riots that could spiral.
Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan was ousted from power, after losing a no-confidence vote in parliament on Saturday. A new prime minister will be chosen next week.
Khan had created a constitutional crisis a week ago when he tried to prevent the no-confidence vote from occurring by dissolving parliament and calling for new elections. However, Pakistan's Supreme Court declared this to be illegal, and said that the no-confidence vote had to go ahead. So it did go ahead, and Khan lost.
However, it's far from clear that Khan will go quietly. He claims that he will not recognize an opposition government.
He also claims, without evidence, that there was a US-led conspiracy to remove him. It's pretty standard behavior for any politician around the world to blame their problems on the United States, and Khan is no exception.
Many people fear that Khan will refuse to step down, but will assume dictatorial power to prevent the opposition party and prime minister from taking power. This could lead to violence or even a new civil war. It's been 75 since since the 1947 Partition War between Hindus and Muslims that followed the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan, so, like much of the world, Pakistan is overdue for a new generational Crisis war. The spike in food and fuel price is hitting Karachi and the interior very hard, and that might be the trigger.
Chinese coast guard vessels and warships have been harassing Philippines fishing and research vessels in Philippine waters adjacent to the South China Sea. This harassment activity has been going on for years, as China has illegally annexed and militarized the South China Sea, including waters historically part of the Philippines, Vietnam, and other countries. When I did my research for my book "World View: War between China and Japan," I found that China has absolutely no historical claim to the South China Sea, and this is consistent the finding of the UN court in the Hague that China's claim to the South China Sea is illegal. China's claims are simply a hoax.
Ever since Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte came to power in 2016, he has sucked up to China.
In fact, in 2018, Duterte recounted a conversation with Xi Jinping that made the threat of war explicit. Xi said that if the Philippines drills for oil and gas in its own territorial waters, then China will go to war. Duterte concluded:
"Are they willing to fight? Because if they are willing to fight, we are. But why would I do that? It will result in a massacre and it will just destroy everything."
So Duterte appeased China and gave in to all of China's demands.
In a phone call on Friday between Duterte and Xi Jinping, Duterte continued his policy of appeasing China, while Xi promised to invest more money in the Philippines. However, Duterte's term as president will end in June, and a new president may or may not continue the policy of appeasing China.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan:
Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book
2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references,
$13.99
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
Sources
Related articles:
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread
of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(10-Apr-2022)
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Russia's incompetence in the Ukraine invasion
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The purpose of this article is to provide a historical analysis of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in order to forecast what is most likely to come next.
Russia has been conducting numerous war crimes, making indiscriminate attacks on civilians and residential neighborhoods, flattening villages and cities with illegal cluster bombs, illegal cassette bombs and illegal thermobaric bombs. Russia hasn't yet begun using illegal chemical weapons, as they used in Syria and Chechnya, but that's presumably coming.
There are now some ten million displaced people in Ukraine who have lost their homes. Three million refugees have flooded into neighboring countries, including Poland, Hungary and Romania.
Russia is supposedly withdrawing some forces from around Kiev into the Donbase in the east, near the border with Russia. Many analysts believe that they're being redeployed in preparation for a new assault on Kiev.
The most common opinion among military analysts is that the Russian army botched the war, and has been shown to be incompetent. This is the subject that I want to explore in detail in this article.
I'd like to address the skill sets possessed by an army, and the societal culture from which the army comes.
Suppose you have an expert gardener. She came from parents who valued gardening, and raised her to develop powerful gardening skills.
Now suppose you have an expert carpenter. He came from parents who valued carpentry, and raised him to develop powerful carpentry skills.
Now ask the gardener to do carpentry, and ask the carpenter to do gardening. Both will do a poor job, and may be totally baffled. You can train them to do their new jobs, but the training will take many months, but even after training they won't do their new jobs well, since they lack the cultural background to do so.
I'm going to make the argument that Russia's army has the skills and culture to be effective within Russia, as in defending against Napoleon and Hitler, but does not have the skills and culture to be effective in an expeditionary war, as is currently occurring in Ukraine. Before making that argument, I'll give some examples.
The first example is the Mfecane war ("the crushing") of the 1820s in southern Africa, a remarkable example of how a leader can change the skills and culture of an army, and turn it into a formidable expeditionary fighting force.
The southern portion of Africa in the first decades of the 1800s was a region in great turmoil, with many different populations competing for resources.
Among the indigenous populations, the Zulus were an obscure tribe in the Transvaal, the northern portion of what is now South Africa. The Zulus went from obscurity to world renown as a result of Shaka, born in 1787, who became the tribal chief in 1816, and who took the Zulu from being a tribe to being an empire.
Standard practice in tribal wars of the time was that the fighters of each warring tribe would throw long spears from a distance at the fighters of the other tribe. Shaka changed both the skills and the culture by having his fighters carry short spears, requiring them to attack the other fighters at close range. Shaka revolutionized tribal warfare with these new kinds of spears and warfare techniques, resulting in the deaths of millions of indigenous Africans, by the time the war climaxed in 1828. Shaka's Zulu Empire left behind vast uninhabited regions by obliterating the populations that used to live there.
The great Zulu Empire lasted for decades, until it was destroyed by the British in 1879 in the bloody Anglo-Zulu war. At the climax of that crisis war, the Zulus were dispersed, and the Zulu nation ended.
A reader expressed surprise that the Russians have had more casualties in one month than the Americans had in the entire Vietnam war. Actually, this isn't surprising at all.
A basic tenet of the American culture is that each individual human life is valuable, and is worthy of saving and protecting. So it's not surprising that the American armed forces placed a very high priority on reducing casualties, with the result that American casualties were low during the Vietnam war.
The Americans had developed plenty of skills for fighting expeditionary wars. They had fought the Nazis and Imperial Japanese during World War II, and then the Korean war, and so by the time of the Vietnam War, they had developed powerful doctrines for winning wars with few casualties. That is the American culture.
The North Vietnamese and Chinese cultures are very different. They place very little value on an individual human life. The result was different battle tactics that led to many casualties. During the Vietnam and Korean wars, they used human wave tactics, which means that they used an infantry of hundreds or thousands of soldiers, attacking a well-defended enemy position, intended to overwhelm the enemy by sheer weight of numbers and regardless of inevitable high casualties.
This cultural difference actually gave the North Vietnamese a big tactical advantage during the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese could suffer huge numbers of casualties and win because Americans did not want to suffer even a few casualties.
In my recent book, "World View: Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War," I quoted Bui Diem, Saigon's Ambassador to Washington from 1967 to 1972, who gave his assessment of why America lost the war. He emphasized the cultural differences between the American and Vietnamese soldiers:
"In the eyes of the South Vietnamese, the Americans created for themselves extra difficulties by making the war too expensive by the way they fought it. The men from the "affluent society" brought into Vietnam a new kind of war never seen or even thought of before. The Vietnamese opened their eyes wide in bewilderment when they saw U.S. forces supplied with hot meals by helicopter while still in combat. They saw the thousands of unnecessary gadgets piled high in huge PXs, the hundreds of planes crossing the Pacific for the transport of American troops on rotation. They witnessed the more than generous use of bombs and ammunition by the U.S. forces, and hours of bombing and strafing . . . triggered in many instances by mere sniper fire."
I'm not going to pass judgment on whether it's a good idea to send helicopters to provide hot meals to soldiers on the front line. I'm simply pointing to this as a capability that requires a great deal of organizational skill and coordination, skills in logistics and command and control, and indicative of America's capabilities in executing an expeditionary war.
England has had centuries of experience with expeditionary wars, and we inherited those skills. We built on those skills since WW II with the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghan wars. All of these wars have been politically controversial, but one thing they unequivocally accomplished was giving the American army the skills to fight an expeditionary war.
This assessment illustrates powerfully how armies are as different from one another as gardeners and carpenters. There were vast differences in both skills and culture between the American and Vietnamese soldiers. Keep this in mind when we discuss the Russian army. In particular, the American ability to fight an expeditionary war with few casualties was and is unmatched in the world. However, as we saw in Vietnam, this doesn't necessarily mean that the American army always wins, since the American culture and skills are at a disadvantage when facing human wave attacks.
The Russian people hate the Chinese people but love the European people, even though Russia has been invaded by both, the worst invasion being the hated "Mongol Yoke" that followed the 1209 Mongol invasion of China, followed by an attack and conquest of almost all the Russian principalities, making them bitter vassals of the Mongol Empire for two centuries.
The major European invasions of Russia were all non-crisis (Awakening/Unraveling era) wars for Russia, fought in conjunction with a crisis war for Europe. These were the Great Northern War with Sweden during the European War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), Napoleon's invasion (1812) following the French Revolution, and Hitler's invasion during World War II. Russia's army performed very well in defending "Mother Russia" during these wars, which were non-crisis wars even though they presented an existential crisis for Russia.
Russia's crisis wars for the last few centuries were internal rebellions -- the Razin's peasant rebellion in the 1600s, Pugachev's Rebellion in the 1770s, the Crimean War in the 1850s, and the Bolshevik Revolution in the 1910s. In other words, Russia has never had a successful expeditionary crisis war.
This leads me to posit the following claim: That Russia's army has been and is incompetent when executing an expeditionary war, but is extremely competent in fighting an invading army within Russia. In other words, the Russians don't have the culture and skills to fight an expeditionary war.
I have to add that "Navigator," a military historian posting in the Generational Dynamics forum, disagrees with this claim. He says that the "trigger" for the Russian army to become extremely competent is when Mother Russia is being threatened. The current war in Ukraine may provide the answer to which of these claims is correct.
There are obvious differences in skill and culture requirements between an army fighting a defensive internal war versus an army fighting an expeditionary war in another country. The local civilian population supports the army in one case, and opposes the army in the other case.
Much of the incompetence of Russia's army in Ukraine can be attributed directly to the opposition by the local population. The following are things that I've heard analysts say to explain Russia's failure in Ukraine:
Contrast that with America's performance in Vietnam, where helicopters delivered hot meals to the soldiers in the front line. I'm not saying whether that's good or bad, but it does illustrate a mastery of supply line management that the Russians do not have.
In 1939, Russia's dictator Josef Stalin ordered an invasion of Finland to gain territory to serve as a buffer between Germany and Russia. This war is remarkably similar in many ways to Putin's current invasion of Ukraine. Here's how history.com describes it:
"On November 30, 1939, following a series of ultimatums and failed negotiations, the Soviet Red Army launched an invasion of Finland with half a million troops.Though vastly outnumbered and outgunned in what became known as the “Winter War,” the Finns had the advantage of fighting on home turf. Led by Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, they hunkered down behind a network of trenches, concrete bunkers and field fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus and beat back repeated Soviet tank assaults. Elsewhere on the frontier, Finnish ski troops used the rugged landscape to conduct hit-and-run attacks on isolated Soviet units. Their guerilla tactics were only aided by the freezing Finnish winter, which bogged the Soviets down and made their soldiers easy to spot against snowy terrain. One Finnish sniper, a farmer named Simo Häyhä, was eventually credited with over 500 kills. While the Finns put up a spirited resistance during the winter of 1939-1940, their troops were ultimately no match for the sheer immensity of the Red Army. In February 1940, following one of the largest artillery bombardments since World War I, the Soviets renewed their onslaught and overran the Finnish defenses on the Karelian Isthmus. With its forces low on ammunition and nearing the brink of exhaustion, Finland agreed to peace terms the following month.
The treaty ending the Winter War forced Finland to cede 11 percent of its territory to the Soviet Union, yet the country maintained its independence and later squared off against Russia a second time during World War II. For the Soviets, meanwhile, victory came at a heavy cost. During just three months of fighting, their forces suffered over 300,000 casualties compared to around 65,000 for the Finns. The Winter War may have also carried important consequences for World War II. Among other things, the Red Army’s lackluster performance is often cited as a key factor in Adolf Hitler’s mistaken belief that his June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union would be a success."
Russia's final "victory" over Finland was the result of what was essentially a human wave attack. Stalin has been quoted as saying, "Quantity has a quality all its own," referring to such an attack.
So far, the Russian invasion of Ukraine appears to be very similar to the Soviet invasion of Finland. "Navigator," the military historian whom I quoted earlier, said that he believes that the Russians will make the "post Winter War" adjustments and begin a national militarization and mass mobilization. This will allow them to repeat the human wave attacks of 1939-40.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union. More than 3 million German and Axis troops invaded the Soviet Union along an 1,800-mile-long front. But in this case, the roles of invader and defender were reversed from the Winter War, with the obvious consequences.
Hitler's Blitzkrieg victories in Belgium and France made him overconfident, even though his attempted invasion of Britain was faltering. In Russia, the Nazi army made numerous blunders, and was overwhelmed by the long supply lines, the harsh Russian winter, and the fierce opposition of the Russian civilians, who were defending "Mother Russia." The Nazis attacked but failed to control any large cities -- Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Moscow or Stalingrad (Volgograd). Hitler's defeat in Russia turned the tide decisively toward the Allies.
Few people believe that Russia will agree to any "peace deal" short of full conquest of Ukraine, and possibly Moldova, Poland, Romania, and the Baltics as well. Vladimir Putin expected a quick victory in Ukraine, and as his army suffered one setback after another, Putin is suffering from Cognitive Dissonance which will only infuriate him and cause him to double and triple down on the offensive. As suggested, Putin's next step may be national militarization and mass mobilization of the Russian population in defense of "Mother Russia," in preparation for a human wave assault on Ukraine. This would be similar to Stalin's actions in Finland in the Winter War.
Of course, there are some significant differences between Russia's invasions of Finland and Ukraine, mainly the possible interventions of Nato and China. Poland and the East European countries cannot afford for Ukraine to lose, and China cannot afford for Russia to lose. This is a formula for a long war, a proxy war, and a war that will spread to the rest of Europe.
I've written about the generational theory concept of the "Regeneracy" for years: During a generational Crisis Era, bitterly opposed political factions put their political differences aside and unite against the common enemy, in a regeneracy of civic unity for the first time since the end of the previous crisis war.
In my last article, I described how the Regeneracy applied to the European nations. All of these countries had significant political differences, but now they are increasingly united against Russia.
What about Russia itself? There have been some scattered anecdotes about Russians turning against Putin, but most reports indicate that the vast majority of Russians support Putin's war in Ukraine, especially as he has cut off all foreign media and allow only state-run media that says that Mother Russia is defending against Nazis in Ukraine.
In America, the position of the Biden administration is confusion, and laden with mixed messages, including contradictory statements by the president and vice-president.
There are numerous reports quoting unnamed administration and military officials that Biden has been pressuring Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept any peace deal offered by the Russians, even one that gives up significant territory to the Russians. Biden's motivation would be that any other outcome would be a block to his fanatical support of the "green new deal."
However, it's increasingly clear every day that Biden's war on the domestic fossil fuel industry is causing huge spikes in energy prices and inflation, which is causing Europe to suffer, and is providing the funding for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Zelenskyy is considered a hero by many Americans, while Vladimir Putin is considered evil incarnate, and this is causing many Democrats and Republicans to demand that Biden change policies. Biden has been forced to speed up military aid and weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The pressure is growing to support and encourage more domestic development of gas and oil, rather than beg Iran and Venezuela to produce more. This is the Regeneracy process in America, and it is continuing.
After my last article, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who have written to me to wish me well, and to tell me how valuable my articles have been by providing a non-ideological explanation of what's actually going on in the world. By applying modern generational theory to historical and current events, I've apparently filled a very important need for a few thousand people, much more than I previously realized. It makes me want to go on, as best as I can.
If any organization or college would like to set it up, I would be willing to give a Zoom course on Generational Dynamics. Here's the blurb: Twenty years ago I began developing Generational Dynamics, a methodology for analyzing historical and current events, based on Forrester's MIT System Dynamics applied to generational flows, and incorporating Chaos Theory and technology forecasting. My web sites, generationaldynamics.com and gdxforum.com, contain over 6,000 articles with thousands of analyses and predictions about hundreds of countries, and they've all come true or are trending true. None has been proven wrong. In addition, I've written four books on the history of Iran, China and Vietnam, and the history and theology of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism. The major prediction over the last 20 years has been that we are headed for a global financial crisis and a world war against China. That time is now approaching. So now, the Russia-Ukraine war is just beginning, and it is expected to cause a chain reaction that will lead to a major European war, and within a couple of years to a world war and a global depression.
I would also like to repeat my invitation to some organization or college that would like to take on the responsibility on further development of Generational Dynamics.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Vietnam, Buddhism, and the
Vietnam War: How Vietnam became an economic powerhouse after the
Vietnam War" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 4), March 2021
Paperback: 325 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99 Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738645/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan:
Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book
2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references,
$13.99
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy
-- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East"
(Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018 Paperback:
153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00 Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
John Xenakis is author of: "Generational Dynamics Anniversary Edition - Forecasting
America's Destiny",
(Generational Theory Book Series, Book 3), January 2020,
Paperback: 359 pages, $14.99,
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/Generational-Dynamics-Anniversary-Forecasting-Americas/dp/1732738629/
Sources:
Related Articles:
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread
of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(3-Apr-2022)
Permanent Link
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Donate to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
South Korea's election of Yoon Suk-yeol moves the country to the right
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which was supposed to succeed within a few days, is currently looking like a debacle.
Russia's president Vladimar Putin ordered hundreds of thousands of troops into the battle, along with tanks, artillery, warplanes, and dozens of warships in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to Ukraine's south.
Russia is conducting massive genocide and war crimes, bombing and flattening innocent women and children in one village after another causing enormous suffering, specifically targeting schools and hospitals, driving millions of refugees into neighboring countries -- for no discernible reason at all except the sociopathic genocidal mind of Putin.
Russia has become an international pariah state, condemned by 141 countries in the United Nations General Assembly, with 23 abstentions (including China), and only five countries opposing the condemnation: North Korea, Belarus, Eritrea, Syria, and Russia itself. Thanks to international sanctions, Russia's economy is becoming increasingly distressed.
While Putin is being condemned as an international war criminal, Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is being viewed as a "Churchillian hero," starting with his refusal to flee the country in the way that Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani had fled.
The Ukrainian people have turned out to be extremely resilient, much more so than anyone expected, after Russia had simply rolled over Crimea in 2014. They've prevented Russian troops from taking control of Kharkiv, Mariupol, and other large cities that Russia has attacked, and so far Kiev has remained out of reach.
The Ukrainians have killed hundreds of Russians, destroyed dozens of tanks, and shot down tens of Russian warplanes.
This does not mean that Russia will be defeated. Far from it. Vladimir Putin has a history of reacting to losses by using increasingly horrific war crimes. In Syria, Russia sent missiles into school dormitories to kill children, or dropped barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons on civilian neighborhoods, or using Sared gas to kill large groups of people. The barrel bombs, missiles and chemical weapons specifically targeted schools, markets and hospitals, in order to kill as many women and children as possible, Since chlorine gas is heavier than air, it seeps down into the basements and forces the choking women and children out into the open, where they can be targeted by missiles and gunfire.
As Putin becomes increasingly desperate, he is expected to employ increasingly horrific violence, including the tactics used in Syria and in Chechnya. If he becomes desperate enough, it's even possible he'll resort to tactical nuclear weapons.
However, even if he manages to kill Zelenskyy and subdue the country, the battle will be far from over. An occupation army of a couple of hundred thousand people is not nearly enough to fight an insurgency in a country of 44 million people. Furthermore, there will be millions of Ukrainian refugees in neighboring countries who will be prepared to do what they can to defeat the Russian occupancy. This would be extremely expensive for Russia to sustain, and it's not believed he could do so for long.
China and Russia have been historic enemies, with the Chinese and Russian people hating each other, but the two countries have been united by their common enemies, the United States and the West. Nonetheless, China has found it impossible to give a full-throated endorsement to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. China is a close ally of Ukraine, and has invested heavily in Ukraine.
I've previously described long-term delusional geopolitical strategy of the Chinese Communists to gain hegemony over the entire world. This analysis was based on a CCP newsletter forwarded to me by a web site reader. (See "16-Dec-20 World View -- China's delusional geopolitical strategy")
Guided by China's leadership, countries throughout Africa, Asia and the Mideast will put aside their disagreements. Old hatreds will be mended by necessity, to attract capital for investments. These include countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan. China will create a "global colossal," of dozens of countries in a massive multi-country partnership, bound together by China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The plan specifies concessions to be made by one nation after another to "mend old hatreds," but it doesn't contain a single example of China making any concession whatsoever.
According to the CCP newsletter: "The big question is how America will respond to the challenge of connecting so much of the world through trade and peace. Their containment policy has failed so far. The choice is either to join this more peaceful venture or to fight it. If the latter choice is adopted it will result in a global war between America and its remaining allies and the combined forces of China and Russia."
This whole delusional fantasy strategy has been torn apart by Russia's Ukraine invasion. The Chinese Communists had assumed that the world would welcome Chinese hegemony, but it's clear that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would also make China as much a pariah as Russia is. The whole strategy of using BRI to make the world love China has been shown to be ridiculous, even to the delusional Chinese Communists.
Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communists will abandon their plans of world domination. To the contrary, the Chinese Communists will become desperate, and will adopt the most horrific tactics, including a nuclear weapons attack on the United States. China has been threatening to invade Taiwan for years, and is too well invested in that goal to abandon it. Furthermore, China has been preparting a nuclear attack on America for decades, and will launch it as a time of its choosing.
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Former prosecutor and conservative Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party won South Korea's presidential election on Wednesday, defeating the liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party, which had formerly been led by the incumbent president Moon Jae-in. Yoon will take office on May 10.
Yoon is expected to take a harsher line towards China and North Korea than did his predecessor Moon, and is expected to be more closely aligned with US policy than Moon. For example, Yoon has voiced a need to deploy another American Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad) anti-missile system to deter North Korea. The 2016 installation of the first Thaad battery in South Korea triggered massive economic retaliation from China that lasted nearly two years.
By the way, Yoon has developed a reputation for being a "non-woke" politician. His wife, Kim Keon-hee, has been attacked by feminist activists for criticizing sexual harassment "opportunists."
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have undoubtedly been shocked at the unity of the international community to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Putin certainly expected to take advantage of a split among the countries of Nato, but now the Nato countries seem completely unified. Even Germany will be sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, in a major reversal of policy.
This is the generational theory "Regeneracy" that I've been talking about for years. I've been writing about it domestically, as the regeneracy of civic unity, where Americans put political differences aside and unite against the common enemy. Today we're seeing the same thing internationally, as countries around the world unite against Russia.
The regeneracy has also united Western-linked countries in Asia. South Korea's election aligns it more closely with America. Japan has strongly condemned Russia's invasion, and has announced that it will end "peace talks" about the Kuril Islands dispute.
The interesting political battle in the next few months will be over energy. So-called "green" policies in America and Europe have been an absolutely disaster, as they've made Europe much more dependent on Russia, and they've raised oil prices so that America and Europe are funding Russia's war in Ukraine. There is enormous pressure from both Republicans and Democrats on the Biden administration to abandon the disastrous "green" policies, and the abandonment of those policies will be a major sign of the regeneracy in domestic politics.
In my opinion, the US will try to stay out of this European war, just as the US at first stayed out of the European wars in 1914 and 1939. The US was able to stay out of those wars for 2-3 years. In my opinion, the European war will trigger a full-scale world war within a few months or at most a couple of years, with the exact timing dependent on China's actions, especially in Taiwan.
I am 77 years old, soon to be 78, and I have absolutely no desire to even try to live through World War III. I'm miserable, depressed, in intermitten pain, alone, surviving on Social Security, and disgusted with the Cassandra Curse, which says that I'm treated abusively, even when (or especially when) I'm right.
Twenty years ago I began developing Generational Dynamics, a methodology for analyzing historical and current events, based on Forrester's System Dynamics from MIT applied to generational flows, and incorporating Chaos Theory and technology forecasting. My web sites, http://generationaldynamics.com and http://gdxforum.com, contain over 6,000 articles with thousands of analyses and predictions about hundreds of countries, and they've all come true or are trending true. None has been proven wrong. In addition, I've written four books on the history of Iran, China and Vietnam, and the history and theology of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism. The major prediction over the last 20 years has been that we are headed for a global financial crisis and a world war against China. That time is now approaching. The Russia-Ukraine war is just beginning, and it is expected to cause a chain reaction that will lead to a major European war, and within the next year or so to a world war and a global depression. Nuclear weapons will be used.
I published four books, thinking that they would create some sort of legacy that would survive me. And they're really good books, in my opinion. I'm really proud of them. You would think by this time, they would have generated some interest somewhere, but they haven't. I've only sold a few dozen copies of each.
I apologize for writing so few articles these last few months. I simply no longer have the energy to write as much as I used to, especially in view of the Cassandra Curse. However, I do try to contribute something to the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Nonetheless, Generational Dynamics may be reaching the end of the line.
After I'm gone, very few people will even remember Generational Dynamics, and many of them will remember it only with scorn and derision as the invention of an old Boomer fossil. There will be nobody whose sa lary depends on keeping Generation Dynamics alive, so Generational Dynamics will die with me.
That's why I'm extending an invitation to any individuals, think tanks, universities, or other organizations that would like to take on the responsibility on further development of Generational Dynamics. There's wealth of information on my books and on my web sites. Furthermore, I am available right now to provide guidance and even to give a professional or college course over zoom. So this is the right time.
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(10-Mar-2022)
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Iran's support for the Houthis
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Monday evening attacked targets in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), including airports in Dubai and an oil refinery in Musaffah, as well as "a number of important and sensitive Emirati sites and facilities," with five missiles and a number of drones. Three people were killed.
Early on Tuesday, warplanes from Saudi Arabia, UAE's coalition partner, attacked Houthi camps and strongholds in Sanaa, Yemen's capital city, including the home of a high-ranking Houthi military official, including his wife and son. About 20 people were killed, according to the Houthis.
The Yemen war began in 2015, when Houthi rebels from northwest Yemen took control of the capital city Sanaa, and seized the international airport. In response, warplanes from a mostly Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia bombed Houthi rebel targets.
The war escalated substantially in November 2017, when the Houthis launched a ballistic missile, undoubtedly supplied by Iran, that reached the King Khalid International Airport near Riyadh, about 800 km from the Yemen border. The Saudis reacted with their own escalation, a blockade of all of Yemen's land, sea and air ports.
The Houthis increased their missile attacks on Saudi cities, and then in June 2018, Saudi Arabia and UAE launched a 'catastrophic' assault on the highly strategic Port Hodeidah in Yemen. The objective was to cut off supplies of Iranian weapons to the Houthis, as well as a source of income.
The battle over Port Hodeidah continued for years, until November 2021, when the Houthis scored a complete takeover of the port, marking an important turning point in the war. Tuesday's Houthi attack on the UAE targets with drones and missiles marks another turning point.
Since the Yemen war began in 2015, it's been seen as largely a proxy war between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. In the wars between Sunnis and Shias following the death of the prophet Mohammed, one Shia sect was known as the Zaydis or "fivers," because of their allegiance to the fifth Imam descendant. Most Shias, including the Persians, had allegiance to the twelth Imam descendant, and so they are sometimes called "twelvers." The Zaydis have become today's Houthis. Despite this theological dispute, the fivers and the twelvers identify with each other as not-Sunni Shias, and so the Iranians are supporting the Houthis in Yemen in a proxy war against the Arab Sunnis. (See my book "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy," for the history of Islam and the Sunni-Shia split.)
Iran is denying that they've had anything to do with Tuesday's attack by the Houthis on the UAE. However, this claim has little credibility since the Houthis have no ability to develop and manufacture the drones and missiles that were used in the attack.
It seems likely that the Houthis' recent takeover of Port Hodeidah has enabled the Houthi attack, because Iran can use the port to smuggle drones and missiles and other weapons to the Houthis. Two weeks ago, a UN group announced that it would be investigating whether the port has been militarized
According to Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy to Yemen:
"The accusations of the militarization of the ports of Hodeidah are worrying and the threats of attacking them are equally disturbing given that these ports are a lifeline for many Yemenis. [The UN Mission to support the Hodeidah Agreement was] closely monitoring the situation in the ports and has requested as part of its mandate to undertake an inspection."
Well, we can hardly wait until the UN report comes out. These UN committees always produce useful results, don't they.
What is the purpose of the Houthi attack on UAE targets? Here are some possibilities:
Each one of these objectives is likely to backfire.
Houthi Yemeni military expert Brigadier-General Abdul Ghani Al-Zubaidi was interviewed on Monday by Russia Today TV, and said the following:
"We sent a message [with the Abu Dhabi drone strike], and the UAE should take this message seriously. The UAE is not like Saudi Arabia, which is bigger in size, and which can perhaps, take the hit and absorb the shock. The UAE is a country made of cardboard and glass. ...The second thing is that we hope to receive Iranian weapons, and to have Iranian experts with us. [Our enemies] have Zionist experts, as well as American and French experts, They have gathered all of the world's vagabonds in their command center and in the battlefield. ...
We have the power, the will, and the determination to strike in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia. If it turns out that the Americans attacked in Yemen, or if they declare that they did, we will target the American interests wherever they may be. Wherever they may be!"
Right now, there's a bit of a lull, as both the UAE and the Houthis decide what to do next. If this is as much of a turning point as it seems, then we should see some additional military reactions soon.
As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy
-- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East"
(Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018 Paperback:
153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00 Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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(19-Jan-2022)
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Russia leads five CSTO nations in sending troops into Kazakhstan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Protests began in western Kazakhstan over the weekend, and were triggered by the removal of government fuel subsidies and the resulting price rises. However, the protests spread quickly, across the country and over numerous other issues related to government corruption. The result is the worst riots since the country became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union Empire in 1991.
Kazakhstan was ruled since independence by a dictator, ex-president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who selected his successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in 2019. Nazarbayev has remained head of the country's Security Council after stepping down as president in 2019. Both Nazarbayev and Tokayev were and are unpopular and thought to be corrupt. There were widespread anti-government farmer riots in 2016 when the government announced a "land reform" program that would have permitted China's agriculture businesses to buy up huge tracts of Kazakh land. Because of the protests, the "reforms" were never implemented. (See "22-May-16 World View -- Kazakhstan farmers riot over fears of encroachment from China")
In the last week, protesters have attacked a military barracks, and also brought down a monument of the former president Nazarbayev. The 2016 protests were brutally oppressed by Nazarbayev, and now the new protests, which are far more widespread and dangerous, are being suppressed by Tokayev, who has issued a "shoot to kill without warning" order to the police. Dozens of people have already been killed.
President Tokayev has declared a state of emergency, and has shut down the internet and other communications.
At the invitation of president Tokayev, Russian troops are now entering Kazakhstan to help quell the protests. It's not clear what these troops will do in a country as enormous as Kazakhstan, but presumably they'll concentrate on Almaty, the largest city.
It's not just Russian troops. Tokayev made the request through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Russia-led military alliance which was formed in the 1990s as a counterweight to Nato. This is the first time that the CSTO is deploying troops on foreign soil since the organization was formed. So there are now troops from five foreign countries on Kazakh soil: Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajijistan and Kyrgyzstan.
According to the CSTO charter, one CSTO member may send troops to another member country only in the case of "foreign interference." No details of this "foreign interference" have been provided, but I heard one report that both Russian and Kazakh officials are blaming "Muslim jihadist terrorists," without providing evidence.
According to several reports that I've heard, this deployment of foreign troops is not very popular with anyone.
Many Kazakhs are opposed to any foreign troops on their soil. The Armenians are really furious that Russia didn't help them out in the Nagorno-Karabakh war with Azerbaijan, and now Armenian troops are being deployed to Kazakhstan. The Tajiks are unhappy with the deployment of their soldiers, and the Kyrgyzstan government is so concerned about the situation that they've closed their border with Kazakhstan.
There is one region of Kazakhstan that's certain to be under the protection of Russian troops, and that's the city of Baikonur which is the home of Baikonur spaceport. All Russian space flights are launched from Baikonur spaceport. According to Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian state space agency, "Today it was calm at Baikonur. The branches of Roscosmos’ enterprises, law enforcement agencies, city services and organizations are working as normal. The crisis center set up at Baikonur’s administration is fully controlling the situation in the city. Armed security at the cosmodrome’s key facilities has been boosted."
While all this is going on in Kazakhstan, Russia is also continuing its buildup of troops along the border of Ukraine. Will Russia invade Ukraine again this month? We'll have to wait and see.
Kazakhstan is a mostly Sunni Muslim country, with Kazakhs having the same Turkic ethnicity as the Turks, the Azerbaijanis, and the Chinese Uighurs. Kazakhs in China's Xinjiang province (East Turkestan) are subjected to the same torture, beatings, sterilization and enslavement as the Uighurs. Kazakhstan is a kind of poster-child for China's use of money to gain compliance for the worst atrocities since the Nazis in the 1930s. Kazakhstan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni Muslim countries are simply ignoring China's torture and enslavement of their Turkic brothers, because China is bribing them to do so.
Nonetheless, it's hard to escape the view that Russian troops in Kazakhstan are less about unnamed Muslim jihadists and more about China. Kazakhstan is rich in oil, gas, copper, and other commodities, and China has invested billions of dollars since independence to buy them.
Furthermore, as I've described in the past, China has 20 border disputes with its neighbors. This includes claiming 34,000 sq km of Kazakhstan's territory, and also claiming much of Russia's Far East, including Vladivostok, the home of Russia's Pacific Fleet, (See "5-Jul-20 World View -- India's list of China's border disputes and disagreements")
As I've described many times, Russia and China are historic enemies, at war most recently in the 1960s. They currently have a kind of "marriage of convenience" in opposition to the United States and West, who oppose their respective threatened invasions of Ukraine and Taiwan.
But it won't be long before the historic differences turn to new disagreements and war. Russia's sending troops into Kazakhstan, with little or no information about their mission, may well be first step in that development.
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(8-Jan-2022)
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Russia cuts natural gas flows to Europe as possible Ukraine extortion ploy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Merry Christmas, everyone! There's peace in Europe right now, but we don't know how long it will last.
The drama is growing on Russia's border with Ukraine, where Russia now has over 120,000 troops, along with tanks and other military equipment, apparently in preparation for an imminent invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin says that the US and Nato are to blame for the hundreds of thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine, which is typical of the garbage that comes out every time Putin opens his mouth. Putin claims that there are no invasion plans, but Putin would say that, no matter what his plans. Putin is following the exact same playbook that he followed in 2014, when he illegally invaded eastern Ukraine, and he illegally invaded and annexed Crimea, after claiming he wouldn't do so.
However, there's a very interesting and amusing sub-plot to the current drama, where American energy firms are playing Santa Claus to keep Europe from freezing to death, despite the efforts of Grinch Putin.
Starting last weekend, flows of natural gas from Russia into Europe have been falling, depriving the Europeans of the natural gas needed to heat their homes. By Tuesday, European gas prices had spiked 40% to an all-time historic high. Freezing temperatures across Europe, low Russian gas supply, and low wind power generation in Germany all combined to send European and UK gas prices to new records.
It's not known whether Russia capped gas flows because of a shortage of gas in Russia, or because Putin wants to use extortion to force the EU to accede to his demands on Ukraine.
Part of the geopolitical situation is that Putin wants Germany to approve a new pipeline, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. This is important because much of Russia's gas flow to Europe currently comes through a pipeline that passes through Ukraine, forcing Russia to pay commissions to Ukraine. Once the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is approved, then Russia can bypass Ukraine, and end the payments.
The situation has pushed European gas prices way above Asian prices, and 14 times higher than prices in the US. As a result, a flotilla of at least 30 LNG (liquified natural gas) tankers from American energy firms have been or are being diverted from Asia to Europe.
As a result, gas prices in Europe fell over 20% on Friday. The fall in gas prices was helped by forecasts of warmer weather on Friday through Monday.
America's Santa Claus flotilla is expected to keep European gas prices down for several weeks, but it's a temporary fix. By summer, at the latest, gas prices are expected to spike once again.
Europe's energy problems are substantially exacerbated by the climate change chaos going on in Europe, which is pitting Germany and France against each other.
France is first in the world in its reliance on nuclear energy. But France was forced to shut down two nuclear power plants last week, because of potential safety faults. The shut down reactors accounted for 10% of the nation's nuclear capacity, straining the nation's power grids in the cold weather. This has led a desperate president Emmanuel Macron to approve the firing up of six oil-fired power plants on Tuesday morning.
Macron has previously stated his commitment to "green energy," meaning wind and solar, and so many people were shocked last month when he announced in a televised speech, "For the first time in decades [France] will relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors." Macron’s government argues that investments in nuclear power will allow France to keep energy costs in check, while meeting its climate goals.
Macron's announcement infuriated the anti-nuclear activists in Germany. Germany has no such political disputes, because Germany is producing energy by burning coal, flooding the atmosphere with pollutants and emissions. Indeed, the country continues to raze villages to make way for new coal mines.
Nuclear power plants produce "clean energy," with no carbon emissions, but activists claim that they're too dangerous. However, pro-nuclear activists point out that far more people die from air pollution in Germany than could ever die from a nuclear power plant meltdown.
After the meltdown in 2011 of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, Germany has banned further nuclear development. Germany, Denmark and Austria are fiercely opposed to any further building of nuclear-power plants, or of designating nuclear energy as "climate-friendly."
America's Santa Claus flotilla of LNG tankers may keep the Europeans from freezing this winter. At least, the LNG shipments will help keep gas prices down so that Europeans can afford to heat their homes.
But the big question in Europe is Putin's apparent plans to invade Ukraine. He claims that he has no plans to do so, but he would say that no matter what he plans, and he keeps massing more and more troops and military equipment on the border.
So it would be quite surprising if Europe got through the next few months unscathed.
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(25-Dec-2021)
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Kyle Rittenhouse, George Floyd and Darryl Brooks
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Despite the hysteria and threats of violence from the left-wing loons on CNN and MSNBC, a jury of 11 white people and one black person convicted three white defendants of murder of a black person, Ahmaud Arberry.
The leftist loons claimed that white jurors only vote in a racist, bigoted way, but instead they examined the evidence, and the evidence was overwhelming that Ahmaud Arberry had been murdered.
So the court system worked correctly.
It was pretty clear that the Democrat KKK attitudes and hatred of blacks were still in place during the Arberry trial.
A defense attorney stood up and asked for black pastors to be banned from the courtroom. A Southern judge last century would probably have granted that request, but today, the request is idiotic. Today, it takes a Democrat attorney steeped in KKK hatred to try it.
Also, in closing arguments, the defense tried to appeal to the white jurors by saying that Arberry was no victim, and that he was in the neighborhood with "dirty khakis with no socks to cover his long dirty toenails." This would certainly have worked with the Democrats in the KKK in the last century, and would probably also have worked with many Democrats steeped in KKK hatreds today, but instead it appears to have badly backfired, even among the white Democrats on the jury.
These acts by the defense attorneys were typical of the KKK in the last century, and they would have worked. They're less common today because they frequently backfire, even among many Democrats. But it's clear that racism and hatred of blacks still runs deep in the Democrat party. This dates back to the Civil War, and the fury that Democrats felt that the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and won the war, causing the Democrats to create the KKK and the Jim Crow laws, and spend the next century lynching and killing blacks, and frequently using the epithet, "The South Shall Rise Again!"
In fact, Joe Biden grew up in that hate-filled atmosphere, with a mentor of Democrat Party scion Robert Byrd, who was a Grand Cyclops in the KKK and a recruiter for the KKK. If Joe Biden had been on the Arberry jury, he might well have found the defendants innocent. Robert Byrd would almost certainly have done so.
It's impossible to overstate what's going on - almost a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the Democrat party. You have thousands of blacks being killed in the streets of Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities run by Democrats. Killing blacks is just as much the policy of Democrats today as it was in the last century. That's not true of all Democrats, just as it wasn't true of all Democrats in the last century, but it is true of a large segment of the Democrat party today. And, unfortunately, that segment of the Democrat party is now the loony left that is running the Democrat party, and they appear to want to re-fight the Civil War, in the hope of winning it this time and re-enslaving the blacks.
The evidence was overwhelming that Kyle Rittenhouse had fired only in self defense, and so he was found innocent. So the court system worked correctly.
Derek Chauvin was found guilty last year of murdering George Floyd. So the court system worked correctly.
These are two more examples of how the court and jury system worked correctly, so it makes no sense for the people on the loony left to want to destroy the American court system by packing the Supreme Court and by making every case about racial justice.
On CNN, the Arberry commentary focused on the dog whistles and racial baiting that we described earlier to get the white people in the jury not to convict.
CNN commentary on the Rittenhouse verdict was apoplectic.
I saw the Jim Acosta show on CNN shortly after the Rittenhouse verdict. Recall that Acosta made a jackass of himself every day during the Trump administration by screaming stupid questions and epithets at Trump during press conferences, but being a jackass only made him a hero to the loony left, and made him a star at CNN.
The contrast between Fox News and CNN was enormous. Analysts on Fox News almost universally said that finding Rittenhouse not guilty was the correct verdict, based on the overwhelming evidence. But they contrasted that to the event, which they said was a tragedy because two people had been killed, and they said that Rittenhouse was not a hero.
But Acosta was unable to distinguish between those two things -- finding innocence and not being a hero. What I've found is that many people in general are unable to do fourth grade math or even second grade math, to the extent of being baffled by fourth grade percentage problems. AOC is a prime example of this, as she showed her stupidity in that issue over the Amazon HQ issue in 2019. AOC is one of the stupidest people in Washington, and the only people who are stupider than she is are her millions of followers in the Democrat party.
It takes a certain grasp of logic to be able to do fourth grade math, and people who can't do fourth grade math should not be expected to distinguish between seeing Rittenhouse as not guilty and Rittenhouse as some kind of hero. Even worse, you have to be really stupid not to understand that a case where a white man shoots three white men is not a racial issue. Acosta is clearly that stupid. CNN attracts commentators who are too stupid to do fourth grade math. From what I've seen, Fox News attracts commentators who are intelligent enough to do fourth grade math.
CNN headquarters is in Atlanta, where the Arberry trial was held. Atlanta is a hotbed of Democrat racists and idiots, which makes it the perfect location for CNN. Nonetheless, the brilliant American jury system, which is the best in the world and in the history of the world, came to the correct verdict.
Anyone who watched the Kyle Rittenhouse trial could see that the innocence verdict was justified, but left-wing Democrat politicians and journalists became hysterical, and called for the virtual detruction of the American jury system. Many of the claims made in the following quotes were lies, made by people who knew they were lies, but who didn't care:
Mayor Bill de Blasio: "This verdict is disgusting and it sends a horrible message to this country. Where is the justice in this? We can't let this go. We need stronger laws to stop violent extremism from within our own nation. Now is the time."
Joy Reid, MSNBC: We knew, but it’s sometimes helpful to remind ourselves how America was designed to work. It continues to work as designed. We have learned again what is considered legal for *some* people to do in America. It’s helpful to know where you stand in your country. Be safe out there.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes: "Over the last few weeks, many dreaded the outcome we just witnessed. The presumption of innocence until proven guilty is what we should expect from our judicial system, but that standard is not always applied equally. We have seen so many black and brown youth killed, only to be put on trial posthumously, while the innocence of Kyle Rittenhouse was virtually demanded by the judge."
NY Governor Kathy Hochul: "Kyle Rittenhouse used an assault weapon to kill two people. This is not justice. If there was any question about why we need strong gun safety laws, this is your answer. This should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. We have a lot of work to do."
Reverend Al Sharpton: "These continue to be dark days for black people killed at the hands of people that believe our lives do not matter. This verdict was not only outrageous and dangerous, it was also an obvious signal that encourages and notifies "vigilantes" that they can continue to use violence to assert their power, and more importantly that they are above the criminal justice system when they do. While it is disheartening that we take one step forward, then several steps back, let this be a reminder that our activism cannot take a backseat"
Eric Adams, NYC Mayor-elect: "This decision is an indictment of irresponsible laws that make our society far more violent and unsafe under the guise of personal freedom and so called self-defense. It also sends an extremely dangerous message to those in our country who seek agendas of anarchy - often born in prejudice and ignorance - to wreak havoc in their communities and potentially murder their neighbors. We should not be shocked. We should be focused on swift and righteous action."
Jumaane Williams, NYC Public Advocate: "This trial and the verdict it produced are clear and devastating representations of the way our country and our legal system view innocence and guilt, vigilantes and villains, race and the fight against racial injustice. A white seventeen year old killing protesters with a weapon of war is celebrated and acquitted. A black seventeen year old walking the community with a bag of Skittles is criminalized and murdered.
Rep. Jerry Nadler: "This heartbreaking verdict is a miscarriage of justice and sets a dangerous precedent which justifies federal review by DOJ. Justice cannot tolerate armed persons crossing state lines looking for trouble while people engage in First Amendment-protected protest."
Nikole Hannah-Jones, NY Times: "In this country, you can even kill white people and get away with it if those white people are fighting for Black lives. This is the legacy of 1619."
George Takei, former Star Trek actor: "Justice denied is a body blow to our national psyche. On trial was not only a killer, but a system that continues to kill. Today that system defeated true justice, once again. But mark these words: We will never stop fighting for what is right and just."
In the midst of all this, Darryl E. Brooks, a black male in late 30s, killed six people and injured 60 others by running them over intentionally with a car as they marched in the Christmas Parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Sunday.
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Brooks had previously been out on bail after pimping out a 16 year old girl who got pregnant, and for attempting to kill the mother of his baby by running her over with his car, and almost succeeding in killing her, and after numerous other felonies, dating back to 1999. He was out on bail because of a "woke" District Attorney who was following "woke" policies of not jailing convicted criminals. Brooks was let out of jail, and he repeated the crime of killing people by running over with this car, this time succeeding spectacularly.
Examination of Darryl Brooks's media posts shows him to be a man filled with hatred for whites and women.
 |
This reminds me of the e-mail messages found on Hunter Biden's laptop, which showed similar hatred of blacks. Like father, like son.
Not surprisingly, CNN did not mention the Darryl Brooks case.
The main lesson learned from all of these cases is that the brilliant American jury system works. As everyone points out, there are reforms to be made. In this case, there were many complaints about prosecuters in both the Arberry and Rittenhouse cases. But the American jury system, at its core, is the best for determining guilt or innocense.
Another lesson to be learned is that racial hysteria doesn't always work, and shouldn't work. Race hysteria was raised in all the cases I've mentioned, and in the end, race didn't matter in any of them.
A third lesson to be learned is the importance of video evidence. This is a relatively new development in jury trials, and it fits in well with the American jury system, since it provides a new and very powerful means for juries to assess what happened.
The fourth lesson is that racism and hatred of blacks still runs deep in the Democrat party. Unfortunately, this is evident in the policies of Joe Biden and the Democrat party leadership. This is evident in policies that lead to the deaths of thousands of blacks in Democrat-run cities, and it's also evident in the drive for "Critical Race Theory," whose purpose if to victimize and marginalize blacks, as was done in the last century by the KKK and the Jim Crow Laws.
So we would have to agree that there's a lot of work to be done to cure systemic racism, but that work has to be done almost exclusively within the Democrat party, especially its leadership.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
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(25-Nov-2021)
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After one year, the military drills affirm the continuation of Abraham Accords
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Israel's navy is taking part in joint maritime drills with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and the United States in the Red Sea. This is the first time that Israel's navy has publicly taken part in naval drills with Gulf Arab states.
According to a statement by the US Naval Fifth Fleet, which is headquartered at a base in Bahrain:
"The five-day exercise includes at-sea training aboard amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD 27) focused on visit, board, search and seizure tactics. The training will enhance interoperability between participating forces' maritime interdiction teams."It is exciting to see U.S. forces training with regional partners to enhance our collective maritime security capabilities," said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of NAVCENT, U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces. "Maritime collaboration helps safeguard freedom of navigation and the free flow of trade, which are essential to regional security and stability."
This statement doesn't say so, but the drills are aimed at Iran. In March and April, Iran and Israel allegedly attacked each others ships in the Persian Gulf with missiles and explosive. And the US Navy had to fire warning shots during encounters with Iranian vessels in the Gulf.
The Abraham Accords were announced on August 13, 2020, and signed by the participants in September. The Accords were negotiated by Donald Trump's administration between Israel and UAE, later joined by Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Trump described the Accords as historic because they were the first public normalization of relations between Israel and an Arab country since the agreement with Jordan in 1994 and the agreement with Egypt in 1979.
There was a lot of skepticism that the Accords would survive for long, but after a year they've even survived an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza. Israel has exchanged ambassadors with the other signatories, and has initiated trade relations with them. The joint naval exercises that Israel is holding with UAE and Bahrain indicate that the Accords are continuing as intended.
One (simplistic) way of looking at the Mideast is that Israel is part of two major fault lines.
One fault line is Sunni vs Shia. This conflict is pitting Iran versus the Arab Gulf nations, and Israel against its will has been drawn into this conflict by Iran. The Abraham Accords directly address this fault line.
The other fault line is Israel vs Palestinians. This conflict comes out of the bloody 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. This fault line is completely unrelated to the Abraham Accords, and is still headed for conflict as much as before.
As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
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(12-Nov-2021)
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Lukashenko's revenge following Ryanair plane forced landing
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There is a growing possibility of military clashes across the border between Poland and Belarus, as Belarus attempts to push thousands of migrants into Poland. The policy is in revenge for sanctions imposed after Belarus illegally forced a passenger plan to land, in order to jail a reporter on the flight.
Hundreds of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia are trapped in Belarus on the border with Poland, with thousands more migrants on the way to the border. Poland has installed a barbed-wire border fence to prevent the migrants from crossing, but the migrants are using wire cutters and shovels, supplied by the Belarus military, to cut the wire or dig up the fence.
The Belarus military is standing behind the migrants, shooting their guns into the air, threatening any migrants who attempt to turn back from the border. Poland's military is standing on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, blocking any attempts by the migrants to cut the barbed wire and cross into Poland.
Poland has deployed more than 12,000 soldiers to the border and a volunteer Territorial Defense force was put on alert, according to Poland's defense ministry.
The European Union is describing the Belarus policy as "weaponizing migrants." Belarus has extended this policy from Poland to Lithuania and Latvia.
The reason that these thousands of migrants are in Belarus is because they were solicited on the orders of dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Belarus has been soliciting migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia to travel to Belarus, and has provided free air travel for them to do so. The migrants are promised an opportunity to cross the border into Poland or Germany.
The current crisis began on May 23, when a Ryanair passenger plane with 126 passengers crossing Belarus air space was ordered by Belarus air traffic controllers to land in the Belarus capital city Minsk, supposedly because of a "potential security threat on board." The demand was backed up by a Belarus fighter jet.
When the plane landed in Minsk, Belarus security forces boarded the plane and arrested a Belarus journalist, Raman Pratasevich, and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. Pratasevich had been a vocal critic of Lukashenko, including accusations of rigged elections. After his arrest, Pratasevich was paraded in staged events.
In June, the EU, US and UK imposed coordinated sanctions on Belarus. The EU has banned flights from Balavia and other Belarus airlines from its airports and airspace. The EU is also planning to sanction airlines that are cooperating with Belarus in flying migrants from the Mideast and Africa to Belarus.
Already, Poland's defense ministry has thanked Iraq for having Belarus close its consulates in Baghdad and Irbil that were giving tourist visas to migrants.
These sanctions have infuriated Lukashenko. He has retaliated and taken revenge by launching his program of weaponizing migrants -- transporting them from the Middle Ease and Africa, and then trying to push them into Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Video from the border is showing a tense military standoff. Polish border guards have used teargas to push back people who tried to cut through the barbed wire. Gunshots were thought to come from Belarus border guards, shot in the air to frighten migrants and prevent them from moving away from the border.
Hundreds of migrants have set up a tent city on the Belarus side of the border in a forested area, where they are essentially trapped.
As more thousands of migrants are headed to the same area, it seems certain that there will be some kind of military confrontation on the border. There is the possibility that lives will be lost, or that a gunfight will break out between the border guards on the two sides. And with Russia supporting Belarus, it's possible that a clash could spread.
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(9-Nov-2021)
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Consequences of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88)
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Iraq's prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi escaped an assassination attempt early Sunday morning, when three explosives-laden drones attacked his residence. The army shot down two of the drones, but a third reached its target and exploded, wounding six guards. Al-Kadhimi was unharmed. The residence is in Baghdad's heavily fortified "Green Zone."
The drone attack follows widespread riots and protests on Friday, where Iran-backed militias were protesting the results of the October 10 parliamentary elections. The Iran-backed Fatah Alliance won only 17 seats, down from 48 seats in the previous parliament.
Because of the Iran-backed protests, many people assume that the drone attacks were engineered by the pro-Iran militias, especially because Iran has used drone attacks to attack American bases along the border with Syria. However, the militias deny responsibility, and claim that the drone attacks were staged. So nobody has claimed responsibility for the failed drone attacks.
Iraq had two generational crisis wars during the last century, the 1920 Iraqi Revolution and the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. In both of those wars, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shias united behind the war effort against the enemy -- the British colonists in 1920 and the Iranians in the 1980s. The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) was one of the longest and bloodiest wars of the 20th century. Chemical weapons and large-scale missile attacks were used. There were millions of casualties and refugees in both countries. ("Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq (1-Apr-2007)")
Today, Iraq is in a generational Awakening era, so there is no chance of a renewal of the Iran-Iraq war. But the horrors of the war are still well-remembered, and it's still the objective of Iran to obtain political control of Iraq. Not surprisingly, these attempts have triggered anti-Iran protests in Iraq.
Iran gained a great deal of popular support in Iraq in 2016-2018, when Iran trained and funded Shia militias called the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs), which played a major role in expelling ISIS from the country. So it was during the 2018 parliamentary elections that the Iran-backed Fatah Alliance gained 48 seats.
However, there were already widespread anti-Iran riots in September 2018 in Basra, which is in southern Iraq, adjacent to Iran. Protesters attacked or set fire to Iran-linked buildings and the Iranian consulate. They also attacked almost every office belonging to the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces. (See "9-Sep-18 World View -- Riots in Iraq's Basra evoke fault lines of 1980s Iran-Iraq war")
In October 2019, there were widespread anti-Iran political protests, this time in Baghdad, with protesters calling for political reforms, and end to corruption, and an end to sectarian system of government that guarantees government control to groups depending on religious sect. There was also a call to end foreign intervention, with a particular focus on Iran.
So by the time of last month's parliamentary elections, the pro-Iranian militias had lost almost all of the good will they had gained from fighting ISIS, and the pro-Iranian Fatah political alliance lost two-thirds of the seats it had previously held.
So the protests on Friday were quite different from the protests in October 2019. The latter protests had been led by students who were protesting corruption and Iranian influence. Friday's protests led by Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias, claiming that last month's parliamentary elections were rigged.
The biggest winner in last month's parliamentary elections appears to be the Sadrists, the political party of Muqtada al-Sadr, who got 73 seats. Those with a long memory will recall that al-Sadr is a highly respected Shia cleric who opposed American intervention in Iraq during the 2000s. Today he strongly opposes all foreign intervention, including intervention by the US, Iran and Turkey.
With or without the drone attack, there's a feeling that Friday's violent protests represent a turning point in Iraq. According to one analyst, Muqtada al-Sadr had been using the time since the October 10 election to negotiate with other political groups in order to form a governing coalition, and Friday's violent protests have forced those negotiations to end.
There is a growing conflict between the Sunnis and the Sadrists on one side, and the pro-Iranian Fatah alliance on the other side. In the meantime, the Iranians are attempting to pressure the Iraqi government to demand with the withdrawal of American forces, just as the Americans had to withdraw from Afghanistan. This conflict will continue during the next few months, but it seems unlikely that America will be forced to withdraw from Iraq, as long as the Americans are seen as a countervailing force to Iran, especially in view of the disastrous results of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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(8-Nov-2021)
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UN warns Myanmar / Burma of 'crimes against humanity'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For six weeks after the February 1 military coup in Myanmar, the army, known as the Tatmadaw, took a measured approach to the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. However, this was followed by "an uptick in violence and much more violent methods used to suppress the demonstrators," according to a UN report issued on Friday:
"We do feel now having observed the events and collected preliminary evidence that the facts show a widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population amounting to crimes against humanity.This was happening in different places at the same time, indicating to us it would be logical to conclude this was from a central policy. And, also, we saw that particular groups were targeted, especially for arrests and detentions that appear to be without due process of law. And this includes, of course, journalists, medical workers and political opponents."
According to Nicholas Koumjian, the UN official who issued the report, there are more and more groups within Myanmar calling for a full civil war, which is not surprising, as the junta continues to escalate its violence.
It's worth pointing out that the junta really couldn't care less what some United Nations agency claims. Myanmar is in the opening stages of a full-scale generational crisis civil war, and no outside political pressure can have much of an effect, just as a tsunami could not be stopped by a UN agency.
In fact, none of this is particularly surprising. Myanmar entered a generational Crisis era in 2016, and the Buddhist army began by committing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingyas. So now, the army is performing the same "clearance operations" against the Chin people in northern Myanmar, and is preparing similar operations against other non-favored ethnic populations.
According to China's state media, there are over 10,000 Chinese nationals in Myanmar waiting to cross the border into Ruili, China. Regulations and restrictions by China's government are permitting only about 100 people to cross the border into China each day. The restrictions were put in place in June because of the instability in Myanmar, and also because the delta variant of the Covid virus is spreading in China, and steps are being taken to block it.
In addition, there's also been a sharp increase in cross-border crimes against China or Chinese citizns, such as telecommunications and internet fraud, gambling and money laundering. Chinese citizens living in northern Myanmar are being told register their identities, and to confess any crimes they've committed.
Ruili is a city of 260,000 residents, and they've suffered almost 200 days under lockdown, because of the two factors -- China's Covid policy and the turmoil in Myanmar. According to the city's mayor: "The epidemic has ruthlessly looted [Ruili] over and over again, draining the city’s last trace of life and devouring the hope of its residents. Please save this hero city! Please pay attention to this beautiful border town!"
There is also anti-Chinese violence in Myanmar far from the Chinese border. Many people in Myanmar blame China for supporting the junta in its violence against peaceful protesters, and Chinese factories and citizens in Yangon have been attacked in Yangon. The Chinese have deflected these accusations by blaming the attacks on incitement by the United States.
China is actually pursuing a dual strategy in Myanmar. At the top level, and in the national media, China is not referring to a "coup," but to euphemisms like a "cabinet reshuffle." On the other hand, local media in China are referring to the violence in Myanmar following the "coup."
The coup and the threat of civil war in Myanmar have been a lot more than a mere annoyance to the Chinese. They represent a threat to China's grand geopolitical strategy for world domination.
China has for years been supplying weapons to Myanmar's government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi until the February 1 coup. Since then, the Chinese have cautiously maintained good relations with the junta, because of Myanmar's part in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
As I've written in the past, China's grand plan is that it will become the leader of the world within 5-10 years, and that almost all countries will gladly accept China's leadership. This goes beyond invading and annexing Taiwan. It also means that the 20+ border disputes that China has with India, Russia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and other countries will be settled amicably in China's favor, and that includes China's control of the South China Sea.
China's vision is like Isaiah 2:4, which says: "The Lord will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore." This is exactly China's delusional vision, except that the role of the Lord will be played by the Chinese Communist Party. (Incidentally, that's why China is promising to stop increasing coal production by 2030.)
According to the delusion, the only possible reason why this plan might fail is that the United States would be jealous of China's power and might come to the defense of Taiwan and Japan. That's why China is developing hypersonic and ballistic nuclear missiles, in order to attack the United States and bring about this millennium of peace.
So now getting back to Myanmar, the major BRI project in Myanmar is the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which is strategically essential to China's grand plan, since it provides a corridor for the transport of people and goods between China's Yunnan province and the Indian Ocean, through Myanmar's ports on the Andaman Sea. This is similar to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which connects China's Xinjiang province to Pakistan's Gwardar port, which China now controls.
Both CMEC and CPEC are essential to China's delusional grand plan, and so the civil war in Myanmar represents a threat in two different ways -- because it could spill over into the population of China, and because it would threaten the strategically important CMEC.
So China is taking a cautious approach to the Myanmar junta. The junta leaders couldn't care less what a United Nations agency says, but they might listen to what the Chinese say. However, what's going on in Myanmar is a generational crisis civil war, and the drive to fight the war is deeply organic and buried deep in the DNA of all the parties. The Chinese probably understand that because of their own deeply organic ethnic atrocities, directed at the Uighurs and Tibetans, so all they can do is hope that the Myanmar war will fizzle out, which is highly improbable in a generational Crisis era.
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(7-Nov-2021)
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Myanmar's ethnic rebel militias fight junta's 'clearance operations'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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When Myanmar's Buddhist army conducted genocidal "clearance operations" against the Muslim Rohingyas in southern Myanmar in 2016-2018, they met little resistance. In fact, the Rohingyas were like sheep being led to slaughter. The Buddhists burned down entire villages, tortured, beat and killed males, raped females, and shot down civilians who tried to flee. Except for an occasional terrorist act, the Rohingyas did nothing to fight back, but instead fled across the border into Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of them still live in refugee camps.
As we described two weeks ago, the Myanmar junta has been massing troops in northwest Myanmar in Chin State, and has been talking about "clearance operations." Analysts at the United Nations see this as a sign that the junta is planning to do the same thing to the Chin people as they did to the Rohingyas. (See "24-Oct-21 World View -- Myanmar/Burma junta massing troops in northwest, preparing for mass slaughter")
The junta military, known as the Tatmadaw, have already begun "clearance operations" in earnest. Over the weekend, the military shelled a town in Chin State and burned down more than 160 buildings, including businesses and churches. The humanitarian aid agency Save the Children said its offices were in one of the buildings that was “deliberately set ablaze.”
So they're repeating what they did to the Rohingyas in the past. Another thing they're repeating is to claim that the villagers set the fires and burned down their own homes and villages. Nobody was stupid enough to believe their claim that the Rohingyas burned down their own villages, and nobody is stupid enough to believe those claims now.
However, we're seeing a big difference between the Rohingyas versus the Chin and other anti-junta rebels. While the Rohingyas simply fled or died like sheep, the anti-junta rebels are fighting back.
According to one report, the Tatmadaw in June attacked the town of Pale in northwest Myanmar with the usual tactics, where soldiers looted homes, raped women and set a village on fire. But instead of simply fleeing, the villagers formed a militia of some 2,000 fighters, mostly farmers, and counterattacked, killing 400 troops, according to their claims, which are probably exaggerated.
However, the point is that since the junta took power on February 1 in a coup, some 250 rebel groups have emerged, ranging from small urban underground cells to militias comprising thousands, according to reports. These rebels have not previously fought in wars, but their grandparents did, in the bloody Burma crisis civil war from 1948 to 1958. It's this historical memory that makes these rebels willing to fight, where the Rohingyas were not.
As I've explained in the past, Myanmar entered a new generational Crisis era in 2016, 58 years after the end of the last crisis war. (See "24-Jun-21 World View -- Myanmar/Burma army fights new militia in Mandalay as civil war spreads")
Since 2016, the Tatmadaw have become increasingly violent and belligerent within their own country. They committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas, and now they're turning to other ethnic groups within Myanmar. This will not end quickly. This is turning into a repeat of the ten-year Burmese crisis civil war that ran between 1948-1958, and involved multiple ethnic groups. History is now repeating itself.
ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Nations) has ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and they've always followed a strict policy of not criticizing the government of any of the others, even when the member governments committed atrocities.
ASEAN held three days of summit meetings last week at which the biggest news was that Myanmar's military junta leader, Min Aung Hlaing, was not invited to participate. This was a shocking move by the organization, which has previously made a point of not criticizing the internal actions of its member states.
ASEAN members felt the need to take a stand in order to maintain relevance as a regional organization. There are several developments that seemed to make ASEAN increasingly marginalized.
In 2012, ASEAN failed to issue a joint statement -- for the first time ever -- over disagreements on how to deal with China's claims to the disputed South China Sea. At that time, ASEAN's rotating chairmanship was held by Cambodia, whose leader is Hun Sen, who is a close ally of China. With Cambodia's help, China attempted to get ASEAN to endorse, or at least not object to, China's claims, but the Philippines objected, and so ASEAN took no position at all. ASEAN received a great deal of international criticism for failing to take a stand on China's illegal claims. (See "21-Nov-12 World View -- China is forced to back down diplomatically at an ASEAN meeting")
More recently, ASEAN's role as a regional power bloc has been challenged by other alliances led by the United States. One is the so-called Quad, a bloc formed by Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, to counter the influence of China. The most recent is the ANKUS agreement (Australia, UK, and US), where the US and UK will help Australia build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet. (This has triggered a major international diplomatic disagreement, since Australia had previously agreed to purchase diesel-powered submarines from France, and the ANKUS agreement was formed without notifying France.)
Few people doubt that Myanmar is headed for a major civil war, with the danger that it will spill over into its neighbors, especially Thailand, India and China. As the civil war overwhelms the region, it remains to be seen whether ASEAN can be relevant.
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(2-Nov-2021)
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Judge Tarek Bitar the center of the Beirut's October 14 gun battle
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Lebanon continues to face one disaster after another, following a historic port implosion last year and an eight-hour gun battle in Beirut earlier this month. Lebanon now faces a major diplomatic and trade crisis with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Lebanon on Friday for consultations, and requested the departure of Lebanon's Saudi envoy by Monday. Saudi Arabia futhermore halted all imports of all products from Lebanon. Bahrain followed Saudi Arabia in solidarity, and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates did the same.
The action was triggered by the airing last week of an August 5 interview in which Lebanon's Information Minister George Kordahi made harsh criticisms of the Saudi Arabia led coalition in the war in Yemen against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. In the interview, Kordahi that the Houthi rebels were "defending themselves ... against an external aggression," and that "homes, villages, funerals and weddings were being bombed" by the coalition.
Last week, Kordahi told local reporters on Wednesday that he refused to apologize and that the interview was his "personal opinion," since he was still a private citizen at the time. He said, "I did not wrong anyone. I did not attack anyone. Why should I apologize? I stated my position with love as a human who feels Arab suffering."
Well, the Saudis apparently did not feel the love, as the Saudis withdrew their ambassador shortly thereafter.
Saudi Arabia has considered Lebanon a close ally for decades, but relations have soured as Hezbollah has gained power in Lebanon. Hezbollah is recognized as a Shia terrorist group by the West and by the Arab League. Saudi Arabia and Lebanon got along well for years, as long they could agree that Israel was the bad guy. But things started deteriorating in 2011 when Syria's Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad started attacking innocent Sunni protesters, and and Hezbollah's militias began fighting in Syria in support of al-Assad's army. Relations between Lebanon and Saudi further eroded in 2020, when the Abraham Accords were signed during the Trump administration.
A particularly dramatic incident occurred in 2017, when Saad Hariri, the prime minister of Lebanon, made a seemingly routine trip to Saudi Arabia, but then shocked everyone by resigning as prime minister while there, giving as a reason the fear that Iran and Hezbollah would assassinate him. Hariri's father, Rafiq Hariri, was killed in 2005 by a massive explosion in Beirut that was blamed on Syria and Hezbollah. (See "5-Nov-17 World View -- Saad Hariri shocks Lebanon by resigning as PM while in Saudi Arabia")
So George Kordahi's harsh criticism of Saudi Arabia's role in Yemen may have been stated "with love," but now that he is Lebanon's Information Minister, he is under increasing pressure to resign.
The new actions by Saudi Arabia followed a six hour gun battle in downtown Beirut, Lebanon's capital city, on October 14. Hezbollah supporters were marching peacefully to protest the investigation of last year's port explosion, which was led by Judge Tarek Bitar. The gun battle was between Hezbollah supporters and supporters of Samir Geagea, who is leader of the Lebanese Forces party (which is a political party, not the Lebanon army). Each side accuses the other of firing the first shot, and seven people were killed, with dozens injured.
At the center of all this is Judge Tarek Bitar, who has been described as incorruptible, and who is conducting the investigation into who is responsible for the Beirut port explosion last year. On Tuesday, August 4, 2020, a catastrophic explosion in the Beirut seaport leveled thousands of homes, killed and injured thousands of people, and left 300,000 people homeless. It's considered by many to be the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history. (See "22-Aug-20 World View -- Hezbollah implicated in catastrophic Beirut Lebanon explosion")
Lebanon is a country where corruption runs deep and politicians are assassinated, all with impunity. Meanwhile, there is no regular electricity or water or garbage collection, the value of the currency has fallen 90%, and the politicians appear to be doing very well. The ordinary people of Lebanon are sick and tired of the impunity, and want someone to be named responsible for the port blast. It's widely believed that Hezbollah is responsible, though the crime may be great enough to enmesh other politicians as well. The reason that Hezbollah supporters were marching on October 14 is that they were demanding that Judge Bitar's investigation be ended, leaving no one to take the blame for the port blast.
Lebanon is hoping for aid from the international community before the economy collapses completely. Aid is being blocked, pending reforms and democratization of Lebanon's government, and Bitar's investigation has been seen by the international community as the best hope for reform. Lebanon's politicians were particularly hoping for support from the Arab nations, but that now seems impossible.
The October 14 gun battle has further paralyzed Lebanon's government. Hezbollah is refusing to allow any cabinet meetings to occur unless Judge Bitar's investigation is permanently ended. Lebanon's government was disastrously weak before, but now can't even hold a meeting.
Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah is blaming Samir Geagea and the Lebanese Forces party with being responsible for the October 14 shootout, and is accusing Saudi Arabia of providing support and perhaps instigating the attack on Hezbollah protesters. This infuriated the Saudis, and after the airing of George Kordahi's interview, and his harsh criticisms of the Saudi Arabia led coalition in the war in Yemen, the Saudis withdrew their ambassador from Lebanon.
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(31-Oct-2021)
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ASEAN blocks Myanmar's attendance
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ever since the military coup that took place on February 1 of this year, the military junta of Myanmar (Burma) has been increasingly violent. More than 1,100 civilians have been killed by Myanmar security forces with thousands of others arrested, according to the United Nations, involving mostly peaceful anti-government protesters.
Now, the military junta in Myanmar is massing tens of thousands of troops and heavy weapons in northwest Myanmar, and talking about "clearance operations." This is exactly the same scenario that preceded the ferocious attacks, unspeakable violance and mass atrocities conducted against the Rohingyas in Rakhine state in 2016-2018.
According to Tom Andrews of the United Nations:
"These tactics are ominously reminiscent of those employed by the military before its genocidal attacks against the Rohingya in Rakhine State in 2016 and 2017.We should all be prepared, as the people in this part of Myanmar are prepared, for even more mass atrocity crimes. I desperately hope that I am wrong."
As I've described starting with the massive demonstrations in 2007 by the "'88 Generation," Burma's last two generational crisis wars (1886-1891 and 1948-1958) were extremely bloody and violent civil wars involving multiple ethnic groups. (See "Burma: Growing demonstrations by the '88 Generation' raise fears of new slaughter")
When a crisis war ends, the country enters a new generational Crisis era (fourth turning) 58 years after the end of the war. In this case, Myanmar entered a new generational Crisis era in 2016.
Almost on cue, Myanmar's army started committing major atrocities in 2016, and today, the next round of atrocities is apparently about to begin.
ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Nations) has ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and they've always followed a strict policy of not criticizing the government of any of the others. ASEAN has been criticized in the past for refusing to condemn atrocities conducted by any of its member governments, but they've maintained their non-interference policy until now.
At an emergency meeting two weeks ago, ASEAN members agreed to exclude Myanmar junta's chief Min Aung Hlaing from attending a regional summit later this month, on October 26-28. This was a major snub since nothing like it has ever happened before. The reason given is that they didn't want to legitimize the junta as the government of Myanmar. Instead, they said that they would invite a "non-political representative" to represent Myanmar.
Apparently this panicked the government of Myanmar, since two days later they released thousands of political prisoners. But it soon became obvious that this a ploy to regain the approval of ASEAN, since they re-arrested many of those prisoners since then. Myanmar has angrily rejected the claims of ASEAN, blaming them on "foreign intervention," referring to the United States. Myanmar may not have anyone at all representing Myanmar at the meeting.
Myanmar entered a generational Crisis era (fourth turning) in 2016, and is apparently already in a full-scale generational crisis war. The last crisis war, from 1948 to 1958, was a massive, bloody war involving multiple ethnic groups within Burma (Myanmar).
It now appears that Myanmar is entering a similar period. The army is currently massing in Myanmar's northwest, but analysts I've heard say that the army is expected to do the same in other regions of the country.
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(24-Oct-2021)
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Hezbollah threatens large-scale violence
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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One again, new events have occurred to prove that Lebanon is an island of grief surrounded by woe. The people have to suffer through one disaster after another in Lebanon, where there is nobody on the side of the angels.
On Thursday of last week, there was a bloody five-hour gun battle in Lebanon's capital city Beirut, pitting Syriac Maronite Christians versus Shia Muslim Hezbollah. Seven people were killed, all Shia Muslims, and dozens were injured.
The gun battle was carried live on al-Jazeera. The gun battle occurred in an ordinary residential neighborhood, where the apartment buildings on one side of the street were mostly occupied by Hezbollah supporters, while the apartment buildings on the other side were mostly occupied by Christians. The Hezbollah protesters marched down the street separating the two neighborhoods. According to the news reports, snipers were on top of the apartment buildings on the Christian side, shooting protesters in the head as they walked by. Hezbollah, which is a military force backed by Iran, and its political arm, the Amal movement, are accusing the Christian party of conducting an "ambush."
According to the reports, the residents of the apartment buildings were elderly people who remembered the extremely horrific 1975-90 civil war, and did not want to see it repeated. This is what always happens after a crisis war. The people who lived through the war are traumatized and keep the war from recurring. In the case of an ethnic civil war, the result is the Democide pattern which means that the government (the winning side in the civil war) uses violence to keep the losing side under control.
As the gun battle was progressing, many people feared that it would escalate into a renewal of the civil war. But this is a generational Unraveling era for Lebanon, and there are too many people alive who remember the horrors of the last civil war, and will do everything in their power to prevent a new one. So it's not surprising the gun battle fizzled after five hours.
In August of last year there was a massive explosion in the port of Beirut, which could be felt as far away as Cyprus. It has been described as the greatest non-nuclear explosion in world history. The people of Beirut, many of whose lives were destroyed by the catastrophe, correctly blame government officials. Many go to blame the most powerful force in Lebanon's government, Iran-backed Hezbollah. (See "22-Aug-20 World View -- Hezbollah implicated in catastrophic Beirut Lebanon explosion")
In 2013, 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were stored in an unprotected warehouse in the seaport of Beirut next door to a fireworks factory. The government did nothing about it for years, despite repeated warnings, and there are reports that Hezbollah used some of the ammonium nitrate to create bombs and weapons that it used in the war in Syria. Finally, on Tuesday, August 4, 2020, a catastrophic explosion in the Beirut seaport leveled thousands of homes, killed and injured thousands of people, and left 300,000 people homeless,
Prior to the explosion, goverment services like providing electricity, water and garbage collection were spotty. Since the explosion, the value of the currency has fallen 90%, homes go for days with no electricity, the water is filthy, and there's no garbage collection.
Anecdotally, they now live the “shawarma paradox”: the national sandwich which cost 5,000 Lebanese pounds or $2 a couple of years ago, today is priced at 20,000 pounds or less than a dollar.
Lebanon's government is a government of impunity. Any government official can skim money and put it into his Swiss bank account or buy a Swiss villa with impunity. There have been numerous political assassinations, and no one is ever held accountable. There are never even any investigations.
With the seaport explosion, a whole city was blown up, and so many of the Lebanese people were traumatized, and are still traumatized, that the ordinary people (not the élite) and are demanding to know who was responsible for the explosion so that they can be held accountable.
The "ordinary" people of Beirut have been demanding an investigation, and an end to the government of impunity. They want to know who is responsible, and they want someone to be held accountable. People want to know who owned the ammonium nitrate? Who refused to do anything about it, though they were repeatedly warned over and over? Who ordered the ammonium nitrate to be unloaded from the boat into the port in 2013 in the first place?
Last year, the people initially demanded an international investigation. Hezbollah's powerful leader, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, blocked those attempts, and said that an investigation would have to be local.
So surprisingly there actually was a Lebanese investigation, led by Judge Tarek Bitar has been praised by the international community for being unbiased and transparent in carrying out the investigation.
However, as the investigation has proceeded, it has been increasingly threatening to Hezbollah, as former Hezbollah ministers are being called to testify. At the same time, Lebanon's Christian President Michel Aoun has supported the investigation.
It's the success so far of the investigation that led to Thursday's shootout. The Hezbollah supporters were protesting the investigation, demanding that Bitar be removed. It's not clear why the Christians were ambushing the Hezbollah protests at this time, except that there's a lot of anger among victims of the catastophic seaport explosion, and they are willing to use violence to determine who is responsible.
Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has made it clear that he will not tolerate the Bitar investigation much longer. An investigation that finds that Hezbollah officials were responsible for the explosion would be a major humiliation to Hezbollah and to Iran.
The Christian president Michel Aoun and Hezbollah leader Nasrallah formed an alliance of convenience in 2006, to their mutual benefit. However, the Catholics want an investigation and Hezbollah does not, and this has caused a split between Aoun and Nasrallah.
This conflict has benefited Aoun's Christian political rival, Samir Geagea, a Hezbollah opponent with close Saudi ties. Geagea is leader of Lebanese Forces (LF), a Christian party opposing Aoun.
Geagea was a military commander during the Lebanese civil war, and is accused of participating in massacres and an organized coup. Nasrallah is now blaming Geagea and the Lebanese Forces with being responsible for the shootout last week, allied with Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel. According to a pro-Hezbollah report, Geagea has sought to “impose himself as the sole representative of the Christians and return to the sectarian stronghold by committing a deliberate and organized massacre like the one he committed during the Lebanese Civil War.”
In a nationally televised speech on Monday, Nasrallah said:
"Civil war constitutes the real plan of the Lebanese Forces party, because civil war will lead to demographic changes, which will cram the Christians into a specific area, like in [their] past dreams, where they will establish a Christian canton, a Christian state, or a Christian ghetto, which will be dominated by the Lebanese Forces party. ...[Geagea,] you should pay attention to the following figure. This is the first time I divulge this figure, and I do it to prevent a civil war, rather than to threaten to start one. You know me, I never say something that is not true. I belong to the school that maintains that lies are not useful even in psychological warfare. Only truth and reliability are useful in psychological warfare."
At the same time, Hezbollah continues to demand that Judge Bitar's investigation be ended, while the public at large is demanding that it reach a conclusion and identify the responsible parties.
Lebanon's government was already in a fragile state, but the dispute over Judge Bitar and the investigation has paralyzed the government completely, as it is now impossible even to call a cabinet meeting.
The situation is evolving on a daily basis. Nobody wants another civil war, particularly the elderly people who survived the last civil war. But there will still be sporadic violence.
Unanswered questions: Will Judge Tarek Bitar's investigation continue? Will the government collapse completely? The situation is so volatile, we may have at least a few answers soon.
The one emerging hope is that there will be reforms leading to the emergence of a non-sectarian government of technocrats. If such a government is acceptable to the international community, then sanctions will be removed, and aid will flow into Lebanon.
However, that's a dream. Iran and Hezbollah will never give up their power without a war, and it's more likely that the sporadic violence will recur and grow.
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(20-Oct-2021)
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When will the Chinese Communists invade Taiwan?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On October 10, 1911, the Wuchang Uprising began, launching the Chinese Revolution and forming the Chinese Nationalists, led by Sun Yat-Sen. He created the Republic of China based on his "Three Principles of the People," developed in 1905 -- nationalism, democracy and welfare. Later in the century, the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Zedong, defeated the Chinese Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, in the Chinese civil war that climaxed in 1949. Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists fled to Formosa and formed the nation of Taiwan. On Sunday, October 10, Taiwan celebrated the anniversary of the uprising that led to the Republic of China.
Beijing prefers to celebrate its own China National Day on October 1, which commemorates the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The Chinese Communists hate Taiwan's National Day, and this has led to dueling rhetoric.
Taiwan celebrated with huge parades highlighted by military equipment. Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen said the following:
"We will do our utmost to prevent the status quo from being unilaterally altered.We will continue to bolster our national defense and demonstrate our determination to defend ourselves in order to ensure that nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us.
The path that China has laid out offers neither a free and democratic way of life for Taiwan, nor sovereignty for our 23 million people."
During the past few days, the Chinese Communists have sent hundreds of fighter planes and bombers into Taiwan airspace. China's state media explained this aerial invasion in this way:
"According to statistics from Taiwan island, the PLA has sent warplanes into the island's "airspace" in 198 days so far this year. Such a number reflects that the PLA has carried out wide-ranged and profound operations to familiarize itself with battlefield conditions, with a large number of PLA Air Force units having experience flying close to the island. Once the order to attack is given, the PLA's pilots will fight as "experienced veterans." ...The PLA is forming a siege of Taiwan with a show of strength as it did in Beijing in 1949. There is no doubt about the future of the situation across the Taiwan Straits. The initiative of when and how to solve the Taiwan question is firmly in the hands of the Chinese mainland."
Well, that's an interesting historical comparison. They're relating the "siege" of Taiwan to a siege that the Communists used to defeat the Nationalists in 1949.
So the Communists say that the purpose of sending hundreds of warplanes over Taiwan is to allow their pilots to gain experience and become "experienced veterans." There are two possible interpretations of this. One is that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is imminent, and the other is that the current incursions are merely practice for a future invasion to occur sometime in the future.
That the Communists intend to invade Taiwan is certain. China has repeatedly declared the intention to invade Taiwan and annex it to China.
Last week, as the hundreds of warplanes were threatening Taiwan, Communist leader Xi Jinping said the following:
"Taiwan independence separatism is the biggest obstacle to achieving the reunification of the motherland, and the most serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation. ...Reunification through a peaceful manner is the most in line with the overall interest of the Chinese nation, including Taiwan compatriots. ...
No one should underestimate the Chinese people's staunch determination, firm will, and strong ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and will definitely be fulfilled."
Xi's problem is that, in many ways, he's running out of time, mostly for generational reasons.
Until the 1990s, the Nationalists ruled Taiwan, and most Taiwanese believed that it was only a matter of time before Taiwan would be reunitied with the mainland, although many would have demanded that the Nationalists govern the reunited country.
Since then, the survivors of the 1940s civil war have died off, and new generations have grown and come to power. A major turning point was the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which the citizens of Taiwan watched with horror. This led to the rise of the nominally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose leader is the current president Tsai Ing-wen. As the new generations have come to power, and young people displace old people, more and more people oppose reunification. In recent years, Beijing's brutal treatment of Hong Kong has reinforced this opposition. According to polls, fewer than 10% of the people today favor reunification, and many of those would agree to reunification only if mainland China became a democratic country, something that's not going to happen.
So Xi Jinping is running out of time in Taiwan, but he's also running out of time on the mainland. Younger generations are increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic, and are demanding that Xi Jinping stop stalling and take action in Taiwan.
The one-child policy, adopted in 1979, has been a disaster for China. Women who had unapproved pregnancies could be violently dragged from their homes and forced to abort and be sterilized. If an unapproved child was born, then the child could not be registered, and essentially did not exist, so could not get schooling or other social benefits.
The policy accelerated the aging of the population, and a decline in the working-age population, which threatens economic growth. Furthermore, with fewer children, fewer elderly people could be cared for by their children. In 2015 there were eleven working age Chinese for every retiree. By 2050, if not earlier, there will only be two for each retiree.
In addition, parents often aborted girl babies, since they wanted their one child to be a boy. The result is that millions of young males have been unable to find a wife, and so females are enticed or coerced (kidnapped by criminal gangs) to become wives of Chinese men who have no other options, which is raising tensions with China's neighbors.
The result is that the number of elderly people is growing, while the population as a whole is shrinking. This puts a strain on the country's pension system, and creates a constantly shrinking labor force. China is already finding it difficult to fill many difficult jobs, including jobs in the military, resulting in lower GDP growth.
There are other domestic problems facing Xi Jinping. The collapse of Evergrande is spreading and could have far-reaching consequences, including outside of China. (See "25-Sep-21 World View -- China Evergrande construction firm heads to default")
Internationally, China is facing criticism about its brutal crackdown on the free press in Hong Kong, China's arrest and enslavement of millions of Uighurs, and illegal belligerent actions in the South China Sea. The Chinese Communists have made it abundantly clear that they don't care at all what others think of them, and what international laws they violate. What we're seeing is the millennia-old Chinese culture saying that the rest of the world are barbarians, and are to be treated as donkeys, with no purpose except to serve the Chinese Communists.
According to analysts, China would prevail in an invasion of Taiwan, although Taiwan would inflict a great deal of damage on China at the same time. However, that assumes that Taiwan would fight Taiwan alone.
By the way, to my knowledge nobody supports China's invasion of Taiwan. Cambodia and Pakistan are close allies with China, but I'm not aware that they or any other country would join China in an invasion of Taiwan.
However, there are several countries that are likely to help defend Taiwan.
The most obvious friend is the United States, and it's debated endlessly whether the US would defend Taiwan, or would just stand by and allow Taiwan to be swallowed up by China. My personal belief is that this would constitute a "generational regeneracy" event (regenerating civic unity behind the president), and we would be at war with China within a few hours or days.
America has been helping Taiwan to defend itself, mainly by providing weapons systems. In the last few days, it was reported that about two dozen U.S. troops have been deployed to Taiwan for at least the last year to train local military forces to bolster the island's defenses. The special operators have worked with Taiwanese ground troops and the Marines have worked with maritime forces on small-boat operations.
Taiwan has other friends, most notably Japan. As I've been writing for years, China has been thirsting for a war with Japan in revenge for the atrocities (chemical warfare, rape of Nanking) committed by Japan on China during World War II. Furthermore, and nationalism and xenophobia have increased in both countries, and there are now signs that the Japanese are thirsting for a new war with the Chinese. It shouldn't take long for both thirsts to be quenched.
One trigger for a Japanese war with China would be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Although Japan has a "pacifist" constitution, in 2015 the law was reinterpreted to permit Japanese forces to defend an ally (Taiwan or the US) as "collective self-defense," provided that Japan's government determined that the war was a security threat that threatened Japan's own survival. For example, the Japanese might view the invasion of Taiwan as a stepping-stone to a planned invasion of Japan. (See "28-Jun-21 World View -- Japan's plans for defending Taiwan from an attack by China")
Beyond Japan, there is also the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, linking the United States, Japan, India and Australia, This grouping does not have any military commitments, but it will hold talks to "hold China accountable."
The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing will begin on Friday, February 4, and end on Sunday, February 20. This is an interesting milepost in the discussions of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
On the one hand, the Olympics games are a matter of enormous prestige for the Chinese Communists, and they would not want to besmirch the games by an untoward event, like a major war. This suggests that any planned invasion of Taiwan would have to come after February 20.
On the other hand, it's expected that there will be substantial boycotts of the games, for two reasons. One reason is that China is actively committing genocide, ethnic cleansing and enslavement of millions of Muslim Uighurs, and many people will boycott in protest. The second reason is that China kidnaps and jails foreigners without charges in order to gain political advantage, in a policy known as "hostage diplomacy," and many people want to stay away from China for fear of being held hostage to some political dispute.
Xi Jinping and Tsai Ing-wen both upped rhetoric this past week, in celebration of the "National Days" for China and Taiwan, respectively, with China going much farther by launching hundreds of warplanes to fly over Taiwan.
There is enormous and growing pressure on Xi Jinping to do something to solve the Taiwan problem. However, I agree with those analysts who say that Xi cannot risk an invasion at this time (or at any time, really) because the results would be too unpredictable and potentially catastrophic. So you have the "pressure cooker" analogy, where you don't know when the pressure will be too great, but you know that the pressure has to blow at some point. Or maybe you prefer the "straw that breaks the camel's back" analogy where you know that if you keep piling on straw, then eventually a straw will break the camel's back, though you don't know in advance which one.
As I've written in the past, crisis wars begin with a chaotic unexpected event. World War I began because a 12-year-old high school student decided in 1914 that it would be fun to shoot an Archduke. WW II began in 1937 because a Japanese soldier had to pee and got lost in the woods. Those wars were a complete surprise, even to the belligerents. That's how WW III will begin. It will be totally irrational, insane and unexpected, and it could happen any day.
During the last two weeks, I've been moved to a new apartment, and I still can't figure out where many things are in the new apartment. At the same time, my computer's hard disk crashed, though fortunately I had everything backed up. All of this has been extremely overwhelming, and it turns out that at age 77 it's even more so, when everything happens at once.
So anyway, anyone who wants to contact me by snail mail should use my new address, which is the same as my old address, except for the apartment number:
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 2-03C [New apartment number]
Cambridge, MA 02142
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan:
Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book
2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references,
$13.99
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(11-Oct-2021)
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Crypto-currency crackdown
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Last week, it was clear that China Evergrande Group real estate construction and retail investment firm was a gargantuan Ponzi scheme that was headed for default soon, unless the Chinese Communist government executed an extremely risky bailout. (See "16-Sep-21 World View -- China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability")
By Friday, 24-Sept, Evergrande was scheduled to pay $83.5 million in interest payments on dollar-denominated bonds held by overseas investors (i.e., non-Chinese). Evergrande missed those payments, but Evergrade will not be in technical default until a 30-day grace period has passed.
Evergrande owes another $47.5 million to offshore investors next week, and $669 million by the end of the year. By the end of next year, Evergrande has to pay back $7.4 billion, as a number of bonds mature. All in all, Evergrande has $305 billion in liabilities.
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Beijing cannot save Evergrande, but the Chinese Communist regulators have announced that they will henceforth be closely supervising decisions by Evergrande. They will override international financial norms and agreements to achieve the political ends of preventing a "systemic" financial crisis or social unrest.
Under direction from regulators, Evergrande has reportedly made arrangements with local (Chinese) bondholders to delay interest payments.
Offshore (non-Chinese) bond holders will not be made whole. Current estimates are that if you hold an Evergrande bond, then you'll receive only 25% of its value, though that number could fall as time goes on. However, most offshore bond holders are actually large international banks, like the Swiss bank UBS, which holds $275.7 million in Evergrande's bonds.
There is little appetite in Beijing to pay back Western bondholders, but this is offset by worries that Chinese companies will not have access to dollar funding in the future. So some accomodation will be made for Western bondholders.
As for local (Chinese) banks, Beijing has injected billions of additional yuan into the banking system to prevent "contagion" -- bank failure resulting from Evergrande failure, in the cases where bank loans won't be repaid.
Beijing is telling Evergrande to pay off Chinese retail investors first. The objective is to avoid social unrest.
Beijing is also telling Evergrande to finish up its unfinished homes under construction, for the same reason. Evergrande is estimated to have a staggering 1.5 million unfinished properties, for which down payments have been collected, but many of which have stopped construction, for lack of funding. Private property developers are being told to prepare to take over projects left unfinished by Evergrande.
Evergrande's Ponzi scheme involved using the down payments for new homes to pay off old debts. Many of these down payments were also used for risky ventures in electric vehicle manufacturing, bottled water, football clubs, and amusement parks. So now, many of these homes are incomplete in ghost cities.
Evergrande is offering a fire sale of unfinished or unoccupied properties, in order to generate cash. Estimates are that you can get something for 40% of its market value. However, China's real estate is in a bubble, and there is a fear that this action will cause property values generally to fall sharply, causing bankruptcies in other areas of the economy.
Chinese banks, including Bank of China and China CITIC Bank Corp, are now closely monitoring their own clients and scrutinizing all loans, to make sure that no other construction firm is about to fail because of its own Ponzi scheme. Credit is being eliminated or tightened for fourth-tier and third-tier cities across China. Smaller Chinese banks are themselves being scrutinized for viability.
Whenever any investors or debtors are bailed out for any reason in any country, there is always a "moral hazard" problem. This is the problem that risky or reckless behavior should not be rewarded with a bailout, since that will encourage others to pursue to risky and reckless behavior.
According to reports, Chinese regulators do not want to get involved in any sort of bailout of Evergrande or any of its subsidiaries until the very last moment, and then only if absolutely necessary.
Most analysts seem to believe that the Chinese Communists will be able to contain the damage from an Evergrande default, with no systemic damage to China's economy and no sustained social unrest or rebellions, although investors outside of China may lose all or almost all of these investments.
Last week's article described a related matter -- a crackdown on China's Macau, the gambling capital of Asia. I'm told that the purpose of the crackdown was end Macau's use of money laundering, particularly the practice by wealth mainlanders of using sending money abroad through Macau.
This week on Friday, the Chinese Communists announced a crackdown on crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. Not only will use of cryto-currencies be made illegal, but any transactions involving the cryto-currencies will be illegal.
Once again, this is apparently a way to prevent money laundering, particularly when used to send money abroad.
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(25-Sep-2021)
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Furious reactions from China and France
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The US, the UK and Australia have reached a new agreement called the "AUKUS pact." The US will provide nuclear-power technology to Australia, and Australia will build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines using the technology, with help from the US and UK. The submarines will be nuclear-powered, but they will not be capable of launching nuclear weapons. The intention is for eight nuclear-powered submarines to be built in Adelaide.
The Aukus announcement did not mention China specifically. However, it referred repeatedly to regional security concerns which they said had "grown significantly."
Commenting on the agreement, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said China was "embarking on one of the biggest military spends in history. It is growing its navy [and] air force at a huge rate. Obviously it is engaged in some disputed areas. Our partners in those regions want to be able to stand their own ground."
The agreement will also provide for industrial cooperation among the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom on other key technologies, including artificial intelligence, cyber, and long-range precision strike capabilities.
According to China's Foreign Ministry:
"The nuclear submarine cooperation between the US, the UK and Australia has seriously undermined regional peace and stability, intensified the arms race and undermined international non-proliferation efforts. The export of highly sensitive nuclear submarine technology to Australia by the US and the UK proves once again that they are using nuclear exports as a tool for geopolitical game and adopting double standards. This is extremely irresponsible."
It's always really funny when the Chinese Communist sleazebags accuse someone of undermining peace and stability, or of being irresponsible. The Chinese Communists are emulating the Nazis by illegally annexing the South China Sea, by threatening Taiwan, and by committing genocide, rape, torture, and other atrocities against millions of Uighurs.
What the Chinese sleazebags want is to take control of the entire Indo-Pacific region, without any opposition. The Aukus agreement is a clear challenge to China's illegal military threats.
The Ankus agreement scraps an existing $90 billion deal that Australia had with the French shipbuilding firm Naval Group. That agreement would have had France provide non-nuclear submarine technology for Australia's submarine fleet.
In an interview, France's furious Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said:
"It's just not done between allies. It's a stab in the back. This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision is very similar to what Mr Trump used to do. ... We had established a relationship of trust with Australia and this trust has been betrayed. This is not the end of the story."
France's Defense Ministry added:
"[Australia's decision] is contrary to the letter and spirit of the cooperation that prevailed between France and Australia, based on a relationship of political trust as well as on the development of a very high-level defence industrial and technological base in Australia. [Also,] the American choice to exclude a European ally and partner from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note with regret."
As far as I can tell, France was going to sell Australia old, out-of-date diesel-power technology for the new submarine fleet, while the Aukus agreement sells new nuclear-power technology. I assume that's the reason that Australia canceled the agreement with France and went with the Aukus agreement.
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(17-Sep-2021)
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Will there be a government bailout?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China Evergrande Group is an enormous real estate construction firm that has built millions of homes and other structures in China, and which has expanded into other areas, such electric vehicles, a theme park, a soccer club, a food company, and other areas. However, Evergrande is now close to default because of its massive debt, and its inability to meet its obligations.
China's Evergrande financial crisis has been bubbling for several months, but reaching a turning point on Monday when the company issued a statement denying that it was close to bankruptcy, but saying that it was going to hire financial advisers to explore "all feasible solutions" to its crisis. However, they would not guarantee that the company will meet its financial obligations. That announcement provoked protests at Evergrande offices across the country.
Evergrande appears to me to be a giant Ponzi scheme, where new debt is incurred to cover old, out of control debts.
So Evergrande as a construction firm has completed nearly 900 commercial, residential, and infrastructure projects. But it has 1.5 million unfinished properties, for which down payments have been collected, but many of which have stopped construction, for lack of funding. For years, Evergrande has apparently used down payments for new homes and projects to fund completion of previously committed projects, leaving no money for the new projects.
Millions of ordinary homebuyers who made down payments on new home construction are now facing losing their down payments, and getting no homes. According to press reports, Evergrande now has about 900 unfinished projects, and there are about 1.2 million people waiting to move in.
In order to fund its Ponzi scheme, Evergrande for years has been offering investment opportunities in "wealth management products" (WMPs), which are offered by many Chinese banks and financial institutions, and which are are unique components of China's shadow banking system. A retail investor can invest in a WMP, which supposedly guarantees a high rate of return, but which is not directly backed by any solid asset, such as real estate. Evergrande pays the WMP through profits from its real estate business and by issuing its own bonds. But if the real estate business is not making profits, and if its bonds are losing value in the financial markets, then Evergrande will default on the WMPs.
Every Ponzi scheme depends on an accelerating stream of cash to fund further sales to meet previous debt obligations. As soon as there's a slowdown in the incoming stream of cash for any reason, like a recession or new regulations, then the Ponzi scheme crashes. That seems to be where Evergrande is now. This means that homebuyers, lenders, bondholders and retail investors are all subject to some or all of their investments. According to some reports, bondholders will lose 75% of their investments.
As things stand now, Evergrande is going to collapse, possibly into bankruptcy but at least into massive restructuring. With millions of people losing some or all of their investments, this could lead to China's dreaded "social unrest." Evergrande's headquarters are located in Shenzhen, which is on the mainland adjacent to Hong Kong, in southern China which has historically been the crucible of China's previous massive rebellions, including Mao's Communist Rebellion (1934-49) and the huge Taiping Rebellion (1854-64). The Chinese Communists are well aware of this history.
The Beijing government may decide that Evergrande is "too big to fail," and bail the company out. But Evergrande has publicly acknowledged $300 billion in debt, and so a bailout would test even the Communist government's resources.
But it's more complicated than even that. For years, there have been news stories about ghost cities where entire towns had been built with homes and stores, all of which remained empty and unoccupied. Many individuals purchased these homes, not to live in, but as an investment, hoping to cash in when they finally became occupied and increased in value. Instead, they're now worth much less than their original prices, and they're sitting empty, with no hope of occupancy.
Another problem is that if Evergrande defaults, then the entire real estate market could collapse, as millions of new properties could possibly come on the market at the same time.
So a bailout might cost China's government considerably more than the $300 billion in debt.
So bailing out the Evergrande Ponzi debt might be too expensive even for China. Even worse, it may result in contagion. Investors in other large financial firms with huge exposures might demand similar bailouts.
It was just last month that Beijing executed a much smaller bailout. China's Huarong Asset Management announced a $16 billion net loss for 2020. After months of saying nothing, the Chinese Communist government finally gave in and agreed to a bailout, for fear that a Huarong bankruptcy could destablize China's financial system.
The way that the bailout would work is that Huarong will issue new shares to five state-owned companies -- Citic Group, China Insurance Investment, China Life Asset Management, China Cinda Asset Management and Sino-Ocean Capital Holding. By purchasing these shares, the five state-owned companies would provide a huge cash infusion to Huarong.
So if that worked for Huarong, would it also work for Evergrande? Well, Huarong lost a mere $16 billion, while Evergrande is at least $300 billion in debt, and possibly much more. So it may not even be possible.
There are several typical behaviors that generations and populations exhibit during a generational Crisis era, like the one we've been in since the beginning of the century. At this time, all the people who survived the previous generational crisis war (World War II) have all died or retired, and the new generations in power (Gen-X, Millennials) have no memory of the lessons learned. They forget the nationalism and xenophobiat that caused the World War II, and they forget the profligacy that resulted in the previous major financial crisis (1929). They say that history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes, and we're seeing that now.
I've written much about China's increasing xenophobia and nationalism directed at Japan and Taiwan, and I won't repeat it here, but I want to focus on profligacy.
The United States is already $28 trillion in debt, and is contemplating new legislation that will add $5 trillion more to the debt. That's absolutely ridiculous, and will result in the worst financial crisis in the history of the world.
China is also incurring historically high levels of debt, with no end in sight. At some point there will be a major financial crisis in China, with tens or even hundreds of million people losing their life savings as the crisis spreads from company to company.
That will give rise to the Beijing's nightmare scenario, massive social unrest, possibly turning into rebellion.
Macau is similar to Hong Kong in that it is a special administrative region in southern China. However, Macau is the gambling capital of Asia, competing against Las Vegas for customers.
On Tuesday, China's regulators announced changes to the gaming law that would give the government much greater control over the casinos, and possibly a larger share of the earnings.
You may think that this is an internal Chinese matter, but it's not. Almost all the casinos are operated by American companies -- Sands China, Wynn Macau, Galaxy Entertainment, SJM Holdings, Melco Entertainment and MGM China. And Macau stocks lost a third of their value, around $14 billion, because investors feared that China would impose tighter regulations.
This illustrates how tightly interlocked the Chinese and American companies are, and a global financial crisis in one country will cause a chain reaction financial crisis in the other.
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Did Joe Biden intentionally sabotage the Afghanistan evacuation?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The Taliban have announced that they're in total control of Afghanistan, now that they've won the last battle, the clash in Panjshir Valley. It's not clear that this is true. The Taliban have cut off electricity and communications to the Panjshir Valley, so it's impossible to read what's going on. I'll discuss the Panjshir Valley below.
Separately, there's already a potential hostage crisis in progress, with the Taliban preventing Americans from leaving Mazar-i-Sharif airport. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is negotiating with the Taliban to obtain safe passage. But as of this writing, the situation is unclear.
The situation in Afghanistan is extremely complex. It's very hard to provide a politically balanced exposition, since the evacuation was clearly a disaster. Even many Democrats agree. I'm going to quote from different, sometimes conflicting media sources, in order to sort the issues out.
The view held by president Joe Biden, the Democrats, the administration and by the left-wing mainstream media (CNN, MSNBC, CBS news, etc.) is that the Afghanistan problem has now ended, and that it's time to move on.
Biden says that the evacuation ws an "extraordinary success." He says that he was handed an existing agreement that the Taliban had made with former president Donald Trump, and that he had to implement it as best as he could. He admits that only 90% of the Americans and Afghan allies had been evacuated, leaving 10% behind, but he says that any large historical evacuation has always been chaotic and had always left people behind.
The Biden administration has been downplaying the problem. They insist that only 100 or 200 Americans are left behind, and many of those have families in Afghanistan and didn't want to leave.
In fact, the mainstream media are cooperating with the desire of the administration to turn the page. MSNBC and CNN sometimes aggressively covered the Afghan evacuation prior to 30-Aug, but since then, coverage on those channels has fallen off a cliff, and typically the Afghan war is never even mentioned.
The Biden administration now wants to turn the page back to the $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill that has passed in the Senate, but is being held up in the house, and the $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" bill, which is an ill-defined collection of spending on Democrat cronies, including labor unions, teachers unions, debt-ridden Democrat states, and social services organizations.
The decision to "end the war" is overwhelmingly popular, but many people believe that the evacuation was botched and America was defeated, betrayed and forced to surrender. In particular, Bagram airbase should not have been closed as the first act of the evacuation. The result was that billions of dollars in advanced American weapons have been left behind, as have hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands (depending on the report) of Americans and Afghan allies have been left behind. Republicans say that people should have been evacuated first, then weapons, and then Bagram could be closed.
Republicans refer to a newly leaked transcript of a phone call between Joe Biden and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on July 23, when Biden said, "And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture." Soon after, Ghani fled the country.
Many Republicans -- and many Democrats, especially veterans -- say that Biden not only botched the evacuation but has betrayed America and the veterans who fought in that war for 20 years, by letting the Taliban take over as if we were back in 2001.
The Republicans point out that Biden's approval rating has crashed from 60% a few months ago to 43% now.
A particularly bitter complaint is the number of Americans and Afghan allies that have been left behind, and mostly ignored, and by the repeated Administration lies about the number of these. As recently as August 19 Biden said in an interview, "If there are American citizens left, we're gonna stay till we get them all out." He said the same was true of Afghan allies. It's believed that Biden never had any intention of fulfilling this promise, since he wants to make a grand "Mission Accomplished!" speech on 11-Sep-2021.
A separate issue for conservatives is that Afghan refugees are coming into the country without being properly vetted. This subject will be debated in the coming weeks.
The BBC receives a great deal of funding from NPR, so it normally just repeats the same Democrat talking points as CNN and MSNBC.
However, this situation is different, because the British and Europeans also feel completely betrayed. In fact, the mission in Afghanistan was actually a NATO mission, and Biden made a unilateral decision without even consulting NATO or any European leaders. So neither NATO nor the individual countries had time to evacuate their own troops or their citizens.
The result was that countries like Britain, France, Italy and Germany each left behind a thousand or more citizens. The future of Nato itself is in doubt.
Once Kabul fell to the Taliban, and Biden blamed it on the Afghan government, criticism from Europe was sharp.
Tom Tugendhat, Tory chair of foreign affairs committee said:
"To see their commander-in-chief [the US president, Joe Biden] call into question the courage of men I fought with – to claim that they ran – is shameful. Those who have not fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have.I leave the house with one image. In the year that I was privileged to be the adviser to the governor of Helmand, we opened girls’ schools. The joy it gave parents to see their little girls going to school was extraordinary ...
The second image is one that the forever war that has just reignited could lead to. It is the image of a man whose name I never knew, carrying a child who had died hours earlier into our firebase and begging for help. There was nothing we could do. It was over. That is what defeat looks like; it is when you no longer have the choice of how to help. This does not need to be defeat, but at the moment it damn well feels like it."
Labor MP Dan Jarvis said the following:
"Many of us who served in Afghanistan have a deep bond of affection for the Afghan people, and I had the honour of serving alongside them in Helmand. We trained together, fought together and, in some cases, died together. They were our brothers in arms. I shudder to think where those men are now. Many will be dead, and I know others now consider themselves to be dead men walking. Where were we in their hour of need? We were nowhere. That is shameful, and it will have a very long-lasting impact on Britain’s reputation right around the world."
Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the German parliament’s foreign relations committee and a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said:
"I say this with a heavy heart and with horror over what is happening, but the early withdrawal was a serious and far-reaching miscalculation by the current administration. This does fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of the West."
A number of European politicians are discussing the creation of a European Rapid Reaction Force.
The UK and the EU have said that when the Taliban announce their new government, there will be "operational engagement" with the new government, but they will not recognize it until it's "stable."
They are particularly concerned that girls and women "will be erased from life." The BBC already reports stories of rape, forced marriages.
As a Muslim country, Qatar is much more sympathetic to the Taliban than the West is.
Al-Jazeera has a very different view of the Afghanistan problem: refugees.
Al-Jazeera is headquartered in Doha, Qatar's capital city, and is funded by Qatar's monarchy.
Qatar has friendly relations with the Taliban, and Qatar also has friendly relations with the United States and the West. Qatar hosts a major American naval base. So I understand that al-Jazeera Arabic has been cheering for the Taliban. Of course, I watch al-Jazeera English, which is much more guarded.
Qatar is playing a pivotal role in Afghanistan's relationship with the United States. The thousands of Americans and Afghans that were evacuated from Afghanistan were first transited through Doha, before going on to other destinations. Qatar's government cooperated by providing hotel rooms and the essentials of food and medical treatment. The housing planned for the 2022 FIFA World Cup (soccer) contests next year is being used.
Since 30-Aug, the Qataris have taken on another important role. With the Americans gone, Kabul's airport was no longer operational for commercial use. The Qataris and the Turks are sending technicians to Kabul to make the airport operational. I understand that there's a dispute about who will operate the airport, once it's operational.
Al-Jazeera has been reporting heavily on the refugee issue.
The issue that may be very explosive in 2022 is a potential flood of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. The size of this flood will depend on the depth of the growing humanitarian disaster and the growing violence by the Taliban against people in the Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek ethnic groups that formed the backbone of the Northern Alliance that fought against the Taliban in the 1990s civil war.
Europeans still have sharp memories of the millions of refugees that flooded into Europe in 2015 and 2016. Those were mostly Syrian refugees, but a large percentage were Afghans. Now many Afghan refugees are once again crossing borders, hoping to find a better life in the European Union.
The flood of refugees was only slowed in 2016 when the EU reached an agreement to pay Turkey a great deal of money to host millions of refugees.
The EU is looking for ways to prevent a new refugee crisis. Greece is strengthening its border wall with Turkey. EU negotiators are desperately trying to reach agreements to pay other countries to host a potential flood of Afghan refugees. Turkey has already said it wants no more refugees. Central Asian countries -- Tajikistan, Uzbekistan -- are closing their borders and, so far, are rebuffing EU offers to pay for housing of refugees.
According to the United Nations, Afghanistan is facing a looming humanitarian disaster. Even before the evacuation, Afghanistan's economy was in severe trouble, with a severe drought going on, but now the economy and the currency are collapsing. In addition, the entire health system is near collapse. According to a United Nations spokesman, "One in three Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from. Nearly half of all children under the age of 5 are predicted to be acutely malnourished in the next 12 months."
The United Nations has warned that up to half a million Afghans could flee the country by the end of the year and has called on neighbouring countries to keep their borders open. The current crisis comes on top of the 2.2 million Afghan refugees already in neighboring countries and 3.5 million people forced to flee their homes within Afghanistan's borders.
The UN says that more than 600,000 Afghans were displaced this year, 80% of which are women and children. But with the growing humanitarian crisis, it's possible that millions more will become refugees in the next year.
Other countries are helping out. Uganda, Mexico, Colombia and Rwanda are temporarily hosting Afghan refugees.
Belarus, arguably the worst country in Europe, is weaponizing refugees. They're inviting refugees into the country, and then transporting them across the border into Poland.
Pakistan's government has denied years of accusations that it was funding the Afghan Taliban. However, the accusations have really been directed at Pakistan's extremely powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which is known to fund terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and India, and to have protected Osama bin Laden when he was hiding out in Pakistan.
Pakistan was formerly part of the British empire, and so the people in the government, the agencies, and the élite almost always speak English. Among rural citizens, Punjabi and Sinhi are most widely spoken. In Afghanistan, most people speak Dari (Afghan variant of Persian), while the majority Pashtun ethnic group speak Pashto. So there is no particular advantage to other ethnic groups besides the Pashtuns to flee to Pakistan.
Nonetheless, Pakistan is the first country of choice for many displaced Pakistanis, especially Pashtuns. However, Pakistan has closed its borders with Afghanistan because it already hosts three million Afghan refugees and refuses to take more because of its own ravaged economy.
In 2020, Pakistan and Iran saw the highest numbers of Afghanistan's refugees and asylum seekers. Almost 1.5 million fled to Pakistan in 2020, while Iran hosted 780,000, according to UNHCR figures.
Furthermore, Pakistan has its own Pakistan Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban or TTP), different than the Afghan Taliban, that has conducted numerous violent terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The TTP has been opposed to the Afghan government for the last 20 years, but with the return of the Taliban government, the TTP is pledging allegiance to the Afghan Taliban.
According to analyst Walid Phares, the combined Afghan Taliban and TTP would like would like to take over all of Pakistan. Among other things, this would give them control of nuclear weapons.
Pakistan's government has expressed concerns that some TTP terrorists were let out of jail by the Taliban.
The Taliban leadership promised that once the American forces were withdrawn, the Taliban would stop fighting and would govern peacefully. Nobody seriously believes any Taliban promises, but this one was broken instantly. As soon as the last American left, Taliban forces moved hundreds of fighters to subdue the Panjshir Valley.
Panjshir Valley has an almost mythical quality. When the Soviet Union invaded in the 1980s, and when the Taliban attacked during the 1990s, the Panjshir Valley was not conquered. The people of Panjshir Valley are Tajiks. The valley itself is surrounded by high mountains, and there is only one road used as an entrance and one road used as an exit. The Soviets attacked from the air, but were defeated when their helicopters were shot down with missiles. In the 1990s, the Taliban were defeated by blockading the entrance and exit roads. The Panjshir Valley was supported by the Americans against the Soviets, and by Central Asians against the Pashtuns.
In the 1990s, Panjshir Valley was the stronghold of the Northern Alliance, fighting the Taliban. Today, it's the stronghold of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), once again fighting against the Taliban.
There have been heavy clashes during the last week between the Taliban and the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) in Panjshir Valley, with both sides claiming to have the upper hand.
This time, the Taliban have several advantages that they didn't have during the 1990s. First, they have a huge multi-billion stash of advanced weaponry that the Americans left behind, and those weapons are being used to attack the NRF. Second, the NRF does not have any foreign support, as it did in the past.
The Taliban have already cut off electricity and all communications to the valley. If the the clashes continue, they can impose a full siege, depriving the value of food and fuel, crippling their ability to fight.
Joe Biden said at once point that America had no further interest in Afghanistan because al-Qaeda was gone. This claim was considered by almost everyone to be outrageous. It's hard to guess whether that was a lie, or because he had no idea, but no one ever seriously believed that al-Qaeda was gone.
Biden's remark was particularly shocking in retrospect, after ISIS-K caused a massive explosion at Kabul airport, killing 13 American forces and hundreds of Afghans.
Al-Qaeda is deeply embedded in the Taliban and the Haqqani network, which has historical ties to Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, though Pakistan denies that.
The fear now is that Afghanistan next year will become a cauldron of international terrorism. The international jihadists networks are thrilled and excited that the Taliban have humiliated and defeated the Great Satan, the United States. There have already been reports of jihadists from Syria and northern Africa going to Afghanistan to join up with other jihadists and to receive training. This had led a number of people to conclude that it will be necessary for American forces to re-enter Afghanistan, possibly next year.
When Saigon was evacuated in 1975, it was claimed that the Vietnam War "was over," something that continues to be believed today, even though nothing can be further from the truth, as I described in my book "Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War," published earlier this year.
Once Saigon fell to the Communists, the war was completely over for most Americans. But that wasn't true for the Vietnamese people. They knew what was going to happen because they'd seen it all before, especially in 1954 when the evacuation of French forces led to massacres of Catholics and other "pro-French" civilians in North Vietnam, forcing almost a million of them to flee to South Vietnam. Now that the North Vietnamese Communists were going to take over Saigon, they knew that they would probably have to flee again.
The new Communist government in Saigon acted in a very brutal way, using policies that they had learned from Communist China. There were harsh "re-education programs," as there are still in Communist China today. The peasants had their land taken from them and collectivized into state farms, as in China's disastrous Great Leap Forward, with similar results.
North Vietnam sent administrators to Saigon to establish a new regime. Officials in the defeated government were killed, and hundreds of thousands of people were sent to concentration camps, ostensibly to re-educate them to live in a socialist society. A system of registering the population was instituted to ensure that those whose families had supported the Second Republic were penalized by denial of employment, education, and food rations.
There was a massive exodus of refugees, and they became known as the "Vietnamese Boat People." Experts estimate that up to 1.5 million refugees escaped but a high estimate of 10 percent died from drowning, piracy, dehydration, or otherwise never made landfall.
The point of remembering that history of "the end of the Vietnam War" is that the Vietnam War was not over in 1975, and the Afghanistan war is not over today.
Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan.
As I've written many times before, the ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
The media-savvy Taliban spokesmen are promising a kinder, gentler "Taliban 2.0" that will govern wisely and will respect women and girls, allowing them to go to school and work. That this is nonsense is made clear by the Vietnam example.
It's even worse, because the North Vietnamese were relatively disciplined, but the Taliban are a collection of tribes headed by warlords who may or may not obey the directions of the central leadership in Kabul. Any one of these tribal warlords might decide to revert to the harsh, violent practics of "Taliban 1.0," including brutality and abuse of girls and women.
Furthermore, there are Americans and American allies scattered in provinces across Afghanistan. Any one of the Americans can be used to provoke a hostage crisis, even worse than the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 that lasted over a year.
 |
Up until a few months ago, I would never have believed that any President of the United States would intentionally sabotage a major foreign policy effort like the Afghanistan evacuation.
My mind was opened to the possibility by my work on my recent book, "Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War," published earlier this year. I concluded, after months of research involving dozens of sources, that John F. Kennedy intentionally sabotaged the Vietnam war effort. Two major decisions -- first, neutralization of Laos and ceding it to Hanoi, and second, ousting South Vietnam's strong anti-Communist leader Ngo Dinh Diem, resulting in Diem's assassination. After these two disastrous mistakes, the war was lost, as I described in great detail in my book.
JFK was a Democrat, and obviously deeply embedded in the Democrat Party culture that was humiliated and infuriated by losing the Civil War and having the end of slavery imposed on them. That culture had spawned the KKK and the Jim Crow laws, and had as its slogan, "The South will rise again!" The Democrats were further humiliated by proposed Civil Rights legislation that was bitterly opposed by the Democrats, and did not pass until JFK himself was assassinated.
Although President Truman was strongly anti-Communist and created the Truman Doctrine, Communism became a highly politicized issue in 1954 because of the Army-McCarthy hearings, which were shut down soon after a Senate Democrat said to Republican Joseph McCarthy "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" After that, McCarthyism was used synonymously by Democrats as being anti-Communist.
So JFK became president, and the Vietnam war was forced on him, probably against his will, because it was another anti-Communist fight. As I describe in my book, the Vietnam War was pushed on JFK by the worldwide march of Communism at the time -- the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, the victory of North Korea, and the victory of North Vietnam. Then, in 1960, there was Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in Cuba.
So two other factors may have contributed to JFK's desire to sabotage the Vietnam War effort. One was the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, which was a losing attempt to defeat Communism in Cuba. And the other was the Civil Rights Act that Democrats bitterly opposed, and in fact did not pass until after JFK himself was assassinated.
So I've concluded that JFK sabotaged the Vietnam war, and did so intentionally.
As a child, Joe Biden was in the same Democrat party culture that had supported ending America with the Civil War. His mentor was Senator Robert Byrd, who had been a Grand Wizard in the KKK.
Now, Joe Biden is in office, and he has adopted one policy after another to sabotage the United States. These include: open the border, flood the country with illegal immigrants from 170 countries, flood the country with Chinese fentanyl and meth, open the prisons, let violent criminals out of jail, defund the police, destroy black families, encourage the murder of thousands of young black men by other black men in Democrat-run cities, close Keystone pipeline then beg Saudi Arabia for more oil, destroy America's energy independence, teach racial hatred in school (critical race theory), censor political opposition, paying people not to work, etc.
When a policy has unintended consequences, and the unintended consequences go on for a long time, with no attempt to stop them, then it's reasonable to conclude that the consequences are intentional. Many of the above policies have gone on for a long time with no attempt to repair them. In some cases, further policies have worsened the "unintended conquences," making it all but certain that they were "intended consequences."
At this point, there's no doubt that the Biden administration repeatedly lied and made one decision after another that "botched" the evacuation effort. Based on JFK's actions, and based on Biden's actions in other areas, I now believe that the circumstantial evidence points to intentional sabotage, imitating JFK's sabotage of the Vietnam war effort.
U.S. General Mark Milley is predicting a new civil war because the Taliban won't "be able to consolidate power and establish governance." Milley and the other generals have had no idea what's been going on in Afghanistan for the last 20 years, and this comment indicates that they still don't.
Milley's observation about the Taliban is correct, but it will not lead to a civil war, since Afghanistan is in a generational Awakening era. As I described in my previous article on Afghanistan, we're going to see the Generational Dynamics Democide Pattern played out. (See "23-Aug-21 World View -- The Afghanistan catastrophe" for an explanation.)
This means that there won't be a new civil war, but there will be continual clashes and brutal treatment by the Taliban of its old Northern Alliance enemy. The Taliban will use violence, beatings, rape, and extrajudicial torture and jailing as needed or desired.
Furthermore, because of the undisciplined, tribal nature of the Taliban, these events, sometimes using American hostages as pawns, are expected to increase.
The Panjshir Valley clashes are only the beginning. These clashes will spread and grow, and it's quite possible that Americans left behind will be used as pawns by either side.
Milley's observations about the Taliban confirm what a number of other politicians, both Democrat and Republican, have been suggesting -- that it will be necessary for the US to go back into Afghanistan, as it becomes a crucible of international terrorism.
The Democrats are hoping that the whole Afghanistan catastrophe will pass quickly from public memory, and they can go back to one destructive policy after another. If the opposite happens -- that the situation continues to worsen -- then Biden's presidency will be untenable. The next two in line - Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as incompetent as Biden.
Any other president would at least have fired several people after this debacle. If Biden continues to make decisions destructive to America, then it will be necessary to find a way, within the Constitution, to find a way to replace Biden with someone competent to govern.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Vietnam, Buddhism, and the
Vietnam War: How Vietnam became an economic powerhouse after the
Vietnam War" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 4), March 2021
Paperback: 325 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99 Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738645/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan:
Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book
2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references,
$13.99
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy
-- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East"
(Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018 Paperback:
153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00 Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
John Xenakis is author of: "Generational Dynamics Anniversary Edition - Forecasting
America's Destiny",
(Generational Theory Book Series, Book 3), January 2020,
Paperback: 359 pages, $14.99,
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/Generational-Dynamics-Anniversary-Forecasting-Americas/dp/1732738629/
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Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(7-Sep-2021)
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Biden says he is just following Donald Trump's policy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The disastrous events in Afghanistan are still unfolding, so all we can do is summarize what happened, and make some guesses about what's about to happen. I will say that this situation has sickened and infuriated me more than any other article I've written.
Once President Biden made the decision to evacuate all American forces, he made a number of additional decisions, related to the execution of the evacuation, that turned out to the cause of the disaster. And these assessments are based on numerous analyses that I've heard on Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC and al-Jazeera.
The two worst decisions were the following:
Analysts I heard agree that all civilians should have been evacuated first, then all the weapons should have been removed, and only then should Bagram airbase have been evacuated.
The most immediate results of these decisions are the following:
The disaster is compounded by the numerous lies that Biden told in the last two weeks, getting visibly angry and defiant whenever anyone challenges him. He said that Americans are free to leave the country, which is a lie. He said that America's allies approve of what he's doing, which is a lie. He said that he wasn't warned about a likely debacle by DoD and the CIA, which is a lie. He said that al-Qaeda is gone, which is a lie. He said that America has no further interest in Afghanistan, which is a lie. He said that girls and women will be safe, which is a lie. He said that it will be possible to control terrorism in Afghanistan with "over the horizon" technology, which is a lie. He said that he made no mistakes in the way he ordered the evacuation to be performed, which is a lie.
Biden responded to criticism by claiming that he had two choices: continue the war with more troops, or end the war. This was spin. He used this claim to deflect from the incompetency of the evacuation, and also, evacuating the troops was never going to end the war.
There's an increasing belief that Biden is so cognitively challenged that he is completely out of touch with reality, his presidency is a danger to the country. Unfortunately, his vice-president is not much better.
Biden made several false claims -- that al-Qaeda was completely gone, that the mission in Afghanistan over the last 20 years had been accomplished, and that Afghanistan was no longer relevant to America.
The claim that al-Qaeda was gone was contradicted by a UN report that claimed that elements of al-Qaeda continued to exist in numerous provinces. Al-Qaeda have always been closely related to and a part of the Taliban, and analysts say that when the American troops have been withdrawn, al-Qaeda will reconstitute itself fully.
At that point, al-Qaeda will be back where it was 20 years ago -- having a safe haven in Afghanistan to use as a platform to launch international attacks on Europe, the Mideast and possibly America.
Jihadists from all over the world will be energized, and will come to Afghanistan for training.
Biden made vague claims that al-Qaeda terrorism can be prevented by "Over the Horizon" technology, which uses such things as drones to augment local intelligence. The problem is that all local intelligence has been pretty much destroyed.
There has been an ISIS branch in Afghanistan for some years, known as ISIS Khorasan (ISIS-K). This is a jihadist group in competition with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and they pretty much hate each other. The importance of ISIS Khorasan is that they may decide to launch some kind of terrorist attack around Kabul to embarrass both the Taliban and the United States.
Biden has reversed one Donald Trump policy after another, causing one disaster after another for the country. Since Biden has become president, he has turned decision making over to millennials like AOC who are sabotaging America. The result is open borders, floods of illegal immigrants from dozens of counrties, spreading Covid and bringing jihadists into the country; changing us from an energy-dependent country to a country begging other countries for energy; massive street crime in cities across the country; and now this unmitigated disaster in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is the one Trump policy Biden chose not to reverse, but did so in the most disastrous way possible. Biden claims that he was just implementing a decision to withdraw the troops that had already been committed by his predecessor, Donald Trump. But he did so in a way most likely to sabotage America. Trump has indicated that he would have made sure that the civilians and weapons were removed before the troops were removed, and that claim is credible since it's standard military procedure and is the policy used, for example, in the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. In view of this history, it's hard to explain Biden's decision to withdraw troops first was done other than intentionally to sabotage America, just as opening the borders, ending energy production and supporting street crime are apparently done purposely to sabotage America.
However, analysts claim that Trump's decision in March 2020 to evacuate was also delusional, and I agree with that, and I said so at the time.
I started writing about this in 2009, during the Barack Obama administration. President George Bush had executed a successful counter-insurgency operation in Iraq in 2007, driving out al-Qaeda in Iraq with a troop "surge." In 2009, I ridiculed Obama's announcement that he would try to duplicate Bush's success with his own "surge" in Afghanistan. ( "People are shocked! shocked! at Obama's war plan in Afghanistan. (06-Dec-2009)")
As I explained many times since then, Iraq and Afghanistan were fundamentally different, with the result that a "surge" would work in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan. I've written about this at length many times, but briefly, the fighters in the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) insurgency were imported from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, while the fighters, in the Afghan insurgency were Pashtuns indigenous to Afghanistan. This is so simple and so obvious that it's unbelievable how stupid the people in Washington are not to understand this. The "surge" in Iraq sent the foreign fighters out of the country, while the "surge" in Afghanistan just sent them to other villages within the country.
Here's what I wrote in "16-Feb-20 World View -- US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan" in response to Donald Trump's agreement with the Taliban to withdraw American forces:
"Why the Afghan peace agreement must failAfghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.
Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
The above is a brief summary of stuff that I've written about in great detail in the past about why peace will fail in Afghanistan. It's not rocket science for the so-called "Washington experts," but it does require studying history and trying to understand what's actually going on in the world. But we live in a society where SAT scores have been plummetting for decades, ever since the Boomers graduated, and where all college courses are being taught by incredibly stupid Marxist idiots. People in the mainstream media know nothing about the world except Marxist sociology and women's studies. In Congress you have total idiots like AOC who says something every day to prove how stupid she is. And in the Administration, you have "experts" who have also graduated from colleges teaching Marxist sociology and women's studies.
So there's really no hope. The above summary is not rocket science, but it's far beyond the mental capabilities of the analysts, journalists and "experts" in Washington, almost all of whom are way too steeped in metoo and socialist garbage to have any clue what's really going on in the world. The same is true about many of the other hundreds of countries and societies that I've studied, analyzed and written about in the last 15 years. All the people in Washington can do is stumble in the dark, until they stumble into World War III. Then they finally learn what's going on. That's the way the world works.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Attributed to American satirist Ambrose Bierce, early 1900s."
If you read the above, you get some idea why I'm always right and the Washington experts are almost always wrong. The catastrophe going on in Afghanistan right now shows the result. I would add that you can also get some idea why being always right has never made me loved. It's brought me no joy, no money, but plenty of contempt. Generational Dynamics has been a curse on my life and has only brought me misery, as the ability to foretell the future did for the mythical Cassandra and the Biblical Jeremiah. I've been doing this for 20 years, and since I'm now age 77, I hope I won't be doing this much longer.
So now we can use some Generational Dynamics analysis to predict some patterns that we can expect to see in Afghanistan.
Regular readers know that I've written several times about the differences that depend on whether the preceding crisis war was an external war with another country versus an internal crisis civil war between tribes and ethnic groups. In the former case, when the war ends, the two armies each withdraw from the other country, and further contact between the populations is done diplomatically. But in the latter case, the two populations continue to live with each other when the war ends -- in the same country, the same villages and even on the same streets. This means that the hatred and the desire for revenge continue at a very personal level.
After a generational crisis civil war, the two sides are never really at peace. The losing ethnic group uses demonstrations and riots to attack the winning government, while the winning government uses violence and extrajudicial torture and jailing to control the losing group. I use the term "Democide Violence" to describe this violence by the winning ethnic group government against the losing ethnic group.
In the case of Afghanistan, we can expect to see this Democide Pattern played out by the Taliban against their enemies in the 1990s civil war -- the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance.
The Democide Pattern was extremely bloody in the late 1990s, following the 1991-96 civil war, when the Pashtuns committed massacres against the Hazaras in northern Afghanistan.
Those massacres ended with the defeat of the Taliban 20 years ago by Nato, but they may begin again. The Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan is a hotbed of the old Northern Alliance. The Taliban says that they are sending hundreds of fighters to the Panjshir Valley. This drama will unfold in the next few days and weeks.
In the past, the Taliban have been unable to subdue the Panjshir Valley because of its geography -- high mountains on three sides with a narrow pass on the fourth side. However, there is a difference this time because the Taliban will be armed with the advanced weapons that the Americans left behind. This will be the first major test of the Taliban's use of American weapons.
Biden is going to try to get the August 31 deadline extended. The Taliban have said that they will refuse to allow that, but Biden can use economic leverage. There $16 billion in Afghanistan Central Bank assets being held by the United States or by the IMF, and unfreezing these funds can be used as leverage.
However, this may cause the Taliban government to ask China or Pakistan for a temporary infusion of funds. It's not clear how all this will play out.
This may well end up being another humiliation for the United States. It is just one more example of how President Biden's evacuation of Afghanistan is, according to many analysts I've heard, the greatest foreign policy disaster since the end of World War II, and completely preventable.
In my opinion, the country is being led by an arrogant, bumbling fool for a president, and an arrogant, bumbling fool for a vice-president. This is an extremely dangerous time for all of us.
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(23-Aug-2021)
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Delta variant spreads across China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The atmosphere in Washington with regard to things like masks and vaccinations is so toxic and vitriolic that it's almost unbearable to watch.
The situation with masks is especially confusing, since the "science" about the effectiveness of different types of masks is ambiguous, and some children are unable to breathe wearing masks.
The Delta variant of Covid-19 was first detected in India. It is now spreading rapidly within the United States and other countries. It threatens to get much worse in the fall, and to force more lockdowns, including school closures. The reason is that the Delta variant is twice as effective as the original virus in spreading from person to person.
So you should be prepared, Dear Reader, for a fall and winter that's worse than last year. You may be forced into lockdowns and school closures that you don't want.
Making judgments about Covid variants is well outside my skill set, so I won't attempt it. However, I've provided some credible mostly non-ideological sources at the end of this article, and you can read through those sources for information.
The most important news is that there are additional variants coming. The "Delta Plus" and "Lambda" variants are spreading in other countries, but their potential effect in the United States is not yet known.
Some experts are predicting far more dangerous variants on the horizon. Again, making a judgment about these is outside my skill set, but there are articles referenced below that tell you about them.
I'm not going to tell you, Dear Reader, to wear masks or get vaccinated. That's not my place. But I am going to tell you to make contingency plans for yourself and your family in case these new dangerous variants start spreading. Follow the motto of the Boy Scouts and always "Be Prepared" for what comes next.
Xi Jinping gave several speeches last year, claiming that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had won a historic battle against Covid (Wuhan Coronavirus) and that this proved the superiority of the Chinese Communism to Western democracies, which were still struggling with the virus.
This year, the CCP and Xi Jinping are facing the possibility of major humiliation, as the Delta variant spreads across China. The CCP is doing everything possible, including mandatory testing and lockdowns, to kill off the virus. If they're successful, it will be another great victory for the CCP. But if they fail, then it may threaten the leadership of Xi Jinping.
In my previous newsletter, I referenced a plan presented by Chinese General Chi Haotian in a speech just as he was retiring in 2003. That was a plan to solve China's perennial problem of overpopulation. His solution is to colonize other lands, specifically the United States, by defeating it with nuclear weapons, and then using biochemical weapons to "clean up America" and kill any people left behind. so that the Chinese can take over. (See "31-Jul-21 World View -- Wuhan Coronavirus -- Thinking the Unthinkable")
This plan is completely insane from the Western point of view, which honors individual human life. The Falun Gong paper Epoch Times, which first leaked the full text of the speech in 2005, refers to it as the "Doomsday Crazy Gambling Plan" and to the CCP as the "Gongshi Blood Company."
However, in the Chinese culture, which does NOT value individual human life, this plan is quite reasonable, since a way must be found to solve the problem of overpopulation. Mao Zedong had said that he would gladly sacrifice half of China's population if it meant killing all the Americans.
Whether Chi Haotian's speech was authentic and valid has been the subject of a lengthy debate in the Generational Dynamics forum, starting around here: http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=62949#p62949
So that brings us back to Covid-19, the Wuhan Coronavirus. We now know with almost complete certainty that the virus was developed in the Wuhan Virology Lab, and that it escaped, either accidentally or intentionally, at some point prior to September 12, 2019, which was the date when the Wuhan Virology Lab deleted its Virus Database in the middle of the night.
Once the virus started spreading through the Wuhan population, China's actions then are clear. There was a deep coverup. The CCP encouraged travel to and from Wuhan from anywhere in the world, except within China itself. This was deliberate, and it spread the virus to 180 countries, while protecting China.
It's now believed that the CCP thought that they could release the virus into the world, while protecting China, and completely escape blame, and furthermore, claim credit as the first and best country to defeat the virus.
In my opinion, this plan has backfired badly. Releasing the virus into the world was apparently some kind of "beta test" to develop technology of using biological weapons. This is insane, but in the Chinese culture which values an individual human life as being worth zero, this is quite possible. Instead, China is being universally blamed for spreading the virus. Furthermore, mutations of the virus, including the Delta variant, are spreading across China, humiliating Xi Jinping and the CCP in two ways: They prove that China did NOT defeat the virus in 2020, and they expose the weakness of China's own locally developed vaccines, Sinovac and Sinopharm.
There are many things that the Chinese Communists do that are insane by Western standards. For example, Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-59), possibly the stupidest policy of any country in the history of the world, killed tens of millions of innocent people for no reason at all, destroying China's economy for decades. Since then, the Tiananmen Square massacre or the massive torture, beating, and enslavement of millions of Uighurs have all been insane policies.
But those are Western culture judgments. In the Chinese culture, the Great Leap Forward may not have been a disaster after all. Today, the population of China is 1.4 billion. If 50 million Chinese were killed today, you would still have 1.4 billion people.
The Wuhan Virus Event backfired badly on the CCP. To save face, Xi Jinping may have to do something drastic. We can only wait to see.
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(12-Aug-2021)
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The Secret Speech of General Chi Haotian (2003)
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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I've always been skeptical of the most extreme explanations of the spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19). For a long time, I was willing to accept the explanation that it jumped to humans from an animal in a so-called "wet market" or, if it came from the Wuhan Virology Lab, that it escaped from the lab accidentally, for example by accidentally infecting one of the lab workers. The last possibility has been supported by numerous reports of sloppy security practices at the lab.
In particular, I've never believed that the Chinese Communists purposely unleashed the virus on the world. Whatever happened, I've always felt, must have been mostly caused by accidents, stupidity and incompetence. I've frequently criticized the Chinese Communists for policies that were extremely stupid, but surely the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as stupid as they are, would not be so stupid as to purposely spread a novel virus across the world.
My opinion has changed 180 degrees. I now believe that the CCP is easily stupid enough to have purposely spread the virus across the world. In fact, I now believe that's exactly what happened.
What's changed my mind is a document from 2003, The Secret Speech of General Chi Haotian (2003).
General Chi Haotian was born in 1929, and was one of the last hardline military men that led Mao Zedong's army to victory, forming the People's Republic of China in 1949. If you'd like to compare him to an American general, then select a hardline general who was born in the 1920s.
The 2003 document is a large, complex strategy document, describing how China would defeat America diplomatically and militarily. It was written 18 years ago, almost the length of an entire generation. Chi's hardline war survivor generation is now gone, replaced by younger generations who may not agree with everything that Chi says.
But as I analyzed this document, it was clear to me that this document is not out of date, except in a few irrelevant details. The plans and motivations of the Chinese Communists, and the methods for achieving their objectives, have not changed substantively since 2003.
I had wanted to provide a summary of the main points, but this document is so large and complex that a summary would be almost as long as the original document. So I'll just provide a narrative of points most relevant to this article, and suggest that you read Chi's entire speech for yourself.
So the following sections contain some of the main points of Chi's speech. As you read them, you'll think that they're highly delusional, to the point of insanity, and I agree. But they're also the policies of the entire CCP, which have frequently been shown to be delusional to the point of insanity. It's also worth pointing out that these policies and views are not new. They're deeply embedded in Chinese culture, dating back millennia to the Analects of Confucius (551-479 BC) and The Art of War (500 BC) by Sun Tzu.
The core belief of Chi Haotian, the CCP, and the entire Chinese culture is that the Chinese people are a unique race, superior to all other races. I've sometimes described this as believing that all other races have no other purpose than to serve the Chinese, in the same way that a donkey has no other purpose than to serve a farmer. I've been using that analogy for years, and I'm not aware of any example of Chinese behavior that contradicts the donkey analogy. This is the Chinese culture. This is how the Chinese think of us, and this is how it has been for millennia.
Chi Haotian carries this to the next level by claiming that Chinese DNA is so unique that the Chinese people did not originate in Africa like everyone else. Chi repeats a claim, based on archaelogical discoveries of "Peking Man" in the 1920s, that the Chinese people evolved completely independently of the other races on earth. This claim was debunked by Chinese scholars in the 1980s, but was still believed by Chi, and is probably still believed by many in the CCP.
Chi is describing the strategy for "the great revitalization of the Chinese nation," which, of course, "is not limited to the land we have now but also includes the whole world." Chi claims that the Chinese nation would not exist without the Communist Party. The Communist Party must exist for this great revitalization of the Chinese nation.
Chi sees the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre as an existential crisis for the Communist Party. If a reformist faction (led by Zhao Ziyang) had succeeded in resolving the riots peacefully, then there would have been a "peaceful transition," ending the power of the Communist Party. Fortunately (he believes), Zhao Ziyang was removed at a crucial movement, and the 1989 riots were crushed.
Chi sees this as a generational issue. He says that Communism ended in the Soviet Union when the "pioneering senior comrades" (i.e., the generals who had served in WW II) passed away, Gorbachev came along, and the power of the Communist Party was taken away by peaceful evolution. This peaceful transition must not happen to the Chinese Communist Party!!! "If we, the CCP, are finished, China will be finished, and the world will be finished."
This is the justification for all the insanity. It's not to improve China's economy. It's not to defend China from a war. It's not even to prevent an internal civil war. The justification for all the insanity is to prevent a peaceful transition in China that ends the power of the Communist Party. And this is breathtakingly insane, but we can see the consequences.
So, for example, every religion must be brutally crushed. Here is the justification:
"Maybe you have now come to understand why we recently decided to further promulgate atheism. If we let theology from the West into China and empty us from the inside, if we let all Chinese people listen to God and follow God, who will obediently listen to us and follow us? If the common people don’t believe Comrade Hu Jintao is a qualified leader, question his authority, and want to monitor him, if the religious followers in our society question why we are leaving God in churches, can our Party continue to rule China?"
So that's why any religious worship is an existential threat to Communism. That's the justification for brutally crushing Buddhists and Christians, and for beating, raping, torturing, and enslaving two million Muslim Uighurs. Praying to God is like declaring war on the Communist Party.
And I want to emphasize the insanity of this. In America or any other country, religious prayer exists alongside the government without a conflict. But in China, "listening to God and following God" is an existential threat to the Communist Party, because the Communist leaders' authority will be questioned, and they will lose their power. I don't know what this looks like to you, Dear Reader, but to me it looks like total madness.
Chi Haotian complains bitterly that China has the world's largest population, including Chinese in China and overseas, but too little per-capita living space for Chinese people.
According to Chi: "China’s great economic expansion will inevitably come with significant development in our military forces, creating conditions for our expansion overseas."
In 2003, China was about 20 years into the "One Child Policy," that caused the government to kill children and forcibly abort women when a family might have more than one child. Chi does not mention the One Child Policy, but I can well believe that he hates it, and sees it as an additional reason for expansion overseas.
Colonization of foreign lands is a crucial part of Chi's strategy for the revitalization of the Chinese nation, and Chi looks to the experience of Hitler and the Nazis for lessons on how to proceed.
In America and the West, we generally think of Hitler and the Nazis as a uniquely evil world development that will never happen again. However, that's not how the Chinese view him. In my book, "War between China and Japan," I mentioned that Chiang Kai-shek admired Hitler, but I didn't carry it farther.
But Chi Haotian and the CCP do not consider Hitler and the Nazis to be a uniquely evil development. They admire Hitler and his attempt to rule the world, and want to learn lessons from his "humiliating" defeat so that the Chinese Communists won't repeat them.
Chi says, "Our Chinese people are wiser than the Germans because, fundamentally, our race is superior to theirs." An important difference between the German Nazis and the Chinese Communists is that "we are complete atheists, while Germany was primarily a Catholic and Protestant country. ... Although Hitler also believed that ordinary citizens had low intelligence, and that leaders should therefore make decisions, and although German people worshipped Hitler back then, Germany did not have the tradition of worshipping sages on a broad basis."
So that's why Hitler made mistakes, and why there are three lessons that the CCP must learn from Hitler's failure.
Chi explains the Issue of America as follows:
"Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, [so] how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization. Therefore, solving the “issue of America” is the key to solving all other issues."
This explains a lot of things for me, things that I've described as insanity in the past.
First, it explains the obsession with Taiwan. Yes of course the Chinese may legitimately wish Taiwan to be part of China, but what's insane is that the CCP is willing to pursue total war to make Taiwan a province of China. Britain gave up the entire British Empire without going to war to keep each colony. Going to war for that reason can legitimately be called insane.
In August 2006, I transcribed a BBC interview with Sha Zukang, China's ambassador to the United Nations. What was remarkable was that the ambassador was screaming angrily at the top of his lungs. He was asked about Taiwan's independence, and he screamed as follows:
"The moment that Taiwan declares independence, supported by whomever, China will have no choice but to [use] whatever means available to my government. Nobody should have any illusions on that. ...It's not a matter of how big Taiwan is, but for China, one INCH of the territory is more valuable than the LIVES of our people."
[With regard to the U.S.'s constant criticism of China's rapid militarization:] It's better for the U.S. to shut up, keep quiet. That's much, much better. China's population is 6 times or 5 times the United States. Why blame China? No. forget it. It's high time to shut up. It's a nation's sovereign right to do what is good for them. But don't tell us what's good for China. Thank you very much."
This followed a 2005 warning given by top-level Chinese army officer General Zhu Chenghu if America interfered with Taiwan: "If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We ... will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
And that's not all. China has 21 active border disputes with neighboring countries. Once again, Dear Reader, I call that insanity. But it's become a Chinese Communist obsession to colonize other lands, and not give up even one inch of land.
This gets to the heart of Chi Haotian's "Issue of America." Chi said that America will block any attempt by China to colonize Taiwan, Vietnam, India or Japan. Therefore, America must be defeated.
According to Chi, the reason that Chinese talk loudly about the "Taiwan issue" is that they want to hide their real objective, the "American issue."
Chi says that once America is conquered, it will be necessary to use biological weapons to "clean up" America:
"To resolve the issue of America we must be able to transcend conventions and restrictions. In history, when a country defeated another country or occupied another country, it could not kill all the people in the conquered land because back then you could not kill people effectively with sabers or long spears, or even with rifles or machine guns. Therefore, it was impossible to gain a stretch of land without keeping the people on that land. However, if we conquered America in this fashion, we would not be able to make many people migrate there.Only by using special means to “clean up” America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. This is the only choice left for us. This is not a matter of whether we are willing to do it or not. What kind of special means is there available for us to “clean up America”? ...
Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves. There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio-weapons have been invented one after another. Of course, we have not been idle, in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of “cleaning up” America all of a sudden."
So Chi Haotian concludes that the way to solve the "Issue of America" is to conquer America, and then "clean up America" by unleashing biological weapons.
Chi doesn't say how America would be conquered, but today's CCP has been stockpiling nuclear weapons and building silos, implying that they plan a massive nuclear missile attack where military targets and American cities are all fired upon at the same time, to knock out America quickly.
Having completed my analysis of Chi Haotian's 2003 speech, you can see why I've done a U-turn, and I now believe that China's release of Covid-19 on the entire world was intentional, and was actually a kind of "beta test" for a full bio-chemical attack in the future.
Here's what we know:
For me, the logic is as follows: So many of the things that the CCP has done for years that I consider insane are explained by Chi Haotian's 2003 speech, and if I were to try to devise a way to "beta test" using a biological weapon in the world, I would probably have done it the way the CCP spread Covid-19 around the world.
If you take a virus and turn it into a bioweapon, the type of research is named "gain-of-function." The enhanced virus may be more lethal, may spread more easily, or may target only certain kinds of entities. For example, in 2000 Dutch researchers genetically engineered the spike protein of a mouse coronavirus so that it would attack only cats, but not rodents.
The nightmare scenario for the world is that Chinese scientists might similarly engineer a virus that attacks all humans, excluding all those with Chinese DNA. This would be entirely expected from Chi Haotian's glorification of the unique Chinese DNA.
However, if this was some kind of "beta test," then many lessons have been learned all around. Scientists and politicians in the United States have learned a lot about handling virus outbreaks, and those lessons would be applied to a biological weapon.
A lesson that the Chinese may be learning is that viruses can mutate when they're out in the wild. As I'm writing this article, hundreds of people in China are suddenly being infected by a "delta variation" of the virus that they infected the world with. That's the danger of using a bioweapon -- you can't be sure that it won't turn against you, once you lose control of it.
 |
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan:
Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book
2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references,
$13.99
Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(31-Jul-2021)
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Japan says 'F--k you China, bring it on'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The mutual hatred that the people of China and Japan feel for each other has always been bubbling below the surface, but in the last month or so, it has become far more public and open at the military and government levels.
The flash point is Taiwan. China has repeatedly declared the intention to invade Taiwan and annex it to China. Japan has said that China's annexation of Taiwan would be a security risk to Japan, and so Japan will join with Taiwan in a war with China. I discussed all of this in my article last month. ( "28-Jun-21 World View -- Japan's plans for defending Taiwan from an attack by China")
What's changed in the last month is that each side, China and Japan, has published something that indicates a harsh "fuck you" attitude toward the other side. In years past, Japan and China pretended to be nice to each other, but those days apparently are ending.
On July 12, the Chinese Communist military uploaded a video to a Chinese Military channel, "Military strategies." The video was taken down after two days, after it had been re-posted, with English subtitles, by Chinese-born human rights activist and author Jennifer Zeng.
Here are some of the main points of the Chinese military video as described by Jennifer Zeng:
There's so much of the above that's entirely delusional that it's hard to know what to start. The most obvious is that the continuous nuclear bombing will not cause Japan to declare unconditional surrender "for the second time." The Japanese will be infuriated and will fight to the last bullet.
The video implies the following Chinese delusional military strategy: The Chinese strategy would be a quick victory in Taiwan combined with a nuclear victory over Japan, to be executed before the United States could respond. When the dust cleared, there would be a new reality, with Taiwan part of China, and Japan colonized/controlled by China.
This is entirely delusional, but being delusional has never stopped the Chinese Communists till now.
There is a never-ending debate whether nuclear weapons will be used in the next war. But Jennifer Zeng's article explains why China MUST use nuclear weapons at the beginning of the war. In conventional warfare, Taiwan+Japan could defeat the Chinese. The Chinese know this, and the Japanese know this. That's why the Chinese are developing the "Japan Exception Theory," which means that Japan is the exception to the "promise" that China will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. Japan does not currently have nuclear weapons, so there will presumably be no danger of nuclear retaliation from Japan.
The Japan Exception Theory is just words, but China has also done a lot militarily in the last few weeks to increase its preparation for war with Taiwan.
The Chinese Communists have sent warplanes into Taiwan's airspace dozens of times in 2020, and hundreds of times so far in 2021. The media describes this as "sending a message," but how long will the increasingly nationalist Chinese public be satisfied with just "sending a message"?
In March, the Chinese military showed an aggressive new tactic: planning for a blockade. Ten Chinese warplanes invaded Taiwanese airspace to the island's south and west, while another two Chinese planes cut through its southern airspace to skirt Taiwan's eastern airspace. A Taiwanese official said that the move was designed to practice cutting Taiwan off from Japanese and American intervention if China carries through on its threats to invade Taiwan.
It's not known what a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would look like, and it's not clear that China has the capability to successfully invade Taiwan.
However a full blockade of Taiwan could be a much simpler strategy. The idea is that if Taiwan were cut off from the world, it could quickly run out of both military and non-military necessities, but once it did it would be forced to surrender. Once again, that's entirely delusional, but a blockade could be part of a larger strategy to weaken and isolate Taiwan first, in preparation for the actual invasion.
Once again, you have to step back here and look at the larger picture. What the hell is going on here? China has been "sending messages" for years, decades even. Now we have the Chinese military talking about a Japanese exception to allow a nuclear attack, and Chinese warplanes practicing for a blockade to prevent Japan or the US from defending Taiwan. We also know that the Chinese Communists have explicitly warned that they would invade Taiwan, and those warnings have become increasingly shrill.
As I've written many times, a war could start at any time, and it wouldn't even require an affirmative decision to do so. World War I was started by a twelve year old boy who decided to assassinate a Serbian archduke. World War II was started by a Japanese garrison near Beijing when a Japanese soldier needed to pee and got lost in the woods. The Japanese accused the Chinese of abducting the soldier, and they were at full-scale war within a month, with the Rape of Nanking occurring two months later.
Look closely at the pair of maps at the beginning of this article. They are the "Defense of Japan" white papers published, respectively, in 2020 and 2021. Both of these are maps of China, with the red arrow pointing to the island of Taiwan.
In 2020, Taiwan was shown in red, indicating that Taiwan is part of China. In 2021, Taiwan is shown in grey, meaning that Taiwan is NOT part of China.
I'm referring to this as a "Fuck you China, bring it on" message. There are no words that could be more insulting and more infuriating to the Chinese Communists than what is essentially a declaration by Japan's Ministry of Defense (MOD) that Taiwan is an independent country.
In the context of the current increasingly belligerent actions by the Chinese, and their declaration of the "Japan Exception Theory," Japan is saying that they're not intimidated.
The "Defense of Japan" white paper, this year for the first time, makes clear that Japan is concerned about a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan:
"Stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community. Therefore, it is necessary that we pay close attention to the situation with a sense of crisis more than ever before."
What is significant about this statement is that Taiwan was never even mentioned in previous white papers.
Japan adopted a pacifist constitution after World War II, and later signed the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans it from developing nuclear weapons, more than 40 years ago.
However, Japan has been able to build nuclear weapons since it launched a plutonium breeader reactor and uranium enrichment plant in the 1980s. Since then, Japan has pursued a nuclear fuel recycling program that separates plutonium from the waste from its nuclear power plants.
Today, Japan has 45.5 tons of separated plutonium — 8.9 tons at home, and 36.6 tons in Britain and France. The amount is enough to make about 6,000 atomic bombs. And Japan continues to produce more plutonium.
Analysts estimate that it would require about six months for Japan to develop an atomic weapon.
In fact, I would speculate further. I could well believe that the Japanese have manufactured the nuclear weapons, perhaps with technical help from the Americans or the Indians, but haven't yet inserted the plutonium. That way, they can claim that they still have no nuclear weapons, but they might be able to complete the manufacture within a few days, when the time comes.
I don't have any evidence of that. I'm just saying that it wouldn't surprise me.
Americans fought and won a war with the Nazis, and now, 75 years later, Americans like the Germans, are friends with the Germans, and Germany is an ally.
Americans fought and won a war with the Imperial Japanese, and now, 75 years later, Americans like the Japanese, are friends with the Japanese, and Japan is a very important ally.
Americans fought and won a war in support of the Chinese, and saved the Chinese from the Japanese. Since then, Americans always loved the Chinese, although attitudes changed with the Tiananmen Square massacre, the torture and enslavement of two million Muslim Uighurs, the smashing of democracy in Hong Kong, and the repeated threats and obvious plans to wage war to annex Taiwan.
Americans like the Chinese people, and have no desire for a war with them, but Americans are increasingly scared to death by the hateful belligerence of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese people like the American people, and have no desire for a war with them, but the Chinese Communists have decided that there must be a war because the United States military will defend Taiwan and Japan from a Chinese invasion.
The Chinese and the Japanese fought a war with each other, and now, 75 years later, each side has a deep, vitriolic hatred of the other. The Japanese performed unspeakable atrocities on the Chinese during World War II. The Chinese are craving revenge like nothing else. Given the chance, they will inflict the same kinds of enormous atrocities on the Japanese, and they'll be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of the Japanese culture.
That's why the last actions by Japan's Ministry of Defense are interesting, which is why I describe them as "F--k you China, bring it on." There are no signs that the Japanese fear a war with the Chinese. It's possible that they fear war with China less than we do. The Japanese have a very powerful conventional armed forces, and they may have nuclear weapons, and they may believe that they can defeat the Chinese, in alliance with Taiwan. So I get the feeling that the Japanese would like another go at China, and are looking forward to it.
It's ironic that the crucible of the war between China and Japan will likely be an invasion of little old Taiwan. Taiwan was a colony of Japan in the early 1900s, and apparently consider that relationship to have been good enough for Taiwan to be on the side of Japan in fighting their common enemy, China.
But what about Korea? Which side will they be on?
Throughout Korea's history, they were either a colony of Japan or a vassal state of China. I'm not sure which is worse. So which side would Korea choose to fight against -- Japan or Korea? I get the feeling that they would rather be like Switzerland, and try to stay neutral as long as possible.
But of course it's much more complicated than that, because Korea isn't Korea any more. Korea is now South Korea, apparently aligned with the United States, and North Korea, apparently aligned with China. Each Korea wants the country to be reunited, but under its own government. So it seems likely that there will be a war between North and South Korea, while Japan is fighting China.
So what will happen to all those nuclear weapons that the North Koreans have been manufacturing? With they be launched toward America, toward Japan, toward China or toward South Korea? That's a very interesting question, and I think that the answer is far from obvious.
So I really don't know what the Koreans will do. Perhaps some of the Koreans who read my articles could write to me and enlighten me, or post their opinions anonymously in the Generational Dynamics forum.
There are people in the Generational Dynamics forum who criticize me for making imperfect predictions. "What good are your forecasts, Xenakis, if you can't tell the date when the war will break out?"
That's funny. All I can tell you today, with 100% certainty, is that China and Japan are headed for a full-scale war over Taiwan. I can't give you an exact date, but I can tell you that China is rapidly making preparations, Japan is rapidly making preparations, and Taiwan is rapidly making preparations. But I can keep track of events and hope for clarity.
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John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(24-Jul-2021)
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World Bank: Lebanon among the worst economic disasters since 1857
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Lebanon continued its path to self-destruction on Thursday, when Saad al-Hariri, who had been designated to form the first government following the massive port explosion in Beirut on August 4 of last year, resigned.
He offered his resignation after meeting with Lebanon's President Michel Aoun. According to Hariri, Hariri's attempts to form a government were thwarted by Aoun, who demanded that Hariri change his proposed slate of ministers so that Iran-backed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah would have a "blocking third," which means that Nasrallah could veto any proposal of any other sect of the government, giving Nasrallah effective dictatorial control of the government.
Hariri has been prime minister three times in the past, but resigned in 2019, complaining that massive corruption was destroying the country's economy. Shortly after the port blast, Hariri agreed to return if he were allowed to choose his government cabinet ministers. In his statement on Thursday, he said:
"I withdrew from forming the government. Aoun demanded some amendments, which he considered essential, and said we will not be able to reach an understanding with each other. ... And may God save this country.I resigned in 2019 because I wanted a government of experts, and if we formed Michel Aoun’s government then the country won’t be saved.
The main problem of this country is Michel Aoun, who is allied with Hezbollah, who in turn protects him. This is the equation in the country and if someone can’t see it then they’re blind."
Incredibly, a year has gone by since the port explosion, and the corrupt politicians running the country have done nothing except continue to line their own pockets.
The economy had been in free fall even before the explosion, with a crashing currency and an unemployment rate above 30%.
About 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer had been left unprotected, sitting in a storage warehouse since 2013, adjacent to a fireworks factory, in the midst of a densely packed residential area. Later investigations showed that Hezbollah had been using the ammonium nitrate fertilizer to build bombs to be used in Syria. When the explosion occurred, 300,000 people lost their homes from the explosion, hundreds were killed, and thousands were wounded. 85% of the country's grain storage was destroyed. Several hospitals were destroyed. The explosion was far larger than anyone had ever seen, and property was damaged and windows broken all across the city, and for miles around. The explosion could be heard as far away as Cyprus.
The explosion was massive and destructive, but apparently not destructive enough to shake loose Iran-backed Hezbollah's control of Lebanon.
According to the World Bank in a report published in March, Lebanon's financial crisis is among the top ten, and possibly the top 3, in world history in the period since 1857 to the present. According to the report:
"In fact, Lebanon’s GDP plummeted from close to US$ 55 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$ 33 billion in 2020, with US$ GDP/ capita falling by around 40 percent. Such a brutal and rapid contraction is usually associated with conflicts or wars. ... This illustrates the magnitude of the economic depression that the country is enduring, with sadly no clear turning point on the horizon, given the disastrous deliberate policy inaction.[In Fall 2020], the World Bank [termed] Lebanon’s economic crisis The Deliberate Depression. For over a year, Lebanese authorities countered an assailment of compounded crises -- namely, the country’s largest peace-time economic and financial crisis, COVID-19 and the Port of Beirut explosion -- with deliberately inadequate policy responses. The inadequacy is less due to knowledge gaps and quality advice and more the result of a combination of (i) a lack of political consensus over effective policy initiatives; and (ii) political consensus in defense of a bankrupt economic system, which benefited a few for so long. In the face of these challenges, Lebanon lacks a fully-functioning executive authority and is currently in the process of forming its third Government in a little over a year. This debilitating institutional void has lasted over 8 months so far."
In other words:
During the last year, nothing has changed. The year has simply been wasted by government officials, especially Aoun and Nasrallah, who don't want anything to change.
In August of last year, after the port explosion, France's president Emmanuel Macron led an international conference which pledged nearly $300 million in humanitarian assistance. However, the money was withheld until a reform government could be formed, because otherwise the $300 million would simply go into the pockets of the politicians and their cronies.
A month later, there was no movement to reform. Macron said at a news conference, "I’m ashamed of the Lebanese political leaders. Ashamed." He accused them of “collective betrayal” and choosing “to favor their partisan and individual interests to the general detriment of the country.”
The main stumbling block, then and today, was that the Shiite sect demanded complete control of the finance ministry, which means that Nasrallah would be able to use Lebanon's treasury for any purpose he wanted. What always happens in situations like these is that Nasrallah and Hezbollah don't dare to open the books of the finance ministry to scrutiny, since that would reveal years of robbery, embezzlement and corruption that had previously been hidden.
In the past few months I've become aware of the brilliance of the US Constitution and its ability to withstand these kinds of crises. This is because of its system of checks and balances among the three branches of government at the federal level, and the checks and balances between the federal governments and the state governments. I expect the US Constitutional form of government to withstand the current attack, especially as vote audits in Arizona, Georgia and other states are revealing what actually happened in the 2020 election. These audits could not be occurring except for the checks and balances in the US Constitution.
However, there are no checks and balances whatsoever in Lebanon's government, and that's why corruption is out of control and why the country is unable to form a government in the wake of the massive explosion that leveled much of Beirut -- an explosion that is the fault of incompetence and corruption in Lebanon's government.
Lebanon has a "dynastic confessional" system of government. Lebanon's "confessional" system of government is defined in its constitution, which requires that the three main government offices be occupied by specific sectarian groups:
So there are three "branches" of government in Lebanon, but there are no checks and balances, since the leader of each branch can do whatever he wants, including skimming money and paying his cronies to do things like beat up people in the opposition, and there is nothing to stop them. That's why each branch forms a kind of "dynasty."
As time goes on, each sect creates its own dynasty within the section of government that it controls. So one way to think of Lebanon's government is, not as a simple dictatorship, but as a triple dictatorship, which each dynastic sect have complete dictatorial control over one part of government, with complete power of embezzlement and corruption, and no controls, no checks, no balances.
This system of government was set up that way for a reason. The sects that I've mentioned -- the Sunni Muslims, the Shia Muslims, and the Syriac Maronite Catholics -- consider people in any but there own sect to be "scum of the earth." The different sects of Lebanon are not capable of simply getting along with each other. The level of mutual hatred between the sects runs extremely deep. This is standard fare after an ethnic civil war in any country.
Lebanon's last generational crisis war was the civil war of 1975-90, mainly between Muslims versus Christians, killing some 200,000 people. A major event occurred on September 15-16, 1982, when Maronite Christian militias massacred 2-3,000 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. This act has haunted Lebanon to this day.
That was 40 years ago. Most of the people today vividly remember the horror of that mass slaughter, and many are still traumatized by it. And they still hate each other for it. So the "confessional" form of government in Lebanon was designed to keep the three sects as separate as possible -- the complete opposite of mutual checks and balances. No sect will have any say over what the other sects do, even when it's corruption or other criminal activity.
If I understand correctly the reason given by al-Hariri for resigning from his appointment to form a government is that he was trying to break through this confessional blockade so that the government could actually function.
Even though the port explosion was massive and horrific, it wasn't bad enough to cause Hezbollah chief Nasrallah to give up any of his dictatorial power. Better to let the people starve.
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(17-Jul-2021)
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Cuba street protests at start of its generational Crisis era
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Communal violence is spreading in South Africa, led by members of the Zulu tribe. More than 70 people have been killed and more than 1,200 people have been arrested, as the violence continues into the eighth day.
Rioters have been looting shopping centers, stores and warehouses, possibly emulating the antifa-blm looters in Portland and Chicago. There are already pockets of hunger in South Africa, and it's feared that the looting will make shortages of food and fuel worse.
The rioting was triggered by the jailing of South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma, a charismatic and popular Zulu leader who was ousted from his own ANC party over accusations of corruption and rape.
For several weeks, Zuma has been calling on his supporters to prevent his arrest by locking arms and blocking the police from arresting him. He has often been seen singing his favorite revolutionary song "Umshini Wami" (Bring me my machine gun), often accompanied by him swirling his hips and skillfully doing a traditional Zulu dance. He used that song frequently during his political campaigns.
The two largest tribes in South Africa are the Zulu tribe and the Xhosa tribe. Between them, they make up a third of South Africa’s 55 million people.
The African National Congress (ANC) is the only political party that has won elections since South Africa's independence in 1994. Thus, the leader of the ANC always goes on to become the president. Up until recently, the Zulu and Xhosa tribes have dominated the ANC.
The ANC hero, Nelson Mandela, a Xhosa, became the first president of the ANC and of South Africa in 1994. He was followed by Mandela's hand-picked successor, Thabo Mbeki, another Xhosa. The ANC became sharply divided in Decenber 2007, when when Mbeki lost a bruising battle for ANC leadership with a Zulu, Jacob Zuma.
In 2008, xenophobic violence against immigrants from other African countries, originating in Alexandria, a suburb of the capital city Johannesburg, spread east into the Zulu heartland of Durban and west into Cape Town. The violence was spurred by a poor economy and a lack of jobs, with the accusations that other African immigrants were taking the good jobs.
Tens of thousands of immigrants were forced to flee for their lives from their homes and businesses, often with no time to collect their belongings before their homes and businesses were looted and destroyed. The violence and looting were generally perpetrated by young South Africans from the Zulu and Xhosa tribes. (See "South Africa will create 'temporary shelters' for migrants, not 'refugee camps' (31-May-2008)")
The xenophobic violence was repeated in 2015 when thousands of people, mostly foreigners from Zimbabwe and Malawi, fled for their lives, after mobs with machetes attacked them in the city of Durban. Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, which is the heartland of the Zulu tribe. The anti-immigrant violence spread to Johannesburg. It's believed that the attacks were triggered by remarks made by Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, who said in a public speech, "We are requesting those who come from outside to please go back to their countries." ( "17-Apr-15 World View -- South African xenophobic violence echoes 1820s Mfecane Zulu massacre")
Jacob Zuma was ousted from the party before his second term ended in 2018. He is facing 16 charges of corruption, fraud, graft and racketeering relating to a 1999 purchase of weapons and gear from European arms firms when he was deputy president. In 2006, he was in court for the alleged rape of a colleague's HIV-positive daughter. He was acquited of those charges, but not before bragging that he had unprotected sex with the woman, but avoided catching HIV by taking a shower after sex.
A surprise candidate, Cyril Ramaphosa, won the ANC leadership in 2017, in a close battle with the favored Zulu candidate. Ramaphosa is a member of the Venda tribe, a small tribe with fewer than 700,000 people, living near the border with Zimbabwe.
Ramaphosa became president in the hope that he could be relatively neutral between the Zulus and Xhosas, and could resolve the divisiveness between those two tribes. One businessman voter was quoted as saying,
"There are not enough Venda to hijack the country. When Thabo Mbeki was president [from 1999 to 2008], you had to be Xhosa to get anywhere. Under Zuma, the Zulus have led the way. I am hoping that Cyril as a Venda will have to involve all South Africans because his own people are so few."
There have been very divisive issues during Cyril Ramaphosa's term as president, and Ramaphosa has been successful in defusing most of them. The most explosive one was the proposal to confiscate the land of white farmers without compensation. Ramaphosa found a way to mitigate the land confiscation without compensation to make it less divisive.
However, probably the most explosive issue of all has been the jailing of Jacob Zuma for corruption, and that has led to the current tribal violence that appears to be increasing.
Human existence has forever been controlled by one major law: That the population always grows more quickly than the food supply. This is the reason why every society has to have an existential, genocidal war every 80 years or so. The purpose of the war is to kill off enough people so that the survivors have enough food to eat.
That appears to be what happened in southern Africa at the end of the 1700s. Population levels were increasing rapidly, and resources were increasingly scarce. The introduction of corn by the Europeans had the double effect of producing more food, but using more water to grow. Corn became a major staple, but there was massive disruption and suffering with declining rainfall at the end of the 1700s, followed by a calamitous ten-year drought that began about 1800. Presumably, this is the fault of "climate change."
Kingdoms that had existed side by side in peace for decades began to fight each other for resources. The result was a massive war called the Mfecane ("the crushing") that climaxed in 1828. The Mfecane gave rise to Shaka, considered to be possibly the greatest African warrior in history. Shaka introduced many new warfare techniques. One of the best known was to use short spears, which required close combat with the enemy, rather than long spears, which would be thrown but would not always be effective.
By the mid-1820s, Shaka ruled a kingdom of more than 100,000 people with a standing army of 40,000 men. The great Zulu Empire lasted for decades, until it was destroyed by the British in 1879 in the bloody Anglo-Zulu war. At the climax of that crisis war, the Zulus were dispersed, and the Zulu nation ended.
South Africa's last generational Crisis war was World War II. Since South Africa was part of the British Empire, it fought on the side of the allies, although some tribal factions wished to side with the Germans or stay neutral. The British colonists introduced Apartheid during the 1940s, but it was abolished in the generational Awakening era of the 1990s that led to South African independence, an Awakening era climax.
When I talk about the world in today's generational Crisis era, I talk about increasing nationalism and xenophobia in almost every nation. The same is true on a tribal basis in South Africa. The Zulus have become extremely nationalistic, and this is driving the current round of looting and rioting. But this time the violence is directed at membrs of other South African tribes, not just a "immigrants" from other African countries, as occurred in 2008 and 2015.
As the world approaches a new world war, South Africa can be expected to be involved in two different wars. One war will be as a participant in the world war on the side of either China or the West -- to be decided -- and the other will be an internal civil war, refighting the battles of the Mfecane.
Just as China blames all its failures on the 1840s Opium Wars, some South African historians are blaming all their failures on the Mfecane, and blaming the Mfecane on the Europeans.
In 1988, a historian named Julian Cobbing published a paper on "The Mfecane As Alibi." He argued that the Mfecane was caused by the European and Brazilian slave trade, and if it hadn't been for the Europeans, then the Mfecan would never have occurred.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is nonsense. As we said, there was overpopulation and a calamitous drought at the beginning of the 1800s, and this is exactly the formula for a generational crisis war, a war of extermination, whose purpose is to kill off enough people so that the survivors will have enough to eat. So the Mfecane would have occurred with or without the Europeans.
The same thing is happening today, around the world. A report earlier this week by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that "world hunger and malnutrition levels worsened dramatically last year, with most of the increase likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic." This continued and accelerated a trend that had already been occurring prior to the pandemic.
According to the report, "Unfortunately, the pandemic continues to expose weaknesses in our food systems, which threaten the lives and livelihoods of people around the world. No region of the world has been spared."
The increase in hunger and malnutrition means that there is less food per capita in the world. For populations living on the margin, this means that they will have to fight for enough food to feed themselves and their families. This usually translates into anti-government protests, such as the ones we see today in South Africa and Cuba, and leads to either civil wars or external wars.
Cuba's government is in turmoil in the face of large anti-government protests that started over the weekend.
Analysts are blaming three factors:
Analysts are comparing this to the 1994 student protests, which fizzled fairly quickly.
However, today's protests are different because this is the beginning of a generational Crisis era.
Cuba's last generational crisis war was Fidel Castro's revolution that climaxed in 1960. The new Crisis era began 58 years later, in 2018.
Prior to 2018, Cuba was in an Unraveling era, when many of the Communist policies imposed by Fidel Castro began to unravel. They moved hundreds of thousands of people from government employment to private sector employment, including self-employment. They abandoned the core principal of Marxist Socialism, "From each according to abilities, to each according to needs." Instead, workers in the private sector will be able to earn high salaries.
Today's new anti-government protests are larger and more widespread than the 1994 student protests. Since this is the beginning of a generational Crisis era, it's quite possible that it will spread, in the following weeks and months, into a re-fighting of Castro's revolution.
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(15-Jul-2021)
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Tajikistan mobilizes 20,000 military reservists to Afghan border
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Multiple analysts on TV have been echoing the reports that, as American and Nato troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban are taking control of the country far more rapidly than expected.
The Taliban are now in control of a third of the country. Many in the Afghan army, who are supposed to be fighting the Taliban without the aid of Nato, are apparently fleeing without a fight.
More than 1,000 Afghan security personnel fled across the border with Tajikistan, causing Tajikistan's president to call up 20,000 military reservists to guard the border. This follows a general warning to Tajikistan villagers who live along the border to be prepared "to take up arms." (See "3-May-21 World View -- US withdrawal from Afghanistan threatens Central Asia stability")
In May, a provincial governor announced:
"In coordination with the police and intelligence departments, we've registered all hunters who live in the border areas. They will have to take up arms to defend our country. In fact, all of us will have to take up weapons if the situation dictates."
As I wrote at the time, the withdrawal of American and Nato forces in Afghanistan threatens to destabilize the entire Central Asian region that includes Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Many analysts are pointing these events out, and it's not lost on any of them that after America and Nato have had forces in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, all the work that was done is now about to be lost in a period of a few months. In particular, there are already reports that the freedoms of women and girls are already being curtailed in newly-captured Taliban areas.
Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are all members of Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia operates one of its largest military bases abroad in Tajikistan, equipped with tanks, helicopters, drones and ground attack aircraft, and Russia is promising to stabilize the border with Afghanistan if needed.
In the 1980s, Russia had an ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan (Russia's "Vietnam") fighting Islamic Pashtuns who later became the Taliban. Tajikistan and other Soviet Socialist republics, who were part of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, supported Russia's invasion. At that time, Osama bin Laden was a Sunni Muslim Saudi citizen whom the Saudis got rid of by encouraging him to travel to Afghanistan to fight against the Orthodox Christian Russian infidels. Since the Soviet Union was the West's major enemy at the time, America and other Western countries supported bin Laden and his fight with the Soviets.
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the situation rapidly evolved. There was an extremely bloody Afghan civil war between 1992-96, pitting radicalized Pashtuns in the south against the Northern Alliance in the north, consisting of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks.
As I've written many times, this civil war, a generational Crisis war, is the controlling event today. Each side is bitterly angry at the atrocities, beatings, tortures and rapes perpetrated by the other side, and all many people want is revenge. That's always the nature of an ethnic civil war, and it's the reason why the Taliban will never fulfill their promises to give up violence. And that's why the remnants of the old Northern Alliance are now fleeing across the border into Tajikistan.
As I wrote at the time, the agreement between Donald Trump and the Taliban in March 2020 was entirely delusional, but was apparently driven by a desire to withdraw troops from Afghanistan no matter what the cost and no matter how humiliating to the US. Joe Biden fully endorsed the delusional agreement, and we're now seeing the results, predictable and predicted. And yes, 20 years of work is now going down the drain. ( "16-Feb-20 World View -- US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan")
So Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko says:
"The situation there is rather tense because according to some sources, up to 70% of the Tajik-Afghan border is now controlled by the Taliban."
So the Northern Alliance may be reincarnated under Russian leadership. Things are changing rapidly in Afghanistan, as the last American and Nato troops prepare to leave, and many analysts are foreseeing a catastrophe.
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(7-Jul-2021)
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China's Dong Jingwei defects to the United States
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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When we discuss China's planned invasion of Taiwan, we generally (tacitly) assume that the US will be Taiwan's only foreign defender. While it's not clear how South Korea, Vietnam, Australia or India might react to China's invasion of Taiwan, Japan has been discussing how it would react, in increasingly explicit terms.
Taiwan was a colony of Japan, thanks to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed by Japan and China on April 17, 1895, after Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95. China ceded Taiwan to Japan as a result of that treaty, and Japan controlled Taiwan until Japan was defeated in 1945. Japan's colonization of Taiwan was harsh, but there were numerous economic benefits to Taiwan, and improvement in living standards. When Japan declared war on China in 1937, Taiwan was an ally of Japan against their common enemy, China.
After WW II, Taiwan and Japan had cordial relations, but there was little talk of joint security and defense planning, since Japan had adopted its "Pacifist Constitution," which made it illegal for Japan to deploy armed forces for any reason other than to defend an attack on Japanese soil.
Finally in 2015, Japan reinterpreted the constitution to permit "collective self-defense," which would permit Japanese military forces to deploy armed forces for an attack on an ally, such as the United States. (See "5-May-14 World View -- Japan debates 'collective self-defense' to protect America and Japan" for a detailed explanation of what was adopted in 2015.)
So a commitment to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China is not a simple thing as it would be in other countries, especially since the pacifist constitution is very popular among the Japanese people, who are still trying to figure out why they acted as they did in WW II. But the increasingly belligerent threats from China are forcing the Japanese to look for a solution.
So with that reinterpretation of the Constitution, Japanese government officials are considering two possible paths by which they could militarily support the United States after a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
In a debate on Covid-19 in parliament earlier this month, Japan's prime minister Yoshihide Suga referred to Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan and said, "These three countries have been imposing strong restrictions on privacy rights" to curb the virus outbreak.
It's not known whether this was a slip or was intentional, but it drew the usual hysterical complaint from China's Foreign Ministry: "China expresses strong dissatisfaction with Japan's erroneous remarks and has lodged a solemn protest against Japan."
China claims Taiwan as a province of China, and has repeatedly said that they will invade Taiwan at a time of their choosing to force Taiwan to be part of China. As a result, both the United States and Japan have adopted a policy of "strategic ambiguity," in order to encourage both China and Taiwan to continue thinking that the issue can be resolved in time peacefully (which, of course, it cannot). In particular, the US has not committed to defending Taiwan, but is providing weapons to Taiwan for its own self-defense.
For decades, this strategic ambiguity has been debated in Washington and Tokyo. But now, with the growing military might of China and its growing belligerence, there is pressure on both the US and Japan to abandon strategic ambiguity and commit to defending Taiwan in case of attack.
These discussions are in process, and it's possible that something will be decided within a few months, or not.
According to an analysis by Ian Easton, senior director at the Project 2049 Institute, China is preparing for an all-out invasion within five to ten years.
He says that Beijing’s optimistic version of events goes something like this:
Easton says that Taiwan has been preparing for just such an attack by fortifying defenses around key landing points and conducting drills to repel Chinese forces.
China has blocked Taiwan from getting doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine was co-developed by the German company BioNTech. Taiwan was negotiating with Pfizer to get the vaccine, but China was able to delay the deal indefinitely by pressuring BioNTech and the German government. The Chinese claim that they had offered to sell their vaccine to Taiwan, but Taiwanese law bans Chinese-made medical products, including vaccines.
So earlier this month, Japan delivered 1.24 million doses of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Japan. The Japanese foreign ministry said that that Japan was responding to a Taiwanese request, and that the donation reflects “Japan’s important partnership and friendship with Taiwan.”
On Friday, Japan said it would send 2 million additional doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan and Vietnam, and arrangements were being made to send 1 million doses each to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
In addition, the United States recently shipped 2.5 million vaccine does to Taiwan. Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu tweeted, “The Taiwan-U.S. relationship is rock solid, & we’ll keep cooperating closely in combating COVID19. Forces for good will prevail!”
Analysts who talk about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan usually provide a time frame of five to ten years. That's pretty much what they have to say, isn't it.
But any such timeline assumes that the Chinese Communists are pursuing rational policies. As I've written in the past, crisis wars begin with a chaotic unexpected event. WW I began because a 12-year-old decided to shoot an Archduke in 1914. WW II began because a Japanese soldier had to pee and got lost in the woods in 1937. Those wars were a complete surprise, even to the belligerents. That's how WW III will begin. It will be totally irrational and unexpected, and it could happen any day.
A lot depends on the stability of the CCP government, and I've argued in the past that any dictatorship is fatally flawed and unstable, especially as compared to the US Constitutional government, with its federal system of checks and balances. The problem is that when a dictator does something really stupid, there's no one there to stop him, and anyone who tries is executed. This was true, for example, of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-59), which was possibly the stupidest policy of any country in the history of the world, killing tens of millions of innocent people for no reason at all, destroying China's economy for decades.
So now we have Xi Jinping in that same position of dictator. If he appears weak, he'll be replaced. So he has to be strong, and if he makes a stupid decision, as Mao did, there will be no one to stop him, and the result will be disaster.
Xi reached the position of dictator by a brutal anticorruption campaign, begun in 2012, which targeted some two million officials in the Chinese Communist Party. This was popular with many Chinese, but alienated may elites.
Xi Jinping is facing many problems. Domestic problems include income inequality, environmental threats, land grabs, food safety, Air pollution, water scarcity, and soil contamination. In addition, China’s aging population means that more retirees are supported by fewer young people.
Internationally, China is facing criticism about its brutal crackdown on the free press in Hong Kong, China's arrest and enslavement of millions of Uighurs, and illegal belligerent actions in the South China Sea. The Chinese Communists have made it abundantly clear that they don't care at all what others think of them, and what international laws they violate. What we're seeing is the millennia-old Chinese culture saying that the rest of the world are barbarians, and are to be treated as donkeys, with no purpose except to serve the Chinese Communists.
On top of all this, there have been reports that Xi Jinping and CCP officials have been shocked at the defection in February of Dong Jingwei and his daughter to the United States. Dong is China's Vice Minister of State Security in the Chinese Ministry of Defense. He is perhaps the highest-level Chinese defector the U.S. has ever had.
He is reported to be providing informtion about the identity of all the Chinese spies in the US, and methods used by the Chinese to infiltrate the US government, businesses and universities.
According to a report from Taiwan, this defection has triggered factional fights within the CCP leading to a period of unprecedented instability not seen since the Cultural Revolution.
The point of mentioning all this in an article on Japan's plans to defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion is that the invasion could occur at any time -- maybe in the 5-10 years as predicted by the analysts, but possibly much sooner than that with an overwhelmed dictator Xi Jinping in charge, and the possibiity that he'll order some military action in the Taiwan Strait to deflect from his personal or political problems.
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(28-Jun-2021)
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China's strategic interest in Myanmar / Burma
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A significant new escalation in the civil war in Myanmar / Burma occurred on Tuesday as the junta regime's armed forces clashed with the Mandalay People’s Defence Force (Mandalay PDF), a newly formed anti-junta militia in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city.
Since the February 1 army coup that installed the junta dictatorship, junta forces have been clashing with militias for months in rural areas. What's different this time is that the clash is occurring in a large urban center, Mandalay. As the civil war progresses, this could lead to large-scale carnage among the huge, dense population of Mandalay. According to the junta, troops killed four people and arrested eight others.
The United Nations is warning that unless something is done, Myanmar will accelerate to a civil war of "unprecedented scale." Well, of course, there are many civil wars of "unprecedented scale" all the time, including Burma's last generational crisis civil war (1948-58), so let's ignore the UN hyperbole.
Nothing will be done because the United Nations has become completely toothless. Any resolution in the Security Council is a joke, vetoed by Russia and China. There was a non-binding resolution passed last week by the UN General Assembly. It had been debated for three months and was supposed to call for an arms embargo, but it only passed after the arms embargo stuff was deleted, so the resolution says exactly nothing.
The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on Myanmar's gemstone industry, which funds the army's violent actions, as well as a number of individuals in the junta's government. These sanctions will do no good, but it's interesting to mention them because it shows, once again, that the US is policeman of the world, and can actually take action while the UN can only pass toothless resolutions.
As I've described starting with the massive demonstrations in 2007 by the "'88 Generation," Burma's last two generational crisis wars (1886-91 and 1948-58) were extremely bloody and violent civil wars involving multiple ethnic groups. (See "Burma: Growing demonstrations by the '88 Generation' raise fears of new slaughter")
As expected, the demonstrations in 2007 fizzled out, because Myanmar/Burma was in a generational Unraveling era, when the last aging survivors of the preceding crisis war exert all their political power to prevent a new crisis war.
But starting in 2016, 58 years after the end of the last crisis war, the survivors were almost all gone (dead or retired), and the people in power were in younger generations, with no sense of history.
Starting in 2011, Buddhists began attacking Muslim Rohingyas in villages across Burma, particularly the 1.1 million ethnic Rohingyas in Rakhine State. Mobs of Buddhists attacked Muslims, conducting atrocities including torture and rape, killing hundreds and forcing hundreds of thousands to leave their homes to flee from the attacks. In some cases, the Buddhists burned down entire Rohingya villages to the ground.
However, the worst violence began after a terrorist attack on Ausgust 25, 2017. The Tatmadaw (the army) responded with a sweep of violence against Rohingyas, causing thousands of them to flee their villages and head for the Bangladesh border, where they hoped to cross and reach a refugee camp. The Burmese army shot them as they were fleeing, including women and children, killing dozens. This was the beginning of mass genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. There are now a million Rohingyas who were forced to flee across the border into Bangladesh, where they're living in filthy refugee camps.
However, that wasn't the end of the Tatmadaw's program of mass torture, rape and slaughter. After the coup of February 1 of this year, that same army turned on its own people. The Tatmadaw has been conducting torture, rape and slaughter of the ordinary Burmans, the Burmese people. And this time it isn't fizzling the way it did in 2007. Isn't it amazing, Dear Reader, what crazy things people do during a generational Crisis era?
So as Generational Dynamics has been predicting, the army and the people of Myanmar/Burma are refighting their last generational crisis war, which was a massive bloody war among ethnic groups (1948-58), with intervention by the Chinese.
But now there's a new acronym appearing in news reports: EAG, which stands for "Ethnic Armed Group." The EAGs are militias formed by different anti-junta ethnic groups in Myanmar. There are 135 ethnic groups in Myanmar, so there is the possibility of 135 different EAGs. The population of Myanmar numbers somewhere between 51 and 55 million people. Of this, around 68% are considered part of the dominant ethnic group - the Bamar (also known as the Burmans).
Here are some of the most significant EAGs:
Many people are comparing the civil war in Myanmar against the civil war in Syria.
Here's a comparison by the analysts at Lowy in Australia:
"Like their fellow Syrian protestors, civilians in Myanmar are forming their own militias. Myanmar already had a patchwork of ethnic militias, some of which have stepped up attacks on the military, known as the Tatmadaw, ostensibly in support of the protestors. Geopolitically, the fault lines mirror the Syrian conflict, with Russia and China blocking Western-led efforts to censure the Tatmadaw at the United Nations.Nonetheless, there are substantial differences between 2021 Myanmar and 2011–12 Syria.
Three key elements helped create the Syrian conflagration: a mass armed uprising, extensive foreign intervention on both sides and an influx of foreign fighters. None of those elements currently exist in Myanmar, and it is unclear whether they ever will – particularly the second and third."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this analysis is nonsense, and it's instructive to understand why.
Syria's last generational crisis war climaxed in February 1982 with the destruction of the town of Hama, by Hafez al-Assad. His son, Bashar al-Assad, launched an attack on peaceful protesters in 2011, during a generational Awakening/Unraveling era. During such an era, the traumatized survivors of the previous crisis war do what they can to prevent a new war. Bashar al-Assad's army suffered from poor morale and heavy desertions, and in 2015, al-Assad announced that he was going to lose the war. At that point, Russia intervened. That's why there was "extensive foreign intervention on both sides and an influx of foreign fighters." This was the result of an unpopular war during an Awakening/Unraveling era.
So when comparing the Syria war to the Myanmar war, the reason for Russian (and Iranian) intervention in the Syrian war was that al-Assad was going to be defeated. It is typical for an Awakening/Unraveling war to fizzle, just like the Myanmar rebellions in 2007 and 1988.
Myanmar has been in a generational Crisis era since 2016. There is no chance that this war will fizzle like the Syria war. It's possible that the Chinese will intervene, but that's because of the fighting along China's border.
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China has for years been supplying weapons to the Tatmadaw, but has been reluctant to fully endorse the February 1 coup, because the Chinese Communists fear that the people of Myanmar will turn against the Chinese.
Myanmar is an essential element of the Chinese Communists' delusional grand plan to lead and control the world within five years. According to this plan, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will bring peace and harmony to the entire world, and all countries will resolve their mutual differences and accede to China's leadership. The only thing that can go wrong, according to this delusiona plan, is that the US will be jealous, and will go to war with China to stop it.
The major BRI project in Myanmar is the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which is strategically essential to China's grand plan, since it provides a corridor for the transport of people and goods between China's Yunnan province and the Indian Ocean, through Myanmar's ports on the Andaman Sea. This is similar to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which connects China's Xinjiang province to Pakistan's Gwardar port, which China now controls.
Both CMEC and CPEC are essential to China's delusional grand plan, since they have to counter the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, formed by the US, along with Australia, India and Japan, with the obvious goal of countering China.
So the Myanmar civil war is more than just an inconvenience to the Chinese Communists. It's a threat to their whole delusional plan for world domination. What the Chinese really want is for the war to just end and go away, but in a generational Crisis era, that's very unlikely. It's much more likely that it will re-fight the previous crisis war, the extremely bloody 1948-58 civil war that involved all of Burma's ethnic groups, and forced the Chinese to intervene to protect their border.
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China and Russia have historically been the biggest weapons suppliers to the Tatmadaw, but they have different objectives.
Neither the Russians nor the Chinese care at all how many Myanmar civilians are tortured, raped, beaten or slaughtered. The Russians and the Chinese don't even care how many of their own people are tortured, raped, beaten or slaughtered, let alone the Myanmar people.
So the Russians are perfectly happy to fully support the coup, and continue to supply weapons to the Tatmadaw. Russia does not share a border with Myanmar, and so any genocide or mass slaughter is miles away, and easily ignored.
But as we said, the civil war is a problem for the Chinese. The war could spill over across the border into China, and the people of Myanmar could turn against China, at a time when their support is needed for the CMEC and China's grand delusional plan to run the world. Thus, it is critical for China that the Myanmar people not blame the Chinese for the ongoing violence. There have already been attacks on Chinese factories by groups claiming that the Chinese are supporting the army violence. So the Chinese will continue supplying weapons, but will keep as low a profile as possible.
For the Tatmadaw, the situation is ideal. They can play the Russians and Chinese off against each other, and get all the weapons they want for their fun program of torture, rape, beatings and slaughter.
In fact, there are eight countries that have openly expressed support for the coup and the violence: Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.
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Just as China has a potential problem along the border with Myanmar, Thailand has an actual problem.
More than 20,000 villagers, mostly women and children, in Karen State (Kayin State, Kayah State) have been forced to flee from their homes into the jungle to escape the relentless airstrikes and artillery fire by the Tatmadaw. The targets are supposed to be military targets of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), but as always happens with genocidal armies, the Tatmadaw are most targeting civilians, in order to "send a message."
As food is scarce in the jungle, with stories emerging of mothers having to feed their children with insects, many villagers have fled across the border into Thailand. Thailand has set up military checkpoints along the border, and is pushing villagers back across the border into Myanmar.
Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha fully supports the coup and the violence by Myanmar's coup leader, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. That is because Prayuth conducted his own coup in 2014, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Thailand, and Hlaing was the first foreign leader to congratulate him. (See "23-May-14 World View -- Thailand's army seizes power in major victory for 'yellow shirt' elites")
But there hasn't been similar violence in Thailand as is occurring in Myanmar. According to reports, Hlaing has been asking for advice from Prayuth in back-channel discussions, but so far they haven't worked.
Once again, the explanation is the difference in generational era. Thailand's last generational crisis war was the extremely violent "Killing Fields war" in the 1970s next door in Cambodia, so Thailand is in an Awakening/Unraveling era, while Myanmar is in a generational Crisis era. So Prayuth might be able to provide some interesting details, but nothing he says will help quell the Crisis era fury of the anti-junta rebels in Thailand.
As I've written before, the situation in Myanmar/Burma reeks of Karmic justice.
Since 2011, Burma's army has been committing atrocities on Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, including gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign. These atrocities have been cheered by the ordinary Myanmar people, led by Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, most of whom apparently hate the Rohingyas.
Aung Sang Suu Kyi became a "useful idiot" for the army by presenting a sympathetic, tired, weary, female face to the world, defending the army to deflect the horrors and atrocities that are occurring in their country. In 2019, the International Court of Justice in the Hague held a trial on Burma's genocide, and Aung Sang Suu Kyi came and defended the army, saying that nothing had happened.
So now the same atrocities that the Buddhist monks cheered when used against the Muslim Rohingyas are being used against the Buddhists, and the "useful idiot" Aung Sang Suu Kyi is in jail, where she'll probably be killed when it's convenient for the Tatmadaw. That's full Karmic justice.
In the meantime, it's not just the people of Myanmar who are going to suffer. This is a highly explosive situation, and it's very likely to spread to other countries in the region, including China, Thailand and India. In the Generational Dynamics forum, we keep discussing various scenarios that could lead eventually into a world war, and this is one possibility.
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(24-Jun-2021)
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Happy Juneteenth, everyone!
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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North Korean dictator last week said that "The people's food situation is now getting tense," referring to scarcity of food and sharply rising food prices He added that the "agricultural sector failed to fulfil its grain production plan" in 2020.
A massive shortage of food has led to a dramatic rise in prices of basic food commodities. A kilogram of bananas costs $45. The price of a kilogram of rice was $0.77 in April, $0.90 in May, and $0.96 in June.
North Korea is subject to both UN and US sanctions, but normally North Korea's agricultural sector can produce enough food, and receive supplements from China and Russia. However, this failed to be enough during 2020 for three reasons:
The food shortage has not surprisingly led to violence in some areas. According to reports, construction workers building houses in the capital city Pyongyang, North Korea’s largest city with a population of about 3 million, are poorly fed, and are committing robberies and murders to steal food in the neighborhoods where the houses are being built.
At the conclusion of a Central Committee meeting on Friday, Kim "solemnly swore that the Party will surely break through head-on the difficulties lying in the way of the revolution" and remain loyal to the revolutionary idea to the end regardless of the "severer difficulties it may be confronted with in the future," according to KCNA, the (North) Korean Central News Agency.
It's not clear how the North Koreans plan to do that, but there have already been some missteps.
North Korea's state-run food stores normally sell just basic foods like unprocessed corn and rice, but due to shortages are now selling some processed foods like sugar, seasonings, flour and cooking oil. However, stocks of those foods are extremely low as well.
A different concern was raised by a recent special "intensive inspection of the storage maintenance status of combat reserve supplies" for the armed forces. The inspection revealed shortages of reserve supplies, and evidence of corruption, since the written records do not match the actual supplies. According to an RFA report:
"The main focus of this inspection is on supplies like wartime fuel, food, combat suites and medicine. All units typically lack fuel, food and medicine so they often secretly dip into their reserves."
Managers responsible for the combat reserve supplies may now fact punishment:
"In addition to the punishment of those who are found at fault in the military-wide intensive inspection, the project to distribute combat reserve materials according to demand will also be under review.All units have been specifically asked whether they comply with the directive that requires them to create combat reserve supplies by contributing five percent of the daily supplies guaranteed by the state and of military supplies they themselves produce."
Obviously, this has implications for the ability of North Korea's army to attack South Korea, when Kim Jong-un decides to do so.
We haven't heard much from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un since those exciting gone-by days of yesteryear prior to the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, when he was meeting regularly with Donald Trump, and the two were expressing their love for one another, in their father-son relationship. In particular, there haven't been any new tests of nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles in a long time. There were some short-range missile tests in March of this year, but they didn't generate much excitement.
President Joe Biden has not announced a North Korea policy, except for "consulting with our allies and partners" and "some form of diplomacy ... conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization," as he said after the North Korean missile test in March.
At that time, I wrote a lengthy article comparing the strategies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. (See "28-Mar-21 World View -- North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion")
The point of the article was the same as in the articles about North Korea that I've been writing for years -- that it makes absolutely no difference what strategy is used by Trump and Biden. North Korea is going to continue developing and manufacturing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, and one day will use them, probably on Japan and the US. The idea of North Korea denuclearization is completely delusionary, even though the "Denuclearization Delusion" persists in the dream world of Pollyannaish fantasy.
In fact, Biden's special representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, was in South Korea on Saturday to discuss the stalled denuclearization talks. Kim Jong-un ordered his government to prepare for both dialogue and confrontation with the United States. Kim is demanding that the US lift its sanctions on North Korea.
Saturday was the new federal holiday, Juneteenth, celebrating the day June 19, 1865, when the Republicans, who had won the Civil War and emancipated the slaves under Abraham Lincoln, officially completed the emancipation by forcing the Democrats, who had finally surrendered after losing the Civil War, to really give up their slaves and set them free.
I can't help but think that this is an odd holiday for the Democrats to be celebrating, since it's a day of their total humiliation and surrender. Following the emancipation, the bitterly angry Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and spent the next century lynching black boys and raping black girls with impunity.
This anger continues to today. Joe Biden grew up at the time when the KKK was active, and his friend and mentor Robert Byrd held the title "Exalted Cyclops." Biden and Byrd may have participated in some lynchings or rapes, or if not were certainly aware of them and approved of them. Biden was a racist and White Supremacist his entire life, and was quite public about it until Barack Obama nominated him to be vice president. But with the recent release of Hunter Biden's texts, which were laced with highly racist epithets, we know that racism and White Supremacy are deeply embedded in the Biden family.
Maxine Waters, who has often appeared to be totally unhinged, must have suffered some kind of trauma in the past. My guess is that either she was raped as a young girl by a White Democrat in the KKK, or if not, at the least she must have known many young black girls who were raped. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who also seems to be unhinged, was born too late to be raped by a KKK member, but undoubtedly knew many black women who had been raped in years past. Frankly, I don't blame Waters or Lightfoot for acting as they do, given the trauma they must have suffered decades ago, surrounded by black girls and women who had been raped by White Democrats.
Lori Lightfoot's Chicago is a good example of how the Democrats are causing massacres of blacks today, just as though the KKK were as active as before. Lightfoot and other Democrat politicians have adopted a set of racist policies that specifically target black communities, making them unsafe and punishing successful black businesses. These policies include the following: destroying the black family, defunding police, not arresting violent criminals, letting violent criminals out of jail, keeping the police from making gun checks, forbidding community policing, and allowing huge amounts of fentynal and meth into the country through the southern border. Of course whites also suffer from these policies, but not nearly as much as blacks do. These policies all target blacks and have the specific purpose of making black neighborhoods unsafe and poor. These are all White Supremacist policies, and any Democrat who follows them is, by definition, a White Supremacist.
The results speak for themselves: Hundreds of blacks are killed each week through mass shootings on the streets of Chicago and other Democrat-run cities, where the above racist policies are in force. These have the same purpose as the 1921 Tulsa massacre of a century ago. It's as if the KKK were still as active as ever in the mass slaughter of blacks.
So now we come to the new Juneteenth federal holiday, which celebrates the Democrat Party's loss of their black slaves, and also commemorates the Democrat Party's launching of the KKK. I find it bewildering that the Democrats allowed this holiday to be celebrated, and I can't help but wonder if this is actually the beginning of a social war by the blacks against their white masters.
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(20-Jun-2021)
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Understanding inflation, deflation and the CPI
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In mid-May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published its monthly computation of the change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of 4.2%, the highest rate since September 2008. This means that consumer prices had risen 4.2% in the preceding 12 months.
The media went hysterical and started predicting hyperinflation. A typical media statement by so-called "experts" was some variation of the following:
"Inflation exploded in April at an annual rate of 4.2%, the highest rate since Sept 2008, so inflation is already occurring, and we can expect much higher inflation or hyperinflation in the next few months!"
Long-time readers are aware that I have a low opinion of economists, and the above statement is one more example. If the inflation rate was even higher in September 2008, then why wasn't there hyperinflation in 2009? These "experts" are too dumb to even ask that question. As it turned out, there was mild deflation in 2009, so the Law of Reversion of the Mean took hold.
Then in mid-June, the BLS reported a CPI increase of 4.99%. Here's how CNBC reported it:
"The consumer price index, which represents a basket including food, energy, groceries, housing costs and sales across a spectrum of goods, rose 5% from a year ago. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting a gain of 4.7%.The reading represented the biggest CPI gain since the 5.3% increase in August 2008, just before the worst of the financial crisis sent the U.S. spiraling into the worst recession it had seen since the Great Depression."
This was actually a pretty good report, since it balanced the inflation hysteria with a sober report about what happened in 2009.
However, it didn't stop the hysteria from the so-called "experts" on TV, who have been predicting hyperinflationary doom, because they just can't seem to grasp that this CPI change is a temporary spike.
The following page contains a table of historical changes in the CPI month by month for the preceding 12 months, from 1913 to the present:
Historical Consumer Price Index Change
If you'd like, you can copy and paste the table on that page into a text file or into a spreadsheet, or you can just read the table on the web page.
You should spend a few minutes studying that table. It shows how the current spike in inflation is not unusual in the last three decades, and that there were previous larger spikes that didn't lead to sustained inflation.
As I've written many times, the "experts" have been consistently wrong about inflation since 2003, when I started keeping track, and predicted a deflationary era. For the last 70 quarters, the "experts" predicted that there would be inflation or super-inflation in the following quarter, and for 70 quarters they've been wrong every quarter and I've been right every quarter. And now it's the same thing all over again.
It would be VERY nice if even one of these "experts" at least acknowledged that they've been wrong for the last 70 quarters, and explained why "this time it's different" this quarter. But they never do.
When I first wrote about deflation in 2003, I really didn't understand what was going on, and in fact I said that inflation is "very mysterious." But I knew we were in a stock market bubble, and I knew that public debt was very high, and I knew that we were in a generational Crisis era, so I assumed that we would be following the deflationary path of the 1930s, and that we were in a "deflationary era."
That turned out to be correct. But now, having seen what happened in the last almost 20 years, I now have a much better idea about what a "deflationary era" or "disinflationary era" means. It means two things:
There are two economic measures that define a deflationary era:
Both of these economic measures are generational, in the sense that they occur during generational Crisis eras, and are the opposite of what occurred in the generational Awakening era of the 1970s. During the 1970s, people were still recovering from the Great Depression and public debt was extremely low, so people were willing to incur debt and spend money, resulting in a high velocity of money in the 1970s, and inflation.
The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 caused many people to go bankrupt or to lose their homes, and that made people extremely averse to spending. This reluctance to spend was measured by the velocity of money, which has been falling sharply since then. You can see that clearly by the graph at the beginning of this article.
This doesn't cause deflation, but it does put a lid on inflation during this deflationary era. It also means that when there's a burst of inflation caused by scarcity, like today, it will not encourage people to spend more, but instead will cause people to become more cautious and pull back even further, often resulting in a brief period of deflation as the scarcity unwinds. This happened in 2009, following an inflationary spike in 2008.
The second factor, besides velocity of money, is increasing public debt.
But today, public debt is extremely high and growing. This feeds into the velocity of money, since people in debt are very reluctant to spend and pay high prices, which would only increase their debt.
Furthermore, the high public debt leads to the second outcome of a deflationary era, namely that it ends with a sharp deflationary crash. This is because of the chain reaction that starts at the beginning of a financial crisis. As debts come due, people are no longer able to borrow money to roll debts over, so they have to sell assets and collect money owed through other people's interlocking debts, and that forces other people to sell their assets, resulting in a chain reaction and a full-fledged deflationary spiral.
I was actually expecting this to happen in 2008, with the collapse of Lehman and other banks. But something happened that I didn't expect -- that the Fed would flood the markets with "quantitative easing" (printed money), which provided banks with plenty of liquidity so that they could lend money to roll debts over. The problem is that this exacerbated the problem of interlocking debt and extended it around the world, so that the next crisis won't be resolved by quantitative easing, especially if it happens in the context of war.
Here's a final ironic point. When the US government "prints money," knee-jerk economists say that this will result in "too many dollars chasing too few goods" and inflation. This was true in the 1970s, but the opposite is true in a generational Crisis era, which the knee-jerk economists don't grasp at all. Printing money today does not generate inflation today. Printing money today increases public debt, which makes people more cautious and lowers the velocity of money. So printing money today does not cause inflation. It creates disinflationary pressure, and eventually will make the deflationary crash much larger. So printing money today actually causes more deflation.
You know, I used to think that the amount of money in the economy (M2) at least had some effect on the inflation rate, but as time has gone on, I increasingly believe that the amount of money has absolutely nothing to do with the inflation rate, at least in the American economy.
The inflation rate is not a monetary phenomenon. It's a generational phenomenon. It's not the Fed that affects the inflation rate. It's the people and the mood of the people that affect the inflation rate.
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(15-Jun-2021)
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Evidence grows that Wuhan coronavirus came from Wuhan Virology Lab
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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This is an article about two subjects -- threats by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to bomb Australia and the unraveling of the CCP's Wuhan coronavirus coverup. As different as these issues are, they have a common core: the intense increase in the last year of China's xenophobia, paranoia, nationalism and belligerence. This has been predicted by Generational Dynamics for years, as the prelude to world war. By now, the level of hostility between China and the West is as bad as the hostility between Japan and the US in 1941, in the months prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
This is being described as a sharp rise in "Wolf Warrior" strategy, named after a 2015 Chinese-produced military action film that demands a belligerent response to anyone disrespecting China.
Here's how left-leaning Foreign Policy magazine puts it:
"Sometime in 2020, China came unmoored from its grand strategy. Until then, Beijing’s diplomatic, military, and economic efforts were all directed toward national security. ... The consistency of purpose underpinning China’s behavior was hard to miss.Of late, however, China has lost that purposefulness -- one of the hallmarks of grand strategy. The predominant feature of Chinese conduct today is not grand strategy but a belligerent, defensive nationalism that lashes out without heed of consequences. Just why that breakdown has occurred is uncertain, but it is clear that the change has put both China and the world in jeopardy. China risks undoing all it has gained -- at considerable cost -- since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power. And the rest of the world, particularly the United States, finds itself confronted not with the hard task of managing a rising, reasonably predictable power but the infinitely harder job of managing a flailing one."
Analysts analyzing the situation say that the rise in this kind of xenophobic nationalism actually began in 2008 with the global financial crisis. I would agree with that because 2008 was 59 years after the end of China's civil war in 1949, and so was the time that China entered its generational Crisis era (Fourth Turning), just as 2003 was the time when America entered its generational Crisis era, 58 years after the end of World War II. There's a parallel between Washington and Beijing in that sensible policies in this era have been replaced by total lunacy in both capitals. Unfortunately, that's how world wars start.
Last year I gave as an example of the insanity of CCP policy is that it was threatening war over 21 different border disputes with neighboring countries. This would be like America threatening border disputes with Canada, Russia, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba. The CCP no longer has any coherent strategy, and is striking out in all directions. (See "5-Jul-20 World View -- Gleeful China wins big Hong Kong victory at UN Human Rights Council -- India's list of China's border disagreements")
Australia has a long history of antipathy towards Chinese in Australia since European settlement, starting with race riots amid the gold rush of the 1850s and '60s. With hundreds of Chinese prospectors injured and evicted from mining sites, the unrest prompted immigration rules that led to the infamous "White Australia" policy, which existed in various forms from 1901 until 1973.
Although these racist policies were repealed decades ago, there has never been a comfortable relationship. In May 2018, an Australian MP accused politicians of Chinese ancestry of being spies for the CCP, and the parliament passed sweeping influence laws targeting secret attempts by foreign spies to influence Australia's politicians, media, ethnic groups and civil society organizations. ( "29-Jun-18 World View -- Australia passes foreign influence laws, targeting China")
In April of last year, Australia's relationship with China deteriorated significantly after prime minister Scott Morrison called for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The Chinese were furious, assuming that it was an attack on the CCP (which, in fact, it was). Morrison further infuriated the Chinese for commenting on human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and for criticizing China's repeated threats to invade Taiwan.
At this point, China was deep into its "wolf warrior" phase. China blocked or slowed exports from Australia of numerous products, including wine, barley, beef, timber and coal.
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Australia was infuriated in December when China's foreign ministry tweeted a fake picture of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the neck of an Afghan baby, saying, "Don't be afraid, we are coming to bring you peace." In his strongest criticism of China, Morrison said:
"The Chinese government should be totally ashamed of this post. It diminishes them in the world's eyes. It is an absolutely outrageous and disgusting slur. Australia is seeking an apology from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and we are seeking it be removed from Twitter."
Needless to say, China did not apologize, and Twitter did not remove it. However, Morrison's statement was significant because it was strong comment Morrison had ever made about the CCP since taking office.
Four months later, in April of this year, Australia struck back at China by canceling Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) agreements that China had contracted with Victoria, a province in southeast Australia. The reason given was that the projects were not compatible with Australia's security, and made Victoria too dependent on China. Agreements with Iran and Syria were also scrapped at the same time.
These were small projects, so this should not have been a big deal, and it would not have been in any other era. But China responded with rage and threats, calling the cancellation "unreasonable and provocative," and vowing revenge.
China's state media Global Times accused Australia to be a puppet of the United States, and wrote the following, referring to Australia's capital city Canberra:
"Canberra must have known or even anticipated that its action would draw such a furious response and potentially crippling countermeasures from Beijing. However, it still decided to move ahead with the action. Clearly, Canberra is increasingly unhinged and in way over its head by taking such a suicidal attack on not just China but also its own economic interests.Since the cancellation of the BRI deals, speculation has been rife that Canberra may soon suffer from the wrath of its largest trading partner. Given the viciousness and seriousness of the move, we won't be surprised if China takes forceful countermeasures to inflict serious pain on Australia. With China's comprehensive strength, there are numerous ways for China to achieve that."
The reason for China's hysterical response is that the cancellation of this small project is a loss of faith for the CCP and Xi Jinping himself.
As I've written in the past, has a totally delusional geopolitical strategy based on BRI. Guided by China's leadership, countries throughout Africa, Asia and the Mideast will put aside their disagreements. Old hatreds will be mended by necessity, to attract capital for investments. These include countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan. China will create a "global colossal," of dozens of countries in a massive multi-country partnership, bound together by China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China foresees connecting the world through trade and peace, but foresees only one obstacle: that America will try to block it, leading to war.
China has used bribery, corruption, and threats to coerce countries in Asia, Africa and Europe agree to build BRI projects in those countries. However, China is receiving increasing resistance to these projects because of "debt trap diplomacy," which gives China almost effective control over each national government. This is actually what Australia feared, in canceling Victoria's BRI project.
A firm cancellation of Australia's Victoria BRI project would be the first such cancellation and would be a major crack in the entire delusional geopolitical plan, since it would provide cover for other countries to similary cancel or refuse BRI projects.
So China's hysteria over the cancelation, with threats of revenge, is intended to force Australia to reverse its decision, just as the boycotts of barley, coal and other products was intended to force Australia to back down from its demands in the area of human rights and particularly its demand for an international investigation of the source of the Wuhan Coronavirus.
At the beginning of May, the editor in chief of the Global Times posted the following editorial:
"Given that Australian hawks keep hyping or hinting that Australia will assist the US military and participate in war once a military conflict breaks out in the Taiwan Straits, and the Australian media outlets have been actively promoting the sentiment, I suggest China make a plan to impose retaliatory punishment against Australia once it militarily interferes in the cross-Straits situation. The plan should include long-range strikes on the military facilities and relevant key facilities on Australian soil if it really sends its troops to China's offshore areas and combats against the PLA. In addition to making the plan, China should also reveal this plan through non-official channels to deter the extreme forces of Australia and prevent them from taking the risk and committing irresponsible actions.China loves peace and will not take the initiative to pick a fight with faraway Australia, but Australian hawks must be clear-minded. If they are bold enough to coordinate with the US to militarily interfere in the Taiwan question and send troops to the Taiwan Straits to wage war with the PLA, they must know what disasters they would cause to their country. China has a strong production capability, including producing additional long-range missiles with conventional warheads that target military objectives in Australia when the situation becomes highly tense."
This is a remarkable statement, for several reasons:
This editorial well illustrates the belligerent mood in Beijing, and its "wolf warrior" attitude that China must never be disrespected.
Now let's turn to the second subject area, the Wuhan coronavirus.
Last week, president Joe Biden ordered intelligence officials to investigate the origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus, including the theory that it came from the Wuhan Virology Lab in China, either accidentally or intentionally, and that the virus was the result of "gain of function" research to create a bioweapon for the military. The investigation will also look at China's actions in covering up the spread of the virus, protecting China by blocking internal travel, and then purposely spreading the virus to 180 other countries by encouraging air travel between Wuhan and those countries.
This order has caused a seismic shock in Beijing, as well as in Washington's mainstream media.
Simply calling for an investigation isn't exactly an act of war, but we've seen how Australia's call for an investigation in March of last year led to hysterical calls for revenge and retribution, including boycotts of Australian goods, escalating up to the present time when Chinese media is talking about bombing Australian soil.
The CCP is far more reluctant to threaten the US militarily than to threaten Australia. Nonetheless, they must be considering possible forms of revenge in the next few weeks.
For now, the CCP response is limited to the usual hysterical lying and deceptions. Here's the statement from China's foreign ministry spokesman:
"However, some in the US, turning a blind eye to facts, science, the questionable study of origins and botched response at home, kept clamoring for additional investigation in China. This shows that they don't care about facts or truth and have zero interest in a serious science-based study of origins. Their one aim is to use the pandemic to pursue stigmatization and political manipulation to shift the blame. They are being disrespectful to science, irresponsible to people's lives, and counter-productive to concerted global efforts to fight the virus. With 33 million confirmed cases and 600,000 deaths from COVID-19, both the highest in the world, the US, instead of examining its own behavior, attempted to scapegoat China. What are they up to? Can they sleep at night with a troubled conscience?What secrets are hidden in the suspicion-shrouded Fort Detrick and the over 200 US bio-labs all over the world? In July 2019, there were reports on the unexplained outbreaks of respiratory disease in northern Virginia and on the subsequent EVALI outbreaks in Wisconsin. What's hidden there? When will the US release detailed data and information on relevant cases? It owes an explanation to the world."
There are many biolabs in many countries around the world, including one at Fort Detrick biodefense center, where an infectious disease research program was shut down in 2019 over problems with disposal of dangerous materials. However, there was no threat to public health, no injuries to employees, and no attempt to protect the United States while purposely infecting 180 countries around the world, so its in no way comparable to the Wuhan Virology Lab.
The seismic shock to Washington's mainstream media is that this is the biggest story of the century, and yet the mainstream media adamantly refused to investigate and report on it, but has cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to label it as "fake news" or a "conspiracy theory" that was dreamed up by president Donald Trump for political reasons.
Left wing media pundits have been falling all over themselves trying to explain why Donald Trump was right and they were all wrong about the biggest story of the century. Joy Behar of the TV show The View, who is a total idiot, said:
"Trump was blaming the Chinese from the beginning. He was using them as scapegoats. If it happens to be true it was from Wuhan, then that was just a lucky break on his part because he took a guess, in my opinion."
This was echoed by other mainstream media pundits, explaining that the reason that they missed the story of the century was that they didn't want to admit that Trump was right.
However, I believe that the real reason is obvious and far more sinister. The mainstream media and many politicians are totally compromised by the Chinese. News organizations that report news that "disrespects" China can be expelled from China, and even have their reporters jailed. Sports figures have been forced to make humiliating public apologies, kowtowing to China, for merely uttering the word "Uighur" or the phrase "the nation of Taiwan." California representative Eric Swalwell was totally compromised by an affair with a hot Chinese spy, and Joe Biden and his son Hunter are totally compromised by their financial deals with China. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The CCP have given grants, provided money, provided girls, and provided workers to every university, every public, private and governmental organization, to infiltrate them. This has been a nationwide scandal in Australia and New Zealand.
That China operates this way has been well-documented in many countries, with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) being the primary bribery and extortion vehicle in Asia, Africa and Europe. This is China's playbook, and it gives them the leverage to use extortion against any reporter, sports figure or politician that might otherwise "disrespect" China or disagree with Chinese Communist policies.
So that's the reason why the mainstream media have been refusing to investigate and report the greatest story so far this century. They would rather find a way to blame Trump, even though it makes them look like idiots, rather than admit to being extorted, which they were. It's bad enough that the mainstream media are an arm of the Democrat Party, but it's much worse that the mainstream media are an arm of the Chinese Communist Party. (Paragraph modified, 1-June)
Biden was clearly reluctant to order any investigation for the same reasons, and in fact in January he closed an investigation in the State Dept. that had been opened by Trump and Mike Pompeo. So what changed?
It's just that circumstantial evidence has been growing and growing more powerful over time. This has included whistleblowers and scientists who had worked in the Wuhan Virology Lab.
There were several triggering events during the month of May:
Biden had previously called for the previous WHO investigation to be completed, as had been promised, but after the CCP announcement on Tuesday that they wouldn't cooperate, Biden was compelled politically to agree to an investigation.
In August 2019, shortly before the spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus, Defense One magazine published a detailed analysis of decades of China's plans for creating biological weapons for use by the military. So it's possible, though unproven, that Covid-19 was developed by the Chinese military as a bioweapon.
If you take a virus and turn it into a bioweapon, the type of research is named "gain-of-function." The enhanced virus may be more lethal, may spread more easily, or may target only certain kinds of entities. For example, in 2000 Dutch researchers genetically engineered the spike protein of a mouse coronavirus so that it would attack only cats, but not rodents.
The nightmare scenario for the world is that Chinese scientists might similarly engineer a virus that attacks all humans, excluding all those with Chinese DNA.
Not surprisingly, gain-of-function research has become highly controversial. As described by the recent article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides grants funding projects at the Wuhan Virology Lab. When questioned about these grants in congressional committees, Dr. Anthony Fauci denied vehemently that these grants ever funded gain-of-research funding at the Wuhan Lab.
However, publicly available documents show that the grants went to a prime contractor, Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York, and that Daszak subcontracted to Bat Lady, Shi Zheng-li, the gain-of-function researcher at Wuhan Virology Lab that we previously described. Fauci insisted that there was no gain-of-function research because the grant agreement specified that there would be no gain-of-funding research. Under questioning, Fauci admitted that there was no way to tell if the Chinese were lying.
The Chinese Communists are supported by many useful idiots in the United States, but apparently Fauci is the stupidest useful idiot of them all.
I've described China's Communist government as being desperate and unstable in the past, and that's been true, but it's been getting much worse. It's a worsening trend that the CCP is desperately striking out in all directions, with a delusional geopolitical plan, 21 border disputes, deteriorating BRI strategy, and facing people in hundreds of countries that are pissed off that China protected themselves while purposely inflicting the Wuhan Coronavirus on them, though are afraid to take any action because of China's bribery and extortion playbook.
Americans can't grasp how China's government is becoming increasingly unstable because the US Constitutional government is possibly the most stable in world history, and we can't imagine it any other way. Every serious decision we take is subject to checks and balances by three branches of government, and is usually first debated in various committees, agencies, and the courts.
Contrast that with China, where Xi Jinping has made himself a dictator for life, which means that he could make a serious decision and there would be no one there to stop him. That's what happened with Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward in 1958, which resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths, and destroyed China's economy for decades, so much that it still hasn't recovered. Nothing like that could ever happen in America.
Why did the Imperial Japanese choose December 7, 1941, to bomb Pearl Harbor? They chose that date because they thought that they were running out of time and they panicked. The US had placed an embargo on the trade of all militarily useful items with Japan, and faced with serious shortages, they believed that they had to move quickly, or they would lose the opportunity.
We know that the Chinese are going to attack Taiwan. We know that because they've said so repeatedly, and they've been open about making military preparations for an attack. And now we've learned that their preparations are reaching the stage of possibly bombing Australia, because they believe that Australia's military would join with America's military in defending Taiwan.
China's "Wolf Warrior" strategy of xenophobia, nationalism and belligerance has been growing. I've tried to show a trend, how there have been a series of such incidents, and how each incident has been worse than the last one. Over the last 20 years, I've studied thousands of wars, and this is how wars start.
The Chinese military or Xi Jinping may decide, for rational, irrational or delusional reasons, that they've run out of time and that they have to move quickly, or they would lose the opportunity. No one, not even the Chinese themselves, can predict when they will panic and take that step. All we can do is watch as the Chinese Communist government becomes increasingly unstable and desperate.
This is a separate subject, but this is a good place to include it.
The mainstream media have been pointing to an increase in hate crimes on Asian Americans as proof that Republicans are white supremacists, and that they've been stirred up by president Trump's frequent reference to the "China Virus."
It takes a reporter from the NY Times or CNN to say something as totally idiotic as that. These attacks have been going on since the 1800s, and incidentally they've been even worse in Australia. So they long predate Trump.
However I came across a report, posted in January by the National Institutes of Health, which used data from the Department of Justice to "examine the nature and characteristics of hate crimes against Asian Americans." The report compared hate crimes against Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics.
The most important finding of the report is that perpetrators of hate crimes against Asians are most likely to be blacks, for economic reasons. This is something that's been known anecdotally for a long time, but the NIH report confirms it. It's also clear that the writers of the NIH report don't want you to easily find this result, probably for fear that if they expose the truth, they'll get fired or canceled.
You have to go far into the report to find the results (search for "Table 3" or "Findings of this study, however, also provide support to the minority-specific model"), but the findings are clear:
"Hate crimes against Asian Americans are more likely than hate crimes against either African Americans or Hispanics to be committed by non-White offenders."
"This finding may be attributed to animosity toward the “model minority” from other minority groups. As aforementioned, the “model minority” stereotype assuming Asian Americans’ success in economics, education, and other opportunities generates potential competition or threats by members of other racial groups, which in turn may lead to resentment to be further acted upon through hate crimes."
"Offenders of other minorities of color targeting Asian Americans might fit the category of “reactionists." ... Instead of acting impulsively, the “reactionists” are motivated by protecting their resources from competitors.... This finding might also lend indirect support to the perspective of racial competition motivating hate crimes, which argues that when members of a racial group perceive that their access and privileges to material resources are threatened by other racial groups during economic downturns, racial conflict and hate crimes may occur."
The article by conservative Michelle Malkin referenced below provides multiple examples of hate crimes against Asians by blacks, probably all Democrats.
Reading through the news stories of the Atlanta shooting in March of Asians, you can almost see the frustration of the writers that they can't find an angle to blame Republicans. By this time it's almost certain that the Atlanta shooter was a Democrat, probably a supporter of Black Lives Matter.
A personal note: All the signs are there that the Atlanta shooter was obsessed with Asian women and went berserk. I find this quite believable, since I've known two guys in the past who were obsessed with Asian women -- to date them not to kill them. There's something about Asian women that causes some men (not me) to obsess about them.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(1-Jun-2021)
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What did the Israelis accomplish? Mowing the lawn
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The worst possible outcome of the recent war -- that it would spiral into a full-scale regional war -- did not happen.
The best possible outcome of the recent war -- that it would settle the Israel-Palestinian dispute once and for all -- did not happen and could not possibly happen.
The 11 day conflict ended with a ceasefire on Friday, May 21, at 2 am. Nobody believes that there won't be another war soon.
Hamas fired 4,300 rockets from Gaza into Israel during the conflict, killing two children and six adults in Israel.
Israel fired thousands of missiles into Gaza during the conflict, killing 66 children and 248 adults.
Gaza was devastated by the war. More than 100,000 people lost their homes. Water and sewer systems were destroyed, so there's no water or sanitation. There is little electricity, and many hospitals were destroyed.
If you listen to Palestinians interviewed on tv, then you hear them say that the deaths and destruction in Gaza were worth it because those deaths have generated international outrage at Israel. There have been international anti-Israel riots and demonstrations in cities around the world. There have been calls for boycotts of Israeli goods.
In a way, this is a longing for a return to the 2000s decade, when the Palestinian issue was front page news around the world almost every day. Starting around ten years ago, Palestinian spokesmen began complaining that they had been completely forgotten by the international community because of other international issues, such as the wars in Ukraine and Syria. One of the motivations for starting the 2014 summer war with Israel is thought by some to be an attempt to get back on the front pages. And now, the Palestinians themselves seem to be saying the same thing.
Some Arab writers are saying the same thing in different ways.
German-Egyptian Intellectual Dr. Hamed Abdel-Samad said the following in an interview:
"Hamas has turned the Palestinians into beggars. Where did all the money go? I would like Fatah and Hamas to explain to the Palestinians where all this money went? [Imagine] what could have been done with it.Why wasn't it invested in good education, instead of making children TV shows that teach them martyrdom and suicide? Why do all the leaders of Fatah have villas, palaces, and a lot of money? They stole from their people and did not invest in their freedom, in their educations, and in their self confidence. They left their people only with the choice between martyrdom or begging for money."
Saudi journalists are even more harshly critical of the actions of the Gaza Palestinians, directly connecting the actions of Hamas to the agenda of the Iranians, who are supplying Hamas with the rockets that they've been launching at Israel.
As the war began, Saudi journalist Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh tweeted:
"I suspect that the move of those Palestinian factions that are agents of the Persians was carried out on orders from Iran, so as to exert pressure in [Iran's] favor in the Vienna [nuclear] talks. The implications [of the escalation] will likely be devastating for the helpless citizens of Gaza."
Another Saudi journalist, Sa'ud Al-Fawzan said that the war could have been avoided entirely, but it's something that that the leaders of Palestine and Israel wanted:
"I will never show tolerance for the killing of children in [either] Tel Aviv or Gaza. Those responsible for their death are both [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu and [Hamas leader in Gaza Isma'il] Haniya. Were it not for Netanyahu and Haniya, the Palestinians and the Israelis would have lived together just as our forefathers coexisted peacefully with the Jews for many centuries."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this interpretation is comforting, but delusional. There is enormous mutual hostility, xenophobia and hatred between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and do Netanyahu and Haniya were doing what the people they were governing wanted them to do.
And this is further proved, by the way, by the communal violence between Palestinians and Israelis that broke out and is still ongoing.
First, not all Israelis are happy with the ceasefire. The cities of Ashkelon and Sderot, in southern Israel, have been hit particularly hard to by Gaza rockets over the years, and have suffered numerous casualties.
According to Sderot's mayor Alon Davidi:
"This proves that despite the full support and perseverance and heroism that the residents of the south have shown for the past 20 years, it appears that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and the Israeli government are not interested in defeating Hamas and prefer temporary quiet for residents of central Israel at the expense of residents of the Gaza periphery and the south, who will continue to suffer from terrorism."
Of course it's totally delusional that completely defeating Hamas is even possible, but this is a widely held desire by many Israelis, especially in the south.
When Israeli officials are interviewed about what they accomplished, they describe the war much more succintly and in military terms.
They say that Israel had to defend itself from the incoming rockets, and that they had to retaliate with massive missile strikes to destroy Hamas's military infrastructure, including military offices, weapons stores, and a huge labyrinth of underground tunnels. The objective is to prevent a new war from occurring for as long a time as possible.
Israeli military commanders do not have any expectation of defeating Hamas permanently. They use the metaphor "mowing the lawn" to capture the idea that after destroying Hamas's arsenal and tunnels, they will be restored again by Iran -- the grass will grow back and have to be mowed again.
It was Egypt that negotiated the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. President Joe Biden says that ceasefire was possible because of his intense behind the scenes mediation.
One of the accomplishments claimed by the Palestinians, along with the rise in worldwide outrage at Israel, is that the far left in America's Democrat Party, led by AOC, is demanding that Biden withdraw his support from Israel. In particular, Biden is being pressured from the left to cancel a $735 million weapons deal, most of which would be used to resupply the defensive missiles in the Iron Dome anti-missile system that protected much of Israel from the thousands of Gaza rockets.
Not resupplying the Iron Dome would have disastrous consequences for Israel, and would permit thousands of Gaza rockets to reach their intended destinations, killing civilians in their homes.
AOC in the past has said that she is thrilled by how Biden has taken one far left socialist position after another, but now for the first time, Biden is being forced to take a position opposed to AOC. On Friday, Biden says that the Democrat party "still supports Israel," and said:
"There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel. Period. No shift. The shift is we still need a two-state solution. It is the only answer."
I've been ridiculing the "two-state solution" through the presidencies of Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden. The first major Generational Dynamics analysis that I posted was Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace? (1-May-2003), in which I explained why there would not be peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, because they would be re-fighting the bloody 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Trump's two-state solution plan was announced just a little over a year ago. ( "29-Jan-20 World View -- Trump announces fantasy 'Peace to Prosperity' Mideast peace plan")
Since 2006, there have been five wars involving Israel and Palestinians: the war between Israelis and Hezbollah, fought largely on Lebanon's soil in 2006; the war between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah in Gaza in 2008, that led to Hamas control of Gaza; Operation Cast Lead, the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza early in 2009; the two wars between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in November, 2012 and July-August 2014.
These wars follow a typical, predictable pattern of a series of clashes separated by periods of peace, with each clash more violent than the preceding one. As the old saying goes, "Peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading." This pattern cannot go on forever, and eventually will lead to a full-scale generational crisis war.
So now Biden is adopting the same delusional two-state solution plan as Bush, Obama and Trump. The main features of Biden's plan are like every other policy announced by Biden -- just do the opposite of Trump did.
Trump's strategy, which included isolating Iran, was to strongly support Israel and cut funding for Palestinian militias, to prevent another war. Biden's strategy, which includes negotiations with Iran to restore the JCPOA nuclear deal, is to "rebuild ties" with the Palestinians. Biden will reopen the the consulate with the Palestinians in Jerusalem -- Trump had closed it and made it part of the new embassy in Jerusalem. Biden will ask Congress for $75 million for economic assistance for the Palestinans, and also $5.5 million for emergency aid for Gaza. Biden will also restore $32 million in new aid for UNRWA, for the exponentially growing number of Palestinian "refugees."
The money being provided is intended for use in rebuilding Gaza's buildings and infrastructure after being devastated by war. The objection, of course, is that those millions of dollars will be used by Hamas to purchase new stocks of weapons from Iran in preparation for the next war with Israel, instead of to rebuild Gaza.
Along with this monetary largess comes another part of the plan that seems totally delusional. Biden's plan is to route the money though the West Bank Palestinian Authority, and let Fatah, Hamas's enemy, take charge of using Biden's money to rebuild Gaza. Yeah, that will work fine.
As for the Democrat Party, there's a poisonous anti-Semitism growing, which is resulting in violent attacks on Jews in this country. Black Lives Matter is promoting the same hate-filled anti-Semitism. Democrat leaders like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have said nothing about the growing violence against Jews.
Regular readers will be familiar with the following paragraph, since I've written something like it dozens of times:
Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
The latest Gaza war is actually different from previous Gaza wars in some significant ways.
First, Hamas had more rockets and more powerful rockets than in the past, supplied by Iran. Hamas points with pride to the fact that its rockets can now reach apartment buildings in Tel Aviv for the first time.
Second, Israel's missile strikes on Gaza were much more powerful than in the past. The destruction of apartment blocks and infrastructure was much more extensive than in 2014.
Third, the communal violence between Arabs and Israelis in the West Bank and within Israel itself was much greater and more violent than in the past. In particular, for the first time, Arabs living as citizens in Israel took the fight to their Israeli neighbors. This is extremely ominous, and the communal violence is still ongoing.
No politician, except the most delusional, believes that the recent Gaza war was the last one. In a sense, the continuing communal violence suggests that the recent Gaza war hasn't really ended yet. But we can expect a new Gaza war in the not too distant future, and at some point it will escalate into a full regional Mideast war.
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(26-May-2021)
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Can Joe Biden bring peace to the Mideast?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Previously, I've described a new an unexpected development in the current war between Israel and the Palestinians. The new development, which has apparently caught everyone by surprise, is the rise of extremely bitter communal / sectarian violence between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. (See "14-May-21 World View -- Communal violence within Israel threatens much wider war")
The purpose of this article is to explain in further detail the significance of this violence, and the role of the "58-Year Rule" of generational theory.
Today's violence is occurring on both the Jewish and Arab sides, but it's being characterized by some as a "Third Intifada," a general street uprising of Palestinian people against the Israeli government and people.
There have been two previous Intifadas. The first began in December 1987 in Gaza and spread to the West Bank. It consisted of massive peaceful protests, demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, and riots. It began to die off fairly quickly, and officially ended in September 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords agreement, which was supposed to provide peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but never did anything of the sort. In the late 1990s, Hamas was formed and carried out a series of suicide attacks against Israeli targets, while Israelis continued to build settlements in the West Bank, with both sides violating the Oslo Accords.
The Oslo Accords broke down in 2000, resulting in the Second Intifada, which began in September 2000 and was an armed rebellion by Palestinian militias, including Hamas and Fatah, against Israeli security forces, and against Israeli civilians using suicide bombings. The violence only began to subside in 2005, after the deaths of about 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.
During the Second Intifida, the leaders of the Palestinians and Israelis were, respectively, Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon. On May 1, 2003, I posted my first major Generational Dynamics analysis, predicting that President George Bush's "Mideast Roadmap to Peace" peace plan would fail, because the Jews and the Palestinians would be re-fighting the bloody 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. (Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace? (1-May-2003))
In that article, I wrote the following:
"There's an incredible irony going on in the Mideast today, in that the leaders of two opposing sides are, respectively, Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat.These two men hate each other, but they're the ones cooperating with each other (consciously or not) to prevent a major Mideast conflagration. Both of them remember the wars of the 1940s, and neither of them wants to see anything like that happen again. And it won't happen again, as long as both of these men are in charge."
Although I didn't write the following, I suspected that Sharon and Arafat were actually cooperating in back channels to prevent the violence from turning into a full-fledged civil war.
Why would they do that? They would do that because they had both survived the ethnic civil war in 1948-49. In my article earlier this week, I gave an example of what happened during Rwanda's ethnic civil war: Populations had intermarried and were living on the same streets, where their children had played together. But that did not stop someone from picking up a machete, going next door, killing the father and children, raping the wife, killing her, and then cutting them all up into mangled pieces. These examples are the rule, not the exception, for ethnic civil wars. Crisis wars are like forces of nature; you can no more stop a crisis war than you can stop a tsunami.
That example is from the Rwanda war, but you can be absolutely certain that similar things happened during the 1948-49 ethnic civil war between Arabs and Jews. Both Arafat and Sharon had lived during that war. They may have personally participated in or ordered these kinds of atrocities. Nobody goes through experiences like that without being completely traumatized. Preventing a repeat of those experiences becomes an overwhelming goal, much more important than fighting another war, even a "justified" war.
It goes much deeper than that. Not only Arafat and Sharon, but also millions of Palestinians and Israelis had lived through the 1948-49 war and were similarly traumatized. That's why, during the Second Intifada, there was relatively little contact between civilian Jews and Arabs, and most of the violence was more or less organized, through militias and security police.
When Yassir Arafat died in November 2004, I wrote the following:
"Yes, he was a brutal, vicious terrorist. Yes he was a liar and maybe even a crook. Yes, he approved suicide bombings that killed Jewish children.But for a man in his position, approving suicide bombings was the lesser of two evils. The greater evil was unleashing a new genocidal war, one that would kill many more Jewish and Arab children than suicide bombings do."
Mahmoud Abbas, born in 1935, took Arafat's place. He was also a survivor of the 1948-49 war, and did not radically change Arafat's policies. Today, Abbas is facing the possibility of leading the Palestinians through a Third Intifada.
I have often seen Al-Jazeera's political analyst Marwan Bishara discuss Mideast topics. It's always been clear that he hates Israel but, notably, it's also been clear that he hates Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah even more than he hates Israel. He considers Abbas to be a historic traitor to the Palestinians, because he negotiates with the Israelis to keep the peace, and the West Bank security forces cooperate with the Israeli security forces for the same reason.
So I listened to Bishara rant for a long time on Saturday. He wonders why the Israelis are killing innocent Palestinians. He wants the US, the UK and the EU all to condemn Israel for its practices, and to force Israel to accept a ceasefire with Hamas.
It's not surprising that Bishara sharply disagrees with Abbas. Abbas was born in 1935 and lived through the 1948-49 war. Bishara was born in 1969, and knows nothing about the war except what Palestinian activists have told him. So he welcomes a Third Intifada, because the Palestinians might finally achieve their dreams of freedom -- whatever that means.
Abbas opposes a Third Intifada. He believes that the Second Intifada was a disaster for Palestinians. His unstated reason is that it is absolutely certain that Abbas remembers the traumatizing atrocities of the 1948-49 war. He is old enough to remember them, and he's also old enough to recognize that it's happening again. Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to go on television and tell the nation: "Nothing justifies the lynching of Arabs by Jews and nothing justifies the lynching of Jews by Arabs." For him to make that announcement reveals that horrible things are happening today and, indeed, news reports confirm that.
Mahmoud Abbas is now 85 years old. I reported years ago that polls shows young Palestinians were almost unanimous in disliking Abbas. They consider him a failure for any number of reasons, the most obvious one being that, 27 years after the Oslo Accords, almost nothing has changed for the Palestinians. Young Palestinians dislike Hamas leaders almost as much.
In my article last week, I described how the 58-Year Rule applies. The generations people who lived through the 1948-49 war were all traumatized by the horrors and atrocities. We've found that these generations all retire and die around the same time, 58 years after the end of such a war, which would have been 2006-2007. That's why the First and Second Intifadas fizzled. There were too many people around who were traumatized by the last war, and would do anything to keep it from happening again.
But that's not true today. Abbas is still around, but almost everyone else from that generation of survivors is gone. That's the difference between Mahmoud Abbas and Marwan Bishara. Bishara has no personal knowledge of the war's atrocities, so he couldn't care less if there's another ethnic civil war. He and many other young people welcome it, because they have fantasies that they'll be free and that Israel will be pushed into the sea.
So, can Mahmoud Abbas prevent a Third Intifada from occurring? Can an 85 year old extremely unpopular leader stop a force of nature? If I had to bet (and fortunately I don't), I would bet that he can't. Or if he can, he can stop it only temporarily.
On Saturday, there was a panel of journalists on the BBC discussing the Israel-Palestine situation. The hostility to Israel among these journalists is enormous, and not surprising. And it's worth noting that there are anti-Israel demonstrations going on in cities around the world.
One person said, "I'm going to say something very controversial. [long pause] If Donald Trump were president, this would not have happened."
Instead of the usual screaming, this comment was met with silence, which I interpreted as tacit agreement.
According to these journalists, Biden was hoping to avoid having to deal with the Mideast, since he wanted to focus on getting a new nuclear agreement with Iran, and ending the sanctions. This would now be very controversial, since Iran is funding Hamas. But the journalists are blaming Biden for the Mideast war, saying that he has been ignoring the Palestinian problem in favor of the Iran policy.
So the narrative is growing that the Mideast war is Israel's fault, and it's also Biden's fault because Biden is not holding back Israel, and forcing Israel to agree to a ceasefire.
In Washington, Democrats like AOC are demanding that Biden end all funding to Israel, and force Israel to accept a ceasefire under terms dictated by Hamas. Republicans are angry that Biden has been taking a wrecking ball to all aspects of America's domestic and foreign policy, and is giving money to the Palestinians, which they are using to buy weapons from Iran, which Biden is also supporting.
So this is shaping up to be a major political issue in America. Meanwhile, the Israel-Palestine war is continuing to escalate, and will continue to do so no matter what Biden does.
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(16-May-2021)
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Understanding the mainstream media
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Communal or sectarian violence within Israel threatens a much larger war. I'll return to that subject below.
The following are the recent developments in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza:
My view has been that the current war would fizzle out within a few months, like the 2014 war. The only thing that could prevent that is if some third country, like Egypt or Turkey, actively entered the war on the side of Hamas.
However, there's a new development that changes that calculation. The new development, which has apparently caught everyone by surprise, is the rise of extremely bitter communal / sectarian violence between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. To be clear, we're talking about Israeli citizens who have for years been living side by side within Israeli cities and towns. About 20% of Israel's total population are Arabs.
There have been shootings, lynchings, rock-throwing, and stabbings. The epicenter of the ethnic violence is Lod, a city with large Jewish and Arab populations. However, the violence has been spreading to cities across the country.
In one case, a lynching was shown on tv in real time. In the city of Bat Yam, a live tv broadcast showed a Jewish mob dragging a man, whom they believed to be Palestinian, out of his car before severely beating him. Needless to say, the video of this live broadcast has gone viral.
"Death to Arabs" is frequently chanted in rallies throughout the country, including Haifa and Acre in the north, as well as Lod, Jaffa, and Tiberias.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on both Jews and Arabs to cease attacks on each other:
"Nothing justifies the lynching of Arabs by Jews and nothing justifies the lynching of Jews by Arabs."
Maybe nothing justifies these lynchings, but it's clear that these lynchings are going to increase in number.
As one commentator said, there has been a "social compact" in Israel for decades, permitting Arabs and Jews to live together side by side in peace, but now that social compact is coming apart at the seams.
The 58-Year Rule is a significant finding of modern generational theory. According to the Generational Dynamics 58-Year Hypothesis, which by now has been well proven, a new ethnic civil war will not begin less than 58 years from the end of the previous ethnic civil war. That's because 58 years is precisely the time when the generations of survivors of the preceding war all die or retire, all at once, and the younger post-war generations come to power. It has now been 73 years since the end of the last ethnic civil war, the war between Jews and Arabs that occurred with the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and so Israel is fully ripe for a new ethnic civil war, and that seems to be what's happening.
Two recent examples of ethnic civil wars are the Rwanda war of 1994 and the Bosnian war of 1995. In Rwanda and Bosnia, populations had intermarried and were living on the same streets, where their children had played together. But that did not stop someone from picking up a machete, going next door, killing the father and children, raping the wife, killing her, and then cutting them all up into mangled pieces. These examples are the rule, not the exception, for ethnic civil wars.
So as long as the war between Israel and Gaza is at the top level government levels, then the top-down war is likely to fizzle out, as I said. But when the war is organic and bottom-up, then it's likely to spread into a much wider war, crossing into neighboring countries.
So for those of you who can take a breather from Washington politics and want to watch what's going on in the world, this is the place to watch. If the communal violence dies down, then a larger war will be avoided, for the time being. But if the communal violence grows and spreads, it will probably engulf the entire Mideast.
As regular readers know (since I've written it many times), Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
This is a completely separate subject. The following text is something that I posted in the Generational Dynamics forum that may be of interest to a larger audience.
The problem is that media sources have become dishonest and censorious, and so the question is: Who is to be believed?
But after writing thousands of articles over almost 20 years, I've developed a pretty good intuition about who in the media is telling the truth and who is bullshitting.
I should probably put together a whole big article on the subject, but here are some sample conclusions:
CNN, MSNBC, AP, Tehran Times, Russia Today, China Daily are all similar in that they're "state media," and just parrot the government line uncritically.
Fox News generally lives up to its "fair and balanced" claim, since they present both sides of issues pretty fairly.
For international news, the BBC is pretty good, but when it reports on American news, which it does all the time, it's the same as CNN and MSNBC. BBC receives a great deal of funding from NPR, and so it is required to follow the same Democrat party talking points.
Al-Jazeera is also pretty good with international news. But you'll never see a negative story about Qatar. Also, they hate Israel, and they hate the Palestinian Authority even more, but they love Hamas. But for Asian news they're pretty good. Oh, and they hate America, and they REALLY hate Trump.
AFP is pretty good for Mideast, Asian and African news. VOA and RFERL are pretty reliable.
Reuters is an interesting case, because I've found them to be almost always completely fair and balanced. I believe that the reason is that Thomson Reuters is an Canadian company, so they have a wholly different view of the world.
When I'm writing an international story, I have to use each news source in a credible way. For example, I'll consider China Daily or Global Times to be an accurate statement of China's political position, and I would consider them more credible on this subject than, say, Reuters or AP or the BBC. On the other hand, the BBC is much more credible about China's actions.
In an international story, like the Israel-Palestine story of today, I don't want to take sides, so I try to find accounts from each side, ideally to quote them in parallel. This is not always easy to do.
And of course I'm always guided by previous Generational Dynamics conclusions. For example, I've known for decades that there will never be a "two-state solution" in the Mideast, so I know automatically that any policitian who talks about it is full of crap.
So maybe at some point I'll expand this into a more comprehensive article.
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(14-May-2021)
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Israeli police storm Al-Aqsa Mosque after violent Palestinian protests
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The war between Hamas militants in Gaza and Israeli's military was renewed on Monday, when militants fired dozes of rockets into Israel, and Israel's military responded with missile strikes, killing 20 people in Gaza, including nine children, according to Gaza officials.
This was the worst such violence that has occurred in year, since the 2014 summer war. Hamas militants have fired rockets into southern Israel at intervals for years, but this was a major escalation because the rockets targeted Jerusalem. Explosions could be heard in Jerusalem, and one of the rockets damaged a home on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Israel struck many of the rockets down, using their "Iron Dome" anti-missile system, and others exploded harmlessly in open areas.
Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the rocket attacks had "crossed a red line":
"Israel will respond very forcefully. We will not tolerate attacks on our territory, our capital, our citizens and our soldiers. Whoever strikes us will pay a heavy price."
Hamas launched the rocket attacks after a 6 pm deadline passed for an ultimatum that demanded that Israeli police withdraw from the Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem. Hamas also demanded the release of all detained Palestinians, and the removal of Jewish settlers from an East Jerusalem neighbourhood.
Hamas said that Israel was waging a "religious war against Palestinian worshipers" in Jerusalem.
"What is happening in the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the time of storming and assaulting worshipers is proof of the brutality of the Zionist occupation.[Israel is responsible for its] incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The occupation will pay a heavy price."
So both sides are promising "a heavy price."
Terminology:
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Hamas militias set the 6 pm deadline and launched the rockets as a reaction to a situation of escalating violence is occurring for weeks in Jerusalem. Typically, these situations worsen for a while, then begin to settle down and fizzle. But we know that one day one of these situations will escalate into a full war, but we don't know which one. So far, this situation is triggering a larger war, to include Hamas.
The epicenter of violence in the last few weeks is the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, which is Islam's third-holiest site, behind Mecca and Medina. It is also a major holy site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount. So it's not surprising that it's a major flash point for Palestinian worshippers and Israeli nationalists.
On Monday, Palestinians hurled rocks, other heavy objects and firecrackers at Israeli policemen. Israeli police stormed the mosque, firing stun grenades and rubber bullets inside the mosque. Hundreds of Palestinians were wounded, and dozens were hospitalized.
This kind of violence has been going on daily since the start of Ramadan on April 13. This is the worst violence in years between Israeli police and Palestinians in East Jerusalem. In April, Israeli police blocked off access to a part of the Old City, giving Covid restrictions as the reason. Then a TikTok video went viral apparently showing an Israeli being abused by an Arab. That's when right-wing extremist Jewish settlers held a large demonstration, chanting "Death to Arabs." Palestinians heard about this, and a crowd responded by throwing firecrackers and setting garbage bins on fire. (See 24-Apr-2021 World View: Violence grows between Palestinians and far-right Jews in East Jerusalem)
Clashes between Palestinians and settlers have occurred almost daily since then. The violence has spiked in recent days as Jewish settlers are asking the Israeli courts to evict Palestinians from their homes, so that the Israeli settlers can take their place. The settlers claim that the land occupied by the Palestinian homes belonged to their Jewish ancestors prior to the 1948 creation of Israel.
These are the last days of Ramadan but, more significantly, Monday is Israel's "Jerusalem Day," which celebrates Israel's capture of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel's government took two steps to try to defuse the violence. First, a court hearing scheduled for Monday was postponed a month. The court hearing would have finalized the decision to evict Palestinians from homes. These threatened evictions would have severely escalated the clashes between Palestinians and settlers.
The other step was to cancel a scheduled march by Israeli right-wing nationalists and settlers, in celebration of Jerusalem Day. The parade would have marched through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, which the Palestinians said would be highly provocative. These two steps reduced some of the violence, although they've apparently infuriated the Israeli nationalists. Nationalist Israelis demonstrated against the moves.
Generational Dynamics predicts that the Israelis and Palestinians will be re-fighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. However, this new situation so far shows signs that it's more likely to fizzle, rather than expand into a larger regional war. The US State Department is pressuring Israel to back off, and the United Nations, Egypt and Qatar are mediating between Israel and Hamas to halt the fighting.
However, the violence is expected to continue for at least several weeks and months. The court hearing to evict Palestinians from their homes has not been canceled, but has been postponed for a month, so we can't expect the clashes between Palestinians and Israelis around the Al-Aqsa Mosque to end for at least that period of time. That will lead to more demands by the Hamas militants for at least that period of time. Perhaps the worst that will happen will be like the 2014 summer war between Hamas and Israel that lasted 67 days.
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(11-May-2021)
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Violence on Tajikistan - Kyrgyzstan border worst in 20 years
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For years since the end of the bloody Tajikistan civil war (1992-97), there have been border disputes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but they've all been isolated incidents. But in the last few weeks, the Tajik army has been mobilizing along a long section of the border, for the first time. The border is 971 kilometers long, of which 471 km are disputed.
At least 31 people have been killed, and over 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes due to the worst violence in decades between Kyrgyz and Tajik army forces. Entire villages on both sides have been burned down. On Sunday, the two governments agreed to a ceasefire, but it's not clear that the people on the ground agree.
Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan belong to Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and Russia has military bases in both countries, so Russia would like to see the conflict settled peacefully.
The borders between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were set up in the 1920s by Josef Stalin, making them part of the Soviet Union. Stalin had no concern for ethnic, demographic, and tribal considerations when he set up those boundaries. He was only interested in commericial benefits. And the boundaries didn't matter, since both countries were part of the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, suddenly the boundaries mattered.
The boundaries were never clearly defined, and there have been calls over the years to officially mark the boundaries. Of course, this would bring any border disagreements into sharp focus, so this project hasn't been pursued. But recently, the government of Kyrgyzstan announced that it would like to complete border demarcations between the countries, and to build a reservoir along the river that supplies water to both countries. These announcements caused the Tajiks to panic, and led to the current border clashes.
The US and Nato began withdrawal of all forces from Afghanistan on May 1, with the withdrawal to be completed on September 11, on the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. The Taliban had promised to coexist peacefully with the Afghan government provided that the US withdrawal was fully completed by May 1, as agreed with the Donald Trump administration early last year. But the Taliban now say that the US has violated the agreement, so they're free to attack anyone they want. Joe Biden has said that the the September 11 completion date for the withdrawal is absolute, not conditions based, so the Taliban know that they can just go ahead and attack.
On Friday, 30 people were killed when a car bomb exploded near a guest house where high school students were staying, in preparation for university entrance exams. Dozens of people were hurt. Witnesses described roofs collapsing and victims being trapped under the debris.
In the last two days alone, there have been dozens of new casualties, from clashes between Afghan forces and the Taliban. Once the Americans leave, there will be nothing preventing the clashes from escalating.
Reports indicate that the people of Kabul are feeling increasingly anxious, particularly about girls' education, which the Taliban have promised to abolish. Friday's car bombing may have been designed to target girls' education.
The withdrawal of US and Nato troops from Afghanistan threatens more than just the stability of Afghanistan. It threatens new kinds of instability in the entire Central Asia region. The countries in the region are concerned that the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will create the same regional instability that the American withdrawal from Iraq did in 2010.
The heads of the countries in Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) have been meeting to discuss this precise concern. In fact, villagers in Tajikistan, along the Afghanistan border, are being told to be prepared "to take up arms," in the words of a provincial governor:
"In coordination with the police and intelligence departments, we've registered all hunters who live in the border areas. They will have to take up arms to defend our country. In fact, all of us will have to take up weapons if the situation dictates."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is not surprising at all. Both Afghanistan (1991-96) and Tajikistan (1992-97) had extremely bloody ethnic civil wars during the 1990s.
In Afghanistan, the war was between the Pashtuns in the south versus the Northern Alliance in the north, consisting of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, so they will be looking for revenge.
It's been over 20 years since those civil wars ended, so the region is in a generational Awakening era, with new nationalistic generations having grown up since then, and having little fear of a new civil war. It's way too early for a major new war, but as typically happens, there will be periods of bloodshed separated by periods of ceasefire, with each bloodshed period worse than the previous one.
Furthermore, new terrorist groups with allegiance to al-Qaeda or ISIS have been springing up in Afghanistan, but have been kept under control with the help of American forces. These groups will be encouraged to grow again, with the departure of the Americans.
In 2009, I told readers to make a mental note of the Fergana Valley (or Ferghana Valley), in central Asia, because it was going to become increasingly important in world affairs. The Fergana Valley sits at the intersection of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is a hotbed of terrorist activity by al-Qaeda. ( "Islamist Uzbeks lead terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan (2-Nov-2009)")
The American withdrawal from Afghanistan will encourage these clashes. That may be why there have been reports that the Biden administration has been talking to the government of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to reposition the US forces leaving Afghanistan in abandoned American military bases in those two countries. American forces had occupied those bases between 2001 and 2014, before the host countries demanded that the Americans leave.
Little is known publicly about these negotiations, but it would be ironic if the withdrawal of American forces from the "forever war" in Afghanistan led to American forces becoming involved a "forever war" in Central Asia and the Fergana Valley.
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(3-May-2021)
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Britain to send warships to Black Sea after US backs down
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Britain is reported to be sending two warships to the Black Sea, as Russia continues its military buildup on the Ukraine border, and a naval buildup in the Black Sea. Britain's announcement came when the US backed out of plans to send ships to the Black Sea after being warned by Russia to stay out.
Russia appears to be taking the next step in a plan that began with its invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014, following a military buildup on the border of Ukraine similar to the military buildup going on at the current time. The invasion took place after Vladimir Putin promised not to invade Ukraine.
During the course of that invasion, Russians in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 shot down a passenger plane, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, with a Russian Buk 9M38 missile. The Russians claimed that the US shot down the plane to embarrass Putin. Russia lied about not invading Crimea, and then invaded Crimea. Putin lied about not annexing Crimea, and then annexed Crimea.
In May 2015, Russia began constructing an 11.8 mile bridge across the Kerch Strait (see map above), said to be the longest bridge in Europe.
Russia used the bridge to strangle commerce into Ukraine's seaports of Mariupol and Berdyansk, resulting in substantial economic damage to Ukraine. In November 2018, Russia completed the bridge, and opened live fire for no reason on three Ukrainian vessels, wounding six sailors, boarding and seizing the vessels. The sailors were transferred indefinitely to a jail in Moscow.
The point of reviewing this history is to set the framework for Russia's latest actions, and to show that pretty much everything Russia claims is garbage. The typical Russian playbook is to commit some atrocity and then blame the United States or Nato, such as when the Russians shot down the MH17 passenger plane.
In the current scene, Russian analysts are claiming that the military buildup is because the United States wants Ukraine to join Nato, and because Ukraine is planning to invade Russia. Over the years, I've dealt with dozens of Russian trolls excusing Russia atrocities with some of the most ridiculous excuses, and this is typical.
The problem is that we have absolutely no idea what the Russians are planning.
Whatever military action Russia is planning will probably take place in early or mid-May, after the snows have melted and the fields have dried and are able to hold tanks. We'll have to wait until then to see which of these options Russia will pursue.
Coinciding with the huge build-up of over 100,000 Russian troops near the border with Ukraine, Russia is bolstering its naval fleet in the Black Sea.
Two Russian warships from Russia's Baltic fleet, accompanied by 15 smaller vessels, transited from the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosphorus to the Black Sea on Saturday. The Bosphorus is the waterway, controlled by Turkey, connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Black Sea.
This comes after Russia announced that Russia is sending 15 naval vessels from its Caspian Sea Flotilla to the Black Sea. These vessels must travel up the Volga River, through a canal built in 1952 with 13 locks, to the Don River, and then to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
So Russia's naval buildup is large and expensive, just like its ground buildup.
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There are a number of news stories from multiple international sources describing this situation, and they seem to boil down to the following:
The US was planning to send two warships into the Black Sea, for a long-scheduled routine mission. However, Russia warned the United States on Tuesday (4/13) against sending the warships, "for their own good." Russia's Deputy Foreign Ministry Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by Russian news agencies as follows:
"There is absolutely nothing for American ships to be doing near our shores. We warn the United States that it will be better for them to stay far away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast. It will be for their own good."
Also on Tuesday, president Joe Biden phoned Russia's president Vladimir Putin, after which the US backed down on the plans to send warships to the Black Sea. US officials described the reason was to avoid needlessly escalating the situation, and a desire not to provoke Moscow during a delicate time.
However on Sunday, British media is reporting that a flotilla of ships from the Royal Navy's carrier task group in the Mediterranean, including a Type 45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles and an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate, will travel to the Black Sea in May. The deployment is aimed at showing solidarity with Ukraine and Britain's NATO allies.
I heard one analyst make the following speculation about what happened: Perhaps Biden fears a coordinated attack next month on Ukraine by Russia simultaneously with a Chinese attack on Taiwan, and so Biden did not want American warships to be trapped in the Black Sea.
If major hostilities break out again in the Donbas (eastern Ukraine), then the situation will have changed a lot since the last war in 2014, since both Ukraine's and Russia's militaries are better prepared.
Ukraine has significantly boosted defense spending since 2014, has U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles in its arsenal, and has troop numbers of nearly 250,000 compared to 168,000 in 2013.
In recent weeks, Russia has unexpectedly boosted its troop presence near the conflict zone in Ukraine. Analysis of open-source material has identified tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, long-range artillery, rocket launchers, and Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems among the materiel that has been moved to the area since mid-March. U.S. and NATO officials have called it the largest military buildup in the region since Russia’s surprise occupation of Crimea and the start of fighting in the Donbas, which has killed more than 13,000 combatants and civilians since April 2014.
So what are Russia's plans? We probably won't know until early to mid-May.
This is a (probably) unrelated story, but it's being described as a major diplomatic development between Russia and Europe.
The Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian diplomats on Saturday. Czech local intelligence agents claim the diplomats are Russian intelligence operatives. They are suspected of involvement in an explosion at an arms depot in 2014. On Sunday, Russia retaliated by announcing that 20 diplomats from the Czech Republic will be expelled. At the time of the explosion, it was assumed to be an accident, but through detective work, Czech officials now say that it was Russian sabotage.
Czech Police have identified two suspects in connection with the blast - Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepigov - who are also accused of using the chemical nerve agent weapon Novichok to murder Sergei Skripal, a former double Russian agent, and his daughter Yulia. The murder took place in the UK in Salisbury in 2018.
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(19-Apr-2021)
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CNN: Biden guided by 'magical thinking' in Afghanistan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that all American troops would be withdrawn by September 11 of this year, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks, and that Nato troops would be withdrawn at the same time. This would be farcical if it weren't so tragic.
How many times have we been here? The President announces a new policy -- "surge" into Afghanistan, a "victory" in Afghanistan, or a "peace with honor" in Afghanistan. I write an article explaining why all of those are impossible, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis summarized later in this article. The new policy fails, exactly as I predicted. But nobody ever learns.
So last year, Donald Trump made a farcical agreement with the Taliban that if they changed their behavior, then the US would withdraw its troops by May 1 of this year. Trump's reason was that Americans are tired of "endless wars." (A bit of irony: Biden's announcement was described by the fawning mainstream media as "historic," but Trump's similar announcement was not.)
So now Joe Biden is president, and he made a farcical announcement that the troops will be removed by September 11 of this year -- the 20th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attack. I always accuse the Biden administration of having no clue what's going on in the world, but this takes the cake. We can expect the Taliban to engineer a major terrorist attack on September 11 to celebrate their victory over the Americans, having achieved their objective of forcing the Americans to withdraw.
In his speech, Biden said:
"I believed that our presence in Afghanistan should be focused on the reason we went in the first place: to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again. We did that. We accomplished that objective.I said, among — with others, we’d follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell if need be. That’s exactly what we did, and we got him. It took us close to 10 years to put President Obama’s commitment to — into form. And that’s exactly what happened; Osama bin Laden was gone.
That was 10 years ago. Think about that. We delivered justice to bin Laden a decade ago, and we’ve stayed in Afghanistan for a decade since. Since then, our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly unclear, even as the terrorist threat that we went to fight evolved."
So Biden's argument is that America went into Afghanistan to defeat al-Qaeda, but now that al-Qaeda has been defeated, there's no need for American troops to remain.
There was one difference between the terms of the Trump and Biden announcements. Trump's May 1 deadline was "condition based," meaning that if the Taliban didn't behave, then Trump might extend the deadline. This was explained by Biden's press spokesman, Jen Psaki:
"[Question: And could his deadline extend, or could he change his mind if you do see the situation in Afghanistan just decline?]Psaki: Well, I will say that the president made this decision after close consultations and a close discussion and taking into account all the difficult factors I should say around that decision. So no, he remains committed to the timeline that he intends to set out in his speech. ...
[Question: I don’t think I’ve heard in the answers so far, what the Taliban is supposed to think about this. I mean, if I was them, I think I’d want to take the summer off and wait until September 11th. And why go ahead and negotiate an agreement that would limit them if the U.S. is going to leave anyway?]
Jen Psaki: Well, first I would say that we have an expectation that the Taliban is going to abide by their commitments and that they are not going to allow Afghanistan to become a pariah state. That’s our view. That’s also in their interest, in our view. ...
And his view is that, when you talk about a conditions-based withdrawal, it punts it down the road, “We will never leave. What conditions would we be required to leave? By how long? What does that mean? What’s the additional cost?” These are all the factors in his mind."
First off, the "expectation that the Taliban is going to abide by their commitments" is totally delusional.
This answer illustrates the conundrum that Biden and Psaki did not unravel.
On the one hand, if the withdrawal date is unconditional, then the Taliban will have every reason to continue terrorist acts. In fact, the Taliban have announced that they won't attend an Afghanistan peace conference being hosted by Turkey. Why should they?
On the other hand, if the withdrawal date is conditional then, as Psaki says, the date will just be kicked down the road again.
So the question is this: Will Biden go ahead with the withdrawal as announced, and hand the Taliban a victory? Or will he be forced to reconsider the withdrawal decision?
A number of analysts have ridiculed Biden's withdrawal announcement and the delusions behind it. One of them is Peter Bergen, the National Security Analysts for CNN, the network that fawns over Biden so much they've turned into a sewer. So Peter Bergen's analysis cannot readily be rejected as the opinion of a "white supremacist," or whatever CNN calls anyone who disagrees with them.
According to Bergen:
"President Biden's decision to announce a date for pulling all US troops out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 sets the stage for a predictable disaster. ...There has to be some magical thinking going on for the Biden White House to expect that there will be a different outcome in Afghanistan [than in President Obama's precipitous withdrawal from Iraq].
Yes, al Qaeda is a mere shadow of what it was on 9/11. That's because for the past two decades, the US and its allies have prevented Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda and allied groups.
It's a policy that has worked.
Now, that sound policy is being abandoned. Once the US leaves Afghanistan, America's NATO allies, who have 7,000 soldiers on the ground, will leave as well, since they rely on an American security umbrella. President Biden confirmed this in his speech to the nation Wednesday afternoon.
The pullout of US and NATO troops will likely enable the Taliban to take over much of the country."
Bergen explains that the Taliban have remained in close contact with al-Qaeda, and they've guaranteed that they "would honor their historical ties" with al-Qaeda. Furthermore, ISIS retains a foothold in Afghanistan.
As Bergen pointed out, the US and Nato have prevented Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda and allied groups. Once the allied forces pull out, Afghanistan will once again become a safe haven for both al-Qaeda and ISIS, just as Osama bin Laden used Afghanistan as a safe haven to launch the original 9/11/2001 attacks.
It's not just Peter Bergen who is alarmed at the withdrawal decision. The New York Times, which always fawningly slobbers over Biden, is worried for the girls of Afghanistan. According to the Times:
"“I am so worried about my future. It seems so murky. If the Taliban take over, I lose my identity,” said Wahida Sadeqi, 17, an 11th grader at Pardis High School in Kabul. “It is about my existence.” ...For two decades, American leaders have pledged peace, prosperity, democracy, the end of terrorism and rights for women. Few of those promises have materialized in vast areas of Afghanistan, but now even in the cities where real progress occurred, there is fear that everything will be lost when the Americans leave. ...
Over two decades, the American mission evolved from hunting terrorists to helping the government build the institutions of a functioning government, dismantle the Taliban and empower women. But the U.S. and Afghan militaries were never able to effectively destroy the Taliban, allowing the insurgents to stage a comeback. ...
Women would be most at risk under Taliban rule. When the group controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, it banned women from taking most jobs or receiving educations and practically made them prisoners in their own homes."
Biden administration officials might be thinking to paraphrase Lyndon Johnson's statement from 53 years ago, referring to Walter Cronkite: "If we've lost the NY Times, then we've lost America."
The interesting thing about the NY Times article is that it seems to reject the delusional Biden administration claim that the Afghan democracy will continue. The article simply assumes that the Taliban will take over, and will impose the same dictatorial government they had in 2001, when they sponsored Osama bin Laden's attack on America.
Analysts who favor continuing to leave a small number (3,500) of American troops in Afghanistan point out that these can prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda and ISIS, and can also provide a listening post and forward military base to counter Chinese military activity in Central Asia. On the other hand, once America closes its bases in landlocked Afghanistan, they can never be reopened.
I began writing about the impossibility of winning in Afghanistan shortly after President Obama announced his plan to "surge" troops into Afghanistan.
President Bush had used a successful "surge" counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq in 2007, with the result that al-Qaeda was driven out of Iraq, and the objectives were met. But al-Qaeda in Iraq were mostly not Iraqis. They were jihadists that al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had imported from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Iraqis themselves, even the Sunnis, mostly hated al-Qaeda, as I described in a lengthy analysis, "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq".
But the Taliban could not be defeated in a similar way in Afghanistan, because the Taliban are radicalized ethnic Pashtuns, and most of the population of Afghanistan are Pashtuns.
In an article earlier this year, I was able to extend this original analysis, based on research that I had done for my book, "Vietnam, Buddhism and the Vietnam War." In that book, I compared the counter-insurgency strategies used by British in the Boer War (1899-1902) and the Malay Emergency (1948-55), and how they contrasted to similar counter-insurgency strategies used by the Americans in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. (See "18-Jan-21 World View -- Chaos grows in Afghanistan as American troops leave in hope of delusional peace plan")
But the extended analysis is based on the same reasoning: In Iraq, the civilians and jihadists looked different and spoke differently. In Afghanistan, the civilians and jihadists are the same Pashtun people.
Let's face it, most politicians and journalists are ignorant and dumb. They have no knowledge of Afghanistan's last generational crisis war, an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96, that defines Afghan society today. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.
Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
So what is Biden going to do? If he goes ahead with the withdrawal, then it's 100% certain that Afghanistan will collapse into chaos, and it's likely that the Taliban will take control of the government, and everything that America's sacrifices brought to Afghanistan -- democracy, women's rights, relative peace -- will be lost within a few months.
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(15-Apr-2021)
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Sabotage and fraud in DeFi and Smart Contracts
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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I've been asked about investing in the crypto-currency (Bitcoin) related technologies, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Smart Contracts, which use the same internet-based blockchain technology as Bitcoin.
For over a decade, crypto currencies have been the highly stylish, fashionable rock star finance technology, but lately they've been losing their glamor and lustre as compared to a newer technology, "decentralized finance" (DeFi) and "smart contracts."
It was just a few years ago that people were saying that the world was just a stone's throw away from having a universal currency (Bitcoin) that was independent of any nation. Last week, I read one analyst saying, "We are a stone’s throw away from the global financial industry running on a common software infrastructure." Well, that stone would have to land something like 20-30 or more years in the future, and if humans haven't figured out how to do it by then, then perhaps our computer overlords will do it for us.
What's happening now is that there's an explosion of financial applications and services, normally provided by banks, brokers, and other financial institution, that are now being provided on blockchain platforms as "smart contracts." There are really an unlimited number of possible apps and services -- insurance, lending, borrowing, asset management, gaming, day trading, savings, payments, billing, and so forth. Smart contracts are "self-executing," meaning that once a particular smart contract is set up, any action that would normally be taken by a human intermediary in a bank or financial institution would now be executed automatically by the smart contract.
Another way of looking at it is to compare a smart contract to workflow software that has been around since the 90s. The software is set up with a set of workflow rules, and when the appropriate conditions specified by the rules are satisfied, then the workflow software sends out e-mail messages to the appropriate people, telling them to take the appropriate action.
DeFi applications are more powerful because typically they have control of crypto assets, so when the right conditions are met, the app does not send out an e-mail saying "buy a new car." Instead, it automatically issues the paperwork to buy a new car.
There are several ways to invest in DeFi technology. You can set up a financial relationship with someone else using a smart contract. Or you could invest in companies that develop these apps or offer services using this technology.
The following web site provides a pretty extensive list of companies offering such apps and services at the current time: https://defipulse.com/defi-list/
Although Decentralized Finance and Smart Contracts are a brand-new, shiny technology, there are problems and dangers that can be learned from history. Let's look at some historical examples.
Back in the 1960s, accounting systems were developed for IBM mainframe systems, and they were only a stone's throw from never needing human accountants again, according to experts.
The transaction processing systems used magnetic tapes. A typical processing run required three tapes -- an input tape of existing account records, an input tape of new transaction records, and an output tape of updated account records. The two input tapes are pre-sorted by account number so that they can be processed simultaneously in order of account. It's therefore possibe to update the accounts with only one pass through the transaction tape, writing the updated accounts to the output tape, which would be the existing accounts input tape for the next day's run.
So let's take a look at some of the issues. The most obvious one is that the mainframe might be down, so that the transaction processing run could not take place. Another issue is that mag tapes are somewhat fragile, and data could be lost.
Another possible problem is that the transaction processing software could have a bug, since all software has bugs. So if the bug affects several thousand accounts, then it's possible that a single run could result in several thousand errors caused by the bug, and they wouldn't be caught until much later.
That's when people started saying things like, "To err is human. To really screw things up takes a computer."
Another problem was intentional sabotage. The mag tape transaction processing that I described was subject to a very interesting form of sabotage.
Some transactions involve division of two numbers, and result in an amount with a fraction of a penny. The correct algorithm would round to the nearest penny, and the resulting amount would be used in the transaction. But one developer did something different. His software contained secret code that deducted the fractional penny from the amount, and credited it to his own account. Tens of thousands of fractions of a penny adds up to real money. He made a lot of money that way, but the consequences of what he had done were not discovered until much later.
The thing that makes this kind of sabotage possible is that managers don't understand what the programmers are doing. There was a similar problem with the financial crisis of the 2000s. The Gen-X financial engineers got their Masters Degrees in the 1990s, and applied those skills to create fraudulent synthetic securities based on subprime mortgages. Their managers in the financial institutions had no idea how they worked, except that they made lots of money, and the result was the financial crisis. In the late 2000s I was working on a government system where the lead programmer was sabotaging the code (my code, in particular). I complained repeatedly to my boss, but he refused to believe me. Eventually, the lead programmer screwed around with someone else's code, someone really important, and my manager apologized to me. This shows that the consequences of sabotage are not usually discovered until much later.
Another example was the Obamacare website Healthcare.gov. President Obama launched Obamacare on the afternoon of Oct 1, 2013, and he had no idea that the web site wasn't even working. When he announced the launch, he had no idea a disaster had unfolded several hours earlier. As I wrote in my 2015 article, massive fraud had occurred among all the consulting firms, and they propagated lies all the way up the chain. The entire White House had no idea of the disaster until it was too late. (See: "Healthcare.gov -- The greatest software development disaster in history")
So there was massive fraud in the development of Obamacare, which no one cares about since caring about Obamacare fraud is politically censored. Similarly, with tens of millions of mail-in ballots sent out last year there was massive fraud in the 2020 election that no one cares about, since caring about fraud in the 2020 election is politically censored.
The reason for mentioning all this is that the DeFi technology will be a huge target for sabotage and fraud, and the people benefiting from the fraud may want it censored. This concern is being politically censored because the major beneficiaries -- Silicon Valley, the Chinese, the Democrats, hedge funds -- don't want it discussed.
Blockchain technology has this magical, mystical reputation as being incorruptible -- open source, "tamper-proof data," transparency, permissionless access, etc. Obamacare had the same magical, mystical reputation, and the amount of fraud was massive. The mainstream media didn't want to see it, because it was censored. The housing bubble of the early-mid 2000s was obvious (I was writing about it, Alan Greenspan was talking about it), but mainstream media didn't want to see it until 2009, when millions of people had lost their homes or went bankrupt. The mainstream media don't want to see the massive voter fraud in the 2020 election.
So there's no doubt that as DeFi grows, there will be lots of bugs and plenty of fraud, sabotage and corruption. This will be done at technical levels, and managers won't even know that it's going on until there are severe consequences and it's too late. In particular, it's absolutely certain that China's military is already developing tools to hack into DeFi applications, to control them.
There's another issue that's analogous to the 1960s IBM mainframe being unavailable, and this applies to all blockchain technologies: There may be a crisis (flood, hurricane, Chinese sabotage, malware, war), and the internet could become unavailable, or large numbers of servers along the blockchain could be destroyed.
So you can invest in DeFi at any of several levels. You can invest in companies developing core low-level technologies, or in companies developing mid-level API platforms, or in companies developing the top level apps that people and corporations actually use in their business. Or, you could invest by using one of the apps for its business relationships. The investment at any of these levels would be subject to the same concerns that I've raised.
So how do you do due diligence on such an investment? I believe that the biggest advantage of DeFi is also its biggest disadvantage and biggest risk -- the "self-executing" feature of "smart contracts."
Here's the investopedia definition of Smart Contracts:
A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. The code controls the execution, and transactions are trackable and irreversible.Smart contracts permit trusted transactions and agreements to be carried out among disparate, anonymous parties without the need for a central authority, legal system, or external enforcement mechanism.
In other words, a "smart contract" is just a software program. It will also certainly contain bugs -- because all software programs contain bugs -- and it will be subjected to sabotage, malware and hacking. And since the whole point of smart contracts is that they're "self-executing," without human involvement, and since management won't understand what's going on anyway, the bugs and sabotage won't be detected until a disaster has occurred.
Perhaps a good solution is to require "human oversight" of any smart contract. That is, if a self-executing smart contract tells you "kill your mother or pay a large fine" (and this isn't as far-fetched as it might seem, given my experience with software developers in the last 20 years), then there has to be a way for a human being on each side of the smart contract to review the self-executing action, and override it under the right circumstances.
This means that every party to a "smart contract" should have, as a backup, a printout or a pdf of a written contract that can be referenced if the internet goes down, or if there's a failure in or sabotage of the smart contract.
Unfortunately, this will only work at a small scale. DeFi applications are going to become larger and more complex, with a single app consisting of hundreds or thousands of interlocking smart contracts, and these will really be a disaster waiting to happen. But they're coming anyway. Watch for the buzzword: DAO (distributed autonomous organization), an entire business which is just a collection of smart contracts.
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(13-Apr-2021)
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Peaceful protests continue in cities across Myanmar, heading for catastrophe
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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An alliance of ethnic armies in Myanmar / Burma on Saturday attacked a military police station in Shan State, killing at least 10 policemen. The attackers were from an alliance that includes the Arakan Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. Normally, these ethnic groups oppose each other, and occasionally fight each other, but this is the first time that they've allied, in the face of the army coup, which makes this very significant.
As we've been expecting, the Myanmar / Burma military crackdown on peaceful civilian protesters, following the coup that replaced the democratically elected government with a dictatorial military junta, is rapidly turning into a full scale civil war, involving multiple ethnic groups.
This situation is growing into a repeat of Burma's last generational crisis war, an extremely bloody civil war (1948-1958) following independence, and involving multiple ethnic groups, along with intervention by the Chinese.
This attack on the police station outpost in Shan State seems to me to have special significance, in view of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the ethnic Rohingyas in previous years.
Starting in 2011, Buddhists began attacking Muslim Rohingyas in villages across Burma, particularly the 1.1 million ethnic Rohingyas in Rakhine State. Mobs of Buddhists attacked Muslims, conducting atrocities including torture and rape, killing hundreds and forcing hundreds of thousands to leave their homes to flee from the attacks. In some cases, the Buddhists burned down entire Rohingya villages to the ground.
However, the most horrific Buddhist violence against the Rohingyas began after August 25, 2017, when Rohingya insurgents carried out a series of coordinated attacks against 30 Burma police outposts and an army base. Using knives, some guns and homemade explosives they killed at least a dozen Burmese security force members.
The army responded with a sweep of violence against Rohingyas, causing thousands of them to flee their villages and head for the Bangladesh border, where they hoped to cross and reach a refugee camp. The Burmese army shot them as they were fleeing, including women and children, killing dozens. The attack on the police posts was the beginning of mass genocide and ethnic cleansing.
This is a standard pattern used by genocidal autocrats. I've described how this works in detail in "12-Jan-21 World View -- America and the standard Genocide Playbook". Autocratic regimes use an isolated terrorist incident as an excuse to conduct a massive overreaction against an entire group. In America, the Democrats are using the January 6 incident to declare that all 74 million Trump supporters are racists, white supremacists and terrorists, and are using that as an excuse for massive censorship and extrajucicial arrests.
So in Myanmar, we now have a situation similar to the one on August 25, 2017, when Rohingyas attacked police outposts. Saturday's attack by ethnic groups -- the Arakan Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army -- could well bring about a repeat of what happened to the Rohingyas. We should know within the next few days.
The unifying of different ethnic groups is being described as highly significant by analysts. Over the decades, since the last crisis war, the Burmese military has been able to deal with the different ethnic groups separately, and after the February 1 coup, the military negotiated with each one to keep them out of the fighting. But now it's clear that has failed, and we can expect all out war with the ethnic groups.
These groups are on the border with China, and there are many people of Chinese ancestry living in Shan State. So this may be the trigger that leads to intervention by the Chinese, although the Chinese will not intervene unless events force them to.
As a separate issue, Burmese regime fighter jets have been dropping bombs on ethnic Karens in territory controlled by the Karen National Union (KNU), as we reported last week. The Karens are the largest ethnic group in Burma. The bombing began on March 27 and has continued almost every day. It was triggered by an attack by the KNU on a military barracks outpost, killing 20.
Some 10,000 Karens have fled across the border into Thailand to escape the violence. This is not new. In the 1990s, a war between the preceding Burmese military junta and the Karens led to some 100,000 refugees in camps along the border between the two countries. This has caused a political problem for the Thai government, which is also led by a military junta that overthrew a democratically elected government in 2014. (See the following: "23-May-14 World View -- Thailand's army seizes power in major victory for 'yellow shirt' elites")
Thailand's last generational crisis war (the Cambodian Killing Fields war) climaxed in 1979, so Thailand is in a generational Unraveling era, with little chance of a new ethnic civil war at this time. (Burma, of course, is well into a generational Crisis era.) Therefore, Thailand's coup did not lead to civil war, but Burma's coup is doing so.
So the thousands of refugees pouring into Thailand present a problem for the Thai military junta, who basically are aligned with the Burmese military junta. So even though Thai prime minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha has assured that "human rights will be respected," the result is that many of the Karen civilians fleeing violence by crossing the border into Thailand are being pushed back into Myanmar by the Thai police.
There are also refugees pouring into India and China.
There were peaceful protests in multiple cities across Myanmar on Saturday, with large marches in Yangon and Mandalay.
This despite the fact that on Friday, 80 peaceful protesters were killed by the army in random gunfire in the city of Bago, near Yangon. The army had thought that escalating violence would cause the protests to fizzle out, as they did in 2007, during Burma's generational Unraveling era. But they're not going to fizzle out now, in a generational Crisis era.
News reports from Myanmar these days are just filled with more details about the army slaughtering innocent unarmed civiians. Analysts say that the solution is for the UN Security Council to pass a resolution, which is hilariously laughable. Others say that the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) should hold a meeting, which is also laughable. I heard one analyst say that the United States has to intervene militarily to stop the carnage. That guy must have been hopped up on some of the drugs currently pouring into the USA through the open southern border.
Both Russia and China are supplying weapons to the Burmese junta, and neither country would be willing to take any step to end the carnage.
So the bottom line is this: I cannot think of a scenario, nor have I read or heard of a scenario, that will stop the violence in Myanmar / Burma from escalating into a full-scale multi-ethnic civil war in the next few days, weeks and months. Like a Greek tragedy, the characters in this play are heading unstoppably into a catastrophe of their own making. After that, the only question is whether it will spread to other countries, and whether it will be the trigger that leads to a new world war.
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(11-Apr-2021)
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Brief generational history of violence in the Isle of Ireland
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The last week in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has seen the worst ethnic street violence in decades. There is a concrete "Peace Wall" in Belfast, separating the two warring neighborhoods. People have been lobbing bricks and Molotov cocktails across the Peace Wall in both directions. The violence worsened when the gate in the Peace Wall was smashed open. At least 55 police officers have been injured over several nights of rioting.
The violence has been triggered by the consequences of the Brexit deal that took the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) out of the European Union. There were many difficult issues that had to be resolved, but the most intractable was the fact that Northern Ireland is part of the UK, while the Republic of Ireland (Southern Ireland) is part of the EU. This is the only place (if you don't count Gibraltar) where there is a land border separating the UK and the EU after Brexit.
So the biggest deal in the Brexit negotiations was that Ireland and Northern Ireland must have a "frictionless border," so that people and goods could pass freely back and forth without customs and border checks. So a Spanish company that wants to ship goods to England without paying British tariffs could simply trans-ship them through Northern Ireland -- that is, ship them to Ireland, send them across the "frictionless border" to Northern Ireland, and then ship them across the Irish Sea to England. Similarly, an English firm could ship goods to Spain by trans-shipping in the opposite direction, and avoid paying EU tariffs.
Well, that could never work. No politician is going to voluntarily give up tariffs. So the solution is that there has to be a "customs border in the Irish Sea." So goods shipped back and forth between England and Northern Ireland now have to go through customs and result in tariff charges.
During the Brexit negotiations, politicians said that if there were a customs check between Northern Ireland and Ireland, then this would infuriate the "Catholic republicans," and would trigger a revival of "The Troubles," the three decades violence in Northern Ireland. So they did it the other way, and put in a customs check in the Irish Sea, and this has infuriated the "Protestant loyalists," and this is triggering a revival of The Troubles anyway.
Northern Ireland's indigenous Gaelic Irish people (usually Catholic, republican, nationalist, "green") have been at war with the descendants of invading English and Scottish people (usually Protestant, loyalist, unionist, "orange") off and on since the 1400s. The Republicans want Northern Ireland to merge with the Republic of (Southern) Ireland, while the Loyalists want to remain loyal to the British crown and have Northern Ireland remain in the UK.
There have been clashes between the two groups since the 1400s, but the most important pattern of wars was set by the Nine Years War (1594-1603), where the Irish Gaelics attempted to overthrow English rule. The result was the Plantation of Ulster, which Gaelics today refer to as genocide and "ethnic cleansing," because the British drove the Gaelics from their land, took it over as landlords, and used the Gaelics as servants.
The next crisis war for Northern Ireland was the Williamite-Jacobite war, climaxing in a victory of the British with the Battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. This was the date of the victory of Protestant William of Orange over the Catholic King James II, and it followed England's Glorious Revolution of 1688, where the Dutch Prince William "invaded" England and overthrew King James without firing a shot. Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland tends to increase as July 12 approaches, as it's commemorated by groups like the Protestant Orange Institution.
The border across Ireland first appeared in 1921 as a result of the British-Irish treaty that partitioned the island and ended the Irish War of Independence, with the new borderline running across farms and villages.
"The Troubles" began in 1969, when hostilities broke out in Northern Ireland, and the border was reinforced with British Army watchtowers and bomb-proof and mortar-proof inspection facilities. All of those reinforcements were removed as a result of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, with a new power-sharing accord that was supposed to break down some of the barriers between south and north, including the physical barrier at the border.
The "Good Friday Agreement" has achieved almost mythic status among politicians, and its terms were frequently cited during the Brexit negotiations as inviolable, lest The Troubles begin again. The result was the "frictionless border" between Ireland and Northern Ireland, but instead there's a customs border between Northern Ireland and England, and The Troubles seems to be starting again anyway.
There's a lot of finger-pointing now as to the cause of the new violence, with many people blaming Boris Johnson for his "betrayal" of the Northern Ireland loyalists. But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the revival of The Troubles is not surprising, inasmuch as a full generation has passed since the Good Friday agreement, and young kids are not going to care about a piece of paper or an ancient agreement that was signed before many of them were even born.
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(9-Apr-2021)
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Russia fires back at reports of a potential invasion of Ukraine
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The US armed forces European Command has raised its threat watch assessement to its highest level -- "potential imminent crisis" -- because of growing reports of trains loaded with large amounts of Russian military hardware, including aircraft, tanks and other heavy armored vehicles, as well as heavy artillery and ground troops, headed toward the border with Ukraine.
In 2014, Russia troops invaded Ukraine in support of Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The purpose was to break off the entire eastern portion of Ukraine and annex it to the Russian Federation.
That didn't happen, but Russia also invaded Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and annexed it and made it part of the Russian federation. It's been assumed that Russia has wanted to complete the job of annexing eastern Ukraine, and there are concerns the Russians plan to do exactly that right now.
Russia may have decided to strike now because of the new Biden administration in Washington. Last Thursday press conference by Biden was undoubtedly analyzed closely by the Kremlin, and it was clear that Biden has no idea what's going on. In addition, the world can see that the Biden administration has completely lost control of its southern border. The Kremlin analysts may have decided that it would take a long time for the Biden administration to do anything, if the Biden administration did anything, and that therefore they can invade Ukraine with impunity. (See "28-Mar-21 World View -- North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion".)
Russia's mealy-mouthed spokesman Dmitry Peskov issued a statement saying that there's nothing to see here:
"Russian Federation is moving its troops within its territory, at its own discretion. Nobody should be concerned about it. It poses no threat to anyone."
At this point, it's worthwhile to make a list of previous Russian lies related to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine:
According to US estimates, Russia has about 32,700 military personnel in Crimea, some 28,000 personnel in "separatist" units in areas of eastern Ukraine known collectively as the Donbass who have been fighting the government in Kiev since 2015.
A member of the Generational Dynamics forum, Navigator, an expert on military history, says:
"You do not move this kind of stuff [tanks and armored vehicles] around unless you mean to use it. Russia wants the traditional Ukraine back. This is up to the line of Odessa/Vinnetsa. They will probably allow Ukraine to remain in what was once the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, centered around the city of Lvov. Given Europe's current state, plus a weak US administration, they know they will be able to get away with this.My bet is that Putin will go all in after Ukraine. After that he will take a breather to get ready for the Baltics. Going after the Baltics will require a NATO response. But my guess is that they will appear so weak due to an almost non-existent response to the Ukrainian campaign that the threat of this will not dissuade him. He could also have intel that the Chinese will be going after Taiwan at the same time he will be prepared to go into the Baltics. This is my guess."
So now more Russian troops ("volunteers?") are headed for the border with Ukraine, and Peskov says, "Nobody should be concerned about it."
However, the Pentagon is concerned about it, as evidenced by the rise in the threat watch assessement to its highest level -- "potential imminent crisis."
According to Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby: "We obviously don’t want to see any more violations of Ukrainian territory. We’ve been very clear about the threats that we see from Russia across domains ... we’re taking them very seriously."
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(2-Apr-2021)
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Irony and Karmic retribution
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Saturday was the deadliest day yet of violence by the Myanmar/Burma army since the February 1 military coup, and installation of a junta headed by army leader General Min Aung Hlaing. In cities across the country, some 80-100 peaceful protesters were killed on that day alone, with no provocation, as the violence by the army is becoming horrific and unrestrained.
These included children and even babies in their homes. Hundreds of people have been killed, including a seven-year-old girl reportedly shot dead in her home this week. Soldiers have also occupied major public hospitals and attacked healthcare workers, including emergency responders trying to help injured protesters.
According to reports, the security forces have occupied 36 hospitals around the country and, in some cases, patients have been evicted from these hospitals. (This is reminiscent of another war criminal, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, specifically targeting hospitals with missiles to prevent medical care.)
Because peaceful street protests are being met with increasingly horrific violence by the army, protesters are trying a new tack -- a "silent strike." Starting Wednesday of last week, a growing number of public servants, bankers, and employees in other key industries are deserting their jobs en masse in a civil disobedience movement to demand an end to the violence.
The junta has responded in the only way it knows how -- by going to the homes of the strikers and arresting them. Several hundred public servants and bankers have been arrested, according to reports.
Many doctors and nurses at major public hospitals have joined a nationwide civil disobedience movement, which has severely constricted healthcare delivery. The result is that the public health system has come to a near standstill and the public health system teeters on the brink of collapse.
As the violence grows into full-scale civil war, there are now growing ethnic conflicts.
On Sunday morning, army fighter jets launched air strikes against a region along the Thai border populated by the Karen ethnic group, killing eight people. As a result of the air strikes, at least 3,000 people fled across the border into Thailand. There are already more tha 7,500 refugees who have been living in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border.
The air strikes were in retaliation for attacks on the Burmese army by the Karen National Union (KNU) on Saturday. At least seven members of the military were captured. That was just the latest in a series of skirmishes between the KNU and the army since the February 1 coup, which the KNU opposed.
The Karen have been persecuted throughout Burma's history. In 2004, a ceasefire between the Karen and the Burmese government was brokered, but human rights abuses continue, including forced labor, village burnings, arbitrary taxation, rape, and extrajudicial killings. 140,000 refugees from Burma, mostly Karen, are living in refugee camps in Thailand, some for as many as 20 years.
Another ethnic group, the Kachin, have also been in clashes with government security forces.
The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) launched simultaneous attacks on at least four of the junta’s police battalions in a Kachin State township early on Sunday morning. Up to 20 policement were killed, and the KIA seized weaponry from the sites.
This situation is growing into a repeat of Burma's last generational crisis war, an extremely bloody civil war (1948-1958) following independence, and involving multiple ethnic groups, along with intervention by the Chinese.
According to the Generational Dynamics 58-Year Hypothesis, which by now has been well proven, a new ethnic civil war will not begin less than 58 years from the end of the previous ethnic civil war. That's because 58 years is precisely amount the time when the generations of survivors of the preceding war all die or retire, all at once, and the younger post-war generations come to power. It has now been 63 years since the end of the last ethnic civil war, so Myanmar is fully ripe for a new ethnic civil war, and that seems to be what's happening.
On Saturday, while Burma's army were slaughtering innocent Burmese people peacefully conducting pro-democracy protests against the February 1 coup, Burma's army held a massive parade and weapons exhibition to celebrate Armed Forces Day, which commemorates the army's rebellion in 1945 against Japanese occupation. At the ceremony, the army leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said that the military would protect the people and strive for democracy.
Many countries in the international community had been expressing horror at the ongoing violence in Myanmar. And yet, despite the horrific ongoing violence, there were eight countries that sent representatives to join Hlaing in the celebrations: Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.
During his speech, Hlaing singled out one of these eight countries -- Russia. He welcomed the presence of the Russians at the ceremony and said, "Russia is a true friend," having previously referred to Moscow as a "loyal friend."
And indeed, Russia is a friend to war criminal Hlaing. Russia has been a leading supplier of weapons to Burma's army. If you see armored vehicles on the streets of Myanmar in videos, those vehicles were almost certainly supplied by the Russians.
In Western media, Russia and China are often portrayed as having similar relationships to Myanmar. This largely comes from the fact that Russia and China jointly veto any attempt in the United Nations Security Council to condemn Myanmar for its war crimes and genocidal violence.
However, from Myanmar's point of view, the two countries are quite different. Russia is geographically remote, while China shares a long border. This means that Russia is simply a weapons provider, and really doesn't care how the slaughter in Myanmar evolves. General Hlaing has cultivated defense ties with Moscow over the past decade to avoid dependence on China, which is Myanmar's largest weapons supplier.
But the situation is much more complex for China. China is heavily involved in building Myanmar's infrastructure, including a joint construction project to build the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The CMEC focuses on 12 areas including basic infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, finance, human resource development and telecommunications.
Thus, it is critical for China that the Myanmar people not blame the Chinese for the ongoing violence. There have already been attacks on Chinese factories by groups claiming that the Chinese are supporting the army violence.
That's why the Russians are able to express open support for the army, while the Chinese are holding back, waiting to see what happens. The Russians couldn't care less how many innocent civilians are slaughtered, and don't care if they're blamed for it in some way. The Chinese don't care either, but they have business interests in Myanmar that outweigh any other considerations.
Buddhists are into Karma, and so it must have occurred to many of them in Myanmar that there a great deal of irony in the country's situation, as well as Karmic retribution.
Since 2011, Burma's army has been committing atrocities on Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, and I've written many articles about this. The atrocities included gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign. These atrocities have been cheered by the ordinary Myanmar people, led by Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, most of whom apparently hate the Rohingyas.
Aung Sang Suu Kyi became a "useful idiot" for the army by presenting a sympathetic, tired, weary, female face to the world, defending the army to deflect the horrors and atrocities that are occurring in their country. In 2019, the International Court of Justice in the Hague held a trial on Burma's genocide, and Aung Sang Suu Kyi came and defended the army, saying that nothing had happened.
So now, the worm has turned, as the old saying goes. The army had no more use for the useful idiot Aung Sang Suu Kyi, so she's now in jail. The horrors and atrocities that the army perpetrated on the Rohingyas are now being perpetrated on Buddhist civilians. That is truly Karmic justice.
I saw a Burma citizen being interviewed on the BBC about the violence. He was asked about the Rohingyas, and asked how he felt about the genocide and ethnic cleansing that went on. He said that he couldn't speak out for the Rohingyas when the genocide was going on because he would have been punished. But now, he says, the Rohingyas are his beloved "brothers," and he welcomes their return to the country. It makes you want to vomit, doesn't it.
I've been around a long time, and I've learned to believe in Karma. People who do evil things eventually become the victims of their own evil. It's sometimes phrased as "what goes around comes around," meaning that the evil circles back to the evildoer. There's no easy explanation, except that people who are evil do stupid things, and their stupid evil acts catch up with them. I've seen this many, many times in my life, and the Karmic retribution going on in Myanmar today is one of the best examples I've ever seen.
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(29-Mar-2021)
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Myanmar / Burma becomes toxic and explosive
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on Thursday, in violation of UN resolutions. The missiles landed outside Japan's territorial waters and exclusive economic zone and there have been no reports of harm caused to aircraft or ships. Both Japan and South Korea have lodged formal protests.
The timing was interesting, because Thursday was the day of President Joe Biden's long awaited press conference, where it was promised that he would take questions from reporters. As expected, Biden's handlers carefully selected the questions in advance, from carefully chosen reporters, and the order in which they would be asked, so that all Biden had to do was follow along in a notebook on his podium and read the answers out loud. The reporters and questions were all fawning, such as referring to Biden "as a moral, decent man," and the Fox News reporter was carefully sidelined.
There was one question where Biden seemed totally unprepared, and that was the question about North Korea's ballistic missile launch, which had just occurred several hours before the press conference. Biden looked down at the podium and read a prepared statement supplied by his handlers. Here's what he said:
"Let me say that, number one, U.N. Resolution 1718 was violated by those particular missiles that were tested — number one. We’re consulting with our allies and partners. And there will be responses — if they choose to escalate, we will respond accordingly.But I’m also prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization. So that’s what we’re doing right now: consulting with our allies."
Denuclearization is a delusional fantasy, as I'll describe below.
This is a reasonable statement, but if you watched the press conference, as I did, Biden didn't appear to understand what he was reading, and had a difficult time reading it. That portion of the press conference appears right at the beginning of the al-Jazeera video referenced below, so you can watch it and judge for yourself. You can blame me as a wild-eyed ideologue for saying that Biden appeared to be, at the least, cognitively challenged or worse, but my perception is not important. What's important is that leaders around the world were watching carefully and analyzing, and they know that Biden is mouthing words, but doesn't know what he's saying. To me, it was painful to watch, and almost cruel for his handlers to stand him up and put him and the country through that.
Before proceeding with the analysis, I want to make it clear that it makes no difference what Biden said. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there is a powerful "March of History" going on here. As I've been saying for years, North Korea is on a path to develop nuclear weapons and missiles, and nothing that Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden could say or do will stop it (short of a pre-emptive missile attack on all of North Korea's facilities, which Trump threatened, but which was never going to happen). Diplomacy is a worthless delusion in the March of History.
I now want to quote excerpts from the best analysis of the North Korea nuclear program that I've seen in years (not counting some of my own). It appeared in the al-Jazeera show Inside Story, and you can watch the whole thing by following the link in the sources below.
The analysis was done by Tariq Rauf, former head of Verification & Securiity Policy, at the IAEA, which is the United Nations nuclear inspection agency.
He began by giving a summary of North Korea's current capabilities (my transcription):
"North Korea has one of the oldest nuclear programs in the world. It started in 1953 [right at the end of the Korean War].They now have a complete nuclear fuel cycle -- uranium mining, uranium enrichment, enriching to reactor grade uranium, also to weapons grade uranium, which is over 90%. They also have a plutonium separation capability.
And they've obviously demonstrated that they can make nuclear warheads. They carried out six nuclear tests, and if one looks at the yields of the six nuclear tests, each one of them has been bigger than the previous one. The last test in 2017 was nearly 140 kilotons.
And so North Korea, in its six tests, has demonstrated much more advanced nuclear weapons capability than India or Pakistan did so in 1998. Therefore it is a full program."
He said that their missile program is equally advanced: "They also have a full suite of ballistic and cruise missiles. They have short range or battlefield missiles, they have medium range missiles, and they also have long range missiles."
He added that their nuclear program is pretty much completed, and the only question left is the number of weapons they have in their arsenal. "We believe they have 30, 40 or 50 nuclear weapons, and can apparently make 7 to 12 more per year."
For years, America and the United Nations have been using sanctions to try to convince the North Koreans to denuclearize. This was true under the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, and it's still true in the Biden administration, since Biden has not made any statement about removing the sanctions.
During the al-Jazeera show, Tariq Rauf gave a lengthy discussion of why sanctions have absolutely no chance of succeeding:
"As for sanctions, nobody can point to a single case in history where sanctions have reversed their nuclear, chemical or biological weapons program in a country.Sanctions did not affect South Africa, Iraq, Iran, didn't stop India or Pakistan, and it's clear that they didn't stop North Korea.
The leadership has shown in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and also North Korea that if the population has to tighten its belt, that's what they will do.
And North Korea has also seen how Iraq, Libya and Iran have been squeezed because they didn't have nuclear weapons.
Nobody threatens North Korea with an attack, nobody says all options are on the table, so North Korea knows. They also know that India and Pakistan have been accepted as de facto nuclear weapons states."
So Rauf makes it clear that North Korea's nuclear program is here to stay, and sanctions will do nothing.
As I said, there is a March of History, and sanctions will not affect it. By the time the world war ends, every one of North Korea's nuclear weapons will be used somewhere -- on America, on Japan, on South Korea, on China, on Russia, or elsewhere.
Tariq Rauf also gives a comparison between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in handling the North Korea situation:
"Biden has already insulted the Russian president, the Chinese president, has insulted Kim Jong-Un as a Hitler and as a thug. How does he expect them to have a meaningful dialog?President Biden who is also known for rash decisions, and for insulting foreign leaders, needs also to be restrained. We criticize president Trump quite justifiably, but president Biden is no angel either. He's not going to wave a magic wand and things are going to fall into place."
This gives rise to a comparison of the two negotiating styles, always keeping in mind that the March of History will be same, irrespective of the American president's negotiating style.
As I described many times, I was initially quite contemptuous of Trump's lack of knowledge of the world, until the unexpected happened: He selected as his principal advisor Steve Bannon, who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics, as I had worked with him off and on for several years. Bannon educated Trump on what was happening in China, North Korea and elsewhere, and Trump used that knowledge, combined with this own "Art of the Deal" skills, in his relations with foreign leaders. Thus, he developed a friendly father-son relationship with Kim Jong-un, and repeatedly complimented Xi Jinping as a great leader, although that changed dramatically in March 2020, when the CCP infuriated Trump by announcing that the coronavirus had been planted into Wuhan province by the American army.
At his press conference on Thursday, Joe Biden emphasized that he had a long relationship with China's president Xi Jinping:
"I’ve known Xi Jinping for a long time. Allegedly, by the time I left office as Vice President, I had spent more time with Xi Jinping than any world leader had, because President Obama and the Chinese President Hu decided we should get to know one another since it was inappropriate for the President of the United States to spend time with the vice president of another country. But it was obvious he was going to become the new leader of China.So, I spent hours upon hours with him alone with an interpreter — my interpreter and his — going into great detail. He is very, very straightforward. Doesn’t have a democratic — with a small “D” — bone in his body. But he’s a smart, smart guy. He’s one of the guys, like Putin, who thinks that autocracy is the wave of the future and democracy can’t function in an ever — an ever-complex world.
So, when I was elected and he called to congratulate me, I think to the surprise of the China experts who were — his people were on call as well as mine, listening — we had a two-hour conversation. For two hours. .... And earlier this month — and apparently it got the Chinese’s attention; that’s not why I did it — I met with our allies and how we’re going to hold China accountable in the region: Australia, India, Japan, and the United States — the so-called Quad. Because we have to have democracies working together.
Before too long, I’m going to have — I’m going to invite an alliance of democracies to come here to discuss the future. And so we’re going to make it clear that in order to deal with these things, we are going to hold China accountable to follow the rules — to follow the rules — whether it relates to the South China Sea or the North China Sea, or their agreement made on Taiwan, or a whole range of other things. ....
And the third thing, and the thing that I admire about dealing with Xi is he understands — he makes no pretense about not understanding what I’m saying any more than I do him — I pointed out to him: No leader can be sustained in his position or her position unless they represent the values of the country. And I said as — “And, Mr. President, as I’ve told you before, Americans value the notion of freedom. America values human rights. We don’t always live up to our expectations, but it’s a values system. We are founded on that principle. And as long as you and your country continues to so blatantly violate human rights, we’re going to continue, in an unrelenting way, to call to the attention of the world and make it clear — make it clear what’s happening.”
And he understood that. I made it clear that no American President — at least one did — but no American President ever back down from speaking out of what’s happening to the Uighurs, what’s happening in Hong Kong, what’s happening in-country.
That’s who we are. The moment a President walks away from that, as the last one did, is the moment we begin to lose our legitimacy around the world. It’s who we are."
Biden was making the point that he has a relationship with Xi Jinping, though apparently a fairly hostile one -- but that's better than no relationship. However, he has no similar relationship with Russia's Vladimir Putin, whom he recently called a "killer," nor with Kim Jong-un, whom he has called a thug, a dictator and a tyrant.
We have to mention that the Trump administration spoke out forcefully about human rights in China, and about the Uighurs. Biden's claim otherwise may be a lie, or more likely he doesn't know, since his handlers didn't bother to tell him. However, world leaders who watched Biden stumble through his press conference are well aware that he lied. (See "20-Jan-21 World View -- Pompeo bashes China over genocide, virus, Taiwan on last days of Trump administration")
So it's not surprising that North Korea's media made a particularly harsh response to Biden's statement:
"We cannot but build invincible physical power for reliably defending the security of our state under the present situation in which south Korea and the U.S. constantly pose military threats to the Korean peninsula while persistently conducting dangerous war exercises and introducing advanced weapons.We express our deep apprehension over the U.S. chief executive faulting the regular testfire, exercise of our state's right to self-defence, as the violation of UN "resolutions" and openly revealing his deep-seated hostility toward the DPRK.
Such remarks from the U.S. president are an undisguised encroachment on our state's right to self-defence and provocation to it.
It is a gangster-like logic that it is allowable for the U.S. to ship the strategic nuclear assets into the Korean peninsula and launch ICBMs any time it wants but not allowable for the DPRK, its belligerent party, to conduct even a test of a tactical weapon.
We clearly remember that after the appearance of the new administration in Washington there have been exploitation of every opportunity to make words and acts provoking the sovereignty and dignity of our state in which we were branded as the most serious "security threat".
The bellicose stance of the new U.S. administration awakens us to the way to be followed by us and convinces us of the justice of the work to be done by us once again."
It's worth remembering that North Korea is a vassal of Communist China. Kim Jong-un occasionally throws a temper tantrum and does something the CCP doesn't like, but basically Kim does as he's told. I consider it likely that the CCP gave Kim the OK for Thursday's ballistic missile launches.
In my opinion, North Korea will not launch any military attacks without China's permission, and that means it will be done in coordination with China's invasion of Taiwan or Japan or an attack on the United States, at some point in the future.
So that's the state of the relations between America and North Korea today.
I want to add a brief word about a different subject.
The situation in Myanmar (Burma) is becoming toxic to the point of being close to explosive. Some 50-80 peaceful protesters were killed on Saturday alone, with no provocation. These included children and even babies in their homes. The violence by the army is becoming horrific and unrestrained. Furthermore, other ethnic groups, including the Kachin and the Shan, are threatening to intervene unless the violence stops.
Burma's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody multi-ethnic civil war following independence (1948-1958). It's been 63 years since the end of that civil war, and so Burma is due for a new one, and that appears to be happening.
This is going to trigger large refugee flows into Thailand, India and China, so those countries may be brought into the war. Russia, incidentally, is supporting Burma's army, and so probably expects to gain from a Burma civil war.
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(28-Mar-2021)
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How Vietnam became an economic powerhouse after the Vietnam War
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Announcing a new book on Vietnam and Buddhism by John J. Xenakis
Book Announcement: World View: Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War
Subtitle: How Vietnam became an economic powerhouse after the Vietnam War
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Click here for description and Complete Table of Contents
If you buy it, please write a 5-star amazon review. Thanks.
Most people know nothing about Vietnam except that their grandfathers fought in something called "the Vietnam War." And yet, as guardian of the maritime routes from Europe to India, Malaya and China, Vietnam has for millennia been a dominant player in world trade.
And now, with China illegally annexing the South China Sea, which controls $1.3 trillion in trade, Vietnam's historic role as guardian of the South China Sea could bring the two countries to full war, for the first time in thirty years.
This book describes Vietnam's history since ancient times, through rule by China, through independence, through multiple dynasties, through colonization by France, and through the Indochina wars since World War II, before becoming an economic powerhouse. Those seriously interested in living in or doing business in Vietnam should understand that historically it's not a country in the European sense, but is composed of "Vietnam Villages" that define its culture and business dealings, and should understand the interaction between Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity in the villages and guilds.
The book has extensive coverage of the history and theology of Buddhism, and how it spread from India to Vietnam and China, in one of the most sigificant events in the history of religion. The book explains how this was possible because of the specific interactions of Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism, and how Chinese and Vietnamese leaders played one religion off of one another as needed to control the population. In today's Vietnam, these tensions still exist, especially between North and South.
The author's previous book on the history of Iran has extensive coverage of the history and theology of Islam and Christianity, while his book on China does the same for Confucianism and Daoism. Putting the three books together provides a comprehensive understanding of the world's religions.
The book also has extensive coverage of what "really happened" in the Vietnam war. Most people, even those who fought in the war, or who had family and friends who fought in the war, nonetheless have no idea what the Vietnam War was about. Even Vietnamese people under age 50 don't know what it was about. This book will tell you what actually happened -- not what the politicians and ideologues say happened, but what actually did happen, and why it happened.
I set up the GenerationalDynamics.com web site in 2003 as an experiment, as I stated at the time. I would analyze current and historical events through generational theory and Generational Dynamics. I would make forecasts and predictions, and the articles would remain on my web site for review at any time.
Now, almost 20 years later, there are over 6,000 articles on my web site, containing thousands of analyses and predictions on hundreds of countries, all of which are either true or trending true. None has been shown to be wrong. There is no web site in the world with a better successful forecasting and analysis record than mine, and there is no politician, analyst or journalist with a better forecasting and analysis record than mine.
There are now four books in the Generational Theory Book Series.
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"World View: Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War: How Vietnam became an economic powerhouse after the Vietnam War" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 4), March 2021 Paperback: 325 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738645/
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"World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019 Paperback: 331 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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"World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018 Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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"Generational Dynamics Anniversary Edition - Forecasting America's Destiny", (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 3), January 2020, Paperback: 359 pages, $14.99, https://www.amazon.com/Generational-Dynamics-Anniversary-Forecasting-Americas/dp/1732738629/
Table of Contents - World View: Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War
Part I. Vietnam, Buddhism and the Vietnam War -- Vietnam today Chapter 1. Importance of Vietnam Chapter 2. Overview of Contents Chapter 3. Objectives of this book Chapter 4. Description of Buddhist theology Chapter 5. Getting a 'feel' for Vietnam 5.1. Vietnam country names Chapter 6. Brief summary of generational eras
Part II. Vietnam's Doi Moi economic reforms (1986-present) Chapter 7. Vietnam's legal and economic history 7.1. Nations, kingdoms, empires, leaders, kings, emperors, dynasties 7.2. Economic influences in historical Vietnam 7.3. Vietnam's economy after French colonization (1858) 7.4. Social etiquette Chapter 8. The collapse of Communism, Socialism, Marxism in Asia 8.1. China -- Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward 8.2. Russia -- Perestroika and Glasnost 8.3. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong -- the 'Asian Tigers' 8.4. The Doi Moi economic reforms Chapter 9. Details of Doi Moi reforms 9.1. Reforming centrally-planned to market oriented economy 9.2. Land reform 9.3. Abolishing the dual-pricing system 9.4. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 9.5. Financial crisis in 2009-12 Chapter 10. Vietnam's economic crisis during Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic (2020) 10.1. Vietnam focuses on foreign investment and trade 10.2. Government heightened focus on high tech and artificial intelligence 10.3. Human Rights
Part III. Overview of Asian religions and theology Chapter 11. Evolution of great religions 11.1. Evolutionary framework of great religions 11.2. Documentation -- written law of the great religions 11.3. Written law in Hinduism and Buddhism 11.4. Etiquette in engaging with Buddhists Chapter 12. Overview of Buddhist theology 12.1. Achieving Nirvana 12.2. Theravada Buddhism ('Path of the Elders') 12.3. Mahayana Buddhism ('The Great Vehicle') 12.4. Hinayana Buddhism ('Modest Vehicle') Chapter 13. The school of meditation: Ch'an / Zen Buddhism 13.1. Rise of Ch'an/Zen Buddhism in China 13.2. Philosophy of Daoism 13.3. Ch'an / Zen Buddhism and sudden enlightenment 13.4. Zen Buddhism in the West Chapter 14. Other schools of Buddhism 14.1. The evolution and simplification of Buddhism 14.2. Pure Land Buddhism 14.3. Tantric (Vajrayana, Tibetan) Buddhism 14.4. Bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism 14.5. The Maitreya in Buddhism
Part IV. How Hinduism and Buddhism spread from India to southern Vietnam Chapter 15. Aryan invasion, and rise of Hinduism in India 15.1. Life of The Buddha (563-483 BC) 15.2. The Middle Way and Enlightenment 15.3. Hinduism and Buddhism 15.4. Popularity of Buddhism Chapter 16. Legacy of Emperor Ashoka (304-232 BC, Ruled 273-232 BC) 16.1. Ashoka commits genocide and ethnic cleansing 16.2. Ashoka repents and converts to Buddhism 16.3. Spread of Buddhism north and south -- overview 16.4. Ashoka's influence on Buddhism Chapter 17. Spread of Theravada Buddhism to southeast Asia and southern Vietnam 17.1. Spread of Buddhism to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 17.2. Spread of Buddhism to Burma (Myanmar) and Siam (Thailand) 17.3. Spread of Buddhism to Malay Peninsula and Indonesia 17.4. Spread of Buddhism to Cambodia and southern Vietnam (Mekong Delta)
Part V. How Buddhism spread through China to northern Vietnam Chapter 18. Spread of Mahayana Buddhism along the Great Silk Road Chapter 19. Collapse of China's glorious Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) 19.1. Significance of China's Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) 19.2. Decline of the Han Dynasty in the 100s 19.3. Collapse of the Han Dynasty -- Yellow Turban Rebellion - 184 AD Chapter 20. Changes to Daoism and Buddhism during and after Han Dynasty 20.1. Daoism during and after the declining Han Dynasty 20.2. Buddhism during and after the declining Han Dynasty 20.3. Differences between Chinese and Indian languages and culture 20.4. Role of Daoism in linking Indian and Chinese cultures Chapter 21. Sacking by the Huns (311) -- China splits into North and South Chapter 22. Spread of Buddhism south of the Yangtze River 22.1. Buddhism vs Confucianism and Daoism Chapter 23. Spread of Buddhism north of the Yangtze River 23.1. Northern rulers' adoption of Buddhism 23.2. Northern rulers' misgivings about Buddhism 23.3. Emancipation of Buddhist ideas from Daoism in the North Chapter 24. Spread of Buddhism in Sui and Tang dynasties (589-906) 24.1. Divergence of North and South during period of disunion 24.2. Regulation of religions during Sui-Tang dynasties 24.3. Great Buddhist movements during Sui-Tang dynasties 24.4. The school of meditation: Ch'an or Zen Buddhism 24.5. The catastrophic An Lu-shan Rebellion (755-763) 24.6. Union of Uighurs and Tibetans (765) 24.7. The Great Suppression of Buddhism (842-845) 24.8. Revival of Confucianism Chapter 25. Zen Buddhism in Japan 25.1. The Zen Koan: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Chapter 26. Buddhism in Vietnam 26.1. Adulteration / Syncretism of Buddhism in Vietnam 26.2. Vietnam Communist Party hostility to religion
Part VI. South Vietnam's ancient history Chapter 27. Background: Archaeological ages and Geography 27.1. Archaeological ages 27.2. Stone age 27.3. Bronze age 27.4. Iron age 27.5. Vietnam's fusion of races, languages and cultures 27.6. Vietnam's Geography Chapter 28. South Vietnam's ancient civilizations -- Sa Huynh, Dong Son 28.1. Sa Huynh culture (10000 BC - 200 AD) 28.2. Dong Son (Dong Son) culture 28.3. Growth of Dong Son culture 28.4. China-Vietnam disputes over Dong Son cultures
Part VII. The millennium of Chinese rule (111 BC to 938 AD) -- Viets, Funan, Champa, Khmers Chapter 29. North Vietnam: Confucian Viet culture, following conquest by China 29.1. Chinese invasion and conquest (111 BC) 29.2. Confucianism in Vietnam and role of women 29.3. Trung Sisters Rebellion (40-43 AD) and reconquest by China 29.4. The Sinicization of North Vietnam 29.5. Ly Bi overthrows Chinese rule, creates Van Xuan empire (544-603) 29.6. Chinese rule by China's Tang dynasty (618-906) Chapter 30. Chinese rule ends with spectacular Battle of Bach Dang River (938) 30.1. Ngo Quyen defeats Chinese in the spectacular Battle of Bach Dang River (938) 30.2. Dinh Bo Linh's tributary mission to China (968) Chapter 31. Far Southern Vietnam: Rise of Hinduized Funan culture, centered in Cambodia 31.1. Funan Culture and Oc-Eo port city Chapter 32. Central Vietnam: Rise of Champa culture 32.1. Champa culture 32.2. Cham people today
Part VIII. Nine centuries of Vietnam independence -- 938 - 1862 Chapter 33. Reference list of Vietnamese dynasties after independence Chapter 34. Vietnam villages 34.1. Vietnam's guilds and villages 34.2. Village organization Chapter 35. Brief history of Laos Chapter 36. Early Le Dynasty (980-1005) 36.1. Generational summary 36.2. Defeating another Chinese invasion Chapter 37. The First Great Dynasty: The Later Ly Dynasty (1009–1225) 37.1. Generational summary 37.2. Development of agriculture in Red River Delta -- and southward move 37.3. Development of written law 37.4. Growth of Buddhism in Nam Viet 37.5. Buddhism in central and south Vietnam 37.6. Champa Kingdom conquest by Angkor Khmers (Cambodia) (1203-20) 37.7. Cultural differences: Nam Viet vs Champa Chapter 38. The Second Great Dynasty -- The Tran Dynasty (1225-1400) 38.1. Generational summary 38.2. Mobilizing eunuchs and slaves - preparing for war 38.3. Sacking of Champa capital Vijaya (1252) 38.4. First Mongol War (1257) 38.5. The Tran vs the Mongols [1284-1287] 38.6. Tran Dynasty defeats the Mongols (1284, 1287) 38.7. Mongols face Vietnamese war elephants (1284) 38.8. Tran soldiers defeat Mongols in Battle of Bach Dang (1287) 38.9. Tran war with Champa (1312) 38.10. Buddhism vs Confucianism during the Tran dynasty 38.11. Growth of Confucianism to modern times Chapter 39. Ho Dynasty (1400-1407) -- Vietnam's most hated dynasty 39.1. Ho general usurps the throne 39.2. China invades Vietnam in brutal period of governance 39.3. Ho Dynasty echoes through Vietnam's history 39.4. War with the Chinese (1417-1427) Chapter 40. Later Le Dynasty Part 1: destruction of Champa Kingdom (1428-1527) 40.1. Generational summary 40.2. Destruction of Champa Kingdom (1471) 40.3. Southern expansion (nam-tien) and land settlement (don dien) 40.4. Aftermath of the destruction of Champa kingdom 40.5. Decline of the Le Dynasty (1497-1527) Chapter 41. Later Le Dynasty Part 2: The warring warlords (1527-1787) 41.1. Generational summary 41.2. The Mac family and Nguyen family split Vietnam in two (1527-45) 41.3. Trinh family joins the struggle (1545-1592) 41.4. Arrival of the Europeans - 1600s 41.5. The inevitable war between Nguyen and Trinh begins (1620-1672) Chapter 42. The cataclysmic Tay-Son Rebellion (1771-1790, defeated 1802) 42.1. Background to Tay-Son Rebellion 42.2. The Ho (Nguyen) brothers begin the Tay-Son rebellion 42.3. Marxist Socialism before Marx -- Tay-Son rebellion 42.4. Tay-Son rebels align themselves with Chinese pirates 42.5. Socialism in the 21st century -- Memories of the Tay-Son rebellion Chapter 43. Nguyen Phuc Anh (Gia Long) launches a harsh new Nguyen Dynasty 43.1. List of kings of the Nguyen Dynasty 43.2. Generational summary 43.3. Nguyen Phuc Anh defeats the Tay-Son rebels (1776-1802) 43.4. Vietnam finally adopts the name Viet Nam 43.5. The Nguyen Dynasty (1802-1945) 43.6. Nguyen Dynasty and persecution of Christians
Part IX. The Treaty of Saigon and French colonization (1862-1954) Chapter 44. Treaty of Saigon, June 1862 44.1. France completes conquest of French Indochina (1887) Chapter 45. Conflicts during French colonization 45.1. Vietnam Villages during French colonization 45.2. Vietnam government after the Treaty of Saigon (1862-1954) 45.3. Truong Dinh -- anti-French guerrilla movement (1858-64) 45.4. Anti-Catholic violence 45.5. Vietnamese modernization movements opposing French colonialism Chapter 46. Rise of Vietnam nationalism up to World War II 46.1. Phan Boi Chau and the Rise of Nationalism (1904) 46.2. Did Ho Chi Minh betray Phan Boi Chau? 46.3. Rise of Ho Chi Minh and fight for independence from the French 46.4. European migration to French Indochina until 1945
Part X. Understanding the context of America's 'Vietnam War' Chapter 47. Summary of America's Vietnam War Chapter 48. Major findings about America's Vietnam War 48.1. Disastrous decisions by President Kennedy 48.2. The question of insanity 48.3. The question of sophistry 48.4. Facts and events vs Context 48.5. Was the Vietnam War worth the cost? Chapter 49. Major world events as context of Vietnam War 49.1. March of Communism 49.2. North Vietnam's toxic relationships with China and Soviet Russia 49.3. Vietcong insurgency in South Vietnam 49.4. Laos coup and the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail' Chapter 50. Insanity and Greek Tragedy 50.1. Understanding Greek Tragedy 50.2. Insanity 50.3. Aeschylus and Prometheus 50.4. The relevance of Greek Tragedy 50.5. The Vietnam War and Greek Tragedy 50.6. Setting the scene in 1959-60 -- the seeds of future defeat 50.7. The main characters Chapter 51. Generational issues 51.1. The Vietnam War and American generations 51.2. Public moods in Vietnam, France and America after WW II 51.3. Hannah Arendt -- 'the calm that settles after all hopes have died' 51.4. Communism on the march -- and the 'Iron Curtain' 51.5. The Truman Doctrine makes America Policeman of the World (1947) 51.6. Truman receives NSC-68 report calling for Soviet Communist 'containment' (April 14, 1950) 51.7. Communist North Korea invades South Korea (June 25, 1950) 51.8. President Eisenhower explains the Domino Theory (1954) 51.9. President Kennedy's 'ask not' inauguration speech (1961) Chapter 52. From trauma in World War II to a Generation Gap in the 1960s 52.1. The traumatic World War II 52.2. Lessons learned: New laws and institutions after WW II 52.3. Definition of the 'Generation Gap' 52.4. The Summer of Love (1967) 52.5. America's generational Awakening era -- 1960s-1970s 52.6. Generation Gap resolution -- Awakening Climax Chapter 53. Examples of generational Recovery and Awakening Eras 53.1. America after World War II (1945) 53.2. Iran after Great Islamic Revolution (1979) 53.3. Zimbabwe after war of independence (1980) 53.4. China after the Communist Revolution (1949) 53.5. American Civil War (1865) 53.6. America's Revolutionary War (1782) 53.7. Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868) 53.8. Japan after World War II (1945) 53.9. The generational 'Democide Pattern' Chapter 54. The political debate over America's 'Vietnam War' 54.1. The left-wing antiwar view of the Vietnam war 54.2. The Vietnamese view of the Vietnam war 54.3. America allies with Ho Chi Minh in World War II Chapter 55. Overview of the Vietnam War
Part XI. French Indochina War (First Indochina War, Nov 1946 to Aug 1954) Chapter 56. Beginnings of the war Chapter 57. Vietminh strategy Chapter 58. Battle of Dien Bien Phu
Part XII. Interwar period -- 1954-1959 -- Republic of Vietnam Chapter 59. Disagreements between China and Vietnam over who gets the credit Chapter 60. History of persecution of Catholics Chapter 61. North-South migration after First Indochina war Chapter 62. Land reform program Chapter 63. Beginnings of American military involvement Chapter 64. Le Duan replaces Ho Chi Minh as de facto North Vietnam leader 64.1. Legacy of Le Duan (1908-1986) 64.2. Rise of Le Duan Chapter 65. North Vietnam ratifies Resolution 16, authorizing war with the South (May 1959)
Part XIII. Second Indochina War 1959-1975 (America's "Vietnam War") Chapter 66. Conflicts between Washington and Saigon 66.1. Core issues - John Kennedy and William Averell Harriman 66.2. Kennedy's youth and inexperience 66.3. Two peoples, quite apart in culture, thrown together against a common enemy 66.4. Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnam's imperfect democracy 66.5. America's conflicting values and policies 66.6. America's conflicting policies in Vietnam under Eisenhower 66.7. Kennedy's disastrous international agreement on Laos 66.8. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (April, 1961) Chapter 67. Conflicting counterinsurgency (COIN) strategies 67.1. Summary of conflicting counterinsurgency (COIN) strategies 67.2. Counterinsurgency (COIN) military doctrine 67.3. Clear-hold-build counterinsurgency framework Chapter 68. Antecedents of Vietnam's Strategic Hamlet program 68.1. Description of the resettlement strategy for COIN operations 68.2. Boer War (1899-1902) resettlement operations for counterinsurgency 68.3. The Malayan Emergency (1948-55) counterinsurgency (COIN) program Chapter 69. Vietnam's Strategic Hamlet counterinsurgency (COIN) program 69.1. Mixed success of strategic hamlet program Chapter 70. Military coup and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem 70.1. Eruption of Buddhist-Catholic conflict (summer 1963) 70.2. Rise of antiwar activism and assassination of Diem (1963) 70.3. Summary: Kennedy's two acts of sabotage of the Vietnam War effort 70.4. Sabotage of the Strategic Hamlet program by Hanoi Chapter 71. Why did the Strategic Hamlets program fail? 71.1. Ethnic and linguistic purity in Malaya and Vietnam 71.2. Ethnic and linguistic purity in Boer War 71.3. Counterinsurgency operations in Iraq War and Afghanistan War 71.4. Ethnic and linguistic purity issue in Afghanistan Chapter 72. Lyndon Johnson's war (1964-1967) 72.1. Battle of Ia Drang (November 14-18, 1965) 72.2. Chaos in Saigon -- Buddhists vs Catholics 72.3. Was the war already lost in 1964? 72.4. Lyndon Johnson's 'limited war' escalation 72.5. Tet Offensive, January 1968 72.6. The My Lai Massacre (March 16, 1968) 72.7. Korean soldiers in Vietnam war Chapter 73. Nguyen Van Thieu and the Second Republic of Vietnam (1967-1975) 73.1. Creation of the Second Republic (1967) 73.2. American policy mistakes in Vietnam 73.3. Problems facing Richard Nixon 73.4. Nixon's 'Vietnamization' policy 73.5. The Cambodia incursion 73.6. The Paris Peace Agreement - October 1972 73.7. The collapse of South Vietnam 73.8. Le Duan's victory speech (May 15, 1975)
Part XIV. Vietnam - Cambodia - China war (Third Indochina War, 1975-1989) Chapter 74. Overview of the so-called 'Vietnam War' Chapter 75. Richard Nixon's 'decent interval' policy Chapter 76. North Vietnamese post-war massacres and boat people (1975-85) Chapter 77. Pol Pot and the Cambodian 'Killing Fields' by the Khmer Rouge 77.1. Rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia 77.2. Pol Pot's Killing Fields -- one of the worst genocides of the 20th century 77.3. War between Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge (supported by the Chinese Communists) 77.4. Cambodia invades Vietnam (1977) 77.5. Hanoi attacks the Chinese population in Vietnam (1978) 77.6. Collapse of Vietnam's economy (1978) 77.7. History of China and Russia wars and border conflicts 77.8. Vietnam invades Cambodia 77.9. China invades Vietnam (1979-89) 77.10. Le Duan dies and Vietnam opens its markets - Doi Moi (1986)
Part XV. References lists Chapter 78. Reference list of names for Vietnam Chapter 79. Reference list of Vietnam's dynasties Chapter 80. Reference list of 54 Vietnamese Ethnic Groups 80.1. Eight categories of Vietnamese ethnic groups 80.2. Alphabetical list of Vietnam's 54 ethnic groups Chapter 81. Reference list of China's dynasties
Part XVI. Histories of Vietnam's neighbors Chapter 82. History of Philippines 82.1. China's history with the Philippines 82.2. Ancient history of the Philippines 82.3. Philippines Spanish colonial period (1521-1898) 82.4. Philippines under American control (1898-1946) and Japanese occupation (1941-45) 82.5. Modern generational history of the Philippines republic Chapter 83. Brief generational history of Cambodia Chapter 84. Brief generational history of Thailand Chapter 85. Brief generational history of Myanmar (Burma)
Part XVII. The End Chapter 86. About John J. Xenakis 86.1. Acknowledgments
Part XVIII. Footnotes / References
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational
Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(23-Mar-2021)
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Syrian war timeline
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
On Thursday of last week, a three-way conference was held in Doha, Qatar's capital, to lay the groundwork for a political solution to war in Syria that began in 2011. Qatar has suffered some foreign policy defeats in recent years, and is looking for a new role to play, and apparently sees this as a way of gaining increased influence in the Mideast.
The conference was attended by ministers form Qatar, Russia and Turkey. They were Qatar's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
According to Cavusoglu: "Today we launched a new trilateral consultation process. Our goal is to discuss how we can contribute to efforts towards a lasting political solution in Syria."
This is laughable. The United Nations has appointed several envoys -- Kofi Annon, Lakhdar Brahimi, Staffan de Mistura -- to mediate a political solution, and in the end they all resigned in disgust after being made useful idiots by Bashar al-Assad. In neach case they provided cover for al-Assad to continue his war crimes and genocide targeting innocent Arab Sunnis, and also provided cover for al-Assad's supporters in Russia and Iran, allowing them to make sanctimonious statements while they support al-Assad's bloody slaughter. The UN has recently appointed a new envoy, Geir Pedersen, who sounds to me like all the others, and speaks the same nonsense.
All of these envoys say the same thing: "A military solution is impossible. There has to be a political solution." The problem is that Syria, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have joined together, and have brought about a military holocaust in Syria. Bashar al-Assad believes that he is close to a total victory, and will never agree to any political solution.
So now Qatar wants to take on the role of mediator. Qatar is a little different from the envoys because it openly supports tne anti-Assad Arab political opposition, while the UN envoys are supposedly neutral. But Qatari officials apparently believe that they can use their existing relationship with Russia to bring something about.
Russia's Vladimir Putin, of course, doesn't care how many Sunni Arabs Bashar al-Assad beats, tortures, rapes or kills. Russia is supporting al-Assad because it wants to retain control of its two military bases in Syria, the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim airbase. When al-Assad begged Putin for military help in 2015, Putin agreed to help, and received control of the two military bases in return.
Ten years ago, Syria used to be a beautiful, affluent middle-class country. Today, the entire country looks like a war zone, with buildings destroyed everywhere, particularly schools, hospitals and markets.
Of the 22 million people that lived in Syria before the war, about half a million have been killed, and more than 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes, either becoming refugees or displaced people in their own country.
Today, Syria is an economic basket case, with massive poverty among people who still live there, and among Syrians who live in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey.
The Syrian currency, the Lira, has crashed. $10 used to give you 500 Syrian Lira. Now $10 is 40,000 Syrian Lira. Money-changers need carts to carry their currency, in a scene reminiscent of the wheelbarrows of money in Germany in the hyperinflation of the early 1920s.
Post-war discontent with corruption, spiralling food prices, a collapsed currency, worsening power cuts and gasoline shortages have aggravated hardships for the remaining citizens.
The war in Syria has become more or less static in the last year. There are about 2.5 million Sunni Arabs in Idlib province, which is in northwest Syria along the border with Turkey, and I had expected that Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, would by this time have found a way to exterminate many of the 2.5 million people, who are mostly women and children. But Turkey has sent its own troops and tanks into Idlib, and al-Assad's extermination process has been slowed.
Al-Assad himself has been shown by defectors to be someone who gets obvious pleasure from gouging out people's eyes or pulling out their fingernails, or other forms of torture. (See "8-Feb-17 World View -- Investigation reveals depraved new atrocities by Syria's Bashar al-Assad")
Most of the civilians in Idlib are women and children refugees from other provinces, including Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa and Quneitra. In each of the other provinces, al-Assad sent missiles into school dormitories to kill children, or dropped barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons on civilian neighborhoods, or using Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. Al-Assad's barrel bombs, missiles and chemical weapons have specifically targeted schools, markets and hospitals, in order to kill as many women and children as possible, Since chlorine gas is heavier than air, it seeps down into the basements and forces the choking women and children out into the open, where they can be targeted by missiles and gunfire. As if that wasn't enough, al-Assad was supported by Russian warplanes.
In each case, international pressure forced al-Assad to allow hundreds of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, to escape to Idlib province. The result is that about half the population in Idlib is refugees from other provinces.
Bashar al-Assad repeatedly vowed to attack Idlib next, with Russian support, and to exterminate all the Sunni Arab civilians. This threat actually presented a huge threat to Turkey and even to Europe, as those attacks would drive millions of refugees across the border into Turkey, and possibly into Europe from there.
To block this, Turkey sent its own troops into Idlib, so that an attack on Idlib would be an attack on Turkey. This has prevented the expected extermination of Sunni Arabs in Idlib. But it has also raised pressure on Turkey to end its "occupation" of Syrian territory.
From the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Qatar, provided huge financial, political and media support for opposition groups, especially armed ones. However, this aid stopped in 2015 when Russia intervened.
Qatar has for years had sharp differences with the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In March 2014, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar after a stormy meeting. One issue was Qatar's friendly relationship with Iran, as well as Qatari support for two organizations that Saudi Arabia and UAE consider to be terrorist organizations -- the Muslim Brotherhood and the Union of Muslim Scholars.
They papered over their differences in 2014, but the differences exploded in June 2016, when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) also broke relations and imposed a sea, air and land blockade on Qatar. Qatar is a very wealthy country and was able to weather this blockade, but it lost influence in the Mideast.
There has been some softening of the blockade in recent months. That change, combined with the presence of a new administration in the United States, has led Qatar to change direction and reactivate its diplomatic posture.
Having ended its aid to Syrian opposition groups in 2015, Qatar is now returning to mediation in the Syria war, taking advantage of what it hopes are its existing good relations with Russia and Iran.
The following timeline lists the major events in the ten-year Syrian war?
Sources:
Related Articles:
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
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(16-Mar-2021)
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Consequences of a new Burma civil war
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Last Sunday (February 28) was a major turning point in the violence in Myanmar / Burma, when the army security forces began using lethal force and adopted a shoot-to-kill policy, killing peaceful protesters for the first time. The protests were the largest that Myanmar has seen since 2007. They began when the iconic leader Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested on Jan 28, along with her government ministers. (See "2-Feb-21 World View -- Myanmar (Burma) military coup as army arrests Aung San Suu Kyi government officials")
Up till last Sunday, the army had been using non-lethal tactics, including tear gas and rubber bullets. But on Sunday they began using live ammunition, and the level of violence has been increasing every day since then. Dozens of protesters have been killed so far, and thousands have been arrested, including 29 journalists.
Several analysts have said that the army is purposely increasing the level of violence each day in order to break the back of the protests. This tactic worked in 2007. Hundreds of activists and citizens were shot dead or burned alive in government crematoriums. Thousands of Buddhist monks, who led the protests to begin with, were gathered up and detained. Some were found floating face down in rivers. The protests finally fizzled when the violence became lethal enough.
However, there's a big difference in public mood between now and 2007. Unlike then, the country today is in a generational Crisis era, and so, unlike then, the mood of both the army and the protesters is not to compromise. This means that it's unlikely the violence will fizzle, and more likely that it will continue to escalate. The next step for the army would be machine guns and assault rifles.
The fact that young, innocent people are being killed is infuriating the protesters. There have been complaints of cruelty, even sadism, by the security forces. There have been brutal attacks on innocent medics, and all hospitals are closed in many cities.
The increase in lethal violence so far has not deterred the protesters who remain defiant and, if anything, have been growing in numbers. The protesters are wearing whatever protective equipment they can find, like makeshift shields. Some are using satellite dishes as shields, or are wearing helmets. They've tasted freedom in the last few years, and they cannot tolerate a new dictatorship by military junta.
Protesters are heavily using their mobile phones to publicize the violence. Although it's dangerous to do so, they're filming the violence and then loading the video onto twitter or live streaming it onto facebook.
Probably the military junta has been most hurt by civil disobedience and the national strikes by the banks, and even in the civil service, by workers in health, education, labor, and immigration.
The army has used videos on Tiktok to threaten the protesters. A typical video shows a soldier pointing a big gun at the camera and saying that protesters will be shot dead. Tiktok claims that it has removed most of those videos.
The UN Security Council met on Friday and, not surprisingly, accomplished nothing. Any condemnation of the violence in Myanmar will be vetoed by China and Russia, rather than risk having violence in their own countries be condemned.
The US and UK are planning their own sanctions. There are planned sanctions targeting the assets of the members of the military council and imposing travel restrictions, as well as an arms embargo.
There is no chance that these sanctions will stop the military junta.
Both BBC and al-Jazeera have been interviewing people in Myanmar, and they're describing a different situation than is portrayed by the so-called "international community," as represented by the UN and NGOs.
The international community has provided verbal condemnation that the violence is unacceptable and must stop immediately, that peaceful protests much be permitted, and that Aung San Suu Kyi must be released from jail and returned as leader of the government. And if the violence doesn't stop, the international community is threatening even worse verbal condemnations, and possibly even to hold more meetings.
However, some reports have pointed out that although the Burmese mobs support that solution, the ethnic minorities in Myanmar are opposed to it. This opposition point of view was discussed at length by Khin Zaw Win, a Burmese anti-government activist and journalist who was imprisoned by the army from 1994-2005 for "seditious writings," and who was interviewed on the BBC.
According to Khin, the ethnic minorities are opposed to Aung San Suu Kyi because she was part of the government that discriminated against minorities. Furthermore, she damaged herself deeply by becoming a useful idiot and siding with the army when the army was conducting genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine State, even going so far as traveling to the Hague in December 2019 to defend the Burmese army against charges of war crimes. It is an irony that the army that she defended turned around and threw her under the bus, arresting her and her entire government when she was no longer useful to the army.
The Burmese majority and the ethnic minorities have been temporarily united by the military coup and the resulting violence against peaceful street protesters. However, they do not share a common objective. What the ethnic minorities want is a new constitution, with greater political autonomy and greater rights for ethnic minorities. And nobody believes that solution is even remotely possible.
Burma's last two generational crisis wars (1886-91 and 1948-58) were extremely bloody and violent civil wars involving multiple ethnic groups. (See "Burma: Growing demonstrations by the '88 Generation' raise fears of new slaughter")
The October 2007 demonstrations occurred 49 years after the climax of the last crisis war, during a generational Unraveling era. At that time, there were many people in the army who had lived through the 1958 slaughter, and stopped short of trying to repeat it. Similarly, the young people who protested in 2007 had parents who had lived through the 1958 slaughter, and who held back their children from going too far in risking their lives.
But since 2016, Burma has been in a generational Crisis era. The people who had lived through the 1958 slaughter are gone or retired, and have lost their influence. The younger generation of protesters have no memory of the 1958 slaughter, and do not fear what's coming.
The current generation of people in the army also have no memory of the 1958 slaughter. What they remember is the 2007 protests, and they remember that those protests fizzled when the army began escalating the violence.
The current protesters also remember the 2007 protests, and they remember how the protesters at that time simply surrendered when they didn't have to.
This is how a generational Crisis era is different from a generational Unraveling era. Today, the army has no inhibitions against escalating its violence, and the protesters have no inhibitions against continuing to protest, even if some of them get killed. That makes it unlikely that the current situation will simply fizzle.
The situation is further complicated by the ethnic minorities. The 1948-1958 crisis war was a civil war involving all the ethnic groups, especially the Burmese, the Kachin and the Shan. The latter three groups are currently aligned in their opposition to the army, but what we are seeing are the first signs of a massive new ethnic civil war.
According to the Generational Dynamics analysis, the current clashes are fairly likely to escalate into a full scale civil war, although that is not a certainty. However, the current situation is so febrile that even if some temporary truce is worked out -- and this would have to include freeing Aung San Suu Kyi and her government -- then the violence will resume again before long.
Arguably, the civil war already began in 2012, when the army began its genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingyas. The army referred to the Rohingyas as "enemies of the state," but now the ordinary Burmese people have also become "enemies of the state."
If the violence escalates into a full-scale civil war, it could affect the entire region. There are now almost a million Rohingyas living in filthy refugee camps just across the border in Bangladesh, and they're looking for revenge. If there is a general breakdown in law and order in Myanmar, then those Rohingya refugees may well cross back into Myanmar and join the fighting. This could also bring Bangladesh itself into the fighting.
The separatist Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has joined together with the Shan ethnic group and other ethnic groups in northern Burma, along the border with China, to form a "northern alliance" against Burma's army. These groups have had occasional clashes with China's army along the border inside China, and those clashes would probably escalate if there is a civil war in Burma. In fact, China was heavily involved in the crisis war that climaxed in 1958, and history will certainly repeat itself, with China heavily involved in a new civil war in Burma.
As long-time readers are aware, Generational Dynamics predicts a new world war between the US and China, but does not predict the scenario that will lead to that war. We've speculated that it may begin with a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or Japan, or it may begin with a war between India and Pakistan, or it may begin in the Mideast and spread from there.
But here we see another possibility. If a massive civil war occurs in Burma, and it spreads to involve China and Bangladesh, then it may spread further to other countries in Central Asia, bringing in India and Russia.
And so, Dear Reader, keep your eye on Myanmar / Burma. Even if you're totally addicted to watching the political sewer in Washington, try to avert you eyes every once in a while, if only for a few moments, to see something that may affect the lives of you and your family more than the latest lockdown.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(6-Mar-2021)
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Book on history of Vietnam nearing publication
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Thursday, Nato defense ministers met in Brussels and decided to postpone the planned withdrawal of Nato troops, previously scheduled for May 1. The Taliban have threatened that unless the troops are withdrawn, then there will be a major escalation in the Taliban's spring fighting season, and indeed the violence is already increasing.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban are poised to return to power in Afghanistan, either through negotiations or through a renewed civil war, after they had been removed from power by the United States in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks.
In 2009 I wrote, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis summarized below, that peace was impossible in Afghanistan, no matter how many troops the US and Nato sent there, which means that the Taliban would return to power if American troops withdrew. That prediction is being proven true once again, and we now appear close to a historic dénouement.
In February 2020, the Donald Trump administration reached a delusional agreement with the Taliban to bring a new era of peace to Afghanistan. America and Nato would remove all its troops by May of this year and, in return, the Taliban would stop funding al-Qaeda and would sever all its ties to al-Qaeda. The Taliban didn't promise to stop violence altogether, but did promise to "tone down" the violence.
As part of the agreement, peace talks took place between America and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. These peace talks were also completely delusional. The Afghan government weren't in the talks. And NATO, which also has troops in Afghanistan, weren't in the talks. In fact, the entire "peace process" has always been delusional.
Trump removed all but 2,500 troops from Afghanistan, and had every intention of removing all troops by May 1, but Joe Biden has promised to review that decision. But what happens now is now a Brussels decision rather than a Washington decision.
Nato still has 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, and they were scheduled to leave by May 1 as well. It's clear that's not happening, simply from the fact that they haven't yet "started packing."
BBC's Lyse Doucet interviewed Nato's Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday. Parts of what he said were hopeful but delusional, but in other parts he conceded that the hopeful parts were not going to happen.
The Taliban are claiming that they've met their commitments to reduce violence and end ties with international terrorists. However, violence has been increasing, not decreasing. Furthermore, a UN panel headed by Edmund Fitton-Brown has found that "There is still clearly a close relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. We believe that the top leadership of Al Qaeda is still under Taliban protection."
The Taliban are promising a major escalation of violence unless the US and Nato troops withdraw by May 1. Since it's clear that the troops will not withdraw by May 1, it's clear that a major escalation in fighting will begin in the new spring fighting season.
Here is what Stoltenberg said in the interview (my transcription):
"So we really believe that this not the time to make a final decision, because we'd like to give every chance to the peace process, the peace talks, to succeed.Those talks are fragile and difficult, there is no easy option in Afghanistan, but there is still a possibility to reach a lasting political agreement, and all parties should engage in those talks, and the Taliban must reduce violence and must negotiate in good faith, and they must stop cooperating with the international terrorists.
And by doing that, they will also provide the platform to find a political solution.
[Question: So you may be in Afghanistan for many years to come?]
Absolutely, as I said, there are no easy options in Afghanistan, and we face many difficult dilemmas. If we decide to stay beyond May 1, then we risk more violence against our troops, and of course we risk continued long-term involvement in a very difficult operation in Afghanistan. But if we leave, we risk that Afghanistan once again becomes a safe haven for international terrorists, planning attacks against our own countries as we saw on 9/11 and also losing all the gains we made on human rights, especially for women over last years.
So this is difficult. That's the reason at this stage why we believe this is not the right time to make a final decision on whether we leave or stay, but continue to support the efforts to re-energize the peace talks.
[Question: The Taliban say they have kept their commitments. Do you believe you have solid evidence that they have not cut there ties with al-Qaeda, that there is still a risk that Afghanistan could once again be a safe haven to launch attacks against Europe and the United States?]
What we have seen is an increase in violence, not a decrease in violence. We have seen that the peace talks are almost stopped, there is hardly any progress at all.
And the Taliban has to do more and they have to live up to their commitments especially related to counterterrorism, break ties with terrorist groups."
According to Doucet, this is so far the worst Taliban fighting season ever, and it will get worse when the snow melts. In fact there's been so little snow this winter, the doctors in the National Police Hospital said that they had never seen so many casualties from so many provinces at this time of year.
So the delusional parts of Stoltenberg's interview are when he says, "we'd like to give every chance to the peace process, the peace talks, to succeed." That's delusional because there is zero probability that the peace talks will succeed, since the Taliban are committed to them not succeeding, and are using the peace talks as a ploy to get the Nato forces to withdraw, so that the Taliban can overrun Kabul and resume the control they had before they were ejected by American forces after 9/11/2001.
According to a European diplomat: "This war is not winnable, but Nato cannot allow itself to lose it pitifully." That's the choice facing Nato right now.
And so the war will go on and be substantially escalated again when the Taliban's spring fighting season begins in earnest.
I've written many times that, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, there is no possibility whatsoever of a successful peace agreement. I started writing about this in 2009, when I predicted that Barack Obama's "surge" into Afghanistan would fail. That prediction has been 100% correct so far.
The following is a summary of the Generational Dynamics analysis:
Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.
Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
So when Jens Stoltenberg says that Nato wants to give the peace process a chance, he knows that statement is delusional, and the only relevant statement is the one by the unnamed European diplomat: "This war is not winnable, but Nato cannot allow itself to lose it pitifully."
As regular readers know, I have been writing a book on the history of Vietnam, to complement my previous books on the histories of Iran and China. The book is nearing publication, and I now expect it to be published on Amazon in March.
Here are the front and back book covers:
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John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
John Xenakis is author of: "Generational Dynamics Anniversary Edition - Forecasting America's Destiny", (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 3), January 2020, Paperback: 359 pages, $14.99, https://www.amazon.com/Generational-Dynamics-Anniversary-Forecasting-Americas/dp/1732738629/
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(19-Feb-2021)
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Similarity between Burma and Washington DC
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Myanmar / Burma is seeing its largest protests in more than a decade, as tens of thousands of protesters demanded that Aung San Suu Kyi be freed, after she was arrested by the army last weekend during an army coup. (See "2-Feb-21 World View -- Myanmar (Burma) military coup as army arrests Aung San Suu Kyi government officials")
The "problem" that the army has to face is that Suu Kyi has millions of supporters, as her party won legislative elections by a landslide in November.
To combat the peaceful protests, the army shut down the internet. The army shut down internet social media, and then the entire internet, making it difficult for international observers to know what was going on, and to prevent protesters from easily communicating with one another. However, on Saturday, the internet was partially restored, though social media is still blocked.
What everyone fears is the next tactic -- violence.
In October 2007, there were large nationwide anti-army pro-democracy demonstrations, led by over 100,000 Buddhist monks. These were demonstrations by the "88 Generation," triggered by an abrupt government decision to double the price of gasoline. ( "Burma: Growing demonstrations by the '88 Generation' raise fears of new slaughter")
Hundreds of activists and citizens were shot dead or burned alive in government crematoriums. Thousands of Buddhist monks, who led the protests to begin with, were gathered up and detained. Some were found floating face down in rivers.
By coincidence, Sylvester Stallone was filming a Rambo film nearby, and witnessed some of the genocide. Stallone said:
"I witnessed the aftermath—survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We saw many elephants with blown off legs. We hear about Vietnam and Cambodia and this was more horrific. This is a hellhole beyond your wildest dreams. All the trails are mined. The only way into Burma is up the river."
The October 2007 demonstrations occurred 19 years after the previous major nationwide demonstrations, starting on August 8, 1988 (8/8/88), creating what was called the "88 Generation," led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Those demonstrations were crushed when the Burmese army fired on students with machine guns, killing thousands. Suu Kyi was arrested and put into detention for years.
Atrocities come easily to Burma's army. Since 2011, the army has been committing atrocities on Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, as I described in last week's article. The atrocities included gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign. Aung Sang Suu Kyi became a "useful idiot" for the army by presenting a sympathetic, tired, weary, female face to the world to deflect the horrors and atrocities that are occurring in their country, as I described in my article.
Suu Kyi appeased the army by becoming a useful idiot, just as Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler and the Nazis. In both cases there were high prices to be paid for being appeasers.
The international community is now waiting to see what will happen next in Burma. Anti-government pro-democracy protests have been growing. How long will the army wait before repeating the violence and atrocities that come as easily to them as smoking a cigarette?
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The problems facing the Democrats in Washington DC are similar to the problems facing the army in Burma.
The Burmese army has to deal with millions of Aung Sang Suu Kyi supporters conducting street protests. They've arrested Suu Kyi so that she can't communicate with her supporters, and they've shut down internet social media so that her supporters can't communicate with one another.
The Democrats have to deal with 74 million Trump supporters who, according to polls I've seen, overwhelmingly support Trump. The wealthy, powerful "Big Tech" companies have colluded with the Democrats to shut down thousands of social media accounts to prevent Trump from communicating with his supporters, and to prevent his supporters from communicating with each other. This kind of mass censorship is previously unheard of in America, and suggests that America is becoming a Stalinist dictatorship.
The Democrats are taking other steps. Joe Biden announced last week that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens will be permitted to enter the United States freely. The apparent purpose is to send them mail-in ballots in 2022 and instruct them to vote for Democrats.
What about violence? The Burmese army is on the verge of violence as the only way to handle even peaceful demonstrations by the millions of supporters of Suu Kiy.
Would the Democrats use violence to control peaceful demonstrations by the 74 million Trump supporters?
Let's make it a little more specific. Look at the first picture at the beginning of this article with a mob of peaceful demonstrators carrying placards with pictures Aung Sang Suu Kyi. Now imagine that as a crowd of Trump supporters carrying placards with pictures of Trump, with text reading "Trump - The Real President."
Something like that could actually happen. What would the Democrats do? Would Nancy Pelosi totally freak out? On January 20, the acting Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli said that Nancy Pelosi had requested thousands of troops to remain in DC for months, and she wanted them armed with crew-manned machine guns. These are the guns used in countries like Burma to kill dozens of student protesters within seconds. The request was denied, but this request shows the state of mind of Pelosi and the Democrats.
We also note that Biden is ordering the army to "stand down" so that "extremists" can be weeded out. To the Democrats, all 74 million Tea Partiers and Trump supporters are extremists or cultists that need to be "deprogrammed."
If you're talking about psychology and madness, it's hard to find any aspect of today's world that isn't full of madness.
You have full-scale genocide going on in China, as bad as the world has seen since the 1930s, or worse. China is also annexing or threatening to annex other regions, as the Nazis did in the 1930s.
There are huge refugee flows around the world. The number of displaced persons has surged astronomically since 2010.
America is being governed by "big tech" companies, and America is moving in the direction of a Stalinist dictatorship.
Stock prices are at astronomically high valuations, and global debt is unsustainable in the hundreds of trillions.
I find the madness of today's world personally overwhelming. To say that it's a world that is senseless to me is an understatement. I can understand how King Solomon saw a world of madness and folly and chaos.
Generational Dynamics is less about predictions than it is about trends. And the madness and folly and chaos trends are growing worse every day. These are the trends, and the trends are unstoppable. Every aspect of today's world is worse than yesterday's world. The only good news is that today's world is better than tomorrow's world.
If something can't go on forever, then it won't.
People talk about how to prevent World War III. But Generational Dynamics sees a world that needs World War III. Each day's delay means that World War III will be even worse.
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(8-Feb-2021)
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China may intervene in Myanmar
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The military in Myanmar (Burma) on Sunday arrested the country's nominal leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and about 45 other government officials, in a military coup. Army chief Min Aung Hlaing declared a state of emergency, and claims that the state of emergency will last a year, and then there will be new elections.
Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a landslide victory two months ago in November's parliamentary elections, with 80% of the seats. The army's political party suffered a huge defeat, and risked losing a great deal of power when the new parliament was seated, which was scheduled for today (Monday).
In 2010, the army released Suu Kyi from detention after 21 years. She had been under detention since the 1988 student protests, in which she participated. During her time in detention, she won a Nobel Peace Prize.
She went into politics and became country leader under the condition that she "share power" with the army. There have been numerous disagreements between the two, but apparently there was always one area of agreement: Aung Sang Suu Kyi and the army and the Buddhist monks, led by monk Ashin Wirathu, committed massive genocide, atrocities and ethnic cleansing on ethnic Rohingya Muslims. Suu Kyi still retains her Nobel Peace Prize anyway.
On Monday, the NLD issued a statement that had been written by Suu Kyi in advance, in anticipation of the coup. In the statement, Suu Kyi called on the country’s 55 million people to oppose a return to “military dictatorship.” The implication is that she is asking her supporters to protest and riot.
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Army general Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the coup, became head of the army in 2011. That was the same year that Burma's security forces began committing atrocities on Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State. The atrocities were supported by Buddhist monks, led by Buddhist Monk Ashin Wirathu. The United Nations described it as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing." The atrocities included gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign. Aung Sang Suu Kyi told reporters nothing had happened.
In 2013, a mob of Buddhists attacked a Rohingya village, hacking 20 boys to death, and reduced an entire established community of 12,000 Muslims, including homes, shops and mosques, to ashes and rubble. Aung Sang Suu Kyi told reporters nothing had happened.
A massive period of full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing began in August 2017. Tens of thousands were killed, and 730,000 refugees were forced across the border into Bangladesh, where they're still living in the crowded, filthy Cox's Bazar refugee camp.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice in the Hague held a trial on Burma's genocide, and Aung Sang Suu Kyi came and defended the army, saying that nothing had happened.
So Aung Sang Suu Kyi is just a useful idiot, becoming a war criminal herself and serving the needs of the Burmese army war criminal, by presenting a sympathetic, tired, weary, female face to the world to deflect the horrors and atrocities that are occurring in their country.
These atrocities have been going on since 2011, but almost nobody cared, or even cares much now, because of Aung Sang Suu Kyi's tired, weary, female face, reciting the words of her puppetmaster Min Aung Hlaing. Most Burmese people are well aware of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. But they aren't bothered by it. They love it. "Go on!" you might imagine millions of Burmese saying in unison. "Torture the Rohingyas some more! Rape them some more! Slit their throats, so that their impure blood waters the furrows of our farmland!"
The Burmese hatred of the Rohingyas is not rare. That kind of ethnic hatred is common in several countries today and recently. It's the rule. It's the Chinese hatred of Uighurs. It's the Zimbabwe Shona hatred of the Nbdele. It's the Syrian Alawite hatred of Arab Sunnis. It's the Rwandan Hutu hatred of Tutsis. It's the Nazi hatred of Jews. In America today, it's the Democrats' hatred of the 74 million Tea Partiers and Trump supporters, as I described at length in "12-Jan-21 World View -- America and the standard Genocide Playbook".
Aung Sang Suu Kyi sold herself, her self-respect, and her soul out to become a useful idiot for the Burmese army war criminals. As often happens by groups united only by hatred and criminality, the army and Aung Sang Suu Kyi have now become enemies. The army has arrested Aung Sang Suu Kyi and dozens of people in her government, but the army just lost an election in a landslide, and they can't arrest the millions of people who supported her. (This is also a lesson for America.)
Aung Sang Suu Kyi has called on her millions of supporters to oppose the coup with protests. This could easily unravel into full-scale riots. However, the Burmese security forces were extremely violent for years against the Rohingyas, and they won't hesitate to be equally violent against their own people. They can also count on support from the Chinese Communists, who conduct their own violence against Uighurs, Tibetans, Buddhists, Christians, and anyone who disagrees with them.
Myanmar and China share a common border, and they have a great deal in common, especially since both are committing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslims, of Rohingyas and Uighurs, respectively. That must give them a lot to talk about, to discuss the best methods for torture and enslavement. Indeed, in a meeting last month with Min Aung Hlaing, China's foreign minister Wang Yi called the two countries “brothers” while praising the military’s “national revitalization.” Myanmar has promised to "continue to support China's position on issues related to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang." They also support each other in the United Nations, when they're accused of crimes against humanity. It takes one to know one.
China is heavily involved in building Myanmar's infrastructure, including a joint construction project to build the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The CMEC focuses on 12 areas including basic infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, finance, human resource development and telecommunications.
China is also practicing "vaccine diplomacy," by promising to provide 300,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines to Myanmar.
However, China and Burma have also had strong disagreements over separatist ethnic groups. In August 2009, there was violent fighting between Burma's army and rebels from the Kokang ethnic group. This angered the Chinese because the Kokang are a Han Chinese minority, and got China's army involved briefly.
The wild card in this situation is the separatist Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is demanding a separate state for the Kachin ethnic group. They've joined together with the Shan ethnic group and other ethnic groups in northern Burma, along the border with China, to form a "northern alliance" against Burma's army. In northern Shan state, intense fighting has occurred since January 2018 and intensified since December 2020. There are an estimated 7 ethnic armed organizations, 20 militia groups, and 7 Border Guard Forces (BGFs) actively engaged in an armed independence movement against the Myanmar government.
Burma's last two generational crisis wars (1886-91 and 1948-58) were extremely bloody and violent civil wars involving multiple ethnic groups. (See "Burma: Growing demonstrations by the '88 Generation' raise fears of new slaughter")
62 years have passed since the climax of the last generational crisis war, so Burma is ripe for cycling around and having a new violent ethnic civil war. China was heavily involved in the 1950s crisis war, and they would be involved in a new Myanmar civil war, possibly destabilizing the entire region.
Pretty much everyone is shocked that the army engineered this coup at this time. Analysts are puzzled by why the army took this step right now, since they pretty much control everything anyway, even with Aung San Suu Kyi as the nominal leader.
So the following is speculation: Perhaps the Burmese army has intelligence that sees signs of new KIA activity, and they want to lock everything down. As I said, this is speculation, but the current situation appears to be potentially very unstable, with an army coup, with threats of protests and riots by Aung Sang Suu Kyi's millions of supporters, and with the possibility of protests by the Kachin and Shan ethnic groups. It's necessary to watch the situation in Myanmar very carefully in the next few weeks.
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China calls Pompeo 'Mr Liar' displaying 'final hysteria'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump's Secretary of State, made extremely harsh accusations against China on Tuesday, announcing new sanctions on China and declared that China's actions constitute "genocide" and "crimes against humanity."
The harsh accusations refer to China's treatment of the Uighurs in East Turkistan (Xinjiang Province). According to Pompeo's statement:
"For the past four years, this Administration has exposed the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and called it what it is: a Marxist-Leninist regime that exerts power over the long-suffering Chinese people through brainwashing and brute force. We have paid particular attention to the CCP’s treatment of the Uyghur people, a Muslim minority group that resides largely in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Western China. While the CCP has always exhibited a profound hostility to all people of faith, we have watched with growing alarm the Party’s increasingly repressive treatment of the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups. ...Party apparatchiks have denied international observers unhindered access to Xinjiang and denounced reliable reports about the worsening situation on the ground, instead spinning fanciful tales of happy Uyghurs participating in educational, counter-terror, women’s empowerment, and poverty alleviation projects. Meanwhile, they are delivering far darker messages to their own people, portraying Uyghurs as “malignant tumors,” comparing their faith to a “communicable plague,” and exhorting the Party faithful to implement a crushing blow, telling them “you can’t uproot all the weeds hidden among the crops in the field one-by-one; you need to spray chemicals to kill them all.” ...
These crimes are ongoing and include: the arbitrary imprisonmentor other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians, forced sterilization, torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained, forced labor, and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement. The Nuremberg Tribunals at the end of World War II prosecuted perpetrators for crimes against humanity, the same crimes being perpetrated in Xinjiang. In addition, after careful examination of the available facts, I have determined that the PRC, under the direction and control of the CCP, has committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state. The governing authorities of the second most economically, militarily, and politically powerful country on earth have made clear that they are engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group, even as they simultaneously assert their country as a global leader and attempt to remold the international system in their image."
I've been writing about these atrocities for years. Many Washington politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, have been calling on the Trump administration since 2017 to make this determination. In a televised interview on Tuesday on Fox News, Pompeo defended the timing of the announcement, on his last day in office: "Look, I’m happy to accept that critique. What took so long is when you do something like this, you have to be right. You have to – and I think this will be a bipartisan analysis that will be shared by a broad swath of American leadership. Indeed, leaders all across the world I think will recognize that the United States got this right."
Pompeo has made several statements and accusations recently on China. Last week, Pompeo called for a a transparent and thorough investigation into the origin of COVID-19, the Wuhan Coronavrus, including a thorough investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), to investigate the evidence that the virus was created by Chinese scientists and then escaped from the WIV lab.
Pompeo this week released new information concerning the activities inside China’s government laboratories in 2019. According to Pompeo:
"The COVID-19 pandemic was avoidable. Any responsible country would have invited world health investigators to Wuhan within days of an outbreak. China instead refused offers of help – including from the United States – and punished brave Chinese doctors, scientists, and journalists who tried to alert the world to the dangers of the virus. Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the world from this deadly virus, and the next one."
One of those brave Chinese scientists is Li-Meng Yan a virologist who made claims about the creation of the coronavirus and her relationship with the Chinese government, and then had to flee from her life from China. She has taken refuge in United States, at an undisclosed location.
Two weeks ago, Pompeo announced that the State Dept. is lifting its internal restrictions on how American officials may interact with their Taiwanese government counterparts. These complicated restrictions had been in place to enforce the delusional "One China policy," where China and the United States both say that there is but one China, but they don't say who the one China is.
The Trump administration has also increased weapons sales to Taiwan, to help them defend against an expected invasion from China. China has been threatening this invasion for years, and it could occur at any time.
Prior to Tuesday's announcement, where Pompeo accused China of genocide and crimes against humanity targeting the Uighurs, China's statement media went on a hysterical tirade accusing Pompeo of lying and "final hysteria." China blamed Pompeo's hysteria on realizing that he followed the wrong guy as his boss, Donald Trump.
According to China's Global Times:
"A long-term anti-China hawk in the Trump administration, Pompeo tweeted around 30 anti-China posts during the weekend, including verbal attacks on the Communist Party of China (CPC), Chinese media entities, policies concerning the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, China's response to the COVID-19 outbreak and so on. ..."Pompeo is now at the stage of physical and psychological hysteria. Why? Because he is facing such a huge failure in his own political career and rising anxiety in his final days after he realized that he followed the wrong guy as his boss, especially after the Capitol Hill riots," Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University, told the Global Times on Sunday."
We can hardly wait to see how China will react to the accusations of genocide.
This kind of hysteria from the Chinese Communists just emphasizes how delusional Chinese government officials are. Unfortunately, these hysterical delusions make them extremely dangerous.
These recent announcements are fairly certain to be timed to put pressure on the incoming Biden administration not to lose the ground that America has gained versus China during the administration of Donald Trump, who was the first president in decades to confront China on theft of intellectual property and many other Chinese crimes.
There is real concern that Joe Biden himself, who has spent the last year in his basement, is not capable of leading the administration as anything but a figurehead. These concerns have grown as evidence accumulated that Democrats like Eric Swalwell, Dianne Feinstein, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are all totally compromised by the Chinese and Chinese money and Chinese honeypots. China has openly used money and sex to influence American politicians, almost always Democrats, to gain intelligence and compromise policy. With Trump making these harsh accusations in the last few days, the objective of the Trump administration is to pressure the Biden administration and prevent it from simply returning to the previous situation before Trump took office.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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Iran offers Shia fighters to fight the Taliban and ISIS
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Sunday morning, unidentified gunmen, suspected to be from the Taliban, killed two female judges from Afghanistan’s Supreme Court. The two were were driving to their office in a court vehicle, when gunmen riding a motocycle ambushed them and shot them dead.
This was only the latest in a wave of assassinations across the country. In many cases, the targets appear to have been chosen because they're women.
This is happening as delusional peace talks are taking place in Doha, Qatar, between America and the Taliban. Participation of the Afghan government in the peace talks has been limited to nonexistent because the Taliban don't want to talk to the Afghan government. They simply want to use the peace talks as a ruse to get America to withdraw its troops.
In February 2020, Washington agreed with the Taliban to begin withdrawing troops. The Taliban did not have to agree to end its terrorist violence, but it did agree to "tone down" its violence. I guess shooting only two female supreme court judges dead is an example of "toning down" violence.
Donald Trump made a campaign promise of "stopping the endless wars," and so has been ordering the withdrawal of American troops faster than had been anticipated, something that some American military officials opposed. In August of last year, there were 8,000 US troops in Afghanistan, which were cut to 4,500. After losing the election on November 3, Trump fired his Defense Secretary Mark Esper on November 9, apparently because the latter opposed further troop withdrawals, unless the Taliban met its commitments to reduce violence. On Friday of last week, acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller said that further withdrawals have reduced the number to 2,500.
Trump has agreed with the Taliban to withdraw all remaining troops by May 2021. I assume that Trump's intention is to let whatever happens happen after that, even if it means that the Taliban take control of the government, as they had prior to 9/11/2001.
However, that will be devastating for the people of Afghanistan, especially the girls and women. For that reason, president-elect Joe Biden may be forced to postpone any further withdrawals.
Joe Biden has been hiding in his basement for the last year, and has no idea what's going on in Afghanistan. According to some unconfirmed reports, Susan Rice will work behind the scenes to make Biden's foreign policy decisions. Susan Rice is an idiot, but I don't know if she's stated a policy on Afghanistan.
I've written many times that, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, there is no possibility whatsoever of a successful peace agreement. I started writing about this in 2009, when I predicted that Barack Obama's "surge" into Afghanistan would fail. That prediction has been 100% correct so far.
The following is a summary of the Generational Dynamics analysis:
Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.
Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
Based on my work on the book on Vietnam that I'm writing, I was able to extend this analysis in an article last year by comparing the Afghan counterinsurgency efforts to previous counterinsurgency efforts. ( "22-Nov-20 World View -- Afghan 'peace talks' threatened by terrorist rocket attack on Kabul")
Here's a brief summary of the extended analysis:
Iran has recently offered to send Shia militias into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and ISIS in Afghanistan. These Shia militias would presumably be withdrawn from Syria, and consist of thousands of ethnic Hazaras and other Shia fighters previously recruited from Afghanistan to support Bashar al-Assad's genocide in Syria.
This is certainly an interesting proposal. Since Iran and Afghanistan are in generational Awakening/Unraveling eras, this would not lead to an "explosion" as some people are suggesting, but it would lead to local clashes between the Hazaras and the Pashtuns. The Hazaras are already under frequent terror attacks by the Pashtuns, and those would expand.
We'll have to wait and see if this goes anywhere.
Since the peace talks under Trump were always completely delusional, they're going to end one way or another without accomplishing their supposed objective.
When the Taliban's spring fighting season begins this year, I would expect to see a surge in terrorist violence, whether American troops have been completely withdrawn or not.
The Biden administration will be under tremendous pressure to cancel the May 2021 withdrawal, and probably will do so.
Here's some advice for the Biden administration from the Atlantic Council:
"The new administration should affirm its support of the ongoing Doha peace negotiations. It should pause further US troop withdrawals until it can conduct an expedited inter-agency policy review. The review should include consultations with NATO, the European Union, and other allies who have faithfully partnered with the United States in Afghanistan. It should include a re-examination of military drawdowns not only as part of a political strategy, but also as they relate to assuring that remaining US forces, diplomats, and other personnel are secure."
This would abandon the existing peace agreement at just about the time of the Taliban's spring fighting season. It is a prescription to continue the status quo indefinitely, and with the increase in Taliban violence, Biden might actually be forced to increase the number of American troops again.
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The January 6 attack on the Capitol building by Trump supporters
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As regular readers know, everything I write is, as much as possible, from a historical perspective. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. As King Solomon said, there's nothing new under the sun.
So before describing how America is in the early stages of the Genocide Playbook, I have to describe what the Genocide Playbook is, and how common it is.
I want to emphasize that this is nothing rare. This is going on in multiple countries today. As regular readers know, I've written thousands of articles describing current and historical events in hundreds of countries, and the Genocide Playbook is a pattern that is not only not rare, but is actually very common, and is the rule.
Here's an outline of how the pattern works:
I will repeat several times: This pattern is not rare. It is common. It is the rule.
Let's look at some examples where the Genocide Playbook is in use today in its later stages:
Hong Kong is in the early stages of the Genocide Playbook. The Communists are already targeting pro-democracy activists with violence and jailing without evidence. If some pro-democracy activist now commits an act of violence, whether organic or a setup by the Communists, then the Communists will declare all pro-democracy activists to be terrorists, and will crack down on them violently.
Of all the countries today, China has been the most effective in using censorship in its genocide playbook.
In 2013 there was a super-Kristallnacht type attack, when a mob of Buddhists attacked a Rohingya village, hacking 20 boys to death, and reducing an entire established community of 12,000 Muslims, including homes, shops and mosques, to ashes and rubble.
In August 2017, Rohingya insurgents carried out a series of coordinated attacks against 30 Burma police outposts and an army base, killing at least a dozen security force members. This was the event that the Burmese were hoping and waiting for. After that, they carried out a massive program of genocide and ethnic cleansing, forcing hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas across the border into Bangladesh refugee camps, where they remain to this day.
I wanted to give examples of genocide taking place today to show that the Genocide Playbook isn't some science fiction concept, but is commonly used in many countries.
Of course it was also used in Nazi Germany, when Hitler used the burning down of the Reichstag to attack all communists, and then used minor terrorist acts by Jews to claim that all Jews were terrorists, leading to the Holocaust.
I never thought I'd see the Genocide Playbook pattern being used in America. This is the darkest time for America in my memory.
As I've said many times, the Democrats' vitriolic hatred for Trump has nothing to do with Trump. They used to love Trump when he was a TV star. They only began to hate him when they transferred their vitriolic hatred of Tea Partiers to him.
And the vitriolic hatred of Tea Partiers was enormous during the Obama administration. Obama and Joe Biden both referred to Tea Partiers and Republicans in general as terrorists, racists and teabaggers. The word "teabaggers" is an especially vile epithet, as bad as the n-word. Can you imagine someone saying that all Democrats are the n-word? That would be extremely vile and hateful, and that shows how vile and hateful the Democrats were to Tea Partiers and Republicans.
And why were Obama and Biden calling them racists, terrorists and teabaggers? It's because they opposed Obama policies -- Obama's budget, Obamacare, or gun control for example. No matter what the policy, if Tea Partiers opposed it, it's not because the policies were bad (which they were). It's because the Tea Partiers were racists, terrorists and teabaggers.
The Democrats' hatred went even beyond that, saying that they had some kind of neurological disorder that turned them into violent racists. This is similar to the kinds of things that Hitler said about the Jews.
The following are excerpts from a newsbusters.org article from 2009 that I saved from my archives. As far as I know, this article is no longer online.
"Garofalo: Tea Party Goers Are Racists Who Hate Black PresidentBy Noel Sheppard | April 16, 2009 | 23:56
During last year's election campaign, liberal media members treated Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin with a hatred most Americans had never witnessed from the press.
On Thursday's "Countdown," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and his guest Janeane Garofalo defamed fellow citizens who attended the prior day's Tea Parties with the same vitriolic contempt.
Garofalo actually called Party-goers "a bunch of teabagging rednecks," adding "this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up."
But that's just the beginning, for what Olbermann and Garofalo engaged in Thursday evening is amongst the most vile, hate-filled attacks on average American citizens ever conveyed on national television by so-called journalists.
KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: Well, the teabagging is all over, except for the cleanup. And that will be my last intentional double entendre on this one at least until the end of this segment. Our number two story tonight, the sad reality behind the corporate sponsored Tea Parties, visual proof that this is not about spending, deficits, or taxes, but about some Americans getting riled up by the people who caused these things, and finally about some Americans who just hate the president of the United States. ...
And then there were the protest messages, seething with hate. [Neil] Cavuto calling that hate bipartisan. "They hate Republicans who waste money, they hate Democrats who waste money." ...
OLBERMANN: Congratulations, Pensacola teabaggers. You got spunked. And despite the hatred on display, a few of you actually violated the penal code. But teabagging is now petered out, taint what it used to be. ... On a more serious note, we're now joined by actor, activist Janeane Garofalo. Good to see you.
JANEANE GAROFALO: Thank you. You know, there's nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry at a speech they're not quite certain what he's saying. It sounds right and then it doesn't make sense. Which, let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. And there is no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they'll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become -- it's like showing Frankenstein's monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don't know, because their limbic brain, we've discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it's pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring. Is Bernie Goldberg listening? ...
GAROFALO: Because Bernie might not have heard this when I said this the first time. So, Bernie, this is for you. It is a neurological problem we're dealing with. ...
GAROFALO: I don't think you do, for most of them. This is a -- it's almost pathological or elevated to a philosophy or lifestyle. And again, this is about racism. It could be any issue, any port in the storm. These guys hate that a black guy is in the White House. But they immigrant bash, they pretend taxes and tea bags, and like I said, most of them probably couldn't tell you thing one about taxation without representation, the Boston tea party, the British imperialism, whatever the history lesson has to be. But these people, all white for the most part, unless there's some people with Stockholm syndrome there.
OLBERMANN: And, I didn't see them, the fact that they weren't near the cameras which is bad strategy on the part of the people that were staging this at Fox.
GAROFALO: True, and Fox News loves to foment this anti-intellectualism because that's their bread and butter. If you have a cerebral electorate, Fox news goes down the toilet, very, very fast. But it is sick and sad to see Neil Cavuto doing that. They've been doing it for years, that's why Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch started this venture, is to disinform and to coarsen and dumb down a certain segment of the electorate. But what is really, I didn't know there were so many racists left. I didn't know that. I -- you know, because as I've said, the Republican hype and the conservative movement has now crystallized into the white power movement.
OLBERMANN: Is that not a bad, long-term political strategy because even though your point is terrifying that there are that many racists left, the flip side of it is there aren't that many racists left.
GAROFALO: They're the minority, but literally tens of people showed up to this thing across the country.
OLBERMANN: But if you spear your television network or your political party towards a bunch of guys looking who are just looking for a reason to yell at the black president, eventually you will marginalize yourself out of business, won't you?
GAROFALO: Here's what the right-wing has in, there's no shortage of the natural resources of ignorance, apathy, hate, fear. As long as those things are in the collective conscious and unconscious, the Republicans will have some votes. Fox News will have some viewers. But what else have they got? If they didn't do that, who is going to watch -- you know what I mean? They have tackled that elusive clam -- you know, the clam, the 18 to 35 clam -- klan. Klan. With a k demo. But, you know, who else is Fox talking to? I mean, what is it urban older white guys? And the girlfriend, and, you know, the women who suffer from Stockholm syndrome gain. There's a lot of Stockholm syndrome, is what I'm saying ultimately. What else do you want to know?
OLBERMANN: What happens if somebody who's at one of these things hurt somebody?
GAROFALO: That is an unfortunate byproduct since the dawn of time of a volatile group like this of the limbic brain. Violence unfortunately may or may not ensue. It always, it's like a, the Republican Party now depends upon immigrant bashing and hating the black guy in the White House. Will people act on that? It's not new. But, you know, Fox doesn't mind fomenting it. Michelle Bachmann doesn't mine fomenting it. Glenn Beck doesn't mind fomenting it.
OLBERMANN: Lou Dobbs.
GAROFALO: Lou Dobbs. Oh, man he sure doesn't mind. But this is, this their, what have they got if they don't have this? You know what I mean? It's like an identity politics of the worst kind. ...
OLBERMANN: Janeane Garofalo, number five, comedian, actress, political activist, and the expert on the limbic brain, great thanks as always.
GAROFALO: Very much thanks to you."
The reference to "Bernie" is Bernard Goldberg, a hated conservative commentator, whose web site is still online at https://bernardgoldberg.com/. The hatemongers also mention Lou Dobbs and Neil Cavuto, who still have shows on Fox Business Network.
So those 60 million Tea Partiers have become 75 million Trump supporters, and the Democrats have the same vitriolic hatred for them.
Once again, I have to emphasize that this isn't rare. This kind of hatred is common. It's the Chinese hatred of Uighurs. It's the Burmese Buddhist hatred of Rohingyans. It's the Syrian Alawite hatred of Arab Sunnis. It's the Rwandan Hutu hatred of Tutsis. It's the Nazi hatred of Jews.
I wish I understood this kind of hatred. In the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans freed the slaves. The Democrats bitterly opposed ending slavery, and after they lost the Civil War, they formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) militia, which the Democrats used for the next century to lynch, torture, rape and execute blacks. If today you're a Democrat who hates Trump supporters, then a century ago you would have been a Democrat in the KKK, cheering the lynching, torture, rape and killing of blacks. I don't know why that kind of thing is in the DNA of the Democrats, or why it's in the DNA of the Chinese or Burmese Buddhists or Nazis or the other groups I mentioned. Like the Genocide Playbook, it's not rare. It is very common. It is the rule.
At the beginning of this article I described the Genocide Playbook, and these were the last two items: "Sooner or later there is some kind of violent incident by a few people in the target group. This incident might occur organically, or it might be a setup by the élites. The élites use this incident to justify complete censorship, violence, abuse and control towards the target group and, in the extreme, commits genocide and ethnic cleansing."
In the current situation, the violent incident was the January 6 attack on the Capitol building by Trump supporters.
This resulted from Donald Trump's disastrous decision to hold a rally with hundreds of thousands of supporters, and then tell them to march to the Capitol building to pressure the politicians to do their jobs and object to the electors in six states. He's been accused of purposely inciting violence, which was clearly the opposite of his intention. He may be accused of stupid blunders and reckless actions, but it was clearly not his intention to incite violence, even if that was the unintended consequence.
The violent Capitol building incident is the culmination of the Genocide Playbook strategy towards Tea Partiers and Trump supporters that the Democrats have been using since the Obama administration. It's what they've been hoping for to crush the Trump supporters once and for all. The Democrats made vile attacks on Tea Partiers during the Obama administration, as we've described, calling them terrorists, racists and teabaggers, just for opposing Obama's policies. Conservatives on college campuses and in businesses could lose their jobs for saying something as simple as "Marriage is between a man and a woman."
The Democrats have gotten away with phony and illegal anti-Trump investigations and impeachments, encouraging antifa-blm fascists to riot and burn down small businesses, using pandemic lockdowns to shut down millions of small businesses, censoring any news that criticizes Biden or exposes Hunter Biden's criminality, and flooding the country with millions of unsolicited ballots and using the the resulting chaos to rig the election with voting fraud and steal the election from Trump -- all with total impunity. The Democrats are gloating that they can get away with anything, and they are escalating their threats.
During the last year, antifa-blm fascists, encouraged by Democrats, tore down statues and burned down not only businesses, but also police stations, courthouses, and even St John's Episcopal Church, near the White House. These are clearly terrorist acts, but the Democrats not only didn't condemn them, but encouraged them and censored them in the media. That's why these acts by the Democrats are analogous to the Nazi Kristallnacht.
Biden's vitriolic comments towards Trump supporters at his press conference last week not only expressed his personal hatred of Tea Partiers and Trump supporters, but also incited further violence. Biden even compared Republican Senators to Nazis. I'm tempted to say that these remarks prove that Biden is the one with the neurological disorder, not the hated Tea Partiers. Biden even was an admirer of Robert Byrd, a Great Kleagle (or something like that) in the Ku Klux Klan that lynched and tortured blacks.
There's increasing evidence that the Democrats provoked the attack on the Capitol building by providing only a bare skeleton security force to protect the building, even though it was known for many days that an attack was imminent.
Obama's Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta criticized the Capitol Police for being completely unprepared, even though "everyone knew that there would be people ... creating havoc":
"What the hell was law enforcement on Capitol Hill thinking by not having secured the Capitol today? ...Everybody knew that there would be a disturbance. Everybody knew that there would be people who were interested in doing nothing else but creating havoc in the Capitol. And very frankly, it was the responsibility of law enforcement and the Capitol Hill police to secure the Capitol, and I'm not sure what happened that allowed this event."
It is now reported that the FBI and the NYPD both warned the Capitol police that there were groups planning violent attacks, but the Capitol police only provided a skeleton force to block them, in effect indirectly provoking those attacks.
These facts may come out in the investigation. But whether the Democrats purposely provoked the attack, or whether it was simply incompetence by the police, it is clearly the violent incident that the Democrats hoped for and are using as part of their strategy to completely destroy the Republican Party and Trump's supporters.
As I've said repeatedly, these kinds of actions are not rare. They're common, and they're occurring today in many countries in various stages. Still, it is almost beyond belief to me that four companies -- Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon -- have successfully colluded to completely shut down Parler.com, a successful and growing online service with millions of users -- for purely political reasons as part of the Democrats' Genocide Playbook strategy. This is the kind of thing that occurs in Russia and China and Cuba and North Korea and Venezuela and totalitarian countries. It was never supposed to happen in America.
Even though this is very common, I never never thought I'd see the Genocide Playbook being used in America. This is the darkest time for America in my memory.
Will the Democrats' use of the Genocide Playbook lead to actual genocide and ethnic cleansing? No. For that they would at least need backing from the army, which obviously they don't have.
In fact, what the Democrats are doing is so completely bizarre and outrageous, so destructive and self-destructive, and so un-American, that it can't possibly last long.
Still, how is this going to end?
First, Donald Trump and his 75 million supporters are not dead and buried. Every Trump voter I've seen interviewed on TV says the same thing: That Trump actually speaks to them, and the others in Washington ignore them. That's why they're loyal to Trump. Trump says that he has some major announcement coming. We'll see what he says.
Second, Parler.com is not dead and buried. The Democrats have gotten Parler offline for now, but Parler has enough support to build its own datacenter and cloud to replace Amazon's AWS, and it will be online again.
In fact, if I were a business using Amazon's AWS cloud service, then I would look at this situation in horror, knowing that Amazon could shut me down at any time for any foolish reason. No one believes that shutting down Parler had anything to do with violence. It had everything to do with isolating 75 million Trump supporters and with eliminating a competitor to twitter. If Amazon can come after Parler, they can come after anyone.
Furthermore, Twitter, Google and Facebook made huge amounts of money because of Trump in the last few years because of Trump. With Trump gone, and with their contemptuous treatment of Trump supporters, they're going to lose a lot of money. But, no worry, the execs will be ok. Many of them are taking jobs in the Biden administration.
It's quite possible that Parler will come back with a vengeance and become a major business threat to Twitter. If not Parler, then another service. This is what always happens.
In fact, another conservative social media service, Gab.com, has signed up millions of new users in the last few days. If you access the site, the reason that it's slow is because it's being overwhelmed by new users.
Third, and this is how it will really end.
As I've been saying for years, there will be a global financial crisis and third world war with China, and this will unify the country, and end all political divisiveness. That will be the end of silliness and political correctness, and the beginning of a real existential crisis.
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China's delusional geopolitical strategy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China state media reports that China's top economic planner has authorized power plants to import coal without clearance restrictions from several countries "except for Australia." This implies that China is formalizing its ban on imported Australian coal. Australian coal been informally banned for months in the sense that dozens of vessels carrying Australian coal have been stranded offshore, blocked from entering China's ports.
China began an economic war on Australia in April, with economic boycotts and blacklisting of imports from Australia, when Australia called for an international investigation on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. China responded by telling Australian officials, "China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy."
Australia has also criticized China over the arrest of millions of Uighurs and imprisoning them in concentration camps. These criticisms have also infuriated the Chinese Communists.
The ban on Australian coal imports has not yet been officially confirmed by the Chinese Communists. However, the state media report is another escalation in China's war of threats, extortion and bribery against Australia.
China's escalating economic war on Australia comes at a time of newly discovered documents that provide a clear picture of how up to a million Uighurs are being forced into slavery in manufacturing, in garment making, and in picking of cotton.
It's been obvious for years that this has been going on, as I've written in the past. Xi Jinping is an admirer of Adolf Hitler, who created one of the largest forced labor systems in history: Over twenty million foreign civilian workers, concentration camp prisoners and prisoners of war from all of the occupied countries were required to perform forced labor in Germany.
The picking of cotton is a particularly emotional issue because American black slaves were forced to pick cotton for their white masters, prior to the freeing of the slaves by Abraham Lincoln. Xi Jinping is going in the opposite direction of Abraham Lincoln. Xi Jinping is forcing more and more Uighurs to pick cotton for their Chinese Communist masters. It's likely that Tibetans and other minorities are being treated the same way. China supplies 20% of the world's cotton.
A web site reader has forwarded to me an investment newsletter written by an analyst close to the Chinese Communist Party that describes Xi Jinping's geopolitical strategy over the next five years for gaining hegemony over the entire world. It could have come from China's Central Committee. It's a breathtaking plan, comparable to similar plans by such historical luminaries as Adolf Hitler and Julius Caesar.
I'll be posting a full analysis at some point, but here's a summary: Guided by China's leadership, countries throughout Africa, Asia and the Mideast will put aside their disagreements. Old hatreds will be mended by necessity, to attract capital for investments. These include countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan. China will create a "global colossal," of dozens of countries in a massive multi-country partnership, bound together by China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The plan specifies concessions to be made by one nation after another to "mend old hatreds," but it doesn't contain a single example of China making any concession whatsoever.
According to the newsletter: "The big question is how America will respond to the challenge of connecting so much of the world through trade and peace. Their containment policy has failed so far. The choice is either to join this more peaceful venture or to fight it. If the latter choice is adopted it will result in a global war between America and its remaining allies and the combined forces of China and Russia."
This is a completely delusional fantasy, of course, but it feeds into the Chinese Communist and Confucian view that they're the Master Race, and the rest of us are barbarians, with no other purpose than to work for and pay tribute to the Chinese, in the same way that donkeys work for farmers.
As Leon Festinger has shown, the problem with a person believing in and being committed to a totally delusional fantasy is that when something goes wrong, the person suffers cognitive dissonance and desperately doubles down on the fantasy, trying to make it come true. In countries, this only happens when the country is a dictatorship, where no one can challenge the fantasy view without being jailed, tortured or executed. That explains what happened in Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. In Xi Jinping's case, this could involve Chinese military action that leads to a regional war, spreading to a world war.
China's delusional geopolitical strategy has been fed a powerful drug-like boost this year by the Chinese Communists' apparent success with the Wuhan Coronavirus. Donald Trump is the first president in decades to stand up to the Chinese, rather than appeasing them. At the beginning of 2020, it appeared that Trump would coast to re-election. But instead, China's intentional spread of Wuhan Coronavirus to countries around the world, including the United States, has resulted in the election of Joe Biden who, along with his son Hunter Biden and other Democrats, have totally compromised relationships with China. At the very least, China can expect to use threats, bribery and extortion on the Bidens and the Democrats to force the US to return to a policy of full-scale appeasement.
This apparent victory would be like a drug to the Xi Jinping, who is convinced that their plan of global hegemony is working.
But an example of what can go wrong occurred in April when Australia called for an international investigation of the source of the pandemic. China responded by telling Australian officials, "China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy." Such an investigation would derail the Chinese plan, and so they doubled down on their strategy by declaring economic war on Australia.
The Chinese Communists will certainly consider this to be another victory since, we assume, no other country would now dare to call for an international investigation of the source of the pandemic. China's policy of threats, bribery and extortion has won again.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(16-Dec-2020)
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Israel's 'pragmatic' foreign policy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Morocco and Israel on Thursday agreed to normalize relations, in an agreement mediated by president Donald Trump, and described as "historic." This is the fourth such agreement since September, after agreements between Israel and United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan were also signed. The first Arab countries to recognize Israel were Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
As part of this deal, the United States changed longstanding US policy and recognized Morocco’s claims over the disputed Western Sahara region.
Morocco has had a large Jewish population for centuries. Before Israel's establishment in 1948, Morocco was home to a large Jewish population, many of whose ancestors migrated to North Africa from Spain and Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition. Today, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews trace their lineage to Morocco, making it one of the country's largest sectors of Israeli society, and a small community of Jews, estimated at several thousand people, continues to live in Morocco.
Trump announced the agreement in a series of tweets in which he thanked Morocco for being one of the first nations to recognize the United States shortly after it declared independence from Britain:
"Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Morocco’s serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity!Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!
Morocco recognized the United States in 1777. It is thus fitting we recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara."
As in the case of the previous agreements, the Palestinian authorities are infuriated. In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said: “This is a sin and it doesn’t serve the Palestinian people. The Israeli occupation uses every new normalization to increase its aggression against the Palestinian people and increase its settlement expansion.”
The Trump administration is pressuring Saudi Arabia to join with the other countries in normalizing relations with Israel. The Saudis have given tacit approval to the normalization process, but Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said last week Riyadh would only consider such a move if a peace deal "delivers a Palestinian state with dignity and with a workable sovereignty that Palestinians can accept."
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The agreement is receiving criticism from the United Nations, because the UN does not recognize Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara.
The region, Spanish Sahara, was a Spanish protectorate until Morocco achieved independence in 1956, and then claimed sovereignty over Western Sahara in 1957, although Spanish troops repelled the Moroccan military from the territory.
In the 1970s, a guerrilla insurgency of nomadic ethnic Sahrawis sprang up, calling itself the Polisario Front, and calling for the formation of a new nation, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). This led to clashes between the Moroccans and the Polisario Front, until a ceasefire was agreed in 1991.
The ceasefire broke down last month. The Polisario Front has declared a "state of war," and the UN has received reports of several "shooting incidents" made by either side.
The Polisario Front is supported by Algeria and South Africa. The intervention by the Trump administration is an important symbolic change in the situation, and will energize the Moroccans. The U.S. is now the only Western country to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, providing a diplomatic breakthrough for which the kingdom has lobbied for decades.
As I reported in February of this year, 15 years ago Israel made a startling policy change and adopted a new "pragmatic" foreign policy. (See "6-Feb-20 World View -- Israeli diplomat reveals Israel's startling new 'pragmatic' foreign policy")
In the new "pragmatic" foreign policy, adopted around 2004, Israel no longer considers itself to be a Mideast country, so much as a European country. It no longer pretends to try to integrate itself into the Mideast. Instead, under Israel's pragmatic policy, the Arabs and Israelis continue to hate each other, but Israel would use money and trade incentives to "buy" peace with its Arab neighbors. The Trump-mediated peace agreements with UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco appear to be the implementation of this pragmatic strategy.
Al-Jazeera's political analyst Marwan Bishara, who hates Israel but who hates the Palestinian Authority even more for traitoriously negotiating peace with Israel, said that the new announcement was another example of "America as a diplomatic mercenary on behalf of Israel. ... Let’s call it what it is – the imperial proclamation. At the end of the day, Washington is using its influence around the world on behalf of Israel, or rather Israel is outsourcing American power for its own benefit in the greater Middle East."
Bishara puts his hatred of Israel on full display, but his political interpretation is more or less consistent with Israel's pragmatic foreign policy.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
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(11-Dec-2020)
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China's official list of 14 blunt complaints about Australia's government
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The toxic relationship between the government of Australia and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has become increasingly apparent after a blunt verbal CCP attack on Australia's government, accusing it of "poisoning bilateral relations," at the same time the China is escalating its economic boycotts and blacklisting of imports from Australia.
Commenting on China's action, a CCP official said to Australian officials: "China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy."
On Friday, China announced 107% to 212% tariffs on wine imported from Australia. This is only the latest economic attack by China on Australia. In recent months, China has been blacklisting one Australian product after another, including lobster, cherries, beef, sugar, cotton, barley and timber. Another blacklisted import is coal. More than 50 ships have been anchored off Chinese ports for months waiting to deliver $500 million of Australian ports.
However, the most important commodity that China imports from Australia remains untouched -- the $60 billion worth of iron ore that Australia exports to China annually, and which China desperately needs.
Although these disputes have been simmering for years, China began an extremely agressive series of economic attacks on Australia in April, when Australian officials called for a joint international investigation of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Australia's announcement was thought to be targeting China, which has repeatedly tried to dodge responsibility for the Wuhan Coronavirus.
Earlier this year, the CCP was blaming the US army for developing the virus and somehow secretly spreading it in China's Wuhan wet markets. Lately, CCP officials have been promoting a bizarre claim that the virus originated elsewhere and arrived in China on frozen food packaging.
So an Australian call for an international investigation on the origins of the virus has brought about the CCP's usual hysterical rantings and threats and demands that everyone shut up and do as China tells them. However, this time, the CCP has backed up its hysterical rantings with the boycott of Australia's products.
The CCP has also been infuriated by Australia's criticisms of China's National Security Law, which has effectively ended the Hong Kong democracy that was supposed to last until at least 2047.
Bribery and extortion are the CCP's standard foreign policy tools, and China has used these tools for years to force dozens of countries to involuntarily end diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Now China is using the same techniques against a much larger country, Australia.
Australia’s former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says that China's tactics fail will only damage China's standing abroad.
"The fundamental point is this: when someone tries to coerce you or bully you, threaten you, you can’t take a backward step.If you do, then all that will do is invite more coercive activity. The best thing that can happen, frankly, is for this episode to come to an end, and for Australia and China to get back to a traditional, businesslike relationship.
Has it won China more influence? No. Has it won China more friends [or] persuaded other countries to be more compliant? No ... if the object of your foreign policy is, among other things, to win friends and increase your influence in the world, how is any of this helpful?"
Turnbull is saying in calm diplomatic terms the same thing that I've been saying for years: That the CCP policies are insane, and always make any situation worse.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, mutual relations between China and Australia have become increasingly hostile for the last few years, and as the populations of both countries are becoming increasingly nationalistic and belligerent in the generational Crisis era, this worsening situation will lead to war.
This is also a good time to respond to the frequently heard statements like, "Countries A and B will never go to war, because trade between the two countries is good, and war will be bad for business." If this were true, there would never have been a war. What actually happens is that trade does not prevent a war. Instead, trade makes the situation worse, because the stronger trading partner uses trade as one more weapon of war, as we're seeing now in the case of China and Australia.
Last week, in another incredibly bizarre CCP move, a sheet of paper containing 14 blunt complaints about Australia's government was leaked to three Australian news agencies. In other words, these were official complaints by the CCP, but instead of notifying Australia's government directly, or instead of posting them on a web site, the Chinese Embassy called up reporters and scheduled meetings, but said nothing at the meetings except to hand over, in each case, the sheet of paper.
The list included complaints about Australia's banning Huawei's 5G routers on national security grounds, complaints about speaking out about the South China Sea, and complaints about "siding with the US" anti-China campaign.
The following is the official list of 14 complaints, as they were printed on the Embassy official's sheet of paper:
In other words, shut up and do as you're told.
This is a good time to repeat the situation with China's 5G routers. It is absolutely certain that these routers contain "backdoors" that permit China's military not only to spy on any traffic traveling through them, but also to control them, possibly shutting down entire networks in time of war.
First off, I'm the expert on this subject, not some reporter or politician who majored in sociology or women's studies in college. I spent five years of my career developing board-level operating systems for embedded systems, so I know how easy it would be to install a "backdoor" into a device that would allow the device to be controlled remotely by China's military. Furthermore, an implementation that uses public/private key encryption technology could be designed in such a way that the backdoor could not be detected, even by someone who suspects that the backdoor is there.
I have the skills to do this fairly easily, and there are undoubtedly many Chinese engineers with the same skills. So it would be very easy for Huawei to install undetectable backdoors into all its devices, allowing the devices to be controlled by China's military. Furthermore, in 2017, the CCP passed the National Intelligence Law, which demands that all organizations, including Huawei, "support, cooperate with, and collaborate with" China's military in collecting intelligence, even when doing so is illegal. That makes it certain that Huawei's routers can be controlled remotely by China's military.
So any country or company that has installed Huawei networks and devices can be easily spied on by China's military, and the network can be controlled or shut down by China's military, for example at time of war.
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(28-Nov-2020)
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Conflicting American values in Vietnam and Afghanistan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A terrorist barrage of dozens of rockets were fired into residential areas of the the heavily fortified Green Zone of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city, killing at least eight civilians and wounding dozens more on Saturday.
The Taliban, which is engaged with the United States in so-called "peace talks" taking place in Doha, Qatar, has denied responsibility for the attack.
On the other hand, ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks. ISIS is a terrorist group, imported from Syria, in competition with the Taliban to win the prize as the better terrorists.
This occurs amid the backdrop of negotiations taking place in Doha, Qatar, between representatives of America and the Taliban. For a long time, the Taliban refused to allow the Afghan government of president Ashraf Ghani to send representatives to the negotiations, but they've generously lifted that restriction in the last few months. However, as I understand it, the Taliban and Afghan government do not talk to each other, but only engage in "proximity talks." This hilarious phrase means that the two groups are in separate rooms, and a negotiator trots back and forth between the rooms to further the "talks."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Doha on Saturday, where he met separately with the Taliban and Afghan government negotiators. Presumably, Pompeo served as the proximity talk mediator on this occasion.
According to reports, the talks have not even reached the stage for producing a timeline. The original claim was that the Taliban would end its terrorist violence, but, as I understand it, the current demand is that the Taliban "tone down" the violence. (Believe it or not, that's the phrase used by an analyst on tv.)
So the peace talks are a huge joke, and have never been anything but a huge joke. But they do have one purpose: They provide political cover for the Trump administration to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, which was a campaign promise made by Donald Trump. Trump had claimed that he would get all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2020.
He didn't accomplish that, but he did go ahead with announcement that shocked a lot of people. First, on November 9, he fired his Defense Secretary Mike Esper, apparently because Esper opposed removing any troops from Afghanistan. Trump replaced Esper with an acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who announced on November 17 that 2,000 troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by mid-January. That would reduce the troop level from 4,500 to 2,500.
No one seriously believes that the Taliban will adhere to commitments made in a peace deal once the American troops are all withdrawn. The Taliban want Afghanistan to be governed by the Taliban, as it was prior to 9/11/2001, after which US forces declared war on Afghanistan, a war that's still going on. The Taliban want the war to end and want American troops gone, so that they can go back to hardline jihadist policies, such as closing girls' schools, as well as beating, raping and torturing the Hazaras and other ethnic enemies.
So why did ISIS launch Saturday's terrorist attack? Since ISIS and the Taliban are enemies, they presumably wish to sabotage the peace talks, so that the Taliban can't over the whole country. We'll probably know within a few months.
We may also know within a few months whether the American withdrawal will destabilize the relationships among other countries in the region -- China, Pakistan and India. These countries all have an interest in Afghanistan and have benefited from the American presence, and may now feel it necessary to fill the vacuum created if the Americans leave.
In 2007, president George Bush launched a "surge" policy in the Iraq war which, much to the surprise of many people, actually worked and won the Iraq war.
So in 2009, president Barack Obama decided that what worked in Iraq would also work in Afghanistan. As I wrote at the the time, and have written many times since then, Iraq and Afghanistan are completely different situations, and a "surge" that worked in Iraq would not work in Afghanistan. This prediction has, of course, turned out to be completely correct.
A summary of the reasoning is as follows: Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.
Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
Obama's surge policy failed because it had to. Obama never had any clue what's going on in the world, so his multiple foreign policy failures aren't surprising. In addition, he appointed that idiot John Kerry as Secretary of State, who stumbled from one disaster to another making things worse.
When Trump began running for president, it was clear that he also had no clue what was going on in the world. I once mocked him for knowing nothing about other countries except his golf courses. But then he did something that was completely unexpected and surprising: He hired Steve Bannon as his principal advisor. This is something I never dreamed would happen. I had worked off and on with Bannon over a period of years, and he's an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics analysis. Even before taking office, Trump was educated for a year on foreign affairs by Bannon.
Even after Bannon left the White House, there was still somebody left who knew what was going on in the world -- John Bolton. Bolton left the White House last year, and as far as I know, Trump no longer has anyone who can credibly inform him about what's going on in the world, beyond the catalog of facts you can find in the CIA World Factbook.
By the way, Joe Biden has been hiding out in his basement for a year, and apparently knows less than nothing about anything. But he thinks that it might be a good idea to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, though he isn't sure.
Working on my forthcoming book on Vietnam has given me plenty of time to contemplate how American values contradict each other, and how well-meaning presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon tried to navigate through the conflicting values and were often forced to make bad decisions that led to bad outcomes.
After World Wars I and II, a traumatized, exhausted America feared they would be fighting a third world war, this time against the Communists. This anxiety increased as Communism seemed to be on the march everywhere -- behind the Iron Curtain in eastern Europe, in China, in northern Korea, in northern Vietnam, and even in the United States in the form of a strong American Communist Party (CPUSA). It became the highest priority of American foreign policy to stop Communism before it led to World War III.
But American values went far beyond that. America was committed to democracies, and South Vietnam was a young vibrant democracy which was being invaded by Communist North Vietnam. There was no way that the leaders who had survived World War II would have tolerated just standing by and letting the South Vietnamese democracy die at the hands of the Communists.
But there was another American value that was equally strong. America had been a British colony and had won its independence from a colonial power. America valued its independence, and would not tolerate having another country, even a friendly country, interfere in its affairs.
South Vietnam was a democracy that had just won its independence from a colonial power, France. America was interfering in South Vietnam's affairs to defend it from the Communists, and so was violating another American value -- not interfering in the affairs of another democracy.
It was this contradiction in American values that led to contradictions in American policies that led to issues that could be exploited by the antiwar activists and American Communists, using the contradictions to sabotage the American war effort politically, leading to the final defeat, and the American betrayal of the people of South Vietnam.
It's worthwhile exploring those conflicting American values in Vietnam, because exactly the same conflict exists today in Afghanistan. However, this time the enemy is a vicious Islamist terror regime, rather than communism.
On the one hand, there is a strong American drive to preserve the democracy in Afghanistan, and protect it from the Islamist terror regime.
On the other hand, there is a strong American drive to avoid interfering in the Afghan government. With the Americans negotiating in Doha with the Taliban, almost to the exclusion of the official Afghan government, there are major policy contradictions, as there have been for the last 19 years.
These contradictions are now in full force, as Americans try to decide how aggressively to take control in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, or to let the Kabul government make its own decisions. After almost 20 years in Afghanistan, Trump has decided that Americans can't stay there forever, and that it's time to withdraw completely, and let the Taliban take over if that's what's in the cards.
There's another issue. Many American soldiers fought in Afghanistan, and many people lost fathers, brothers and sons there. The same is true of Nato countries. Was all that lost blood and treasure for nothing? Apparently so.
As I work on my forthcoming book on Vietnam, I've also reached some conclusions about when a war is winnable or not winnable.
These conclusions are based on examination of the following wars: Vietnam War, Iraq war, and Afghanistan war. What these three wars have in common is that they're all guerrilla insurgencies -- internal rebellions against the government. Why were we able to win the Iraq war, while losing the Vietnam and Afghanistan war? This analysis does not apply to wars fought by opposing armies.
The insurgency in Vietnam could not be defeated because it was impossible to distinguish between the insurgents and ordinary civilians. The South Vietnamese government adopted a counter-insurgency strategy that had been successfully used a decade earlier by the UK in its Malay colony. In that case, the civilians were indigenous Malays, while the insurgents were ethnic Chinese. The British were able to segregate the Chinese from the Malay population for a simple reason: They looked different. They could easily be distinguished.
The South Vietnamese government adapted this same strategy into something called "strategic hamlets," where North Vietnamese insurgents would be segregated from civilians. This worked for a while, but it had to fail because it was impossible to tell the difference between an ordinary civilian and a Communist insurgent.
President George Bush's "surge" strategy won the Iraq war because the insurgents were quite distinguishable from Iraqi civilians. The insurgent group "al-Qaeda in Iraq" consisted almost entirely of fighters imported from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Syria. They were not Iraqis, and the Iraqis hated them. That's why the Iraq war was winnable. (See "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq" from April, 2007.)
The Afghan insurgency was hopeless from the beginning. Yes, we were able to quickly defeat the Afghan army after 9/11/2001, but after the situation turned into an insurgency it could not be won because ordinary civilians were ethnic Pashtuns, and so were the Taliban.
The Afghan war turned into a guerrilla insurgency about 15 years ago, and since then it has been unwinnable. This is the justification for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. Sooner or later, we'll have to lose.
Unfortuately, that conflicts with important American values about protecting young democracies. This political battle will be fierce.
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(22-Nov-2020)
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Generational history of Ethiopia and Eritrea
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The ethnic civil war in Ethiopia escalated sharply on Saturday when the army of the Tigray ethnic group fired missiles at the airport in Asmara, the capital city of the Eritrea, bringing Eritrea into Ethiopia's civil war.
The Tigray ethnic group occupies the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, with Eritrea on its northern border, and Sudan on its western border. Ethiopia's federal government, headed by prime minister Abiy Ahmediat of the Oromo ethnic tribe, is located in the capital city Addis Ababa in central Ethiopia. For the last few weeks, government forces have been attacking Tigray with missiles and militias. The militias are mostly ethnic Amharas, who are historic enemies of the Tigrays. The Amhara region is directly south of the Tigray region.
Over 20,000 refugees from Tigray have abandoned their homes and belongings and have fled into Sudan to refugee camps along the border to escape the violence. Sudanese officials have said that as the fighting escalates, they expect to see 200,000 refugees.
At the same time, terrorist groups from ISIS and al-Shabaab have been entering Ethiopia from Somalia and, according to Ethiopian officials, plotted to attack various parts of the country, seizing the window of opportunity opened by the conflict in the Tigray region.
Ethiopia is a hotbed of tensions between different ethnic groups. There are already growing clashes between other ethnic groups in other parts of Ethiopia, and there are fears that waves of refugees will cross into Kenya and Somalia, possibly destabilizing the entire region.
The Tigray attack on the airport in Asmara, Eritrea, was something of a surprise, and puzzled analysts since it seems to have no purpose except to provoke a retaliatory attack by Eritrea on Tigray.
However, Debretsion Gebremichael, the leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), says that the airport was a "legitimate target," since it was being used by Ethiopian forces. "As long as troops are here fighting, we will take any legitimate military target and we will fire. We will fight them on all fronts with whatever means we have," he said
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmediat, launched military operations in Tigray two weeks ago after he accused local authorities of attacking a military camp in the region and attempting to loot military assets. The TPLF denies the charge and has accused the prime minister of concocting the story to justify deploying the offensive.
On Sunday, the Abiy government rejected any calls for a ceasefire:
"With unwavering commitment we will see this project through to the end ... As a sovereign nation, Ethiopia reaffirms its capability and resolve to manage ... its own rule of law operation without any external intervention. ...The Federal Government of Ethiopia is asserting its constitutional mandate to uphold the rule of law according to the laws of the land."
With Abiy unwilling to consider a ceasefire, with the Tigrays attacking Eritrea, and with tens of thousands of refugees pouring into neighboring countries, observers are concerned that this could escalate into a full-scale war in the Horn of Africa.
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Ethiopia's last generational crisis war (1975-1991) was a protracted war between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) against the vicious Marxist Derg military government in Addis Ababa, which climaxed in 1991 when they were finally toppled by the TPLF. The Tigrays are only 6% of Ethiopia's population but they dominated Ethiopia's government for decades, following the 1991 victory.
The Oromo ethnic group, of which Abiy is a member, and the Amhara ethnic group are the two largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia. During the generational Awakening era, mass protests by these two groups targeted the Tigray coalition government, resulting in a "velvet coup" that brought Abiy to power as prime minister in 2018. At the same time Ethiopia and Eritria signed a peace deal ending a bitter border dispute between the two countries.
Shortly after that, Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize, which is always laughable these days. The TPLF says that, since then, Abiy's government has systematically persecuted Tigrays since he took office. After Abiy became prime minister in April 2018, several high-ranking TPLF officials were prosecuted for human rights abuses and corruption. The TPLF responded by accusing Abiy of targeting them in a politically motivated campaign.
When Abiy’s government delayed this year’s general elections until 2021, citing Covid-19, the TPLF accused the prime minister of using the pandemic to hold on to power beyond his mandate. The TPLF then unilaterally held regional elections in September. The federal government refused to accept the results, and this led to the federal government's military attack on Tigray.
Abiy apparently expects a quick victory against the Tigrays, but analysts point out that the TPLF remains a fighting force of up to 250,000 battle-hardened troops. Furthermore large elements of the Northern Command leadership of the national Ethiopian army are Tigrays, meaning that Abiy cannot expect full loyalty from the army.
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These two countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea, have been linked since at least the second century AD.
Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century, and was a tribal society ruled by emperors until the 1800s. However, a split between Ethiopia and Eritrea occurred in the 700s with the rise of Islam and the Arab trade along the Red Sea, and what is now Eritrea became part of the Islamic Empire, and later the Ottoman Empire.
Italy colonized the region in the 1860s, in the so-called Scramble for Africa, so named because after it was discovered in the 1850s that malaria could be controlled with quinine, England, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Germany all competed with each other to colonize different parts of Africa.
In 1869, the Suez Canal opened, connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea, and Italian shipping firms became active. Large stretches of Eritrea's coastline were acquired from the local sultans and transferred to Italian control. By the mid-1880s, the Italian army moved into Eritrea, displacing the Ottomans, and challenging the Ethiopian empire.
In 1889, Menelik II rose to the position of Emperor of Ethiopia. The "Italian-Ethiopian War" (1889-1896) was a generational crisis war for Ethiopia. Menelik inflicted on Italy the most humiliating and bloody defeat ever experienced by a colonial power in Africa. In the outcome, Italy retained Eritrea as a Red Sea colony, populating it with thousands of Italian settlers, developing road and rail transport, but doing little to improve the lives of Eritreans.
Ethiopia gained independence, and by 1914 and the beginning of WW I, all of black Africa except Ethiopia and Liberia were European colonies.
By 1935, Eritrea was a colony of Italy, and Ethiopia had a new emperor, one who had taken the title Haile Selassie, meaning "Might of the Trinity," emphasizing the fact that Ethiopia was a largely Christian country.
In October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini ordered an invasion of Ethiopia, partly in revenge for Italy's humiliating defeat in 1896. Mussolini announced the establishment of a new Italian empire, including Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, under the name Italian East Africa. Haile Selassie fled the country.
When Mussolini brought Italy into World War II on Hitler's side, in June 1940, Haile Selassie won the cooperation of Britain in launching a counterattack against the Italian forces in Italian East Africa. By 1941, Haile Selassie was once again emperor of Ethiopia. After the war, the United Nations made Eritrea a part of Ethiopia, an autonomous federal province with its own constitution and elected government, something that the Muslims in Eritrea strongly opposed.
From the above description, one can see that although World War II was a generational crisis war for Italy and Britain, with part of the war fought on Ethiopian soil, it was not a crisis war for Ethiopia itself. In fact, with the previous crisis war having climaxed in 1896, this was a generational Unraveling era for Ethiopia. In such an era (like America in the 1990s), there is little appetite for war among the general population, except perhaps for quick police actions. Although Ethiopia and Eritrea changed hands several times during the WW II time period, the fighting was mostly between foreign armies, and did not heavily involve the local population.
In the mid-1950s, the region entered a generational Crisis era, and the fault line between Muslims and Christians began to inflame. In 1958, Eritrea's Muslim leaders formed the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), consisting mainly of students, intellectuals, and urban wage laborers. Low-level warfare continued throughout the 1960s.
In the 1970s, the Eritrean independence movement took another turn with the formation of a powerful Marxist offshoot of the ELF, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). Haile Selassie was toppled in 1974, after which factional warfare began to increase.
This might have led to a full-scale generational crisis war, but there was a major development: In 1977, the USSR allied with the Ethiopian government, took control of Eritrea's Red Sea ports, and provided Ethiopia's government with huge supplies of arms, enough to suppress the EPLF guerrillas.
The guerrilla war fought by Marxist rebels against the well-armed Ethiopian government climaxed in May 1991 with the collapse of Ethiopia's government, coincident with the collapse of the USSR. Eritrea finally declared independence. By that time, there were 500,000 refugees that had fled to refugee camps in Sudan, and they had to be resettled in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
In 1998, a new border war broke out between Eritrea and Ethiopia. This was a non-crisis war, with a quality very similar to World War I, where trenches were dug, mines were laid, and bodies of dead soldiers were strewn about. Of the 400,000 men who fought on both sides, 50,000 soldiers died.
A peace deal in 2000 ended the two-year border war, but it was never fully implemented, and a new peace deal was signed in 2018.
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(16-Nov-2020)
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Ethiopia civil war threatens to destabilize horn of Africa
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Armenia has agreed to a Nagorno-Karabakh peace deal with Azerbaijan, mediated by Russia, rather than face a complete military debacle. Azerbaijani military forces have achieved a string of victories in capturing cities and villages around Nagorno-Karabakh. On Sunday, Azerbaijani forces captured Shusha (Shushi), the region's second-largest town, and were close to attacking the Nagorno-Karabakh capital city Stepanakert, which is on the main road to Armenia.
Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the deal "incredibly painful both for both me and our people." He added, "The army said that we had to stop, because there are problems for which there are no solution, and the army was out of resources."
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said “This (ceasefire) agreement has historic significance. This agreement constitutes Armenia’s capitulation. This agreement puts an end to the years-long occupation."
Vagram Pogosian, a spokesman for the Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh, said "Unfortunately, we are forced to admit that a series of failures still haunt us, and the city of Shushi is completely out of our control. The enemy is on the outskirts of Stepanakert.”
Turkey's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, "We will stand alongside Azerbaijan. This is a great success, a victory for Azerbaijan. Territories that were under occupation for 30 years are being taken back."
This is the fourth mediated cease-fire agreement on the last three months. The previous ones lasted only a day. There are two things that make this one different. First, there is the lingering threat the Azerbaijani military forces will continue on to Stepanakert and take control of the entire Nagorno-Karabakh region. And second, Russia is deploying its own military forces to separate the two sides and prevent a resumption of fighting.
This is actually the next step in a standard generational pattern.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region within Azerbaijan, but which has a mostly Armenian population which governs it. Nagorno-Karabakh ("highland Karabakh") is also called Karabakh by Azerbaijan, and the Republic of Artsakh by Armenia. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, an extremely bloody war broke out. Armenia invaded Azerbaijan and defeated the Azeri defenders of Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in hundreds of thousands of people displaced or killed.
The war ended in 1994 because of Russia's mediation, but since then it's proceeded according to a standard generational pattern, with periods of peace alternating with periods of low-level violence that grow worse with each iteration. In typical situations, this process continues until at least 58 years after the end of the war, when the survivors of the war are no longer in power, and a new war breaks out. In this case, a new full-scale war would not be anticipated until at least 2052.
So it remains to be seen how long the new cease-fire will last. Maybe it will last only a day like the last one. Or, maybe it will last a couple of years like the cease-fire negotiated in 2016. But you can be absolutely certain that it will not last.
Al-Jazeera is showing video of the streets of Azerbaijan's capital city Baku filled with overjoyed people, dancing, singing, and shouting (without, incidentally, much sign of masks or social distancing).
Joyous, grinning young girls were launghinbly describing how they will now return to their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, where their parents were displaced in 1994. They chuckled as they said that it won't be long before all of Nagorno-Karabakh is returned to Azerbaijan, so that they can all return to all of their former homes.
One 52-year-old Azeri is quoted as complaining that the government should not have agreed to the cease-fire. "We were about to gain the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh back. The agreement is very vague I don’t trust Armenia and I don’t trust Russia even more.”
The video from Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia was considerably grimmer. Furious citizens are demanding the resignation of Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his entire government, saying that he betrayed the Armenian people, and asking why Pashinyan waited until now to capitulate, after 1,300 Armenian soldiers have already been killed in the fighting.
Rioting broke out in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, where crowds stormed and ransacked government buildings.
As "historic" as the cease-fire agreement is, there are a number of issues remaining.
Russia is claiming to be the kingmaker that brought about the deal, but Turkey was not part of the deal. Turkey was heavily committed to backing Azerbaijan in the fighting, and have even provided hundreds of Syrian jihadists to fight alongside the Azerbaijani forces, according to a number of reports, paying the jihadists pay ranging from $1,200 to $2,000 per month.
Russia and Turkey are historic enemies that have fought massive wars against each other in previous centuries, and are already supporting opposing sides in conflicts in Syria and Libya. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan would like to restore the former glory of the ancient Ottoman Empire, and being shut out of the Nagorno-Karabakh cease-fire deal in favor of Russia is contrary to those glorious plans.
According to some reports, the Russians did not want to commit Russian troops to enforce the ceasefire, but felt that they had to because if the fighting continued, it was likely that Russia and Turkey would soon be at war. Russia is supposed to be an ally of Armenia, and has a military base in Armenia, so an increase in fighting could force Russia to defend Armenia from the Turks.
Russian forces are scheduled to remain for at least five years. Almost 2,000 servicemen, 90 armured personnel carriers, and 380 vehicles and pieces of other hardware were being deployed. Russian media said 20 military planes had taken off for the region and had started arriving in Armenia en route to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russia says that there had been no agreement on deploying any Turkish peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, but the Turkish military will help staff a joint monitoring center with Russian forces.
According to Azerbaijan, on February 26, 1992, 613 Azeri civilians were massacred by Armenian soldiers in the town of Khojaly in Nagorno-Karabakh. Some 487 people, including 76 children, were critically injured. According to Azerbaijan, this was genocide.
According to Armenia, Khojaly had been used as an Azeri firebase from which to use multi-rocket launches on residential areas of Stepanakert, purposely killing as many Armenian civilians as possible. Everyone knew that an Armenian military attack on Khojaly was coming, but according to Armenia, the Azeri military purposely blocked civilians from leaving Khojaly, so that the attack would result in a massacre of civilians, which they would call a genocide.
Whichever side is telling the truth, it remains clear that the Azeri people are demanding revenge for the Khojaly massacre.
This is a standard generational pattern, the next step in a string of alternating periods of war and ceasefire. The last ceasefires each lasted one day, Russia hopes this one will last at least five years.
As is always the case, it will be the people, rather than the politicians, who will decide how long the ceasefire will last.
The people of Azerbaijan, as far as I can tell, want the fighting to resume and continue. They want revenge for the Khojaly Massacre, they want to recapture the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh and drive out all the Armenians, and those whose parents were displaced in the 1991-94 war are demanding to return to those homes.
All of these steps are inevitable, if not right away then in the next few years, and the result will be genocide and ethnic cleansing of Armenians.
This is a completely separate subject, for those who are interested in more than the subject of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. I've written several times in the past about the ethnic situation in Ethiopia, but it's been peaceful for a couple of years, and now new clashes are creating a refugee crisis that can threaten the entire horn of Africa.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who comes from the Oromo tribe, the largest Ethiopia ethnic group, has ordered hundreds of air strikes and an army offensive against the Tigray minority in northern Ethiopia. Already 2,500 Ethiopians have fled into Sudan, and the fear is that a wider civil war would bring hundreds of thousands of refugees into Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Kenya. Even worse, the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea may be renewed The African Union called for a ceasefire, but we know how those things go.
I've written about the civil war between the Tigrays and the Oromos several times in the past, and how Abiy Ahmed got a Nobel "Peace" Prize by ending the civil war. But, as in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, there is a generational pattern that's always followed, with alternating periods of peace and conflict, with the conflict worsening with each iteration. I'm still spending a lot of time on my Vietnam book, but I'll try to write something soon to bring the Ethiopian civil war up to date.
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Brief generational history of Thailand
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Thailand's military junta government is in crisis after five continuous days of anti-government protests in Bangkok by thousands of protesters, mostly young students, demanding that army general Prayuth Chan-ocha step down as prime minister. Protests are also spreading to other provinces.
A new aspect of these protests is the demand that the monarchy be reformed. In the past, protesters have not made this kind of demand, since criticizing the monarchy in Thailand is considered a severe violation of the law.
On Friday, police in Bangkok used a water cannon with chemical-laced water that stings the eyes to repel thousands of pro-democracy protesters. However, the protesters were mostly young students, and some were children, and so the police have been heavily criticized for attacking children with chemical laced water.
The protests began in July, and reached tens of thousands of protesters on some days in the last few days. The protesters have been copying some of the tactics of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests of last year, forming flash mobs that scatter when confronted by police, but then form a new protest in another place.
Dozens of pro-democracy activists have been jailed, but that hasn't stopped the protests, as they've used online communications to play cat and mouse with the police.
The protesters used "pop-up demonstrations" to outfox the police, leaving the police protecting an empty intersection, while they gathered at another intersection.
The protesters are mostly young people, born since the late 1990s, who have known only coups, protests and military governments during their lifetime. Many of them have vivid memories of 2010, when the Bangkok army, led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, used tanks and live fire to disperse and kill "red shirt" protesters in Bangkok.
The most recent coup occurred in May 2014, when a military junta led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha overthrew the democratically elected government of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, and made Prayuth the prime minister.
The core issue in Thailand is that there are two ethnic groups, and the ones in charge are in the minority, and the minority is repressing the majority ethnic group. In any country, this would be a situation resulting in riots, protests or even civil war, and Thailand is no exception.
The vast majority of Thailand's population are the dark-skinned lower class indigenous people, also called "Thai-Thai" and "red shirts," comprising about 3/4 of the population, living mostly in the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand, but who come to Bangkok mostly to work in menial jobs as servants of the Thai-Chinese.
The Thai-Chinese, also called "yellow shirts," are the light-skinned descendants of a wave of Chinese workers that poured into the country to find jobs in the 1930s. They comprise 1/4 of the population, live mostly around Bangkok, and are extremely contemptuous of the indigenous Thai-Thai, whom they consider to be inferior.
What this means is that if Thailand holds a free and fair election, and race is an issue, as it always is, then the indigenous Thai-Thai red shirts are going to win every time, much to the distress of the élite Thai-Chinese in Bangkok.
In the 2000s decade, an extremely charismatic leader Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister in 2001. He was born in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand with a long history of restive opposition to control by Bangkok. In office, he implemented a number of programs that were favored by the large mass of rural Thai-Thai voters in the northeast of the country. Thaksin became very popular with the poor rural voters in the north and northeast, but he angered the wealthier, better educated élite population in the southern areas around Bangkok.
When he was reelected in 2005, the army staged a bloodless coup that overthrew Thaksin's government, and forced Thaksin into exile. There were new elections in 2007, and a Thaksin's party easily won control of the government, and named a Thaksin ally as prime minister.
The new prime minister, Samak Sundaravej took office in December 2007. This is where everything turned to farce. Apparently Samak is also quite a good amateur cook, and for many years he hosted a televised cooking show. He kept on with the cooking show after he became Prime Minister, causing a court to remove him from office, because the cooking show represented a conflict of interest with his job as Prime Minister.
So Samak Sundaravej was ousted because he had a cooking show, and the parliament, still controlled by Thaksin's party, then named Somchai Wongsawat, another Thaksin ally, as prime minister. That's when the "yellow shirt" protests began.
It became clear to the élite in Bangkok that the indigenous Thai-Thai were going to keep on winning, so the yellow-shirt Thai-Chinese held massive protests in 2008, mostly peaceful, but shutting down the entire city, including the airport. Samak Sundaravej was forced to resign, and the army installed a Thai-Chinese prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva.
At the beginning of April 2010, the "red shirt" protests began, demanding that Abhisit Vejjajiva resign, followed by new elections. Of course, new elections would mean a new red-shirt political victory.
Masses of protesters occupied Bangkok's high-class shopping district, forcing stores to close, and leading to a state of emergency. Army troops attempted to clear the protestors on April 10, but suffered a humiliating defeat, with 25 people killed, and hundreds injured.
The protests finally ended in May when the Thai army ran tanks through their barricades and assaulted them with live ammunition, and after the most radical elements of the protestors retaliated by burning down shopping centers and the stock exchange. The violence left civilians on both sides extremely bitter.
So in 2011 there was another election. The party of Thaksin Shinawatra's political party easily won the parliamentary election decisively again, as was obvious that it would, and the parliament selected a new prime minister -- Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of Thaksin, who was still in exile in Dubai. And to add to the comedy, she said the following:
I am ready to fight according to the rules and I ask for the opportunity to prove myself. I ask for your trust as you used to trust my brother. I will utilise my femininity to work fully for our country."
Well, the misogynists in the Thai-Chinese élite somehow weren't fully charmed by Yingluck's femininity.
In December 2013, yellow shirt rioters were back in the street again, with anti-government protests. About 30,000 "yellow shirt" rioters occupied government buildings and hurled stones and petrol bombs at police, who fired back tear gas. At least four people were killed and dozens injured. The anti-government yellow shirt leader Suthep Thaugsuban met with Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and gave her a 48 hour ultimatum "to return power to the people."
Was Suthep calling for new elections? Obviously not, since that would just mean another victory for the hated dark-skinned Thai-Thai indigenous red shirt majority. It turned out that what he meant was that he was demanding that Yingluck resign, and that a new "People's Council" select the next prime minister. Presumably, the People's Council would be packed with Thai-Chinese.
What the yellow-shirts were objecting to was a rice-subsidy scheme that Yingluck began in 2011 that paid rice farmers above market rate for their crop. This pleased the Thai-Thai rice farmers in the north around Chiang Mai, but it cost the government $21 billion, and infuriated the powerful élite Thai-Chinese opposition in Bangkok.
A month later, in January 2014, Yingluck offered to resign and call for new elections, but the yellow shirt élite protesters forced the new election to be called off because they knew that Yingluck's party would win.
In Thailand, the Thai-Chinese élites are backed by the monarchy, the army and the courts. So in May 2014, the courts ruled that Yingluck and her government should be impeached because of the rice subsidy. Then they used the courts to appoint the "People's Council" described above.
However, General Prayuth Chan-ocha didn't wait that long. He seized control of the government two days later, and announced on Thai television:
"In order for the situation to return to normal quickly and for society to love and be at peace again ... and to reform the political, economic and social structure, the military needs to take control of power."
Love and peace - more comedy. In 2017, Yingluck was convicted of corruption, but the army looked the other way when she fled the country, fearing popular riots from her supporters. Yingluck is now in exile with her brother Thaksin.
After the 2014 coup, Prayuth promised to hold elections in early 2015, then in 2016, and then in November 2018, canceling them each time. Finally he held a rigged election in March 2019, which he won.
That brings us to 2020, and new protests by the Thai-Thai red shirts.
Many of these protesters were young children when General Prayuth used bullets and tanks to disperse and kill their parents and older brothers and sisters during the red shirt protests in 2011.
The army is being criticized for using water cannons on the protesters on Friday, since the water contained burning chemicals, and many of the protesters were children.
The ruling élite face the continuing problem that 3/4 of Thailand's population are the hated dark-skinned indigenous Thai-Thai red shirts, and they will win any election in a democracy. The ruling élite may have found a solution: Restore the monarchy so that the King is ruling again, and there are no more elections. No more democracy.
The problem with this solution is that the current king is so scandal-ridden and so unpopular that any solution like this would lead to a further backlash among red shirts, and possibly even among yellow shirts.
Thailand's previous king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, also known as Rama IX, was born on December 5, 1927, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was on the throne in Thailand since 1946, and so until his death on October 13, 2016, he was ever-present as King of Thailand, and the only monarch that almost every resident of Thailand had ever known. Bhumibol had been a calming voice that had seen Thailand through multiple national crises, including several coups and military takeovers, and so he was highly revered, so much so that the country has passed so-called "lèse-majesté" laws that make it a crime to even criticize the monarchy.
Despite his being 88 years old, Bhumibol's death in 2016 still came as a shock to the Thai people, probably most of all to the person next in line for the throne, the highly unpopular 62-year-old Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn. Vajiralongkorn was an international playboy, living mostly in Germany, who had been divorced four times, and who had disowned his own children by one of the wives. So he didn't even want to be king, but he reluctantly assumed the throne a year later, under pressure from the army, and became King Rama X.
Vajiralongkorn's numerous scandals and his reported cruelty to his wives and servants have made him a target of the protesters. However, even a mild criticism can make someone liable for arrest under the "lèse-majesté" laws. In fact, the army junta has made draconian use of the lèse-majesté as a tool for jailing dissidents.
The protesters are demanding that the monarchy be reformed. They're particularly critical of his vast wealth and his taking personal control of $40 billion of Thailand's financial assets.
The élite have decided that they can no longer hold elections, since the hated Thai-Thai red shirts will always win. Prayuth denies that there are plans to replace the democracy with a new monarchy ruled by Vajiralongkorn. However, Vajiralongkorn's act in taking control of $40 billion of Thailand's assets leads many to believe that replacing the democracy with a monarchy is just a step away.
Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra were born in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Chiang Mai is the red shirt stronghold, and plays an important part in Thailand's history.
Chiang Mai was built in 1296 to be the capital city of the Lanna Kingdom (the kingdom of a million rice fields). The Lanna kingdom was successfully invaded and incorporated into Burma as a vassal state in 1557. Over the next 200 years Chiang Mai fell at various times under the rule of the strongest invader, be it Burma or Siam.
In 1774, Siam finally drove the Burmese out of the Lanna Kingdom. The Lanna Kingdom eventually became part of Siam in 1892. The Lanna Kingdom was gradually dissolved and condensed into an area centered around Chiang Mai. In 1932 the whole Chiang Mai area officially became a province of Siam.
Thailand's King Rama had fought a generational crisis war in the early 1830s when he had invaded Laos and Cambodia, but ended up losing to a Vietnamese army.
Siam's next generational crisis war occurred in what is now southern Thailand. For centuries, Siam's kings had felt that the Muslims in southern Siam were a major threat to the security of the country, mainly because resistance and rebellion against Thai government rule were so strong among the Muslim population, and in fact the southern Muslims had revolted during the 1830s crisis war.
By the late 1800s this threat had been felt to be critical, and in 1902 King Rama V invaded and annexed the Malay kingdom of Patani, consisting of the four provinces of Satun, Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. (Note: The kingdom is spelled "Patani," while the province is spelled "Pattani.") In 1909, an Anglo-Siamese Agreement established the present border between Thailand and Malaysia.
During the next few decades, Siam (which became Thailand in 1939) was faced with the problem of trying to assimilate the southern Muslim population into what is essentially a Buddhist country. During the generational Awakening era that followed, the military coup of 1932 overthrew the absolute monarchy in Siam and replaced it with constitutional monarchy. This was a representative form of government that promised a high degree of political participation of the Malay-Muslims in the South. However, as World War II (an Awakening era war for Thailand) approached, the country became more Thai-nationalistic, and the country adopted a policy of forced assimilation towards the Muslims, which had little success, as resistance and rebellion have continued since then.
The 1930s also saw a large influx of migrants from China, coming to the country to work. Over the decades, they were able to displace the indigenous people in positions of power in government, and in control of businesses. This formed an ethnic fault line between the indigenous Thai-Thai majority and the élite Thai-Chinese minority.
Thailand's next generational crisis war was the Cambodian "killing fields" war, 1975-79, in which Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge government, backed by China, killed up to 3 million people in a massive genocide. The Cambodian war spilled over into Thailand in the form of a communist rebellion that had begun in the 1960s. King Bhumibol (Rama IX) became an essential figure in the fight against the communists, although his role became more controversial in the savage anti-leftist coup of 1976, in which dozens of students were brutally killed by the security forces and royal-backed militias, and thousands forced to flee to seek sanctuary with the Communist Party.
The Cambodian "killing fields" civil war took place on Thailand's doorstep, though not on Thai soil. Still, it caused a split along the Thai-Thai versus Thai-Chinese fault line that continues to the present time. Today, Thailand is in a new generational Awakening/Unraveling era, and we're seeing a repeat of what happened in the 1930s.
During the generational Awakening era of the 1930s, the military coup of 1932 overthrew the absolute monarchy in Siam and replaced it with constitutional monarchy that gave some power to the southern Muslims, only to have it taken away a few years later.
During the current era, the 1997 constitution guaranteed free elections for everyone, including the indigenous Thai-Thai, and now that's been taken away by a military junta.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
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(19-Oct-2020)
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Azerbaijan's objectives
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A temporary truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan was mostly successful on Saturday, although each side accused the other of violating the ceasefire.
The ceasefire was mediated by Russia, which applied heavy pressure to both sides to accept the agreement. It's being described as a humanitarian ceasefire, to permit the two sides to exchange prisoners, and for the Red Cross to remove dead bodies. Also, it will give both sides time to reload and resupply their weapons in preparation for the next round of fighting.
The two countries are fighting over control of the Nagorno-Karabakh ("highland Karabakh") province and seven adjacent regions within Azerbaijan territory that are populated and governed by Armenians. The two countries used to be member states of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991. A major war was fought between the two countries, and it ended in stalemate in 1994, under pressure from Russia.
There have been occasional outbursts of fighting since then, but the fighting that began on September 27 of this year is the worst so far since 1994.
Armenia says that its objective is that Nagorno-Karabakh should be recognized internationally as an independent state, Artsakh. That isn't going to happen.
Azerbaijan says that its objective is to gain full control of the enclave, as it is Azerbaijan territory. According to a number of tv analysts, Azerbaijan officials feel that this objective is within its grasp. Several of the areas adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh have already been captured by the Azeri army.
In 1994, when Russia mediated a ceasefire, Armenia was much more militarily powerful than Azerbaijan, and was able to take over Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the situations are reversed today, and Azerbaijan is more powerful militarily, according to these analysts. Furthermore, the international community is supportive of Azerbaijan since Nagorno-Karabakh is officially Azeri territory.
Turkey is supporting its Turkic brother Azerbaijan, and has promised to provide military aid if necessary. Furthermore, Turkey has little concern about good relations with Armenia, having been accused of genocide against the Armenian people in 1915.
Russia is close to its Eastern Orthodox Christian sister Armenia, and has a military base in Armenia, but wants to maintain good relations with both countries. Russia is applying maximum pressure to both sides to keep the ceasefire going, but it seems unlikely that the ceasefire will continue much longer.
One analyst suggested that there's "horse-trading" going on. For example, Russia may convince Armenia to give up Nagorno-Karabakh in return for Turkey pulling its forces out of Syria. That's an interesting idea -- then the Azeris could massacre the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh in revenge for the massacre of Azeris by Armenians in the 1990s, and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad could continue with its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs in Syria's Idlib province. That would be an explosive development, so I do not believe that this particular version of "horse-trading" is likely. (Paragraph corrected, 11-Oct)
Meanwhile, there are other things going on in the world. I'm working every spare minute to finish up my book on Vietnam. Kyrgyzstan's government has collapsed, and people are rioting, because of alleged election fraud. China is stepping up warplane flights threatening Taiwan, is demanding that US ships stop entering international waters in the South China Sea illegally claimed by China, and is arresting anyone in Hong Kong who dares to criticize Beijing. The United States is locked into an election campaign circus, and Americans are generally completely oblivious to anything going on in the world. And many countries are trying to avoid more lockdowns, as cases of Wuhan Coronavirus have been surging in many countries, especially in Europe. And that's the way it is.
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Possible intervention by Turkey and Russia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Heavy fighting has erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan, starting early Sunday. There were brief clashes in July of this year, and a larger clash in 2016, but this is the worst clash since the bloody Nagorno-Karabakh war ended in 1994. There are fears that this could spiral into a larger regional war, especially if Turkey or Russia gets involved. Turkey issued a statement that it would support Azerbaijan in a conflict, and this led Armenia to issue a warning of "full-scale war."
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region within Azerbaijan, but which has a mostly Armenian population which governs it. Nagorno-Karabakh ("highland Karabakh") is also called Karabakh by Azerbaijan, and the Republic of Artsakh by Armenia.
Even when both Armenia and Azerbaijan were member states of the Soviet Union, there was tension over Nagorno-Karabakh. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, an extremely bloody war broke out. Armenia invaded Azerbaijan and defeated the Azeri defenders of Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in hundreds of thousands of people displaced or killed.
The war ended in 1994 because of Russia's mediation, but since then it's proceeded in a fairly typical way, with periods of peace alternating with periods of low-level violence that grow worse with each iteration. In typical situations, this process continues until at least 58 years after the end of the war, when the survivors of the war are no longer in power, and a new war breaks out. In this case, a new war would not be anticipated until at least 2052.
Sunday's clashes resulted in dozens of deaths, including civilians. As is usual in these situations, each side is blaming the other for firing the first shot. However, several analysts are pointing out that Azerbaijan has been signaling this kind of attack since July, while Armenia really has nothing to gain by launching this clash.
The countries are in a generational Awakening era, and so there are too many traumatized survivors of the last war still alive, and they will do everything possible to keep the low-level clashes from escalating into another full-scale war, despite demands for war from younger people to recover Karabakh, as shown in the photo at the beginning of this article.
However, that could change if other countries get involved. Russia, Iran, France and the EU have offered to mediate. Russia has good relations with both former Soviet countries, although it has closer relations with its Orthodox Christian sister Armenia and has a military base in Armenia. But Russia is expected to stay neutral unless Turkey gets involved.
Turkey issued several statements on Sunday that Turkey was ready to side with its Turkic brother, Azerbaijan, if war breaks out.
Turkey's Ministry of Defense said:
"In the struggle to protect the territorial integrity, we will remain in the ranks with our brothers, the Azerbaijani Turks, to the end."
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote on his Twitter page:
"By carrying out another attack on Azerbaijan, Armenia reaffirmed that it is a great obstacle on the way to peace and stability. I call on the Armenian people to use their future against the government, which is pulling them into the abyss of disaster, and those who use them as puppets. At the same time, I call on the whole world to support Azerbaijan, which is fighting against despotism and injustice."
Armenia says that it will defend its "sacred homeland," the Republic of Artsakh, because "we must defend our homeland and our families." Armenia declared martial law and mobilized its male populations to prepare for war.
A full-scale war between Azerbaijan and Armenia would destablize the entire southern Caucasus region, and perhaps the Mideast as well.
The Generational Dynamics analysis is that this clash will fizzle within a few days or weeks or maybe a few months, and will not escalate into full-scale war. That could change if it turns into a proxy war between Turkey and Russia, two countries that are already at war in Syria and Libya, and have been historical enemies in the Caucasus for centuries.
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(28-Sep-2020)
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President Trump harshly attacks China and World Health Org at UN
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
|
Mustapha Adib, the man recently designated to become Lebanon's next prime minister, resigned in failure on Saturday, unable to form a government because of opposition from the puppets of Iran, the Hezbollah terror group and the Shia Amal political party.
The country is still reeling from the catastrophic explosion in the Beirut, Lebanon, seaport on Tuesday, August 4, which leveled thousands of homes, killed and injured thousands of people, and left 300,000 people homeless. Investigation has revealed the Hezbollah is implicated in the explosion, and may be to blame for it. ( "22-Aug-20 World View -- Hezbollah implicated in catastrophic Beirut Lebanon ")
Lebanon's economy has been a continually worsening disaster for many years, and that's blamed on Lebanon's "dynastic confessional" system of government, where power is divided based on sectarian affiliation or confession, requiring that a Sunni Muslim must occupy the position of prime minister, while the presidency is given to a Maronite Christian and speaker of parliament to a Shia Muslim. As I've explained in detail several times in the past, this confessional system has promoted massive corruption, as there are no checks and balances, and greedy politicians have taken advantage of it to destroy Lebanon's economy. ( "9-Aug-20 World View -- Beirut Lebanon police clash with furious protesters following Tuesday's catastrophic explosion")
Hezbollah and the Shia bloc have benefited the most from the corruption and criminality engendered by the confessional system, and it was hoped that because the August 4 explosion practically leveled the city of Beirut, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah might change his stripes, and allow some government reforms. France's president Emmanuel Macron has promised international aid to Lebanon, but only if fundamental government reforms take place.
But apparently Nasrallah is doubling down on his greed and his demands that he and the Shia bloc retain all their power. He particularly wants full control of the Finance Ministry, which would give the Shia full control over spending any international aid that international organizations granted to Lebanon. There's no way that Macron would approve this. This is the reason that Mustapha Adib resigned.
According to a couple of Lebanese analysts on TV, Nasrallah's puppetmaster, Iran's president Hassan Rouhani, is demanding that Nasrallah remain intransigent at least until America's November 3 election.
Presumably the reason for this is that Rouhani is hoping that Donald Trump will lose the election to Joe Biden, and Biden will restore the nuclear deal and end sanctions on Iran, and that the Europeans will follow with money for both Iran and Hezbollah, and Nasrallah can remain fat and happy, until the next disaster.
So Lebanon's chaos is going to continue for at least a couple more months, and possibly a lot longer, because the expected election chaos in the US caused by fraud and irregularities with 80 million mail-in ballots poured onto the election could result in long delays in determining who the election winner will be.
On Tuesday, president Donald Trump gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. It was described by the mainstream media as a "machine gun speech," because he covered one point after another very quickly, without adding the usual political bloviation. The speech lasted only 7 minutes, reportedly the shortest leader speech in the history of the United Nations.
What was interesting about the speech was the harsh criticism of China and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Trump used to say that Xi Jinping was his friend. However, he made a U-turn in March, when China's Foreign Ministry began saying that the American Army infected Wuhan with the virus. This accusation infuriated Trump, and since then he's taken every opportunity to condemn China for the "China virus."
In the UN speech, Trump said that the UN must hold China accountable for purposely unleashing this plague onto the world. He also harshly criticized the WHO for supporting several lies by China that allowed the virus to spread around the world, while China protected itself.
Trump also said that "China dumps millions and millions of tons of plastic and trash into the oceans, overfishes other countries’ waters, destroys vast swaths of coral reef, and emits more toxic mercury into the atmosphere than any country anywhere in the world." Trump also heavily criticized China's human abuse record.
Here are some excerpts from Trump's speech:
"It is my profound honor to address the United Nations General Assembly.Seventy-five years after the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, we are once again engaged in a great global struggle. We have waged a fierce battle against the invisible enemy — the China virus — which has claimed countless lives in 188 countries.
In the United States, we launched the most aggressive mobilization since the Second World War. We rapidly produced a record supply of ventilators, creating a surplus that allowed us to share them with friends and partners all around the globe. We pioneered life-saving treatments, reducing our fatality rate 85 percent since April.
Thanks to our efforts, three vaccines are in the final stage of clinical trials. We are mass-producing them in advance so they can be delivered immediately upon arrival.
We will distribute a vaccine, we will defeat the virus, we will end the pandemic, and we will enter a new era of unprecedented prosperity, cooperation, and peace.
As we pursue this bright future, we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China.
In the earliest days of the virus, China locked down travel domestically while allowing flights to leave China and infect the world. China condemned my travel ban on their country, even as they cancelled domestic flights and locked citizens in their homes.
The Chinese government and the World Health Organization — which is virtually controlled by China — falsely declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Later, they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease.
The United Nations must hold China accountable for their actions.
In addition, every year, China dumps millions and millions of tons of plastic and trash into the oceans, overfishes other countries’ waters, destroys vast swaths of coral reef, and emits more toxic mercury into the atmosphere than any country anywhere in the world. China’s carbon emissions are nearly twice what the U.S. has, and it’s rising fast. By contrast, after I withdrew from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord, last year America reduced its carbon emissions by more than any country in the agreement.
Those who attack America’s exceptional environmental record while ignoring China’s rampant pollution are not interested in the environment. They only want to punish America, and I will not stand for it. ...
Thank you. God bless you all. God bless America. And God bless the United Nations."
This is just one more illustration of how the atmosphere between the US and China continues to grow worse. This is a typical pattern that history tells us leads to war.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(27-Sep-2020)
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China's dual-track policy towards Taiwan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Chinese Communists further escalated the tensions with Taiwan on Sunday, by sending a mass of 43 warplanes across the Taiwan Strait, crossing the historic "median line" or "middle line" separating China from Taiwan, and entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ).
The incursions came from multiple directions and involved a combination of sophisticated fighter jets and heavy bombers, without modern precedent, marking a significant escalation in cross-strait tensions. Taiwan responded by scrambling its own warplanes, which intercepted the Chinese warplanes and escorted them back in the direction of China.
The Chinese Communists went even further when Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin claimed in a statement that "Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory; there is no so-called median line of the strait." The "median line" was established in 1954 to establish rules to prevent Taiwan-China conflicts. The sudden declaration that the median line does not exist is the latest flouting of international law by the Chinese Communist Master Race.
Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen accused China of threatening regional stability, and praised the "heroic performance" of Taiwan's pilots in intercepting the Chinese warplanes:
"I have a lot of confidence in you. As soldiers of the Republic of China [Taiwan], how could we let enemies strut around in our own airspace?"
The Chinese Communists have indicated that the intrusions are retaliation for a visit to Taiwan by U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach last week to attend the memorial service of late President Lee Teng-hui.
According to an analysis by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), China has commited more than 4,400 intrusions into the ADIZs of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan since 2013. There have been thousands of intrusions into Japan's ADIZ, hundreds into South Korea's ADIZ, and two dozen into Taiwan's ADIZ.
This is consistent with the findings of my 2019 book, "War Between China and Japan - Why America must be prepared," in which I found, after extensive research, that China is planning for and preparing for a war of revenge against Japan, and a war of annexation against Taiwan.
According to a FAS analysis:
"Over the last decade, Chinese flights in the East China Sea have become increasingly more sophisticated. Intrusions in the early 2010s often featured single Y-8 early warning aircraft flying near the Senkakus to the Miyako Strait. By the late 2010s, Chinese flights evolved into more specialized training missions featuring multiple independent flight groups of various aircraft packages conducting increasingly long-range flights to the Pacific."
These "training missions" are preparing China for its revenge invasion of Japan.
With regard to Taiwan, the FAS analysis found: "Chinese air provocations against Taiwan manifest in three ways: circumnavigational flights of Taiwan, ADIZ intrusions, and violations of the cross-strait median line. Circumnavigational flights are the most common provocation, followed by ADIZ intrusions. Violations of the median line are widely seen as the most provocative action and as a result are rare." The FAS report is several months old, and the violations of the median line are now more frequent and, indeed, China now says that the median line does not exist.
The FAS analysis gives "four clear objectives" of China's intrusions into the ADIZ's of other countries:
"On this last point it is important to remember that China not only seeks to decouple security partners like Japan, South Korea, and the United States from one another, but to also manipulate possible domestic political cleavages to its advantage, such as those potentially between Taiwanese citizens and the Tsai government and between Japan’s hardline security establishment and more cautious partners like the Komeito."
In 2016, Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), led by Tsai Ing-wen, defeated the pro-Beijing Kuomintang (KMT) party in the presidential election, changing the directions of Taiwan's politics, and also changing the direction of China-Taiwan relations. ( "17-Jan-16 World View -- Taiwan's pro-independence party wins historic presidential election")
Prior to 2016, when the pro-Beijing KMT was in power, relations were very cordial, with the Chinese Communists indulging in the fantasy that if they were nice to Taiwan, then the Taiwanese people would actually want to give up their nation, and become a province of China. That was never going to happen, but the election of Tsai Ing-wen as president destroyed the fantasy for all but the most delusional Chinese Communists.
According to analysis by the Shanghai-based Fudan University, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has adopted a set of dual-track policies towards Taiwan.
One set of policies are used to "tighten the noose on Taipei to contain the pro-independence momentum." Some of these policies are as follows:
The second track of Taiwan policies is for politicians and other Taiwanese individuals who have expressed pro-Beijing views or at least have been neutral on the independence questions. Generally speaking, these are the same policies that Beijing applied to everyone in Taiwan when the KMT was in power, but they are now blocked for anyone expressing pro-independence views.
According to the report, Beijing's aim is to more closely integrate Taiwan into China in economic, social and cultural fields:
"[For example, in February 2018], Beijing unveiled 31 preferential measures covering fields of industry, finance and taxation, land use, employment, education and health care. The essential objective of Beijing is to integrate Taiwan people and companies more closely with China.Since the introduction of the 31 preferential measures, it is reported that more than 2,000 enterprises with investment from Taiwan have enjoyed preferential tax treatment on the mainland and more than 100 enterprises have secured special financial support under programs for industrial transformation and upgrading, green manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing. Additionally, Beijing annulled administrative restrictions on high-skilled professionals and technical personnel from 134 listed professions in order to attract as many well-educated Taiwanese as possible to open businesses and lead a life on the mainland."
Reading through the two tracks of these policies, I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would think that either set of policies would make any citizen of Taiwan want Taiwan to become a province of China. How do the Chinese Communists benefit from this nonsense? I'm always talking about the incredible stupidity of the CCP thugs, and this looks like just one more example.
In fact, the published report seems to agree. According to the report, these dual-track policies have produced counter-productive consequences, including the following:
I've said many times that the Chinese Communist Party thugs consistently follow one incredibly stupid policy after another. The most disastrous policies since WW II were the Great Leap Forward, which killed 50 million innocent Chinese while destroying the economy for decades, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which was so horrific that the CCP is still pretending that it never happened. Whether it's a policy regarding Hong Kong, the South China Sea, the Uighurs in Xinjiang, or anything else, I've often said that I don't know what the CCP will do, but I can guarantee that whatever they do, they will make the situation worse.
In fact, even the Chinese Communists don't seriously believe that this nonsense will make the Taiwanese want to become provincial citizens of China. There is only one way that all this benefits the Chinese Communists. According to analysts, referring to the massive intrusions into Taiwan's airspace: "PLA drills this time are not a warning, but a rehearsal for a Taiwan takeover."
In other words, the Chinese Communists are not trying to charm the Taiwanese people. What they're actually doing is preparing to launch a war -- against Taiwan, against Japan, and against the United States -- and everything that the Chinese Communists are doing is to help them prepare for those wars.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(23-Sep-2020)
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Marxist Socialism before Marx -- Vietnam's Tay-Son rebellion
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
(I am currently writing a book on the history of Vietnam, following my books on the histories of China and Iran. Vietnam has a long, complex history, heavily influenced by both India and China. This article provides some advance information from the new book.)
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Up until the last two months, Vietnam was considered the undisputed economic powerhouse of southeast Asia. In 1986, the hard-core communist government saw that their Marxist Socialist policies were causing economic disaster, and they instituted the "Doi Moi" reforms that began to privatize government businesses, and reduced regulations on foreign direct investment (FDI). These capitalistic reforms have been extremely successful, and Vietnam's economy has shown spectacular growth for over three decades. Vietnam also benefited greatly from the US-China trade dispute, which caused may Chinese businesses to relocate to Vietnam.
Another reason for Vietnam's economic success is that its population is relatively young, a large percentage having been born since 1975, the end of the "Vietnam-American war." This especially makes Vietnam a large market for Japanese goods, with Japan's median age over 50.
Vietnam's economic success has depended on FDI and on global economic growth, but both of those have fallen sharply with the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, with the result that Vietnam's economy has recently fallen off a cliff.
Both Russia and China were forced to abandon their Marxist Socialist policies in the past, in favor of capitalism and privatization reforms. The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) is trying to learn from the Russian and Chinese experiences, and keep its economic growth continuing, without making the same mistakes that Russia and China made and are making.
Unfortunately, there's a dark side to the CPV's economic reforms. The dark side is that they weren't accompanied by human rights reforms. Implementing economic reforms without human rights reforms means that CPV is no longer a Communist, Socialist or Marxist government, but instead has become a Fascist dictatorship. In this sense, it is following China's path, though not Russia's path.
Ironically, Vietnam has previously had a Marxist Socialist government for three decades in the Tay-Son Rebellion of the late 1700s -- decades before Marx was even born. This previous experiment with Marxist Socialism was a disaster, but unfortunately the CPV has not learned any lessons from that disaster.
Those who are hoping for a quick economic recovery in Vietnam are pointing to the country's successful response to the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic, which is already in a "second wave" in Vietnam.
Vietnam had very few cases for months, using what was described as "cost-effectives" methods of virus control. These included health checks at airports and borders, strategic testing, contact tracing through mobile apps, effective public communication campaigns, and a national lockdown in April. On May 4, millions of students went back to school after three months at home, making Vietnam one of the first in Southeast Asia to ease movement restrictions.
The Vietnamese thought that they had the virus all but defeated. By July 25, Vietnam had remarkably been completely free of local transmission of the virus for almost 100 days, and had quickly isolated anyone entering the country with the virus.
But then a "second wave" began unexpectedly on July 25, with a new local transmission outbreak began in the coastal city of Danang, a popular tourist destination. By July 31, there were 82 new cases in a single day, more than half in Danang. On the same day, Vietnam reported its first death due to the illness.
So Vietnam quickly decided to evacuate 80,000 people from Danang, so that large-scale sterilization procedures could be set up to control the virus. From the Western point of view this is absolutely incredible, and it shows the difference between fascist governments like China and Vietnam, versus Western democracies, where those kinds of drastic measures would be impossible. They may all have open or partially open economies, but only a fascist CPV government could evacuate 80,000 people quickly from a city by force.
It may be that this drastic technique was successful, as there have been no new community transmissions in Vietnam for the last week.
There are concerns about whether Vietnam will successfully manage a new surge in the fall, but the Vietnam government expects to do so. According to a UN representative in Vietnam, "I am confident that the country will be successful in its efforts to once again successfully contain the virus, once more over the next few weeks."
It's been pretty clear for several months that Vietnam's economy is contracting sharply this year, thanks to the pandemic. Vietnam's Doi Moi reforms were designed to encourage foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade, and so its economy today is extremely dependent on global trade, with exports equivalent to over 70% of GDP.
The pandemic caused global trade to fall drastically, estimated at an 8% contraction in 2020. Thus, exports from Vietnam fell 12.1% in March from a year ago. This was followed by a 14% drop in April, and a 12.4% drop in May.
But the economy is coming back. According to research by Euromonitor, Vietnam ranks second out of 50 economies in merger and acquisitions attractiveness. Exports climbed 2.5% in August compared to a year ago, with shipments to the U.S. rising 19% in the first eight months of 2020. However, this is not all good news. Exports from domestic companies in August increased 18.3% year-on-year, while foreign companies in Vietnam experienced a 4.6% decline. Figures like these inevitably raise suspicions that the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) government is unfairly favoring domestic companies.
The CPV is taking numerous steps to restore economic growth, especially trade, as quickly as possible.
In June, the CPV ratified a free trade agreement with the European Union that will cut or eliminate 99% of tariffs on goods traded between Vietnam and the EU. The deal was controversial in Europe because of the CPV's human and labor rights record, although the agreement supposedly addresses those abuses. It will open up Vietnam’s services, including post, banking, shipping and public procurement markets, align some standards and protect EU food and drinks, such as French champagne or Greek feta cheese, from imitations in Vietnam.
In the area of energy, Vietnam is currently working with ExxonMobil to develop the Blue Whale gas field off the country’s central coast, which has an estimated reserve of 150 billion cubic meters. Gas from this field will be used to run three gas-fired power plants slated to be built at the nearby Dung Quat Economic Zone.
In the area of manufacturing, Vietnam's primary industry of textile and garment exports fell 22%. The decline in global textile demand has led these businesses to manufacture PPE instead, producing nearly three billion masks a month.
The CPV is seeking to support high tech firms with a number of financial incentives.
High tech firms have not only seen their real estate fees reduced or waived completely, but have also been able to take preferential loans with half the general interest rate. SMEs with a revenue of 200 billion dong ($8.8 million) will also see a 30% reduction in corporate income taxes.
In Vietnam, the Communist Party owns all the land, and grants various individuals and businesses the right to use the land, in return for payments to the CPV. The CPV has reduced or eliminated real estate fees for high tech firms, and have granted them loans at low interest rates.
The CPV itself has invested heavily in the tech sector. Hanoi-based Viettel Group, the largest state-owned military telecommunications company, is investing $30 million in 5G labs to manufacture 5G chips en masse to create a national 5G infrastructure.
The investments have paid off. Dozens of AI tech firms were founded in the last two years, and Vietnam has an increasingly sophisticated workforce. Vietnam is also benefiting from the US-China trade dispute. A number of foreign high-tech firms are relocating their supply chains from China to Vietnam, due to cheaper production costs and geopolitical stability. These include South Korea's consumer electronics companies LG Group and Samsung Group. Dozens of Japanese companies have made similar shifts, including Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co, Panasonic Corp., and Canon Inc.
Australia's government is heavily supporting AI development in Vietnam. Through its Aus4Innovation program, Australia's Ministry of Science and Technology has already provided millions of dollars in funding for partnerships between Vietnamese and Austrailian institutions for commercialization of science and technology across Vietnam. New funding of almost half a million dollars is specifically targeted to AI applications to assist Vietnam's economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic.
The economic future of Vietnam seems very bright, but there's also a very dark side to Vietnam, and that's in the area of human rights.
The CPV adopted the "doi moi" economic reforms for purely monetary reasons -- to encourage foreign investment that benefits the country in general and the CPV in particular, by keeping it in power. However, the CPV did not reform the harsh, abusive public policies.
Like the Communist Party in China, the CPV has a paranoid fear of religion-based rebellions. The thugs in both Communist parties consider themselves to be more important than their countries, or than anything. These are vicious, greedy, abusive dictators, scared to death that any sort of religious prayer would mean the destruction of the Communist Party itself, and the loss of their jobs.
In Vietnam, Christians and Buddhists are particular targets of CPV abuse -- arrest, torture, jailings or execution -- just for praying to their gods rather than to the Communist Party thugs.
This abusive behavior is quite widespread, but a particularly interesting example is the Christian Hmong ethnic group in Laos, just across the North Vietnam border in Laos.
The Vietnamese brutally massacred the Hmong in the late 1970s, even performing such atrocities as cutting off penises or widespread rape. The Hmong in Vietnam continue to be persecuted by the CPV because of their Christian religion.
There is a connection between the Hmong ethnic group and the death of George Floyd early in 2020 in Minneapolis at the hands of a white policemen, Derek Chauvin. Little has been reported about Chauvin's past, except that he's married to Kellie Chauvin, a former Mrs. Minnesota. She's an ethnic Hmong and a Hmong activist, born in Laos, but fled to Thailand and became a refugee in the late 1970s, when Vietnam was committing genocide. I haven't been able to find out whether the Hmong connection was related in way to the death of George Floyd.
In one way or another, Vietnam has been around for millennia, and I will make no attempt in this article to even summarize that history. It is described in detail in my forthcoming book on the history of Vietnam.
However, there's one snippet of Vietnam's history that's fascinating now because of its relevance to today's world. It's about a three decade period in the late 1700s, when Vietnam tried Marxist Socialism, decades before Marx was born, with disastrous results as is always the case with Marxist Socialism.
The story begins in 1400 with the Ho Dynasty, Vietnam's most hated dynasty. In 1400, General Ho Quy Ly seized the throne and proclaimed himself founder of the short-lived Ho dynasty (1400-1407). He inflicted an enormous amount of suffering on the Vietnamese people, so much so that the landowners appealed to China's Ming Dynasty to intervene.
The Chinese took advantage of the situation. They invaded and took control, and inflicted even worse human exploitation than the Ho on the Vietnamese people, until they were ejected in 1428.
The Ho family came back with a vengeance in 1773, when three Ho brothers from the Tay-Son district launched a rebellion. It's apparently very easy to change your name in the Vietnam culture, and so they changed from the hated Ho name to the popular Nguyen name, although they were unconnected with the Nguyen family.
Their rebellion spread and gained strength quickly. Like all Socialists, the Tay-Son bought popularity by spending other people's money, starting by confiscating all the money of their own constituents. The Tay-Son governing chief principle and main slogan of the Tay Son was "seize the property of the rich and distribute it to the poor." In each village the Tay Son controlled, oppressive landlords and scholar-officials were punished and their property redistributed. The Tay Son also abolished taxes, burned the tax and land registers, freed prisoners from local jails, and distributed the food from storehouses to the hungry. As the rebellion gathered momentum, it gained the support of army deserters, merchants, scholars, local officials, and bonzes. It was essentially a modern-day Marxist Socialist government, though it existed long before the birth of Karl Marx.
Like all Socialist regimes, they soon ran out of other people's money. Modern day Socialist regimes turn to such things as drug dealing, extortion or dictators to gain income. They also starve, torture, jail and execute their political opponents still living in their Socialist Paradise.
The Tay-Son rebels aligned themselves with Chinese pirates. The targets of these Chinese pirates were Chinese commercial vessels. Among other things, this gave the Tay-Son (Ho) brothers revenge for the Chinese invasion in 1407 that removed the Ho Dynasty.
The benefits of the Tay-son - pirate relationship were mutual. The pirates required bases and safe harbors on land where they could sell booty, gain military and organization experience, careen and refit ships, and carouse, and the rebels provided that to the pirates, along with protection and legitimacy. In return, the rebels got the needed manpower and revenues to fight against the entrenched bureaucracy.
By the 1780s, the Tay-Son brothers were so destitute from their Socialist policies that they were completely dependent on the support of Chinese pirates. According to one historian, pirates "became a central feature of Tay Son naval strategy and indeed the regime’s economy between 1786 and 1802."
In the 1790s, a prince from the real Nguyen family, Nguyen Phuc Ahn, teamed up with French Christian missionaries and raised a mercenary army in India and defeated the Tay-Son government on June 1, 1802. The missionaries were willing to cooperate because the Tay-Son brothers were persecuting Christians.
Nguyen Phuc Ahn began a new Nguyen Dynasty in 1802. He changed his own name to Gia Long, and he changed the name of the country to Nam Viet. The Chinese didn't like that name for historical reasons. China recognized Gia Long as emperor of the new Nguyen Dynasty, but insisted on naming the country Viet Nam, the first time that name was used.
After a generational crisis civil war ends, the winning tribe or ethnic group continues the conflict by harsh, abusive treatment of ordinary people in the losing side after the war ends. Typically, the winning side fears a renewed uprising by the losing side, and they become paranoid and freely begin using harsh repression, torture and jailings.
Gia Long was no exception. His regime harshly repressed any political opposition that opposed the regime or the interests of the bureaucracy and the landowners. Pre-Tay-Son taxes were reinstated. Pre-Tay-Son prison punishments were reinstated, or were even more severe.
Gia Long followed strict "North Vietnam" Confucian style government principles. Buddhism, Taoism, and indigenous religions were forbidden, and these are characteristic of the "South Vietnam" culture.
Initially, the new government was friendly to the French Christians, since it was Christian missionaries that helped overthrow the Tay-Sons. However, the growing number of converts to Christianity -- 450,000 by 1841 -- with their disdain for Confucianism, were perceived as a critical problem by the regime. By the 1830s, the regime issued edicts that forbade the practice of Christianity, forcing the Christian communities underground. An estimated ninety-five priests and members of the laity were executed by the Vietnamese during the following quarter of a century.
Tensions grew, and in early 1861, a French fleet of 70 ships and 3,500 men reinforced Saigon, and in June 1862, forced Vietnam's emperor to cede Saigon and three provinces to the French.
France's navy continued traveling up the Mekong River, and by the end of the century had colonized all of French Indochina, their new name for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The French remained in control until after World War II, and left completely after being defeated by human wave assaults at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Once again, Vietnam was partitioned into North and South Vietnam.
The reason that I went into such detail about the Tay-Son rebellion is because it's being replayed today. "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."
North and South Vietnam were split in the 1760s. The Tay-Son (Ho) brothers started a harsh Marxist revolution that began in 1773 and lasted until 1802, with the result that North and South Vietnam were reunited again. It was followed by decades of severe repression and religious persecution. There would have been a new civil war around 1860 between North and South Vietnam, except that the French came and colonized the region. North and South Vietnam remained united until the French were ejected in 1954.
In 1954, after the defeat of the French colonizers, North and South Vietnam were again split. Another Ho, the dictator Ho Chi Minh, started a harsh Marxist revolution that began in 1954 and lasted until the reforms in 1986. It was followed by decades of severe repression and religious persecution, that are still going on today.
Vietnam may be united under control of the the CPV, but it is not culturally united. For centuries, there have been many wars between North and South Vietnam, and the core reasons haven't changed. This is clear from many blog posts online today that the people of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh city or HCMC) really do hate their CPV overlords and the people of Hanoi, while the people of Hanoi consider the people of Saigon to be sweet and nice, as if they were puppies.
The Vietnam-American war that ended in 1975 was just one more of a long series of wars between the Sinicized-Confucian culture in North Vietnam versus the Indianized-Buddhist culture in South Vietnam. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the time frame for a new civil war would be around 2035. However, just as the French invasion and colonization of French Indochina derailed the timeline for the civil war that would otherwise have begun in 1860, the current timeline could be derailed by an invasion from China or by a new world war.
In the meantime, "it is what it is," to use the trite phrase. You can visit Vietnam, you can work in Vietnam, you can live in Vietnam, provided you understand the rules. The rules are that the CPV is very harsh and oppressive, and saying or doing the wrong thing can get you arrested, tortured or deported. And even if you find a comfortable niche, the tensions and hostility between North and South are going to be worse every year.
Vietnam is an exciting, interesting place to live or visit, and it has a young, enthusiastic work force eager to succeed. Take advantage of those benefits as long as you can, and just follow the rules.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
John Xenakis is author of: "Generational Dynamics Anniversary Edition - Forecasting America's Destiny", (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 3), January 2020, Paperback: 359 pages, $14.99, https://www.amazon.com/Generational-Dynamics-Anniversary-Forecasting-Americas/dp/1732738629/
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Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(16-Sep-2020)
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Mideast peace continues to be a fantasy objective
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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US President Donald Trump has mediated another peace agreement, this time between Israel and Bahrain, following the peace agreement one month ago between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Once again, the agreement is being described as "historic."
Bahrain will participate in what will now be a three-way signing ceremony at the White House Tuesday with Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Trump explained the peace agreements happened because "Even great warriors get tired of fighting, and they’re tired of fighting." He suggested that this was just the next step on the road to peace deal for the entire Mideast. He said that other countries are considering signing peace agreements as well. He didn't name countries, but Morocco, Kuwait and Oman are considered possible candidates.
Those are all small kingdoms. It's not expected that Saudi Arabia would join the countries normalizing relations with Israel, even though Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) might consider doing so, since his father King Salman is opposed to any such recognition until the Palestinian issue is settled. However, it's believed that UAE and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel with the approval of MBS. MBS has supported the agreements by permitting Israeli planes to fly over Saudi air space for the first time.
Historically, this is the fourth peace agreement between Israel and an Arab country since Israel was created in 1948. In 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement between the two countries, in 1994, Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel, and a month ago, UAE signed a peace agreement. Thus Bahrain is the fourth country to take this step.
Long-time readers know that I've reported on and mocked numerous proposed peace agreements. Every president has a plan for Mideast peace based on a "two-state solution" -- Israel and Palestine, side-by-side in peace. Just think about that. On what planet could Israel and Palestine exist side-by-side in peace?
On May 1, 2003, I posted an article predicting that President George Bush's "Mideast Roadmap to Peace" peace plan would fail, because the Jews and the Palestinians would be re-fighting the bloody 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. (Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace? (1-May-2003)) The most recent was President Trump's "Deal of the Century" ( Trump announces fantasy 'Peace to Prosperity' Mideast peace plan (29-Jan-2020)).
When you're trying to do a Generational Dynamics analysis of a situation, you have to analyze what the people want, not what the leaders want. Bahrain and UAE are countries far away from Israel, and people probably couldn't care less whether a peace deal is agreed or not. Generally speaking, they're more concerned about Iran than Israel.
But the Palestinian people of course do care. So the Palestinian Authority leaders on Friday strongly condemned Bahrain's decision as a "betrayal of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian issue." They said:
"[The Bahraini decision would] support the legalization of the cruel crimes of the Israeli occupation against our Palestinian people at a time when the occupation state is continuing to control the Palestinian lands and annex them by military force, is working toward Judaizing Jerusalem and controlling the Islamic and Christian holy sites and is committing crimes against the Palestinian people."
So now suppose that the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who is 84 years old, decided to sign a meaningful peace agreement with Israel. He would either be shot dead by his own advisers, or else beaten to death by Palestinian mobs. Remember that the average age in the West Bank and Gaza is about 20 years old, and 20 year old children will not care about a peace agreement that an 84 year old fossil signs.
So the point is that these "historic" agreements are just pieces of paper, signed by aging leaders, with no relevance to the vast majority of the population. The peace treaties are nice, but it's the young people in that majority that are going to determine what happens, and Generational Dynamics predicts that it will be war.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
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(12-Sep-2020)
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Comments by Chinese analysts in the media
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Readers may recall that in June hostilities broke out between Chinese and Indian troops in Ladakh's Galwan Valley, along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the unmarked boundary between the two countries. On June 15, Chinese forces ambushed Indian forces in Ladakh's Galwan Valley, using barbaric weapons consisting of bayonets, poles studded with steel nails, and wooden clubs wrapped with barbed wire, killing 20 unarmed Indian soldiers. ( "25-Jun-20 World View -- Both India and China reinforce armies in Ladakh, as China makes new claim")
Now, almost three months later, there are still many unanswered questions about what happened on June 15, since neither side has issued a statement providing a full narrative. The Indians have said that 20 Indian soldiers were killed, but the Chinese have not even revealed how many Chinese soldiers were killed, leading to some speculation. Various reports indicate that 40-45 Chinese soldiers were killed, even though the Chinese were armed and the Indians were unarmed. Furthermore, according to some unconfirmed reports, the reason that the Chinese needed weapons and lost anyway is because Indian soldiers are taller and stronger than the Chinese soldiers, and so India soldiers defeat Chinese soldiers in hand to hand combat. If any of this is true, then it would be huge embarrassment for the Chinese military to admit it, and could lead to popular unrest and a desire for revenge in China, and so they won't even admit how many soldiers were killed.
The Chinese and Indian military have been having peace talks, most recently at the ministerial level on Friday on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) defense ministers’ meeting, with the meeting lasting over two hours. The peace talks have not gone well, and they belie what's actually happening on the ground.
What's happening on the ground is that Indians apparently scored a major tactical victory two days ago. Both China and India have been building up troops. But India last week executed a stealth night-time operation to claim strategic outposts. Thousands of soldiers climbed up mountain peaks for about six hours during the night to claim the vantage points along the south bank of Pangong Tso, a glacial lake under dispute. According to the Indians, this tactical move gives them the high ground and a clear view of enemy troop movements in disputed territory.
According to Chinese state media: "India bears full responsibility for the current China-India border tensions and China's military is fully determined, capable and confident to safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity."
Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, expects the Indians to have to give up without a fight:
"By the end of September, winter will have arrived in the Ladakh region where temperatures could fall to minus 25 degrees, and India has deployed about 40,000 troops in the region. This is far beyond its logistics capability, and if the tension remained unresolved, the Indian military could see non-combat casualties."
The conflict has spilled over into the economic area. India has limited Chinese investments, is tightening scrutiny on vasas, is blocking Huawei Technologies Co. out of 5G networks, and is banning numerous Chinese mobile phone apps.
Some analysts are calling the current India-China relations in Ladakh the most dangerous in decades. Both sides are massing troops, and if it's really true that the Indian troops cannot tolerate the low winter temperatures, then they'll have to either strike or retreat. The winter months may bring a turning point.
The Chinese communists have not admitted either their plans or intentions in their mass military buildup in Ladakh. However, Antara Ghosal Singh, a Chinese strategy expert at the Delhi Policy Group, has done an analysis of commentary by the Chinese strategic community on the situation. They all blame the Indians for the hostilities, and give various reasons for they think that the Indians are doing this. The following are some of the main points:
Many in China are fuming over India's tactical victory, and for its "audacity" to wave a Tibetan "Snow Mountan Lion Flag" at the confrontation site, the video of which went viral in the Chinese social media. Chinese social media space has been buzzing with calls for an "appropriate counterattack."
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(6-Sep-2020)
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South China Sea tensions soar after China launches missile barrage
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China's military launched a barrage of ballistic missiles into the South China Sea on Tuesday, triggering a further escalation of tensions between China and the United States.
China's state media said that they were DF-21D and DF-26 missiles, which China developed specifically to target moving American aircraft carriers, with the ability to adjust their path after launch to follow the moving carrier. According to the Global Times, "China's DF-26 and DF-21D are the world's first ballistic missiles capable of targeting large and medium-sized vessels, earning them the title of 'aircraft carrier killers.'"
The missile launches set off a flurry of statements on both sides.
According to a Pentagon statement:
"Conducting military exercises over disputed territory in the South China Sea is counterproductive to easing tensions and maintaining stability. The PRC's [China's] actions, including missile tests, further destabilize the situation in the South China Sea."
According to Chinese military commentators:
"This is China’s response to the potential risks brought by the increasingly frequent incoming US warplanes and military vessels in the South China Sea. China doesn’t want the neighboring countries to misunderstand Beijing’s goals. ...The US continues to test China’s bottom line in Taiwan and South China Sea issues, and this pushed China to showcase its military strength to let Washington know that even US aircraft carriers cannot flex their full muscle near China’s coast."
The "incoming US warplanes and military vessels" phrase refers to an American U-2 spy plane sent on Tuesday into an area illegally claimed by China, and a Freedom of Navigation operation (FONO) by the US guided missile destroyer USS Mustin near the Paracel Islands, which are illegally claimed by China.
Laughably, when the FONO operation ended, the Chinese claimed that they had driven the Mustin away:
"The USS Mustin, a US Navy guided missile destroyer, trespassed into the China's territorial waters in the [Paracel] Islands on Thursday, and the [Chinese military] dispatched naval and air forces to track, identify and warn it leave, said Senior Colonel Li Huamin, a spokesperson.The US ignored the rules of the international law, repeatedly stirred up troubles in the South China Sea, exercised navigational hegemony in the name of "freedom of navigation," seriously undermined China's sovereignty and security interests, and severely sabotaged the international navigation order in the South China Sea, Li said.
China has undisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters in the region, and the command troops are always on high alert to resolutely protect national sovereignty and safeguard peace and stability in the region of the South China Sea, Li said."
You know, Dear Reader, writing these articles over the years, I've had to deal with so many trolls, from China, Russia, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere, and after a while one just gets tired of the bullshit. China does not have "indisputable sovereignty" over the islands. They have no sovereignty whatsoever. The US plus everyone in the region is disputing it. Furthermore in July 2016, the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China had no sovereignty, and that its activities in the South China Sea are illegal.
Furthermore, the Chinese are highly contemptuous of international law as it applies to them, but they demand that everyone else conform.
As I've said in the past, the Chinese are unique in a highly racist way, as I described in my book, "War Between China and Japan." While people in America consider themselves to be ordinary people who were lucky enough to be born in the greatest nation in world history, the Chinese Communists view themselves as the Master Race -- yellow race, black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin -- and the rest of us as barbarians. They see international law as a way to control us, the barbarians. They'll sign an international agreement knowing that they'll violate it at will, because they're the Master Race, and the rest of us are just there to serve the Chinese.
Since completing my book on China and Japan, I've been working on a book on the history of Vietnam. It's clear that nobody has a claim on the South China Sea, but if anyone does, it's Vietnam. Vietnam's Champa Kingdom, in particular, has been guardian of the sea for centuries. The Chinese were never interested in it until Chiang Kai-Shek, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, took an interest in it in 1947, and decided to claim it just as Hitler had claimed Poland. Mao Zedong continued to claim it for Communist China.
The whole claim has always been a hoax, based on one lie after another. One of the biggest lies occurred at a September 25, 2015, press conference on the White House lawn, where Xi Jinping blatantly lied to President Barack Obama, saying that China had no intention to militarize the South China Sea, at a time when China was already moving rapidly to militarize the South China Sea. This was a significant lie about a major military matter, and it shows that the thugs in the Chinese Communist Party are never anything but trolls, even at the top.
So now the Chinese are still claiming "indisputable sovereignty." After a while, one just gets sick and tired of listening to all this crap from the Chinese Communists.
The US retaliated on Wednesday with sanctions, blacklisting 24 Chinese companies and individuals involved in China's illegal construction and military actions in the South China Sea.
The Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) has ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
This association has always worked very hard not to anger China, which means saying very little about China's illegal claims to the South China Sea. In particular, very little is said at their meetings about the 2016 victory by the Philippines at International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the Hague. The ruling declared China's activities in the South China Sea to be illegal.
However, positions have been hardening this year. The US and Australia have already issued "notes verbales", or formal diplomatic requests, to the United Nations, challenging China's claims to the South China Sea, quoting the 2016 Tribunal ruling. Japan is taking similar steps.
What's new is that several ASEAN states are also losing their fear of angering China, and are issuing their own notes. These include Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Brunei.
In particular, Vietnam has been taking steps to file a new lawsuit with International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to reaffirm the 2016 decision for the Philippines, and provide additional support for Vietnam's own claims. This would be politically explosive.
In July 2016, one day after the Hague Tribunal issued its ruling against China, the Master Race's vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin said, "It is just a piece of waste paper. You may just chuck it in the bin, leave it on the shelf, or put it in archives." Whether it's China's 1984 agreement on Hong Kong, or China's commitments to the World Trade Organization, or any other agreement, the Chinese are contemptuous of all such agreements, and see their only use as keeping the barbarians (the rest of us) under control.
China has gotten away with that for decades, as the world kept hoping that China would slowly turn into a liberal democracy. Instead, each year it's become more and more criminal.
As I'm working on my book on Vietnam, I have to point out one irony. After the Vietnam war, Vietnam was a hardcore communist country led by a fanatic, Le Duan. When he died in April 1986, the country actually did open up and institute many reforms. It's far from a liberal democracy today, but it has been moving in that direction.
The opposite is true in China. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chinese Communist Party became paranoid, desperate and belligerent, increasingly so every year.
Now the world is turning against China, especially after they seeded hundreds of nations, apparently intentionally, with the Wuhan Coronavirus, while controlling it within China itself. I've often said that Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, which killed 50 million innocent Chinese for no reason at all, was the stupidest policy enacted by any nation in the history of the world. But I may have to change that opinion now that China has adopted an even stupider policy with regard to the Wuhan Coronavirus.
So China is becoming increasingly belligerent every year, and the Western nations are becoming increasingly hostile to China every year. This has resulted in tit-for-tat confrontations that have been escalating and will continue to escalate.
These escalating tit-for-tat escalations are exactly the path that always leads to war. There's no way to stop this, given the paranoia and desperation of the Chinese Communist thugs.
This past week, China's military launched four "carrier killer" missiles into the South China Sea, in a "signal" to the United States. That's just the next escalating step. Sooner or later, it will escalate to full scale war.
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(30-Aug-2020)
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Media investigations reveal new facts about the Beirut Lebanon explosion
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
|
Ever since the catastrophic explosion in the Beirut, Lebanon, seaport on Tuesday, August 4, leveled thousands of homes, killed and injured thousands of people, and left 300,000 people homeless, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, the Iranian puppet leader of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, has been running as fast as he can in the other direction, to avoid being blamed. ( "9-Aug-20 World View -- Beirut Lebanon police clash with furious protesters following Tuesday's catastrophic explosion")
At first, Nasrallah insisted he knew nothing about the 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that exploded, after being stored in the port unprotected since 2013, in a warehouse next door to a fireworks factory. Then he tried to blame Israel. Then, when a furious public demanded an international investigation, he insisted that any investigation could only be done locally -- that is, controlled by Hezbollah.
Nasrallah is still doing everything possible to prevent an official international investigation by the United Nations or by the European Union, but unfortunately for him, he has no way to stop unofficial investigations by media or other private parties.
An investigation conducted by the German magazine Der Spiegel and the journalism network called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has revealed that Hezbollah fingerprints are all over the explosion, and that the storage of the ammonium nitrate in the first place was under Hezbollah control.
As I detailed in my August 9 article, the "official" narrative has been that a Moldovan-flagged, Russian-owned cargo ship, the MV Rhosus, carrying 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, left Georgia in 2013 heading for Mozambique, but stopped in Beirut because of technical problems, and because the owner could not afford the fees to pass through the Suez Canal. The ship was impounded in Beirut, but despite repeated requests and warnings of danger from customs officials, the Beirut courts refused to permit the ammonium nitrate to be removed or sold.
The investigation by Spiegel and OCCRP revealed numerous flaws and problems with the official narrative:
The Hezbollah militia has an iron grip on Beirut, especially on the Beirut seaport. So one possibility is that in 2013 Hezbollah ordered the delivery of the ammonium nitrate, and has been using it for weapons and explosives in Syria and elsewhere since then.
There are other possibilities as well. That's why it's most important for an international investigation to determine what actually happened. Even though Hezbollah will do everything possible to block any such investigation, it's only a matter of time before all the facts come out.
In any case, this crisis isn't over, and won't be for years.
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(22-Aug-2020)
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The political power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There was a major news story recently that you may have missed about an extremely serious hacking breach.
Last month, hackers took control of dozens of Twitter accounts, and used them to try to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from millions of Twitter users. The hackers used a very simple "low tech" technique to gain control: they bribed or extorted or tricked a Twitter employee to giving them control. There are undoubtedly hundreds or even thousands of people in Twitter's IT department with full access to the user databases who could have satisfied the hackers, although Twitter is now thought to be reducing that number.
When this happened, most people were shocked that this could even happen. Most thought that it was impossible. In this article, we're going to show that this and a lot worse can happen to Microsoft and other online services.
According to Twitter:
"The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s internal systems, including getting through our two-factor protections. As of now, we know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts. For 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, login to the account, and send Tweets. We are continuing our forensic review of all of the accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the usernames."
News reports at the time speculated that the Twitter attack was just a rehearsal for a much larger attack by Russia or China to be launched just prior to the November 3 election, to influence the election.
According to press reports, all the hackers wanted was money, but press reports speculate that they could have been a lot more malicious, and the recent attack could have been a practice test for a more extensive attack to manipulate the November 3 elections.
According to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.):
"This hack bodes ill for November balloting. Count this incident as a near miss or shot across the bow. It could have been much worse with different targets. So many security red flags are raised by this criminal attack that the culprits should be tracked down as quickly as possible."
Blumenthal is right about the large number of security red flags. But he's wrong that the problem can be solved by tracking down the culprits. The reason he's wrong is that this is a simple, low-tech attack. There's no super-complex hacking software involved. It's done the old fashioned way, with bribery and extortion or tricking of Twitter employees.
And the same low-tech attack could be used on any of the online giants -- Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft or indeed on any large online service. A malicious actor, including a country like China or Russia, could use bribery or extortion to "manipulate" one or more IT employees to gain access to or control of dozens or hundreds or even thousands of user accounts or computers. This is what happened at Twitter, and it can happen at any of the online giants. How the malicious actor uses that access or control varies from one online giant to another, but the core technique of using bribery or extortion to gain control is the same in all cases.
In this article, we're going to focus on Microsoft. According to Microsoft, there are almost one billion desktop computers running Windows 10. Microsoft is a monopolist with complete control of Windows 10 on those one billion computers. Microsoft can update or modify the Windows 10 software at any time, and there's nothing that any user can do to stop it because, for almost all users, there's no other choice but to use Windows 10. Microsoft is the quintessential monopolist, with total control of a product that one billion people are forced to use.
We're going to show how Microsoft illegally uses its monopoly power to extort money from users. The method is obvious from the numbers: If Microsoft can update or modify the Windows 10 software on computers in order to "coerce" a million users to pay $100 each for Microsoft apps or services or upgrades, then Microsoft makes $100 million for doing essentially nothing. This is the essense of monopoly power.
We're going to show how Microsoft is already doing that, and we're going to show how a malicious actor, like Russia or China, could use an attack similar to the Twitter hack to extort money or even to start a war.
Let's begin by giving three examples of how this has already occurred in other ways.
It's estimated that some 3 billion iPhones have been sold, and Apple has the kind of monopolistic control over them that Microsoft has over Windows. Apple has already used criminal monopolistic behavior to force users of older iPhones to upgrade.
You may recall from March that Apple was forced to pay up to $500 million to settle a US lawsuit. Apple had used its monopolistic control over iPhones to slow down old iPhones, in order to coerce users into upgrading. This is criminal behavior under the antitrust laws, and that's why Apple was forced to settle, and was anxious to settle. They were lucky that it cost them only $500 million.
Here are some excerpts from a Reuters news story from March:
"Apple to pay up to $500 million to settle U.S. lawsuit over slow iPhones(Reuters) - Apple Inc has agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy replacement phones or batteries.
Consumers contended that their phones’ performance suffered after they installed Apple software updates. They said this misled them into believing their phones were near the end of their lifecycles, requiring replacements or new batteries.
Apple attributed the problems mainly to temperature changes, high usage and other issues, and said its engineers worked quickly and successfully to address them. Analysts sometimes refer to the slowing of iPhones as “throttling.”
Following an initial outcry over slow iPhones, Apple apologized and lowered the price for replacement batteries to $29 from $79."
Apple was committing a crime by using its monopoly control of iPhones to force iPhones to run more slowly, in order to coerce the user to upgrade to a new iPhone. That's why Apple was desperate to settle as quickly as possible.
An important part of Apple's behavior is that it must be as obscure as possible to the user. If the user knew that Apple was purposely throttling his iPhone, he might trade it in for an Android. Instead, slowing the iPhone down is made as obscure and invisible as possible so that the user doesn't know what's going on, and just buys a new iPhone.
I realize that many people idolize Tim Cook and Apple, but this is incredibly sleazy behavior. Apple managers are screwing their own customers to essentially extort their customers to buy new iPhones. It's absolutely incredible, but it shows the state of corporate management these days. Apple managers like Tim Cook and Craig Federighi are criminals who are totally lacking in morality and ethics. And this criminal behavior actually happened.
But with 3 billion iPhones under their control, morality and ethics go out the window, as Cook and Federighi look for ways to extort more cash from users. The chance to extort billions of dollars from users is just too tempting.
If anyone reading this wants to argue that Microsoft managers are less unethical and immoral than Apple managers, then I'd like to hear that argument.
Example #1 was Apple's illegal throttling hack on iPhones to slow them down, forcing users to upgrade.
Example #2 is an illegal action in 2016 by Microsoft to force Windows Pro users to upgrade to Windows Enterprise, costing as much as $200 for each user.
In July 2016, Microsoft updated Windows 10 on its customers' desktop to make it impossible for Windows Pro users to eliminate Windows crapware like games, ads, trials and teasers. Users already have to pay a big premium to run Windows Professional, but they do so because, well, they're professionals like me, and want a professional version of Windows, so they want the option of removing things like games. But that's not good enough for Microsoft. Microsoft wants to force Pro users to pay $100-200 more per computer to get the professional features they thought they already had.
Here is a July 28, 2016, post by Russian blogger Sergey Tkachenko on his Winaero blog:
"Microsoft locks some Group Policy options to Enterprise editions in Windows 10 Anniversary UpdateToday, we surprisingly discovered that Microsoft has secretly changed the availability of some Group Policy options in Windows 10 version 1607. Windows 10 version 1607 "Anniversary Update" has reduced the control via Group Policy that you have in Pro edition. Pro edition users have lesser options available compared to version 1511, so many behaviors of the OS cannot be controlled.
If you open the Group Policy management console and read the description of certain policy settings in Windows 10 build 14393, you will find out that the options mentioned below are NO LONGER AVAILABLE for Windows 10 Pro users. They are locked down to Enterprise and Education editions only: ...
Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences. Using this option, you could prevent Windows 10 from automatically downloading and installing promoted apps like Candy Crush Soda Saga, Flipper, Twitter, NetFlix, Pandora, MSN News and many other potentially unwanted apps and games. Now you can't prevent these apps from being automatically downloaded and installed if you are using Windows 10 Pro or Home editions. The policy setting (or Registry setting) has no effect in these editions. consumer experience Starting with Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you can only control unwanted apps in Enterprise and Educations editions of Windows 10. This behavior was confirmed when I upgraded my Windows 7 Professional to Windows 10 Pro and many unwanted apps installed automatically from the Store."
A Zdnet article by Mary Jo Foley at that same time explains why Microsoft did this:
"Why did Microsoft remove the ability for admins to change and shut off these apps and settings? I asked and didn't hear back from company officials.Some of us cynics believe the change was because Microsoft wants to get more users to upgrade to the more expensive Enterprise SKU. ...
Microsoft officials have been very up front about looking for ways to make money indirectly from Windows 10 in various ways, including promotional/sponsored app suggestions. ... The Softies are trying to push more people to go to the Store and download new/more apps. Microsoft gets a cut of third-party apps downloaded from the Store."
This is pretty much a smoking gun. Microsoft wants to prevent Pro users from stopping the crapware attacks, so the option to stop them is disabled in the Pro edition. Foley call the Microsoft execs "softies," but I would call them hardcore monopolistic criminals.
This is clearly extortionary behavior by Microsoft that's illegal. There is absolutely no reason to remove these options from the Pro version, except to extort money from users who are trapped by Microsoft's monopoly, and have already paid a premium for the "Professional" version of Windows 10.
Like many sophisticated users, I used to love my Windows-7 system. It worked great, with none of the Microsoft crap that you have to put up with in Windows-10.
In mid-January 2019, on a Tuesday afternoon, all of a sudden my Windows 7 computer started getting incredibly slow. Firefox was brought to its knees, and Chrome was working intermittently.
I spent many days trying to figure out which process was causing the problem, and then I realized that it was far more sinister: Whenever I started using Firefox, or a Youtube video on Chrome, or Windows Media Player, or any of several other programs, then the problem would occur. What would happen is that that particular program would only use 15-20% of the cpu, but Windows would magically jack up the CPU usage of other normally innocuous processes.
So for example, when the system was mostly idling, process explorer might show the top cpu users as omnipage 1.3%, firefox 0.9%, sidebar 0.9%, emacs 0.1%, acro rd32 0.3%, and so forth, totalling around 10%.
But when I started up a youtube video on chrome, that process would use 23% of the cpu, which wouldn't be a problem. But all of those numbers in the last paragraph were now jacked up to 13.1%, 8.4%, 5.6%, and so forth, totaling 100%, bringing the system to its knees.
In other words, starting up something on Chrome or Media Player or any of numerous other programs would affect every other process on the system. For example, I open Media Player, and suddenly Emacs would go from using 0.1% of the cpu to 13.1% of the cpu, which makes no sense at all.
So I started searching the internet, and I found that it's happening to other people. Apparently it was triggered by a particular windows update. Being a paranoid individual, I took note of the fact that this problem started occurring the same week that Microsoft reminded everyone that Windows 7 support would expire in a year, and I wondered if this was a Microsoft plot to force people to install Windows 10.
What was going on was purposely obscure to 99.9% of the Windows-7 users. I'm one of the few users who could figure out what was going on, since I spent many years of my career developing operating systems. I developed three embedded operating systems, and two mainframe operating systems, so I'm very capable of diagnosing these situations.
So after a great deal of analysis, I knew that the only way this problem could be occurring would be is if someone (Microsoft) changed the operating system in a certain way. There's a process queue in the core of any timesharing operating system, and there's a core o/s function that takes the top process off the queue and gives it a time slice -- let's it execute for a few milliseconds. When the time slice expires, then that process goes on the bottom of the process queue, and the new top of queue is allowed to run for a time slice. That's how the operating system makes it appear that multiple programs are all running simultaneously when, in fact, they are running in turn, a few milliseconds at a time.
So the problem I was having could happen only one way: Microsoft had modified the operating system on my computer to add several milliseconds of time in a do-nothing loop to each time slice for each process. This might have been simply a bug, and that's why I was hoping that it would be corrected in the next Windows update. But it wasn't corrected in the next update or the one after. It was clear to me that that Microsoft was doing this on purpose, to force me to upgrade to Windows 10.
By the way, the only reason I could figure this out was because of my years of operating system experience. Ordinary users would have no clue what was going on, and that's how Microsoft wanted it. And if they called anyone for support, they would simply be told that their computer was getting too old, and they should upgrade to Windows 10.
I knew what was going on, but it didn't matter. Microsoft is a powerful monopolist that can screw me or any of its users at any time of its choosing, to extract money or whatever. After a few weeks of despair, I bought a new Dell Windows-10 computer. Then, of course, Microsoft started with crapware downloads on my new computer, which caused the same kind of performance problem as on my old computer.
I've now given three examples of illegal monopolistic behavior -- Apple throttling iPhones, Microsoft forcing upgrade to Enterprise edition, and Microsoft forcing upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. All of these are examples are of a monopolistic company illegally using its monopoly power to extort money from users.
We'll now turn to the particular subject of this article, Microsoft's illegal monopolistic behavior downloading crapware. However, this example is much worse because unlike the recent Twitter hack, it's about more than money.
At any time of the day or night, Microsoft downloads several gigabytes of data to my computer, essentially crippling my computer. If I'm trying to get some work done, then I'm screwed. Response time to a simple command becomes 15-30 seconds, and saving a file in an Emacs editor can sometimes take as much as 5 minutes.
The crapware downloads are different from the regular Windows Updates downloads. Those updates occur at scheduled times, and they're carefully controlled by Microsoft procedures that have been developed for years.
However, with Windows 10, that hasn't been enough for Microsoft. Every week, Microsoft downloads several gigabytes of ads, games, videos and other crapware to your computer in a completely uncontrolled fashion. These downloads go on for hours, often completely crippling the desktop computer being targeted.
My experience for the last year is that Microsoft cripples my computer at any time of the day or night, for any number of hours at a time, to store more crapware on my computer. To say that this infuriates me would be a big understatement.
Let me make it clear that I don't care about the ads. I'm used to seeing ads on tv, on web sites, in magazines, and so forth. That's not the problem. The problem is that Microsoft is purposely crippling my computer at any time, for hours at a time, to download their crapware, preventing me from getting my work done. This is criminal behavior by a monopolist, designed to force users to upgrade or to purchase additional Microsoft services.
As a Senior Software Engineer of many decades, I can spot bad software and sloppy implementations. Here's a list of the characteristics of these crapware downloads that reveal the intent:
As a software engineer of many decades, I see the above list as proof that Microsoft is purposely screwing its users for financial gain, just as Apple did in throttling iPhones. Some of the items in the above list could be fixed trivially, such as displaying advance notifications, and allowing the user to reschedule, or lowering the priority of the process, so that the computer isn't crippled. The fact that Microsoft designed these downloads to do the greatest possible harm to its own users in the most chaotic way is proof, in my opinion, of extreme malice and criminal behavior on the part of Microsoft.
For most users, it's almost impossible to see what's going on, except that your computer slows down. The only way that I know of to see what's happening during a crapware download is to open the Task Manager, go to the performance tab, and click on the "Disk 0 (C:)". You'll see that disk activity is solid 100% without variation, sometimes for hours. (By the way, I've gotten into the habit of leaving the Task Manager window open all the time to that tab. If I'm suddenly having problems, I can click on that window, and usually I can see that a new Microsoft crapware attack is just beginning.)
The graphic at the beginning of this article shows what Task Manager looks like during a crapware attack. Note that the Drive C: activity is at 100%, and this can go on for minutes or hours. That's on the Performance tab. If you try to switch back to the Process tab, you'll see that there's nothing going on -- Microsoft has purposely hidden the crapware download activity so that you can't plan for it or modify it, or even know it's going on. Microsoft can do this because it's a monopoly and it has control of your computer, and can do whatever it wants to you.
As a Software Engineer, I've always had a very high opinion of Windows, and Microsoft technology. I started playing around with Windows version 1 in 1985. Since then, I haven't always agreed with some of the directions that Windows took, but I always felt that they were intended to be in the best interest of the users. Until a year or two ago, Windows was always a gold star product, in my opinion.
I also met Bill Gates two or three times in the 1990s. I thought he was a really decent, competent guy who, once again, believed in doing what was in the best interest of the users.
But Bill Gates is gone now, having left Microsoft years ago to save the world from malaria and coronavirus. The company that he left behind has turned into a sewer with a corporate culture of young people who happily sacrifice the best interest of their users for their own agendas and money.
I'm now ready to show how Microsoft's policies risk a global hacking attack on Microsoft that can have much more serious consequences than the similar attack that's already occurred on Twitter.
I've now shown the following:
With regard to "manipulating" any of the employees of these services, let's recall that there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese living in America. Under Chinese law, the Chinese military tracks them and requires them to provide intelligence or perform other duties as described by the military. China's 2017 National Intelligence Law requires all Chinese citizens and businesses to perform such duties, even when doing so is illegal. I don't blame the Chinese citizens for this. I blame the Chinese Communist thugs who treat their own citizens like dirt, as contrasted to ethnic Chinese citizens who live in Taiwan and have much higher standards of living, much more freedom, and aren't persecuted by a paranoid, desperate government.
The major online services are mostly headquartered in the west, and so have many Chinese employees. These people are all subject to China's National Intelligence Law, and so they can be directly "manipulated" by China's military. If one of these employees has access to the company's user database -- and I have no doubt that many do -- then those employees can be "manipulated" into stealing data, stealing accounts, or taking control of millions of users' accounts, as has already happened in the case of the Twitter hack.
I have a personal anecdote related to this subject. A few months ago, I started receiving robocall phone messages in Chinese on my home phone. So I recorded one of them and asked someone to translate. It went: "Hello, this is the Chinese embassy. You have a very important notification. For details please press xxx." So I don't know why my phone number was called, or what sort of "important notification" was intended, but this shows one of the ways that the Chinese Communists keep Chinese people in America on a short leash, ready to do as they're told.
On July 29, 2020, the House Judiciary committee held a hearing on examining the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The CEOs of all four companies came and testified, and were questioned by the politicians on the committee.
The hearing began in full-scale farce. The opening statement of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, began as follows:
"My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her. When they tried to kick her out of school, my grandfather went to bat for her. After some negotiation, the principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma."
Listening to this, I was soooooooo touched that I almost had tears streaming down my face. It was just so sad.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Google, took a slightly different approach:
"Expanding access to opportunity through technology is deeply personal to me. I didn’t have much access to a computer growing up in India. So you can imagine my amazement when I arrived in the U.S. for graduate school and saw an entire lab of computers I could use whenever I wanted. Accessing the internet for the first time in that computer lab set me on a path to bring technology to as many people as possible. It’s what inspired me to join Google 16 years ago."
Once again, very touching.
So what's going on here? These ridiculous statements are carefully planned and carefully rehearsed well in advance, in both content and demeanor, to show that these huge online service monopolies are really just innocent little businesses, bringing the American dream to millions of others.
It's as if to say, "We're not like other wicked monopolists -- John D. Rockefeller in oil, Andrew Carnegie in steel, Cornelius Venderbilt in railroads. Those are nasty, mean, old, ancient, out-of-date monopolies. Not like us. We're sweet, happy, modern, hip, cool monopolies, and we're different."
The CEOs were playing on the politicians' ignorance and stupidity, which is trivially easy. The objective of the CEOs was to avoid answering any real questions from the posturing politicians, who are too dumb to know what was going on anyway, since they barely know how to turn on a computer. And it worked.
So what are the questions that the CEOs were afraid to answer?
One of them was the one we've been discussing. This hearing occurred shortly after the Twitter hack, and the CEOs were undoubtedly all dreading the question: "Could the same thing happen to you?" They were dreading that question because the answer would have to have been "Yes," although they would have buried that answer in multiple paragraphs of self-excusing verbiage.
The second question the CEOs are afraid to answer is about their censorship monopoly.
This article has been about illegal abuse of monopoly power and exposure to data breaches, by the large online services, especially Microsoft.
However, with the November 3 presidential election approaching, we're seeing abuse of a different kind of monopoly power. We're seeing Google, Facebook and Twitter abuse their monopoly power over censorship to influence the election toward the Democrats by censoring anything from Trump's 63 million supporters as "hate speech" or "fake speech." There are many examples of this that are extremely ridiculous, such as approving support for left-wing protests and violent riots by antifa, while condemning street protests against Democratic governors as racist or dangerous.
Ironically, this didn't start with Trump's presidency and actually has nothing to do with Trump. It was already going on early in the Obama administration with the vitriolic attacks by Democrats on members of the conservative Tea Party, referring to Teapartiers with the hate term "teabaggers," which is as bad as the N-word. In my almost 20 years of developing Generational Dynamics, I've seen many similar examples of one group hating another group for no reason at all. I don't know what chromosome or hormone causes this, but I do know that that chromosome or hormone causing Democrats to hate 63 million Teapartiers and Trump supporters is exactly the same as the one that caused the Nazis to hate the Jews, the Hutus to hate the Tutsis, or the Chinese Communists to hate the Uighurs and Tibetans. This is a constant of human nature, and we're seeing it played out in America today in the Democrats' vitriolic hatred of 63 million Teapartiers and Trump supporters.
So today we have the major online services -- Google, Facebook and Twitter -- supporting this hatred by classifying anything by Teapartiers or Trump supporters as "hate speech" or "fake speech."
When confronted with evidence of this, a standard answer is to appeal to the magic of artificial intelligence. "The decision whether something is hate speech is made by impersonal AI algorithms in computers that are non-partisan and not political. Haha."
Politicians who barely know how to turn on a computer just accept this argument, as if there were some magic involved. Actually, there's no magic involved. AI algorithms like that are rules-driven, and programmers would write the rules.
The rules used by Google and others are confidential, of course, but we can speculate on how some of them work. Let's suppose a tweet contains the text, "Make America great." That alone wouldn't be enough to classify it as hate speech, but it would add points in some sort of point system. If a tweet contains another "racist" phrase like that, then there might be enough points for the "non-partisan" algorithms to decide that the tweet is hate speech.
Who decides what these rules are? The deciders are Google employees. Among the Google employees making the rules there will be women as well as men, to prevent anti-female bias in the rule-making. And there will be blacks as well as whites, in order to prevent anti-black bias in the rule-making. But what do they do about anti-conservative bias? The answer is NOTHING. We know from various statements and blogs and leaked meeting videos that all the employees at Google are far left, and if there are any politically moderate employees at Google (such as James Damore), they will be fired or marginalized by the others, and their suggestions for rules will ignored in group code reviews.
So we have a situation where Google is fully on-board to target 63 million tea partiers and Trump supporters in order to affect the November 3 election. As I said, for one demographic group to hate another demographic group is common throughout history and the world, as in the Nazi hatred of Jews and the Hutu hatred of Tutsis or any of a million other examples that anyone who studies history can name. The one good thing we can say about the current situation is that the hate campaign has not yet degenerated into genocide, although genocide is the stated objective of the fascist organization antifa.
I can't end this article without looping back to the beginning.
There are some important points to be made about the power of monopoly. I've shown how companies like Apple and Microsoft use their monopoly power to coerce millions of users to purchase additional unnecessary services, products and upgrades, making hundreds of million or billions of dollars for the companies involved, or how Google, Twitter and Facebook are using their monopoly power over censorship rules to control the November 3 elections.
But I've also shown the danger of monopoly -- to the companies, to the country, and even globally. Think of a monopoly as an enormous source of power that the company can use in many ways to make money. But now suppose a malicious actor, like Russia or China, finds a way to gain control of that enormous power, as has already happened in the case of the Twitter hack. That power then becomes a weapon that can destroy the company, destroy million of lives or businesses, or destroy a country.
Right now that monopoly power is being used to make money and to affect the November 3 election. But we can also be certain that hackers around the world have learned from the Twitter hack, and are working 24 hours a day to gain control of an online system for their own financial or political benefit. It's possible that they've already succeeded without our knowing it.
In the middle of an election season, it's too late to even think about fixing this problem this year. But fixing this problem should be among the highest government priorities next year, no matter who wins the election.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational
Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(17-Aug-2020)
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Palestinians infuriated by UAE-Israel peace agreement
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
US President Donald Trump has mediated a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) being described as "historic," since the agreement will lead to normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries, for the first time. They will exchange embassies and ambassadors, and cooperate in numerous areas, including commerce, trade, security, anti-terrorism, and health.
Historically, this is the third agreement between Israel and an Arab country since Israel was created in 1948. In 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement between the two countries, and in 1994, Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel. Thus, the UAE becomes the third country to take this step.
According to Trump, both Israel and UAE were anxious to reach this agreement, because Israel and UAE are united in their opposition to Iran. Trump said that the agreement only became possible because the Trump administration backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, and because Trump then developed personal relations of friendship with several Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia.
A significant part of the new agreement is that Israel will suspend plans to annex a portion of the West Bank occupied by Israeli settlers. These plans to annex a portion of the West Bank have been extremely controversial since they were announced several months ago. This has infuriated Jewish settler organizations. David Elhayani, head of the Yesha Council of settlers, said: "He deceived us. He has deceived half a million residents of the area and hundreds of thousands of voters."
Trump is claiming that this agreement is an important step on the path to Mideast peace. This is political fantasy. The Palestinians are not part of this deal, and they will not be in favor of it.
Another country that won't be happy will be Qatar. Qatar is still under an air, sea and ground blockade by Sunni Arabia and UAE. The blockade began in 2016, and attempts at mediation by Trump have failed. However, the US has a large military naval base in Qatar, so that relationship is important.
As long-time readers know, the first Generational Dynamics analysis that I posted was on May 1, 2003, when I predicted that President George Bush's "Mideast Roadmap to Peace" peace plan would fail, because the Jews and the Palestinians would be re-fighting the bloody 1948 war the followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Since then, there have been several smaller Mideast wars, with but there has been no sign of an acceptable peace agreement. Indeed, I have said any number of times that the so-called "two-state solution" is impossible.
So it's not surprising that Palestian leadership is denouncing this agreement, and accusing the UAE of betrayal of the Palestinians, and even of "stabbing them in the back." Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's senior adviser said, "The Palestinian leadership rejects and denounces the UAE, Israeli and US trilateral, surprising, announcement."
A former deputy foreign minister of Iran tweeted:
"UAE's new approach for normalizing ties w/fake, criminal #Israel doesn't maintain peace & security, but serves ongoing Zionists' crimes. Abu Dhabi behavior has no justification, turning back on the Palestine cause. W/ that strategic mistake, #UAE will be engulfed in Zionism fire.— H.amirabdollahian (@Amirabdolahian) August 13, 2020"
Other Mideast leaders reacted as expected.
Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain and European countries endorsed the agreement with varying levels of enthusiasm. At the very least, individual spokesmen hoped that it would advance the "peace process." Saudi Arabia has not commented on the agreement, but it's thought that the UAE would not have taken this step without the Saudi's tacit approval.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
The following is the text of the agreement announced on Thursday:
"Joint Statement of the United States, the State of Israel, and the United Arab EmiratesPresident Donald J. Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Sheilch Mohammed Bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates spoke today and agreed to the full normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
This historic diplomatic breakthrough will advance peace in the Middle East region and is a testament to the bold diplomacy and vision of the three leaders and the courage of the United Arab Emirates and Israel to chart a new path that will unlock the great potential in the region. All three countries face many common challenges and will mutually benefit from today's historic achievement.
Delegations from Israel and the United Arab Emirates will meet in the coming weeks to sign bilateral agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit. Opening direct ties between two of the Middle East's most dynamic societies and advanced economies will transform the region by spurring economic growth, enhancing technological innovation, and forging closer people-to-people relations.
As a result of this diplomatic breakthrough and at the request of President Trump with the support of the United Arab Emirates, Israel will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in the President's Vision for Peace and focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world. The United States, Israel and the United Arab Emirates are confident that additional diplomatic breakthroughs with other nations are possible, and will work together to achieve this goal.
The United Arab Emirates and Israel will immediately expand and accelerate cooperation regarding the treatment of and the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus. Working together, these efforts will help save Muslim, Jewish, and Christian lives throughout the region.
This normalization of relations and peaceful diplomacy will bring together two of America's most reliable and capable regional partners. Israel and the United Arab Emirates will join with the United States to launch a Strategic Agenda for the Middle East to expand diplomatic, trade, and security cooperation. Along with the United States, Israel and the United Arab Emirates share a similar outlook regarding the threats and opportunities in the region, as well as a shared conimilment to promoting stability through diplomatic engagement, increased economic integration, and closer security coordination. Today's agreement will lead to better lives for the peoples of the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and the region.
The United States and Israel recall with gratitude the appearance of the United Arab Emirates at the White House reception held on January 28, 2020, at which President Trump presented his Vision for Peace, and express their appreciation for United Arab Emirates' related supportive statements. The parties will continue their efforts in this regard to achieve a just, comprehensive and enduring resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As set forth in the Vision for Peace, all Muslims who come in peace may visit and pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, and Jerusalem's other holy sites should remain open for peaceful worshippers of all fifths.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and Crown Prince Sheilch Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan express their deep appreciation to President Trump for his dedication to peace in the region and to the pragmatic and unique approach he has taken to achieve it."
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational
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(14-Aug-2020)
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Why was 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in Beirut's seaport for years?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Police are firing rubber bullets and teargas at protesters in Martyrs' Square in central Beirut, Lebanon's capital city. One person was killed and dozens injured on Saturday, as government buildings were occupied by protesters.
There is a growing anti-government fury in Lebanon, following the catastrophic explosion on Tuesday at the Beirut seaport. Hundreds were killed, thousands were injured, hundreds of thousands are now homeless because their homes were destroyed.
The exploded materials were 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that had been stored in the seaport since 2013. As a point of comparison, Timothy McVeigh used only about one ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to destroy the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.
There is a growing fury in Beirut that the politicians who have been destroying Lebanon's economy for years by lining their own pockets have allowed this to happen. A lot of people knew about the stored fertilizer, and a lot of people complained about it during the last six years, but nothing was done. It was just allowed to sit there, without proper precautions taken. Meanwhile the corrupt élite politicians just continued growing fat and happy, allowing the economic collapse to worsen month after month, allowing garbage to pile up around the city, taking kickbacks for approving defective fuel oil so there's been no electricity, and still going on tv and spouting the usual unbearable self-serving crap that comes from all politicians who are incapable of accomplishing anything but the enrichment of themselves and their cronies.
Even before the explosion, even before the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic, the country Lebanon was already on the verge of collapse. Nearly 50% of the population are living in poverty. Lebanon has two problems. The Iran-controlled terrorist group Hezbollah runs the country, but is receiving less money from its puppetmaster Iran, thanks to US sanctions. And second, there is massive government corruption, stemming from its "confessional system of government," where power is divided based on sectarian affiliation or confession (Sunni, Shia, Christian), as I've described in detail in the past. The confessional form of government has worked fairly well in resolving disputes in both Iraq and Lebanon, but it gives each sectarian group unrestricted access to the funds of the portions of government it controls, leading to a situation where government officials take all the money for themselves, and let the people starve and freeze in darkness. Now, for the first time, there is massive anger growing against Hezbollah in both Lebanon and Iraq, and Lebanon's government may collapse completely.
The country has been in free fall for months. The currency has collapsed. The unemployment rate is over 30%. A tainted fuel oil scandal revealed enormous corruption -- bribes, forged documents, and falsified tests. There have been anti-government protests for months, and after the explosion they are now propelled by a new fury.
The 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was left sitting in a storage warehouse, adjacent to a fireworks factory, in the midst of a densely packed residential area. 300,000 people lost their homes from the explosion, hundreds were killed, and thousands were wounded. 85% of the country's grain storage was destroyed. Several hospitals were destroyed. The explosion was far larger than anyone had ever seen, and property was damaged and windows broken all across the city, and for miles around. The explosion could be heard as far away as Cyprus.
Public officials in Lebanon are all trying to cover their asses to claim that they had nothing to do with storing 2750 tonnes of fertilizer in the seaport for several years, and each one is pointing to someone else to blame. Citizens in Lebanon are blaming the entire government, and demanding that all of it be thrown out.
It's interesting that none of Lebanon's politicians is willing to come to Martyrs' Square to talk with the people. The only politician who did so was France's president Emmanuel Macron, who visited Beirut on Thursday and poignantly went into the square to talk to the people that Lebanon's leaders didn't dare talk to.
Marwan Bishara at al-Jazeera is reporting that Hezbollah officials are referring to the protesters in Martyrs' Square as "the scum of the earth." We'll discuss this more later.
The sequence of events was so ridiculous that it would be a joke if it hadn't ended in catastrophe. Here's a summary:
Imagine if there were no checks and balances in the US constitution. Donald Trump would have been able to impose all sorts of immigration and other policies with no resistance from the courts or Democrats. Similarly, if the Democrats were in power, they would be able to impose far left Socialist green new deal policies without resistance. It's the checks and balances in the US constitution that prevent radical policies from being implemented, and force compromises.
China illustrates what happens when there are no checks and balances. An example of what happens is Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward policy in 1958-60. This may have been the stupidest, most destructive policy of any nation in the history of the world, and it resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths of innocent Chinese, from starvation, execution and torture, all to impose a Socialist ideology. China's economy still has not recovered from the disaster. It happened because there were no courts to stop it, and any politician who pointed out to Mao that it was failing was tortured and executed. Today, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and dictator Xi Jinping are repeating mistakes in the same way -- genocide, executions, torture, invasion, annexation, and so forth -- and there are no courts or opposition to stop him. China is headed for another disaster. That's what happens when you don't have government checks and balances like the United States.
So that brings us to Lebanon's "dynastic confessional" system of government. Lebanon's "confessional" system of government is defined in its constitution, which requires that the three main government offices be occupied by specific sectarian groups:
Because each sect has complete control of one portion of the government, there are no checks and balances and corruption is rampant, with the leaders of each sect able to steal as much money as they like from their own part of the government.
As time goes on, each sect creates its own dynasty within the section of government that it controls. So one way to think of Lebanon's government is, not as a dictatorship, but as a triple dictatorship, which each dynastic sect have complete dictatorial control over one part of government, with complete power of corruption, and no controls, no checks, no balances.
This system of government was set up that way for a reason. Recall that several paragraphs back I referred to Hezbollah politicians referring to the protesters as "scum of the earth." The different sects of Lebanon are not capable of simply getting along with each other. The level of mutual hatred between the sects runs extremely deep.
Recall Lebanon's last generational crisis war, the civil war of 1975-90, mainly between Muslims versus Christians, killing some 200,000 people. A major event occurred on September 15-16, 1982, when Maronite Christian militias massacred 2-3,000 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. This act has haunted Lebanon to this day.
That was less than 40 years ago. Most of the people today vividly remember the horror of that mass slaughter, and many are still traumatized by it. 15 years ago, when I wrote about the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. I quoted Lebanese President Émile Geamil Lahoud as saying:
"Believe me, what we get from [Israeli bombers] is nothing compared to [what would happen] if there is an internal conflict [a new civil war] in Lebanon. So our thanks comes when we are united, and we are really united, and the national army is doing its work according to the government, and the resistance [Hizbollah] is respected in the whole Arab world from the population point of view. And very highly respected in Lebanon as well."
In 2006, the people of Lebanon were still more sickened and horrified by what they had done to each other in 1982 than in the bombing by Israel's warplanes. The Lebanese feared, above all else, a repeat of something like the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila, and considered that to be a worse possibility than Israeli bombers.
Some 14 more years have passed, but those feelings still remain. There's a terror in the population that a spark will be lit, and there will be another huge, bloody massacre of Lebanese people by other Lebanese people, as happened in 1982.
Lebanon's political situation is complicated in another way. Lebanon has become a vassal state of Iran, which uses Iran to fight its Mideast wars. Iran itself has turned into a full-fledged vassal state of China, who is buying Iranian oil as long as the Iranians do as they're told. A political change in Lebanon could have some kind of chain reaction in Iran and China.
Lebanon is in a generational Awakening era, a time when older traumatized generations who had survived the war do anything possible to prevent it from happening again, while the younger naive generations rebel against the strict rules and institutions that their parents had put in place. In America and Europe, the last Awakening era was the 1960s, following the horrors of World War II.
One thing that WON'T happen in this current crisis in Lebanon is a new civil war. There are too many people who are still traumatized by the memories of the last one, and they won't let it happen again.
But what does happen during an Awakening era is a political climax -- a regime change, a "velvet revolution," "palace coup" or non-violent coup that fundamentally changes the government in a significant way. In America, this was the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. Another example is Germany's change of government that led to the Weimar Republic in 1918.
So today's protesters in Martyrs' Square are seeking a major political reform: Repeal the dynastic sectarian form of government and replace it with a real democracy with checks and balances.
A solution of this kind will probably be adopted, but it has the problem that it will tear down the firewalls between the sects that the strictly confessional government provides. This would normally lead to low-level clashes among the sects, and then full-scale sectarian civil war again probably around 2040.
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It's hard to overstate how devastated Lebanon is. The economy was in a state of collapse before Tuesday, and now hundreds of thousands more are homeless and the food stocks have been destroyed. Lebanon is desperately in need of international aid.
Lebanon has been negotiating for a bailout with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for years. The problem is that there's no point in giving money to Lebanon's corrupt government, since it would just go into the coffers of the cronies of the sleazebag Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, and the others. So the IMF refused to provide money to Lebanon unless Lebanon reforms, which was never going to happen.
On Sunday, Emmanuel Macron will lead an international donors' conference. Macron has already promised that aid to Beirut will not fall into "corrupt hands," but whether there are any non-corrupt hands left in Beirut remains to be seen.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
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(9-Aug-2020)
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China's strategy continues to suffer geopolitical reverses
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia's government in Moscow has been caught by surprise by large anti-government protests in Khabarovsk, eight time zones away in Russia's Far East.
Protests have been growing for several weeks, and on Saturday, tens of thousands of people in Khabarovsk took part in protest marches. Protests have also spread to other cities. They were protesting the arrest, on July 9, of Sergei Furgal, the democratically elected governor, who was "kidnapped" back to Moscow, over 6,000 km away. Furgal was arrested on charges that he was involved in three murders in the early 2000s. The protesters were demanding that if Furgal was going to be tried, then the trial must take place in Khabarovsk, not 6,000 km away in Moscow.
Furgal was unexpectedly elected governor of the Khabarovsk Region in September 2018, beating the candidate who had been hand-picked by Vladimir Putin. Furgal has remained a popular figure ever since, and in 2019, his Liberal Democratic party won a landslide victory. After Furgal's arrest, and before any trial, Furgal was fired as governor, and Putin replaced him with a federal politician Mikhail Degtyaryov as acting governor to the region. Degtyaryov is from the same party as Furgal, but presumably he will do as he's told by Putin.
Theoretically, Russia is a functioning democracy, but as a practical matter, the candidates selected by Putin always win, and are expected to do as they're told when in office. Furgal did not do as he was told, and his removal and replacement by Putin is seen not only as a necessary step to bring the Khabarovsk Region under control, but also as a warning to any other governor who might be thinking of straying from the official line.
Nonetheless, the size of the anti-government protests has been a shock to the Kremlin, with an estimated 30,000 protesters marching to the Khabarovsk capital building on Saturday.
At the march, demonstrators chanted slogans like "Disgrace!", "Fair trial in Khabarovsk!", “As long as we are united, we are invincible!” and “Freedom for Furgal!” Many demanded President Putin resign because local people had lost trust in him.
The new governor, Degtyaryov, has already offended people by refusing to meet with local citizens, saying that he won't meet with those who come "yelling under my windows."
Putin has always responded harshly to protests, but this one caught him by surprise. If the protests continue, we can expect violence by the security forces in the coming weeks.
Khabarovsk is the capital city and largest city of the Khabarovsk Krai (administrative region), with a population of 600,000, including thousands of Chinese migrants that have crossed over the Amur River from China.
Many Chinese claim that Khabarovsk really belongs to China. They point to Hong Kong, which became a British colony in 1842 because of the Opium Wars and what the Chinese call an "unfair treaty." Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997. Many in Chinese social media claim that Khabarovsk became part of Russia because of another "unfair treaty," the May 1858 Treaty of Aigun between Russia and China that settled the boundary between the two countries, when China was weakened by the Taiping Rebellion. The Chinese are claiming that Russia should hand Khabarovsk back to China, just as Hong Kong was handed back to China. However, the region demanded by China also contains Vladivostok, which is the location of Russia's Pacific military fleet, so there is little chance that Russia would agree to any such thing without a major war. Still, China and Russia fought a border war in the 1960s, so there may be a new war at some point.
However, it won't be soon. Russia and China currently have a "marriage of convenience," where they pretend to love each other. They need each other's support because they're both criminal outlaws, with China illegally annexing the South China Sea and Russia illegally annexing eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself has been suffering numerous serious reverses lately. The Trump administration's closing of China's Houston consulate is a major blow to the Chinese military's espionage program. China is receiving worldwide condemnation for many of its policies that were previously ignored, or even supported by the credulous Western mainstream press -- purposely seeding hundreds of countries with the Wuhan Coronavirus, causing worldwide economic devastation, arresting, torturing and enslaving millions of Muslim Uighurs, imposing dictatorial policies on Hong Kong through its new security law.
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is running into problems because China's infrastructure agreements with numerous countries, especially in Africa, imposed huge debt requirements, thanks to China's "debt trap diplomacy," and now because the Wuhan Coronavirus has shut down many economies, many countries can no longer make the debt repayments.
What many people don't realize is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has no strategy. They're planning to annex part of India, annex part of Vietnam, annex Russia's Far East, launch a war of revenge against Japan, and annex Taiwan. But what's the strategy? Even if China wins all those wars (and it will probably lose all of them), then those gains will disappear within two generations.
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union had won control of numerous countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. By 1991, Russia had lost control of all of those countries. The same would happen with China. So what's China strategy after it wins all those wars? If there is one, I'm not aware of it.
The CCP thugs today are paranoid and desperate, and highly emotional. What do we do now? Attack Taiwan? Attack India? Sign up another BRI country? They don't know what to do next, so they might do anything. Sooner or later that will lead to war.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(26-Jul-2020)
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Lebanon: A country in free fall
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For many years, I used to write an article every day, 365/366 days per year, and cross-posted them on Brietbart. However, in the last couple of years, I no longer have the energy to do that. One reason is that I was royally screwed by the a--holes at Breitbart, and the other reason is that, even though I have thousands of regular readers, nobody is willing to pay me a regular salary, and most of them consider the articles equivalent to a comic strip that they enjoy reading, as long as it's free.
Nonetheless, there's so much nonsense, ignorance and stupidity, in the mainstream media, especially about international events. Even the BBC is turning into a left-wing sewer like CNN, probably because the BBC receives a lot of money from PBS and they have to do as they're told. And I've been told by many people that they depend on my web site, which apparently the only web site in the world with honest, unbiased, non-ideological descriptions of what's going on in the world.
The result is that I actually feel guilty about not doing more. So the purpose of this article is to briefly summarize some major international stories that are very important, but which nobody knows anything about. It's not as good as three major articles on three consecutive days, but it's almost as good.
There's a really interesting story about Ethiopia's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which has been under construction since 2011. I've written several stories about it while it was under construction, and about the controversy: Once the dam has been constructed, it has to be filled with water from the Blue Nile, and the region to be filled is so enormous that it will take about seven years to fill the dam. However, the Blue Nile supplies most of Sudan's water, and about 90% of Egypt's water. Both Egypt and Sudan are already short of water, and there are drought seasons that are worse. So this seven-year filling period is potentially a disaster to Sudan and Egypt. There have been years of arguments and negotiations, to no avail.
So now, in July 2020, the time has come for Ethiopia to start filling the dam. Nothing much has happened yet, but if Egypt and Sudan suffer from lack of water, there could well be a war.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been arguing for years about an Armenia-governed enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh in the middle of Azerbaijan. There was no problem when both countries were part of the Soviet Union, but they had a bloody war after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. There have been occasional clashes, most recently in 2016. But in the last week, major fighting has begun, and people in Azerbaijan have been marching on the capitol building in Azerbaijan's capital city Baku, demanding that Azerbaijan declare war on Armenia and force Armenia to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Generally speaking, Azerbaijan is a Turkic country aligned with Turkey, and Armenia is an Eastern Orthodox (Armenian Apostolic) country aligned with Russia. Furthermore, memories of the massacre of Armenians in Turkey in 1916 ("Armenian genocide") are being revived. Turkey has vowed to defend Azerbaijan, and Russia has offered to mediate. I would say that this situation could lead to a regional war, but there's already a small regional war going on. The war could expand into a war between Turkey and Russia, two countries that are also at odds with each other in Syria and Libya.
The country Lebanon is on the verge of collapse. Nearly 50% of the population are living in poverty, and that was before the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis began, which is making things much worse. Lebanon has two problems. The Iran-controlled terrorist group Hezbollah runs the country, but is receiving less money from its puppetmaster Iran, thanks to US sanctions. And second, there is massive government corruption, stemming from its "confessional system of government," where power is divided based on sectarian affiliation or confession (Sunni, Shia, Christian), as I've described in detail in the past. The confessional form of government has worked fairly well in resolving disputes in both Iraq and Lebanon, but it gives each sectarian group unrestricted access to the funds of the portions of government it controls, leading to a situation where government officials take all the money for themselves, and let the people starve and freeze in darkness. Now, for the first time, there is massive anger growing against Hezbollah in both Lebanon and Iraq, and Lebanon's government may collapse completely.
The country is in free fall. The currency has collapsed. The unemployment rate is over 30%. A tainted fuel oil scandal revealed enormous corruption -- bribes, forged documents, and falsified tests. Protesters have blocked roads with burning tires and are demanding that the entire government resign. A crisis seems imminent.
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(17-Jul-2020)
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Iran's Chabahar Port deal with India is at risk
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A leaked agreement being negotiated by China and Iran has little chance of being implemented, but if it were, it would have significance going back through centuries of Iran's history. China would invest $400 billion over a 25 year period in infrastructure and military projects in Iran, in return for discounts on Iranian oil.
The agreement is very much in the pattern of China's Belt and Road (BRI) agreements with numerous countries, using "debt trap diplomacy." The typical pattern is that China lends an enormous sum of money to a country, and the country then uses that money to pay Chinese companies for parts and services, and then pays salaries of thousands of Chinese workers that will develop the projects. Once the target company fails to make its debt repayments, China seizes control of the country's strategic assets. China has used these secret agreements to acquire and control ports and other strategic assets in Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Zambia, Kenya -- through its "debt trap diplomacy." Several other countries, including Pakistan and the Maldives, are at risk.
The draft agreement is secret, but the terms that are leaked look very similar to BRI agreements with other countries. According to the NY Times, which obtained the leaked agreement, it cites almost 100 projects, including airports, high-speed railways and subways. China would develop free-trade zones in Maku, in northwestern Iran, and in Abadan, where the Shatt al-Arab river flows into the Persian Gulf, and on the gulf island Qeshm. The agreement also includes proposals for China to build the infrastructure for a 5G telecommunications network, to offer the new Chinese Global Positioning System, Beidou, and to help Iran's government control the internet in the same way that China does. China will have access to Iran's military airbases.
A secretive element relates to the military dimension of the agreement, whereby China will have 5,000 members of its security forces present on the ground in Iran. Once again, this is a typical requirement. China lends money to Iran, Iran uses the money for Chinese parts and services, and to pay the salary of Chinese workers, the Chinese workers send the money back to their families in China. So China gets the money back, and Iran still has to repay the loan, so that Iran essentially has to repay the loan twice.
China will be investing nearly $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries in the first five years of the agreement. In return, China will get priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also get a 12 percent discount and it can delay payments by up to two years. In addition, China will essentially be able to pay in any currency it desires. In total, China will receive discounts of nearly 32 percent.
The "capitulatory system" of the Middle East was developed starting in the 1500s during the rise of the Ottoman empire (Turkey). A capitulation was an agreement between two countries to permit one country to grant various concessions to another country. Under this system, the French were granted by the Ottomans to establish trading posts and consular missions in Syria and Egypt. Later, agreements with England and other Europeans provided for imports of steel, lead, tin, gold and silver into Turkey.
In the 1800s, the capitulatory system reached Persia (Iran). After Persia's humiliating military losses to the Russians and English, Persia was forced to accept concessions as "reparations." Economic concessions fell into three major categories: public utilities, financial enterprises, and exploration for and exploitation of natural resources. I described this capitulatory system in detail in my 2018 book, "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East."
After decades of these concessions, where the Russians and English took advantage of the Iranians, and the Iranian politicians and clerics were enriched through corruption, there was a backlash. For example, the tobacco concession granted a monopoly on both the purchase and sale of tobacco within Persia to an English company for a period of fifty years, and during this period Iran's rulers received enormous kickbacks, while Iran's tobacco merchants suffered. Huge anti-government protests led to the anti-government Tobacco Revolt (1890-92).
In the political debate of that time, a merchant wrote:
"By what laws does the government sell our national rights to foreign racketeers? These rights, according to both the principles of Islam and traditional laws of Iran, belong to the people of our country. These rights are the means of our livelihood. The government, however, barters the Moslem property to the unbelievers. By what law? Have the people of Iran died that the government is auctioning away their inheritance?"
Today, the proposed Iran-China draft agreement is receiving sharp criticism that sounds very similar to the above criticism of the 1890 tobacco concession. Some lawmakers are saying that it feeds China's 'colonialist greed." Former President Mahmood Ahmadinejad warned that the Iran-China agreement was with "a foreign country" was being discussed "away from the eyes of the Iranian nation." Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, blasted the "shameful, 25-year treaty with China that plunders our natural resources and places foreign soldiers on our soil."
The Tobacco Revolt was a major event in Iranian history, with implications far beyond the income of tobacco merchants. The tobacco concession was revoked, but the anti-government protests continued. In 1905 there were protests over the price of sugar and the sugar merchants. This led to a massive generational crisis civil war known as the Constitutional Revolution, whose purpose was, among other things, to demand adoption of a constitution that would guarantee that no leader was above the law, and would control the powers of the Shah, and not allow him to grant concessions to other countries without the approval of the Majlis (parliament).
What's obvious here is that today's proposed Iran-China agreement is stirring up emotions still remaining from the Tobacco Revolt and the Constitutional Revolution, just as racial issues in America today stir up emotions remaining from the American Civil War.
People are always asking me about "regime change" -- when will the Iranian people rise up and finally replace the exceedingly corrupt religious thugocracy running the country now? As we know from Generational Dynamics, Iran is in a generational Awakening era, which is the time in any country when a "velvet revolution" or "palace coup" or non-violent coup is most likely to occur.
So I believe that this agreement has almost no chance of being implemented. But if Iran's loony leaders continue to push it, it could be the trigger for the regime change that everyone claims to want.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
In 2016, India and Iran signed a the "historic" Chabahar Port agreement. Chabahar is on the coast of Iran near Pakistan. India has agreed to invest $500 million to significantly increase the size of this port. Using it, India will be able to bypass Pakistan in shipping goods to Iran, and from there to Afghanistan, Central Asia or Europe. When India took operational control of the port in 2018, India agreed to invest in the 628 km Chabahar-Zahedan railroad linking the port to the Trans-Iranian railway and to other cities in Iran, connecting from there to Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. ( "18-Feb-18 World View -- Iran gives operational control of its Chabahar seaport to India")
On Tuesday, Iran announced that India would no longer be part of the Chabahar-Zahedan railway project, and that Iran would go it alone. The reason given is that India has delayed providing funding for its share of the project, related to the American sanctions on Iran.
However, it's widely suspected that India was dropped from the project under pressure from China. Under the new China-Iran draft agreement, China will assist Iran in "Chabahar’s duty free zone, an oil refinery nearby, and possibly a larger role in Chabahar port as well," according to reports. The upcoming deal will facilitate Chinese investments in "infrastructure, manufacturing and upgrading energy and transport facilities, to refurbishing ports, refineries and other installations." Furthermore, the agreement wi commit Iran to supplying oil and gas to China for the whole duration.
Using debt trap diplomacy, China has taken over Sri Lanka's Hambantota port, and is expected soon to take over the Mombasa port in Kenya. In each of those cases, there is a large enclave of thousands of Chinese workers living near the ports. Under the new draft agreement, China is already planning an enclave of 5,000 Chinese workers in Iran, and may be planning to take over the Chabahar port, when the time is right.
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(15-Jul-2020)
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The Chinese Communist Party and Wuhan Coronavirus
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The following are some personal thoughts.
The administration is now saying that we have to learn to live with coronavirus.
The good news is that once you get sick from Wuhan Coronavirus, then doctors are a lot more able to treat you and possibly even cure you. Furthermore, there are many therapeutics being successfully developed for treating the illness. So the death rate for infected people has been coming down.
On the other hand, I haven't heard anyone credibly claim that a vaccine will be available until well into 2021, if then. And even if one becomes available, how will it be administered? Will the developing country (US, UK, China, etc.) restrict it to its own citizens until they're all protected? That will create huge international outrage, including violent riots. There are 330 million Americans. How long would it take to provide a vaccine to all of them? There are almost 8 billion people in the world. Same question.
In the US, there's been a big resurgence of infections in some southern states -- California, Arizona, Texas, Florida. One reason given for this is that there's been a kind of reversal from the north. In March, people stayed indoors in the north to stay warm, and went outside in the south. Today, people go outdoors in the north, but stay indoors in the south to get air conditioning. The reasoning is that the virus spreads most rapidly among a group of people indoors in an enclosed area, so it spread rapidly in the north in March, and in the south today.
It had been hoped (and expected) that the coronavirus would act like the seasonal flu and slow down (or stop) during the warm summer months. That seems to have been a false hope. The coronavirus seems much more virulent than the seasonal flu.
All the experts seem to expect a "second wave" in the fall, as happened in the fall 1918 with the Spanish Flu pandemic. Perhaps, by that time, some of these therapeutics will be successful enough so that most people can recover.
Every state and every country seems to be handling the pandemic in its own way, but it always seems to end the same way. Israel started out with a quick lockdown and strict controls, and thought that they had conquered it, but now there's a big resurgence again. The same is true in South Africa.
It's now winter in South America, and infections are growing exponentially in almost every country. In fact, infections are growing exponentially across Africa. That's going to cause a major political explosion.
Confusion over face masks continues. In February, Dr. Anthony Fauci was saying that face masks were not necessary for anyone but medical workers. The explanation now given for that advice is because there were not enough face masks available for the general public, beyond medical workers.
Since then the advice has changed to make face masks optional or required, depending on the jurisdiction. Sometimes "social distancing" is enough so that you don't need a mask, according to some experts, but you always need a mask according to others. Also, do people have to be one meter apart or two meters apart for social distancing? It seems to vary.
Why do we wear face masks? "You wear a mask to protect me, and I wear a mask to protect you," goes the standard explanation. This means that if you're social distancing, then you don't have to worry about a mask. But in the last couple of days, that advice has been changing. It seems that the virus is spreading not in large droplets that fall to the ground quickly (as had been previously stated), but rather in a fine mist that stays in the air for a long time. That means that if you don't want to be infected, then you always have to wear a face mask, and you have to inhale through your mask, even if you're socially distancing.
If you get the virus and you survive, can you get it again? The experts say they don't know. Apparently you have immunity for a few weeks or months, but we don't have experience to judge whether the immunity lasts longer than that. So if you've had the virus already, you might get it again in the fall.
So only about 3% of the world's population have become infected so far, according to one estimate, including those that show no symptoms. That means that 97% of the world still has no immunity at all.
It's pretty random. Anyone could get infected just by touching the wrong thing or breathing the wrong air or being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Which means that, sooner or later, perhaps 5 billion, 6 billion or 7 billion more people have yet to be infected. I'm one of those who believe that, sooner or later, everyone will be infected.
Personally, I know that I'm in multiple risk groups -- old, overweight, high blood pressure -- so if I live long enough to get infected, I won't live much longer after that. Young people, the experts say, are far more likely to survive, though lately there have been statistics challenging that claim. However, experience in other countries shows that children in school are almost completely safe.
As regular readers know, I follow the news about China constantly, and I've written a book, "War Between China and Japan" which describes how China is preparing to launch a war of revenge against Japan, a war of annexation against Taiwan, and a war with America because we will be defending Japan and Taiwan.
It's been increasingly clear since Xi Jinping came to power that China is becoming more and more belligerent and hostile every day. With regard to the situation in Hong Kong, it's been clear (again) that China feels free to violate any international law, but still demands that everyone else obey international law. The Chinese Communist Party considers themselves to be the Master Race, and everyone else to be barbarians and vassals, and the only purpose of international law is to provide a means for the Chinese to control the barbarians.
This has been really clear in the last few days as the CCP has imposed a harsh National Security law on Hong Kong, completely ignoring international law and their own commitment in the 1984 handover agreement with the UK. The same is true of their arrest, torture and enslavement of millions of Uighurs, and their illegal annexation of the South China Sea. The CCP attitude is that they're superior to everyone else, and not bound even by their own commitments.
The CCP thugs don't have a strategy. They are increasingly paranoid and desperate, and lash out in all directions at once. They're absolutely furious that they're being blamed (correctly) for having unleashed the Wuhan Coronavirus on the world, lied about it, purposely spread it to hundreds of countries, and purposely purchased all available PPE (face masks, gowns, goggles, etc.) around the world so that those materials wouldn't be available to anyone but the Chinese. The CCP have managed to piss off almost every country in the world, even countries that are forced to support them.
On Tuesday, FBI director Christopher Wray gave a press conference on the enormous threat to the United States from the Chinese Communist Party:
"The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. It’s a threat to our economic security—and by extension, to our national security. ...And at this very moment, China is working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research."
As Wray suggests, the CCP are desperate to be the first to develop therapeutics and a vaccine for Wuhan Coronavirus to use as leverage against America and the West. He says that the Chinese want to "compromise American ... institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research." He doesn't say whether the Chinese simply want to steal the intellectual property, or to hack into company services and somehow destroy them - probably both.
Meanwhile, the hostility towards China has grown substantially in the last year in the West. The mutual xenophobia between China and Western nations grows almost every day. This will not end well.
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(8-Jul-2020)
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India's list of China's border disagreements
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Communist China's state media are claiming a major victory in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) when 53 countries supported China's human rights record in Hong Kong, and only 27 members opposed it.
The United Kingdom called for the vote to condemn China's human rights record in Hong Kong, after Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented a new Hong Kong Security Law that imposes harsh restrictions on freedom. For example, a person can be arrested and jailed for 5 years to life for merely criticizing a CCP policy or action.
The CCP action violates the commitment that China made to Britain in a 1984 agreement that was registered with the UN. The commitment was that after Britain handed its Hong Kong colony over the China in 1997, China would guarantee a high degree of freedom and autonomy in Hong Kong for 50 years, until 2047.
For many years, the US, UK and other Western nations have ignored or overlooked human rights violations in China. However, the violations have become extremely egregious since the rise of dictator Xi Jinping. The CCP has also committed many other human rights violations, including arresting, torturing and enslaving millions of Muslim Uighurs in East Turkestan (Xinjiang province), as well as arresting and torturing Buddhists in Tibet and Christians anywhere who simply pray to Jesus. The CCP thugs claim that they're the Master Race and all the rest of us are barbarians, but every day the CCP proves that we in the West are far superior, and the CCP thugs are barbarians with an IQ of 50, with no capability other than to bluster and kill.
And we have to mention that the CCP apes are so stupid that they didn't stop the Wuhan Coronavirus when they could have, but instead let it spread, and then purposely seeded the virus into dozens of other countries, something they continue to believe is a victory for China.
So the CCP media is quite gleeful about their victory in the UNHCR. According to the puppet media Global Times:
"A total of 53 countries supported China's national security law for Hong Kong at the 44th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on Tuesday, triumphing over 27 members that attacked and called for harsh measures against China over issues involving Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.The landslide victory was seen by experts as showing that China's achievements in human rights have won more supporters and become known by wider audiences. The double standards of some Western countries that tried to politicize the UNHRC and to use human rights-related issues as weapons to attack China, brought themselves more criticism within the international community."
The people supporting China's human rights record form an interesting rogue's gallery of countries, many with their own devastating human rights record.
Some are brutal dictatorships that torture, jail and arrest political opponents and journalists: Cuba, Cambodia, Cameroon, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria and others.
Some, like China, are currently committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, or have done so recently: Myanmar (Burma), Syria, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Cambodia, and others.
Belarus is the only European country supporting China.
The vast majority -- over 40 -- are part of China's Belt and Road Infrastructure (BRI) project. China has been using "debt trap diplomacy" on these projects and now, particularly in Africa, many countries can no longer make their debt payments, thanks to Wuhan Virus lockdowns and downturns. So these countries are at China's mercy and they have no choice but to do as their Chinese puppetmasters tell them.
The complete list of countries supporting China are:
China, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo-Brazzaville, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, UAE, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Many countries did not vote at all. The United States did not vote because it is no longer a member of the UNHCR, after withdrawing in 2018 because the agency is too political -- which is pretty obvious from this latest vote.
European countries voted overwhelmingly to support the condemnation of China's human rights record. However, Spain, Italy and Poland abstained, which analysts say shows that there is no coherent European policy when it comes to China. That's no surprise.
Here's a list of the countries that voted to condemn China's human rights policy:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.
While we're making reference lists of countries that support or condemn China's human rights policies, this is a good time to re-post a list of China's border conflicts, according to Indian media.
On Friday, India's prime minister paid a surprise visit to the troops in Ladakh, facing the Chinese troops on the other side of the border. Modi gave a speech to the troops, including the following:
"Age of expansionism is over, now, is the age of development. The policy of development is the foundation of mankind and is the only policy relevant today. History has witnessed that the expansionist policy has hurt humanity the most. Expansionist policy has always threatened world peace. History has witnessed that such forces have either lost or were forced to turn back. This is what the world has experienced so far and it has once again made up its mind against the policy of expansion."
Modi didn't mention China, but it's obvious that's who he meant. In response, the Hindustan Times posted the list of China's 21 border conflicts. The following is the list:
"China's 21 border disputesXi Jinping’s China has territorial disputes with 20 more countries, not just India over Ladakh
President Donald Trump on Thursday waded right in the middle of India’s dispute with China, asserting that Beijing’s aggressive stance in Ladakh fits with the larger pattern of Chinese aggression in other parts of the world. President Trump’s office did not elaborate on China’s aggression elsewhere but is seen as a clear reference to Beijing’s efforts to enlarge its position on border disputes. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had recently called it China’s “rogue attitude” as he announced the movement of US supercarriers in the Indo Pacific region to counter China’s aggressive posture.
According to Beijing watchers, China has traditionally suffered from xenophobia against foreigners. The Middle Kingdom’s fears were exacerbated in the past two centuries as a result of which China believes that it is the only civilizational power in the world and the rest are either tributary states or barbarians.
China has had territorial disputes with 21 neighbours including India over its claims on land and sea. Here is a complete list of its disputes.
Brunei
China claims the southern part of the Spratly Islands chain. Brunei, on the other hand, claims part of South China Sea nearest to it as part of its continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone
Philippines
China and Philippines disagree over parts of the South China Sea including the Spratly Islands. Philippines took the dispute to the International Court of Justice where they won the case but the Chinese side did not abide by the order of the ICJ. Tensions have continued between the two countries despite economic incentives offered by China.
Indonesia
China’s nine-dash line overlaps the Natuna Sea/Exclusive Economic Zone of Indonesia leading to disputes. China claims fishing rights in waters near the islands. Indonesia government argues that China’s claims are not recognised under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Indonesia irked China in July 2017 when it renamed parts of the South China Sea as North Natuna Sea to underscore its claim.
Malaysia
China’s dispute with Malaysia also revolves around parts of the South China Sea, particularly the Spratly Islands. Its claims cover only islands included in its Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 miles as defined by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Malaysia has a military presence on three such islands that it considers to be part of the continental shelf.
Singapore
Singapore is not a claimant state in the South China Sea disputes but is closely aligned to the United States and allows the presence of US naval forces in Singaporean waters. It does not want to antagonise China by openly taking sides though it does advocate freedom of navigation and resolution of all disputes in line with the UN Convention of Law of the Seas.
Laos
China claims large areas of Laos on historical precedent of China’s Yuan Dynasty during 1271-1368
Cambodia
China has, on occasions, claimed part of the country on historical precedent (China’s Ming dynasty 1368-1644)
Thailand
Thailand opposes China’s dredging on the Mekong River since 2001 for large ships to carry goods from its landlocked Yunnan province to ports in Thailand, Laos and remaining southeast Asia. China has also built hydropower dams on the main stream of the Mekong River, altering the natural flood-drought cycle, affecting ecosystems as well as economies of countries on the lower Mekong River.
The Thai Cabinet scrapped a Chinese-led dredging project in February 2020 to blast rapids on the Mekong river. This had already led to fall in water levels and fers that it would lead to drought and affect 6 million people in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam
Japan
Japan’s dispute with China centers around South China Sea, particularly Senkaku Islands, Ryukyu Islands and the overlapping Air Defence Identification Zone and Exclusive Economic Zone in the East China Sea
Vietnam
Vietnam, which fought a bloody war with China in 1979 when Beijing tried to teach its former ally a lesson, has stood its ground on its territorial claims over parts of the South China Sea, and the Macclesfield Bank, Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands. Last month, a Chinese ship rammed a Vietnamese fishing boat operating in the Paracel Islands that was seen as an effort by Beijing to flex muscles to enforce a unilateral fishing ban in parts of the South China Sea against vessels from another nation.
India
China occupies 38,000 sq km Indian territory in the Aksai Chin region apart from staking claim on Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. It was this expansionist policy that led to the ongoing standoff between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA that escalated into a violent scrap in Ladakh’s Galwan valley. Another 5,163 sq km of Shaksgam valley was illegally ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963. Hence, the total Indian territory occupied by China is over 43 ,000 sq km.
Nepal
Nepal and China have pending border issues over three boundary pillars in Dolakha and two in the vicinity of Mt Everest. There have, however, been reports that China has illegally occupied strategic land at 12 places across Nepal. China has also claimed part of Nepal dating back to the Sino-Nepalese war in 1788-1792, claiming that some parts of Nepal are part of Tibet and therefore, part of China.
Taiwan
China claims all of Taiwan but particular disputes are Macclesfield Bank, Paracel Islands Scarborough Shoal, part of South China Sea and the Spratly Islands. The Paracel Islands, also called Xisha Islands in zvietnamese, is a group of islands in the South China Sea whose sovereignty is disputed.
North Korea
The two countries have a continuing dispute over Mount Paektu and Yalu and Tuman rivers. China has also claimed Baekhu Mountain and Jiandao. Beijing has, on occasions, claimed all of North Korea on historical grounds (Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368)
South Korea
South Korea and China have an overlapping Air Defence Identification Zone and a continuing Exclusive Economic Zone dispute over Leodo (Socotra Rock) in the East China Sea. China has also, on occasions, claimed entire South Korea on historical grounds (Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368)
Mongolia
China and Mongolia have settled their boundary dispute but China has claimed all of Mongolia on historical precedent (Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368).
Bhutan
Bhutanese enclaves in Tibet, namely Cherkip, Gompa, Dho, Dungmar, Gesur, Gezon, Itse Gompa, Khochar, Nyanri, Ringung, Sanmar, Tarchen and Zuthulphuk. Bhutan has lost a substantial chunk of area under dispute including the Kula Kangri peak to slow encroachments by China. Beijing claims Kula Kangri and mountainous areas to the west of this peak in addition to the western Haa district of Bhutan.
Tajikistan
The two sides have a bilateral dispute dating back to 1884 when a border demarcation agreement between the Qing Dynasty and Tsarist Russia left large segments of the frontier in the sparsely-populated eastern Pamirs without a clear definition.
The Chinese claims are based on historical precedent (Qing Dynasty 1644-1912).
In 1991, Tajikistan inherited from the Soviet Union three disputed border segments constituting about 28,000 sq km which China and the Soviet Union had been unable to resolve.
In 1999, Tajikistan and China signed a border demarcation agreement defining the border in two of the three segments. Under this deal, Tajikistan ceded about 200 sw km lands to China. In 2002, Tajikistan agreed to cede 1,122 sq km or about four percent of the territory that Beijing had claimed. China has, in all, settled for 3.5 per cent of the claimed territory.
Kazakhstan
China has laid claim to a territory in Kazakhstan stretching from Semirechie to Lake Balkhash covering 34,000 sq km. In May 2020, a Chinese website ‘Sohu.com’ published an article claiming that Kazakhstan is located on territories that historically belong to China.
China has settled for 22 per cent of its claim over Kazakh territory. Despite a border demarcation treaty with China in 1994 and claim by Kazakh state media that the Kazakhstan government had succeeded in retaining 56.9 percent of the disputed territory, critics had opined that the remaining 43.1 per cent of the land also belonged to Kazakhstan for which a new deal should be signed.
Kyrgyzstan
China lays claim to the whole of Kyrgyz territory. In May 2020, Chinese website tutiao.com published an article on such a claim and argued that under the Han Dynasty, the entire Kyrgyz territory was part of the Chinese mainland before the Russian empire captured it.
Chia has settled for 32 percent of its claim over Kyrgyz territory. Under the 1999 agreement, Kyrgyzstan handed over 1,250 sq km to China.
Russia
Despite signing bilateral agreements in 1991 and 1994 to delimit the estern and wester section of the Russia-China border, a few sectors remain unresolved. There are 160,000 sq km still unilaterally claimed by China despite signing several agreements.
In October 2004, the 4,300 sq border was finally demarcated in its entirety, thus resolving a 300-year-old territorial dispute.
In 2005, the Russian Parliament ratified the agreement in 2008, a part of the Abagaitu Islet, the entire Tarabarov Bolshoi Ussuriysk Island and some adjacent river islets were handed over to China."
So between the list of border conflicts and the list of countries supporting China's human rights record, we have an indication of who China's allies and enemies are, around the world.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(5-Jul-2020)
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Ladakh: India - China - Pakistan military buildup continues
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China's National People's Congress in Beijing rubber-stamped a harsh Hong Kong National Security Law on Tuesday, and on Wednesday arrested over 300 peaceful protesters in Hong Kong.
On Wednesday, the Hong Kong police bragged about their first arrest on Twitter:
"#BREAKING: A man was arrested for holding a #HKIndependence flag in #CausewayBay, Hong Kong, violating the #NationalSecurityLaw. This is the first arrest made since the law has come into force.— Hong Kong Police Force (@hkpoliceforce) July 1, 2020"
So someone was carrying a "Hong Kong Independence" flag. According to the new National Security Law, he will be in jail for 5-10 years.
The new law marks an end to the "one nation, two systems" doctrine that the Chinese Communist Party had committed to until 2047. It also means that China is repudiating the international commitments that it made when the UK handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997.
This is nothing new. The CCP consider themselves to be the Master Race, and everyone else to be barbarians, as I described in detail in my book, "War Between China and Japan." Their officials take pleasure in lying, knowing that the useful idiots in the Western mainstream media will simply repeat them as if they were true. They commit to international agreements, knowing that they're so superior, they can simply ignore the commitments they've made.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement:
"No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground.Hong Kong and its dynamic, enterprising, and free people have flourished for decades as a bastion of liberty, and this decision gives me no pleasure. But sound policy making requires a recognition of reality. While the United States once hoped that free and prosperous Hong Kong would provide a model for authoritarian China, it is now clear that China is modeling Hong Kong after itself."
Pompeo's statement is an official government assessment that Hong Kong will no longer be assured of receiving special considerations, such as exemptions from tariffs imposed on Chinese goods. However, those decisions have not yet been made.
There are harsh penalties -- prison terms of 5 or 10 years or life -- for anything that fits into any one of several categories: secession, subversion, terrorist activities, or collusion with a foreign country.
However, each of these categories is ill-defined, and so they can be applied in any way. Simply criticizing a CCP policy could be interpreted as subversion, for example, just as carrying an "Independence" flag makes you guilty of criminal secession.
The CCP will set up its own security forces in Hong Kong, and its own courts, with judges that it appoints. Defendants can be deported to the mainland for trial or jailing there.
The law applies to anyone, anywhere in the world, including Americans. This may seem strange, but it's quite consistent with the CCP view that they're the Master Race, and the rest of the world are barbarians.
Listening to analysts and CCP stooges today, it's pretty clear that the CCP has had a fundamental change of attitude. In the past, they've made concessions to the West to avoid criticisms. But what now seems clear is that they no longer care what anyone in west thinks. They will do whatever they want in Hong Kong, just as they've illegally annexed and militarized the South China Sea, just as they've arrested, jailed, tortured and enslaved millions of Uighurs -- and they won't be deterred by anything, certainly not by a statement by Mike Pompeo.
The CCP believes that by enforcing this new law in the harshest possible way, then the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong will settle down, and Hong Kong will be fully compliant within a year. History and Generational Dynamics do not support this view.
Although there haven't been any new military clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh on the China-India border, military buildups continue on both sides.
As I've written in the past, the Ladakh military clash is remarkably similar to the military clash between Japanese and Chinese soldiers in 1937 in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The clash was resolved quickly, but both sides brought in reinforcements. Within a month there was full-scale war, leading to the Japanese "Rape of Nanking" shortly thereafter. ( "13-Jun-20 World View -- China and India mobilize thousands of troops along border in Ladakh")
With both sides bringing reinforcements into Ladakh, the situation is very similar.
Here are some recent developments, according to Indian media (Chinese media is remaining quiet):
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(2-Jul-2020)
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Russia will speed up delivery of weapons systems to India
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The situation in Ladakh, on the China-India border, continues to worsen.
As I've been writing for some time, China and India have been mobilizing thousands of troops in Ladakh on either side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the nominal boundary between the two countries. Then, on June 15, Chinese forces ambushed Indian forces in Ladakh's Galwan Valley, using barbaric weapons consisting of bayonets, poles studded with steel nails, and wooden clubs wrapped with barbed wire, killing 20 unarmed Indian soldiers.
While officials from China and India are continuing negotiations for a "peaceful resolution" to the border conflict in Ladakh, both sides have been moving in even more reinforcements. According to Indian media, both the Chinese and India armies have moved troops and tanks into the regions adjacent to the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
According to a 1993 agreement between China and India:
"The two sides are of the view that the India-China boundary question shall be resolved through peaceful and friendly consultations. Neither side shall use or threaten to use force against the other by any means."
The Chinese took advantage of the unarmed Indians with bayonets, clubs wrapped with barbed wire, and rocks, despite the agreement that requires both sides to be unarmed. Last week, in response to the June 15 ambush, the Indians repudiated the agreement and changed the rules of engagement, so that the Indian soldiers are now armed.
I've said in the past that this dispute is remarkably similar to the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge incident that triggered World War II fighting between Japan and China. The Ladakh dispute looks more and more like it every day.
In the midst of the latest peace negotiations, the Chinese Defense Ministry made a new claim on Tuesday that the Galwan Valley in Ladakh is sovereign Chinese territory:
"China has sovereignty over the Galwan Valley region and the Chinese border troops have been patrolling and on duty in this region for many years."
The Indians were jolted by this new claim, and say that this is a lie, that Galwan Valley is well within Indian territory, and that this is the first time that China has made such a claim.
It seems that every day, I get a new reason to be impatient with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I see the CCP lie all the time. They've repeatedly lied about the South China Sea that they've illegally annexed, they've repeatedly lied about the Uighurs that they're arresting, torturing and enslaving, and they've repeatedly lied about the Christians and Buddhists who are regularly beaten and jailed. They also lied for weeks about the Wuhan Coronavirus, and purposely infected hundreds of other countries, so that they wouldn't be alone in dealing with the virus. They're apparently congratulating themselves for this victory in infecting the world. As I wrote in my book, "War Between China and Japan," the Chinese Communists consider themselves to be the Master Race, and everyone else to be barbarians and vassals.
So the CCP are criminal thugs and liars, and if they're now claiming sovereignty to the Galwan Valley, then there is absolutely no reason to believe anything they say.
At any rate, nationalism is very high on both the Chinese and Indian sides, and neither side will back down. Both the Chinese and Indians are sending troops and tanks into the regions around the Galwan Valley, and tensions are continuing to rise.
Neither Chinese nor Indian officials have made official statements about what happened on June 15, except that 20 Indian soldiers were killed. Chinese media have been claiming that China dealt a "heavy blow" to the Indians.
According to Chinese media:
"The PLA is a glorious army. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it fought with the armies of the two superpowers, the US and the former Soviet Union. It has punished the Indian army for the latter's outright provocations. Some in India preach that the PLA, which has not fought a war for more than 30 years now, is an army that does not know how to fight. Their arrogance is frivolous. It is now clear who is the egg and who is the rock."
At a briefing on Wednesday, the Chinese finally officially admitted that they had casualties in the June 15 encounter:
"Exact casualties were not publicised as China did not want the media to play it up. Now was the time for both sides to find ways to de-escalate the situation and restore stability. Comparisons may trigger antagonism on both sides, which is not helpful."
There have been media reports of anywhere from 25-45 Chinese casualties on June 15. No wonder the Chinese don't want to admit the exact numbers.
And so, Dear Reader, start placing your bets. How long can this "peaceful" standoff remain peaceful?
Donald Trump has offered to mediate, but it seems unlikely that his offer will be accepted.
The Russians have met with both sides, but India's Defense Minister said on Tuesday that the Russians will speed up delivery of advanced S-400 air defense systems and other weapons systems to India. This gives the impression that Russia is on India's side. This is not surprising, since Russia has its own problems with China making false claims to parts of Russia's Far East. China is even claiming that Vladivostok, the home of Russia's Pacific Fleet, is really China's sovereign territory.
This is also not surprising in view of the Generational Dynamics prediction, which I've stated repeatedly for many years, that in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war, China will be allied with Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries versus the United States, allied with India, Russia and Iran. In particular, India and Russia are historic allies.
I keep seeing claims that Russia and China will be allied. There isn't a snowflake's chance in hell that will happen. The Russians have hated the Chinese ever since the Mongols defeated the Chinese in 1206, and then went on to attack and conquer almost all the Russian principalities, and made them bitter vassals of the Mongol Empire, in a relationship called the "Mongol Yoke." This hated period, two centuries long, has defined the relationship between the Russian and Chinese people forever. There is no possibility that China and Russia will remain "strategic partners" for long. In fact, Soviet Russia and China almost went to full-scale war as recently as the 1960s, just as China and India went to war in the 1960s. So Russia's delivery of advanced weapons systems to India is just one more step along the same path.
Another common claim is that World War III will be won by means of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons can do an enormous amount of damage, and they will be heavily used. But a war cannot be won with just by bombing, even by bombing with nuclear weapons. The war, whether it occurs this year, next year, or later, will be won with ground forces, and nuclear weapons will be used tactically.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(25-Jun-2020)
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Brief list of Chinese Communist Party crises
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Anti-China protests have erupted in cities across India by people demanding retaliation for the killing of 20 Indian soldiers on Monday in the growing Ladakh border confrontation that we described last weekend. ( "13-Jun-20 World View -- China and India mobilize thousands of troops along border in Ladakh")
The protesters are burning the Chinese flag and calling for boycotts of China-made products.
However, the calls for revenge grew even louder on Thursday, when a photo emerged of a weapon used by Chinese soldiers to kill Indian soldiers. The weapon, pictured at the beginning of this article, is made with iron rods studded with nails, and is being called "barbarous" by some Indian officials.
Former leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, also demanded fiercer retaliation from the government.
"It is now clear that China has committed an unforgivable war crime. The Chinese have used bayonets, nail studded iron rods, wooden clubs wrapped with barbed wire ... to mount a surprise attack on our unarmed soldiers."
Some MPs are demanding that Indian army forces invade the Chinese-controlled territory Aksai Chin, a disputed region on the Chinese side of the border. According to Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, the MP for the Ladakh region:
"We want a one-time solution. Not just the people of Ladakh but people of the country too want a one-time solution. After the sacrifice of our soldiers, I am starting to think the time has come to take Aksai Chin back."
Several days have passed, but there's very little confirmed information about what took place.
Here's what we do know:
In the absence of statements by either the Indian or Chinese side giving details of what happened, unauthorized reports are beginning to appear, and they are highly explosive. Here's one from India's News18:
"Furious hand-to-hand fighting raged across the Galwan river valley for over eight hours on Monday night, as People’s Liberation Army assault teams armed with iron rods as well as batons wrapped in barbed wire hunted down and slaughtered troops of the 16 Bihar Regiment, a senior government official ... has told News18.The savage combat, with few parallels in the history of modern armies, is confirmed to have claimed the lives of at least 23 Indian soldiers, including 16 Bihar’s commanding officer, Colonel Santosh Babu, many because of protracted exposure to sub-zero temperatures the Indian Army said late on Tuesday.
“Even unarmed men who fled into the hillsides were hunted down and killed,” one officer said. “The dead include men who jumped into the Galwan river in a desperate effort to escape.”
Government sources say at least another two dozen soldiers are battling life-threatening injuries, and over 110 have needed treatment. “The toll will likely go up,” a military officer with knowledge of the issue said."
In the absence of official statements, it's impossible to determine the veracity of this narrative, but it almost doesn't matter, because this situation is rapidly growing out of control.
Indian and Chinese officials claim that they're conducting ongoing negotiations to bring the crisis to an end and pull troops back on both sides.
In dozens of articles in the last few years, I've stated and restated the core principle of Generational Dynamics that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people. The attitudes of politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they represent the attitudes of the people.
We're seeing that applied in this case. According to reports, Chinese army teams hunted down, attacked and killed Indian soldiers, using barbarous weapons like the one shown at the beginning of this article. On the Indian side, we see increasing demands for retaliation and revenge.
Recall what happened in 1937 in the Marco Polo Bridge incident that I described in my article last weekend. The Japanese and Chinese negotiated a settlement, but both sides brought in reinforcements. Within a month, they were at full scale war, leading soon after to the Rape of Nanking.
That's not to say India and China will be at war within a month, but it does say that they're following a familiar pattern that leads to full-scale war. If both the Chinese and Indian armies are pulled back immediately, then a war can be avoided, but I see little desire on either side to do so, or to do anything but escalate.
It's worth noting that the India government has ordered the armed forces to make emergency procurements to stock up its war reserves in case of war in Ladakh. These preparations even include the deployment of navy military assets near the Malacca Strait, which would be a focal point for any future India-China war.
The following is a reference list of the major crises currently being faced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and dictator Xi Jinping:
So those who think that America and the West have a lot of problems are absolutely correct, but they do not have nearly as many problems as China, which has been turning into an international pariah.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(19-Jun-2020)
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Significance of the Ladakh border confrontation
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China has occupied more than sixty square kilometres of Indian territory in eastern Ladakh, according to a senior Indian Army source.
China has mobilized thousands of paratroopers, armoured vehicles and equipment in a military drill on a plateau near Ladakh, the border region disputed by India and China. According to state media reports, they could be deployed "within hours" to the Ladakh region.
According to India's media, China's army has been carrying out manoeuvres to occupy Indian territory and build concrete defenses on it. China now has at least two group armies, three air force bases, and one rocket force base in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), with over 200,000 soldiers conducting combat training.
These steps signal a dramatic escalation in border tensions by China's military. In response, India has been reinforcing its forces on the India-China border.
So far, not a shot has been fired on either side, since that would amount to a declaration of full-scale war, but there have been clashes anyway. Seventy Indian troops were injured in fist-fighting and stone-throwing as they tried to stop the advance.
India must now prepare for a two-front war, with the Pakistan military on one side and China's army in the east. Pakistan and China have been doing combined combat training since 2011.
Indian army sources say that similar Chinese army troop movements are occurring in multiple locations in all three sectors -- western, middle and eastern -- of the 3,488-km boundary that India shares with China. While the current faceoff has been restricted to eastern Ladakh, which is in the western sector, armies on both sides have augmented their military strength even in the middle and eastern sectors.
Divisional commanders on both the Chinese and India side met on Wednesday to discuss moving troops back. Nothing was resolved, although negotiations are expected to continue in the near future.
The United Nations is calling for restraint. UN officials undoubtedly believe that a border war would be "unacceptable," and they would not hesitate to take firm action by calling a committee meeting or a press conference. Russia would blame the United States.
As I've written a number of times in the past, I do not expect WW III to begin with some major attack, such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or Japan or a missile attack on the United States. Those acts would come later. Major wars begin with small events. In a generational Crisis era, when public levels of nationalism and xenophobia are very high, a small event can be a match that lights an explosive fire.
World War II did not begin with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, nor did it begin with the invasion of Poland.
As I've described in the past, World War II began in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge incident. The Marco Polo Bridge is about 15 km south of Beijing in China, and was so named because Marco Polo praised the bridge in the 13th century. In 1937, both Japan and China were deep into generational Crisis eras, and the Japanese and Chinese people really hated each other. On July 7, a small group of Japanese soldiers, stationed near the bridge, took a roll call and found one soldier missing. The Japanese accused Chinese soldiers, also stationed near the bridge in the city of Wanping, of abducting the Japanese soldier. A brief clash was won by the Japanese. There were negotiations, and the situation was settled quickly. (The "abducted" soldier had merely gotten lost in the woods.)
So the two sides negotiated a settlement, but both sides then brought in reinforcements. Within a month there was full-scale war, leading to the Japanese "Rape of Nanking" shortly thereafter.
What's remarkable about the Ladakh border situation is its similarity to the Marco Polo Bridge incident that triggered World War II. In particular, both the Indian and Chinese populations are in highly nationalistic and xenophobic moods, and this is the kind of mood that leads to a "shoot first, look later" situation. All it would take is one gunshot to trigger an escalation situation. And there are similar potential border confrontations all along the 3,488-km boundary that separates China from India.
This doesn't mean that the Ladakh border incident will lead to full scale war. In fact, confrontations like the one going on in Ladakh are not uncommon, and they're settled quickly.
But this particular confrontation is raising international concern because positions on both sides appear to be hardening. China is occupying Indian land, and will not back off. In the border confrontation in May 2018, China did back off, possibly because the confrontation was taking place on Bhutan's Doklam Plateau, and Bhutan asked India to prevent a China takeover. It was speculated at the time that China backed off because China was not ready for a full-scale war with India, and wanted to wait until it WAS ready for a full-scale war.
What's remarkable about these border situations, alternating between negotiations and reinforcements, is their similarity to the incident that triggered World War II. With nationalism and xenophobia growing on both sides of this enormous border, with troop buildups at several locations along this border, it's quite possible that one of the India-China border confrontations will be the trigger that spirals into a major war.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(13-Jun-2020)
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Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou loses a battle in her extradition fight
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened sanctions targeting China and Hong Kong on Wednesday, as the streets of Hong Kong were filled with over 1,000 protesters, confronting police firing rounds of pepper balls and arresting hundreds.
Pompeo was reacting to a plan by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to effectively revoke the "one country, two systems" formula that the CCP committed to honor in its 1984 agreement with the United Kingdom.
According to a statement issued by Pompeo:
"The State Department is required by the Hong Kong Policy Act to assess the autonomy of the territory from China. After careful study of developments over the reporting period, I certified to Congress today that Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws in the same manner as U.S. laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997. No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground."
This certification means that tariffs that the Trump administration have imposed on China, but exempting Hong Kong, may now be applied to Hong Kong as well. However, it is not clear when this step will be taken, if at all.
More than 1,000 people protested in Hong Kong on Wednesday against a proposed law that would outlaw "abuse of China's national anthem."
The proposed law is a reaction to what happened at a recent sports event in Hong Kong. When the national anthem, "March of the Volunteers," was playing dozens of young people started booing.
Such things are intolerable to the idiots in the CCP. Recall that it's illegal to post a cartoon of Winnie the Pooh because Xi Jinping looks exactly like Winnie the Pooh. Can you imagine the hilarity if Trump objected to a cartoon mocking him? But mocking Xi Jinping is a crime in China, and apparently so is saying "boo" while the national anthem is playing. That's how it is in the Socialist Paradise of China.
The song was written in 1935 by Shanghai playwrights Nie Er (music) and Tian Han (lyrics), both members of Mao Zedong's communist party as a marching song about the fight against the invading Japanese. These are the original lyrics (translation):
"Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!
With our flesh and blood, let us build a new Great Wall!
As China faces its greatest peril
From each one the urgent call to action comes forth.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Millions of but one heart
Braving the enemies’ fire! March on!
Braving the enemies’ fire! March on!
March on! March, march on!"
As the Sino-Japanese war progressed, most Americans were on the side of the Chinese. The song "March of the Volunteers" became popular in the United States, thanks to the efforts of Paul Robeson, the deep-throated baritone who was known for his performance of "Ol' Man River" in the 1927 Broadway show Showboat. Robeson was a spokesman for the Chinese resistance against Japan, and he provided star power to the marching song.
The song remained popular in China, and became the national anthem of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
In 1966, Mao Zedong's disastrous "Cultural Revolution" was underway. One of the casualties of Mao's craziness was Tian Han, who had written the lyrics. (Nie Er had died at the end of 1935.) So Tian was persecuted and thrown into prison, where he was tortured and killed, and "March of the Volunteers" became forbidden.
After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping rehabilitated the song in 1982, making it the national anthem again with updated lyrics:
"Stand up! Those who are unwilling to become slaves!
Take our flesh, and build it to become a new Great Wall!
The Chinese people have reached a most dangerous time,
Every person is being compelled to send issue a final roar.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
We are millions with one heart,
Braving our enemy’s gunfire, march on!
Braving our enemy’s gunfire, march on!
March on! March on! Charge!"
This is the song that the young people in Hong Kong were booing last year.
Hong Kong protesters have used a variety of their own protest songs, such as "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from the Broadway musical Les Misérables.
But last year, Hong Kongers used crowdsourcing to write their own anthem, titled "Glory to Hong Kong":
"For the tears that we shed on this soil
For the anguish we had in this turmoil
We keep our heads up, our voices strong
May freedom root in Hong Kong
For the fear that looms overhead
For the hope that moves us ahead
We march in blood, our martyrs along
May freedom glow in Hong Kong
Deepest night we shall not be in fright
In the mist, a new day breaks with chants and light
Stand with us, with virtuous minds and unbending spines
The pearl we hold will always shine
Come children of our motherland
The time has come to wage a revolution
Freedom and liberty belong to this land
May glory be to Hong Kong."
In the battle of the anthems, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) becomes more nationalistic and belligerent every day, it doesn't seem likely that "Glory to Hong Kong" will be the winner.
What's interesting about this battle of the anthems is how China has dissipated its goodwill of the last 80 years. When Paul Robeson was singing "March of the Volunteers," China was very popular in America. This popularity continued for decades. During Mao's Great Leap Forward, when tens of millions of innocent Chinese were starved, tortured, raped and executed, China remained popular. During Mao's Cultural Revolution, when millions of Mao's political opponents were tortured, raped and executed, China remained popular.
Starting with the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when college students were peacefully protesting in favor of democracy, and there was international televison coverage of thousands of college students being tortured and killed, China's popularity began to wane seriously.
As time went on, and the CCP arrested, raped, tortured and executed people for their Christian, Buddhist, Falun Gong (Buddhist) or Muslim religious beliefs, Americans disliked the CCP more and more. This dislike increased even more, as the CCP arrested, raped, tortured, enslaved and executed millions of Uighurs, and also illegally occupied the South China Sea.
Through one incredibly stupid act after another, the CCP has dissipated and reversed the affection that Americans used to feel for China 80 years ago.
There was a surprise announcement on Wednesday that a Canadian court has ruled against Ms. Meng Wanzhou (Sabrina Meng), the chief financial officer (CFO) of China's Huawei Technologies, which was founded by her father Ren Zhengfei. Meng was arrested in Canada in December 2018, at the request of the United States, on charges of bank fraud and violating sanctions against Iran.
Meng has been under house arrest since then, living in luxury in her expensive home in Canada, awaiting the court decision about an extradition request by the United States. Wednesday's ruling was on a single aspect of that case -- namely the court ruled that Meng was being charged with a crime that is also a crime in Canada.
There will be additional appeals, so the case may extend for many more months.
When Meng was arrested, she was given a fair court hearing, and was represented by her own lawyers. While the extradition process is going on, she is allowed to live in her luxurious mansion.
In retaliation, China arrested two Canadian nationals, Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman. They were thrown into prison, with no court hearing and no charges.
I always like to say that I don't know what the CCP is going to do about a given situation, but I can guarantee that they're so stupid that they'll make the situation worse. In this situation, by taking two Canadian citizens hostage, they've made it practically impossible for Canada's government to return Meng to China through a political process, since that would appear to be giving in to Chinese extortion.
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(28-May-2020)
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Japan's pacifist constitution and 'collective self-defense'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Japan's State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Keisuke Suzuki, said on Thursday Japan would not allow "people living in such a free society [as Taiwan] to be ravaged by the military power of a one-party dictatorship of the Communist Party," with the implication that Japan would militarily defend Taiwan from an invasion by China. This is a tricky argument to make in view of Japan's pacifist constitution.
The statement came in a Livedoor blog post in which Suzuki described how strategically important Taiwan is to Japan, and how their fates are tied together. In addition to challenging China's military power, he made several other statements making clear Japan's alignment with Taiwan against China. He congratulated Taiwan on the re-election of president Tsai Ing-wen, said that Taiwan's participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) is "of vital importance to the lives and health of people around the world."
An article in Taiwan's Central News Agency describes the contents of the blog post (translation):
"Keisuke Suzuki, the current member of the House of Representatives, posted an article on the livedoor blog. First of all, he paid tribute and congratulations on the election of President Tsai Ing-wen and Vice President Lai Qingde in Taiwan through democratic elections.Suzuki said that, as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated clearly, "For Japan, Taiwan is an important partner and important friend sharing basic values." Whenever a disaster occurs, Taiwan and Japan exchange support at all levels, personnel exchanges, Economic cooperation is close and there is a strong sense of closeness to each other. Taiwan and Japan are adjacent and jointly face the threat of China, a powerful military dictatorship that continues to provoke provocations. Taiwan and Japan are communities of life.
He said that Japan is one of the few countries in the world facing a severe security environment. For Japan, based on the viewpoint of national interests, the significance of Taiwan is difficult to count. Japan must recognise the fact that Taiwan ’s security and the strengthening of Taiwan-Japan relations are very important to Japan.
He pointed out that in terms of safety and security, due to the impact of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19, commonly known as Wuhan pneumonia), the media reported that the operations of the US military ’s aircraft carriers and other operations were affected. In this case, peace and stability in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea, It is extremely important for Japan's security. The Chinese military has repeatedly invaded the "territorial waters" in the Diaoyutai waters, repeatedly carried out military provocative actions in the Miyako waters, and around Taiwan.
He emphasized that Taiwan's sharing of values such as freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law and freedom of navigation is an irreplaceable property for Japan. Japan absolutely cannot allow people living in such a free society to be ravaged by the military power of a one-party dictatorship of the Communist Party.
Suzuki pointed out that the World Health Assembly (WHA) has been held this week. This time, because of the pneumonia in Wuhan, China, many people know the World Health Organization. Not only are other international organizations such as the WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Taiwan ’s attempt to join is obstructed by China, which poses substantial risks not only to Japan but also to international peace and security.
Regarding the WHO, Japan has repeatedly advocated Taiwan ’s participation in the World Health Assembly. Taiwan ’s success in the prevention of coronavirus diseases in 2019. If the world can share Taiwan ’s lessons and experience, it should have great significance for the lives and health of the world.
Suzuki said that Taiwan is a democratic society with a population of more than 20 million, and is adjacent to China. The epidemic was controlled in the early stage of the epidemic. The reason why such results cannot be shared by the world is because the WHO is the WHO Secretariat and the Communist Party. One-party authoritarian military power China is at the mercy of political thinking. WHO, who emphasizes scientific views, is criticized for attaching importance to the political thinking of a particular country rather than human life and health. WHO should reflect deeply on it.
Suzuki believes that Taiwan's participation in ICAO is also very important. On Fei'an, because China's political intentions give rise to geographic gaps and will not allow Taiwan to participate in ICAO, Japan, which is adjacent to Taiwan, faces various risks and will suffer the most.
He said that from the point of view of the safety and peace of mind of Japanese citizens and people traveling to Japan, it is absolutely impossible to allow China's brutal actions and the inaction of the secretariats of international organizations."
Of particular note to Americans is that Suzuki implies that American defense may not be dependable because "the operations of the US military ’s aircraft carriers and other operations were affected" due to the impact of the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19).
On Friday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, speaking at the National People's Congress (NPC) made the usual call for "reunification" of Taiwan with China, but signaled an apparent policy shift by omitting the word "peaceful," as in "peaceful reunification," which is the phrase used in the past.
An examination of Keisuke Suzuki's blog post, quoted at length of above, reveals some complex legal reasoning.
Japan has a pacifist constituion, adopted at the insistence of the United States at the end of World War II. Article 9 of the constitution forbids most military action by Japan's military, but permits military action only when Japan itself is being attacked, and then only on Japanese soil.
Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to revoke Article 9, but there is a strong pacifist political movement in Japan that has blocked such attempts.
Finally, in 2015, prime minister Shinzo Abe succeeded in getting the Diet (parliament), following a bitter debate involving fisticuffs, to pass a law reinterpreting the defense clause to include "collective self-defense," which would permit military action under some circumstances when an ally (such as the United States) is attacked. I discussed the meaning of "collective self-defense" in detail in 2014 in "5-May-14 World View -- Japan debates 'collective self-defense' to protect America and Japan".
So now Keisuke Suzuki is proposing to apply the "collective self-defense" concept to Taiwan.
I want to repeat the most important sentences of the blog post:
"For Japan, based on the viewpoint of national interests, the significance of Taiwan is difficult to count. Japan must recognise the fact that Taiwan ’s security and the strengthening of Taiwan-Japan relations are very important to Japan.He pointed out that in terms of safety and security, due to the impact of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19, commonly known as Wuhan pneumonia), the media reported that the operations of the US military ’s aircraft carriers and other operations were affected. In this case, peace and stability in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea, It is extremely important for Japan's security. The Chinese military has repeatedly invaded the "territorial waters" in the Senkaku Island waters, repeatedly carried out military provocative actions in the Okinawa waters, and around Taiwan."
This is actually a legalistic explanation of why the "collective self-defense" reinterpretation of Article 9 can be used to defend Taiwan. It explains why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is also a threat to Japan, and that even US intervention cannot be counted on.
Keisuke Suzuki's statement is going to be controversial in Japan, but it probably reflects reality in that Japan could not simply stand by while China flattens Taiwan.
The CCP also knows all this, which means that if they're going to invade Taiwan, then they'd also be at war with Japan (which is what my book is about), and would soon be at war with the US. So a "simple" invasion of Taiwan would be more difficult than it seems.
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"Navigator," a retired American Army Colonel 30 years experience as an Army Officer, who blogs at http://www.comingstorms.com, posted in the Generational Dynamics forum his analysis of how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would proceed:
"The first thing I would tell you is to take a look at the adjoining map. This shows the locations of airfields in Taiwan territory.Taiwan owns territory VERY close to China. The main islands are Quemoy (now more often called Kinmen county) and Matsu. Matsu is too far north to really be involved in the Chinese invasion plan, but not Quemoy (I will use the modern Kinmen hereafter).
Next, note the 3 airfields on islands between China mainland and Taiwan proper. These are Magong, Wangan, and Qimei. These are in the Pescardores islands (now called Penghu county). Magong is on the main island, which is also the location of MAJOR port facilities.
In an invasion of Taiwan, the Chinese cannot allow for enemy occupied airfields to remain along the invasion route, and along the supply lines from China to the landing beaches. Also, the invasion would have major airfields as immediate objectives.
In a rough outline, what the Chinese would probably do is:
- Secure Kinmen
- Secure Penghu (with its airfield and port facilities much closer to Taiwan than those in Mainland China)
- Secure beachheads on Taiwan, with the immediate objectives including a good airfield (much better to fly in Reinforcements than ship by sea).
To do this, the Chinese would first have to mass troops around Xiamen. This would probably follow landing exercises that the Chinese would do everything possible to conceal.
Kinmen, so close to China, is not really defensible, and although the Nationalist Chinese were successful in fighting off a CCP invasion in 1949, I don't think they could do it now. The Chinese could conceivably secure Kinmen before the USA, if it even wanted to, could interfere.
With forces massed, they would then move quickly to sieze Kinmen. Once done, they would then move to take the Pescadores (Penghu county). This would be MUCH more difficult, as it would involve a major sea lift across about 80 miles of sea.
The US would have the opportunity to interfere with the Chinese landings in the Pescadores. But the Chinese could bring enough force to bear to defeat or neutralize the Carrier group sent to do so. This of course would mean war with the USA.
Once the Chinese have the Pescadores secured, they would, in my opinion, land to move to take either the Chiaya airport, or, more likely, the Tainan airport, as it is only about a mile and a half away from a decent landing beach (the Gold Coast), and there is not a lot of urban area between the beach and airfield.
The Pescadores would be a better staging area for a CCP invasion of Taiwan than mainland China due to the much closer proximity. The CCP forces would build up here, and the distance for ferrying troops and equipment would be less than 20 miles to Taiwan.
By this time, the Nationalist Chinese would have time to prepare for the landings and fighting. I think that they would have a good chance of fighting the CCP forces to a standstill, at least in the short term. Long term they will run out of resources (ammunition).
The Chinese could attempt landings closer to Taipei initially, but this is less likely. It would however be more in line with a quicker strike at Taiwan than landing in the Pescadores first. But this move would have to be preceded by taking the Matsu islands (and their Taiwan controlled airfields) first.
Note on the map that the open area of Taiwan is the strip on the western coast of the country. Further to the east the terrain becomes MUCH more rugged, and therefore much more militarily defensible."
The above is one possible description of China's military scenario in invading Taiwan. In my book, "War between China and Japan," I predicted that China would invade Japan to get revenge for World War II atrocities, and would invade Taiwan to annex it.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(24-May-2020)
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China puts 100 million people under lockdown, as possible virus mutation emerges
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has run "out of patience" with the repeated pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in the last year, and will pass laws on "Establishing and Improving the Legal System and Enforcement Mechanisms for Hong Kong to Safeguard National Security." The law will be discussed on Friday by the National People's Congress (NPC), and the rubber-stamp NPC is expected to pass it.
Depending on the details, the new laws could mean the complete repudiation of the "one country, two systems" formula that the CCP committed to honor in its 1984 agreement with the United Kingdom. The net of all the new laws is that the CCP is ending any pretense of meeting its commitments under the agreement.
The laws for Hong Kong will cover secession, foreign interference, terrorism and subversion against the central government.
Even talking about "secession" is already illegal, and presumably the new laws will specify even harsher punishment for speaking out. "Foreign interference" refers to American support of pro-democracy activists' free speech in Hong Kong, but also refers to Britain's insistence that the CCP abide by the commitments it made in the 1984 joint declaration treaty to allow freedom of speech and assembly in Hong Kong and a free press. The treaty is now part of international law, but the CCP considers itself superior to international law and not bound by it, although it demands that everyone else be bound by it. "Terrorism" is the catch-all phrase that dictators and war criminals use to justify mass arrests or mass slaughter. "Subversion" refers to any speech or act that the CCP feels threatens it. For example, even showing a Winnie the Pooh cartoon is considered subversive, since Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh.
A top CCP official, Wang Yang, in a speech on Thursday that free speech in Hong Kong was only permitted to "stop violence and curb disorder." In describing the new laws, Wang pointedly omitted phrases frequently used in the past, like "Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong," nor the city’s "high degree of autonomy."
The CCP has already been cracking down on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement since January, by arresting a number of people under vaguely specified charges. It's believed that the CCP is taking advantage of the worldwide distraction from the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic crisis to get away with passing this law without any international reaction.
In addition, the CCP is hoping that the strict enforcement of social distancing regulations will prevent the large public demonstrations and riots that occurred last year.
However, the CCP may be underestimating the anger of the Hong Kong activists, or the support that the international community may be willing to provide them.
Even before Thursday's announcement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to end America's special economic treatment of Hong Kong, if the CCP did not meet the requirements of the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019," passed by the US Congress in November of last year.
That threat was part of an extremely harsh set of criticisms of the CCP related to the pandemic handling, and CCP threats against Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong:
"I want to begin today with a few observations on China, because the media’s focus on the current pandemic risks missing the bigger picture of the challenge that’s presented by the Chinese Communist Party. First, basic facts. China’s been ruled by a brutal, authoritarian regime, a communist regime since 1949.For several decades, we thought the regime would become more like us through trade, scientific exchanges, diplomatic outreach, letting them in the WTO as a developing nation. That didn’t happen.
We greatly underestimated the degree to which Beijing is ideologically and politically hostile to free nations. The whole world is waking up to that fact. ...
Second point on the bigger picture: The Chinese Communist Party’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan have accelerated our more realistic understanding of communist China.
The Party chose to destroy live virus samples instead of sharing them or asking us to help secure them.
The People’s Liberation Army has claimed more features in the South China Sea’s international waters, sank a Vietnamese fishing boat, threatened a Malaysian energy prospector, and declared a unilateral fishing ban. The United States condemns these unlawful acts.
The Chinese Communist Party chose to threaten Australia with economic retribution for the simple act of asking for an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus. It’s not right.
We stand with Australia and the more than 120 nations now who have taken up the American call for an inquiry into the origins of the virus, so we can understand what went wrong and save lives now, and in the future.
The Chinese Communist Party also chose to pressure the World Health Organization’s director-general into excluding Taiwan from this week’s World Health Assembly in Geneva. ...
Turning for a moment to Taiwan: I want to say congratulations to President Tsai on her inauguration. The democratic process in Taiwan has matured into a model for the world. Despite great pressure from the outside, Taiwan has demonstrated the wisdom of giving people a voice and a choice.
In Hong Kong, our decision on whether or not to certify Hong Kong as having “a high degree of autonomy” from China is still pending. We’re closely watching what’s going on there.
This week pro-democracy legislators were man-handled while trying to stop a procedural irregularity by pro-Beijing legislators. Leading Hong Kong activists like Martin Lee and Jimmy Lai were hauled into court. Actions like these make it more difficult to assess that Hong Kong remains highly autonomous from mainland China."
With regard to Hong Kong, Pompeo was threatening to end America's special economic treatment of Hong Kong, if the CCP did not meet the requirements of the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019," passed by Congress in November of last year.
The law requires that "Hong Kong must remain sufficiently autonomous from the People's Republic of China to justify treatment under a particular law of the United States, or any provision thereof, different from that accorded the People's Republic of China."
The law requires that the CCP support free elections and "the robust exercise by residents of Hong Kong of the rights to free speech, the press, and other fundamental freedoms," and "freedom from arbitrary or unlawful arrest, detention, or imprisonment for all Hong Kong residents."
The special economic treatment of Hong Kong grants such things as tariff-free special access to US markets and easier visa approval, things are not granted to mainland China. If that treatment is withdrawn, then Hong Kong will be treated the same as mainland China.
Needless to say, the CCP was infuriated by Pompeo's statements, and went into their usual acting out expressions of outrage, this time accusing Pompeo of "blackmailing" the Hong Kong government, and of blatantly interfering in China's internal affairs.
So it's worth pointing out that Pompeo is only demanding that the CCP honor commitments that it already made which, or course, is a laughable concept to the CCP, leaders of the Master Race.
Still, it's hard to overstate how harsh Pompeo's criticisms of the CCP were. The point is that we're continuing on a long-term trend of growing hostility between China and the US, with no end in sight. Chinese and Americans are becoming increasingly xenophobic toward each other, and this has increased substantially since the pandemic crisis began.
Long-time Generational Dynamics readers will be aware that this is the path to war. Due to the mutual belligerence and hostility, a small military confrontation in the South China Sea or elsewhere could spiral into a larger and larger war, and engulf other nations. That's the path that China and the US are on. This will not end well.
China has put over 100 million people into renewed lockdown, as major new virus outbreak clusters have appeared, in a feared "second wave." The outbreaks are occurring in China's Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces (the former Manchuria in China's northeast), on the borders with Russia and North Korea. There are also new outbreaks in Wuhan.
According to one Chinese expert, those infections in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces are presenting slightly different symptoms, suggesting that there may have been a mutation. In the 1917-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic, a mutation occurred in the summer of 1918 that made the second wave in fall 1918 much worse than the first wave. That doesn't mean that the same thing will happen with Covid-19, but there are fears that it might.
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(22-May-2020)
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Generational Theory: Is nuclear war with China inevitable?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The US Department of Commerce announced on Friday that it would block sales of US semiconductor technology to China's Huawei Technologies or its HiSilicon affiliate. The order would block sales of chips and chipsets, as well as related software and technology.
This is actually an extension of an order that was put into effect last year, that I described in detail in an article in August. ( "16-Aug-19 World View -- Results of sanctions on Huawei Electronics")
The order was put into effect because Huawei devices, including mobile phones and routers, present a threat to national security in the United States and in any other country where these devices are used and installed. It's now generally accepted that Huawei devices contain undetectable "backdoors" that allow China's military to control them remotely for the purposes of spying and data collection, and could even shut them down completely on command from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
However, Huawei has found ways to bypass the previous order, and so the extended order will restrict many more companies, including foreign companies, from selling products to Huawei. The US is able to restrict even foreign companies from selling products to Huawei if the products contain 25% or more of U.S.-originated technologies or materials.
Possibly the most significant target of the extended order is Taiwan’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) Ltd, a major producer of chips for Huawei’s HiSilicon unit as well as mobile phone rivals Apple and Qualcomm.
The extended order will only go into effect after 120 days. In the meantime, TSMC has announced that it will conduct a thorough legal analysis, and Huawei announced that the Chinese Communist Party will retaliate.
According to reports in the CCP propaganda publication Global Times, the CCP is planning retaliation on US companies such as Apple, and halting purchase of Boeing airplanes:
"The potential move, the second time within two days that China has released message of hitting back against the US, also the very first time government source noted to target specific US companies, is a result of Washington's recent malicious attacks on China, which ignited a tsunami of anger among Chinese officials and in the business circle. China is mulling punitive countermeasures against US individuals and entities over COVID-19 lawsuits due to the abuse of litigation by the US side, sources close to the matter told the Global Times previously.China's latest moves indicate a toe-to-toe strategy between the world's two largest economies, from political to economic ends, being in full play, experts said."
At the very least, this makes it likely that the US-China trade war is back in full force.
I've been writing about this issue since 2012, when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned of a Cyberwar Pearl Harbor from China.
First off, I'm the expert on this subject, not some reporter or politician who majored in sociology or women's studies in college. I spent five years of my career developing board-level operating systems for embedded systems, so I know how easy it would be to install a "backdoor" into a device that would allow the device to be controlled remotely by China's military. Furthermore, an implementation that uses public/private key encryption technology could be designed in such a way that the backdoor could not be detected, even by someone who suspects that the backdoor is there.
I have the skills to do this fairly easily, and there are undoubtedly many Chinese engineers with the same skills. So it would be very easy for Huawei to install undetectable backdoors into all its devices, allowing the devices to be controlled by China's military. Furthermore, in 2017, the CCP passed the National Intelligence Law, which demands that all organizations, including Huawei, "support, cooperate with, and collaborate with" China's military in collecting intelligence, even when doing so is illegal.
So any country or company that has installed Huawei networks and devices can be easily spied on by China's military, and the network can be controlled or shut down by China's military, for example at time of war.
The CCP has heavily subsidized Huawei so that Huawei's products are much cheaper than those of competitors. This has allowed Huawei to install networks in many countries, and is being particularly aggressive in installing 5G networks. China's military already has the ability to track political, media and military figures in many countries, and to steal any kind of economic or military information.
The above is the title of a recent article in the Washington Post, highlighting the fact that the CCP's handling of the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis has been nothing short of criminal. What's different now is that it isn't just the United States being the lone critic of the CCP in areas such as trade and Huawei 5G, but after the CCP seeded the virus in over 180 countries, people in many countries see the CCP as a criminal organization.
There's a debate going on as to whether the virus occurred naturally in a Chinese "wet market," or whether it originated in the Wuhan Institute Of Virology. The debate is hightened by the fact that today, many months later, the CCP still is blocking the CDC, the WHO, and other international organizations from going to Wuhan to conduct an independent investigation. The CCP's actions lead to the conclusion that the "worst" must be true, whatever the "worst" is.
But most people no longer even care about that. Who cares how the virus was created? What's being viewed internationally as criminal behavior is what the CCP did once the virus started spreading:
By seeding the world, by using their WHO puppets to lie to the world, and by buying up all available PPE in the world, the CCP gave themselves a three-month headstart on controlling the virus. The CCP seems to have succeeded in this extremely malicious and evil strategy, as they're far ahead of other countries in "opening up" their economy. The only downside for the CCP is that China is an export economy, and they've destroyed the economies of their own customers.
Chinese Communist supporters and CCP trolls claim that items in the above list are exaggerated, but there is no longer any doubt of overwhelming evidence of malicious actions and malicious intent by the Chinese Communist Party.
That's why, as the Washington Post article claims, "the world is waking up to the character of the Chinese Communist Party," which is increasingly seen as a criminal organization which has maliciously caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, increasing into the millions, in hundreds of countries. Not only has the CCP expressed no remorse, but they continue to blame others, continue to censor news reports from their own media, continue to deport reporters from foreign news organizations, and continue to block international investigations in Wuhan.
As an aside, I've noticed a significant change in Donald Trump's demeanor. In January, he was still referring to Xi Jinping as a friend, and saying that China was doing a good job. The turning point occurred in February, as I recall, when the CCP disinformation campaign began claiming that the virus was planted in Wuhan by American soldiers. This clearly infuriated Trump. Today, Trump specifically blames Xi Jinping for hundreds of thousands of deaths in over 180 countries.
Trump's change in attitude is emblematic of a change in attitude that has occurred in many populations in many countries around the world. This will not end well.
The CCP thugs may believe that now would be a good time to attack America, believing that the American armed forces are weakened by Covid-19. That's why Trump is pushing hard to open businesses again, and that's why he said on Friday, "I just want to make something clear, it's very important. Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back."
Faust is the title character in a nineteenth century play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in which Faust sells his soul to the devil in return for money and sex. The devil helps Faust seduce Gretchen. The play ends tragically as every person in Gretchen's family dies, and Gretchen is imprisoned, as Faust goes to hell to pay the price.
As I've said in the past, the Chinese are unique in a highly racist way, as I described in my book, "War Between China and Japan." While people in America consider themselves to be ordinary people who were lucky enough to be born in the greatest nation in history, the Chinese Communists view themselves as the Master Race -- yellow race, black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin -- and the rest of us as barbarians. To the CCP, other people produce products and services for the benefit of the Chinese Communists, just as mules plough the fields for the benefit of their farms. Stealing intellectual property or PPE is perfectly OK because we barbarians are the mules from which anything can be taken. On the other hand, the CCP regime will collapse if the population believes that Xi Jinping has lost the "Mandate from Heaven."
Thus, we're more and more hearing the term "Faustian bargain" in conjunction with any agreement made with the Chinese Communists.
This is clear from the CCP's subsidizing of Huawei devices. Huawei sells these devices at extremely low prices, thanks to the CCP subsidies. But that's the Faustian bargain. As we've described, the devices contain "backdoors" that allow China's military to spy on the data and control the devices remotely.
Then there are the "debt trap diplomacy" agreements in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China has been extremely secretive about the details of these agreements, but in the past, details have leaked out in several countries, and I wrote several articles when the leaks occurred. China has used these agreements to acquire and control ports and other strategic assets in Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Zambia, Kenya -- through its "debt trap diplomacy." Several other countries, including Pakistan and the Maldives, are at risk.
Based on leaks in various countries, the details of these BRI agreements are absolutely incredible. Here's the pattern:
These terms are so horrific that it's almost impossible to believe them, but that's what leaked documents have shown. ( "15-Jan-19 World View -- Kenya's leaked BRI contract reveals shocking China debt trap details")
So we're seeing this time after time in every CCP transaction. When the CCP joins an international organization like the United Nations or World Trade Organization (WTO) or World Health Organization (WHO), they feel no obligation to meet their commitments, although they demand that everyone else do so. They view these organizations as a means to control the barbarians, as a farmer might use electrified fences to control his pack of mules.
In every CCP transaction, it's always the same. The subsidized Huawei devices will control networks in any country that uses them. Joining the WHO let China use them to spread the virus worldwide. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) gives the CCP control of many governments and infrastructure in Asia and Africa.
Doing business with the CCP means selling your soul to the devil. The CCP never apologizes for errors. Never concedes that they made a mistake. Never agrees to reparations for any damage they do. The CCP is a criminal organization which, if it were an individual acting the same way, would be called psychopathic. This is not going to end well.
Let's not forget to mention that the CCP has arrested, imprisoned and enslaved millions of Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs, something that was supposed to be "Never again!!" after Hitler did it. And the CCP has also illegally annexed the South China Sea, similar to something that Hitler also did. These are the kinds of people that we're dealing with in Xi Jinping and the CCP thugs.
And it's always important to make it clear that we're distinguishing between the CCP thugs and the ordinary Chinese people. The ordinary Chinese people are wonderful, whether they're in China, in Hong Kong or in Taiwan. In fact, the Chinese people in Taiwan have a standard of living several times better than the Chinese people in China, because Taiwan is a free market democracy, and China is a Fascist thugocracy.
The following discussion goes beyond news reporting to Generational Dynamics theory on the question of whether we're headed to nuclear war with China. It's intended to be read by those interested in better understanding of generational theory.
We can look at the big picture without referring to generational theory. There were two world wars in the last century, plus massive additional wars in Asia, the Mideast, Africa, and pretty much in every region of the world. Furthermore, there have been massive wars in every continent, in every nation, in every region of the world in every century for millennia. There is absolutely no reason why this century should be any different, and several reasons why this century should be worse. So from that point of view, it's 100% certain that there will be one or two world wars in this century, plus additional massive wars in every region of the world, and so a war between the US and China is inevitable. Only the timing is in question.
I've probably written several million words on the differences between crisis and non-crisis wars, and I won't attempt to repeat that here. But it's important to understand that crisis wars are the worst wars, and, in the words of one person, it would be necessary to "reboot the culture" during the Recovery Era following a crisis war, particular within the nation or society that lost the war. A generational crisis war is extremely horrific and traumatizing to all sides, and typically the population becomes anxious and desperate to make sure that it never happens again, and some sort of "rebooting" would not be unusual.
I get asked a lot of questions, and I try to answer all of them, based on three conditions: I have to have the time, it has to be an interesting subject, and I have to be in the mood. If those conditions aren't met, then I usually ask the questioner to do his own research. This has actually worked out very well, as a number of people have done their own research, and contributed to the development of Generational Dynamics.
So I was asked several questions about whether a crisis war is even possible between nuclear powers in the 21st century, or whether it's even possible to win a nuclear war.
Of course a nuclear war is winnable -- in the sense that one side or the other will surrender, even if both sides have huge refugee problems and multiple cities destroyed by nuclear weapons. And you can be very certain the US military -- and the military in many other countries -- are fully prepared to fight a nuclear war, with the intention of winning it.
With about 200 countries in the world, you can expect crisis wars to be occurring somewhere at any point in time. There are typically 15-20 wars going on in the world at any given time (not all crisis wars, of course). However, I recall that in 2004, there was a study by some Swedish academy that the number of wars at that time was the lowest on record.
Since the end of World War II, there have been a number of regional generational crisis wars. For reference, the following is a quick summary list of some examples that I've written about in the past:
Kenya's Mau-Mau rebellion (1956), Bolivia civil war (1967), Iran/Iraq war - Great Islamic Revolution (1979-88), Cambodian "Killing Fields" genocide (Cambodia and Thailand - 1975-79), Sudan war of independence (1991), Colombia and Venezuela - "La Violencia" or the Colombian Revolt (1948-1959), Armenia vs Azerbaijan (1989-94), Yemen civil war (1962-68), Rhodesia civil war - Zimbabwe (1979), Afghanistan civil war (1991-96), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - Kasai region (1960), Algeria's war of independence from France (1954-62), Cameroon - UPC Revolt (1956-1960), Ethiopia - Eritrea(1991), Pakistan - India - Partition war (1947), Bangladesh - East Pakistan - East India (1971), Rwanda - Burundi - Hutu-Tutsi (1994), Sri Lanka civil war - Tamil-Sinhalese (2009), Cuba (1960), Vietnam reunification civil war (1975).
Over the centuries, as transportation, communication and weaponry technologies improve, nations, societies, and identity groups tend to grow, with the result that crisis wars tend to merge into clusters. For convenience, I've referred to two different clusters that I call the WW I timeline and WW II timeline. Most of the nuclear powers (US, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, China) were on the WW II timeline. Russia was on the WW I timeline, with the Bolshevik revolution.
A lot of other countries were on the WW II timeline. Just to pick some at random, you have South Africa, Egypt, Korea, and Australia.
A lot of countries were on the WW I timeline, particularly in the Mideast with the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires. WW I was early enough in the century that some countries have had two crisis wars in the last century. Iran, Syria and Iraq are examples. Others have been delayed into a Fifth Turning, such as Mexico, Tunisia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. These Fifth Turning countries are all very interesting examples to study.
As I said, crisis war clusters tend to merge over the centuries, and what we're looking at today with WW III is a final merging of the WW I and WW II timelines.
This leads to the question of how crisis wars start and, in particular, if the existence of nuclear weapons makes crisis wars less likely. I've thought a lot about these questions and looked at many examples, and I haven't been able to find any evidence that nuclear weapons will make any difference at all.
Let's start with examples of some American non-crisis wars. The Vietnam war (Vietnam's reunification war) evolved slowly from advisors to heavier involvement after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. The Gulf war occurred after months of debate following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The Iraq war began after years of political haranguing over Iraq's WMDs. The point is that none of these were rash decisions. These occurred only after lengthy debate and consideration.
A recent example that I've pointed to often because it's so incredibly fascinating and almost unbelievable is the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. On July 12, 2006, some members of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon crossed the border and abducted two Israeli soldiers.
Israel's government went into a state of total panic. Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called this "an act of war," and within a few hours, Israel was mobilized for war. Israel launched the war with no plan and no objective. Each day, Israel lurched from one plan and objective to the next, as the previous one failed. In the end, the war was a disaster for both Israel and Lebanon, and accomplished nothing except the destruction of a lot of Lebanon's infrastructure. The war fizzled quickly because Lebanon and Hezbollah were in a generational Awakening era.
It's really a remarkable example. On July 11, 2006, there was no thought of war. On July 13, 2006, they were at war. The abduction of Israeli soldiers was apparently a random act by some Hezbollah fighters, but that random act on July 12, 2006, was all it took to trigger a war that might have spiraled into much bigger war, if Lebanon had been in a highly xenophobic and nationalistic Crisis era.
So my view is that crisis wars start from a panicked reaction to exactly this kind of random or minor act. If the participants are in a crisis era, with populations in highly xenophobic and nationalistic moods, then a random act can quickly spiral into a larger and larger war, with no planning. World War I began when a high school student assassinated an Archduke, and it led to the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires.
World War II did not begin with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It didn't even begin with the Nazi invasion of Poland.
World War II began in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge incident. I've written about this a number of times, but here's a summary.
The Marco Polo Bridge is about 15 km south of Beijing in China, and was so named because Marco Polo praised the bridge in the 13th century. In 1937, both Japan and China were deep into generational Crisis eras, and the Japanese and Chinese people really hated each other. On July 7, A small group of Japanese soldiers, stationed near the bridge, took a roll call and found one soldier missing. The Japanese accused Chinese soldiers, also stationed near the bridge in the city of Wanping, of abducting the Japanese soldier. A brief clash was won by the Japanese. The two sides negotiated a settlement, but both sides brought in reinforcements. Within a month there was full-scale war, leading to the Japanese "Rape of Nanking" shortly thereafter.
And, of course, we always have to mention that the Japanese soldier missed roll call because he went into the woods to pee, and lost his way back. So it's not so wrong to say that World War II was triggered because someone unexpectedly had to pee.
One of the major motivations that Japan had in bombing Pearl Harbor in 1941 was that the US, while officially neutral, was clearly supporting China in the Japan-China war, and the purpose of bombing Pearl Harbor was not to make the US a Japanese colony, but rather to prevent the US from supporting China.
Today the situation is similar to WW II, with the roles of China and Japan reversed. I didn't call my book "War between China and the US," since that's not the major objective of China. I called it "War between China and Japan." Once again, the Chinese and Japanese people are highly xenophobic and nationalistic. Once again, the Chinese and Japanese people really hate each other. The Chinese want revenge for WW II -- for Japan's invasion of China, for the comfort women, for the Rape of Nanking, for Japan's war crimes, and for the horrific chemical and biological warfare atrocities committed on Chinese people by Japan's Unit 731. But this time, the US will be supporting Japan against China, even though the US may be officially neutral at first.
There are extremely powerful emotions involved here. Most of these emotions are exhibited by young people who are indifferent to the catastrophic consequences of a war, in the same way that young people in the US support Sanders and are completely indifferent to the catastrophic consequences of his policies.
So, would these extremely powerful emotions between Chinese and Japanese people be affected by the fact that China and the US are nuclear powers? I just don't see how. There could be a trivial incident today, tomorrow or the next day, with a small clash between China and Japan that spirals into a war because of the massive nationalism and xenophobia on both sides. Nuclear weapons would have nothing to do with it, although nuclear weapons would be used as the war spiraled and progressed.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(17-May-2020)
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Milk-Tea War exposes generational split in Thailand
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There isn't much news lately except for coronavirus news. Potential riots in places like Lebanon or India quickly die down because everyone is afraid of getting sick.
So when this story popped up on my radar, it sounded great. It's about a hilarious twitter war called the "Milk-Tea War" that has special significance for younger generations in Thailand and their bitter attitudes toward China.
I'll try to summarize the twitter war, but you'll need to read through the sources for all the gory details.
The above is only a summary. There was an outpouring of nationalist slurs and hatred only, fueled by the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) news media.
Thailand's last generational crisis war was the Cambodian "killing fields" war, 1975-79, in which Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge government, backed by China, killed 2-3 million people in a massive genocide. Even though the war wasn't on Thai soil, it spilled over into Thailand in the army's fight against communists in Thailand.
Thailand's government has endeavoured to maintain friendly relations with China, but what the Milk-Tea twitter war reveals is that Thailand's younger generations, that grew up after the war, are hostile to both China and their own government. This is not surprising, as Thailand is in a generational Awakening era, and there is a "generation gap" between the generations surviving the war and the generations growing up after the war, as there was in America in the 1970s.
Ever since Xi Jinping came to power in 2011, China has been increasingly nationalistic and belligerent, ignoring international law and committing crimes in the South China Sea and Xinjiang province. Lately, the evidence has been growing that the CCP purposely seeded the Wuhan Coronavirus on 180 countries of the world, so that China wouldn't be the only country fighting the virus. ( "27-Apr-20 World View -- CNBC's Jim Cramer: Hostility to China grows in America")
The action by China's embassy to enter the fray and accuse the Thai users of "bias and ignorance" turned what might have been fun flame war into an international incident. It illustrates that there is a great deal of hatred and hostility between the CCP and young people in Thailand.
As world war with China approaches, China continues to make enemies. China has a few allies, such as Cambodia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and others, but China is surrounded by historic enemies, including Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, India and Russia. Now we can add Thailand to the list of likely CCP enemies.
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(8-May-2020)
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Growing evidence of China's malicious behavior in spreading pandemic
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A lengthy rant by CNBC's Jim Cramer shows several aspects of how world opinion toward China is growing increasingly negative, starting with the US-China trade dispute, and more so with the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) issue. A growing minority consider the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to be a criminal organization.
Cramer's rant was directed at China's reaction to a failed drug trial by the California company Gilead Sciences.
Gilead is one of dozens of American companies that are working to develop vaccines, treatments, therapeutics or even a cure for the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19). Gilead has an existing antiviral treatment product, Remdesivir, that has been used to treat Ebola patients. In March, the FDA approved testing the drug for Covid-19 patients.
Gilead went to a great deal of trouble to get approval for a test of Covid-19 patients in China. The trial was ended last week, after being inconclusive. Chinese officials responded by trashing Gilead, trashing the trial, and getting the World Health Organization (WHO) to do the same. WHO was forced to retract its statement. Gilead issued a statement saying that the trial was ended because enrollment was too low, and said, "the study results are inconclusive, though trends in the data suggest a potential benefit for remdesivir, particularly among patients treated early in disease." Gilead accused China of posting "inappropriate characterizations of the study."
CNBC's principal commentator Jim Cramer commented on this situation on Friday morning with an extended rant (my transcription):
"And I thought it you listen to [Dr. Scott Gottlieb], you would conclude only one thing: That the Chinese have done very bad job in the way that they've handled us. And I've always felt that Remdesivir would help if you get it early enough. ... I think that the Chinese have been horrendous. And I think that the WHO has been horrendous, and I think that the combination of the two [China and WHO] against Gilead and the assault against Gilead [is horrendous]. And here's a company [Gilead] that's done its absolute best like many American companies, and I don't understand the animus of China to our own companies, other than the fact they regard us as a cold war opponent. ...The reason that I'm discouraged about the Chinese is we have so many great things that are going on here by fantastic people who are really doing great things, and all we ever get from the Chinese is frankly a country that looks down upon us. They're number one, and they're the great power, and we're being treated by them and our companies are being treated by them with the greatest disrespect.
... That's how they treat us. Why does anyone say that?
I sat there and listened to what they [the Chinese] did with Gilead. First they said they didn't do the test, cause it couldn't get finished. Then suddenly they leak to the WHO saying how bad it is. Then it's pulled from WHO. In the meantime, all Gilead is doing, AND FOR FREE, is to try to come up with something that when you start early might work. And the disrespect [from China] is widely accepted [by the media]. Maybe Trump is a hot button [to the media]. But not the Chinese. The Chinese are revered. My father worked for the Chinese. God love them, they were nice to my father. Have you ever seen anyone just look down upon us, and say that we don't know what we're doing? Even the Soviet Union respected us from 47 to 87. They respected us. But -- What do they [the Chinese] think of us that they could treat us like this. And our drug companies? How many Nobel Prizes have they won?
... That's just the way I feel. You and I know that this idea that we're a fifth rate power and they would treat Ecuador better than us, and you saw Ecuador in the papers today."
I quoted Cramer's rant at length because I want to use it to make serveral points.
Let's start with the easiest one -- the reference to Ecuador.
Ecuador's infestation of Covid-19 is a mess, with many streets filled with bodies of dead people. That's the reason that Ecuador has been in the papers, but that isn't the reason that China loves Ecuador.
Thanks to China's "debt trap diplomacy," Ecuador owes $6.5 billion to China. In return, Ecuador is China's slave. China has deployed a massive surveillance spy system in Ecuador, the ECU-911 system, that can spy on all citizens, and sends its data back to China's military. By the way, similar systems have been sold to Venezuela, Bolivia and Angola. So that explains why China loves Ecuador. ( "13-Oct-19 World View -- Ecuador's president Moreno imposes curfew after 10 days of violent protests")
Jim Cramer is confused about why the CCP is so disrespectful of Americans and American companies. "I don't understand the animus of China to our own companies, other than the fact they regard us as a cold war opponent," says Cramer.
No, that isn't the reason at all. In fact, the Chinese do not see this situation as a "cold war." They see it as a prelude to a hot war.
China is unique as having an extremely racist view of themselves as superior to everyone else.
America is a "melting pot" of many races. Americans know that, and don't consider themselves to be some sort of superior race or master race. Instead, Americans see themselves as ordinary people who were lucky enough to be born in the greatest country in history. Most countries have similar views of their own people.
But not the Chinese. They are unique in a highly racist way, as I described in my book, "War Between China and Japan." Since ancient times, the Chinese have viewed the universe in three layers: The highest layer is the Kingdom of Heaven. The second layer is China, the Master Race, the Middle Kingdom -- yellow race, black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin. And the bottom layer is everyone else, the rest of us, the barbarians. The Chinese culture views the Chinese as a Master Race, superior to all other races. Even Hitler's Master Race Nazi attitude was not as bad, because it only survived a couple of decades. But the Chinese Master Race attitude has been firmly entrenched in the Chinese culture literally for millennia.
China's government, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), considers itself superior to all other governments, and not bound by international law, or any international agreements that it has signed. To the CCP, joining the United Nations or the World Health Organization (WHO) or the World Trade Organization (WTO) or any international organization does not require China to abide by any commitments. The CCP considers itself superior to the organization, and is simply using the organization as a way of controlling and exploiting the barbarians for the benefit of the CCP.
So that's why the Chinese love Ecuador. To the Chinese, Ecuadorians are like cute little poodles that are controlled and monitored by the CCP masters, and who do as their CCP masters tell them. Who wouldn't love to be masters of a country of cute little poodles? But the CCP hates Americans because we aren't obedient poodles, and because we constantly prove that we're better than they are. As Cramer asks, "How many Nobel Prizes have they won?"
So this isn't some simple economic competition, or even a simple military competition. America's superiority to China is a definitive challenge to Confucius and to China's entire racist Master Race culture.
So Jim Cramer had no idea why the Chinese treat Americans with such enormous contempt, but if he reads this, then he'll finally know.
Cramer's rant illustrates more and more widely held views that China is not a friend, but an enemy.
Americans have always had a friendly positive view of China. We helped them in World War I, and we saved them in WW II. Even when Mao Zedong was starving and murdering tens of millions of Chinese in the Great Leap Forward, even when the CCP was slaughtering thousands of peaceful young students in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, it made little difference -- Americans loved China.
According to Pew Research, this changed sharply in 2011, when Xi Jinping came to power, as shown by this chart.
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Views became less unfavorable in 2016-17, but then unfavorable views surged in 2018 with the trade dispute, and recently with the Covid-19 issue.
This change is even more pronounced by the people of India, who believe that China’s opacity and mismanagement is to blame for the global pandemic, according to a survey conducted by The Takshashila Institution in Bangalore, India. According to the survey:
According to a study of Indian social media, Indians are angry at China and the World Health Organization (WHO) for their mishandling of the pandemic, and they praise the efficiency and transparency of Taiwan's response.
I haven't seen any surveys of Chinese attitudes towards Americans and Indians, but it would seem likely that those attitudes are becoming more negative as well.
Evidence is growing that the CCP purposely took steps to spread the pandemic to other countries, and used the World Health Organization as a tool to do this. The motive was that China did not want to be the only country in the world experiencing a pandemic, and wanted to make sure that the pandemic spread to the US and other countries.
First, there's the question of where the virus came from. There are three theories:
The first of these theories is almost universally rejected, and there are investigations underway to determine which of the latter two theories is correct. However, it doesn't really matter too much which it is.
What matters now and what's important now is the CCP's actions once the virus started spreading in Wuhan. The circumstantial evidence points clearly, almost beyond a reasonable doubt, to the conclusion that the CCP purposely spread the virus around the world.
I've listened to several interviews on the BBC and elsewhere of Chinese officials being asked about these charges. These Chinese officials are really mealy-mouthed. They never try to explain their actions, but just blame everything on Trump, even though every country on the planet is going to suffer because of China's actions. It's proof of how stupid the CCP thugs are, if they think that we're so stupid we believe what they're saying.
I always say that the CCP officials are the dumbest bunch of thugs imaginable. You never know how they're going to handle a situation, but you can always be certain that they'll handle it in such a way as to make it worse. They've certainly done that in this situation.
The CCP thugs apparently believe that they can talk their way out of this, just as they've tried to talk their way out of their illegal annexation of the South China Sea or their genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs in East Turkestan (Xinjiang province). The CCP thugs are unable to grasp how dangerous the situation is, as the people of the world increasingly view the CCP as a criminal organization. This will not go well for anybody.
It now appears that we'll have to continue using face masks, "social distancing" and other containment methods until early 2022. The world will be a very different place by then, even more so if there's a war with China before then.
There are now about 3 million cases and 200,000 deaths worldwide, with almost 100,000 cases and almost 55,000 deaths in the United States.
If you're willing to step back from the horror of that many deaths, and look at the big picture, then there are some interesting experiments going on.
There are 50 states in the US, and there are countries and provinces around the world. So let's say that there are 500 different regions.
Then there are 500 different experiments going on for dealing with the virus. Some started lockdowns early, some later, and others had no lockdowns at all. Different lockdowns permitted different kinds of activities, whether buying groceries or jogging alone in the park, provided that "social distancing" and face mask rules are followed.
Now they're starting to end the lockdowns. Some are doing it early, some doing it quickly, some doing it later, some doing it slowly. Some will fail, and there will be a new resurgence of cases, and all the accomplishments of the lockdown will be lost.
That means that by the end of the summer, we're going to have a great deal of data and information on what works and what doesn't. It's widely expected that there will be a "second wave" of the pandemic in the fall, and in that case, all the data collected from these 500 experiments will be used to deal with the virus much more effectively than in the first wave.
So I'm going to call this "good news." People are always complaining that I post nothing but bad news, but this is one piece of good news: If there's a "second wave" in the fall, then we'll know how to handle it effectively, based on the experience of these 500 experiments.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(27-Apr-2020)
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The Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) hoax
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In the past week, president Donald Trump has announced on Thursday a plan for "opening up" the American economy on a rolling basis, starting in May and continuing until a vaccine is found.
In the past week, several pharmaceutical companies have announced development of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, raising hopes that the virus will be defeated by the fall, even though every medical expert I've heard says that 12-18 months will be required to perform all the testing phases before a new vaccine can be deployed.
In the past week, the stock market has swung upward, giving investors the hope that "the bottom has been reached," after a period where investors have been whiplashed by wild swings.
In the past week, several ongoing conflicts in the Mideast, Africa and Asia have become frozen because of fear of a "coronavirus tsunami," leading some people to hope that the Covid-19 crisis will end wars for a while. However, China and other countries have taken advantage of international pandemic distraction to launch military actions.
Each of these changes gives hope that the end of the Covid-19 crisis is sight, at least in the distance.
However, if you want to understand what's going on today, you have to understand that we don't have three or four different sets of problems (virus, stock market, real economy, global tensions) that can be solved independently.
The situation is almost infinitely more complex than that, but what we're seeing is the three major Western crises of the 20th century all merging into a single interlocking crisis today.
The three major cataclysmic Western crises of the 20th century are as follows:
In the 20th century, these crises occurred ten years apart, giving the world a chance to recover from one before having to deal with another.
But today, all three of these cataclysmic crises are occurring simultaneously. In addition, the WW I and WW II fault lines and timelines have been combined. Whether one of the currently "frozen" conflicts will eventually spiral into WW III is a matter of speculation.
The world is a complex system, where everything interlocks with everything else. So if two or more crises occur simultaneously, they interact with one another. When government officials try to deal with one crisis, they're hindered by problems with the other crises. So today's economic crisis will be much worse than the Great Depression, and World War III will be much worse than WW I and WW II combined.
On Thursday, president Trump announced a framework for opening up the US economy and returning to work. The framework is "data driven," and since the data can differ from state to state or region to region, the timeline will differ from region to region.
The chart at the beginning of this article was created by Morgan Stanley several days ago, so it doesn't precisely align with Trump's Thursday announcement. But it's close enough to serve as a reference model for discussion.
One issue highlighted by this chart is the date when a vaccine is broadly available. The chart assumes March 2021, which is a bit on the optimistic side, in view of what I've heard from experts.
Another issue highlighted by this chart is the "Potential Second Wave of Infections," starting in the fall, though it's not reflected in the "Daily New Cases" dark blue line. Scientists have already identified several minor mutations, with America's west coast dealing with the "Chinese virus," while the east coast dealing with the "European mutation."
The chart ignores the consequences of a significant mutation. In the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the flu virus mutated over the summer into something much more virulent, resulting in far more deaths in the fall.
So the chart, like Trump's announced plan, might be called the "base scenario." It assumes that a lot of things will go right, but it's fragile, in that if one the assumptions is even partially wrong, then it could result in major changes to the plan.
So this chart, and Trump's plan, assume that a vaccine will be available in a year or a little later, which corresponds to the statements by experts. They also assume that any "second wave" can be controlled quickly, as Dr. Anthony Fauci on Trump's coronavirus team has promised, using experience gathered from the the first wave.
However, the biggest omissions in this chart, and in Trump's announced plan, is that there is no recognition of the other major crises that I've listed above -- a stock market crisis and a war crisis.
As regular Generational Dynamics readers are well aware, the stock market is in a huge bubble, with stocks far overpriced. By contrast, stocks were far underpriced in 1918 at the time of the Spanish Flu pandemic.
The S&P 500 price earnings ratio can tell us whether stocks are overpriced or underpriced. The historic average of the P/E ratio is 14. Here are the three values relevant to the current discussion:
This is an illustration of what I mean by simultaneous crises today.
There was no stock market bubble in 1918, the time of the Spanish Flu, and it was literally almost impossible to have a stock market panic at that time. The bubble grew during the 1920s, and burst ten years later, in the 1929 stock market crash. So the Spanish Flu crisis and the stock market crisis were ten years apart.
But today, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis is occurring SIMULTANEOUSLY with a huge stock market bubble. With the market far overpriced in a bubble, a panic could occur at any time.
This doesn't mean that a stock market panic must necessarily occur, but it means that the probability is high that it will occur. This is in contrast to 1918, when a stock market panic was almost impossible.
The timelines in the Morgan Stanley chart above, as in Trump's announced plan, assume that there will be no stock market panic. This means that the plans assume that funds will be available to pay for all the testing and bailouts and loans and unemployment benefits. Any sane person reading news must be as shocked as I am these days to see the government distribute trillions of dollars in newly "printed" money, as if they were distributing marbles. This is tied into the current economic fad, "Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)" that I'll describe below.
As regular Generational Dynamics readers are well aware, most of the world is in a generational Crisis era, with high levels of xenophobia and nationalism in almost every nation. This means that most countries, including China, Japan, Turkey, Russia, the EU, the United States, and many others have no fear of war, have no hesitation to set "red lines" or to cross other countries' "red lines," without understanding that such actions can quickly spiral into major wars.
This was not the case for Western nations in 1918, since World War I was just finishing up, and everyone was war-weary. This is an enormous difference between 1918 and today.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
Furthermore, as I've written in the past, China does not want a war with the US. However, China is planning a war of extermination against Japan, in revenge for Japan's atrocities in World War II, and also a war of annexation against Taiwan. China is developing a huge arsenal of missiles and ships to attack the United States because the Chinese know that the US will defend Japan and Taiwan when they're attacked by China.
Those interested in understanding the dynamics of China's plans should read my book, "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019 Paperback: 331 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
So we have war tensions growing in many places in the world, during this generational Crisis era. It's impossible to predict how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting whatever war plans might be in progress in any of these countries. In the Mideast, we're seeing some ongoing conflicts in Syria and Yemen frozen in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic threat. On the other hand, there are reports that China is taking belligerent actions in the South China Sea and East China Sea in order to take advantage of how the Covid-19 pandemic has distracted the United States.
A decision to go to war during a generational Crisis era is a "chaotic event" (in the sense of Chaos Theory), which means something trivial (like a butterfly flapping its wings) could affect the nature or the time of the decision to go to war. The Covid-19 pandemic is not a trivial event, of course, but the same principle can apply. So if we apply that reasoning to China, then the pandemic may cause the CCP thugs to say, "We'd better wait a while longer to make sure the army is OK," or it may cause the CCP thugs to say, "Since Japan is flat on its back from the pandemic, now is the time to strike." It could go either way.
This is a brief summary of the accusations being directed against China as the source of the pandemic. These are important because they may play a role in the anger and xenophobia directed against China, and in the defensiveness and xenophobia directed by China against other countries.
It's now widely accepted that China could have used standard containment measures (contact tracing and isolation) to stamp out Covid-19 fairly quickly in December. Instead, the CCP censored all news and social media reports of the growing danger, and forced the doctor, Dr. Li Wenlian, who had identified and reported about the virus, to sign a phony confession. Dr. Li died of the disease himself, and other doctors were "disappeared."
China repeatedly censored any reports of the virus, and denied that there was any human-to-human transmission for weeks. China's claims would not have been believed, since China lies about everything, but Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization (WHO), vouched for China's lies.
These lies lulled many countries, in Europe, Asia and the United States, into a sense of complacency. If it hadn't been for those lies, the pandemic would have been far less severe, because the US and other countries would have started reacting much sooner.
There are some additional issues:
As things stand, many nations are facing the pandemic because China censored the facts and lied about them. If it turns out that China did so on purpose, in order to infect other nations, then some of those nations might consider it an act of war.
All the actual facts will be coming out over the next few weeks.
I listen all the time to economists and financial analysts on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Wall St Journal and elsewhere, often described as "reknowned" or "legendary." These people are idiots. They have no particular skills at explaining or forecasting the economy than any random seven-year-old child. Their only skill is to dress up their own political biases or their firm's sales pitches into words that will get them on TV.
There are so many examples. One was the housing bubble in the mid-2000s decade. That there was a housing bubble was obvious, to me and to others, as early as 2004, when Alan Greenspan said there was a housing bubble. But for years the "experts" on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal kept saying that "Housing prices can't go down -- people have to live somewhere," and "Banks won't foreclose -- it's not in their interest to do so" and "These housing construction firms know what they're doing, and they wouldn't be building houses if it were just a bubble."
It wasn't until 2009 that I heard a tv analyst talk about a housing bubble -- they said that it had occurred several years earlier. These "reknowned" or "legendary" experts only recognized the housing bubble long after it had burst. That's why I call them idiots -- they can't even see the most obvious things.
Economists are no different from politicians, and I see this all the time. SAT scores have been plummeting since the Boomers were in school. Since then, it became fashionable to major in idiotic subjects like sociology or women's studies, and then call yourself an "expert." You can see this in politicans, in computer programmers, and in economists.
Another example, which I've written about many times, is that economists are unable to explain the tech bubble that occurred in the late 1990s -- why it occurred at all and why it didn't occur ten years earlier or later. The economist idiots just say, "Oh, it's because of the internet," which is no explanation at all, especially since it doesn't explain why it didn't happen in the 1980s, when millions of programmers were developing PC software in the basements.
As Generational Dynamics readers are well aware, the 1990s tech bubble occurred at exactly the time the survivors of the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression all disappeared (retired or died). As long as they were in charge, as they were in the 1980s, PC software investments were made with care. But when their children were in charge, starting in the 1990s, internet software investments were made with reckless abandon.
Those concepts are beyond the grasp of economists and analysts, because understanding it requires more knowledge than you get in fourth grade. So they're simply incapable of understanding this.
Economists and analysts may not have any knowledge beyond the fourth grade, but that doesn't stop them from becoming drug addicts. And for today's economists, the cocaine-like addiction drug is known as "The Modern Monetary Theory" (MMT).
In centuries past, when Kings wanted to "print money," they actually had to run some sort of printing press. But not today. Today, anyone can "print money" simply by creating and issuing bonds. The US government "prints money" by selling Treasury bonds.
When Barack Obama took office, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. When Donald Trump took office, the national debt was $19.9 trillion. But this year, the government is going on a massive spending spree. There was a $2.1 trillion bailout bill, and there are more bailouts and infrastructure programs planned. The total national debt will go to around $27 trillion.
So doesn't that debt have to be repaid? The magic of MMT says that it doesn't.
Here are the elements of MMT:
You read this, and you might think it's something out of a comic book, but it's considered serious economic theory today (though controversial).
The first fallacy is that the government would raise taxes to control the hyperinflation. That's ridiculous. Neither Democrats nor Republicans would ever agree to such a tax increase, and decades of history prove that's true.
The biggest fallacy of all in MMT is that it causes inflation or hyperinflation. That's not what happens in a generational Crisis era, like today, when almost everyone is in debt. Today the country and the world are in a classic deflationary spiral, and anyone counting on inflation is going to be badly hurt.
MMT is the ultimate form of drug addiction.
It's like a drug addict who has already lost his home, his family and his job, and who needs to take more and more drugs to feel ok. Taking more and more drugs only postpones and worsens the problems he has to face, but it may be the best choice for the time being because it postpones the problems he has to face. In the meantime, he keeps hope alive. Maybe he'll win a $10 million lottery, so he'll be able to use the money to get off drugs, and get his home and family back. Keep taking drugs, and keep hope alive as long as possible. If something can't go on forever, then it won't.
So that's why so many economists and politicians hope for and predict inflation. Just as a drug addict might hope for winning the lottery, economists and politicians hope for hyperinflation, which is their version of winning the lottery, since hyperinflation wipes out debt. It's a dream fantasy.
When people have tons of money, then they buy lots of things, creating inflation.
But people have NO money today. They have the opposite. Instead of tons of money, they have tons of debt, which is the opposite. They have tons of interlocking debt.
They do not have the money to spend or the desire to spend, so there won't be hyperinflation. You have a clue what's going on when the federal government is tying its bailouts to requirements to spend. If the government has to force people to spend there won't be inflation. If people won't spend, then there'll be deflation, the opposite of inflation.
The way the economy will fail is when somebody's margin call or somebody's bankruptcy triggers a chain reaction of debt payment failures. That's what a deflationary spiral is, as one bankruptcy triggers another one. This is what I used to refer to as the Principle of Maximum Ruin: The maximum number of people are ruined to the maximum extent possible. Inflation is a fantasy.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics theory, hyperinflation can only occur in generational Awakening and Unraveling eras, as in the case of Germany's Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. In a generational Crisis era, when all the bills come due, it's not inflation but it's a massive deflationary spiral that occurs. If I have enough time left, then at a future date I'll write about the theory of how all this works. I can't get into it now, because this article is long enough as it is.
At the beginning of this article, I referenced Donald Trump's plan for "opening up" the economy, and I referenced the Morgan Stanley plan, as illustrated by the diagram at the beginning of the article.
Those two plans differ in details, but from a high level, they're pretty much the same plan. They portray the most optimistic scenario for ending the Covid-19 pandemic crisis in America. However, these plans overlook the consequences of several real possibilities.
At the beginning of this article, I listed three major 20th century crises:
In the 20th century, these crises occurred ten years apart. But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, they are likely to merge in the 21st century.
Generational Dynamics predicts that all of the items in this list of events will occur, though not necessarily in the two year time frame contemplated by the "opening up" scenarios. However, bear in mind that the IMF has predicted the worst global recession since the 1930s Great Depression. So with debt around the world increasing almost exponentially, and with ethnic and racial tensions growing around the world because of Covid-18, the probability that they'll occur in the next year is substantially higher than at any time since the end of World War II.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
John Xenakis is author of: "Generational Dynamics Anniversary Edition - Forecasting America's Destiny", (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 3), January 2020, Paperback: 359 pages, $14.99, https://www.amazon.com/Generational-Dynamics-Anniversary-Forecasting-Americas/dp/1732738629/
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(19-Apr-2020)
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Syria admits to first cases of coronavirus -- probably from Iran
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As long-time readers are aware, there are now over 3.5 million people in Syria's Idlib province. Two million of them are refugees from Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa, and other regions of Syria where Syria's Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad, supported by Iran and Russia, has been conducting genocide and ethnic cleansing, targeting his Sunni Muslim political opponents.
In Idlib, about 40,000 of the 3.5 million people are anti-Assad fighters, some being members of al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Most of the other 3.5 million people are children. Of the remainder, most are women. Al-Assad's barrel bombs, missiles and chemical weapons have specifically targeted schools, markets and hospitals, in order to kill as many women and children as possible, which I guess is the best way to commit genocide. Just since December, 84 hospitals and healthcare facilities were damaged, and hundreds of healthcare personnel have been attacked in Idlib.
At this time, international humanitarian aid workers in Idlib are in a state of dread and panic because they know that, sooner or later, the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) will reach the crowded refugee camps, where there's no clean water or soap or medicines or even much food. The virus will sweep through the crowds in the refugee camps and worsen the humanitarian disaster.
The virus outbreak in Idlib will be made much worse because the sociopathic monster Bashar al-Assad, joined with his genocidal pals Russia's president Vladimir Putin and Iran's crazy fanatical leader Ali Khameini, have been bombing hospitals, so there will be few places left where doctors can care for patients.
So the rescue agency White Helmets, along with the aid agencies and NGOs, have been scrambling, trying to plan for the pandemic's arrival, disinfecting camps and trying to work out how to provide medical care and containment strategies where all the hospitals have been destroyed. The objective will be to try to hold back the tidal wave of illness when the pandemic arrives.
On Wednesday, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria imposed a nationwide curfew from 6 pm each evening until 6 am the next morning. During the curfew, all trade activities and shops must shut completely, and violators will be arrested.
On the same day, Syria admitted to confirming five cases of coronavirus in the capital city Damascus. As in the case of China, Iran and Russia, it's believed that al-Assad is hiding the true extent of the problem in Syria, and that there are many more cases beneath the surface.
Bashar al-Assad depends heavily on Iran to prop up his regime, and so he can't be too critical about the coronavirus infections, since most of them were inherited from Iran. Iran refused for weeks to admit that there were coronavirus infections in Iran, because Iran was importing the disease from China, and didn't want to anger the Chinese. ( "14-Mar-20 World View -- Iran's army to monitor entire population for Wuhan Coronavirus")
So now, al-Assad's regime is importing the disease from Iran, but doesn't want to anger the Iranians. In the meantime, the final virus explosion will be made much worse because al-Assad destroyed dozens of hospitals in Idlib that might have prevented the spread of the disease.
Iran now has 30,000 confirmed cases of the virus, resulting in the death even of numerous government officials, and the number of infections continues to grow. By inviting Iranians to help with his genocide and ethnic cleansing, and by destroying dozens of hospitals that might have helped, Bashar al-Assad is going to get what he deserves. Think of it as Allah's divine retribution.
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(27-Mar-2020)
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Pandemic and shutdown surrounded by political controversies
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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President Donald Trump and his advisors are saying: "The cure can’t be allowed to be worse than the disease." This statement concisely describes the conflict between the twin goals of slowing the pandemic and preventing collapse of the economy.
The "disease," of course, is the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, the number of cases worldwide surpassed 400,000 on Tuesday, with 18,227 deaths (4.5%). In the United States, there have been almost 50,000 cases. As I wrote in my previous article, the path of Covid-19 is almost identical to the path of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, and millions of Americans will die from the virus during the next two years. ( "22-Mar-20 World View -- Today's Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic vs 1918 Spanish Flu")
The "cure" for the disease has been to shut down the entire economy. Factories are closed, restaurants are closed, businesses large and small are closed. People are told to stay in the homes, and not go to work. This is crippling the economy, sending the economy spiraling into a recession, and causing a major selloff in the stock market. The same is true in countries around the world.
The graph at the beginning of this article shows the "Corona Curve," and the position of different countries on that curve. That chart shows that China and South Korea are the farthest along, with a leveling off of the number of new cases, with Italy and Iran in the middle of the time of fastest growth of new cases.
The United States is shown just about to enter the rapid growth period in the next couple of months. This has been widely predicted anyway, as the amount of testing increases, and reveals new infections. The World Health Organzation on Tuesday said that the United States is becoming the new epicenter of the pandemic.
What the chart doesn't show is that different states are at different positions on the curve. New York City, San Francisco and Seattle are well into the "late accumulation" phase, while many parts of the Midwest are still in early development. In New York state there are 21,000 cases on Tuesday, and the number is doubling every three days. New York will soon be totally overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases.
So Donald Trump says that he'd like to end all the lockdowns by Easter, April 12. Few people believe that's possible.
The United States, like many countries, is facing a stark choice: death from the virus, or death from economic collapse.
Last week, Trump issued a set of guidelines calling for a national shutdown for 15 days, after which the situation would be reevaluated. The 15 days ends on March 31. He's said that, if possible, he'd like to announce an end to the lockdowns:
"America will again and soon be open for business. We are not going to let it turn into a long-lasting financial problem."
Speaking generally, the medical community would prefer to continue the shutdown. This is adding to a number of political issues and controversies.
Putting the country back to work is not an on-off switch. When Trump announces new guidelines next week, he'll probably announce a gradual lifting of the national shutdown:
I gave an example of this in a previous article: If a restaurant or bar wants to stay open, then the owner will separate the tables and place screens between them to create compartments, and then sanitize each compartment after the people leave. Many restaurants are already staying open by providing curbside service or at-home deliveries, but the use of screens could permit them to reopen completely.
This may seen like a fairly obscure example, but imagine if restaurants were permitted to open again, provided that the restaurant were made safe by the use of such screens. And now, imagine any other kind of business, and think about how a similar change could be made to allow the business to continue operating. This would result in new regulations that would replace the requirement to shut down. And as I've said before, we can imagine a different world, a new world, but a world that's as busy and bustling as the old world was until recently.
So it's possible that within three or four months, most businesses will be open again, but restricted by new regulations to make them safe. Such regulations might "flatten the curve" enough so that the number of coronavirus deaths can be reduced until a vaccine becomes available, sometime in 2021.
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(25-Mar-2020)
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Why the Covid-19 crisis won't be over by summer
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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I've now written several articles and almost daily reports, on my web site and in the Generational Dynamics forum, on the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis, and unfortunately the most pessimistic of the predictions are coming true on a daily basis. In this article, I'm comparing Covid-19 pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and showing that there's no material difference between the two pandemics.
Using round numbers, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 infected about 500 million people worldwide, almost one-third of the world's population. It killed about 2% of the world's population, or 36 million people.
The Spanish flu (which, incidentally, originated in Kansas, not Spain) first appeared in March 1918. American troops carried the virus with them when they went to war in Europe, and it spread quickly to England, France, Spain and Italy. However, it wasn't much more deadly than the ordinary seasonal flu at first.
Cases of flu dropped off in the summer of 1918, and it was hoped that the virus had run its course. However, a second wave of the Spanish flu began in August, and the second wave was far deadlier than the first. The deadliest month was October 1918. Tens of millions of people worldwide were killed during the next few months.
The Spanish flu death rate in America was far lower than the death rate for the world as a whole.
The Spanish flu killed about 2% of the world population, but killed only 675,000 Americans, or 0.7% of the American population. Why was the death rate for Americans so much lower?
The reason is that Americans were using the same containment and mitigation strategies that are being recommended today. People wore face masks. WW I victory parades and events were canceled. Schools were closed. Theaters and businesses were closed. There are anecdotal stories about people who were forcibly locked into their homes to prevent them from infecting other people. In these stories, the patient would lower a basket with a rope from a second story window, and his neighbors would fill it with food.
Containment and mitigation strategies are being used today for the same reason. The phrase "social distancing" is on everyone's lips. Tens of millions of Americans are in states that have been "locked down" in the last few days, meaning that they're told to stay in their homes (or "shelter in place"). Those people will not be getting infected with Covid-19, nor will they be infecting other people.
It's always tempting to believe that we're so far advanced and so sophisticated today, that anything older than yesterday is ancient and out of date and only of interest to historians and Boomers.
But in fact, it's very hard to see any material difference between the 1918 Spanish Flu and today's Wuhan Coronavirus, except that today we have some electronic devices like ventilators for treatment.
However, everything else is the same:
So not only are the containment and mitigation strategies the same as in 1918, even the same anti-malarial drug is being used.
So far, today's Covid-19 pandemic appears to be materially the same as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The two won't really diverge until a vaccine becomes available, and that's not expected until late in 2021.
I described the containment and mediation strategies in earlier articles, and their purpose in "flattening the curve." ( "17-Mar-20 World View -- Stock market plunges 13% on Monday, as investors begin to accept reality")
In the containment strategy, the country tracks and tests people and uses contact tracing to identify infected people, and isolate them. When that fails, the mitigation strategy is used, where schools and stores are closed, and large gatherings are illegal, in order to reduce the number of infections.
I'm using the phrase "burn through" to describe a strategy where no mitigation is done, and the infections are allowed to take their course. A variation of this strategy that I've described in the past is the "Herd Immunity" strategy, where all the old people and people with existing health conditions are first locked up for safety, and then the infection is allowed to spread through the population, after which the old people can be let out.
There are a number of people on TV and on the internet who say that the mitigation strategies we're using -- closing all the schools, businesses and restaurants, for example -- are panic reactions that are worse than the disease. Many of these people say that they would like to see the "burn through" strategy used, believing that it would only kill elderly people who, as one person wrote to me, "they are going to die anyway."
Some people in the Generational Dynamics forum expressed the same view. One wrote:
"I think shutting down the economy to keep drug addicts and elderly people alive who will all be dead within five years anyway is stupid. I'm an older person (70) and I am willing to take my chances if it means my grandchildren won't have to live in abject poverty for the rest of their lives."
Another person agreed:
"I think that in general terms you are quite right. We are doing an inordinate amount of damage to our economies in order to save a very small percentage of the population. ...We cannot cover the cost of intensive care needed for say 5% of the population. That would be about 15 million people in the US in ICU for a couple of weeks.
Panic is causing drastic measures that we just cannot afford."
This is the kind of policy that might be possible today in China or Russia, but there's no chance that any Western democracy today would adopt a policy of letting one group of people die, even old people, any more than it would adopt a policy of allowing all blacks or all Jews to die.
But it's more than that. The mitigation strategies are not just trying "to save a very small percentage of the population."
If we look at the Spanish flu figures, we can see the difference. Most of the world in 1918 used the "burn through" strategy, and 2% of the world population died. But in America, only 0.7% of the population died, and that can be attributed to the mitigation strategies.
Using round numbers, 45 million Americans get the seasonal flu each year. 200,000 are hospitalized, and the number of deaths is roughly 0.1% x 45 million = 45,000.
If we use the "burn through" strategy with Covid-19, and just let it spread without taking any remediation steps, then there will be roughly 200 million infections. The number of people hospitalized will be roughly 20% x 200 million = 40 million. The number of deaths will be 2% x 200 million or 4 million.
So just letting Covid-19 spread without mitigation would be a lot worse than just letting a few old people die. At the very least, hospitals and funeral homes would be overwhelmed by a factor of ten, and there would be dead bodies in the streets and in dump sites. This is the not the direction that America or any Western country wants to go.
That's not to say that remediation is an easy out. If we assume the 0.7% figure from the Spanish flu, and apply it to the American population of 300+ million, we still get over two million deaths. This is a speculative figure, and with curve flattening, the number of deaths would be spread over a long period of time.
A lot of people would like to believe that the Covid-19 crisis will be over by summer, or even earlier, in April or May. This is a total fantasy. Let's take a look at some of the reasons why this crisis will last well into next year.
The point is that even when the virus appears to be contained, there can be a rebound at any time because of a new infection. It's possible, for example, for an asymptomatic person to spread the virus to a dozen other people. These new outbreaks may be contained through contact tracing, but they'll keep occurring.
Some of these issues are more speculative than others, but the belief that the virus crisis will end this summer is the most speculative assumption of all.
There is one more issue, and this is perhaps the most dangerous issue at all.
There are deeply overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, Greece, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela and other countries. Sooner or later, there will be a Covid-19 outbreak in each of these camps. People in these camps are crowded together, living in filth. There's almost no water at all, and certainly no clean water. If there's a Covid-19 outbreak in one of these camps, then it will quickly burn through the entire camp, and fleeing refugees will spread it to other countries.
In fact, any place where crowding and poverty are so great that containment and mitigation strategies will not work represent a risk to an entire region. If someone lives in a small home with a large family, and must go to work every day to feed his family that day or they'll starve, then "self-isolation" and "self-quarantine" don't even make sense. He'll go to work anyway, and risk contaminating the entire neighborhood. This is true in many "supercities," from Mumbai to Lagos to Mexico City.
In each of these cases, attempts will be made to blockade these cities and refugee camps, to trap people inside and keep them from leaving. But this will be unsuccessful, if only because the virus will create a massive humanitarian disaster, and outside world will demand some kind of relief.
These situations probably will trigger regional wars, and this may be the scenario that leads to World War III.
Finally, another major problem area is that many prisons, even in Western countries, are overcrowded, and the spread of virus could kill many inmates. As a result, there are calls to release large numbers of prisoners. This is already a major political issue in many countries, including the United States.
It seems that hundreds of companies around the world are working to create a Covid-19 vaccine. There are new developments almost every day, and a couple of new candidates have already gone into first phase testing.
But every expert that I've heard says the same thing: these vaccines will have to go through multiple test phases to make sure that they're safe and effective. You don't want to be saved from Covid-19 by a vaccine that kills you anyway. Every expert I've heard says that it will be well into 2021 before any vaccine can be widely deployed.
In this article, I've compared the Covid-19 pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and I've shown that there's really no difference at all. The remediation techniques are the same, the medicines are the same, and there's even no vaccine for now. Covid-19 is being handled in the same low-tech way as the Spanish flu. So those who want to understand how Covid-19 will affect the world should study the history of the Spanish flu.
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(22-Mar-2020)
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Some possible good news: The Real Economy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell 12.9% or 2,997 points, which was one of the sharpest declines in history.
The index had already fallen around 2000 when president Donald Trump gave his coronavirus press conference on Monday afternoon. As usual, he was trying to be realistic while, at the same time, being as optimistic as possible, when he made a remark that he expected the coronavirus crisis to "wash out" in July or August. He added that "it could be August, could be July, could be longer than that."
The background is that earlier in the day, I was watching one analyst after another on tv talk about the virus crisis ending in April or May, after which there would be a "V-shaped recovery." As I watched these so-called "experts," I couldn't get over the feeling that I was watching a Donald Duck cartoon show, with each "expert" quacking the same nonsense.
So when Trump made his remark, investors began to freak out because their April-May assumption was apparently wrong, and a July-August assumption meant that their V-shaped hopes were dashed. By the way, as I've said several times in the past, I don't expect the crisis to be over until a vaccine can be deployed, sometime in 2021. I'll discuss this more below.
As long-time Generational Dynamics readers are very well aware, the stock market is in a huge bubble that will have to implode at some point, and that could occur at any time.
The Federal Reserve made several major moves to pour money liquidity into banks on Sunday and Monday. Many commentators are complaining that it didn't help the stock market, but that wasn't the intention anyway. The problem being addressed was a "broken" bond market, with a "credit crunch" similar to the one in 2007-08. The Federal Reserve move helped the bond market, but not the stock market.
There's a conflict between governmental economic policy versus coronavirus policy. Economic policy -- monetary and fiscal -- has the goal of putting money in people's pockets so that they'll spend it and the economy will grow. But coronavirus policy is that people shouldn't be out shopping or attending events or traveling, but should be staying quietly at home to limit spreading of Covid-19. This is a conflict that shows how complicated the situation is.
The most pessimistic of the predictions that I've been posting since the beginning of February, in articles and in daily reports on the Generational Dynamics forum, are continuing to occur. We're still waiting for an event that hasn't occurred yet but must occur, as predicted by Generational Dynamics: A full-scale generational panic leading to a global financial crisis. It might occur soon, or it might not occur for weeks or months. But it will occur. ( "2-Mar-20 World View -- Coronavirus updates -- infections spread across the world")
This is truly a remarkable time. I heard an analyst complain that stock prices have become "completely untethered" from earnings, because the only thing affecting stock prices now is the latest news headline.
In fact, stock prices have been "untethered" from earnings for a long time. As readers know, I focus on price/earnings ratio, to keep things simple. Prior to the 1990s, the core value of a stock was considered to be "tethered" to the P/E ratio, what today we would call P/E based on "trailing earnings." This means that the "earnings" are actual reported earnings for the previous year, also called "one year trailing earnings."
Starting with the 1990s tech bubble, that P/E ratio was producing results that stock salesmen disliked, so they started using "forward earnings" or "operating earnings." But unlike trailing earnings, which are solid values backed up by audited financial statements, forward and operating earnings are fantasy earnings, not backed by financial statements, but backed by wishful thinking from public relations departments.
An example of the fantasy is something that I hear frequently. Someone will say that stock X has a P/E ratio of 80, and stock Y has a P/E ratio of 40, and therefore stock Y is better. This is total nonsense, since both the 40 and 80 numbers are totally meaningless.
This has given rise to complete doublespeak. Analysts will talk about a historic average P/E ratio of 14, and say that if a stock's P/E ratio is less than 20, then it's close to the historic average. Actually, 14 is the historic average P/E ratio with trailing earnings. I've estimated that the historic average P/E ratio with forward earnings is around 8. So a stock with a P/E ratio of 20 is astronomically overpriced.
So stock prices have been untethered to trailing earnings since the 1990s, since analysts never talked about anything but their fantasy forward earnings, and ignored trailing earnings. Under the forward earning doublespeak, the stock market bubble has been growing to a huge size.
So the analyst complaint that stock prices have become "completely untethered" from earnings is particularly ironic, since they've been untethered from trailing earnings for years. What's ironic is that, in the last few months, stock prices have even become untethered to fantasy forward earnings. We might also say that they've become untethered to sanity.
Almost every news report these days contains the phrase "Flattening the curve." This refers to postponing Covid-19 infections for as long as possible, using such techniques as closing schools and stores, locking down cities and making everyone stay at home.
The idea is that if everyone gets sick at once, then hospitals will be overwhelmed. But if the infection rate can be slowed down, then hospitals will be able to keep up.
Here's a graph that illustrates the concept:
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The above graph illustrates the concept. If everyone gets sick at once, then the "Healthcare system capacity" will be exceeded, and hospitals will be overwhelmed. But if the same number of cases is spread over time, and the curve is flattened, then according to this graph, the healthcare system will be able to handle them.
It's worth mentioning that the entire concept is fantasy. There's no way to flatten the curve except through unacceptable draconian measures (as in China), and even then, the flattened curve will have to be years long.
The two different curves in the chart above actually represent two different strategies that a government might use to deal with the Covid-19 crisis.
The first curve is associated with a strategy known as "Herd Immunity."
This strategy is being proposed by some officials in the UK: Let the entire population of a town become infected, and then the town is immune.
This strategy would seem to have a great deal of appeal, especially to young people who typically do not become seriously sick. Once you're over it, you can stop worrying about touching your face and washing your hands, and just get on with life. Even for old people like myself, it's tempting to get it over with one way or the other.
According to psychologist Dr David Halpern, this herd immunity strategy may become necessary, as more and more people become infected:
"There’s going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows, as we think it probably will do, where you’ll want to cocoon, you’ll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they basically don’t catch the disease and by the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity’s been achieved in the rest of the population."
So according to Halpern, the Herd Immunity strategy works as follows: Isolate the old people somewhere, let all the young people get infected, and after they recover, let all the old people out.
The herd immunity strategy is based on one huge assumption: If you get sick from coronavirus and recover, then you'll be immune from reinfection.
This assumption has not been proven, and it's being debated. It seems likely that a patient is immune from reinfection immediately after recovery. But how long does that immunity last? It might be years, but it might be only months or weeks or just days. Also, even if you remain immune, then there might be new strains to which you aren't immune. According to Anthony Costello, a pediatrician and former World Health Organization director:
Does coronavirus cause strong herd immunity or is it like [ordinary seasonal] flu where new strains emerge each year needing repeat vaccines? We have much to learn about Co-V immune response."
So the "herd immunity" debate is interesting and ongoing, and as Covid-19 continues to spread exponentially, a lot of places will have to use the herd immunity strategy whether they want to or not.
Referring to the graph above, the "politically correct" strategy is represented by the second curve, the flattened curve. The curve is flattened by means of containment and mitigation strategies, as I've described in a previous article. In the containment strategy, the country tracks and tests people and uses contact tracing, to identify infected people, and isolate them. When that fails, the mitigation strategy is used, where schools and stores are closed, and large gatherings are illegal, in order to reduce the number of infections. ( "2-Mar-20 World View -- Coronavirus updates -- infections spread across the world")
Both of those strategies should be quite familiar to almost everyone at this time. They're being implemented throughout Europe and the United States, as well as in many other countries. Cities, towns and provinces are being locked down, stores and schools are being closed, and borders are being closed.
Just to take one of many possible examples, France on Monday made it against the law for many people to leave their homes. In Africa, 20 countries now have coronavirus infections, but most people are too poor to be able to stop working and self-isolate, so mitigation will fail and the virus will continue to spread exponentially.
Here's the problem with the containment and mitigation strategies: They require stores and schools to be closed, and people to be isolated, for many months until the crisis ends. As long as people believe that the crisis will end in April or May, the restrictions may be tolerable. But when it becomes clear that the crisis will continue for many more months, then people will no longer tolerate the restrictions.
That's why, in my opinion, until a vaccine is deployed some time in 2021, the virus is going to continue to spread, until everyone is exposed to it sooner or later.
To my knowledge, there's only one country where the leaders claim that the mitigation strategy has been successful: China.
China is claiming that they've conquered the Wuhan coronavirus by means of extremely severe harsh mandatory mitigation measures. (They also claim that Wuhan coronavirus was a bioweapon installed in Wuhan by the US Army under the noses of the incompetent Chinese army, which is typical of the crap that comes from the CCP.)
Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lies about everything, including enslaving Muslim Uighurs and annexing the South China Sea, there is no reason to believe any of their claims. Furthermore, the CCP is harshly censoring media, and punishing anyone who dares to describe what's actually going on. So if an outbreak of caronavirus breaks out in a rural area, a regional manager who reported the outbreak to Beijing could be harshly punished, so has no motivation to report it. So it seems quite likely that infections and outbreaks are being hidden, or reported as other kinds of illnesses.
Here's one analysis from Thailand:
"Doctors in provinces like Helionjang, Xinjiang, Henan and Shanxi are telling a different story. According to a stringer,there is an ever increasing amount of patients coming in with respiratory symptoms but doctors have been given guidelines as to what medications to prescribe and to admit them if serious but not to conduct any diagnostic tests directly involved with Covid-19! A check with hospitals in 4 provinces also showed that Covid-19 test kits are not available in any of these hospitals.Health authorities and medical entities have been given strict warnings not to talk to the media and foreign entities while local media have been prohibited from reporting on any local health issues except official releases sent out to them." (Thailand Medical News)
So this means that the mitigation strategy isn't working in China either, and that many outbreaks are being covered up. Any one of these outbreaks could explode at any time.
There might be some good news. In analyzing how the crisis will unfold in the next few months, there are three related issues that everyone is conflating, but which are really quite separate:
Let's focus on the real economy. These are ordinary businesses, often private businesses completely unaffected by the stock market, that are scrambling to do everything possible to stay in business.
To show what I mean, here's what happened between 1929-33:
The GNP represents what I'm calling the "real economy." Owners of the businesses in the real economy take whatever steps are necessary to stay in business, irrespective of virus or stock market disasters.
If a restaurant or bar wants to stay open, then the owner will separate the tables and place screens between them to create compartments, and then sanitize each compartment after the people leave.
If a factory wants to stay open, and it depends on supply chains originating from one country whose factories can't supply them, then the owner will look for new suppliers in other countries.
Here are some examples of businesses that are likely to do well in the next few months:
Even in the worst case scenario, we can imagine a world that's as busy and bustling as it was until recently, but now people are protected by special clothing or compartmentalization or special safe modes of transportation. These are all technically within reach -- and in fact are really quite simple to implement -- but they just haven't been necessary until now.
I believe that the real economy is going to do a lot better than most people think, and possibly a lot better than the stock market, as it did during the Great Depression. In fact, there may actually be a "V-shaped recovery" in the real economy long before there's a recovery in the stock market.
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(17-Mar-2020)
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Iran and China call Wuhan Coronavirus a US Army bioweapon
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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We're now halfway through March and the most pessimistic of the predictions that I've been posting since the beginning of February, in articles and in daily reports on the Generational Dynamics forum, are coming to pass. America has declared a national emergency. Europe is now the epicenter of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic according to the World Health Organization. European countries are closing their borders to each other, locking down the worst hit cities, and restricting travel to and from their countries. Many countries outside Europe, including America and countries in Africa and Asia, are restricting travel from European countries.
As of Thursday, Iran had confirmed about 10,000 cases of coronavirus, with widespread suspicions that there were a lot more. Then, on Friday, Iran reported over 1,000 new cases in the preceding 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections to 11,364, with 85 more deaths, bringing the total to 514.
The suspicions have been buttressed by satellite photos of the city of Qom that show that long trenches have been dug apparently to serve as mass graves for hundreds of bodies, coronavirus victims.
Qom is Iran's religious capital, about two hours from Tehran, with several Shia seminaries run by leading Shia Muslim clerics. Within Iran, Qom became the epicenter of the epidemic because pilgrims from so many other Muslim countries visited Qom to pray and to study. According to some reports, the virus was spread in Qom by a merchant who travelled back and forth between Qom and Wuhan, the city in China where Wuhan Coronavirus originated.
The Qom clerics did not want to restrict travel to or from Qom, but instead entered a delusional state of total denial of what was going on. The result was a major outbreak of coronavirus in Qom that visitors spread to many other countries, including Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Canada, Georgia, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
One Iranian MP, Fatemeh Rahbar, a close advisor to the supreme leader Khamenei, has already died of coronavirus, and several others have been infected. Iranians have been asked to voluntarily remain at home as much as possible, but they are ignoring these requests. The streets and stores have been filled with shoppers, especially in preparation for the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, that falls on Friday, March 20.
On Thursday evening Khameini sent a letter to the head of Iran's army, major general Mohammad Bagheri, instructing him to take control of the situation.
On Friday, Bagheri announced that, within 24 hours, he will begin using the military to limit crowds, and to clear people off the streets, and out of shopping centers, shopping malls, grocery stores and bazaars.
Furthermore, he announced that all citizens will be monitored and checked for coronavirus. According to Bagheri, "During the next 10 days, the entire Iranian nation will be monitored once through cyberspace, by phone and, if necessary, in person, and those suspected of being ill will be fully identified."
You know, this is very serious stuff, but you can't help but laugh at this delusional nonsense. Iran has a population of 81 million, and it would take many months to perform this task. In the meantime, the virus will continue spreading exponentially while this "monitoring" is going on.
So we'll have to watch this unfold during the next couple of weeks. It should be interesting.
Government media in Iran, Russia and China have been publishing accusations that the Wuhan Coronavirus was actually developed and launched by the United States, specifically by the US Army, as a bioweapon.
There have been numerous accusations of that type in China's social media. On Thursday, Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesman, posted the following on Twitter:
"CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!"
This is completely ridiculous on many levels, but deliciously delusional because Zhao is accusing China's army of total incompetence.
If the US Army brought the virus to Wuhan, then they completely fooled the Chinese army (PLA). If what Zhao said is true, then Chinese army soldiers were too busy screwing their mistresses and shooting up drugs to notice that some US Army soldiers waltzed into Wuhan and deposited the coronavirus bioweapon in the raw meat market where it spread to the population. That's what totally incompetent losers China's army would have to be, if you believe Zhao.
But it's worse than that. Zhao's accusations are so ridiculous that no one outside of China takes them seriously. But apparently the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thugs are so delusional that they take the accusations seriously. That means that the CCP thugs have no idea what's going on in PLA. They apparently believe that the PLA is so completely incompetent that US soldiers, if they wanted to, could make fools of the Chinese soldiers by planting a bioweapon right under their noses.
Based on Zhao's delusional accusations of the incompetence of China's army, it's no wonder that the Chinese army was clobbered by the Japanese army in World War II, and had to be saved by the American army. The Japanese army will probably do it again in the next war, and if they don't, then the Taiwanese army will clobber the Chinese army. The Chinese army soldiers, shooting up drugs with their mistresses, won't even know what's going on.
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(14-Mar-2020)
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European Union reaction to Idlib crisis
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Moscow today to meet with Russia's president Vladimir Putin. At the end of their meeting, they announced a ceasefire agreement for Syria's Idlib province.
Before going into the terms of the agreement, let's take a look at what each of the protagonists wants.
I heard a video clip from Syria's president Bashar al-Assad on tv. I don't have the exact words, but it was something like the following:
"Why does Turkey have troops in Idlib? Syria has never done anything to Turkey. Turkey should withdraw its troops from Idlib. They have no business being in Syria." (paraphrase)
This statement made me laugh because it's so completely honest and so completely typical of al-Assad's sociopathic, murderous, bloody personality. Al-Assad has repeatedly made it clear that he wants to take full control of Idlib province and get rid of the 4 million Sunni Arabs living there, most of whom are children, and most of the rest of whom are women. Al-Assad would like to push all four million of them into Turkey, which would require Turkey to open its border to them, which would be an economic disaster for Turkey -- and for Europe as well, because they would continue traveling to the EU.
Or else, al-Assad would simply like to kill all four million Sunni Arabs. When al-Assad says that Turkey should not interfere, he means that he wants a free hand to slaughter all four million of them, by any means possible, leaving their dead bodies strewn across Idlib, to have their bodies and belongings to be picked over by those lucky Syrian troops. And he's telling Turkey to just sit there and watch all this go on.
None of this is really surprising. Al-Assad has said for years that he wants control of Idlib and the removal of all the Syrian Arabs, all of whom he considers to be cockroaches to be extinguished.
Vladimir Putin is the most dishonest of the participants in that everything he says is a lie. So we can only infer his objectives:
Turkey is facing an existential crisis, with four million Syrian civilians crowded along its border. If al-Assad is allowed to kill four million civilians, it will be a social and political disaster for Turkey for not stopping it. If al-Assad is allowed to drive four million civilians into Turkey, that would be an economic disaster for Turkey.
So that's Erdogan's major objective in meeting with Putin: Please, please, please stop al-Assad's attack on the four million civilians in Idlib.
Last week, Russian and Syrian warplanes killed 30-50 Turkish soldiers in Idlib who were there as observers. This left Erdogan with no choice. Turkey has now sent thousands of troops into Idlib to repel the Syrian regime army.
On Tuesday, there was a fistfight in Turkey's parliament between Erdogan supporters and opponents. According to one report, the disagreement was whether Erdogan should be sending troops into Syria. According to another report, the disagreement was whether Erdogan should be meeting with Putin, since it was Putin's warplanes that killed the Turkish soldiers in Idlib.
So on Thursday Erdogan and Putin did agree to a temporary ceasefire.
But anyone can see that this ceasefire agreement is a joke. Al-Assad is bloodthirsty, and won't stop killing civilians in Idlib. Russia sees support for Syria as being the way to be recognized as a powerful player in the Mideast.
There are powerful generational forces at play here. Nothing is going to deter al-Assad for long. Nothing will stop Putin from fully supporting al-Assad.
In my personal opinion, Erdogan will be forced to full-scale war with the Syrian regime army. That would lead to war between Turkey and Russia.
Turkey and Russia have both made it clear that neither wants war with the other, and yet they've fought major many generational crisis wars with each other. ( "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars")
There are various "compromise" agreements being discussed. These compromises have to do with setting up buffer zones or ceasefire zones, where Idlib civilians can hide out from Syrian and Russian warplanes. We've had "de-escalation" zones before, but they're always a hoax, since Putin uses them to cover up Russian atrocities, and al-Assad simply ignores them.
Erdogan has been begging European Union officials to provide help with the potential humanitarian crisis in Idlib. In order to pressure the EU, Turkey has encouraged tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to cross the border into Europe. These are not refugees from Idlib. These are from the 3.5 million Syrian refugees that are already in Turkey.
Thousands of these migrants and refugees are trapped on Turkey's side of the border with Greece and Bulgaria. Along the Edirne river, which serves as a border between Greece and Turkey, there have been clashes between the migrants and Greek police. Turkey has accused Greece of using live ammunition against the migrants, a charge that Greece has denied.
On Thursday, Turkey deployed 1,000 police officers on its border with Greece. Formerly, these police were used to prevent migrants from trying to cross into Greece. But now they have a different purpose: Their job is to stop the Greek police from pushing the migrants back into Turkey.
All this is on top of millennia of wars between Greece and Turkey, dating back at least to the days of the Trojan Horse, culminating most recently in the conflict over Cyprus.
So Turkey is facing a new conflict with the EU, is close to war with the Syrian regime in Idlib, and that may expand to war with Russia. In this generational Crisis era, there are powerful generational forces pushing these conflicts and potential conflicts forward. It's hard to see what might stop them, if anything can.
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(6-Mar-2020)
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Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) observations
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Sunday, the United States, Australia and Thailand reported first deaths from coronavirus, while the Italy death toll rose to 34, and Dominican Republic reported its first case.
It's now the first week of March, and the shape of the coronavirus crisis is becoming clearer. I've read or listened to literally hundreds of reports, and these are my personal conclusions:
General advice from the experts: Wash your hands, cough into your sleeve, and don't touch your face.
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(2-Mar-2020)
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The generational 'Democide Pattern'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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With all that's going on in the world today -- an increasingly explosive situation in Idlib, Syria, with al-Assad's army threatening full-scale genocide and Turkey threatening war with Syria, and a growing coronavirus crisis in multiple countries -- it's easy to ignore a growing ethnic conflict in India.
At least 27 people were killed and hundreds injured in three days ethnic riots between Hindus and Muslims in Delhi, India's capital city. In most cases, the violence was by Hindu nationalist mobs targeting Muslims, beating unarmed Muslim men, and destroying or burning Muslim homes and businesses. Muslims claim that the police did nothing to stop the violence, and Hindus claim that some Hindus were attacked as well. It's described as the worst communal violence in Delhi in decades.
The protests were triggered by a new law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that became law in December. According to the Indian government, the purpose of the law is to protect persecuted ethnic minorities in neighboring countries (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh), by allowing members of the ethnic minorities to apply for citizenship in India. ( "17-Dec-19 World View -- India's Citizenship Bill riots evoke memories of the 1947 Partition War")
So that sounds perfectly reasonable, until you begin to understand its consequences. It applies to persecuted minorities -- Hindu, Christian, Jain, Parsi, Sikh or Buddhist -- but not to Muslims, since Muslims are not minorities in the neighbor countries. Opponents of the law point out that ethnic minorities that happen to be Muslim are also excluded, referring specifically to the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, as well as Ahmadis and Sufis in Pakistan.
Starting in December, there were large anti-CAA protests, and protesters included by Muslims and Hindus, complaining that the law undermines India's secular traditions.
However, as the weeks have passed, Muslims in the protests have been increasingly targeted by Hindutva (Hindu nationalists) with inflammatory speeches and expletives and mobs mouthing racist anti-Muslim slogans. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who heads the Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), are being accused by activists of inciting the violence against Muslim.
Hindu nationalism is controversial in India because opponents associate it with "Hindutva violence," where the Hindutva movement began in 1923, led by Veer Savarkar (Vinayak Damodar Savarkar), mostly as a movement against British colonization. (See "'Hindutva' terrorist violence against Muslims shocks Indians" from 2008.) Modi became associated with Hindutva violence in 2002, as Governor of the Gujarat province, when he allegedly looked the other way when a train with Hindutva activists attacked a group of Muslims, triggering sectarian violence that led to hundreds of deaths and displacing more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslim. ( "15-Sep-13 World View -- Hindu nationalist nominated as India's prime minister")
Many in the media are also comparing the current anti-Muslim riots to a major 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhin, in which more than 3,000 Sikhs were killed.
It's been 73 years since India's last generational crisis war, the 1947 Partition War that followed when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into two countries, India and Pakistan. The idea was that Hindus and Sikhs would occupy India, and Muslims would occupy Pakistan. But unfortunately the partition wasn't "clean," in the sense that there were both Hindus and Muslims on both sides of the partition line. The result was one of the most massive and bloodiest battle of the 20th century, the 1947 Partition War.
The preceding generational crisis war, when India was a British colony and there was no Pakistan, was the 1857 anti-British rebellion, also also called India's First War of Independence from the British colonial power. What started out as protests related to the Hindu veneration of cows grew into an extremely bloody generational crisis war, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 Indian civilians. ( "7-Aug-16 World View -- India's Narendra Modi finally hits out at Cow Protectors ('Gau Rakshaks')")
So the 1857 rebellion and the 1947 Partition War were the last two generational crisis wars, and India is overdue for a new one. The current communal violence in Delhi is extremely disturbing, and in this generational Crisis era, it is possible that the Delhi violence will escalate into war.
Dear Reader, if you get the feeling that the world is coming apart at the seams, you're right. That's what happens during a generational Crisis era. Winston Churchill referred to a similar period prior to WW II as "The Gathering Storm." We're seeing a "gathering storm" today, and it's possible that the growing Delhi violence in India will be the trigger for a much larger war.
As I've developed generational theory and Generational Dynamics, I've seen a particular pattern occur over and over in dozens of countries. I've decided to adopt the name "Democide Pattern" for this pattern, even though the original author of the term "democide," R. J. Rummel, used it to mean mass slaughter of a segment of a country's population by the government.
I'm using the same word in an expanded sense, to include things like torture, rape, jailings, executions, and discrimination targeting a segment of the population. This pattern occurs in countries in the decades following a generational crisis war which is also a civil war.
Regular readers know that I've written several times about the differences that depend on whether the preceding crisis war was an external war with another country versus an internal crisis civil war between tribes and ethnic groups. In the former case, when the war ends, the two armies each withdraw from the other country, and further contact between the populations is done diplomatically. But in the latter case, the two populations continue to live with each other when the war ends -- in the same country, the same villages and even on the same streets. This means that the hatred and the desire for revenge continue at a very personal level.
In the past I've described in general terms what happens, but now I'm using the term "Democide Pattern" to describe the particular behaviors that occur. After a generational crisis ethnic or tribal civil war ends, the winning side gets control of the government. There's usually some sort of peace agreement at the end of the war, where the winning tribe promises not to discriminate against the losing tribe, but that agreement always falls apart when the losing tribe begins to gain political power.
I'll write more about this at a later date, but here is a summary of the behaviors that we see in country after country:
India has adopted most of these behaviors targeting Muslims.
A standard technique is for the government to continually discriminate and incite violence against the losing tribe, in order to provoke some kind of violent or terrorist act in response. This provides the excuse for the government to collective punishment against everyone in the losing tribe.
The extreme example is Bashar al-Assad, whom I've described is the worst genocidal monster and war criminal so far this century. But I've also described the same phenomenon, with varying levels of violence, with Paul Biya in Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Joseph Kabila in DRC, or, outside of Africa, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hun Sen in Cambodia and Maithripala Sirisena in Sri Lanka.
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(27-Feb-2020)
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V-Shaped Recovery -- learning from the financial crisis
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
There's a great deal of hope in the air of a "V-shaped" recovery, meaning that the virus is causing massive economic problems now, but this will be followed a huge recovery, as things return to "normal" in April or May. Other people, perhaps a lot more realistic, don't expect resolution until well into summe.
This article describes the main issues surrounding the coronavirus. The last section, "V-Shaped Recovery -- learning from the financial crisis," describes how the virus crisis was permanently change this generations behavior permanently.
China is claiming that the virus has now been contained because the number of new cases each day has gone down for a few days. In the West, the dream is of a "V-shaped recovery," where everybody will be hurt in Q1, but then all that lost business will be regained in Q2. In particular, the widespread hope is that the warmer weather in April would bring an end to coronavirus, at least until the Fall, and by then measures can be taken to prevent further spread. That's the hope.
However, many people believe that the Q2 V-shaped recovery scenario, while possible, is less likely than a scenario that extends well into summer.
In a television interview of 2/19, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health was asked how certain he was that the virus would be contained and not allowed to spread in the US. He said (my transcription):
"Given the situation the way it is today, we've successfully done that with the 15 cases that we have - 13 of which were travel from Wuhan, and two of which were spouses of the travelers. If we get a worldwide pandemic, where you have sustained transmission in multiple regions about the world, then it's gonna be very difficult to adequately contain it anywhere. I think we did do a reasonably good job, but it's not going to be absolute."
Fauci is a leading American expert. You can try to read between the lines and decide whether he's just being cautious or whether he's sending a signal that far worse is yet to come, but either way, a V-shaped recovery is very far from certain.
In particular, he makes it clear that one scenario is that we may be facing a massive worldwide pandemic, in which the world will be a very different place by summer.
Fauci described the virus as follows: "But clearly this is a highly transmissable virus that does have a disturbing level of mortality."
There are many conflicting reports about the spread of the virus in America and other countries, and unfortunately there's no reason to believe any of them.
Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lies about pretty much everything, few people believe that China is telling the truth about the situation in China.
The Chinese were apparently aware of the virus as early as October, and heavily censored any information about it. In fact, a correspondent whose sister was a nurse working in Wuhan told me that the Chinese began building new hospitals in Wuhan in November, which is considerably earlier than they admitted to knowing about the virus. A Chinese scientist, Li Wenliang, warned his colleagues of a potential "SARS-like" disease in December 2019, but was harshly punished, and he later died of the disease. Other Chinese scientists have been jailed for describing what's happening.
This week, the CCP expelled three WSJ reporters from China, because of an opinion piece that appeared in the paper, criticizing Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus crisis, and referring to China as the "sick man of Asia." The three reporters had nothing to do with the opinion piece, but they were expelled anyway, and WSJ has now apologized to the CCP thugs for offending them. This is how the CCP extends its censorship around the world, since the WSJ will now have to refrain from publishing information or else suffer other retribution. The CCP imposes similar worldwide censorship about many other subjects, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong riots, the South China sea, or the Uighur genocide. Any publication anywhere in the world can be punished by the CCP for publishing information that the CCP doesn't like.
In January, as the size of the epidemic in Wuhan was becoming publicly known, the United States began placing travel restrictions on travelers from China. This infuriated the CCP, not only because they tend to whine about everything that America does, but also because the move gave cover to many other countries to do the same, and also to Central and Southeast Asian countries to close their borders to China.
In January, the American CDC, which has the best and most experienced virologists in the world, offered to send people to Wuhan in January, as the size of the infection was becoming apparent.
China not only blocked the CDC scientists, but at same time the foreign ministry issued statements blaming the United States for not offering to help. This is a typical example of the Chinese talking out of both sides of their mouths.
There has been a World Health Organization (WHO) team that has been permitted to enter the country in the last couple of days, and that team contains a couple of CDC scientists. But according to reports on Wednesday, the WHO team is still being blocked from visiting Wuhan, and they're being confined to hotel rooms where they're being fed filtered data by the CCP.
Last week on Friday morning, US Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Alex Azar was interviewed on CNBC, where he harshly criticized China for its lack of transparency with regard to the coronavirus emergency.
He was asked, "Do you know for a fact that this virus occurred naturally, and not in some kind of P4 bioweapons lab?" He evaded the question with this response: (my transcription):
"We need to be very careful not to engage in speculation here, until we have data and evidence. We need transparent access to all first generation genetic sequencing. And we gotta get on the ground and do what we always do -- work shoulder to shoulder with the Chinese scientific experts. To just look at raw data, and solve these questions."
Azar's point is that question won't be resolved until the CDC scientists, the best in the world, are able to go to Wuhan and examine the evidence. This was a message to the CCP that there will be more unpleasant rumors, and the Chinese have only themselves to blame for those rumors. If China continues to block the CDC, then they have no right to whine about rumors that begin.
The CCP gives the need for "social stability" as the reason for the harsh censorship, and for expelling, jailing or torturing reporters. By "social stabilty" they mean that they fear that people will turn against Xi Jinping and the CCP.
Xi Jinping's own credibility is badly damaged. He said that everyone would be back to work by now, and everyone knows that's far from true. Furthermore, severe restrictions are still on in Wuhan, and regional authorities around the country are still imposing local restrictions on travel. China's entire economy is all but locked down, and tens of millions of migrant workers who went home for the Lunar New Year are unable to return to their jobs.
Many people have been out of work almost two months -- many of those will not be able to afford food, or pay rent. This could generate anti-CCP activism. Historically, this is exactly the kind of environment that leads to an anti-Chinese government rebellion.
There are already some signs of resistance and criticism of the CCP in Guangzho province, which is adjacent to Hong Kong, including the arrest of Xu Zhiyong, the leader of the New Citizens Movement, which is advocating greater freedoms.
This is highly significant. China's history is filled with hundreds of crisis wars in the form of massive internal rebellions (civil wars). The last two of these massive rebellions were the the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) and Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49) -- and both of these rebellions began in Guangzho province and spread north. China is overdue for a new massive civil war, and any sort of economic setback could be the trigger. The CCP leadership are very well aware of this history, and are extremely paranoid about it.
Most commentators agree that the coronavirus will remain an active threat until a vaccine is developed. Estimates are that some companies will begin testing a vaccine within a couple of months, but no vaccine will be ready for widespread use for at least 6-12 months, and possibly longer.
In the meantime, some existing drugs are being tested. For example, doctors in Thailand said they appeared to have some success in treating severe cases of the coronavirus by combining Tamiflu with anti-HIV drugs.
However, those who develop severe cases and survive often have damaged heart muscles, and many have developed heart attacks.
Singapore is a good place to watch as a bellwether of what path the coronavirus emergency is going to take for several reasons.
So, putting everything together, Singapore can provide an early warning for what will happen in the rest of the world.
Japan is a bellwether in another sense.
Japan has over 59 confirmed coronavirus cases -- not counting the 454 cases that were identified in the Diamond Princess cruise ship. New cases continue to emerge in prefectures around the country, and some analysts are expressing fear that the infections will not be controlled until infections are widespread.
So Japan is good country to watch to see how a developed Western country deals with a spreading coronavirus epidemic, and possibly a pandemic.
Japan has canceled a number of international events because of the virus. The Summer Olympics is scheduled to be in Tokyo, and if that event is canceled, it will cause long-range damage to Japan's economy.
Update: As this is being written, reports indicate a large outbreak in South Korea. This may also be a bellwether.
Countries like Singapore and Japan are developed countries with sophisticated medical services infrastructure, capable of handling a coronavirus outbreak -- although that claim is currently being tested in both countries.
But there are many countries with no such infrastructure, including many African, Mideast and Asian countries.
Africa appears to be extremely safe, since there have been almost no reported cases there. But that's because no one is being tested. If you don't look for cases, then you won't find any cases. And in fact, Africa has a number of Chinese enclaves, thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
As of Feb 11, Africa does not have any confirmed cases, but suspected patients have been quarantined in Ethiopia, Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire, and Botswana.
The World Health Organization is providing support to Africa, and is providing prioritized report to 13 countries with Chinese enclaves, since there is frequent travel between these countries and China. The 13 countries area: Algeria, Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
There's still an ongoing Ebola crisis in eastern DRC, in the middle of a continuing ethnic war. International NGOs have been successful in preventing the further spread of Ebola by standard techniques such as contact tracing and quarantining people with symptoms, and aggressive use of newly developed vaccines.
African officials are saying that the same techniques will be used to control coronavirus outbreaks. However, there are significant differences. Coronavirus spreads much more easily than Ebola, and there's no coronavirus vaccine. Few people believe that a coronavirus outbreak will be contained.
There are several ongoing wars in Africa and the Mideast -- DRC, Central African Republic, Mali, Cameroon, Yemen, Syria. There are smaller ongoing clashes in other countries.
Sooner or later, there will be a coronavirus outbreak in one of these war zones.
I want to call particular attention to war in the Idlib province in northwestern Syria. I've been writing about this situation for several years on the Generational Dynamics web site and forum.
This started as the Syria civil war in 2011, and it's evolved to a final explosive confrontation in Idlib. There are four million people, mostly women and children, packed into Idlib.
On Monday, Syria's sociopathic monster president Bashar al-Assad, the worst war criminal so far this century, announced that his army will mop up the rest of Idlib soon.
On Wednesday, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech threatening both Syria's president al-Assad and his ally, Russia's president Putin. In the meantime, al-Assad's army is pushing a million people, mostly women and children, towards to the border with Turkey.
It has just emerged that there's a cluster of coronavirus cases in Qoms, Iran, with two deaths. It won't be long before these cases spread into Iraq and Syria, and could start spreading among those million people in Idlib.
And then either Turkey and Syria will be at war, or else Turkey will open the border and allow those million refugees with coronavirus to flow into Europe.
There are hard deadlines and hard positions here. It seems unlikely that anyone will back down, and so this situation is expected to explode by March 1.
The coronavirus is spreading around the globe, and it is not known today whether most countries will be able to control their local outbreaks, or whether there will be a global pandemic. These questions can't be answered today, so as I wrote in the past, it's best to wait until early March to make new business decisions.
Economic activity has almost come to a standstill in China, as the virus has affected global tourism, trade, manufacturing and export/import. With many Chinese businesses shut down, supply chains have been disrupted. Companies and countries with a high dependency on Chinese components and parts will continue to suffer.
Politicians, analysts and economists who are hoping for a "V-Shaped Recovery" are making the same mistake that they made after the 2008 financial crisis.
Once worst of the 2008 financial crisis ended, everyone assumed that things would return to "normal." Economists would look at their 1980s vintage economics models, and conclude that there would be an extremely quick economic recovery.
What they overlooked is that people in the 1980s, during a generational Unraveling era, behavr very differently than people in the 2000s, during a generational Crisis era.
That particular difference in behavior can be measured by the "Velocity of Money." This measures how quickly ordinary people spend money they've received, versus saving the money in the bank. I haven't updated this graph since 2017, but it shows the Velocity of Money since 1919:
 |
As you can see from this graph, the velocity started falling in 2000, when the Nasdaq stock market crash occurred, and then started falling very sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, and hasn't stopped falling.
This indicates that the Nasdaq crash and the financial crisis were events that permanently changed the behavior of the current generations of people. They are permanently reluctant to spend money. So the 1980s economic models are completely, totally wrong.
So I believe that we can apply this same lesson to the coronavirus crisis. The assumption behind the "V-Shaped Recovery" is that as soon as the virus is more or less contained, businesses will quickly return to their pre-virus levels of activity. That may happen if the virus is contained quickly over the summer.
But if there's a larger and longer-lasting crisis, or a pandemic, then I believe that most people will be extremely reluctant to behave as they did before the virus spread, and I believe that the economic impact could be far more serious.
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(21-Feb-2020)
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Syria war in Idlib close to explosion
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Two elderly Iranian nationals died of coronavirus in a Qoms hospital on Wednesday. They had not recently traveled outside of the Qoms area.
This is significant because it means that they must have been infected communally as much as two weeks ago, which indicates that there must be a cluster of cases in Qoms.
This is the kind of outbreak we expect to see increasingly frequently. Iran has a close relationship with China, as do many African countries, and many individuals travel between China and these countries.
A coronavirus outbreak in Iran could quickly spread to Iraq and Syria.
The situation in Idlib, which I've been reporting on almost every day, is about to explode. On Wednesday, Erdogan gave a speech threatening both al-Assad and Putin. In the meantime, al-Assad's army is pushing a million people, mostly women and children, towards to the border with Turkey. It won't be long before coronavirus starts spreading among those million people.
And then either Turkey and Syria will be at war, or else Turkey will open the border and allow those million refugees with coronavirus to flow into Europe.
There are hard deadlines and hard positions here. It seems unlikely that anyone will back down, and so this situation is expected to explode by March 1.
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(20-Feb-2020)
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The year of laughable peace agreements
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
This could be a Saturday Night Live skit. And maybe it will be.
The United States, led by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, announced an agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan whose final objective would be to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
According to Esper on Thursday:
"The best, if not only solution forward is a political agreement. We have the basis for one on the table, and we are taking a hard look at it. We are consulting with our allies. We are consulting with Congress and others. And I think peace deserves a chance."
It's not exactly a "peace treaty," since no one pretends that it will bring peace. And it's not a truce, since no one pretends that the US and the Taliban will stop killing each other. And it's not a ceasefire, since no one pretends that anyone will cease firing. It's being called a "reduction in violence" which, I assume, means that the number of schoolchildren that the Taliban will kill with bombs every week will be reduced by, say, 25%. That's progress, isn't it?
And it's not a permanent "reduction in violence" agreement. It's a 7-day "reduction in violence" agreement. If the Taliban uphold their commitments during the 7 days, then negotiations would begin within 10 days for a permanent U.S.-Taliban peace agreement. Where the negotiations will take place was not announced, but Germany and Norway have offered to host the talks. The Afghan government is not party to the agreement.
And then if the negotiations go well, the United States will begin to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. There are about 12,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and about 4,000 troops from other Nato countries.
It takes my breath away.
By the way, the US and the Taliban announced an agreement in September, and the Taliban were coming to Camp David to sign it. But them a terrorist set off a car bomb in Kabul, killing 12 people including an American soldier, so Trump called off the signing ceremony. Something like that could happen again during the 7-dy reduction in violence.
Whenever any politician says anything like:
"There is no military solution. The only possible solution is a political solution."
then he's nothing but a babbling idiot. The same is true when a politician, like Esper, says "And I think peace deserves a chance."
There is NEVER a political solution to a war. (Well, just to protect myself, let's just change that to "almost never.")
If it's a generational crisis war, then it end will with an explosive genocidal climax and victory. WW II in Europe did not end because Churchill and Hitler got together and signed a peace agreement. WW II in Asia did not end because FDR and Emperor Hirohito agreed to a political solution mediated by Charles de Gaulle.
If it's a non-crisis war, then it might end with victory and surrender, or it might end with a "peace agreement." But in the latter case, the peace agreement will never last. Typically, in these situations, the combatants alternate between periods of war that end in ceasefires, and periods of "peace" that end when the peace agreement collapses. The Jews and the Arabs have signed multiple "peace agreements," but they don't last. The conflict between Jews and Palestinians will not end except through a massive bloody war, where one side or the other achieves victory, and the other side surrenders. That's the way the world works.
As the old saying goes:
"Peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading."
So let's take a look at three "peace agreements" that are in the news these days.
There is a massive disaster unfolding in Idlib. There are three possible paths: (1) Sociopathic monster Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, will slaughter millions of innocent men, women and children. (2) Turkey will open its border and let millions of refugees flood into Turkey and Europe. (3) Turkey and al-Assad will go to war. ( "9-Feb-20 World View -- Turkey sends tanks across border into Syria to confront al-Assad regime in Idlib")
For sleazebag Vladimir Putin, the whole Astana de-escalation thing was a big joke. The only objective was to provide political cover for genocide and ethnic cleansing by Putin and al-Assad, and also by Iran's sleazebag, Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
This turns out to be a pragmatic Rube Goldberg agreement for a two-state solution, with a promise of $60 billion to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt to spend on Palestinians to implement the agreement. ( "6-Feb-20 World View -- Israeli diplomat reveals Israel's startling new 'pragmatic' foreign policy")
It's assumed that the Israelis and Palestinians would continue to hate each other, but they would stop fighting because of the money.
This is the one we're talking about today. As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics proves that no "peace" in Afghanistan is possible. I'll summarize the reasons again below. ( "16-Dec-19 World View -- Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan")
What does the US want from the current US-Taliban agreement? It's to provide a political path for the withdrawal of American forces with dignity. Why do the Taliban want from it? It's because they want the withdrawal of American forces, and so American and Taliban objectives coincide to that extent. However, the Taliban want to inflict as much humiliation as possible on the US forces as they're withdrawing, and then to move on to Kabul and overthrow the government, to prove that America's 18 year involvement in Afghanistan was a waste of time, blood and money.
It's interesting how similar these three laughable "peace agreements" are:
As I say, politicians are babbling idiots.
If you look at the world today, American and the Western countries generally feel obligated to honor their commitments. But three major countries -- Russia, Iran and China -- see commitments and peace agreements as a way of controlling the West, since they can violate the agreements with impunity, but the Western countries remain bound to them. In fact, this has been an actual strategy of Russia and Vladimir Putin since 2010 -- use Russia's veto power in the UN Security Council to cripple the foreign policy of America and the West, while Russia does whatever the hell it wants, such as annexing Crimea. ( "22-Apr-11 News -- Russia seeks to cripple Nato through Libya United Nations politics")
Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.
Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
The above is a brief summary of stuff that I've written about in great detail in the past about why peace will fail in Afghanistan. It's not rocket science for the so-called "Washington experts," but it does require studying history and trying to understand what's actually going on in the world. But we live in a society where SAT scores have been plummetting for decades, ever since the Boomers graduated, and where all college courses are being taught by incredibly stupid Marxist idiots. People in the mainstream media know nothing about the world except Marxist sociology and women's studies. In Congress you have total idiots like AOC who says something every day to prove how stupid she is. And in the Administration, you have "experts" who have also graduated from colleges teaching Marxist sociology and women's studies.
So there's really no hope. The above summary is not rocket science, but it's far beyond the mental capabilities of the analysts, journalists and "experts" in Washington, almost all of whom are way too steeped in metoo and socialist garbage to have any clue what's really going on in the world. The same is true about many of the other hundreds of countries and societies that I've studied, analyzed and written about in the last 15 years. All the people in Washington can do is stumble in the dark, until they stumble into World War III. Then they finally learn what's going on. That's the way the world works.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Attributed to American satirist Ambrose Bierce, early 1900s.
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(16-Feb-2020)
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Russia will finally be forced to choose sides -- between al-Assad and Turkey
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Turkey and Syria appear close to war, as the forces of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad have begun targeting and killing Turkish soldiers in Turkey's "observation posts" in Idlib province. ( "9-Feb-20 World View -- Turkey sends tanks across border into Syria to confront al-Assad regime in Idlib")
According to a statement by Turkey's defense ministry, five Turkish soldiers were killed and five more wounded by "the regime's intense artillery fire [that] targeted our elements sent as reinforcement to the region with an aim to prevent clashes in Idlib, ensure our border security and stop migration and human tragedy."
Turkey said it carried out sweeping retaliation, hitting 115 Syrian targets with strikes that killed dozens of Syrian troops, three Syrian tanks, two artillery unites, and a military helicopter.
Turkey has established 12 observation posts, as I described in my last article. Those observations posts were under a September 18, 2018, agreement in Astana, Kazakhstan, between Turkey's president Tayyip Recep Erdogan and Russia's president Vladimir Putin. Bashar al-Assad was not party to the agreement.
Russia's job would be to hold back al-Assad from attacking civilians in Idlib. Turkey's job would be to separate out the "terrorists" from the civilians, so that al-Assad could kill the "terrorists" without harming the civilians. The problem is that al-Assad considers all of the Sunni Arabs in Idlib to be "terrorists," cockroaches to be exterminated by any means as quickly as possible.
According to Turkish media, al-Assad began attacking Turkish forces in the observation posts early last year, with attacks reported on April 29, May 4, May 12, May 31, June 8, June 27 and August 19. Erdogan threatened retaliation each time, but took no action. Now the Turks are retaliating.
Bashar al-Assad is a sociopathic monster and war criminal who wants to complete the work begun by his father, Hafez al-Assad, in exterminating the Sunni Arabs in Syria and replacing as many of them as possible with Alawites and Shia Muslims.
Al-Assad's horrors have been well documented. In 2014, an al-Assad defector supplied 55,000 photos of about 11,000 men whom al-Assad had tortured using electrocution, eye-gouging, strangulation, starvation, and beating on prisoners on a massive "industrial strength" scale. Al-Assad was so pleased and proud of this torture that he made sure each act was photographed. ( "22-Jan-14 World View -- Western leaders sickened by Assad's 'industrial strength' torture in Syria")
Throughout my lifetime, I've heard people describe the Holocaust and say, "Never again!" But al-Assad is a man who gets obvious pleasure from gouging out people's eyes or pulling out their fingernails, or sending missiles into school dormitories to kill children, or dropping barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons on civilian neighborhoods, or using Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He considers all Sunni Muslims to be cockroaches to be exterminated. Bashar al-Assad is the greatest genocidal monster in today's world, comparable to Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and Stalin from the last century. There is no mass weapon of destruction, nor any gruesome form of torture, that he won't use to satisfy his psychopathy.
So there's no chance at all that al-Assad will agree to any "political solutions." He will not stop until he's satisfied that his father's enemies have been completely exterminated. And there are already about a million displaced people in Idlib crowded along the border with Turkey.
The situation is intolerable for Turkey. Erdogan cannot simply "observe" as al-Assad slaughters many Sunni Arab men, women and children -- not to mention that many of them are ethnic Turkmens. And Turkey cannot tolerate millions more Syrian refugees, in addition to the 3.6 million Syrian refugees that Turkey is already hosting.
Al-Assad expects Russia to continue supporting him, as he slaughters the civilians in Idlib. He knows that Putin couldn't care less how many of them get slaughtered. All Putin cares about is keeping control of his two military bases in Syria that he was given in return for supporting al-Assad -- the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim airbase.
Erdogan expects Russia to support him -- because that's what Putin agreed to in their meetings in Astana and Sochi. Turkish media points out that there are many agreements between Turkey and Russia such as the S-400 deal and TurkStream and other bilateral and military cooperation deals. All of those deals would be in jeopardy if Russia sides with al-Assad, and doing so might even lead to war between Turkey and Russia. ( "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars")
I'm aware of only one possible "compromise" solution that's being discussed. Turkey would take control of 20-30 mile wide strip of land in northern Idlib along the border with Turkey. This would be a "safe zone" or "buffer zone," where perhaps millions of displaced Sunni Arabs would live, under the protection of Turkey.
Any such buffer zone would be intolerable to al-Assad, and so this "compromise" would work only if Putin forced it on him.
But unless something major changes Turkey will soon be at war with Syria, and possibly with Russia.
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(11-Feb-2020)
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Turkey, Syria, Russia: The next steps in Idlib
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Turkey sent a convoy of hundreds of tanks and armored carriers last week into Syria's Idlib province, to confront the army of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by Russia.
Al-Assad has for years been saying that his army will take full control of Idlib province, and there's every reason to believe that is his intention. Al-Assad for years has been saying that the 3.5-4 million men, women and children in Idlib are terrorists. This is the standard method used by war criminals to justify genocide and ethnic cleansing. You pick out an illegal or terrorist act by a small group of people, and declare that the entire ethnic group are terrorists. This is the excuse that China is using to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs, and it's the excuse the Burmese are using to to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. Those are all going on today. It's the same excuse that Hitler used to justify genocide of the Jews. It's an excuse that's as old as time.
So there's no doubt that Bashar al-Assad intends to take control of Idlib, even if it means exterminating as many of his Sunni Arab political enemies as possible.
Probably nobody would even care, no matter how many of those Sunni Arab men, women and children would be killed, but Turkey cares. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrians who have already fled across the border to escape Bashar al-Assad, and now Turkey is facing the possibility of 1-2 million more Syrians from Idlib fleeing into Turkey.
Russia was supposed to stop this. Russia's president Vladimir Putin and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan met several times at such glamorous meeting sites as Astana, Kazakhstan, and Sochi, Russia, to create the Astana Accords. Under these agreements, Russia would stop al-Assad from committing genocide in Idlib, if Turkey would separate out the "terrorists" from the civilians in Idlib, so that al-Assad could just exterminate the "terrorists," and leave civilians alone.
I've never understood why Erdogan agreed to that ridiculous condition, since it's a completely idiotic demand. How is Erdogan's army supposed to go into 3.5 million Sunni Arabs in Idlib, and sort them into two groups, so that al-Assad could kill one group and leave the other one alone? That demand was so ridiculous and idiotic I can only assume that Erdogan agreed to it out of total desperation.
So Erdogan responded by setting up 12 "observation posts" in Idlib province, each of which had a few Turkish soldiers and a couple of tanks. The idea, I guess, was that these observation posts would stop al-Assad from going any further, since attacking a Turkish observation post would result in clashes between Syrian and Turkish troops.
Well, that's a nice theory, but Syria attacked three of the observation posts last week, killing some Turkish soldiers. Also, nine of the 12 observation posts are now encircled by Syrian troops. "B-b-b-but that's a violation of the Astana agreement," Turkish officials are gasping. Quelle surprise!
These Astana agreements (the "de-escalation zones") between Erdogan and Putin were all farcical anyway, since al-Assad was never party to them, and Russia never had any intention of enforcing any of them anyway. The agreements were simply a cover to give al-Assad's army and warplanes, along with Russia's warplanes, free time and space to exterminate Sunni Arabs in the more southern de-escalation zones, such as Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa.
So nobody cared about al-Assad's and Putin's extermination of the hated Sunni Arabs in those other de-escalation zone. But now the crunch is on in Idlib, since there are already over a million people on Turkey's border, waiting for Turkey to open the border, and allow them to enter Turkey as refugees, and from there go on to Europe.
Erdogan is under a lot of domestic pressure. When the Syrian refugees began coming across the border in 2014-16, the Turkish public welcomed them. However, now in 2020 the Turkish public is very tired of them, and want them to return TO Syria. They definitely don't want a million more refugees coming FROM Syria.
Turkey is also playing a grand game between Russia and Europe. Erdogan has repeatedly been slighted by the EU and Nato, and sees this linkage with Putin as a way of taking a stand against the Europeans.
Then there's also the question of the millions of Syrian refugees that entered Europe, especially in 2015-16. It was pretty clear that Putin loved seeing that happen, while al-Assad couldn't have cared less.
Bashar al-Assad is a sociopathic monster and war criminal who wants to complete the work begun by his father, Hafez al-Assad, in exterminating the Sunni Arabs in Syria and replacing as many of them as possible with Alawites and Shia Muslims. His advance into Idlib might be slowed, but won't be stopped unless al-Assad himself is killed.
A spokesman for Erdogan said:
"[Syrian authorities] should know well that we won’t leave any threat to our soldiers without a response. From now on, any mistake by the [al-Assad] regime under the pretext of struggling against terrorism and terrorist groups will have grave consequences."
This weekend, Turkish and Russian officials are meeting to decide on a new farcical peace process in Idlib. Putin couldn't care less about Turkey's problems, and he would probably enjoy watching the millions of additional refugees that could enter Turkey and move on to Europe.
So what is Turkey going to do? In the last few days, Turkey sent a few dozen military vehicles into Idlib to provide its observation posts with supplies and reinforcements. That's not going to stop al-Assad. So will Russia find a way to force al-Assad to stop? Will Turkey just "observe" as al-Assad mass-slaughters hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs in Idlib? Or will Turkey capitulate and open the border and let a million more refugees come into Turkey?
Or will Turkey attack Syrian forces, and try to inflict the "grave consequences" promised by Erdogan's spokesman, risking war with both Syria and Russia?
Let's watch and see what happens.
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(9-Feb-2020)
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Implications of Israel's new 'pragmatic' policy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There was a program on al-Jazeera today that a discussed possible close relationship between Israel and Sudan. One of the people interviewed is Alon Liel, a former Israeli diplomat to a number of different countries.
I found what he said about Israel's strategy to be quite startling. It described a major change in strategy by Israel's leadership that occurred 15 years ago:
"The founders of Israel aimed at political, social, cultural integration of Israel with the Middle East. The plan was that this would result in integration with the Arabs and the Palestinians, and peace.About 15 years ago this was dropped. Nobody in Israel among the Jewish politicians is speaking about peace with the Palestinians today.
The basic assumption is that since we will not have peace with the Palestinians, the Muslim-Arab world will never accept Israel politically.
The change is that we are aiming at economic, technological, maybe some intelligence relations, and supply the Arab countries, Muslim African countries, with basic economic needs, in order to improve relations bilaterally.
This does mean that Israel is aiming to be part of the Mideast. We forgot about it. We behave as a European country, the leadership of Israel today sees Israel as a Western country, part of Europe, if you want, part of the United States, but definitely not part of the Middle East.
Even with Egypt and Jordan, where we have really stable peace, it's based on security and some economic technological issues, not on political support. The public doesn't like us - not in Egypt, not in Jordan - definitely no cultural relations, no tourism. So there is a different approach in Israel. We are rich.
If you want, Sudan, if you want, any other poor country on the globe, we can give you what you need, if you normalize relations with us economically, because more we cannot give."
This could be described as a "very pragmatic" foreign policy. Israelis and Arabs will always hate each other, but Israel is willing to spend money to keep the peace.
This major change of policy took place about 15 years ago, or about 2004. I can't recall ever reading anything about this change of policy. I guess I've been fooled as much as anyone else.
It was just a week ago that President Trump announced his "Peace to Prosperity" Mideast peace plan. In my article, I said that there's no way that this Rube Goldberg peace proposal is going to survive. ( "29-Jan-20 World View -- Trump announces fantasy 'Peace to Prosperity' Mideast peace plan")
So what the hell was all that? Was it just a big show that had to be put on for international leaders who are always demanding that the US take a "leadership role" in the Mideast peace process, so that they can shoot it down. Is that why Trump put forth this farcical peace plan?
There is one strange thing that I would like to mention. When Benjamin Netanyahu was at the White House with Trump last week to announce the "peace plan," I noticed something that was off -- Netanyahu always had a broad grin on his face, and gave me the impression that he was laughing at the whole thing. And now, in retrospect, I would say that he probably was laughing at the whole thing, because he knew it was just a show. Did Trump know it was just a show? I don't know.
This policy change took place 15 years ago, soon after president George Bush published his "Mideast Roadmap to Peace on May 1, 2003. I predicted at that time that Bush's peace plan would never succeed, because Israel and the Palestinians would be re-fighting the bloody 1948 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. ("Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace? (1-May-2003)")
A major policy change like this often is part of a major generational change, and that seems to be the case here. From the point of view of generational theory, Israel transited from a generational Unraveling era, when the public mood strong favors compromise, into a generational Crisis era, when the public mood becomes more xenophobic and nationalistic. This occurred in 2006, 58 years after the end of the bloody 1948-49 Jewish-Arab war, when enough of the survivors of that war all disappeared (retired or died), all at once, leaving behind younger, much more belligerent generations.
And recall that 2006 was the time of Israel's disastrous 2006 invasion of Lebanon to attack Hezbollah. Israel panicked when two Israeli soldiers were abducted near Lebanon's border, and conducted a highly emotional, organic and uncontrolled invasion of Lebanon. The war was a disaster for all involved. After a few months, the war had run its course, with nothing accomplished except to destroy a lot of Lebanon's infrastructure in airstrikes, and displace a lot of Lebanese from their homes.
One more memory -- 2005 was the year when Israel withdrew from Gaza and turned it over to the Palestinians as a gesture of peace, something it now regrets. That was perhaps the last major decision of Israel's Unraveling era, prior to the beginning of the Crisis era, and the disastrous 2006 invasion of Lebanon.
The next event of note occurred in May 2011, when President Obama offered his own Mideast "peace plan." ( "20-May-11 News -- Obama and Netanyahu in sharp disagreement after speech")
You may recall the picture at the beginning of this article, which was taken on May 20, 2011, just after Obama presented his peace plan to Netanyahu and the public. It became famous because Obama was angrily glaring at Netanyahu as the latter was rejecting Obama's plan, and was lecturing Obama why it wouldn't work.
What's interesting about this today is that, just as I wasn't aware that Israel had had a major change of policy five years earlier, apparently Obama hadn't gotten that memo either. Hadn't Netanyahu bothered to inform the Obama administration of Israel's new policy?
Which brings us back to Trump's "Peace to Prosperity" peace plan, presented by Trump to Netanyahu in the White House last week. Netanyahu didn't lecture Trump the way he had lectured Obama. Instead, he was grinning broadly the whole time, and seemed to be enjoying the joke. Did Trump get the joke? Had Trump gotten the memo?
One way of looking at it is that Trump did get the memo, and the plan was consistent with Israel's new "pragmatic" regional policy. In particular, Trump promised $60 billion to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt to spend on Palestinians to implement the rest of the policy. That certainly is consistent with the pragmatic approach.
Unfortunately, we get back to the other problems that I raised in my January 29 article. The average age in the Palestinian territories is around 20, which means that most of the Palestinians are literally children. And those children will not accept the "pragmatic" proposals, even if their geezer leaders do.
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(6-Feb-2020)
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The Timeline for the coming months
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China's official figures are that there are more than 20,000 confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus, and 426 deaths (2.1%).
Many people believe that those figures are low, that there are already tens or hundreds of thousands of cases, many of them in rural areas where they wouldn't be found, and some of them mild enough so that the patient did not see any need to report it. If there are thousands more cases, then the death rate will probably be lower than 2.1%.
50 million people are on lockdown, and are forbidden from leaving their villages. 24 provinces and cities are on lockdown or near lockdown (Anhui, Chongqing, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hebei, Heilonjiang, Henan, Hunan, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Shanxi, Suzhou, Xi'an).
Factories in those provinces are being told not to restart operations until at least February 10. So half of China is shut down, with more than 80% of national GDP and 90% of exports.
One factory owner in Shandong said that he won't be allowed to open unless he has a stock of two face masks for each worker every day. He has 1,500 employees, so that's a lot of face masks.
So one might say that China is in a panic. Nonetheless, they're refusing to permit American CDC officials to visit Wuhan to help out, and they're refusing to allow the US to fly Americans in Wuhan back to America.
China is being congratulated by many international officials for taking the harsh steps necessary to stop the threat of the virus spreading further. But on Monday, China became harshly critical of the United States for imposing some travel restrictions on people traveling to the US from China.
So China's foreign ministry spokesman on Monday said:
"But as far as I know, the US government has not provided any substantive help to the Chinese side yet. On the contrary, it was the first to withdraw its consulate staff from Wuhan, the first to suggest the partial withdrawal of embassy staff, the first to announce a ban on entry by Chinese citizens after the WHO made it clear that it doesn't recommend and even opposes travel and trade restrictions against China. What the US has done could create and spread panic. ...[[Question]]: You just severely criticized the US government response to the outbreak. We understand the second US flight is experiencing delay - is it due to the lack of Chinese government authorization as some say?
As I just said, the US was the first to evacuate its consulate staff in Wuhan via charter flight. Further arrangements need to be coordinated based on a variety of factors including Wuhan airport capacity to receive supplies."
So China has taken its own draconian measures to prevent the spread of the virus, but when the US and other countries do it, it causes panic.
The above statement could definitely be seen as a threat. China has a standard playbook of reacting to a disliked policy of another country by jailing citizens of that country for weeks or months without charges. The statement seems to be demanding "substantive help" in return for allowing American embassy personnel to leave Wuhan. No one who follows the news from China on a regular basis can have any doubt that this kind of extortion by the CCP thugs is a real possibility. China is blocking access from US CDC officials who want to help, and so it's not known what "substantive help" China is demanding.
When China's government says that the US is causing fear and panic, what's the purpose of that message? I doubt that any Americans care at all what that latest name-calling China is directing at America this week. So what's the point?
The fear and panic messages are directed at Chinese people, many of whom are now blaming Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for mishandling the crisis.
Concern is growing among the CCP thugs that the Wuhan coronavirus health crisis could lead to enough social unrest to threaten the CCP itself. At the very least, the crisis is the greatest political challenge that Xi Jinping has faced since he took power in 2012.
There's a certain irrestible irony about this. Xi Jinping has for years tried to protect himself by ordering an increasingly brutal and violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and Hong Kong activists, and now is facing a threat -- Wuhan coronovirus -- that he can't control with his usual arsenal of beatings, torture, rape and jailings. That fact alone should provide some moral lessons to the dictator in fear of losing the Mandate from Heaven.
Food prices are soaring in Wuhan, and pictures on social media show empty shelves in supermarkets. Restrictions on transport are hindering efforts to bring food and medicines into Wuhan, and as popular discontent increases, CCP officials are desperately trying to find the source of the photos of empty supermarket shelves.
The city of Wuhan has a population of 11 million, but as the virus spread, millions of people fled the city before it was finally locked down on January 24. Outside Wuhan, people from Wuhan are being told that they're not welcome, and they're being barred from entering other cities. Some places are refusing entry to cars from Hubei Province, where Wuhan is located, and gas stations are refusing to fuel cars with Wuhan license plates, while hotels are refusing to accommodate guests from Hubei.
The threat of social unrest goes outside the borders of China. Already there are reports that Chinese people in public are being targeted with insults in some countries, because of increased xenophobia caused by potential spread of coronavirus. If coronavirus spreads to other countries, it could lead to social unrest in countries, such as those with projects in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where enclaves of Chinese cities have to coexist with locals.
It's clear from listening to analysts and experts that, at this time, no one knows how long this crisis will continue, or whether it will metastasize into a larger worldwise pandemic.
Those who hope that the worst will be over by March 1 are probably dreaming or lying, but at least it is possible that by March 1 we'll have answers to some important questions.
First, there have been no major outbreaks of the disease outside of China. Most cases have been in people who had just returned from a trip to China, rather than in someone who was affected by another person outside of China. So by March 1, we should know whether there are going to be outbreaks in any other countries.
This depends on a question that is still largely unanswered: How easily can the disease pass from person to person? The crucial question, still unanswered, is whether a person who has not yet shown symptoms infect another person.
If a person has to show symptoms before he can infect another person, then it should be possible to limit the spread in most countries. Standard techniques of quarantining people with symptoms and using contact tracing to find other possible cases should be effective. However, if a person can infect another person without showing symptoms, then these standard techniques won't work. By March 1, we should know the answer to this question.
Either way, the best outcomes should be possible in America, the West, and other developed countries. Underdeveloped countries in Africa, and elsewhere probably don't have the medical infrastructure and resources to contain an outbreak. The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been ongoing for months, and has been mostly contained only with the help of a massive international effort. If there are multiple outbreaks of coronavirus in multiple countries, the resources to control them will not be available.
A related subject is that the Ebola breakout in eastern DRC is being contained with the help of millions of doses of a vaccine for Ebola that has recently been developed. Several companies are working on a vaccine for Wuhan coronavirus, but development, testing and production of such a vaccine will require over a year.
Globally, there are about 2,000 new cases of Wuhan coronavirus every day. That number has not yet shown any sign of peaking and falling, at this time. By March 1, it will hopefully have begun to do so. So we should know by March 1 whether that is happening.
Some analysts are saying that we should know within a week or two. Chinese cities with large outbreaks were locked down on January 24, and there is a two-week incubation period. Therefore, according to this reasoning, within the next week or two the number of new cases should start falling. We shall see.
Another thing that we don't know is whether the virus can spread easily only in winter, and will be blocked by warm summer weather. If so, then the pandemic should be over by May or June, although it may reappear in the southern hemisphere after that.
The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic in China is being called a "Black Swan" event because it was completely unexpected and unplanned, and because it could have devastating consequences.
It may lead to other "Black Swan" events.
First, China's economy is being devastated, and the effects are overflowing into all the countries in the region. China is injecting $713 billion of money into China's economy in the hope of preventing the worst. However, with so much debt in China and beyond, it's possible that missed payments in China and region will force businesses into bankruptcy, resulting in a chain reaction of missed payments and missed deadlines, and a global financial crisis. That's one additional "Black Swan" possibility.
Second, China's social fabric is extremely fragile, and the number of anti-government protests has been growing for years. As I've written in the past, China's history is filled with anti-government rebellions and coups that have occurred with regularity for millennia. The last two massive rebellions began in China's south, near Hong Kong. Mao Zedong's Long March that led to the Communist revolution civil war (1934-49) started in the south. The massive Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), which was led by a Christian convert who believed he was the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, began in the south and spread north. It's now been 71 years since the end of the last rebellion, and so China is overdue for its next rebellion, and that would be another possible "Black Swan."
To prevent this, the CCP is mounting a campaign of blaming the United States. Most Chinese people know that the CCP is corrupt and full of crap, so this is unlikely to work.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(4-Feb-2020)
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Investors nervous as China's stock market to reopen on Monday
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Investors are nervously waiting to see what will happen on Monday, when China's stock market reopens for the first time since the beginning of the Lunar New Year celebrations. It closed down 3.1% on January 23, and has been closed since then. It was supposed to open last week on Thursday, but the opening was postponed until February 3 because of the Wuhan coronavirus crisis.
Taiwan's stock exchange did open on Thursday, and fell nearly 6%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng stock market index also fell nearly 6%.
Worldwide there have been 14,000 confirmed cases, with 304 deaths. That means that 2.1% of confirmed Wuhan coronavirus cases are ending in death. Deaths from ordinary influenza are closer to 0.1%.
Not that there's been much of a Lunar New Year celebration this year. Coronavirus is now present in every province of China.
China’s economy seems to be grinding to a halt. Sixteen cities in China, with a combined population of more than 50 million people, are on lockdown, and people are prevented from leaving. Shops and restaurants in many cities are completely deserted, as people are afraid to leave their homes.
The only exception seems to be long lines where people camp out for hours to puchase protective face masks. They've been sold out everywhere, but Chinese officials have announced that prisoners are working day and night to make millions more face masks.
Tourism will be hit hard. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Philippines have stopped accepting visitors from China’s Hubei province, and Russia and Mongolia have closed their borders with China.
Many countries are imposing travel bans from China. On Saturday, Australia and the United States joined Israel, Vietnam, Italy, Philippines and Qatar to suspend flights from China. In the United States, the government has put about 200 US citizens repatriated from Wuhan under legal quarantine at March Air Reserve Base in Southern California. The group includes State Department personnel, family members, children and other Americans. It’s the first time such a policy has been used in the US since the 1960s, when a quarantine order was issued to stop the spread of smallpox.
The coronavirus crisis could cost China's economy $60 billion this quarter. There were already millions of people unemployed, and the coronavirus has forced many small businesses to close. Many economists are concerned about massive layoffs in March, because of loss of revenue in January and February, caused by a combination of the Lunar New Year holiday and coronavirus.
Many businesses and factories have had to close temporarily to prevent further spread of the disease. Where possible, people are being ordered to work at home, but for many that will not be possible.
As long as the number of new cases increases every day, then the end is not in sight. When the number of new cases peaks and starts to decrease, that will signal the beginning of the end of the pandemic. That's likely to occur as winter ends, around May or June in the northern hemisphere. It may strike the southern hemisphere after that.
Officials in China are hoping that the things will start to return to "normal" by March 1, but there's a possibility that nothing will change for two or three additional months.
This is exactly the kind of potential social unrest situation that the paranoid Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thugs fear the most. Most ordinary Chinese know that the CCP thugs are corrupt, incompetent, and violent, but there's a kind of contract between them. The people will keep quiet as long as there's plenty of employment and the livin' is easy. When that deal begins to fall apart, a full-scale rebellion becomes a possibility.
As I've written in the past, Hong Kong is on the fault line between northern and southern China. ( "22-Jun-19 World View -- Hong Kong protests show historic split between northern and southern China")
Southeast China was the starting point of the last two massive Chinese anti-government rebellions. Mao Zedong's Long March that led to the Communist revolution civil war (1934-49) started in the south. The massive Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), which was led by a Christian convert who believed he was the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, began in the south and spread north.
The ethnic fault line between north and south is just as active today as it ever was, and China is overdue for a new north-south rebellion. So there's already massive unrest in Hong Kong, and now the country is on the verge of large-scale unemployment. China has had massive anti-government rebellions at regular intervales for millennia. It's now been 71 years since the end of the last rebellion, and so China is overdue for its next rebellion.
The CCP thugs are aware of this, and so the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, has promised to flood the financial markets with liquidity, and to increase spending in whatever sectors it can.
Whether that will work remains to be seen. China spent huge amounts of money to weather the financial crisis of ten years ago. China has been spending massive amounts of money in many countries with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Even China has some limits on the amount of money it can spend.
There's been a discussion in the Generational Dynamics forum in the last few days about whether this will be the trigger for a global financial crisis and stock market crash, since Wall Street stocks are in a huge bubble, bigger than 1929.
My response is that I don't think so. If you look back at previous panics -- the 1929 panic, the 1987 false panic, and the flash crash of a few years ago -- they were all completely unexpected. In other words, you can't "expect" a panic. A panic is, almost by definition, "unexpectable." Therefore, if a panic is now "expected," then it can't occur now. So there might be a 20% stock market correction, but not a full-scale financial panic.
However, another person has pointed out a flaw in my logic. Since the panic is "expected," then it can't happen. Therefore, it's "unexpected." Therefore it can happen. See how easy it is to tie yourself up in knots?
At any rate, people investing in the stock market should be very cautious these days. The stock market is in the biggest bubble in world history, and so really anything can happen.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(2-Feb-2020)
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The Mideast peace process fantasy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Here we go again.
President Donald Trump, in a joint White House celebration with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced a new Mideast peace plan.
I've seen how this works too many times. International politicians pressure the United States president to come up with a peace plan, saying that there will never be peace in the Mideast without White House "leadership." But as soon as the president offers a peace plan, those same international politicians slam the plan to make sure it's never implemented.
So Trump's 181 page Mideast peace plan has the following features:
In May 2017, Trump met with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, and they agreed to work together to reach a historic peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. ( "4-May-17 World View -- Channeling Sisyphus, Trump and Abbas say Mideast peace not as hard as it looks")
At the time, Trump said, "I look forward to welcoming [Abbas] back as a great marker of progress and, ultimately, toward the signing of a document with the Israelis and with Israel toward peace. We want to create peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We will get it done."
Abbas responded as follows: "Mr. President, we believe that we are capable and able to bring about success to our efforts because, Mr. President, you have the determination and you have the desire to see it become to fruition and to become successful. And we, Mr. President, inshallah, God willing, we are coming into a new opportunity, a new horizon that would enable us to bring about peace in that regard. ... Mr. President, it’s about time for Israel to end its occupation of our people and of our land after 50 years. We are the only remaining people in the world that still live under occupation."
It was pretty clear from just those two statements that it was never going to work. Now that Trump's peace agreement was being announced, Abbas refused to attend the ceremony.
His statement this time was far more colorful: "Trump is a dog and the son of a dog. They called me from Washington, and I did not pick up the phone. ... I said no, and I will continue to say no."
However, ambassadors from three Arab countries -- Oman, Bahrain, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- did show up at the meeting.
The UAE ambassador tweeted that the UAE believes Palestinians and Israelis can achieve lasting peace and genuine coexistence with the support of the international community.
Britain's Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said,"This is clearly a serious proposal, reflecting extensive time and effort. Only the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian territories can determine whether these proposals can meet the needs and aspirations of the people they represent."
However, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhr said, "Trump's statement about Jerusalem is nonsense and Jerusalem will always be a land for the Palestinians ... The Palestinians will confront this deal and Jerusalem will remain a Palestinian land."
Israel's Security Minister Naftali Bennett said in response to the plan, "We will not allow for Israel, under any circumstances, to recognize a Palestinian state."
I heard several Palestinian protests complain particularly about the tunnels and bridges that are supposed to connect the two Palestinian territories, saying that these were extremely offensive.
Later, Mahmoud Abbas said, "After the nonsense that we heard today we say a thousand no’s to the Deal of The Century."
There's no way that this Rube Goldberg peace proposal is going to survive.
As I wrote in my very first Generational Dynamics analysis on May 1, 2003, when president George Bush published his "Mideast Roadmap to Peace," which described the details of a two-state solution, that it will never happen. Generational Dynamics predicts that the plan would fail because the Jews and the Arabs would be refighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the average age of the population in Gaza is 18, and in the West Bank is 21. (In America it's 38, in Germany 46, in Japan 47.) Most of the population in the Palestinian territories are children -- often children with guns. They call themselves the "Oslo Generation," because they were born after the 1993 Oslo peace accords that were supposed to bring peace to the Mideast, but have accomplished nothing. (Paragraph modified, 29-Jan)
Now think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who is 29 years old, who says one incredibly idiotic thing after another every day, and yet is effectively running the Democratic Party.
The point is that even if Mahmoud Abbas and other regional Arab leaders wanted to agree to Trump's peace plan, they wouldn't be supported by Oslo Generation Palestinians on the street.
This is the fallacy the media and politicians all make. They assume that the leader of a country can make a decision, and everyone will follow.
As I've written many times, it's a core principle of Generational Dynamics that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people. The attitudes of politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they represent the attitudes of the people. So in this case, the even if Abbas signed this peace deal, it would be meaningless.
The whole idea of a "Mideast peace process" and a "two-state solution" is a complete fantasy. It's never going to happen.
As long-time readers know, the Generational Dynamics prediction is that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Jews vs Arabs, Sunnis vs Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. The exact scenario can't be predicted, but tensions across the Mideast continue to grow. The death of 84 year old Mahmoud Abbas would be very significant.
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(29-Jan-2020)
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China's coronavirus spreads across China and around the world
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The number of confirmed cases of China's coronavirus has been increasing every hour. It started weeks ago in the city of Wuhan in China's Hubei province, apparently in a meat market where the virus jumped from animals to humans. Since then, the virus has demonstrated the ability to pass from human to human.
It's not yet really known how dangerous the virus is, or whether it's more dangerous than the ordinary flu. It's in the class of diseases known as "coronavirus." The common cold is a coronavirus. SARS, the extremely dangerous disease that came from China, is also a coronavirus.
At this time (Friday evening ET), there are currently 1,320 confirmed cases worldwide, including 41 fatalities. It has spread to every province of China, and there are small numbers of cases in Thailand, Singapore, France, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Nepal and the United States.
This is the worst possible time for a pandemic of this kind to occur in China. This is the time of the Lunar New Year celebrations, where millions of people take planes, trains and buses to return home to see their families for the first time in a year.
China has been trying to contain the spread, by canceling many Lunar New Year celebrations, in Beijing and elsewhere, even closing Shanghai Disneyland and part of the Great Wall of China. There are confirmed cases in nearly every province of China. 14 cities across Hubei province have been "locked down," meaning that roads have been closed and buses, trains and planes are no longer running.
When SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) broke out in 2002 in mainland China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) kept it secret for months, and the world only found out about it when it spread to Hong Kong, and from there to other countries. The CCP claims to have learned its lesson from that disaster, and has been more open about providing DNA sequences and virus samples to researchers in other countries. However, the CCP is still censoring most information about it, including details of its incubation period, how quickly it spreads, and how long it takes to recover. As usual, the CCP harshly censors anyone that criticizes the government.
As I wrote my book "War between China and Japan - Why America must be prepared," it was clear that China has a highly racist view of themselves and the world that goes back millennia. We American people do not view ourselves as unique, as America itself is a "melting pot" of many nations and cultures. Instead, Americans view themselves as ordinary people who were lucky enough to be born in the greatest country in history.
That's not how the Chinese have viewed themselves for millennia. In the highly racist Chinese view, the universe is in three layers. The highest layer is the Kingdom of Heaven, where the gods live. The middle layer is the Middle Kingdom, where all the Chinese people live -- the Master Race, yellow race, black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin. The bottom layer is where you and I live -- the Barbarians, who must always be subservient vassals to the Chinese, must pay tribute and acknowledge the superiority of the Chinese.
This highly racist and arbitrary view results in a society which is ruled by corruption, bribery, torture, and execution. And the leader of this society is said to be have the Mandate of Heaven. If he does not follow Confucian principles, if he does not meet the needs of his people, then he can lose the Mandate of Heaven. After that, the leader can only continue to lead by means of beatings, torture, rape, and murder, and that's what's been happening in China to an increasing degree for the last 20 years.
But now Xi Jinping has suffered so many recent setbacks that he may actually be in danger of being thrown out. Here are some of them:
It's becoming increasingly clear that Xi Jinping is failing, and has had one failed policy after another.
However, I did hear a brief report on TV that some Chinese social media are saying that the coronavirus was planted by the United States as biological warfare.
As I've said many times, the CCP thugs have a record of doing one incredibly stupid thing after another. I don't know what the CCP thugs will do about the coronavirus crisis or the situations in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but I can say with certainty that whatever they do, it will make the situation worse.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(25-Jan-2020)
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Multi-sectarian rioters protest 'confessional' government
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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After months of generally peaceful protests that began on October 17 when the government announced tax increases, on Saturday protesters began throwing rocks, molotov coctails, fireworks and large plant pots at police blocking the road to the parliament building in Lebanon's capital city Beirut. Other protesters blocked roads and crippled the city.
The Internal Security Forces tweeted: "A direct and violent confrontation is taking place with anti-riot police at one of the entrances to parliament. We ask peaceful protesters to keep away from the site of the rioting for their safety."
By the end of the day, the Red Cross reported 80 wounded were taken to the hospital, while 140 were treated on site.
Lebanon's banking system is near collapse as the country runs out of dollars, and Lebanon's pound currency has lost 60% of its value. Banks are setting a withdrawal limit of around $200 per month, and people are unable to pay their bills. There are fears that the economy will collapse completely.
There have been street protests in Lebanon in the past, but they've always been highly sectarian protests by people in just one religious bloc -- Sunnis, Shias or Christians.
But these new protests are cutting across all sectarian blocs. The massive protests began after the new taxes were announced on October 17, and by October 29 the entire government collapsed, leaving the country to be run by a caretaker government since then.
Lebanon (like Iraq) has been governed by a "confessional system of government," where power is divided based on sectarian affiliation or confession. The confessional form of government has worked fairly well in both Iraq and Lebanon, because it's prevented the kind of massive violence that's been occurring in Iran and Syria.
However, the confessional form of government has failed in a different way. Lebanon's constitution requires that the three main offices be occupied by specific sectarian groups:
Because each sect has complete control of one portion of the government, there are no checks and balances and corruption is rampant, with the leaders of each sect able to steal as much money as they like from their own part of the government. Since the government collapsed on October 29, the three sects have been fighting among themselves and have been unable to form a new government.
So the protesters have been getting increasingly furious. The economy gets worse every day, and the people see the sectarian government leaders as massively corrupt because each one refuses to give up any power to the others, and so the country is at a stalemate.
The World Bank has warned that the poverty rate in Lebanon could rise from a third to a half of the population if the political crisis is not remedied fast.
Rioters have also been protesting the influence of Iran. The most powerful sect has been the Shia Muslim sect, led by Iran's puppet Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah.
As long as Iran was paying Hezbollah enough money, there was little complaint in Lebanon. But thanks to Iran's own economic crisis, caused in part by US sanctions, Iran has less money to pay to Hezbollah. Hezbollah for five years has also yielded to Iran's demands to send troops to fight alongside Bashar al-Assad's failing army in Syria, and indeed Syria's army would have collapsed years ago except for support from Russia and Hezbollah. But all that has taken an enormous economic toll on Lebanon.
So rioters in Lebanon are demanding an end to Iran's influence, and that would mean a big reduction in Hezbollah's influence.
Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are all in a generational Awakening era, like America and Europe in the 1960s-70s. Iraq's government and Lebanon's government are both in collapse, and Iran's government is dealing with its own massive anti-government protests.
Violence has been growing in all three countries, and beatings and violence by police is growing. There's no resolution in sight in any of these three countries. With all three governments in turmoil, the chaos is not going to end any time soon, and the street violence is liable to get worse, as it did in America and Europe in the 1960s-70s.
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(19-Jan-2020)
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Cracking down on Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba and Shopify
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There are two ways to look at the US-China Phase I trade deal that was signed in Washington on Wednesday.
One way is that is that it accomplished so little that it's nothing more than a temporary ceasefire in the US-China trade war.
The other way is that it was a good first step and accomplished some things in forcing China to open up its markets, but that there's a long way to go in Phase II.
Let's start with the basics: As I've said many times in the past, North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons and missiles, no matter what Trump does, and China will not give up stealing intellectual property and trade secrets, no matter what Trump does. Trump knows that too. China's criminal activities are deeply embedded in China's culture, which considers Americans to be barbarians, and they could never be resolved without a war. All that Donald Trump can do in negotiations is to postpone the worst effects of these Chinese and North Korean policies, and do everything possible to protect the United States and the West from the inevitable World War III that China and North Korea are preparing against Japan, Taiwan and the United States.
Donald Trump said that he is not removing any of the existing tariffs or sanctions on China at this time, because he needs them in place "as cards" to negotiate with in Phase II, but they will all be removed at the successful completion of Phase II. Negotiations for Phase II will not begin until after the November elections.
Peter Navarro is President Trump's Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. He's considered to be a "hardliner" on the China negotiations. He appeared on television in August, and recited a list of seven structural issues in China's economy that have to be resolved by trade negotiations:
In a television interview on Wednesday, Navarro reviewed the US-China agreement, in view of the above list of China's "seven deadly sins." According to Navarro, America got the following in the agreement:
These are all nice promises, but China has always made nice promises, and then simply ignored them the day after they were made. Navarro claims that this time it's different, because there's an enforcement mechanism:
"The judge, jury and executioner is on our side of the fence. This is not WTO (World Trade Organization) rules where you take three years and get nowhere. This deal calls for a 90 day clock, controlled by [U.S. Trade Representative Robert] Lighthizer. If there's an issue, it comes to him, and he negotiates with this counterpart in China. If we don't get satisfaction, we unilaterally have the authority to take proportionate measures."
Whether you believe that this enforcement mechanism will make a difference is up to you.
According to Navarro, that was a "solid Phase I," and some things have been left for Phase II:
Navarro said that the US will crack down on companies like Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba and Shopify who have served as "facilitators" for the import of contraband goods from China.
Navarro said that a million packages come into New York's Kennedy airport every day. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency ran a project called Operation Megaflex, which sampled thousands of these packages coming in from China, and found that 15% of them contained contraband. Half of them are counterfeits, and the other half are controlled substances, like fentynol, and also gun parts, and fake drivers licenses.
Navarro expects China to police these operations, but on the American side, distribution companies that make a great deal of money by importing and selling this contraband will also have to police them, or will face civil fines or penalties or loss of import licenses.
According to analysts, the Chinese are breathing a sigh of relief because, even though the existing tariffs will not be lifted, this agreement means that any new tariffs will be postponed. And since Phase II negotiations won't even begin until after the November election, the new tariffs will be postponed indefinitely.
As I've described in the past, Trump administration has placed additional restrictions on Huawei to slow down the company's rapid takeover of portions of the internet. Huawei is heavily subsidized by China's government to undersell foreign competitors with routers and other networking equipment that many people (including me) believe contain "backdoors" allowing China's military to control those devices at any time. In fact, in 2017, China passed a National Intelligence Law that compels every Chinese company to take exactly those kinds of steps. Trump's tariffs have affected not only Huawei, but also the supply chains of many military-related firms in China. Obviously, these steps can slow down China's military, but not stop it.
Trump's restrictions on trade with America has been a benefit to China's neighbors, with whom Chinese firms are actively seeking to trade. This has resulted unexpectedly in quick agreement on a free trade agreement for Asian nations, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The participants in RCEP are the ten members of the the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- plus five additional nations -- Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, with India eventually deciding not to participate.
The RCEP trade agreements will fill any holes left by the US-China trade tariffs. China's military will be slowed down by the tariffs, but will not be stopped.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(17-Jan-2020)
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Iran's 'Vietcong Tet Offensive'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Three days ago, overjoyed Iranian officials were watching as millions of Iranians were in the streets for the funeral of Iran's Gen. Qassim Soleimani, who had been killed by an American airstrike. Iranian officials had thought that, finally!, the Iranian people were returning to their support the government. As I pointed out in my daily commentary in the Generational Dynamics forum, this was mostly a show put on by Iran, and it wouldn't last.
Now the situation has flipped back again. Iranians, who had believed the government's story that they were winning the war in Iraq against the Americans, now learn that everything that government has told them was a lie and cover-up, and that the only result of Iran's missile attack on Americans was not dead Americans, as the government had claimed, but hundreds of dead Iranians. There are growing anti-government demonstrations. The new demonstrations are relatively small, but they're expected to grow.
For any number of reasons, the decision on Saturday by the government of Iran to admit to shooting down a Ukrainian airlines PS752 passenger plane with a missile, killing all 176 people aboard, could turn out to be the most historically consequential decision of Iran's experiment with a government of Islamic Shia terror and dictatorship that was created by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
For several days, the government made increasingly outlandish lies to defer blame for shooting down the passenger plane. They bulldozed the crash site to hide the evidence. They refused to allow international experts to examine the planes "black boxes." They blamed the crash on a mechanical error, and they said that the plane has suddenly changed direction ominously -- both claims that Iranian video showed were untrue. All this was a lie, and the government knew it was a lie from the very beginning. Iranians listening to the BBC heard that the US, Canada and Ukraine said they had evidence to prove that Iran had shot it down with a missile, but the government of Iran said that the BBC reports were "fake news," part of the usual anti-Iran plot by the and Israel.
Finally, on Saturday, Iran admitted shooting it down, saying that doing so was a "disastrous mistake." General Hossein Salami said, "I swear to almighty god that I wished I were in that plane and had crashed with them and had burned but had not witnessed this tragic incident."
So, why did Iran do a U-turn and admit to shooting it down?
The narrative in the media today is that Iran was forced to do so by the conclusive evidence that had been collected and presented by the United States, Canada, Ukraine, and other sources.
But if you believe that, then you also have to explain why the Russians have never admitted shooting down the Malaysian Airlines MH17 passenger plane over Ukraine in July 2014, but instead have made one ridiculous claim after another, for example saying that the US had purposely shot it down to embarrass Russia. Since then, there have been numerous deep investigations that prove conclusively that MH17 was shot down by the Russians in eastern Ukraine, using a Russian Buk missile. But Russia continues to make ridiculous excuses.
So if Iran was forced to admit its "disastrous mistake" after only five days, then how come Russia still makes one ridiculous claim after another for five years, and still refuses to admit its own mistake? What's the difference between Russia and Iran?
There could be several reasons, but from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the most obvious reason is that Iran is in a generational Awakening era, and with large and growing younger generations born since the Islamic Revolution, and these younger generations are generally pro-Western and pro-American. These younger generations are coming to power in the government, and they would have pressured their bosses in the government to tell the truth. The government was also pressured by the large anti-government student protests, which make Iran look every day more and more like America in the 1960s and 1970s.
The demostrators are protesting that the government was incompetent because it kept Tehran airport open at the same time that the armed forces were launching missiles at American targets in Iraq. In fact, officials in many countries have been highly critical of Iran for this. Many have expressed incredulity that Iran would keep Tehran's airport open in what is essentially a war zone. The passenger plane that was shot down had just taken off from the airport, and the Revolutionary Guide forces mistook it for an American missile.
But the main criticisms of the government were, of course, that the government lied for three days, not only denying that an Iranian missile had shot down the plane, but also that accusing Western governments and Western media of "fake news" in claiming that a missile had shot down the plane.
Protesters point out that the government was claiming that the IRGC missile attack on Americans in Iraq would achieve victory by driving the Americans out, but all it accomplished was getting hundreds of Iranians killed.
This has dealt a major blow to the government's credibility. Iran's government has always blamed every problem on the United States and Israel, even claiming that peaceful protesters were terrorists funded by the US. The claims always lacked credibility, but now protesters will claim that every such claim was a lie. One of the chants on Sunday was, "They’re lying when they say it’s America. Our enemy is right here."
I heard one Tehran apologist on the BBC claim that the loss of credibility was only a small, temporary blip, but if Iranian officials actually believe that, then they're sadly delusional.
The analogous event during America's last Awakening era, in the 1960s, was the "Vietcong Tet Offensive." This was a massive military counterattack by North Vietnam's army in cities and villages across the entire country, beginning in January 1968. It took weeks for the American and South Vietnam forces to recapture the cities. The Tet Offensive was a military disaster for the Vietcong and the North Vietnam forces.
But it was political victory that won the war by turning Americans against the war. Americans had been told that the war was nearly won, and that "we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel," but the Tet Offensive caused Americans, especially students, to believe those were all lies.
The American government never recovered. President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would have to step down and not run for reelection. Richard Nixon became president, but he was relentless accused of lying about everything. The protests against Nixon became worse and worse, and eventually Nixon was forced to resign, under threat of impeachment.
So that's the kind of thing that Iran's government is going to be facing from now on. Iran's anti-government protests will take on new energy following the recent disaster.
Does this mean "regime change" in Iran? I've been writing for years that there will be "regime change" in Iran as it's Awakening era climax, but it's impossible to predict the timing or scenario.
Last week's events have been so politically disastrous for Iran, that they may at least trigger some resignations and firings in the regime. There's a major parliamentary election Iran next month, and that may bring some changes. But as Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei becomes increasingly embattled, a more drastic change may occur, just as happened with Johnson and Nixon in America.
The complexity of the current situation in Iran and Iraq provides me with the opportunity to write a deeper generational analysis.
The last week has been fairly dramatic for me personally, because the article that I posted on Friday evening stated unequivocally, based on a generational analysis of Iran and Iraq, that there would be NO WAR with Iran. (See "4-Jan-20 World View -- Iran faces tough choices after Soleimani assassination")
This was at a time when the media was filled with analysts almost unanimously predicting World War III, and left-wing media and politicians were saying things like, "I can't see how a war can be avoided." These idiots have now all been proven wrong, and Generational Dynamics has, as usual, been proven right.
I reached my conclusion based on Iran's history, dating back at least to Iran's disastrous 1800s border wars. Whenever I make a prediction like this, I always take a deep breath and wonder whether this will finally be the time that I'm wrong, and I look like an idiot. Fortunately for me and for Generational Dynamics, that didn't happen this time, and in fact has never happened in hundreds of such predictions over the years, although this was one of the most dramatic. What did happen in Iran is completely in line with the generational analysis I posted. So it's been a relief for the world, and also for me personally.
One thing that I've learned repeatedly is that the experts in Washington have no clue what's going on in the world. As I've mentioned several times in my articles, I learned this in 2006 when Congressional Quarterly and the London Times did a survey of Mideast "experts," many with years of experience, and found out that they didn't know the answers to the simplest questions. ( "Guess what? British politicians and journalists are just as ignorant as Americans")
One of things that the experts didn't know was whether al-Qaeda was a Sunni or Shia organization. Think about that. We had people -- Republicans and Democrats -- making foreign policy who were so ignorant and stupid that they couldn't answer the simplest questions about the subject they were supposed to be experts on. (And recall that Pelosi famously declared that al-Qaeda was not in Iraq. Lol.)
Today's politicians and media are obviously just as ignorant, which is obvious every time they open their mouths. I've previously singled out the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy for criticism because al-Jazeera has run video from him several times, and referred to him as an "expert." He's been in Congress since 2007 and on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 2013, so he should know what's going on. And yet, he says the most incredibly stupid things. My theory is that the reason that al-Jazeera runs video from him and others like him is that they want to show to their Arab audience how stupid the Americans are.
The generational analysis I'm about to give is not rocket science, but it's beyond the mental capacity of almost everyone, since it requires the ability to understand percentages and to do math at least the fourth grade level, and most people cannot do fourth grade math. Say what you want about Boomers, but we knew how to do percentages. But in the past few decades, SAT scores have been falling, and college graduates are so dumb, they don't even know how to read a map or understand historical concepts. If you listen to many politicians, reporters and analysts today talk about the economy and Socialism, you quickly realize that they're too dumb to even do second grade arithmetic.
It's obvious that none of the experts on tv has any idea of what's going on in Iran, because they don't have the mental capacity to understand it. Also, they know absolutely nothing about Iran's history, because that's also beyond their mental capacity.
So let's take a look at what you'd have to know if you want to understand Iran today. You may wish to have a pencil and paper handy to take notes.
So if you understand the above, they you understand why my unequivocal prediction that there would NOT be a war with Iran turned out to be true, while the idiots on TV and in the media who were predicting WW III really are idiots.
And quite seriously, Dear Reader, if you listen to these guys in the mainstream media, you should understand that they literally don't have a clue about anything. They probably couldn't find Iran on a map, and they certainly know nothing about Iran's history. You might as well get your news from the Saturday morning cartoon shows.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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(13-Jan-2020)
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Hong Kong chaos boosts Tsai Ing-wen and DPP in Taiwan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Taiwan's presidential election occurs on Saturday. The voting has already begun at the time I'm writing this article (Friday evening ET), and the voting may be over by the time you read this.
The election results are almost certain to be very bad news for the leaders of Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is almost certain that the current president Tsai Ing-wen will be reelected. Tsai is leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which favors independence of Taiwan from China.
China has repeatedly threatened military action to invade Taiwan and annex it to China. Indeed, my book "War Between China and Japan - why the US must be prepared" contains a detailed historical analysis of China's current plans to invade Japan to get vengeance for World War II, and to invade Taiwan to annex it.
In 2005, China passed an "Anti-Secession Law" that stated that China will take military action in response to anything that even hints at independence:
"Article 8: In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful re-unification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity."
Passage of this law in China in 2005 provoked massive riots and anti-China demonstrations in Taiwan.
Tsai's chief opponent is Han Kuo-yu of the opposition Kuomintang Party, which is the modern day descendant of the Nationalist Party formed by Chiang Kai-shek in the 1920s. Mao Zedong's Communist Revolution civil war (1934-49), split northern China from Southern China. Chiang lost militarily to Mao, and many people in southern China fled to Hong Kong, which was then a British colony, and from there to Formosa and Taiwan. Chiang's Kuomintang party maintained iron rule in Taiwan until the 1990s, when the Taiwan independence movement led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) began to rise, especially after the Taiwanese people watched the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in horror. Tsai has one more opponent, James Soong Chu-yu, chairman of the smaller People First Party.
The victory by Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP in January 2016 was considered historic because it was a large, decisive victory, and so was a major setback for the CCP.
However, the DPP lost badly in local elections in 2018, and might well be on her way to losing the current presidential election, if it were not for the chaos in Hong Kong from pro-democracy protests that began in June of last year.
Hong Kong was a British colony prior to 1997, and Taiwan was a Japanese colony prior to the end of World War II, but Hong Kong and Taiwan see themselves as very close. [DELETED: They both favor the Cantonese dialect of the Chinese language over the Mandarin dialect favored by the CCP.] And they both favor freedom and democracy, which the CCP considers to be a Western plot to overthrow the CCP. They're still in shock from 1991 when a pro-democracy movement in the Soviet Union caused the Russian Communist Party to collapse. (Paragraph corrected: Most Taiwanese people speak the Mandarin and Taiwanese dialects. 11-Jan)
The CCP has been trying to convince the people of Taiwan to adopt the supposedly wonderful "one country, two systems" formula used in Hong Kong. The argument appeared to be winning until last year, when it became clear that the CCP was violating the agreement in Hong Kong, with acts that led to the massive street protests. It became clear to the Taiwan people that "one country, two systems" would just lead to putting the island in control of the brutal, violent CCP dictatorship.
A number of analysts have been suggesting that things have calmed down in Hong Kong because of the approaching Taiwan election, since the pro-democracy students in Hong Kong are supporting the re-election of Tsai Ing-wen. This follows a historic victory by pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong in November. ( "25-Nov-19 World View -- Historic Hong Kong elections throw relations with China mainland into disarray")
If this is true, then it means that Saturday's election in Taiwan, if the DPP wins as expected, has the potential to be extremely significant. Two major pro-democracy elections at nearly the same time in Hong Kong and Taiwan may throw the CCP thugs into a panic. This could be even worse if, once the Taiwan election is over, Hong Kong returns to extreme chaos again in the weeks to come.
The CCP leaders in Beijing are hoping that if they remain calm, then the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong will fizzle, and the pro-independence movement in Taiwan will die. As I've said many times, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong cannot end, because all young people in Hong Kong know that if they marry and bring children into the world, then the children will be under the control of the brutal, violent CCP dictatorship in 2047. The same would happen in Taiwan.
If the Taiwan election goes as expected, then the CCP leaders in Beijing are going to be looking ahead to a long 12 months in 2020 where the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and the pro-independence movement in Taiwan will grow. This isn't going to change, no matter how much the CCP thugs pretend to be "nice."
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
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(11-Jan-2020)
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Iran's disastrous miscalculation after 40 years of war
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
On Friday, BBC reporter Rebecca Kesby interviewed Ghanbar Naderi, political editor for Tehran-based Kayhan International newspaper. During the course of the interview, the following exchange occurred:
Rebecca Kesby: "You say this is uncharted territory. But surely the Iranian authorities would have been prepared for this. He [Qassim Soleimani] must have known himself that he was a target."Ghanbar Naderi: "Rebecca, nobody took president Trump seriously. They never thought that when he said he threatened Iran he was going to make good on his threatened promises, but that's exactly what he did. And they were all caught off guard. They never expected General Soleimani to be assassinated in Iraq."
In my previous article, I included a narrative of Iran's actions leading up to Iran's attack on the US embassy in Baghdad. ( "1-Jan-20 World View -- US sends troops to Baghdad to defend embassy from Iranian rioters")
As I explained in that article, this was right out of Iran's playbook, ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution civil war, in which they were propelled to success by the "American Hostage Crisis," taking 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. Since then, the hardline government in Iran has been trying to duplicate that success although, as I've explained many, many times over the years, what works in a generational Crisis era in 1979 will not work in a generational Awakening era today.
Iran's government is in serious trouble. The economy is crippled, and most young Iranians blame that on the foreign military adventures by the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), headed by General Qassim Soleimani. There have been months of massive anti-Iran riots and demonstrations in both Iraq and Iran, and in Iran, Soleimani has overseen the torture, rape, jailing and slaughter of thousands of peaceful anti-government protesters in Iran. So the takeover of the Baghdad embassy was a desperate attempt to repeat the 1979 success, and unite the country against America.
But the takeover was a flop from the start. Some fires were set and some property was damaged, but it fizzled quickly, and within 24 hours the Iraqi armed forces were guarding the US embassy from the Iran-backed attackers. In my last article, I said that this would be the most likely outcome, during a generational Awakening era.
So Iran's entire US Embassy attack didn't last 444 days, but was a failure and a flop within 24 hours.
But it quickly got a lot worse, because Iran made a disastrous miscalculation. As was revealed by the BBC interview with Ghanbar Naderi quoted above, and by other sources as well, the Iranians never took Trump seriously and never believed he would respond and kill Soleimani.
Iran had good reason to believe that Trump would not respond. For 40 years, Iran has been conducting asymmetic warfare against the US and Israel, using its proxies, like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, and its allies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, to attack America and its allies with impunity, while claiming deniability.
Here's a list of some of the most recent attacks in just the last few months:
In each case the Iranians were warned not to repeat these actions, but the warnings were never followed up with actions, and the Iranians came to believe that they could continue such attacks with impunity, and Trump would never respond. As Ghanbar Naderi said, "Nobody took president Trump seriously."
Gen. Qassim Soleimani, Iran's most important military figure, and head of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed by an American airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport on Tuesday.
The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a top Iraqi military figure, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq.
So the Iranians had every reason to believe that the attack on the US Embassy would be met with words and no action. This turned out to be a major miscalculation.
Not only was Soleimani killed, but in fact the entire operation has failed in that it did nothing to unite people the way the Iranian Hostage Crisis did in 1979. In Iraq, the anti-Iran protesters are celebrating and cheering the killing of Soleimani.
In Iran, the feelings are mixed. Soleimani was a hero of the Iran/Iraq war, which killed 1.5 million people, and Soleimani was responsible for killing many Iraqis. Like any war hero, Soleimani is revered by Iranians who lived through that war. But Soleimani has also been responsible for the torture, rape, jailing and slaughter of thousands of peaceful anti-government protesters over the years, and those victims are cheering his death.
So it's hard to see this as anything but a disaster for the Iranians. It resulted in the death of a top general, and did not achieve its objective.
However, the United States has gained quite a bit, and not just from the death of Soleimani. Donald Trump has proven (again) that he's willing to back up his words with actions, something that's almost unheard of from politicians, and that's a message that will be heard 'round the world, especially in North Korea and China.
Pundits and analysts are saying that Iran must now retaliate, and everyone is wondering how they will do that.
They could repeat some of the actions that I listed above -- attacking oil tankers, launching artillery attacks, etc. -- but that would be more of the same, and would not really impress anyone.
The speculation is that Iran will be planning something spectacular -- perhaps blowing up an American embassy or business or something in some other country, or a European target in Europe.
One analyst said that Iran would have to walk a very difficult line in such an action. It would have to be large enough to count as retaliation, but not so large that it would provoke a heavy military response by the United States, perhaps destroying Iran's oil fields.
One other problem for Iran is that various officials in other countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon -- are expressing the hope that Iran will not retaliate on the US in their countries, and any Iran attack on America in one of their countries would violate that country's sovereignty.
Some speculation is that Hezbollah will conduct some terrorist attack against America and Israel. Hezbollah is already poor, because of the anti-Iran sanctions, and crippled from having fought for years in Syria. At any rate, America and Israel claim that they are always ready for a Hezbollah terrorist attack.
Another speculation is an Iranian cyber attack. The US is under constant cyber attacks from numerous countries, so it's hard to see how this would be different.
There will NOT be a war between American and Iran.
This is despite the fact that the media have been filled with screams by hysterical, apoplectic left-wing politicians who claim that we'll be at war by Monday. Any clash would fizzle quickly. Some have said that Trump will be involved in something worse than the Vietnam war and it would last for years. Such is the idiocy of the left. They should spend more time fantasizing about girls, rather than wars.
Almost all reporters and politicians making such claims are so ignorant that they couldn't find Iran on a map, and certainly know nothing about Iran's history.
As I described in my book on Iran, Iran's 1979 civil war was triggered generationally by the 1890 Tobacco Revolt, the 1905-09 Constitutional Revolution, and the 1963 White Revolution in which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was exiled. During all this time, the UK, Russia and later America were bogeymen that various Iranian politicians blamed for their own failures.
As I described in my book on Iran, Iran suffered major humiliating defeats in nationalistic border wars during the 1800s. As a result, Iran takes pride in saying that it no longer invades anyone, and points to the Iran/Iraq war as a case where it was invaded.
However, under the insanity of the Islamic republic, Iran now serves its nationalistic drives not by invading anyone, but by funding other groups to conduct proxy wars, as previously described.
The problem is that, just as the 1800s border wars failed spectacularly, the new proxy war strategy is also failing spectacularly. Instead of getting soldiers killed in foreign wars, Iran is spending huge amounts of money to pay other groups to get their soldiers killed in proxy wars.
This has caused enormous economic problems in Iran, and a lot of people are furious at wasting money on the foreign proxy wars. But Iran's main problem is that the older generations have a hate-America foreign policy, while the younger generations love the West and America, and the size of the younger generations is growing every day.
Iran's last generational crisis war was the 1979 Islamic Revolution civil war, combined with the 1980s Iran/Iraq war, and now the hardline geezers are paying the price for their democide policies following both those wars. Both Iran and Iraq are close to Awakening era climax events, and looks like the most likely result will be for Iraq to eject Iran, and for Iran to eject the hardline geezers. But this is speculation, and it remains to be seen.
However, one thing is certain: Iran cannot now abandon its centuries-old policy of avoiding foreign wars and sponsoring proxy wars.
During the Iraq war, Donald Rumsfeld liked to say that "unknowns" were broken up into two groups -- "known unknowns," where you know that you don't know something, and "unknown unknowns," where you don't have any clue at all.
So it's worth pointing out that there are some known unknowns in the current situation that will reveal themselves in the next few days, and readers may wish to watch for them.
Of course, the biggest unknown is how Iran is going to retaliate. And that will probably remain unknown until it happens.
Iran's future is dominated by the fact that the old hardline geezer survivors of the 1979 civil war are dying off, and the younger generations are pro-American and pro-Western.
At some point, there will be some kind of "regime change," a generational Awakening climax where the younger generation takes control of the government. However, this "regime change" cannot be rushed by Trump or any outsider. It totally depends on internal generational forces.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
The exact scenario that will lead to this world war, but it's always possible that the current crisis will turn out to be a step on the way.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
As I'm writing this late on Friday evening ET, there are reports over airstrikes on a convoy in northern Baghdad. The reports are confusing since some reports indicate that it isn't an American operation.
Sources:
Note: The following articles are useful for facts, but they're all pretty idiotic as far as analysis is considered, since they're almost all predicting a war, which won't happen for the reasons that I've given. Most of the analysis is written by people knowing less than nothing about the history of Iran, and probably couldn't find Iran on a map. In other words, most (though not all) of these articles are written by idiots.
Note: Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings Institute, is referenced in the Fox News article below. O'Hanlon is the only analyst that I know of in Washington who knows what he's talking about, and this has been my opinion for over a decade. He's sometimes anti-Trump or pro-Trump, but he always talks sense -- which no one else does, ever.
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(4-Jan-2020)
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The link to the 1979 attack on US embassy in Tehran
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Happy New Year everyone!
A detachment of 100 Marines are deploying from Kuwait to Iraq to reinforce security at the US Embassy in Baghdad. Hundreds more American soldiers are planned for deployment. The Baghdad embassy is the largest US embassy in the world.
On Tuesday, hundreds of pro-Iranian Iraqis, led by Qais al-Khazali, stormed the embassy. There was some property destruction, and some fires were set, but the embassy was not evacuated.
The US ambassador to Iraq, Matthew Tueller, was away on a trip, but said that he is immediately returning to the embassy. According to one analyst, Behnam Ben Taleblu, "It's important for him to come back because it would be a show of force that America is not going to flinch in the face of this pressure."
The attack on the US embassy was led by Qais al-Khazali, founder of the Iran-backed Shia terrorist group Asaib Ahl al Haq militia, responsible for hostage-taking and the killing of U.S. soldiers. However, al-Khazali's terrorists have also won seats in Iraq's parliament, under pressure from Iran.
The attack was a response to US airstrikes on Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah terrorists that have been attacking American bases with artillery, and on Friday killed an American contractor. (See yesterday's article, "31-Dec-19 World View -- American airstrikes on Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah provoke international fury")
According to al-Khazali: "Americans are unwanted in Iraq. They are a source of evil, and we want them to leave."
For months, there have been massive anti-Iran protests in Iraq, threatening to completely distabilize the Iraqi government which is mostly dominated by Iran. Leaders of these protests on Tuesday made it clear that they do not agree with al-Khazali, and that their protests had absolutely nothing to do with and had no relation to the attacks on the US Embassy.
As usual, reporters with the mainstream media stumbled over themselves in a rush to make one idiotic statement after another.
The NY Times was heavily criticized after it called the US embassy attackers "mourners" in an idiotic tweet: "Hundreds of Iraqi mourners tried to storm the United States Embassy in Baghdad, shouting 'Down, down USA!,' in response to deadly American airstrikes this week that killed 25 fighters."
Chris Murphy is a 46-year-old Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Two months ago I heard him on giving a speech on al-Jazeera that was so idiotic that I wrote an article on the Generational Dynamics forum 23-Oct-2019 World View: The stupidest person in Congress - Chris Murphy. The occasion was a speech where Murphy blamed the deep historic split in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) between Saudi Arabia and Qatar on Donald Trump. The concept is so idiotic that al-Jazeera just played the sound byte without saying a word about it.
Now Chris Murphy is blaming the attack on the US embassy in Tehran on Donald Trump: "Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East. No one fears us, no one listens to us."
It's not surprising that a NY Times reporter would say something so dumb as to call the Shia terrorists "mourners." Most of these reporters are kids out of college where they majored in women's studies or sociology, following years of declining SAT scores, and most of them probably couldn't find Iraq on a map.
But I'm singling Chris Murphy out because he says unbelievably stupid things even though he's been on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee for six years, and should know better. He's supposed to be an expert. He's supposed to be making American foreign policy. But he's an idiot. This goes we'll beyond ignorance into sheer stupidity.
In 2006, the Congressional Quarterly and the London Times conducted a survey of Mideast experts (Democrats and Republicans), and found that they couldn't answer simple questions like whether al-Qaeda was a Sunni or Shia organization. (As I recall, most thought they were Shia.) You know, I really do despair that the country is being run by total idiots. And the "experts" in China are also idiots. But this is why we're headed for World War III.
There's a larger picture here. There are a lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, like Murphy, who believe that if any event occurs anywhere in the world, then it occurred because either the President of the United States did something or didn't do something.
What Generational Dynamics says, and what has been proven over and over again, is that major events in the world have absolutely nothing to do with the US president except as a target of convenient political blame.
There are deep-seated hatreds in the Mideast going back millennia, and they keep bubbling to the surface every few decades in the form of a war. In particular, despite what Murphy says, the split in the GCC had nothing to do with the president, and the attack on the embassy is based on Iran-Iraq animosity unrelated to America, and closely related to the extremely bloody and vicious Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s.
In yesterday's article, I wrote that it seemed likely that the attacks by Kataib Hezbollah on American bases were done purposely to bait the United States, and force a response. Since the US has no choice but to respond to a military attack on its base, especially when an American is killed, the attack achieved that purpose.
Despite all the mainstream media nonsense, Iran is deeply in trouble. In recent months, there have been thousands of anti-government protesters in Iran, and thousands of anti-Iran protesters in Iraq. This is increasingly a threat to Iran's control of Iraq's government, and even a threat to the Islamic regime inside Iran itself.
As I've said many times over the years, the standard playbook in Iran is to repeat the Iranian Hostage Crisis that took place in the context of Iran's civil war in 1979. At that time, Iranian terrorists stormed the American embassy in Tehran, making the terrorist leadership of Iran into international heroes.
The people in the leadership in 1979 were young and fun-loving, willing to slit somebody's throat on a bet. Today those leaders are very old geezers, still willing to split anyone's throat, but now desperate to hold onto power. And like a person who tries to relive the most exciting erotic experience of his childhood, the old geezers in Iran are trying to trying to relive their fun-loving attack on the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.
One of the terrorist leaders of Tuesday's attack, Abu Alaa Al-Walai, leader of Kata'ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, tweeted the following:
"The popular mobilization forces, more accurately the mobilized people, surrounded today the embassy of evil in Baghdad and will soon surround the camps and headquarters of the U.S. killers that are spread all over the Iraqi lands. ...[The demonstrators will go further to surround] the embassies of [America's] tails and submissive countries, [including Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain].
The siege of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran back in 1979 extends to today's siege of the embassy in Baghdad, 2019. It summarizes the history: Allah will bring victory to those who support Him."
Notice two things about this statement. The obvious one is linking Tuesday's embassy attack to the 1979 embassy attack.
But also notice the reference to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. These are the members of the GCC opposing Qatar, and they're also heavily involved in opposing the Iran-supported Houthis in the Yemen War. So Tuesday's attack on the US embassy touches on many deep divisions among the Mideast countries.
So now, based on multiple analyst descriptions, we can put together a more complete narrative of Tuesday's attack on the US embassy:
Iran and Iraq are still in a generational Awakening era, and the most likely scenario now is that these anti-embassy attacks will fizzle fairly quickly.
Once again, Happy New Year everyone! However, the decade doesn't begin until 1/1/2021, so don't celebrate that yet.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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(1-Jan-2020)
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Iran may have purposely baited the Americans to make the airstrikes
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Sunday, US forces conducted airstrikes against five facilities in Iraq and Syria belonging to Kataib Hezbollah (Hezbollah Brigades). The locations included weapon storage facilities and command and control locations.
Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah (KH) is a different militant Shia organization than the Lebanon Hezbollah organization that is usually in the news, but both organizations are puppets of Iran and the militant Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The airstrikes were in retaliation for numerous KH artillery strikes on American military bases in Iraq, particularly for a strike on Friday on a US base in Anbar province in western Iraq, killing a US Army contractor, wounding four US armed forces members, and two members of the Iraqi Security Forces. Over 25 KH members were killed.
When ISIS was defeated in Iraq two years ago, the US pulled out most of its troops, leaving behind 5,000 troops at the invitation of Iraq's government to aid and support the Iraqi security forces as they search for and clear ISIS sleeper cells hiding in the deserts. One of these ISIS clearing missions coincided with the US airstrikes against KH.
During the war to eject ISIS from Iraq, US forces fought alongside the Iran-backed Shia Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), since the mostly Sunni Iraqi army soldiers did not want to fight against the Sunni ISIS fighters. After ISIS was defeated, some PMF fighters became Kataib Hezbollah (KH), and have been using violence to force the US to leave Iraq.
Kataib Hezbollah on Monday sought to justify the artillery strikes killing Americans. According to KH spokesman Mohammed Mohieh on Monday:
"We are warning the United States as we've warned before -- that their illegal presence means that they're standing against the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi people have the right to confront them with all types of resistance."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said:
"What we did was take a decisive response that makes clear what President Trump has said for months and months and months was that we will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy."
According to reports, the US warned the Iraq government half an hour before the planned airstrikes, and they said, DON'T DO IT, but the US did it anyway.
The Iraqi army is supposed to protect American bases from attacks by KH and the PMF. There have been numerous attacks in the past, although Friday's was the first where an American was killed. After each attack, Iraq promised to investigate the attack and determine what happened. According to analysts, the PMF are deeply embedded in Iraq's legislature and government, and so the "investigations" have gone nowhere although everyone knows which organization is responsible for the attacks.
After the airstrikes, Iraq's prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi issued a statement saying that the American attack on the Iraqi armed forces as an unacceptable vicious assault that will have dangerous consequences. His reference to the "Iraqi armed forces" reflects the fact that many of the PMF units have been incorporated into Iraq's army after defeating ISIS, and therefore the airstrikes targeted Iraq's army on Iraq's soil.
Not surprisingly, there have been the usual chorus of outrage against the United States for the airstrikes from the usual stellar peace-loving world community members as Iran, Russia and China.
Pundits have been speculating on the consequences and outcome of the American airstrikes.
Some pundits have speculated that this is just the first step in a planned American action against Iran, possibly a war.
Others have speculated that the IRGC and KH will now have to retaliate against the Americans and that, once again, this will lead to war.
Neither of those speculations seems particularly likely.
However, it's possible that the airstrikes will further destabilize Iraq's government. Iraq has been facing massive anti-Iran and anti-government protests, as I've described several times. (See "29-Nov-19 World View -- Spiraling bloodbath in Iraq, as anti-Iran and anti-government riots spread")
Most of protesters have been objecting to Iran's influence in Iraq, blaming Iran for Iraq's impoverishment. Most of the protesters are from the predominantly Shia southern Iraq, and are young kids who are well aware that their grandfathers and grandmothers were attacked, raped, tortured, and killed by Iranians during the Iran/Iraq war.
A couple of analysts have suggested that the KH attacks on American bases were ordered by Iran purposely to bait the Americans into conducting exactly the kind of airstrike that occurred, so that Iran could unify the Iraqis against the Americans.
This would be typical of Iran's playbook. During the 1979 Iran civil war, the clerics were able to unite the Iranians by taking over the American embassy in Tehran and keeping the Americans hostage (the Iranian Hostage Crisis). Since then, as Iran's younger generations have grown increasingly pro-Western and pro-American, Iran's hardline geezer leadership has been desperately using one trick after another to achieve the same result. What they've discovered, as I've described many times, is that what works in a generational Crisis era fails in a generational Awakening or Unraveling era, and today, most Iranians today see through these desperate attempts by Iran's leadership.
Although the press is describing the KH attacks and retaliatory airstrikes as a conflict between the US versus Iraq and Iran, it's really a conflict between Iraq versus Iran, replaying some of the bitter, violent clashes of the 1980s Iran/Iraq generational crisis war.
The United States has played the role of Policeman of the World since the Truman Doctrine was announced in 1947. Whenever the US plays policeman, it has always received blame for not doing it right, or for doing it for the oil. Today, we're hearing pundits blame the problems in the Mideast on the US because the US has been withdrawing from the Mideast. Presumably these people believe that we should somehow intervene between Iraq and Iran in the current mess. I'm sure that would go well.
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(31-Dec-2019)
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The genocide and ethnic cleansing continue in Idlib, Syria
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we've been reporting several times this month, the war in Libya has been heating up. There are two governments in Libya. The western government of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Khalifa Haftar, has been moving east and attacking the internationally recognized Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.
The war is increasingly a proxy war. Haftar's LNA is backed with weapons and warplanes by Egypt and United Arab Emirates, while Qatar has been supplying weapons to the GNA. In recent months, Haftar's LNA is being helped by troops from the Wagner PMC Mercenary Group, the private army of Russia's president Vladimir Putin.
Turkey has joined Qatar on the side of the Tripoli-based GNA, and last month Turkey and Libya signed an agreement whereby Turkey would supply weapons to the GNA and also, if asked, would supply ground troops to the GNA.
Well, GNA prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj has formally asked Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to send ground troops.
Erdogan really doesn't want to send Turkish troops to Libya, since that would be unpopular among the Turkish people, but he promised so he has to. So he's apparently found the ideal solution.
Erdogan has been working with anti-Assad rebel groups in northern Syria, so he's going to ask some of those rebels to go to Tripoli to fight against Haftar in the name of Turkey. Apparently the incentive is that each of the rebels will receive $300 upon signing the contract in Syria, and will receive $2,000 per month in Libya.
So that should make it truly a proxy war. It won't be Libyans fighting Libyans. It will be Syria's anti-Assad rebels, provided by Erdogan, fighting against Russia's Wagner mercenaries, provided by Putin.
Whether either side in this proxy battle is competent enough to win remains to be seen. However, the potential escalation in fighting is raising concerns. In Italy, which was Libya's colonial power once upon a time, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is strongly opposing Turkey's intervention and is calling for an internationally supervised no-fly zone in Libya. "A no-fly zone too can be an instrument for achieving a goal: the immediate cessation of hostilities."
I guess that's true, but let's recall that in 2011 the Libyan war took hold when the Arab League called for an internationally supervised no-fly zone in Libya. History may repeat itself.
The massacre of innocent women and children by Syrian and Russian warplanes, including some reports of chemical weapons, along with Syrian ground troops, is continuing in full force.
In just the last month, the number of people who have been forced from their home has reached a quarter million. Most are headed north, wanting to cross the border into Turkey, and from there travel into Europe. So far, Turkey has kept the border closed. But the assault on Idlib, with 3.5 million people, shows no sign of slowing, and Turkey may not be able to keep the border closed when hundreds of thousands more try to push through.
Here's a statement by Raed Al Saleh, head of the White Helmet humanitarian group:
"It seems that 2019 was the year the international community and the UN completely abandoned Syria and politicians have even run out of words of condemnation.My biggest fear as the year comes to a close is for the attacks to intensify further, causing new waves of displacement because there is nowhere left for people to run to. Every olive tree has become a tent and every camp has exceeded its capacity ten times over.
I still cannot understand how the world’s most powerful nations can meet those horrors with silence and inaction."
That statement is actually funny. He's complaining because almost nobody cares about the Holocaust going on in Idlib. Actually, there are three Holocausts going on today that almost nobody cares about, all targeting Sunni Muslims: China's genocide, ethnic cleansing, and enslavement of over a million Sunni Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs in East Turkestan (Xinjiang Province), Buddhist Myanmar's (Burma's) genocide and ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslim ethnic Rohingyas, and Bashar al-Assad's genocide and ethnic cleansing of his Sunni Muslim political opponents in Syria.
There are several Holocausts going on today, and nobody cares. Actually, nobody cared about the Nazi-Jew Holocaust while it was going on. To care about a Holocaust while it's actually going on is too politically painful, because the politicians, the trolls, the defenders, the acolytes, the deniers, the cheerleaders, the propagandists, and the collaborators all benefit from the Holocaust, the genocide, the slaughter, and will protect it. It's only after it's over that nobody stands to benefit, and then the wise men can stand up and say, "Never Again!"
So Raed Al Saleh should stop whining just accept the fact that there's going to be a bloody massacre of almost unimaginable proportions in Idlib. After it ends, he can go on TV and join the chorus saying "Never Again!"
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(29-Dec-2019)
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Turkey's Erdogan threatens Greece and Europe with Idlib refugees
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As Syria's sociopathic monster president Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, continues to escalate his assault on the 3.5 million Arab Sunnis in Idlib province, including about 1.5 million children. Among those 3.5 million people, there are some 70,000 anti-Assad rebels.
According to some reports, Assad's strategy is to attack markets, residential neighborhoods, schools and hospitals in order to kill as many women and children as possible, and force the rest to flee towards the border with Turkey.
According to reports, some 120,000 civilians have abandoned their homes and are fleeing north towards the border with Turkey. Then, according to these reports, al-Assad's ground forces can move into the villages that have been deserted by these civilians and supposedly the only ones left are that men who are fighting against al-Assad.
In a speech on Sunday, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey is already hosting 3.7 million Syrian refugees. For the past three years, Turkey has had an agreement with Greece and the European Union to block Syrian refugees from leaving Turkey. Turkey has mostly kept to that agreement, while the EU has reneged on most of the commitments it made.
Erdogan on Sunday said that Turkey cannot handle a "new refugee wave" from Syria, and that the new influx will be felt by Greece and "will be felt by all European countries." Most Syrian refugees want to go to Europe anyway, and the implementation is that Turkey will no longer try to prevent them from doing so.
In the past, Russia and Turkey have agreed that Idlib will be a de-escalation zone, or a ceasefire zone. All those agreements about ceasefire zones were never more than covers for further further assaults by Syria and Russia. But now Assad has reached the Idlib deescalation zone, so Russia's support for Assad makes Russia Turkey's enemy.
Russian officials are claiming that they are working for peace in Idlib, but Russian officials never tell the truth except by accident. So far, it's impossible to determine what Russia's plans are in Idlib, whether to help Assad or to stop al-Assad. We'll probably know within the next few months, but al-Assad has always made it clear that he plans to take control of Idlib and exterminate the 3.5 million Arab Sunni civilians living there, so I would consider it unlikely that Russia will stop al-Assad's genocide and ethnic cleansing.
As we reported last week, the war in Libya is also escalating. ( "21-Dec-19 World View -- War in Libya escalates as Tripoli receives military aid from Turkey")
Turkey had promised weapons and military advisers to the government, but during the last few days, the Tripoli government has made a request for ground troops from Turkey.
There are two governments in Libya. The internationally recognized Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, and the renegade Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Khalifa Haftar.
Haftar has been trying for three years lead his Libyan National Army to defeat the Tripoli government, with little success. During the last few months, Russia's president Vladimir Putin has made his private army, the Wagner PMC Mercenary Group, available to Haftar, and now they are leading the military effort to defeat Tripoli.
And so, as in Idlib, Russia and Turkey are on opposite sides of the battle, and, as in Idlib, Russian officials are claiming that they're negotiating for peace.
As I wrote in 2015, Turkey and Russia have been bitter enemies for centuries, and have fought numerous generational crisis wars. ( "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars".)
Any alliance made between the two countries today could only be a temporary marriage of convenience. Turkey is so thoroughly isolated in the region that it needs support from Russia. Russia is totally duplicitous and appears to be playing all sides to see which one wins.
As we reported in last week's article, there was a second agreement signed by Libya and Turkey on the same day as the military agreement: A maritime agreement that claims a shared exclusive economic zone (EEZ) consisting of a 200-mile wide strip that splits much of the eastern Mediterrean between them.
The claimed region is rich in oil and gas, and makes the Libya-Turkey agreements much more important than Turkey merely helping out a friend in Libya. If the maritime agreement could be upheld, it would mean a great deal of energy money pouring into Turkey's coffers.
The agreement is almost certainly illegal, as the claimed region overlaps regions historically belonging to Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Egypt and Israel. Furthermore, it would block a planned Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum agreement signed by Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece earlier this year, along with a planned pipeline that would carry natural gas to Greece and Italy.
Putting all this together, you have:
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these are additional tensions that keep surging in this generational Crisis era, adding to numerous tensions elsewhere, including Hong Kong, the South China Sea, Kashmir, India, Pakistan, and South America.
In the 1990s, when the Silent generation was running the world, a small clash would almost always be quickly settled. Today, with the Gen-Xers running the world, a small clash could escalate into a larger war. With all these tensions and clashes occurring around the world, at some point one of them will escalate.
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(26-Dec-2019)
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This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The assault by the Syrian regime and Russia is continuing to escalate, as I described several days ago. ( "19-Dec-19 World View -- Escalated bombing by Syria, Russia in Idlib sends tens of thousands to Turkey border")
Massive bombardments by Syrian and Russian warplanes have continued. The United Nations has condemned "a well-documented pattern of attacks against civilians and infrastructure." This pattern involves the use of powerful barrel bombs particularly targeting masses of women and children, including attacks on schools, marketplaces, maternity hospitals and other hospitals, and residential neighborhoods.
According to the UN, tens of thousands of civilians are fleeing for their lives by traveling north towards the border with Turkey. There are 3.5 million civilians in Idlib, and as the Syrian - Russian assault continues to escalate, it's expected that several hundred thousand will travel to the Turkey border, where they either be slaughtered like fish in a barrel, or else they'll force themselves into Turkey.
There's been another change in the last couple of weeks, with the introduction of Syrian regime ground forces. They've been concentrating on highway M5 in order to reopen the link between Damascus and Aleppo. This has gone on while the airstrikes have continued inside Idlib. Presumably, once the M5 highway has been fully reopened, the ground troops will move into the other civilian villages.
For two years, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has been promising a full-scale assault to take control of Idlib, even if it means killing the 3.5 million Arab Sunni civilians, whom al-Assad considers to be loathsome cockroaches to be exterminated.
Unless something changes, we're going to see a major new humanitarian crisis. We're also going to see hundreds of thousands of civilians crowd across the border into Turkey, and from there many thousands will continue into Europe, creating a new European refugee crisis.
In a surprise on Friday in the UN Security Council, Russia and China vetoed the resolution to continue the humanitarian aid program for Idlib, and instead offered an alternative resolution that severely restricted the amount of humanitarian aid.
The reason given is that program is no longer necessary, since Bashar al-Assad now controls enough of Syria that he can provide the humanitarian aid, instead of the United Nations. This is typical of the laughable crap that we're always hearing from Russian officials and Russian trolls.
The current aid resolution expires on January 10. Until then, the United States and other diplomats are going to be negotiating with the Russians to try to get the existing program extended.
This veto makes it pretty clear that the Syrian regime and Russia are now going all out to take control of Idlib, no matter how many millions of civilians are killed. Ironically, it won't end the war, since there are still many pockets of anti-Assad Sunni Arabs across Syria. Furthermore Turkey is in control of some of Syria's territory, and the Kurds are in control of a large part of eastern Syria, as can be seen in the map in my last article on Idlib.
It's pretty clear that al-Assad is going to finish up his massive genocide and ethnic cleansing of his Sunni Arab political opponents. Does anyone care except people who are paid to care?
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(22-Dec-2019)
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Turkey-Libya maritime agreement threatens Egypt, Greece, Cyprus
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The ongoing civil war / proxy war in Libya escalated sharply on Friday as warplanes from the renegade government bombed targets in the capital city Tripoli, as well as Misurata and Sirte.
The internationally recognized government is the Government of National Accord (GNA), with headquarters in the capital city Tripoli, in western Libya, led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. On Thursday, the GNA and Turkey announced that Turkey would be supplying the GNA with weapons, military advisors and, if requested, soldiers.
The renegade government is headed by General Khalifa Haftar, who defected from the internationally recognized government in 2014 and formed a government in eastern Libya in Tobruk, known as the Libyan National Army (LNA).
The bombing of Tripoli and the two other cities began after the announcement that Turkey would be supplying military aid to the GNA. Haftar also issued an ultimatum that all GNA militias must pull out of the three cities by Sunday evening. Haftar announced on Friday that his forces were making "pre-emptive airstrikes against three separate locations near Tripoli that were expected landing points for Turkish military forces."
GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj asked Turkey, the US and several European countries to come to their aid.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin said on Thursday said that he was "in contact with all regional parties to try and end the conflict in Libya."
It's been known for several months that the Wagner Group, Vladimir Putin's "private" militia, has been operating in Libya in support of Haftar. Putin has used Wagner in Syria, Ukraine and Central AFrican Republic when he wants to intervene militarily, but maintain deniability by not using the Russian army directly. (See "7-Nov-18 World View -- Suspicions grow about Russia's Wagner PMC mercenary group in Central African Republic")
On Friday, Russia's Foreign Ministry said that the "possible deployment of Turkish troops in Libya is a source of worry" because it "could trigger a reaction from neighboring states."
It's unclear what will happen when Haftar's deadline passes on Sunday evening, but there is certainly a possibility of a much larger conflict.
The ongoing civil war / proxy war in Libya is about to be escalated as the Government of National Accord (GNA) in western Libya in Tripoli has accepted Turkey's offer of military help. The GNA, headed by prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj, is the government officially recognized by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union, and is militarily supported by Qatar, Italy, the Muslim Brotherhood, and now Turkey.
Libya's civil war began in 2011 with the "Arab Spring" that was triggered by the death of a food vendor next door in Tunisia. There were widespread riots in multiple Arab countries in Spring 2011, including Libya, where there were hundreds of thousands of Libyan refugees pouring into neighboring countries, and thousands more crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. With a growing bloodbath in Libya, the leader Muammar Gaddafi threatened to kill all protesters, and crush any enemy, with mass slaughter. With Libya's civil war destabilizing the entire region, the Arab League unanimously requested the UN, the US and Europe to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, to keep Gaddafi from bombing and killing civilians. Nato implemented a no-fly zone, but the conflict in Libya continued until Gaddafi was killed.
In the aftermath, Libya became increasingly lawless and ungovernable. Libya is a land of hundreds of militias, all competing with one another for money and power. The United Nations attempted several times to set up a stable government. The latest attempt is the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is currently the government internationally recognized by the UN, US, the EU, and particularly by Libya's former colonial power, Italy. It is also an an Islamist government supported by Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood.
However, in May 2014, General Khalifa Haftar defected from the government and joined a group of anti-government militias who claimed to be fighting Islamist terrorists. He was supported by Egypt's General Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2013. Haftar was an ally of Muammar Gaddafi in the 1969 Libyan revolution, but he turned against Gaddafi in the 1980s, and fled to the U.S. where he apparently became a citizen living in Virginia and became a CIA asset. He returned to Libya after the 2011 war. Haftar set up his own capital city in Tobruk in eastern Libya, where he formed the Libyan National Army (LNA), and backed by many former military officers as well as militias tied to the cities of Benghazi, Tobruk and Ajdabiya in the east and Zintan in the west.
Starting in 2014, Haftar's forces moved west with the intention of defeating the GNA government in Tripoli and taking control. Haftar was supplied with weapons and backed by warplanes from Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Since then, Qatar and UAE have been supplying weapons to the opposing sides, the Islamists and secularists, respectively, in Libya, making it a proxy war. However, the war has continued with neither side being successful in landing a decisive blow.
But now Turkey is joining Qatar in supplying weapons and military advisors to the internationally recognized Islamist Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. So far, this is only advisors and weapons, but not troops. We'll have to see if this results in a victory by either side, or if there's a major escalation.
Yes, Dear Reader, there's more.
The military agreement under which Turkey is now providing weapons, advisors and possibly soldiers to Libya was signed on November 28.
On the same day, the two countries also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on "Delimitation Of The Maritime Jurisdiction Areas In The Mediterranean." In this second agreement, Libya and Turkey agreed to the boundaries of the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of each country within the Mediterranean Sea. The result is that they've created a 200-mile wide strip between their countries that they claim they own as their shared EEZ, and which are rich in minerals, oil and gas.
However, Egypt, Greece and Cyprus are pointing out that their own EEZ regions supercede and conflict with the claimed Libya-Turkey EEZ regions. In particular, the Libya-Turkey EEZ regions interfere with a gigantic gas field off Egypt's coast, and with a planned pipeline between Israel and Cyprus.
However, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan says that on the basis of his country’s occupation since 1974 of Northern Cyprus, he might lay claim to all waters around Cyprus.
There have already been verbal threats of war between Greece and Turkey over oil and gas exploration around Cyprus, and those threats may increase as a result of this new agreement between Libya and Turkey.
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(21-Dec-2019)
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The complex ménage à trois relationship - Syria, Russia, Turkey - under stress
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The United Nations is condemning the escalated bombing by Syrian and Russian warplanes of civilian targets in Syria's northwest province, Idlib.
The bombing has substantially intensified since the beginning of November. Bashar al-Assad's warplanes are specially targeting hospitals, schools, residential neighborhoods and marketplaces in order to kill as many women and children as possible, whom he considers to be cockroaches to be exterminated. Al-Assad is using barrel bombs, which are large barrels filled with explosives, metal, and sometimes chlorine gas, ammonia and phosphorous.
According to Turkey's media, about 110,000 civilians have been forced to leave their homes, as 12,000 of them are headed for Turkey's border, presumably with the intention of crossing.
The numbers are staggering. A million Syrian refugees have come to Europe, mostly by crossing through Turkey. Turkey itself hosts 3.7 million Syrians who fled al-Assad's violence in the past. Idlib is home to 2.4 million residents, but they've been augmented by 1.1 million additional Syrians who arrived in Idlib to escape al-Assad's violence in earlier target sites like Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa. Of the 3.5 million civilians in Idlib, it's estimated that about 70,000 of them are members of al-Qaeda linked al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) later renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS, and then renamed again to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
For two years, al-Assad has repeatedly said that he considers all 3.5 million residents of Idlib to be terrorists, and that he plans to take control of Idlib, presumably exterminating many or all of those 3.5 million "terrorists." This would create a huge humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands more refugees pouring across the border into Turkey. Many of them would then go on to attempt to cross into Europe.
With the sharp escalation in bombing of Idlib by Syrian and Russian warplanes since the beginning of November, it appears that a full scale assault is likely to begin soon.
Syria's Idlib province has been out of the news for several months now, since the world has been focused on the REALLY important stuff like Brexit and impeachment.
But Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and his Russian puppetmaster Vladimir Putin have been using the time and their respective warplanes for increasing attacks on civilians in Idlib province, including missile attacks on markets, hospitals and schools.
A full-scale attack on Idlib has been expected for a couple of years, but apparently al-Assad has been held back by Russia as part of the complex ménage à trois relationship connecting Syria, Russia and Turkey.
Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the objective of Shia/Alawite Bashar al-Assad is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of all his Sunni Arab political enemies. His father Hafez al-Assad, fought an extremely vicious and bloody ethnic civil war with that ethnic group in the 1980s, and now al-Assad wants to finish the job with his own "final solution." (See "1-Dec-18 World View -- Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria")
So al-Assad's objective in Idlib is to do the same kinds of things that he's previously done in in other regions like Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, where he used barrel bombs on hospitals, schools, marketplaces and residential neighborhoods, along with chlorine gas and Sarin gas, in order to clean out and exterminate the three million Sunni Arabs in Idlib, whom he considers worse than cockroaches.
Russia's objective is to keep control of its two military bases in Syria -- the Tartus naval base and Hmeimim airbase. Russia lost all its Mediterranean military bases in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed, and now Russia desperately want to keep these two in Syria. Russia's president Vladimir Putin obtained control of these two military bases in 2015 in return for saving al-Assad from defeat in 2015, when his army was close to collapse.
Russia also wants to remain friendly with Turkey, because Putin wants to pull Turkey away from Europe and Nato. So Putin has held al-Assad back from an all-out attack on Idlib, because that would send millions of refugees across the border into Turkey.
Turkey's objective is to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Idlib that would send those millions of refugees across the border. Turkey is already hosting 3.6 million refugees that fled al-Assad's previous violence in other regions. Furthermore, in eastern Syria, Turkey is well on its way to setting up a buffer zone in northern Syria along the border with Turkey. Turkey would like to expel all Kurds from that buffer zone, and replace them with some two million Syrian refugees that Turkey is currently hosting.
So now, getting back to al-Assad, he has frequently stated the intention of exterminating what he views are three million cockroaches in Idlib province, and doesn't care about any humanitarian disaster.
In August, al-Assad visited the Syrian army troops in Idlib, and accused Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being a thief, backed by his American master, who steals wheat, petroleum, factories and land from Syria. He again made clear his intention of winning "the Battle of Idlib":
"What Syria has gone through during these nine years can be likened to the chapters of a play prepared and directed and executed by one side, but in each chapter it would have a different main character or actor, and the main actor of the current stage is Erdogan, who was the most successful in being a pawn in the hands of his American master and in being a thief who steals wheat, petroleum, and factories, and now he is trying to steal land. ...The Idlib front is very important, particularly since it was an advanced outpost for them, while the battle was in the east, which aimed at scattering the army, which is why we have always said that the conclusion of the battle in Idlib is the basis for ending chaos and terrorism across Syria."
This suggests that al-Assad's planned assault on Idlib could end up being a conflict between Syria and Turkey.
Vladimir Putin, the third member of the ménage à trois, will have to figure out how to prevent a war from breaking out if Russia is to maintain its influence with both.
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(19-Dec-2019)
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Riots spread across India along Hindu-Muslim fault line
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A proposed bill that appears to discriminate against Muslims has triggered demonstrations and riots in multiple cities across India, including college campuses in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Lucknow, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata (Calcutta) and Mumbai (Bombay). The protests have been mostly peaceful, but there has been some violence, and there is viral video of people attacking peacefully protesting students and beating them. Six people have died in Delhi, about 200 were injured.
The proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) is complex. It allows refugees from three neighboring countries -- Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- to seek citizenship in India.
But there's a requirement: The refugee seeking citizenship must not be Muslim. He or she may be Hindu, Christian, Jain, Parsi, Sikh or Buddhist, but not Muslim.
The reason given for this restriction is that all three of these neighboring countries are "Muslim countries," with majority Muslim populations and Muslim governments. So the CAB is said to provide citizenship to harassed or persecuted religious minorities in the three Muslim countries. The explanation ignores the issue of the Sufis and Ahmadis in Pakistan, who are Muslim, but are still targeted and persecuted.
According to prime minister Narendra Modi, Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are not covered because they have no need of India's protection. He tweeted that the new law "does not affect any citizen of India of any religion."
However, Modi is leader of the Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), and activists are accusing Modi of discriminating against Muslims, and violating India's secular constitution.
This is the second major Indian government decision this year that has triggered protests and complaints of discrimination against Muslims.
In August, India revoked Article 370 of India's constitution. That article made Kashmir, which is a Muslim majority province, a semi-autonomous state of India, allowing some level of self-government. Revoking Article 370 means that Kashmir no longer has a special status, and is now just another state in India, under full control of Delhi. To prevent riots, Kashmir has been on virtual lockdown for several months, with strick curfews and with limited phone and internet service.
These two changes have something in common, at least in the eyes of the demonstrators. Revoking Article 370 means that, for the first time, Hindus will be able to buy property in Kashmir, and Muslims in Kashmir fears that in time Hindus will be in the majority. In the case of the new citizenship bill, some protesters have expressed the fear that an influx of Hindus from neighboring countries will cause some border area, especially in Assam in the northeast, to become Hindu majority in time.
Actually, residents of Assam are protesting the citizenship bill for entirely different reasons. Assam is populated by some 70 different ethnic groups, and they fear that any influx of refugees, whether Hindu or Muslim, will mean that they will lose their ethnic character. Indigenous people in Assam speak Assamese and Bengali, and both groups for years have competed over jobs and resources.
India's previous two generational crisis wars were India's 1857 Rebellion, which pitted Hindu nationalists against British colonists, and then the 1947 Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century, pitting Hindus against Muslims, following the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan.
Today, the survivors of the 1947 Partition War have almost all died off, leaving behind younger generations with no fear of repeating past disasters. Generational Dynamics predicts that there will be a new civil war between Muslims and Indians, or an external war with Pakistan, or both.
The number and belligerence of riots and demonstrations in India have been growing and spreading across the country for several weeks. It remains to be seen whether these demonstrations will fizzle out, or whether they will continue to grow into a much large anti-government rebellion.
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(17-Dec-2019)
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'Afghan Papers' reveal we sent 175,000 soldiers into Afghanistan
without 'foggiest notion' what we were doing
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Washington Post has published a trove of thousands of "Afghanistan papers" that it has obtained from the Dept. of Defense under the Freedom of Information Act. The paper is declaring these to be of historic importance, and is comparing them to the "Pentagon Papers" that roiled federal politics in the 1970s.
Starting in 2014, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) undertook a project to interview hundreds of people, including politicians, analysts, and soldiers, who are Americans, Europeans and Afghans, in a "Lessons Learned" project in order to figure out why nothing has worked in Afghanistan.
Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump have all promised to bring the Afghan war to a satisfactory conclusion, defeating the Taliban, and making the country into a free market democracy. Even today, there are still truly idiotic "peace negotiations" going on in Doha, of all places, between US and Taliban negotiators, but not including Afghan government officials because the Taliban only want to negotiate with the US, but not with the Afghan government. Can you believe this?
The project found that Bush, Obama and Trump have all done the same things. They tried to win the war by not repeating earlier mistakes, or the mistakes of their predecessors, but all this meant was that they made new mistakes. And then, we're all shocked, shocked, shocked to learn from the Afghanistan Papers that the three presidents lied to the American people, always hiding the setbacks, always claiming that progress was being made, always saying that the end is in sight.
This is exasperating to me because I've written many times in the last ten years that the war in Afghanistan CANNOT be won, or even resolved in any meaningful way. And by that I didn't mean that the Nato forces just had to be a little more clever. I meant that it was literally impossible. Mathematically impossible.
I've given the reasoning many times, and I'll repeat it again below. The reasoning is not that difficult, but the problem is that the so-called experts in Washington really don't have a clue. Long-time readers are aware that I learned this in 2006, when the Congressional Quarterly and the London Times conducted surveys of supposed Mideast experts and found that they were idiots. (See "Guess what? British politicians and journalists are just as ignorant as Americans" from January 2007)
I was really shocked at that time to realize that I knew a lot more than the so-called Mideast experts in Washington knew. In a sense it isn't surprising, since I'm a Boomer and went to college at a time when colleges actually taught something. Since then, SAT scores have been falling, and college professors are left-wing idiots who teach the equivalent of women's studies and sociology.
So it's not surprising that I know a lot more about analyzing Afghanistan than the Washington experts do. As I said, the reasoning in the analysis isn't that difficult, but it does contain some logical subleties that are beyond the mental capabilities of the so-called experts who graduated from Harvard or Princeton, where they leave with no clue about the real world.
This "shocking" discovery from the Afghanistan Papers of the total ignorance and stupidity of the so-called experts in Washington is really amazing, when you think that there might be one or two people in the State Dept. or DoD that can figure out what's really going on. But my guess is that such people would be too threatening to the élite "experts" from Harvard or Princeton, and so the people who really know what's going on are given offices in the basement in the boiler room, where they won't bother the élites.
Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.
The Washington Post article quotes Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations. He says the following in 2015:
"We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing. What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction ... 2,400 lives lost. Who will say this was in vain?"
See, this is what I mean. What the hell is going on here??? We're in Afghanistan fighting a war with hundreds of thousands of troops, and the Afghanistan "czar" for Bush and Obama says that "We didn't have the foggiest notion" of what we were doing?
Do you understand the magnitude of this, Dear Reader? We send hundreds of thousands of troops to a war where the don't have the foggiest notion of what we're doing. It's so hideously unbelievable that it's almost hysterically funny.
And if this is happening in Afghanistan, then it's also happening with American policy in the Mideast, in Africa, in Asia, and so forth.
I realize that the regular readers of my Generational Dynamics articles are a lot more intelligent than the so-called experts in Washington. But if you happen to know one of the "experts" on Afghanistan, then please send him a copy of this article. He'll either learn about what's really going on in Afghanistan, or else he'll change his spam filter so that all future e-mail messages from you go into his spam folder.
The Iraq war was a political disaster for Bush until he adopted the "surge" strategy in 2007. Obama and the Democrats ridiculed this strategy until it worked, and successfully ejected AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) from Iraq.
In 2009, Obama was faced with a potential political disaster in Afghanistan. He looked at the success of the "surge" strategy in Iraq, and decided that his surge strategy would be better than Bush's. So he adopted a surge strategy in Afghanistan. He would be even more successful in getting rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan than Bush was in getting rid of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
As I wrote at the time, and have written many times since then, the "surge" strategy was 100% guaranteed to fail in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was a foreign militia led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al-Zarqawi had to import fighters from Jordan and Saudi Arabia because the Iraqis refused to fight. (See "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq" from April, 2007)
So the "surge" in Iraq worked because it had to eject a FOREIGN militia. But that's not true in Afghanistan. The Taliban are NOT foreign. They're radicalized Pashtuns, and Pashtuns are the dominant ethnic group IN AFGHANISTAN. So the "surge" can't eject the Taliban.
And so, Dear Reader, you understand that, don't you? As a reader of Generational Dynamics articles, you're more intelligent than the experts in Washington for whom this concept that AQI was foreign while the Taliban are domestic is much too subtle for the Washington experts to understand.
But that's only one of the reasons why the surge strategy would fail in Afghanistan with 100% certainty.
Iraq's last generational crisis war was the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, where the major groups (Sunnis and Shias) were UNITED in fighting against Iran. So the Sunnis and Shias were also UNITED in ejecting al-Qaeda in Iraq. That's why the "surge" strategy worked in Iraq.
Afghanistan is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. The last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.
Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.
In recent months, there's apparently been a new development. You still have the Pashtuns, who have been aligned with al-Qaeda, and other ethnic groups that loathe the Pashtuns are aligning with ISIS. This is the very early stages of a new civil war.
Now go back and review what General Douglas Lute said in the quote above: That we sent 175,000 troops into Afghanistan without having "the foggiest notion" of what we were doing.
It's this stuff about the Pashtuns and the civil war that the so-called Afghanistan experts don't have "the foggiest notion" about. And it's really not that complicated. You don't even have to know anything about generational theory to understand it.
You understand it, don't you Dear Reader? That's because you're intelligent and well-informed. You can take satisfaction in the fact that you understand why there's been one failure after another in Afghanistan, but that the so-called experts in Washington are too stupid to understand. This is what Lute was talking about.
So now we just have to sit back and watch these farcical peace talks take place in Doha between the US and the Taliban -- because the Taliban refuse to negotiate with the Afghan government!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaha.
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(16-Dec-2019)
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China's confused response to the North Korean threat
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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North Korea on Saturday announced that it conducted another "crucial test" which "will be applied to further bolstering up the reliable strategic nuclear deterrent of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea." This was the second test in the space of a week. The North Koreans didn't announce the nature of the tests, but it's believed that they were tests of an advanced rocket engine of a type that can be used in ballistic missiles.
North Korea has in recent weeks become increasingly belligerent, conducting a series of short-range missile tests and using increasingly belligerent language. The North Koreans have set a deadline of the end of the year for the US to agree to the removal of some or all of the US or UN sanctions unilaterally, without any serious denuclearization steps by the North Koreans.
Not surprisingly, North Korea's rhetoric toward Japan has been especially hostile. Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe responded to a recent missile test by saying, "North Korea’s repeated launches of ballistic missiles are a serious defiance to not only our country but also the international community." North Korea's state media responded by denouncing Japan's prime minister Abe as "an underwit," "the most stupid man ever known in history," and a "perfect imbecile."
On the other hand, Donald Trump last week once again referred to Kim Jong-un as "rocket man," saying that "he likes sending rockets up," but "in the meantime, we still have peace." A North Korean official said, "This naturally indicates that Trump is an old man bereft of patience. As he is such a heedless and erratic old man, the time when we can not but call him a 'dotard' again may come."
U.S. special envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun will arrive in Seoul on Sunday to meet with South Korean officials and devise a joint US-South Korea strategy for responding to North Korea's end of year threat.
For the past two years, since the talks between North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump began with a "charm offensive," North Korea has not tested any nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles. However, it has made numerous tests of things like short-range missiles, which are a threat to South Korea and Japan.
North Korea originally promised that it would denuclearize, in return for agreement by the US to end the UN and US sanctions. Kim Jong-un has used a variety of artifices to trick Trump into removing the sanctions unilaterally, but has not succeeded. These tricks worked with president George Bush in 2008, which was a major humiliation to the US. But Trump has refused to fall for them.
Now, North Korea has set a deadline of the end of this year for the sanctions to be lifted. After two years of charm offensive, but being unable to get the sanctions lifted, the North Koreans now say that they have "nothing to lose" in taking "a new path." They have not said what the new path is, but it's believed that it would be a resumption of nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests.
It seems likely that the "new path" will be devised to take advantage of scheduled elections in America and South Korea, in November and April respectively, to apply maximum political pressure on Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. For example, the North Koreans might simply threaten to begin nuclear weapons testing again unless some or all of the sanctions are lifted.
According to reports, US envoy Stephen Biegun will discuss with South Korean officials a strategy to get the US-North Korea talks started again, in order to avoid a new regional crisis. According to one South Korean official, "In any case, Biegun would try to give an impression that they won’t be manipulated by the North Koreans, while making clear that they want to keep talking."
Normally, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) takes a highly contemptuous anti-American position on almost any subject, but that's not the case with the current situation. The Chinese are as unhappy with the North Koreans as they are with the Americans.
For centuries, Korea has had a vassal or tributary relationship with China. This means that Korea paid China a great deal of money, usually gold and slaves, in return for guarantees of defense from outsiders (i.e., Japan). Although China does not directly govern the vassal, China expects the vassal to do as it's told, and will not hesitate to punish a vassal that disobeys.
North Korea today pays tribute to China not in the form of gold and slaves, but in the form of massive amounts of coal and "workers," both of which are also used to provide financial aid to North Korea.
Relations between China and North Korea took a hostile turn in October 2006, when North Korea began testing nuclear weapons. The vassal North Korea did not do as it was told, and China punished its vassal by agreeing to United Nations sanctions targeting North Korea.
However, China cannot punish North Korea too severely. If China tries to starve North Korea, the result could be a massive refugee flow from North Korea, across the Yalu River, into northeast China, which would be an economic disaster for China.
The reason that China does not want North Korea testing nuclear weapons is simply because such tests provide the US with an excuse to increase its military presence in the area.
The Chinese were particularly infuriated in 2016 when North Korean tests provoked South Korea to reverse a previous policy and agree to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), supplied by the United States military, to protect itself from North Korean missile attacks. The THAAD does not do a very good job at protecting South Korea from North Korean short-range missiles. But what the THAAD system does, through its sophisticated long-range "over the horizon" radar capabilities, is provide early warning to the American military of a missile attack from China.
What China would like is for America to reduce its military presence in the region, which a North Korean missile test would certainly make less likely. Therefore, the Chinese are very unhappy with North Korea's threats.
What the Chinese say they would like is for the North Koreans, the South Koreans and the US to talk, and for everything to settle down, so that American forces can start withdrawing from the region. That's a nice Chinese dream, but it's very unlikely to occur.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(15-Dec-2019)
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Protesters renew their 'five demands, not one less' chants
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Hong Kongers filled the streets on Sunday with a massive peaceful pro-democracy demonstration. According to organizers, the size of the protest was 800,000, although the police estimated 300,000. Unlike other recent protests, the crowd was filled with children and families, and there was almost no violence.
In previous recent demonstrations, protesters have vandalized public buildings belonging to the government or private buildings belonging to mainland businesses. The also blocked streets and shut down the public transit system. This has had the effect, since the protests began six months ago, of bringing Hong Kong's economy to its knees, as the protests became more violent each week.
However, Sunday's protests were like the initial peaceful demonstrations six months ago. Furthermore, activists had called for a citywide strike on Monday, but no such strike occurred.
Pro-democracy demonstrators were apparently placated by the November 24 local council elections, where pro-democracy candidates won a stunning landslide victory, as summarized by the chart above. More than half of the 452 seats switched from pro-Beijing to pro-democracy, giving pro-democratic forces control of 17 out of 18 district councils. The election also saw record high voter turnout with 4.1 million registered voters, a 71% increase since the last election cycle in 2015.
While Sunday's protests were peaceful, it was undoubtedly infuriating to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials in Beijing that many protesters were waving US flags and singing "Glory to Hong Kong."
The original protests were triggered by a proposed "extradition bill" that would have allowed any Hong Kong citizens accused of a crime to be extradited to China with no hearing, where they would be at the complete mercy of the CCP, and its record of torture and indefinite jailing for anything deemed to be political opposition to the CCP.
Hong Kong's leader, Carrie Lam, took several months to agree to withdraw the extradition bill. Some people believe that if she had taken that step immediately, then the protests would have fizzled. But the long delays triggered increasingly strident demands, and the number of demands increased to five.
The five demands are as follows: withdraw the extradition bill completely (this has been accomplished); do not classify past demonstrations as riots; drop all charges against those arrested in relation to the protests; set up an independent commission to investigate the use of force by the police; and call for fully democratic elections for the Legislative Council and the chief executive.
The CCP will never agree to the last two of the demands. If the CCP and Carrie Lam were smart, they would find a way to agree to the second and third demands, as a way of reducing tensions. But as I've said many times, the CCP leaders do one stupid thing after another, and you can be sure that whatever they do in Hong Kong will only make things worse.
Instead, according to news reports, Carrie Lam has found the solution: To increase patriotic education in schools, so that protesters will understand the advantages of Communism.
The fact that CCP leaders even think that this kind of reeducation program could ever work explains how stupid CCP officials are, and why they consistently get everything wrong. This is such an incredibly stupid idea, that only the CCP would think of it. It's like trying to end race riots in the United States by teaching black children in schools how to be more white.
CCP officials do not view "democracy" as a form of government. They view it as an ideology that is opposed to the communist ideology and can bring down the CCP, just as it brought down the Soviet Communist Party in 1991. The CCP view is that they must crush the democracy ideology, or the democracy ideology will crush them.
After the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and the subsequent massacres of thousands of college students by security police, the CCP saw that the use of the democracy "ideology" brought about the 1991 collapse of Soviet communism, and they realized that it might happen to them.
In the 1990s, the CCP launched the Patriotic Education Campaign, a nationalistic propaganda campaign designed to teach school students to reject the "democracy" ideology, and instead to adopt a highly vitriolic form of anti-Japan hatred as the ideology replacing the democracy ideology. As I explained in detail in my book, "War between China and Japan," this vitriolic and nationalistic anti-Japan hate campaign, which has continued to today, is the crucible of the coming war between China and Japan.
At the same time in the 1990s, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics began to take on a whole new and far darker and more sinister meaning. Any criticism of the CCP leadership could lead to torture, rape and jailing. Any serious adoption of any religious "ideology" (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Daoism) would be treated the same way.
So today, the CCP sees the hated democracy "ideology" rapidly gaining ground in Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, they don't know what to do about it since, as stupid as the CCP leaders are, even they realize that a violent response in Hong Kong could trigger a widespread rebellion among Cantonese speakers in southern China, and a military invasion of Taiwan would trigger a war with the United States that they're not yet fully prepared for.
So the peaceful demonstrations this weeked were a welcome respite from the violence, and most people hope that the peace will last a while. However, 2020 promises to be a time of renewed violence in Hong Kong, and the CCP will be running out of options.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(9-Dec-2019)
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Civilians attack UN peacekeeping missions in DR Congo for failure to protect them
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Measles is spreading like wildfire in the Democratic Republic of Congo (CRC). It's believed that 250,000 people have been infected this year alone, more than three times the number in all of 2018, and has spread to all 26 provinces of the country.
More than 5,000 people have been killed. Of those, 4,500 are children.
Measles can be controlled with vaccines, but DRC has a weak health infrastructure, regional wars, escalating violence, and widespread suspicion of health workers. There have been more than 300 attacks on health care facilities in the country this year, with six deaths.
There's a shortage of vaccines, so not all parents who want their children vaccinated can obtain them. Many people live in hard to reach rural areas. Furthermore children require two vaccine jabs to be protected against measles, making the vaccination problem even more difficult.
Although DRC has the biggest measles outbreak in the world today, they are far from alone. There are large measles outbreaks in other countries, particularly in Africa, eastern Mediterranean, and eastern Europe.
Even Western countries in Europe and North America are seeing surges in measles cases. This is blamed on parents in political "anti-vaxxer" movements who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated. This puts the children and the entire community at risk of measles.
In the past couple of months, the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu province in eastern DRC had appeared to be well-contained, as the number of new cases has been falling substantially. Health workers have achieved this by means of aggressive contract tracing of new cases, followed by providing vaccines to people considered vulnerable.
At the beginning of this year, it appeared that Ebola would continue to spread exponentially faster, but since then, the World Health Organization has effectively used new vaccines that have become available to slow the spread considerably.
However, North Kivu is still a tribal war zone, where a Uganda-based group of rebels known as "Allied Democratic Forces" (ADF) have been fighting in eastern DRC against the Congolese army and other rebel groups, to take advantage of the rich mineral resources of the region.
ADF militias and Maï-Maï militias have been attacking Ebola health centers, forcing the World Health Organization (WHO) to close some of them down. This has raised fears that Ebola will once again begin to spread.
As a separate issue, civilian protesters stormed the facilities of the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUSCO). MONUSCO is the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world, with some 15,000 personnel, but has failed to bring peace. The attackers were protesting the fact that MONUSCO had failed to protect them from violence, after ADF terrorists had killed eight civilians last weekend.
Monusco was formed in 1999, and has been so unsuccessful at keeping peace that there are actually calls for it to be disbanded.
A lot of people like peacekeeping forces, even when they do nothing to keep the peace. The UN likes them, because they allow the UN to collect money from Western countries to pay for them. They use that money to increase the sizes of their budgets and staffs. Most of the money is supposed to pay for the soldiers who are sent by member countries to form the peacekeeping operation. However, the governments of the member countries confiscate the salary money, so little of it reaches the peacekeeping soldiers. So a lot of people are making money from peacekeeping operations, even when they do not keep the peace, which is why it's almost impossible to end a peacekeeping operation.
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(2-Dec-2019)
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Protesters demand restructuring Iraq's 'confessional' government
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Increasingly violent anti-Iran and anti-government demonstrations and riots are spreading across numerous cities in southern Iraq. These are generational Awakening era riots following the Iran/Iraq war of 1980-89. The riots are mostly confined to cities in southern Iraq, which is the stronghold of the Shia Muslims, and the rioters are themselves almost entirely Shia Muslims.
So far, there is no activity by Sunni Muslims in Iraq. This is ironic, of course, since Iraq is a Shia Muslim country being attacked by Shia Muslim civilians in Iraq.
There was a bloodbath on Thursday, as 40 protesters were killed and hundreds wounded in the cities of Baghdad and Nasiriyah.
The unrest in Iraq began on October 1, when thousands took to the streets in Baghdad and southern cities. At least 350 people have been killed by security forces, which routinely use live ammunition, bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades to disperse crowds.
On Wednesday evening, there was a dramatic escalation when hundreds of anti-government protesters attacked the Iranian consulate in the holy Shia city of Najaf, setting the building on fire, and replacing the Iranian flag with the Iraqi flag.
This is the second time this month that an Iranian consulate was attacked. Three weeks ago, security forces killed four demonstrators who stormed the Iranian consulate in the city of Karbala.
One could say that Iran is getting what it deserves, since Iran has frequently allowed attacks on foreign embassies in Tehran as an instrument of government policy.
Since the riots began on October 1, demonstrators have been accusing the government of corruption, and have been protesting Iran's massive intervention in Iraq.
Iran's government has been demanding action from the Iraq government to stop the attack on Iran's consulates.
There have been some efforts by Iranian officials to meet with protesters to try to quell the demonstrations. However, this will never go well, because the protesters are young kids who are well aware that their grandfathers and grandmothers were attacked, raped, tortured, and killed by Iranians during the Iran/Iraq war.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi criticized Iraq's government's failure to prevent violence:
"The Iraqi government is responsible to secure safety of diplomatic missions and diplomats in Iraq... Tehran strongly condemns the attack and demands the Iraqi government's firm response to the aggressors."
A statement from the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) suggests that Iran will take action of its own by using the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to control the protesters. The PMF were formed in the past few years and were the principal paramilitary force used to expel ISIS from northern Iraq. However, the PMF are still around, and Iran is threatening to use them to attack the Shia protesters in southern Iraq.
This action by the PMF would certainly raise concerns that the Iran/Iraq war was starting all over again. That can't happen because both Iran and Iraq are in a generational Awakening era, but there could be a brief military clash.
As I described earlier this month, Iraq has a "confessional" form of government. ( "3-Nov-19 World View -- Anti-Iran, anti-government protests spread across Iraq")
The confesssional form of government was set up in both Lebanon and Iraq. Different governmental institutions are assigned, based on the sectarian affiliation or confession. In Iraq, the nation's resources and institutions are divided up among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, to ensure free and equal citizenship.
In terms of preventing new rounds of sectarian violence, the confessional form of government seems to have worked. But unfortunately it makes corruption too easy, since officials in each "confession" have too much control over the funds, with no checks and balances.
The young Iraqis are now calling for an end to the confessional form of government, saying that it has permitted too much corruption. They particularly blame Iran's influence for the greatest amount of corruption.
Needless to say, the corrupt government officials in Iraq who have been using control of money and institutions to keep their cronies in power have no intention of letting this happen. But if the street protests continue and grow, they may have no choice.
The same thing is happening in Lebanon, where there are massive street protests, and calls for an end to its confessional form of government.
Both Iraq and Lebanon are client states of Iran, and these protests represent serious threats to Iran's foreign policy.
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(29-Nov-2019)
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Taiwan's separatists boosted by Hong Kong election
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In what is being described as a historic election, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong's Pan Democracy party have won a massive victory in electing members for local district councils. The elections had a record turnout of 71%, while similar elections in 2015 had a turnout of just 47%. Many of those turning out this time were young first-time voters.
Votes are still being counted. At this time (Sunday evening ET = Monday morning in Hong Kong), the pro-democracy parties have won 201 seats, while pro-CCP parties have won only 28 seats, with 12 seats for independents, out of a total of 452 seats. The other 221 seats have not yet been determined at this time.
Roughly speaking, it appears that pro-democracy parties will control 3/4 of the seats, whereas prior to this election they controlled roughly 1/4 of the seats. So this is a "historic" reversal at this level of government.
There have been some "stunning upsets," with well-established pro-CCP candidates Junius Ho and Michael Tien already losing their seats. These people have been harshly critical of the pro-democracy demonstrations, and have threatened jailing and violence of protesters, even peaceful ones.
In one sense it's only a symbolic victory. The district councils only control such things as parks and taxicabs. They are not as powerful as the city's Legislative Council, which controls the citywide government.
The difference is that anyone is permitted to run for the district council positions, while the only candidates that can run for the Legislative Council must first be approved by the CCP in Beijing. So the local councils are far more democratic, but the Legislative Council is anti-democratic, but far more powerful.
The huge victory follows five months of pro-democracy street protests, mostly peaceful but sometimes becoming violent. The pro-CCP camp had referred to a "silent majority" of voters who who would vote for their candidates, to show their rejection of the violence of the street protesters. But actually, violence worked both ways in this election. Some voted for the pro-CCP candidates because of the street protest violence, but there was also plenty of violence on the other side -- attacks on the peaceful protesters by police and by white-shirt "triad thugs."
These historic upsets are going to "put wind in the sails" of the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and the pro-separatists in Taiwan.
In Hong Kong, pro-democracy activists are now demanding that Carrie Lam finally respond to the five demands that the protesters announced months ago.
The first demand was the withdrawal of the "extradition bill," which would have permitted the CCP to abduct and arrest people in Hong Kong and bring them to the mainland for prosecution. Carrie Lam finally withdrew the bill, but only after several months of equivocation.
During that period, the activists expanded what they wanted to a list of five demands. The five demands are for the withdrawal of the bill, an agreement not to call the clashes of June 12 a riot, amnesty for those arrested on that day, a commission inquiry into allegations of excessive use of force by the police and a push for genuine universal suffrage.
It was thought that the CCP would never agree to any of these demands (except the first), but now activists are saying that the climate must change because of the overwhelming pro-democracy victory in Hong Kong, which refutes the CCP claim of a "silent majority" supporting CCP. The activists claim that this victory forces Carrie Lam to open negotiations on the remaining four demands.
The CCP could do a lot to defuse the situation in Hong Kong by permitting Carrie Lam to open those negotiations with the pro-democracy activists. But that would be the smart thing to do, and as I've written many times, the CCP always one incredibly stupid thing after another. We'll see, but my expectation is that the CCP will do something stupid that will make things worse.
Pro-separatists activists in Taiwan are taking note of the historic election in Hong Kong, and are hoping that they'll affect Taiwan's presidential race in January.
The CCP considers Taiwan to be part of China, and any move to declare Taiwan a separation nation would be an act of secession that would trigger a Chinese military invasion.
Taiwan's current president is Tsai Ing-wen, from the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tsai is known to favor complete independence for Taiwan, although she always uses weasel words in talking about it, so as not to trigger a Chinese invasion. However, Tsai has spoken openly of her support for the protesters in Hong Kong, much to the displeasure of the CCP.
Tsai's opponent is Han Kuo-yu, who is the candidate of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, which favors merging Taiwan with China.
The CCP has been wooing Taiwan for years by saying that Taiwan could have a "one country, two systems" just like Hong Kong, and wouldn't that be wonderful? Tsai’s latest campaign advertisement makes the assurance that “Taiwan will not become Hong Kong”, while calling on voters to reject the “one country, two systems” model.
Thus, Sunday's elections in Hong Kong are thought to favor Tsai's re-election. The reasoning is that voters will see the overwhelming rejection of the pro-CCP candidates as supporting Tsai in Taiwan.
The CCP in Beijing is already close to full-scale panic over what's happening in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Sunday's vote will prove to the CCP that their worst fears and anxieties are coming true, and it may cause them to panic.
As I keep pointing out, the CCP has a record of doing one incredibly stupid thing after another. I don't know what the CCP will do about the situation in Hong Kong or Taiwan, but I can say with certainty that whatever they do, it will make the situation worse.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(25-Nov-2019)
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Uighurs after 're-education': prison, death or enslavement?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The NY Times has obtained a trove of hundreds of pages of leaked top secret Chinese documents containing details about the millions of Muslim Uighurs in East Turkestan (Xinjiang Province) have been rounded up, jailed, and treated harshly. The documents contain top secret statements by Xi Jinping and other top officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The documents say that regions of Xinjiang have been given quotas for the minimum number of Uighurs to be arrested, with the directive to "round up everyone who should be rounded up." Once arrested, full dictatorial powers should be used against them, and they should be punished, even though there was no indication that they committed any crimes. The documents describe how one party official, Wang Yongzhi, was discredited and punished himself because he had objections to the abusive treatment of innocent Uighurs, and didn't round up and arrest enough of them to meet his quota.
The CCP has been conducting violent attacks at members of all non-indigenous religions, including Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. The attacks on Buddhism have been particularly violent and bloody, because of Buddhist presence in Tibet, and on Islam because of Muslim presence in Central Asia.
China's policies towards religions have always been violent, but before Xi's rise to party, the CCP described the terrorist attacks in Xinjiang as the work of a few fanatics. That all changed under Xi, who in essence has declared all Muslims (and, indeed, all Buddhists and Christians) as terrorists.
After a terror attack by Uighur terrorists in July 2014, Xi Jinping called for a “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy."
"The psychological impact of extremist religious thought on people must never be underestimated. People who are captured by religious extremism — male or female, old or young — have their consciences destroyed, lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye."
It's interesting that the leaked documents are revealing that Xi Jinping has found a way to blame the United States for Uighur terrorism in China:
"After the United States pulls troops out of Afghanistan, terrorist organizations positioned on the frontiers of Afghanistan and Pakistan may quickly infiltrate into Central Asia. East Turkestan’s terrorists who have received real-war training in Syria and Afghanistan could at any time launch terrorist attacks in Xinjiang."
Although Xi's comments were addressed to Uighurs, the same policies target Buddhists and Christians as well. In 2013, Xi issued "Document Number 9," which condemned those in the West who criticized China's violent crackdowns on Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims. Then, in April 2018, Xi adopted the "Sinicization of Religion," which triggered a rampage by China's security thugs, destroying Catholic and Protestant Churches, destroying Buddhist statues and temples, and jailing, beating and torturing anyone who tries to practice his religion.
The CCP has identified what it calls the "five poisons" of society that must be controlled or stamped out. These are Tibetans, Uighur Muslims, democracy activists, Taiwanese, and Falun Gong practitioners. These are the guiding principles of China's self-destruction.
However, in practice there are many more "poisons," according to the CCP, including Christians.
Another "poison" to be treated violently are the ethnic Hui people in Gansu province, in the heart of China. The Hui are not separatist, are not violent, are not terrorists. In fact, they're pure Chinese, except that they're not Han Chinese. But they're Muslims, and that makes them hated enemies of the state, and they're now being treated violently by the CCP, just like the Tibetans and Uighurs.
One of the mysteries of China's "re-education" program for Uighurs is: What happens to a Uighur after he's been "re-educated"? I've heard analysts on al-Jazeera and the BBC raise this question, but no one seems to have an answer -- or perhaps they don't want utter the obvious answers.
One analyst last week said that there was evidence that the prison population in Xinjiang prisons was increasing substantially. She opined that the Uighurs were being sent to prison after being re-educated.
Does that make sense to you, Dear Reader? It makes no sense to me at all.
The implication is that a bloodthirsty violent leader, Xi Jinping, ordered the state to spend tens of millions of dollars re-educating Uighurs, and then spend more tens of millions of dollars to pay for their room and board in prison. So that possibility doesn't make sense at all.
Another possibility is that the re-educated Uighurs are being killed. That's possible, since the same satellite photos that revealed the re-education centers also revealed adjacent crematoria. This would indicate the same kind of "final solution" that Hitler used to get rid of the Jews. And it's much more likely a scenario than just putting them in prisons.
However, the issue seemed to be solved in July, when Xinjiang Governor Shohrat Zakir announced that after the Uighurs had received their re-education, they were given good jobs with good incomes. (See my article: "31-Jul-19 World View -- China claims Muslim Uighurs released from concentration camps")
Does that make sense to you, Dear Reader? Actually, it does, as I described in my article. A bloodthirsty leader like Xi Jinping would use this work force of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs to do slave labor for China's military. As I described in my July article, that's what Hitler did.
So, millions of Uighurs (and Kazakhs) have been sent to concentration camps ("re-education centers"). Some were sent to prison afterwards, some were killed in the crematoria, and some were sent to work in slave labor camps.
That seems like the most likely set of scenarios to me. And yet, I've never seen or heard any mainstream media sources even mention killing or enslaving Uighurs.
I continue to be absolutely astonished that, after hearing politicians for decades say "Never again!", referring to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, that there are now three Holocausts currently in progress, in three different countries, all targeting Sunni Muslims:
What's perhaps most astonishing is that even the Sunni Muslim nations -- Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, and so forth -- are not saying anything about the three Holocausts, committing genocide and ethnic cleansing of their own brothers.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(18-Nov-2019)
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Racial division in Latin America
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Bolivia's far-left President Evo Morales resigned on Sunday after nearly 14 years in power as the country's first indigenous president. The resignation follows a heavily disputed re-election on October 20, leading to weeks of riots and chaos.
Bolivia's army generals last weekend called for him to step down, after they fought angry anti-Morales protesters for weeks. On Sunday, Morales resigned on nationwide tv, saying he resigned willingly "so there would be no more bloodshed." He also said that he felt forced to stand down because his supporters and his family near his home in Cochabamba were being harassed, persecuted and threatened.
After resigning, he fled to Cochabamba, which is a stronghold of his indigenous supporters. From there, he has fled to Mexico, where he has been given asylum. Now Morales is calling the situation a coup.
Now the anti-Morales protesters are being met by pro-Morales protesters in the capital city La Paz and across the country. An opposition leader, Jeanine Áñez, has declared herself to be interim president, and has promised new elections.
Moreno's political party, Movement to Socialism (MAS), is evoking the memory of 1960s Marxist revolutionary Ché Guevara. Guevara launched a revolutionary coup in Bolivia in 1965. Guevara's guerrilla movement was defeated by the Bolivian army, and Guevara himself was killed on October 8, 1967, allegedly with the help of the United States. MAS today uses Guevara as a symbol for opposition to United States intervention.
As usual, racism is the dominating factor in Bolivia's society. Society is split between the descendants of the Spanish invaders, along with the mestizos, versus the indigenous groups, led by the far-left indigenous president Evo Morales. According to the CIA Factbook, the first group comprise 68% of the population, while the indigenous people are 20%.
Although the percentages vary, this same kind of European/indigenous split occurs in populations throughout Latin America. This is true of Peru, Chile and Ecuador, which all currently have widespread protests. The same is true of Venezuela.
A common thread running through all these countries is that the European descendant population is market dominant, while the indigenous population, often called Amerindians, is marginalized, with large disparities in wealth and income. Somebody ought to figure out why this always happens.
In Bolivia, Morales has been in power since 2006. The indigenous minority was marginalized under earlier leaders. Morales, the country's first indigenous leader, is credited with substantially improving Bolivia's economy, and particularly reducing poverty substantially among the indigenous population. This of course explains why the population of Morales in the indigenous population goes well beyond racial affinity.
(As an aside, it's worth noting that in this generational Crisis era, there are widespread protests not only in Latin America, but also in countries around the world, including Hong Kong, Iraq, Lebanon, Catalonia, Kazakhstan, Libya and Egypt.)
Today a major regional issue is that Morales is one of the few leaders in the world aligned with the Venezuelan thug Nicolás Maduro, who is flooding the entire region with millions of Venezuelan migrants who are fleeing violence and starvation. In some cases, Morales is deporting Venezuelans back to Maduro and Venezuela to be punished, which is increasing tensions in Bolivia.
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What Morales has done is similar to what I've seen in country after country in Africa. An African warlord comes to power, usually under a constitution that limits him to two terms. But he uses the time in office to take control of the courts and the main institutions, and uses corruption to illegally enrich all his cronies, so that the entire government is tied to him and dependent on him. Their wealth depends on the leader staying in power, and a new leader would expose them to criminal corruption charges and jailing. The leader uses torture, beatings, rape, and jailing of the opposition to make sure that he stays in power. This is standard fare in country after country in Africa.
Evo Morales has been in power since 2006. The constitution prohibited him from running for a fourth term in 2019. In 2016 he ran a national referendum to authorize his running for a fourth term, and he lost the referendum. The constitutional court, which is widely believed to have been corrupted by Morales, rejected the referendum result, so that he could run for a fourth term anyway, in the October 20 election.
It's also widely believed that Morales and his cronies have been corrupting the voting system during the last few years. When the election finally took place last month, the election commission stopped in the middle of counting the votes, when it appeared that Morales was going to lose. They started counting votes again the next day, and then suddenly Morales was winning. Subsequently, the Organization of American States (OAS) did an investigation and found numerous irregularities in the election, so they called for new elections. This lead to the protests and rioting, and Morales' decision to step down.
After fleeing to Mexico, Morales changed his mind and announced that his resignation was forced, and that this was a coup. This is not surprising since, as I described above, there are typically many of his corrupt cronies in government who would be subject to criminal prosecution under a new leadership, and they undoubtedly demanded that he rescind his resignation. Politicians in other far-left Latin American countries -- Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba -- are also calling the resignation a coup, and are demanding that he be reinstated. On the other hand, Brazil, Colombia and the United States are supporting the opposition leader, Jeanine Áñez.
Along with Morales, the next two successors, vice-President Alvaro García and Senate President Adriana Salvatierra, also resigned, leaving a power vacuum in Bolivia. There are fears of more riots and violence and that the army may step in to maintain order.
The situation in Bolivia today is febrile and chaotic, with continuing clashes between European and indigenous factions, and the possibility of greater violence.
Bolivia's history is dominated by its invaders -- various indigenous tribes, then the Incas, and then the Spaniards -- who enslaved them and used them to mine and extract minerals, for shipment back to Europe.
Bolivia gained independence in 1825 with Simón Bolívar's war of independence. The next generational crisis war was the War of the Pacific (1879-1884), where Bolivia lost its entire coastline to Chile, turning it into a landlocked country.
The next generational crisis war began in 1965 with a guerrilla movement mounted from Cuba and headed by Maj. Ernesto "Ché" Guevara, a well-known Argentine Marxist revolutionary. With the aid of U.S. military advisers, the Bolivian army smashed the guerrilla movement, and the crisis war climax occurred on October 8, 1967, when Guevara was captured and killed.
The death of Ché Guevara is still referenced today by Moreno's Movement to Socialism (MAS), and by indigenous activists in general, using it as a symbol for indigenous activism, and for opposition to United States intervention.
There is a serious fault line between the descendants of Spanish invaders + mestizos versus the indigenous groups. The tensions are growing, but I don't expect them to grow into a civil war, because it's too soon.
It's been only 52 years since Ché Guevara was killed, and so there are still many survivors alive today who lived through and remember that climactic battle and don't want to see it repeated. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the "58-Year Hypothesis" applies, which means that a full-scale civil war will not begin before 2025 (1967+58). In the meantime, there will be riots and low-level clashes in the next few days or weeks, but I expect them to fizzle reasonably quickly.
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(15-Nov-2019)
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Confessional governments in Lebanon and Iraq
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the capital city Baghdad and cities across Iraq on Saturday to continue anti-government and anti-Iran protests that began in early October.
In the Umm Qasr port, which is in southern Iraq, south of the city of Basra, hundreds of people were wounded in clashes between security forces and protesters, as protesters set up blockades and burned tires to shut down the port. Operations at the port, which receives the vast bulk of Iraq's imports of grain, vegetable oils and sugar, have been at a complete standstill since Wednesday.
The protests are similar to those that I described last week in Lebanon. ( "21-Oct-19 World View -- Massive anti-government street protests paralyze Lebanon") Like Lebanon, Iraq is in a generational Awakening era, like America in the 1960s, following the Iran/Iraq war (1980-88), which was a Persian-Arab war. Today's protests are not sectarian (anti-Sunni vs anti-Shia) but are anti-government, and particularly against massive government corruption.
Most generational crisis wars in the Mideast occurred in the context of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
Iraq's generational crisis war was the 1920 Great Iraqi Revolution, which was a watershed event in Iraqi history. It was not a sectarian (Sunni vs Shia) war. Instead, the entire country Sunnis, Shias, tribes and cities were united in fighting the British colonists.
Sixty years later, in 1980, Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein launched an invasion of Iraq. This followed Iran's revolution in 1979, and Saddam thought Iran would be weakened for an easy conquest. Instead, Saddam's invasion united the Iranians.
The Iran/Iraq war was one of the longest and bloodiest wars of the 20th century. Chemical weapons and large-scale missile attacks were used. There were millions of casualties and refugees in both countries. This war had a profound influence on the entire Mideast.
Since then Iran has attempted to gain political influence in Iraq. The biggest opportunity came in the last three years, when ISIS was occupying much of Iraq, and Iraq's army was failing to eject them. Iran trained and funded Shia militias called the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), which played a major role in expelling ISIS from the country. This gave Iran a great deal of influence in the country.
There were generational crisis wars throughout the region in the 1970s and 1980s. The Iran-Iraq war pitted Arabs against Persians. Lebanon's civil war was related to Syria's civil war, which pitted Arabs against Shia/Alawites who, in turn, were aligned with Iran. Iran has enormous political influence in Lebanon through its puppet militia Hezbollah, which is the military arm of the Shias in Lebanon.
Iran and Syria came out of their respective civil wars with extremely bloody repression of their enemies. In Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1988 ordered the torture, rape and massacre of tens of thousands of political prisoners and political enemies. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is still conducting genocide and ethnic cleansing of his political enemies, the Arab Sunnis.
In my recent article on Lebanon, I described how Lebanon's constitution was written to split control of government institutions (prime minister, president, parliament) into three sects, Sunni Muslim, Maronite Christian, and Shia Muslim, respectively. The purpose of this form of government was to prevent the kind of violence that has occurred in Iran and Syria.
It turns out that this is called a "confessional system of government," where power is divided based on sectarian affiliation or confession. So after the dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted by the Americans in 2003, Iraq adopted a confessional form of government for the same reason.
The confessional form of government has worked fairly well in both Iraq and Lebanon, because it's prevented the kind of massive violence that's been occurring in Iran and Syria.
However, rioters in both Iraq and Lebanon are protesting against their governments for the same two reasons: First, corruption, the sectarian-based divisions give the sects too much financial power over their respective institutions, and allow them to steal as much money as they like. And second, Iran has too much influence, and the country is serving Iran's needs instead of its own.
Both countries are in extreme poverty, and protesters are giving both of those reasons as the cause.
Iran's dream for several years has been full control of the "Shia crescent" -- Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, including an open highway from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea.
This is all falling apart now, with anti-Iran protests in Iraq and Lebanon, and loss of influence in Syria.
Winston Churchill's history of World War II describes the obvious "Gathering Storm" that preceded the war, making it apparent that war was coming.
Today we see a similar Gathering Storm -- regional wars, trade wars, surging xenophobia and nationalism in almost every nation, and in recent months a surge in street protests. Just today, Pakistan had to be added to the list of countries experiencing major anti-government street protests.
The street protests in Chile have been going on for months, and have forced Chile to cancel plans to hold two international conferences. One was an economic conference where Donald Trump and Xi Jinping were supposed to attend and sign a trade deal, and the other was a climate change conference.
As part of its coverage of the Chile street protests, the BBC did an interesting story on the spread of global protests.
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The BBC noted that the number of countries with large protests has grown dramatically in the last few months.
The BBC report provided a one or two sentence summary for each country. Here they are (my transcription):
All of the protests are based on worsening economies, and that's happening because the growing debt bubble days have largely ended, and so there is much less money in the world than there used to be, meaning that there are many more people who cannot get money to buy food with.
The world is being held together with duct tape and rubber bands, and at some point a rubber band will snap, and that will lead to the first declaration of war, and an escalating cycle of wars.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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(3-Nov-2019)
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Backlash grows against Chinese surveillance and AI equipment
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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US vice president Mike Pence on Thursday delivered a speech harshly criticizing the entire list of CCP activities that the West considers to be criminal -- jailing Uighurs, jailing priests, destroying churches, IP theft, forced technology transfer, cyber-theft, South China Sea crimes, and dozens more. Pence also criticized the hypocrisy of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Nike.
Pence's speech comes shortly after the US banned Chinese surveillance companies. The speech triggered harsh replies from the NBA and China.
Once upon a time not so long ago, everybody loved China. America saved China in both world wars. Americans considered China to be a strange and wonderful place after World War II, despite the brutal violence of the Communist dictator Mao Zedong. The Tiananmen Square massacre was considered an aberration, and trade disputes were rarely understood by the public.
So China was invited to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, based on commitments that it would open up its economy to outsiders, and would follow all the WTO rules and international law. Western leaders believed that membership in the WTO would change China for the better, encourage it to become a valued member of the international community, and abandoning the hostile policies of the past. None of that happened. Instead, China used the WTO as a tool to make suckers out of Western nations, ignoring WTO rules and playing victim, but angrily insisting that Western nations obey all WTO rules. China always made it clear that WTO rules and international law apply to everyone else but not to China, and signed agreements apply to the other parties but not to China.
Things seriously began to change with the rise of Xi Jinping in 2011. In 2013, the CCP issued "Document Number 9" which listed evil "anti-China forces," including the following. Some of these "evil" forces named in the document include democracy, human rights, civil society, neoliberalism, and a free press. The reason the CCP gives why all of these Western values are considered "evil" is because they are interpreted to be weapons undermining the authority of the CCP.
These "evils" permeated every aspect of CCP policy under Xi. Specific hostile acts were all performed under this doctrine, including illegal activities in the South China Sea, violent crackdowns on Christians, Buddhists and Muslims, the arrest and enslavement of millions of Uighurs and Kazakhs, and crackdowns on free press and democracy movements in Hong Kong.
This doctrine and these acts have steadily eroded the goodwill that people in the West have had for China. Increasingly, Westerners view China with hostility and suspicion.
One of the most dramatic signs of the growing hostility to China is that George Soros, who for decades has been an enormous admirer and supporter of the CCP, has now turned against it, because the Social Credit Score system is turning China into the worst police state in world history.
Pence's speech on Thursday focused on several of China's illegal practices:
"The Communist Party in China has arrested Christian pastors, banned the sale of Bibles, demolished churches, and imprisoned more than one million Muslim Uighurs. ...Last July, the director of the FBI told Congress that of his agency’s 1,000 active investigations into intellectual property theft, the majority involve China. American enterprises continue to lose hundreds of billions of dollars each year in intellectual property theft. ...
And today, China’s Communist Party is building a surveillance state unlike anything the world has ever seen. Hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras stare down from every vantage point. Ethnic minorities must navigate arbitrary checkpoints where police demand blood samples, fingerprints, voice recordings, and multiple angle head shots, and even iris scans.
And China is now exporting to countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East the very same technological tools that it uses in its authoritarian regime: tools that it’s deployed in places like Xinjiang; tools that it’s deployed often with the help of American companies.
And Beijing has also smashed the barriers between civilian and military technological domains — a doctrine that China calls “military-civilian fusion.” By law and presidential fiat, companies in China — whether private, state-owned, or foreign — must share their technologies with the Chinese military."
China's massive buildout of surveillance equipment is reaching into every country of the world, as China collects information on billions of people, inside and outside China, which it puts into its huge big data database.
There's a backlash growing against Chinese-made surveillance products on multiple levels.
Surveillance cameras have been around for years, and few people were concerned, as long as the cameras were used in places like banks and busy intersections, and as long as nobody ever reviewed the video except a human being.
Public alarm over the general surveillance issue has been increasing as the public has become aware that not humans but computers are increasingly reviewing the video, using artificial artificial (AI) technology that provides facial recognition capabilities, matching faces up to records in databases, allowing the software to track any individual in real time.
This comes amid increasing global awareness that the China's military is using these same devices for surveillance in cities and countries around the world.
This awareness was boosted by a shocking demonstration in August when a researcher was able to prove that millions of surveillance devices marketed by Dahua Technology, and installed around the world, contain a secret backdoor that can easily be hacked, and used for eavesdropping. That means that if you have one of these devices in your war room, board room, or bedroom, even when the audio is disabled, someone knowing the IP address of the device can access the device remotely and secretly listen in to conversations and sounds in that room. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZTza1BiahQ
A Duhua spokesman was quoted as saying that the company "conducted an emergency investigation, and the preliminary results are that this vulnerability does not exist after refactoring—some end-of-life products may have security risks. We have a plan to repair the related products." Wow! That's nice!
The Dept. of Commerce announcement blocked eight Chinese companies, and they can be divided roughly into two groups -- surveillance cameras that capture video and audio and transmit it to the central server over the internet, and artificial intelligence (AI) products that interpret the video and audio being captured, particularly with facial recognition and identification. The eight Chinese companies are as follows:
It's believed that America and the West have been most successful in developing advanced AI algorithms for surveillance and recognition, but Chinese companies have a big advantage because of their huge data base to use for training and testing purposes.
Ironically, China desperately needs surveillance data from around the world for a completely different reason: testing its facial recognition software. All the Han Chinese ("yellow race, black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin") have similar facial characteristics, and the Chinese need millions of faces of people from all countries and races to test its facial recognition software.
It's frightening how successful China has been at using these surveillance and AI technologies not only to imprison and enslave millions of Muslim Uighters and Kazakhs, but also to continually identify and track all activities of every Chinese citizen, as well as millions of people outside of China.
Furthermore, a number of incidents have been reported that are increasingly alarming people about the use of surveillance equipment, including equipment made by other manufacturers.
During the last four years in Ecuador, China has installed a vast surveillance system, known as the ECU-911 system, that can be used to spy on all Ecuadorian citizens.
The China-made surveillance equipment contains as many as 4,200 cameras, monitored by 16 centers and around 3,000 employees. The system lets the government track phones, and may soon be upgraded with facial-recognition capabilities. The equipment was manufactured by two Chinese firms, Huawei Technologies and China National Import & Export Corp (CEIEC).
As with all Chinese-made network products, we have to assume that the Chinese military is able to access the surveillance and data, and correlate it with the data in their own databases.
In London, the developer of the prestigious King's Cross 67-acre 50-building Estate was forced to abandon plans to deploy facial recognition technology throughout the site. It had already been used at a busy intersection for two years, but attempts to extend it to the entire site met with sharp opposition and a debate about the ethics of facial recognition.
Surveillance technology in London goes much deeper than King's Cross. Hikvision is generating millions of dollars in annual revenue by supplying its surveillance cameras for use on the British parliamentary estate, as well as to police, hospitals, schools, and universities throughout the country. According to Adm. Lord Alan West, "It’s rather like being able to get a Mata Hari into each office."
The same kind of thing is true in Australia, which may be more exposed to continual surveillance and spying by China's military than any other country in the world. Australia has hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras, mostly made by Hikvision and Dahua, have been installed in local council offices, at schools and universities, on buses, in shopping centers and thousands of other public spaces across Australia. The surveillence equipment is at use at every level of government, from some of the most sensitive federal government agencies, all the way down to suburban councils.
Australian officials have already been raising alarms about the infiltration of Chinese people in the organs of Australia's government, at a time when tensions are growing sharply because of China's illegal activities in the South China Sea.
According to Fergus Hanson of Australia's Strategic Policy Institute:
"It's a real dereliction of duty to have them in military bases.But even on the street you've got the potential to inadvertently contribute towards Chinese espionage activity by providing real time information about the situation on the ground, all over the world, and in collective terms, quite an important data feed to China."
There was even a backlash in Beijing, of all places. Parents and students at Tsinghua High School were furious when it was discovered that the school had installed surveillance cameras in all the male toilets. Officials were forced to remove the cameras.
In the last month, public hostility in America to China took another huge leap forward, because of an event that's almost impossible to believe. The event involved the National Basketball Association (NBA), which is hugely popular in China, with millions of Chinese following the games and purchasing related products, including Nike sneakers. Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet supporting the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. The CCP has blocked Twitter in China, so the tweet would never be seen by Chinese, and would be quickly forgotten. But the CCP lashed out at the tweet, considering it an insult to the Chinese people, and canceled several NBA games and public events in China.
These events have substantially heightened the public's hostility to the CCP, and awareness of the CCP's dictatorial policies. Many commentators pointed out that the CCP uses violence to control public opinion in China, and is now trying to use economic weapons to extend its control of public opinion to everyone in the world.
The hostility to China has increased even further when basketball star LeBron James made comments supporting the CCP, and condemning Daryl Morey as being "uninformed." This has caused an enormous reaction in the American public. People who previously didn't know how to spell Hong Kong or who thought it was a kind of chop suey suddenly became "informed" about what's going on in Hong Kong.
LeBron's support for the CCP is particularly ironic because of his extremely vocal and vitriolic criticisms of Donald Trump in the past, including this January 18, 2018, tweet, quoting Martin Luther King: "-Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere- Our Lives Begin To End The Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter- #ThankYouMLK50"
These events are important for three reasons.
First, these quickly moving events show how quickly simple events can escalate. This is literally how world wars have begun.
Second, these events particularly affect public attitudes towards Hikvision and other companies that are being banned. The trend has been a growing public anxiety towards surveillance equipment in general. But the massive use by China's military of AI-enhanced surveillance equipment to violate human rights in all of China, particularly in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, has focused public hostile attitudes toward surveillance equipment to hostility to surveillance equipment from China in ways we haven't seen before.
Third, these events show how easy it is for Americans to turn against each other when money is involved. Generational Dynamics predicts that once a "regeneracy event" occurs, such as a missile attack on American soil, then political differences will be dropped, and the country will unite behind the president.
Mike Pence's speech on Thursday heightened the controversy over the NBA and Nike. Pence called out the NBA and Nike for kowtowing to China:
"And far too many American multinational corporations have kowtowed to the lure of China’s money and markets by muzzling not only criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, but even affirmative expressions of American values.Nike promotes itself as a so called “social justice champion,” but when it comes to Hong Kong, it prefers checking its social conscience at the door. Nike stores in China actually removed their Houston Rockets merchandise from their shelves to join the Chinese government in protest against the Rockets general manager’s seven-word tweet, which read: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”
And some of the NBA’s biggest players and owners, who routinely exercise their freedom to criticize this country, lose their voices when it comes to the freedom and rights of the people of China. In siding with the Chinese Communist Party and silencing free speech, the NBA is acting like a wholly owned subsidiary of the authoritarian regime."
Pence's criticism of the NBA for hypocrisy and kowtowing to China infuriated former NBA star Charles Barkley, who has substantial money at stake. He responded as follows:
"Vice President Pence needs to shut the hell up, number one. All American companies are doing business in China. I thought the criticism of commissioner Silver and LeBron James was unfair. Daryl Morey — who I like — he can say whatever he wants to. But there are consequences.I don’t understand why these holier-than-thou politicians — if they’re so worried about China, why don’t they stop all transactions with China? President Trump has been talking about and arguing with tariffs for China for the last two years. I think it’s unfair for them to do all their business in China and just because this thing happens try to make the NBA and our players look bad. All American companies do business in China. Period."
Several commentators have noted the hyprocrisy that Barkley feels free to criticize Pence (and Trump) in the most hostile terms with impunity, but is demanding that no one be permitted to criticize China, so that he can make money.
China's Foreign Ministry responded to Pence's speech as follows:
"The most important criteria on China's human rights situation is whether the Chinese people are satisfied. As the country advances in leaps and bounds, the Chinese people have an increasingly stronger sense of happiness and fulfillment. Our government attaches high importance to protecting and advancing human rights. During the past over four decades of reform and opening-up, China's human rights cause has seen tremendous progress that has been recognized by the world. The Chinese people now enjoy unprecedented rights and freedoms. This is a fact that no one can deny except for those obsessed with prejudice. Nearly 200 million Chinese practice various religions, of which more than 20 million are Muslim. Chinese people of all ethnic groups enjoy full religious freedom in accordance with law. ...China's foreign policy is aboveboard as always. China pursues an independent foreign policy of peace, a path of peaceful development, a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind. China never advances its own interests at the expense of others, and its development will never pose a threat to any country. China never seeks hegemony or expansion. That's exactly why we have so many friends all over the world. Some people's attempts to wantonly label China or drive a wedge between China and other countries will never succeed. Such attempts will bring nothing but shame on those people themselves.
While arbitrarily accusing and lecturing other countries, Mr. Pence and his like have turned a blind eye to serious domestic problems in the US and tried to cover their own political malpractice by smearing other countries to divert public attention in the US. From the PRISM program to frequent, severe shootings, from extensive racial discrimination to obvious wealth gap, from arbitrary sanctions and use of force on other countries to wanton withdrawals from international agreements and treaties, there are so many cases in point proving that the US has become notorious for lack of moral principles and credibility. We advise some people in the US to carefully examine themselves in the mirror, get fully aware of their own problems and mind their own business. They should cease talking utter nonsense and stop playing mutually detrimental tricks as soon as possible."
It's always exasperating to read the CCP's comments on anything, which rarely have anything to do with the truth.
She says, "China never seeks hegemony or expansion." But China in recent decades has annexed Tibet and East Turkestan, and slaughtered, tortured, beat, raped and imprisoned millions of Buddhists and Muslims. Today, China has illegally annexed the South China Sea, in violation of internation law, and repeatedly lied about it. The CCP considers the Chinese to be the Master Race, immune from international law.
And she says that racial discrimination in America is as bad as China's human rights record, even though we are not beating, torturing, locking up and jailing millions of Mexicans and blacks.
I heard one analyst at MSNBC wonder why China would ever sign a trade deal with the US after that speech by Pence. The answer is that China is desperate to end the sanctions, which have disrupted China's relentless path to war.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(26-Oct-2019)
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Brief generational history of Lebanon
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
There have been four days of massive anti-government protests in Beirut, Lebanon's capital city, and in cities across Lebanon. In the country's second largest city, Tripoli, in northern Syria, and in the southern port city of Tyre, the protesters waved the Lebanon national flag, and changed "revolution" or "the people demand the fall of the regime."
These were the largest street protests in Lebanon since 2005, when Rafiq al-Hariri, the father of the current prime minister Saad al-Hariri, was killed by a massive terrorist bomb in Beirut. The assassination was blamed on Syria and on the fact that Hariri opposed Syria's influence in Lebanon. The massive street protests at that time led to the Cedar Revolution, causing the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.
Most popular protests in Lebanon have been highly sectarian, aligned with the Sunnis, the Shias or the Christians. However, the massive 2005 protests cut across all the sectarian blocs.
The same is true of the protests in the last four days. They've been almost completely peaceful, with some violence on the margins. Protesters have been united in criticizing the massive corruption in the government of Lebanon, and the resulting poverty, and a ballooning deficit.
The protests were triggered on Thursday by a proposed fee equal to the equivalent of 20 cents on WhatsApp calls. Making a phone call using Lebanon's antiquated phone system is expensive, so people have increasingly used WhatsApp to make the calls. But the fee proposal triggered the massive protests and the proposal was quickly withdrawn by a desperate government in the hope of ending the protests.
However, the protests continued and grew, and the government is now even more desperate, as it appears that the country will be paralyzed by the protests on Monday. The Maronite Christian Lebanese Forces party is withdrawing from the government, along with its four ministers. The country's main labor union has threatened a general strike.
Hariri has demanded that each government office implement reforms by Monday evening, including a 50% cut in salaries of numerous government officials. Protesters have been mocking these demands, since they know that the government officials will never agree to cut their own salaries. However, if the reforms are implemented, then they will unlock $11 billion in Western donor pledges and help avert economic collapse.
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Although the objectives of the protests are serious, the protests themselves are often playful, unlike, for example, the protests in Hong Kong. That's because Lebanon is in a generational Awakening era, and so the protests are similar to those in the US and Europe in the 1960s. Hong Kong and China are, by contrast, in a generational Crisis era, which means that their protests are likely to lead to full-scale war, which is not likely in the case of the Lebanon protests.
Lebanon had two generational crisis wars during the last century. The first was part of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908-22).
The second was Lebanon's civil war (1975-90), mainly between Muslims versus Christians, killing some 200,000 people. A major event occurred on September 15-16, 1982, when Maronite Christian militias massacred 2-3,000 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. This act has haunted Lebanon to this day.
After a generational crisis war ends, the belligerents enter a generational Recovery Era, and the survivors of the war take steps to try to guarantee that nothing so horrible should ever happen again.
I want to take a quick side trip to describe what happened in Iran and Syria.
I've described many times how a country that goes through a generational crisis war that's also an ethnic civil war almost always follows the same pattern. The ethnic group that won the civil war takes power, and the oppresses and marginalizes the people in the losing ethnic group, sometimes resorting to extreme violence.
Iran had a crisis civil war, the Islamic Revolution of 1979, followed by the Iran/Iraq war. The leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, wrote a new constitution that gave himself complete dictatorial powers, in order to prevent a new anti-government rebellion. In 1988, Khomeini ordered the torture, rape and massacre of tens of thousands of political prisoners and political enemies. That's fairly typical of a country's Recovery era following an ethnic crisis civil war.
Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war between the Shia Alawites versus the Arab Sunnis. That war climaxed in February 1982 with the destruction of the town of Hama, which killed or displaced hundreds of thousands. This ended the war, but today, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad is still conducting genocide and ethnic cleansing of his political enemies, the Arab Sunnis.
Lebanon's Recovery Era acted somewhat differently. Instead of putting one group (the Shias, the Sunnis, the Christians) in charge of the government, which might have led to the same kind of violence as in Iran and Syria, they tried to write the constitution to balance the three sects.
Lebanon's constitution requires that the three main offices be occupied by specific sectarian groups:
This sectarian separation seems to have served Lebanon pretty well, at least as compared to Iran or Syria. But protesters see it as a source of the corruption causing the economic problems.
Each of the sects is in control of a major set of government institutions, controlling the funding and salaries for those institutions. Protesters are being quoted as saying that they can't get any government services without going through the relevant religious sect. Furthermore, each sect skims money from the institutions that it controls. Protesters are calling this the reason for Lebanon's extreme poverty.
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(21-Oct-2019)
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Will there be a war between Turkey and Russia?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In a surprise announcement by Turkey and the United States on Thursday, Turkey agreed to a temporary ceasefire in its invasion of Syria, and to end its invasion completely if the ceasefire holds for five days.
According to reports, Turkey's president Tayyip Recep Erdogan was visibly angered by being forced to accept this ceasefire, in the face of harsh economic sanctions and threats of even more sanctions by the Trump administration.
However, the agreement specifies that Turkey will get some of what it wants, as well. The US will cooperate with Turkey to set up the buffer zone that Turkey has been demanding for five years, a strip of land in northern Syria, 32 km deep and 150 or 300 km long.
The US also agrees to destroy the heavy weapons that it provided to the Kurds to fight ISIS, and to transport the military Kurdish YPG out of the buffer zone.
Turkey is hosting 3.6 million refugees who fled across the border into Turkey to escape the violence. Erdogan has demanded to relocate 2 million of those refugees back into Syria in the buffer zone, but it's unclear that they will ever be able to accomplish this.
The rest of this article analyzes Turkey's invasion of Syria from the point of view of a Generational Dynamics analysis, and conclude with some forecasts of scenarios about what will happen next.
For almost two years, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been massing troops and forces on the border with Syria, in preparation for an invasion to establish a "safe zone" or "buffer zone," a strip of land 32 km (22 miles) wide in northern Syria, along the border with Turkey.
The Kurds in northeast Syria have made it clear that they want to create a Kurdish state named "Rojava" along the border. Erdogan has made it clear for years, that Turkey will not tolerate having 60,000 armed Kurds permanently located on the border with Turkey, after Turkey has been fighting an internal war with Kurd separatists and terrorists for three decades.
Turkey claims that hundreds of Turkish citizens living near the border have been killed in frequent terror attacks by the Turkestan Workers' Party (PKK) and al-Qaeda terrorists crossing the border from Syria. Erdogan has been furious for years that America and Europe haven't supported his efforts to end these terror attacks.
A major objective of Erdogan is to push the 60,000 armed Kurds and al-Qaeda terrorists back below the buffer zone.
Erdogan has also been furious for years that Europe won't provide support for any of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees that Turkey has been coasting. These 3.6 million refugees include 300,000 Kurds. The Europeans for five years have been telling Erdogan to wait, because all these 3.6 million refugees will soon return to Syria. Ironically, Erdogan's plan for the buffer zone is to provide a region for the refugees to return to.
So Erdogan has plenty of reasons to feel a growing fury, which is why he's been massing troops on the Syria border, in preparation for an invasion to create a buffer zone. Erdogan has held back because there has been an American "tripwire" force of about 26 soldiers in observation posts in Syria along Turkey's border.
On Sunday, October 6, Donald Trump spoke on the telephone with Erdogan. Apparently Erdogan told Trump that the invasion was occurring whether the "tripwire" was in place or not. Trump announced that the 26 soldiers in the tripwire would be withdrawn.
After Trump's announcement the invasion began. There were 15,000 soldiers in the Turkish troops, but apparently most of them are Syrian Arabs in the Syrian National Army (SNA). In the past there have been two previous Turkish incursions into Syria, and in both cases it was SNA fighters that did most of the fighting, with Turkey providing support.
This week, there were immediately reports of the Turkish forces massacring Kurds on the ground. There was a video of an SNA Arab torturing and killing a Kurd, and bragging about it.
There were reports that Turkish/SNA forces are going farther south than was needed for the buffer zone. There were reports that Turkish airstrikes were forcing thousands of Kurdish families to flee their homes to the south. However, these reports come from media are overwhelmingly hostile to Turkey, and so it's possible that these reports are huge exaggerations. At any rate, it's impossible to verify them at the present time.
In the last 15 years, I've read about and written about hundreds of incursions, military actions, invasions, and so forth, all around the world. In some cases, the incursion is carefully controlled and organized. These are typical of non-crisis wars.
Other incursions are highly emotional, organic, uncontrolled and disorganized, and that seems to be the case with Turkey's invasion of Syria. These are typical of actions taken at the beginning of a generational crisis war.
Turkey's invasion of Syria shows all the signs of being organic and uncontrolled, not fully under the control of Turkey's armed forces command. In particular, the Arabs in the SNA appear to be responsible for the massacres, and are taking actions that are not controlled by the Turkish command.
So does this mean that Turkey and the Kurds are headed for a full-scaled generational crisis war? Absolutely not.
We have a recent example that illustrates what's most likely to happen.
The best recent analogy would be Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon to attack Hezbollah. Israel panicked when two Israeli soldiers were abducted near Lebanon's border, and conducted a highly emotional, organic and uncontrolled invasion of Lebanon. The war was a disaster for all involved. After a few months, the war had run its course, with nothing accomplished except to destroy a lot of Lebanon's infrastructure in airstrikes, and displace a lot of Lebanese from their homes.
The invasion of Lebanon fizzled because Lebanon was in a generatinal Awakening era. Syria is also in a generational Awakening era, so Turkey's new invasion is almost certain to fizzle unless, as we'll describe later, Russia's armed forces confront Turkey.
So, as I've been writing for the last few days in the Generational Dynamics forum, it's more likely than not that Turkey's Syria incursion will end in a few weeks. Erdogan made a statement a few days ago that the incursion will stop when it has created a buffer zone 400 km wide and 35 km deep, and that statement is credible, though it may have been superceded by Thursday's ceasefire announcement.
Turkey's invasion of Syria appears to be a lot more uncontrolled than analysts had expected, suggesting that there's more going on than a simple action to create a buffer zone, to protect Turkey from PKK and al-Qaeda "terrorists." In fact, Turkey's last generational crisis war was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish independence following World War I, and so Turkey is very deep into a generational crisis war. And so it's not surprising that parts of the invasion have become disorganized and uncontrolled, at least for a while.
Bashar al-Assad is a Shia/Alawite, and Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war between the Shia Alawites versus the Sunnis, including the ethnic Turkmens, climaxing in February, 1982. So there's a great deal of animus between the Alawites and the Turks. However, survivors of that Syrian civil war are still alive, and they have no desire for another bloody uncontrolled crisis war, so they will make sure that it stays controlled, despite al-Assad's genocidal tactics. So Syria is in a generational Awakening era, like Lebanon during Israel's 2006 invasion, so it's likely that Turkey's invasion of Syria will fizzle over a furious period of two or three months.
A new Syrian civil war began in 2011, but it's an Awakening era war, so it's well-controlled. It should have fizzled within a few months in 2011. But it was propelled by the sociopathic monster Bashar al-Assad, who personally pursued the war by targeting political enemies, innocent women and children in markets, schools and hospitals, using barrel bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas.
Even so, it's been clear from the beginning that the Syrian people themselves did not want to fight. By 2015, al-Assad himself announced publicly that he was going to lose the war, and he begged for help, which he received from Russia, in return for establishing two Russian military bases, Tartus naval base and Hmeimim airbase).
So today, here's a (partial) list of all the groups fighting in Syria:
Most of these are small groups formed on an ad-hoc basis for a specific purpose.
The Kurds themselves are not a monolithic group, as described by a member of the Generational Dynamics forum, an American soldier who fought in Iraq and Syria:
"John, When people talk about the Kurds, they are mistaken. The “Kurds” are not a monolithic group. That is a general title that has many “diverse” groups and that term is used by the lazy media. I dealt with the “Kurds.” There are radical communists “Kurds” that will snuff out the Islamic/Wahhabi “Kurds” in a heartbeat. Many are armed families that are organized into “battalions” that would be a glorified light infantry company/platoon in a western army. A tiny few hate the Turks and love killing them. Many live in Turkey and have no problems with the Turks. Like the Afghans, they will align with the big “man” for self-preservation of the tribe/ethnic group. The Turks will make nice with the “Kurds” for now; it is the least bloody way forward, since the “Kurds” make a sizeable minority in Turkey proper."
So this makes the point that there are dozens of Arab, Kurdish, Alawite and Turkish groups fighting in Syria. Each group has its own agenda, its own hatreds, its own objectives, its own allegiances, and its own set of tricks to use on Americans to get their support.
This chaos should be kept in mind by those politicians who claim that the US should send troops into Syria to defend our "allies," the Kurds. Which of those dozens of groups would the American troops be aligned with?
If you look at all the list of groups fighting in Syria, you'll see that almost all of them are small ethnic or ad-hoc groups with various agendas. But not all.
In that list, there are six national armies actively fighting: Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Lebanon-Hezbollah, United States.
Of these six, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon-Hezbollah have armies in generational Awakening eras, with little will to fight an expanding war.
Two of them, Turkey and Russia, are in generational Crisis eras. These two countries are historic enemies, and have fought many generational crisis wars with each other. One of those was the Crimean War of the 1850s, which was disastrous for both sides, but feelings from the Crimean war have been revived in recent years because of Russia's illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea, and expulsion of the Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group from Crimea. And there's also tension over the Bosphorus, which is controlled by Turkey, but is heavily used by Russia (and other nations) as the passage between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. And of course, tensions were extremely high after Turkey "accidentally" shot down a Russian warplane in November, 2015.
Turkey and Russia know how strong their mutual xenophobia has become, and they're both aware that a small conflict could lead to a major war, which neither side wants. So Turkey and Russia have been making Herculean efforts, through the "Astana process," to stay out of each other's way, to prevent an action that could lead to a major war. This is typical of countries in a generational Crisis era, who know that a miscalculation could lead to a major generational crisis war, but instead force themselves to compromise rather than go to war. Eventually, however, compromise becomes impossible, and small incidents escalate into full-scale war.
Since 2011, Russia has been fully engaged in supporting al-Assad's genocide and ethnic cleansing of his Arab Sunni political enemies, including Turkic groups such as Turkmens. But Turkey has let Russia and al-Assad have their way, even including chlorine and Sarin gas, and has not interfered, having agreed to the farcical "de-escalation zones" in the "Astana process," because they realize that not letting the Russians get their way would mean full-scale war.
Al-Assad and Russia have used the de-escalation zone agreement to conduct full-scale genocidal war on all the people in every de-escalation zone except one. In Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, where Bashar al-Assad has used barrel bombs on hospitals, schools, marketplaces and residential neighborhoods, along with chlorine gas and Sarin gas, forcing people to flee to Idlib.
The remaining de-escalation zone is Idlib, in northwest Syria, on Turkey's border. Al-Assad would like to go in an exterminate all three million Arab Sunnis living in Idlib, including women and children, all of whom are "terrorists" according to al-Assad, and Russia would like to help him, but everyone knows that would be opposed militarily by Turkey, and could lead to a Russia-Turkey war. So there's a continuing tense standoff in Idlib.
Returning now to northeast Syria, we have the Kurds, who want to form their own secessionist state of Rojava on the border with Turkey. Thanks to their US-backed fight against ISIS, the Kurds now have control of a large part of Syria, including the planned state of Rojava, and gaining control of that land was a major part of their motivation to fight ISIS.
Now the Kurds have Rojava almost in their grasp, but the thought of Rojava with tens of thousands of armed Kurds on Turkey's border makes the Turks' blood run cold, as terrorist attacks in Turkey would certainly be launched from Rojava. So Turkey has invaded Syria in order to set up a buffer zone, and destroy the Rojava dream once and for all.
The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) has been threatening for a year to make an agreement Bashar al-Assad for the protection of the Kurds from Turkey. The SDF has formalized the deal in the last few days, and the Syrian Army has been moving north to protect the Kurds.
In response, Russian special forces have been moving into northeast Syria, taking over some of the responsibilities that the US military previously had, to keep SDF and Turkish forces separated as much as possible.
Many of the hysterical news reports on the situation have been blaming Trump for ceding American influence to Russia in the Mideast.
So let me be clear about this, as I repeat what I've said in one way or another for 15 years.
Russia is not America's enemy. Russia is the enemy of Georgia and Ukraine, but not America, and not Western Europe. Our enemy is China, not Russia. The Russian people love us, the Chinese people not so much (except for the Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong).
As I've written many times, in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war, China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be our enemies, and our allies will be India, Russia and Iran.
So despite the hysteria in the mainstream media, I'm not the least bit concerned that Russia is gaining influence in the Mideast. Russia and Iran will be our allies in WW III, and China will be our enemy.
The more immediate question is whether there will soon be a war between Turkey and Russia, the two generational Crisis era countries with a long, bitter history of bloody wars. As I said earlier, Turkey and Russia have been taking steps, usually through the "Astana process," to stay out of each other's way, to prevent an action that could lead to a major war. Russia's actions to keep Syria's army separated from Turkey's forces and the SDF are another action of that type.
But how effective will Russia's efforts be? Recall the earlier analogy -- Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006. That war fizzled, as I said, but not overnight. The war went on for over two months. During that time, the Israelis were highly emotional and uncontrolled, and they made one disastrous mistake after another, while the Hezbollah fighters were much cooler, setting off rockets into Israeli territory, and then going home to their wives.
The Turks have been massing on the Syria border for months, and they made an emotional, uncontrolled invasion into Syria. I would be very, very surprised if that uncontrolled invasion suddenly ended, thanks to an agreement between Turkey and the United States. I would expect the ceasefire to fall apart within a few days, and for fighting to resume. However, a ceasefire could succeed within a couple of months.
So the real question is: What are the Russians going to do? Will they sit back and let the incursions by Turkish and Arab SNA forces continue? If so, then the war will fizzle within a couple of months.
Or will the Russians respond with military force directed at Turkey? That's the major risk, because that's how major wars start.
What happens next in Syria does not depend on what the US does. It depends on what Russia does. If Russia remains controlled, then the war will play itself out within 2-3 months. If Russia becomes more aggressive or uncontrolled, then a larger war will result.
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(18-Oct-2019)
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China deploys mass surveillance spy system in Ecuador
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno Garces has imposed a curfew on Quito, the capital city, after 10 days of violent protests that have paralyzed the city. Protesters on Saturday blocked road access to the city's international airport and set fire to the national auditor's office as police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and authorities imposed water and power cuts across the city.
The violence was so bad that Moreno moved his government base from Quito to the coastal city of Guayaquil earlier this week to escape the violence.
The protests were led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). The indigenous groups are the ethnic groups that occupied this region prior to arrival of the European conquerors. Today, there's a major social fault line between the indigenous people and the descendants of the European invaders. The principal indigenous groups are the Shuar and the Cañari Kichwa.
The protests were triggered by a plan to end fuel subsidies. Ending fuel subsidies would increase gasoline (petrol) prices by 1/3, and would double diesel fuel prices.
On March 11, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $4.2 billion bailout for Ecuador, subject to certain conditions:
"The aim is to reduce debt-to-GDP ratio through a combination of a wage bill realignment, a careful and gradual optimization of fuel subsidies, a reprioritization of capital and goods and services spending, and a tax reform. ...The authorities are committed to supporting job creation, restoring competitiveness and catalyzing private sector-led growth while increasing transparency and forcefully countering corruption. A more efficient tax system, public wage restraint, facilitating the hiring process, and a more efficient energy sector are important components of the authorities’ plan in this area."
Having accepted the IMF bailout money, Ecuador is now committed to implementing the austerity measures, including "the careful and gradual optimization of fuel subsidies."
Some of the rioters are demanding that the government ignore the IMF's austerity requirements, and keep the fuel subsidies. Conaie agreed late Saturday to negotiations. This is an ongoing situation, and it's possible that Moreno's government will not survive.
Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado was Moreno's predecessor as president between 2007-2017. When Correa first took office in 2007, he advocated for indigenous people’s rights and sustainable development, and the end of “exploitative capitalism” by mainly American and European investors.
The end of "exploitative capitalism" meant that Correa would refuse to pay back $3.2 billion in foreign debt.
So having defaulted on debt to US and European investors, Correa invited investments from Chinese investors, and went on a spending spree with money loaned by China. Today, Ecuador owes $6.5 billion to China.
In December 2018, Ecuadorian president Moreno visited Beijing and obtained an additional $900 million in loans from China, as part of a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation deal with China.
I've written about a number of China's "debt trap diplomacy" deals with many countries. China designs these agreement so that it's almost impossible for the debtor country to make its payments. The terms of these agreements are kept top secret, because they usually involve corruption and kickbacks, and because the allow China to take control of a country's infrastructure, such as a seaport, as an inevitable consequence of default. Since the agreement specify that China takes control of the debtor's assets, there's no need to impose austerity requirements, as the IMF does.
So even the $900 million loan in December wasn't enough to save Ecuador from default, and so Ecuador had to obtain a further $2.4 billion bailout from the IMF.
There are some groups in Ecuador that are demanding that the government simply not pay back the IMF loan, in the same way that Correa refused to pay back the $3.2 billion that Ecuador owed to US and European investors in 2007. However, that won't work this time, since the IMF bailout money will only be disbursed over a three year period.
As we said, this is an ongoing situation, and Morena may not survive in office.
Ecuador has a 750 km stretch of mostly undeveloped deposits of copper, silver, gold and zinc. Starting in 2015, China has taken a leading role in mining those minerals. China has ownership or joint ownership of three mines: the Mirador and San Carlos-Panantza copper mines, and the Rio Blanco gold mine.
The mines are all being developed in the midst of indigenous people's villages. When the Chinese first arrived, they promised that the local people would benefit from the mines. However, as is usual with Chinese projects, the jobs are all taken by imported Chinese workers, and the locals receive nothing, although their land is taken, their roads and lakes are blocked. The Mirador copper mine has turned 1,300 hectares of rainforest into an open pit mine.
Indigenous people affected by the mines are planning protests, but they have little hope. This is another ongoing situation.
During the last four years, China has installed a vast surveillance system, known as the ECU-911 system, that can be used to spy on all Ecuadorian citizens.
The China-made surveillance equipment contains as many as 4,200 cameras, monitored by 16 centers and around 3,000 employees. The system lets the government track phones, and may soon be upgraded with facial-recognition capabilities. The equipment was manufactured by two Chinese firms, Huawei Technologis and China National Import & Export Corp (CEIEC).
Outside of Ecuador, similar systems have been sold to Venzuela, Bolivia, and Angola. As many as 18 countries worldwide are currently using Chinese-made monitoring systems.
As with all Chinese-made network products, we have to assume that the Chinese military is able to access the surveillance and data, and correlate it with the data in their own databases.
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(13-Oct-2019)
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Turkey's Erdogan responds to European Union's threat with his own threat
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Turkey is receiving almost universal international condemnation for launching its long-planned military invasion of northern Syria. Turkey has been massing forces on the border for a year, with the objective of setting up a buffer zone in northern Syria, and neutralizing the PKK terrorists living there. In the long run, Turkey would also like to relocate some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees that it's hosting into the buffer zone.
Officials from countries around the world are demanding that Turkey end the invasion immediately.
The most interesting condemnation is a speech by EU Parliament VP Federica Mogherini, in which she made the following farcical statement:
"The Turkish operation into north-east Syria can open a new dramatic chapter in the already very dark history of the Syrian war.The potential consequences of such military action are clear to everyone – at least are very clear to us. The repercussions can be extremely serious in humanitarian, military, political and strategic terms. For all these reasons, we call upon Turkey to immediately stop its unilateral military action. ...
But Turkey’s legitimate security concerns should be addressed through political and diplomatic means, not military action, in accordance with international humanitarian law. We urge all to always ensure the protection of civilians and unhindered, safe and sustainable humanitarian access throughout Syria.
Our goal remains to help the Syrian people build a united, sovereign, democratic and inclusive Syria.
A sustainable solution to the Syrian crisis will not come through military means. I think that this is very clear to all, at least this is very clear to us Europeans. The only way to achieve peace and security in Syria is the full implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2254 under UN auspices."
I suppose that I shouldn't be so hard on Mogherini. After all what else can she say? She's just a puppet saying what she has to say. If she said something different, she'd just be replaced by a different puppet.
Mogherini's statement is completely delusional. UN Security Council Resolution 2254, adopted on December 15, 2015, says that everyone in Syria should stop fighting and expresses support for "a Syrian-led political process that is facilitated by the United Nations and, within a target of six months, establishes credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance and sets a schedule and process for drafting a new constitution, and further expresses its support for free and fair elections." This is totally laughable.
Against that, we have the psychopathic, sociopathic monster president Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who freely uses barrel bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas on women and children, in order to exterminate his political enemies, and who is supported by Iran, who wants a clear path to Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, and which routinely uses torture, rape, beatings and murder itself.
Al-Assad is also supported by Russia, which doesn't care about al-Assad's use of chemical weapons and genocide, as long as it gets its military bases at Tartus and Hmeimim. Russia, which has no hesitation to commit genocide when it's convenient, also loves the Kurds because they're Communists.
Since 2012, the United Nations Security Council has put forth one farcical resolution after another. Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran have used these as cover for their use of barrel bombs, chlorine gas, Sarin gas and genocide of women and children. Bashar al-Assad has made fools of one credulous UN envoy after another -- Kofi Annon, Lakhdar Brahimi, Staffan de Mistura. Obviously, the same kind of thing is happening now with Mogherini. If United Nations officials didn't have delusional thoughts, then they wouldn't have any thoughts at all.
So everyone, including Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, knows that UN Security Council Resolution 2254 is completely farcical. But as we said, what else can Mogherini say, except her ridiculously delusional statement.
Turkey has been hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees, and 300,000 of them are Syrian Kurds, who have fled the violence of Syria's civil war. Erdogan has frequently expressed anger at the EU for not supporting Turkey, which is a Nato member, although after years of negotiations, the EU did agree to pay some financial assistance (3 billion euros) for the refugees. However, in her speech, Mogherini threatened to limit this financial assistance.
Erdogan responded on Thursday in a speech to his governing party:
"The objective of our operation is to avoid the establishment of a terror state in the south. That’s what we are working for.Just like other operations conducted by Turkey, the objective of the Peace Spring is to contribute to the territorial integrity and political unity of Syria. It’s quite obvious that one can talk about the territorial integrity and political unity of this country while one-fourth of its territories are under the occupation of the PKK/YPG."
Erdogan referred to the 300,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees that Turkey is hosting, and the Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) political party in Turkey.
"Let’s first see this. They are still in our country. Why don’t we talk about it? America does not see this, nor does the EU. To whom will we explain all these? Then we should tell this to our own people. There is a political party at the parliament which takes support from a terror organization. They will never see but we will let them see one way or another.You [the HDP] cannot describe our operation as an invasion. You cannot depict our army as an invading force."
Erdogan responded to Mogherini's threat to cut off financial assistance to Turkey for hosting the 3.6 million refugees with a threat of his own:
"Hey, European Union! Pull yourself together. I repeat it: If you try to describe our operation as an invasion, we will do what’s easy for us: we will open the doors and send 3.6 million refugees to you. ...You have not given anything to us for our efforts (to host refugees). It was us who spent $40 billion. We’ll continue our path by spending the same amount of money, but we will then open the doors.
You cannot remain silent when terror organizations attack Turkey."
 |
Thousands of displaced Syrians are living in temporary camps. The families of suspected ISIS prisoners are help in three of them, Roj, Ain ISSA, and al-Hol, which house 1,700, 12,900 and 68,000 people, respectively. Al-Hol is about 60 km from Turkey and so would not be in the proposed buffer zone. More than 94% of the people at al-Hol are women and children, and 11,000 are foreign nationals.
Many of the ISIS prisoners are being guarded by Kurdish forces, and their disposition is now the subject of finger-pointing. Donald Trump says that some EU officials have asked him to transfer them to Guantánamo prison, which he refused. Trump has asked the EU nations to take back their own citizens that went to Syria to join ISIS, but they're refusing.
Mogherini is demanding that Turkey take full responsibility for them, but whether that will happen remains to be seen.
Mostly left-wing politicians in Washington are blaming Donald Trump for causing the invasion by withdrawing 50 soldiers from observation posts in Syria near the Turkey border. This is laughable, considering that Turkey has been massing forces on the border for a year in preparation for this invasion, and 50 troops would have made no difference.
Trump says that the original agreement with the Kurds was that we'd provide support, weapons and money for 30 to 90 days until ISIS was defeated, and then we'd leave. Trump says that there was never any commitment to protect the Kurds forever.
Now we're hearing that Democrats want US soldiers to intervene to protect the Kurds. I've been through this too many times. Anti-war democrats supported the Iraq war before it happened, but then later pretended that they had opposed the war all along.
So here we go again. Let's get US soldiers involved in the war between Turks and Kurds, so that later we can pretend we were against doing anything of the sort, and then we can impeach again.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
Although all of those wars are coming with absolutely certainty, it's impossible to predict the exact scenarios that will bring them about. One possible scenario is that they will be triggered by a war in northern Syria.
One thing is certain: World War III will occur whether the 50 US soldiers are withdrawn or not.
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(11-Oct-2019)
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Donald Trump announces troop withdrawal from Syria
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For over a year, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been demanding to invade Syria and set up a "safe zone" or "buffer zone," a strip of land 20 miles wide in northern Syria, along the border with Turkey. The plans have always been blocked by president Donald Trump and by the presence of American troops in the region, which would mean that an invasion by Turkish troops would result in a military clash between two members of Nato.
Erdogan's objectives in setting up the buffer zone include the following:
Erdogan has wanted to put this plan into effect for over a year, but was prevented from doing so by the Trump and the United States. However, in the last couple of months, Erdogan has evidently told Trump that Turkey will go ahead with the invasion whether American troops are present or not.
When President Trump last year announced his intention to withdraw US troops from northeast Syria, it drew many protests, and was given as the reason for the resignation of James Mattis as Defense Secretary.
The protests accused Trump of leaving the Kurds to the mercy of Turkey and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who views all Kurds as terrorists. However, it was the Kurds, with the help of American airstrikes, who defeated ISIS and ejected them from their caliphate in Raqqa. The Kurds claim that the Americans promised to stay and protect them from Turkey, but the Americans claim that no such promise was made. The Kurds are now saying that they've been betrayed and "stabbed in the back."
Trump delayed the withdrawal because of the huge controversy, but now has has issued the following statement:
"The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so. They have been fighting Turkey for decades. I held off this fight for ... almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN."
Trump's statement follows a meeting last week with Erdogan, and a phone call of Sunday with Erdogan. Erdogan threatened to begin a military invasion of Syria whether the US troops were there or not, and the withdrawal of American troops prevents a confrontation with Turkish troops.
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Another issue is that the successful Kurdish fight against ISIS resulted in tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners. These ISIS fighters originally came from other countries, especially European countries, to join ISIS. As part of the current agreement, Turkey will take responsibility for all the ISIS fighters held as prisoners.
A White House statement said:
"The United States Government has pressed France, Germany, and other European nations, from which many captured ISIS fighters came, to take them back, but they did not want them and refused. The United States will not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer. Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past two years."
Trump tweeted:
"When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area. We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate, ... including capturing thousands of ISIS fighters, mostly from Europe.But Europe did not want them back, they said you keep them USA! I said 'NO, we did you a great favor and now you want us to hold them in U.S. prisons at tremendous cost. They are yours for trials.' They ... again said 'NO,' thinking, as usual, that the U.S. is always the 'sucker,' on NATO, on Trade, on everything."
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who almost always supports Trump, opposed Trump's withdrawal decision.
"The biggest lie being told by the administration [is] that ISIS is defeated. This impulsive decision by the president has undone all the gains we've made, thrown the region into further chaos. ... I hope I'm making myself clear how shortsighted and irresponsible this decision is in my view."
Senator Marco Rubio joined Graham and other Republican senators in criticizing Trump's decision.
There is a very passionate debate going on in Washington over this decision, and it's a relief that it's a real debate, not like the impeachment crap.
Some of the criticism is motivated by hatred of Trump by people who don't have a clue who the Kurds are. In some cases, people opposing the withdrawal of troops fighting jihadists in Syria are the same people who, twelve years ago, demanded the withdrawal of troops fighting jihadists in Iraq, because they hated George Bush.
Those who sincerely oppose the decision to withdraw have several reasons.
One reason is that they fear a bloodbath as Turkish forces invade villages occupied by Kurds and their families in northease Syria. Erdogan has said that this fear is unjustified, as Turkish forces have already taken control of of al-Bab and Jarabulus in midwestern Syria, and there was no Kurdish bloodbath.
Another reason is the loss of American credibility from betraying our allies, the Kurds. America also abandoned the Kurds in Iraq when they were attacked by Saddam Hussein.
One of the biggest reasons for concern is the possible resurgence of ISIS. Although the ISIS Caliphate in Raqqa has been eliminated, there are still about 10,000 ISIS fighters being held by the Kurds in a prison camp in the desert, along with tens of thousands of their family members. The ISIS fighters are still being funded, and in the chaos of a clash between Turkish and Kurdish forces, they could regroup and recapture territory.
On Monday, Donald Trump gave the reasons for the withdrawal in several press conferences on Monday.
He pointed out that it was only small pullout. He said that only a few dozen soldiers are being pulled back from observation posts in a region on the border where Turkey will be entering Syria. It's believed that further pullouts will follow later.
Trump also said that he didn't want American troops to be in Syria for ever, and he asked if we can't withdraw troops now, then when can we?
Trump said that the Kurds and the Turks have been fighting for centuries, and it's not up to the Americans to keep them apart forever. The implication is that he expects a clash, and he doesn't want the American forces to be involved. In the past, Trump has made similar remarks about wanting to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, but political pressures have prevented him from doing it.
This whole debate gets to the heart of America's role in the world since the end of World War II. As I've discussed many times, president Harry Truman adopted the Truman Doctrine that made America policeman of the world. John F. Kennedy repeated and emphasized this principle in his inauguration speech: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
The justification given for the Truman Doctrine was as follows: It's better to pay a small amount of blood and treasure now to resolve a small clash than to wait and allow the clash to expand into another world war, with massive costs in blood and treasure. This argument was made at a time when people said that if Hitler had been killed in 1935, there would have been no world war or Holocaust.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is a completely flawed analysis. World War II and the Holocaust would have occurred with or without Hitler. A small American expenditure in blood and treasure will have no effect whatsoever on whether there is another world war.
So the withdrawal from Syria may have political or legacy implications, but it won't cause or prevent a major war. The withdrawal from Syria is all determined by political pressure, and it's even that political pressures may force Trump to reverse his withdrawal plans for Syria again.
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(8-Oct-2019)
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Hong Kong violence may be reaching a boiling point
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A protester in Hong Kong was shot by a policeman at point-blank range on Tuesday. He's in the hospital in critical condition. The police say he shot in self-defense.
This was the highlight of the worst day of violence since the pro-democracy protests began 17 weeks ago.
The violence in Hong Kong was a vivid contrast to Tuesday's activities in Beijing. Tuesday was the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China, and there were massive military parades and highly nationalistic speeches the entire day.
Something that's been coming across for weeks in the TV coverage of the Hong Kong riots, much more than in the print coverage, is that they are becoming much more vitriolic and tribal. The police hate the protesters, and the protesters hate the police, especially after today's events, and there's no turning back.
I've been following a lot of anti-government protests for many years, and I've developed a feeling for which ones are more serious than others.
So, for example, the recent pro- and anti-Brexit protests in London were all just kids having fun. The same is true of just about any protest on the mall in Washington DC.
Even violence doesn't necessarily trigger the worst conflicts. I'm thinking of the various student protests in Iran. The thugs in Iran's security forces always go out and beat, rape, torture and jail innocent protesters, but once the period of protest end, there doesn't seem to be any residual violence.
Even the Hong Kong umbrella protests in 2014 did not seem to be a major problem. Everyone seemed to follow the unwritten rules of peaceful protests: The protesters are allowed to chant, block roads, occupy buildings, and even do a little bit of property damage. The police are allowed use physical force, water cannons, tear gas, and even mass arrests. At the end of the day, everybody has had fun, and can go home and brag about it.
But my view is that the Hong Kong protests are becoming increasingly vitriolic, on a trend line for a lot more violence. At the social media level, many mainland postings encourage violence against the protesters, and Hong Kong postings are contemptuous of mainlanders. Protesters and police have been describing each other in increasingly vitriolic and hate-filled terms.
And recall that in mid-July, pro-democracy protesters and ordinary civilians were violently attacked by unidentified men in white shirts, later identified as criminal members of "Triad" gangs. The attack was well-organized, and it is believed that the attacks were organized by Beijing security forces, who didn't want to be seen getting their own hands dirty. The Hong Kong police watched the attacks, but made no attempt to intervene, or to respond to injured civilians begging for help.
As I've written in the past, Hong Kong is on the fault line between northern and southern China. ( "22-Jun-19 World View -- Hong Kong protests show historic split between northern and southern China")
Southeast China was the starting point of the last two massive Chinese anti-government rebellions. Mao Zedong's Long March that led to the Communist revolution civil war (1934-49) started in the south. The massive Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), which was led by a Christian convert who believed he was the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, began in the south and spread north.
The ethnic fault line between north and south is just as active today as it ever was, and China is overdue for a new north-south rebellion. That's why the increasing signs of hatred and vitriol between protesters and police in Hong Kong are significant.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials have been relatively restrained so far. They had hoped that the Hong Kong protests would fizzle before the October 1 anniversary celebration. They were restrained, with the result that the Hong Kong riots overshadowed the anniversary celebrations in Beijing to some extent.
What next? The Hong Kong anti-Beijing activists have hardened their positions, and they claim that they will continue their violent protests. The CCP officials are also hardening their positions. Their only hope is that the protests will fizzle in the months to come. But nobody believes that would end them permanently. The CCP officials know that at some point in the next few months they're going to have to send in the army to bash heads. (Paragraph corrected, 2-Oct)
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(2-Oct-2019)
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Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein's Oil-for-Food scam
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Jacques Chirac, who was president of France between 1995 and 2007, died on Thursday. He had previously served two terms as prime minister, from 1974-76 and 1986-88, and was mayor of Paris from 1977-1995.
According to the current president, Emmanuel Macron:
"We are remembering tonight with emotion and affection his freedom, his personality, the talent he had to reconcile simplicity and grandeur, proximity and dignity, love of the motherland and openness to the universal."
However, another French politician said anonymously: "People think Chirac is a decent guy, but not very bright. In fact, he's exactly the opposite."
In fact, Chirac was extremely controversial as president, although the thing that he was most praised for was standing up to President George Bush and refusing to join America and Britain in the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. According to British journalist Sophie Pedder:
"Much to criticise about his time as French president (twice), prime minister (twice) and Paris mayor. But Jacques Chirac (1932-2019) was right on Iraq, prescient about multi-polarity, brave to acknowledge France's responsibility under Vichy--and an improbable icon of French cool pic.twitter.com/KHkQE9gHaM"
Born in 1932, he was too young to fight in World War II, but later in life he was praised for acknowledging France's collaboration with the Nazis during the war, including the deportation of Jews from France to Nazi concentration camps.
As I recently described, the 2003 Iraq war occurred as the result of panic in the West over weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), 58 years after nuking of Japan in 1945 at the end of World War II. (See discussion of 58-Year Hypothesis in "2-Sep-19 World View -- Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon border clash fizzles quickly, no repeat of 2006 war")
Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against the Kurds and the Iranians in 1988 at the end of the Iran/Iraq war, and had continued developing chemical weapons during the 1990s. Saddam refused UN WMD inspections under President Bill Clinton, and his response was to order bombing campaigns on military targets in Iraq.
However, military action did not go farther than that until 2003, 58 years after the nuking of Japan, as the age cohort of people who were children in 1945 suddenly became anxious that the WMDs would be used again, causing a general panic. (58-Year Hypothesis) Saddam was resolutely opposing UN inspections, and many people read this as a sign of guilt.
Most countries were convinced that Saddam was still developing WMDs, and many endorsed the British and American plan for a ground war in Iraq. The two major exceptions were Russia and France. In the case of Russia, it was thought that the reason was that the Russians still hoped to collect the $10 billion that Iraq owed to Russia, mainly for illegal arms deals.
Jacques Chirac was president of France at the time, and he announced that he would veto any UN Security Council resolution authorizing the military action. That's why so much of the mainstream media is heaping praise on Chirac.
Chirac insisted that his opposition to the Iraq war was principled, but an investigation revealed that Chirac and his family and some of his ministers were deeply implicated in a lucrative scam to divert millions of dollars of profits of the UN's oil-for-food program into their own private coffers.
So, in my opinion, Chirac does not deserve one bit of adulation he's been receiving these last two days. He opposed the Iraq war, because he didn't care how many people Saddam killed with WMDs, but he wanted to keep the fraudulent millions pouring into his coffers.
Chirac was formally charged in 2007 after he left office as president, losing immunity from prosecution. In 2011, he was found guilty of misuse of public money, breach of trust and illegal conflict of interest while he was mayor of Paris, and given a two-year suspended jail sentence.
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(27-Sep-2019)
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The default solution: No-deal Brexit
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It's hard to know whether it's more accurate to describe the Brexit drama in Britain as a situation comedy or as a Greek tragedy. Actually it's both, since a well-written tragedy always contains some humor in the form of "comic relief," until finally the tragedy reaches its catastrophic conclusion.
What happened on Tuesday is pure comedy. The UK Supreme Court, which only came into existence in 2009, ruled that prime minister Boris Johnson's attempt to shut down Parliament for five weeks was illegal. Johnson has promised that the UK will exit the EU on October 31, and he used a parliamentary trick to suspend or "prorogate" the Parliament for five weeks, in order to give himself some breathing room to negotiate, or pretend to negotiate, a final "deal" with the EU on the terms of the Brexit, in order to avoid the hated "no deal Brexit." So the Parliament will start meeting again on Wednesday, and it should provide a lot of laughs.
The real zinger in the UK Supreme Court ruling is that the court said that when Boris Johnson went to the Queen earlier this month to ask her to prorogate the Parliament, he "misled" her about the reasons. So this means that Johnson lied to the Queen about the reasons, and that the Queen was too dumb and credulous to know the real reasons, which she and her staff could have quickly learned by reading the newspaper or turning on the TV. So the ten-year-old UK Supreme Court has firmly established itself by ruling that Johnson is a criminal and the Queen is an idiot. Somebody's going to pay for that opinion in the months to come.
The Brexit referendum was passed in June 2016, and it was clear almost immediately that it was a disaster.
The major intractable problem has been that, after the UK leaves the EU, Northern Ireland will be in the UK, and Southern Ireland (the Republic of Ireland) will be in the EU. So there will have to be solid border crossings, and tariffs placed on goods crossing the border.
There have been centuries of violent history between Ireland's indigenous ethnic Gaelic people versus the descendants of the Scottish and English invaders. This violence continued in modern times until the "Good Friday Agreement" was signed in 1998. Many people say that they fear that new border crossings would result in renewed violence.
The solution that the EU wants is called the "Irish Backstop." In this case, the border would remain completely open, and then either Northern Ireland would become part of the EU and separate from the UK, or else Britain would have to follow all EU regulations and court decisions, but have no say in making them. This solution is so ridiculous that it serves as monument to the stupidity of this whole process.
The "Brexiteers," led by Boris Johnson, claim they don't want a "no deal Brexit," so they say they're going to tweak the Backstop as part of a deal, something that the EU refuses to allow. The "Remainers" don't want to admit they're remainers, since then they would be ignoring "the will of the people," as expressed in the the 2016 referendum, so they advocate the "deal" with the Irish Backstop, hoping that means that Brexit will be abandoned entirely.
Tuesday's court decision changes nothing, except the rhetoric. It's still the case that unless a new arrangement is negotiated, then the UK Brexit will take place with no deal on October 31.
I've been saying for a long time that I expect the final result to be a no-deal Brexit, simply because the Generation-X is now in charge in Britain and the EU.
Government leaders in the 1990s were in Silent generation that grew up during the horrors of World War II, including the Nazi bombing of London, and had the skills to negotiate and compromise. Today, the Gen-Xers are in charge, and Gen-Xers have no skills to negotiate and compromise. So there are different camps in the government, each dominated by a different group of Gen-Xers, and they're all in hardened positions opposed to each other.
My expectation for a long time is that a no-deal Brexit would occur because it's the default, and it's the only option that doesn't require anyone to negotiate and compromise with anyone else. So far, that expectation has proven to be correct.
In the last year, the Parliament has repeatedly voted NO every chance it could get -- no on remaining, no on a no-deal Brexit, and noes on various "deal" Brexits. There's always a major to reject any solution, but never a majority to say YES to any proposal.
The Parliament did vote in favor of a law forbidding Boris Johnson from taking the UK out of the EU in a no-deal Brexit, but I don't understand how that would work. A no-deal Brexit is the default, so if Johnson does nothing, then a no-deal Brexit would occur automatically on October 31.
Possible scenarios in the next few weeks include leaving the EU with a no-deal Brexit on October 31, asking the EU to postpone the October 31 date, or having a new British election. However, none of these scenarios would resolve any of the differences. There are also calls for a new referendum, but there's wide disagreement on what options should be on it, and so the disagreements on the text of the referendum could be as vitriolic as the disagreements about Brexit itself.
The Brexit issue has badly split the British people, as well as the two major British political parties, the Conservative Tories and Labor, although the smaller Liberal Democrat party says that it's united in wanting to Remain. It's possible that by the time this is over, there will be a major realignment of British politics. There's also talk of drawing up a constitution for the British government, since it currently plenty of traditions, but they are not written down.
And even though Britain voted in 2016 to leave the EU, today nobody can say for sure whether Britain will actually leave the EU, and how long it will be before a decision is reached. The comedy continues, and the tragic dénouement awaits.
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(25-Sep-2019)
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Earth Day, 1970 -- déjà vu all over again
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There's a new Children's Crusade going on, as kids in cities around the world took part in a general strike from school on Friday, and held protests with hundreds of thousands of kids in cities around the world.
On Saturday, hundreds of kids attended a Youth Climate Summit, sponsored by the United Nations. The kids demanded an end to climate change, and many said they've decided not to have children, rather than bring children into a world destroyed by climate change. They said they wanted an end to use of fossil fuels, and parroted the claim that the world come to an end if carbon emissions didn't stop by 2030.
As usual, it's really only about money. Activists demanded money for a fund to help poorer nations adapt to a warming world. The whole purpose of the Paris Climate Treaty was to extract money from the West, particularly the United States, to give to the pet projects of the activists. As far as the US is concerned, Donald Trump has already withdrawn the country from the Paris treaty, so the activists have no hope of getting American money for their pet projects.
One of the facts that the kids won't be talking about at the climate change protests is that, of all the major countries that signed the Paris treaty, there's only one that's actually reducing carbon emissions -- the United States. America's power plants will emit 2.3% less carbon dioxide this year compared to 2018. That's because of fracking and abundant supplies of natural gas.
One other thing that won't be mentioned is that China already has largest number of coal-fired power plants in the world, and that China has just announced plans for a massive number of new coal-fired power plants. You can be sure the leftist climate activists will never mention this, or anything else that criticizes their beloved Communist country.
A recent article quoted some of the predictions that climate scientists were making in 1970, in celebration of "Earth Day."
Here are some examples:
Today we can see how ridiculous these 1970 predictions by population scientists turned out to be. Below we'll show how today's predictions by climate scientists are equally ridiculous, but for now I want to make the point that these 1970 scientists were incredibly stupid.
It's a fair question: If they're scientists, then how come they were so disastrously wrong? And why would anyone think that today's scientists would be any less disastrously wrong?
To show how stupid these scientists were, look particularly at the last of the predictions referenced above. Let's assume that their prediction that came true that there wouldn't be enough food to feed the world. Then would widespread famine have occurred -- 1975 in India, all of Asia by 1990, South and Central America by 2000, the rest of the world after that? Is that guy a total idiot?
There's no way the people of India would just sit there and starve to death. And there's no way that the rest of the world would let them. The same with the other countries.
So people like Paul Ehrlich. George Wald and Peter Gunter are really stupid. It's hard to believe anyone, let alone a scientist, could be stupid enough to believe that the people in India, Asia, Africa, and so forth, would just sit there are starve to death.
So what would happen? There would be riots, demonstrations, and international conferences, but if things got really bad, there would be war. But nobody would just sit there and die of starvation, and these "scientists" are total idiots to believe so.
I will show that today's climate scientists are just as stupid as the one that predicted disaster after 1970 Earth Day.
But first, let's make note that climate scientists have been wrong, time after time. Al Gore quoted climate scientists as saying that the Arctic ice cap would disappear completely by 2013, and so those climate scientists were wrong.
And then there's the biggest prediction of them all: That the world will end unless carbon emissions end by 2030. What does that even mean? If the temperature of the earth increases by 1 degree or so, then does everyone burn to death? That's ridiculous. Maybe some polar ice caps will melt and some islands and beach fronts will disappear, but that won't be the end of the earth.
So what will really happen? Once again, the climate scientists are too stupid to understand that even if their predictions about global warming are true, it will mean war.
In fact, there will be one or two world wars in this century with or without climate change. In the last century, there were two world wars, and massive additional wars in Asia and Africa. In every century for millennia, there were massive wars on every continent and every region. So it's 100% certain to happen in this century.
You can already see the signs of it. There are millions of refugees in Asia, Syria, Africa and Latin America traveling in large groups to other countries, including America, Europe and Indonesia. There are sky-high military tensions in China and the Mideast. All that's needed is for some small event to flare up into a regional war, and then a larger war.
And what of the Paris treaty and climate change? That's just a silly fantasy anyway. The only country reducing carbon emissions is the United States, and all the other major countries are increasing their carbon emissions. In particular, China is aggressively planning a massive number of new coal-fired power plans. China needs these as it prepares to launch a world war, and will not stop building them under any circumstances.
Getting back to those kids who are protesting climate change in cities around the world, some of them have said that they won't have kids, because how can you bring kids into a world to be destroyed by climate change?
Well, with world war coming, now they have another reason not to have kids.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(22-Sep-2019)
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Identifying Iran as the perpetrator
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Sunday's attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure is raising concerns in four Asian countries -- China, India, Japan and South Korea -- that the world's oil markets have just taken a sharp turn for the worst that will result in continuing worldwide oil disruption and far higher prices.
The governments of China, India, Japan and South Korea have harsh differences in many areas. China's criminal annexation of the South China Sea has infuriated everyone. Japan and South Korea are having a trading war that is becoming increasingly serious and hostile every day. China and India have numerous border conflicts, and were at war in the 1960s.
But the four countries are united in their concerns about the possibility of oil prices spiking, which would hurt all of their economies. In particular, all four are warning the US against a war with Iran, which would hugely destabilize the global oil markets, and send prices sky high.
Most analysts believe that Iran perpetrated the attack, but there's a broader problem, no matter who the perpetrator was. The fact that the attack occurred at all means that it won't be long before more terrorists begin using drones to attack oil infrastructure anywhere and, indeed, any targets anywhere, with permanently high oil prices.
Sunday's attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure caused oil prices to spike 12%, the largest one-day increase in history. However, prices have retreated slightly, especially after Saudi's announcement that most of the oil production would be restored within a few days. If true, the Saudis are being lauded for the resilience they've built in to the oil infrastructure.
It's pretty much universally believed that Iran was the perpetrator, and that the attack was launched by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Iran denies responsibity for the attack, but it's generally believed that Iran is responsible, and this is the sixth attack on Saudi oil facilities in the last four months.
Iran's denials are being disregarded. The claim by the Iran-sponsored Yemeni Houthis that they launched the attack from Yemen is being disregarded, and is viewed as an attempt to shield Iran from blame.
According to several reports, all originating from US intelligence sources, the coordinated attack was extremely sophisticated. US and Saudi intelligence officials referenced have concluded that 12 low-flying cruise missiles were launched from Khuzestan in southern Iran, and 5 drones were launched from Anbar province in western Iraq.
According to officials, if the missiles had come from Yemen, then Saudi radar would have detected them. However, the Saudis were not prepared to detect missiles coming in from the north.
Even if the Saudis recovered quickly from Sunday's attack, there are concerns that Iran will simply make more attacks. It's believed that Iran's strategy is to cause oil shortages and push the price of oil above $100 a barrel, so that America will be forced to reduce the sanctions preventing Iran from selling oil. It's believed that Iran will avoid American targets, since doing so would cause an immediate military response.
Therefore, analysts are saying that there MUST be a retaliatory response, to force Iran to stop the attacks.
Few politicians or media people have the vaguest clue about Saudi Arabia's history prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in October. However, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US is very deep.
Since the 1930s, America and Saudi Arabia have had a very specific core understanding: That Saudi Arabia will guarantee to supply all the oil that America and the West need, and, in return, America and the West must guarantee the security of Saudi Arabia.
The exact details of the US-Saudi relationship have had to change from time to time, based on international events such as Iran's revolution, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, Syria's civil war, the rise of ISIS.
While the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis and subsequent Iranian behavior drove a wedge between the US and Iran, the 1973 oil embargo, which came out of Israel's war with Egypt, did the opposite -- it cemented the US-Saudi relationship.
The core has always remained the same: The Saudis will guarantee oil, the Americans will guarantee security. That core is changing slightly, now that America has become energy self-sufficient in the last two years, but like it or not, America is still policeman of the world, but the core agreement that the Saudis will guarantee oil and the Americans will guarantee security is unchanged.
Therefore, it's believed that Donald Trump has asked the military to provide a list of options of possible responses. These options would include diplomacy (the United Nations Security Council), cyber attacks (to cripple Iran's intelligence cabilities), and special forces or missiles to proportionally attack Iran's oil production facilities.
Analysts I've heard seem unanimous in saying that there must be some response, or else Iran will simply launch more and more attacks, until there is a response.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018, Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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(18-Sep-2019)
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Syria regime increases bombing of hospitals in Idlib
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Events in Saudi Arabia and Syria are increasing the probability that a larger war could be triggered.
Reports are that over a dozen explosive drones attacked two oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia. This is the world's largest oil processing facility. About half of Saudi's oil production will be affected. The closure will reportedly impact nearly five million barrels of crude production a day, roughly 5% of the world's daily oil production. Saudi Arabia also supplies half of China's imported oil.
Saudi officials are saying that the damage can be repaired by Monday. Whether the Saudis are successful at this will affect the oil and stock markets on Monday.
The Houthis, the Iran-backed ethnic group in Yemen fighting against the Yemen government backed by Saudi Arabia, claimed credit for drone attacks.
However, there was a delay of several hours before the Houthis claimed credit, and some analysts are saying that this makes it unlikely that the Houthis were responsible.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed doubt that the Houthis were responsible, and laid the blame on Iran in a tweet:
"Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen. ...We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression 3:59 PM · Sep 14, 2019·T"
It's possible that the drones were launched from Yemen, Iran or Iraq. Whether the Houthis are directly responsible or not, most analysts believe that Iran is behind the attack, especially after several recent Iranian attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
The concerns are that the drone attacks will trigger increased violence, including the following possibilities:
As we reported two weeks ago, civilians in Idlib province in Syria, where airstrikes by Syria and Russia have been increasing dramatically in recent weeks, are attacking border posts on Turkey's border in order to enter Turkey as refugees. Turkey, which already hosts almost four million Syrian refugees, has firmly closed the border to refugees from Idlib.
Reports indicate that Syrian and Russian airstrikes are specially targeting hospitals and schools, committing war crimes. Ironically, the Syrians and Russians know the coordinates of these hospitals and schools because the coordinates are being supplied by the United Nations so that the Syrians and Russians will AVOID targeting hospitals and schools. So they're using the coordinates in the opposite of the way intended. Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Russia's Vladimir Putin are two of the sleaziest leaders in the world today.
Idlib has about 3 million people, including about 70,000 anti-Assad rebels, some of whom are linked to al-Qaeda. Bashar al-Assad continues all 3 million of them to be "terrorists," to be exterminated like cockroaches. He's said as much several times, and there's no reason to disbelieve him.
More and more, the civilians in Idlib are turning against Turkey, whom they see as "traitors" and "collaborators" with the genocide being performed by Russia and al-Assad.
The worst protests on Turkey's borders are occurring in regions controlled by al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front), with the purpose of forcing Turkey to open its borders to Idlib refugees.
For the past year, the world has been watching and waiting for Bashar al-Assad to open up a full assault on Idlib as he has previously in other regions like Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, where he used barrel bombs on hospitals, schools, marketplaces and residential neighborhoods, along with chlorine gas and Sarin gas. Apparently he's been holding back from a full assault, possibly because of international pressure, but there's an increasing feeling that he's losing patience, and is anxious to get on with the genocide.
The Generational Dynamics prediction is that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Jews vs Arabs, Sunnis vs Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. The exact scenario can't be predicted, but either the drone attack or the Idlib genocide could be the spark that starts the war.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1) Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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(15-Sep-2019)
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End of relationship with Breitbart
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There are reports that there was a very heated argument in the White House on Monday evening, principally between Trump and Bolton, over the collapse this weekend of the Afghanistan "peace negotiations" with the Taliban.
As readers know, I evaluate policies and actions based on Generational Dynamics principles. Left-wing and right-wing analyses are usually delusional and idiotic, and usually turn out to be wrong more often than right. I've written thousands of Generational Dynamics analyses in 15 years, and they've been almost 100% correct. Unfortunately for me, being right all the time when everyone else is wrong doesn't makes me popular, but only makes me universally hated and shunned, but that's the way the world is today. Maybe that's also why Bolton was fired.
So I've had mixed emotions about John Bolton. Bolton has the most realistic view of the world among the major figures in Washington, Republican or Democrat, and having someone with a realistic view of the world advising Trump is valuable. That doesn't mean that I would agree with all of Bolton's recommended policies, and in fact I don't. For example, Bolton's recommendations to force regime change in Iran is overreach, and is clearly in conflict with the Generational Dynamics view of Iran that I've been posting for years. But Bolton is still one of the few people in Washington who know what's going on in the world.
My view of Trump has changed over time. During the election campaign in 2015-16, it was initially clear every time Trump opened his mouth that he had absolutely no clue what was going on in the world. But then something very surprising and unexpected occurred -- Trump hired Stephen K. Bannon as chairman of Donald Trump's campaign, and later as Trump's principal adviser in the White House.
This is something I never dreamed would happen. I had worked off and on with Bannon over a period of years, and he's an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics analysis. I was comforted by the fact that Trump would be guided by one of the very few people in Washington who knew what was going on in the world.
Even after Bannon left the White House, I wrote numerous articles about how Trump's foreign policy actions were completely baffling to the mainstream media, but made perfect sense once you understand Generational Dynamics analyses, particularly China's plans for war.
Trump pursued extremely successful policies (though completely baffling to the mainstream media) with respect to North Korea, China, Russia, India, and others, and I've attributed this to his grasp of the Generational Dynamics view of the world, that Bannon educated him on, along with Bannon's knowledge of history and Trump's own "Art of the Deal" instincts that have been so successful.
That brings us to Trump's Afghanistan policy. Here's the NBC News description of how John Bolton got fired:
"Most recently, the two had clashed over Trump's desire to have leaders of the Taliban visit Camp David in the days before the Sept. 11 anniversary to finalize peace talks. The idea was strongly opposed by Bolton, even as officials at the State Department argued it could move the parties closer to an agreement, officials said.Bolton has been deeply skeptical of negotiations with the Taliban. U.S. negotiators have been working under the president’s demand that a drawdown occur before November 2020 when he’s up for re-election."
One has to be careful referencing NBC news, since NBC news frequently lies about White House news, in order to make Trump look bad. However, other reports seen to confirm this explanation, so it's probably safe to assume that it's true.
Reports indicate that there was a major disagreement in the aftermath of the collapse of the Afghan war "peace negotiations," and the cancellation of last weekend's "secret meeting" at Camp David with the Taliban and Afghanistan's president. Bolton was opposed to the meeting, while Trump was apparently looking for a photo op.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the Afghan "peace talks" with the Taliban are completely farcical. The Taliban simply want to get the Americans to withdraw, so that they can go back to closing girls' schools and killing Hazaras. The Camp David photo op was harmless, but silly.
My concern with the situation is not that Trump may have wanted the meeting for domestic political purposes. My concern is that Bolton was fired for telling Trump what was actually going on, even though Bolton and Bannon and perhaps only one or two others are the only ones in Washington that have any clue what's going on in the world. So with Bolton fired, I'm not aware of anyone left in the White House who knows what's going on in the world, beyond any simplistic fatuous left-wing or right-wing ideological or political considerations.
Barack Obama never had any idea what was going on in the world, which was particularly apparent when he appointed that idiot John Kerry as Secretary of State. At the end of his term, Obama seemed to have no more knowledge of the world than he did at the beginning.
Originally, it appeared that it would be the same for Trump, until he hired Bannon as his principal advisor to educate him. Trump is still on the correct path with China and North Korea, but with Bolton gone, we may be returning to the same path as Obama, at least in Afghanistan.
So the main problem in firing Bolton is not that Trump fired someone who disagreed with him, but that Trump fired one of the very few people in Washington who know what's going on in the world.
As for the situation in Afghanistan, Generational Dynamics analysis makes it clear that there is no chance whatsoever for "peace" in Afghanistan. A meeting at Camp David is just a meeting, and has no relevance. But if all American troops withdraw, then the Taliban will take over completely, as they did until they were dislodged by the Americans in 2001. They would restore hardline jihadist policies, such as closing girls' schools, and they would beat, rape and torture the Hazaras and other ethnic enemies. They might even sponsor a new bin Laden. The Chinese, who have been developing relationships with the Taliban since 2017, would take over. Fair or not, like it or not, America will be blamed for all of it. I think Bolton understands that, but I don't know whether Trump does.
A number of people have asked me why I no longer cross-post articles on the Breitbart news web site. This is a summary of what happened.
Starting in 2010, I posted over 3,000 articles on the Breitbart web site. For a couple of years, they had almost no international coverage at all on Breitbart, except for my articles. From 2011 through 2018, I posted one or two articles every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, missing only about 15 days during that entire eight year period.
Frances Martel took over as editor of Breitbart international news coverage in 2014. She and her staff knew little of international events and issues, beyond the usual right-wing delusions, and so my daily articles served to educate both her and her reporters about what was actually going on in the world. (Both the left wing and the right wing are totally delusional these days.)
And yet Martel always made it clear to me that she would never pay me a penny for the articles I was writing for Breitbart, even though Breitbart was making money from the ads that ran with my articles.
So a few months ago, I cross-posted an article as usual, but this one announced my book, "War between China and Japan." Martel refused to post the article unless I paid her for an "ad buy."
That was insulting and humiliating enough, but there's more. Last year, when I posted the article announcing my Iran book, I estimate that it resulted in 10-20 additional sales, so it was worth about $50 to me, give or take. I would have expected the same result from the announcement of my China book.
I don't know how much this "ad buy" would have cost -- probably hundreds or thousands of dollars -- but it's pretty clear to me that running an ad on Breitbart is almost completely worthless. In fact, if you look at the ads that they do run, they're almost all garbage.
So I've written thousands of articles for Martel, she got ad revenue from the ads that ran alongside my articles, I educated her and her staff about international events, and she refused to pay me a penny. And then she insulted me further by demanding that I pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a worthless "ad buy," after all I'd done for her, over a period of many years. I did a lot of work for Martel and Breitbart, and they made money from me, but refused to pay me a penny. I wasn't expecting to be treated as a hero, but Martel and Breitbart treated me as a piece of garbage, and I certainly deserved better than that. But with Gen-Xers in charge, that's the way the world is today.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2) Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy -- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1) Paperback: 153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00, https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Supremacy-Obsession-Generational/dp/1732738610/
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(11-Sep-2019)
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Israel's drone strike on Beirut targeted Iran's guided missile components
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Israel's army fired hundreds of artillery shells into southern Lebanon on Sunday, in response to a Hezbollah attack, launching two or three anti-tank missiles into an Israeli military base in northern Israel. There were no casualties on either side.
Analysts are calling the cross-border shelling the worst hostilities between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah since the end of the 2006 war between them.
Israel's army along the Lebanon border has been on high alert all week, since Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah promised retaliation for last week's drone strikes by Israel into targets in Beirut, Lebanon's capital city.
It now appears that neither Hezbollah nor Israel wants a war, and that the exchange of fire was just for show for domestic audiences.
In my article two days ago, I quoted a report from Debka saying that the drone attack was was actually a targeted assassination, targeting Iran’s Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who is the Iranian commander that Hezbollah's chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah reports to.
A web site reader has pointed out an alternative narrative that differs from the Debka report. As I often point out, Debka reports are based on Israeli military and intelligence sources, but they sometimes gets things wrong, and apparently Debka may have gotten the Beirut drone attack quite wrong.
According to the report from the Metula News Agency, the drone attacks in Beirut were targeting a particular component, supplied by Iran, for building guided missiles, in particular an eight-ton Iranian propulsion fuel mixer. According to the report (translation):
"The industrial mixer in question was to be used to prepare missile propulsion fuel to improve their performance and increase their accuracy. It was supposed to be part of the Iran-Hezbollah program to modify the tens of thousands of primitive rockets in its possession in order to turn them into precision missiles.The equipment arrived from Iran was deposited in a storage place between residential buildings to dissuade the Israelis trying to destroy them. Hezbollah planned to take them to a safe place during the current week. ...
These devices are essential to the rocket transformation program, according to the confession of a Shiite militiaman I met on site yesterday (Tuesday) while going to observe the place of the main explosion. If the mixer can be repaired or exchanged within a few weeks, the electronic control unit, packed with expensive components, will not be available for a few months. This, as long as it can be routed from Iran escaping the raids of the Israelis, who obviously know everything that happens here in Syria, Iraq and Iran, and who choose the best time to destroy equipment likely to disturb them."
The Metula report goes on to deny other claims in the Debka report, particularly the claim that one of the drones crashed after a boy threw a rock at it.
If the Metula report is correct, then it must be a major embarrasment to Debka that they got almost every detail of the story completely wrong.
Hezbollah has thousands of unguided rockets, but few guided missiles. Israel has managed so far to thwart every attempt by Iran to supply Hezbollah with guided missiles.
Most journalists are comparing the situation today to the beginning of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers near Israel's border with Lebanon. Israel went into a total panic, and rushed into war within four hours. There was no clear objective. Actually there was no objective at all, and no plan. The stated plans and objectives changed on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. Initially, Israel was going to use only air power. When that failed, they sent in troops.
While Israel was in a generational Crisis era, Lebanon was in a generational Awakening era, and really didn't want to fight a war. I discussed this at length in 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah. I quoted Lebanese President Émile Geamil Lahoud as saying:
"Believe me, what we get from [Israeli bombers] is nothing compared to [what would happen] if there is an internal conflict [a new civil war] in Lebanon. So our thanks comes when we are united, and we are really united, and the national army is doing its work according to the government, and the resistance [Hizbollah] is respected in the whole Arab world from the population point of view. And very highly respected in Lebanon as well."
The Lebanese feared, above all else, a repeat of something like the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila, and considered that to be a worse possibility than Israeli bombers.
So that explains why Lebanon and Hezbollah didn't want to fight in 2006. But why did Israel go into a state of chaotic panic? This panic is actually explained by the Generational Dynamics "58-Year Hypothesis."
The 58-year Hypothesis says that when some sort of calamitous event occurs, something so horrific that it traumatizes the entire population, adults and children alike, then the population will panic in some way exactly 58 years later. That's because 5-10 year old children at the time of the calamitous event all retire or die or lose power, all at once, 58 years after the calamitous event, and it's this cohort of people who panic, because they suddenly realize that they'll be gone and the calamitous event could happen again, because they won't be around to prevent it. The calamitous event has to be non-political, and one that was preventable but not prevented, and the panic comes from a fear that it will be unprevented once more.
The 58-year Hypothesis is reasonable, since it approximates the length of the active life of a cohort of people born in a given year, and it's supported by a lot of anecdotal evidence. There have now been so many examples of anecdotal evidence, that it might now be reasonable to call it the "58-Year Law."
In the case we're discussing, 2006 Israeli-Lebanon war occurred 58 years after the 1948 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. That actually explains why Israel totally panicked and pursued the war that turned into a disaster for both Lebanon and Israel. There was a cohort of people who were afraid of a major new war between Jews and Arabs, and they acted on those fears.
After the war ended, Lebanon appeared to be descending into chaos. Violence was increasing, and analysts and politicians around the world openly expressed fear of a major civil war in Lebanon between government (anti-Syrian) forces and (pro-Syrian) Hizbollah. This fear was almost universal, among international media, analysts and politicians.
I wrote that the generational analysis of Lebanon had not changed, and that a civil war at that time was impossible. I wrote that there would be a major political battle and that, at some point, "a political winner would be declared -- either the current government or Hizbollah. But there won't be a civil war." That was the generational prediction, and it turned out to be true. Late in 2008, I received the following e-mail message from a web site reader:
"I am very impressed with your site, especially when looking at some of your past predictions. I was trapped in Lebanon during the fighting and everyone was in great fear that a civil war was in progress. You predicted that it would fizzle out, and it did."
That brings us up to today, and Sunday's border clash between Hezbollah and Israel's army.
Numerous journalists have been expressing anxiety that the border clashes would trigger a new war, like the abduction of the two soldiers did in 2006. Well first off, the Israelis have learned their lessons from the 2006 war, and were certainly never going to allow themselves to panic again. They were completely crazy in 2006, but less crazy today. And Lebanon is still in a generational Awakening era, so neither side wants a war, and the cross-border shelling fizzled quickly.
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(2-Sep-2019)
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Mainland China troops poised to crush Hong Kong protesters
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Hundreds of civilians in Syria's Idlib province on Friday tried to push across the border into Turkey.
As the army of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia's army and air force, has been pushing farther into Idlib province, tens of thousands of additional civilians are being forced to flee their homes, and are moving northwest to the border with Turkey.
There are three million civilians in Idlib, including hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in refugee camps in the northwest. About 70,000 people in Idlib are anti-Assad rebels, but al-Assad has declared all three million people to be "terrorists," and he's made it clear repeatedly that he plans to exterminate them like cockroaches.
United Nations officials continue to express alarm at the continued attacks by al-Assad, and are fearing a major humanitarian disaster, as they try to flee into Turkey and are blocked. Turkey, which already hosts 3.5 million Syrians who fled al-Assad's violence since 2011, does not wish to have to host possibly a million more. Germany and other European countries are trying to pressure Turkey and Russia to bring al-Assad to heel, out of fear of another wave of Syrian refugees pouring across the border into Europe.
With hundreds of Syrians pushing across the border into Turkey on Friday, we may be seeing the beginning of large wave of thousands of displaced people, with resulting alarm in Turkey and Europe.
So Russia took hard-hitting action on Friday by declaring a "unilateral ceasefire," starting on Saturday morning.
There has been one farcical ceasefire after another in the last eight years. As usual, Bashar al-Assad didn't agree to the ceasefire, and the anti-Assad rebels didn't agree to the ceasefire.
Historically, al-Assad has always made a mockery of these ceasefires, and this one is sure to be no different.
Israel raised tensions in the Mideast last weekend by attacking Iranian assets in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
According to Israeli sources, the attacks in Iraq and Syria were airstrikes against components of precision guided missiles being transported from Iran to Lebanon for use by Hezbollah against Israel. Starting in 2012, Iran tried by failed to bring precision guided missiles into Lebanon, but Israeli airstrikes destroyed the missiles in transit each time. For the last three years, Iran has been tring to bring components into Lebanon, to be assembled into missiles there. The airstrikes in Iraq and Syria were targeting the components, according to Israeli sources.
The situation in Lebanon was a little different. Israel did not launch airstrikes into Lebanon. Instead, Israel sent two unmanned drones into Lebanon to crash into targets in Beirut, Lebanon's capital city.
At first it appeared that the drones had been shot down by Hezbollah. Then it was reported that the drones were targeting guided missile comnponents, same as the Iraq and Syria airstrikes.
However Debka, an analyst service based on Israeli military and intelligence sources, but which sometimes gets things wrong, is reporting that the drone strikes into Beirut were actually a targeted assassination, targeting Iran’s Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who is the Iranian commander that Hezbollah's chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah reports to. According to the report, the first of the two drones was unarmed on a reconnaissance mission to track the movements of Soleimani, but crash landed when a boy threw a rock at it. The second drone was to kill Soleimani. Although the second drone did hit a car and explode, it did not kill Soleimani.
Soleimani called the attack "insane." Hezbollah has threatened retaliation.
There are concerns that last weekend's multiple attacks were a first step in a new war by Israel against Iran and Hezbollah. This weekend, Israeli troops are on high alert near the Lebanon border.
Pro-democracy protesters had planned a large public protest on Saturday evening (Saturday morning ET), possibly as large as the protest last month with two million protesters, 25% of the population.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing did the following:
The organizers of the pro-democracy protests called off Saturday's protests, saying that they couldn't guarantee the safety of the demonstrators
However, a Fox News Hong Kong correspondent (Jonathan Hunt) said that he has just interviewed some of the extremists ("in an undisclosed location") and they're saying the following:
The question always is: How long will the CCP allow this to go on. There's effectively a hard deadline of October 1, the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China, and it's believed that the protests must be "settled or crushed" by October 1.
You can always count on the CCP to do the stupidest, most incompetent, and most self-destructive thing, so the logic of the situation requires a Tiananmen Square type intervention within the next month, in time for Hong Kong to be out of the news by October 1. That suggests that the deadline for action is pretty close.
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(31-Aug-2019)
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Russia admits its ground troops are fighting in Idlib
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia's army and airforce, has achieved a major victory in al-Assad's campaign to recapture Idlib province from anti-Assad rebels. This comes after weeks when the Idlib war was at a standstill and frozen in place.
Syrian and Russian forces entered the strategic town of Khan Sheikhoun on Wednesday, after capturing another strategically important town, Al-Hobeit, last week. These two towns lie on the key M5 highway that connects Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo. Anti-Assad forces have been in control of these towns since they were captured in 2014, so their recapture represents a major symbolic and strategic victory for al-Assad.
As the Syrian and Russian forces closed in, all the "moderate" anti-Assad rebel fighters, many of them supported by Turkey, withdrew. Reports indicate that they moved north and east, towards the Turkey border, to try to prevent the Syrian and Russian forces from proceeding further.
Another group of anti-Assad rebels, the al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front) has issued a statement that the withdrawal is a "redeployment" of its fighters to the southern part of Khan Sheikhoun from where they would continue to defend their territory.
There are over three million people in Idlib, most of whom fled there from Bashar al-Assad's violence in other regions. About 70,000 are anti-Assad rebels, and rest are families of men, women and children. Bashar al-Assad considers all three million of them to be "terrorists," and are to be exterminated. He's made it pretty clear that this is his intention, although he hasn't specifically used the word "exterminated."
Now Idlib is being bombed and attacked by Syrian regime and Russian forces as happened in previous "de-escalation zones," including Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa, but there is no other place to flee to. This is the last major region for al-Assad's genocide and ethnic cleansing of his Arab Sunni political opposition. Al-Assad is particularly targeting hospitals, schools and markets, in order to kill as many women and children as possible. However, al-Assad has not yet begun using chemical weapons -- chlorine gas, phosphorous and Sarin gas -- as he did regularly in other regions.
Many families in Khan Sheikhoun and the surrounding villages are afraid of leaving their homes for fear of losing their land, their crops, their animals, and their belongings. Tens of thousands of families have left their homes in the last two days alone, and are fleeing north and west toward the border with Turkey. The regions closer to the Turkey border are becoming more and more crowded, since Turkey, which already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees, has closed the border. At a time of his choosing, al-Assad and his Russian puppets will be able mop up the crowds of civilian families all at once.
As a result of the so-called "Astana process" last year, Turkey and Russia agreed that Idlib was a "de-escalation zone," and Turkey would police it, and take the guns away from the anti-Assad rebels. Turkey has set up a dozen small military bases (observation posts) around the region, as part of that agreement, but has not been successful in disarming the anti-Assad rebels.
These Turkish observation posts have been attacked repeatedly by artillery from the Syrian army. Turkey has repeatedly demanded that Russia keep al-Assad under control, but Russia has been unable or unwilling to do so.
The situation became much more alarming on August 17 when, for the first time, Syrian warplanes targeted a Turkish military convoy on its way to an observation post near Khan Sheikhoun. Three civilians were killed and 12 wounded.
Turkey's Defense Ministry blamed the Russians, saying that Turkey had supplied the Russians with advance information on the route that the convoy would be taking. However, an al-Assad spokesman said that the convoy was attacked on purpose, because "Turkish vehicles loaded with munitions... are heading toward Khan Sheikhoun to help the terrorists." In other words, Syria used the information to locate the convoy, and targeted it on purpose.
None of this is surprising. The UN is conducting an investgation of Syria and Russia for targeting hospitals and schools. The UN had supplied the Syrians and Russians with the coordinates of the hospital and school in Idlib, so that they would not be targeted by warplanes. Instead, the Syrians and Russians used those coordinates to target schools and hospitals on purpose.
During 2015, I repeatedly reported that the army of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad was near collapse, after al-Assad's army suffered a number of significant major setbacks, and was being crippled by massive desertions. ( "8-Apr-15 World View -- Bashar al-Assad's Syria army showing signs of collapse")
At that time, al-Assad was saved by the massive intervention by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. It's been known that Iran's troops from the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been fighting alongside al-Assad's troops in Syria. It's been known that Hezbollah troops, under orders from their Iranian puppetmasters, have also been fighting alongside al-Assad's troops in Syria.
Russia's warplanes have been an essential part of al-Assad's slaughter of his Sunni Arab enemies. But Russia has always denied that Russian troops were fighting in Syria, even though numerous reports said that they were.
However, during a press conference on Tuesday, Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov finally confirmed that "There are Russian soldiers on the ground in the Syrian province of Idlib."
He added that Russia would respond to any attack on its soldiers in Syria. That would be a warning to Russia's supposed ally, Turkey.
It's not surprising al-Assad's army needs even more help. Syria is in a generational Awakening/Unraveling era, and the people have little will to fight another war. The civil war in Syria should have fizzled years ago, but it's continuing because Bashar al-Assad is a psychopathic monster, and because he's received massive support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
There's nothing new here. Syria and Russia have always used the "peace talks" as a cover to hide the continued genocide, and they're doing it again in Idlib.
Turkey has played along, but there are two things that would change that: attacks by Syrian or Russian warplanes on Turkish forces, and a massive humanitarian disaster that would push hundreds of thousands of people across the border into Turkey.
Bashar al-Assad has said repeatedly that he intends to take control of Idlib province. There is absolutely no reason to doubt his intentions, or that he intends to do it using the same methods he used in Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa, and previous de-escalation zones: targeting markets, schools, hospitals and residences with barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine gas, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons targeting innocent Sunni women and children, and using Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He considers all Sunni Arab political opponents to be cockroaches to be exterminated.
The first warplane attack on Turkish forces occurred four days ago. As al-Assad's Syrian forces continue to move north, they're going to encounter more Turkish observation posts (military bases), and there are going to be more convoys to attack. If such an attack occurs again, Turkey may attempt to shoot down the warplane with a surface to air missile.
As Syria and Russia continue their attacks on civilians in Idlib, and push them farther north and east to the border with Syria, the humanitarian situation with worsen. Hundreds of thousands of families have already been forced to flee their homes and head for Turkey's border. The United Nations has for months been warning of the potential of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in history.
The point is that all of these activities are pointing towards a military clash between Turkey versus the Syrian regime and Russia.
Bashar al-Assad is a Shia/Alawite, and Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war between the Shia Alawites versus the Sunnis, including the ethnic Turkmens, climaxing in February, 1982. So there's a great deal of animus between the Alawites and the Turks.
Turkey and Russia may be having a marriage of convenience at the present time, but they are no friends, as I described in "25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars".
As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war refighting the 1948 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war will also pit Sunnis versus Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other.
Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran.
It is 100% certain that Turkey and Russia will be at war. The only remaining questions are the timing and scenario.
I've assumed that the most likely scenario for the start of a major war in the Mideast would be Israelis versus Palestinians and other Arabs. However, as Israel has developed alliances with Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries, that scenario has seemed less likely.
We now see a new scenario growing more likely, based on the following observations:
This suggests a possible scenario where a military clash begins in Syria between Turkey and Russia, and spreads to a regional or larger war. This scenario is not certain, of course, but in view of centuries of wars between Turkey and Russia, it's certainly plausible.
As the alignment of nations in a future Mideast war becomes clearer, there are still a number of questions about how the nations of Europe will line up.
Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Greece all have different and sometimes conflicting interests in the Mideast, and these differences could expand into clashes. Within Europe itself, there are sharp differences between North and South, and between East and West. Recall, for example, that one of the major reasons for Brexit is that many Britons objected to immigrants -- not the Muslim immigrants from Syria but the Christian immigrants from Poland and Hungary. And, of course, the Balkan nations are a hotbed of anger and hostility.
Meanwhile, I continue to be absolutely astonished that, after hearing politicians for decades say "Never again!", referring to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, that there are now three Holocausts currently in progress, in three different countries, all targeting Sunni Muslims:
Something new and astonishing occurs every day.
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(23-Aug-2019)
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Planning for the future in a chaotic world
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Much of international trade is in chaos, because of the US-China trade war, and especially because of US sanctions on Huawei Technologies and other Chinese firms for security reasons. Many international firms are going to take a revenue hits because they have to do less business with China. Furthermore, they're unable to plan effectively for the rest of 2019 and 2020 because President Donald Trump changes the details of the US sanctions rules frequently. Trump has announced two major changes in the last week alone -- delay of some tariffs, and ending all business with Huawei.
Trump has received a great deal of support both domestically and internationally for his US-China trade sanctions, because China has repeatedly lied and cheated in trade as a matter of course for decades. Even Democratic party leader Chuck Shumer was counseling Trump to "hang tough." Those supporting the sanctions say, "this has to be done sometime, and if not now, then when?"
However, almost everyone, particularly the Chinese, would like the sanctions to end, so that things can return to "normal." For the sanctions to end, there has to be a "trade deal," and so there have been frequent predictions of a trade deal in the mainstream media, many of which have proved to be wishful thinking.
The biggest example was the trade deal that was supposed to be signed at the end of May. During negotiations, the Chinese made commitments to resolve core complaints and write the changes into law -- theft of U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation. But at the beginning of May, China reneged on every commitment, and demanded that the agreement be signed anyway.
This is a typical Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tactic -- agree to concessions, renege on concessions, and demand that everyone else honor their own commitments. This is the script that American presidents have followed in negotiations with China and North Korea for decades.
The CCP officials undoubtedly expected this to work again, believing that Trump would be politically forced to sign anyway, being forced to do so by Democrats in the US and by leftists internationally.
The CCP officials were apparently doubly shocked first because Trump didn't follow that script, and second because he received support from the Democrats and politicians worldwide. Trump vowed to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10% to 25%, and threatened to raise them even more if China reneged on its existing agreements.
As I've said many times in the past, North Korea will not give up it nuclear missiles, no matter what Trump does, and China will not give up stealing intellectual property and trade secrets, no matter what Trump does. Trump knows that too.
Since May, there has been no progress on US-China trade talks.
Peter Navarro is President Trump's Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. He's considered to be a "hardliner" on the China negotiations. He appeared on television this week, and recited a list of seven structural issues in China's economy that have to be resolved by trade negotiations:
These criminal activities are deeply embedded in China's culture, which considers Americans to be barbarians, and so it's doubtful that they could ever be resolved without a war.
Some reports indicate that the Chinese are hoping a new American president to take office in 2020, and be more "reasonable." The problem with that reasoning is that even a Democratic president would be unable politically to simply approve of the Chinese stealing intellectuarl property, forcing technology transfers, and so forth.
In other words, there is no compromise that resolves this problem. We can look to the North Korean talks for an analogy that we can learn from. In that case, the Trump negotiations with Kim Jong-un produced a "charm offensive" that postponed some North Korean tests, but Trump did not end the sanctions, and North Korea did not end development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration may have the effect of raising prices, but no apparent consequences beyond that. However, the sanctions on Huawei Technologies are having a major geopolitical effect.
Of course, it's not just America that's blocking Huawei. Officials in more and more countries are becoming convinced that Huawei is building undetectable backdoors into their routers and other devices. These backdoors could be activated by China's military using, for example, a secret 1024-bit key, giving the military control of the device.
The US and a number of other Western countries have placed severe restrictions on installations of Huawei 5G routers and other internet equipment on networks in their countries. As a result, many countries have restrictions on the purchase of Huawei equipment.
However, Trump's sanctions on Huawei have gone a lot farther, and these sanctions are creating a chaotic situation for companies trying to plan a strategy for the next year.
The problem is that China's government, through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is forcing as many governments as they can to install Huawei 5G networks. Since China's government is heavily subsidizing Huawei, Huawei's devices are being widely installed in any countries where they're permitted. This means that, in case of war, China's military will be in control of networks in those countries.
The Trump administration has placed additional restrictions on Huawei to slow down the company's rapid takeover of portions of the internet. The Trump administration is restricting sales of Huawei products to American companies for security reasons. But the Trump administration has gone further, and is also restricting sales of American-made products to Huawei. The objective is to disrupt Huawei's supply chain, to slow their takeover of the internet as much as possible.
Components manufactured outside of the United States of course would not be affected by the US ban. However, it's more complicated than that, because components manufactured outside the US may still have components or materials manufactured within the US. The US has blocked Huawei from buying goods made from 25% or more of U.S.-originated technologies or materials.
An example of the confusion many companies are facing is Kyoto, Japan, based Murata Manufacturing. Murata supplies capacitors for Huawei-made base towers and smartphones.
The capacitors made by Murata are heavily used in electronic circuits to stabilize voltage and power flow. A smartphone may contain hundreds of capacitors, while an electric vehicle like a Tesla uses about 10,000.
It would seem that Murata's business with Huawei is completely outside the reach of the US sanctions on Huawei. That's why, on May 23, Murata's headquarters office in Kyoto, Japan, said that "its business had not been affected by the U.S. move."
However, this statement apparently caused something of a panic in the Murata's North American division. On May 30, Murata Electronics, North America (MENA), issued a very strong statement that contradicted the corporate statement issued just a week earlier. This statement said:
"Murata Electronics, North America (MENA), must not export, re-export or transfer (in country) any items (hardware, software, technology) that are subject to the US Export Administration Regulations to those who are listed in the Entity List. Public domain information available on Murata's web site is the only technical information available to these companies. Direct sales to any of these Huawei business entities or indirect sales known or suspected to be routed to the listed Huawei entities is to immediately cease.Communications between, or on behalf of, MENA and Huawei, or any Huawei affiliated companies regardless if they are included in the Entity list or not should immediately cease. This direction includes communications such as meetings, email, phone, sample support, product promotion, technology discussions, quotes, or any other activity whether written or verbal.
Out of an abundance of caution, MENA is ceasing all sales and communications with Huawei business entities regardless of whether the Huawei business is on the Entity List or not.
MENA customer codes tied to Huawei affiliated companies will be deactivated."
This is a pretty aggressive policy statement, issued on May 30, in compliance with US requirements, on the part of the North American branch of Murata. It appears to a reaction to the corporate statement, to make it clear that MENA was complying with the sanctions, even if corporate might or might not.
Since then, Murata's Japanese offices have apparently not made any further public statements. Murata's June 30 quarterly financial statement made only a vague reference to the issue:
"In the global economic environment for the period under review, a slowdown in the economy in China caused by the trade friction with the U.S. was increasingly apparent. While employment growth continued in the U.S., economic prospects gradually worsened, and in Europe, political uncertainty coincided with the weakening of the region's economy. The prolonged U.S.-China trade friction is increasingly having an impact on the global economy, causing growing uncertainty about its future."
These are pretty clearly weasel words written by a lawyer, since they supposedly state a policy while saying nothing.
But one can sympathize with the complexity of Murata's problems. Murata has numerous plants, sales offices, and research facilities in China, so it's not surprising that the company is unable to arrive at a firm policy with respect to Huawei. According to research by Goldman Sachs, Murata will lose $90 million in operating profit because of the Huawei restrictions, and Japan's major electronic parts manufacturers together will lose $230 million in profits.
As another example, Osaka-based Panasonic Corp. has had similar confusion. On May 23, the company said that it was suspending supplies of some components to Huawei, but issued a clarifying statement on May 24 saying, "No transactions with Huawei have been suspended at the moment. We are still making checks whether the ban applies to our products."
Huawei reacted last year by preparing for a worst case scenario. Huawei is diversifying its suppliers, and it's developing some of its own components instead of depending on suppliers. Huawei told its suppliers last year that it wanted to build up a 6-12 month inventory of the most crucial components
Every company that does business with Huawei is likely to be confused right now, if only because President Trump himself seems to change policy regularly. On Friday of last week, Trump said that "it's easier not to do business at all with Huawei," and he added, "We're not going to do business with Huawei. That doesn't mean we won't agree to something if and when we make a trade deal, but we're not going to be doing business with Huawei."
Trump said that China was breaking its commitment to purchase more American farm goods, and indicated that if China started fulfilling that promise, then he would revisit the Huawei decision. For Murata, Panasonic, or any other firm that sells components to Huawei, this means that it must be ready to change policies at any time.
There's a broader picture here. In the 1980s, the US imposed sanctions on Poland and South Africa, and they apparently played a part in restoring democracy in both countries. I remember analysts at the time describing how sanctions were a much better way to solve problems than using military action. Today, many countries are imposing sanctions, including the US, the EU, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and others. It may be true that sanctions can solve problems, but only in a generational Awakening era. Today, in a generational Crisis era, they have the opposite effect. Instead of acceding to demands backed by sanctions, the targets impose counter-sanctions. There is now a large global network of interlocking sanctions involving many countries, and this is slowing growth and strengthening the hands of hardliners in many countries and falling growth forecasts.
This international trade war is in context of a number of things that are almost beyond belief in modern times:
There's a feeling these days that the world is headed for some kind of tipping point. In particular, there is a good chance of a global recession in the next few months, and that could trigger a chain reaction of crises in any of the items in the above list.
So the correct analogy to what's happening today is not Poland and South Africa in the 1980s.
One analogy is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which was passed by Congress in 1930, during the Great Depression. It was particularly devastating to Japan, as it cut off Japan's exports to America of silk, its greatest cash crop. A year later, a desperate Japan invaded Manchuria.
Another analogy today is 1941. Japan invaded China in 1937, and launched the Sino-Japanese war. On August 1, 1941, US president Franklin Roosevelt showed his displeasure by establishing an embargo on oil and gasoline exports to Japan. Three months later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
You don't have to understand these analogies to know that the world is an international pressure cooker today, a welter of tariffs, sanctions, annexations, genocide, ethnic cleansing, border disputes, and militarization. As I showed with numerous examples in my book, world wars don't begin with cataclysmic events like the bombing of Pearl Harbor. They begin with tiny conflicts that grow into cataclysmic events over a period of months.
Those interested in understanding the history of China, Japan, Korea and Russia should read my book, "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2) Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(16-Aug-2019)
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Pakistan furious at the revocation of Article 370
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Kashmir is a bitterly disputed region on the border between India and Pakistan. It's one of the four or five extremely volatile regions in the world where a local war could quickly spread into a larger regional war or even a world war. So a large surge in tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir in the last week is capturing worldwide attention.
Two weeks ago, India sent tens or hundreds of thousands of troops into the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir with no explanation.
It turned out that India deployed the vast army of troops to Kashmir in anticipation of violence that was likely to occur after last week's revocation of Article 370 of India's constitution, which makes Kashmir a semi-autonomous state of India.
India did much more than send in troops. For the last few days, Kashmir has been locked down and isolated. The streets are deserted all day long, because of a strict curfew that requires everyone to stay at home. All phone and internet lines have been shut down, in order to prevent Kashmiris from communicating and planning a riot.
Indian officials are concerned about a large backlash, once the curfew is lifted, and the events that occurred on Friday illustrate those concerns. The curfew was temporarily lifted for Friday prayers. Indian police used tear gas, pellets and live fire to fight back at least 10,000 anti-Indian protesters in Srinagar, Kashmir's capital city.
Indian officials are concerned about what will happen on Monday, when there is a major Muslim festival of Eid Ul Azha. Eid Ul Azha ("Festival of the Sacrifice") is one of the holiest days on the Muslim calendar, and it commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son in obedience to Allah's command.
The region's last generational crisis war was the massive 1947 Partition War between Muslims and Hindus that followed the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan.
An outcome of that war was that Kashmir was split into two, governed respectively by Pakistan and India. Indian-governed Kashmir is populated mostly by Muslims. As a condition for giving control to India, Article 370 was added to India's constitution, giving Kashmir substantial autonomy over its own affairs. Importantly, another article — 35a — also barred people outside the state from buying property there to prevent India’s majority-Hindu population from moving into Jammu and Kashmir and displacing the Muslims who live there.
A possibly unintended consequence of these laws was that girls from Kashmir could not marry men from outside Kashmir. The reason was that residents of Jammu and Kashmir had exclusive rights to property and state government jobs, among other privileges, and women marrying non-residents stood to lose those benefits.
With the revocation of those laws, Kashmir is just another state within India, equivalent to all the other states. Girls can now freely marry outside of Kashmir, but the larger picture is Kashmir's affairs are now decided in New Delhi rather than in Srinigar.
India's prime minister Narendra Modi has justified the revocation of Article 370 by saying that it's harmed the people of Kashmir in the last 70 years, and and that all it has done is to bring nepotism, separatism, and terrorism. He said that the "historic" decision would benefit all the people of Kashmir, and would benefit all of India.
It's not surprising that Modi revoked Article 370, since he has wanted to do so for years, but many analysts are wondering about the timing - why now?
According to some analysts, it's because of the Donald Trump administration. The US is negotiating to remove all of its troops from Afghanistan, and Modi may fear that this will free up a new wave of terrorists to flood into Kashmir, and saw a need to act preemptively. Modi also may have been concerned by Trump's July meeting with Inran Khan, at which Trump offered to mediate the Kashmir problem for Pakistan and India.
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Pakistani officials were caught by surprise by the revocation of Article 370, and have been expressing fury. Officials in Pakistan particularly point to the removal of restrictions on ownership of land and property by outsiders, which were embedded in Article 370. Removing these restrictions might lead to an influx of Hindu immigration into Kashmir, diluting the Muslim population.
There were large anti-India protests in Pakistan's capital city Islamabad, with 8,000 demonstrators in the streets. One young man was quoted: "Yes, we are angry here. We don't want to fight. The last option is to fight ... but if we have to, we will get Kashmir by the sword, by ammunition and guns." Some Pakistani officials were calling for military action against India.
Pakistan's close ally China said that it will "continue to support Pakistan in safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests."
Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan defused some of the anger by saying that instead of military action, they will use diplomatic action. Pakistan has downgraded diplomatic ties with India and suspended trade, and will bring the issue to the UN Security Council.
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(10-Aug-2019)
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South Korea's Moon: 'We won't be defeated again' by Japan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The surprise trade dispute between South Korea and Japan that we reported three weeks ago has been become increasingly vitriolic. ( "17-Jul-19 World View -- Japan - South Korea trade dispute worsens")
The Koreans have been demanding reparations for Japanese atrocities committed during World War II. Japan and South Korea agreed to reparations in a treaty in 1965 that the Japanese claim settled the matter. The Koreans demanded more reparations, and in 2015 Japan and Korea concluded a bilateral agreement which was intended at the time as the “final and irreversible” resolution.
However, now a Korean court has ruled that the Japanese must pay additional reparations to so-called "comfort girls." The Japanese are seeing this as harassment, and last month they imposed trade sanctions on chemicals needed for manufacturing chips. The sanctions particularly target Korean firms Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and LG Electronics.
Two days ago, Japan took the further step of dropping South Korea from a so-called "white list" of favored export destinations, and South Korea retaliated in kind.
Japan's sanctions have hit South Korea hard, and have generated a vitriolic backlash in South Korea against Japan.
Millions of South Koreans are boycotting Japanese goods over the dispute, and several protests have been held throughout the country. A South Korean man set himself on fire in the center of Seoul. Supermarket shelves are being emptied of Japanese goods. Defiant demonstrators have posted films of themselves destroying their own Japanese cars.
Speaking to a cabinet meeting, President Moon Jae-in vowed angrily that "we will never let Japan" defeat Korea again:
"I clearly warn that the Japanese government will be solely responsible for what happens going forward. We will never be defeated by Japan again. The Republic of Korea is not the same Republic of Korea of the past. We will never let Japan, who is the assailant, speak louder and become offensive towards us. We will sternly take measures corresponding to Japan’s unjustified economic retaliations. We have measures to use to counter their offenses."
An editorial in the Korea Times relates the current situation to Korea's historical relation to Japan, Russia and China:
"The issue of getting Japanese companies belatedly to pay compensation for Korean forced laborers during World War II the starting point of the Korea-Japan standoff only scratches the surface of the much bigger issue underneath. ...His shadows are manifest in two ways: Koreans resent Japan and its nationalist leader Shinzo Abe for their refusal to inherit the sins of their ancestors and the obligation to pay for these sins but Koreans worry about their wellbeing, fearing that the fate that befell them at the turn of the 20th century will revisit them. ...
Back then, the big powers scrambled to have Korea as a colonial trophy prize.
In that scramble, imperial Japan cut deals with the U.S., fought off the Qing Dynasty and the Russian Empire, and absorbed Korea, then the Joseon Kingdom, before ruling it as ruthless colonial master for the following 36 years.
The hapless King Gojeong, the last monarch of the ailing Joseon, was reduced to a pawn being pulled by his father and Queen Min or Empress Myeongseong. The trio's respective and conflicting attempts to curry favor with the big powers to save themselves backfired and collapsed.
The ambience created by the mixture of U.S. President Donald Trump, China's president for life Xi Jinping, Japan's Abe, remotely Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and, last but not least, North Korea's young autocrat Kim Jong-un, has for no good reasons spooked present-day Korea in the same manner Joseon must have felt some 100 years ago."
The Japanese and Korean people have hated each other for many centuries. In the modern era, after the Korean war, the two countries have remained at a frozen peace because they're both American allies. But that peace is thawing, now that the survivors of WW II have all but disappeared.
Historically, Korea has been a Chinese vassal state, forced to pay tribute to China. So the Koreans hate both the Japanese and the Chinese. How this will all unfold once war breaks out will not be pleasant. Those missiles and nuclear weapons that the North Koreans are developing will be targeting Japan, South Korea and America. South and North Korea will be in a full scale ground war. Japan and America will be striking back at both North Korea and China.
Those interested in understanding the history of China, Japan, Korea and Russia should read my book, "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2) Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
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(3-Aug-2019)
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From 'Re-education' to slave labor
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A new bizarre announcement from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that most of the Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs that have been arrested and put into concentration camps ("re-education centers") have now been released.
Starting in 2016, reports were coming out of East Turkestan (Xinjiang Province) that tens or hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs were being arrested and put into concentration camps. At first, the CCP vehemently denied that these concentration camps even existed. But more and more satellite imagery was published showing the existence of huge concentration camps and crematoria. By 2019, the evidence collected from satellites and on the ground indicates that over one million Uighurs and Kazakhs have been locked up in these concentration camps.
With the overwhelming evidence piling up, the the CCP was forced last year to admit that they had locked up a million Uighurs and Kazakhs in "reeducation centers," but claimed that the Uighurs and Kazakhs were being locked up so that they could be "reeducated" and given new skills that they could use in Chinese society.
On Tuesday, Xinjiang Governor Shohrat Zakir made an announcement:
"Most of the graduates from the vocational training centers have been reintegrated into society, More than 90 percent of the graduates have found satisfactory jobs with good incomes. ...Many of these training centres have become venues for short-term classes on farming skills, and some are offering short-term skills improvement courses for people before they take up their new jobs."
People in the West are scratching their heads wondering what this means. If there were hundreds of thousands of former prisoners suddenly walking free in the streets of Xinjiang province, then it would already have been noticed, and no announcement would be necessary. So if these hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and Kazakhs are no longer in the "reeducation centers," then where are they?
One possibility is that they've been sent to the crematoria, much like the "graduates" of Hitler's concentration camps. That may turn out to be true for a substantial number of them, but we may not know for a long time, just as we never found out about Hitler's crematoria until after the war.
Barry Sautman, an expert on ethnic politics in China at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, provides a different possible explanation:
"They may mean that such persons no longer reside within the centers. It does not mean that such persons have returned to the status quo ante, are no longer under close supervision, or work somewhere other than an enterprise connected to one of the centres."
This makes sense. If you have a million prisoners, then use them as slave labor on farms and in factories.
That's what Hitler did, according to the project "Forced Labor 1939-1945" archive in Berlin:
"Nazi Germany created one of the largest forced labor systems in history: Over twenty million foreign civilian workers, concentration camp prisoners and prisoners of war from all of the occupied countries were required to perform forced labor in Germany in the course of the Second World War.At the height of the so-called “Ausländereinsatz” (use of foreigners) in August 1944, six million civilians were forced to perform forced labor in the German Reich, most of them from Poland and the Soviet Union. Over one third were women, some of whom were abducted together with their children or gave birth to their children in the camps. In 1944, nearly two million prisoners of war were exploited to work in the German economy. From 1943, German industry also increasingly used concentration camp detainees as a source of forced labor."
So it seems likely that the CCP is using Uighurs and Kazakhs concentration camp detainees as forced labor.
Using these prisoners as forced laborers makes a lot of sense. But also, as I've described in my book, "War Between China and Japan," both Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong admired Adolf Hitler and his methods, and Xi Jinping is also copying Hitler's methods in illegally annexing the South China.
This story about "releasing" Uighurs and Kazakhs is just breaking today, so there's a lot we don't know. But as I keep pointing out, the CCP has adopted some of the stupidest policies in the history of the world since World War II, and using Uighurs and Kazakhs as slave labor would be consistent with that.
Those interested in understanding China today and in history should read my book, "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2) Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational
Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(31-Jul-2019)
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Roots of the Japan-Korea dispute
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Korean chip and display manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and LG Electronics, are scrambling to recover from being hit with a one-two punch -- first the US-China trade war, and then Japan's export restrictions on needed materials.
The US-China trade dispute has roiled supply chain relationships throughout Asia. Officials in many companies are moving factories and finding new suppliers, hoping that the dispute will end soon or that, at worst, Donald Trump will lose the next presidential election and the trade dispute can then be settled.
So a lot of people are shocked and surprised that there's suddenly a new trade dispute, this time between Japan and South Korea, and this one may be as intractable as the US-China dispute.
Starting in July, Japan tightened restrictions on the export of three materials used in manufacturing chips and displays, citing what it has called “inadequate management” of sensitive items exported to South Korea, as well as a lack of consultations about export controls. The three materials are EUV photoresist, hydrofluoric acid (etching gas) and fluorinated polyimide.
It's believed that Samsung's existing inventory of EUV photoresist is not large, since stocks can expire within a few weeks, and require demanding storage conditions.
It's going to be difficult to find alternate suppliers since Japan controls 92% of the global resist supply and 94% of fluorinated polyimid.
Two South Korean companies, Dongjin Semichem and Foosung Co, do manufacture the restricted materials, but not in the quantities needed by Samsung and SK Hynix.
Both Samsung and SK Hynix have announced 10% cuts in DRAM production, and probably the same in NAND memory production, because of the restrictions announced by Japan on July 1.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, this has benefited both companies, with Samsung's stock shares increasing 2% since July 1, and SK Hynix shares up 8%. This is despite a general fall in Seoul's stock market.
The reason is that the production cuts are reducing the supplies of these chips, while demand remains the same, and so prices are going up, and so profits at Samsung and SK Hynix are also going up. In fact, the prices of DRAM chips have been falling in the last year, and are now returning to their former levels.
The shortages of these chips will mean higher prices for consumers wanting to buy iPhones and other electronic devices, but what is bad for consumers in this case is good for the manufacturers.
The mutual hatred of the Japanese and Korean people goes very deep. Korea has been the staging ground for earlier invasions by both China and Japan against one another — for example, Kublai Khan's invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 or Toyotomi Hideyoshi's attempts to invade Ming China via Korea in 1592 and 1597.
During much of the last two millennia, Korea has been a vassal state of China, in a tributary relationship, meaning that Korea paid China a great deal of money, usually gold and slaves, in return for guarantees of defense from outsiders (i.e., Japan).
Since Korea lies between Japan and China, there have been many wars fought between Japan and Korea, or between Japan and China on Korean soil. In my opinion, the most important and significant battle in east Asia during the last millennium, prior to World War II, was the Battle of Myongnyang (Myeongnyang) on October 26, 1597. The Koreans won a brilliant naval victory against the Japanese navy, using technologically advanced "turtle ships," believed to be the world's first ironclad warship. A Korean contingent of 12 ships lured a Japanese force of hundreds of ships into a narrow channel and destroyed 133 Japanese vessels without any Korean losses. Even today, the battle is described in mythic terms, as an almost miraculous victory.
Japan finally achieved its revenge in the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-95), which was a victory of Japan over China. China relinquished all claims of influence over Korea, which became a Japanese protectorate until it was annexed outright in 1910. Japan also took control of Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula. Korea was a Japanese colony until 1945, when Japan was defeated in World War II.
Those interested in understanding the millennia of east Asian history should read my book, "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2) Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/
So with those centuries of history, nobody should be particularly surprised when differences between the two countries are flaring up again. There have been two major flareups in the last year, and neither of them appears close to resolutions.
During World War II, Japanese soldiers used Korean girls, both prostitutes and civilians, as "comfort girls." Korea has demanded reparations for the use of the comfort girls, and for other slave labor performed by the Koreans.
The Japanese claim that all such awards were already paid in a settlement concluded in a 1965 treaty.
Then, in 2015, Japan and Korea concluded a bilateral agreement which was intended at the time as the “final and irreversible” resolution of the comfort women issue. However, that turned out not to settle the issue after all. South Korea is now saying that demands from the victims are causing the agreement to "wither," and on October 30 of last year, South Korea's supreme court awarded compensation to four Korean citizens forced to work for the Japanese during World War II, an award that the Japanese are refusing to acknowledge. This is still an explosive issue with vitriolic views on both sides that are unlikely to be settled in the near future.
A second dispute is related to a military issue that occurred late last year.
According to Japan, on December 20 a South Korean warship locked its fire-control radar onto a Japanese patrol plane, as if preparing to shoot it down. Japan made a formal protest to South Korea, claiming that it was a "hostile act." South Korea denied that the radar lock had occurred. In the vitriolic talks that have occurred since then, Korea has claimed that Japanese Self-Defense Force planes have deliberately flown at low altitude near South Korean naval vessels multiple times, terming the acts a "clear provocation."
This brings us back to Japan's announcement that it was restricting sales of the three materials needed by South Korean firms to manufacture chips. Japan has never given a reason for the restriction, except to make some vague claims about national security. At a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Japanese representative said the measures are "not a trade embargo but an operational review necessary for proper implementation of Japan's export control system based on security concerns," whatever that means. But it's believed that the Japanese are retaliating for the comfort girl and radar lock issues.
Japan and South Korea are US and Western allies, and have common enemies -- North Korea and China. After centuries of war, there's little chance that the people of the two countries will ever love each other, or even that the current disputes will ever be completely settled. All that we can hope for is some sort of ceasefire.
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(17-Jul-2019)
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Does the Syria war have a political solution?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
For the past three years, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has publicly vowed that he would regain control of all of Syria, even if it meant exterminating all of millions of civilians in his Sunni Arab opposition.
Al-Assad used a similar period in one region after another -- Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa, etc. He begins by bombing peaceful protesters, particularly women and children. As soon as someone become violent in revenge, he declares the whole community or ethnic group to be "terrorists," and uses that as an excuse for full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing. The genocide is performed with missiles, barrel bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas, all particularly targeting women and children, as well as schools, markets, and hospitals. In each region, under pressure from Russia and the United Nations, allowed hundreds of thousands of people to flee to the northwest province of Idlib.
Al-Assad has vowed since May 2018 that he would attack Idlib in exactly the same way, in order take control of it. This has led to widespread fears of a major humanitarian catastrophe, since "there's no Idlib for Idlib," meaning that there's no place for the people to flee to. Thanks to the influx of refugees from other regions, Idlib now has over three million people, mostly women and children, and al-Assad claims that all of them are "terrorists." Approximately 70,000 are believed to be members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an anti-Assad rebel group formerly associated with al-Qaeda.
If al-Assad assaulted Idlib in the same way as the other regions, perhaps millions of people would try to cross the border into Turkey. Turkey will bear the brunt of this disaster. Turkey is already hosting 3.5 million refugees, and is doing everything possible to prevent any more refugees from Syria from entering Turkey. If a new mass of refugees does enter Turkey, then some of the Idlib refugees will undoubtedly continue on into Europe, resulting in a new European migrant crisis.
I and many other people expected al-Assad's assault on Idlib to have begun long before now. But there was almost know military action at all in the last year, until April 26, when it began bombing residential areas, schools, hospitals, markets and other places where women and children are likely to be found. It seemed that the full force of al-Assad's assault on Idlib had begun.
However, al-Assad's assault on Idlib appears to have "hit a wall." More than two months of Russian-backed operations in and around Idlib province have yielded little or nothing. Al-Assad's assault has been met with a counterpunch from anti-Assad rebels who have been well-armed with guided anti-tank missiles supplied by Turkey.
The fact that al-Assad has accomplished little in Idlib in the last year, and has hit a roadblock since resuming operations on April 26, is making observers wonder if the war may be reaching a diplomatic solution, with no clear victory by either al-Assad or the anti-Assad rebels. There are a number of political reasons supporting that conclusion.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin has been under domestic pressure because of the cost of Russia's support for Syria in the war. That's not surprising, since Russia already has what it wants from the Syria war. Russia was completely shut out of the Mideast in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, for the first time in decades, Russia has two military bases in the Mideast -- the Tartus naval base, and the Hmeimim airbase, both of them in Syria, in return for supporting al-Assad. Russia is now firmly in control of those two bases, and now that it has the bases it wants, and also wants to spend less money, it can pull back from the war in Syria.
In the past, Russia, Iran, and Iran's puppet Hezbollah were all fighting alongside al-Assad's forces against his Sunni Arab opposition. Turkey had no choice but to watch what was happening from afar.
But now, Russia wants to be main power in the Mideast. Furthermore, Russia does not want any more Mideast wars, since they would inevitably require Russia to intervene. So Russia wants to support Turkey in preventing a massive new refugee crisis in Idlib. Russia would also like to keep Iran and Hezbollah under control, so that they don't threaten a war with Israel.
However, there are also major political factors working against a political solution. The HTS anti-Assad rebels have been attacking Syrian forces. Theoretically, based on an agreement between Turkey and Russia, Turkey is supposed to prevent these kinds of attacks between HTS and al-Assad forces, by means of a buffer zone separating them, but this has not been entirely successful.
When the war in Syria began in 2011, I wrote that it would fizzle because Syria is in a generational Awakening era. That's what should have happened. The war almost fizzled after four years in 2015 when al-Assad's army, ridden with desertions, was facing defeat from his Arab Sunni opposition. But that was point at which he was saved by Russia, which brought the full force of its armed forces in support of al-Assad.
Now another four years have passed, and once again it appears that war is about to fizzle. Maybe this time there will finally be some sort of political settlement. It's certainly true that after eight years, pretty much everyone is sick and tired of fighting the war.
Syria's current "civil war" is also an Awakening era war because it comes just one generation after the real civil war that occurred in Syria.
Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war between the Shia Alawites versus the Sunnis. That war climaxed in February 1982 with the destruction of the town of Hama. There had been a massive uprising of the 400,000 mostly Sunni citizens of Hama against Syria's Shia/Alawite president Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father. He turned the town to rubble and killed or displaced hundreds of thousands. Hama stands as a defining moment in the Middle East. It was so shocking that it largely ended the war.
That worked because at that time, Syria was in a generational crisis era, and the destruction of Hama was the climax of the war. The reason for Bashar al-Assad's delusions is that he thought that the destruction of Aleppo in 2016 would end the war in the same way that his father's destruction of Hama ended the war. But this is a generational Awakening era, and that kind of outcome doesn't work. The reason that it doesn't work is that there are many survivors who were shocked by the destruction of Hama in 1982, but are no longer shocked by similar actions since they've seen it all before. So the destruction of Aleppo did not end the war, as Bashar al-Assad delusionally hoped, and now the war is back in full force.
So that's why the war should have fizzled, since both the Shia/Alawites and the Arab Sunnis have vivid memories of the 1982 war and don't want it to repeat. So why didn't war fizzle quickly?
As I've written many times in the past, Bashar al-Assad is the worst genocidal monster so far this century. He is apparently in some kind kind of psychotic competition with his late father, and wants to prove that he can slaughter just as many people, just as effectively.
(As an aside, North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un is also in a similar psychotic competition with his own late father, Kim Jong-il, as I've mentioned in the past.)
The Syrian war began in 2011 when al-Assad ordered his army and air force to attack peacefully protesting civilians, including women and children. Things really turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad launched a massive military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and children Palestinians. He dropped barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons onto innocent Sunni women and children, he's targeted bombs on schools and hospitals, and he's used Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He considers all Sunni Muslims to be cockroaches to be exterminated.
This attack on Arab Sunnis attracked tens of thousands of young jihadists to Syria to fight al-Assad. By 2014, these jihadists had formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). There were numerous anti-Assad rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) later renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS, and then renamed again to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). There were also Kurdish forces including PYD = Kurdish Democratic Union Party, YPG = Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, armed wing of the PYD, and YPJ = Women’s Protection Units. And of course there were also Turkish forces, American forces, Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
The point is that the Syrian civil war is not really a civil war. Rather it's a mash of over a dozen different forces vying for control of different parts of Syria.
In the past eight years since Syria's war began, I've written analyses of Awakening era wars in many other countries, where the preceding crisis war was an ethnic or tribal civil war. All the leaders in such cases exhibit some level of violence against their former tribal or ethnic enemies. These include Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Paul Biya in Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, the military junta in Thailand, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Salva Kiir in South Sudan, Joseph Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Hun Sen in Cambodia.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what we can expect with respect to Idlab and the war in Syria is as follows: The Syria war will not reach a climax (such as the climax in 1982). Intead, the war will fizzle, or there will be some kind of poltical settlement. Throughout history, what has always happened in such situations is there are always alternating periods of peace and low-level violence or war. Each period of violence will be worse than the previous one, land will be settled by some kind of peace agreement, which will be quickly broken by one or both sides. Finally, after several decades, there is a massive new generational crisis war, and the cycle repeats.
At the very least, we can breath a sigh of relief that al-Assad has "hit a wall" in Idlib, so that there won't be a new humanitarian catastrophe.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
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Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(12-Jul-2019)
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Pundits fear conflict with US-China trade talks
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
The US State Dept. has approved the sale of sophisticated weapons to Taiwan. The sales will include 250 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and 108 General Dynamics M1A2T Abrams tanks.
According to a statement from the Dept. of Defense:
"This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security and defensive capability of the recipient, an important force for political stability, military balance, and economic progress in the region.The recipient intends to use these defense articles and services to modernize its armed forces and expand its existing air defense architecture to counter threats. This will contribute to the recipient military's goal to update its capability while further enhancing greater interoperability between the recipient, the U.S., and other partners. The recipient will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment into its armed forces.
The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region."
Although the statement says that the sale "will not alter the basic military balance in the region," it's clear that the intended purpose is to allow Taiwan to defend itself against an attack by China. China has stated that it will, as a last resort, invade Taiwan in order to annex it to China, as it has already illegally annexed the South China Sea to China.
The intent is that anti-aircraft missiles will permit Taiwan to defend against a missile attack by China, and the tanks will permit Taiwan to defend itself from a land attack by China.
According to a tweet by Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen:
"Pleased that the #US government has approved another arms sale package, boosting #Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities. We’ll continue to speed up investment in national defense, & partner with like-minded countries to defend democracy while promoting regional peace and stability. pic.twitter.com/dw4Rw58hYb Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) July 9, 2019"
However, China's Foreign Ministry responded harshly:
"The US arms sale to Taiwan gravely violates international law and basic norms in international relations, seriously breaches the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, flagrantly interferes in China's domestic affairs and harms China's sovereignty and security interests. China deplores and resolutely opposes it. We have lodged stern representations with the US.Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory. No one should underestimate the Chinese government and people's will and resolve to defend our sovereignty and national integrity against foreign interference. We urge the US to stay committed to the one-China principle and the three joint communiques, cancel this arms sale immediately and stop military ties with Taiwan to prevent further damage to China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait."
As I've written in the past, China does not want a war with the US. However, China is planning a war of extermination against Japan, in revenge for Japan's atrocities in World War II, and also a war of annexation against Taiwan. China is developing a huge arsenal of missiles and ships to attack the United States because the Chinese know that the US will defend Japan and Taiwan when they're attacked by China.
A number of commentators are complaining about the timing of this announcement of arms sales to Taiwan because it will further complicate the US-China trade talks. The US and China were close to an agreement in May, when the Chinese negotiators reneged on all their written commitments.
The reality is there will never be a US-China trade agreement, because China will never give up its illegal trade practices and illegal theft of foreign intelligence and intellectual property, no matter what Donald Trump or anyone else does, whether the US sells arms to Taiwan or not.
As usual, the mainstream media are totally baffled by Trump's foreign policy. The purpose of the US-China trade talks is only partially about trade. It's mostly about derailing China's headlong rush into launching World War III. As I've said many times in the past, World War III is 100% certain, and cannot be prevented. However, I'm not going to criticize Trump for taking steps to prevent WW III, even if it's impossible to prevent World War III.
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(10-Jul-2019)
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Did China set a trap for the protesters?
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Although it's still only a war of words, tensions and acrimony have risen sharply in the last three days, following the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Hong Konger made peaceful pro-democracy protests. However, a small group of protests smashed the thick glass in the exterior glad doors and walls of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) building, and entered and vandalized the building.
This has infuriated Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, some of whom are calling for a get-tough policy in Hong Kong that removes some of freedoms granted to Hong Kong in the "one country, two systems" policy that distinguishes Hong Kong's governance from that of the rest of China.
But apparently nothing infuriated the CCP officials in Beijing more than seeing the British colonial flag installed at the head of the Legislative Council Chamber, as shown in the picture at the beginning of this article.
Starting on Tuesday, CCP officials have been talking in a manner much harsher than they've talked in the past. One CCP official suggested that Hong Kong's "one country, two systems" should be brought to an end:
"Yet, some extremists on the pretext of opposing the amendments to the relevant Bill of the special administration region government, attacked the Legislative Council building in an extremely violent manner and deliberately damaged its facilities.This serious illegal act tramples on the rule of law in Hong Kong, undermines Hong Kong's social order and undermines the fundamental interests of Hong Kong. It is a blatant challenge to the ‘one country, two systems’ bottom line."
A number of people on Chinese social media are being quoted as supporting the government position:
"There's definitely a problem with the policies towards Taiwan and Hong Kong. Why does the central government think that as long as it gives enough benefits and special rights, the people will be loyal to you?"
Here's another:
"One country, two systems is too lax, and this is the result. If Hong Kong wants to return to normal, it should start with decolonization and change the name of Victoria Harbour to Oriental Pearl Harbour."
On the other hand, many of the young protesters on Monday were expressing concern that the "one country, two systems" policy is scheduled to end in 2047, well within the expected lives of the protesters. This is leading many young protesters to demand that Hong Kong be returned to Britain.
This is not the end of the story. After Monday's "victory," the protesters are only going to become more bold in pro-democracy protests. Pro-independence activists in Taiwan will also be emboldened. The CCP thugs are seeing the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as a repeat of the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which ended with the mass slaughter of thousands of peacefully protesting college students.
This is the danger that many in the international community fear. The paranoid, delusion people in the high ranks of the CCP consider democracy to be not a form of government but an ideology, and ideology opposed to Communism, Socialism and Marxism, and they see a pro-democracy demonstration as threatening the CCP's very existence. That reasoning led to the massacre of thousands of peacefully protesting college students in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and many analysts fear that the CCP will do a repeat if there's another huge pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong, last the the last three in the past couple of months.
For the CCP, the anxiety and hysteria is particularly acute, since Hong Kong is in southern China, and CCP officials fear a new massive anti-government rebellion in the south, as happened in the past with the Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), and Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49). (See "22-Jun-19 World View -- Hong Kong protests show historic split between northern and southern China")
China's president Xi Jinping has said that if it hadn't been for Britain's 1840s invasion of China, the Opium Wars, then China would be a great nation today. It was as a result of those wars that Britain acquired Hong Kong as a colony, which it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Under the terms of the 1984 Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, signed by China and Britain, Hong Kong is to be a "Special Administrative Region" of China, having its own laws, freedoms, financial system and judicial system, for 50 years, from 1997 until 2047. This is known as "one country, two systems."
Britain's government claims that even though Hong Kong is part of China, Britain still has some responsibility to protect Hong Kong freedoms under the terms of the Joint Declaration that China and Britain signed in 1984.
Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, began the war of words:
"My heart goes out to those worried they’ll lose their precious way of life. I don’t support violence in any circumstances but I understand their worries about changes happening in Hong Kong.The Chinese government say this is an internal affair and it’s not for Britain to meddle in this, but we signed an agreement ensuring ‘one nation, two systems’ for 50 years, so I hope there are not changes which undermine that legally binding agreement."
CCP officials have described this statement as "very offensive." China's position is that the Joint Declaration is an old document that is no long relevant. China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said:
"Let me reiterate, the Joint Declaration resolved the Hong Kong issue, which was left over by history. As Hong Kong returned to the motherland and work relating to the transitional period came to an end, the rights and obligations of the British side under the declaration were completely fulfilled. On July 1, 1997, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong and the Chinese government started administering it in accordance with the Constitution and the Basic Law. The UK no longer has any responsibility for Hong Kong. Hong Kong affairs are purely China's internal affairs that brook no foreign interference.I would also like to stress that China deplores and strongly rejects the frequent British interference in and criticism of Hong Kong affairs. We advise the UK to know its place, stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs in any form and do more for its prosperity and stability rather than the opposite."
China’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, appeared on British television and accused the British government of meddling:
"The U.K. government chose to stand on the wrong side, it has made inappropriate remarks, not only to interfere in the internal affairs of Hong Kong but also to back up the violent lawbreakers. [Britain has tried to obstruct Hong Kong officials from] bringing the criminals to justice, which is utter interference in Hong Kong’s rule of law."
I heard several commentators express the fear that the war of words could escalate into something more serious. The last sentence in the preceding paragraph shows one possible scenario.
Let's suppose that Britain takes some action to help Hong Kong activists escape via ship from Hong Kong to avoid prosecution. China could then block the ship on the high seas, and things could escalate further.
In my book, "War between China and Japan," I discussed at length how world wars are triggered by trivial events, as the hatred and vitriol grows during a generational Crisis era. China repeatedly whines that China would be a great nation if it hadn't been for Britain's Opium Wars, and nostalgia in Hong Kong for the days when Hong Kong was a British colony seems to be growing, which clearly infuriates the CCP officials.
As I described in my book, in this febrile atmosphere even a simple event could trigger tit-for-tat escalations back and forth, and lead to a major military crisis.
 |
When the protesters were breaking into the Legilative Council (LegCo) building, they had to smash through doors and windows with thick glass, designed to withstand terrorist explosions. It took several hours to finally break through.
During all this time, there were riot police nearby, but they did nothing to stop the vandalism. In fact, when the small group of vandals approached, they turned away.
As midnight approached, the protesters finally left the LegCo building, and all that were left were reporters. The BBC reporter wondered why he was being allowed inside the building, and was allowed to broadcast these scenes to the world. He raised the question about whether the government was setting some kind of trap, so that they could be called rioters and terrorists.
That seems to be exactly what happened. The riot police were right there, and could have stopped the smashing of the LegCo building doors and windows, but just stood aside and them the vandals proceed. Now the Chinese government will be able to use this incident as a reason to impose stricter laws and procedures on Hong Kong residents.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
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Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(4-Jul-2019)
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North vs South Vietnam
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Thanks to China's new Foreign Investment Law and the apparently complete collapse of the US-China trade negotiations, companies doing business in China are now considering moves to China's neighbors, especially Vietnam.
China passed its Foreign Investment Law in March. It allows any Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official to visit a foreign-owned business with offices in China and demand copies of all confidential company business records and company data, as well as its source code and all other intellectual property. Compliance is required.
US and Chinese trade negotiators had reached a 150-page written agreement that removed all of these regulations.
US trade negotiators had thought that they had an agreement with the Chinese negotiators that threw out all these onerous conditions. But late in the evening, Friday May 3, Washington received the latest edits from their Chinese counterparts that completely reneged on all of Beijing's commitments. It's now believed that Beijing never had any intention of honoring the its commitments, but expected that political pressure would force President Donald Trump to accept the watered-down agreement anyway. Instead, Trump angrily announced a new rounds of tariffs and restrictions on Huawei. It's believed to be quite a shock to Beijing that Trump is receiving wide support from the international community and Democrats in Washington to stand up to China, at least for the time being. China will not back down from its trade model that uses subterfuge, extortion, and ignoring its commitments and obligations, and Trump cannot back down because to do so would be appeasement, and would do no good anyway.
And so the US-China trade negotiations have mostly collapsed, although the talks may be revived as a result of last week's meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
The collapse of the US-China trade talks is shaking up all of Asia, and there are certainly going to be winners and losers. Vietnam is hoping to be one of the major winners, as businesses look for countries to which to shift their manufacturing out of China, in order to avoid the US tariffs.
Vietnam’s economy today is one of the fastest-growing and most vibrant in the world. GDP grew at 7% in 2018, with similar growth forecast for 2019.
Vietnam also has a young, ambitious labor force, with two-thirds of the population under age 35. Just as the West had its "baby boom" after World War II, Vietnam had its own baby boom after the extremely bloody generational crisis civil war between North and South Vietnam in the 1970s, and those babies are now of working age.
Furthermore, labor costs are a fraction of what they are in neighboring countries. According to one estimate, labor costs in Vietnam are half those of China, with the same worker productivity.
Because of the US-China trade dispute, many companies are considering moving their manufacturing facilities from China to Vietnam, since exports from Vietnam would not be subject to the US tariffs.
For example, China's wireless earphone maker GoerTek has expressed an intent to move production to Vietnam, to avoid the tariffs, because labor is cheap, and because Vietnam is close by. Taiwan's massive tech firm Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, better known as Foxconn, has begun moving its production to Vietnam in recent months.
Vietnam was flat on its back after the 1970s wars, but the economy has changed substantially in the last decade or so. For example, fifteen years ago Vietnam imported almost all the food it consumed, but today Vietnam is in the top two exporters of rice and coffee and exports a lot of seafood worldwide, mainly to China and Hong Kong.
Those wanting to do business in Vietnam should distinguish between the the North and the South, because they have two very different cultures, and in many ways they're like two different countries.
North Vietnam (Vietnamese Kingdom) was originally populated by ethnic Chinese, while South Vietnam (Champa Kingdom) was populated by Polynesian settlers from Indonesia and Malaysia. These ethnic differences resulted in one North-South crisis civil war after another over the centuries.
The country was united by the Tay-Son rebellion (1771-1790), the most celebrated military event in Vietnamese history, ending in a brilliant battle in 1789 where the Vietnamese troops repelled a much larger Chinese army. The North and South remained technically united through the French colonial period, until Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnam Communist Party and drove the French out of North Vietnam in 1956.
The North and the South went through bloody civil war (America's "Vietnam war") that united the two regions under the North Vietnamese communists. However, although the war has ended, there's still a great deal of animosity between the North and the South. Furthermore, after the war ended, Vietnam followed up with wars against Cambodia, and then a border war with China.
After the 1970s wars, the Communist government in Hanoi applied Communist restrictions on businesses in the South, with the continued use of wartime planning mechanisms that emphasized output targets and paid little heed to production.
In 1986, Hanoi adopted the Doi Moi economic reforms, with a significant effect on the south, making it the engine for Vietnam’s industrial growth. These reforms were inspired by Deng Xiaoping's 'Reform and Opening Up' of China in 1978.
Most companies moving their production facilities from China to Vietnam to evade US tariffs want to select sites for convenience, in North Vietnam, close to China's border. The Hanoi government is encouraging investments from China, but North Vietnamese public in general is opposed.
Capital inflows from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau stood at $700 million in 2011, but by last year had topped $2.4 billion. China is the fifth biggest investor in Vietnam behind Japan, South Korea and Singapore. But critics, especially among North Vietnamese, argue that Chinese projects exploit cheap labor and minerals, while polluting the environment and landing the locals in debt.
Vietnamese hostility toward China is great for a number of reasons. In the late 1970s, after the Vietnam civil war, there was an extremely bloody border war between China and Vietnam that left a lot of dead but was otherwise inconclusive. More important, China has illegally annexed the South China Sea, including regions that historically belonged to Vietnam. China's navy has even attacked Vietnamese fishing boats in Vietnam's own territorial waters.
In 2014, thousands of anti-Chinese protesters in Vietnam, furious over China's installation of an oil rig in waters in the South China Sea historically claimed by Vietnam, turned violent and torched a number of factories in a southern Vietnam industrial park. It was Chinese factories that were the nominal targets, but the angry mob also attacked properties owned by Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.
Public opposition last year to Chinese investments became focused when thousands of people filled the streets of several major cities across Vietnam in June, 2018. They were protesting a proposal to create three "economic zones" which would give special business and trade privileges to foreign investors. They were particularly objecting to a proposal to allow 99 year leases by foreign investors, which allow the Chinese to set up Chinese enclaves that would remain forever. The Vietnamese public strongly opposed the economic zones. So far, public pressure has prevented the Communist government in Hanoi from gaining approval of the economic zones.
Those who wish to do business in South Vietnam should focus on the city of Saigon, which was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City or HCMC by the Communists after the 1970s civil war. Last year HCMC attracted foreign investment of over $7 billion, 22% of the country’s total.
HCMC is experiencing a major real estate boom, thanks to low property prices. The following are average property prices in Asian cities, per square meter:
According to one study, 35,000 new apartments were put on the market between 2015 and 2018. During 2016-17, developers and corporate buyers snapped up about $1.2 billion of residential-zoned land. Most of this was from foreign buyers, mostly from South Korea, Hong Kong and China. According to estimates, over a third of historic old Saigon city buildings have been destroyed in the last 20 years to make room for new construction.
However, the disproportionate investment in real estate is raising concerns. Foreign investment money is pouring into Saigon for real estate, but not so much for industries.
During the first four months of 2019, real estate accounted for 46.8% of foreign investment, with little going for industries such as manufacturing or agricultural processing.
In response, the HCMC People's Committee chairman Le Thanh Liem has called for $53.8 billion in foreign invesments, focusing on nine areas, including transport, infrastructure, agriculture, commerce-service, education, and healthcare. 1,000 hectares of land would be earmarked for industrial purposes to attract investors.
This should represent a big opportunity for investors or for businesses that would like to relocate to South Vietnam, because of low-cost labor, low-cost housing, and government incentives for foreign investment.
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American attitudes towards the Chinese
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The hostility being directed on a day to day basis towards Chinese students on the MIT campus has become so great that MIT's president has warned the entire MIT community against the growing "toxic atmosphere" directed at Chinese students. However, it's quite possible that this "toxic atmosphere" is within the Chinese community itself.
MIT's president L. Rafael Reif sent a letter to the entire MIT community entitled "Immigration is a kind of oxygen." Excerpts follow:
"MIT has flourished, like the United States itself, because it has been a magnet for the world’s finest talent, a global laboratory where people from every culture and background inspire each other and invent the future, together.Today, I feel compelled to share my dismay about some circumstances painfully relevant to our fellow MIT community members of Chinese descent. And I believe that because we treasure them as friends and colleagues, their situation and its larger national context should concern us all.
The situation
As the US and China have struggled with rising tensions, the US government has raised serious concerns about incidents of alleged academic espionage conducted by individuals through what is widely understood as a systematic effort of the Chinese government to acquire high-tech IP.
As head of an institute that includes MIT Lincoln Laboratory, I could not take national security more seriously. I am well aware of the risks of academic espionage, and MIT has established prudent policies to protect against such breaches.
But in managing these risks, we must take great care not to create a toxic atmosphere of unfounded suspicion and fear. Looking at cases across the nation, small numbers of researchers of Chinese background may indeed have acted in bad faith, but they are the exception and very far from the rule. Yet faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone.
Nothing could be further from – or more corrosive to – our community’s collaborative strength and open-hearted ideals. To hear such reports from Chinese and Chinese-American colleagues is heartbreaking. As scholars, teachers, mentors, inventors and entrepreneurs, they have been not only exemplary members of our community but exceptional contributors to American society. I am deeply troubled that they feel themselves repaid with generalized mistrust and disrespect.
The signal to the world
For those of us who know firsthand the immense value of MIT’s global community and of the free flow of scientific ideas, it is important to understand the distress of these colleagues as part of an increasingly loud signal the US is sending to the world.
Protracted visa delays. Harsh rhetoric against most immigrants and a range of other groups, because of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin. Together, such actions and policies have turned the volume all the way up on the message that the US is closing the door – that we no longer seek to be a magnet for the world’s most driven and creative individuals. I believe this message is not consistent with how America has succeeded. I am certain it is not how the Institute has succeeded. And we should expect it to have serious long-term costs for the nation and for MIT."
Like many universities, MIT has moved far left and is extremely hostile to President Trump and 60 million Trump supporters, who have been publicly referred to as "teabaggers," "racists," "deplorables," and so forth.
Nonetheless, Reif has to walk a fine line because his main job is to beg for grants from agencies in the Trump administration. So the above letter has soft criticisms of Trump's immigration policies, but is careful not to incite further hatred against Trump supporters.
However, it's reasonable to believe that his letter is very wide of the mark.
The fact that Reif felt compelled to write this letter at all indicates how hostility has been growing nationwide towards Chinese students, and to the Chinese diaspora in general. However, in the case of MIT, the question is whether the source of that hostility is Americans or other Chinese students. In the case of Americans and Westerners in general, the question is whether the hostility is directed at the Chinese people or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Since the 1950s, Americans' public attitude toward has China been almost always favorable. In the 1960s, left-wing college students were carrying Mao Zedong's Little Red Book of Quotations in their back pockets, ready to be pulled out and used to lecture someone at any time about the evils of capitalism, ignoring that Mao was responsible at that time for tens of thousands of deaths from starvation, torture, rape, beatings, and execution. For most Americans, China could do no wrong. Even the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which killed thousands of peacefully protesting college students, didn't change opinions much, but was considered by many to be just a kind of Chinese peculiarity of the wonderful Chinese Socialist system, which was opposed in their minds to the fascist American system.
Furthermore, when China was invited to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2000, it was hoped that this would make China a part of the international community, and that China would become a Western-style liberal democracy, instead of a fascist state like America. That didn't happen, of course.
However, the West's favorable view of the Chinese has been continually eroding since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. This is because the public has become aware of many things that indicate that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actually a fascist criminal organization. There are many such things, including the following:
I just started typing the above list at random, and I probably could have added a hundred more items. The point is that these events have entered the public consciousness over a period of 30 years, and attitudes towards China and the Chinese have been deteriorating over that period.
I wrote about this shift in public opinion in January, when China-lover George Soros announced that he has turned against China because of its religious persecution and particularly because of the "Social Credit System," which "will subordinate the fate of the individual to the interests of the one-party state in ways unprecedented in history." ( "27-Jan-19 World View -- George Soros speech at Davos marks significant global shift against China")
Another recent example was when Democratic party presidential aspirant Joe Biden recently said that the US has nothing to fear from China, and then had to walk that back a few days later. In the Democratic party debates last week, there was lots of criticism of Trump, but not of the China sanctions, as far as I could tell.
Perhaps the most remarkable sign of this change in attitude is that there have been few serious objections domestically or internationally to the Trump administration's harsh sanctions against China, including tariffs, restrictions on Huawei, and arrest of the Huawei CFO, although some farmers are being hurt.
Reif's letter briefly mentions issues related to national security, and totally evades the issue. He says:
"Looking at cases across the nation, small numbers of researchers of Chinese background may indeed have acted in bad faith, but they are the exception and very far from the rule. Yet faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone."
This is entirely the fault of the fascist Chinese government. It is stated Chinese policy that China sends tens of thousands of students and workers to the United States to collect intelligence information from China's military, and under the 2017 National Intelligence Law, every Chinese person and business is obligated to collect foreign intelligence, even when doing so is against the law.
Reif says that "small numbers" of Chinese researchers may have "acted in bad faith," but even Reif must realize how ridiculous this statement is, since all we know about are the ones who were caught. For all he knows, every person of Chinese descent working at Lincoln Lab is working directly for the Chinese military, but just hasn't been caught yet. This is where Reif's argument completely falls apart. The CCP has forced Chinese citizens to be the targets of suspicion, so Reif's letter should have been directed at China's government, not to the MIT community.
There's a related matter, with regard to "back doors" being installed in Huawei chips and devices. As I've described many times, my personal experience spending five years implementing board level operating systems for embedded systems has made it clear that it would be easy for a Huawei engineer with the right skills to install undetectable backdoors in Huawei chips. Huawei is also required by China's National Intelligence Law, passed in 2017, to fully cooperate with China's military in collecting intelligence, so installation of these undectable backdoors is required by Chinese law. These backdoors would permit China's military to control these devices remotely.
Now I have the skills to do this, and there must be a lot of people at MIT, Americans and Chinese, especially in the electrical engineering department, who have these skills and are also aware of how easy it is to do. So if there are Huawei devices brought into the classroom or the lab, other students are going to wonder if these devices are being used for spying or communicating with China's military. Reif's letter says that "MIT has established prudent policies to protect against such breaches," but the fact is that there are no policies, prudent or otherwise, that can protect against undetectable backdoors.
The CCP has really screwed Chinese students in America by adopting policies that make any one of them a possible spy working for China's military. This is doing enormous harm to Chinese students, and Reif's letter can do nothing about it.
I've written recently about the Hong Kong protests have exposed an increasingly vitriolic split between northern and southern China. Mandarin-speaking Beijing and Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong are, respectively, the current political epicenters of the two sides. ( "22-Jun-19 World View -- Hong Kong protests show historic split between northern and southern China")
I continue to see reports that suggest anecdotally that this split is extremely serious and growing. Here's an extract from a recent article appearing in Inkstone by a Hong Konger who met a Chinese girl in a bar in Coventry, England, and they agreed to go out on a date:
"The vibes were good at the start. Arrived on time. Greetings. Drinks and snacks. And then, at some point, I innocently uttered the phrase: “Because we from Hong Kong...” My date, from mainland China, swiftly interrupted me. She raised her voice and eyebrows, signaling how angry she was. She rapped the table with her fingers and snapped: “Stop saying you are from Hong Kong. You are Chinese and from China.”I decided not to say “Hong Kong” for the rest of our conversation. But she wouldn’t let it go. She derisively attributed Hong Kong people’s denial of our Chinese identity to our low self-esteem. In her mind, people from mainland China seem to be smarter and more financially secure than their Hong Kong counterparts."
As he described, the evening became increasingly tense, and they parted without even saying goodbye. Next day, she blocked him on both WhatsApp and WeChat.
The north-south conflict goes far beyond thwarted love and romance.
Returning now to Rafael Reif's letter to the MIT community, one might infer that he's criticizing the American male white patriarchy for creating the "toxic atmosphere." But there are a lot of Chinese students at MIT, and I wonder if the "toxic atmosphere" is within the Chinese community.
As I've written in the past, my research for my book "War between China and Japan" has revealed that the CCP wants a war of revenge against Japan and a war of annexation against Taiwan, but does not want a war with America, but consideres it necessary because America will depend Japan and Taiwan. There's really very little hatred between Americans and Chinese, while there is great hatred between Chinese and Japanese, and between northern and southern Chinese.
So my conclusion is that the "toxic atmosphere" described in Reif's letter is being created by Chinese and possibly Japanese, but not by Americans.
This is my personal inference from the facts as I know them. Perhaps more anecdotal evidence will emerge that clarifies the situation.
We in America and the West tend to believe that ethnic and racial conflict is a thing of the past. However, what I've seen over and over is that race is everything. Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Racial and ethnic political and military conflicts create the "toxic atmosphere" that makes the world go 'round, and the Chinese and Japanese are about to make the world spin a little bit faster.
John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/
MIT/RafaelReif, 25-Jun-2019 and NYPost, 11-Jun-2019 and Inkstone, 25-Jun-2019
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(30-Jun-2019)
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Why America must be prepared
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Announcing a new book on China by John J. Xenakis
Book Announcement: World View: War Between China and Japan
Subtitle: Why America Must Be Prepared
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$9.99 -- Buy the digital version on Amazon
Click here for Complete Table of Contents
If you buy it, please write a 5-star amazon review. Thanks.
For over 15 years, I've been writing about China's preparations for war with the United States, particularly building and deploying one advanced nuclear-capable ballistic missile system after another with no purpose other than to attack and destroy American cities, aircraft carriers and bases, as well as massive cyberwar. So there's never been any doubt that China is planning to launch a war against the United States.
However, I was never entirely comfortable with that prediction, since there's no apparent hatred of Americans by the Chinese. I've personally known many Chinese during my life, and they were always friendly unlike, for example, some Mexicans. Furthermore, Chinese media has always been critical of US political policies, but there was no hatred directed at the American people the way there is, for example, against the Japanese people. In other words, I knew that China was going to launch a war with the US, but I really didn't know why.
As a result of research on my book, late last year I had a major change in views. China does not want war against the United States, but does want a war of revenge against Japan for the atrocities committed during WW II. China also wants to invade Taiwan, in order annex it. China does not want war with the US, but the CCP knows that it will have no choice, since the US will defend Japan and Taiwan against China's war of extermination against Japan and war of annexation against Taiwan.
There's even an alternate explanation for all those missile systems that China has been developing and deploying for decades. It's possible that the Chinese believe that just having those missile systems will serve as a threat to deter the US and to force the US to remain neutral when China invades Japan and Taiwan. If this is what the CCP hopes, then it's entirely delusional.
Although I've changed my views about China's motives, the bottom line is still the same. China has developed these massive nuclear-capable missile deployments because China expects to use them to attack the US, and they will. It's just that the motives are different than I said prreviously.
When I started writing this book, it was to be a book about China's claims to the South China Sea. I was going to find out who was right, and who was spinning fake news.
So I researched all of China's history going back thousands of years and multiple dynasties, as well as the histories of China's religions -- Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, and Falun Gong.
I discovered that China had no claim at all to the South China Sea. I mean, it isn't even arguable. China's claim to Taiwan, whether valid or not, is at least arguable. But the claim to the South China Sea isn't even arguable. It is completely nonexistent. It is a complete hoax.
This means that China's activities in the South China Sea are criminal, as the Chinese themselves realize. The Chinese know this. That's why China's president Xi Jinping on September 25, 2015, blatantly lied to the face of Barack Obama during a joint press conference on the White House lawn about China's intentions, just as Adolf Hitler lied to Neville Chamberlain in 1938 about "Peace in our time." Xi said that there were no plans to militarize the South China Sea, even though they were actively militarizing it. In July 2016, the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued a ruling that all China's activities were illegal, reaffirming their criminal nature.
China blames this and other criminal activities on its "Unequal Treaties" and its "Century of Humiliation." All of that research from the first objective is included in this book.
So that evolved to become the second objective of this book. I wanted to focus on China's history since the 1840 Opium Wars in order to determine exactly how the unequal treaties occurred, how China was humiliated over the period of a century, and by whom, and how that led to China's behavior today.
So I discovered that there were indeed "unequal treaties," especially the 1860 Treaty of Tianjin and the 1915 Twenty-One Demands that gave concessions to foreign powers in a way that was humiliating to China. I followed this history through the late 1800s to the Republican Revolution of 1911, through World War I and the Versailles betrayal, into the rise of communism, and then the brutal Sino-Japanese war (1937-45), in which the Japanese committed brutal atrocities, and in which the United States saved China from a humiliating defeat.
I also followed China's history after WW II -- the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution that killed tens of millions of Chinese through government-forced starvation, executions, and rioting. Then there was the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, where thousands of peacefully protesting college students were mercilessly slaughtered by China's military.
So the second objective of the book was achieved, and I had researched the causes of China's claims to Unequal Treaties and a Century of Humiliation. All of that research from the second objective is also included in this book.
However, I began to see the results of the second objective of the book -- that most of the humiliation was caused by China's own faults.
And that led me to an important and obvious question that I've never seen discussed anywhere. The West tried to impose the same Unequal Treaties on Japan as on China. Why didn't Japan also suffer a "Century of Humiliation"?
That led to the third objective of this book -- to compare Japan and China. The research from that objective is also included in this book.
What I discovered is that Japan has repeatedly and consistently bested China in all areas -- economically, diplomatically, militarily, and in governance. The bottom line appears to be the fact that the reason that China suffered a "Century of Humiliation" is because they were inferior to Japan, time after time.
This is not because the Chinese people are inferior. In fact, the same Chinese people in Taiwan and colonial Hong Kong have also beaten the Chinese people in China, by a factor of ten. It's the Chinese government that's inferior to the governments of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The great and brilliant Chinese people are being led by corrupt idiots in the CCP.
In fact, it's been a lot worse than that for China. Since World War II ended, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong all had "economic miracles," while China's economy languished for decades. Mao's Great Leap Forward was supposed to prove that Marxism, Communism and Socialism are better than anything else, but instead it was a total disaster, causing the deaths of tens of millions through starvation and execution.
After Mao's disaster totally discredited Marxism, Socialism and Communism, once Mao died in 1976, Deng Xiaoping was able to institute an "Opening up and reform" policy that completely reversed Socialism and opened up China to free markets and capitalism. They started using the phrase "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," which is laughable because it means "Socialism that's really capitalism, but we don't want to call it that." However, China retained its governmental dictatorship, and "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is really the same as Adolf Hitler's "National Socialism."
So today we have Xi Jinping, a "dictator for life" like Hitler, leader of a "master race" like Hitler, committing genocide like Hitler, illegally annexing regions like Hitler, and preparing to launch a world war like Hitler.
Table of Contents
Part I. Introduction Chapter 1. China today 1.1. China since World War II 1.2. Chinese people vs China's government Chapter 2. Evolution of this book 2.1. Three objectives 2.2. Historical imperative of world wars 2.3. China's preparations for war 2.4. China's historic incompetence compared to Japan 2.5. China's contempt for international law 2.6. Does China deserve sympathy? Chapter 3. Brief summary of generational eras
Part II. China and Japan since the end of World War II Chapter 4. China and Japan during and after World War II Chapter 5. South Korea's postwar economic miracle Chapter 6. Japan's postwar economic miracle Chapter 7. Taiwan's postwar economic miracle Chapter 8. Colonial Hong Kong's postwar economic miracle Chapter 9. China's postwar economic and governmental disasters 9.1. China's failure at self-government 9.2. The Statistics 9.3. The Great Leap Forward (1958-60} 9.4. Mao's justifications for the Great Leap Forward 9.5. Great Cultural Revolution (1966-76) 9.6. Tiananmen Square Incident (April 5, 1976) 9.7. Tangshan earthquake (July 28, 1976) 9.8. Mao Zedong dies (September 9, 1976) 9.9. Deng Xiaoping's 'Reform and Opening Up' of China (1978-1989) 9.10. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics 9.11. One-Child policy 9.12. Tiananmen Square massacre (June 4, 1989) 9.13. Collapse of the Soviet Union (December 26, 1991) 9.14. China's nationalist anti-Japan propaganda (1989-present) 9.15. Yellow race, black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin Chapter 10. Rise of China's dictator Xi Jinping 10.1. Biography of Xi Jinping 10.2. Xi Jinping lies about South China Sea (Sept 25, 2015) 10.3. UN Tribunal declares China's South China Sea claims invalid (July 2016) 10.4. Xi Jinping becomes 'the core of the leadership' of the CCP (October 2016) 10.5. Xi Jinping becomes dictator for life (March 20, 2018) Chapter 11. Xi Jinping adopts harsh, violent, dictatorial policies 11.1. Sources of Xi's policies: Japan and Great Leap Forward 11.2. Document #9 - China's belligerent rejection of Western values (2013) 11.3. Sinicization of religion 11.4. Comparison of Sinicization to Hitler's Kristallnacht 11.5. Genocide and ethnic cleansing of Uighurs in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) 11.6. China's preparations for war 11.7. Role of North Korea and 'denuclearization' 11.8. Japan's and China's views of each other 11.9. Other nations' view of China 11.10. Mutual Defense Treaties of the United States 11.11. China's desire for world hegemony 11.12. The outlook for war between China and Japan 11.13. Winston Churchill vs Neville Chamberlain 11.14. Timing of the war between China and Japan
Part III. China's preparations for war Chapter 12. China's war preparations through cyber war 12.1. Theft of intellectual property 12.2. Huawei's hack of African Union headquarters 12.3. China's National Intelligence Law (June 27, 2017) 12.4. China's weaponization of Huawei 12.5. Installing a hardware backdoor - Technical details 12.6. Installing an undetectable software backdoor - Technical details Chapter 13. China's Social Credit Score system 13.1. Development of China's Social Credit Score system 13.2. Huawei's 'big data' cloud database 13.3. China extends its 'social credit score' system to Americans and Westerners 13.4. China's economy -- Huawei the only money making private company Chapter 14. United Front Work Department (UFWD) and Magic Weapons 14.1. China's biggest resource: billions of expendable people 14.2. History of China's United Front 14.3. United Front Work Department in New Zealand 14.4. China's infiltration of Australia 14.5. United Front Work Department (UFWD) in Australia -- mind control 14.6. University of North Florida closes its Confucius Institute 14.7. Controversy over China's Confucius Institutes Chapter 15. Belt and Road Initiative and Debt Trap Diplomacy 15.1. Debt Trap Diplomacy 15.2. The secret BRI deals and Debt Trap Diplomacy 15.3. The Belt and Road (BRI) contract in Kenya Chapter 16. China's claims to the South China Sea 16.1. China's Nine-Dash Map 16.2. China's 'ironclad proof' of South China Sea claims revealed as hoax 16.3. China's humiliating repudiation by UNCLOS court 16.4. China's claims in South China Sea -- Nationalism, Rejuvenation, Lebensraum Chapter 17. America's preparation for war 17.1. Will America survive world war with China? 17.2. Will America's young people refuse to fight for their country? 17.3. Preparing yourself and your family for war
Part IV. Theory of War: The phases of World War III Chapter 18. How do world wars begin in general? 18.1. How World War I started (1914-18) - an unexpected assassination 18.2. How the Israel-Hezbollah war started (2006) - an unexpected abduction 18.3. How World War II started (1937-1945) - someone had to pee 18.4. Do genocide and ethnic cleansing start a world war? 18.5. Neutrality Chapter 19. The early and middle phases of World War III 19.1. The early days -- neutrality and the salami method 19.2. The euphoria phase: The declaration of war 19.3. The public panic phase: The Regeneracy 19.4. Moral degeneration during a generational crisis war Chapter 20. World War III in Asia - Forecasts and predictions 20.1. A divided America - is civil war in America possible? 20.2. 'Mass Incidents' and civil war in China 20.3. Chinese Civil war and the United Front 20.4. Civil war in China and its effect on Taiwan 20.5. America and China -- Preparedness for war 20.6. China's military strategy 20.7. World War III lineup: 'The Allies' vs 'The Axis'
Part V. China's ancient dynasties Chapter 21. Reference list of China's dynasties Chapter 22. China's population Chapter 23. Early civilizations of the world 23.1. Peking Man (700,000 BC) Chapter 24. Earliest dynasties 24.1. Xia dynasty (c. 2070-1600 BC) 24.2. Shang Dynasty (c.1500 - 1050 BC) Chapter 25. Zhou dynasty (1050 - 221 BC) 25.1. Western (1070-771 BC) and Eastern (770-221 BC) Zhou dynasties 25.2. Eastern Zhou: China's Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC) 25.3. Eastern Zhou: China's Warring States period (481/403 - 221 BC) Chapter 26. Qin (Chin, Ch'in) Dynasty (221-206 BC) Chapter 27. Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) 27.1. The Silk Road 27.2. Invention of paper 27.3. Yellow Turban uprising - 184 AD 27.4. End and legacy of the Han Dynasty Chapter 28. Sui Dynasty (581-618 AD) and Korea's Goguryeo Kingdom 28.1. Reunification of Northern and Southern China 28.2. Defeat by Korea's Goguryeo Empire (37-688) and Battle of Salsu River (612 AD) 28.3. The Goguryeo Stele
Part VI. Religious and cultural teachings in China Chapter 29. China's harsh 'Sinicization' policy of religions (April 2018) 29.1. Number of religious believers in China 29.2. Equivalence of Islam, Christianity and Buddhism to CCP 29.3. CCP administrative control of religion 29.4. CCP attitude toward religion 29.5. Pope's betrayal of Chinese Catholics 29.6. Imperialist China view of religion 29.7. Chinese government attitude towards non-indigenous religions 29.8. Rules governing Christian Churches in China Chapter 30. Sun Tzu / The Art of War (500 BC) 30.1. The Art of War 30.2. Sima Qian's biography of Sun Tzu Chapter 31. Confucius (551-479 BC) 31.1. Confucius sayings and aphorisms 31.2. Confucius Analects 31.3. Confucius theology: Tian and the Mandate from Heaven 31.4. Confucius theology: Maintaining stability and harmony 31.5. Relevance of Confucius and Sun Tzu to today's world 31.6. North Korea denuclearization - deception and manipulation Chapter 32. Laozi (Lao Tzu) (-533 BC) and Daoism 32.1. Confucians vs Daoists 32.2. Description of the Dao de jing 32.3. Excerpts from the Dao de jing Chapter 33. Buddhism 33.1. Justification for Buddhism in China 33.2. Secret Societies 33.3. White Lotus Society and Red Turban Rebellion (1351-68) 33.4. White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1804) 33.5. Tibetan Buddhism 33.6. Qigong and Falun Gong Chapter 34. Christianity -- Catholicism and Protestantism 34.1. Catholicism 34.2. Catholicism and Taiwan 34.3. Protestantism - Taiping Rebellion (1850-64)
Part VII. China's 'Century of Humiliation' Chapter 35. China today: Xi Jinping's view of the Century of Humiliation 35.1. Xi Jinping's speech to National Peoples' Congress (March 2018) 35.2. Do the Chinese have only themselves to blame? Chapter 36. China and Japan prior to 1840 36.1. The 'Middle Kingdom' and China's tributary system 36.2. European trade with China 1557-1838 36.3. Japan's Tokugawa era or Edo era (1603-1868) Chapter 37. Clash of civilizations: China vs Japan after the Opium Wars (1840-70) 37.1. The 'bad marriage' of China and Japan 37.2. First Opium War (1839-42) 37.3. Taiping Rebellion (1852-64) and the rise of Marxism 37.4. Japanese view of China's Opium War 37.5. American Commodore Matthew Perry comes to Japan 37.6. Second Opium War (1856-60) 37.7. The 1860 Treaty of Tianjin (Tientsin) and international law 37.8. Consequences today of the 1860 Treaty of Tianjin (Tientsin) 37.9. Tianjin Massacre of Catholic orphanage (1870) Chapter 38. China and Japan prior to World War I (1870-1912) 38.1. European scramble for East Asia (Late 1800s) 38.2. The Joseon Dynasty in Korea (1392-1910) 38.3. Imjin Wars and Battle of Myongnyang (Myeongnyang), October 26, 1597 38.4. Japan's revolutionary social, political and economic changes 38.5. Japan's relations with Korea, China, Russia, Britain and France 38.6. First Sino-Japanese war - 1894-95 38.7. Significance of the First Sino-Japanese war (1894-95) 38.8. Treaty of Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895 38.9. Open-Door Policy (1899-1900) 38.10. Boxer Rebellion (1900) 38.11. Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902, 1905, 1911) 38.12. Russo-Japanese War (1905) 38.13. Japan's annexation of Korea (1905, 1910) 38.14. Sun Yat-Sen and the Republican Revolution (1911) Chapter 39. China and Japan during World War I (1910-1919) 39.1. China versus Japan at beginning of 1910s decade 39.2. Sun Yat-Sen versus Yuan Shikai 39.3. European and Asian alliances prior to World War I 39.4. China and Japan in World War I 39.5. Twenty-One Demands - May 9, 1915 - China's National Humiliation Day Chapter 40. The aftermath of World War I 40.1. New Culture Movement (1915-1920) 40.2. The Versailles Betrayal (1919) 40.3. The May Fourth Movement (1919) 40.4. The Washington Naval Arms Limitation Conference (1921-22)
Part VIII. China turns to Communism Chapter 41. China's alignment with Soviet Russia against the West 41.1. Historic relationship between Russia and China 41.2. Aftermath of the May 4th Movement 41.3. China's disillusionment with 'imperialism' and the West 41.4. Details of the Versailles betrayal and return of Shandong 41.5. Bolshevik government renounces privileges and interests in China Chapter 42. Nationalists vs Communists - Chiang Kai-shek vs Mao Zedong -- 1920-1949 42.1. Warlord era (1916-1927) 42.2. The rise of communism 42.3. The 1927 Nanking Incident (3/24/1927) and Battle of Shanghai 42.4. Aftermath of the Nanking incident (1927) -- assigning blame 42.5. Japan invades Manchuria -- the Mukden incident (1931) 42.6. The rise of Japan's militarism 42.7. The Soviet Communist Republic of China 42.8. Mao Zedong's Long March (1934-35) Chapter 43. Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) - World War II in Asia 43.1. Japan's conquest of Manchuria (1931) 43.2. Unit 731 - chemical and biological warfare (1936-45) 43.3. Marco Polo Bridge Incident (July 7-9, 1937) and Sino-Japanese War 43.4. Aftermath of the Marco Polo Bridge incident 43.5. Battle of Nanking / Rape of Nanking (December 13, 1937) 43.6. Regeneracy and the United Front 43.7. The United Front and Hong Kong 43.8. American support for China before Pearl Harbor (1937-41)
Part IX. Appendix: China's neighbors on the South China Sea Chapter 44. History of Vietnam 44.1. The earliest settlers -- the Sa Huynh 44.2. The Cham people and the Champa Kingdom 44.3. North Vietnam versus South Vietnam (Champa Kingdom) 44.4. Unity and disunion in Vietnam 44.5. French conquest of Indochina (1865-85) 44.6. America's Vietnam war 44.7. China's Vietnam war Chapter 45. History of Philippines 45.1. China's history with the Philippines 45.2. Ancient history of the Philippines 45.3. Philippines Spanish colonial period (1521-1898) 45.4. Philippines under American control (1898-1946) and Japanese occupation (1941-45) 45.5. Modern generational history of the Philippines republic Chapter 46. Brief generational history of Cambodia Chapter 47. Brief generational history of Thailand Chapter 48. Brief generational history of Myanmar (Burma)
Part X. The End Chapter 49. About Generational Theory 49.1. Intuitive description of generational theory 49.2. Use of GenerationalDynamics.com web site 49.3. Theoretical core for Generational Dynamics Chapter 50. Leon Festinger and Cognitive Dissonance Chapter 51. About John J. Xenakis Chapter 52. Acknowledgments
Part XI. Footnotes / References
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational
Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(28-Jun-2019)
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Comparisons with 1989 Tiananmen Square riots cause anxiety in Beijing
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Thousands of protesters in Hong Kong blocked police headquarters on Friday, continuing their protests that were triggered by the proposed "Extradition Law."
In the hope of allowing the protests to fizzle out, the Hong Kong police took no action to disperse the protesters. However, larger protests are planned all weekend.
The proposed Extradition Law that would permit Hong Kong's government to extradite anyone in Hong Kong -- citizens, businessmen and tourists alike -- to China, to be tried by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thugs in Beijing courts. The proposed law would also permit mainland Chinese courts can request Hong Kong courts to freeze and confiscate assets related to crimes committed on the mainland, and give control of those assets to the CCP in Beijing.
Officials in Hong Kong and Beijing were shocked last week by the size of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Some two million protesters filled the streets, over one-quarter of the entire Hong Kong population.
With the third protest bringing one-quarter of Hong Kong's population out on the streets to demand that Beijing's hand-picked leader Carrie Lam step down, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan have been emboldened. For the CCP, it's a question of what action must be taken, not whether action should be taken.
When Britain handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, there was a "one country, two systems" agreement that would allow Hong Kong to retain its own social legal and political systems. There was a strong firewall in the agreement between the Hong Kong and Beijing legal systems that the extradition law would breach.
Carrie Lam has profusely and abjectly apologized to the people of Hong Kong, and announced the suspension of consideration for the extradition bill. With activists planning massive new pro-democracy demonstrations on Sunday of last weekend, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced on Saturday:
"After repeated internal deliberations over the last two days, I now announce that the government has decided to suspend the legislative amendment exercise, restart our communication with all sectors of society, do more explanation work and listen to different views of society."
Activists are demanding that the extradition law be scrapped completely, so this temporary suspension will not satisfy activists. As positions have hardened, this issue has taken on a symbolism that goes far beyond Hong Kong.
No matter how weepy her apology was, she has little credibility among the demonstrators because she didn't announce complete withdrawal of the extradition law, which is a signal that it's going to be revived at a time of the CCP's choosing.
Lam's climbdown was a major humiliation for the CCP, and Hong Kong is Xi Jinping's portfolio, so hardliners in Beijing are blaming Xi for the problems in Hong Kong. Xi is also being blamed for the failure so far of the US-China trade negotiations. So Xi has two crises on his hands, just before the G20 talks. This weakens Xi at a time when there are hardliners in Beijing just waiting for Xi to fail so that they can take over. Xi's position as "dictator for life" is not 100% secure, and a palace coup would undoubtedly bring to power someone younger and even more bellicose and belligerent.
Hardliners in Taiwan will also be strengthened. China has been using a carrot and stick approach with Taiwan. On the one hand, Chinese officials say that any move toward independence would result in military reprisals. On the other hand, China has been on a continual charm offensive to convince the Taiwanese people how much better off they'd be as a province of China. Part of that charm offensive has been to claim that Taiwan could have the same "one country, two systems" perks that Hong Kong has. The protests in Hong Kong have emboldened the pro-independence factions.
The protests last week were the largest that Hong Kong has seen since June 1989, when Hong Kong was still a British colony, and millions in Hong Kong protested against China in support of the millions of students in the pro-democracy demonstrations Tiananmen Square, where the CCP massacred thousands of students on June 4-5, 1989.
Because of the similarity between last week's Hong Kong protests and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, if you want to understand the most likely outcome of the Hong Kong protests, look at the history of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and examine the similarities and differences.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests did not begin on June 4. They began in early May, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests that launched the "May 4th Movement" on May 4, 1919. Throughout May 1989, the CCP watched Tiananmen Square with growing alarm, because the pro-democracy protests were actually a repudiation of the ideology of Socialism, Marxism and Communism.
In the perverse, delusional logic of the CCP, democracy is an ideology, not a form of government. Furthermore, the CCP sees democracy as an ideology in conflict with communism. So by the beginning of June, the CCP was so alarmed that they had to crush the protests, to prevent democracy from gaining an ideological victory.
The current pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong so far are on a similar path. They're commemorating the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. As the number of protesters has grown into the millions, the CCP in Beijing is seeing 1989 all over again. And the pro-democracy protests are, once again, a repudiation of the "communist" ideology promulgated by the CCP.
According to unnamed CCP sources speaking to Boxun.com, Xi Jinping has already decided that "The situation in Hong Kong is in danger of getting out of control," and that he will order a military response if the situation worsens.
These sources say that the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Hong Kong Garrison are awaiting orders and prepared to fully respond to all possible scenarios that may arise in Hong Kong.
Since 1997, the Hong Kong Garrison is a group of several thousand PLA soldiers who are stationed in Hong Kong, but are meant to be "invisible." They are confined to barracks, where they wear their uniforms, but are not permitted to wear their uniforms in public. They've never left their barracks in uniform in the 22 years they've been stationed in Hong Kong, but they're prepared to emerge and take military action if ordered to do so.
We've described the similarities with the 1989 Tiananmen Square situation. However, there are significant differences as well.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre took place in Beijing, a region tightly controlled by the CCP, where the international media was well controlled, and was shut down quickly.
However, there's virtually no control of the international media in Hong Kong. The CCP has canceled visas and deported journalists of several publications, but the events of the last two week prove that any violence in Hong Kong will immediately be known and broadcast worldwide.
However, there's a more important difference: The Tiananmen Square massacre took place in Beijing in northern China, while Hong Kong is in southern China.
Southeast China was the starting point of the last two massive Chinese civil wars. Mao Zedong's Long March that led to the Communist revolution civil war (1934-49) started in the south. The massive Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), which was led by a Christian convert who believed he was the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, began in the south and spread north.
Most people in the West do not make these connections, but you can be certain that the paranoid officials in Beijing are well aware of the dangers of a rebellion from the south that can spiral out of control and travel north to swallow up Beijing.
Try playing around with the interactive "China strike map" from the Hong Kong based China labor bulletin: https://maps.clb.org.hk/strikes/en
If you set the year to 2011, 2012, etc., you'll see that the number of labor strikes is gradually increasing, from 184 in 2011 to 1702 in 2018. Furthermore, most of the strikes occur in southeast China, which was the starting point of the unrest that led to the last two massive Chinese civil wars.
This shows that there's already a level of unrest in southeast China, and it's been growing steadily and relentlessly for years. Xi Jinping is well aware of this.
Throughout China's millennia of history, there have been huge, massive anti-government rebellions at regular intervals. In the last 200 years there have been the the White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1805), the Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), and Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49). Today, China is overdue for the next massive anti-government rebellion, and Xi Jinping is well aware that the Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations could be the trigger.
Xi Jinping has another worry. There is no surer way to trigger a mass rebellion in China than a failing economy. China's economy has already taken a big hit from the new US tariffs, as many businesses are relocating out of China to neighboring countries.
Hong Kong has always been China's portal to the world financial system, and if Hong Kong become chaotic to the point that this portal is essentially shut down, it will cause the economic failure that will trigger the expected rebellion.
So Xi Jinping is boxed in, with no good choices.
It's hard to overestimate the shock felt in Hong Kong and Beijing over the size of the pro-democracy demonstrations last week, and their similarity to the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese are running out of time in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and they know it. The survivors of Mao's Communist Revolution are almost all gone now, and the younger generations are increasingly anti-communist and pro-democracy and pro-independence. At the same time, China's own economy is hugely unstable and under pressure from the US tariffs. China's entire business model, which involves stealing intellectual property from the West, is also under attack.
China cannot tolerate this situation much longer. For 30 years, China has been conducting a vitriolic hate campaign against Japan, and has been planning for war to annex Taiwan and exterminate the Japanese. The Chinese do not want war with the US (because they like us), but they've been preparing for it.
Carrie Lam's weepy apology was certainly not an act of heartfelt atonement or reconciliation, since that's not what the CCP ever does. Instead, it was an act of total desperation, an attempt to head off the worst. Over the next few weeks and months, we'll see if she succeeded.
John J. Xenakis is author of "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2)"
Sources: South China Morning Post, Hong Kong and China Labor Bulletin, Hong Kong and Reuters, 15-Jun-2019 and ChannelNewsAsia/AFP, 15-Jun-2019 and Bloomberg, 13-Jun-2019 and Bloomberg, 16-Jun-2019 and Hong Kong Free Press, 18-Jun-2019 and Taiwan News, 12-Jun-2019 and Boxun, 11-Jun-2019 and Inkstone, 3-Aug-2018
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion,
see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational
Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.)
(22-Jun-2019)
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South Korea's network of anti-missile defenses
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
Note: This article was originally published by Baillie-Gifford investment management firm on March 9. Updates since them: North Korea has tested a low-altitude cruise missile, and Kim Jong-un has met with Vladimir Putin.
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New satellite imagery shows that North Korea has begun a rapid rebuilding of the Sohae Launch Facility, used for testing long-range ballistic missiles.
The Sohae facility has been inactive since August 2018, when North Korea committed to dismantle it in order to "prove" that it was denuclearizing. North Korea demanded a reduction in sanctions in exchange, which was refused. The US agreed to temporarily end large military drills with South Korea, and has recently extended that to a permanent ban, after the Hanoi summit ended in failure. At the same time, the US demanded from North Korea a list of all nuclear and missile development sites, and a timeline to dismantle all of them, which North Korea has refused.
It's not clear if this is play-acting by the North Koreans, or whether it represents a plan to return to open testing of long-range ballistic missiles. At the very least, it appears to signal a final end to the "charm offensive" between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, and their mutual declarations of love and devotion to one another, and a return to fear that there will be a military confrontation with North Korea.
Based on history, this fear should give a boost to the South Korean weapons industry. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), South Korea has previously responded to the belligerence of North Korea by developing weapons systems, for both domestic use for sales overseas, with the intention of becoming a major exporter.
After being devastated by the Korean War in the 1950s, South Korea was one of the world’s largest importers of military equipment and technology for decades - mostly from the US. But slowly, starting the 1960s, South Korea has progressively developed a sophisticated indigenous arms industry, first for its own armed forces and, increasingly, for export. South Korean exports have steadily increased since the early 2000s, and now cover a range of high-technology weapons systems delivered to customers around the world.
The buildup has been rapid. South Korean arms-producing companies’ combined sales totalled US$8.4 billion in 2016, with a 20.6% rise in sales compared to 2015. According to budget plans announced in January, South Korea plans to spend over $84 billion on new military capabilities over five years.
South Korean weapons company LIG Nex1 is aggressively pursuing international weapons sales, and participated last month in the International Defence Exhibition (IDEX) 2019 opening in Abu Dhabi with a slew of its precision-guided munitions. The company's exhibit included the medium-range surface-to-air missile KM-SAM Cheongung, the short-range anti-air guided missile Shingung, the lightweight torpedo Cheongsangeo (Blue Shark), the anti-tank guided weapon Hyungung and the counter-battery radar II.
The KM-SAM Cheongung is playing a significant role in South Korea's defenses to a North Korean missile attack. North Korea has for decades been exposed to North Korea’s large and diverse arsenal of tactical and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
The most controversial component of South Korea's growing missile defense system is the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), supplied by the United States military. THAAD is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles on their terminal trajectory as they plunge down to their targets.
The US has for years asked South Korea's government to permit deployment of THAAD systems in South Korea. South Korea demurred, mainly because of opposition from China, though agreed in 2014 to allow it in principle. Then, because of North Korea's aggressive schedule of nuclear and missile tests, South Korea agreed to a surprise deployment of two THAAD launchers starting in March, 2017, approved by the conservative president, Park Geun-bye. When liberal president Moon Jae-in took office in May, 2017, he rejected any further THAAD deployment. But then North Korea tested a powerful new long-range ballistic missile on July 29, 2017, and Moon had a change of heart, and approved further THAAD deployments, four more launchers in addition to the two already deployed.
Chinese officials were infuriated and became almost hysterical. Why would the Chinese object to the deployment in South Korea of an anti-missile system that would protect South Korea from North Korean missiles? Chinese media provided the answer:
"The X-band radar can snoop on Chinese and Russian territories as it can spot at least 2,000 km. Seoul claims that it will adopt the radar with a detectable range of 600-800 km, but the mode change can be made at any time in accordance with the needs of the U.S military that will operate the THAAD battery in South Korea."
In other words, the Chinese were furious because the THAAD system includes "over the horizon" radar that would provide early warning to the American military of a missile attack from China.
China expressed its fury with South Korea in more than mere words. China banned tour groups from visiting China, removed popular South Korean TV dramas from the internet. China also forced the closure of 75 South Korean Lotte stores in China, resulting in $179 million in losses to the company.
China particularly ordered the Chinese living in China and in South Korea to boycott Lotte deparment stores, owned by Lotte Group, a South Korean multinational conglomerate. China decided on this punishment because it emerged that Lotte had agreed to a land swap that would allow THAAD to be deployed on a piece of land previously owned by the company. The enraged Chinese imposed harsh economic sanctions, particularly targeting Lotte Department Stores in China and South Korea with a boycott.
A correspondent living in Seoul has wrote to me in April 2017 to describe the devastating impact of the actions by China:
"China's economic boycott of Korea over THAAD has hit the country like a ton of bricks. I went to the flagship Lotte department store today, and it was practically empty. I have friends who own their own businesses, and they tell me they are facing bankruptcy because of the loss of Chinese customers. The thing is, Koreans, by and large, hate the Chinese. This embargo is only heightening the hatred. I think this embargo has finally woken people up to the fact that China is an existential threat to Korea. ...I can't believe how much the mood here has flipped. The word 'changed' would be inappropriate. Things are different now. I feel sick."
By November 2017, relations between China and South Korea had deteriorated substantially, and it was clear that the THAAD systems would not be removed. So China backed down. In a surprise announcement, China agreed to remove the harsh economic sanctions that it had imposed on South Korea. However, it imposed conditions, and suggested that the economic sanctions and boycotts would be reimposed if the conditions are not met.
China had one more objection to THAAD: China said that THAAD is useless because it is not designed to intercept North Korean missiles, which travel at too low an altitude for THAAD.
That's an interesting argument because it's partially true. When North Korea attacks the capital city Seoul, which is in the northern part of South Korea, it will use low-altitude missiles for that attack. However, THAAD is used as protection from ballistic missiles that North Korea will use to attack the southern part of South Korea. So what will protect Seoul?
This brings us back to the the KM-SAM Cheongung medium-range surface-to-air missile system and its new PIP missile interceptor, manufactured by LIG Nex1 and other South Korean firms.
THAAD and KM-SAM work together to create an anti-missile defense network. While THAAD defends against high-altitude ballistic missiles, KM-SAM can defend against low-altitude aircraft and missile attacks. The American-made Patriot anti-missile systems also provide a tactical layer of defense.
Late last year, LIG Nex1 signed a 499 billion won ($450 million) mass production contract with the South Korean government to produce KM-SAM systems. Other companies, including Hanhwa System, Hanhwa Defense, Hyundai and Kia, will participate in the mass production. According to LIG Nex1, KM-SAM is attracting high interest in overseas market due to its excellent operational performance, and it is expected to be exported on a large scale in the future.
However, the KM-SAM has plenty of competition. Last month, the Colombian Air Force selected Israel's Barak-8 system over South Korea's KM-SAM and other similar systems from Canada, Spain, the United States and France. Yonhap (15-Feb-2019) and NK News (11-Jan-2019) and National Interest (24-Feb-2019) and Army Recognition (13-Sep-2018) and AFP (20-Jul-2018) and Jerusalem Post (20-Feb-2019)
Related Articles:
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Apr-19 World View -- South Korea's weapons industry boosted by end of North's 'Charm Offensive' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Apr-2019)
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Sri Lankans fear a return to the civil war
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The death toll has risen above 350, and over 500 injured, in the Easter Sunday bombing of churches and hotels in Colombo, the capital city, and other cities in Sri Lanka. The church bombings took place in the middle of Easter Sunday services, to maximize carnage. Some analysts are saying that this is the worst terror attack since the attack on 9/11/2001.
So far, police have arrested 30 people in conjunction with the attacks.
The investigation has concluded that the perpetrators were National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ), a little-known jihadist terror group operating in South Asia. NJT has not claimed credit for the attack. In fact, no one claimed responsibility for the attack until ISIS did so through its public relations agency Amaq. NJT has been in existence since 2014, but hasn't previously done much more than vandalize Buddhist statues.
According to the police, the suicide bombers are well-educated, from middle or upper-middle class well-to-do families, and hold college degrees from the United Kingdom and Australia.
That's why this is so puzzling to analysts. It's a huge leap to go from vandalizing Buddhist statues to Sunday's extremely sophisticated attack, six coordinated suicide attacks in cities across the country, with multiple attacks, multiple attack sites, multiple cities, multiple churches, two hotels and a banquet facility, all coordinated, using bombs that are fairly sophisticated.
A claim by ISIS is always suspect, since they've often taken credit for terror attacks they had nothing to do with. However in this case, the complexity of the attack combined with Christian and tourist targets that are more ISIS-like targets supports the view that ISIS was involved before the attack. Speculation now is that ISIS sent out some operatives to recruit and train NTJ, perhaps in the role of terrorist consultants.
Another questions is the massive number of weapons that were involved, including caches of more weapons that were discovered by the police after the attack. The question of how so many weapons could be smuggled into the country was answered by one analyst who pointed out that the country is still awash with weapons from the Sri Lanka civil war that ended in 2009.
Sri Lanka is a mainly Buddhist and Hindu country, but there is a small minority of Muslims. Muslims make up 9.7% of the population, Roman Catholics make up 6.1%, Hindu 12.6%, and Buddhists make up 70.2%. The NTJ is thought to have grown out of that small group of Muslims, and were recruited by ISIS to plan Sunday's attack.
ISIS has suffered major setbacks in Syria and Iraq, and has lost its caliphate and all the land that it controlled. However, ISIS is not eliminated, just like al-Qaeda. Both ISIS and al-Qaeda are like terrorist fundamentalist religion sects; just because you kill some of them, there are more to take its place. ISIS is the "younger" of the two terrorist groups, so they appeal to different generations, depending on the country.
So ISIS has to adopt a different game plan, and that game plan is to launch terror attacks in other countries. Thus, we can expect to see more attacks like the one in Sri Lanka.
Why was Sri Lanka chosen? It has a small Muslim community, about 10% of the population, with no history of terror attacks, so it might have been easy for ISIS operatives to find a couple of dozen disaffected young people who could be radicalized and trained to carry out this attack.
One surprising aspect is that no Buddhist targets were chosen for the terror attack. These undoubtedly would have been the choice of an indigenous terror group like NTJ, but once they had pledged allegiance to ISIS, they would have been committed to the ISIS objectives. ISIS would not be interested in a Buddhist target, since they want to attack Western targets, and that leads to the selection of hotels and Catholic Churches.
There has been speculation that the attack on Catholic churches may have been in retaliation for a recent high profile attack on a Muslim mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. The motivation for making this connection appears to be a purely political attempt to blame the Sri Lankan bombing on so-called "white supremacists." However, the planning for the Sri Lanka attack must have begun months earlier. So the most influence that the New Zealand attack could have had is, perhaps, a last minute decision to attack an extra church.
A major scandal is brewing because US and Indian intelligence agencies had warned Sri Lanka intelligence agencies on April 4 that there was reason to believe that a terror attack would occur around Easter. The information was distributed on April 9 to some ministries, but apparently not any farther.
So after the attack on April 21, the prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe complained loudly on Monday that he had never received the warning, and if he had, the attacks could have been prevented. Wickremesinghe blamed the president for keeping it from him.
The president, Maithripala Sirisena, did not immediately respond, but finally on Tuesday said that he hadn't received the warning either. However, many people believe that Sirisena did received the warning but took no action.
In October of last year, Sirisena, who is pro-China, tried to fire Wickremesinghe, who is pro-India, over a dispute over whether China or India should be awarded a port infrastructure project.
Sirisena had wanted to replace the fired prime minister with a prime minister of his choice, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is also pro-Chinese.
Rajapaksa was the president of Sri Lanka before Sirisena. When Rajapaksa was president, he signed the agreement with China to build the Hambantota seaport. This was China's first major "debt trap" deal, putting Sri Lanka into so much debt that it had to hand control of the seaport over to China. Today, Sri Lanka is still in so much debt that it will never be paid back. Furthermore, China not only has control of the Hambantota seaport, but it also has control of a large enclave of Chinese workers and their families who are employees of the seaport. The seaport project has been a disaster for Sri Lanka, and it's not hard to see why Rajapaksa is unpopular.
Now that the Easter Sunday attack has occurred, Sri Lanka is returning to a full-scale chaotic constitutional crisis. On Wednesday, Sirisena on Wednesday fired the chief of police and defense secretary. However, the general public are furious that government officials received intelligence information from India and the US weeks ago, and didn't act on it. Many are blaming it on the bitter dispute between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe.
Sri Lankans had hoped and assumed that this level of violence was over, once and for all, once the Sri Lankan civil war ended in May, 2009. As a result, people became complacent, and security was lax.
For 30 years, from the 1970s to May 2009, Sri Lanka's entire society has been dominated by the Sri Lankan civil war between the ethnic majority (Buddhist) Sinhalese and a separatist faction, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers, consisting of an army of thousands from the ethnic minority (Hindu) Tamils.
It's worthwhile reviewing how it ended, because that's highly relevant today. As I was developing generational theory, I followed the Sri Lanka civil war closely, and wrote a number of articles about it, since it was one of only two generational crisis wars going on at the time (the other being in Darfur).
There had been low-level violence between the Tamils and Sinhalese since the 1970s, with periods of violence separated by numerous peace agreements and ceasefires. In 2006, the tempo of violence increased sharply, and it seemed clear that there would be no more peace treaties, although there was officially a moribund ceasefire in effect that had been negotiated by the Norwegians in 2002.
In January 2008, a series of terror attacks by the LTTE caused the Sri Lankan army to issue a statement saying that the ceasefire agreement would be thrown out completely, and that the army would destroy the LTTE by the end of the year. From the point of view of generational theory, this was a signal that the war was taking a major turn. Patience was running out, the value of a human life was diminishing, and nothing mattered any more except winning. This was the point where the civil war turned into a generational crisis war.
During the next year, both sides committed acts that have been described as war crimes. In brief, the Tamil Tiger terrorists embedded themselves into civilian neighborhoods so that any bombs targeting Tamil Tigers would also kill civilians, and the Sinhalese army bombed the Tamil Tiger locations, even though it meant bombing civilians. This is a classic example of the moral degeneracy that occurs on both side of a generational crisis war as it approaches its climax, and the need to win takes precedence over everything else, particularly the lives of civilians.
In the spring of 2009, it was clear that Sri Lanka was approaching the climax of the generational crisis war. And this is where all the reporters, politicians and analysts got their analyses completely wrong. Everyone that I read was saying that one battle was nearing an end, but that it had been going on since the 1970s, and would continue far into the future. I even wrote a message to Stratfor and told them that their analysis was wrong, and that the war would end completely. Of course they ignored it. Stratfor charges big bucks for their newsletter, but like other analysts they were completely wrong, and just followed the herd and wrote what everyone else was writing, and got it wrong like all the others did.
When a generational crisis war ends, it does not then go on afterwards in another battle. When Berlin was captured, the Nazis didn't continue the war in some other country. When Japan was bombed, the Japanese didn't continue the war on another Pacific island.
A crisis war ends with what I can an "explosive climax," referring to the genocidal acts and atrocities that both sides commit out of desperation to end the war. Once the war concludes, each side is exhausted and traumatized -- not just because of the atrocities the other side had committed, but because of their own atrocities.
And that's what happened in Sri Lanka. The BBC, Stratfor, the AP were all predicting that war would continue, and they were all wrong. The war ended and there was no more fighting as the Generational Dynamics analysis correctly predicted.
A similar error is being made today by analysts and journalists analyzing Sri Lanka's society today. They all assume that Sri Lanka society is like the society in India, in America, in Europe, or someplace similar.
To understand the mood of Sri Lanka's society today, you have to compare it to, for example, America in the 1950s, in a generational Recovery era following WW II. That was the time when the Silent Generation were taking charge. They had been so traumatized by the Great Depression and WW II, that Time Magazine called them the Silent Generation because they just did their job and never complained.
Sri Lanka's society today is like that, in a generational Recovery era following the crisis civil war. Everyone -- the Sinhalese, the Tamils, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Muslims -- everyone is still in a state of shock, traumatized by the atrocities that had been committed during the civil war, just doing their jobs, not complaining.
There are small groups of exceptions. There's Bodu Bala Sena (BBS - Forces of Buddhist Power), a terror group led by Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, formed in 2012 to purify Sri Lanka for the Buddhists by exterminating the Christians, Hindus and Muslims. Gnanasara was jailed last year for terrorist acts.
Another group is the one in focus today: The National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ, National Monotheism Organisation), a formerly obscure Islamist group formed in 2014, with a reputation for vandalizing Buddhist statues. The Muslims were perhaps a little less traumatized than the Buddhists and Hindus who committed all the atrocities during the civil war, but they were still deeply affected.
The main difference for NTJ, apparently, is that a disaffected group vandalizing Buddhist statues were radicalized by ISIS operatives to accept training, and to turn their targets away from Buddhists towards Christians and western tourists.
Generational theory provides a description of Sri Lanka's society in the years to come, and unfortunately the news is not good. When the war ended in May 2009, the Sinhalese, Tamils, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims were all traumatized, and became like the "Silent Generation," just doing their jobs without complaining. But as a new generation of kids grows up after the war, they do not share those traumatized attitudes, and they're going to be looking for revenge for real or imagined atrocities. That means that the frequency of terror attacks by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims is going to increase, as the new generational cycle proceeds. Sydney Morning Herald and News First (Sri Lanka) and Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) and AP and Sky News (Australia) and Al-Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Apr-19 World View -- ISIS claims credit for Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombing thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Apr-2019)
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Coming soon: World View: The Conflict between China and Japan,
by John J. Xenakis
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
The following articles appeared on Wednesday in India's Open Magazine:
 |
13 February 2019
The West gets constantly surprised by Iran because of their universal stupidity, says John J Xenakis
On the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, an American scholar talks about its impact on world politics
by John J Xenakis
"John J. Xenakis juggles multiple careers: that of a software engineer, historian, journalist, analyst and author. The American scholar, who has developed what he calls the “generational theory” to forecast the future of countries and people, is the author of World View: Iran’s struggle for Supremacy. As Iran celebrates the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution this month, Xenakis delves deep into the legacy of its spearhead Ayatollah Khomeini and how the historical event changed the course of world history. He argues that it is a pity that most journalists and politicians don’t have even “the vaguest clue of what's going on Iran”. He also talks about other countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia which is fighting a proxy war with Iran in many parts of the region. Edited excerpts from an interview with Executive Editor Ullekh NP"
Looking back, how has the Islamic Revolution of 40 years ago altered the history of the Middle East and the rest of the world?
There were three events that occurred in 1979 that set the direction of the Mideast. The Islamic Revolution changed Iran from a Western ally to a Western enemy, and radicalized the Mideast. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was an invasion of a Muslim nation by a Christian nation, further radicalized the Mideast and Pakistan. And the Salafist attack on Saudi Arabia's Grand Mosque was the first major terrorist attack in recent times. It led to Osama bin Laden and his band of jihadists to leave Saudi Arabia and go to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. These events can be traced directly to the Iran-Iraq war and to the 9/11 terror attack.
What are your thoughts on Ayatollah Khomeini's legacy?
Ruhollah Khomeini's greatest sin is that he corrupted Islam by twisting it into a policy called Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) which turned himself into an "infallible" Supreme Leader who could order the arrests, torture, rape, beatings, and executions of political opponents with impunity. Furthermore, he devised a constitution with absolutely no checks and balances, which makes Iran a kleptocracy, unable to get anything done except with bribery and extortion. Khomeini was truly evil. He has fouled Islam and destroyed Iran.
Many famous intelligence officials and news correspondents who have worked in Iran have opined that they had underestimated the inherent strengths of that country to survive insurmountable odds. What do you think?
Dictators always survive in a police state, where political opponents can be arrested, tortured, raped, beaten, and executed at will with impunity. What you call "inherent strength" is the ability to use violence to control the opposition.
A lot of people talk about "regime change" in Iran, without having any idea what that means. If all it means replacing one Supreme Leader by another, it will make no difference at all. The problem is that the constitution and entire government are a kleptocracy, where it's impossible to survive without bribery, corruption and violence.
However, generational theory tells us that an important change is coming. The fanatical hardliners in Iran are in the generations that lived through and fought in the 1979 Revolution, and those people are quickly disappearing. The younger generations, who grew up after the 1979 Revolution, have no such fanaticism. In fact, they're generally pro-American, pro-Western, and have no particular interest in seeing Israel pushed into the sea. These younger generations are increasingly in power, and they will dramatically change Iran's politics. Some opposition figures are even suggesting that the son of the deceased Shah could come back and restore a secular government.
Do you think that Iran has been villainized over the past 40 years because it took on the might of the US and threw an American stooge out of power? How justified are the West's sanctions on that country?
Iran is a country that abducted American ambassadors, and declares "death to America" and "death to Israel" every single day. They're corrupt, violent terrorists, and they're spreading terror throughout the Mideast in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Yemen. Of course, they're going to be villanized, and they deserve it.
Just as Hindus in India feel an emotional link with Shia Muslims in Iran, and tend to excuse Iran's sins, Jews and evangelical Christians in America feel a close emotional link to Jews in Israel, and tend to excuse Israel's sins
Isn’t it Saudi Arabia, a friend of the US, that is the fountainhead of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East (we feel the pressure in India as well because Islamism in India is also funded by the Saudis)? Why do you insist it is Iran? Besides, Israel isn't a saint after all and has earned the wrath of UNHCR on many occasions for its treatment of Palestinian civilians. It is a country whose economic mainstay is arms and its government has been accused of terrorism by religious groups within. Your comments.
Saudi Arabia is "A fountainhead," not "THE fountainhead." In Yemen, SA is in a never-ending proxy war with Iran, in Syria SA is supporting many anti-Assad rebels. The Jamal Khashoggi incident has shocked everyone, and has had the ironic effect of pushing SA closer to Pakistan. Many people also blame SA for 9/11. SA itself has an internal split between the Sauds and the Wahhabis. At any rate, Saudi Arabia and Iran are headed for war.
Many in the US Congress do not consider SA to be a friend. Obama hated SA, and SA hated Obama. SA and US have had a close relationship since the 1930s based on the following core agreement: SA will provide oil to the world, and the US will provide security to the Mideast. Trump's "friendship" with SA is based on that core agreement. This core agreement greatly benefits everyone, including India. There have been many problems in the SA-US relationship over the decades, but this core agreement has remained the most important factor.
And if I'm not mistaken, most of the funding for Islamism in India comes not from the Saudis but from Pakistan's ISI. However, that may be a distinction without a difference because Pakistan is a close ally of SA and China, both of whom are enemies of India. India, on the other hand, is a close ally of Iran, as illustrated by the Chabahar seaport project. Hindus and Shia Muslims have been allies for centuries, all the way back to the seminal Battle of Karbala in 680. I discussed this in my book.
Nobody's a saint, especially in the Mideast. Israel is a democracy and has an independent judiciary, which makes them unique in the Mideast. Muslim Arabs are much safer living in Israel, and have more freedoms, than in any other Mideast country. Just as Hindus in India feel a close emotional link with Shia Muslims in Iran, and tend to excuse Iran's sins, Jews and evangelical Christians in America feel a close emotional link to Jews in Israel, and tend to excuse Israel's sins.
There's also anti-Jewish sentiment in the US -- read the current news stories about Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, who is the Somali Muslim congressional representative from Minneapolis, which has a large Somali community.
Many in the US consider UNHCR to be highly biased, condemning actions in Israel while ignoring massively greater human rights violations by others.
Did the 1979 Revolution intensify the Shia-Sunni conflict and how?
By changing from a secular government to a radical Shia government, they radicalized the Wahhabi Sunni extremists and other jihadists.
What are the untold stories of the Islamic Revolution? Why did Saddam Hussein spare Khomeini while the latter was in exile in Iraq? How come he became a darling of the international media overnight in France? Were there more to these developments than meets the eye?
These are all political developments that were not nearly as important as the three major events in 1979 that I listed above.
Iran is still a power that continues to surprise the West. Do you think there are chances that it will become a nuclear power soon?
Well, I was surprised myself when I did research for my book and discovered that no analysts, journalists or politicians have even the vaguest clue what's going on Iran, as judged by the fact that they say one incredibly stupid thing after another every day. That's why they keep getting surprised -- because of their universal stupidity.
Will it be a nuclear power soon? They're undoubtedly continuing some nuclear development, and/or buying nuclear technology from North Korea. Even under the Iran nuclear treaty, they're permitted to develop nuclear weapons by 2025, and they're certainly planning to do so.
How important is it to understand Iran in order to understand political Islam?
I don't even know what this means, since no one wants to bother to understand political Islam or Islam at any level. However, someone who wants to understand Iran and Islam can start by reading my book, which has the best and most accessible exposition of both that I've seen.
Who are your favourite historians who have written extensively on Iran?
The best was Homa Katouzian. In my book, I showed how generational changes led to the historical flow Russia/Britain-Iran border wars -> Tobacco Revolt -> Constitutional Revolution -> White Revolution protests -> Islamic Revolution. Most historians discussed these as individual, almost unrelated events. Katouzian was the only one who understood how one leads to the next.
On the same day that the above article was published, there was a massive terror attack in southeastern Iran, targeting a bus carrying members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Supreme Leader's security forces that conduct the most vicious atrocities against any peaceful protester or anyone who says something not approved by the dictatorial government.
A suicide bomber driving a car laden with explosives targeted the bus, causing a massive explosion. Official government figures put the number of dead at 20, although other reports say that as many as 41 IRGC members were killed. Dozens more were injured. The attack took place in Sistan-Baluchistan province, near the border with Pakistan.
The Sunni terrorist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), which says it wants greater rights for the ethnic minority Baluchis, took credit for the attack. This group was formed in 2012 as an offshoot of the al-Qaeda linked Jundallah, which is in the Pakistan Taliban.
Both Jundullah (Soldiers of God) and Jaish-ul-Adl (Army of Justice) have stated openly that they're committed to the extermination of all Shia Muslims. Jundullah itself was an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) which in 2013 issued the following statement:
"Our mission [in Pakistan] is the abolition of this impure sect and people, the Shias and the Shia Hazaras, from every city, every village, every nook and corner of Pakistan."
In 2010, Iran captured and executed Jundullah's leader Abdulmalik Rigi, and declared that the defeat of Jundullah. But Jundullah reconstituted itself with new leadership, and stepped up the attacks on Iran, claiming revenge for the execution of Rigi.
Jundullah and Jaish-ul-Adl are offshoots that have extended the extermination plan from Pakistan across the border into Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province. On January 29, a bomb explored in the provincial capital Zahedan, and three members of a bomb squad were wounded when a second device blew up. There have been dozens of such attacks in recent years, killing hundreds of people.
Two people were killed and about 40 wounded in the port city of Chabahar early December. The Chabahar port project is an important part of the strategic relationship between Iran and India, as I mentioned in the Open Magazine article quoted above. For that reason, it's possible that Jundullah and Jaish-ul-Adl attacks on Sistan-Baluchistan province are also intended to be an attack on Indian assets.
For Wednesday's attack, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, declared that the blame goes to the United States because of a Mideast summit being held in Poland. Zarif tweeted:
"Is it no coincidence that Iran is hit by terror on the very day that #WarsawCircus begins? Especially when cohorts of same terrorists cheer it from Warsaw streets & support it with twitter bots? US seems to always make the same wrong choices, but expect different results."
A Foreign Ministry spokesman added, "The self-sacrificing military and intelligence children of the people of Iran will take revenge for the blood of the martyrs of this incident."
I've been writing about Jundullah's terror attacks on Iran for almost ten years, and even though the attacks are being conducted by a group vowing to exterminate all Shia Muslims, Iranian officials always find a way to make delusional statements blaming the attacks on the US. Press TV (Iran) and Radio Farda and Guardian (London) and Reuters
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A new book, World View: The Conflict between China and Japan, by John J. Xenakis in the Generational Theory Series, will be published soon.
The topics include:
As the book is being completed, there's an active discussion going on in the Generational Dynamics forum about it's contents, as well as book excerpts and other World View stories.
If you'd like to follow the discussion, or even contribute your own thoughts and comments, do any of the following:
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Feb-19 World View -- India's Open Magazine: The West gets constantly surprised by Iran thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Feb-2019)
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Reformulation of daily World View articles
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As I announced last week, I've suspended the daily World View articles, because the best use of my time right now is to concentrate on finishing up my book on China.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been performing one barbaric act after another, from militarizing the South China Sea to arresting, beating, raping, torturing and executing over a million Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province, as well as similar violence against Christians and Buddhists.
My research on my book has been to determine from China's history how this happened. I've found so far that every CCP policy is connected in some way to the "century of humiliation," and particularly to events surrounding the 1860 Treaty of Tanjin, almost like a serial killer's actions are linked to some traumatic childhood event.
In research for my book, my objective is to determine the following:
I'm experimenting with a new format for posting news stories, as well as continuing research on China. Instead of a long, complex article every day, I will be posting short news briefs, sometimes several times a day.
This is in the following thread of the Generational Dynamics Forum: http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5168
Since I'm also doing extensive research on China for my book on China, this thread also contains research analyses on China that are not available in the mainstream media.
In past decades, everyone in the world wanted China to succeed in becoming an economic powerhouse and a responsible member of the international community. For this reason, numerous concessions were granted to China and billions of dollars were invested in China to make this happen. Instead of becoming a responsible member of the international community, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has turned into barbaric monsters.
My research has already developed partial answers to these questions. Further research will be posted in this forum thread linked above, and of course will appear in the final book. Those who are interested in world events, and particularly in where China is going, are asked to visit this thread.
From a geopolitical point of view, the most significant event at last week's World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, was the speech on Thursday given by Hungarian-born left-wing billionaire George Soros, who has a long-standing vitriolic hatred of the political right. Soros launched into a scathing historical criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
One analyst at Davos that I heard said that "Soros said what everyone was afraid to say, but what everyone is thinking." The reason that everyone is afraid to say this is because they all have huge amounts of money invested in China and are afraid to lose it. And the reason that everyone is thinking this is because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commits one barbaric act after another, from theft of intellectual property to illegal militarizing the South China Sea to "debt trap diplomacy" with dozens of countries, to violence, beatings, rape, and execution of Christians, Buddhists and Muslims for their religious beliefs.
So if Soros is saying what everyone is thinking -- which I believe to be true -- then it means that the attitude of the world has turned a corner, and is substantially more hostile to the policies of the CCP than in the past. Soros said:
"I want to use my time tonight to warn the world about an unprecedented danger that’s threatening the very survival of open societies. ...Tonight I want to call attention to the mortal danger facing open societies from the instruments of control that machine learning and artificial intelligence can put in the hands of repressive regimes. I’ll focus on China, where Xi Jinping wants a one-party state to reign supreme.
A lot of things have happened since last year and I’ve learned a lot about the shape that totalitarian control is going to take in China. ...
All the rapidly expanding information available about a person is going to be consolidated in a centralized database to create a “social credit system.” Based on that data, people will be evaluated by algorithms that will determine whether they pose a threat to the one-party state. People will then be treated accordingly.
The social credit system is not yet fully operational, but it’s clear where it’s heading. It will subordinate the fate of the individual to the interests of the one-party state in ways unprecedented in history.
I find the social credit system frightening and abhorrent. Unfortunately, some Chinese find it rather attractive because it provides information and services that aren’t currently available and can also protect law-abiding citizens against enemies of the state.
China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society. But Xi isn’t alone. Authoritarian regimes are proliferating all over the world and if they succeed, they will become totalitarian."
George Soros and Financial Advisor and Diplomat
Soros told of his childhood in Hungary, escaping from the Nazis and the Soviet occupation, and taking refuge in England, where he became a successful hedge fund investor. After he made more money than he knew what to do with, he decided to turn to philanthropy. He started with South Africa.
"In the years that followed, I tried to replicate my success in Hungary and in other Communist countries. I did rather well in the Soviet empire, including the Soviet Union itself, but in China it was a different story. ...Bao Tong was its champion. But the opponents of radical reforms, who were numerous, banded together to attack him. They claimed that I was a CIA agent and asked the internal security agency to investigate.
[Bao Tong was replaced by Zhao Ziyang.] Soon thereafter, Zhao Ziyang was removed from power and I used that excuse to close the foundation. This happened just before the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and it left a “black spot” on the record of the people associated with the foundation. ...
In retrospect, it’s clear that I made a mistake in trying to establish a foundation which operated in ways that were alien to people in China."
Soros went on to sharply criticize the "debt trap diplomacy" of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI):
"It was designed to promote the interests of China, not the interests of the recipient countries; its ambitious infrastructure projects were mainly financed by loans, not by grants, and foreign officials were often bribed to accept them. Many of these projects proved to be uneconomic."
He specifically mentioned the cases in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Pakistan -- where it's turning into a military project.
Soros went on to praise US president Donald Trump and vice-president Mike Pence:
"Most importantly, the US government has now identified China as a “strategic rival.” President Trump is notoriously unpredictable, but this decision was the result of a carefully prepared plan. Since then, the idiosyncratic behavior of Trump has been largely superseded by a China policy adopted by the agencies of the administration and overseen by Asian affairs advisor of the National Security Council Matt Pottinger and others. The policy was outlined in a seminal speech by Vice President Mike Pence on October 4th. ...Last year I still believed that China ought to be more deeply embedded in the institutions of global governance, but since then Xi Jinping’s behavior has changed my opinion. My present view is that instead of waging a trade war with practically the whole world, the US should focus on China. Instead of letting ZTE and Huawei off lightly, it needs to crack down on them. If these companies came to dominate the 5G market, they would present an unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world.
Regrettably, President Trump seems to be following a different course: make concessions to China and declare victory while renewing his attacks on US allies. This is liable to undermine the US policy objective of curbing China’s abuses and excesses."
Soros's speech is important because of what it serves as a major signal that the world's attitude is changing towards China, and that it's increasingly acceptable to say so.
The last two paragraphs indicate that Soros is misjudging China today as much as when he opened his China Fund in the 1980s. As I've described many times, the mainstream media are completely baffled by Trump's policies, but the policies are completely understandable in view of Trump's attempts to prevent war with China, even though war with China cannot be prevented. If Trump cracked down heavily on ZTE and Huawei, it would have enormous economic effects. China would be furious and even destabilized, and war would occur much more quickly.
Just as Soros is baffled by Trump's policies, China is baffled by Soros's speech. Here's the statement given by China's Foreign Ministry:
"On your second question, I have seen relevant reports. In today's world, it is very easy to tell who is opening the door and paving roads and who is closing the door and building walls. Therefore, it is meaningless and worthless to refute these words made by certain individual that call white black and confuse right and wrong. Living in this era where globalization is advancing further on all fronts, only by seeing things in a dynamic way and taking in things with an open and inclusive mind can a country find greater development space for itself and its relations with other countries. We hope that the relevant people on the US side can set right their attitude, broaden their horizon, and view China's development in an objective, reasonable and correct way."
This is just meaningless babble, and it seems to imply that Soros is speaking for the Trump administration. The reason that China is baffled is because Soros has a decades long history of supporting China. Soros says in his speech that he made a 180 degree U-turn because of China's "frightening and abhorrent" social credit system in just the last year, and the Chinese have no idea what Soros's change of mind means for them and their relations with the world. China Foreign Ministry
For several months, we've read that China has swept up a million Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province and jailed them in "re-education centers," where they're beaten, tortured, raped, abused and executed.
Some recent analyses are saying that China's plans go well beyond "re-education." In fact, the plan is the total genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslim Uighurs in the next ten years.
According to this analysis, there has been no international outrage about this because Sunni Muslims are so unpopular since 9/11. China has been adroit in using economic and financial packages to silence the Arab and Islamic world's support for the Uighurs. Despite the suppression, not one single Arab or Islamic government has spoken out openly to criticize China for its draconian measures in Xinjiang.
China is conducting equally violent crackdowns on Buddhism and Christianity, though without the full-scale genocide.
One thing that's really remarkable is that there are now three countries in the world where there is full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing targeting Sunni Muslims, with little international outrage even from Muslim countries. These are:
This is a historic event that will have very serious consequences. Hoover.org (9-Oct-2018) and Straits Times (28-Sep-2018) and Memri (19-Dec-2018)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Jan-19 World View -- George Soros speech at Davos marks significant global shift against China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Jan-2019)
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South Korea vs Japan military 'radar lock' feud continues to escalate
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
|
According to Japan, on December 20 a South Korean warship locked its fire-control radar onto a Japanese patrol plane, as if preparing to shoot it down. Japan made a formal protest to South Korea, claiming that it was a "hostile act."
South Korea says that it was a maritime search and rescue operation, with naval forces and supporting coast guard vessels, and that any radar that was used was only ship-to-ship between Korean vessels. Japan rejected this explanation.
South Korea then demanded that Tokyo offer a "smoking gun" -- its analysis of radar frequency data to verify whether the destroyer sent the warplane any signals from its tracking radar. Tokyo rejected the call, saying it won't offer sensitive information on its "operational capabilities."
Then, on December 28, Japan released a 13-minute video of the interior of the patrol plane at the time of the incident, where a crew member remarked on the plane’s systems picking up an “extremely strong” reading.
South Korea then became more aggressive, urging Japan to apologize for the patrol plane's low-altitude flight, which was "threatening" to the South Korean warship, and criticized Tokyo's "unilateral, misguided" claims. South Korea then released its own video, saying that it refutes Tokyo's arguments.
Now, on Saturday, Japan indicated that on Sunday it might release an audio recording of its crew at the time of the incident. South Korea is accusing Japan of planning to use it to "distort the facts" and release "incorrect" information.
Memories of World War II are still very raw between the two countries, and now that the WW II survivors are gone, younger generations are seeking revenge. Japan colonized Korea from 1905 to 1945, and used Koreans as "comfort women" during the war.
In 2015, Japan and Korea concluded a bilateral agreement which was intended at the time as the “final and irreversible” resolution of the comfort women issue. However, South Korea is now demanding that issue be reopened.
Another issue is that, last year, because of the "charm offensive" between North and South Korea, South Korea's military canceled the purchase of a number of weapons whose purpose was to defend against a North Korean invasion of Seoul. The Japanese view this as an opportunity to redirect those funds towards weapons systems that can be used against the Japanese.
The "radar lock" issue started out looking like something really trivial, but as time has passed, tensions on both sides have rapidly escalated, and the probability that the controversy or some other misunderstanding could lead to a wider conflict is increasing. Japan Times and Yonhap (Seoul, 1-Jan) and Diplomat (12-Jan) and Defense News (17-May-2018)
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I'm suspending daily World View articles because most of the work on generational theory has been completed, and because the best use of my time right now is to concentrate on finishing up my book on China.
Since 2003, I've posted over 6,000 articles on my web site, all of them well-sourced through multiple sources, and non-ideological. There is no "fake news" in any of them.
These articles contain thousands of generational analyses and predictions of over 100 countries. All of these analyses and predictions are true or are trending true. None has turned out to be wrong.
My work in the last ten years has been groundbreaking, on the behavior of how a country acts in the decades after a major civil war, a generational crisis civil war. This is a breakthrough on analyzing and predicting the behavior of the population, the generations, and the politicians, and showing how these nations all act pretty much the same as each other, though differently from countries after a major external war (invading or being invaded).
Generational Dynamics now provides the tools to government officials, historians, journalists, and geopolitical analysts -- if they want to use them -- to correctly analyze what's happening in the world, what will happen next, and what the likely outcome is of different policy decisions. No other analytical tools, besides Generational Dynamics, have ever provided successful predictions at this level of accuracy and usefulness.
For most countries, the last generational crisis war was World War II. But that's not true for all countries. Many countries were relatively untouched by WW II, and had crisis wars at other times.
Many African nations (e.g., Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria, etc.) had crisis wars in the 1950s-60s related to their individual wars of independence from colonialism. Some non-African countries (Burma/Myanmar, Indonesia, Bangladesh) did as well. Many Middle Eastern countries had a generational crisis during the World War I time period, and then cycled into a new crisis war in the 1970s-90s (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan). Some countries (Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Morocco, Turkey, Russia) haven't had generational crisis wars for a very long time, and studying those has produced significant discoveries about suicide bombers and terrorists. The most recent generational crisis wars were in Central African Republic, Darfur (Sudan) and Sri Lanka.
Writing about these nations has provided a wealth of opportunities to make comparisons. For example, both America in the 1960s and Iran in the 2000s were in their respective generational Awakening eras. By doing detailed social and political analyses, one can find similarities (student demonstrations, anti-government protests, a social "generation gap" between survivors of the war and those growing up afterwards) and differences (occasional low-level violence versus major violent government crackdowns, using torture, rapes, beatings and arbitrary jailing). Where differences exist, it's not in kind, but in intensity.
During my research in the past 15 years, I've done many tens of thousands of such analyses and comparative analyses, systematically comparing and contrasting social and political behaviors of different countries at different times in history and during similar or different generational eras. Of these, I've written thousands of articles about them, and documented conclusions. Starting in 2010, I began writing an article every day, and I've written thousands of article since them. This has allowed me to thoroughly document generational theory research and how it is applied to hundreds of countries over many centuries, with the result that, in many ways, development of generational theory is now near-completed and empirically proved.
However, there's been a problem. Each time I write about a country, I have to say the same things over and over, with only the details changed. So, for example, when I write about Cambodia, I talk about the 1970s Killing Fields genocide, how it's affected Cambodian society since then, through Recovery and Awakening generational eras in a predictable way. So when prime minister Hun Sen commits each horrific new atrocity, the only real difference between one article and the next is the nature of the new atrocity. The core generational analysis of Cambodia remains the same. This has gotten really boring to write over and over and also boring to read, and of course I don't get paid for these articles, and so it's hard to see anymore what the point is of writing boring unpaid articles every day under those circumstances.
"What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. -- Ecclesiastes I."
On the other hand, the book that I wrote on Iran last year was a very interesting project, and is the best book available today for those who wish to understand Iran, the history of Islam, and the nature of the Sunni-Shia split.
Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East.
I'm now working on a great book on China which is also a very interesting project, and the best use of my time right now is to complete that book, as well as possibly one more. We're headed to a world war with China, possibly very soon, and I've already done a great deal of historical research on China to determine why China's leadership is so paranoid, barbaric and incompetent, how they've completely lost their own Mandate from Heaven, why China's hard-working citizens tolerate these worthless barbarians, and what sequence of events is likely to occur in the next few months.
So I'm suspending the daily World View articles, but I'll still write occasional articles every few days, when a news event occurs that I would find interesting to analyze. Hopefully, these less frequent articles will be more interesting to read, as well. I might also post brief items on the Generational Dynamics forum. We'll experiment and see what happens and how this works out.
I know that not having me around every day will be a cause for celebration among Russian trolls and Bashar al-Assad acolytes, and I hope you enjoy your champagne. For everybody else, thank you for reading my articles, and I welcome questions and comments through my GenerationalDynamics.com web site or the Generational Dynamics forum.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Jan-19 World View -- Suspension of daily World View articles thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Jan-2019)
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Local DRC population giving little cooperation to health officials
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The number of Ebola cases recorded each day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has doubled, indicating that it may spread to other regions and other countries.
According to Jean-Philippe Marcoux, country directory for Mercy Corps in DRC:
"Now it’s doubling – it’s very possible that it can double again. If we don’t significantly increase the resources, it will keep increasing. It will spread progressively to other health areas and it will be there for a long time."
If this doubling continues, it would represent exponential growth.
The current Ebola outbreak in DRC began in July 2018, and is now the largest in that country’s history and the second largest ever recorded. According to the country’s health ministry, as of January 17, 2019 there have been 668 cases and 410 deaths in the outbreak
The cases are centered in two northeastern provinces, North Kivu and Ituru, which is a war zone in an extremely violent ongoing ethnic civil war. No cases have yet been identified outside DRC, but the increasing rapid spread of the disease is raising concerns that it will soon travel to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and even South Sudan.
The epidemic was originally centered in Beni, with a population of 232,000. But it's spread to Butembo, with a population of over a million, a densely populated trade city near the Uganda border. Further south along the highway from Butembo are the million-plus population cities Goma and Bukavu. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been focusing its efforts on preventing a spread to the latter two cities, since "all bets are off" for stopping the epidemic if it reaches there.
The problem is that the continuing war causes the disease to spread in an uncontrolled and unexpected fashion. The result is that new cases of Ebola keep popping up in unforeseen places and people.
Normally, the medical professionals use contact tracing to identify potential chains of transmission before they occur. Once a person is suspected of having Ebola, all the people that he might have had in contact with are identified and given a vaccine. But the ongoing war often makes contact tracing impossible, with the result that nearly 70% of the newly discovered cases have fallen outside of known chains of transmission. Another problem is that rape is common in any war zone, and so Ebola can be spread among women, soldiers, gangs, arms smugglers and rapists. More than one-third of the Ebola cases have been in children, and the majority of identified adult infections have been in women.
WHO is predicting that the outbreak will continue for six more months or even longer. But even if the outbreak could be contained quickly -- and it can't -- then the it could quickly be restarted because the disease can be transmitted sexually up to 18 months after an individual’s cure, and it can also pass from pregnant mothers to their fetuses. Guardian (London) and Kaiser Family Foundation and Daily Mail (London)
The local population in the North Kivu war zone in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are often refusing to cooperate with health officials to stop the epidemic. Even worse, health officials have been kidnapped or killed by armed groups, and treatment centers have been ransacked.
There are several issues:
It's interesting to trace the changes in public mood and attitude toward Ebola.
When the huge outbreak began in western Africa in 2014, there was almost international hysteria. It continued into 2015, and only really subsided when the outbreak ended in 2016.
Early in 2018, there was an outbreak in western DRC (the other end of the country from the current outbreak). This raised international concern, but world health officials ended it quickly, thanks to the new experimental vaccine.
Then in July 2018, the new outbreak began in eastern DRC, in North Kivu. Having an active outbreak of Ebola has become the "new normal" in people's minds, and so there has been little concern or media coverage. And why should there be any media coverage, when there are more important subjects -- Brexit in Europe, the border wall in America, and jailing Canadians in China.
But even among the local population in North Kivu, there seems to be little concern. Many people don't believe anything the UN says, and don't believe there's an Ebola outbreak. Others just assume that it will be quickly ended, like the previous Ebola outbreaks. Others simply have other worries on their minds -- getting beaten, raped, or shot by gangs or warring militias.
If a few cases pop up in neighboring countries, health officials will move quickly to contain them, and will probably succeed since they aren't in war zones. The real danger is that Ebola will become endemic in North Kivu and become a continuing source of infection that can go on for years. Foreign Policy and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Jan-19 World View -- Ebola outbreak in DR Congo now spreading exponentially faster thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Jan-2019)
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It's possible that Mnangagwa is changing Zimbabwe, making it worse
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Zimbabwe's government has reacted to public protests of high gasoline and fuel prices by a massive police and military crackdown. At least eight people have been killed in four days of sometimes violent protests, and dozens are being treated for gunshot wounds. Hundreds have been abducted in their homes and thrown into crowded jails, where they are sometimes beaten and tortured.
It's possible that there are far more casualties, as the government shut down the internet most of the week, to prevent news of the violence from being reported.
Some reports indicate that the government security forces, which are mostly members of Mugabe's Shona tribe, of which Mnangagwa is also a member, were particularly targeting the city of Bulawayo. Bulawayo is a government opposition stronghold, largely with a population from Mugabe's hated Ndebele tribe. Mugabe's violence always targeted the Ndebele tribe, including the 1980s Operation Gukurahundi, which was a massive act of genocide and ethnic cleansing targeting the Ndebele tribe.
The protests began on Monday after Zimbabwe's president Emmerson Mnangagwa announced a sharp rise in fuel and food prices. The announcement triggered panic buying that left store shelves bare.
According to one lawyer representing 30 people, including children, in the central prison in the capital city Harare, "Most said they had been abducted from homes by masked men with AK47s who dragged them out and beat them up. They are being held without charges or representation, with no food or water ... The brutality of what is going on is shocking."
The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe says it is “alarmed” by credible reports that security forces are targeting and beating activists and labor leaders.
The protests were led by Evan Mawarire, a Christian pastor and prominent social activist, who called for a nationwide strike on Monday after the price increases were announced. He was arrested in his home early on Wednesday, charged with inciting violence. Mawarire said, "I cannot tell you how heartbreaking it is. We thought we had a new country and a new way of doing things. None of what I am being accused of is what I have done at all."
Actually, that hope was completely delusional, as I wrote in several reports in 2017 when Mugabe was being ousted. It was quite a remarkable show. One week, 93 year old Robert Mugabe was universally loved by everyone the country and would rule Zimbabwe forever, even from his grave when he died, according to his 53 year old wife, Grace Ntombizodwa Mugabe. ( "19-Nov-17 World View -- Ecstatic throngs in Harare Zimbabwe demand that Robert Mugabe step down")
One week later, Mugabe was universally hated, with tens of thousands of people cheering ecstatically and marching, carrying banners that read "Mugabe must go!" and "Leadership is not sexually transmitted" -- the latter an allusion to the attempt by Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband as president. Another sign read, "Mugabe must rest now!", alluding to the fact that Mugabe falls asleep during meetings.
There was never any chance that replacing Mugabe with Mnangagwa would suddenly change Zimbabwe. Mugabe was a vicious, violent racist who spent decades destroying Zimbabwe's economy, and it will take a similar amount of time to repair the damage.
Mnangagwa has been trying to convince foreigners to invest in Zimbabwe again. After the continuing violence, possibly with the worst yet to come, investors may not be interested. Mail & Guardian (South Africa) and Guardian (London) and AFP and Zimbabwe Mail
Zimbabwe was never going to be better under Emmerson Mnangagwa than it was under Robert Mugabe because both of them cooperated in four decades of horrific crimes that have destroyed Zimbabwe economically and socially, turning it from a country that used to export food into a country that can't even feed itself.
They're both in the Shona tribe, and they both are responsible for Operation Gukurahundi, the genocidal war crime that brought in North Korean soldiers to help exterminate tens of thousands of civilians in the hated Ndebele tribe in the early 1980s.
They've both cooperated in turning Zimbabwe into a police state, where anyone who speaks against the government was likely to be arrested, tortured and killed. This is particularly true of the members of the Ndebele tribe that managed to survive Operation Gukurahundi. This was supposed to have changed with Mnangagwa, but the events of the last week show that it hasn't.
They both worked together on Mugabe's "indigenization" program, which threw out white farm and business owners who knew how to run a farm or a business, and replaced them with thugs and cronies from Mugabe's and Mnangagwa's Shona tribe who didn't know how to run a farm or business. Over three decades, Mugabe and Mnangagwa turned Rhodesia, which was a wealthy country and the breadbasket of southern Africa, into today's Zimbabwe, which is an economic basket case. At one point, the inflation rate was in the millions of percent.
However, there are signs from this week's violence that the situation under Mnangagwa is even worse than it was under Mugabe. Mnangagwa was on a trip to Eurasia when the protests started, and is still out of the country. In his absence, the security forces have conducted large scale violence not seen in over ten years. One analyst says that what is different this time is "the open militarization of the state."
Alex Magaisa, a Zimbabwean lawyer and professor at the University of Kent, says, "People wanted to see Mugabe go, but they didn’t realize that they were actually creating a bigger monster. The military is now very much in control - and very powerful."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is the kind of thing that always happens to a country following a generational crisis civil war between two ethnic groups or tribes. The tribe in power after the war, usually the winner, uses the fear of renewing the civil war as a never-ending excuse to use tactics of abuse, violence, jailings, rapes, beatings and executions, supposedly to prevent another war. However, once the survivors of the civil war grow old and are no longer in charge, and are replaced by people in younger generations with no personal memory of the war, then a new generational crisis civil war starts, and it all repeats. Foreign Policy
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Jan-19 World View -- Zimbabwe returns to violence of Mugabe era with police beatings and abductions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Jan-2019)
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Brief generational history of Cambodia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Cambodia's prime minister Hun Sen is threatening to kill opposition politicians if the European Union revokes its grant of trade preferences to Cambodia.
The trade preference program, known as Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP), grants to Myanmar the right to export goods to the EU without paying tariffs. The GSP "Everything But Arms" (EBA) status allows Cambodia to sell any goods except weapons tariff-free into the EU.
The EU threat follows elections last year in July, when Hun Sen's government party won all 125 parliamentary seats up for election. In order to guarantee his victory, early last year Hun Sen jailed Kem Sokha, the leader of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue party (CNRP), the only viable opposition party, and then ordered the complete dissolution of the CNRP. That's how Hun Sen's party won all 125 seats.
On Monday, Hun Sen threatened to retaliate against CNRP politicians if the trade preferences were withdrawn, and that critics should be prepared to flee to other countries:
"If you (the EU) want the opposition dead, just cut it [the EBA]. If you want the opposition alive, don’t do it and come and hold talks together. People are prepared to flee, be prepared. I won’t forgive them."
At the request of Hun Sen, Cambodia's Supreme Court banned 118 CNRP party members in 2017, accusing them of working with the United States to plot a coup. These 118 people are presumably the ones who would be at risk of retaliation if EU withdraws the trade preferences.
The EU is also considering withdrawing the same EBA trade preferences from Myanmar (Burma) for the human rights atrocities associated with the government's actions, led by Buddhist Monk Ashin Wirathu, of torture, beatings, rape, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine State. ( EU considers revoking Myanmar's trade preferences because of Rohingya genocide (05-Jan-2019))
Hun Sen regularly threatens violence against political critics. At an ASEAN summit meeting held a year ago in Sydney, Australia, he and Myanmar leaders were both met with large groups protesting human rights violations in both countries. Hun Sen warned protesters, "I will follow you all the way to your doorstep and beat you right there ... I can use violence against you." There have been no reports that he followed up on these threats. Asia Times and Reuters
Hun Sen is following the same generational pattern that I've described in numerous leaders from other countries, such as Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Paul Biya in Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, the military junta in Thailand, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Salva Kiir in South Sudan, Joseph Kabila in DRC, as well as Hun Sen in Cambodia.
What these countries have in common is that the previous generational crisis war was a bloody ethnic or tribal civil war. After the war ends, the leader of the country, usually from the winning tribe or ethnic group, refuses to give up power, and becomes increasingly violent and authoritarian, using as an excuse that peaceful protests or negative news articles can turn into a new civil war. This excuse provides justification for mass slaughter, rape, torture, mass jailings, mutilations, and so forth. This happens in country after country, differing only in level of violence. Bashar al-Assad in Syria exhibits the most violence, using missiles, barrel bombs, Sarin gas, chlorine gas, and other atrocities on hospitals, marketplaces, schools, and civilian neighborhood, resulting in genocide and ethnic cleansing of his Sunni Arab political enemies. ( "1-Dec-18 World View -- Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria")
Cambodian culture dates back to at least 5000 BC. During the period 500 BC to 500 AD, the Khmer people in Cambodia were strongly influenced by Indian culture, via India traders, bureaucrats and priests. When Khmer became a written language in about 300 AD, Indian characters were adapted for its alphabet. Cambodia adopted some Indian gods, but not the caste system of Hinduism. In the 1200s, there was a mass conversion of Cambodians to Theravada Buddhism, a religion that was also adopted by the neighboring Thais. There were several centuries of wars between the Khmer and the Thais, until the French arrived in the 1860s.
Cambodia became a French protectorate in 1863. Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953, and supported the North Vietnamese against the South Vietnamese and the Americans in America's Vietnam war. It's easy to underestimate the horror of what happened next, since in the vitriolic political atmosphere following the Vietnam war, leftists like Jane Fonda vocally denied it was even going on, saying "I will never criticize a Communist government."
And yet, the Buddhist society of the China-backed Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in 1975-79, led by Pol Pot, perpetrated one of the three or four top mass genocides of the 20th century, comparable to the huge genocides of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong.
The Buddhist Cambodian "Killing Fields" genocide, 1975-79, killed something like 1.7 to well over 2 million people, out of a population of 8 million. So around 20% of Cambodia's population were killed, making it possibly the worst genocide, on a percentage basis, of the 20th century. By contrast, the Nazi Holocaust killed around 5 million, which was less than 3% of Germany's population. Pol Pot was trying to imitate Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in China, which was a genocide that killed tens of millions of people out of some two billion. Mao Zedong and Pol Pot may be comparable in their genocides. In all cases, these millions of people were the subject of almost unimaginable atrocities, including torture and rape.
By January 1979, the Khmer Rouge had so destroyed Cambodia that the country was too weak to fight off an invasion by Vietnamese forces. At the time, many Cambodians welcomed the Vietnamese invasion, because it freed them from the Khmer Rouge. The war between the Vietnamese and Cambodians was extremely bloody, until the Vietnamese finally withdrew in 1989.
In 1991, prime minister Hun Sen signed a peace agreement called the Paris Peace Accords, a document that guaranteed democracy and human rights in Cambodia. However, like other leaders we've described following an ethnic or tribal civil war, Hun Sen has become increasingly authoritative and dictatorial, using as an excuse that unlimited violence is justified to avoid returning to the violence of the civil war.
In October 2016, as Hun Sen was brutally cracking down in preparation for these new elections, he said the following in a speech:
"Don’t imagine you can hold a meeting like the Paris Peace conference again because the Paris Peace [Accords] agreement is like a ghost."
He told people to stop "dreaming" and harking back to the ideals of the agreement, because the Khmer Rouge were gone now, and so the agreement was useless "unless the Khmer Rouge returns."
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Jan-19 World View -- Cambodia's Hun Sen threatens to kill opposition politicians if EU ends preferences thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Jan-2019)
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Al-Shabaab continues to threaten eastern Africa
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Somalia-based al-Qaeda linked terror group al-Shabaab attacked the luxury hotel Dusit-D2 in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday, killing at least 15.
Al-Shabaab is considered the deadliest terrorist organization in Africa, and has conducted several spectacular terrorist attacks in Somalia and Kenya.
The attack on Tuesday came three years to the day after al-Shabaab extremists attacked a Kenyan military base in neighboring Somalia, killing scores of people.
Tuesday's attack comes on the third anniversary, to the day, of an al-Shabaab ambush on the El-Adde camp in Somalia, killed 170 Kenyan soldiers.
In April 2015, al-Shabaab killed 147 students at the Garissa University College in Kenya. ( "3-Apr-15 World View -- Al-Shabaab kills 147 mostly Christian students in Kenya school")
Al-Shabaab also conducted the horrific three-day terror attack on Nairobi's upscale Westgate Mall, killing 67 people. ( "23-Sep-13 World View -- Minnesota link to Kenya shopping mall attack raises U.S. fears")
The reason that the Westgate Mall attack lasted for three days is that the Nairobi police were ill-prepared to respond to it, and received a great deal of criticism as a result. The Dusit hotel is less than 2 km away from the Westgate mall. Tuesday's attack on the Dusit hotel was handled more efficiently by Nairobi's police, though it still lasted several hours.
CCTV footage has emerged showing that there were four assailants who carried out the attack. The hotel is in a supposedly very secure part of Nairobi, but the attackers gained acccess to the hotel by hurling grenades at the security officers manning the gate.
The Dusit hotel complex consists of a number of buildings, and many of the buildings were attacked. Police went from building to building and rescued hundreds of people who were trapped in hotel rooms or offices.
One of the CCTV images captured what appears to be a US Navy SEAL rescuing civilians and then returning to the scene of the fighting. The Pentagon has US special forces in a number of countries in Africa, describing their mission as "advising and assisting." In Kenya, the US has a small presence at Camp Simba, where they reportedly train naval special forces.
Al-Shabaab has vowed retribution against Kenya for sending troops to Somalia since 2011. The al-Qaeda-linked group has killed hundreds of people in Kenya, which has been targeted more than any other of the six countries providing troops to an African Union force in Somalia. Kenyans and AP and The Star (Kenya) and Business Insider
Al-Shabaab is a Somalia-based terror group that has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. In 2014, they debated changing allegiance to ISIS but rejected the change, resulting in the formation of a small splinter group. The group conducts massive terror attacks in Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania. It has an estimated 3,000-6,000 members, including members that it has successfully recruited from the Somalia diaspora in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the case of the Westgate Mall attack, three terrorists were from the United States, including two are the Somali community in the twin cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) region of Minnesota.
Al-Shabaab's predecessors have been around in Somalia since the 1980s. During the 2000s, they were responsible for numerous pirate attacks on vessels off the coast of eastern Africa. Since 2007, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), consisting of troops from Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone, have targeted the group. US drone strikes and airstrikes have killed several of the group's leaders.
Al-Shabaab's targets are usually governmental, with the stated goal of ejecting Western influence and converting Somalia into an Islamic Sharia state.
The UN Security Council had ordered the withdrawal of AMISOM troops starting in October of last year, after which Somalia security forces were expected to begin taking over. However, the withdrawal was postponed until February of this year. However, a recent spate of successful attacks, despite the presence of AMISOM troops, has given credence to the view that Somalia security forces are too weak to take over, and the departure of AMISOM would result in the complete al-Shabaab takeover of Somalia. Jamestown (12-Oct-2018) and Council of Foreign Affairs (11-Dec-2018) and International Crisis Group (21-Sep-2018)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Jan-19 World View -- Somalia terror group al-Shabaab attacks Nairobi, Kenya, hotel complex thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Jan-2019)
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Uganda's auditor warns that Uganda may be in similar China debt trap as Kenya
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China has signed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) contracts with dozens of countries, with the requirement that the details be kept secret, even from the countries' ministers or central banks.
For months I've been describing the onerous details of such contracts, based on incomplete reports or vague statements by politicians. It's always been clear that the reason why China demanded total secrecy was because these contracts are extremely favorable to China and are used for "debt trap diplomacy," allowing China to take control of a country's infrastructure when unable to make the loan payments.
The poster child for debt trap diplomacy is China's seizure of control of the Port of Hambantota after Sri Lanka was unable to pay the onerous debt payments that China had demanded. China has already acquired or is about to acquire ports and other assets in several countries -- Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Zambia, Kenya -- through its "debt trap diplomacy." Several other countries, including Pakistan and the Maldives, are at risk. Malaysia is still at risk, as well.
Now, a partially leaked BRI contract between Kenya and China reveals details that are far more shocking and onerous than have been revealed or inferred so far. With Kenya's debt repayments to China scheduled to triple this year, all of Kenya's national assets are at risk, unless public pressure forces China to relent.
The new headline revelation is that all Kenya's assets, within Kenya or abroad, are now subject to Chinese seizure if Kenya can't make its debt payments. Up until now, Kenyans had worried that its Port of Mombasa, which would be extremely valuable to China for use as a military base, was in danger of seizure by China. But the leaks reveal that any Kenyan asset can be seized.
The leaked document refers to the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, a railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, funded by two separate $1.6 billion loans from China. The debt was to be repaid from revenue from the SGR, but that has been far below the optimistic estimates made in 2014. Clause 5.5 of the "Preferential Buyer Credit Loan Agreement on the Mombasa-Nairobi SGR" says the following:
"Neither the borrower (Kenya) nor any of its assets is entitled to any right of immunity on the grounds of sovereignty or otherwise from arbitration, suit, execution or any other legal process with respect to its obligations under this Agreement, as the case may be in any jurisdiction."
Strictly interpreted, this clause forfeits all of Kenya's rights, sovereign or otherwise, to any Kenyan asset, whether the Port of Mombasa, another asset within Kenya, or a Kenyan asset abroad. None of the news reports I've seen provides a list of foreign assets that might be vulnerable, except to suggest that all of them are. According to legal experts, in case of default, China can take over many critical resources — anything from airports and natural resources to embassies abroad.
Other clauses of the leaked contract reveal the following:
The agreement contains other clauses that protect China, and almost guarantee that the loan will not be repaid, allowing China to seize Kenyan assets.
Kenya's government has repeatedly promised to publicly release the contract, but has always stalled, presumably because doing so would violate the contract with China, and and would also expose massive corruption and incompetence among Kenyan government officials.
Kenya's government is promising to release the contract by the end of the week. Now that many of the clauses have already been publicly revealed, perhaps it might actually happen. The Nation (Kenya) and Mwakilishi (Kenya) and Tuko (Kenya)
Related Articles:
Uganda's Auditor General John Muwanga is warning that Uganda may be subject to the same risk as Kenya. He points out that Uganda's national debt had gone from $3.3 billion in June 2017 to $4.1 billion in June 2018. Furthermore, according to Muwanga, Uganda's contracts with China contain exactly the same clauses as Kenya's contracts. According to Muwanga:
"These conditions include waiver of sovereign immunity by government over all its properties and itself from enforcement of any form of judgment, adoption of foreign laws in any proceedings to enforce agreements, requiring government to pay all legal fees and insurance premiums on behalf of the creditor."
However, Uganda's Minister of Finance Matia Kasaija dismissed the Auditor General's report:
"I am not worried about China taking our assets. They can do it elsewhere, I don’t know, but not here. I don’t think it will ever happen."
India will provide the Maldives with a $1.4 billion credit line, after the new president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih visited India's prime minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi last month. The credit line will permit the Maldives to avoid default on payments on its debt to China, which is estimated to be between $1.5 billion and $3.2 billion.
Solih shocked the Maldives by winning the presidential election on September 23 by unexpectedly defeating the incumbent Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom. Yameen had close relations with China, and had signed several BRI infrastructure contracts with China that place the Maldives into a great deal of debt.
When Solih took office, he discovered that it was almost impossible to learn the details of the contracts with China. ( "24-Nov-18 World View -- Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China")
Solih vowed that he would find out exactly what was in the deals with China, and at the time I expressed the hope that Solih would make the China deal public so that, for the first time, we could see all the details in one of China's BRI deals.
Unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet, though I'm still hoping. In an interview last week, Solih said:
"Our government is still reviewing the extent of the debt incurred under the previous government. No doubt, the debt situation has put us in an extremely challenging situation. A vast number of infrastructural projects have been undertaken and we are in the process of reviewing the terms of these agreements."
Perhaps the leaking of the Kenya deal will make it possible for Solih to release the details of the Maldives' deal.
The Maldives islands occupy a major strategic position in the Indian Ocean. India's promise of $1.4 billion in aid to the Maldives has the geopolitical effect of moving Maldives away from China and closer to India. India Times and Maldives Times and Diplomat
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Jan-19 World View -- Kenya's leaked BRI contract reveals shocking China debt trap details thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Jan-2019)
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Macedonia's parliament approves country's name change to North Macedonia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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After a highly tense and emotional debate lasting several days, Macedonia's parliament approved four constitutional amendments that change the country's name to "Republic of North Macedonia." This ratifies the Prespa Agreement (Prespes Agreement) made last year with Greece, and after Greece's parliament ratifies the same agreement, it will be possible for North Macedonia to join the European Union and Nato.
This has been a highly emotional issue in both Macedonian and Greece since 1991, when the Republic of Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia. The Kingdom of Macedon is an ancient name, dating back centuries BC, and is the birthplace, in 356 BC, of Alexander the Great.
But Greece objected to that country's use of the name Macedonia, claiming that having that name would give the country a claim to Greece's own province of Macedonia. These concerns were increased because of a clause in the country's constitution referring to "the rights of all persons belonging to the Macedonian people in neighboring countries, as well as Macedonian expats." Although this clause refers to cultural development, Greece raised concerns that the clause could be used in the future to attempt to annex Greece's Macedonia province.
For 25 years, Greece has vetoed attempts by Macedonia to join either Nato or the EU because many Greeks consider "Macedonia" to be pure Greek name, and they oppose another other country using it as part of their own name. They are especially infuriated by Macedonia's claims that Alexander the Great was Macedonian. They claim that he was Greek because at that time the Kingdom of Macedon was part of Greece.
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Macedonia was admitted to the United Nations in 1993 under the name the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). It has also been admitted to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the name FYROM. The European Union and Nato also recognize only the name FYROM. However many countries, including Russia and the United States, also recognize the name Republic of Macedonia, or just Macedonia.
During the last year, there has been tremendous international pressure to resolve the dispute. A variety of alternate names for the country were proposed, including:
Last week, Macedonia's parliament voted in the four constitutional amendments with 81 votes and none against and no abstentions, as the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party boycotted the session.
During the vote, several hundred people protested in front of the parliament, chanting “Traitors”. VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski joined the protests and said January 11 was “black Friday” for Macedonia.
The four amendments change the name of the country to "Republic of North Macedonia," guarantee sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country and protection of Macedonian cultural and historical identity, as well as rights of diaspora. They also eliminate the ambiguity about a claim to Greece's province of Macedonia.
The constitutional amendments will take effect as soon as Greece's parliament ratifies the Prespa Agreement. After that, it's expected that the Republic of North Macedonia should be able to join the European Union and Nato. Balkan Insight and BNE IntelliNews and Greek Reporter and Nezavisen (Macedonia) and Deutsche Welle
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Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras has called for a vote of confidence on Wednesday, after the Independent Greeks (ANEL) party announced its departure from the ruling coalition. The split occurred over the issue of ratifying the Prespa Agreement (Prespes Agreement), under which the Republic of North Macedonia will be permitted to apply for membership in the European Union and Nato, having agreed to change its name from Republic of Macedonia. ANEL leader Panos Kammenos said, "The issue of Macedonia, an issue for which thousands died, does not allow me not to sacrifice the minister’s chair."
If Tsipras loses the vote of confidence, then he will have to call for new elections. New elections are scheduled for September anyway. Guardian (London) and Greek Reporter and Kathimerini (Athens)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Jan-19 World View -- Greece's government in crisis over Prespa Agreement to change name of Macedonia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Jan-2019)
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India takes over operations at Iran's Chabahar port, despite US sanctions
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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From the first day that Pakistan's prime minister took off in August, the country has been facing an imminent financial crisis and bankruptcy, due to a lack of foreign reserves (that is, US dollars that it can use to purchase imported goods).
First, Imran Khan, self-described as "desperate," went begging to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a loan, but returned empty-handed.
Then Khan went begging to its "all-weather friend," China, but once again came back empty-handed.
What China really wanted was for Khan to get money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), so that the IMF, and the US taxpayer, would be supplying money to repay China's loans for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and the Gwadar seaport. The IMF was willing, but insisted first that all details of all contracts between Pakistan and China be made available to the IMF, and China vetoed that idea. So the negotiation with the IMF failed.
Then there was a world-shaking event that changed everything: Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was bizarrely killed in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, and everyone in the world was blaming Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Imran Khan was able to return to return to Saudi Arabia as almost the only national leader left who was willing to support MBS. Khan leveraged MBS's embarrassment to obtain a $6 billion loan from Saudi Arabia.
However, Pakistan still needed an additional $12-15 billion in aid to survive through 2019. A renewed request to the IMF yielded the same results as before.
But now there's been a turnaround. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are likely to sign memoranda of understanding for more than $10 billion Saudi investment in Pakistan this month. This will be in addition to the $6 billion in aid already agreed.
There are two major geopolitical effects from this deal.
First, Imran Khan, before he was prime minister, was one of the most vocal opponents of the proposal to send Pakistani troops to join the war in Yemen on the side of Saudi Arabia. The $16 billion in Saudi aid to Pakistan may have come with strings attached, namely that Pakistan will have to provide some sort of support, perhaps even troops, to the Saudi effort in Yemen.
The second effect is related to the first, since the Yemen war is proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Pakistan has been trying to remain neutral between the two countries, possibly even taking the lead in mediating. This situation means that Pakistan will be clearly on the side against Iran, and both the Arab and Iranian press have been saying so.
The Generational Dynamics prediction for almost fifteen years has been that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, China and Pakistan would be allied with Saudi Arabia. As a result of the $16 billion in aid, Pakistan is now clearly allied with China and Saudi Arabia. Dawn (Pakistan) and Arab Weekly and Global Village Space
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India has taken over operations of the strategic Chabahar port, on the coast of Iran near Pakistan. India and Iran signed a deal in 2016 too develop the port, so that India can bypass Pakistan in shipping goods to Iran, and from there to Afghanistan, Central Asia or Europe. ( "25-May-16 World View -- Iran-India sign 'historic' Chabahar port deal to counter Pakistan-China")
During the last year, development of the Chabahar port faced special difficulties after the US re-imposed sanctions on Iran, making the Chabahar port project a violation of the sanctions, since it required India to import Iranian oil. However, India and Iran received one of the waivers that the Trump administration gave, so the port project could proceed.
In addition, Iran and India have signed banking agreements that allow imports and exports, as well as other financial needs, can be handled despite the sanctions. Part of these agreements allow goods to be exchanged in a barter system. For example, India can provide steel rails and locomotive engines to Iran and Iran can provide urea to India.
Just as the aid deal cemented the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the Chabahar port has cemented the relationship between India and Iran. For almost fifteen years, Generational Dynamics has predicted that America, India, Iran and Russia would be allied in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, and the Chabahar port deal brings that alliance one step closer. Actually, Hindus and Shia Muslims have been allied against Sunni Muslims for centuries, going back as far as the seminal Battle of Karbala in 680. Tehran Times and India Today and Eurasian Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Jan-19 World View -- India-Iran and Saudi-Pakistan alliances form and strengthen in Asia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Jan-2019)
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Poland arrests Huawei employee on spying allegations
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Huawei (WHA way) has surpassed Apple as the world's second-largest smartphone supplier, behind Samsung, but aims to become the largest with the introduction of a new low-cost smartphone, the "Huawei P Smart 2019," selling for around $200.
It includes a number of features that once would have appeared only in much more expensive smartphones, including a dual-camera array, face unlocking, fingerprint scanning and AI in the camera app to identify what you’re shooting. It uses the Huawei's powerful Kirin chipset, giving it more power and performance than even more expensive competitive devices. Its only disappointment, according to reviewers, is that the camera isn't as powerful as those on competitive phones.
As I've said in the past, I've spent a part of my career as a senior software engineer developing chip-level operating system software for embedded systems, so I know exactly how any chip or any electronic device can be turned into a tool for espionage. Furthermore, I can tell you that not only is it doable, it's not even particularly difficult for someone with the right skills.
This could not be detected by tests, because the chip would work normally until a backdoor is activated by receiving, say, a secret 1024-bit code. Then it will execute commands sent to it by Chinese engineers. Thus, the Chinese are then in control of any devices with Huawei chips, and it cannot be detected until it's too late. And since Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei was previously an officer and engineer in China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), there's little question that these steps have been taken.
China's biggest natural resources is its population of 1.4 billion. China sends them overseas to work or get educated, and controls them by the United Front Work Department (UFWD). China's officials even call them "secret weapons." China's fleet of fishing boats in the South China Sea and East China Sea have crews that have been trained by the military for espionage, and even to fight in battle.
This is how China works, and now China's Huawei is launching low-cost smartphones to be purchased by the millions around the world, and which can be controlled by China's military, at the right time.
As I've written in detail in the past, if Huawei really wants to convince Westerners that their products do not contain secret "backdoors," then they should invite American and Western engineers to work side-by-side with Chinese engineers in development centers in China, so that American engineers can examine all the internal code and scripts, just as Chinese workers work in development centers in America. Expert Reviews and IDC (11/2/2018) and Bloomberg
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Poland's Internal Security Agency (ISA) has arrested two individuals. One is a Chinese national going by the name “Weijing W” or Stanislaw Wang, who works as a sales director for Huawei in Poland. The other is a Polish national, "Piotr D," a former high-ranking officer of Poland’s ISA. Both were charged with spying against Poland for China. ISA officers raided the homes of both suspects on Tuesday morning. They also seized documents and electronic data from the offices of Huawei and mobile phone operator Orange Polska, where Piotr D had worked recently.
This comes after the December arrest by the Canadian police, at the request of the United States, of Ms. Meng Wanzhou (Sabrina Meng), the chief financial officer (CFO) of China's Huawei Technologies, which was founded by her father Ren Zhengfei. According to reports, China has retaliated by arresting as many 13 Canadian citizens.
At the same time, many European countries are becoming more aggressive at prohibiting the use of Huawei technology, since it might have "backdoors" that permit espionage or control. This is increasingly becoming a more serious tit-for-tat escalation of actions that shows no sign of ending and may spiral into something much bigger.
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In a speech given in early December by Professor Xiang Songzuo, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for International Monetary Research at China’s Renmin University in Beijing, he said:
"You can look at the history: only the Wall Street Crash of 1929 can compare to the steep decline that the Chinese stock has experienced this year. Many stocks are down 80 or even 90 percent."
In his speech, Xiang backed up his concerns with numerous facts and figures. Such speeches are normally dismissed, but in this case the speech has so alarmed Chinese officials that it was banned from the internet, though it was translated into English and posted outside of China before it was banned. Furthermore, a number of financial firms are taking Xiang's conclusions very seriously.
I've often said that, as many problems as the US economy has, China's economy is much worse because of real estate bubbles, ghost towns, shadow banks, and a hugely leveraged credit bubble that could crash at any time. While I can make a general statement like that, Xiang has backed up those concerns with specifics.
Many people believe that since China is a Communist dictatorship, they can't have a recession because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will control the economy enough to prevent it. It doesn't work that way. Like every Socialist economy, China's economy was headed for disaster until it was opened to free markets in the 1970-80s. In fact, every Socialist economy has either opened up to free markets to some extent, or ended in disaster and massive bloodshed. Today, only Venezuela and North Korea have refused to open up to free markets, and both of those are disasters, with bloodshed in the future.
China today is subject to the same market forces and the same generational forces as every other country. People fool themselves into believing that politicians can actually change things. In China, only the politics will be different, but the outcomes will be the same. China Change (28-Dec-2018) and National Interest and Naked Capitalism and Don Tai (29-Dec-2018)
The headline statistic in Xiang's speech is his claim that China's GDP rate of growth is at most 1.67%, or may even be negative. China's official National Bureau of Statistics claims that China’s rate of GDP growth is at 6.5%. This one statistic alone could explain why the CCP felt it necessary to censor Xiang's speech.
Nobody is surprised that China lies about statistics. Mao Zedong lied about agricultural statistics during the Great Leap Forward in 1958-59, with the result that tens of millions of Chinese died from starvation or were executed.
The problem is that you can lie about statistics only for a while, and then reality causes a financial crisis, which is what Xiang is predicting.
Since the CCP can pump money into any business at will, it would seem that any financial crisis can be prevented. The problem is that any business that can count on being bailed out has no motivation to become efficient, and so loses money.
Xiang says that this has happened with almost all Chinese businesses:
"Look at our profit structure. To put it plainly, China’s listed companies don’t really make money. Then who has taken the few profits made by China’s more than 3,000 listed companies? Two-thirds have been taken by the banking sector and real estate. The profits earned by 1,444 listed companies on the SME board and growth enterprise board are not even equal to one and half times the profit of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. How can this kind of stock market become a bull market?When we buy stocks, we are buying the profits of the company, not hype and rumors. I recently read a report comparing the profits of China’s listed companies with those in the U.S. There are many U.S. public companies with tens of billions dollars in profits. How many Chinese tech and manufacturing companies are there that have accomplished this? There is only one, but it’s not listed, and you all know which one that is. [Xiang is referring to Huawei, the Chinese tech company.] What does this tell us?"
Xiang says that there are major risks in the economy, and major battles to be fought:
"China’s economic decline indicates that there is a major issue with the focus on expansion and growth: It has deviated from the fundamental and moved to speculation. ... What are our current financial risks? They are hidden, complex, acute, contagious, and malevolent. Structural imbalance are massive, and violations of law and regulations are rampant. ... We have rampant speculations everywhere, in too many aspects."
According to Xiang, "Basically China’s economy is all built on speculation, and everything is over leveraged." This is significant, because when a company is over-leveraged, then when there's an economic downturn it won't be able to meet its debt payments. If every company is like that, then when one company goes bankrupt, it will create a chain reaction that sends every company into bankruptcy.
This is the basis of Xiang's statement that China's stock market is facing a huge crash greater than America's 1929 crash.
According to Xiang, in the four decades following economic reform, China has undergone five phases of consumption:
According to Xiang:
"But these five waves have essentially all come to an end. Car sales have dropped sharply and real estate spending is also substantially decreasing, so we are facing serious problems. This is the crux of the six stabilities called for by the Politburo [stable employment, stable finance, stable foreign trade, stable foreign investment, stable investment and stable expectations], or as some internet users have joked, the six “tender kisses” [ , kiss, is a homophone for , stability]."
Xiang says that China made a historic mistake by relying on consumption:
"Look at these numbers. That China faces a long-term economic downturn is not a problem by itself. But you may have noticed that the consumption and the service sectors now make up 78.5 percent of GDP. Going by the government’s logic, this should be a good thing, since it means the economic transition to a consumption economy has been successful: we used to rely on investment and export, now we rely on consumption and the service sector. This sounds reasonable, but think about it: in a country like China, as investment slows dramatically, how can we maintain economic stability by solely relying on consumption?"
Xiang says that consumption and services comprise 78.5% of GDP, which is good news to some extent, but it's far eclipsed by negative implications of low investment.
Xiang says that in the past year, China has made major misjudgments about the economy.
The first misjudgment was vastly underestimating the negative effects of the US-China trade war on China:
"First, the trade war between China and the U.S.. Did we make some inaccurate assessment? Did we underestimate the severity of the situation? Let’s recall some slogans from the mainstream media at the beginning of the year:
- "In the trade war between U.S. and China, the Americans are lifting rocks only to smash them on their own feet"
- "China is sure to win."
- "China will win the trade war without a doubt, be the battles big or small.”
What’s behind this kind of thinking? To this day, we keep suffering from a cognitive dissonance between our understanding of the Sino-U.S. trade war and the international reality. This calls for deep reflection."
The second misjudgment has caused private businesses to lose confidence in the national leadership, with the result that investment by private business owners has falled substantially. According to Xiang, this has occurred because the Chinese media have been suggesting that the economic reforms of the past 40 years will be reversed, and there will be a return to full-scale Socialism:
"Since the beginning of the year, though, all kinds of ideological statements have been thrown around: statements like
- “private property will be eliminated,”
- “private ownership will eventually be abolished if not now,”
- “it’s time for the private enterprises to fade away,” or
- “all private companies should be turned over to their workers.”
Then there was this high-profile study of Marx and the Communist Manifesto. Remember that line in the Communist Manifesto? Abolition of private property. What kind of signal do you think this sends to private entrepreneurs?"
With regard to the trade war, Xiang says that it's really a clash of value systems, with no solution in sight:
"In addition to this, there are three major external challenges. The first is the trade war, which is in fact no longer a trade war but rather a clash between two opposed value systems. It can be said with certainty that the Sino-U.S. relationship has come to a crossroads right now and faces significant historic challenges. What are we to do? To be honest, I don’t think we have really found much of a solution.You are aware that Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou was recently detained in Vancouver. In the past two days, mainstream media such as BBC and CNN have been reporting on how the U.S. is going at Huawei on all fronts. What this tells us is that this issue is not simply about trade or economics."
Unless the date is postponed, China and the US have until March 1 to reach agreement on a huge list of trade and trade secret protection issues, before the US substantially increases tariffs on Chinese imports.
What this almost certainly means is that the can will be kicked down the road. This could mean that the March 1 date will be postponed, or it could mean that president Trump will simply increase the pressure on China by increasing tariffs by a small amount.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Jan-19 World View -- China's economy destabilizes as Huawei introduces cheap smartphone thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Jan-2019)
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Malta - EU migrant deal splits Italy's government
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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At total of 49 migrants in two rescue boats, including a baby and several children, who had been rescued weeks ago in the Mediterranean Sea as they traveled in dinghies from Libya trying to reach Europe, will be permitted to disembark in the island nation of Malta. The two rescue ships are the German vessel Sea Watch 3 and the Dutch boat Sea Eye.
For years, Malta has refused to take in migrants from rescue boats, forcing the boats to continue northward to Italy. This infuriated the Italians, who were receiving thousands of migrants that they were forced to take in under international and European law.
However, Italy has been closing its ports to rescue ships in the last year, and in November, Italy's parliament passed a tough anti-migrant law put forth by Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. The law restricts the conditions under which migrants will be permitted to stay in Italy, and makes it much easier to deport them.
The deal reached between Malta and the EU also took into account the fate of 249 migrants already in Malta, having been rescued in December. The 298 migrants will be distributed to other EU countries under the deal.
176 would be sent to Germany, France, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy. Another 78 will be allowed to stay in Malta, while 44 Bangladeshi migrants will be repatriated.
In a tweet, Sea Watch International said: "The EU decided to release their 49 hostages. After 19 days at sea, our guests will finally reach a safe port. This represents a confession of state failure, policy must not be made at the expense of people in distress."
However, Italy's interior minister Salvini refused to authorize the deal, and said that Italy would not take in any additional migrants. Salvini said that other European countries had not fulfilled their previous commitments to accept migrants who had already reached Italy.
In July 2018, Germany, France, Portugal, Spain and Malta agreed to each take in 50 of around 450 migrants disembarked in Sicily by the Italian coastguard vessel Diciotti after being rescued at sea. According to Salvini, France has taken its 50, but Germany only 23, Spain 21, Portugal 19 and Malta none. Ireland, which said it would take in 20, has received 16 migrants, he said.
This resulting in name-calling between Salvini and Malta. The government of Malta disputed Salvini's figures, expressing "disdain and surprise at the inaccurate allegations by Minister Salvini."
Salvini responded: “We’re not going to take any lessons from Malta, which closed its eyes for years so that boats could head for Italy. The music has changed, you can only come to Italy if you have a permit. We’ve already taken in too many, it’s time for others to wake up." AFP (29-Nov-2018) and Al Jazeera and Guardian (London) and Reuters
Readers may recall that when Italy held nationwide elections in March of last year, the elections failed to produce a majority party. Two particularly bitter rivals were the left-wing Five Star Movement (M5S), led by Luigi Di Maio, and the right-wing La Lega (The League), led by Matteo Salvini. The two parties received a combined total of 49% of the vote and, incredibly, these two parties got together and formed a governing coalition. They're far apart on many issues, but they do share similar attitudes on three issues: a nationalistic anti-euro attitude, a xenophobic anti-immigrant attitude, and a complete lack of fiscal discipline. Much to everyone's surprise, they formed a governing coalition based on these three principles. And after a lengthy period of negotiation, Di Maio and Salvini decided that neither of them could be prime minister, and they selected a technocrat, Giuseppe Conte, to fill that role.
Wednesday's deal between Malta and the EU provoked something of a crisis in this governing coalition. Salvini refused to authorize the deal, or to accept any more migrants. But Salvini, Di Miao and Conte had an all-night working session on Wednesday evening, and Di Maio sided with Conte against Salvini to accept the deal, which required Italy to take in ten migrants.
Salvini was infuriated by that decision:
"There is convergence within the government on a hard line: ports closed, fight against smugglers and NGOs,” Salvini said on Thursday.“And I add that any new arrival must not cost Italian citizens a cent. [I]t’s the interior ministry that handles immigration."
A compromise was agreed by which Italy’s Waldensian Evangelical Church would take in the 10 migrants.
In 2015, millions of migrants entered Greece. After the "Balkan route" was closed, most migrants entered Europe through Italy in 2016 and 2017. Italy's government was begging the other EU states to take their fair share of migrants, but the pleas fell mostly on deaf ears. In 2018, the new government shut Italy's ports. This caused a huge international outcry that continues to this day, but now most migrants enter Europe from Morocco through Spain. AFP and The Local (Italy) and El Pais (28-Nov-2018)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Jan-19 World View -- Malta takes in 49 migrants after deal with EU that infuriates Italy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Jan-2019)
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China threatens retaliation if US implements ARIA in Taiwan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On his first day on the job, last week on January 2, the new Acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan, appointed in the wake of James Mattis' resignation, told his first meeting with secretaries of the US military branches that the department's focus should always be on "China, China, China."
Word of Shanahan's statement was interpreted by the Chinese to mean that they should expect further military "provocations" by the Americans, such as Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOs) by American warships in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait, or that American was going to take steps to "prevent China narrowing the China-US military gap."
In fact, the American military is focusing a lot more on what used to be called the "Asia-Pacific" region, and is now called the "Indo-Pacific region," which one Indian analyst colorfully described as stretching from Hollywood to Bollywood.
In August of last year, vice president Pence attended an Indo-Pacific strategy that included investments of $300 million investments for technology, energy and infrastructure in the region. ( "5-Aug-18 World View -- China mocks America's 'Indo-Pacific' strategy at ASEAN meeting")
This announcement was ridiculed by the Chinese, who attended the same meeting, because China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has committed $900 billion (with a "b") to Asian countries, in contrast to America's "paltry" commitment of $133 million (with an "m"). Reuters and Global Times (Beijing) and Breaking Defense
In December, Congress passed the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA), which president Trump signed on December 31. It called for America's increased engagement in the Indo-Pacific region and strengthened support, including arms sales, for U.S. allies in the region.
ARIA is a good example of the U.S. Congress exercising oversight over the Executive through authorizing expenditure for specific activities, requiring annual reports on a number of security issues, and mandating specific strategies to achieve U.S. objectives.
ARIA authorizes $1.5 billion annually for 5 years to enhance U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific. This is ten times greater than the $133 million that was announced in August at the ASEAN meeting, but it's still much less than the $900 billion that China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has committed to Asian countries.
ARIA recognizes the vital importance to the security of the United States of treaty allies (Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand), strategic partners (India), enhanced security partnerships (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam), and commitment to Taiwan. With respect to Taiwan, the Bill significantly calls for the transfer of “defense articles” and high-level official visits.
ARIA identifies three major security challenges to the “United States-backed international system”:
In particular, ARIA says the following specifically about China:
ARIA expresses serious concern over the rule of law and civil liberties in five countries – Cambodia, China, North Korea, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. More significantly, ARIA highlights “unacceptable human rights developments” in Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, and China. Diplomat and IndraStra Global (India) amd US Congress
Last week, China's president Xi Jinping gave the military its first order of 2019 - prepare for war:
"All military units must correctly understand major national security and development trends, and strengthen their sense of unexpected hardship, crisis and battle.[China's armed forces must] prepare for a comprehensive military struggle from a new starting point.... Preparation for war and combat must be deepened to ensure an efficient response in times of emergency."
China's foreign ministry spokesman gave a specific answer to the portion of the new ARIA law having to do with Taiwan:
The above-mentioned Act seriously violates the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiques, and grossly interferes in China's internal affairs. The Chinese side expresses strong dissatisfaction with and resolute opposition to the US insisting on signing the Act into law and has already made stern representations with the US.I would like to remind the US side of the speech made by President Xi Jinping at the 40th anniversary of issuing Message to Compatriots in Taiwan. He stressed solemnly that the Taiwan question belongs to China's internal affairs, concerns China's core interests and the national bond of the Chinese people and allows no interference from the outside.
We urge the US side to abide by the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiques. The US must not implement the relevant contents of the Act and should carefully handle the Taiwan-related issues in a cautious manner so as not to impair the overall situation of the China-US relations and cross-Straits peace and stability."
Just as the United States laws and rhetoric are becoming increasingly belligerent, China's are doing the same.
Today, in 2019, many nations of the world are deep into a generational Crisis era. As I've been writing for years about country after country, many countries of the world are becoming increasingly nationalist and xenophobic, as the survivors of World War II have almost completely disappeared. This is true today in North America, Europe and Asia. And this is not an abstract concept. It has real consequences in that the survivors of World War II were willing to compromise, but the generations growing up after World War II are not. So most countries today have become more willing to escalate small crises into larger ones, and less willing to accept compromises to prevent war. Even a simple misunderstanding today could trigger a military response, resulting in a tit-for-tat escalation leading to war. South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and China's Foreign Ministry
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Jan-19 World View -- Trump signs Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA), focusing US military on China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(10-Jan-2019)
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Malaysia's '1MDB scandal' continues to grow as biggest
financial scandal in world history
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, was founded in 2009 just four months after Najib Razak became Prime Minister of Malaysia.
The fund was supposed to attract global investors to finance infrastructure and other economy-linked deals in Malaysia. Unfortunately, the fund was unsuccessful at attracting investors, but it did attract a lot of debt - $12 billion by 2016.
A great deal of that $12 billion was misappropriated to finance finance spending sprees by corrupt officials and their associates. An estimated $4.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB by high-level officials and their associates between 2009 and 2014, according to the US Department of Justice. $681 million landed in Najib's personal bank account. Billions more were diverted into personal accounts disguised to look like legitimate businesses, and kicked back some of those funds to officials. The money was spent on things like real estate, jewelry, a luxury yacht, a Hollywood movie, "The Wolf of Wall Street," casinos, champagne and “Dustheads,” a painting by US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Of the $12 billion in debt, much of it was arranged by Goldman Sachs. Between 2012 and 2013, Goldman arranged three bonds worth $6.5 billion for 1MDB with fees totalling $593 million. Malaysia has made criminal accusations against Goldman and two employees for defrauding investors, and is suing to recover the fees. Goldman denies the charges.
Questions arose about the fund’s transparency and performance as early as 2010. Suspicions about 1MDB began as early as 2013 when it asked for a six-month extension to file its annual report. The company had changed its auditors on three occasions at this point, furthering suspicions. But international exposure became more pronounced in 2015, when 1MDB’s bonds, then worth around $12 billion, were downgraded to junk status by ratings agencies Standard and Poor’s and Fitch.
By 2016, the fund was far in debt, and was threatened with bankruptcy. Wall St Journal and Bloomberg (17-Dec-2018) and Business Insider (12-Dec-2018) and Bloomberg (12-Dec-2018)
With 1MDB close to bankruptcy in 2016, prime minister Najib Razak turned to Low Taek Jho, popularly known as Jho Low, an international investor and bon vivant, who had been born of a wealthy family in Malaysia, but had spent years embezzling and laundering billions of dollars in America, Europe and Asia. Jho Low had advised in the creation of 1MDB, but didn't hold a formal position in the fund.
Low was known since the 2000s in financial circles, but he began to have star quality when he dated Miranda Kerr, an Australian supermodel and former Victoria's Secret model. He wooed her by giving her a $1.3 million diamond necklace on Valentine's Day in 2014, and followed it up with more jewelry obtained through money laundered through energy deals and through 1MDB.
A few weeks later, at a party for Kerr's thirty-first birthday, Low hired out a venue on Chelsea Piers in New York for a nineties-themed party and flew in Salt-N-Pepa, Mark Morrison, and Vanilla Ice to perform. Jamie Foxx was on hand to emcee, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Swizz Beatz were among the hundred or so invitees.
Low had attended London's Harrow School, and had studied at Wharton's business school, so it was natural that Najib Razak would turn to him when 1MDB neared bankruptcy in 2016.
Low has been painted by U.S. prosecutors as a central figure in the 1MDB scandal. In December 2018, Malaysian prosecutors charged him with receiving more than $1 billion from the state fund in 2009 and 2011, adding to the eight counts of money laundering charges he was slapped with in August.
He's currently an international fugitive, believed to be hiding out under the protection of China. Through his public relations agency, he issued a statement on Tuesday saying, "The article is a selection of half-truths, mixed in with fiction, to create a misleading and oversimplified narrative that has been peddled by a morally-bankrupt Mahathir regime to advance its failing political cause," referring the current prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. Business Insider (19-Sept-2018) and Bloomberg (12-Dec-2018) and Business Insider (2-Jan-2019)
Malaysia's 1MDB scandal has been called the biggest financial scandal in the history of the world. It involved corruption at the highest levels of Malaysia's government, channeling billions of dollars provided by China in 1MDB infrastructure projects into the private accounts of Malaysia's prime minister Najib Razak.
Now a new report by the Wall Street Journal alleges that the scandal also involved the highest levels of China's government, including president Xi Jinping and prime minister Li Keqiang.
In 2016, Najib turned to Jho Low to negotiate the deal with the Chinese. Low set up meetings between Chinese and Malaysian officials, where the details could be worked out. According to documents examined by the Wall Street Journal:
China was clearly unsuccessful in discouraging investigations. Malaysia has filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs and several employees. There are investigations in multiple countries, including the US, United Kingdom, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and United Arab Emirates (UAE).
These investigations would have been blocked if Najib were still prime minister. But Malaysia and the world were shocked last year when Najib unexpectedly was not reelected. ( "31-May-18 World View -- Malaysia shocked when 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad becomes prime minister")
China's embassy in Kuala Lumpur denies that it had anything to do with the 1MDB scandal, saying that it adheres to a policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries:
"China never attaches political conditions on our cooperation with other countries. We promote the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative under the principles of wide consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, with an aim to pursue shared development and prosperity. We do not accept any groundless accusations made against China."
This is laughable. China has already acquired or is about to acquire ports and other assets in several countries -- Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Kenya -- through its "debt trap diplomacy." Several other countries, including Pakistan and the Maldives, are at risk. Malaysia is still at risk, as well.
Furthermore, China lies about everything. China has repeatedly lied about the South China Sea, claiming that there were no plans to militarize it, and now the South China Sea is bristling with Chinese military bases and weapons, and the Chinese are threatening anyone who passes through, even though the United Nations Hague Tribunal has declared that China's activities are illegal. The statement says, "We do not accept any groundless accusations made against China," but fortunately all these accusations are fully grounded. Channel News Asia and Malay Mail and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and Malay Mail and Malay Mail
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Jan-19 World View -- WSJ: China used bribery, corruption and 'leverage on other nations' in Malaysia's 1MDB scandal thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Jan-2019)
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Brief generational history of Gabon
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Days after the US began deploying troops to Gabon for a mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a failed coup attempt occurred.
Rebel soldiers in Gabon launched an abortive coup attempt on Monday. At around 4:30 am, five soldiers took over the state run radio and television station and broadcast a statement calling on the people of Gabon to "rise up," while the president, Ali Bongo, is in Morocco recovering from a stroke.
A man identifying himself as Lt Kelly Ondo Obiang, flanked by two armed men. They presented themselves as the Patriotic Youth Movement of the Defense and Security Forces. Obiang read out a statement:
"The eagerly awaited day has arrived when the army has decided to put itself on the side of the people in order to save [1]Gabon from chaos. If you are eating, stop; if you are having a drink, stop; if you are sleeping, wake up. Wake up your neighbors ... rise up as one and take control of the street."
He called on Gabonese to occupy the country’s airports, public buildings and media organizations. A few hundred people went into the streets of Libreville to support the so-called coup, but they were quickly dispersed.
Security forces stormed the state broadcasting headquarters, capturing the rebel chief, killing two of his team and freeing journalists and technicians who had been held hostage and forced to help the mutineers make their broadcast. All five members of the Patriotic Youth Movement of the Defense and Security Forces were arrested after a chase.
According to a Gabonese journalist, "The people are afraid. When the young soldiers asked everyone to come to the streets in support of the coup, nobody did, because they were in panic."
The abortive coup attempt was apparently triggered by Ali Bongo's poor New Year's eve speech. He was hospitalized in October in Saudi Arabia after suffering a stroke, and he went to Morocco, where the president is a long-time friend, in order to continue treatment. Ali Bongo hasn't been seen in Gabon since then, and on a televised New Year's Eve speech he slurred some words and did not move his right arm. It's unclear if he is able to walk.
Gabon's former colonial power, France, has a permanent force of 300 soldiers in Gabon. France 24 and Al Jazeera and AP and Radio France International (Translation)
Since 1910, Gabon was part of France's colony French Equatorial Africa (the equator runs through Gabon), consisting of the colonies Gabon, Middle Congo (today's Congo-Brazzaville) Ubangi–Shari–Chad (today's Chad and Central African Republic).
Gabon's last generational crisis war was World War II. All the colonies except Gabon sided with Charles de Gaulle's Free French government, while Gabon sided with the pro-Nazi French Vichy government. In October 1940, General de Gaulle issues orders for liquidation of the Vichy enclave in Gabon. The Free French forces marched into Gabon's capital city Libreville. The Battle of Libreville occurred between November 9-12, resulting in the victory of the Free French.
In 1960, Gabon became independent of France. In 1967, Albert-Bernard Bongo became president. In 1973, he converted to Islam and changed his name to Omar.
After 40 years, Omar Bongo died in June 2009, and his son Ali Bongo succeeded him after an election that many believed was rigged. Ali Bongo narrowly won reelection in 2016, after violence and rigging of the election.
Rigging an election to keep a dictator or dynasty in power for decades is nothing new in Africa, as we've described in country after country, where jailings, beatings, rapes, and killings are standard fare by leaders who wish to make sure that they win elections, while at the same time they call their elections "democratic, free and fair" in order to please international media and governments, and keep aid and investment money pouring in to benefit the country's élite.
With Ali Bongo in Morocco recovering from a stroke, there is widespread confusion about who is really making decisions, uncertainty about when the newly elected National Assembly and a new cabinet will begin work, and political maneuvers that appear designed to evade the constitutional requirement that an incapacitated President be replaced through a special election. Bongo's cronies and family members appear to be running the country for now, but as the failed coup attempt illustrates, it will be difficult to maintain stability with provisional and ad hoc measures indefinitely.
Gabon has high unemployment and a country dependent on oil exports. People accuse the government of corruption, with a wealthy political élite that benefit from the country's riches, while millions of people live in dire poverty. BBC and Council on Foreign Relations and Gabon timeline
The abortive coup attempt in Gabon comes just three days after the White House ordered 80 combat-equipped military personnel to Gabon, "to be in position to support the security of United States citizens, personnel, and diplomatic facilities in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo" in case of violence. ( "6-Jan-19 World View -- Trump announces that US troops will be sent to DR Congo")
For the time being, the abortive coup will have no effect on the mission of the US forces. “At this time there is no change in the status of our forces in Gabon,” AFRICOM spokesman John Manley said as events were unfolding Monday. The troops are not currently tasked with securing diplomatic assets within Gabon, he said. Stars and Stripes
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Jan-19 World View -- Gabon has failed coup attempt as US troops arrive for DR Congo mission thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Jan-2019)
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Bomb disposal robot detonates object carried into Israel by helium balloons
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Tensions between Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority (Fatah), the governing authority in the West Bank, have intensified substantially in the last few days.
The trigger for the latest fallout was apparently plans by Fatah's 83 year old leader Mahmoud Abbas to celebrate the 54th anniversary of the launchng of Fatah's first attacks against Israel, and to do so by holding several rallies throughout the Gaza strip, which is governed by Hamas.
According to Fatah, Hamas prevented those rallies from taking place by arresting 500 of its men in the Gaza strip, subjecting many of them to torture, and also by raiding the homes of many Fatah officials and activists, confiscating material and equipment that was supposed to be used during the Fatah rallies.
Then, to make matters worse, Hamas allowed Abbas's political rival, Mohammed Dahlan, and his supporters to hold their own rallies to celebrate the 54th anniversary of Fatah’s first attack against Israel, according to the Jerusalem Post.
This had led to vitriolic mutual accusations, with each side accusing the other of the being a traitor. Abbas accused Hamas being "spies" for Israel, while Hamas accused Abbas of being a dictator, senile, a liar, and mentally unstable. Abbas was called a collaborator because of the security coordination between his security forces and Israel in the West Bank.
On Friday, five armed men entered the offices of the Palestinian Authority's media headquarters in Gaza, assaulted the workers and destroyed equipment, including cameras, equipment, furniture and broadcasting equipment.
On Saturday, Hamas arrested five men and accused them of being the perpetrators, and also announced that all five men were Fatah employees whose motive was revenge for not getting paid salaries. However, Fatah leaders hold Hamas responsible.
On Friday evening, Abbas announced a halt to payment of salaries and social welfare to thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which amounts to $96 million monthly. Fatah also announced it would close all its offices in Gaza "in anticipation of any attacks on them."
On Saturday, Fatah announced that it would be withdrawing its employees from the Rafeh border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. This border crossing is a lifeline to many Gazans, but it's been closed for many periods in the last ten years. Thanks to Hamas-Fatah mediation efforts by Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, the Rafah crossing has been open continuously for several months, under the condition that Fatah provides the guards to run the crossing. Egypt has not commented, and it's not clear whether Hamas will be allowed to replace Fatah in operating the crossing.
For several years, Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi has been trying to mediate a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, so that they can form a unity government representing all Palestinians. Once that's done, the grand fantasy is that this unity government can then negotiate with Israel for the boundaries in the two-state solution, which will produce two nations, Israel and Palestine, side-by-side in peace.
As I wrote in my very first Generational Dynamics analysis on May 1, 2003, when president George Bush published his "Mideast Roadmap to Peace," which described the details of a two-state solution, that will never happen. Generational Dynamics predicts that the plan would fail because the Jews and the Arabs would be refighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
All the machinations and negotiations for a unity government and a two-state solution are completely naive. Polls have shown that young Palestinians consider 83-year-old Mahmoud Abbas to be a fool. The Hamas leaders get more respect because they're a generation younger, but not much more respect. What they're all waiting for is a young obsessed fanatic, their own version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to inspire them to inspire them to become martyrs for their cause.
As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war refighting the 1948 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war will also pit Sunnis versus Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. Iran is controlled by an ancient generation of hardliners whose policies are strongly opposed by the growing population of younger generations. Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Jerusalem Post (2-Jan) and Mideast Eye and Al Arabiya (5-Jan) and Jerusalem Post (5-Jan) and Reuter
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On Sunday morning, a large object was flown into Israel from Gaza by means of a large cluster of helium balloons. The object looked like a drone glider, although it was apparently not capable of flight. The name of a Gaza engineering college was printed on the side of the object.
The device landed in a carrot field in southern Israel. A police bomb disposal robot examined the device, causing it to explode like a bomb. The drone lookalike was then carried away.
In retaliation, Israeli military helicopters attacked two observation posts in Gaza controlled by Hamas. Times of Israel
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Jan-19 World View -- Hamas vs Fatah relationship deteriorates sharply on Palestinian anniversary thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Jan-2019)
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DR Congo delays releasing election results again
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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President Trump announced that US troops will be sent to Gabon, in anticipation of "violent" demonstrations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) if and when the results of the December 30 presidential election are announced.
The announcement came in a Friday evening letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi:
"Dear Madam Speaker:United States Armed Forces personnel have deployed to Libreville, Gabon, to be in position to support the security of United States citizens, personnel, and diplomatic facilities in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. This deployment of approximately 80 personnel is in response to the possibility that violent demonstrations may occur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in reaction to the December 30, 2018, elections there. The first of these personnel arrived in Gabon on January 2, 2019, with appropriate combat equipment and supported by military aircraft. Additional forces may deploy to Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or the Republic of the Congo, if necessary for these purposes. These deployed personnel will remain in the region until the security situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo becomes such that their presence is no longer needed.
This action was taken consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad, and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.
I am providing this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148). I appreciate the support of the Congress in these actions.
The letter indicates that the U.S. is concerned with the safety of American officials and facilities in Congo, not with the DRC electoral situation itself. A State Department travel warning was issued in mid-December, urging Americans to "reconsider travel" to DRC "due to crime and civil unrest."
Gabon is a small country on the northwest border of DRC. Libreville is the capital city. White House and CBS News and CNN
The president of CENI, the election commission of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), indefinitely postponed the release of the preliminary results of the December 30 presidential election, saying that it was not yet clear when the results would be ready for release.
The election was originally supposed to take place in December 2016. Joseph Kabila, the incumbent president, is not permitted to run again, according to the constitution, and so he has postponed the election several times. The last postponement was from December 23, 2018, to December 30, when the election finally took place.
In the week prior to the election, Kabila's election commission said that the election will still be held, but will be delayed until March in three cities -- Beni, Butembo and Yumbi. The reasons given for Beni and Butembo are that there are Ebola outbreaks in those cities, and that voting would be "dangerous." However, voting has not been delayed in other cities with Ebola outbreaks. What these three cities have in common is that they are strongholds for anti-Kabila opposition. On election day, the local government of Beni held its own elections, just to prove that voting was not "dangerous."
Preliminary results were to be released today (Sunday, January 6), until the CENI announcement on Saturday, delaying the release.
There are widespread suspicions that Kabila is trying to find a way to rig the vote count so that the winner will be his hand-picked successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. Many people believe that if Shadary wins, then he will just be a puppet with Kabila as the puppetmaster.
Kabila has shut down the internet all week, supposedly to prevent the incitement of riots. Kabila has made it illegal for any organization to announce election results before CENI does. It's believed that these laws were specifically targeted to the Catholic Church, which had sent more than 40,000 observers to poling stations across the country.
On Thursday, the National Episcopal Conference Of Congo (CENCO) released a lengthy statement about its conclusions. It listed several irregularities in the voting procedures, and then reached a startling conclusion: From its own data, CENCO knows who won the election, but won't announce the name, in keeping with the law against announcing election results.
CENCO called on the election commission to do the following:
"In order to respect the will of the People and to dispel any suspicion, CENCO proposes the following scheme for the integrity of the results which will have to be published:1 Only take into account the results from manual counting that were published and posted in front of the polling and counting stations;
2 Ensure that the consistency check at the Local Results Compilation Centers (CLCR) is carried out in the presence of observers and witnesses.
3 Publish the results polling station by polling station."
CENCO did not name the purported election winner, but reports indicate that it was the main opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu.
The capital city Kinshasa is very tense right now. There were almost full-scale riots in December 2016, but the Catholic Church intervened and quieted the situation. If CENI continues to delay announcing the election results, or if it announces that Shadary is the winner, there may be widespread riots again.
The situation is so serious that it's believed that this is the reason that President Trump announced the deployment of troops to Gabon, available to protect the safety of American officials and facilities in DRC. Reuters and Guardian (London) and CENCO (DRC Catholic Church)
The Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC is still growing, but not as quickly as had been feared. The outbreak total is 613 cases, including 565 confirmed and 54 suspected cases. Health officials are still investigating 54 suspected infections.
According to Tedros Adhanom, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the DRC Ebola outbreak would have been much worse without the use of Merck's experimental Ebola vaccine, known as VSV-EBOV. He based his assessment on the fact that infections haven't grown exponentially. Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDRAP)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Jan-19 World View -- Trump announces that US troops will be sent to DR Congo thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Jan-2019)
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EU considers revoking Myanmar's trade preferences because of Rohingya genocide
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Myanmar's army has just recently completed most of the job of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine State, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee for their lives to neighboring Bangladesh, where they're trapped in refugee camps. Myanmar's army began committing atrocities, including torture, rape, beatings and slaughter, burning down entire Rohingya villages, targeting the Rohingyas, starting as early as 2011. But they crossed the line into full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing after an August 25, 2017, attack on Burma police outposts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), killing 8 policemen. At that point, Burma's army began full-scale "clearance operations," sending hundreds of thousands more Rohingyas into Bangladesh.
With most Burmese Rohingyas now in Bangladesh, and with most Rohingya villages burned to the ground, Burma's army may have thought its job was done. But now they have a new problem, and they're launching "clearance operations" again against a new group, ethnic Rakhines.
Ethnic Rakhine rebels, claiming to be part of the Arakan Army (AA), which is a Buddhist ethnic Rakhine "army," as opposed to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which is a Muslim ethnic Rohingya "army," killed 14 "prisoners of war" in four police stations in Rakhine State on Friday.
This has prompted the army to launch localized "clearance operations" this time against the ethnic Rakhines. Clashes between AA and Burma's army in recent months has already forced an estimated 2,500 people to flee from their homes because of the violence. Many of them are sheltering in local Buddhist monasteries.
Myanmar officials said that four police posts in northern Rakhine came under attack from hundreds of Arakan Army fighters after daybreak on Friday, killing 13 and injuring nine, and triggering the army's new "clearance operations" in the area. Reuters and Special Broadcasting Service (Australia) and AP and Asia Times
Trade unions in Myanmar are begging the European Union not to revoke its grant of trade preferences to Myanmar
The trade preference program, known as Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP), grants to Myanmar the right to export goods to the EU without paying tariffs. The GSP "Everything But Arms" (EBA) status allows Myanmar to sell any goods except weapons tariff-free into the EU. The GSP privilege was granted in 2013. Exports from Myanmar to the EU, especially in garments and foodstuffs, has risen tenfold in the past five years.
After months of pressure from rights groups, the EU is considering punishing Myanmar for "the blatant violation of human rights" referring to ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas and the failure of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi to resolve the crisis. EU’s trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom said in October, "Our trade policy is value-based. These are not just words. We have to act when there are severe violations."
However, trade unions and workers groups in Myanmar say that over one million workers might lose their jobs if GSP is revoked. According to Maung Maung, chairman of the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM):
"Over 700,000 workers from the garment industry and over 400,000 workers in fishery industry will lose their jobs and their families will be in trouble. We don’t want to see this situation. So, we request the EU not to revoke GSP."
Withdrawing GSP would also have a significant impact on foreign direct investment, since investors who invest in Myanmar to gain access to the EU export market will no longer be attracted.
Card Charles Maung Bo, archbishop of Yangon and the country’s first cardinal, said, "I am completely against any form of sanction or embargo against Myanmar. Experience shows that this type of measures only harms the poorest sections of the population. They will suffer the consequences, certainly not the rich and powerful."
An EU review team visited Myanmar in October to assess the situation, but has not yet issued an opinion.
The same team is also considering withdrawing GSP for Cambodia, because of substantial and increasing human rights violations under the Hun Sen administration. Fibre2Fashion (Myanmar) and Mizzima (Myanmar) and Reuters (5-Oct-2018) and Asia News (Italy)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Jan-19 World View -- Myanmar (Burma) Buddhist separatists in Arakan Army in Rakhine State kill 13 policemen thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Jan-2019)
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US State Dept issues elevated travel warning for China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In the 1800s, Britain was the world's superpower. Now, Britain's Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson says that Britain could return to being a "true global power" after Brexit.
According to Williamson, Britain will become a much more important world player after Brexit:
"This is our biggest moment as a nation since the end of the Second World War, when we can recast ourselves in a different way, we can actually play the role on the world stage that the world expects us to play.For so long - literally for decades - so much of our national view point has actually been coloured by a discussion about the European Union.
This is our moment to be that true global player once more - and I think the armed forces play a really important role as part of that.
I am very much looking at how can we get as much of our resources forward based, actually creating a deterrent but also taking a British presence. We are looking at those opportunities not just in the Far East but also in the Caribbean as well."
Williamson did not specify specifically where the bases would be, but unnamed sources say that one could be sited in Singapore or Brunei, adjacent to the South China Sea. The other could be Montserrat or Guyana in the Caribbean. The bases would be created "within the next couple of years."
The U.K. already has bases in Cyprus, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and Diego Garcia. Williamson said he expected a dramatic shift in political focus after Brexit - with the UK building deeper relationships with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Caribbean states and nations across Africa.
China claims the entire South China Sea as its sovereign territory, based on some fantasy historical claims. During the last few months, I've been intensively studying Chinese history, and I've found that not only do the Chinese have absolutely no historical claim whatsoever to the South China Sea, but in fact they weren't even interested in the South China Sea until after World War II, when they decided to annex it in order to steal resources from other countries.
In fact, in 2016 the Philippines won a historic case in the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague thoroughly humiliating China by ruling that all of China's activities in the South China Sea are illegal and in violation of international law. However, as a criminal outlaw state, China has continued building illegal military bases in the South China Sea, annexing the region illegally just as Hitler annexed Poland.
The Chinese claim that they would be a great nation today if they hadn't been victimized by Britain in the Opium Wars of the 1840s. The Chinese claim that they've been repeatedly victimized and humiliated by the West for 170 years, when in fact that Chinese have repeatedly been so credulous and so incompetent at governing themselves, they actually allowed themselves to be humiliated time after time.
And so a new British military base in the South China Sea is certain to provoke the usual hysterical screams from the paranoid Chinese Communist Party, and there's no way to tell how they'll react, or whether they'll retaliate militarily. Daily Mirror (UK) and Special Broadcasting Service (Australia) and Bloomberg
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The State Department has issued an elevated travel warning for people considering travel to China. Particularly alarming is China's use of exit bans to lure individuals back to China from abroad. Once in China, individuals can be arbitrarily arrested and tortured, with no access to lawyers or the outside world, and may be arbitrarily jailed for years with no trial and even no charges.
The State Department advisory says the following:
"Exercise increased caution in China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws as well as special restrictions on dual U.S.-Chinese nationals.Chinese authorities have asserted broad authority to prohibit U.S. citizens from leaving China by using ‘exit bans,’ sometimes keeping U.S. citizens in China for years. China uses exit bans coercively:
- to compel U.S. citizens to participate in Chinese government investigations,
- to lure individuals back to China from abroad, and
- to aid Chinese authorities in resolving civil disputes in favor of Chinese parties.
In most cases, U.S. citizens only become aware of the exit ban when they attempt to depart China, and there is no method to find out how long the ban may continue. U.S. citizens under exit bans have been harassed and threatened.
U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime. U.S. citizens may be subjected to prolonged interrogations and extended detention for reasons related to “state security.” Security personnel may detain and/or deport U.S. citizens for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government.
Extra security measures, such as security checks and increased levels of police presence, are common in the Xinjiang Uighur and Tibet Autonomous Regions. Authorities may impose curfews and travel restrictions on short notice.
China does not recognize dual nationality. U.S.-Chinese citizens and U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage may be subject to additional scrutiny and harassment, and China may prevent the U.S. Embassy from providing consular services."
Special care should be taken when visiting Xinjiang province, where China has arbitrarily jailed as many as a million Muslim Uighurs, subjecting them to "reeducation" torture, rapes and beatings. US State Dept. and CNBC and Business Insider
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Jan-19 World View -- Britain may establish a military base in South China Sea after Brexit thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Jan-2019)
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Kenya's debt repayments to China triple in July
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Starting in July, Kenya's annual debt repayment of loans to China triples to $900 million.
Kenya has been on a borrowing binge in the last five years, having borrowed a total of $50 billion. These loans have been used to build roads, ports and railways, and were to be repaid with the revenue from this infrastructure, but as with many loans, hopes and promises were not kept.
Some $2.7 billion in loan repayments will be due to foreign lenders in 2019-20, a third of it to China. In addition, Kenya must pay $780 million for 2014 Eurobond note, including $2 billion in commercial loans in the first half of 2019. This includes retiring a $787 million loan from Britain's Standard Chartered Bank and another $371 million loan from Trade and Development Bank, formerly PTA Bank.
The reason that payments to China are tripling in 2019 is because a five-year grace period that China granted to Kenya in 2014 is now expiring.
All of these loans are denominated in foreign currencies, usually US dollars. Payments must be made out of the country's foreign reserves, which are at $9 billion September 2018. Standard Media (Kenya) and The Nation (Kenya) and Tuko TV (Kenya)
Kenya's government borrowed $4 billion from China to build the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), a train that would operate between the Port of Mombasa and the capital city Nairobi. It was supposed to pay for itself with revenue to the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), but revenues have been far below the projections.
China requires that all the deals that China makes with countries under the umbrella of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) be kept top secret, even within the country making the deal. However, new details about the SGR deal are now coming to light in a report by Kenya's Auditor-General Edward Ouko, including a requirement that revenue of the Kenya Ports Authority would be used to clear the debt of $2.27 billion owed to the Exim Bank of China.
The auditor also notes that the contract specifies that if there's any disagreement or dispute between Kenya and the bank, then the disagreement would be referred to arbitration within China, "whose fairness is resolving the disagreement may not be guaranteed."
According to the auditor, "Exim Bank would become a principal over KPA if [Kenya] defaults in its obligations and the Chinese bank exercises power over the escrow account security."
China's foreign ministry spokesman was asked about this a week ago, and responded as follows:
"Regarding the issue you mentioned, we have checked with the relevant Chinese financial institution and found that the allegation that the Kenyan side used the Mombasa Port as a collateral in its Mombasa-Nairobi Railway payment agreement with the Chinese financial institution is not true. The report you just cited said that the Kenyan side also has made clarifications on it.At present, the China-Kenya cooperation on the Mombasa-Nairobi railway is progressing smoothly. When cooperating with African countries including Kenya, Chinese companies and financial institutions will always conduct joint and thorough scientific study on the feasibility of the projects and then proceed to determine the construction and funding plans and scales to guard against causing debt risks and fiscal burdens for Africa."
This is an evasive answer (standard practice from a Chinese official), because the auditor's report does not claim that the port itself was used as collateral.
Kenya media is becoming increasingly concerned that China's "Debt Book Diplomacy" is going to ensnare Kenya in the way that it's forced other countries to give control of its infrastructure to China.
The poster child for how it works is the Port of Hambantota, a Chinese infrastructure project in Sri Lanka, funded with a loan from China, with almost all the labor performed by Chinese workers. Sri Lanka was unable to repay the loan, and the government was forced to give the Port to China. So now Sri Lanka has a large seaport owned by China, and a large Chinese enclave with hundreds of Chinese families, with no benefit to itself and to its own people.
There are examples in Africa as well.
In 2007, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) entered into a $10 billion resource-financed infrastructure agreement with China, where copper and cobalt mining licenses would be allocated to a Chinese consortium. In exchange, the consortium would secure financing of $6.56 billion worth of infrastructure projects and invest $3 billion in mining projects. The agreement came to light only when DRC could not make the debt payments, and China's Exim bank took control of a portion of the mines.
In 2010, the government of Ghana informally secured $3 billion loan from China without parliamentary scrutiny and over 15 years Ghana would supply 750 million barrels (13,000 barrels per day) for servicing the debt. When oil prices crashed, China's Exim bank demanded that the amount of oil used to service the debt would increase from 13,000 to 15,000 barrels per day, and that the agreed fixed price to be paid would be reduced from $100 to $85 per barrel According to Ghana’s then Finance minister, that $15 difference would have seen Ghanaians pay $6.4 billion to repay a $3 billion loan. Ghana was forced to cancel half of the agreed $3 billion loan.
In all three of these cases, the details of these agreements were kept secret, per China's demands, until they were revealed because debt repayments could not be met, and China then enforced repayment by seizing assets.
It's now feared that the same thing will happen in Kenya, and China will seize Kenya's Port of Mombasa. The governments of both Kenya and China insist that there's no problem, but it still remains the case that the SGR is generating far less revenue than had been assumed when the original loan agreement was signed in 2014.
China has used "debt trap diplomacy" in several countries. They loan a country to build infrastructure proects that will strategically benefit China by helping China to exploit the countries natural resources, but and only marginally benefit the local population. They require that the loan money be used to purchase parts and services from Chinese firms, and that almost all workers must be Chinese. So instead of benefiting the local factories and workers, the money goes back to China to benefit factories and people there. And then the country still has to repay the loan, which means that they're repaying the loan twice.
In the case of Kenya, China is being accused of "neo-colonialism, racism and blatant discrimination" towards Kenya workers. Racism is rampant, and the Chinese allow Kenyans to perform only menial tasks. The Chinese are supposed to train the Kenyans, many of whom have engineering degrees, to do the jobs, but instead blatantly exclude the Kenyan workers. The Nation (Kenya) and China Foreign Ministry (24-Dec) and African Stand
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Jan-19 World View -- China may seize Kenya's Mombasa Port as debt repayments triple thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(3-Jan-2019)
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Brexit chaos continues as Britain heads for March 29 cliff
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It's hard to overestimate what a political disaster Brexit has been ever since the referendum passed on June 23, 2016. Britain, and to some extent the EU, have been almost completely deadlocked for two years with political lockjaw. And now, the committed date when Britain will leave the European Union is March 29, 2019.
The problem has always been the border between Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK) and (Southern) Ireland (which will remain part of the EU). Ireland and Northern Ireland have an extremely violent history described as "The Troubles," which were resolved by the Good Friday agreement in 1998 which, among other things, committed to remove any physical border between the two, and allow free movement of goods and people. It's been apparent since the beginning that no solution exists to meeting the objectives of the "Brexiteers" (the people who wanted Brexit) and maintaining a barrier-free border. So that problem has always been insoluble and remains so today.
So there are four possibilities for what will happen on March 29:
There is no UK majority for any of these options, but if there's no agreement, then the default will be a no-deal Brexit. In my opinion a way will be found to avoid this, because it will be catastrophic for the economies of both the UK and EU.
I had thought that the Brexit decision was final, once Britain submitted its two-year notice on March 29, 2017. However, in the last few months, an EU court has issued an opinion that Britain can reverse the Brexit decision, provided that it does so with finality, and not just to start up a new two-year negotiation. So that's an option. However, if Britain's government invokes it, it will invoke the howls of hell from people who say that the government is violating the will of the people.
Prime minister Theresa May's plan, which I summarized in detail in October, is a transition plan that many consider be the worst of all possible worlds. The whole point of why the Brexiteers wanted Brexit was to get away from the EU regulations, EU taxes, and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In the transition period, all of these will remain, with the additional restriction that the UK will have to obey all the regulations and pay all the money, but will have no say in changing them. This plan is almost Karmic retribution for the idiocy of going ahead with Brexit in the first place.
However, few people like Theresa May's plan, and many pundits say that when it comes to a vote in Parliament on January 14, it's unlikely to pass.
That brings us to the last option -- kicking the can down the road. It's believed that if the UK requested it, then the EU would agree to extend the March 29 date. That would give time for more debate.
Some people want to use that time to hold a new Brexit referendum. The problem with that option is that even among the few people who want a new referendum, there's no agreement on what the question would be. Would it be the same two choices as the 2016 referendum? Or would it be the three choices, something like the first three options in the list above?
So really, no one knows what's going to happen out of this mess, but my bet would be that they'll find some way to "fudge," or to kick the can down the road. Bloomberg (20-Dec) and Independent (Ireland) and Guardian (London, 17-Dec) and UK News (17-Dec)
A big increase in the number of migrants illegally crossing the English Channel from Calais, France, to Dover, England, is being blamed on the chaos surrounding Brexit. There are reports that human traffickers are telling migrants that crossing from France to Britain will be much more difficult after March 29 because of Brexit, and charging the migrants €15,000 or more to cross the Channel in a cheap dinghy. At the same time, security has been toughened around ports and the Channel tunnel, and authorities have been cracking down on migrants in northern France. However, there are still many more migrants who cross to Britain by stowing away on trucks that travel through the tunnel.
This is actually a fairly small number of migrants, but it's become a major political issue in Britain. It's far smaller than the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Greece, where the EU border force has been patrolling the waters. But political pressure has forced Britain's Home Secretary to reassign to British patrol cutters from the Mediterranean to the English Channel.
Many of the migrants are from Iran. This is believed to be the result of a policy that Serbia implemented between August and October, 2017, offering visa-free travel to people from Iran for 30 days. More than 40,000 Iranians visited Serbia, but it's believed as many as 12,000 didn't return home after 30 days, but instead moved through the Schengen Zone to western Europe and, in particular, to Calais, France, hoping to reach Britain.
The trip across the English Channel is 21 miles, but cross-currents can make the trip much longer. The trip can be particularly dangerous due to high seas and busy shipping lanes. If a British patrol boat captures the migrants in British waters, then they're required to take them to Britain; otherwise, the patrol boat can return them to France. When a migrant reaches Britain, he's evaluated for eligibility for asylum. Iranians are likely to be granted asylum because of Iran's human rights record. For that reason, migrants from Iraq or Syria often claim to be from Iran. Daily Mail and Guardian (London) and Deutsche Welle
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Jan-19 World View -- Brexit chaos entangles issue of Iranian migrants crossing English Channel thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(2-Jan-2019)
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The future of Generational Dynamics
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In forecasting the events of 2019, we're going to use two metaphors.
One is "the straw that breaks the camel's back." This commonly used metaphor suggests a scenario where someone is piling one straw after another onto a camel's back. You know with 100% certainty that the weight will eventually break the camel's back, but it's impossible to predict when. You won't know which straw breaks the camel's back until after it happens.
Putting that into analytical terms, if you have a long-term trend that gets worse and worse, then there's a new saying that applies: "If something can't go on forever, then it won't." At some point, the long-term trend ends with a growing or full-scale panic, resulting in a financial crash or a war.
The other metaphor is "kicking the can down the road," which means taking some action that postpones a problem, but makes the problem worse in the long run. If we stretch the camel metaphor a little farther, we can imagine adding protein to the hay we feed the camel, in order to strengthen the camel's back while we're piling on straw. It will take longer for the camel's back to break, but when it does, the poor camel will be almost destroyed. In analytical terms, this means that some action is taken to permit the long-term trend to continue for a while longer, albeit with even worse consequences when the panic finally occurs.
In each of the forecasts in the following sections, there is trend for something that's getting worse or more dangerous, because this is a generational Crisis era, because the survivors of World War II are almost completely gone. The trend may continue to worsen in 2019 with no major consequence, or there may be a full-scale panic leading to a financial crash or a war, or the international community may take steps to kick the can down the road.
If any one of these leads to a panic, then a panic may be triggered in the others, leading to a world war.
Kashmir and Jammu are the two provinces of colonial India that were the epicenter of the massive 1947 Partition War between Muslims and Hindus that followed the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Starting in the 1980s, Pakistan-supported separatist groups have been conducting terrorist attacks in the Indian-government portion of Kashmir.
The situation on the ground has worsened substantially in the last two years, in the terrorist attacks have become much more "organic," meaning that they're being perpetrated by young Muslims growing up in Kashmir, rather than by jihadists imported from Pakistan.
This is an archetypical example of how the generational cycle works. The 1947 Partition War was one of the bloodiest and move horrific wars of the entire century, and anyone who survived that war, whether Muslim or Hindu, would have vowed to spend their entire lives making sure that nothing like that happened again. And the survivors succeed, but eventually the survivors die off, and younger generations with such inhibitions come to power, and start a new horrific war, repeating the cycle.
In Kashmir, the trend line is that there is a growing number of young Muslims coming of age without the influence of survivors of the 1947 Partition war, and are attracted to the separatist movement. At the same time, there is a growing number of Hindu members of the Indian army and police coming of age. The young Muslims are willing to commit increasingly serious terrorist acts in their separatist cause, while the young Hindus are are willing to be increasingly violent with the separatists, in the vain hope of ending the separatist movement completely.
So there are two trend lines here, with both the young Muslims and the young Hindus becoming increasingly xenophobic and violent. Indian security forces try to kick the can down the road with a variety of techniques, such as spending money on social outreach to Muslims or such as implementing curfews. But these two trend lines cannot increase forever, and at some point the situation will spiral out of control into a larger war. That might happen in 2019.
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There are so many trend lines of increasing tension and violence in the Mideast, that it's almost impossible to count them, in Syria, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between Israelis and Palestinians. These trend lines were particularly exposed by the 67-day war in 2014 between Israel and Hamas. The increasing hostility behind these trend lines was further exposed on June 5, 2017, when Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar.
President Trump's recent announcement of a quick American troop withdrawal from Syria -- which has recently been modified to a "slow withdrawal" -- has further hardened these fault lines, as different factions compete to fill the vacuum in eastern Syria tha the US withdrawal will leave behind. There are three major sets of alliances among the Mideast countries:
From the point of view of Generation Dynamics, the Mideast is particularly difficult to analyze because of multiple generational timelines. The last crisis war climax for Saudi Arabia occurred in the 1920s, for Israel and the Palestinians in the late 1940s, for Syria and Lebanon in the early 1980s, and for Iraq and Iran in the late 1980s. Each of these timelines and their interactions has to be analyzed separately to get precise forecasts for the future of the Mideast.
The general Generational Dynamics forecast is that there will be a larger regional Mideast war that is coming with 100% certainty, pitting Arabs vs Jews, Sunnis vs Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. This will be part of the Clash of Civilizations world war, and nothing can be done to prevent it. It might begin in 2019. Jerusalem Post
Russia is not an existential threat to America, but it is an existential threat to Ukraine.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, Russia has conducted one act of war after another against Ukraine, including invading Crimea, annexing Crimea, building the Kerch Strait bridge and blockading the Sea of Azov and, most recently, seizing three Ukrainian ships in international waters, and abducting and torturing the 24 crew members. Ukraine has retaliated by implementing martial law and prohibiting Russian men aged 16-60 from entering Ukraine.
A dramatic development occurred late in 2018 when there was a historic split between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches with the blessing of the Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. This is a huge loss of prestige to Moscow, and the Russians are furious.
The trend lines are that Russia is perpetrating increasingly belligerent military actions targeting Ukraine, and Ukraine is desperately looking for ways to retaliate. Fears are growing that Russia is planning a new invasion of Ukraine in 2019.
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2018 was a remarkable year of kicking the can down the road by means of a charm offensive, starting with North Korean participation in the Seoul Olympics.
But the "North Korea problem" has become objectively much worse than it was a year ago. The North Koreans have been continuing development of nuclear weapon and ballistic missile technology, with the one exception that they haven't been able to publicly test their new developments.
The charm offensive has also changed the border between North and South Korea. And the DMZ is being demilitarized, with military posts and land mines being removed along the border. Those were put there to prevent or slow an invasion by North Korea of Seoul in South Korea. North Korea has never repudiated its stated intention of unifying North and South Korea under military control by the North.
So the North Korean charm offensive has kicked the can down the road for a whole year, in that there have been no public tests of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles. But that could change in 2019, and North Korea has become considerably more dangerous in the last year.
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As I recently wrote in "30-Dec-18 World View -- Xi Jinping's speech on 'the humiliation of the Chinese nation for centuries'", China's government blames the world for 200 years of "humiliation of the Chinese nation." China is becoming increasingly nationalistic, xenophobic, and militaristic. Whether it's militarizing the South China Sea or developing and deploying new nuclear missile systems, China is preparing to launch an attack on the United States at a time of its choosing. It may choose 2019.
The rapidly spreading Ebola pandemic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) caught a lot of people by surprise, and it will be continuing well into 2019.
On average, in one corner of the world or another, a new infectious disease has emerged every year for the past 30 years: Mers, Nipah, Hendra, swine flu, bird flu, and many more. Researchers estimate that birds and mammals harbor anywhere from 631,000 to 827,000 unknown viruses that could potentially leap into humans.
The international community, led by the World Health Organization (WHO) or the American Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have defined protocols and procedures to prevent outbreaks of new diseases from becoming pandemics. However, wars and mass migrations can defeat these protocols.
It was exactly a century ago, in 1918, that the Spanish flu pandemic began (though probably not in Spain). In two years, it killed as many as 100 million people, 5% of the world's population, and far more than the number who died in World War I. There could be a new pandemic in 2019. The Atlantic
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According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations index) on Friday morning (December 28) was at an astronomically high 19.60 This is far above the historical average of 14, indicating that the stock market bubble is still growing, and could burst at any time.
The P/E ratio fell to the range of 5-6 three times in the last century, in 1919, 1949 and 1982, and it's overdue to do so again. When that happens, the DJIA will fall to around the 3000 range.
If we use 1929 as an example, there was an initial panic, then a partial recovery. John Kenneth Galbraith's 1954 book The Great Crash - 1929 described what happened next:
"A common feature of all these earlier troubles [previous panics] was that having happened they were over. The worst was reasonably recognizable as such. The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune.The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. ... The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited out all of October and all of November, who saw the volume of trading return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or fourth of the purchase price in the next twenty-four months. ... The ruthlessness of [the stock market was] remarkable." (p. 108-109)
Generational Dynamics predicts that the P/E ratio will fall to the 5-6 range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982, resulting in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower.
I hear more and more analysts express concern about a "20-30% correction," with the expectation that once the correction reaches bottom, the stock market will recover to new highs. These analysts always advise people to "buy into the dips," which is what Galbraith was describing above.
With the P/E ratio so high, at some point there will be a full-scale panic, and the process described by Galbraith will happen again. It might happen in 2019.
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I used to worry about U.S. debt, but on this issue I've turned into Alfred E. Neuman. Does it really matter whether US debt is at $20 trillion, $30 trillion or $50 trillion? It's unsustainable either way.
The Trump administration is issuing $1.3 trillion in US government debt this year, more than twice the 2017 amount. This can't go on forever, and if something can't go on forever, then it won't. When the bond panic occurs, it will be a massive global financial disaster, and $20 trillion or $30 trillion won't make much difference. It will be a disaster either way.
Issuing more and more US debt depends on foreign buyers and investors willing to buy US debts. But in the last couple of months, demand for US debt, particularly 30 year Treasury bonds, has fallen to the lowest level in almost ten years. Will foreigners start buying US debt again, or could this be the start of a bond panic? What, me worry? Fiscal Times
The trend line for me is that because of my age I'm unable to get a job, and since my only income is social security, I'm going to run out of money in 2019, which will be the end of both me and Generational Dynamics. Job descriptions in the computer industry often mention pizza parties and exercise rooms as a way of telling people over 30 not to apply. What I need is for someone to hire me and pay me a regular salary as a journalist, or as an analyst, or as a Senior Software Engineer. Help would be appreciated. Dice.com and Resume
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Jan-19 World View -- Generational Dynamics 2019 Forecast: The Camel versus the Can thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Jan-2019)
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Fears grow of a new Hutu-Tutsi war
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Centuries of tribal warfare between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis in east Africa are once again threatening to return, as relations deteriorate between Burundi, which is led by Hutu president Pierre Nkurunziza, and Rwanda, which is led by Tutsi president Paul Kagame.
Two weeks ago, Nkurunziza wrote a letter to Uganda's Tutsi president Yoweri Museveni, listing a series of accusations by Rwanda against Burundi, and asking for a meeting of the East African Community (EAC):
"It is, therefore, very urgent for the East African Community to focus on the real problem that is jeopardizing peace and security throughout Burundi.It is Rwanda, a state party to the treaty establishing the East African Community, which is not at its first attempt to destabilize its neighbor, Burundi, in violation of the fundamental principles of the community. ...
In short, Rwanda is the only country in the region that is one of the main destabilisers of my country and, therefore, I no longer consider it a partner country, but simply as an enemy country."
Nkurunziza in particular is accusing Kagame of instigating an April 2015 coup attempt against Nkurunziza. The coup attempt was triggered when Nkurunziza refused to step down after announcing that he would seek a third term as president, which is not permitted under Burundi's constitution. His announcement triggered protests, and the police responded with bullets and teargas, killing ten people in four days of violence between youthful Tutsi protesters and police. Continued clashes killed hundreds of people. ( "30-Apr-15 World View -- 20,000 refugees flee violence in Burundi, fearing Hutu-Tutsi war")
Museveni is the current president of the EAC, which has six members: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. It was formed in 2000 to improve relations among the member nations, and particularly to prevent a repeat of something like the 1993-94 Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Burundi and Rwanda.
Museveni selected Tanzania's former president Benjamin Mkapa to evaluate Nkurunziza's accusations. Mkapa investigated and submitted a report that rejected Nkurunziza's accusations against Kigali, and recommended talks between Nkurunziza’s government and dissidents, including the alleged coup plotters.
Nkurunziza responded with a decree that no outsider should interfere in his country’s internal matters, and that any such interference "would be to overthrow this institution elected by the people [of Burundi]."
Museveni then responded to Nkurunziza that he was manipulating the EAC, and that "you use it when it suits you and discard it when it does not." The Nation (Kenya, 14-Dec) and News 24 (South Africa) and AP
A United Nations human rights report in September said that Burundi officials were committing crimes against humanity in 2017 and 2018.
"These crimes include murder, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity, and persecution on political grounds," according to the report. It's believed that the Hutu government of Pierre Nkurunziza is specifically targeting Tutsis for the crimes. Tens of thousands of refugees, mostly Tutsis, have fled and are staying in refugee camps in neighboring countries.
The BBC has confirmed the worst of the accusations in its own investigations. According to the BBC, Burundi's government was running secret detention houses to silence dissent. A video, widely shared on social media, showed blood flowing from the drain of a house in the capital city Bujumbura. An eyewitness said that the blood was from beheadings.
Early in December, Burundi ordered the United Nations Human Rights Council to leave the country. "All international staff must be redeployed immediately, and the Office has two months to pack its bags and close its doors permanently," according to the order.
In October 2017, judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) authorized an investigation into crimes committed in Burundi since April 2015. Burundi officials reacted by withdrawing from the ICC. Burundi was the first ever country to leave the ICC. Reuters (5-Sep) and BBC and AFP (6-Dec) and Human Rights Watch (18-Jan)
The event overshadowing many countries in Africa, particularly in east Africa, is the 1994 Rwanda genocide, when ethnic Hutus slaughtered close to a million ethnic Tutsis in a period of about three months. The threat of a new Rwanda genocide has influenced policy in Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan, and in discussions outside of Africa.
Rwanda's president Paul Kagame said a year ago said that Nkurunziza's third term as president and his refusal to step down threatened a repeat of the 1994 genocide. “They should have learned the lesson of our history,” said Kagame.
Kagame's criticism is laughable because Kagame himself, as well as Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, have all refused to step down after serving the maximum time permitted by the respective constitutions. This, of course, is similar to what we've seen in country after country in Africa.
However, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's way too soon for another full-scale Hutu-Tutsi genocide. There are too many survivors still alive who remember the incredible horrors of the last genocide, and they will prevent their children from letting things get out of hand. However, the resurgence of low-level and sporadic violence is occurring right on schedule in this generational Awakening era. Newsweek and Global Security
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Dec-18 World View -- Burundi's president Nkurunziza says Rwanda is no longer a partner but an enemy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Dec-2018)
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China's history since the May Fourth Movement
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Last week on December 18, China's president Xi Jinping gave a solemn speech in the Great Hall of the People, marking the 40th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s policy of reform and openness.
In my opinion, the most important part of that speech was his goal of "wiping out the humiliation of the Chinese nation for centuries."
He made the same allusion in March of this year in a major speech to the National People's Congress -- a meeting where he made himself a dictator for life, and modified the consititution to incorporate "Xi's Thoughts" on "Socialism with China Characteristics (SWCC)."
In the March speech, he said "China has continuously striven for its dream of realizing great national rejuvenation for over 170 years," alluding to the Opium Wars of the 1840s. This is a theme I've seen frequently in Chinese statements -- that China would be a great nation today, if it hadn't been humiliated by the West, particularly Britain and Japan.
For the past few months, I've been deep into studying China's history, back to ancient times, but particularly focusing on the time since the 1840s Opium Wars. And there's a big puzzle about China that becomes starkly apparently when you compare China and Japan in the late 1800s.
Both China and Japan had generational crisis civil wars that climaxed in the 1860s (Taiping Rebellion and Meiji Restoration, respectively). Both countries were devastated by those crisis civil wars, and each had to reconstruct a shattered country. But those reconstructions proceeded in vastly different directions.
Japan embraced the West, including culture, government and technology, and by the early 1900s Japan was considered a "developed country" and even a "Western country," although the people became imbued with a militaristic attitude that resulted in disaster in World War II.
China did not embrace the West. China rejected the West (or at best had a love-hate relationship with the West), and even declared war on the West in the Boxer Rebellion. As a result, China had no idea what was going on in the world. The Chinese leaders were repeatedly "conned" by Japan and the West in World War I, and they never seemed to learn what was going on. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" is the old saying. But the Chinese were fooled over and over, and never seemed to learn anything. While Japan's government was highly competent and driven, China's government was totally incompetent, and stumbled from one disaster to another.
This created the "New Culture Movement" in the late 1910s, which was a rejection by young people of all of China's culture under previous governments, including Confucianism and the classical Chinese language. This created a vacuum that might have been filled by Western ideas, except that China was fooled and humiliated once again by Japan and the West in the Versailles Treaty of Paris, the agreement that ended World War I. The result was that a large segment of China's society began adopting anarchism, socialism and communism from Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, leading to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1920s.
That triggered the May 4th movement (May 4, 1919), a massive anti-government protest by millions of students in Tiananmen Square, that the government brutally put down, but which turned the people into a driven population seeking revenge against Japan and the West.
(It's no coincidence that the May 4th movement was repeated exactly 70 years later, in May 1989, leading to the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989. It's also going to be a big problem next year for the Chinese leadership that May 4 and June 4, 2019, will be anniversaries of the May 4th Movement and the Tiananmen Square massacre.)
The riddle about China is why the Chinese people are so naive and credulous. For three hundred years, from 1640 to 1912, they were governed by a small army of foreigners -- the Manchus -- that they could easily have overthrown at any time, but never bothered to do so. Then during the 1910s and World War I, their incompetent government was humiliated time after time by Japan, Britain, Russia and France. In World War II, the huge Chinese empire would have been defeated by the small island of Japan if the West, principally the Americans, hadn't saved China's butt.
After the war, the disasters continued under Mao Zedong, with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and then, in 1989, the Tiananmen Square massacre. Even today, under Xi Jinping, China's government (the CCP) seens like a child lost in the woods, with no idea how to deal with its own population except through brutality or how to deal with the other countries of the world, except through deception and military threats. China Daily and Xinhua and Diplomat (5-May-2015) and RadiiChina
Xi Jinping sees the May Fourth Movement (May 4, 1919) as a major turning point in China's history, and he lists three major outcomes in the last century of the May Fourth Movement:
I believe that we can reasonably assume that Xi would identify the fourth major outcome of the May 4th Movement as his own anointment as dictator for life and the incorporation of "Xi's Thoughts" in the constitution, in March of this year.
In terms of intent, Deng's "Reforms and Opening Up" are comparable to the kinds of actions that Japan took in the decades following the Meiji Restoration. So one might say that in 1978, China lagged a century behind Japan.
However, there is still a big difference. Japan is a democracy, while nobody would ever call China's government a democracy.
According to the minutes of the "Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee," meeting from December 18-22, 1978, where the reforms were presented, China must implement "socialist modernization":
"Socialist modernization requires centralized leadership and strict implementation of various rules and regulations and observance of labour discipline. Bourgeois factionalism and anarchism must be firmly opposed. But the correct concentration of ideas is possible only when there is full democracy. Since for a period in the past democratic centralism was not carried out in the true sense, centralism being divorced from democracy and there being too little democracy, it is necessary to lay particular emphasis on democracy at present, and on the dialectical relationship between democracy and centralism, so as to make the mass line the foundation of the Party's centralized leadership and the effective direction of the organizations of production. In ideological and political life among the ranks of the people, only democracy is permissible and not suppression or persecution. ... The constitutional rights of citizens must be resolutely protected and no one has the right to infringe upon them.In order to safeguard people's democracy, it is imperative to strengthen the socialist legal system so that democracy is systematized and written into law in such a way as to ensure the stability, continuity and full authority of this democratic system and these laws; there must be laws for people to follow, these laws must be observed, their enforcement must be strict and law breakers must be dealt with. ... Procuratorial and judicial organizations must maintain their independence as is appropriate; they must faithfully abide by the laws, rules and regulations, serve the people's interests, keep to the facts; guarantee the equality of all people before the people's laws and deny anyone the privilege of being above the law."
There are two important concepts here: "socialist modernization" was necessary to open China to the world, and "democratic centralism" meant that the country was centrally controlled, but democratic in the sense there must be no suppression or persecution. Elsewhere, the same document says: "The Party members' right to make criticisms within the Party concerning the leadership at higher levels, up to Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, must be guaranteed and any practice that does not conform to the Party's democratic centralism and the principle of collective leadership should be resolutely corrected."
This is what was meant by Socialism with Chinese Characteristics at the time of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, but none of this is recognizable in today's China, where members of the CCP are clearly above the law, and anyone who criticizes the CCP can be thrown into jail.
When Xi Jinping listed the three major outcomes of the May Fourth Movement, he is probably leaving out the most important: the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre.
In May 1989, exactly 70 years after the May 4th movement, millions of young Chinese students crowded into Beijing to demand greater democracy and less repression, exactly what Deng Xiaoping had called for. On June 4, Chinese troops and security police stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters. Thousands of students were killed, and tens of thousands were arrested.
That wasn't the only thing that happened around that time. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union was collapsed, and all the former Soviet republics became independent self-governing nations.
Arguably, the collapse of the Soviet Union was more traumatic to the CCP than even the Tiananmen Square massacre. Suddenly, the leadership of the CCP were staring death in the face, as they considered the fact something like that Tiananmen Square protests could force the Chinese Communist Party to collapse as well. Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian communism had always been the role model for Chinese communism. If Russian communism could collapse, then so could Chinese communism.
In the 1990s, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics began to take on a whole new and far darker and more sinister meaning. The CCP leadership became increasingly paranoid, and began seeing ghosts. Centralism was still in play, but democratic centralism was gone. The "right to make criticisms" was gone, and any criticism of the CCP leadership could lead to torture, rape and jailing.
Religious persecution surged. The Buddhism-based Falun Gong movement was and is particularly targeted, after millions of people became practioners of their form of meditation. The CCP has increasingly cracked down on Christianity and even Daoism, for fear their practice could lead to overthrow of the CCP. Beijing Review (26-May-2009) and Economist and China Global Television Network and South China Morning Post
Deng Xiaoping's reforms are almost completely unrecognizable in today's CCP, led by Xi Jinping. Consider Deng's "24-Character Strategy" (24 Chinese characters):
"Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."
Xi Jinping is certainly not following Deng's advice. China today is belligerent, boastful, and militarily threatening to anyone who does not do as China demands. It's the opposite of Deng's advice.
The May 4th Movement led immediately to two disastrous Chinese leaders -- Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong -- and to China's bloody civil war (the Communist Revolution) and then to disastrous domestic policies, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Today, China is led by the CCP and Xi Jinping, and the government is insanity on steroids, and is completely delusional and out of touch with reality. There are a couple of examples I like to point to.
One is the fear of Winnie the Pooh, who looks like Xi Jinping. This is actually a real fear, because the deeply paranoid CCP leaders are actually afraid that Winnie the Pooh can be used as a symbol for an internal revolt to overthrow the CCP. Can you imagine Donald Trump or any other national leader being afraid of Winnie the Pooh or some other cartoon character? But that's the state of insanity of China's CCP government.
Another example is the policy of locking up a million Muslim Uighurs in reeducation camps in Xinjiang province. This has got to be the stupidest policy in the history of any country in the world. One would have to be insane to believe that this policy would work to convert the Muslim Uighurs into compliant Han Chinese.
Xi Jinping's own father, Xi Zhongxun, was dragged by Red Guards in front in front of a mob, and jailed in what might be called a "reeducation center" during the time of the Cultural Revolution. In his recent speech, Xi Jinping says that the Cultural Revolution was a "mistake," but that doesn't stop him from the insane policy of doing to a million Uighurs what was done to his own father.
Those are domestic policies. Foreign policies are equally delusional, and are characterized by deception and simple lying. I've studied China's historic claims to the South China Sea, and they're completely nonexistent. China's claims are a complete hoax. When Hitler illegally annexed Sudentenland, he could at least claim that he was protecting ethnic Germans. But there are no ethnic Chinese in the South China Sea. China's claims are a hoax.
In 2015, Xi told Barack Obama that China would not militarize the South China Sea. Today, the South China Sea is bristling with Chinese military bases and weapons. Xi's statement was a complete lie, just like Hitler's promise of "peace in our time."
At first, China pitched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as an exciting new version of the ancient Silk Road that connected China to Europe. However, it's increasingly seen as a policy of building infrastructure in other countries for the purpose of allowing China to exploit each country's natural resources. The Chinese "debt trap diplomacy" model is to send in thousands of Chinese workers, lend money to the government and demand that they use the money to pay the salaries of the Chinese workers, who then use the money to send to their families back home or to purchase Chinese products within their enclave. The country cannot afford to pay back the loan, and the Chinese workers stay there forever.
One can see the elements of revenge in these policies. Xi Jinping and the Chinese blame the world for "the humiliation of the Chinese nation for centuries," and now are adopting policies to exploit and humiliate the other countries of the world.
This brings us back to understanding how incompetent China is to governing itself. When the Manchus governed China, there was some sanity. Today, Xi Jinping and the CCP have no clue how to govern their own country or how to navigate in the world. Today, the meek, naive, credulous Chinese people are being governed by another monstrous authoritarian government, led by an incompetent leader Xi Jinping, who has adopted one insane policy after another, with no idea what to do next.
The most insane policy of all is its preparation for war. China has developed one nuclear ballistic weapons system after another with no purpose except to attack American cities, American bases, and American aircraft carriers. China has nothing to offer the world except that it has become an aggressive, imperial, militaristic nation that will launch a war that it will lose, but not before it's brought catastrophe to itself and the entire world. Financial Times and American Thinker
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Dec-18 World View -- Xi Jinping's speech on 'the humiliation of the Chinese nation for centuries' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Dec-2018)
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DRC anti-government protesters attack Ebola clinic in Beni
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There was supposed to be a presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sunday, December 23, but it got postponed. The current president, Joseph Kabila, was supposed to step down in December 2016, but he refused to step down and postponed the presidential election for a year. Then, in December 2017, he refused again to step down, and postponed the presidential election for a year, until December 23 of last week.
Kabila himself will not be running, since the constitution limits him to the two terms he's already served. Instead, he has a hand-picked successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. Many people believe that if Shadary wins, then he will just be a puppet with Kabila as the puppetmaster.
So Joseph Kabila's election commission (CENI) postponed the December 23 election for a week, until December 30. The reason given is that there weren't enough voting machines.
This week, there are new tactics. Kabila's election commission said that the election will still be held on Sunday, but will be delayed until March in three cities -- Beni, Butembo and Yumbi. The reasons given for Beni and Butembo are that there are Ebola outbreaks in those cities, and that voting would be "dangerous." However, voting has not been delayed in other cities with Ebola outbreaks.
The reason given for Yumbi is that there's violence in Yumbi. Of course there's violence in many DRC cities.
But what's special about these three cities -- Beni, Butembo and Yumbi -- is that all three cities are strongholds for anti-Kabila opposition. Voting will continue as usual in other cities where there is Ebola or violence. So there are 1.2 million votes in these three cities, and there are 40 million registered voters in all of DRC. So Kabila has disenfranchise over a million opposition supporters.
On Friday, Kabila's election commission had some further news. About 20% of the polling stations in the capital city Kinshasa will not be open because of lack of voting machines. There's no word on whether those polling stations will all be in opposition strongholds of Kinshasa. However, the election commission says that voters will be directed to other polling stations in the city.
Kabila cannot afford to simply step down, thanks to rampant, massive corruption. Kabila and his family own, either partially or wholly, more than 80 companies and businesses in the country and abroad. He and his children own more than 71,000 hectares (175,444 acres) of farmland. His family owns diamond mines, a part of the country's largest mobile phone network, companies that mine mineral deposits, gold and limestone, a luxury hotel, stakes in an airline, a share of the country's banks, and a fast-food franchise. With tentacles reaching into so many businesses, it's not surprising that Kabila is willing to use any method -- massacres, atrocities, jailings, torture -- to stay in power. If he were out of power, he and his family and friends might well be jailed or executed.
DRC's foreign ministry has unexpectedly announced the expulsion of European Union ambassador Bart Ouvry, saying he has 48 hours to leave in retaliation for the EU's decision to renew sanctions against DRC officials, including Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, who is Kabila's hand-picked successor. As Minister of the Interior and Security, Shadary was first sanctioned in 2017 for arrests and violent suppression of Kabila's political opposition. AP and Al Jazeera and Reuters and Africa News
Protesters angry with the postponement of Sunday's presidential election in Beni attacked an Ebola clinic in that city on Thursday. During the attack, shots were fired, some tents were burnt down and tables and chairs were stolen. About 21 people fled the clinic though most returned after that attack ended.
This attack is emblematic of the problems that the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners are having in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces of DRC, where the current outbreak of Ebola continues to spread.
As of December 26, a total of 591 Ebola cases, including 543 confirmed and 48 probable cases, have been reported in the two neighboring provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. Of these cases, 54 were healthcare workers, of which 18 died. Overall, 357 cases have died (case fatality ratio 60%).
WHO health officials might have already ended the Ebola outbreak, but they are being prevented from doing their work by the civil war in progress, and now by the demonstrators protesting the cancellation of elections in Beni and Butembo.
In particular, the teams in Beni are unable to carry out critical field work, including vaccinations, contact tracing, and following up on alerts of potential new cases.
WHO is concerned that if there is a period of prolonged insecurity, then there will be increased transmission of Ebola. Fortunately, many people in the local communities, including the local health authorities, are helping the WHO workers. World Health Organization and BBC and World Health Organization and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Dec-18 World View -- DR Congo in election chaos, as Ebola continues to spread thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Dec-2018)
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Arabs scramble to regain influence in Syria
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In a dramatic turnaround, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced that it is restoring diplomatic relations with Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, and reopening its embassy in Syria's capital city Damascus. On Thursday afternoon, the UAE’s chargé d’affaires Abdul Hakim Naimi visited the Damascus embassy and watched the flag being raised again.
UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the UAE hopes to contribute to a political solution to the war:
"[The reopening of the embassy] reaffirms the keenness of the UAE to restore relations between the two friendly countries to their normal course.It will strengthen and activate the Arab role in supporting the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and to prevent the dangers of regional interference in Syrian Arab affairs."
The "regional interference" being referenced is thought to be interference from Turkey, Iran and Hezbollah.
It may already be too late to "prevent the dangers of regional interference" from Iran and Hezbollah. In the past seven years, Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, have brought about then genocide and ethnic cleansing of vast portions of the Syria's Sunni Arab population, and is repopulating the cleansed areas with Shia Muslims families from Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah. ( "1-Dec-18 World View -- Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria")
Al-Assad's Shia/Alawite Syrian army has always fought the civil war half-heartedly, with crippling defections and desertions. The army almost collapsed in 2015, until al-Assad begged for help and was saved by the massive intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. That massive intervention continues until the present time, in the form of the "regional interference" that UAE's foreign ministry was referring to. So that's why preventing "the dangers of regional interference" may no longer be possible. The National (UAE) and Reuter and AP and The National (UAE)
Al-Assad's massive attacks on the Sunni Arabs had several major consequences. One was that Syria was expelled from the Arab League, something that may now be reversed, beginning with the restoration of diplomatic relations by UAE.
Officials from some Arab countries are now expressing regret that Syria was expelled from the Arab League, since it meant a complete loss of influence by the other Arab League members. But these crocodile tears ignore the reality of what was going on in 2011.
By August of 2011, it was becoming clear that al-Assad was conducting genocidal and ethnic cleansing attacks on Sunni Arabs, and this was shocking and repulsive to the other Arab states. Arab nations stayed silent for several months, hoping that the carnage would end, but finally they broke their silence in August, after the Syrian army first attacked Homa and then began attacking the city of Deir Ezzor. The technique being used in each of these cities is that tanks first surround the city to prevent anyone from fleeing and then, once the city is sealed, the tanks start flattening residential neighborhoods and the snipers kill anyone on the street, even children. This is a classic ethnic cleansing technique.
Al-Assad's actions were so shocking that finally the Arab League Secretary-General issued a statement strongly condemning al-Assad, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE recalled their ambassadors to Syria.
Al-Assad's ethnic cleansing continued to worsen as he attacked the El-Ramel Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia killing many women and children and shocking the entire Sunni Muslim world. By mid-November, the Arab League suspended Syria -- the first such suspension since it expelled Egypt in 1979 for signing a peace treaty with Israel. To claim today that Syria should never have been expelled completely ignores the fury and chaos at the time.
The attack on the Latakia refugee camp also led to the creation of ISIS. Al-Assad's attacks drew tens of thousands of young Sunni jihadists from over 80 countries to Syria to fight al-Assad, and by 2014 they had formed the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL), and took control of a large region of eastern Syria, with the headquarters of its Caliphate in the Syrian city of al-Raqqa, with a population over 300,000. It took a joint operation by American forces leading the Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) to recapture al-Raqqa.
With the recent announcement by President Trump that American troops will be withdrawn from Syria, UAE's decision to restore relations with Syria takes on a much greater significance and urgency than before. The American withdrawal will create a vacuum in the huge eastern part of Syria, and that region will might now be taken over by Iran and Hezbollah.
It's also increasing calls across the Arab world to re-admit Syria into the Arab League. With millions of Sunni Arabs slaughtered or expelled from Syria, and their homes replaced by Shia Muslim families from Iran, it now seems likely that Iran will have a great deal of influence in Syria.
The war in Syria is far from over. With American troops withdrawing, Turkey has promised to invade Syria and attack the Kurdish SDF, which might bring Turkish troops into conflict with Syrian troops.
Even worse, Idlib province in northwest Syria is currently hosting over three million Sunni Arabs. Al-Assad has vowed to regain control of Idlib, which would amount to genocide and ethnic cleansing of the three million Sunni Arabs currently living there. Idlib is a "de-escalation zone," with Turkey responsible for maintaining the ceasefire. An attack by al-Assad could lead to a full war between Syria and Turkey. Also, it could create a new humanitarian disaster, with millions of Sunni Arabs pouring across the border into Turkey, and from there into Europe, bringing back the days of 2015. The National (UAE) and Sky News and Press TV (Iran) and The National (UAE) and Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Dec-18 World View -- UAE reopens embassy in Syria to counter influence from Iran thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Dec-2018)
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UN prepares Venezuelan refugee crisis, the largest
in modern Latin American history
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Venezuela's economy desperately needs to be able to sell oil in order to survive. But Venezuela's Socialist presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have done what many might consider to be an almost impossible feat -- turned the country with the largest oil reserves in the world into a country that can't produce oil. When you see something like this, it's almost impossible to believe it happened, but this is always what happens with Socialism. Other "Socialist paradise" countries, including China, Russia, East Germany, Cuba and Sweden, have partially or completely turned to free markets as their economies spiraled into disaster, but only two countries in the world haven't -- Venezuela and North Korea. And both are economic disasters as a result.
In Venezuela, Maduro has fulfilled his Socialist dreams by turning the country's nationalized oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) over to army generals and other political cronies to run, lest some dirty capitalist make a profit on Venezuela's oil. Well, Maduro has made sure that nobody is making money on Venezuela's oil, including Venezuela.
Oil accounts for about 98% of Venezuela's export revenue, and in November 2017, Maduro put Major General Manuel Quevedo in charge of PDVSA, in the hope of stopping its collapse.
Quevedo is a Maduro crony but knows nothing about the oil industry. In July, Quevedo joined his wife, a Catholic priest and a gathering of oil workers in prayer to ask God to boost oil output. Prayer is a great management technique, but unfortunately, God wasn't listening this time. The collapse has continued, and production has dropped 20% since Quevedo took over, and is now at the lowest level in nearly 70 years.
And now there are reports that Maduro is thinking of firing Quevedo and replacing him with another army general who has no oil industry expertise. Ironically, Quevedo is scheduled in January to assume the rotating presidency of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for one year.
There is one subsidiary of PDVSA that that has increased oil production this year. Sinovensa is jointly owned by PDVSA and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), and it accounts for about 10% of Venezuela's oil output.
China has lent over $50 billion to Venezuela through oil-for-loan agreements over the past decade. China has not been producing enough oil to make the debt repayments, and so earlier this year China took over additional control of Sinovensa, and now owns 49% of the joint venture. The result is that oil production from Sinovensa increased 46% since April. Reuters and S&P Global and Hellenic Shipping and OilPrice.com
The problem of refugees fleeing from Venezuela into neighboring countries has become so massive that the United Nations refugee agency has created a Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan (RMRP) involving 95 organizations in 16 countries to respond to the humanitarian needs of the refugees and migrants from Venezuela.
Almost 3.3 million Venezuelans have fled into neighboring countries and beyond. This exodus is already the largest in the modern history of Latin America and the Caribbean and involves both refugees and migrants from Venezuela. UNHCR expects that another two million Venezuelans will flee in 2019, with the result that about 5.4 million Venezuelans, or 17% of the country's total population, will be living abroad by the end of 2019.
The RMRP organizations are also asking for $738 million in financing in hopes of providing assistance to 2.2 million Venezuelans and 500,000 people in the host communities. The United States has earmarked more than $95 million in aid to Colombia, Brazil and other host nations to deal with the Venezuelan crisis since fiscal year 2017.
It's interesting to compare Venezuela and North Korea, the only two major Socialist countries left in the world. Both have devastated economies and enormous poverty. Both of them are supported by Russia and China. Both are international pariahs. There are some differences. Unlike North Korea, Venezuela doesn't have nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and people are permitted to leave the country without getting shot to death. Miami Herald and UNHCR and Refugee and Migrant Response Plan (RMRP, PDF)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Dec-18 World View -- Socialist Venezuela's oil output plummets as refugee outflow surges thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Dec-2018)
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Recent generational history of Sudan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As of Monday, at least 37 people have been killed by Sudan's security forces attempting to quash anti-government protests that began in the suburbs on Wednesday of last week, and spread to the capital city Khartoum. Security forces have been shooting live fire and teargas into crowds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators.
On Tuesday, police fired into the air, used teargas and hit demonstrators with batons to disperse them as they marched to the presidential palace to demand that Omar al-Bashir, who has been president of Sudan for 29 years, step down. Four members of the Central Doctors Committee, including a doctor, surgeon and medical student -- were shot by snipers Tuesday and were recovering in the hospital.
The protests began last Wednesday, initially over rising prices and shortages of food and fuel, but later escalated into calls for al-Bashir to step down. As we've seen in one African country after another, the leader who has been in power for decades refuses to step down and uses the army and security forces to bash, arrest, torture and kill anyone who opposes him. There's nothing new here.
Al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Darfur conflict in western Sudan.
Sudan's last generational crisis war was World War II, and so it's deep into a generational Crisis era. The current widespread protests could possible spiral into a full conflict.
Sudan is a country of more than 40 million people, and is a special case in one sense. It depends on oil revenue, and when South Sudan broke off and became independent in 2011, Sudan lost three-quarters of its oil revenue. CNN and Amnesty International and AFP and Sudan Tribune and Still Sudan blog
Sudan's name in Arabic means "land of the blacks," which gives an idea of the Arab view of the nature of Sudan.
For the purposes of Generational Dynamics, it's easiest to view Sudan as three separate regions, on three separate generational timelines:
The Darfur conflict began in the 1970s as minor land disagreements between farmers and camel herders. Droughts in the 1980s exacerbated the tensions, causing low-level violence. In the 1990s, the Khartoum government armed the Arab herders as the Janjaweed militias, authorizing them to police the Darfur region.
In 2003, the Darfur conflict grew into a full-fledged generational crisis war. In 2007, the United Nations Security Council authorized a large international peacekeeping force in Darfur called UNAMID, but in the last year has been reducing the size of UNAMID, even though hostilities are still occurring in parts of Darfur. Sudan Tribune (12-Nov) and Mideast Forum (March 2001)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Dec-18 World View -- Sudan police crack down violently against anti-government protesters thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Dec-2018)
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DJIA falls 650 points on Monday
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It's Christmas in Bethlehem today (Tuesday). Bethlehem is unique in that it celebrates Christmas three times each year:
About 50% of the Palestinian Arab Christian community across Israel and the Palestinian territories belong to the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, and celebrate Christmas on January 7.
Pilgrims from around the world come to the West Bank city of Bethlemen each year to celebrate Christmas at the Church of the Nativity, venerated as the site of Jesus Christ's birth. In past years, tourists have stayed away because of tensions and violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Last year, tensions were high because of repeated violence around the al-Aqsa Mosque / Temple Mount compound, and then again when President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
However, this has been a relatively quiet year in the West Bank, and so this has been a record setting year in terms of tourism. Some three million tourists have visited Bethlehem this year, and the city's hotels hosted an "astounding" 10,000 tourist overnight on Christmas eve. AFP and AP
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell 652.83 points on Monday, and other Wall Street indexes fell proportionally. CNBC described the market decline as "very orderly."
If the decline continues and becomes "disorderly," then that will be an actual stock market panic. The S&P 500 Price/Earnings ratio is around 20, and has been above 20 for years. The historic average is 14, which means that the stock market is in a huge bubble, and something will trigger a total panic and implosion. The P/E ratio fell to the 5-6 range three times in the last century, the last time in 1982, and when it does, the DJIA will fall to around 3000.
There's been a lot of nonsense on television about President Trump blaming the Fed for a stock market crash. Blaming the Fed does no harm, but it does no good either. It's irrelevant.
There was a similar stock market bubble in 1929. It's been 89 years since the 1929 panic, and to this day nobody knows what triggered it, and why it happened on August 28 rather than a few months earlier or later. The same will be true when the new panic occurs this time. I hope Trump understands that he who lives by the stock market dies by the stock market. Market Watch and Bloomberg
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Dec-18 World View -- Christmas in Bethlehem is the biggest in years thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Dec-2018)
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The future of Generational Dynamics
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
President Donald Trump's announcements of troop withdrawal from Syria and partial troop withdrawal from Afghanistan signal a major policy change, in that it signals the end of the "War on Terror" that began on 9/11/2001.
The announcement is being widely ridiculed by the mainstream press and politicians, most of whom probably couldn't find Syria on a map if they had to.
Much of the ridicule followed from the letter of resignation from Defense Secretary James Mattis, following Trump's announcement:
"My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position."
Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat ISIS, also resigned. Typical remarks from the mainstream media are that the Trump White House is now in a downward spiral because Mattis was "the only adult in the room."
With this major change of policy occurring right at the end of 2018, an end-of-the-year look at events is in order. As the end of the year approaches, this is a good time for a thorough review of many Generational Dynamics principles and to see how these principles apply to an in-depth analysis of the announced troop withdrawal from Syria. Military Times and Fox News
In the last two years, I've seen and heard one hysterical condemnation of president Trump's policies after another in the mainstream media, mostly from so-called "experts" who have no clue what's going on in the world. These people have been wrong almost every time, but that never stops them.
On the other hand, I've written thousands of generational analyses in the last 15 years, and they've all turned out to be true or are trending true. None has turned out to be wrong.
The withdrawal from Syria signals a major change in policy that has completely baffled the mainstream "experts." So these people have been repeatedly wrong time after time for two years, and I've been repeatedly right for two years, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be right again, and they're going to be wrong again. So, Dear Reader, believe whom you wish.
In the last two years, I've pointed out many times that Trump's policies make perfect sense when viewed from the point of view of Generational Dynamics. Trump himself is familiar with Generational Dynamics analyses, because he was educated about them by his former chief strategist and advisor Steve Bannon, with whom I worked off and on for several years. And, once again, despite the fact that the mainstream "experts" are totally baffled, Trump's policies in Syria make perfect sense from the point of view of Generational Dynamics.
Actually, this one is pretty easy. The Generational Dynamics prediction has always been that we're headed for a "Clash of Civilizations world war." The "allies" will be the United States, India, Russia and Iran, while the "axis" will be China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim countries.
I've written about the reasons for this hundreds of times, and the summary behind the reasoning is as follows: China is very closely allied with Pakistan, which is very closely allied with the Sunni states. China and India are bitter enemies, as are Pakistan and India. Russia and India are very closely allied, and India is very closely allied with Iran, as Hindus have been allied with Shia Muslims going back to the Battle of Karbala in 680. Connecting the dots, the US is going to be allied with India, Russia and Iran, versus China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim states. If that seems surprising, remember that Russia was our bitter enemy before WW II, was our ally during WW II, and was our bitter enemy after WW II, so you can't judge from today's political alignments how nations will act when they're facing an existential crisis in the form of a generational crisis war.
So that's the Generational Dynamics prediction, and we assume that Trump is aware of it and believes it, as he should. Now we take note of the of the following:
So if you're baffled by Trump's withdrawal policy, just read the above list. When you look at that list, it makes perfect sense to withdraw some resources from Syria and Afghanistan, in order to allocate them to the approaching war with China. It makes perfect sense to prepare for the coming preemptive attack by China on the United States. Keeping troops in Syria does not do that.
So why did Mattis and McGurk leave? I don't know for sure, of course, but I assume that Mattis and McGurk don't believe that we're headed for a war with China. They're wrong. I assume that many people reading this article don't believe that we're headed for a war with China. You're wrong. If Mattis and McGurk want to focus a lot of resources in Syria, then they're "fighting the last war." If Mattis and McGurk are unwilling to face what's going on in the world with China, with startling events unfolding in China almost every day, then Mattis and McGurk should go.
On Sunday morning I listened to the news shows, and heard one "expert" after another talk about "chaos," "Trump out of control," "Trump is crazy," "the wheels are coming off," "Trump should be impeached," and so on. I would be concerned, except that it's no different from what I've heard every Sunday for two years, except that the screams today are perhaps a bit louder and a bit more hysterical and high-pitched.
I have a theory. I think that most people are viscerally aware that we're headed for war with China, and they can't stand to think about it, so they become hysterical and displace their hysteria from China to Trump. There was a similar level of hysteria in the late 1930s directed at Franklin Roosevelt, as the war in Europe against Nazi Germany approached. The best example was Neville Chamberlain's promise of "Peace in our time." Washington Post
The big picture is that it makes sense to withdraw forces from Syria in order to prepare for an inevitable war with China. But many people believe that we have a moral obligation to protect the Kurds and to continue to fight ISIS. (Many other people claim that we never had any business being in Syria in the first place.)
An argument that I heard several times in the mainstream media is: "Trump says ISIS is defeated and he's wrong. ISIS is still in Syria, in Egypt, in Nigeria, in Yemen, in Afghanistan, and so forth. ISIS is spreading around the world, and is nowhere near being defeated."
This argument was put forth by several "experts" -- college professors, book authors, diplomats, etc. And yet, this argument is so dumb that it serves as a good example of brainless idiocy we're seeing as common fare today.
Let's take Egypt for example. Has ISIS really spread to Egypt? The jihadist group in Egypt was originally the al-Qaeda linked Bedouin-based Sinai terrorist group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM). In 2015 it changed its name to al-Wilayat Sinai (Province of Sinai) and changed its allegiance to ISIS. This was a change for public relations reasons, and nothing else. It allows ABM to be associated with an up-and-coming brand name, and it allows Amaq, the ISIS public relations agency, to put out press releases about the group. But it's exactly the same group. Being aligned with ISIS or aligned with al-Qaeda is completely irrelevant. Now that ISIS is on the run, ABM may change their allegiance back to al-Qaeda, though they'll look like complete fools if they do. The point is that fighting ISIS in Syria has nothing to do with fighting ABM in Egypt. The two are completely unrelated except for a public relations link.
This is really basic, obvious stuff, that any so-called "expert" should understand before calling himself an "expert." Instead, these "experts" have no clue what's going on, probably couldn't pick out Syria on map if they had to, are wrong time after time, and yet continue to say one really dumb thing after another. It reminds me of 2007, when a survey by Congressional Quarterly and the London Times revealed that so-called "experts" at the time didn't even know whether al-Qaeda was a Shia or Sunni group. ( "Guess what? British politicians and journalists are just as ignorant as Americans (14-Jan-2007)") All of this goes well beyond ideology. It's sheer ignorance and stupidity, by people who babble endlessly with no idea what they're saying.
So what about ISIS in Syria? Is ISIS defeated there, as Trump claimed? ISIS mainly consists of jihadists who came to Syria to fight against Bashar al-Assad after he began genocidal attacks and ethnic cleansing targeting Arab Sunnis, particularly after his massive attack on innocent women and children in a Palestinian refugee camp near Latakia. ( "1-Dec-18 World View -- Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria")
In November 2016, the US announced a joint operation with the Kurdish led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) to recapture al-Raqqa, the ISIS "capital city" and "Caliphate," and a city of over 300,000 people, from ISIS. ( "7-Nov-16 World View -- US-backed Kurdish militias in Syria make surprise announcement of Raqqa operation")
That was the commitment that President Obama made, and President Trump followed through on that commitment. There was no commitment to fight ISIS forever, and there was no commitment to protect the Kurds forever. The Kurds are better off today than they were when the joint operation began, and ISIS has been ejected from al-Raqqa, and has been reduced to just one of many local jihadist groups in the world. America's commitment has been met.
I discussed some of these issues in yesterday's article on al-Shabaab in Somalia. America has been fighting the "war on terror" since 9/11/2001, and by one estimate, America is still conducting counterterror operations in 76 countries. And yet, after 17 years, the war on terror has been increasingly a failure. As I've written many times, the current violence in the Arab/Muslim world can be dated to three epochal events that occurred in 1979. These were Iran's Islamic Revolution, the Salafist attack on Saudi Arabia's Grand Mosque, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. These three events led to the growth of modern terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks, and there is absolutely nothing that the US can do to stop this, certainly not with US special forces.
Here we have one more example of so-called Mideast "experts" having absolutely no clue what's going on. They have no idea what happened in 1979, they go on tv and make one dumb statement after another, they always turn out to be wrong, but it goes on anyway. That's the world we live in.
One particularly laughable "expert" interview occurred on Sunday on the BBC World Service. The politician made every possible criticism of Trump and the Syria decision that he could think of. The interview lasted about four minutes, and at different times he said that Trump would be turning northeast Syria over to a reconstituted ISIS, and then to Iran, and then to Russia, and then to Turkey, and also to al-Assad. Oh really? Which one is it? And if there's a war among all these groups, does we really want the American military to be involved in it? On whose side? There's a war coming, no matter what we do.
The point is that terrorism will not be stopped, and is the precursor to a larger regional Mideast war that is coming with 100% certainty, pitting Arabs vs Jews, Sunnis vs Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. This will be part of the Clash of Civilizations world war, and nothing can be done to prevent it.
America's joint operation with the SDF to eject ISIS from al-Raqqa was a benefit to America, to Europe, the Kurds, and the world. But it's over now. America is in no position to fight ISIS forever, or to protect the Kurds forever, and troop withdrawal from Syria was going to happen sometime. Business Insider
In addition to a troop withdrawal from Syria, President Trump announced that 7,000 of the 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan would be brought home.
Ever since President Obama announced the troop surge into Afghanistan in 2009, I've written repeatedly that the Taliban cannot be defeated. This is an outcome of the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and, more importantly, the extremely bloody Afghan civil war from 1991-96. This is yet another example of something that the mainstream so-called "experts" are completely oblivious to, and yet these are the crucial events to understanding what's going on today.
The events of the last ten years have shown that this war cannot be won, and the situation is actually getting worse each year. Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the incoming head of the US Central Command, testified that the Afghanistan war is unsustainable.
Reducing the number of American troops in Afghanistan does not end our commitment to Afghanistan, which is to aid in the training of Afghan soldiers to defend themselves. It does mean that the Taliban have fewer American targets to kill, which is probably a good thing.
In the past, I've speculated that a part of President Trump's strategy is that, as war with China and Pakistan approaches, to keep American troops active in Afghanistan, and to continue to maintain several American military bases in Afghanistan, including two air bases in Bagram and Kandahar International Airport. If this is the strategy, then removing 7,000 troops will probably not affect it. Fox News
At my age, I'm unable to get employment as a journalist, analyst, or a senior software engineer, because no one wants to hire an older person. (Actually, age discrimination in the computer industry is so great that no one over age 45 or so can get a job anymore.) This means that my only income source is social security, and I'm going to run out of money in a few months, which will be the end of BOTH me and Generational Dynamics. I've done this work for years as a public service, but now that has to end. If you think that this work has been valuable, then any help that anyone can provide to resolve this situation would be greatly appreciated. Resume
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Dec-18 World View -- Generational Dynamics analysis of the troop withdrawal from Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Dec-2018)
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Somalia's 'Black Hawk Down' event affects US policy today
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A massive car bomb detonated at a military checkpoint near Somalia's presidential palace in the capital city Mogadishu on Saturday, followed by a smaller explosion nearby. At least 16 people were killed, and dozens injured. The bombings appeared to target people heading to work.
Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda linked terror group, took responsibility for the attacks. One of those killed was prominent journalist Awil Dahir Salad.
The attack comes a week after six airstrikes from US warplanes killed 62 al-Shabaab militants, according to the US military.
The US has a huge military base in neighboring Djibouti, from which the US has launched 40 air strikes so far this year, compared to 35 in 2017. It's estimated that at least 400 people have been killed in air strikes since the beginning of 2017, far more than the previous 10 years combined.
US airstrikes have forced al-Shabaab to change its tactics. Instead of targeting Somali government with mass attacks and assassinations, which expose its fighters to airstrikes, they've instead increase urban guerrilla warfare of terrorist bombings.
Al-Shabaab (AS) is an indigenous jihadist terror group which has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. There is a separate jihadist group in Puntland (northern Somalia) affiliated with ISIS called "IS Somalia" or ISS (Abnaa ul-Calipha). However, ISS has had nowhere near the success in blowing people up that AS has had.
Both groups have been increasingly demanding that businesses pay them taxes, in exchange for "protection" from bombings and terror attacks. Thus, both AS and ISS are increasingly acting more and more like Mafia criminals, rather than pious jihadists. AP and Reuters and BBC and Hiraal Institute
In 1988, a full-scale generational crisis civil war began in Somalia which, combined with a growing famine, was killing tens of thousands of people. In the final days of his presidency, George H.W. Bush committed ordered more than 20,000 troops into Somalia to calm the situation and to “save thousands of innocents from death.”
As always happens in a generational crisis war, the situation deteriorated, and in October 1993, élite American troops launched a disastrous raid in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down using rocket-propelled grenades. Some of the survivors were rescued, but two pilots were attacked by a mob of thousands of Somalis who hacked them to death with machetes and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets as trophies. The result was a 15-hour battle that killed hundreds of Somalis, as well as about 18 Americans and two UN soldiers.
The "Black Hawk Down" incident, which was later made into a movie, was the climax of the Battle of Mogadishu and also the climax of Somalia's civil war. Black Hawk Down shocked the American public, and caused the US under Bill Clinton to withdraw its forces from Somalia in 1994, and to be reluctant to intervene in African crises since then. So, for example, the US stayed out of the massive Rwanda massacre in 1994, which is probably just as well.
The American military's hasty retreat was viewed by many as a sign of weakness -- that the United States could not tolerate military casualties. In 1996, Osama bin Laden taunted the Clinton administration about its withdrawal: "You left carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you."
After the terror attack on 9/11/2001, US Special Forces began gradually returning to Africa. By 2016, 17% of all Special Forces deployed overseas were in Africa.
About 40 American soldiers were sent to Somalia in March 2017, the largest deployment of American troops to the Horn of Africa since Black Hawk Down in 1993. Their job was not combat, but was rather to train the Somalis to fight al-Shabaab on their own, supported by American airstrikes.
Today, 17 years after 9/11, it seems clear that the "war on terror" is not being won, and this is causing the Trump administration to reevaluate its military policies. This has resulted in announcements of troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, and may lead to other announcements. Washington Post and AP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Dec-18 World View -- Al-Shabaab double bombing kills 16 people in Mogadishu, Somalia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Dec-2018)
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NY Times: CPEC in Pakistan will build military jets and weaponry for China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ever since the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was launched on May 22, 2013, both the Chinese and Pakistan government promised that the project would bring wealth to Balochistan province, home of Pakistan's marginalized ethnic Baloch people.
Balochistan officials have been complaining for years that Balochistan is being shortchanged, and claim that both Pakistan and China denied. However, it couldn't be verified, because the details of the CPEC deal between Pakistan and China are top secret, just like all the deals in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) program. Many of these deals are assumed to be "debt traps" for the countries involved, ensnaring a country in debt to China that can't be paid back, giving China leverage to take control of land and other assets in the client country.
However, the Balochistan Cabinet were stunned on December 10 when some of the secrecy was pulled back in a briefing, revealing the following:
Pakistan government officials claim that the lack of funding to Balochistan are "concocted stories" to damage the China-Pakistan relationship, and that they are "fully committed" to more investment in Balochistan.
The explosive report showed that the most extreme claims of Baloch activists have turned out to be true. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist terror group, have opposed the project since its inception, claiming that Balochistan was being "colonized" by Punjabi and Chinese workers. ( "6-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan's Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claims credit for killing CPEC workers")
Insurgents trying to disrupt construction of CPEC projects in Balochistan have killed 66 persons since 2014. The BLA have been conducting a series of terror attacks on Chinese and Punjabi workers, and are promising to continue. Dawn and South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) and Asia Times
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China has demanded that all the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) deals be kept top secret, and a recent report has revealed one of the reasons why. BRI is supposed to be building roads and bridges and ports.
But according to documents uncovered by the NY Times, China and Pakistan plan to create a special economic zone under CPEC in Pakistan to produce a new generation of fighter jets, navigation systems, radar systems, and onboard weapons. This would expand China and Pakistan’s current cooperation on the JF-17 fighter jet, which is assembled at Pakistan’s military-run Kamra Aeronautical Complex in Punjab province.
China has already signed an agreement with Pakistan to build a network of satellite stations to establish the Beidou Navigation System as an alternative to the American GPS network. This will be major technology that China provides to numerous countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, and strengthens the military space capabilities of the Chinese military.
Revelation of the military deal also resolves a mystery. As we've reported numerous times, Pakistan is on the brink of bankruptcy, and Pakistan’s first debt repayments to China are set for next year, starting at about $300 million and gradually increasing to reach about $3.2 billion by 2026. Pakistan has been begging for money from China, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, and all have refused. Finally, Pakistan asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for another loan, but one of the conditions of an IMF loan is that every detail of the relationship between Pakistan and China would have to be revealed.
Apparently China has had a change of heart. The Chinese Embassy in Islamabad demanded that CPEC deals be kept secret and promised to loan more money to Pakistan.
Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "allies" of America, India, Russia, Iran and the West will be at war with the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries. China is Pakistan's "all-weather friend," whose friendship is "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel, sweeter than honey, and dearer than eyesight." This military relationship brings the two countries ever closer together. NY Times and The News (Pakistan) and India Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Dec-18 World View -- China's CPEC project in Pakistan turns military, marginalizing Balochistan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Dec-2018)
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Steve Bannon: Chinese engineers working on American weapons systems
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The Dept. of Justice on Thursday accused China of a massive international hacking scheme that penetrated commercial and military systems in at least 12 countries, including Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
An indictment charged two Chinese nationals, Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.
According to the indictment:
"Over the course of the Technology Theft Campaign, which began in or about 2006, Zhu, Zhang, and their coconspirators in the APT10 Group successfully obtained unauthorized access to the computers of more than 45 technology companies and U.S. Government agencies based in at least 12 states, including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The APT10 Group stole hundreds of gigabytes of sensitive data and information from the victims’ computer systems, including from at least the following victims: seven companies involved in aviation, space and/or satellite technology; three companies involved in communications technology; three companies involved in manufacturing advanced electronic systems and/or laboratory analytical instruments; a company involved in maritime technology; a company involved in oil and gas drilling, production, and processing; and the NASA Goddard Space Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In addition to those victims who had information stolen, Zhu, Zhang, and their co-conspirators successfully obtained unauthorized access to computers belonging to more than 25 other technology-related companies involved in, among other things, industrial factory automation, radar technology, oil exploration, information technology services, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and computer processor technology, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Finally, the APT10 Group compromised more than 40 computers in order to steal sensitive data belonging to the Navy, including the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salary information, personal phone numbers, and email addresses of more than 100,000 Navy personnel."
Most of the news coverage has focused on the theft of commercial and military technology, and how that will be used by China's state-run companies and military. These technologies will be useful to the Chinese as they build weapons systems and prepare to launch a war on the United States.
But for this article, I want to focus on the theft of personal data on Americans (and citizens of other Western countries).
This indictment says that a hack of navy computers stole names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salary information, personal phone numbers, and email addresses of more than 100,000 Navy personnel.
I recently described the Marriott hotel data breach by China's spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) which stole names, addresses, telephone numbers, credit card numbers, passport numbers, birthdates, passport photos, hotel arrival and departure dates, and information on where people traveled and with whom on roughly 500 million guests.
Other data breaches attributed to China's MSS include a 2017 Equifax hack that collected detailed credit information on 145 million people, a 2013 Target breach that exposed payment card and contact information for 60 million customers, and a 2015 hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that collected detailed personal information on more than 20 million government employees, family members and applicants. There were other breaches of health-care institutions, including Anthem and CareFirst, that provided health data.
China's military is creating a huge database of hundreds of millions of Americans. Such a database would be illegal in the United States, but it's being done by the Chinese. Dept of Justice and Dept of Justice and UK government and CNBC
China's government has complete control over databases and servers in China, and can delete messages at will on Chinese social media platforms. But social media platforms outside of China, such as Twitter and Facebook, should be out of reach of the Chinese, right? In fact, since Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China, and only a person with sophisticated software skills can get to them from China, the Chinese can simply ignore then, right?
Starting in early November, China's government launched a large campaign to remove from Twitter tweets that the government finds offensive. Many of these tweets were written years ago. Apparently this was done very rapidly, in order to maintain the element of surprise before Twitter users had a chance to arrange for all their tweets to be safely backed up.
If the owner of the Twitter account is in China, the government security thugs simply arrested him, brought him into a police station, and demanded that he access his Twitter account immediately and delete all his tweets. This apparently happened to quite a few people.
In many cases, however, the Chinese government was able to delete tweets from an account without the participation of the account owner, or knowing his password. The methods by which they did this are a sketchy in the reports, but I believe the following is how they accomplished it.
In most online systems, you can change or reset your password automatically, and then the system sends you an e-mail message where you have to click on something to confirm the change. Only the owner of that e-mail account should have access to it, so that should provide a secure means of confirmation.
However, if your e-mail account is in China, then the Chinese government can gain control of it, and then make the password change on the Twitter account, and confirm it on the e-mail account, without you even knowing.
However, many online services go further and also use the telephone. Instead of (or in addition to) sending you an e-mail message. the online service will ring your telephone, using a phone number for you that it has on file, and then the recorded voice says, "press 1 to confirm or 2 to cancel," or something like that.
In America, that should be secure means of confirmation, since only you can answer that phone number. But if it's a Chinese phone number then, as in the case of e-mail, the military can take control of your phone number and then use it to confirm a password change.
There's one more method that China's military could be using. If you have Chinese-manufactured phone from Huawei or ZTE, it's believed that these phones have back doors that the Chinese military can use to access data, or even to control the phone. This would provide another method for confirming a password change.
The point is that China's military is willing to use any means it can to steal information, and they're willing to try everything, no matter how obscure, until something works. That's why they already have a database containing personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans.
Last week, I received a letter from Bowker Corp. saying that their database had been hacked, and my data might have been compromised. There are companies being hacked successfully every day, sometimes by kids in basements, sometimes by the Russians, and sometimes by the Chinese.
The Chinese in particular are using every technique available to them to get as much data on ordinary Americans as they can, and merge it into a database that they can access at any time they want to track someone. Human Rights Watch and Radio Free Asia and Hong Kong Free Press and China Change
There has been a lot of news recently about China's "Social Credit Score" system that has been rumored for a long time and was officially announced in December. China is creating a large "big data" database of all of its 1.3 billion people, accumulating data from a variety of departments and agencies, combining the data in individual data agency databases into a large database, and using it to create a credit score for every Chinese citizen.
The system will reward "pro-social behaviors," such as volunteer work and blood donations. The system will penalize things like violating traffic laws or charging under-the-table fees. Agencies like tourism bodies, business regulators and transit authorities are supposed to work together. These agencies will provide data on private citizens to the central system, and will then use the credit score to reward or punish citizens. In fact, the system is already partially in place, in that people with unacceptable credit scores have already been blocked from booking more than 11 million flights and 4 million high-speed train trips. According to reports, other punishments include slower internet speeds, reducing access to good schools for individuals or their children, banning people from certain jobs, preventing booking at certain hotels and losing the right to own pets.
Many Americans and Westerners view this system with little more than curiosity, thinking that applies only to Chinese citizens in China, so it doesn't matter to them.
Starting with Thursday's indictments against Chinese hackers, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Chinese military is going a lot farther, and creating databases of hundreds of millions of people in other countries, whether American, or others. Of course, the data on foreign citizens is not readily available to the military in the way that domestic data is, but the Chinese are employing increasingly sophisticated methods to collect this data on foreign citizens, whether hacking Western commercial or government databases, or using its vast population studying and working overseas to collect data and information and pass it back to China. Bloomberg and Xinhua and Independent (London) and Life Site News
China has a massive population of 1.3 billion people and, as I've written several times in the past, China considers these people to be "magic weapons" to be used in other countries to infiltrate government, military and commercial organizations, and to influence these organizations as well as to collect information about them to be sent back to China's military.
Steve Bannon, formerly the chief strategist and advisor to president Donal Trump, has researched the extent that Chinese engineers are working on American weapons systems.
According to Bannon, many Chinese workers start out as students in American colleges, through Confucius Institutes, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through Beijing's international coercive propaganda agency, the United Front Work Department (UFWD), and funded by China's military. Every aspect of the Confucian Institutes is tightly controlled by the CCP. Teachers and teaching materials are all supplied by China. Taiwan and Tibet are portrayed as undisputed territories of China, with no alternate views permitted. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the one million Uighurs in re-education camps, the human rights abuses in China are all forbidden subjects.
Bannon says that Chinese students study in colleges to get access to the latest scientific research to be passed back to the CCP. These students become contractors to get access to the latest American weapons systems, once again for the CCP. According to Bannon, Defense Department reports on the infiltration of China into our research universities and our weapons labs shows extensive infiltration:
"I don't think people understand these reports. These reports are essentially declassified reports that showed that the 300,000 students are here on student visas and the 10,000 contractors that we have the weapons labs -- I think that up to 2/3 of them could be intelligence assets, intelligence officers or agents.This is political correctness and greed and avarice writ large. How did contractors-- and let's call them out-- Booz Allen and all these contractors-- how do these contractors and these big government programs get so many Chinese nationals working into our weapons labs? Our weapons labs are at the cutting edge of national security. How did it happen? ...
The political correctness of it all-- the Financial Times of London leaked the other day that my colleague, Stephen Miller, who's a terrific young man, actually had the plan in place to get all 300,000 Chinese students out of the country with a way to cut the visas off right away. Not that we we're going to execute on it, but it was even in thinking.
And obviously, it got leaked. In the Times, it goes around the State Department, et cetera. Look at all the appeasers. I am so glad. I take great pride that someone like Susan Thornton now owns a farm up in Maine because she was part of this kind of rational accommodationist, this softness in the Defense Department, in the State Department, in our intelligence services that basically went along with what China wanted to do and looked the other way."
A book titled "Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State," written by Clive Hamilton, documents the extent to which Chinese nationals have infiltrated Australia's government, and influences its policies. Several publishers withdrew offers to publish the book because of pressure from the Chinese Communist Party. As one Australian commenter pointed out, he could walk into any bookstore or library in Australia and find a dozen books that accused the CIA of controlling Australia's government and institutions, and no one would care. However, just one book about China caused a furious, threatening response from China. ( "26-Feb-18 World View -- New book documents extensive Chinese infiltration into Australia's organizations")
The book was finally published in February, thanks to pressure from alarmed members of the Australian parliament's national security committee. His research revealed evidence of CCP influence and infiltration in politics, culture, real estate, agriculture, universities, unions, and even primary schools. The book lists more than 40 former and sitting Australian politicians allegedly doing the work of China's totalitarian Government, if sometimes unwittingly.
Another book documented similar infiltration into New Zealand's government. ( "16-Feb-18 World View -- Concerns grow over China's covert infiltration into New Zealand's government")
There are some changes in the works. Some colleges have severed relations with Confucius Institutes, and the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in August, contains provisions barring any U.S. university from using Pentagon resources for any program involving Confucius Institutes. In many cases, this will force universities to choose between receiving funding the Pentagon and funding from China's military.
The information provided by China's "magic weapons," the Chinese nationals working and studing in the West, can provide a great deal more information to add to the data collected by hacks of hotel databases and other sources. ZeroHedge and RealVision
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Several countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan have banned or are considering banning routers and other equipment from Huawei Technologies Ltd., the world's largest global maker of network gear, because it's feared that these products contain "back doors" that allow them to be secretly accessed and controlled from China. The result is that Huawei is being shut out of supplying products for the latest 5G networks.
As I've said in the past, I've spent a part of my career as a senior software engineer developing chip-level operating system software for embedded systems, so I know exactly how any chip or any electronic device can be turned into a tool for espionage. Furthermore, I can tell you that not only is it doable, it's not even particularly difficult for someone with the right skills.
Now Ken Hu, the chairman of Huawei, is challenging America and other companies to provide evidence that Huawei products are in fact security risks. He complains that the accusations stem from “ideology and geopolitics.” He warned that excluding Huawei from fifth-generation networks in Australia and other markets would hurt consumers by raising prices and slowing innovation.
According to Hu:
"There has never been any evidence that our equipment poses a security threat. ...We have never accepted complaints from any government to damage the networks or business of any of our customers."
The problem is that Huawei could develop a chipset that works exactly as described in the public specifications. The chipset could be subjected to thousands of tests, and they would all work perfectly. But what Huawei could do is install a "backdoor" into the chipset. When the chip receives, say, a secret 1024-bit code, then it will execute commands sent to it by Chinese engineers. Thus, the Chinese are then in control of any devices with Huawei chips, and it cannot be detected until it's too late.
Now, as everyone knows, I'm a very helpful kind of guy, and I want to be helpful to Chairman Hu, and tell him how he can regain the confidence of the West that his chips and devices do not contain back doors. And I offer this advice in the spirit of peace, cooperation and friendship between America and China.
Hu has the burden of proof backwards. He's asking America to prove there's a security risk. Actually, the burden is on him to do the opposite -- prove affirmatively that there's no security risk. How does he do that? Here's how:
This should not be a problem, since China already sends Chinese workers to do the same things in American companies. So Ken Hu should be quite comfortable doing this.
This will permit Ken Hu to prove that Huawei's products pose no security risks, and he can then ask that the bans to their use can be lifted.
I hope that Ken Hu will implement these suggestions, which have been offered in the spirit of peace, cooperation and friendship between the American and Chinese people, and because I would like to help him get the Huawei ban lifted. AP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Dec-18 World View -- China hackers collect data on hundreds of millions of Americans and Westerners thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Dec-2018)
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Ebola outbreak in DR Congo worsens
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is scheduled to hold a presidential election on Sunday, and this time, Joseph Kabila isn't a candidate. That's because he's already been president for two 5-year terms, and the constitution he can't run again.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin had the same problem in 2008. After serving two consecutive terms as president, Putin was no longer constitutionally allowed to run for president again in 2008. So Putin arranged for Dmitry Medvedev to win the election for president in 2008, so that Medvedev would appoint Putin as prime minister. In 2012, Putin admitted that the whole thing was a scam in order to keep himself in power, and that Medvedev was just a puppet. He ran for president again in 2012 and won, and then appointed Medvedev as prime minister.
Joseph Kabila became president in 2001 after his father, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated. He ran for reelection in 2006, and did the same in 2011. When his mandate ran out in December, 2016, he refused to step down. Instead, he pulled a breathtaking stunt by doing everything possible to prevent new elections from taking place, and then claimed that he couldn't step down because there hadn't been any elections to select a president to replace him.
The country was close to civil war, but the Catholic Church intervened and brokered an agreement: Elections would be held in December of 2017 to choose Kabila's successor, and this time Kabila would really step down. However, the agreement was a farce: It was signed by members of Kabila's government, but it wasn't even signed by Kabila himself. Kabila pulled the same stunt in December, 2017, by doing nothing to prepare for an election, then said he couldn't step down, because there hadn't been any elections.
So this time there's apparently going to be an election, but Kabila has pulled a different stunt. He's arranged for his own puppet, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a former interior minister, to run for president. Shadary was responsible for a violent, deadly crackdown on anti-Kabila protests in 2017, and so he's under sanctions by the European Union.
Corruption in DRC is rampant. Kabila and his family own, either partially or wholly, more than 80 companies and businesses in the country and abroad. He and his children own more than 71,000 hectares (175,444 acres) of farmland. His family owns diamond mines, a part of the country's largest mobile phone network, companies that mine mineral deposits, gold and limestone, a luxury hotel, stakes in an airline, a share of the country's banks, and a fast-food franchise. With tentacles reaching into so many businesses, it's not surprising that Kabila is willing to use any method -- massacres, atrocities, jailings, torture -- to stay in power.
Few people doubt Kabila's plan -- that Shadary become president for a term, so that Kabila can run again after Shadary's term ends, acting as Kabila's puppet in the same way that Medvedev served as Putin's puppet.
Shadary may lose the election. He has no charisma, and he has no experience in politics. He's a nobody. However, he's expected to win anyway because there are two major candidates running against him, and over a dozen minor candidates, and they're expected to split the opposition vote, giving Shadary (and Kabila) the victory.
Kabila has banned election rallies by the opposition. Al Jazeera and Council on Foreign Relations and Guardian (London)
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Officials in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have now reported 549 total Ebola cases and 326 deaths. Eighty-two suspected cases are under investigation.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "The outbreak is intensifying in Butembo and Katwa, and new clusters are emerging elsewhere. Over the last 21 days (25 November to 16 December 2018), 120 confirmed and probable cases were reported from 14 health zones, the majority of which were reported from the major urban centres and towns in Katwa (27), Beni (27), Butembo (17), Komanda (16) and Mabalako (12)."
The situation in North Kivu province is the worst possible scenario. There is a major ethnic war in progress, and Ebola is now spreading in the densely populated city of Beni, which became the epicenter of the pandemic. However, the number of cases in Beni seems to have peaked, while the disease has spread to the south and Butembo may be the new epicenter.
The entire region is a war zone, and over one million people have been driven from their homes by armed rebel groups, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), fighting government troops allied with Joseph Kabila. The fighting is preventing doctors and experts from reaching infected people, in order to educate the population and do contact tracing. Without contact tracing, there is no way to stop or slow the spread of the disease.
The Ebola outbreak has been growing, but so far it's been confined to DRC. North Kivu is on the border with Uganda, and many people cross the border between Uganda and DRC each day. It's feared that Ebola will cross the border with the people, but that hasn't happened yet. According to one resident of the village of Mpondwe in Uganda, just across a bridge from the village of Lhubiriha: "I'm scared. Ebola hasn't reached our village but I hear it's coming." AFP and Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDRAP) and AP and CNN
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Dec-18 World View -- DR Congo's Kabila manipulates election to stay in power as Ebola spreads thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Dec-2018)
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The Jamal Khashoggi murder continues to affect the Yemen war
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Much to the surprise of many people, including me, both sides in the Yemen war agreed to a ceasefire to begin on Tuesday, December 18, and after one day it seems to be holding.
This follows months of heavy fighting in Yemen's seaport city of Hodeidah, in the proxy war between Yemen's official internationally-recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) versus the Houthi rebels, backed by Iran. The ceasefire agreement was reached last week at UN-brokered talks in Stockhold, Sweden.
The war began in 2015, when Houthi rebels from northwest Yemen took control of the capital city Sanaa, and seized the international airport. In response, warplanes from a mostly Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia bombed Houthi rebel targets.
The war escalated substantially in November of last year, when the Houthis launched a ballistic missile, undoubtedly supplied by Iran, that reached the King Khalid International Airport near Riyadh, about 800 km from the Yemen border. The Saudis reacted with its own escalation, a blockade of all of Yemen's land, sea and air ports.
The Houthis increased their missile attacks on Saudi cities, and then in June of this year, Saudi Arabia and UAE launched a 'catastrophic' assault on Port Hodeidah in Yemen. The objective was to cut off supplies of Iranian weapons to the Houthis, as well as a source of income.
The Hodeidah deep sea port on the Red Sea has become a crucial asset to the Houthi's war effort. NGOs use the port to import badly need humanitarian aid, including food, water and medicines, for 8 million Yeminis. The Houthis control these imports, and charge duties that fund their war efforts. Furthermore, the Houthis use the port to import Iranian weapons for the war effort.
The blockade of the seaport may have been effective in preventing money and supplies from reaching the Houthis, but it also created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today, since food, water and medicines could no longer reach Yemen civilians.
Tuesday's ceasefire is not a peace deal. It's a temporary ceasefire that both sides have agreed to so that humanitarian aid -- food, water and medicines -- could be imported into Yemen to alleviate the humanitarian disaster. There are international efforts to extend the ceasefire into a complete peace deal but, assuming that can't be done, the ceasefire may end as quickly as it started. PBS and Sky News and National Interest
Every we read about slaughter, torture, rapes, jailings and atrocities being perpetrated in many countries around the world, so it's still startling to see how the murder of one man on October 2, Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, is even still remembered today, over two months since it happened.
If Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) had simply hired a pait hit man to shoot him dead in the street outside the embassy, it would have been an ordinary murder of the kind that leaders like MBS, Erdogan and others regularly order. Instead, MBS apparently arranged for something out of a horror movie -- kill him, dismember him, dissolve the pieces in acid, ship what's left out of the country -- and if I didn't know that atrocities like that are common these days, I would think it was impossible. But it is possible, it happened, and that's why so much of the world has turned against MBS.
There are two reasons why both sides in the Yemen war agreed to the ceasefire deal.
First is the humanitarian situation. We're used to wars where the atrocities have become unbelievably bad, and nobody cares. But in the case of Yemen, it seems that people on both sides do care -- enough to permit a few days of ceasefire and opening of the Hodeidah port to relieve at least some of the suffering.
Also, I can't prove this, but reading and listening to news reports has given me the impression that the two sides fighting the Yemen war do not have the same level of vitriolic hatred for one another as, say, the two sides in the Syrian war. I read and hear lots of news reports about battles and wars in lots of countries, and there's no question that this war has been extremely bloody, but there seems to be something lacking in the level of vitriolic hatred. As I said, this is a feeling, and I can't prove it.
The second reason is that the Khashoggi murder has motivated the Senate in Washington to pass a resolution directing president Trump to end American support for the Saudis in Yemen. The measure is purely symbolic, since it would be vetoed, but the fact that the Senate passed it has put pressure on MBS to agree to a ceasefire.
The US has a long-standing relationship with Saudi Arabia, dating back to the 1930s, where the US is committed to provide security while the Saudis are committed to providing oil. The relationship has lasted through many crises and, in the end, no one in Washington wants this to be the crisis that ends it. AP and Washington Post and Axios
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Dec-18 World View -- Ceasefire in Hodeidah seaport in Yemen war holds on the first day thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Dec-2018)
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India's 'Operation all-out' to continue as more
young Kashmiris become militants
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Indian-governed Kashmir was locked down with curfew-like restrictions for a third day on Monday, after seven civilians were killed during a shootout between militants and Indian security forces on Saturday. Armed police and paramilitary soldiers in riot gear fanned out across the region in anticipation of further anti-India protests and clashes. Shops and businesses closed in other areas with no security restrictions. Authorities stopped train services and cut cellphone internet in Srinagar and other restive towns, and reduced connection speeds in other parts of the Kashmir Valley, in order to prevent anti-India demonstrations from being organized.
Seven civilians were killed and at least 36 injured in clashes that erupted after three militants were shot dead in a gunfight in the village of Pulwama in Indian-governed Kashmir during the early hours on Saturday. Two soldiers were critically injured in the encounter, and one died.
The three slain militants were identified as being associated with Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), a home-grown indigenous militant separatist group in Kashmir (as opposed to Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based terrorist group). One of the militants was Ahmad Thokar, who had deserted from the Indian army to join HM. These defections have been increasingly common recently. Tribune India and AP and Pakistan Today
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Kashmir is replaying previous generations of violence according to a fairly standard template. India's previous two generational crisis wars were India's 1857 Rebellion, which pitted Hindu nationalists against British colonists, and then the 1947 Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century, pitting Hindus versus Muslims, following the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan.
Now, as the survivors of the 1947 Partition War have almost all died off, leaving behind younger generations with no fear of repeating past disasters, Kashmir is repeating the violence of 1857 and 1947. Generational Dynamics predicts that Kashmir is returning to full-scale war, re-fighting the extremely bloody partition war of 1947.
We're now seeing the next step in this standard template, as generations of young Muslims in Kashmir become increasingly self-radicalized, and replace the Pakistani-supplied terrorists in Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) with indigenous Kashmiris joining Hizbul Mujahideen (HM).
A major change occurred after the July 8 2016 death of HM leader Burhan Wani in a gunfight with the Indian army. This triggered a continuing series of demonstrations and riots. Since then, thousands of Kashmiris have been blinded in one or both eyes by pellet guns used by Indian security forces, and thousands of youths have been arrested.
In this generational Crisis era, the clashes between young Kashmiris and Indian security forces is providing the motivation for young people to simply disappear and join HM. Parents, according to news reports, are forced to search jihadist social media sites to search for pictures of their sons who have disappeared.
Burhan Wani himself had joined HM after his brother Khalid was beaten up by Indian security forces. After he was killed, he was the inspiration for many others to join HM.
Indian politicians and security forces, who have no understanding of generational theory, have no idea what's going on, and are looking desperately for a way to return to the "normalcy" of twenty years ago. This is impossible, since 20 years ago there were still survivors of the 1947 Partition War who were willing to accept any compromise to prevent anything so horrible from happening again. But those survivors are gone, and the younger generations simply want revenge.
This led India's army in June 2017 to launch "Operation All-Out." Under this plan, the army identified 258 specific militants the would be specifically targeted and captured, thus delivering "a lethal blow to terrorism ... with a long-term plan for a listing peace."
When Operation All-Out was announced last year, the 258 militants were almost all in Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Since then, hundreds of additional militants have been identified, and this time they're indigenous youths joining Hizbul Mujahideen (HM).
However, the Kashmiris have been adapting to Operation All-Out. When Indian security forces are spotted traveling to the home of a suspected militant, the people pour out of their homes and block them.
That's what happened on Saturday. The security forces were targeting three HM militants, when local youths thronged the forces and began hurling stones. This resulted in the live fire that killed not only the militants but at least seven civilians.
Avinash Rai Khanna, a senior Indian politician, says that Operation All-Out will continue "until the last terrorist is eliminated." He blamed the deaths of the civilians on Saturday on the local youths who threw stones. According to Khanna:
"Civilian killings are unfortunate, but when people interfere in operations and try to divert the attention of the forces, mishaps are bound to happen. We can only appeal to people to let the forces do their job in eliminating terrorists and not indulge in activities like stone-throwing or cause obstruction in operations.We had come to power in the state with an agenda of peace and development, but had to back out when things started going haywire. ... We want [Kashmir] terrorism-free. Operation All-out will reach its logical end."
Khanna assumes that the "normalcy" of twenty years ago can return, but Generational Dynamics predicts that the militancy will continue to worsen until the 1947 Partition War in Kashmir is refought. Tribune India and The Kashmir Walla and Hindustan Times and Dawn (Pakistan)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Dec-18 World View -- Kashmir locked down after Indian security forces kill seven civilians thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Dec-2018)
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Japan-Korea relations worsen over 'comfort women' issue
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
On Monday, the Trump administration announced new sanctions against three senior North Korean officials for for human rights abuses and censorship in the country. The new sanctions were in honor of the Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old American college student who died after being released from North Korean custody in June 2017.
According to Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin:
"Treasury is sanctioning senior North Korean officials who direct departments that perpetrate the regime’s brutal state-sponsored censorship activities, human rights violations and abuses, and other abuses in order to suppress and control the population. These sanctions demonstrate the United States’ ongoing support for freedom of expression, and opposition to endemic censorship and human rights abuses. The United States has consistently condemned the North Korean regime for its flagrant and egregious abuses of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and this Administration will continue to take action against human rights abusers around the globe."
The sanctions are for human rights abuses by North Korean organizations that "conduct warrantless searches for unapproved foreign media or content, inspect and confiscate computer content, including external storage devices, and even kidnap defectors or foreign citizens who support human rights in North Korea." ABC News and US Treasury
North Korea on Sunday harshly condemned the U.S. administration for stepping up sanctions and pressure. and warned of a return to “exchanges of fire” and that the denuclearization process could be blocked forever.
According to the North Korean statement, published by the North Korean news service KCNA:
"Now, the international society is unanimous in welcoming the proactive denuclearization steps taken by the DPRK [North Korea] and urging the U.S. to respond to these steps in a corresponding manner. And president Trump avails himself of every possible occasion to state his willingness to improve DPRK-U.S. relations.Far from the statements of the president, the State Department is instead bent on bringing the DPRK-U.S. relations back to the status of last year which was marked by exchanges of fire. I cannot help but throw doubt on the ulterior motive of the State Department.
If they are a sort of diplomats of "only superpower", they should at least realize from the past record of the DPRK-U.S. relations that sanctions and pressure would not work against the DPRK.
The United States will not be unaware of the self-evident fact that its threat, blackmail and pressure against the other side cannot be a solution under the relations of pent-up confrontation, mistrust and hostility between the DPRK and the U.S. and deterioration of the situation that might be incurred by these hostile actions would not be beneficial for peace and security of the Korean peninsula and beyond.
Since we know too well that the deep-rooted hostility between the DPRK and the U.S. cannot be redressed overnight, we have been proposing that the DPRK-U.S. relations be improved on a step-by-step approach of resolving what is feasible one by one, by giving priority to confidence building.
If the high-ranking politicians within the U.S. administration including the State Department had calculated that they could drive us into giving up nuclear weapons by way of increasing the anti-DPRK sanctions and pressure and human rights racket to an unprecedented level, which has nothing to do with confidence building, it will count as greatest miscalculation, and it will block the path to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula forever - a result desired by no one.
The U.S. should realize before it is too late that "maximum pressure" would not work against us and take a sincere approach to implementing the Singapore DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement."
North Korea gave this statement a great deal of publicity, and so they wanted it to be noticed. And indeed, the international networks all carried it prominently.
An interesting thing about the statement is that it blames the State Dept., and praises president Trump. This is part of the game and the "charm offensive" that's been going on. This way, the North Koreans can threaten the United States, but encourage Trump to make more concessions.
The statement refers to "the proactive denuclearization steps taken by the DPRK." Actually, there have been no such steps that aren't easily reversible. The one big "step" was blowing up the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, but recent satellite imagery indicates that the site is still usable, and that several dozen personnel are still working there.
The one major step that the US has requested was a list of all of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles development sites, but North Korea has refused to provide this list.
The US has also taken a reversible "proactive step" -- namely canceling all joint military drills with the South Koreans. However, since no progress was being made down the denuclearization path, the US and South Korea resumed some military drills last month.
As I've been saying since the start of the year, when North Korea's "charm offensive" began, the North Koreans have absolutely no intention of denuclearizing. President Trump has been saying that he's in no hurry to conclude a deal, knowing that the sanctions remain on North Korea, and hoping that the sanctions might pressure them to agree to denuclearization. However, as the KCNA statement says, "The U.S. should realize before it is too late that "maximum pressure" would not work against us."
It's worth pointing out that North Korea has been evading sanctions by transferring oil at sea, despite active surveillance and enforcement by an eight-nation coalition, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, deploying warships and aircraft to better spot sanctions violations.
As before, it's pretty clear to everyone (except the news media and the general public) that the charm offensive was all a show -- that North Korea would never denuclearize, and that Trump would never agree to reduce the sanctions. But all sides kept it up because it solve their immediate political problems by "kicking the can down the road" -- that is, masking and hiding problems and postponing them until later.
In the meantime, North Korea now has completed a year more nuclear and missile development than it had as of a year ago, with the only restriction that they haven't been able to publicly test their latest weapons. It remains to be seen how long this can go on. Reuters and KCNA and Chosun Ilbo (Seoul) and NBC News
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The question of Korean "comfort women" used by Japanese soldiers during World War II is reaching a boiling point again.
On October 30, South Korea's supreme court awarded compensation to four Korean citizens forced to work for the Japanese during World War II. The Japanese claim that all such awards were already paid in a settlement concluded in a 1965 treaty.
This has opened up the "comfort women" issue again. In 2015, Japan and Korea concluded a bilateral agreement which was intended at the time as the “final and irreversible” resolution of the comfort women issue. However, South Korea is now saying that demands from the victims is causing the agreement to "wither."
I have witnessed an extremely vitriolic disagreement between two people who, fortunately, were disagreeing online and were not in the same room. The disagreement stems from a 1944 US Army report, based on interrogation of "20 Korean Comfort Girls," which indicates that the girls volunteered for these roles, and they were well-treated by the Japanese soldiers. This issue is certain to be raised again. Japan Today and Diplomat and US Army report (1-Oct-1944)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Dec-18 World View -- North Korea threatens US with 'exchanges of fire' over new human rights sanctions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Dec-2018)
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Cambodia is becoming increasingly Chinese and military
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Cambodia's prime minister Hun Sen has been forced repeatedly to deny that China was building a military naval base in Koh Kong province on the Gulf of Thailand. A naval base in that location would give China commanding control of the southern part of the South China Sea, which it currently is occupying in violation of international law.
China has long been Cambodia's top provider of military equipment. For years, there has been a Chinese-built $3.8 billion land project in Koh Kong province in Cambodia, along the Gulf of Thailand. The project was begun a decade ago, operating under a 99-year lease granted to China. The land project contains a deep-water port which is said to be deep enough to potentially accommodate not just container ships, but Chinese navy frigates and destroyers as well.
A report last month in Asia Times said that the naval base was already under construction, forcing Hun Sen to make a denial:
"I also received a letter from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence raising concerns of the possible presence of a Chinese naval base in Cambodia in the future.“I want to make clear to our compatriots and foreign friends that Cambodia will not violate its own constitution. Cambodia’s Constitution prohibits the presence of foreign armies or military bases inside the country ... Cambodia will not permit any foreign military base for a navy, army or air force.
That Hun Sen is unwilling to violate Cambodia's constitution is laughable. Earlier this year, his party won a national parliamentary election, taking all 125 parliamentary seats that were up for election. He accomplished that amazing feat by jailing or assassinating political opponents, taking control of all of the media, closed all radio stations critical of the government, and ordered the complete dissolution of the opposition political party -- all of that, presumably, in violation of the constitution.
The size of land granted to China under the 99 year lease is reported to be another violation of the constitution. The grant is 45,000 hectares, while Cambodial law limits such concessions to 10,000 hectares.
So, just like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Bashar al-Assad and other leaders, we can assume that anything that Hun Sen says is a complete lie, except by accident. At any rate his assurances to Mike Pence that China is not building a naval base are completely meaningless. Asia Times and Radio Free Asia and Khmer Times
Sihanoukville, which is in Preah Sihanouk province on the southern border of Koh Kong province, used to be a premier seaside resort and tourist attraction, but has now turned into a Chinese enclave. It's a visible example of the China's rising domination of Cambodia's economy. Hun Sen's critics claim that Hun Sen has enabled China's de facto "colonization" of Cambodia.
Whether or not the Koh Kong deep water seaport will be a Chinese military base, there's little doubt of China's increasing military presence in Cambodia. Cambodia is a key country within Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the seaport has taken on increasing significance. China has pledged $100 million in military grants for training and equipment for the Cambodian military. Sihanoukville has given itself over entirely to Chinese investment, with a $1.1 billion investment from China in just the past year. The key complaint for many in Sihanoukville is that even though Chinese investment brings wealth, it is mainly kept within their own community.
Cambodia appears to be another victim of China's "debt trap diplomacy." About half of Cambodia's $6 in foreign debt is owed to China, and as usual, it's China that has benefited from the infrastructure projects, leaving Cambodia with little more than a pile of debt which it will never be able to pay back.
As happened with Sri Lanka's Hambantota seaport, this could give China complete control over Cambodia's Koh Kong port, and China could use it as a military naval base whether doing so violates Cambodia's constitution or not. Asia Times and Reuters (19-Jun) and Asia Times and Diplomat
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Dec-18 World View -- Cambodia denies major China-funded seaport project is a military base thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Dec-2018)
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Military tensions between Ukraine and Russia are increasing
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the leader of the the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), has sent a letter to the pope and a number of other world leaders urging them to protect bishops and clergy of the ROC in Ukraine, who are under pressure to change allegiance to the Kiev Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the biggest Orthodox Christian Church in Ukraine, and is subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the Church was also split, with a separate Kiev Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
In October, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the "first among equals" leader of all Orthodox Christian churches and of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians, announced that he was reversing a 330 year old policy, and would make the Kiev Patriarchate a separate Church, independent of the Moscow Patriarchate.
This infuriated the Russians, who promised revenge. This has led to pressure in Ukraine for clergy and bishops in Ukraine belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate to switch allegiance to the Kiev Patriarchate.
According to Kirill:
"Recently, the intervention of the leaders of the secular Ukrainian state in church affairs has acquired the character of gross pressure on the episcopate and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which allows us to speak about the beginning of full-scale persecutions."
Kirill also accused Ukraine's government of a kind of identity theft:
"The state-run media continues a massive company to discredit the Ukrainian Church. In violation of the right to privacy and the prohibition of the use of personal data, personal information about the bishops and clergymen of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, available to the state, is published. In particular, the personal data of a significant part of the episcopate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were published on the Peacemaker website along with comments that incited religious hatred,[The Peacemaker website exists with the direct support of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine], and has previously become notorious for publishing information about Ukrainian, American and European journalists, after which they were threatened, beaten and even deprived of life."
Kirill's plea was sent to numerous world leaders, including Pope Francis, the head of the Anglican Community to the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the Secretary General of the World Council of Churches O. Fuxse Tveit, and the UN Secretary General A. Guterres, Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe T. Gremymhramhym, the President of France E. Macron and the German Chancellor A. Merkel as heads of states of the Normandy Four.
Kirill appealed to religious and state leaders, leaders of intergovernmental organizations to make every effort to protect the bishops, clergy and believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from discrimination and pressure from the Ukrainian authorities, to defend the freedom of conscience and religion enshrined in international law. Moscow Times and Russian Orthodox Church (Trans) and AP and Moscow Times
The dispute over the Orthodox Church in Ukraine comes four years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and at a time when military tensions are rising again.
The problem with Kirill's plea is that Kirill is following the policies of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, and Putin lies about everything. These include lying about Russian soldiers in Ukraine, lying after Russians shot down a passenger plane with a Buk missile, lying about not invading Crimea, lying about whether Russia is going to annex Crimea, and then annexing Crimea. There are lots more lies related to Bashar al-Assad's use of Sarin gas and chlorine gas.
So we have to assume that Kirill is just as much a liar as Putin is. Maybe bishops and clergy are being targeted with "full-scale persecutions," and maybe they aren't -- we can't conclude anything from anything that Kirill says.
On the other hand, Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, is claiming that Russians in east Ukraine are organizing church marches in numerous cities across Ukraine on Sunday, in order to disrupt a meeting of the unification council of Ukrainian Orthodox Church. We'll see if these church marches actually take place tomorrow (Sunday). Unfortunately, no one can exclude the possibility that Moscow may launch more serious military actions this weekend with the same purpose.
What is apparent is that military tensions are purposely increasing on both sides. The original Ukraine war that started four years ago has not been in the news much, but it's still continuing at a low level, with both Russians and Ukrainians being killed every week.
On November 25, Russia conducted an act of war by firing on Ukrainian navy ships in the Black Sea, boarding and seizing the ships, and blockading Ukraine's ports at the Kerch Strait. Russia abducted the crew of 24, and apparently tortured some of them in order to create a video and forcing them to confess to crimes they didn't commit.
Russia continues to hold and bury the 24 Ukrainian sailors, possibly in retaliation for the Orthodox Church issue, just as the Chinese have abducted and buried two Canadian journalists, in apparent retaliation for the arrest in Canada of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, after an multi-year investigation revealed massive bank fraud by Huawei in order to violate US sanctions against Iran.
On November 26, in retaliation for the Kerch Strait seizure, Ukraine's parliament voted to implement Martial Law in ten regions of Ukraine for 30 days, in preparation for a possible new invasion by Russia.
Then, on November 30, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine prohibited Russian men aged 16-60 from entering Ukraine. The reason given was to prevent Russia from sending in troops to form private armies, but the restriction played havoc with men who cross the border every day for work.
On December 1, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (UAF) announced short-term, 15-day training courses for reservists and members of the territorial defense forces. Window on Eurasia and Reuters and Jamestown and RFE/RL (Trans)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Dec-18 World View -- Russian Orthodox Church asks world leaders to protect it from Ukrainian persecution thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Dec-2018)
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The unraveling of Cuba's Socialist economy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In the face of popular demand from artists and entrepreneurs, the government of Cuba has backed down on plans to implement harsh new restrictions on the private sector.
In July, Cuba announced the harsh controls on private businesses, to take effect on December 7, claiming that the opening up of some free markets has fueled wealth inequality, tax evasion and the black market.
Since 2010, when it became legal to run certain small businesses, life has been transformed for many people. Around 13% of Cuba's overall workforce is now self-employed, in areas like tourism and transport.
However, the rapid growth of small businesses was apparently threatening to Cuba, and in 2017, it began freezing issuing licenses for some popular business categories.
It appears that Cuba's government is struggling to avoid a total economic disaster as in Socialist Venezuela, at the same time pretending to maintain a Socialist façade in its economy. Thus the government wants people to earn money self-employed in private businesses, but the government wants to forbid a person from making money in two private businesses, since then me might make too much money. Therefore, the government announced in July that it would be illegal for a person to own more than one business license.
So for example, a person renting out a room in his home while driving a private taxi during the day would be making too much money, and would be forced, under the new regulations, to give up one source of income or the other.
So it was a shock that, after years of unyielding authoritarian government under Fidel and Raúl Castro, the new president Miguel Diaz-Canel suddenly reversed some of the worst rules on December 6, just a day before they were to take effect.
The biggest reversal is that Cubans will be permitted to work in two or more self-employment activities simultaneously.
Another abolished rule had set a limit of 50 seats for private bars, restaurants and cafeterias. A law requiring many businesses to maintain bank accounts with a minimum deposit of three months taxes, a requirement that would have put many people out of business, was softened to require only two months taxes.
Artists are applauding the delay in implementing another new law. The law, announced in July, requires prior government approval for artists, musicians, writers and performers who want to present their work in any spaces open to the public, including private homes and businesses. Implementation of the law will be delayed following protests and social media campaigns by many Cuban artists that it was another layer of censorship and control over artistic expression. Miami Herald and Reuters and AP and Miami Herald
There's a certain amusing irony that Xinhua, the official news service the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in a country that is still officially Socialist (but "with Chinese characteristics"), congratulated Cuba on rolling back some of the restrictions on the private sector: "Cuba's government has taken new regulations that will spur the island's fledgling private sector to ensure it continues to expand and create jobs, local media said on Thursday."
Indeed Cuba is in the process of abandoning its Socialist economy and turning to capitalistic free markets, just as China did decades ago, and just as one Socialist country after another had to do in the last 60 years, in order to avoid catastrophic economic meltdowns. Two Socialist countries -- Venezuela and North Korea -- did NOT make that transition, and the disastrous self-destructive results are there for all to see.
From the point of view of Generation Dynamics, Cuba is in the midst of a generational Unraveling era, when the harsh rules set up after the last generational crisis war, in this case the 1960 Cuban Revolution, unravel because younger generations no longer are willing to tolerate them. America's last generational Unraveling era occurred in the 1990s, when the country dismantled the post-Depression financial regulations and opened its foreign policy to Communist countries like China and Russia.
During the last ten years, Cuba's entire Socialist economy has been unraveling, step by step.
In 2010, when Cuba's economy was in shambles, and president Raúl Castro announced the end of the Socialist economy. The government would lay off 500,000 government workers (Socialist bureaucrats) and privatize many businesses.
In particular, Marx's Socialist Principle Of Distribution ("From each according to abilities, to each according to needs") was abandoned at the time, with the announcement: We must reinvigorate the socialist principle of distribution, to pay to each according to the quantity and quality of work provided."
Within two years of the 2010 announcement, the size of the state payroll had been reduced by 20%, and more than 200,000 people had moved into private enterprise. For the first time, Havana was populated with street stalls selling everything from pirate DVDs to kitchen implements. There were still many restrictions on private businesses, but these restrictions are being removed, one by one.
Unfortunately, ending a Socialist economy does not mean ending the dictatorship. Like Nazi Germany and China, a dictatorship with free markets is Fascist. Whether Cuba's dictatorship will also unravel and turn into a democratic government remains to be seen. Xinhua and Reuters
Another sign that Cuba's hardline control over business is unraveling is the availability of internet access to mobile phones across the country. Previously, internet access was limited to state-run internet cafes and public wi-fi hot spots.
Cuba will offer packages of data data ranging from 600 MB for 7 convertible Cuban pesos ($7) to 4 GB for 30 Cuban pesos ($30). The average monthly salary for a Cuban is $30 per month, meaning that few Cubans will be able to afford the service, except for Cubans in the wealthy élite. CNBC and Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Dec-18 World View -- Cuba eases economic restrictions, continuing on path from Socialism to free markets thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(14-Dec-2018)
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai evades questions about helping China's military
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As we reported yesterday, China arrested a Canadian journalist and former diplomat Michael Korvig with no charges or justification. ( "12-Dec-18 World View -- China jails Canadian journalist Michael Kovrig in apparent retaliation for Canada arrest of Meng Wanzhou")
On Wednesday, Canada said that a second Canadian, Michael Spavor, has been arrested. He was initially questioned by Chinese police, and then contacted the Canadian government. After that, he disappeared.
The international hostility to China has been growing palpably in the last year. It isn't just the Trump administration that has been critical of China's theft of intellectual property and violation of international trade rules. According to analysts I've heard, politicians in Canada and Europe and Japan are increasingly "fed up" with trying to deal with China.
The Chinese are also growing angrier at the West, but it goes beyond that.
At the same time, China increasingly gives the impression of a country in societal meltdown. The crackdown on Christianity has become more vitriolic, and the policy of sending a million Uighurs to "re-education camps" where they can be beaten, tortured, raped or killed for not reciting the party line is one of the most insane policies in the history of mankind. The number of "mass incidents" in China was increasing exponentially for years, until China stopped reporting the official statistics, and jailed reporters who did so unofficially. It's believed that an economic recession in China could trigger widespread protests or a civil war, as happened with Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49) or the Taiping Rebellion (1852-64).
Arresting another Canadian for the second day in a row is extremely reckless, because it's going to cause panic among all Western diplomats and executives in China. Even worse, it suggests that China's government no longer cares how bad it looks, and is losing control of its foreign policy.
As long-time readers know, Generational Dynamics has been predicting for years that China and the West are headed for World War III in this generational Crisis era. Things appear to moving quickly now, as relations deteriorate. China Digital Times and Bloomberg and Guardian (London)
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US government investigators blame hackers working for China's spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), for a cyberattack on the Marriott Hotel chain that collected personal details of roughly 500 million guests between 2014 and 2018.
The stolen data contains names, addresses, telephone numbers, credit card numbers, passport numbers, birthdates, passport photos, hotel arrival and departure dates, and information on where people traveled and with whom.
Other data breaches attributed to China's MSS include a 2017 Equifax hack that collected detailed credit information on 145 million people, a 2013 Target breach that exposed payment card and contact information for 60 million customers, and a 2015 hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that collected detailed personal information on more than 20 million government employees, family members and applicants. There were other breaches of health-care institutions, including Anthem and CareFirst, that provided health data.
It's believed that China's MSS has created a large database of hundreds of millions of Americans, merging data from all these sources. This data can be used for spying, extortion, identity theft, and so forth.
Taking this a step further, the Chinese company Huawei Technologies is the second largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, behind Samsung. It's believed that Huawei phones and devices can be accessed remotely by China's military, as I described in detail last week, with the result that numerous Western companies are banning Huawei from supplying equipment for their networks.
Huawei phones, like all smartphones, keep track of locations and calling data for its users. This data could be accessed from China and merged with the master data base described above to accumulate detailed personal information and activities of tens of millions of Americans.
China is already doing this for its citizens in China. China's military collects massive amounts of data on online activities and uses street cameras and facial recognition algorithms to track the locations of millions of Chinese citizens in real time. This is particularly true in Xinjiang province, where Uighurs are constantly monitored for suspicious activity, and a million Uighurs have been sent to "re-education camps." Washington Post and AP (3-Dec) and New York Times
In a related matter, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. He was questioned about the massive amount of data that Google collects about Americans, though not nearly as much as the Chinese are collecting on the Chinese -- or on Americans.
Pichai completely evaded answering questions about Project Dragonfly, the massive project to use search engine technology in China to collect data about search requests and add it to China's huge database of tens of millions of its citizens, where it could be used, for example, to identify "suspicious" activity. Pichai said that the project was under active development, but that there were "no plans" to deploy it in China at this time.
However, Pichai was not asked about the state of the art Artificial Intelligence development center that Google is opening in Shanghai, to supply advanced AI technology to China's government and military, while Google refuses to work with the American military for even defensive purposes. Google apparently plans to help out the Chinese when China and the US are at war, just as IBM helped out the Nazis at the beginning of World War II. The Street
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Dec-18 World View -- China recklessly arrests a second Canadian without justification thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Dec-2018)
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Canada releases Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on bail
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Michael Kovrig, a Canadian journalist and analyst working as a China expert for the International Crisis Group, has suddenly disappeared while in China. Kovrig is also a former Canadian diplomat.
It's assumed the Kovrig was arrested by China's security forces. According to one analyst, the Chinese will hold someone for 37 days before he's given access to a lawyer.
Many people additionally believe that Kovrig was arrested, without charges or justification, in retaliation for Canada's arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested after a multi-year investigation alleging that Meng conducted massive counts of bank fraud in order to violate US sanctions against Iran.
The fact that Meng was charged with multiple real crimes, while Kovrig was arrested without any justification is just one of the differences between the two cases.
A second difference is the Meng was immediately given access to her family and a lawyer, and was told what the charges were. Kovrig has completely disappeared, and is given access to no one.
Third, Meng was tried in a real court, where her lawyer could defend her. If Kovrig's case is typical, he'll be thrown into jail, tortured, and forced to confess to a crime he knows nothing about.
China is just being consistent as a criminal nation. Meng is being tried in a fair court procedure. China's abduction of Kovrig is criminal. China's activities in the South China Sea are criminal. China's theft of other countries' intellectual property is criminal. China's repeated violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules is criminal. China's repeated destruction of Christian churches is criminal. China's incredible actions sending a million Uighurs to "re-education camps" where they can be beaten, tortured, raped or killed for not reciting the party line is not only criminal, it's one of the stupidest and most insane policies in the history of mankind. And China is being led by president Xi Jinping who is terrified by Winnie the Pooh because they look the same. Can you imagine Donald Trump or any other world leading being terrified by a cartoon like Winnie the Pooh?
Almost every day something new happens that makes China appear to be a country falling apart at the seams. This is not good, as it will lead to a great deal of bloodshed and a world war. Toronto Star and South China Morning Post and Canadian Broadcasting
Michael Kovrig's arrest without charges or justification, apparently in retaliation for Canada's arrest of Meng, has raised alarm that any Westerner in China is now subject to arbitrary arrest without charges or justification.
There are reports that the US State Department is considering toughening its travel warning for people considering travel to China. However, the State Dept's existing travel warning is already pretty tough, and shows that Kovrig's unjustified rest is pretty common in China:
"Chinese authorities have the broad ability to prohibit travelers from leaving China (also known as ‘exit bans’); exit bans have been imposed to compel U.S. citizens to resolve business disputes, force settlement of court orders, or facilitate government investigations. Individuals not involved in legal proceedings or suspected of wrongdoing have also be subjected to lengthy exit bans in order to compel their family members or colleagues to cooperate with Chinese courts or investigators.U.S. citizens visiting or residing in China have been arbitrarily interrogated or detained for reasons related to “state security.” Security personnel have detained and/or deported U.S. citizens for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government."
It's pretty clear from this State Dept. warning that things like arresting and burying Michael Kovrig are a fairly common occurrence in China. US State Dept.
Michael Kovrig is a fluent Mandarin speaker and an analyst for the International Crisis Group. I was curious to see what he's written, and I found his most recent article on the ICG web site, "China Expands Its Peace and Security Footprint in Africa." It's a lengthy article, and here are some excerpts:
"[O]fficials from 53 African countries and the African Union (AU) [came] to Beijing for meetings that culminated in a resolution to continue strengthening ties and a renewed pledge of billions of dollars in Chinese loans, grants and investments. Over the past decade China’s role in peace and security has also grown rapidly through arms sales, military cooperation and peacekeeping deployments in Africa. ...A more controversial sign of China’s military footprint is the 36-hectare Djibouti facility that the PLA established in 2017 with a ten-year lease at $20 million annually. The PLA describes it as a support base for naval anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, peacekeeping in South Sudan and humanitarian and other cooperation in the Horn of Africa, but has also used it to conduct live-fire military exercises. ...
Less noticeable to outsiders but broader in impact is China’s direct defence and security cooperation with African counterparts. This takes place through a growing number of joint exercises, naval patrols and exchanges. In the first half of 2018 alone, the PLA Navy’s 27th and 28th anti-piracy escort task forces reportedly visited ports in Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana and Nigeria, while PLA units conducted drills in the same countries, and its medical teams did work in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Zambia. Mere months after Burkina Faso’s May decision to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, the PLA is already working to develop military ties that will likely emphasize counter-terrorism cooperation. ...
The political and defence relationships fostered by these programs grease the wheels for weapons sales. Data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that China has become the top supplier of arms to sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 27 per cent of the region’s imports over the four year period from 2013-2017, an increase of 55 per cent over 2008-2012. Some 22 countries in the region have procured major arms from Chinese suppliers in recent years, key among them Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia. In June, China’s State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence reported that Beijing now has defence industry, science and technology ties with 45 African countries. ...
China’s own expanding economic interests are a further driver. Africa’s largest trading partner since 2009, China increasingly counts on the continent for natural resources and markets to maintain its own growth and social stability. ...
Moreover, roughly a million Chinese are estimated to live and work in Africa, and China’s leaders have a domestic political imperative to ensure their safety. Beijing has already contended with evacuations from Libya, South Sudan and Yemen, and incidents of violence and property damage elsewhere. The 2017 Chinese blockbuster action movie Wolf Warrior II brought home a Rambo-esque fantasy version of these concerns. Set in a nameless African country that descends into chaos, it closes with the hubristic message that China’s government will protect its citizens wherever they go."
China's politicians are people that become infuriated by Winnie the Pooh, so it's not surprising that this criminal nation would be infuriated by this kind of analysis. It's quite possible that they've been planning to arrest and bury Michael Kovrig for some time, and the arrest of Meng Wanzhou provided the perfect opportunity. International Crisis Group (24-Oct)
There was a burst of applause on Tuesday afternoon in the Vancouver Supreme Court courtroom when the court granted bail to Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
Meng is not scheduled to appear in court again until February 6, at which time a hearing will be held to determine whether Meng should be extradited to the United States for a setting up a complex international financial system, defrauding banks in several countries, in order to violate US sanctions laws with regard to Iran.
The judge said that Meng's husband Liu Xiaozong would pledge a total of $15 million — including the value of two Vancouver homes and $7 million in cash — and live with her to ensure she obeys court conditions. Meng must also report to a bail supervisor, maintain good behavior, live at a house owned by her husband, and stay in that house between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. She must also surrender her passports, wear an electronic monitoring bracelet on her ankle and live under surveillance 24/7.
However, these people are billionaires, and this money means nothing to them. I don't believe anyone will be too surprised if Meng doesn't show up at the February 6 court hearing, and investigation shows that she eluded the police by wearing a turban, a long fake beard, and a Sikh chola, carrying a pair of swords.
Apparently what convinced the judge is that four other friends were willing to guarantee that she would not skip bail. He told the courtroom he believed "the risk of her non-attendance in court can be reduced to an acceptable level" under the bail conditions.
There is an unconfirmed suspicion that the arrest of Michael Kovrig in the criminal nation China was a factor, since not granting bail to Meng could mean torture and additional detention for Kovrig. Even with bail, the suspicion is that the fate of Kovrig is directly dependent on the fate of Meng in the Vancouver courtroom. Toronto Star and Canadian Broadcasting
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Dec-18 World View -- China jails Canadian journalist Michael Kovrig in apparent retaliation for Canada arrest of Meng Wanzhou thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Dec-2018)
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Uganda and South Sudan vaccinate health workers against Ebola
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is now the second-largest in history. The current outbreak, that was declared on August 1, has 471 identified cases, of which 423 are confirmed, including 225 confirmed deaths. However, that's nowhere near the size of the 2014-2016 outbreak that killed more than 11,300 people.
The big difference between the current outbreak and the 2014 outbreak is that an experimental vaccine is available this time, and it seems to be working. Teams of health workers from Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) have vaccinated more than 41,000 people so far. It's estimated that without the vaccine, there would already be more than 10,000 Ebola cases in the current outbreak.
The vaccine is used in conjunction with contact tracing. When an Ebola case is suspected, health workers identify the patient's contacts and their contacts, and all those people are given the vaccine, in case they've been infected.
The current epidemic is centered around the city of Beni in North Kivu province, which is in the middle of a war zone with a population of 400,000. Militias have attacked health workers, making it almost impossible to do the contact tracing necessary to stop the progress of the disease, so it may be 6-12 more months before the current epidemic can be stopped completely.
More worrisome is that the outbreak has been spreading southward, and there are now identified cases in the city of Butembo, which has one million residents. Furthermore, new cases are increasing quickly in the eastern suburbs and outlying, isolated districts. In some cases, not all residents of hard-to-reach communities have received the vaccines. Public and private health centers with inadequate infection prevention and control (IPC) practices continue to be major source of amplification of the outbreak.
The greatest concern now is that it will spread further south to the city of Goma, a major population center and regional hub for transportation -- air, road, truck -- with a population of two million, including the suburbs. No cases of Ebola have been identified in Goma yet.
There may not be enough of the experimental vaccine to service the huge populations in Beni, Butembo and Goma. The current stockpile is 300,000 doses. Merck has a supply of the vaccine, but Merck says that it takes about a year, start to finish, to produce a batch of the vaccine. World Health Organization (WHO) and Australian AP and STAT News
As the Ebola epidemic spreads southward, it has so far remained with DRC. But North Kivu province is on the border with Uganda and South Sudan, and tens of thousands of people cross these borders in both directions every day, so it's possible that the disease will spread into those two countries. If it spreads into a transportation hub like Goma, then it may spread even farther into other countries.
Uganda last month announced plans to roll out vaccinations to 3,000 frontline health workers. According to Uganda's health minister, "We have not waited for the first case to arrive. The vaccination is continuing."
About 2,160 doses of the Ebola vaccine have been allocated to South Sudan and will be administered to healthcare and frontline workers. The country is on high alert and no confirmed case has been detected as of December 8. World Health Organization (WHO) and New Vision (Uganda)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Dec-18 World View -- Ebola in DR Congo spreads southward to large cities thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(11-Dec-2018)
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Analyzing the generational history of an insular Japan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In the predawn hours on Saturday, Japan enacted controversial new legislation that will permit 345,000 low-skilled foreign workers to receive labor shortages, especially in such areas as farming, nursing care and construction.
From April 1, a new residency permit category will allow foreigners who have completed some skills training and passed a Japanese-language test to work in Japan for up to five years in 14 industries.
The passage of the new law is almost an act of desperation, as Japan has a low birth rate and an aging population, and needs workers who can build build buildings, and support the elderly and the factories.
However, there is a great deal of opposition to the measure for several reasons.
Foreign workers in Japan have been forced to work at almost slave wages in jobs where they can be abused and exploited.
Labor leaders object to a program that brings in low-wage workers that will take the jobs of Japanese workers.
But most of the objections refer to the Japanese culture. Throughout its history, Japan has been an island shut off from the rest of the world, with its unique shared customs and shared culture, and foreign workers would not fit into that. Furthermore, Japan has a history that a small number of Japanese treat any foreigners as subhuman.
For that reason, the new legislation is including a package of measures to provide skills training, language training, and to ensure decent working conditions. Japan Today and Nikkei and Washington Post and Japan Times
The insular, isolated culture of Japan has presented unique problems in trying to understand its history from the point of view of Generational Dynamics theory.
For the past few centuries, we can divide Japanese history into four distinct periods:
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics theory, the problem occurs in the analyzing the 250 year Tokugawa era. Going 250 years without a major war is not possible. Populations grow exponentially and use up land and water resources, and after a few decades there isn't enough food for everyone, so there has to be a war to restore the balance. So if there were generational crisis wars during that 250 year period, then how come we aren't seeing them?
To put it another way, let's assume that Japan had crisis wars in the 1600-1868 period like every other country. How would those wars be different from crisis wars in other countries?
Xenophobia and nationalism are often defined in terms of things like race, skin color, appearance, language, geography and religion, things that are set at birth and cannot be easily changed. What makes Japan unique is because of its insularity and homogeneity, there is little difference among groups of Japanese in terms of of race, skin color, appearance, language, geography and religion. The only thing that separates one group of Japanese from another would be political beliefs, things that can be easily fudged or even changed.
When historians write about wars during a period, how do they describe the wars? Usually it's "North vs South" or "dark-skinned vs light-skinned" or "Protestants vs Catholics" or "English-speaking vs French-speaking," or something like that. How would a historian describe a war in Japan? In the "Warring Period," it was one warlord versus another.
But in the Tokugawa period, there's apparently no obvious way. There must have been wars, because the population growth would have exceeded the demand for food, land, water and other resources, but how these wars manifested themselves is little understood in the West. This is an area that requires additional research. Japan Times and Columbia University and History.com
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Dec-18 World View -- Japan invites hundreds of thousands of foreigners to work in Japan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(10-Dec-2018)
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Brief generational history of South Sudan and Dinka-Nuer clashes
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There's an old saying, "Peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading." That saying may apply to South Sudan, after a peace agreement was signed in September.
The peace agreement was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on September 12. It was signed by Salva Kiir, the leader of Dinka tribe, and president of South Sudan. The other signer was Riek Machar, the leader of the Nuer tribe, and vice president of South Sudan until 2013, when he was sacked by Kiir.
The sacking led to extremely bloody and violent clashes between Dinka and Nuer militias. The conflict killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, displaced an estimated one-quarter of the population of 12 million, and ruined the economy, which depends heavily on crude oil production.
This was the second or third peace agreement signed since 2013. It calls for an immediate ceasefire. It calls for an end to recruitment of soldiers on both sides, it calls for an end to the trafficking of young girls, and it calls for a power-sharing agreement with the return of Machar to be vice president again in May.
Although low-level violence has been a constant since South Sudan became independent of Sudan in 2011, there were major clashes that began in December 2013. ( "29-Dec-2013 World View -- Conflicts grow in South Sudan and Central African Republic") There followed 21 months of atrocities, until they were supposedly ended by a peace treaty that was signed by both sides in August 2015. By mid-2016, the fight was fully engaged again.
There are concerns that this peace agreement won't last either.
There's news emerging that in the last ten days of November, 150 girls and women were raped near the town of Bentiu. The situation is still being investigated.
And a new report by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan says that both sides are continuing to recruit fighters, many of them just boys.
The problem with the peace agreement is that it was signed by politicians. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's the people rather than the politicians who make this kind of decision. The people who are doing the fighting are the members of the Dinka and Nuer tribes, and they hate each other, irrespective of any peace agreement between the politicians.
There has been a letup in the violence since the peace agreement was signed in September, but it remains to be seen whether it will last, or whether it was just a brief, glorious moment when both the Dinkas and the Nuers spent the time reloading. Al Jazeera (12-Sep) and Reuters (12-Sep) and Council on Foreign Relations (26-Sep) and Sudan Tribune and AFP
The Dinka and the Nuer tribes have had conflicts over land for centuries. In numerous other countries, I've described how ethnic wars grow over farmers versus herders. But in South Sudan, both the Dinkas and Nuers are herder communities. The conflict over land is the same, however. Clashes begin during dry periods, when both sides compete for the same land.
Sudan was ruled by the Ottoman empire, and later by an arrangement by an arrangement of Egyptian and British control. When Sudan became independent of Britain in 1956, the north was largely Muslim, Arabic speaking, while the southern population mostly followed tribal religions. The Khartoum government in the north launched a program to "Arabize and Islamize the South." This triggered a reaction from Christian evangelists, mostly from the US, to come to Sudan and convert the South to Christianity.
There was immediately a north-south war of independence, but there was also a generational crisis civil war between the Nuer and Dinka tribes. This was climaxed on November 15, 1991, when the "Bor Massacre" began. Over the next three months, 2,000 civilians were killed, thousands more wounded, at least 100,000 people fled the area. Famine followed the massacre, as looters burnt villages and raided cattle, resulting in the deaths of 25,000 more from starvation.
The nightmare scenario is that the new clashes will spiral into a repeat of the 1991 Bor Massacre. But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, South Sudan is in a generational Awakening era, so a historic massacre of this type will not occur, despite the enormous ethnic hatred between the Nuers and the Dinkas. Sudan Tribune (24-Nov-2018) and National Geographic (30-Sep-2014) and Vox (9-Jan-2017) and Nyamile (31-Mar-2016)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Dec-18 World View -- Latest South Sudan peace agreement appears close to collapse thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Dec-2018)
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The story of Stern Hu, an employee of Australian mining company Rio Tinto
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As we described yesterday, Huawei Technologies chief financial officer (CFO) Ms. Meng Wanzhou was arrested by Canadian police on Saturday, while changing planes in Vancouver. Meng is the daughter of of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, who was previously an officer and engineer in China's People's Liberation Army (PLA). ( "7-Dec-18 World View -- Canada arrests the chief financial officer of China powerhouse Huawei")
Meng appeared in a Vancouver court on Friday, where the allegations were laid out:
If convicted on all these charges, Meng faces up to 30 years in jail in the United States.
The Chinese government has called for Meng’s immediate release, saying that arresting her violates her "human rights."
Meng's lawyers are requesting bail, saying that she's not a flight risk because she would not risk embarrassing her father or her country by fleeing before her extradition hearing. However, Canadian prosecuters say that Meng is the daughter of the company’s billionaire founder, Ren Zhengfei, is a flight risk because of her wealth and the fact that she could face three decades in prison. Washington Post and Reuters (31-Jan-2013)
For reasons that I described in detail in yesterday's article, we have to assume that it is absolutely certain that any Huawei networking device can be controlled remotely by China's military and used for espionage, and that it's impossible to detect this.
On Friday, Japan's government said that it will exclude Chinese telecommunication equipment-makers Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. from public procurement because of security concerns.
Japan joins the United States, Australia and New Zealand in implementing such a ban. Canada, Britain and the European Union are investigating security issues, although Germany's interior ministry opposes banning Huawei. Japan Times and BBC
An example of how Meng Wanzhou might be treated is the tale of Stern Hu, an executive in Australian firm Rio Tinto who was jailed in 2009 and only freed four months ago.
Hu was apparently one of the millions of peaceful student protesters in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that Chinese authorities ended on June 4, 1989, with a bloody massacre that killed thousands of students.
Hu used to work for China International Trust and Investment Co, until a photo surfaced in a magazine showing him participating in the Tiananmen Square protests, at which time he was fired. He traveled to Australia, became an Australian citizen, and in 1996 joined a company that went on to become the international mining giant Rio Tinto. Hu became head of Rio Tinto's iron ore business in China.
In 2010, Hu and three other Rio Tinto executives were given hefty jail sentences on charges of corruption and bribery for bribing executives from Chinese steel companies to sign contracts with Rio Tinto. Hu was given a ten-year jail sentence, but he was released in July of this year for good behavior.
The incarceration of Hu Stern can provide precedents for how the case of Meng Wanzhou should be resolved. Telegraph (London, 28-Jul-2009) and Australian Broadcasting (5-Aug-2010) and Mining.com and Washington Post
In yesterday's article, I speculated that the Trump administration will decide to de-escalate this situation quickly by returning Meng to China as soon as possible, in order to avoid risking the current "ceasefire" in the trade war between the US and China.
However, some analysts point out that the opposite may be true, because otherwise our allies may not continue to support us. ZTE is another Chinese company that was severely sanctioned for making illegal sales to Iran. The Trump administration heavily sanctioned ZTE, but the sanctions were reversed as the result of a personal plea by Xi Jinping to Donald Trump. This reversal, according to analysts, confused our allies, who wonder how serious the Trump administration is about enforcing the sanctions against Iran.
Furthermore, Meng went far beyond simply violating US sanctions laws. She set up a complex international system, defrauding banks in several countries, and therefore violating several countries' laws, and so Meng can't be excused unless these other countries agree. (Paragraph added, 8-Dec)
This reasoning indicates that the Trump administration is going to have to follow a hard line in the case of Meng, including giving her a jail sentence, as in the case of the Rio Tinto executive.
At the same time, the Chinese are becoming increasingly infuriated by Meng's arrest. Huawei is perhaps the most respected company in China, and many Chinese people are viewing the arrest of Meng and the banning of Huawei products as part of a policy to contain China.
Chinese people, including Xi Jinping, claim that China has been repeatedly humiliated by countries of the West, starting with the Opium Wars in the 1840s. ( "21-Mar-18 World View -- Xi Jinping invokes the 1840s Opium Wars to justify military action for China's 'rejuvenation'")
Some Chinese are saying that the campaign against Huawei is a continuation of the West's policy of humiliating China and containing China.
I've been writing for years how, as the world goes deeper into a generational Crisis era, countries of the world are becoming increasingly xenophobic and nationalistic, and that eventually this leads to a new generational crisis war. Generational Dynamics predicts that China and the US are headed for a new world war. The Huawei situation has resulted an increase in xenophobia and nationalism in both countries, bringing us one step closer to that world war. Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Dec-18 World View -- Arrest of Meng Wanzhou of China's Huawei has increasingly serious implications thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Dec-2018)
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English-speaking 'Five Eyes' countries are banning Huawei products
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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At the request of the United States, Canadian police arrested Ms. Meng Wanzhou (Sabrina Meng), the chief financial officer (CFO) China's telecom powerhouse Huawei (WHA way) Technologies, which was founded by her father Ren Zhengfei. Before founding Huawei, Ren was an officer and engineer in China's People's Liberation Army (PLA).
According to the US Justice Department:
"She is sought for extradition by the United States, and a bail hearing has been set for Friday. As there is a publication ban in effect, we cannot provide any further detail at this time. The ban was sought by Ms. Meng."
Reports indicate that Huawei is alleged to have used the global banking system to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran. In particular, it's believed that Huawei used HSBC Holdings Plc to conduct illegal transactions involving Iran. As CFO, Meng would be intimately familiar with any such illegal transactions.
HSBC Bank plc is a London-based international banking and financial services company. In 2012, HSBC paid a $1.92 billion fine for violating US sanctions and money-laundering laws. HSBC is apparently not under investigation in the Huawei allegations.
Meng was arrested on Saturday in Vancouver airport, as she was changing planes. The arrest occurred at the same time that president Donald Trump and China's president Xi Jinping were having a dinner meeting that led to an agreement for a 90-day "ceasefire" in the "trade war" between the two countries.
Since the arrest occurred shortly before the dinner meeting, there is speculation that Trump timed the arrest to send a message to China and to Xi. However, the dinner meeting was planned well in advance of the arrest, and there would have been no way of predicting that Meng would be changing planes in Vancouver at exactly that time. National security advisor John Bolton says that he knew before the dinner that Meng was being arrested, but said that he didn't brief Trump. Meng may have been put onto a list of people subject to arrest at Canadian airports months ago, but the fact that she happened to change planes in Vancouver on Saturday appears to be purely happenstance.
ZTE is another Chinese company that has been severely sanctioned for making illegal sales to Iran. The Trump administration heavily sanctioned ZTE, to the extent that ZTE would have gone out of business, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs in China, but Trump relented after a personal plea from Xi.
Mainstream media and other politicians are almost universally baffled by Trump's foreign policy actions, as I've pointed out many times. But the policies all make complete sense when you understand that Trump believes (correctly) that the US and China are headed for a world war, and he's adopting policies that he believes will prevent that outcome, even though Generational Dynamics predicts that a world war will happen with 100% certainty, no matter what Trump does.
In the case of the "trade war" policy, Trump has described its purpose as saving American jobs, which is true, but it also has the purpose of throwing China off its game of relentless militarization and preparation for war. However, it's an extremely risky policy because it may actually trigger war if the Chinese panic. The 90-day freeze gives the Chinese some breathing room, and keeps them from panicking.
For that reason, the happenstance arrest of Meng is actually a risk to the ceasefire, since it could infuriate the Chinese to the point of triggering an unwanted reaction, including the arrest of American executives in China. It's possible that the Trump administration will decide to de-escalate this situation quickly by returning Meng to China as soon as possible. Globe and Mail (Toronto) and Reuters and Wired
China's foreign ministry has demanded the Canadians and Americans "immediately clarify the reason for the detention and release the detainee, and earnestly protect the legal and legitimate rights and interests of the person involved."
China's embassy in Canada posted the following:
"At the request of the US side, the Canadian side arrested a Chinese citizen not violating any American or Canadian law. The Chinese side firmly opposes and strongly protests over such kind of actions which seriously harmed the human rights of the victim. The Chinese side has lodged stern representations with the US and Canadian side, and urged them to immediately correct the wrongdoing and restore the personal freedom of Ms. Meng Wanzhou. We will closely follow the development of the issue and take all measures to resolutely protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens."
It's always laughable when China talks about international law or human rights, two things that the Chinese believe don't apply to them, since they consider themselves superior to everyone else. My guess is that Ms. Meng is being held in the equivalent of a suite in a five star hotel. On the other hand, China is a country that kidnaps children, harvests the organs of political prisoners, and has a million ethnic Uighurs locked up in forced reeducation prisons, where they can be tortured raped and killed for saying the wrong thing. I doubt that Ms. Meng is in danger of suffering any of those "human rights" violations. China Foreign Ministry and China's Canadian Embassy
Huawei Technologies is the world’s largest telecommunications equipment provider, and it is the second largest mobile phone manufacturer. It is a pillar of the Chinese economy. Its founder Ren Zhengfei is a former military officer in the People Liberation Army (PLA). Meng Wanzhou is his daughter.
Huawei has been promoting itself worldwide to sell routers and other equipment for the latest technology advance, 5G networks, in countries around the world. Back in August, Australia banned Huawei from supplying equipment for its 5G networks. The United States has done the same, and last week New Zealand did the same.
The United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are members of the "Five Eyes" alliance that shares intelligence to combat espionage, terrorism and global crime. Three of these countries have banned Huawei because of a security threat.
As I've said in the past, I've spent a part of my career as a senior software engineer developing chip-level operating system software for embedded systems, so I know exactly how any chip or any electronic device can be turned into a tool for espionage. Furthermore, I can tell you that not only is it doable, it's not even particularly difficult for someone with the right skills.
Huawei could develop a chipset that works exactly as described in the public specifications. The chipset could be subjected to thousands of tests, and they would all work perfectly.
But what Huawei could do is install a "backdoor" into the chipset. When the chip receives, say, a secret 1024-bit code, then it will execute commands sent to it by Chinese engineers. Thus, the Chinese are then in control of any devices with Huawei chips.
As I said, this is not only doable, it's easy to do. The "backdoor" could not be detected until an attack had been launched, and then it would be too late. And since it CAN be done, it's certain that it HAS been done. China has been preparing for war with the West in every possible way, and has conducted cybercrime and espionage on a massive scale. Installing a secret backdoor in its chips would be one of the easiest ways to prepare for war, so there's no doubt that they've done it.
Huawei has been aggressively selling routers and other infrastructure equipment to companies and governments around the world. China could spy on transmissions over these networks or, in the worst case scenario, completely shut down all commercial and government networks during a war. For that reason, Huawei devices are considered to be a security threat. Globe and Mail (Toronto) and AFP and Wired and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Dec-18 World View -- Canada arrests the chief financial officer of China powerhouse Huawei thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Dec-2018)
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DJIA plunges 800 points on Tuesday
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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According to Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the incoming head of the US Central Command, the death rate among Afghan government security forces is unsustainable. He said he doesn’t know how long it will take to develop an Afghan force capable of defending its own country.
Speaking at a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, McKenzie said that the war is currently stalemated:
"They’re not there yet. If we left precipitously right now, they would not be able to successfully defend their country.Their losses have been very high. They are fighting hard, but their losses are not going to be sustainable unless we correct this problem."
However, he did not spell out what changes are necessary to correct this problem. Also, he said he doesn't know know how long it will take to develop an Afghan force capable of defending its own country.
Long-time readers will not be surprised by this at all. In 2009, when president Barack Obama announced a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan, mimicking president George Bush's successful troop surge into Iraq, I wrote that the Afghanistan troop surge would not be as successful as the Iraq troop surge. The Iraq troop surge was to eject foreign jihadists from Iraq, and it was successful because the Iraq Sunnis also wanted to eject foreign jihadists from Iraq. ("Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq (01-Apr-2007)")
But the Taliban are not foreign fighters. As I've explained many times, Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was the extremely bloody Afghan crisis civil war, 1991-96, which mostly pitted the ethnic Pashtuns, who are Sunni Muslims and later formed the Taliban, versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. Now, twenty years later, Afghanistan is in a generational Awakening era, and a new young generation of Pashtuns is coming of age, raised on stories their parents told them about the atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance, and they're looking for revenge.
But you don't have to know anything about generational history to understand what's going on. You just have to understand that there was an extremely bloody, violent civil war in 1991-96, pitting the Pashtuns versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. And you have to know that the Taliban are Pashtuns, and that young Pashtuns are looking for revenge for atrocities committed in the 1990s.
That's why the government cannot possibly control the Taliban, and why trying "peace talks" with the Taliban doesn't even make sense. Even if the Taliban leaders agreed to some settlement, it would not satisfy their sons and daughters, who are not going to be deterred in their search for revenge. That's the way the world works.
The Taliban have repeatedly and consistently said that they will not agree to any peace deal until after the Nato troops have withdrawn.
There are some 16,000 American and Nato troops in Afghanistan, acting in a support role to the Afghan army. McKenzie said the U.S. and its allies need to keep helping the Afghans recruit and train forces to fight the Taliban’s estimated 60,000 troops. The 60,000 figure is considerably higher than previous estimates, which were around 20,000. Military Times and AP
At the Senate hearing, an angry Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich, said:
"We’ve been at it 17 years, 17 years is a long time. What are we doing differently when it comes to the Afghan security forces that we haven’t done for 17 years while being focused on this?"
McKenzie said that it's different this time because we have a key, new strategy in Afghanistan: peace talks with the Taliban. I guess he's forgotten numerous attempts at peace talks in the past, all of which have failed for the reasons that I just gave. McKenzie said:
"I don’t know how long it will take. I do know that we’re working it very hard. I do know that they are making improvements. I do know that today it would be very difficult for them to survive without our and our coalition partners’ assistance. And we should remember that NATO and other nations are with us on the ground in Afghanistan."
That last point is true. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says that the Nato countries have reaffirmed their commitment to Afghanistan's "long-term security and stability" despite mounting Afghan casualties.
"Sometimes there is an uptick, an increase in violence because different parties try to gain the best possible position at the negotiating table. So it may actually become worse before it becomes better."
What this obscure statement apparently means is that the "uptick" in violence is a GOOD thing because it means that the Taliban want to gain an advantage before they negotiate peace.
As I've written in the past, there may be a dynamic going on. President Donald Trump's foreign policy is totally baffling to the mainstream media and most politicians, but as a I keep pointing out, everything makes perfect sense once you understand that he believes (correctly) that the US is headed for a world war against China and Pakistan. So there's undoubtedly a larger purpose in not withdrawing from Afghanistan. As war with China and Pakistan approaches, president Trump wants to keep American troops active in Afghanistan, and to continue to maintain several American military bases in Afghanistan, including two air bases in Bagram and Kandahar International Airport. These bases will be valuable in any future war with China. Under these circumstances, having troops in Afghanistan is what matters, whether the Taliban are defeated or not. Stars and Stripes and RFE/RL and Foreign Policy
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunged 800 points on Tuesday. The S&P and Nasdaq indexes fell by equivalent amounts. Undoubtedly many people are like the person whose tweet is shown above who lost his own life savings, but also the life savings of his parents in a single day.
As I'm writing this on Wednesday evening, the Dow Futures Index are down -250 points. Although it may recover in time for the market opening on Thursday morning, this once again reminds us that a full-scale stock market crash is not just possible -- it's absolutely certain. It may happen this week, next month, next year, or thereafter, but it's going to happen.
The S&P 500 price/earnings ratio is around 20, down from 25 a year ago. The historical average for the P/E ratio is 14, meaning that the stock market is in a huge bubble, and this huge bubble will have to pop. The P/E ratio fell to the range of 5-6 three times in the last century, in 1919, 1949 and 1982, and it's overdue to do so again. When that happens, the DJIA will fall to around the 3000 range.
And let's not forget Bitcoin, which was the darling, trendy, highly stylish investment of about a year ago. Bitcoin is an asset with nothing backing it but hot air, and it could well become totally worthless in the next few months.
In the time it's taken me to write that last two paragraphs, the Dow Futures index has fallen further to -360. That's not to say that it won't pop up again, and may even go positive by morning. But what happened on Tuesday is very real, and it could happen to you or to anyone. ZeroHedge
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Dec-18 World View -- New head of US Central Command says Afghanistan war is unsustainable thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Dec-2018)
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Russia 'partially unblocks' Ukraine's ports
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russia had "partially unblocked" access to its blockaded Berdyanks and Mariupol ports on the Sea of Azov. As of Monday, ships were allowed to move in both directions through the Kerch Strai separating the Azov and Black Seas, although Russia stops all ships and inspects them.
Russia blockaded access to the Ukrainian ports on November 25, when Russia rammed, fired on, boarded and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels, accusing them of traveling through territorial waters of occupied Crimea, which Russia had invaded and annexed in 2015.
Legal experts point out that under international law, the "innocent passage" of the three ships should have been permitted, even if they were within Crimean or Russian territorial waters.
Analysis of photos of the Ukrainian ships after the incident shows that they were rammed four times by the Russian warship, and that the Russian live fire was aimed to injure or kill the Ukrainian sailors, rather than to disable their ships.
Russia seized 24 crew members in the incident, and charged them with illegal border crossing. The Russians released videos of confessions by two of the Ukrainians. The confessions appear to have been coerced. The 24 crew members have been incarcerated in Moscow.
Observers fear that Russia intends a further invasion of Ukraine after completely blockading the Sea of Azov. Russia denies this, but Russia denied invading east Ukraine when it was invading east Ukraine, Russia denied invading Crimea when it was invading Crimea, Russia denied that it would annex Crimea days before it annexed Crimea, so the denial of further invasion plans is part of the same pattern. Bloomberg and Defense News and Bellingcat and RFE/RL
Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea struck at both Ukraine and Turkey. Crimea is part of Ukraine's sovereign territory, and the population of Crimea prior to the Russian invasion is most Tatars, a Turkic race ethnically related to the population of Turkey. In fact, Russia and Turkey have fought centuries of Crimean Wars.
Last month on November 3-4, prior to the Kerch Strait seizures, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko visited Turkey to meet with Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They discussed issues falling into three main “baskets”: the military, economics, and Turkish arbitration in Ukraine’s relations with Russia -- in particular, concerning the situation of the Tatars in occupied Crimea. This was the latest in Ukrainian-Turkish initiatives to cooperate in the military sphere, including joint development of weapons systems.
The growing military cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine is, at the very least, an annoyance to Russia. Beyond that, particularly with Turkey as a member of Nato, the cooperation limits Russia's hand in the Black Sea.
Since the Kerch Strait incident on November 25, Turkey has offered to play a "mediator" role between Ukraine and Russia to resolve the crisis. Ukraine has made two requests for protection from further aggression by Russia.
First, Ukraine has asked Nato to conduct "Freedom of Navigation Operations" (FONOPS) through the Kerch Strait, just as the US Navy warships conduct FONOPS through the South China Sea. It's unlikely that Nato will grant this request.
Second, Ukraine has asked Turkey to invoke the Montreux Convention, to shut down the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, in order to block passage of Russia's ships between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Once again, it's unlikely that this request will be granted. Jamestown and Anadolu and AFP and UNIAN (Ukraine)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Dec-18 World View -- Ukraine and Turkey develop closer relationship amid Russia's aggression thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Dec-2018)
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The split deepens between Saudi Arabia and Qatar
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Qatar announced that on January 1 it would withdraw from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
OPEC was founded in September 1960 with five founding members: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Qatar joined in 1961. It consisted of the countries of the world that produced most of the oil, and so it was a cartel that, to some extent, was able to control total global oil supplies, and thereby control prices. As of 2016, the additional members are: Indonesia, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Nigeria, Ecuador, Gabon and Angola.
Most Americans had never heard of OPEC and weren't aware of its existence until October, 1973, when they were shocked by OPEC's announcement of an international oil embargo, triggered by US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war against Egypt. This caused the gasoline (petrol) shortages in the United States, resulting in long lines at gas stations, and a surge in gas prices from about 30 cents per gallon to (horrors!) a dollar a gallon or more.
Qatar is the first Gulf country to withdraw from OPEC. It won't have much effect on the cartel, since Qatar provides only 2% of the cartel's oil. This meant that Qatar really had little influence of OPEC anyway. In fact, the cartel has evolved over the years, to the point where the decision makers are Saudi Arabia and Russia, the latter not even being a member of OPEC. Furthermore, it retains just a fraction of its previous ability to set oil prices, since the United States has for years been flooding the market with oil obtained from fracking.
So the withdrawal of Qatar from OPEC has little more than symbolic value. However, it is an embarrassment, since a major OPEC meeting is scheduled to be held next week.
The reason that Qatar gave for its withdrawal from OPEC is that it wants to concentrate more on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Although Qatar is a relatively small supplier of oil, it's the world's biggest LNG supplier, producing almost 30% of the world's total.
According to Qatar's energy minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi,
"The withdrawal decision reflects Qatar's desire to focus its efforts on plans to develop and increase its natural gas production from 77 million tonnes per year to 110 million tonnes in the coming years. ...We are a small player in OPEC, and I'm a businessman, it doesn't make sense for me to focus on things that are not our strength, and gas is our strength so that is why we've made this decision."
However, many observers believe that the reasons are deeper than just pure business. Reuters and Investopedia and History.com and Gulf Times (Qatar) and The National (UAE)
Although Qatar's al-Kaabi says that the withdrawal is purely a business decision, it's certainly tied into the increasingly toxic geopolitical situation in the Gulf.
Recall that in June of last year, several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE), broke relations with Qatar and imposed an air, sea and land blockade on Qatar. Amazingly enough, that blockade is still in place. The core of the disagreement is apparently related to Arab tribal differences that go back to World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Shortly after imposing the blockade, Saudi Arabia produced a list of 13 demands that would have to be met to end the blockade. Included were demands to stop supporting terrorism, to sever ties with Iran, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood, and to shut down Al-Jazeera.
Today it seems that all the Saudi demands have backfired, especially after the October 2 gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees the Khashoggi murder as an opportunity to turn the screws on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) by gradually leaking out pieces of evidence about the murder a bit at a time. MBS was probably responsible for ordering the murder, but wants to claim that he knew nothing. Erdogan keeps pulling MBS in by releasing evidence that points to him.
Qatar-based al-Jazeera is also playing a major part in this. While other international news organizations have reduced their coverage of the Khashoggi murder as time has passed, al-Jazeera continues to devote a significant portion of each newscast to the latest on the murder, inviting one expert after another to opine on MBS's relationship to the crime.
Qatar shares the world's largest LNG field with Iran, so the two countries have to cooperate. Furthermore, in a 60 Minutes interview last year, Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said the following:
"Iran is our neighbor. And by the way, us as a country, we have lots of differences and foreign policies with Iran, more than them. But let me tell you one thing Charlie; When those countries, our brothers, blocked everything. Blocked medicine, blocked food, the only way for us to provide food and medicine for our people was through Iran. And when they talk about terrorism, absolutely not. We do not support terrorism."
Turkey also helped Qatar get through the blockade. So if MBS's intention with the blockade was to force Qatar to sever relations with Iran and Turkey, it seems to have accomplished the opposite.
Qatar, Iran and Turkey have been forced into a fellowship by the Saudi blockade. However those three countries are strange bedfellows, with not a lot in common and significant historical differences, so the fellowship may not survive once the blockade ends. Washington Post and Al-Jazeera (Qatar) and CBS News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Dec-18 World View -- Qatar withdraws from Saudi Arabia-led OPEC thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Dec-2018)
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Dozens of reported measles cases in Israel, New York and
New Jersey, as disease spreads
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Jewish worshippers at a Friday evening service in a temple near Jerusalem were exposed to a patient suffering from measles. Israel's government has directed those attending the service to see a doctor immediately and receive the necessary vaccinations. An outbreak of measles has been spreading in Israel since October, and it's being blamed on the failure of thousands of parents to vaccinate their children, particularly among the ultra-Orthodox communities in Jerusalem.
On average, about half of the population in these communities are not immunized. Israel's Health Ministry is considering new legislation that would penalize parents of children who are not vaccinated for measles and other contagious diseases by the age of one year.
There are 83 known cases of measles in Rockland County, New York, about 25 miles north of New York City. They were spread, among other places, at the Best Buy store in the Palisades shopping center.
There are 18 confirmed cases of measles in Ocean and Passaic counties in New Jersey. More cases are expected, since there's a 5-21 day incubation period after exposure, and a person is contagious four days before and four days after showing signs of a rash.
It's believed that the outbreak started from a man who visited Israel in late October. Asbury Park Press (NJ) and Jerusalem Post and Asbury Park Press
The number of measles-related deaths fell 80% between 2000 and 2017, and it had been hoped that measles might eventually be entirely eliminated.
But the number of reported cases of measles surged by more than 30% from 2016 to 2017. Since not all cases are reported in a timely manner, there may be many more cases -- estimated to be 6.7 million.
According to an official from the World Health Organization (WHO), "[W]e risk losing decades of progress in protecting children and communities against this devastating, but entirely preventable disease."
According to a report issued on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC):
"Despite this progress, however, the 2015 global milestones have not been achieved; global [first dose vaccination] coverage has stagnated for nearly a decade; global [second dose] coverage is only at 67% despite steady increases; and [supplementary immunization activities] quality was inadequate to achieve >=95% coverage in several countries. Since 2016, measles incidence has increased globally and in five of the six WHO regions. Furthermore, as of July 2018, endemic measles has been reestablished in Venezuela because of the sustained transmission of measles virus for >12 months; the remaining 34 AMR [North/South America] countries continue to maintain their measles elimination status, but the ongoing outbreak in Venezuela has led to measles virus importations and outbreaks in bordering AMR countries. In addition, the measles resurgence in Europe has likely led to reestablished endemic measles in some EUR countries. These outbreaks highlight the fragility of gains made toward global and regional measles elimination goals."
The statement mentions that Venezuela has had its measles elimination certificate withdrawn. This means that measles is now considered to be endemic in Venezuela, where previously it was thought to be on the path to elimination. Socialist Venezuela's inflation rate is approaching one million percent, many people are no longer able to get food, medicines or medical services, allowing contagious diseases like measles to spread freely.
Measles in other Latin American countries is still on the path to elimination, but over one million refugees have fled from Venezuela to neighboring countries, and it's feared that they will rapidly spread measles in these other countries as well.
Other countries that have lost their measles elimination certificates in the last year include Germany and Russia, meaning that measles is spreading in these countries.
The surge in measles is being caused by a stalled rate of vaccination in the last few years.
World health officials are blaming the surge in measles cases on complacency, as measle rates have declined, and on misinformation being spread by the so-called "anti-vax movement," or "anti-vaxxers" -- people who are refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated.
The misinformation comes from a 1995 theory that the measles vaccine causes bowel disease and autism. This theory has long been completely discredited. The measles vaccine has been proven to be both effective and safe.
Measles is highly contagious. In one in 15 cases, measles can cause life-threatening complications including pneumonia, convulsions and encephalitis. Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain, and can result in death or disability.
Measles can be prevented by receiving two vaccinations, the first at 13 months old and the second at three years and four months to five years old. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and NPR and WebMD and Daily Mail (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Dec-18 World View -- Measles outbreaks in New York, Israel blamed on 'anti-vax' movement thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Dec-2018)
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G-20 Summit meeting in Buenos Aires ends with multiple compromises
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The G-20 is a group of member nations that represent two-thirds of the world's people and 85% of its economy. The G7 member countries are the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Canada. Russia was a member (of the G-8), but when expelled in 2013 when it invaded Crimea. The G-20 was formed in 1997 by adding developing nations such as Brazil, China, India, and Russia.
The G-20's primary mandate is to prevent future international financial crises. It seeks to shape the global economic agenda, by combining the perspectives of the major economies with the growing economies in Latin America and Asia. The finance ministers and central bank governors of the G-20 countries meet twice a year. They meet at the same time as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
This year's G-20 summit meeting was a masterpiece of mulitiple compromises designed to keep the summit meeting from blowing up.
A big part of the meeting was to avoid being seen with someone that you didn't want to be seen with. So start with the group picture at the beginning of this article. It was important not to stand next to the wrong person, but it was also important not to smile at the wrong person while people were going to their assigned spots:
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Last year's G-20 meeting didn't have a final joint communiqué from all the members because Donald Trump as advocating a protectionist trade policy and also because he had just pulled out of the Paris treaty on climate change. Trump opposed the views of the other 19 countries, so no communiqué could be drafted that they all agreed on.
So this year, they were bound and determined to get out a joint communiqué that everyone would sign onto. Apparently they negotiated all night Friday night, sometimes spending an hour on the wording of one sentence. But they finally had "a breakthrough."
Previous G-20 communiqués had contained text discouraging protectionism, but any such text this year would be clearly aimed at Trump, so would not be agreed. So they agreed to this language:
"27. International trade and investment are important engines of growth, productivity, innovation, job creation and development. We recognize the contribution that the multilateral trading system has made to that end. The system is currently falling short of its objectives and there is room for improvement. We therefore support the necessary reform of the WTO [World Trade Organization] to improve its functioning. We will review progress at our next Summit."
So the breakthrough was that the communiqué specified that the WTO had to be reformed, but did not specify what the reform would be.
That's because different groups wanted different, contradictory reforms. Trump particularly wanted a reform that change China's status from a "developing nation" to a "developed nation," so that it would be bound by the WTO rules, but China of course disagreed with that. China wanted a "win-win" situation where the WTO continues exactly as it has.
When the US helped China join the WTO in 2000, it was with the expectation that China would become an honest member of the international trading community. But the United States position during the last three administrations is that China has repeatedly cheated and lied, and not followed the WTO rules. Even when the WTO rulings against China, China just ignores the ruling (as it has ignored the Hague Tribunal ruling that China's activities in the South China Sea are illegal), and continues to lie and cheat. So the Trump administration would not agree to continue trade rules as they have been.
So the wording of the communiqué, as shown above, will not make any difference in trade, but it did allow the communiqué to be adopted.
The other major problem area is the Paris climate change treaty. All the other 19 countries supported the treaty and wanted to say so in the communiqué, so they compromised on this text:
"20. Signatories to the Paris Agreement, who have also joined the Hamburg Action Plan, reaffirm that the Paris Agreement is irreversible and commit to its full implementation, reflecting common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances. We will continue to tackle climate change, while promoting sustainable development and economic growth.21. The United States reiterates its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and affirms its strong commitment to economic growth and energy access and security, utilizing all energy sources and technologies, while protecting the environment."
So that solved the Paris agreement problem.
Other issues were resolved in similar ways. Vladimir Putin vetoed any reference to the seizure near the Kerch Strait, and any mention of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was omitted. G-20 Final Communiqué (PDF) and Bloomberg and AP
Investors around the world are breathing a sigh of relief today, as Donald Trump and China's president Xi Jinping agreed to a 90-day moratorium on further tariffs in the so-called "trade war." The US has already imposed 10% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, and threatened to raise that rate to 25% on January 1. That change will be delayed for 90 days.
In exchange, the US will get the following:
The trade conflict, which has rattled financial markets and upended global supply chains, began this year when Trump imposed tariffs on a total of $253 billion of imported Chinese steel, industrial products and consumer goods, including handbags, furniture and appliances. Chinese officials, caught off guard by the aggressive U.S. moves, retaliated with import taxes on such American products as soybeans, automobiles and liquefied natural gas. Washington Post and Russia Today and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Dec-18 World View -- Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agree to a 90 day moratorium in trade war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Dec-2018)
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Al-Assad issues citizenship cards to Iranian and Hezbollah Shias
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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I've written thousands of articles on Syria since the war began in 2011. There were little bits and pieces of the story that didn't always make sense, but now they're all beginning to fit together, like a collection of jigsaw puzzle pieces fitting together to form a big picture.
The big picture now is that Christian Russia and Shia Iran have joined with the Syria's president Bashar al-Assad to bring about the extermination of Sunni Arabs and Turkmens, and repopulation of their former homes with Shias from Iran and Hezbollah, and their families.
Al-Assad has been moving through different regions of Syria. He begins by bombing peaceful protesters, particularly women and children. As soon as someone become violent in revenge, he declares the whole community or ethnic group to be "terrorists," and uses that as an excuse for full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing. The genocide is performed with missiles, barrel bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas, all particularly targeting women and children, as well as schools, markets, and hospitals.
Al-Assad's ethnic cleansing policy as applied locally to different regions -- Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa -- has been well-documented by thousands of media reports, as I've been reporting for years. It's been suspected that there's a larger picture that al-Assad was plotting to completely exterminate or cleanse Sunnis across the country. This has been denied by the Syrians and their trolls. However, evidence has been growing in the last six months that show exactly how al-Assad plans to implement his "final solution," eliminating all Sunnis in Syria.
As I reported in May, the ethnic cleansing is accomplished by making it impossible for refugees to return to their homes. Last month, Syria's government passed 'Law #10', which makes it almost impossible for refugees to return to their former homes. There are millions of Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe and other countries who will not be able to return home, and are effectively stranded in the country they fled to.
On April 2, the Syrian government of the Bashar al-Assad regime passed "Law #10," a complex new property law that requires property holders in Syria to produce documentation to formally prove ownership of their private property within a period of 30 days, or face confiscation. Since millions of Arab Sunnis have fled to other countries, there is no possibility that they would be able to provide the documentation and proof of ownership. There are also reports that Arab Sunnis who do have proof of ownership are beaten and tortured when they apply to Syrian authorities to have their property restored.
This means that there are large regions of Syria that have been completely cleansed of Arab Sunnis. The only question that remained was: Who was going to occupy the regions that al-Assad had cleansed? Asharq Al-Awsat (Saudi Arabia) and Al Ahram (Egypt, 14-Dec-2016) and Mideast Forum (15-Mar-2017) and Washington Institute
Since late 2016, there have been reports of Iranians moving into the areas that al-Assad cleansed of Arab Sunnis. As reported at the time, a senior leader in Lebanon said, "Iran and the regime don’t want any Sunnis between Damascus and Homs and the Lebanese border. This represents a historic shift in populations."
Recent reports in the last few months describe how al-Assad is arranging for a massive influx of Iranian and Hezbollah Shias to move into the regions from which the Sunni Arabs have been cleansed.
Early this year, Syria announced a plan to issue new ID cards to Syrian citizens as well a new passports, invalidating the old documents.
In recent months, several web sites, mostly opposed to the al-Assad regime, have been posting documents and reporting that the region is naturalizing members of Iranian and Hezbollah militias as Syrian citizens. In combination with "Law #10," previously described, this provides for the repopulation of regions that have been cleansed of Sunni Arabs who are in foreign refugee camps with no chance of reclaiming their property.
One web site posted a Syrian government document granting citizenship to several dozen members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). According to the web site:
"These official documents indicate that the Syrian regime is systematically settling Iranians in different parts of Syria in order to change the demographics [of these areas] by granting citizenship to Shi'ite Iranians and settling them in Sunni areas whose original inhabitants have been expelled... The document presented [here] is not the only one; hundreds of thousands [of Shi'ite] have been granted [Syrian] citizenship and settled in various areas, most of them members and operatives in the Iranian IRGC... These Iranians have begun to receive Syrian citizenship, as preparation for bringing in their families and settling in the areas to which they have been assigned."
In April, a Syrian opposition web site reported that "the Passports and Immigration Department in Damascus recently issued 200,000 passports to Iranians." A Lebanon newspaper, Al-Nahar, reports that the Syrian president "has issued [Syrian] identity cards to some two million Iranians and operatives of militias belonging to the Iranian IRGC Qods Force, and to their families, as well to Hezbollah [operatives]. The [regime] does not just issue them Syrian identity cards, but helps them to settle in parts of Damascus's Ghouta and in the rural areas of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo that have been emptied of their original inhabitants." The report adds that "many members of the Iranian regime have obtained Syrian identity cards in order to evade the American sanctions." MEMRI (26-Nov-2018) and Guardian (London, 13-Jan-2017) and Syrian Observer (4-May-2018)
As I said earlier, the little bits and pieces of the war in Syria are beginning to fit together, like a collection of jigsaw puzzle pieces fitting together to form a big picture.
Most Westerners assume that once the war ends, Syria will return to some sort of balance such as existed prior to 2011. In particular, the 12 million or so Syrians who have been displaced from their homes, including the millions that have fled to neighboring countries, including Europe, would return to their homes when the war ended, according to the common wisdom.
However, we now know that this will never happen, and that this was never the intention. The millions of Syrian refugees that fled to other countries, many in refugee camps, are stranded there, and will never be permitted to return to their homes.
Many observers are comparing al-Assad's actions to those of Israel in the 1947-48 war between Jews and Arabs. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee from their homes in what is now Israel, and forced to live in Palestinian refugee camps, with descendants who will never be permitted to return to their grandparents' homes. Al-Assad expects the same thing: that Syrian refugees will be forced to remain in refugee camps, and they and their children will never be permitted to return.
One of those Palestinian refugee camps was on the outskirts of Latakia in western Syria. In August 2011, al-Assad launched a violent ethnic cleansing attack, causing tens of thousands of residents to flee. Today, that region is being repopulated by Iranian and Hezbollah Shias.
I wrote about this attack in 2011, before I understood what was really going on. Here's what I wrote at the time:
"Assad's forces have avoided the neighborhoods of Assad's Alawite sect, and instead have been targeting Sunni Muslim neighborhoods, including a large Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia's al-Ramel district. Five to ten thousand refugees were forced to flee, and their whereabouts are unknown, according to the BBC. Newspapers in the region have expressed anger about Arab states' failure to respond to events in Syria.Another report indicates that Assad's security forces began ordering residents of the Ramleh region, which includes a refugee camp housing more than 10,000 Palestinians, to go to a soccer stadium ahead of what they described as a huge military operation. After the people were herded into the stadium, security forces took away their identification cards and cellphones. At least five people were confirmed dead, according to the LA Times"
We now know that in fact this was the beginning of al-Assad's policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Al-Assad used an ethnic cleansing / genocide methodology that he's repeated many times after that. He would begin by bombing peaceful protesters, or any civilians whether protesting or not. Once there was any kind of violent counter-reaction, al-Assad would declare the entire population to be terrorists. He would then go into a full-scale extermination, using missile barrages, barrel bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas.
An analogy in America would be if someone from Black Lives Matter killed a white policeman, and the Trump administration retaliated by exterminating an entire population of blacks, using missiles, bombs and other weapons.
Al-Assad's use of chlorine gas was particularly effective. Al-Assad used Vladimir Putin's "Grozny strategy," where warplanes attack hospitals, schools and markets with the objective of creating millions of refugees, who can then be attacked while they're out in the open. A refinement developed by al-Assad's forces is to drop barrel bombs filled with metals, explosives, and chlorine gas. The metals would kill as many people as possible, and the chlorine gas, which is heavier than air, would fall into basements and bunkers where women and children were hiding. Once they were forced out into the open, additional barrel bombs and missiles or Sarin gas could kill the women and children en masse.
It was never entirely clear why al-Assad attacked the Latakia Palestinian refugee camp, but it's now clear that he meant to exterminate or remove all the residents so that the area could be repopulated by Iranian and Hezbollah Shias.
The attack on the Latakia camp had another consequence. The attack was widely reported in Islamic media around the world as an attack by al-Assad's Shia army and Russia's Christian warplanes on innocent Sunni women and children. The result was that tens of thousands of young Sunni jihadists from over 80 countries came to Syria to fight against al-Assad. These were foreign fighters who, in 2014, formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
The relationship between al-Assad and ISIS has always been puzzling, because al-Assad and the Russians never attacked ISIS, but always seemed willing to allow them to grow and prosper as if they were al-Assad's ally. As it turned out, ISIS was al-Assad's ally. The foreign fighters in ISIS were fighting for control of territory in eastern Syria and Iraq, and they were fighting Syrian Sunni Arabs to gain that territory. In other words, al-Assad and ISIS were allies, killing the same enemy -- indigenous Sunni Arabs.
ISIS was launching terrorist attacks in Europe, which al-Assad and Vladimir Putin were apparently very pleased about. This justified, and continues to justify, an American military presence in Syria, whether Bashar al-Assad likes it or not. It was only the Americans that were determined to eliminate ISIS. The mainly Kurdish YPG forces, backed by American warplanes and logistics, finally defeated ISIS in their Caliphate capital city, Raqqa.
Idlib is the province in northwest Syria, along the border with Turkey.
As the Syrian regime, along with the Christian Russians and Shia Iranians, conducted ethnic cleansing and genocide in one region after another, Bashar al-Assad always agreed to a "humanitarian" solution, as requested by a series of credulous United Nations envoys, who were all useful idiots. The solution was that any Sunni Arabs that hadn't been killed would be permitted to leave the region and flee to Idlib province.
It now turns out that this was just another part of the jigsaw puzzle that forms the entire picture. Al-Assad has arranged for much of Syria to be demographically changed, with Iranian and Hezbollah Shias and their families to live in areas that have been cleansed of Arab Sunnis. The Arab Sunnis and Turkmens have been gathered into Idlib province in the northwest, where their security is supposedly guaranteed by Turkey, although Turkey seems to be overwhelmed.
So now al-Assad and Iran are in control of western and southern Syria, where they present a continuing threat to Israel. But what's the future of Idlib?
There are three million people in Idlib, and half of them are displaced people who fled al-Assad's violence in other regions. Of the three million civilians, there are an estimated 60,000 or so anti-Assad rebels in Idlib. No one doubts that al-Assad would be happy to kill all three million people in Idlib, using the anti-Assad rebels as an excuse.
Some observers believe that al-Assad will just let Idlib be, even though those anti-Assad rebels could launch attacks at any time on the regime.
Bashar al-Assad is a psychopathic monster, the worst war criminal so far this century. Al-Assad has gotten this far in ethnic cleansing large areas and repopulating the cleansed areas with Iranian and Hezbollah Shias. He is not going to stop at Idlib, even if attacking Idlib creates millions more refugees and the greatest humanitarian disaster so far this century.
For Iran, the goal would be completion of the "Shia Crescent": Support the Houthis to defeat the Saudis in Yemen; continue taking control of the government in Baghdad; repopulate the Arab Sunni areas of Syria with Iranian and Hezbollah Shias; continue to support Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack Israel, and wipe it off the map.
For Christian Russia and Shia Iran, this would be the greatest genocidal victory so far this century.
As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war refighting the 1948 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war will also pit Sunnis versus Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. Iran is controlled by an ancient generation of hardliners whose policies are strongly opposed by the growing population of younger generations. Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. AFP (25-May-2018) and Orient News (Syria/UAE, 4-Sep-2016) and MEMRI (26-Nov)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Dec-18 World View -- Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Dec-2018)
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India and Pakistan approve the Kartarpur Corridor, connecting Sikh shrines
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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November was the bloodiest month of the year for separatist militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir. According to official figures from Indian security forces, 37 separatist militants were killed in November, and 227 militants have been killed in Kashmir this year.
The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), which supports the separatist militants, does not dispute those figures, but goes farther and says that 2018 was the bloodiest year for everyone in Kashmir since 2009. JKCCS says that 528 people were killed in Kashmir in 2018, of which 145 were civilians, 234 were separatist rebels, and 142 were Indian security personnel.
As I've written in the past, there are three major Pakistan-sponsored jihadist groups operating in Kashmir. Hizbul Mujahedeen (HM) is an indigenous, home-grown jihadist group that became considerably more violent after the July 8 2016 death of HM leader Burhan Wani in a gunfight with the Indian army. Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) is a relatively new indigenous jihadist group. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) is a Pakistan-based terrorist group that was formed in the 1990s by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to fight India in the disputed regions of Kashmir and Jammu. Hindustan Times and Al Jazeera
With India and Pakistan almost always apparently close to a state of war, with Kashmir at the epicenter, it's surprising that they can agree to anything significant. But that seems to have happened, although ulterior motives abound on both sides.
India and Pakistan have both endorsed the Kartarpur Corridor, a visa-free path that permits Indian Sikh pilgrims to visit the gurdwara (Sikh shrine) known as the Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, associated with the founder of Sikhism, Sri Guru Nanak Sahib Ji, or just Guru Nanak.
Politicians in both India and Pakistan have been effusive in their praise for this agreement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India drew parallels with the fall of the Berlin wall, declaring, "Who thought the Berlin Wall would fall. May be, with the blessings of Guru Nanak Dev ji, Kartarpur corridor will not only be a corridor but can be a reason to bring people together." In a similar vein, Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, at the ground-breaking ceremony at Kartarpur Sahib, expressed the sentiment that, "If France and Germany who fought several wars can live in peace, why can't India and Pakistan?" A number of other statements are in the same vein of intemperance, including Indian Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu's statement, "The corridor will become a symbol of love and peace between both countries."
Going beyond the ebullient promises of "love and peace," Modi has in the past refused to approve the Corridor, saying that Pakistan could use it to radicalize Sikh separatists in the Khalistan movement.
However, the Modi's change of heart was rather sudden, and probably driven by domestic considerations. April 15, 2019, will be the 550th birthday of Sikh found Guru Nanak, and general elections will be held in May, 2019. Refusing to open the Corridor would alienate millions of Sikhs living in India, and motivate them to vote for the opposition. South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) and The Diplomat
Guru Nanak Dev (1469-1539) founded Sikhism in the 16th century with the goal of bringing peace to India at a time when the environment heavily permeated with conflicts between the Hindu and Muslim religions. His most famous saying is: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim, so whose path shall I follow? I shall follow the path of God." He was extremely charismatic. Today, there are 23 million Sikhs worldwide, making Sikhism the 5th largest religion in the world, with 19 million Sikhs living in India, primarily in the state of Punjab.
However, Sikhism did not bring peace between Hindus and Muslims in India. To the contrary, Sikh leaders began to militarize the Sikh community, and Sikh military leaders captured more and more territory, and in 1799 declared Punjab as an independent Sikh state. This was the beginning of the "Khalistan" separatist movement. At that time India was a British colony, and British troops defeated the Sikh armies in the 1800s, decisively beating the Sikhs in 1849.
The seminal event for Sikhs in the 20th century was the April 10-12, 1919, with the Jalianvala Bagh Massacre (Amritsar Massacre), Some 10,000 Sikhs were holding a meeting protesting British colonial policies in India, when British troops opened fire, killing hundreds. This event convinced everyone -- the British, the Sikhs, the Hindus and the Muslims -- that Britain had to give up control of India. This led to the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent that created India and Pakistan, and to the Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century.
Sixty-four years after the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, in 1983, some Sikh activists took refuge in the Golden Temple Complex at Amritsar, the most revered place in the Sikh world. In June 1984 Indian troops launched 'Operation Blue Star'. They attacked the Golden Temple Complex, killing many of those inside, and seriously damaging the buildings.
This infuriated the Sikhs, and revived the Khalistan separatist movement. In October 1984, the world was shocked when India's prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Four days of anti-Sikh rioting followed in India. The government said that more than 2,700 people, mostly Sikhs, were killed, while newspapers and human rights groups put the death toll between 10,000 and 17,000.
The opening of the Kartarpur Corridor, which permits visa-free travel between Sikh shrines in Pakistan and India, raises concerns that the corridor will encourage activism among hardline Khalistan activists in India, giving rise to yet another separatist movement to add to the one by Muslims in Kashmir.
Sikh activists have already been holding rallies in London. In August, a rally for "Punjab Referendum 2020," which calls for a Sikh referendum to encourage separatism, was attended by 2,500 expatriate Sikh hardliners, mostly from Britain. Indian officials say that the Khalistan movement may be popular in London, but it's not catching on in London.
India makes no effort to hide its irritation over allowing “a separatist activity which impinged on India’s territorial integrity and seeks to propagate violence, secessionism and hatred." Indian intelligence agencies are wary of Khalistan radicals in London, as London was the epicenter of a pro-Khalistan movement in the 1980s. Discover Sikhism and Dawn (Pakistan, 12-July-2015) and Hindustan Times and HuffPost and Pluralism.org
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan and India agree to support Sikhs, as separatist violence surges in Kashmir thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Nov-2018)
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China building a 'tsunami' of coal-powered plants across Asia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A new United Nations report on climate change shows that countries that had been vocal about supporting the 2015 treaty on climate change have been failing miserably at meeting the goals of that treaty.
According to the Paris treaty, the world had to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to prevent the world temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Centigrade by 2100. In order to meet that target, global greenhouse gas emissions would have to fall by 55% by 2030.
Then recently a new report by scientists said that 2 degrees wasn't good enough to avoid global catastrophe, and so we'd have to cut carbon emissions enough to prevent world temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Centigrade.
Unfortunately, the countries of the world haven't been doing what they promised, and global greenhouse gas emissions actually increased in 2017. If things continue as they are, then global temperatures will increase by 3.2 degrees Centigrade by 2100.
The report describes different countries:
According to the report, the countries that failed to meet their emission commitments did so because their economies had been growing. The report implies that emissions of greenhouse gases are correlated to economic growth. This is an eminently obvious conclusion, and is certainly true.
But it also implies that greenhouse gas emissions will not be sharply cut unless economic growth is sharply cut, and that's not going to happen in any country.
There is nothing in the Paris treaty that describes any technology for reducing carbon emissions except by cutting economic activity. As for other technologies, they only provide a minuscule part of the solution, and anyway environmentalists are opposed to those too. These include nuclear power plants, huge windmill farms, and huge solar panel farms.
As usual, every time I write one of these articles on climate change, I make the point that I accept the conclusions of the climate "scientists": That there has been and is global warming, that the global warming is caused by increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and that the increased emissions are caused by human activity.
However, climate "scientists" have been getting climate change predictions completely wrong for thirty years, and so I do not accept that these scientists have any idea what the temperature will be in 2100, any more than then know what the temperature will be a month from now.
Even if you accept the scientific conclusion that human activity is causing global warming, the climate change movement is still scam. It's nothing but a movement to take money from developed countries (the US, the EU, etc.) and give it to developing countries, and also give it to the cronies of the climate change activists by funding them.
Every scientific organization in the world understands that if they can "solve" the emissions problem with new technology, then they'll be billionaires. No further encouragement is needed, and no climate change treaty is need.
Furthermore, it's almost 100% certain that there will be one or two world wars prior to 2100, killing 30-50% of the world's population. That reduction in the population will reduce the amount of human activity by a proportional amount, which will completely solve the global warming problem. BBC and CNN and Washington Post and France 24 and United Nations
"Like an approaching tsunami triggered by a distant earthquake, a massive cohort of hundreds of new coal-fired power plants is on course to be added to the already overbuilt Chinese coal plant fleet," is how a September report from CoalSwarm’s Global Coal Plant Tracker begins.
In 2016 and 2017, authorities in Beijing tried to reduce the number of coal-fired plants being built, and they issued a series of suspension orders for many of the plants scheduled for construction.
However, satellite imagery shows that many of the suspended plants were not suspended at all, or at most were delayed. Apparently, regional and provincial authorities ignored the suspension orders from Beijing, and allowed construction to continue anyway.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this illustrates how major decisions are made large populations or large generations of people, even in a dictatorship. Someone commented on my recent article on China's Belt and Road Initiative, and said that all the projects would be completed because China is a "command economy." But China has a population of 1.4 billion people, and a population that size cannot be controlled, even in a "command economy." China is far too big a country, long overdue for a major internal rebellion with the right triggering event.
However, China's activities with coal-fired plants go far beyond their borders.
China is taking a leading role in financing a wave of now coal plants in countries across Asia. Export credit agencies such as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, China Development Bank Corp. and Korea Trade Insurance Corp. are among the biggest supporters. The three biggest destinations for those funds are Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam.
China alone emits 27% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but that's just within China's own borders. Thanks to China, greenhouse gas emissions are increasing in countries across Asia as well. Guardian (London) and BBC and China Dialogue and EndCoal and Bloomberg
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Nov-18 World View -- New climate change report shows countries are failing to meet commitments thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Nov-2018)
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Bitcoin super-bubble implodes and crashes below $4,000
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The price of a Bitcoin fell to $3,700 on Tuesday, down from a peak close to $20,000 in December of last year.
A little over a year ago, in response to people asking my advice about investing in Bitcoin, I wrote about Bitcoin just after its price surged past $5,000. In the article I wrote, "Investing in Bitcoin is the road to disaster. I literally cannot think of a worse investment today than Bitcoin, or the various copycat newcomers, such as Ethereum. Bitcoin is almost literally a Ponzi scheme backed by nothing but air."
So Dear Reader, I hope you took my advice, because if you didn't then you've lost money. Many people lost a great deal of money investing as the price increased parabolically all the way up to $20,000, and those people have lost a LOT of money.
What are analysts saying today? Some are saying that Bitcoin has bottomed, and now will go up. One says that Bitcoin will fall further to about $3,000, and then will go up. Another says that it will remain about where it is now for several months, and then will go up. These are the same people who have always said it would go up, even while it was crashing.
This reminds me of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s decade. I was writing as early as 2004 that there was a housing bubble, as did a few others. It was perfectly obvious. But the "experts" on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal kept saying that "Housing prices can't go down -- people have to live somewhere," and "Banks won't foreclose -- it's not in their interest to do so" and "These housing construction firms know what they're doing, and they wouldn't be building houses if it were just a bubble."
It wasn't until around 2009 or 2010 that these "experts" even admitted that there had been a housing bubble, and then they pretended that they had known it all along. It was the same with the Iraq war, which everyone was in favor of in 2003, but then years later pretended that they had been against it all along.
So now we have experts making predictions about the future price of Bitcoin. How is any prediction of any kind even possible?
If you want to predict the future price of stock shares, you can look at a company's earnings history. If you want to predict future corporate bond prices, you can look at a company's assets. If you want to predict the future price of corn, you can look at yield estimates that you get from the Department of Agriculture.
But for Bitcoin, there's nothing, absolutely nothing on which to base any prediction. These analysts on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal who predict that Bitcoin will go up should be prosecuted for criminal fraud, because they don't have a clue. Betting on Bitcoin is worse than betting on the Las Vegas roulette wheel. Maybe you'll win, maybe you'll lose but the analysts who make predictions are nothing but criminals. If you invest in Bitcoin, you should be prepared to lose 100% of your investment. Bloomberg and CNBC and NewsBTC and MarketWatch and Coin Market Cap
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The above graph shows that the prices of iron and steel in China have crashed in the last month, with the right part of the graph looking very similar to the Bitcoin graph above. Maybe the two are linked in some way, or maybe it's just a coincidence that they're both crashing at the same time, but either way the fall in iron and steel prices in China is the latest sign that the economy has been weakening for about six months.
It's my personal opinion that China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is in a massive bubble of its own.
The BRI is a breathtaking project as much as $1.3 trillion on railways, roads, seaports, and power grids, now extending into a least 76 countries, mostly developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, together with a handful of countries on the eastern edge of Europe.
My feeling, based on many, many things that I've read in the last year, is that China's BRI is a humongous financial disaster in the making. The other side of "debt trap diplomacy" is that all these debt traps will be sprung at roughly the same time, as each debt trap default creates a level of panic that triggers defaults in other debt traps.
What most people don't understand is any bank or company can "create" money by issuing debt. People think that only the federal government can create money, but the money created by issuing debt is 100% identical to the money created money created by the federal government. And in a debt bubble, money created by issuing debt vanishes when the bubble bursts.
There are a few things about the BRI that I find troubling and indicative of a financial crisis.
First, the utter secrecy of the terms of the BRI deals, in particular the amount of debt being created, and the terms of repayment. I don't see any reason why that information can't be made public for each country, even if other deals still have to be kept secret. By keeping the debt secret, China evokes a great deal of suspicion of bribery, corruption, and debt-trap diplomacy.
Second, as we recently reported, the terms of China's loan to the Maldives is becoming public, thanks to a surprise election victory and change of administrations. The new president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, asked China's ambassador Zhang Lizhong how much the Maldives owed to China, and he was handed an invoice for the shocking amount of $3.2 billion, many times more than Maldives could afford. This figure was so embarrassing to China that later denied that Zhang ever gave that figure. The whole situation raises suspiicion of a great deal of corruption. ( "24-Nov-18 World View -- Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China")
So you have the huge amounts of money sloshing around 76 countries, with no public information about the terms. In this top secret environment, there must be many situations involving bribery and kickbacks, as well as country leaders lining the pockets of their family and cronies.
The third issue is what's happening in Pakistan. Pakistan is about to go into bankruptcy, but it's "all-weather friend" China very surprising has refused to come to Pakistan's aid. Is this because China's slowing economy requires keeping expenses in check? China has asked Pakistan to go to the IMF, but the IMF is going to demand full details of all the Pakistan-China contracts, and also require Pakistan to stop funding terrorists.
So this is what I call the "BRI Bubble." China is funding projects in 76 countries, and most of those countries are ever going to be able to pay that money back. A crisis could occur at any time.
This is a bubble that's going to burst, with catastrophic results, especially in Asia.
We keep speculating about what will trigger the next world war -- South China Sea, North Korea, Mideast, Kashmir, etc. But another possibility has always been a global financial crisis triggering the world war. The Bitcoin crash may have cascading effects leading to a broader crisis but, if not, it might be the BRI bubble. Bloomberg and Sputnik News (Moscow) and Financial Times and Global Times (Beijing)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Nov-18 World View -- Bitcoin bubble and China's Belt and Road bubble both appear to be crashing thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Nov-2018)
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Pakistan turns to its 'friends' for aid
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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After two weeks of discussions early this month between Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan failed to get agreement on securing a bailout package that would save the country from its balance of payments crisis. The talks ended inconclusively, with agreement to meet again in January.
China has strongly encouraged the IMF to make a bailout loan available to Pakistan. Last month, China's foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, "As a member of the IMF, China supports the organization in making an objective evaluation of Pakistan based on professionalism and earnestly helping it properly address the current difficulty."
However, the main area of disagreement with Pakistan stemmed from the IMF's insistence that Pakistan fully disclose the terms of the loans made by China to Pakistan for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This is a very sensitive subject for China. China's has made loans to numerous countries across Asia and Africa, and China has insisted that the terms of these loans be kept top secret. Outside observers believe that China is engaging in "debt trap diplomacy," and exposing the terms of these loans would reveal the amount of leverage that China has on all these countries. In the case of Pakistan, even the central bank doesn't know the terms of the loan.
As we recently reported, the terms of China's loan to the Maldives is becoming public, thanks to a surprise election victory and change of administrations. The new president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, asked China's ambassador Zhang Lizhong how much the Maldives owed to China, and he was handed an invoice for the shocking amount of $3.2 billion, many times more than Maldives could afford. This figure was so embarrassing to China that later denied that Zhang ever gave that figure. ( "24-Nov-18 World View -- Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China")
However, the IMF is demanding to know all the details of China's loans to Pakistan before it will approve a bailout package. That's because a lot of the bailout money would end up going to China to pay off the CPEC investment. That's why China is so supportive of an IMF loan to Pakistan. And since most of the IMF money comes from US taxpayers, American taxpayers would be paying for China's infrastructure projects in Pakistan. Nikkei and Market Watch
This week is the tenth anniversary of the horrific 3-day terrorist attack on Mumbai, India, killing 126 people, injuring hundreds more, and gutting the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, a major landmark for all of India.
It later turned out that the perpetrators were Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based terrorist group that was funded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. LeT's leader in the operation was Hafiz Saeed. Pakistan refused to condemn him or LeT, but kept him under house arrest for several years, under international pressure. Then in November 2017, Pakistan freed him with no trial and all charges dropped. As he left the court a free man, he was greeted by chanting crowds and rose petals.
The relevance of this story to Pakistan's relationship with the IMF is that the IMF will not provide funding to a country on the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF is a 30 year old international policy-making body concerned with money laundering and financing of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
There are currently 11 countries on the FATF blacklist, including Pakistan. According to the October 2018 update, Pakistan has committed "to address its strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies," and take numerous steps including the following:
"(1) demonstrating that TF [terror financing] risks are properly identified, assessed, and that supervision is applied on a risk-sensitive basis; ...(4) demonstrating that authorities are identifying cash couriers and enforcing controls on illicit movement of currency and understanding the risk of cash couriers being used for TF; ...
(8) demonstrating effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions (supported by a comprehensive legal obligation) against all 1267 and 1373 designated terrorists and those acting for or on their behalf, including preventing the raising and moving of funds, identifying and freezing assets (movable and immovable), and prohibiting access to funds and financial services."
In June, Pakistan agreed to tighten its compliance with anti-money laundering laws and counter-terror funding. In view of Pakistan's previous sponsoring of terrorist organizations targeting India and Afghanistan, it's not surprising that Pakistan has no particular desire to fulfill that commitment, even though the IMF will not provide funding for a country on the FATF blacklist.
Finance Minister Asad Umar specifically addressed this question last week and responded:
"The government is neither in a hurry to sign a deal with the IMF nor will it come under any pressure to take any decision which burdens the country’s economy and its people."
The IMF has other requirements as well: raise taxes, raise electricity prices, tighten monetary policies and allow a further depreciation in the value of the rupee currency. Asia Times and Pakistan Today and The News (Pakistan) and Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
Last month, Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan leveraged the bizarre death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul to obtain $6 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia. ( "25-Oct-18 World View -- Pakistan's 'desperate' Imran Khan attends Saudi investment summit amid Khashoggi crisis")
However, even with that aid, Pakistan still needs an additional $12-15 billion in aid to survive the next year. Imran Khan has paid visits to both United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, but apparently returned empty-handed from both visits.
So Pakistan has turned to its "all-weather friend," China, whose friendship is "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel, sweeter than honey, and dearer than eyesight."
Khan visited China early this month, expecting a generous bailout package from China. But to everyone's surprise, China flatly refused. Perhaps China feels that its refusal will force the IMF to provide a bailout, and then, as described earlier, the US taxpayer will be paying China for CPEC, something that would delight the Chinese who would be getting sweet revenge for unfair deals forced on China after the Opium Wars in the 1800s.
So that brings us back to the IMF demands -- make the details of China's loans to Pakistan public, and put procedures in place to end terror financing. It remains to be seen whether Pakistan is even capable of meeting these demands, or if it even wants to. Dawn (Pakistan) and Lowy Institute (Australia) and Pakistan Today and and Bloomberg (24-Oct)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan fails to get agreement from IMF for a bailout thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Nov-2018)
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Russia confirms the attack on the Ukrainian ships
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of resuming their war today, after a major naval escalation where Russia's military fired on Ukrainian navy ships in the Black Sea, boarding and seizing the ships, and blockading Ukraine's ports at the Kerch Strait.
The sequence of events, according to Ukrainian media and mostly confirmed by Russian media, is as follows:
There is no word about how long the blockade will be in place.
Russia's attack on Ukraine's ships appears to be a continuation of the war between Russia and Ukraine that began in 2014. Russia invaded Donbas (eastern Ukraine) and is still occupying it, and then Russia invaded, occupied and annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.
In the past three years, Russia has built a bridge over the Kerch Strait between Russia and Occupied Crimea, and has constantly harassed and blocked hundreds of commercial ships trying to reack Ukrainian ports.
Many observers believe that these steps are all in preparation for a naval assault on Mariupol, Berdyansk, and other Ukrainian ports along the Sea of Azov, with the objective of creating a land bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea, and to taking full military control of the entire Sea of Azov.
The three seized ships are in Kerch seaport. There are no reports on the locations and health of the captured sailors.
Ukraine has called an emergency meeting of its national security and defense council, and Ukraine's parliament may vote on declaring martial law on Monday.
Last month, Orthodox Christian Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the Constantinople Patriarchate and "first among equals" leader of all Orthodox Christian churches and of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians, announced that the Orthodox Christian Church of Ukraine in Kiev is now independent of the Orthodox Christian Church of Moscow. This move has infuriated Russia, causing them to threaten retaliation. Sunday's naval crisis may be one step in that retaliation. News.com (Australia) and BBC and Ukrinform (Ukraine) and Daily Mail (London)
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Before we quote the Russian statement about Sunday's incident, we have to remind readers that Russia has repeatedly lied about everything, including the following:
There are many additional examples, especially in Syria. Any statement by a Russian official has to be assumed to be a lie unless it's confirmed by a Western politician or Western media. Russia's press is tightly controlled by Russia's government. If Russians ever tell the truth, it's only be accident.
On the other hand, Ukraine has a free press, and statements by Ukrainian sources during the last four years have generally proved out to be consistently true.
So with that introduction, here's the Russian statement as published in Tass:
"MOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. All three vessels of the Ukrainian Navy, which violated the Russian state border, have been detained in the Black Sea, weapons were used to force them to stop, the Public Relations Center of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reported."The Ukrainian Navy’s vessels the Berdyansk, the Nikopol and the Yany Kapu, which violated Russia’s state border this morning, made another attempt of committing illegal activities in Russia’s territorial sea at 19:00 Moscow time on November 25," the FSB said. "They did not respond to legitimate demands by the ships and boats of Russia’s FSB Border Guard Service escorting them to stop immediately and performed dangerous maneuvers."
According to the FSB, "weapons were used to force the Ukrainian warships to stop." As a result, all three vessels of the Ukrainian Navy were detained in Russia’s territorial waters in the Black Sea. "Three wounded military servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces received medical assistance," the FSB said, adding that there was no threat to their lives.
A criminal case has been initiated over violation of Russia’s state border.
The FSB stressed that Ukraine was aware of the procedure for warships’ passage through Russia’s territorial sea and Kerch-Yenikale Canal. "They have already used that procedure for innocent passage," it said.
The FSB’s border directorate for Crimea earlier reported that three Ukrainian warships had illegally crossed Russia’s state border in the Black Sea and entered Russia’s territorial waters performing dangerous maneuvers. Later on, the FSB said that two more Ukrainian warships had sailed off from Berdyansk to join the three vessels. However, they later turned back.
The FSB stressed that "before making such dangerous and irresponsible decisions, the Kiev leadership should have thought about possible consequences of its actions."
Russia’s Federal Security Service said it had irrefutable evidence of Kiev’s using the Ukrainian Navy to stage a provocation in the Black Sea and promised it would be made public soon.
Three Ukrainian Navy vessels, which violated Russia’s state border and were detained in the Black Sea are being delivered to the port of Kerch (a city in eastern Crimea), Anton Lozovoy, an officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) State Border Directorate for Crimea, said in a video commentary on Monday.
"All three vessels have been detained and are being delivered to the port of Kerch," he said.
According to Lozovoy, three Ukrainian military servicemen who sustained minor wounds have received medical care."
Russia claims that they have "irrefutable evidence" of a provocation, but until that "irrefutable evidence" is released and evaluated by Western analysts, we have to assume that most of the above statement is a lie.
The Russian statement does not mention ramming the tugboat.
The Russian statement says that the Ukrainian ships were in Russian territorial waters. Until this is confirmed by Western sources, we have to assume that this is a lie.
The Ukraine war has been ongoing for four years, and people are still being killed on both sides. Sunday's incident is a major escalation, and it could mean that Russia is planning to invade and annex the region of Ukraine along the Sea of Azov. Tass (Moscow) and Aesop's Fable: The Boy Who Cried Wolf
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Nov-18 World View -- Russia attacks Ukraine's navy and blockades Ukraine's ports at Kerch Strait thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Nov-2018)
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Russia rebukes Venezuela for non-payment
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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With over one million refugees from Venezuela having fled to other countries, with dozens of people dying violently in Venezuela every day, Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro's Socialist policies seem to drive the country further into disaster every week.
In 2017, Venezuela was producing two million barrels of oil per day (bpd). But by September of this year, output had fallen to just 1.4 bpd. According to Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency:
"Venezuela production is in a free-fall and we expect that soon it may go to even below 1 million barrels per day."
Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, and Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) was one of the biggest oil producers in the world.
But Socialist dictator Hugo Chávez nationalized ExxonMobil's Venezuelan assets in 2007, and turned them over to his crooked cronies who didn't know anything about running an oil company. Venezuela's oil production has been steadily declining for years. Average oil production declined dramatically over the past two years, by 12% in 2016 and again by 13% in 2017. Production in December 2017 was 27% lower than a year earlier. And this year it's fallen even farther.
Late last year, Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás Maduro appointed a military man, Major General Manuel Quevedo, head of PDVSA, with a mandate to increase production and rid the company of corruption. Quevedo treated the engineers and other professions contemptuously, even calling them "thieves and saboteurs." Tens of thousands of employees left the company, and Quevedo replaced them with soldiers who knew nothing about the oil industry.
The result has been a collapse in infrastructure, as engineers who were needed to maintain the busted valves, ripped gaskets, cracked pipes and so forth were forced to leave. Contractors who were experts in cleaning up oil spills have gone out of business because PDVSA wasn't paying them.
The means that oil production is decreasing, and oil spills and leaks are increasing. PDVSA is unable to clean up spills after years of neglect, scant investment, and corruption scandals. Pools of oil are polluting waterways and farmland, causing a pungent odor.
Urban areas have been hit, too. Early this year, the contents of a ruptured transport line blackened the Guarapiche River in Monagas state. A water-purification plant on the river was compromised, and the authorities shut it down for more than a month. Local schools canceled classes, and government offices reduced office hours because water was so scarce.
Socialist Venezuela is in a major economic collapse, following years of mismanagement and underinvestment in the oil industry, an enormous humanitarian crisis, and a leader who is addicted to Socialist policies that enrich himself and his cronies, but destroy the population, with a hyperinflation rate expected to reach one million percent by the end of the year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Reuters and Bloomberg and Reuters and Bloomberg
Socialist Venezuela would have gone into full-blown default years ago if not for bailouts by Russia and China. Russia has been bailing out Venezuela for decades, and in recent years Russia and China have extended large loans to Venezuela, with the agreement that Venezuela can service the debt by making payments in shipments of oil.
One of the reasons for the fall in oil production has been that PDVSA has been forced to starve its own oil refineries of crude oil, so that crude oil can be shipped to Russia and China as loan repayments. However, as PDVSA's infrastructure collapses, it's becoming more difficult to make debt servicing payments even with oil.
It's now emerged that PDVSA has been unable to provide all the oil shipments that it's promised to Russia. Igor Sechin, a close adviser to Vladimir Putin and head of Russia's state-owned oil company Rosneft, flew from Moscow to Caracas over the weekend to rebuke Venezuela's Socialist leader Nicolás Maduro for being behind schedule in oils-for-loans payments to Russia.
Possibly even more significant is that, according to reports, Sechin brought information (I would guess satellite tracking data) showing that Venezuela was meeting its obligations with China, but not with Russia.
The problems delaying payments include operational mishaps, such as refining outages and delayed cleaning of tanker hulls, and financial disputes with service providers owed money by PDVSA. Reuters and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Nov-18 World View -- Socialist Venezuela oil production in 'free fall' as infrastructure collapses thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Nov-2018)
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Constitutional crisis continues in Sri Lanka over China-India competition
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Shortly after Ibrahim Mohamed Solih shocked the Maldives by winning the presidential election on September 23 decisively by 58-41% of the vote, he met with the Chinese ambassador to the Maldives, Zhang Lizhong, to ask how much money the Maldives owed to China. According to Solih, Zhang handed him an invoice for $3.2 billion. This was money owed for Chinese-funded infrastructure projects for China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Solih's election victory was a surprise because it had been expected that the election would go to he incumbent president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who had never hesitated to use vote-rigging or jailings or violence to win elections, had been expected to win. However, Solih's election margin of victory was so large that Yameen was forced to concede. Solih's victory is also major victory for India and a major loss for China, since Yameen had close relations with China and Solih promised to balance Indian and Chinese influence.
So then there was another shock, when Solih received the "invoice" from ambassador Zhang saying that Maldives owed China $3.2 billion. With annual revenues of $1.5 billion and an annual gross domestic product of around $3.9 billion, Maldives would be unable to service the debt, and it appeared that Maldives had been the victim of a huge Chinese debt trap.
Solih took office a week ago, and said that the country's finances are worse than expected, and that it will take weeks or months to untangle details of all the deals struck with Chinese firms. According to his assistant, Mohamed Nasheed:
"We are at a loss to understand how much we really owe to China. Direct debt, or direct bilateral government-to-government debt is one thing, but there is on top of that sovereign guarantees for the private sector. And there is also on top of that our state owned enterprises who have gone into debt."
However, the Maldives central bank contradicts the $3.2 billion figure, estimating the country’s liabilities to China at $1.5 billion.
And now China is denying that the Zhang ever gave Solih a $3.2 billion figure, also saying that the correct figure is closer to $1.5 billion.
So the Maldives is sending its foreign minister Abdulla Shahid to China next month, to renegotiate deals and to finally figure out how much Maldives owes to China.
China has negotiated many infrastructure debt deals with numerous countries. These deals are all secret, and are usually considered to be Chinese "debt traps" imposed on small countries. The situation with the Maldives is that, for the first time, one of these top secret deals may become public, and we'll be able to see what the terms are and whether there was corruption involved on the part of the Yameen administration.
What we've seen so far in the Maldives case is that the financial relationship with China is a total mess. If and when deals with other countries become public, we can expect a similar mess.
The Maldives envoy Abdulla Shahid will be discussing another subject when he visits China next month -- the joint Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that the two countries signed a year ago. According to the Maldives government, the FTA was rushed through parliament by the Yameen administration, but the Solih administration plans to cancel it, because it's too one sided.
Between January to August this year, the Maldives’ imports from China were $342 million, while its exports to China were just $265,270. The FTA specifies that there would be no tariffs on imports by either side from the other, but since China imports almost nothing from Maldives, the FTA is of benefit only to China. Canceling the FTA would be one more setback to China, which is facing an increasing chorus of accusations of "debt trap diplomacy" in many countries across the Pacific and Indian oceans. Avas (Maldives) and Reuters and Maldives Independent (30-Nov-2017) and Reuters (19-Nov) and Xinhua
Sri Lanka is another country that has been harshly victimized by China's debt trap diplomacy. Sri Lanka, under former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, signed a huge finance deal with China to build the Hambantota seaport. But Sri Lanka was unable to service the debt, and Rajapaksa's successor was forced to hand control of the seaport over to China. So now China has control of an important strategic seaport on the Indian Ocean, and an enclave of thousands of Chinese workers and their families on Sri Lanka soil.
So it was a great shock on October 26 when Mahinda Rajapaksa, the mastermind of the Hambantota project, was appointed prime minister by the current president, Maithripala Sirisena, after firing the existing prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Sirisena has never explained the reason for his decision, but it's believed that Wickremesinghe is close to India, while Rajapaksa is close to China. Wickremesinghe has refused to leave the prime minister's residence, so for the last month Sri Lanka has had two prime ministers.
Sirisena also dissolved the parliament, but the parliament refused to be dissolved and remained in session. Last week, a vote was held to select the actual prime minister from the two choices, pandemonium broke out in the assembly when Rajapaksa's supporters threw books, chairs and chili paste at Wickremesinghe's supporters, in an attempt to keep from losing the vote.
On Friday, the parliament held another vote, this time to decide control of a crucial committee that sets the parliamentary agenda. When Wickremesinghe's supporters won the vote, Rajapaksa's supporters staged a walkout. Wickremesinghe argues that he still commands majority support within parliament and, despite being fired, he continues to occupy his official residence. On the other hand, Rajapaksa has lost two no-confidence votes in the parliament but has refused to stand down.
Despite having been forced to give up its Hambantota seaport to China, Sri Lanka still owes more than $50 billion to foreign lenders. Next year it has to pay more than $4 billion in debt servicing. The current constitutional crisis is causing the value of the Sri Lanka rupee to plummet, which means that the $4 billion will be much harder to pay.
Both Sri Lanka and the Maldives are very important strategic locations in the India Ocean, and seaports in those countries would be among China's "String of Pearls" seaports in the Indian Ocean, giving China a major strategic advantage. However, pro-Indian governments in both island countries would hand significant setbacks to China. Al Jazeera and Reuters and Al Jazeera and South China Morning Post (29-Oct)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Nov-18 World View -- Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Nov-2018)
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Hyperinflation returns to Zimbabwe
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In the 1990s, Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa, growing much more food than the country needed and exporting the rest. Then in 1999, president Robert Mugabe instituted a "land reform" plan. The Mugabe government seized, without compensation, farms owned by white farmers, farms that were operating well and producing a great deal of food. The farms were given to cronies in Mugable's Shona tribe, who knew nothing about farming. By 2002, Zimbabwe's farmland was in ruin and people were starving. Zimbabwe had been a food exporter, but became a food importer.
Now suddenly, and unexpectedly, Zimbabwe's government is proposing to compensate white farmers whose land was seized without compensation. On Thursday, Zimbabwe's finance minister Mthuli Ncube, who was trained at University of Cambridge and was appointed to his new post in September, issued his proposed budget for 2019. Buried deep in his budget document are the following paragraphs:
"202. Government is committed to finalizing the issue of compensation to former white farm owners who were affected by the Land Reform Programme, in accordance with the country’s law and commitments under the various bilateral agreements and the Constitution. ...206. In the interim, the 2019 Budget proposes to avail US$53 million towards payment of compensation to former white farm owners, whose disbursement will be targeted."
The proposal acknowledges that the $53 million in the budget is only a tiny fraction of the total compensation that would be required, so this is only a first step. But why do it at all? Has the government of Zimbabwe suddenly developed a conscience.
The answer is that Zimbabwe is no longer able to borrow money from the World Bank, until some of Zimbabwe's previous debts have been resolved. In particular, the United States is demanding that Zimbabwe provide at least partial restitution to for land seized from white farmers, before it will approve of any further World Bank loan to Zimbabwe. So Ncube is proposing a nominal payment of restitution to white farmers so that Zimbabwe, which is drowning in debt already, might be able to borrow more money from the World Bank.
So Zimbabwe is being forced, most assuredly against its will, to compensate white farmers for stolen land, so that Zimbabwe can go further into debt. That sounds like Karmic justice to me.
According to the World Bank: "Zimbabwe has enormous potential given its generous endowment of natural resources, an existing stock of public infrastructure, and comparatively well skilled human resources. However, realizing this will require prompt action to correct fiscal policies, re-stabilize the monetary system, and resolve arrears to international lenders that would allow for a resumption of development financing." Australian Broadcasting (5-Sep-2002) and Daily News (Zimbabwe) and Zimbabwe Finance Ministry and World Bank
After Mugabe's land seizures left the farmlands in ruin and the people starving, Zimbabwe began importing food. Mugabe was printing money to pay for imports, causing rapid inflation and then hyperinflation, which exceeded one million percent by 2009, making Zimbabwe currency worth less than toilet paper. Half the population was in severe poverty, with the greatest poverty among Mugabe's hated enemy, the Ndebele tribe.
The US dollar became the official currency, and for a few years the economy started to grow again. But in 2016, Mugabe started spending lavishly again, resulting in unsustainable fiscal deficits, and a cutoff of World Bank loans.
Since Zimbabwe was running out of foreign reserves (US dollars), Mugabe in December 2016 introduced the bond note, a new paper currency with each bond note worth one US dollar. Mugabe said that only a limited number of bond notes would be printed, so that hyperinflation would not recur.
However, bond note inflation has been occurring. According to official figures, the inflation rate was 20.9% in October. However, one analyst says that the official inflation rate is not accurate:
"The inflation print fails to account for the widening black market premium and therefore does not show the actual rate at which prices are rising in the informal market. October’s rapid increase in prices is likely to lead to even more confusion and panic among local consumers."
The black market inflation rate is 244.6%. Zimbabwe Herald and Bloomberg and New Zimbabwe
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Nov-18 World View -- Zimbabwe proposes to compensate white farmers as hyperinflation returns thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(23-Nov-2018)
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Iraq War and the 58 Year Hypothesis
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Fourteen major French companies went on trial on Wednesday in the Appeals Court of Paris for taking part in a vast corruption scheme where hundreds of companies around the world paid $1.5 billion to Saddam Hussein in bribes and corrupt payments to win oil contracts in the Iraq War "Oil-for-food" program.
Saddam Hussein, as president of Iraq, had a long history of developing and using WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). Saddam had a long-standing program to develop nuclear weapons, and in 1981, Israeli war strikes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor that could have been used to develop nuclear weapons. In 1988, towards the end of the Iran/Iraq war, Saddam had used mustard gas chemical weapons in 1988 to kill Kurds and Iranians.
In 1990, Hussein's Iraq invaded and annexed the country Kuwait, resulting in the first Gulf War, which ended up ejecting Iraq from Kuwait, but left Saddam Hussein in power, still able to produce WMDs. In the years that followed, Saddam continued to develop WMDs, and refused to permit UN inspectors to enter Iraq. In 1998, the Bill Clinton administration ordered air strikes against Iraq because it refused to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.
The second Iraq War began in 2003 at a time when almost everyone in the world believed that Saddam was continuing WMD development, and the CIA reported that the evidence supported this. During all this time from 1991-2003, Iraq was heavily sanctioned in the hope of ending the WMD program.
Saddam always complained that the crippling sanctions were hurting ordinary Iraqi people, so in 1996 instituted the "oil-for-food" program. Under this program, Saddam could sell a limited amount of oil to other countries, and use the money to buy food and humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people. The United Nations was to serve as a watchdog.
Saddam corrupted the system by demanding that any company that wants to buy oil under this program would be invoiced for 110% of the actual cost of the oil. The 100% portion would be used to purchase food, and the other 10% would go into Saddam's own bank account. A UN inquiry led by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker alleged in 2005 that the 2,200 companies involved in the programme had paid a total of $1.8 billion in kickbacks to win supply deals. Of those, 180 were French.
In 2016, French oil company Total was ordered to pay a $827,000 fine, the maximum allowed under French law, for corruption linked to the UN oil-for-food program. Other French companies were cleared of the charges because the situation did not match the offenses that French anti-corruption law is designed to prosecute. However, prosecutors hope that the judges in the trials that began on Wednesday for 14 companies will look at the situation differently, and will convict them.
The 14 companies include Renault Trucks, Legrand and Schneider Electric. The trial is expected to conclude by the end of November. Radio France International and Le Figaro (Paris) (Trans) and Deutsche Welle (2-Jul-2008) and Radio France International (26-Feb-2016)
The Iraq War has been called the worst war in American history, mainly by people with deficient reasoning skills that they can't figure out that without the war we would never have known that Saddam was not developing WMDs. After the war, President George Bush was able to leverage that discovery to convince Iran and Saudi Arabia to end their own WMD programs, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa late in 2003 ending their nuclear program.
The most vocal opponents of launching the Iraq war in 2003 were also those who were making huge amounts of money in corrupt practices in the oil-for-food program.
Kojo Annan, the son of Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, was heavily involved in the scheme through the Swiss company Cotecna, which won a large oil-for-food contract.
Russia benefited the most from oil-for-food corruption, winning near a third of all the oil deals. Paul Volcker's UN inquiry identified the people involved, but none was prosecuted because the Russians refused to cooperate.
France was in second place in benefiting from the corrupt scheme. For years, we've had to listen to French commentators express moral superiority because they opposed the Iraq War. Actually, they were the worst of all, since the advisors to France's president Jacques Chirac were heavily involved in the Iraq corruption. Chirac would have happily let Saddam kill thousands of people with WMDs, as long as Chirac kept making money from it.
There was something really remarkable about the 2003 Iraq War in that there was almost universal panic, an unrealistic panic, about Saddam's development of WMDs. We don't get nearly as panicky today about Bashar al-Assad's use of Sarin gas in Syria, or Russia's use of Novichok nerve agent to kill people in Britain.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the 2003 Iraq war was an example of the "58 year hypothesis," which says that when some sort of calamitous event occurs, then some sort of panic will occur exactly 58 years later. That's because 5-10 year old children at the time of the calamitous event all retire or die or lose power, all at once, 58 years later, and it's this cohort of people who panic, because they suddenly realize that they'll be gone and the younger generations won't be prepared. (See lengthier explanation at "The 58 Year Hypothesis")
So the 2003 panic over WMDs in Iraq occurred 58 years after the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Another example of the 58 year hypothesis was the swine flu panic that occurred in 1976. Anyone alive at that time will remember the nationwide panic that occurred, and the demands for development of a swine flu vaccine, which turned out to be a disaster. That was 58 years after the devastating Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 that killed millions of people.
Another example was the 1987 stock market panic. If fizzled very quickly because it wasn't a real panic. It occurred 58 years after the 1929 stock market crash.
Another example is Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanon border. Israel went into a state of total panic, and launched the war in Lebanon within four hours, with no plan and no objectives. The war was a total disaster for Israel. It occurred 58 years after the genocidal war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine in 1948.
The 58 year hypothesis has turned out to be one of the most fascinating discoveries in the development of generational theory. It certainly doesn't explain everything, or even many things, but it does make sense of things like the "false panics" that occurred in 1976, 1987, 2003, and in Israel in 2006. Economist (13-Mar-2008) and Council of Foreign Relations (11-May-2006) and AP (Jan 2008)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Nov-18 World View -- Fourteen companies in France on trial over Iraq war oil-for-food corruption thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Nov-2018)
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New survey shows that Philippine people are anti-Chinese, pro-American
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Tuesday, China's president Xi Jinping visited Philippines president Rodrigo R. Duterte to sign 29 agreements. The agreements give China permission to drill for oil and gas in the Philippines territorial waters.
Philippines president Rodrigo R. Duterte has never made a secret of the reason why he has repeatedly acceded to the demands of China's president Xi Jinping, and why he's been giving up Philippines' sovereignty to Scarborough Shoal and to other parts of the South China Sea: He gave in to China because China threatened him militarily if he didn't comply.
In fact, in May of last year, Duterte recounted a conversation with Xi Jinping that made the threat explicit. Xi said that if the Philippines drills for oil and gas in its own territorial waters, then China will go to war. Duterte concluded:
"Are they willing to fight? Because if they are willing to fight, we are. But why would I do that? It will result in a massacre and it will just destroy everything."
So Duterte appeased China and gave in to all of China's demands.
Another part of Duterte's 2016 agreement with Xi was that China would provide $24 billion in loans and investment for infrastructure overhaul. Duterte used this promise of money from China to sell the appeasement to the people of the Philippines. However, a recent analysis revealed that China has only come through with a small portion of the promised investments. According to one Philippines analyst: "Duterte’s naivety with China has been a slam dunk strategic coup for China, no doubt about it."
The 29 agreements that Xi and Duterte signed on Tuesday are being described as "broad or vague, from cooperating in education, culture and industrial park development to jointly promoting infrastructure, agriculture cooperatives and establishing sanitation protocols for shipping coconuts." Of the 38 projects that Xi and Duterte agreed to in 2016, only four of them were among the commitments made on Tuesday.
Of particular significance is that one of the 29 deals is related to oil and gas development in Philippines territorial waters. The Philippines should receive 100% of the benefit, but China agreed to enter into a 60-40 joint exploration arrangement with the Philippines. Under the agreement, Manila will receive 60% of the oil and natural gas deposits while Beijing will get the remaining 40%.
It remains to be seen whether China will honor that agreement, or will renege on it and demand 100% of the oil and gas deposits for itself. Reuters and Manila Times and Reuters and Bloomberg
As I wrote in 2016, Duterte's "flip-flop" towards China couldn't last because polls show that 54% of the Philippine people have a favorable view of China, while 92% have a favorable view of the United States. Nonetheless, Duterte's flip-flop still makes sense after Xi Jinping's threat to massacre the Philippines.
A new survey released on Tuesday by the Philippines social research institution Social Weather Stations (SWS) shows that anti-China sentiment continues to be extremely high.
This survey shows a great deal of trust and confidence in the United States, but a great deal of distrust in China, which is not surprising in view of China's increasingly belligerent and illegal military actions in the South China Sea. Duterte's policies of increasing appeasement of China's demands is creating a potentially explosive situation that could lead to conflict in any of a number of scenarios.
And by the way, other surveys have shown that the Chinese people have a great deal of contempt for the people of the Philippines. In 2012, a Chinese television anchor 'accidentally' claimed that the Philippines "is China's inherent territory and the Philippines belongs to Chinese sovereignty, this is an indisputable fact." The statement was later retracted, but it illustrates the state of mind of the Chinese people toward the Philippines.
As I've written many times, it's a core principle of Generational Dynamics that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people. The attitudes of politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they represent the attitudes of the people. So in this case, war is inevitable because the Chinese people want a war.
Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump have something in common. They are both aware that China is headed for war with their respective countries. In both cases, their policies are little understood by the mainstream media, but they make perfect sense when seen as an attempt, perhaps even a desperate attempt, to try to prevent that war, and the resulting world war, from occurring. And as I've said before, I'm not going to criticize policies whose purpose is to prevent a world war, even if a world war is 100% certain. Social Weather Survey (Philippines) and Coconuts Manila
In my recent article on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit, held in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea (PNG), over the weekend, I described some incidents of extremely arrogant, belligerent behavior of Chinese officials at the meeting. ( "19-Nov-18 World View -- APEC meeting ends in disarray after harsh US-China disagreements")
However, it turns out that China's behavior was far worse than I had described. An article by Josh Rogin, who traveled with vice president Mike Pence to the conference, described China's "temper tantrum diplomacy, which was a series of aggressive, bullying, paranoid and weird stunts to try to exert dominance and pressure everyone into succumbing to its demands.
China's "weird stunts" included the following:
The more that I write about China, the more the message always comes through of the extreme contempt that the Chinese people have for other people -- not just Americans, but also people from Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, India, Australia, and pretty much everywhere else. This is an extremely dangerous situation that will not continue in this way for much longer. Washington Post and White House
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Nov-18 World View -- Philippines president Duterte renews policy of China appeasement thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Nov-2018)
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People of Mexico are increasingly split between xenophobia
and sympathy toward migrants
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The United States closed off northbound traffic for several hours at the border crossing from Tijuana Mexico into San Ysidro, California. One of two pedestrian crossings were also closed, to prevent a mass rush of migrants across the border.
This is the busiest border crossing from Mexico to the United States. Closing the border crossing inconvenienced many of the about 110,000 people who cross the border every day in 40,000 vehicles, in order to commute to work.
The border crossing had to be closed for several hours to permit the installation of movable, wire-topped barriers.
Tensions at the border have been building as nearly 3,000 migrants from a caravan arrived in Tijuana in recent days, the first of a series of migrant caravans that began in October. The federal government estimates the number of migrants could soon swell to 10,000, as additional migrant caravans arrive. The migrants are arriving from Central American countries.
The migrants are planning to apply for asylum in the United States at the San Ysidro portal. However, US border inspectors are processing only about 100 asylum claims per day.
Tijuana officials converted a municipal gymnasium and recreational complex into a shelter to keep migrants out of public spaces. The city's privately run shelters have a maximum capacity of 700. The municipal complex can hold up to 3,000.
Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has called the migrants' arrival an "avalanche" that the city is ill-prepared to handle, calculating that they will be in Tijuana for at least six months as they wait to file asylum claims. Gastelum has appealed to the federal government for more assistance, but so far the government in Mexico City has refused.
Because Tijuana's resources are overwhelmed, cities "upstream" along the caravan route are slowing down the flow.
The city of Mexicali is 100 miles away along the highway to Tijuana. There are 1,300 Honduran migrants crowded into shelters in Mexicali, waiting to travel to Tijuana. However, Mexican police this weekend blocked their buses from proceeding to Tijuana, because the latter city is already full of migrants.
The group began as 7,000 migrants who left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, about a month ago, fleeing poverty, gang violence and lawlessness. The 1,300 who arrived in Mexicali are considering options, including making the extremely dangerous journey to Tijuana on foot. Hundreds more are expected in Mexicali next week.
Migrants in Guadalajara, the capital city of Jalisco state, about 1,200 miles south of Tijuana, were apparently played a cruel trick by government officials. The government of Jalisco had promised to provide transportation to Nayrit, 120 miles away, for nearly 6,000 migrants staying in Guadalajara. Instead, they provided buses for only 2,000, and then forced them off the bus on the outskirts of Jalisco, still over 62 miles away from the closest town in Nayarit. Then they blocked the other 3,000 migrants from receiving food packages, saying that "they are only for those who are leaving on the buses." Instead, the state will provide water, some food and escorts at nine points along the main highway leading through the state to help ensure the migrants don't have to stop.
And in Mexico City, authorities closed a shelter at a sports complex that had once housed thousands of migrants. The remaining 650 migrants from the third, mainly Salvadoran, caravan were taken to a Roman Catholic pilgrimage hostel at the Basilica of Guadalupe. The city said the hostel would be warmer. AP and Palm Springs Desert Sun (18-Nov) and Regeneración Radio (15-Nov)
Although most Mexicans have been sympathetic and supportive toward the central American migrants, and have provided food and water to them along their travels, there is a growing minority of Mexicans, especially in the northern states close to the US border, who are expressing hostile xenophobic attitudes towards the migrants.
Over the weekend, a few hundred Tijuanenses gathered in Tijuana's high-end Rio area to protest the migrants. Demonstrators held signs reading "No illegals," "No to the invasion" and "Mexico First." Many wore the country's red, white and green national soccer jersey and vigorously waved Mexican flags. The crowd often slipped into chants of "Ti-jua-na!" and "Me-xi-co!" They sang the national anthem several times. One was quoted as saying, "We want the caravan to go, they are invading us. They should have come into Mexico correctly, legally, but they came in like animals."
A Facebook page called “Tijuana against the migrant caravan,” which promotes the rejection of migrants. Five days after it was created, the group already had 4,000 followers. Through social media, local citizens are requesting for foreigners to be taken out of the city, with slogans such as “Defend your country, kill a Honduran.” The group members argued that migrants were criminals, and that there were drug addicts, gang members, and even murderers among their ranks.
As long-time readers are aware, nationalism and xenophobia have been increasing in countries around the world, as the world goes deeper into a generational Crisis era, and the survivors of World War II, who understood the dangers of nationalism and xenophobia, are now all pretty much gone.
At the same time, as the global population has been growing faster than the global supply of food and other resources, poverty has been increasing, leading to mass migrations in many parts of the world, including Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Some of these mass migrations are intentionally caused by leaders of countries, including Syria, Myanmar (Burma), Venezuela, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These mass migrations tax the resources of the countries receiving the migrants, and might lead to a regional war that could spiral into a larger war at any time. These mass migrations are expected to become larger each year.
With regard to the influx of Hondurans into Mexico, there has not been a major war between Honduras and Mexico in recent centuries, so the bouts of anti-Honduran xenophobia that are occurring today in Tijuana and elsewhere are unlikely to spiral into something more serious. NPR and El Universal and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Nov-18 World View -- Migrant caravans creating chaos and hostility in Mexico thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Nov-2018)
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Aggressive behavior of China's officials raises concerns about security
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Four days ago, I described the approaching meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit, being held in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the weekend as a competition for influence between China and Australia.
There was indeed such a competition, but it was the competition between China and the US that made the biggest news. The media were predicting that the US presence would be almost minimal because president Donald Trump was not going to attend.
But in Trump's place was vice president Mike Pence who spoke very harshly about China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and its use of debt trap diplomacy in infrastructure projects that were intended to benefit China more than the countries that are being put into debt. The result was that for the first time ever, the APEC meeting ended with no joint communiqué.
Pence's speech included a joke about "a constricting belt or a one-way road":
"Too often they come with strings attached and lead to staggering debt. Do not accept foreign debt that could compromise your sovereignty. Just like America, always put your country first. ...Know that the United states offers a better option. We don't drown our partners in a sea of debt. We don't coerce or compromise your independence. The United States deals openly and fairly. We do not offer a constricting belt or a one-way road.
When you partner with us, we partner with you. and we all prosper."
China's president Xi Jinping spoke before Pence did, but he responded to much of what Pence said:
"Mankind has once again reached a crossroads. Which direction should we choose - confrontation or cooperation? Openness or closing one's door? Win-win progress or zero sum game. The interest of all countries and the future of mankind hinge on the choices that we make. ...Let me make this clear. The Belt and Road Initiative is an open platform for cooperation. It is guided by the principles of consultation and cooperation for a share of the benefit. It is not designed to assure any hidden geopolitical agenda. It is not targeted against anyone, and it does not exclude anyone."
China has been losing a great deal of credibility over debt trap diplomacy because more examples keep emergency. Everybody has now heard of the Seaport of Hambantota, a Chinese infrastructure project in Sri Lanka, funded with a loan from China, with almost all the labor performed by Chinese workers, and all parts and services imported from China, so that the loan money never benefited Sri Lanka's industries. Sri Lanka was unable to repay the loan, and in December of last year, Sri Lanka was forced to give the seaport away to China. So now Sri Lanka has a large seaport owned by China, and a large Chinese enclave with hundreds of Chinese families, with no benefit to itself and to its own people.
China's loans and aid in the Pacific region have gone from almost zero to $1.8 billion in the last decade, and China has pledged to spend $8 billion more.
Fiji owes China half a billion dollars, and Tonga now owes more than $160 million, or one-third of its GDP. Several other Pacific Island countries are also overwhelmed with debt to China.
There has been major drama involving China and Tonga in the last few days. Tonga has been begging China for relief from its debts for several months, with no success. But then a few days ago Tonga's prime minister called on the Pacific Islands to band together against China. Tonga backtracked on this call within a few days, but the reasons were unclear. And then it emerged on Sunday that China was granting Tonga a five-year reprieve in paying back the loan.
As part of that announcement, China will lend Tonga more money for yet another BRI infrastructure project. Reuters and Australian Broadcasting (16-Nov) and BBC and Australian Broadcasting
There were several incidents of extremely aggressive behavior of Chinese diplomats attending the APEC conference.
On Saturday, four Chinese officials barged into the office of PNG's foreign minister Rimbink Pato, after they had been denied a private meeting. Security was called to the office and the officials had to be forced from the room. As a result, additional police were stationed at the government building to guard Pato's office.
China demanded the meeting because it wanted to make sure that the draft version of the final communiqué (which, in the end, was never issued anyway) contained language that was satisfactory to China. The US wanted to including language, directed at China without mentioning China, calling for reforms to world trading rules to target predatory trade conduct and demanding state-owned enterprises be forced to compete on a level playing field with private businesses. China apparently barged into Pato's office to make sure that the communiqué did not contain the US language.
The second issue is that Chinese officials strictly controlled media access to Xi Jinping, even ejecting PNG journalists who had been invited to cover a meeting between Xi Jinping and some Pacific Island leaders. Apparently Xi Jinping prevented any but Chinese media from having any opportunity to ask a question. One can only guess why. Australian Broadcasting and Bloomberg and Australian Broadcasting
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Nov-18 World View -- APEC meeting ends in disarray after harsh US-China disagreements thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(19-Nov-2018)
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Jair Bolsonaro moves Brazil sharply to the right
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Cuba announced that it will pull thousands of its doctors from Brazil, in reaction to demands by the newly elected Jair Bolsonaro, who takes office as president on January 1.
There are 11,400 Cuban doctors working in Brazil under the Programa Mais Médicos (PMM, More Doctors Program) that was set up in 2013 by left-wing former president Dilma Rousseff.
The Mais Médicos program was hailed as a huge success by Rousseff's supporters. During the first two years, 18,240 physicians were hired, including 11,429 Cubans, 5,274 Brazilians and the remaining 1,537 of other nationalities. They works in more than four thousand municipalities throughout Brazil, and treat 63 million Brazilians. Many of these were poor and indigenous communities where no doctor had previously been available. These included communities of former African-Brazilian slaves (Quilombos), to the indigenous population, the landless peasants and those living in the Northeastern outback.
However, from the beginning Mais Médicos was extremely controversial. The doctors complained that they were being forced to work as slaves. Brazil has to pay $3,300 per month to the Cuban government, but only one-quarter of that money goes to the doctor, giving him barely enough to live on, and not enough to send money back to his family in Cuba as remittances. Cuba receives about $250 million per year for its doctors in Brazil. Losing that money will be a hard blow for Cuba's ailing economy.
The Cuban government has reported it earns more than $12.5 billion a year from the work of its professionals abroad. Most of that money comes from Venezuela, where tens of thousands of Cubans are working, including 21,000 health workers.
Cuba prevents the doctor's family from joining him in Brazil or Venezuela, and the family suffered consequences if the doctor doesn't do as ordered by Cuba. By keeping control of the family, Cuba prevents the doctors from defecting. Rousseff was removed from office in 2016 on corruption charges, and her Mais Médicos has grown in controversy insce then.
Many Cuban doctors do defect and request asylum in Brazil. In the past, they could apply for asylum in the United States under the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) Program, set up by George Bush in 2006. However, this program was terminated by Barack Obama on January 12, 2017.
Upon being elected, President-elect Jair Bolsonaro threatened to break off diplomatic relations with Cuba over Mais Médicos, because of the near-slave conditions under which the doctors have to work. He demanded that the doctors receive the full $3,300 amount that Brazil now pays to Cuba, and that the doctors' families be permitted to join the doctors in Brazil. He also questioned the qualifications of the Cuban doctors and said they would have to renew their licenses in Brazil.
Cuba’s Health Ministry rejected Bolsonaro’s comments as “contemptuous and threatening” to the presence of our doctors” in a statement announcing its withdrawal from the program, adding, "These unacceptable conditions make it impossible to maintain the presence of Cuban professionals in the program."
Brazil's Ministry of Health announced that it will launch a public notice in the coming days for Brazilian doctors who want to fill the vacancies to be left by Cuban professionals. Reuters and Miami Herald and Rio Times (18-Sep-2015) and Miami Herald (12-Mar-2018) and Rio Times (15-Nov)
Jair Bolsonaro is being called "Trump of the Tropics" because of his incendiary comments and because many of his policies are perceived to be similar to those of Donald Trump.
He's sending out a tough anti-crime message, and he's supporting wider ownership of guns. This tough message has won him increased support among women. He's strongly opposed to the legalization of abortion, which won the support of many evangelical Christians.
For the economy, he makes the usual proposals to reduce government waste. He also promised to reduce state intervention in the economy. He originally proposed selling off parts of state-run Petrobras oil company, but later backed off.
On foreign policy, he has suggested that Brazil pull out of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. He favors moving Brazils embassy Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and closing the Palestinian embassy in Brazil. He has also said that his first foreign trip as president would be to Israel. BBC (28-Oct) and BBC (23-Oct)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Nov-18 World View -- Cuba to pull thousands of doctors out of Brazil after right-wing Jair Bolsonaro wins election thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Nov-2018)
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North Korea announces a 'Newly Developed Tactical Weapon'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As the charm offensive involving the Koreas and the United States continues, the North Koreans have made their next move, with an announcement in North Korean media that "Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un Supervises Newly Developed Tactical Weapon Test."
The news report describes the weapon as an "ultramodern tactical weapon", and combines a description of the child dictator's glee with claims that his father Kim Jong-il had the engineering skill to have personally directed the new weapon's development:
"After seeing the power of the tactical weapon, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un was so excited to say that another great work was done by the defense scientists and munitions industrial workers to increase the defense capability of the country and the weapon system whose development Chairman Kim Jong-il had chosen personally and directed step by step with his special attention paid to it was born at last. He added that the weapon is just like a posthumous weapon and he missed Kim Jong-il very much while seeing the great success of its test. ...He expressed great satisfaction, saying the great success serves as another striking demonstration of the validity of the Party policy of prioritizing defense science and technology and the rapidly developing defense capability of the country and as a decisive turn in bolstering the fighting capacity of the Korean People's Army."
No further description was given of the weapon. It's described as a "tactical weapon," and one online definition of that phrase says that "Tactical weapons are designed for offensive or defensive use at relatively short range with relatively immediate consequences." We assume then that the word "tactical" was used purposely to imply that the weapon would not be used against the United States, but could be used against South Korea.
We further assume that therefore this announcement was meant as a warning to South Korea's president Moon Jae-in. We take note of the fact that North Korea has never repudiated its primary mission of using military force to reunite North and South Korea under North Korean control.
So one purpose of the announcement is to reassure the North Korean domestic audience that weapons development is continuing, and preparations for an invasion of the South are continuing.
A second purpose might be retaliation for the resumption by the US and South Korea earlier this month of some minor joint military marine drills.
Third, we can assume that Kim's announcement was intended as a threat of war to South Korea, unless Moon Jae-in meets Kim's demands, including declaring an end to the Korean War, and convincing President Trump to agree to reduce sanctions. DPRK Today and Reuters and ABC News
A year ago at this time, it appeared that the United States and North Korea were close to war, after multiple nuclear and ballistic missile tests by the North Koreans.
The climate changed dramatically early in January, when Kim Jong-un began his "charm offensive," based on North Korea's participation in the Olympics games in Seoul, South Korea.
Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in immediately responded with their own "charm counter-offensive." All sides stood down from threats and threatening actions, and had a sort of love-in, with various summit meetings and actions like clearing land mines along the South-North border.
It was quickly apparent to everyone that North Korea had no intention to denuclearize under any circumstances. Nonetheless, the charm offensive/counter-offensive has been a great convenience that has met the needs for all sides:
It was pretty clear to everyone (except the news media and the general public) within a month from the beginning of the charm offensive that it was all a show -- that North Korea would never denuclearize, and that Trump would never agree to reduce the sanctions. But all sides kept it up because it solve their immediate political problems by "kicking the can down the road" -- that is, masking and hiding problems and postponing them until later.
The charm offensive has been going on for almost a year. Could it go on for another year? Maybe. That's the kind of chaotic political decision that cannot be predicted.
President Trump has said that he's in no hurry, implying that he's willing to continue the charm offensive indefinitely if necessary. However, it's the North that is suffering under the sanctions, Kim Jong-un seems to be increasingly impatient about the sanctions.
So it's really up to Kim how long the charm offensive / counter-offensive will last. He may decide that sanctions will never be lifted anyway, and so there's no point in waiting. He may take action next week, next month or next year. All we can do is wait. Yonhap (S. Korea) and Reuters and Defense News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Nov-18 World View -- North Korea 'Charm Offensive' appears to have run its course thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(17-Nov-2018)
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China's crackdown on religions continues
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The ambassadors to China from a group of 15 Western countries are reportedly taking coordinated action to condemn China's human rights record in Xinjiang province, where evidence has been accumulating for several months that about a million Chinese citizens of Uighur ethnicity are forcibly locked up in vast "re-education centers" or "re-education prisons," where they're required to sing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) songs and pledge allegiance to the CCP.
The 15 ambassadors have drafted a letter to be sent to Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang’s CCP boss. The draft letter reads in part:
"We are deeply troubled by reports of the treatment of ethnic minorities, in particular individuals of Uighur ethnicity, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.In order to better understand the situation, we request a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss these concerns."
The project is being led by Canada. The other 14 countries are Britain, France, Switzerland, European Union, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Estonia, Finland and Denmark.
The response from China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying was both angry and bizarre. Here are excerpts:
An ambassador is supposed to promote the mutual understanding, mutual trust and cooperation between the receiving state and the sending state, rather than raise unreasonable requests and interfere in the internal affairs of the receiving state based on hearsay.
Maybe you could interview these ambassadors and ask them whether they have got all the facts straight before writing this letter. Do they know that we have another 54 ethnic minority groups besides the Han and the Uyghur? Do they know that China has more than 40 laws and regulations including the Constitution which have clear stipulations on ethnic minority groups' usage and development of their languages and cultures? Maybe you could ask these ambassadors whether the ethnic minority groups in their countries like the US and Canada, learn English? Is their learning of English also considered as an attempt by their governments to extinguish or assimilate languages and cultures of the ethnic minority groups? ...
I think what they have done is very rude and unacceptable. We hope that they could fulfill their duties and obligations as ambassadors, work to help their countries learn about China in a truthful, all-around and multidimensional way, and play a positive and constructive role in enhancing mutual trust, friendship and cooperation between their countries and China.
I would like to reiterate that Xinjiang as an open region welcomes those who go there with goodwill. Anyone harboring malicious intentions and prejudice and seeking to interfere in China's internal affairs will be firmly rejected."
So China's re-education prisons are being compared to Americans and Canadians learning to speak English. As far as I know, we don't beat, torture and jail people until they learn English. That's about as bizarre as you can get.
Beyond that, the statement contains no attempt to address the charges of human rights abuses in Xinjiang except to call the ambassadors' actions "very rude and unacceptable."
Finally, the description of Xinjiang as "an open region" may be true in a sense, but several BBC on-site investigations show that every word and action is rigidly controlled by the security forces. BBC reporters may be allowed into Xinjiang but they're closely followed by "minders," and prevented from approaching the re-education prisons.
The letter by 15 ambassadors will not cause China to change its behavior -- nothing ever does -- but it will embarrass the Chinese and make it more difficult for them to continue lying. CNN and Reuters and BBC (26-Oct) and China Foreign Ministry
The Uighurs are Muslims, but as I've described several times in the past, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considers all non-indigenous religions to be dangerous. These include Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism and Buddhism.
The reason is that pretty much every religion has, at one time or another, been the underpinning of an anti-government rebellion in China.
So the Buddhist White Lotus Society led the Red Turban Rebellion that overthrew the Yuan Dynasty in 1358, and came close to overthrowing the Qing dynasty in the White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1804). Of course the Tibetan Buddhists frightens the CCP, and the Falun Gong movement, which is also Buddhist-based, terrifies the CCP.
The CCP has been particularly heavy-handed this year in cracking down on Christianity. That's partially because of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64). That rebellion was led by Hong Xiuquan who had been converted to Christianity by a Protestant missionary, and who had a hallucinatory vision that he was the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus. He formed the Society of God Worshippers that spread and drew converts from ethnic Hakkas to form the Taiping Army that, once again, almost overthrew the Qing Dynasty.
China, throughout its history, has rarely been able to govern itself, and was frequently conquered by outside armies. It took only small armies of Mongols to rule China for centuries, and then a small army of Manchus to do the same for centuries. When China wasn't being conquered and ruled by outside armies, it was a country of regions and warlords fighting each other. It's only since Mao's Communist Revolution in 1949 that China was finally self-governing through a central government, but even that was almost destroyed by Mao's Great Leap Forward and Mao's Great Cultural Revolution, which killed tens of millions of people through starvation and execution.
Today, the CCP is the most paranoid government on earth. They're even afraid of Winnie the Pooh because Winnie the Pool looks like president Xi Jinping, and might be used as a symbol to trigger a rebellion. Can you imagine Donald Trump or another Western leader being terrified of Winnie the Pooh? Yet, Xi Jinping is terrified of Winnie the Pooh. That's how pathetic he is as a leader. He's made himself into a total dictator, and the only way he can rule is by killing, torture, rape, abductions, massacres, atrocities, or, in the case of the Uighurs, massive re-education prisons holding millions of people.
The CCP has identified what it calls the "five poisons" of society that must be controlled or stamped out. These are Tibetans, Uighur Muslims, democracy activists, Taiwanese, and Falun Gong practitioners.
The equivalent situation in America would be if the government declared blacks and Catholics to be "poisons," along with gun owners and Jews, would need to be sent to re-education prisons to be forced to become Protestants.
In July, a group of 30 workers at Jasic Technology in Shenzen who were treated abusively and weren't being paid decided to unionize. The CCP jailed them for "gathering a crowd to disrupt public order," not even letting them see a lawyer. Last week, Marxist and Maoist students from Peking University and other colleges traveled to Shenzen to form the "Jasic Workers' Solidarity Group" to support the workers.
To the paranoid CCP, this situation is very dangerous, because it could lead to an anti-government rebellion, so naturally these groups of students have been violently rounded up and jailed. This was followed by a crackdown on student activism on campus, banning Marxist study groups, and punishing students at Peking University, Renmin University and Nanjing University. The CCP know very well that the government was brought down in 1949 by Marxist and Maoist forces, and they know that it could happen again.
So whether it's Winnie the Pooh, or the Uighurs, or the Tibetans, or the Falun Gong, the Chinese government are terrified of everything, and consider pretty much everyone to be their enemy.
Like central governments throughout China's history, the CCP is extremely weak and will end as quickly as it began. It can't govern except by developing massive weapons systems and planning for a war that it will lose, but not before it's brought catastrophe to itself and the entire world. Radio Free Asia (12-Nov) and AP and Economist
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Nov-18 World View -- Fifteen countries challenge China's human rights in Xinjiang province thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Nov-2018)
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500 US marines and other foreign troops arrive in PNG for APEC meeting
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The USS Green Bay amphibious transport dock ship arrived in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea (PNG), on Wednesday, with 500 US marines and US Navy servicemen to provide security and support for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit being held later this week.
About 4,000 military personnel, around half of them foreign, will work with hundreds of police to patrol Port Moresby for APEC, which will attract representatives from 21 nations.
There is a 1,500-strong Australian Defense Force (ADF) contingent, along with RAAF F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters, surveillance aircraft and a helicopter carrier moored in Port Moresby harbor. Vessels from Australia, New Zealand and the US will guard the capital's shores, and all three countries have provided special forces. Working alongside them in an operation that has taken more than a year to plan will be about 2,000 Papua New Guinea (PNG) troops.
Much of the summit will take place in a $35 million convention centre built with Chinese aid and Beijing has donated nine fire engines, along with 50 coaches and 35 mini buses for use at the event. However, Chinese troops were excluded from the security forces.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is an island nation near Australia, which provides it regularly with substantial aid. All of this security is considered necessary because PNG is one of poorest, most corrupt, and most dangerous countries in the world. Feared street gangs known as "raskols" have made car jackings common and the country has among the highest rates of rape and domestic violence in the world. PNG has a population of 8 million — speaking 800 distinct languages and spread out across some 600 islands. With 15,000 delegates expected at the summit, security is essential. And due to a lack of hotel accommodations, many will sleep in the three cruise liners docked at the port.
In view of the corruption, poverty and street violence, many people are concerned that PNG will not be able to pull this summit meeting off. It's hoped that the massive influx of troops from the US, Australia and New Zealand, as well as support from other countries, will make the meeting a success.
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, is a forum for facilitating economic growth, cooperation, trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region. The 21 members are the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Donald Trump will not be attending the conference, much to the relief, according to some reports, of the summit organizers. Instead, Mike Pence will be representing to the United States. Stars and Stripes and Asia Pacific Report and AFP and Guardian (London)
Despite PNG's weak economy, high unemployment, corruption and street violence, China still has considerable interest in PNG's vast swathes of timber, and huge mineral, oil and gas deposits, which China is looking to exploit.
China's investments in the region as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) grew to $2.46 billion in the last year alone for infrastructure projects such as roads and seaports.
Australia has become alarmed by this incursion into its sphere of influence. As a result, prime minister Scott Morrison is announcing a new "Pivot to the Pacific" program, where Australia will provide grants and long-term loans for $2 billion for "high priority" projects, inclding telecommunications, energy, transport and water.
Morrison said:
"Australia has an abiding interest in a Southwest Pacific that is secure strategically, stable economically and sovereign politically. This is not just our region, or our neighborhood. It's our home."
This announcement infuriated the Chinese, who must see it as a threat to their unimpeded access to the region's resources that China wishes to exploit. China's vice foreign minister Zheng Zeguang issued a harsh response, accusing Australia of a "cold war mentality":
"The Pacific Island region is not a sphere of influence of any country.[Australia should] objectively look at the relations between China and the Pacific Island countries and to abandon Cold War mentality and the zero-sum game mentality, which are both outdated. ...
Other countries should not obstruct China's friendly cooperation and exchanges with the island nations. Of course, they have no way to obstruct this cooperation and these exchanges."
The government of PNG says that it has no intention at all of choosing one of China or Australia over the other. It also says that it is ready to accept aid and donations from all sides.
PNG's prime minister Peter O'Neill says that he is willing to play peacemaker at the APEC summit. "It's not for me to address either of those countries through the media as to what they should do, but as I have said, for us, they are great friends of this country. So we will do all we can to ensure, if we can, that there are no conflicts, to the extent possible," he said. Australian Broadcasting and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and Australian Broadcasting (8-Nov) and Time
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Nov-18 World View -- China and Australia compete for influence at APEC meeting in Papua New Guinea (PNG) thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(15-Nov-2018)
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Split in Libya reflects the fault line in the Arab world
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Seven years after the fall of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Libya now has two governments. In the West, including the capital city Tripoli, Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj leads a weak government, known as the Government of National Accord (GNA), internationally recognized by America, Europe and the United Nations.
Most of the east of Libya is ruled by Khalifa Haftar, a military strongman and former Gaddafi ally, who is considered an international "renegade." There are fears that a war will break out between the eastern and western factions at some time in the near future.
It's doubtful that most Europeans care deeply who is in charge of Libya, but one thing that they do care deeply about is the flow of migrants from Libya to Europe. For that reason, the Europeans want to see a single government in Libya, and a government with which it can negotiate to keep the migrant flow under control.
Libya's former colonial power, Italy, hosted a conference in Palermo on Tuesday, to bring all interested parties together, with the objective of having an election for the leader of a unified government.
The conference was hosted by Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte. About 20 countries are participating in the conference, including representatives from the US, European governments and Arab countries. Top names in attendance include Egypt's president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, Russia's prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, European Council President Donald Tusk and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.
The conference didn't accomplish much, but there was a lot of drama.
Originally, Haftar refused to say whether he would even come to Palermo. Then Haftar did arrive, but on Tuesday said that he would not attend the conference, choosing instead to "hold a series of meetings with presidents of regional countries to discuss the latest national and international developments" on the sidelines.
So then Haftar attended a meeting on the sidelines of conference, also attended by Fayez al-Serraj, as well as leaders of France, Russia and Italy.
However, Turkey was not invited to that particular meeting. Turkey's vice president Fuat Oktay stormed out of the international conference, blaming Conte for "attempts to keep Turkey out of the process" in Libya.
At the end of the conference, there was no statement issued. But the parties agreed that an election previously scheduled for December would not be held, but would be postponed to May of next year. And many people considered the conference a great success, simply because Fayez al-Serraj and Khalifa Haftar smiled and shook hands. Deutsche Welle and Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey) and Middle East Eye and Reuters
One reason that the split between east and west Libya hasn't been resolved is their supporters are split along the same growing fault line that became apparent several years ago.
Turkey, Qatar and Italy all support the western GNA government of Fayez al-Serraj, and are supportive of Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Russia, France, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) support Haftar, who is an anti-Islamist military man.
This split in the Arab world has been growing in recent years. Recall that in June of last year, several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE), broke relations with Qatar and imposed an air, sea and land blockade on Qatar. The blockade is still in place, with no end in sight, despite international attempts to resolve it.
More recently, the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, apparently by a Saudi hit squad, has continued as an international incident, adding more tensions between Saudi Arabia versus Turkey and Qatar.
This deepening split among the Arab and Mideast nations makes it all the more unlikely that agreement will be reached on a unified government in Libya.
The situation is complicated still further by signs that Russia is deepening its military involvement in Libya, sending in Vladimir Putin's "private" military companies (PMCs), as he has done in Syria and Central African Republic. (See "7-Nov-18 World View -- Suspicions grow about Russia's Wagner PMC mercenary group in Central African Republic")
Putin has taken an interest in Libya at least since the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011, and has actively supported Khalifa Haftar. There have already been military clashes between Haftar's forces and militias around Tripoli in the West, and the involvement of Russia makes Syrian war situation more likely than an election. Al-Jazeera (Qatar) and Meduza (Russia) and Jamestown
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Nov-18 World View -- Italy's Libya peace talk conference ends in drama but no resolution thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Nov-2018)
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Palestinians demand 'revenge', but Hamas backs off from war
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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An Israeli army officer and seven Palestinians were killed in a gunfight that followed a botched Israeli army military undercover operation in Gaza on Sunday evening.
Israeli special forces members wore women's clothing to avoid detection, and crossed the border into Gaza. This follows another "cloak and dagger" operation on Thursday, when a car crossed into Gaza carrying three suitcases in the back seat stuffed with $15 million in cash from Qatar.
When the car was two miles into Gaza, near Khan Younis, fighters of the Izzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, stopped the car and asked to see ID cards. A gunfight ensued, killing one Israeli military officer, who hasn't been identified, and seven Palestinians. One of the Palestinians was an Al-Qassam Brigades senior command, Noureddin Mohammad Salama Baraka, 37.
Due to the secrecy of the operation, Israel has not revealed specific purpose of the mission. According to one reported, it was an intelligence gathering operation that went wrong. According to another report, the objective was to kill Baraka, although this is specifically denied by Israel, saying that the operation was "not intended to kill or abduct terrorists, but to strengthen Israeli security."
The Israeli car fled the scene, followed by Al-Qassam fighters, who were bombed from the air by an extraction operation that rescued the Israelis with a helicopter. Guardian (London) and Jerusalem Post and International Mideast Media Center (Palestine) and AP
In the worst bout of fighting since the end of the 67-day war between Israel and Gaza in 2014, Palestinians launched over 200 rockets and mortar bombs into Israel on Monday. One mortar bomb hit a bus, wounding an Israeli. At least seven Israelis were wounded by other rocket strikes.
Israeli tanks and fighter jets retaliated by bombing sites across Gaza. Palestinian officials said that at least three people, including two militants, were killed. Israeli missiles also struck and destroyed Gaza's Al-Aqsa television station, as well as a number of apartment buildings believed to house Hamas militants.
This intense exchange of fire occurred just two days after $15 million in money from Qatar entered Gaza, paying civil service workers' salaries. This money was supposed to help bring calm, but it's worth noting that the money to pay civil service workers' salaries was blocked for months not by Israel but by Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Abbas strongly opposed the infilitration of Qatari money last week, as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, and may be pleased with Monday's exchange of fire.
Reports are that the Israeli army is preparing for all-out war in Gaza, renewing the 2014 summer Gaza war, especially after Hamas threatened on Monday that Israel will pay a “heavy price” for the operation.
However, Egypt and the UN, which in the past have been mediators between Israel and Hamas are hoping to bring about a ceasefire. In addition, a number of analysts are saying that Hamas doesn't want a war with Israel, at least not at this time, or to give Israel an excuse to launch a major military operation in Gaza.
Besides saying that Israel will pay a "heavy price," Hamas's rhetoric has not gone further to say that the incident will affect efforts to reach a truce agreement with Israel. Also, Hamas leaders have not accused Israel of sabotaging the ongoing efforts to achieve a truce in the Gaza Strip. Nor have they indicated that Hamas views the incident, which took place near Khan Younis, as a trigger for another war with Israel.
Hamas and militants in Gaza have been attacking Israel with rockets that have no guidance systems. Reports indicate that they also possess an arsenal of middle range and long-range missiles that reach cities all across Israel, but they have refrained from using them.
Hamas issued a statement saying, "The resistance last night taught the enemy a harsh lesson and turned its intelligence system into the laughing stock of the world." The statement claimed that Hamas scored a major victory over the Israelis, who were forced to flee after being spotted by Hamas militants.
What these statements mean is that the leaders of Hamas have much to lose at this time in a war with Israel, especially with the influx of Qatari money and promises of further concessions. That means that there probably won't be a new Gaza war, at least for a while.
As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war refighting the 1948 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war will also pit Sunnis versus Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other. Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Jerusalem Post (11-Nov) and Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post and Israel National News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Nov-18 World View -- Eight people killed in botched Israeli military operation in Gaza thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Nov-2018)
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North Korea - South Korea reunification talks continue
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Now that the US midterm elections have taken place, there's no longer any reason to pretend that North Korea is ever going to denuclearize, and so North Korea's child dictator may be taking hard new steps to pressure the Trump administration to get what he wants: Lifting the sanctions with no requirement to denuclearize.
Last week North Korea's lead negotiator, Kim Yong-chol, refused to show up for a scheduled meeting on Thursday with the US chief negotiator, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. This cancellation was apparently unexpected, and the State Dept. scrambled to say that the meeting had been postponed, and would take place "when our respective schedules permit."
President Trump himself kept up the pretense last week by saying: "We’re in no rush. We’re in no hurry. ... We’re very happy how it’s going with North Korea. We think it’s going fine."
This comes at a time when North Korean is becoming increasingly belligerent in threatening to resume nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development if the United States continued to refuse to back down on sanctions. China and Russia are also both pressuring the United States to agree to ease sanctions.
North Korea is taking no real steps toward denuclearization, even refusing to take the simple step of providing a list of all its nuclear development sites. The symbolic steps that it was taking, dismantling a missile test site that it didn't need anyway, have apparently ended, based on satellite imagery. And a key facility in the process of creating nuclear weapons grade uranium, is still running.
Many people believe that North Korea is continuing development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, lacking only the ability to openly test the developments. Many people also believe that they have no intention of stopping that development under any circumstances, but still hoping that international pressure will force the Trump administration to left sanctions.
For the time being, the denuclearization pretense is continuing on both sides. Once the North concludes that the Trump administration cannot be pressured to lift the sanctions, then they'll probably also conclude that there's no reason not to resume public nuclear and missile testing.
North Korea has been playing hardball recently, and that may indicate that the decision to resume testing is not far off. The "North Korea crisis" has been out of the news for a while, but one way or another expect the crisis to be in the news again soon, especially now that the midterms are over. The Hill and The Diplomat and International Business Times and Daily Beast
The office of South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in sent a gift of 200 tons of tangerines to North Korea's president Kim Jong-un on Sunday, in return for a gift of mushrooms from the North. This gift is part of a separate, but related, negotiation track going on between South and North Korea.
More significant than the tangerines is that the The North and South Korean military completed withdrawing troops and firearms from 22 front-line guard posts on Saturday. There are over 100 guard posts on both sides, and the plan is to disarm almost all of them by next year.
The Koreas have also been clearing mines from front-line areas and plan to start in April their first-ever joint search for remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War.
Moon would like to push ahead with his more ambitious plans for engagement, such as reconnecting railways and roads across the border and normalizing operations at a jointly run factory park. However, those plans would violate the existing UN sanctions.
Moon Jae-in has made it clear that he is extremely anxious to normalize relations with the North, with the eventual goal of reunification, and that he's willing to concede almost anything to the North to accomplish this. This is true even though the North has never repudiated its plan to conquer the South by force, and reunify the two Koreas under control of the North. North Korea has an unbroken record of lying and deception about almost everything, and removing the guard posts may be a goodwill gesture to the South, but it also makes it easier for the North's million-man army to cross into the South, and that's what the North wants.
The North-South negotiation track may be separate from the denuclearization negotiations, but they do affect one another. With North Korea now playing hardball in the denuclearization negotiations, which are completely stalled anyway, South Korean analysts now believe that a planned trip by Kim Jong-un to Seoul in December is becoming increasingly less likely.
According to one South Korean analyst:
"South Korea will continue to try to make room for the US and North Korea to continue negotiations and ease tensions between the countries through Kim Jong-un’s visit to Seoul.But for Kim, visiting Seoul without any progress in the US-North Korea relations could be a burden because it would likely draw more opposition from South Korea’s conservatives and more skepticism from the US. I think Kim will decide on his visit to Seoul after the high-level meeting between Pompeo and Kim."
Assuming, or course, that the latter meeting takes place.
However, another South Korean analyst said that there's another way to convince Kim to make his promised visit to Seoul: "I think North Korea would want to come to Seoul on the back of some progress in its relations with the US so that it could gain economic rewards -- economic assistance, for example -- from South Korea." Korea Herald and AP and Russia Today and Korea Herald
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Nov-18 World View -- North Korea plays hardball to get sanctions lifted thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Nov-2018)
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Israel and Qatar agree to a sea route between Gaza and Cyprus
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Thursday, three suitcases stuffed with $15 million in cash traveled in the back seat of a car from Israel to Gaza through the Erez crossing. This money is being distributed to Gazans, under an agreement between Qatar, Israel and Gaza, mediated by Egypt.
The money was supplied by Qatar, which is taking an increasing role in trying to make Gaza more "livable" for the people, in the hope of reducing the weekly protests.
Many employees working for Hamas in Gaza haven't been paid salaries in months, because the money for paying the salaries hasn't been made available to Hamas. It isn't Israel that made the decision to withhold the money. It was the Palestinian Authority (Fatah), headed by Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is supposed to be the head a unity government of all Palestinians, and Abbas has cut off money to pay the salaries of Gazans working for Hamas. Israel has supported Abbas's decision, out of concern that Hamas would use the salary money to fund terrorist activities.
So Egypt's mediation has led to an agreement where Qatar provides the money to pay the salaries of Hamas employees. The $15 million that arrived on Thursday is the first installment of a $90 million total payout. 27,000 civil servants will receive 50% of a month's salary, with the amount to gradually increase over the months.
The money is not being given to the United Nations or to Hamas. Instead, civil servants' salaries are being paid individually, under the supervision of the Qataris.
Israel has not commented on the payments, but must have approved them because otherwise the three suitcases of money could not have crossed into Gaza.
However, the Palestinian Authority said that the $15 million was "cheap price that Hamas received for the precious blood" of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and that "Hamas leaders are prepared to align themselves with the devil in order to remain in power and undermine the Palestinian national project." Jerusalem Post and Reuters and Jerusalem Post and Middle East Eye and Jerusalem Post
Israel and Qatar have reached agreement on the establishment of a seaport in Cyprus, under Israeli security supervision, that will be used to ship goods to Gaza.
There is a dispute over how security will be implemented. Israel has demanded that its representatives be present at the seaport for manual inspection of goods entering Gaza to make sure that there are no weapons. However, Hamas is demanding that inspections take place only electronically.
That Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is completely opposed to the plan, saying Hamas was not authorized to reach any agreement on such matters with international parties, and warning that such a move would “consolidate” the split between the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and make Gaza a separate Palestinian state in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.
Qatar is also working on a number of other proposals to make Gaza more livable, including expanding fishing, establishing industrial zones, and reliable electricity.
It's hoped that by making Gaza more livable, the weekly "March of Return" protests, of Gazans trying to break through the fence into Israel and demanding to return to their ancestral homes, will be reduced. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this hope is delusional. The protests are being driven by young people just coming of age, and no agreement by their geezer leaders will change that. YNet (Israel) and Jerusalem Post and Israel National News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Nov-18 World View -- Qatar provides $15 million in aid to Gaza, will mediate electricity issues and Cyprus seaport thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Nov-2018)
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Sri Lanka constitutional crisis grows as president dissolves parliament
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There are major individual government crises in progress in both the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and they are linked by China's interference in the affairs of both countries by using "debt trap diplomacy" related to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Sri Lanka's president Maithripala Sirisena dissolved parliament on Friday, after his administration promised that he wouldn't do that. Sirisena fired prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on October 26, and appointed a new prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Sirisena wanted the parliament to confirm his actions, but after it became clear that he wouldn't have the votes, he dissolved parliament to prevent a vote.
An interesting angle is that the Tamil MPs specifically refused Sirisena's request that they abstain from the vote. The ethnic Hindu Tamil minority community was defeated in a generational crisis civil war that climaxed in 2009, with Rajapaksa leading the ethnic Buddhist Sinhalese majority to victory, amid charges of war crimes.
So rather than allow a vote, Sirisena dissolved the parliament and called for snap elections in January. Sirisena's opponents are saying that both the decision to fire the prime minister and the decision to dissolve the parliament are unconstitutional. So the constitutional crisis and government gridlock is expected to continue into the new year.
Sirisena has never given any explanation for why he fired his prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. It's now emerged that Sirisena and Wickremesinghe were in sharp disagreement over whether a seaport project in the country capital Colombo should be awarded to a Chinese firm, favored by Sirisena, or an Indian firm, favored by Wickremesinghe. Wickremesinghe was fired just after that loud disagreement, and Rajapaksa was appointed.
Rajapaksa has always had close relations with China. When Rajapaksa was president, he signed the agreement with China to build the Hambantota seaport. This was China's first major "debt trap" deal, putting Sri Lanka into so much debt that it had to hand control of the seaport over to China.
Today, Sri Lanka is still in so much debt that it will never be paid back. Still, because of Sri Lanka's strategic importance, both India and China want to be build the new infrastructure projects. The constitutional crisis may appear to be a domestic matter, but it has important geopolitical implication. Times of Sri Lanka and Reuters and Channel News Asia
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At the time I wrote about the September 23 Maldives election, it seemed the country could be headed for its own constitutional crisis. The country was in something of a state of shock because the incumbent president Abdulla Yameen, who had never hesitated to use vote-rigging or jailings or violence to win elections, had been expected to win. Instead, his opponent, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, won decisively, by 58-41% of the vote.
It was suspected that Yameen could not step down, since a new administration would discover massive corruption in Yameen's dealings with China. China had arranged for a "debt trap" for Maldives, and Yameen's family was heavily involved in China's infrastructure projects in the five years Yameen was in power. As usual, the contractual specifics between the Maldives and China were completely secret. In other countries where situations like this have occurred, the leader and his family are often so heavily involved in bribery and corruption that they dare not lose power.
So it was feared that Yameen would use whatever tactics and power he could to overturn the election, but it seems that he was unable to do so because Solih's win was so huge.
The first thing Solih did after winning the election was to meet with with the Chinese ambassador, where he learned that the Maldives owed the Chinese $3 billion, not the $1.5 billion he had previously been told. That’s more revenue than Maldives' government raises in two years – a staggering figure that makes the Maldives a prime example of how Chinese loans have swamped smaller economies with loans that can't be repaid.
Details of the debt – and how much might have been stolen – will only begin to emerge after Solih takes office on November 17 and his aides gain complete access to documents Yameen’s government hid from lawmakers and the public. But information already collected by Solih’s transition team indicates the liabilities are greater than initially believed and will soon outpace the country's ability to pay.
It's amazing how China has gotten away with "debt trap diplomacy" in country after country. They loan a country to build infrastructure proects that will strategically benefit China and only marginally benefit the local population. The require that the loan money be used to purchase parts and services from Chinese firms, and that almost all workers must be Chinese. So instead of benefiting the local factories and workers, the money goes back to China to benefit factories and people there. And then the country still has to repay the loan, which means that they're repaying the loan twice.
At this point, China's "debt trap diplomacy" has gotten so much publicity that many countries are now cutting back on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Both Malaysia and Pakistan have recently cut back or cancelled BRI projects. The latest is Sierra Leone, which has accumulated more than $220 million in Chinese debt, and last month canceled a new airport project with Chinese labor and loans.
In the Maldives, Solih has promised to examine all contracts and leases to see which should be cut back or modified. Because the Maldives and Sri Lanka are both so strategically important and are both in the Indian Ocean just off the southern tip of India, both India and China have similar interests in South China Morning Post and National Herald India and Reuters (11-Oct) and Standard Times Press (Sierra Leone)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Nov-18 World View -- China and India compete for influence in Sri Lanka and Maldives constitutional crises thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Nov-2018)
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Number of migrants leaving Venezuela reaches three million
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Socialist poster child, Venezuela, is facing increasing crises, as the country continues to crumble. Socialism has been a disaster every time it's been tried, whether it's been abandoned, as in North Korea, Sweden, Russia, China, Cuba, or East Germany, or where it's led to total financial disaster, as in North Korea.
In Venezuela, the refugee crisis and the economic crisis continue to reach fresh levels, while the overweight Socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, who stuffs himself while his people starve to death, shows no hint of wanting abandon the disaster.
On Thursday, Venezuela's year on year inflation rate was 833,997%. The International Monetary Fund predicted several months ago that Venezuela's inflation rate would reach one million percent by the end of the year, and Maduro is on track for reaching that goal. The IMF predicted that the inflation rate would exceed 10 million percent by the end of 2019, and there's nothing to stop that from happening unless Maduro is stopped.
Maduro, along with his predecessor Hugo Chávez, have implemented a perfectly functioning Socialist economy, with nationalized industries, price controls, a high minimum wage, and punishment for anyone making money. As in all perfectly functioning Socialist economies, there are shortages of food, medicines, toilet paper, and other basic goods.
What's truly amazing and even record-setting is that Venezuela should be the richest country in Latin America with the largest oil reserves in the world, and yet faces a shortage of gasoline of 80%.
Venezuela has 18 refineries throughout the world and six in national territory, but many of the refineries are in disrepair, and even when they're working, they have no oil to refine. One of the main refineries, Amuay, is operating at just 5.4% of production capacity.
Instead, what oil is available is sent to Cuba or China. According to one worker representative, oil is being sent to China rather than being refined:
"There was an order from Nicolás Maduro to the Minister of Petroleum, Manuel Quevedo, to send one million barrels of oil to China. They stopped the refineries and loaded the barrels. It is even more the amount that they send to Cuba."
Since the beginning of the year, Maduro has sent over 11 million barrels of oil to Cuba. Just between June and August, Maduro sent 4.19 million barrels, worth $248 million. If I understand this correctly, it means that Cuba is now bailing out Venezuela, just as Venezuela used to bail out Cuba.
It's noteworthy that while both Cuba and China call themselves Socialist countries for public relations purposed, both countries have largely given up Socialism and have opened up their markets. For these countries, Socialism has simply turned into a religion. That's why these countries are able to make money, which Venezuela is not. Reuters and Today Venezuela and Guardian (London)
According to the United Nations, the number of migrants fleeing Venezuela's Socialist poverty and violance has now surpassed three million. Of the three million, 2.3 million have left Venezuela since 2015, and the number keeps increasing, with 3,000 new arrivals into Colombia every day.
More than one million refugees and migrants are in Colombia. Peru has more than half a million, Ecuador over 220,000, Argentina 130,000, Chile over 100,000 and Brazil 85,000, according to the UN.
One priest in Colombia took a swipe at America: "People go crazy over the caravan of Central Americans entering Mexico, trying to reach the US. That's four, five, maybe 6,000 migrants, that's how many we get every four days."
The rate of migration has sped up in the past six months. The new figures show that about one in 12 of the population has now left the country, driven by violence, hyperinflation and shortages of food and medicines. Al Jazeera and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Nov-18 World View -- Venezuela's refugees crisis soars, as economic disaster reaches new levels thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Nov-2018)
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Yemen war violence intensifies as 30-day ceasefire deadline approaches
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On October 31, Secretary of Defense James Mattis called for a ceasefire in the Yemen war in 30 days, or by the end of November. A first step would require Iran to stop supplying missiles to the insurgent Houthis:
"[T]alk about demilitarizing the border so that the Saudis and the [United Arab] Emirates do not have to worry about missiles coming into their homes and cities and airports. [A cease-fire arrangement should] ensure that all the missiles that Iran has provided to the Houthis are put under international watch in parks somewhere, where they can be kept accounted for."
Unfortunately, that's already delusional. Iran would never agree to that condition, or if it agreed, it wouldn't honor the commitment. In fact, Iran already claims that it doesn't supply missiles to the Houthis, so Iran could agree to this condition and then just keep doing what it's doing.
Next, Mattis said:
"[Such a truce would help] set the conditions for [Yemeni factions to] return to traditional areas inside Yemen, and a government that allows for this amount of local autonomy that the Houthis or that southerners want."
Once again, this is delusional. The traditional are for the Houthis is northwest Yemen, far outside the capital city Sanaa.
"The longer-term solution, and by longer-term, I mean 30 days from now, we want to see everybody sitting around the table, based on a cease-fire, based on a pullback from the border, and then based on ceasing dropping of bombs, that will permit the [U.N.] special envoy—Martin Griffiths, who's very good, he knows what he's doing—to get them together in Sweden and end this war.It’s time to stop [the Yemen war]. And right now, what the Iranians have done by bringing in anti-ship missiles ... it’s interrupted freedom of navigation, they are the ones who keep fueling this conflict and they need to knock it off."
This is all fantasy. None of this is going to happen. But what's interesting is that pretty much the opposite has happened.
Fearing that US support for the war might end in 30 days, Saudi Arabia has redoubled its attacks on Yemen's al-Hodeidah seaport. Two hundred air strikes were reported in and around Hodeidah on Saturday alone. Artillery shells had also hit residential areas and temporary roadblocks had prevented people from leaving or entering the city overnight, in effect trapping them in an active conflict zone, it added.
The UN says Yemen is on the brink of the world's worst famine in 100 years. The assault on the al-Hodeidah seaport has blocked humanitarian aid, including food and medicines, from reaching much of Yemen, with the danger of a worsening humanitarian crisis. US Institute for Peace and Arab News and BBC and CNN
With so many people being killed in so many ways every day, it's somewhat startling to see that one particular murder, that of Washington Post columnist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi by other Saudi Nationals in Istanbul on October 2, has been the cause of so much international chaos.
There are three reasons for this, in my opinion. First, the murder was particularly gruesome, ordered by the highest officials in the Saudi government, and the body has not yet been produced. Second, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been dribbling out the facts of the case, so that every day there's a new revelation to embarrass the Saudi government. And third, the al-Jazeera news network, based in and funded by the government of Qatar, which has become Saudi Arabia's mortal enemy, is doing everything possible to keep the story alive, with lengthy coverage of the latest in every newscast.
The Khashoggi murder has also had geopolitical consequences. As I recently reported, Pakistan's new prime minister Imran Khan was able to use the Khashoggi scandal as leverage to convince Saudi Arabia to provide $6 billion in aid.
It now appears that the Khashoggi murder is also changing the direction of the Yemen war. The murder has strengthened the hand of activists in the UK and Washington who want Saudi Arabia to end the Yemen war. The statement by Secretary of Defense James Mattis, excerpted above, was an outcome of the Khashoggi murder.
The Yemen war has been a disaster for Saudi Arabia. Despite repeated promises that the war would end quickly, the Saudis are completely bogged in a seemingly never-ending war. They would love for Mattis' recommendations to succeed, but in the end that would hand Yemen over to the Iranians, and they can't agree to that.
However, we're already seeing unintended consequences, specifically Saudi Arabia doubling down on the violent assault on Hodeidah. The proposal by Mattis was a ceasefire by all parties, including Iran, the Houthis, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE), and then have a peace conference in Geneva. That was never going to happen or, if it did, it would have resulted in a "peace process" with no commitments honored by the parties. History shows that this kind of peace process will not work.
Khashoggi's murder has led to Mattis' statement, which has led to a massive increase in the violence in the Hodeidah attack. The Saudis want to bring the Houthis to their knees, and force a negotiated truce under terms favorable to the Saudis. History shows that this kind of attack will not work either. This kind of attack only works when it is at the climax of a generational crisis war, and then only when all the parties are so war-weary and exhausted that they'll agree to end the war. The Yemen war is nowhere near a climax. Saudi Gazette and Foreign Policy and New Yorker and Al-Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Nov-18 World View -- The Jamal Khashoggi murder changes the direction of the Yemen war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Nov-2018)
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Over 10,000 people displaced by new fighting in Central African Republic civil war
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Last week, the town of Batangafo in northern Central African Republic (CAR) was attacked by militias in the ongoing generational crisis civil war. Armed groups looted and burned thousands of homes, three camps hosting 27,000 displaced and a market in the city. Some 10,000 are seeking refuge in a hospital in Batangafo run by Doctors Without Borders Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF). At the same time, the town of Bambari in central CAR was attacked. Dozens of people were wounded or killed, or had to be treated for burns.
The CAR sectarian war began in March 2013, when François Bozizé, the Christian former president of CAR, was ousted in a coup in March 2013 by Michel Djotodia, a Muslim, who became president and served until January 2014.
After Djotodia's coup took place in March 2013, Muslim Séléka militias began committing atrocities, particularly targeting the Christian constituencies of the deposed François Bozizé. In December 2013, French Foreign Legion peacekeeping troops arrived to disarm the Séléka militias.
The actions of the French troops backfired. When the Muslim Séléka troops were disarmed, the Christian anti-balaka militias "rushed into the vacuum," and began committing atrocities in 2014, for revenge against the Sélékas. Since then, both Christians and Muslims have been committing atrocities, and it's become a full-scale generational crisis war. Thousands have been killed, and millions have been displaced.
Since 2013, there's been a delusional struggle, led by the United Nations Security Council, to use "peacekeepers" to bring the fighting to an end. The idea that "peacekeepers" can stop the progress of a generational crisis war is absurd beyond belief.
In 2015, there was even a visit by Pope Francis to CAR's capital city Bangui to propose "a renewed attention to the idea of a respectful urban integration, as opposed to elimination, paternalism, indifference or mere containment." ( "28-Nov-15 World View -- Pope Francis to visit Central African Republic in middle of civil war")
Well, I'm not sure that a visit by a Pope ever ended any war. A generational crisis war only ends when everybody is completely exhausted, and then only with an "explosive climax," usually an act of genocide that's so horrific that both sides agree to end the war, and vow never to allow anything like that to happen again. The war in CAR is nowhere near such an explosive climax.
Jonathan Allen, UK's UN ambassador, recently said the following at a UN Security Council meeting:
"Civilians, peacekeepers, and humanitarian workers continue to be attacked. More than one in four Central Africans remain displaced; half of the population are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Only 36% of the 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan has been funded. We encourage all member states to help fill this gap. The UK has provided £63 million – or $81 million – in humanitarian aid to CAR since 2015. We believe that this aid supports progress towards a stable, secure, and peaceful CAR – something that remains in all of our interests."
No it won't. Any aid money to try and stop this generational crisis war is just money down the drain.
From the point of Generational Dynamics, CAR's last generational crisis war was the 1928-1931 Kongo-Wara Rebellion ("War of the Hoe Handle"), which was a very long time ago, putting CAR today deep into a generational Crisis era, with a new crisis war in progress.
This war was triggered by a religious fault line between Muslims and Christians, but it's actually an ethnic war between cattle herders, such as ethnic Fulani, versus farmers, such as ethnic Gula and Runga. As I've described many times in Central African Republic, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, and even America in the 1800s, is that in country after country, there a classic and recurring battle between herders and farmers. The farmers accuse the herders of letting the cattle eat their crops, while the herders accuse the farmers of planting on land that's meant for grazing. If the farmers put up fences, then the herders knock them down. ReliefWeb (1-Nov) and Médecins Sans Frontières and Reuters and UK Government
In July, three internationally known reporters and war correspondents were gunned down and killed in Central African Republic after their car was ambushed.
The three were making a documentary film for TsUR, an investigative media center funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oligarch. In 2003, Khodorkovsky announced he would run against Vladimir Putin for president. Putin destroyed Khodorkovsky, and had him jailed for life, only letting him out in 2013 in a "humanitarian gesture" before the Sochi Olympics.
The topic of the documentary film was the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), a mercenary group, sometimes known as "Putin's personal army" that Putin uses for "dirty work" when he needs deniability, most recently in Ukraine and Syria. In the West, Wagner is believed responsible for the deaths of the three journalists, while Russia's foreign ministry denies the connection.
Historically, peacekeeping efforts in CAR were led by France, which had been the colonial power in the past. But in the past year, Russia has been actively working to expand its influence in CAR, supplying hundreds of weapons to the CAR army along with 175 civilian and military instructors.
Suspicions have raised that Russians are less interested in peacekeeping, and more interested in cutting deals with rebels and deploying Wagner mercenaries to guard the extraction of gold, diamonds and uranium. There had been a previous announcement that Russia and CAR had agreed on joint "exploratory mining concessions."
France's defence minister Florence Parly said last week:
"Russia has asserted its presence in the Central African Republic in recent months, it is true, but I am not sure that this presence and the actions deployed by Moscow, like the agreements negotiated in Khartoum at the end of August, help to stabilize the country."
However, Russia's foreign ministry had defended its actions against what it said was "a certain jealousy" by other foreign powers over Russia's role in CAR. Telegraph (London, 31-Jul) and Africa News and Reuters (17-Oct) and Telegraph (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Nov-18 World View -- Suspicions grow about Russia's Wagner PMC mercenary group in Central African Republic thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Nov-2018)
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Questions raised about planned China military naval base in Jiwani
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The separatist terror group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed credit for killing on October 31 five men working for a construction company building 70 housing developments. The housing will be populated by thousands of Chinese workers who will be working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The housing developments are on the road connecting Gwadar port to the town of Jiwani.
According to Azad Baloch, a BLA spokesman:
"The site attacked today was part of the CPEC project. ...Today's attack is a clear message to China and all other countries that Balochistan is an occupied territory. We warn China to halt working on all the projects including a planned naval base in Jiwani, Balochistan. The BLA will continue to resist against the occupation of Baloch Ocean and coastal belt. ...
China and Pakistan are settling Punjabis and Chinese in Gwadar and other areas of Balochistan's coastal belt to turn the Baloch into a minority under their expansionist designs.
If the international community fails to fulfil their responsibilities and turn a blind eye to the Pakistani and Chinese colonization of Balochistan, then the Baloch nation will have no other option but to target all non-Baloch settlers in Balochistan."
This was only the latest in a series of BLA attacks on CPEC targets in Balochistan. On October 26, the BLA conducted a joint operation with another separatist group, the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), and killed two Pakistani paramilitary soldiers in a coordinated attack on a senior officer's convoy. In September, there were seven terrorist attacks in Balochistan. In August, the BLA claimed credit for a suicide bombing attack on a bus transporting Chinese workers, injuring three.
After the August suicide bombing, Chinese companies hired more security personnel to protect Chinese workers. However, the targets of the most recent terror attacks were not Chinese, and not Baloch. Furthermore, they were not killed with a suicide bombing. Instead, they were killed when unidentified motorcyclists opened fire at them and fled. Also, they were from other provinces in Pakistan. The BLA is insisting that with unemployment and poverty so high among Baloch people, Baloch workers should be doing the CPEC development, rather Chinese workers or workers from Punjab.
However, a Chinese investment firm has already announced a project to build homes for 500,000 Chinese professionals in Gwadar by 2023. Dawn and South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) and Al Jazeera and Express Tribune (Pakistan, 11-Oct) and The News (Pakistan, 21-Oct-2017)
CPEC is a $55-60 billion 20-year project that will supposedly build a network of roads, railways and energy pipelines aiming to connect western Chinese cities, starting from China's easternmost city Kashgar in Xinjiang province, to the sea port in Gwadar on the Indian Ocean in Balochistan province in southern Pakistan. Power generation, transport, commerce, R&D and the defense of Pakistan all will be increasingly tied to Chinese investment, supplies and interests.
China has always insisted that Gwadar will be a purely commercial port, with no military purpose at all. As usual, we seem to be facing the usual deception, double-talk, and lying from the Chinese.
Recall that in 2015, China's president Xi Jinping and said that his country had "no intention to militarize" the South China Sea, and that they would be tourist attractions. It was just as much a lie as when Hitler promised "peace in our time" as he was planning to invade Britain. Today, the Chinese military has turned them into bases, bristling with radar domes, shelters for missiles, warplane runways, and other heavy military equipment. No tourists are welcome.
In January of this year, there were reports that Gwadar would become a Chinese military naval base. China denied the report, but an article in the South China Morning Post reported that the military base would not be in Gwadar itself, but nearby on the Jiwani Peninsula. The article quoted a Beijing-based military analyst who said:
"China needs to set up another base in Gwadar for its warships because Gwadar is now a civilian port.It’s a common practice to have separate facilities for warships and merchant vessels because of their different operations. Merchant ships need a bigger port with a lot of space for warehouses and containers, but warships need a full range of maintenance and logistical support services."
At a Beijing forum last week, Javaid Iqbal, Navy Secretary of the Pakistan Navy was asked whether Gwadar is the location of a future Chinese military base. He evaded the question by restricting his answer to Gwadar port: "Let me emphasize that the Gwadar port is purely a commercial venture and has no military overtones. The Gwadar port has no military dimension. It will be just a commercial port." So, no mention of a base in nearby Jiwani. Aren't these people wonderful? Diplomat (9-Feb) and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong, 5-Jan) and Reuters (26-Oct) and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (CSIS/AMTI)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan's Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claims credit for killing CPEC workers thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(6-Nov-2018)
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Disarmament proceeds along North-South Korea border, opposed by US
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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US and South Korea marine forces will begin on Monday joint military marine drills around the southeastern port city of Pohang on Monday. It will involve 500 troops from the South Korean Marine Corps and the U.S. III Marine Expeditionary Force stationed in Okinawa. South Korea announced that it will decide next month whether to suspend next year's exercises.
Early in January of this year, at the time that North Korea was beginning its "charm offensive" and talking about participating in the Olympics games in Seoul, North Korea demanded that US-South Korea military drills be postponed until after the Olympics. The military drills have been performed for years, and they have always infuriated both the North Koreans and the Chinese. So, the US and South Korea acceded to the North Korean demand to postpone the drills until after March 18, when the Olympics and Paralympics games finally end.
However, the charm offensive continued, with numerous negotiating sessions involving North Korea, South Korea, and the United States, including personal meetings between the national leaders. North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un repeatedly insisted that he would fully "denuclearize." North Korea has even destroyed a nuclear testing facility that it doesn't need or use to "prove" it was sincere.
Many analysts, including myself, believe that North Korea has no intention to denuclearize, and that the purpose of the "charm offensive" is to apply political pressure to the United States to agree to and the sanctions with having to make any denuclearization concessions. I also believe that if Kim Jong-un tried to actually denuclearize, then he would be shot dead by his own generals.
North Korea has taken no real steps towards denuclearization, even refusing to take the simple step of providing a list of all its nuclear development sites. No reason was given by the US military why it is resuming the limited military drills, but it may be a warning to North Korea after 11 months of charm offensive that nothing has been accomplished.
Kim Jong-un appears to be replaying the same fraudulent script that his father Kim Jong-il followed in 2008. At that time, the North demolished a 60-foot-tall cooling tower to prove that it was ending its nuclear development programs. In reaction, the Bush administration agreed to remove all sanctions. As soon as they were removed, North Korea immediately and openly resumed its nuclear and ballistic missile development. They had completely defrauded the United States and the world.
On Friday, North Korea issued a statement threatening to resume nuclear development unless the sanctions are lifted. Specifically, the statement threatened to resume North Korea's "pyongjin" policy of simultaneously advancing its nuclear force and economic development.
Some analysts claim that North Korea has already won. A year ago, the US was threatening military action to halt North Korea's nuclear and missile development. Now, thanks to the charm offensive, the North had a year to continue nuclear and missile development in secret, lacking on the ability to openly test their development with hydrogen bomb tests and long-range ballistic missile tests. North Korea is believed to have an arsenal of ballistic missiles ready to be launched at the US or other targets, and at a time of its choosing it can simply start openly testing again.
The charm offensive will continue later this week, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet with North Korean officials to discuss the next halluncinatory steps in the denuclearization process. Pompeo's last meeting didn't accomplish anything. Yonhap News (Seoul) and Reuters and AP
For several months, there has been a separate "peace process" going on in Korea, not well publicized outside.
South Korea's president Moon Jae-in has had several well-publicized meetings with Kim Jong-un, and they've agreed to disarm the demilitarized zone (DMZ) border that separates North and South Korea.
Two weeks ago, the two Koreas announced that firearms and military posts have been withdrawn from a portion of the DMZ, turning the "truce village" of Panmunjom into a "peace village."
This was done quickly, after Moon and Kim agreed to it, and it was the first step in fulfilling the far-reaching agreement of disarming the DMZ, removing land mines, declaring a no-fly zone over a huge region near the border, and eventually removing the 25,000 American troops stationed nearby.
There's no shortage of people calling this a super-wonderful first step on the road to peaceful reunification of North and South Korea.
However, the US State Dept. is opposing these steps. The North Koreans have never repudiated their oft-stated intention of invading South Korea and taking control. Demilitarizing the DMZ has a second purpose -- removing some of the major obstacles to a North Korean invasion of South Korea. North Korea could send its 1.1 million man army across the border into Seoul, wiping out the 23,000 American soldiers stationed there.
The US State Dept. is particularly objecting to the agreement to impose a no-fly zone over the border, because it would effectively prevent close air support drills. The agreement also bars live-fire drills involving fixed-wing aircraft and air-to-ground guided weapons in the no-fly area.
If you step back and look at the entire year, Kim Jong-un seems to be winning on every point. There's widespread cheating by the Chinese and Russians over the sanctions. North Korea has been free to continue nuclear development and ballistic missile development, with no restriction except open testing. And the DMZ is being demilitarized, leaving Seoul open to invasion by the North at a time of its choosing.
All of this seems pretty obvious to a lot of people. The only question is: Why is Moon Jae-in facilitating it? Yonhap News (Seoul) and Stars and Stripes and Reuters (18-Oct) and Korea Herald (19-Sep)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Nov-18 World View -- US and South Korea resume some military marine drills, despite North's objections thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Nov-2018)
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Questions about Mohammed's covenant with Christians and Christianity
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Three days after Pakistan's Supreme Court freed Asia Bibi on blasphamy charges, the government has signed a 5-point agreement with the Barelvi sect / Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) terrorists completely capitulating to the demands of the terrorists. The TLP had mobilized massive protests across the country, blocking roads in and out of big cities, and had threatened to kill the three Supreme Court judges who had written the opinion freeing Asia. Even Pakistani media and politicians were alarmed at the extent of the government capitulation, and wondered whether the government would survive.
Here's the five-point agreement:
"1. A review petition has been filed in the Aasia Bibi case, which is the right of the petitioners. The government will raise no objections over the review petition.2. Due process will be followed immediately to include the name of Aasia Bibi in the Exit Control List (ECL).
3. Immediate legal action will be taken over the martyrdom of any individuals during the protest campaign against the acquittal of Aasia Bibi.
4. All those arrested on October 30 or afterwards in the protest campaign against Aasia Bibi's acquittal will be released immediately.
5. The TLP apologizes to anybody whose sentiments have been unnecessarily hurt during the incident."
The reference to the "Exit Control List (ECL)" means that Asia's name will be placed on the airline list that prevents someone from leaving the country. The UK had sent a plane to take Asia to Europe, but it had to leave without her. Asia is said to be in protective custody somewhere.
A number of people had been arrested during the three days of massive demonstration for destroying property and causing violence, and the agreement says that they will be freed.
The only concession made by the terrorists is that they apologize for hurting people's feelings.
A lot of people are now wondering whether Pakistan is ruled by Islamist terrorists. The new president Imran Khan initially said the following:
"I say to these people: do not confront this state ... do not damage this country for your vote bank. If you do this, I promise that the government will do its duty ... I ask you: do not force the government to have to take action."
Khan did take action the next day -- total capitulation.
A lot of people congratulated the Supreme Court for its bravery in acquitting Asia, but are now wondering why Asia was not acquitted by a lower court long before this. One analyst answers as follows:
"People ask a question as to why Sessions Court and Lahore High Court convicted her for blasphemy and endorsed death penalty. There are mainly two reasons. First, it is obvious that death threats from the extremists who use Islam for their political gains that might have forced the judges; you have see the chaos by now, for which most judges were afraid of. Secondly, the judges of lower courts were not that courageous to take the risks of their lives for justice."
The following analogy might provide clarification. Imagine a high-level official in America saying that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. There would be screaming, hysterical mobs harassing him in restaurants, threatening him, and demanding his resignation. The same thing is happening in Pakistan today with respect to blasphemy. The News (Pakistan) and Deutsche Welle and The Nation (Pakistan) and Dunya News (Pakistan)
It's not surprising that the TLP were absolutely furious about the Supreme Court ruling, which I described three days ago. It was a scathing opinion not only that Asia was not a blasphemer, but that her accusers and, by implication, the Barelvi/TTP terrorists were themselves blasphemers, because they had blasphemed Asia's Christian belief, which Mohammed had ordered all Muslims to protect in a covenant.
Several people asked for more information about this covenant, and whether it actually exists. The text of the covenant appears in the court opinion that I quoted in my previous article, and is repeated here:
"This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them. Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by God! I hold out against anything that displeases them. No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate. No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world)."
Possibly the best way to understand this covenant is to consider the phrase, "Verily, they are my allies." The word "allies" is used in a literal sense. The document was signed in 628 AD, when Mohammed was in the middle of a generational crisis war between his own Hashim clan versus the Umayyad clan in Mecca. Mohammed had nothing against the Christians and had no reason to fight them, so he promised to protect them.
Over the centuries, Muslim nations have continued to protect Christians living among them, choosing to tax them rather than kill them. So Mohammed's covenant has been followed for 1400 years.
Even today, Muslim jihadists are not killing Christians except for public relations purposes in high profile terrorist attacks. The number of Christians being killed is minuscule, compared to the number of Muslims being killed. More Christians are being killed in traffic accidents than by Muslim jihadists.
A lot of this was discussed in my book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East.
For the most part, it's Muslims who kill Muslims (Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc.), and it's Christians who kill Christians -- Nazis vs Russians, French and British, Hutus vs Tutsis, Russians vs Ukrainians and Georgians, etc. Most of the time, that's the way the world works. Islamic Supreme Council
John J. Xenakis is author of the book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East, available on Amazon for $5 for the digital version or $7 for the paperback version.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan government capitulates to Barelvi/TLP terrorists, doesn't free Asia Bibi thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Nov-2018)
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Officials of Nauru infuriated by the contemptuous remarks by NGOs and politicians
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As a result of Federal Court orders, the Australian government is in the process of moving all migrant children and their families from Nauru immigration camps to Australian cities and towns. Fifty minors and their families have come to Australia since October 15, for a total of 135 people, and the remaining 35 minors are expected to be transferred by Christmas.
Since August 3, 2013, when the government of Australia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of the Republic of Nauru, refugees and asylum seekers arriving by boat without a visa would be sent either to Nauru or to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG), and would have "no chance" of being resettled in Australia as refugees.
The decision to send "boat people" to the offshore islands has been extremely controversial, both domestically and internationally, as NGOs claim that the offshore islands are filthy and unsafe. Despite the objections from activists, the policy has been extremely successful in meeting its objectives. While there had previously been tens of thousands of "boat people" per year arriving in Australia, that number has been reduced to almost none, because refugees know that they will be transferred to one of the offshore detention centers. Australian officials claim that thousands of refugees' lives have been saved, since they didn't attempt the risky boat trip with human traffickers.
Activists have been using the courts and political pressure to force the government to bring all refugees on the islands to be resettled in Australia. Different government officials since 2013 have all refused, saying that any such move would trigger a new flood of boat people from Indonesia.
New Zealand has volunteered to take 150 refugees from Nauru and PNG and resettle them. However, Home Secretary Peter Dutton has rejected this offer because intelligence surveillance of smuggling operations had detected “increased chatter” and “talk about elections and change of government here," according to Dutton. "My judgment at the moment, based on all of the advice available to me, is New Zealand would be a pull factor at this point in time." The phrase "pull factor" refers to a possible resurgence of boat people.
However, prime minister Scott Morrison said that he'd only consider the New Zealand offer if legislation were passed that would prevent the refugees from simply leaving New Zealand and coming back to Australia.
Dutton says that the government remains committed to never resettle the refugees in Australia, meaning that they will be deported to their countries of origin after hospital treatment.
As a separate issue, the Obama administration in 2016 agreed to accept up to 1,250 refugees from Nauru and Papua New Guinea. ( "6-Feb-17 World View -- Trump will honor Australia refugee deal, despite calling it 'worst deal ever'")
But after more than a year of screening, only 439 have found new homes in the U.S., and dozens more have rejected the offer to resettle in the United States. According to an NGO, these were mostly people who had family in Australia and were concerned about being separated from them permanently. Sydney Morning Herald and CBS News and Guardian (London) and Australia Government (3-Aug-2013)
Australia's prime minister Scott Morrison is warning NGOs and politicians to stop being offensive to Nauru: "For those Nauruans who live there, I do know that they get frankly a bit offended about the way people talk about their home." Some NGOs have called it an "open air prison."
According to Morrison, all the refugee children on Nauru are living freely in the community just like the locals, and that the island nation should not be disrespected:
"That is the home of Nauruans - their children live there, their families live there, they go to school there. We should be tempered in our discussion about the nation of Nauru and I think we should treat them with respect."
Former prime minister Tony Abbott said, "If you like living in the tropics it's a very, very pleasant island."
According to the Australian government, 65 medical professionals, including 33 mental health workers, are contracted to serve the refugees on Nauru. According to Abbott, health services are better there than in some parts of regional Australia.
However, these statements are in contrast to warnings by NGOs, the United Nations, and the Australian Medical Association about the appalling state of mental health among young refugees. It was these claims that led to the court order to transfer children to Australia.
The issue is becoming increasingly explosive. A month ago, the government of Nauru expelled the NGO Doctors Without Borders Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) which had been providing free mental health care on Nauru. According to Nauru, MSF had originally committed to providing health services for the entire population of 13,000 Nauruans, but instead focused on the refugees to further political advocacy.
According to a statement put out by the Nauru government:
"For too long, some sections of the media, refugee advocates and some NGOs, have focused only on refugees in Nauru and referred to Nauruans with disdain.Refugees and locals live side by side as part of a homogenous multicultural community. Calls for refugee children to be removed from our country ignore the fact that Nauruan children grow up here happy, healthy and educated within strong family units. Refugee and asylum seeker children attend school and activities with Nauruan children creating friendships and familial bonds. It is disturbing and concerning that advocates and organizations with political agendas prey on the vulnerable and innocent to progress their agendas. ...
The statements made by MSF expose their ruse. It has become very clear that they were never here to help Nauruans as was their initial representation to Government to gain entry into Nauru. They were here as political activists and it was self-evident from the statement made by MSF representatives referring to our sovereign nation, which is our beloved home, as an “open air prison”. This was least expected from an organization proclaiming to be an international humanitarian organization. Nauru has opened its home to refugees awaiting resettlement options. MSF must not define our home as a prison. It speaks of the organization itself."
Nauru is a tiny island, 21 sq km, in the middle of the Pacific. Inhabited for at least 3,000 years, originally by 12 Polynesian and Micronesian tribes, its nearest neighbor, Kiribati, is 300 km of empty ocean away. Nauru was a German colony in the 19th century and an Australian protectorate in the 20th, until independence in 1969, at which time it was one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
It had a massive supply of mineral phosphate. It was strip-mined by mining companies, who packed it up and sold it overseas to be used as fertilizer. Profits were placed into a trust which, at its peak, was valued at $1 billion.
But Nauru became independent in 1969, and then the politicians took over. A series of corrupt and incompetent governments wasted the money, and left the country broke and barren by the 1980s, with an unemployment rate of 70%. Since then, Australia has had to provide aid to them.
The "boat people" situation has provided an extremely controversial opportunity for both countries. For Nauru it provided a way to earn extra millions of dollars by housing the refugees. For Australia, it provided a place to send them. Australia AP and NPR and Naura Government and News.com (Australia) and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Nov-18 World View -- Australia moves migrant children from Nauru immigration camps to Australia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(3-Nov-2018)
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Trump's Iran sanctions, announced in May, scheduled for Sunday
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
In May, the Trump administration withdrew America's position in the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). At that time, Trump announced that he was restoring wide-ranging sanctions on Iran's economy. He Trump gave oil buyers 180 days to wind down purchases of Iranian oil, and that the final deadline for oil purchases would be Sunday, November 4. From May to September, Iran's oil exports fell by about a third.
The Trump administration has the power to enforce the sanctions because of the way that the international banking systems are interlocked. Iran can sell oil to another country, but in order to get paid, payment sooner or later has to pass through an entity that can be sanctioned by the US for violating the Iran sanctions, or can be cut off from the US financial system altogether.
The European Union, which has expressed fury at the Trump administration for taking these actions, has been trying to set up a "special purpose vehicle" (SPV) that European countries can use to pay Iran without having to pass through a financial entity that the US can punish. The original plan was to have the SPV in place by Monday, but implementing it has turned out to be too complex so far. Furthermore, EU officials are said to want to avoid a "direct confrontation" with the Trump administration over Iran before the midterm elections on Tuesday.
The US has reportedly agreed to grant a waiver to India to permit Indian oil companies to continue importing Iranian oil for four more months, until March. The terms of the waiver are not fully clear, but India will be required to cut its imports by a third. India will make 45% of the purchase in its own rupee currency, which Iran can then use to purchase rice, drugs and other products from India. The other 55% of the payment will be made in euros, but this money will be held in escrow in India banks, until the sanctions are lifted.
There are also reports that South Korea will be granted a waiver, although the details are not known.
China and Japan are also seeking waivers, but have yet to receive them. China is Iran's biggest oil customer, but because of the US sanctions, China's biggest refiners have reportedly halted imports in November until the US provides clarity. CNBC and India Times and CNBC and AFP
When Trump withdrew from from the JCPOA in May, officials in Denmark said they were shocked and surprised by Trump's decision. Former foreign minister Holger K. Nielsen said:
"It is catastrophic for him to do this. It could have very serious consequences for the entire region. This was a way to stay Iran's nuclear ambitions while giving more moderate forces wind in their sails. It is now a concern that hardliners [in Iran] will gain power. ...That's why I am very, very concerned. If Iran resumes nuclear arms development, I fear that Israel or the US will attack Iran, and that will make the Iraq war look like a playground fight, because this would be much worse."
That was then. This is now. And now, Denmark is asking the European Union to impose additional sanctions on Iran.
On September 28, agents from Denmark's intelligence service (PET) saw an individual taking photos outside the home in Copenhagen of the leader of Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of al-Ahwaz (ASMLA). ASMLA is a separatist group demanding a separate Arab state in Iran's south-western Khuzestan Province, and is classified as a terrorist group by Iran. A previous leader of ASMLA had been shot dead in the Netherlands in November 2017, so PET was concerned that a new assassination was being planned.
By total coincidence, a Swedish-registered black Volvo started moving "suspiciously" outside the same house. When they tried to stop the car, it sped off. This triggered a major manhunt, during which a number of roads, bridges and ferry routes were shut down, including connections between Denmark and Sweden. It turned out that the three occupants of the Volvo had no relation to the ASMLA case, but that the Volvo was a stolen car. They were only caught because of the ASMLA case, making them "the world's most unlucky criminals," according to the Copenhagen police.
The man taking the pictures was a Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin. He was arrested in Norway on October 21, and extradited to Denmark. A search of his home revealed numerous photos of the residences of members of ASMLA.
Danish security officials have accused Iranian intelligence of "planning an attack on Danish soil" against Iranian Arab dissidents.
Iran's Foreign Ministry denied the country had any role in the alleged assassination plot. It said in a statement:
"This is yet another scenario in a series of conspiracies and plots by well-known Iran adversaries in an attempt to jeopardize the good and progressive Iran-EU relations at this very important and critical juncture."
Other Iranian official suggested sabotage by the US, Saudi Arabia or Israel.
Some analysts claim that hardliners in Iran's intelligence services may plan plots in Europe without the knowledge or control of Iran's government. The rogue elements may even be trying to undermine pragmatists in the Iranian government and good relations with the Europe.
This is actually believable. As I describe in my book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East, Iran is one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Iran's constitution has no checks and balances, and the only way to get ahead in the government is through bribery, extortion and corruption.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that Washington stood behind Denmark, a Nato ally.
"We congratulate the government of #Denmark on its arrest of an Iranian regime assassin. For nearly 40 years, Europe has been the target of #Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks. We call on our allies and partners to confront the full range of Iran’s threats to peace and security. — Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) October 30, 2018"
This situation has thrown a huge stumbling block into the EU plans to keep the JCPOA deal alive.
Iran has had a long record of pursuing opponents living abroad. Last month, a series of raids in France and across Europe caught several Iranian diplomats and sleeper cells planning terrorist operations. ( "4-Oct-18 World View -- Iran diplomats and sleeper cells arrested in France and across Europe")
There's a darkly ironic twist because Iran has strongly condemned Saudi Arabia's killing of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul Turkey, and is now accused of the same crime. Russia has used the nerve agent Novichok to murder opponents living in Britain, but to my knowledge they've issued no statement on Iran's alleged assassination attempt in Copenhagen. The Local (Denmark, 9-May) and Deutsche Welle and The Local (Denmark, 29-Sep) and Washington Post
John J. Xenakis is author of the book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East, available on Amazon for $5 for the digital version or $7 for the paperback version.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Nov-18 World View -- EU splits on Iran sanctions after assassination attempt in Denmark thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Nov-2018)
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Asia Bibi acquittal triggers widespread riots and terrorist threats
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Pakistan's Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed the conviction of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman with five children who was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death by hanging in 2010, and has remained on death row since then. The court's scathing decision not only acquitted her, but also accused the two women who accused her of blasphemy, as well as the prosecutors who took the case to trial, of their own acts of blasphemy against Asia's religion, Christianity.
Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), the political party of the loony Barelvi sect of hardline Sunni Islam has called for nationwide riots, and the assassination of the three Supreme Court judges, who are being given additional protection. Widespread protests erupted on Wednesday in cities across Pakistan, including Lahore and Karachi, shutting down roads.
It was feared that the government would bow to the Barelvi/TLP demands and ignore the court's decision. That hasn't happened so far, and the new prime minister Imran Khan has endorsed the court verdict, and condemned the protesters:
"These protesters are not ‘protecting’ Islam; they are just trying to fill their vote banks. They are enemies of the state that are doing politics in the name of the religion. People cannot get to their jobs. A laborer, who had to get to his work place and would be unable to feed his children because of this. ...Do not force the government to take action. Do not clash with the state or hurt the country only for political gains."
However, there are still concerns that the Barelvi/TLP terrorists will prevent Asia Bibi from leaving the country, now that she's free and several countries have offered her asylum.
The blasphemy charge occurred when a bunch of women started arguing with each other. Several women refused to drink out of the same cup as Asia because she's a Christian. Five days later, they decided to charge her with blasphemy. She was prosecuted and has been in jail until today.
Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province in Pakistan, called for the release of Asia Bibi, and was shot 28 times in broad daylight in an open marketplace on January 4, 2011. The killer was his bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri. The motive, as described by Qadri, was to punish Taseer for objecting to Pakistan's blasphemy laws, and for calling for the release of Asia Bibi. Qadri was not just a national hero, but he was a Barelvi hero, and it's that execution that led to the rise of TLP. Since Qadri justified his murder of Taseer with a phony blasphemy charge, the TLP political movement is based almost entirely on phony blasphemy charges. Qadri was showered with roses and treated as a hero in 2011 after brutally murdering Taseer. Qadri was finally executed last year, but not before he became a national hero for killing Taseer over a phony blasphemy charge.
So Asia Bibi has been a political foil for the loony Barelvi sect for eight years. If she is successful in leaving the country, at least that part of saga may be over. BBC and Deutsche Welle and Dawn (Pakistan, 13-Oct)
The court's opinion is very long, 56 pages. Each statement or conclusion is supported by a verse from the Koran. It's in roughly three parts.
The first part is the history of blasphemy laws in Pakistan. The second part describes the evidence against Asia Bibi.
The third part is a scathing criticism of the women who accused Asia of blasphemy, and of the prosecutors who tried the case, repeated lying and ignoring exculpatory evidence. Furthermore, the court accuses the women and the prosecutors and even the trial courts of violating Mohammed's covenant with Christians and Christianity, and of being guilty themselves of blasphemy, for having blasphemed the religion of Asia Bibi, which was Christianity.
The following are extracts from the latter parts of the opinion. According to the judgment, the Asia Bibi's prosecutors repeatedly lied, and so the prosecutors were in violation of the Koran:
"20. The glaring and stark contradictions in the evidence produced by the prosecution in respect of every factual aspect of this case, noticed by me above, lead to an irresistible and unfortunate impression that all those concerned in the case with providing evidence and conducting investigation had taken upon themselves not to speak the truth or at least not to divulge the whole truth. It is equally disturbing to note that the courts below had also, conveniently or otherwise, failed to advert to such contradictions and some downright falsehood. All concerned would have certainly done better if they had paid heed to what Almighty Allah has ordained in the Holy Qur’an:“O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm for Allah, witnesses in justice, and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just, that is nearer to righteousness. And fear Allah; indeed, Allah is acquainted with what you do.” (Surah Al-Ma’idah: verse 8)
“So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort [your testimony] or refuse [to give it], then indeed Allah is ever, with what you do, acquainted.” (Surah An-Nisa: verse 135)"
The court was particularly suspicious that Asia was only accused of blasphemy five days after the alleged incident occurred, and that Asia's accusers themselves had insulted her (Christian) religion. They say that the Koran demands every Muslim believe in all the holy prophets, including Jesus Christ, and that therefore Asia's accusers were themselves blasphemers:
"23. The statements made by [prosecutors] before the trial court revealed that the alleged blasphemy had been committed by the Christian appellant after her Muslim co-workers had insulted the appellant’s religion and had injured her religious sensibilities only because she believed in and was a follower of Jesus Christ. According to the Holy Qur’an a Muslim’s faith is not complete till he believes in all the Holy Prophets and Messengers of Almighty Allah including Jesus Christ (Isa son of Maryam) (Peace Be Upon Him) and all the revealed Holy Books of Almighty Allah including the Holy Bible. From that perspective insulting the appellant’s religion by her Muslim co-workers was no less blasphemous. Almighty Allah, the Creator of mankind, knew how a human being whose religion and religious sensibilities are insulted is likely to snap and retort and that is why it was ordained in the Holy Qur’an that“And do not insult those they invoke other than Allah, lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge. Thus We have made pleasing to every community their deeds. Then to their Lord is their return, and He will inform them about what they used to do.” (Surah Al-An’am: verse 108)
The Muslim co-workers of the appellant had violated the command of Almighty Allah by insulting the Deity believed in and the religion followed by the appellant and, even if the prosecution’s allegations against the appellant were to be accepted as correct, the stated reaction to the same by the appellant was not different from that warned about by Almighty Allah."
The court went on at length to describe how Mohammed was committed to protecting Christians and Christianity, and so Asia's accusers were actually violating one of Mohammed's covenants:
"24. In view of the glaring contradictions in the evidence produced by the prosecution it has appeared to me to be equally plausible that due to the quarrel taking place between the appellant and her Muslim coworkers at the spot without any offending word having been uttered by the appellant the quarrel was reported by the Muslim ladies to others who then, after deliberating over the matter for five long days, had decided to go after the appellant with a false allegation regarding commission of blasphemy. If that were so then the Muslim witnesses in this case had violated a covenant of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) with those professing the Christian faith. [One covenant is with the] Monks of Mount Sinai. It is reported that in or around the year 628 A.D. a delegation from St. Catherine’s Monastery, the world’s oldest monastery located at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt, came to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), requested for his protection and he responded by granting them a charter of rights. That charter, also known as The Promise to St. Catherine, was translated from Arabic to English language by Dr. A. Zahoor and Dr. Z. Haq as follows:"This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by God! I hold out against anything that displeases them. No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims' houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God's covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world)."
The promise made was eternal and universal and was not limited to St. Catherine alone. The rights conferred by the charter are inalienable and the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) had declared that Christians, all of them, were his allies and he equated ill treatment of Christians with violating God’s covenant. It is noticeable that the charter imposed no conditions on Christians for enjoying its privileges and it was enough that they were Christians. They were not required to alter their beliefs, they did not have to make any payments and they did not have any obligations. The charter was of rights without any duties and it clearly protected the right to property, freedom of religion, freedom of work, and security of person."
The court reaches its final conclusion, completely acquitting Asia Bibi:
"[25.] Blasphemy is a serious offence but the insult of the appellant’s religion and religious sensibilities by the complainant party and then mixing truth with falsehood in the name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) was also not short of being blasphemous. It is ironical that in the Arabic language the appellant’s name Asia means ‘sinful’ but in the circumstances of the present case she appears to be a person, in the words of Shakespeare’s King Leare, “more sinned against than sinning”.26. For what has been discussed above a conclusion is inescapable and irresistible that the prosecution had failed to prove its case against the appellant beyond reasonable doubt. This appeal is, therefore, allowed, the conviction and sentence of the appellant recorded and upheld by the courts below are set aside and she is acquitted of the charge by extending the benefit of doubt to her. She shall be released from the jail forthwith if not required to be detained in connection with any other case."
Although not mentioned in the opinion, the implication is that TLP is also guilty of blasphemy. Pakistan Supreme Court (PDF) and Christianity Today and BBC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan court reaffirms Mohammed's covenant with Christianity, acquits Asia Bibi of blasphemy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Nov-2018)
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Mahinda Rajapaksa's return to power will be welcomed by China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Mahinda Rajapaksa, a close ally of China and former president of Sri Lanka until he was defeated in a 2015 election, may be making a comeback as prime minister.
Last week, in a vitriolic political dispute, Sri Lanka's current president decided to fire the current prime minister, and appoint Rajapaksa to be the new prime minister.
Note:
- President is Maithripala Sirisena,
Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)
- Fired prime minister is Ranil Wickremesinghe,
United National Party (UNP)
- Appointed prime minister is Mahinda Rajapaksa
The fired prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has refused to leave the prime minister's residence, and hundreds of supporters gathered outside.
Meanwhile, Rajapaksa has moved into the prime minister's office, and is starting to appoint a cabinet. So there are currently two prime ministers.
The president, Maithripala Sirisena, claims that he has the right to fire the prime minister and appoint a new one. His opponents say that it's unconstitutional, and that only the parliament can fire a prime minister, and so the parliament should be called into session to decide who is prime minister.
Sirisena responded by announcing that the Parliament will remain closed until mid-November. This will give him to time to make sure that the members of parliament are aligned behind his decision. However, the speaker of the parliament said: "We need to solve this through parliament. If we try to solve this in the streets it will lead to a major bloodbath."
Wickremesinghe posted a defiant statement on Monday:
"As the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, I call upon all parties to assemble in parliament to regain our country's peace, stability, and to vehemently defend the fundamental rights of our citizens. My expectation is that the Speaker [of Parliament] will exercise his constitutional rights and summon parliament within the next 2 days.We ask the Honorable Speaker to summon Parliament urgently- only through the parliamentary system can we can save our country from this unfortunate and dangerous situation. Let us forget our political differences and rally to re-establish democracy in our country."
The reference to a "dangerous situation" is made because there's already been violence, including one person killed.
On Saturday, a pro-Wickremesinghe minister was confronted by a crowd of supporters of the president. The minister's bodyguard opened fire on the crowd, killing one person and wounding two others. This followed the storming of two state-owned television stations by mobs of Rajapaksa supporters. Guardian (London) and NPR and Guardian
President Sirisena and fired prime minister Wickremesinghe have had a number of disagreements, especially because Wickremesinghe is "pro-India," while Sirisena is "pro-China."
In a bizarre manifestation of this difference, in mid-October Sirisena publicly accused India's intelligence services of plotting his assassination. However, he spoke to India's prime minister Narendra Modi on the phone the next day. Afterwards, Sirisena stated that the mischievous and malafide reports were utterly baseless and false, and seemed intended to create misunderstanding between the two leaders as well as damage the cordial relations between the two friendly neighbors.
Rajapaksa became president of Sri Lanka in 2005, but was defeated in the presidential election by Sirisena in 2015. The two men had maintained cordial relations, so in that sense it wasn't a surprise that Sirisena decided to bring Rajapaksa back to power by appointing him prime minister after firing Wickremesinghe.
However, there's a great deal of hostility and violence in Sri Lanka related to the 30-year civil war between the governing ethnic Sinhalese, who are Buddhist, and the minority ethnic Tamils, who are Hindu. This was actually the first generational crisis war to reach a climax in this century. This civil war climaxed in May 2009. As in the case of all generational crisis wars, especially when they're civil wars, the war was extremely brutal and blood, with atrocities committed on both sides. Mahinda Rajapaksa was president during the last years of that war, and he's been personally charged with war crimes. (Paragraph corrected, 31-Oct)
There have been sporadic surges in violence since then. Since 2014, there have been numerous hate crime attacks by Buddhists on Muslims, including arson at Muslim-owned businesses and petrol-bomb attacks on mosques. The attacks are being blamed on a radical nationalist Buddhist organization, Bodu Bala Sena (BBS - Forces of Buddhist Power).
Another important legacy of Rajapaksa's presidency is that he made Sri Lanka the poster child and the first country to become victim to China's "Debt Trap Diplomacy." The Seaport of Hambantota, a Chinese infrastructure project in Sri Lanka, was funded with a loan from China, with almost all the labor performed by Chinese workers, and all parts and services imported from China, so that the loan money never benefited Sri Lanka's industries. Rajapaksa agreed to China's demands for exhorbitant loan repayment terms. Sri Lanka was unable to repay the loan, and in December of last year, Sri Lanka was forced to give the seaport away to China. So now Sri Lanka has a large seaport owned by China, and a large Chinese enclave with hundreds of Chinese families, with no benefit to itself and to its own people.
What's more important is that the seaport is at a strategic location in the Indian Ocean, and is one of China's "String of Pearls" seaports, and is considered a major security threat to India. Rajapaksa's return to power means that China will play a dominant role in Sri Lanka's politics and development. India Today and Foreign Policy and Diplomat
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Oct-18 World View -- Sri Lanka constitutional crisis represents opportunity for China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Oct-2018)
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Brief generational history of Thailand
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Thailand's prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has announced that a new general election will be held in 2019, possibly on February 24. Prayuth himself is prime minister because he was appointed by a military junta that overthrew the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014 in a coup. Under domestic and international pressure, Prayuth has promised five times to schedule a general election, but has always failed to do so.
It's possible that he won't keep his promise this time either. After the 2014 coup, he promised elections in early 2015, then in 2016, and then in November 2018. Now it's 2019 - maybe.
The reason that Prayuth may again kill election plans is because he knows that his side will almost certainly lose. The vast majority of the population are the dark-skinned lower class indigenous people, also called "Thai-Thai" and "red shirts," comprising about 3/4 of the population, living mostly in the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand, but who come to Bangkok mostly to work in menial jobs serving the Thai-Chinese.
The Thai-Chinese, also called "yellow shirts," are the light-skinned descendants of a wave of Chinese workers that poured into the country to find jobs in the 1930s. They comprise 1/4 of the population, live mostly around Bangkok, and are extremely contemptuous of the indigenous Thai-Thai, whom they consider to be inferior. Prayuth hates the Thai-Thai people, and knows that they'll win a general election, which is why he'll probably do all he can to avoid one. Straits Times and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong, 29-Dec-2017) and Channel News Asia
The Pheu Thai Party (Puea Thai Party), originally called the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party, is the party of the indigenous "red shirt" people, led by Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin was prime minister from 2001-2006, when he was ousted by a military coup. He then engineered a series of election victories for prime ministers from his Pheu Thai party, but in each case the army used some artifice to overthrow the elected prime minister.
In one case, the elected prime minister Samak Sundaravej was thrown out of office by a court because he previously had a cooking show on tv, and that was a conflict of interest. ( "Thailand government collapses, ending crippling riots from class war".)
In the most recent case, Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra won the 2011 election as the first female prime minister, with her election campaign scripted by her brother Thaksin, who at that time was living in exile in Dubai. ( "Thailand's Yingluck promises to use 'femininity' to resolve disputes")
However, Yingluck's use of femininity during her time in office didn't seem to work with the military junta that overthrew her in a coup in 2014. She was charged with corruption and convicted in 2017, but fled the country in August just before she was scheduled to be sentenced and jailed. Many observers believe that the army purposely looked the other way when she fled the country, fearing that if she were jailed there would be popular riots by her supporters. She was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail.
Thaksin and Yingluck are still extremely popular in Thailand, and they still yield a great deal of influence in the Pheu Thai party. According to one analyst, "You have to understand how powerful the Thaksin ‘brand’ is among his supporters. For his working class supporters he is still seen as a hero, who delivered to those people who voted for him what he promised, until he was unjustly overthrown by the ‘élite’."
Thaksin has been traveling to London, Hong Kong and Singapore, remaining out of reach of the Thai authorities. He recently gave an interview in which he said that all the "pro-democracy parties," including his own Pheu Thai, should unite behind a single candidate. "It's time for [voters] to cast their ballots ... to dump the dictatorship of Thailand."
After giving this interview, a member of the ruling military junta in Thailand, urged the Election Commission to look into whether Thaksin exercises control over the affairs of the Pheu Thai party from abroad. If a probe takes place and finds that Thaksin still retains influence, it could lead to dissolution of the party for several years. Bangkok Post and Nikkei and South China Morning Post and Al Jazeera
Part of Thailand's history was made famous by Anna Leonowens, who came from London to Siam (as it was known then) to be the governess and teacher of the many children of King Mongkut (Rama IV) in the 1860s. In 1895, she wrote memoirs that were turned into a film, "Anna and the King of Siam" in 1946, and into the 1952 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical, "The King and I."
If you have a few minutes, then watch the YouTube video of "The March of the Siamese Children," from the 1956 film, "The King and I." It depicts Anna's first meeting with the children.
The play depicts a troubled king trying to lead a small country surrounded by large enemies, and willing to use invasion, torture and other atrocities.
King Rama had fought a generational crisis war in the early 1830s when he had invaded Laos and Cambodia, but ended up losing to a Vietnamese army.
Siam's next generational crisis war occurred in what is now southern Thailand. For centuries, Siam's kings had felt that the Muslims in southern Siam were a major threat to the security of the country, mainly because resistance and rebellion against Thai government rule were so strong among the Muslim population, and in fact the southern Muslims had revolted during the 1830s crisis war.
By the late 1800s this threat had been felt to be critical, and in 1902 King Rama V invaded and annexed the Malay kingdom of Patani, consisting of the four provinces of Satun, Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. (Note: The kingdom is spelled "Patani," while the province is spelled "Pattani.") In 1909, an Anglo-Siamese Agreement established the present border between Thailand and Malaysia.
During the next few decades, Siam (which became Thailand in 1939) was faced with the problem of trying to assimilate the southern Muslim population into what is essentially a Buddhist country. During the generational Awakening era that followed, the military coup of 1932 overthrew the absolute monarchy in Siam and replaced it with constitutional monarchy. This was a representative form of government that promised a high degree of political participation of the Malay-Muslims in the South. However, as World War II (an Awakening era war for Thailand) approached, the country became more Thai-nationalistic, and the country adopted a policy of forced assimilation towards the Muslims, which had little success, as resistance and rebellion have continued since then.
The 1930s also saw a large influx of migrants from China, coming to the country to work. Over the decades, they were able to displace the indigenous people in positions of power in government, and in control of businesses. This formed an ethnic fault line between the indigenous Thai-Thai majority and the élite Thai-Chinese minority.
The next generational crisis war was the Cambodian "killing fields" war, 1975-79, in which Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge government, backed by China, killed 1.7-3 million people in a massive genocide. The Cambodian war spilled over into Thailand in the form of a communist rebellion that had begun in the 1960s. King Bhumibol (Rama IX) became an essential figure in the fight against the communists, although his role became more controversial in the savage anti-leftist coup of 1976, in which dozens of students were brutally killed by the security forces and royal-backed militias, and thousands forced to flee to seek sanctuary with the Communist Party.
The Cambodian "killing fields" civil war took place on Thailand's doorstep, though not on Thai soil. Still, it caused a split along the Thai-Thai versus Thai-Chinese fault line that continues to the present time. Today, Thailand is in a new generational Awakening/Unraveling era, and we're seeing a repeat of what happened in the 1930s.
During the generational Awakening era of the 1930s, the military coup of 1932 overthrew the absolute monarchy in Siam and replaced it with constitutional monarchy that gave some power to the southern Muslims, only to have it taken away a few years later.
During the current era, the 1997 constitution guaranteed free elections for everyone, including the indigenous Thai-Thai, and now that's being taken away by a military junta.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Yale: Thailand’s Response to the Cambodian Genocide and Cornell: History and Politics of the Muslims in Thailand (PDF) and Communist Party of Thailand
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Oct-18 World View -- Thailand and Thaksin Shinawatra prepare for new national elections thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Oct-2018)
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Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) accepts the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) said that it's agreed to a ceasefire with Israel mediated by Egypt after a Friday night of terror.
During Friday night, 34 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza, according to the Israeli military. It's believed that the rockets were launched by Islamic Jihad, a terror group in Gaza that is a separate entity from Hamas. Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defense system is said to have intercepted 13 of the 34 rockets. No Israelis were reported injured by the rocket attacks.
In response, Israeli air force missile attacks struck 80 targets across Gaza on Saturday morning, including Hamas's new headquarters for General Security Services. Gaza officials say that nine Palestinians were wounded in one of the Israeli attacks and a hospital was badly damaged.
Gaza is under siege by both Israel and Egypt. Hamas, the nominally ruling government in Gaza, has disavowed the rocket activity and blames PIJ for sabotaging attempts to broker a long-term truce that would lift the siege. However, Israel holds Hamas responsible for all rocket attacks on Israel. Al Jazeera and Asharq Al-Awsat (Saudi Arabia) and CNN
PIJ official Khaled al-Batsh said that the rocket attacks were made in revenge for Israeli attacks on Gazans:
"The occupation could not have been allowed to kill four peaceful demonstrators in Gaza and two in the occupied West Bank for taking part in peaceful popular marches without responding to the crimes."
However, an Israeli army spokesman said that Iran and Syria were behind the rocket attacks: "Islamic Jihad fired dozens of missiles at Israel under the guidance of Iran and Syria. These incidents show the dangers threatening the State of Israel."
PIJ was actually formed in the late 1970s, and was inspired by Iran's Islamic Revolution. PIJ and Hamas are both Sunni Muslim terror organizations, but PIJ has always had a much closer relationship with Iran than Hamas has had.
Israeli security officials believe that PIJ is supplied with money and weapons from Iran, and also takes orders from Iran. These officials believe that Iran was influenced by two events in the last week to order PIJ to make the rocket attacks.
One event was a surprise visit by Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Oman, meeting Oman's leader Sultan Qaboos. This meeting came shortly after a similar meeting by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. Sultan Qaboos' objective was to initiate a new dialog between the two parties, which might have shut Iran and Hamas out.
The second event was word that Hamas and Egypt have finally agreed to the terms to restore calm in Gaza, more or less under the same parameters put in place after 2014 summer war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
PIJ has its own reasons to launch the rocket attacks -- unlike Hamas, it opposes any peace negotiations with Israel.
However, under pressure from Hamas and Egypt, PIJ agreed to the ceasefire, and there were no more rocket or missile attacks on Saturday or Sunday. According to a PIJ spokesman:
"After contacts between the Islamic Jihad leadership and the brothers in Egypt it was agreed that a comprehensive ceasefire will begin immediately. The Islamic Jihad will abide by the ceasefire if the occupation (Israel) does the same."
Israel has threatened further attacks on Iranian targets Syria if the rocket attacks resume. Ynet (Israel) and Akhbrna News (Cairo)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Oct-18 World View -- Islamic Jihad agrees to Egypt-sponsored ceasefire in Gaza after night of terror thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Oct-2018)
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Remembering previous Syria 'peace conferences' and 'peace plans'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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How many "peace conferences" and "peace plans" have there been since 2011, when Syria's president Bashar al-Assad launched his genocidal war against his historic Sunni enemies, including the Palestinians in refugee camps, targeting women and children in marketplaces, schools and hospitals using barrel bombs, missiles, chlorine gas, and Sarin gas, exterminating them as if they were termites?
The first ones began in 2012 with the UN Security Council appointing a series of UN envoys to Syria. The first was former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan who came up with a six-point peace plan that I described as "farcical" on the day it was announced. ( "22-Mar-12 World View -- U.N. Security Council adopts farcical 'peace plan' for Syria")
The first of the six points says that Syria commits to work with Kofi Annan “in an inclusive Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people.” That's just an example of how silly it was, as if it had been written by third graders.
Al-Assad actually agreed to the plan, and then ignored it. He made a complete fool of Annan. The so-called "peace plan" actually made things worse in Syria, because it provided cover for al-Assad to continue his slaughter, while claiming to be negotiating peace. Similar things happened with all three UN envoys -- Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi, Staffan de Mistura. They were all useful idiots, played by al-Assad as complete fools, humiliating themselves and the United Nations. As I wrote in "3-Aug-12 World View -- Kofi Annan resigns in failure as Syria envoy", Annan was bitter and angry when he resigned, blaming his decision on what he described as Syrian government intransigence, on increasing militancy by Syrian rebels and on finger-pointing and name-calling by members of the United Nations Security Council.
By the way, two weeks ago Staffan de Mistura announced that he would step down. He blamed Bashar al-Assad for blocking the peace process. Totally laughable.
It was during the tenure of the envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that I learned what the term "proximity talks" means. The way this works is that the two sides don't actually talk to each other -- if they did, they'd probably end up killing each other. Instead, the two sides remain separated in different rooms, and each side only talks to Brahimi, who goes back and forth between the rooms. That's how the farcical "peace talks" worked.
Then there were the completely fraudulent so-called "Astana talks," which were led by Russia and took place in Astana, Kazakhstan, or sometimes in Sochi.
The Astana talks split western Syria into four "de-escalation zones" or "ceasefire zones." Russia promised there would be no fighting in any of these zones. In the case of three of them, al-Assad and Russia violated the agreement, and turned each of them into a full-scale genocide zone.
There's only one de-escalation zone remaining: Idlib Guardian (London) and Reuters (17-Oct)
On Saturday, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan led peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey, with leaders of Russia, France and Germany. In addition to Erdogan, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President Emmanuel Macron were present.
The peace conference was considered a diplomatic victory for Erdogan, because he believes that he can get more leverage against Russia and Syria if the Europeans support him.
Syria was not present, because Bashar al-Assad is never present at these peace conferences, since he always ignores them anyway.
The U.S. was not present at the peace conference. According to one analyst, the Europeans are furious at Donald Trump for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and for the tariff policy, and didn't want the peace conference to turn into a pure Trump-bashing conference, so they didn't invite the US.
The purpose was to make the ceasefire in Idlib permanent. There are over three million people in Idlib, and half of them are displaced people who fled al-Assad's violence in the other three de-escalation zones. Of the three million civilians, there are an estimated 60,000 or so anti-Assad rebels in Idlib, including both "moderate" rebels and jihadists in al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the al-Nusra Front.
Bashar al-Assad has made it clear that he plans an assault on Idlib, and is willing to kill three million people to do so, since he considers them all the be "terrorists." If there is an assault on Idlib, there will be a massive humanitarian disaster, and hundreds of thousands or millions of people will pour across the border into Turkey, which is already hosting 3.5 million Syrian refugees. Some of the Idlib refugees will undoubtedly continue on into Europe, resulting in a new European migrant crisis.
That's why Merkel and Macron are at the meeting, calling for a political solution that makes the Idlib ceasefire permanent. And that's why the meeting is considered a diplomatic victory for Erdogan, since he thinks that Merkel and Macron will pressure Putin into agreeing to a permanent ceasefire.
On September 17, Erdogan and Putin met in Sochi, and they reached an agreement to stabilize Idlib. A buffer zone would be set up, with the Syrian army on one side, and the rest of Idlib on the other. Turkey would guarantee that all rebel weapons would be removed from the buffer zone, and that Turkey would patrol the buffer zone and guarantee that it is weapons-free.
Since then, there are been sporadic violations of the buffer zone on both sides, but Turkey claims that it has succeeded in clearing the buffer zone. So the purpose of Saturday's peace conference was to agree to make the ceasefire permanent.
No such agreement was reached, of course. A secondary objective, to form a constitutional committee for Syria, was rejected by al-Assad. In fact, the meeting was a failure except for a few laughable expressions of hope and change.
At the press conference after the meeting, Macron said, "We should be vigilant that the ceasefire in Syria will be long lasting." Merkel said, "A political solution is necessary besides military solutions. We will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons in Syria." Haha.
We've seen this movie several times before. Al-Assad and Putin commit to some kind of ceasefire, with absolutely no intention to keep the commitment, and use the negotiations as cover to launch a new genocidal offensive. Sooner or later, something will happen that al-Assad can use as an excuse, and the assault will begin.
This time it will be different, however. In Aleppo, Ghouta and Daara, there were a few hundred thousand people, and many of them were permitted to escape to Idlib.
In Idlib, there are over three million people, and they have no place to escape to. As I wrote at length earlier this month, this situation has all the makings of a traditional tragedy in the classical Greek sense. There are three major protagonists, al-Assad, Putin and Erdogan, and they're headed for a massive, tragic, calamitous ending that cannot be prevented by them or anybody else. Daily Sabah (Turkey) and Deutsche Welle
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Oct-18 World View -- Syria peace summit issues delusional call for political solution in Idlib thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Oct-2018)
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China and Japan's 'marriage of convenience' limited by bitter history
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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There have been numerous reports in the last three months that, with the Trump administration imposing reciprocal tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese exports to the US, China has been scrambling to find new markets for its exports.
One of those new markets appears to be Japan. As Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe visited China's capital city Beijing on Friday, the two countries signed several deals, and declare a new era of cooperation between the two countries.
China’s President Xi Jinping on Friday rolled out the red carpet for Abe, and said:
"Our relationship has encountered a lot of obstacles. It was not a smooth ride. But with our joint effort, the relationship has become more normalized. A healthy relationship between China and Japan serves the basic interests of both countries."
Abe responded by saying that he hoped his trip would elevate the China-Japan relationship from competition to cooperation. "China and Japan are neighbors and partners, and we will not be a threat to each other."
One of the deals was a currency swap deal. Under the deal, the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of Japan will be able to exchange up to 3.4 trillion yen for 200 billion yuan (about $29 billion) and vice versa over the next three years – a design that will help to ensure financial stability and facilitate financial ties, and allow commercial trade involving the two currencies without needing to go through the US dollar as an intermediary.
The sides also signed about 50 agreements on boosting cooperation in third-party countries, while companies agreed more than 500 business deals. The third-party country deals are said to be cooperative infrastructure projects related to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The two sides also agreed to open a hotline “as soon as possible” to prevent accidental clashes at sea and in the air in the East China Sea, where Chinese ships have been harassing Japanese ships near the Senkaku Islands. South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and Japan Today and South China Morning Post and Deutsche Welle
China and Japan have a long, bitter history going back centuries. In recent times, the Sino-Japanese war (1894-95) was a major humiliation for China, which was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan as a colony.
Even more recently, in December 1937 Imperial Japanese troops in China perpetrated the Nanjing (Nanking) Massacre. This event, along with the Japanese army's use of Korean and Chinese women as "comfort women" during World War II. Japanese troops did not leave China until they were defeated by the Americans at the end of World War II.
During the last ten years, Chinese ships have been constantly harrassing Japanese ships around the Senkaku Islands. These islands, in the East China Sea, are governed by Japan. Like many places belonging to other countries across Asia, China is threatening to annex them by force. However, this would trigger a war with the US under a Japan-US mutual defense treaty.
China has its own concerns about Japan. Under Shinzo Abe, Japan has all but abandoned its defense-only policy adopted after World War II, and been strengthening its military for the first time in decades, which China sees as a threat.
The hatred that many Chinese people viscerally feel for the Japanese runs deep. There have been frequent anti-Japan protests in China. One of the biggest occurred in 2012, when more than 70,000 Chinese staged rallies in at least 28 cities to demand that Japan surrender the Senkaku islands to China. The largest demonstration, in Qingdao, Shandong Province, attracted as many as 30,000 people and evolved into rioting as protestors torched as many as 10 Japanese enterprises, including a Panasonic factory. The protests and violence appeared to have the tacit approval of China's government.
The current rapprochement between China and Japan may be a marriage of convenience, but the core issues separating the countries runs deep. Generational Dynamics predicts that Japan and China will fight a new generational crisis war as part of the Clash of Civilizations world war that will pit the US, India, Russia and Iran versus China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries. Deutsche Welle and National Interest and BBC and Diplomat
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Oct-18 World View -- China, facing Trump's trade challenge, appears to mend ties with Japan thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Oct-2018)
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Post-war speeches by Churchill and Kennan defined 'containment' policy for Soviet Union
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On October 4, VP Mike Pence gave a speech on US policy towards China. Since then, the speech has taken on a great deal of importance, and it's being compared to speeches by Western officials after World War II to "contain" the Soviet Union.
On March 3, 1946, Winston Churchill gave a speech he called "The Sinews of Peace." It contained the following well-remembered excerpts:
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone-Greece with its immortal glories-is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. ...However, in a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from the Communist centre. Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilisation. These are sombre facts for anyone to have to recite on the morrow of a victory gained by so much splendid comradeship in arms and in the cause of freedom and democracy; but we should be most unwise not to face them squarely while time remains."
On February 22, 1946, America's ambassador to Moscow George Kennan sent a "Long Telegram," 8,000 words long, to the US State Department, describing his recommended policy towards the Soviet Union. The text was made public in a 1947 article in Foreign Affairs magazine as "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," by "X" (no relation to me).
Kennan described the ideology of the Soviet Union, and by changing a few words, the same description would apply to China today. He described the history of Marxist ideology and how it led to the Bolshevik revolution. "[T]he capitalist system of production is a nefarious one which inevitable leads to the exploitation of the working class by the capital-owning class; ... capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction; ... imperialism, the final phase of capitalism, leads directly to war and revolution." However:
"Now it must be noted that through all the years of preparation for revolution, the attention of these men, as indeed of Marx himself, had been centered less on the future form which Socialism would take than on the necessary overthrow of rival power which, in their view, had to precede the introduction of Socialism. Their views, therefore, on the positive program to be put into effect, once power was attained, were for the most part nebulous, visionary and impractical, beyond the nationalization of industry and the expropriation of large private capital holdings there was no agreed program. ...Let it be stressed again that subjectively these men probably did not seek absolutism for its own sake. They doubtless believed -- and found it easy to believe -- that they alone knew what was good for society and that they would accomplish that good once their power was secure and unchallengeable. But in seeking that security of their own rule they were prepared to recognize no restrictions, either of God or man, on the character of their methods. And until such time as that security might be achieved, they placed far down on their scale of operational priorities the comforts and happiness of the peoples entrusted to their care.
As things stand today, the rulers can no longer dream of parting with these organs of suppression. The quest for absolute power, pursued now for nearly three decades with a ruthlessness unparalleled (in scope at least) in modern times, has again produced internally, as it did externally, its own reaction. The excesses of the police apparatus have fanned the potential opposition to the regime into something far greater and more dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began."
So Kennan is saying that once these people have won the civil war and created their Socialist paradises, they turn into cruel, ruthless despots that retain power by any means possible.
Kennan's description is so well written, and sounds so familiar, because applies to so many countries today. Of course we can see it in Venezuela, but we've also seen it in non-Socialist Paradise countries, including Cameroon, Burundi, Iran and Cambodia. This is a statement of the finding of Generational Dynamics that whenever any country experiences an ethnic civil war which is also a generational crisis war, then in the aftermath, the winning ethnic group oppresses the losing ethnic group, using torture, beatings, rape and slaughter to keep the other ethnic group in line. It also applies to all the other Communist countries that were formed during and after World War II.
Kennan, writing in 1946, says that the Soviet leaders are still struggling to complete the 1917 Revolution:
"As things stand today, the rulers can no longer dream of parting with these organs of suppression. The quest for absolute power, pursued now for nearly three decades with a ruthlessness unparalleled (in scope at least) in modern times, has again produced internally, as it did externally, its own reaction. The excesses of the police apparatus have fanned the potential opposition to the regime into something far greater and more dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began.But least of all can the rulers dispense with the fiction by which the maintenance of dictatorial power has been defended. For this fiction has been canonized in Soviet philosophy by the excesses already committed in its name; and it is now anchored in the Soviet structure of thought by bonds far greater than those of mere ideology."
Kennan says that this dictatorial power, with all its oppression and atrocities, is so ingrained in the Kremlin's ideology that they believe they have to use force to spread the same ideology to other countries. In 1946, this observation was already to clear to many people, as described in Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech.
In response, Kennan describes his policy of containment:
"In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. ...In the light of the above, it will be clearly seen that the Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence."
Kennan went on to describe details of how the Soviet Union could be contained. Kennan's "Long Telegraph" had a huge impact on Washington policy, and was debated for years. Winston Churchill (5-March-1946) and History Guide - George Kennan (22-Feb-1946)
VP Mike Pence's October 4 speech gives a scathing criticism of China's behavior. Pence's speech is being described as a "containment" speech, like those of Churchill and Kennan, but directed at China.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's important to remember that there's a big difference. In 1946, WW II had just ended, and the US, Russia and China were all war-weary, in a generational Recovery era, with absolutely no desire to fight another war. There was a war in Korea in which all three countries fought, but that war was fought so half-heartedly that it ended in a ceasefire, with no conclusion. Technically, the Korean War has never ended.
But today, we're all in a generation Crisis era, with xenophobia and nationalism at a peak in all three countries. If there were a new Korean war today -- and it's a definite possibility -- then it would also certainly spread to a wider war and a world war.
Pence says that Donald Trump's administration has adopted "a new approach to China, ... grounded in fairness, reciprocity, and respect for sovereignty."
Pence reminded the Chinese that America has always supported China, during the so-called "Century of Humiliation" and World War II, and in the decades after World War II, when "America ensured that China became a charter member of the United Nations, and a great shaper of the post-war world." America has opened its markets to China, and "American universities began training a new generation of Chinese engineers, business leaders, scholars, and officials."
Pence said that "After the fall of the Soviet Union, we assumed that a free China was inevitable." As I've written many times, China's reaction to the fall of the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party was not to emulate it, but to become paranoid about it, doubling down on violence and atrocities, for fear that the same thing would happen to the Chinese Communist Party. So today, says Pence, "The dream of freedom remains distant for the Chinese people"
Pence went through a list of Chinese policies that have harmed the Chinese people.
Pence went on to describe American's responses to these Chinese actions, including strengthening the military and implementing reciprocal tariffs.
In the view of many Chinese, Pence's speech indicates that the United States has finally dropped its hypocritical mask and shown its true colors, which is to contain China’s rise just like it did to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War, and that the United States and China are on an irreversible course of conflict in the coming years. White House and Diplomat
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Oct-18 World View -- Mike Pence's China 'containment' speech signals more contentious US-China relations thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Oct-2018)
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Imran Khan considers the options in asking the IMF for a loan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The bizarre story of the gruesome death of Saudi-born Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, seems to be settling down in the last couple of days, largely because Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has so far refused to accuse Saudi's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of being personally involved. Now, MBS is saying that it was "a heinous crime that cannot be justified" and that "those behind this crime will be held accountable... in the end justice will prevail." It may be that Erdogan is holding back some evidence for use as leverage against MBS at some future time.
MBS has been holding a three-day conference called the Future Investment Initiative, whose purpose is to invite investments from countries around the world. Thanks to the Khashoggi scandal, many world leaders are boycotting the conference, although many of those have sent high-level representatives in their place. Reports are that the conference is going well for MBS, despite the boycott.
However, one national leader did attend the conference: Pakistan's new prime minister Imran Khan.
Khan described Khashoggi's death as “sad beyond belief”, and indicated that he did not consider credible the latest official Saudi account of what happened:
"What happened in Turkey was just shocking. What should I say? It shocked all of us. The Saudi government will have to come up with an answer... We wait for whatever the Saudi explanation is. We hope there is an explanation that satisfies people and those responsible are punished."
However, Khan has described his situation as "desperate," and that he is attending the conference because of Pakistan's deep debt crisis:
"The reason I feel I have to avail myself of this opportunity [to speak to the Saudi leadership] is because in a country of 210 million people right now we have the worst debt crisis in our history.Unless we get loans from friendly countries or the IMF [the International Monetary Fund] we actually won’t have in another two or three months enough foreign exchange to service our debts or to pay for our imports. So we’re desperate at the moment."
Khan had previously visited Saudi Arabia in July to try to get aid, but came away empty handed. However, Khashoggi's death has changed things, and the Saudis are "desperate" as well, needing support from someone like Imran Khan. So Khan was rewarded for attending. MBS is providing $6 billion in aid to Pakistan, $3 billion in foreign currency support and another $3 billion in loans.
Another issue is Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. In the past, Pakistan has refused to provide military support for the war, but now it may turn out that Khan had to promise something to MBS in return for the $6 billion in aid. So it's interesting that Khashoggi's murder has provided the opportunity for all sorts of extortion and blackmail among the countries in the Mideast and Asia. BBC and CNN and Middle East Eye
When Imran Khan took office as prime minister in August, Pakistan had only enough foreign reserves to pay for imports for two months. Since then, Pakistan's "all-weather friend" China has loaned Pakistan enough additional money so that they can pay for imports into December. Now the $6 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia should give Khan several months' more breathing room.
Khan, a Pashtun born in 1952, is extremely popular and charismatic. He was one of Pakistan's greatest cricket players of all time. In the 1990s, he was voted as the "Sexiest Man of The Year" by the Australia Magazine Oz. He's anti-American, has promised to distance Pakistan from the United States. He's been particularly critical of previous governments for borrowing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and having to accept their austerity rules in return.
Now that Khan is prime minister, all his previous silver-tongued promises are ignored. Pakistan has received over a dozen IMF programs in the last 30 years, and now he says he's going to ask for another one. Pakistan formally applied for IMF assistance early in October.
Pakistan is about $90 billion in debt, with $19 billion of that owed to China, mainly because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). China needs CPEC as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in order to have a cheap way to transfer commercial and military goods and people between China and the Indian Ocean.
As usual, the terms are nothing but a debt trap for Pakistan. China lends the money to Pakistan. Pakistan must use the loan money to purchase goods and services from China, and to pay the salaries of the workers on the project, almost all of whom will be Chinese. So, as usual, Pakistan will have to repay the loan twice, once to pay for Chinese goods, services and salaries, and once to repay the loan, plus interest.
So there's a lot of bad dealing going on here. Saudi Arabia is providing $6 billion in aid to Pakistan, but a lot of that money will go, in one way or another, to China in debt repayments.
China would like Pakistan to borrow from the IMF. Since most of the IMF's money comes from the US taxpayer, tht means that the US taxpayer will be paying for the CPEC project.
That's why US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the administration will oppose any IMF loan to Pakistan, and said, "There's no rationale for IMF tax dollars — and associated with that, American dollars that are part of the IMF funding — for those to go to bail out Chinese bondholders or China itself."
China would love having the US pay for Pakistan's debts. According to China's foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, "As a member of the IMF, China supports the organization in making an objective evaluation of Pakistan based on professionalism and earnestly helping it properly address the current difficulty."
State Dept. spokesman Heather Nauert said:
"Pakistan has formally requested assistance from the International Monetary Fund. In all cases, we examine that closely from all angles of it, including Pakistan’s debt position, in evaluating any type of loan program. ... I think part of the reason that Pakistan found itself in this situation is Chinese debt and the fact that there is debt that governments have incurred that they maybe thought wouldn’t be so tough to bail themselves out of, but has become increasingly tough."
IMF director Christine Lagarde has said that any IMF loan to Pakistan would need to determine the debt sustainability of the country by having "a complete understanding and absolute transparency about the nature, size and terms" of its debt, both public and private, and including the details about the relationship between Pakistan and China.
However, all the information about Pakistan's Chinese debt is secret, and even the State Bank of Pakistan is not privy to it. China has already signaled that the secrecy should not be breached. China welcomes IMF loans to Pakistan, but they must not affect economic cooperation between China and Pakistan. Dawn (Pakistan) and Daily O (India) and CNBC (31-Jul) and Dawn and Committee For The Abolition Of Illegitimate Debt and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Oct-18 World View -- Pakistan's 'desperate' Imran Khan attends Saudi investment summit amid Khashoggi crisis thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Oct-2018)
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Greece's elderly still face possible pension cuts in January
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
It's like writing a letter to your bank and saying that you'll be making only half your mortgage payments for three years, and that they should understand because you need the money. Your bank would have to reject your statement forcefully.
On Monday, Italy's Economy Minister Giovanni Tria sent a letter to the European Commission (EC), clearly saying that Italy intended to violate EC budget rules from 2019-22:
"As regards the path of the structural balance, the Italian Government is aware of having chosen a budgetary policy approach that is not in line with the application rules of the Stability and Growth Pact. It was a difficult but necessary decision ally of the persistent delay in recovering pre-crisis GDP levels and the dramatic economic conditions in which the most disadvantaged strata of the Italian society are found. The Government also intends to implement the qualifying parts of the economic and social program on which it has obtained the confidence of the Italian Parliament. The Update Note of the Economic and Financial Document, and the attached Parliament Report, clarify that the Government plans to deviate from the structural adjustment decrease in 2019 but does not intend to further expand the structural deficit in the following two years and undertakes to return the structural balance towards the medium-term objective starting from 2022. If it were to return to pre-crisis level before the forecast, the Government intends to anticipate the return path."
This is a direct, and possibly unprecedented challenge by an EU member state to the European Commission, and it required an unprecedented response. The EC firmly rejected Italy's proposed 2019 budget, and demanded a compliant budget within three weeks.
Readers may recall that when Italy held nationwide elections in March, the elections failed to produce a majority party. Two particularly bitter rivals were the left-wing Five Star Movement (M5S) that got 32% of the vote, and the right-wing La Lega (The League) that got 17% of the vote.
Incredibly, these two parties got together and formed a governing coalition. They're far apart on many issues, but they do share similar attitudes on three issues: a nationalistic anti-euro attitude, a xenophobic anti-immigrant attitude, and a complete lack of fiscal discipline. Much to everyone's surprise, they formed a governing coalition based on these three principles.
This new governing coalition announced a list of policy proposals, including a completely delusional list of economic proposals.
Italian debt stands at around €2.3 trillion ($2.7 trillion), or 133% of gross domestic product (GDP), the worst in Europe. The new government does have a way of reducing the debt: spend a lot more money, and drastically reduce taxes. (As I wrote at the time, I wish I could tell you that this is a joke, but it isn't.)
Specifically, the government would like to do the following right away:
So now the time has come for Italy to submit a 2019 budget to the EC to fulfill these delusional campaign promises, and the budget far exceeds EC rules, as well as Italy's previous commitment to fiscal discipline.
What we can say at this point with certainty is that, with the EU already buried in problems from Brexit and immigrants, Italy's budget is sure to create an additional huge new fracas.
It seems pretty clear that Italy's government is out of control fiscally, and that they will be unable to stop themselves from going into more and more debt. But as the saying goes: If something can't go on forever, then it won't.
According to an analysis by Silvia Ardagna of Goldman Sachs, Italy will not become fiscally responsible until some event forces them to be:
"Financial market participants understand there is value in correctly pricing not just the 'end game,' but also the path to that 'end game' and the risks around it.From this perspective, our view is that market tensions would need to intensify in order to exert sufficient pressure on the Italian political system to trigger a change in the policy path and the political rhetoric around it.
On that basis — and even if Italy does ultimately remain part of the Euro area — the market situation may need to get worse before it gets better."
Some people are speculating that the event will be "Italexit," with Italy leaving the euro currency and possibly the European Union. However, prime minister Giuseppe Conte said, "I can assure that this executive will not accompany this country, Italy, out of Europe. We feel very comfortable, we feel at home in Europe and we think that the euro is our currency and will be our currency, the currency of my kid, he’s 11 years old, and the currency of my grandchildren."
Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said that "this is an unprecedented situation, and the decision should not be surprising to anyone as the Italian government’s draft budget represents a clear and intentional deviation from the commitments made by Italy last July." Italy's Economic Ministry (PDF) and European Commission and Business Insider and Politico (EU)
Greece's elderly may not face pension cuts in January after all. The planned pension cuts are part of the austerity program that the EU and the ECB imposed on Greece in return for years of bailouts to prevent the country from becoming totally bankrupt. The pension cuts are necessary to increase the sustainability of Greece's social security system, but apparently most members of the European Commission are willing to put this measure on hold. The final decision on whether to cancel the pension cuts will be made on December 3, but in fact the pension cuts may be made anyway, since Germany opposes canceling them.
I tell this little story to remind readers that even though Greece's financial crisis has been out of the news for a while, it has not been resolved, and there could be a renewal of the crisis at any time.
Greece had to be bailed out in 2010 because the country was essentially bankrupt. Greece was borrowing and spending way beyond its capability to repay throughout the 2000s decade. According to one analyst,
"The history of [Greece's National Statistical Service (NSSG)] reveals that its chief officer (general secretary) was replaced whenever a new party was elected to power. The main objective behind this practice was to control the flow of information; in this respect, the personal or political allegiance of the chief officer was the most crucial factor for the appointment."
We can also say with certainty that if Italy goes on the spending binge, the country will be deep trouble. I don't know why it's so hard for people to understand that it's fun to borrow and spend money, but it's extremely painful when you have to pay it back.
In order to fund its spending binge, Italy will have to borrow money, and Italy will do that by selling government bonds. Moody's last week downgraded Italy's bond rating to Baa3, which is the lowest possible rating that they can have without becoming "junk bonds." In fact, a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief because the downgrade was anticipated, and it was feared that it would be to junk status.
Each time a bond's rating goes down, the value of the bond goes down, and the yield goes up. The yield is the interest rate that the government has to pay to investors who buy the bonds. So during Greece's financial crisis, the yield on Greek bonds went to 5%, to 7%, to 20% to 30% to 40%, and even more. Holders of Greek bonds eventually had to take a 75% "haircut" -- which means that they lost 75% of their entire investments.
This hasn't happened to Italy yet. Italy's ten-year bond yields have gone from 2% at the beginning of the year to about 3.5% recently. If Italy's spending binge continues, then the yields will increase to 5%, 7%, 10%, and so forth, and Italy's debt will become unsustainable.
Even worse, many other banks in Europe have purchased Italian bonds. About 20% of Italy's government bonds are held in other eurozone countries. If yields go up and values go down, then these banks will also be in trouble. That's called "contagion," Dear Reader, and the fear of contagion will cause the European Commission to be very critical of Italy's 2019 budget.
"It is tempting to try to cure debt with more debt, but at some point the debt [becomes] too heavy and at the end of the day, you end up having no freedom at all," Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Commission, said during a press conference on Tuesday. Kathimerini (Athens) and Kathimerini and CNN and CNBC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Oct-18 World View -- European Commission rebukes Italy, after blatant budget rules violation thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Oct-2018)
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China warns that the decision will 'cause many negative effects'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Donald Trump has announced that the US will will leave the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), that the US signed with Russia in 1987, and has been called a historic arms control treaty.
The treaty was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. It was a response to a growing missile standoff in Europe, where Soviet and American nuclear short range and cruise missiles were pointed at each other. The treaty ended a dangerous standoff.
Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump have accused the Russians of violating the treaty in the last decade with new developments of cruise missiles. According to Trump on Saturday:
"Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years and I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out.We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honored the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out. ...
Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military."
Russia has accused the US of also violating the agreement pointing, for example, to unmanned drones that can serve the same functions as cruise missiles. This may well be a valid argument, but what it shows is that, after 30 years, the treaty is out of date anyway.
Russian senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev said on Sunday said that Trump's announcement means that "Mankind is facing full chaos in the nuclear weapons sphere."
Leonid Slutsky, who leads the Foreign Affairs Committee said that Trump is placing “a huge mine under the whole disarmament process on the planet.”
The real risk will be borne by European allies, according to Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, a think tank. “This removes all constraints on the production and fielding of Russia’s illegal missile, thereby increasing the threat to our allies in range of the missiles, leaves the United States holding the bag for the treaty’s demise, and creates another source of division between us.”
Mikhail Gorbachev said that the announcement "is not the work of a great mind." He added:
"Do they really not understand in Washington what this can lead to? [The decision] will undermine all the efforts that were made by the leaders of the USSR and the United States themselves to achieve nuclear disarmament.[A]ll agreements aimed at nuclear disarmament and the limitation of nuclear weapons must be preserved for the sake of life on Earth."
Russia Today and Time and CNBC and AP
Since the announcement, it's become increasingly clear that the real target of Trump's announcement is China. According to a CIA analysis in 1983:
"China's position on arms control is dictated by its interests in: 1) maintaining a free hand to expand its nuclear deterrent capabilities; 2) exercising some influence over US-USSR strategic arms talks that could adversely affect Chinese security; and 3) enhancing China's status and influence in the Third World. The Chinese also have sought to promote their commercial interests through the sale of conventional arms."
China has indeed taken advantage of its refusal to join any arms control agreement. As we've been reporting for years, China has developed one nuclear ballistic weapons system after another with no purpose except to attack American cities, American bases, and American aircraft carriers. It really doesn't make sense that an aggressive, imperial, militaristic China should have no restrictions developing nuclear missiles, when other countries are bound by arms control treaties.
In particular, China has had a free hand developing and deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles of its own, including missiles designed to take out US aircraft carriers patrolling the waters of the Western Pacific. China is estimated to have 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles in its inventory, almost all of which would be in violation of this treaty.
According to Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo:
"China has not signed the agreement and has been producing mid-range missiles and so-called carrier killers to asymmetrically increase the costs of an American-led naval containment strategy. The US is likely withdrawing to send a message to Beijing that the US can and will produce mid-range nuclear weapons that can erode away China’s existing asymmetric advantage."
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said the following:
"The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is an important treaty on arms control and disarmament signed by the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. It has played an important role in easing the international relations, moving forward the nuclear disarmament process and safeguarding global strategic balance and stability. It is still highly relevant today. Unilaterally withdrawing from the treaty will cause many negative effects.What needs to be stressed is that making an issue out of China on withdrawing from the treaty is totally wrong. We hope that the relevant country can cherish the hard-won outcomes achieved over the years, prudently and properly handle the issues related to the treaty through dialogue and consultation and think twice before withdrawing from the treaty."
So China wants the US and Russia to be bound by the treaty, while China is not. No surprise there. However, when she talks about causing "many negative effects," we might ask, What is she referring to?
Whenever I talk about various policies, everything from tariffs and trade to canceling a North Korea meeting, that completely baffle the mainstream media, I always come back to the same point. Trump is aware of the Generational Dynamics analysis and predictions that China is preparing for full-scale war with the United States. Trump is aware of this because he was educated by Steve Bannon, who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics.
So as I always point out, Trump's policies, whether trade or arms control, have the objective of trying to end China's plans for a preemptive attack on the United States. And as I always point out, a war with China is 100% certain, but I'm not going to criticize Trump for trying to prevent a world war.
But all of these policies are dual-edged. Yes, these policies might cause the Chinese to postpone their plans, but it might also cause them to bring these plans forward. Those might be the "negative side effects" that China's Foreign Ministry is talking about.
Generational crisis wars are not based on rationality and reason. They're based on desperation and panic. China has numerous domestic problems -- increasing numbers of "mass incidents," a highly-imbalanced economy being centrally managed but poorly managed, numerous bubbles and financial distortions -- and a restive population that, along with Winnie the Pooh, strikes terror in the hearts of the Communist central committee. These are more than enough to cause desperation and anxiety, and could trigger a military panic at any time. CIA (1-Sep-1983) and Bloomberg and Russia Today and China's Foreign Ministry
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Oct-18 World View -- Trump targets China by cancelling arms control treaty with Russia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Oct-2018)
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China's deal with the Vatican stirs concerns in Taiwan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Thousands of pro-independence demonstrators rallied in Taipei, Taiwan's capital city, on Saturday to pressure the government of president Tsai Ing-wen to be more confrontational with mainland China and to move faster towards independence.
Tsai Ing-wen leads the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which was formed as a reaction to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, where several thousand peacefully protesting students were brutally murdered by Chinese security forces in a huge bloodbath. They have been "pro-independence" from the beginning, but in official government positions when winning elections, they've adopted the 1992 "One China Consensus" which says that China and Taiwan are one country, but which leaves the meaning of that phrase ambiguous.
However, since winning the presidential election early in 2016, Tsai Ing-wen has gone farther than previous DPP politicians by refusing to endorse the 1992 consensus, instead saying that she "respected ... the common understanding" between China and Taiwan, without saying what that means. Her refusal to endorse the 1992 consensus has triggered the usual stream of hysterical screaming threats from Chinese officials, and relations between China and Taiwan have been deteriorating steadily.
The rally was organized by a new pressure group called the Formosa Alliance. The rally actually represents a split in the pro-independence movement because Tsai has been taking a relatively cautious approach to China, while the Formosa group want to take steps toward independence more quickly.
In 2005, China passed the Anti-Secession Law, which orders the army to invade Taiwan if any Taiwanese official makes any move toward independence, whether by word or by deed. Taiwanese officials have said many things since 2005 that, arguably, could trigger the anti-secession law, and Saturday's independence rally adds one more.
Because China's armed forces are several times bigger than Taiwan's, it's generally believed that China would easily defeat Taiwan in a war, especially if the US did not honor its commitment to mutual defense. The quick win would be achieved first by a barrage of missiles striking government and military targets, followed quickly by special forces ferried across the strait for a quick kill.
However, Foreign Policy has published a detailed analysis by which Taiwan can win a war with China. The Taiwanese, Japanese and American leaders will have 30-60 days' notice of an impending invasion, because China will have to make preparations. So the Taiwanese will be prepared with booby traps, explosives, sea mines, and the Taiwanese soldiers will be far better prepared than their Chinese counterparts.
China has been using money and extortion to force a number of countries and international companies to declare that Taiwan is a province of China. Since Tsai became president, five countries have ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan and begun diplomatic relations with China: Sao Tome and Principe in 2016, Panama in 2017, and the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso and El Salvador in 2018. Only 16 countries plus the Vatican now recognise Taiwan under its formal name: the Republic of China. China has also pressured international companies, including airlines, to remove "Taiwan" from their company web sites, or replace it with "Taiwan, province of China," if the companies want to continue doing business in China.
With China and the Vatican having concluded a historic agreement on
the appointment of bishops in China, people in Taiwan are now
concerned that the Vatican will also switch diplomatic relations from
Taiwan to China. Channel News Asia and
By one estimate, China’s Christian population has swelled from a few million in the early 1980s to 100 million this year – in comparison, the Communist Party has 90 million members.
China this year has become increasingly bloody and violent against the four supposedly approved non-indigenous religions, Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism, as I described in a recent article: "14-Oct-18 World View -- China defends million-prisoner 'reeducation camps' and Sinicization of Islam in Xinjiang"
In that article, some commenters criticized me for implying that Islam and Christianity are equivalent in some way. Actually, the article in no way implies that. The point was that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considers Islam and Christianity to be equivalent, and the same for all of the non-indigenous religions.
In China's multi-millennial imperialistic history, China has always been at war or close to it -- invading neighbors to exterminate them and take their land, or planning and preparing for such an invasion, or being invaded by a neighbor, or in the midst of a massive internal civil war. China's indigenous "religions" -- Sun Tzu's Art of War, Confucianism and Daoism -- are all aimed at unifying behind the government and winning wars.
Each one of the non-indigenous religions has been used at one time or another, sometimes successfully sometimes not, as a belief system to create a populist movement to overthrow a dynasty or a government.
This became particularly frightening to the CCP on June 4, 1989, when tens thousands of students from all over China traveled to Beijing and rallied in Tiananmen Square, causing the CCP to vicious murder thousands of them, creating a bloodbath. This show of mass protest showed the Chinese leadership how easy it would be for them to be toppled by a mass movement, and so they've been extremely vicious towards all non-indigenous religions. And then when the Soviet Communist Party collapsed in 1991, they went into full-scale panic.
So to the CCP, Islam and Christianity are exactly the same, as are all the non-indigenous religions. And they all must be subject to "Sinicization," which means that they must conform to Chinese government policies or face jailing or destruction.
In April of this year, China's government issued its Sinicization decree, called by the Orwellian name "China's Policies and Practices on Protecting Freedom of Religious Belief."
There are six areas of Sinicization: intensifying political identification, integrating religion into Chinese culture, establishing theological thought with Chinese characteristics, setting up a management system for the church with Chinese characteristics, exploring liturgical expression with Chinese elements, and using Chinese aesthetics in church buildings, pictures and sacred music.
According to the decree:
"It also means guiding religious groups to support the leadership of the CPC and the socialist system; uphold and follow the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics; develop religions in the Chinese context; embrace core socialist values; carry forward China’s fine traditions; integrate religious teachings and rules with Chinese culture; abide by state laws and regulations, and accept state administration in accordance with the law."
This paragraph gives complete administrative control of the religion to the CCP, and permits the CCP to monitor all religious activities. The crackdown has been particularly brutal this year.
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Several months ago, China's storm troopers demolished a massive evangelical church using bulldozers and dynamite. The Jindengtai ("Golden Lampstand") mega-church, which reportedly had a congregation of 50,000 people, was demolished. Last month, the Zion Protestant Church in Beijing was banned because the administration refused to install closed-circuit television cameras that the CCP could use to monitor all activity.
In other cases, Chinese police have stormed into people's homes and replaced the pictures of Jesus Christ and other religious symbols with pictures of Xi Jinping, with the implication that people should be worshipping Xi Jinping as God.
Any person who violates the government's rules can be tortured or jailed or sent to reeducation camps. The most extreme example of this so far is Xinjiang province, where a million ethnic Uighurs are being tortured, raped and beaten in reeducation camps.
I was listening to a BBC report a couple of days ago, interviewing someone who had a number of Uighur friends living in Xinjiang province. He rattled off a list of the offenses that could get you sent to a reeducation camp, things like not saying "hello" to a Chinese official when you pass him in the street. He also mentioned "giving up smoking." It turns out that if you give up smoking, then it means that you're planning to become an extremist and terrorist, so you have to be sent to a reeducation camp. State Council Information Office - Protecting religious freedom and Deutche Welle (19-Jan-2018) and Reuters and China Today
Another section of the sinicization document says the following:
"Religious groups and religious affairs are not subject to control by foreign countries.... This principle is a historic choice made by Chinese religious believers in the Chinese people’s struggle for national independence and social progress, as Catholicism and Protestantism, which were known as foreign religions in China, had long been controlled and utilized by colonialists and imperialists."
This rule has been particularly applied to Catholics, since Catholics have allegiance to the Pope in the Vatican, and the Pope is presumably either a colonialist or imperialist.
There are about twelve million Catholics in China. Seven million of them belong to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which is actually a CCP political organization, and is "Catholic" in name only. The other five million belong to "underground" Catholic churches, which are barely tolerated by the government, but which retain allegiance to the Pope.
In the last few decades, many Catholic priests in China have gone to jail for years and been tortured for their refusal to reject their vows and the guidance of the Pope.
So many of these people feel betrayed by the Pope, because the Vatican last month agreed to a "compromise" where the Vatican recognized seven bishops who were ordained by the CCP without the approval of the Vatican. There was another part to the deal, where China promised to accept some bishops in the "underground" church who had been ordained by the Vatican, but China has so far not fulfilled that promise.
It appears that the Vatican has completely given in to China in order to gain approval from China.
This has raised concerns in Taiwan that the Vatican will go further in giving in to China by cutting ties with Taiwan.
Taiwan has about 300,000 Catholics, and Taiwan, unlike China, has complete freedom of religion. The Taiwanese government apparently does not fear that the Catholics will form a secret society whose purpose is to overthrow the government, which is what has happened many times in China. If, as many fear, the Vatican withdraws its recognition from Taiwan, then the Pope will lose all credibility with the Catholics in Taiwan, and will be held in contempt by millions of people in "underground" Catholic churches in China. SCMP (22-Sep) and Diplomat (21-Sep) and South China Morning Post (30-Mar) and Free Catholics in China and South China Morning Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Oct-18 World View -- Pro-independence rallies in Taiwan press for faster separation from China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Oct-2018)
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Israel adopts a go-slow strategy with new 'rules of the game'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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At 3:43 am on Tuesday, a sleeping mother and father heard warning sirens, woke up their three children, and pulled them into a safe room just before a Grad rocket fell through the roof of their Beersheba home and landed in one of the second story bedrooms, almost completely destroying the structure.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Tuesday denied that they were responsible for the missile attack, but their denials were not considered credible, since no one else has the type of Grad missile that struck the home.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman publicly called for a powerful military response to Hamas:
"Before going to war, we need to exhaust all other possibilities, because when we’re sending soldiers to battle we know that some of them aren’t returning home. We’re obligated to exhaust every other way, every other option.Upon entering the Defense Ministry I said — Israel has no right, no option, no luxury to conduct wars of choice. We can conduct only wars of no choice. In the last months we made every effort, we’ve overturned every stone and at this point ‘no choice’ is behind us.
We have arrived at the point where we have to land as strong as possible a blow on Hamas."
Israel's Security Cabinet had convened for a midnight emergency session on Thursday morning, and many Israelis believed that they would be at war with Gaza by morning.
However, there was no war. According to reports, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided that no such military attack would take place. Israel has invaded Gaza three times in the last ten years to put a stop to missile attacks, most recently in the 67 day summer war in 2014. Each of these wars has ended in a ceasefire, and than after another period of relative calm, another round of fighting begins.
Generational Dynamics predicts that there will never be a resolution until there's a full-scale regional war between Jews and Arabs.
I posted my very first Generational Dynamics analysis on May 1, 2003, when president George Bush published his "Mideast Roadmap to Peace," which described the details of a two-state solution. I wrote that Generational Dynamics predicts that the plan would fail because the Jews and the Arabs would be refighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Here's what I wrote:
"We are now in the early stages of replaying the extremely violent, bloody wars between the Jews and the Palestinians that took place between them from 1936 to 1949. So far the war has been little more than a series of skirmishes, as it was in the late 1930s. The full-fledged violent, bloody war is awaiting a generational change.There's an incredible irony going on in the Mideast today, in that the leaders of two opposing sides are, respectively, Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat.
These two men hate each other, but they're the ones cooperating with each other (consciously or not) to prevent a major Mideast conflagration. Both of them remember the wars of the 1940s, and neither of them wants to see anything like that happen again. And it won't happen again, as long as both of these men are in charge.
The disappearance of these two men will be part of an overall generational change in the Mideast that will lead to a major conflagration within a few years. It's possible that the disappearance of Arafat alone will trigger a war, just as the election of Lincoln ignited the American Civil War. (It's currently American policy to get rid of Arafat. My response is this: Be careful what you wish for.)"
Since that time, Yassir Arafat died, and was replaced by Mahmoud Abbas, who was also a survivor of the 1948 war and remembered its horrors. Since then, Abbas has lost control of Hamas, which has been run by much younger leaders.
Since 2006, there have been five wars involving Israel and Palestinians: the war between Israelis and Hezbollah, fought largely on Lebanon's soil in 2006; the war between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah in Gaza in 2008, that led to Hamas control of Gaza; Operation Cast Lead, the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza early in 2009; the two wars between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in November, 2012 and July-August 2014.
These on-and-off clashes cannot go on forever. At some point, they'll be resolved by a full-fledged generational crisis war that engulfs the region. In the meantime, there is no chance whatsoever that any sort of Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" will succeed, and that's just as true today as it was in 2003. Jerusalem Post and World Israel News and Bloomberg
By Thursday morning, after the emergency midnight meeting of cabinet ministers, the fiery rhetoric had softened. Housing Minsiter Yoav Galant said:
"I can’t address the content of cabinet discussion but I can say one thing very explicitly — the rules of the game are going to change.We won’t accept more fire and [border] fence terror."
However, the cabinet meeting decision not to launch a military operation was condemned by other government leaders. According to Regional Council head Gadi Yarkoni:
"We had every reason to deliver a serious response in a way that they would understand the message. We should have taken advantage of what happened in Beersheba to restore deterrence, but unfortunately that did not happen."
I googled Gadi Yarkoni, and learned that he was born in 1967, which would put him in Israel's equivalent of Generation-X, much younger than Netanyahu, born in 1949, or Mahmoud Abbas, born in 1935, or Hamas head Khaled Mashal, born in 1956. When there's an all-out war between Jews and Palestinians, it will be launched by younger people, such as Yarkoni and a young Palestinian leader.
Although no full-scale war is imminent, Israel's army has been cleared to follow more aggressive tactics. This includes a green light for troops to fire at Gazans who are farther away from the fence than previously allowed, as well a more forceful response to incendiary balloon launches. According to reports, the army will ramp up the severity of its responses gradually, but ultimately adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward rocket attacks, arson balloons and rioting along the Israeli border. Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Oct-18 World View -- Israel backs down from full-scale attack on Gaza after family escapes rocket thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Oct-2018)
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The most likely deal: 'Extend and Pretend'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ever since the referendum passed on June 23, 2016, Brexit, the UK exit from the European Union, was never going to be anything but a disaster for the UK, and almost as much for the EU, and increasingly there's a search to mitigate the disaster as much as possible.
A month ago, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said:
"I’m a desperate optimist, and I very much hope and pray that there will be a deal between the European Union and the UK.Let me be clear, compared with today’s smooth single market, all the likely Brexit scenarios will have costs for the economy and to a lesser extent as well for the EU.
The larger the impediments to trade in the new relationship, the costlier it will be. This should be fairly obvious, but it seems that sometimes it is not."
Lagarde said that the IMF will issue its latest forecast for global economic growth in November, and that "clouds on the horizon have not become lighter but darker."
The UK is leaving the EU on March 29, 2019. The most severe consequences for the UK economy would occur if the UK "crashed out" of the EU with no deal whatsoever. In this case, there would no longer be a "smooth, single market," no "frictionless trade" at all between the UK and EU. Instead, there would be a "hard border" between the UK and EU, which would damage tens or hundreds of thousands of individual trading relationships that for years have depended on frictionless trade.
The main stumbling block in the negotiations is and always has been the problem of Northern Ireland. After Brexit, the (southern) Republic of Ireland would be in the EU, while Northern Ireland would not, but would still be in the UK. That means that there could be a frictionless border between Northern Ireland and Ireland (which everyone says they want) or a frictionless border between Northern Ireland and Britain (which the UK wants, but the EU couldn't care less about), but not both.
UK politicians in London, led by prime minister Theresa May, have for months been in chaos debating this issue, with the "Remainers" wanted as close a relationship to the EU as possible, and the "Brexiteers" wanting a full and complete break. But as the weeks and months have gone by, the London fog finally seems to be clearing, well enough that we can begin to make out the shapes of what the final deal is most likely to be. Reuters and Irish Times
Readers may recall what happened with Greece's financial crisis, when it was clear that Greece could not meet its debt payments, and would in fact never be able to do so. The EU and the European Central Bank came up with an "extend and pretend" policy, which lowered the interest rates and stretched out the debt payments to decades, and then pretended that by 2100 Greece would be able to repay its debts. Extend and pretend.
So everyone in the EU and the UK, not counting the hardcore Brexiteers, is in favor of a two-year Brexit transition period -- lasting until December 31, 2020. This was agreed in March, and now appears to be set in stone. It's back in the news because on Wednesday, both Theresa May and the EU said they were discussing extending it for an additional year.
The transition period will be pretty much the worst of all worlds. The terms will be as follows:
So the whole point of why the Brexiteers wanted Brexit was to get away from the EU regulations, EU taxes, and the ECJ. In the transition period, all of these will remain, with the additional restriction that the UK will have to obey all the regulations and pay all the money, but will have no say in changing them. That's what I meant by "the worst of all worlds."
According to Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake saying the extension was merely “kicking the can further down the road and delaying, by a bit, driving off the cliff.” iNews (London)
But wait! How does the transition period solve the Northern Ireland problem? Well, it doesn't, but it gives the politicians 2-3 more years to find a solution. And yet, no one that I've heard or read believes that an extra 2-3 years will solve the problem any more than the last two years have.
That brings us to the "backstop." That's an "insurance policy" that the EU is insisting on. They want the UK to commit to a specific plan to preserve the frictionless border between Ireland and Northern Ireland when the transition period end. And they've already rejected every UK backstop proposal, including the delusional hope that in 2-3 years the technology will have been developed to enforce customs rules on the Irish border without requiring commercial vehicles to stop for inspection. Well, maybe in 2-3 years some technology will develop, but no one really believes that will happen.
The backstop that the EU wants is that at the end of the transition period, Northern Ireland will be part of the EU customs union and single market. That means that there will be a hard border between Northern Ireland and Britain. That means that UK citizens traveling between Northern Ireland and Britain will have to go through customs, and it means that goods shipped between the two will have to be inspected.
Britain's prime minister Theresa May says that this is unacceptable because it would split the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.
This is still a seemingly unsurmountable obstacle to achieving any sort of deal before the UK leaves the EU on March 29. Guardian (London) and BBC and Irish Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Oct-18 World View -- Brexit appears headed for worst of all possible worlds for UK thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Oct-2018)
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Violent school massacre in occupied Crimea kills 19 people
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Readers who remember ancient history (2014) may recall a war between Russia and Ukraine. Russia invaded Donbas (eastern Ukraine) and is still occupying it, and then Russia invaded, occupied and annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.
The war in Donbas has not ended, as there have been regular clashes between Ukrainian and Russian forces. These clashes have occasionally been severe enough for observers to raise concerns that Russia was planning a new offensive for Russian forces to attack and occupy the seaports at Mariupol and Berdyansk, and then continue to move west in order to create a land bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea.
That hasn't happened, but many observers believe that Russia is making preparations to accomplish the same objective through a naval attack from the Sea of Azov. In the last three years, the Russians have been doing the following:
Many observers believe that these steps are all in preparation for a naval assault on Mariupol, Berdyansk, and other Ukrainian ports along the Sea of Azov, with the objective of creating a land bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea, and to taking full military control of the entire Sea of Azov. US State Dept. and RFE/RL and RFE/RL (7-Aug)
Following years of neglect, Ukraine is hurriedly tying to reinforce its naval capabilities in the Sea of Azov. Ukraine is considering buying three Danish Standard Flex 300 patrol vessels for $117 million, and has received two Island-class Coast Guard cutters from the United States. These vessels will be upgraded and deployed in the Sea of Azov.
However, this attempt to stand up an "Azov Flotilla" will not be enough to challenge Russia's overwhelming naval presence, consisting of around 50-70 Russian "coast guard" vessels.
For that reason, Ukraine is also formulating a diplomatic and political strategy to challenge Russia. This would include seeking support from Nato and the European Union, and lodging a complaint against Russia at the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
With both Ukraine and Russia becoming increasingly aggressive, the Sea of Asov is becoming an increasingly important flash point that could lead to a new conflict.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, both Russia and Ukraine are in a generational Crisis era. In 1932-33, millions of innocent Ukrainians – men, women, and children – starved to death as a result of the deliberate policies of the regime of Joseph Stalin. The genocidal atrocity is known as the Holodomor, which means "death by hunger." Stalin's regime seized crops and farms across Ukraine, leaving the population to starve to death. It's quite possible that Russia's president Vladimir Putin would like to find a way to repeat Stalin's achievement. Jamestown and Daily Signal and Sputnik News and Government of Ukraine and (Trans)
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An 18-year-old Russian student, Vladislav Roslyakov, on Wednesday exploded a homemade nail bomb and then went on a shooting rampage, killing 19 others before killing himself in the school library.
The mass school shooting at occurred at the Kerch Polytechnic College, in the city of Kerch in occupied Crimea. The city is located on the eastern shore of Crimea on the Black Sea near the Kerch Strait.
Russian officials initially went into their usual spin and deception mode, trying to hide what happened, or put the blame on anyone but themselves. They first reported it as a gas explosion, and then said it was a terrorist bombing.
Russian politicians in Crimea's parliament then tried to put the blame on Ukrainian nationalists, saying, "The entire evil inflicted on the land of Crimea is coming from the official Ukrainian authorities." But friends of the shooter said that the teenager hated the school and that he wanted revenge against his teachers.
There are similarities between this school shooting and the April 20, 1999, massacre at Columbine High School, in Columbine Colorado that killed 13 people. Roslyakov was dressed in an outfit similar to that of Eric Harris, one of the killers in the Columbine massacre. Furthermore Roslyakov killed himself in the school library, just as Harris and his partner killed themselves in the school library. CBS News and Daily Mail (London) and AP
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Oct-18 World View -- Ukraine counters Russia's military buildup in the Sea of Azov thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Oct-2018)
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Google repudiates its 'Don't Be Evil' conduct clause, and sides with China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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At a time when employees of high tech companies like Google and Microsoft are adopting holier-than-thou attitudes about defending the United States of America, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said on Monday that Amazon is going to work with the Pentagon, and that other high-tech companies should do the same. He said in an interview:
"If big tech companies are going to turn their back on US Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble. We are going to continue to support the DOD and I think we should."
In recent months, Google has been almost enthusiastic in its willingness to provide technology to the Chinese government and the Chinese military, while at the same time management has given in to demands that Google not supply technology needed by the US military to defend the country.
Bezos acknowledged that Donald Trump is unpopular among some workers, and particularly expressed disapproval of Trump's immigration policy, but pointed out that this proves why America is still the best in the world:
I like this country. I know everybody is very conflicted about the current politics and so on. This country is a gem.There aren't other countries where everybody is trying to get in. I'd let them in if it were me. I like 'em, I want all of them in. But this is a great country and it does need to be defended."
Amazon is in the process of bidding for a major DoD contract call "The Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative," or JEDI, a $10 billion development project that will make a cloud computing and storage platform available to all of DoD.
Last week, Google issued a statement saying: "we are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles...." This might actually be a blessing in disguise. Google has said that it will accede to China's demand that all cloud passwords for Chinese citizens and businesses will be made available to the Chinese government and military, and this would represent a possible security risk to US DoD data on Google's servers. As a Senior Software Engineer, I've worked on development of these extremely large, complex systems, and I'm aware how easy it is for bugs and systemic failure to permit data and services to be hacked.
Microsoft is being pressured to move in the same direction as Google. A recent letter by employees describes Jedi as "a secretive $10 billion project with the ambition of building 'a more lethal' military force overseen by the Trump Administration," and concludes, "Microsoft, don’t bid on JEDI." However, Microsoft management has not yet acceded to these demands.
Fortunately, there are still some American companies not being run by children. Amazon is expected to be the lead contender for Jedi, but Oracle and IBM are also expected to bid, and Microsoft may do so as well. Wired and BBC and TechCrunch and Medium
When Google was launched in 1998, it's unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil." It was a corporate principle that "you can make money without doing evil," and "Don't be evil" was part of the company's official code of conduct until this year.
With no fanfare, Google removed "Don't be evil" from its code of conduct sometime between April 21 and May 4, when it simply disappeared from the Google web site.
Shortly after that, in May, Google announced that would not renew its contract with DoD for Project Maven, which provides AI technology for analyzing drone footage, because its employees objected to doing any work for the American military.
But in December of last year, Google announced that it would open a state of the art AI development center in Shanghai, where the most advanced AI technology would be made available to the Chinese government and the Chinese military.
The biggest public scandal this year occurred when word leaked out in July that Google for almost two years had 200 programmers working on an advanced AI search engine for China called Dragonfly that would detect users who made requests that violated Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship rules, and would make personal identifying information about such users available to the Chinese government and Chinese military.
Google has refused comment about Project Dragonfly, saying that it's an experimental system, with no current plans to deploy it. But in fact, Google's search engine chief, Ben Gomes, told an internal meeting in July that the plan was to launch the search engine as soon as possible — and to get it ready to be "brought off the shelf and quickly deployed" once approval from Beijing was received.
On Monday of this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, an American who was born in India, defended Project Dragonfly. He said that Project Dragonfly will still be able to answer "well over 99% of the queries” put to it and that “there are many, many areas where we would provide information better than what’s available." I'm not even sure that he understood the message he was sending with that remark, but it implies that the other 1% would be subject to arrest by China's police.
As China continues to prepare to launch a war against the United States, it's hard to avoid the impression that Google has already chosen the side that it wants to win that war, and it's not the United States.
And somebody ought to tell Sundar Pichai that those same super-intelligent weapon systems that Google is helping the Chinese military to build will also be used against his native India. Perhaps that thought never occurred to him.
And finally, Chinese employees working in America should realize how dangerous Google's policy is for them personally. During World War II, Japanese Americans were interned. After 9/11, Muslim Americans were jailed without trial. The path that Google is on will adversely affect all Chinese-Americans, and an anti-Chinese public mood could materialize overnight. Gizmodo (18-May) and Gizmodo (1-Jun) and CNBC (13-Dec-2017) and NY Times (16-Aug) and The Intercept (9-Oct) and Washington Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Oct-18 World View -- Amazon's Jeff Bezos says America must be defended, while Google repudiates its 'Do No Evil' policy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Oct-2018)
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American CDC Ebola experts have been blocked from the outbreak zone in DR Congo
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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It has now emerged that American Ebola experts from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been withdrawn from the outbreak zone in North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This will make the new outbreak more difficult to contain.
There are experts on the ground from other organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF), and The Alliance for International Medical Action (Alima).
The CDC experts are among the most experience Ebola experts on the planet. According to Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
"CDC has responded to nearly two dozen filovirus outbreaks in its history and has people who’ve been working on these issues for 30 years. It doesn’t make sense to have those people hundreds or thousands of miles away from where the disease is actually spreading.It would provide a lot of value to have experienced leaders at CDC who’ve been in the situation before contributing what they can to the larger effort. I think it’s an important moment to think about that."
Instead of being on the ground in the outbreak zone, CDC experts are being given other assignments thousands of miles away, such as advising DRC's ministry of health in the capital city Kinshasa.
News stories are providing few details about why they're blocked from the outbreak zone, except that it's related to the attack in 2010 in Benghazi, Libya, that killed US ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The inference that we're to draw, apparently, is that Americans in the North Kivu war zone would be targets of attacks similar to those against ambassador Stevens. Stat News and CNN
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday that it will hold an emergency committee meeting on Wednesday in Geneva. According to a statement: "The committee will meet on October 17 in Geneva to ascertain whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern."
The designation "public health emergency of international concern" refers to a pandemic that is so serious that it might spread to other countries. There are now concerns that it could soon spread to Uganda and Rwanda.
WHO has resisted that designation so far in eastern DRC, but over the weekend a "second wave" of the Ebola virus was confirmed. There are now 211 registered cases of Ebola, 176 confirmed and 35 probable, with 135 deaths. The number of cases has been expanding rapidly, more than twice as fast as in September. There were six new cases over the weekend.
Many new cases come out of funerals for previous victims. Even if a funeral is conducted in a secure manner, the risk for Ebola transmission is high, because viral loads are at their highest level at the time of death.
The situation in North Kivu province is the worst possible scenario. There is a major ethnic war in progress, and Ebola is now spreading in the densely populated city of Beni, which has become the epicenter of the pandemic.
The entire region is a war zone, and over one million people have been driven from their homes by armed rebel groups, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), fighting government troops. The fighting is preventing doctors and experts from reaching infected people, in order to educate the population and do contact tracing. Without contact tracing, there is no way to stop or slow the spread of the disease. AFP and Reuters and Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDRAP)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Oct-18 World View -- WHO considers declaring Ebola outbreak as an international emergency thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Oct-2018)
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Negotiations follow the pattern of N. Korea's 2010
torpedoing of S. Korean warship
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Saudi officials appear to be in a state of shock over the harsh international reaction to the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi almost two weeks ago.
Khashoggi was once a close adviser to the Saudi government, but has become persona non grata since criticizing the human rights record of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and his pursuit of the Yemen war, which has been a major humanitarian disaster. The excommunication was complete when Khashoggi exiled himself to the United States, and began publishing his criticisms of MBS as a Washington Post reporter. Recently, he needed Saudi government papers in order to marry his fiancé, a Turkish citizen, Hatice (Khadija) Cengiz. He made two visits to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, and he completely disappeared during the second visit, on October 2.
Turkey's government has officially taken the position that it's still investigating, but numerous leaks to the Turkish media indicate a belief that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate, and that his body was dismembered, packed up in suitcases, and taken back to Saudi Arabia in private Saudi planes. It's also believed that MBS ordered the killing, and Turkism media are claiming that officials have audio recordings of Khashoggi being interrogated and killed in the embassy.
Many people are shocked by the apparent brutality of the alleged murder, but it seems that the biggest shock of all is that international outrage is continuing and may be growing. MBS has been ruthless in committing human rights abuses, arresting and imprisoning hundreds of people without trials. There have been numerous complaints that he decreed that women would be permitted to drive, but then he ordered the arrest of some of the women who did drive. And of course he's pursued the Yemen war mercilessly. He's done all this with impunity and little uproar. What's surprising is the uproar in this case.
There have been international public demands for the Saudis to explain what happened, and there have been threats from the White House and from officials in Britain, France and Germany, including threats of sanctions by Donald Trump. Saudi Arabia has angrily denied the accusations, and threatened sanctions in return -- presumably to use oil as a weapon. AP and CNN and Reuters and Al Jazeera (Qatar)
What's becoming increasingly clear is that despite all the international uproar, nobody has the stomach for an all-out war -- not a military war, not a financial war, and not a sanctions war. The US and the Europeans have demanded explanations and investigations, but haven't made any explicit threats.
There's a recent historical event that provides an analogy to the diplomatic pattern that's emerging.
On March 26, 2010, the North Koreans launched a torpedo at the South Korean warship Cheonan, causing an explosion that killed 46 people. Everyone knew immediately that the explosion was caused by a North Korean torpedo, almost certainly ordered by Kim Jong-il, the father of the current child dictator, but South Korean President Lee Myung-bak refused to say so. Instead Lee continued to call for more and more investigations.
The reason was simple. If Lee had formally accused North Korea of sinking a South Korean warship, then South Korea would have been forced to retaliate militarily, or even declare war. Lee did not want to have to declare war.
The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi today has created a similar situation, where nobody wants to let the Saudis completely off the hook, but nobody wants a full-on financial or sanctions war.
Since the 1930s, America and Saudi Arabia have had a very specific core understanding: That Saudi Arabia will guarantee to supply all the oil that America and the West need, and, in return, America and the West must guarantee the security of Saudi Arabia.
The exact details of the US-Saudi relationship have had to change from time to time, based on international events such as Iran's revolution, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, Syria's civil war, the rise of ISIS. The 1973 oil embargo, which came out of Israel's war with Egypt, cemented the US-Saudi relationship.
Today, Saudi Arabia plays a crucial role in US and Western strategy. Saudi Arabia is important for Trump's strategy with Iran, and in Trump's peace plan proposal for Israel and the Palestinians.
The core has always remained the same: The Saudis will guarantee oil, the Americans will guarantee security. The Khashoggi disappearance is just one more event that threatens the US-Saudi accords that have been in place since the 1930s, but all signs are that the parties will find a way to keep the Khashoggi crisis under control. Daily Sabah (Ankara) and BBC and Al Arabiya (Riyadh) and Reuters and Washington Examiner
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Oct-18 World View -- Saudi Arabia tries to recover from Khashoggi disappearance disaster thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Oct-2018)
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Brief history of China's religions
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Since the end of World War II, China's atheist government has been on a "Sinicization" program of all religions. Typically this means brutal suppression of followers who display allegiance to anything not approved by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For example, in April of this year, the CCP declared:
"The core and soul of Sinicization of Christianity are the Sinicization of theological thought. Only by the realization of Sinicization of theological thought will there be Sinicization in the true sense. Otherwise, the Sinicization of Christianity will be empty slogans like trees without roots, water without a source."
In practice, China's storm troopers in recent years have invaded churches and torn down posters of Jesus and replaced them with posters of Xi Jinping.
As has been widely reported, the Sinicization of Islam in has meant sending millions of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province to "reeducation centers," where they are imprisoned, raped, tortured, and forced to recite Chinese Communist propaganda at the tops of their lungs. When the existence of these camps was first reported, the Chinese vehemently denied that they existed. But in the last few days they've admitted their existence, but say that the camps are necessary, for the same reason that they give for the violent suppression of all religions: to prevent "extremism" and "splittism," and to promote ethnic solidarity and religious harmony.
In August, China declared a war against "halalization." Everyday halal products, such as food and toothpaste, must be produced according to Islamic law.
As part of the sinicization of Islam, the government is pulling down mosques that have Islamic domes that look too much like Arab mosques. All Arabic script must be removed. The mosques must look like Chinese religious temples, presumably Daoist temples.
Books on Islam and copies of the Koran have been removed from souvenir shops. Private Arabic schools have been forced to shut down. It's also forbidden to have a long beard.
Although Islam is the main current target, the same kinds of harsh measures are being applied to the other non-indigenous religions -- Catholicism, Protestantism and Buddhism. According Xi Jinping last year, "[We] should adhere to the direction of Sinicizing religion in our country, and actively guide religion to adapt to a socialist society." Reuters and CNN and South China Morning Post (14-May) and Al Jazeera
Recently I've been doing my own research on China's teachings and religions, and this is a summary of what I've learned so far.
As an imperialistic country throughout its multi-millennial history, China's religions have always been heavily tied in with war -- either wars of conquest or internal civil wars.
China's core cultural teachings, developed around 500 BC, are Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Confucius' Analects. These teachings tell the harsh rules for winning wars, and the harsh rules for maintaining a "Mandate from Heaven" for a unified, harmonious society. Insofar as they can be called religions, they are the pro-government religions.
Daoism as a religion was a reaction to Confucianism. It teaches peasants how to maintain harmony with nature without the harsh Confucian rules, whether you're pro-government or anti-government, and so Daoism has sometimes been the core of anti-government protests.
Buddhism: As a religion imported from India, not indigenous in China, Buddhism has historically been the most important vehicle for anti-government protests. Subjugated people in particular have adopted Buddhism, because in Buddhism all people are equal, and someone who is evil in this life will be punished when he is reincarnated in the next life. Major historical anti-government branches of Buddhism were the White Lotus Society, Tibetan Buddhism, and Falun Gong, all of which have been violently suppressed by the government as major threats.
Catholicism has existed in China since the 600s AD. It became very popular in China, thanks to Jesuit missionaries, but the Chinese government has always considered it a major threat because it requires allegiance to an outsider -- the Pope. Since 1949, the government has been harshly hostile to Catholicism, and has demanded to control all functions, including appointments of bishops and priests. So today, there are two Catholic churches in China, the Chinese Catholic Church, and the underground Catholic Church, with allegiance to the pope.
Chinese leaders fear Protestantism because the massive Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) was launched by a Protestant convert who believed he was the brother of Jesus. Since 1949, China has harshly controlled Protestantism, even to the point of replacing worship of Jesus with worship of Xi Jinping.
Islam: China's wars with the Mongols and the Turkic tribes in Central Asia have been against Muslims. Today, the Chinese government has opened "reeducation camps" for millions of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province, and Uighurs are regularly raped, tortured and slaughtered.
Throughout Chinese history, all the internal rebellions or external invasion have had as their underlying motivation a widespread popular religious belief. Therefore the non-indigenous religions (Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam) have been permitted only when carefully (and violently controlled by the government.
Starting in 1949, China's government has controlled the non-indigenous religions, but the control took a turn and became extremely harsh starting in the early 1990s, because of two traumatizing events.
The first traumatizing event was the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre, a massive peaceful student anti-government demonstration that China's security forces brutally repulsed, killing thousands of innocent students, creating a bloodbath. Today, a Chinese person can be thrown into jail for even mentioning the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The second traumatizing event was the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. This terrified the CCP because they realized that the same thing could happen in China, and the massive Tiananmen Square protests showed the way.
So today Xi Jinping is terrorized by Winnie the Pooh, because he looks like Winnie the Pooh, and he's terrorized by all the uncontrolled religions, since they could lead to an internal rebellion. He fears Islam because it might be used in an invasion of China from Central Asia. He fears Tibetan Buddhism because the Tibetans have never accepted Chinese rule since China viciously invaded the nation of Tibet in the 1950s.
Xi Jinping and the CCP feel a special terror of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. This is an offshoot of Buddhism that began in 1992 in reaction to the government's bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square. In 1999, when there were tens of millions of practitioners, China began to arrest, torture, rape and kill practitioners. Human rights advocates claim that hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been killed for the purpose of organ harvesting -- to provide fresh organs to be transplanted into other people. China's State Council Information Office and Union of Catholic Asian News and Council on Foreign Relations and US State Dept.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Oct-18 World View -- China defends million-prisoner 'reeducation camps' and Sinicization of Islam in Xinjiang thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Oct-2018)
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Growth of Ebola cases suddenly surges in DR Congo, threatening Uganda, Rwanda
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to North Korea's capital city Pyongyang on Sunday, for a meeting with the child dictator Kim Jong-un.
A smiling Kim was driven to the meeting in a new black Rolls Royce Phantom limousine. The car costs $500,000, with an additional $200,000 investment to provide security.
This car could not have been acquired without violating United Nations sanctions, probably with delivery from China. Ostentatiously driving this car to the meeting appears to have been a slap in the face to Pompeo.
Not surprisingly, the meeting appeared to accomplish little.
North Korea is demanding that the US sign a peace treaty that would officially end the 1950s Korean War, and offered in exchange to destroy a nuclear test site that was unusable anyway. Signing the peace treaty might lead to the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea, which Pompeo refused.
Pompeo demanded demanding a list of all nuclear and ballistic missile development and test sites in North Korea, in return for reducing or eliminating sanctions, and Kim refused.
South Korea, China and Russia are increasing international pressure on the Trump administration to agree to reduce sanctions on North Korea, despite the fact that the North has made no irreversible concessions. The US has made a reversible concession, by suspending all military drills with South Korea.
The objective of the North Korean regime from the beginning has been to use reversible concessions, a charm offensive and international pressure to force the Trump administration to reduce or eliminate sanctions. That would be an enormous victory for North Korea and a total humiliation to America, as it was when a similar North Korea strategy worked against the Bush administration in 2007. Chosun (Seoul) and UPI and CNN
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The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that there are now 200 cases of Ebola in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with 165 of them confirmed, and the other 35 considered probable.
There were 33 new cases between October 1-9, compared with 41 cases in the entire month of September. The number of new cases each day has more than doubled in October, compared to September.
There are a couple of reasons for the sudden surge in the growth of the number of cases. The main reason is that Ebola is spreading into a war zone for a major ethnic war in DRC's North Kivu province, and so it's often impossible for WHO health workers to even enter these areas or, if they do, they're receive opposition from the local population, who fear and distrust them.
A second, related reason, is that most of the new cases are now in the densely populated city of Beni, and Beni is also in the war zone.
Sometimes health workers are targeted by armed opposition groups, but even when they're not, they may be forced to stay out of an infected area because of continuing gunfights or because of protests by groups opposing the violence.
The city of Beni is near the border with Uganda, and it seems increasingly likely that Ebola will spread into Uganda, and possibly into Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan. World Health Organization (WHO) and Relief Web and Punch (Nigeria) and AFP and Canadian Broadcasting
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Oct-18 World View -- N. Korea's Kim Jong-un met Pompeo in a new Rolls-Royce Phantom, violating sanctions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Oct-2018)
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Russia says that Constantinople's decision is 'catastrophic'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Orthodox Christian Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the Constantinople Patriarchate and "first among equals" leader of all Orthodox Christian churches and of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians, announced on Thursday that he will be issuing a "Tomos of autocephaly" (charter of independence) to the Orthodox Christian Church of Ukraine in Kiev.
Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko quickly hailed the decision. "This is a victory of good over evil, light over darkness," he said, adding that Ukraine has been waiting for this "historic event" for more than 330 years.
The "330 years" refers to another part of the Bartholomew's announcement:
"4) To revoke the legal binding of the Synodal Letter of the year 1686, issued for the circumstances of that time, which granted the right through oikonomia to the Patriarch of Moscow to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv, elected by the Clergy-Laity Assembly of his eparchy, who would commemorate the Ecumenical Patriarch as the First hierarch at any celebration, proclaiming and affirming his canonical dependence to the Mother Church of Constantinople."
In granting independence to Ukraine's church, Bartholomew it taking control of Ukraine's church from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). This has infuriated the Russians, and is a political and financial disaster for the ROC and for Russia's Patriarch Kirill, since about a third of the parishes controlled by Kirill are in Ukraine.
In anticipation of Thursday's announcement, the ROC last month broke all relations with the Constantinople. ( "16-Sep-18 World View -- Russian Orthodox Church in historic split with Constantinople over Ukraine issue")
Thursday's announcement is the culmination of decades of tension between the Ukraine and Russian churches since the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991. The ROC took control of the Ukrainian church, which was headed by Ukrainian Patriarch Filaret Denisenko, an ardent proponent of independence from the ROC. The ROC excommunicated Filaret, who formed his own unrecognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is now the second largest in Ukraine.
Thursday's announced by Bartholomew also reverses the excommunication of Filaret:
"3) To accept and review the petitions of appeal of Filaret Denisenko, Makariy Maletych and their followers, who found themselves in schism not for dogmatic reasons, in accordance with the canonical prerogatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople to receive such petitions by hierarchs and other clergy from all of the Autocephalous Churches. Thus, the above-mentioned have been canonically reinstated to their hierarchical or priestly rank, and their faithful have been restored to communion with the Church."
It is now considered likely that Filaret will be chosen to lead the new Ukraine Orthodox Church.
The Constantinople Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate are two of several dozen Orthodox Patriarchates in the world, but they're the two most influential. The city of Constantinople was renamed Istanbul when it was conquered by the Ottoman Muslims in 1453, bringing an end to the Byzantine Empire. The offices of the Constantinople Patriarchate are located in today's Istanbul.
According to Ukrainian media, a scholarly study of the history of the ROC reveals that it never received a "Tomos of autocephaly," and therefore may itself not be a legitimate church. Constaninople Patriarchate and AFP and Russian Today and Unian (Ukraine)
There are thousands of churches in Ukraine that have pledged allegiance to the Moscow Patriarchate, and who will now be under pressure to pledge allegiance to the new Ukrainian Church.
Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, calls the decision "catastrophic," and says, "Of course, people will take to streets and protect their sacred sites." Hilarion in the past has warned,
"If the schismatics begin to seize the laurels, thousands of people will gather, they will defend these monasteries, blood will be shed, ... If, God forbid, there will be a legitimization of the split, it is difficult even to imagine what consequences this can lead to. This would mean a split, similar to the split of 1054."
This alludes to the historic, bloody split between the Catholic Church, led by Rome, and the Eastern Othodox Church, led by Constantinople, in 1054. In 1204, in a new Crusade, the Catholic army sacked sacked Constantinople, starving and murdering its citizens, and plundered the Orthodox Church's treasures accumulated over the centuries, capping the deed by placing a prostitute on the Emperor's throne at the church of St. Sophia, at that time the most beautiful church in Christendom. It was not until the year 2001, after facing large anti-Catholic protests in Athens, that Pope John Paul apologized to the Greeks for the incident, and made a plea for forgiveness.
So Hilarion's warning that Constantinople's Ukraine decision is similar to the split of 1054 illustrates how furious the Russians are that this decision was made. It's expected that Kiev and Moscow are going to be fighting for control of every one of the churches affected by the decision, but whether those fights lead to violence between the parishioners remains to be seen.
Another consequence might be Russian violence against the Churches in Russian-occupied Crimea. Russia may attack these churches in retaliation for Kiev's attempts to control the churches in mainland Ukraine. AFP and Tass (Moscow) and Unian (Kiev) and Washington Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Oct-18 World View -- Constantinople grants Ukrainian Orthodox Church independence, causing historic split with Russia thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Oct-2018)
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The island of Bhasan Char - 'floating island' - rose from the sea 20 years ago
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Bangladesh last week again postponed plans to begin relocating 100,000 Rohingyas from refugee camps on the Burma (Myanmar) border to the remote island of Bhasan Char in the Sea of Bengal, about an hour's boat trip from the mainland. However, planning and implementation is continuing, and a new start date announcement is expected soon.
Today, there are over one million Rohingyas living in refugee camps near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh -- the world's largest population of stateless people, not citizens of Burma, not citizens of Bangladesh. The Buddhists in Myanmar have been incredibly successful in committing almost complete genocide and ethnic cleansing, though they're still in second place this century, behind the genocide and ethnic cleansing being committed by Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Since 2011, Burma's mostly Buddhist security forces have been committing mass atrocities on mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, in what the United Nations says is "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing," and which some Western governments are calling genocide. The atrocities by Buddhist security forces include gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign. Myanmar's genocide is reminiscent of the Buddhist on Buddhist genocide that occurred in Cambodia in the late 1970s, under Pol Pot. Burmese Buddhist leader Aung San Suu Kyi has become the 21st century Pol Pot.
In August 2017, Rohingya terrorists took revenge by killing several Burmese security forces in attacks against 30 Burmese police outputs. Using this attack as an excuse, the Buddhist Burmese army began conducting massive slaughter and atrocities against the Rohingyas, causing hundreds of thousands to flee across the border into Bangladesh.
The refugee camps around Cox's Bazar have been extremely crowded, and are subject to large mudslides during monsoon season. When refugees started arriving several years ago, the Bangladeshis initially welcomed them with sympathy, but have been getting increasingly resentful.
The plan to relocate 100,000 refugees to the island of Bhasan Char was originally proposed in 2015, but it has been postponed several times. In the most recent attempt, prime minister Sheikh Hasina was scheduled on October 3 to officially open newly-constructed shelters for the refugees on Bhashan Char, but the announcement was postponed again. Finance Today (Bangladesh) and Daily Star (Bangladesh) and Quartz (27-Feb)
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Bhashan Char, which means "floating island" in the Bengali language, emerged from the sea about 10-20 years ago. It was formed in the last 20 years by silt from Bangladesh’s Meghna River.
According to some reports, half the island goes underwater every time there's a full moon, and 60% of the island is underwater during a monsoon.
So Bangladesh's navy has fast-tracked construction of shelters and water barriers. Each shelter will be a metal-rooted brick building, raised on pylons, to house 16 families. Each family (4 people) will be allotted a 3.5x4 meter room for sleeping, with bathrooms and kitchens down the hall. There will be solar panels on the roof, and water filters below deck.
Chinese and British engineers are building a 13 km embankment, with the entire habitable area surrounded by a wall 2.47 meters high. An offshore structure will protect the structures from the waves.
The construction is only partially complete, which is probably the reason for the latest postponement.
Many NGOs are objecting to plan to transfer 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char. Human Rights Watch gives the following reasons: 1) it is not sustainable for human habitation; 2) it could be seriously affected by rising sea levels and storm surges; 3) it likely would have very limited education and health services; 4) it would provide extremely limited opportunities for livelihoods or self-sufficiency; 5) it would unnecessarily isolate refugees; 6) the Bangladeshi government has made no commitment to allow refugees’ freedom of movement in and from Bhasan Char; 7) it is far from the Myanmar border; and 8) the refugees have not consented to move there.
Nonetheless, construction on the island is continuing, and Bangladesh will probably announce a new relocation date soon. Dhaka Tribune/AFP (18-Sep) and Reuters (22-Feb) and NewsClick (24-Feb) and Human Rights Watch
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Oct-18 World View -- Bangladesh continues plans to relocate 100,000 Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char island thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Oct-2018)
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Venezuela migration crisis continues to grow
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
In mid-August, Nicolás Maduro, president of the Socialist government of Venezuela, announced a new package of economic reforms that were supposed to stop the country's slide into economic disaster. ( "19-Aug-18 World View -- Socialist Venezuela introduces new fantasy currency and new Socialist changes")
At that time, Maduro said:
"I want the country to recover and I have the formula. Trust me."
To the surprise of few if any people, his "formula" has only sped up the economic disaster.
The first part of Maduro's formula was to devalue the bolivar currency by 96%, and then introduce a new currency, the Bolivar Soberano ("sovereign bolivar"). Well, that doesn't seem to have stopped inflation.
There are no longer any official Venezuelan government figures on inflation, because the figures were so embarrassing to the Socialists there, they decided to stop publishing them three years ago. So the opposition congress has been computing its own figures, and publishing them.
According to opposition legislator Angel Alvarado, daily inflation is now 4%, which comes to 1.7 million percent per year. During the past year, prices rose a mere 488,865%, but the inflation rate continues to accelerate.
On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued its own estimate of Venezuela's inflation rate, saying that it would rise 1.4 million percent in 2018, and up to 10 million percent in 2019.
The second part of Maduro's magic formula was to raise the minimum wage by 3000%. Maduro has raised the minimum wage 24 times since 2013. I always have to blink my eyes in disbelief when I read stuff like this, since apparently Maduro and his Socialist acolytes are too stupid to understand that when you increase wages then you increase inflation proportionately. So that's one more reason why the inflation rate increase has been accelerating.
But it's worse than that, in this case. Within a month it was clear that the minimum wage increase was causing an additional economic disaster: Few companies or shops were able to pay the increased minimum wage, so massive numbers of people lost their jobs.
In September, Maduro paid a visit to Xi Jinping in Beijing, and apparently came back home to Caracas with a lifeline.
China agreed to invest an additional $5 billion, and the investment would boost oil production, and nearly double its oil exports to China. "We are taking the first steps into a new economic era," said Maduro. Reuters and Reuters and Bloomberg (19-Sep) and Al Jazeera (19-Sep)
Some six million people have fled from Syria since the war began in 2011, and that's currently the worst migration crisis in the world. The second worst is the Venezuelan crisis, where some 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled from the Socialist paradise.
Unable to feed their children or provide medicines for illnesses, or running from violence, there are 4,000 more Venezuelans crossing the border into Colombia each day. Colombia has called for a regional response, saying the migrant crisis was costing it about 0.5% of GDP – around $1.5m. Thousands travel on to Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, This has placed an enormous financial burder on neighboring countries, and many have been closing their borders. The migrants are willing to work for little pay, and so they take the jobs of each country's citizens, further destabilizing the region. UNHCR and Guardian (London) and Merco Press and Fair Observer
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Oct-18 World View -- China aids Venezuela as inflation rate exceeds one million percent thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Oct-2018)
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Fallacies in the climate change story
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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According to a new report issued on Monday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change scientists are saying that the world is approaching climate change catastrophe much faster than climate change scientists have said in the past.
In the past, the climate change scientists were saying that the temperature of the earth would increase by 3 degrees by 2100, if nothing changes. They said in the past that we have to cut carbon emissions so that the temperature of the earth would only increase by 2 degrees. But according to Monday's report, even a 2 degree increase leads to world catastrophe.
Typical media headlines read, "UN report on global warming carries life-or-death warning" and "Planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, experts warn" and "Trump ‘poses the single greatest threat’ to our climate, bombshell UN report makes clear."
What to do? What to do? The BBC World Service interviewed Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat, a key architect of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. Figueres was asked what people should do now, and she listed "four things that we all can do":
I wonder if it ever occurs to anyone at the United Nations how ridiculous and incompetent it looks to have this spokesman making these truly idiotic statements. Nobody's going to give up meat because this lady says so. Nobody's going to give up their cars for her.
Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Treaty because, among other things, it allows China, the biggest polluter in the world, to continue polluting, while imposing enormous financial burdens on the United States and Western Nations.
The principal purpose of the Climate Change Treaty is to specify money payments from "developed countries," like the United States, to "developing countries" like Costa Rica. Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican diplomat, so we can assume that Costa Rica will benefit financially from the treaty, and she may even personally benefit financially from the treaty, and we can assume that's why she supports it. United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and CNN and Vox and Mining Global
Climate change treaty supporters like to claim that anyone who disagrees with them is denying established facts.
So let's assume that all the climate change assumptions are true:
Let's assume that all of this is true. Then there are still major fallacies in the climate change argument.
There are two major flaws in the climate change argument that I've pointed out on several cases to climate change advocates. They do not make any attempt to respond, but all these people just blow me off.
If they had a response, they would respond. By just ignoring me or blowing me off, they prove that they don't have a response.
The climate change scientists say that if nothing changes, then the earth's temperature will increase by 3 degrees. We're assuming that's true, but the climate change scientists are failing to take into account things that will certainly change.
First, there's war. There were two world wars in the last century, as well as numerous other massive wars (Russian civil war, Spanish civil war, Cambodian civil war, Rwandan genocide, etc.) on every continent, and in every region.
The 20th century was not unique. In every century for millennia, there have been massive wars on every continent in every region, such as China's Taiping rebellion, Africa's Mfecane, India's sepoy rebellion, the 30 years war, 100 years war, and so forth.
It's 100% certain that there will be massive wars, including one or two world wars, before 2100. A world war in the 21st century will kill 20-50% of the population, through nuclear war, ground war, starvation and disease. Since we're assuming that carbon emissions are caused by human activities, that means that carbon emissions will be reduced by 20-50%.
When I ask climate change scientists about this, they just blow me off.
Climate change scientists won't even consider this, but it completely blows away their theories. If you don't believe me, then ask them about it, and see them duck the question.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of companies, big and small, around the world, developing solutions to carbon emissions, because everyone knows that a working solution will make billions of dollars. In the United States, emissions are down to their lowest point since 1991, thanks to many new technologies, including everything from fracking to better windmills to better batteries. Climate change scientists can't stand to even think about new technologies, because it blows all their theories out of the water.
Several years ago, when thousands of East Anglia e-mail messages by climate change scientists were hacked, I did a search for the word "Singularity," and it never appeared once. You'd think that these scientists would have at least asked one another, "Hey, what about the Singularity?" But apparently it was such a forbidden subject that it couldn't be mentioned.
Even if you've decided that the Singularity won't occur, there will still be nanotechnologies, materials technologies, advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, and lots of new technologies that will tackle the emission problem.
So go ahead and ask climate change scientists how new technologies will affect their climate change predictions. What they'll answer is: Climate change is 100% certain, and world war is 100% impossible, and new technologies are irrelevant. Once again, you'd have to be a complete idiot to believe that.
At the start, I said we would assume that all the climate change scientist conclusions are true, including the one that says that if nothing changes, then the earth's temperature will increase by 3%.
Well, we've identified two changes that are 100% certain, and will affect their conclusions: technology and war. Here's a riddle: How do you make a climate change scientist run for his life? Answer: Ask him about war and technology.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Oct-18 World View -- UN: We have just 12 years to prevent global warming catastrophe thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Oct-2018)
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Khashoggi incident threatens Saudi relationship with the West
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey's media are now saying with increasing certainty that that the Saudi journalist who visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday and never came out was murdered by the Saudis and that his body was removed by a group of 12 Saudi officials.
The sequence of events was as follow. Jamal Khashoggi, 59, is a Saudi journalist who writes for the Washington Post, and who has been increasingly critical of Saudi's participation in the war in Yemen, and of the human rights record of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been running the country since 2015. Fearing for his life, Khashoggi has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for the last year.
On September 28, he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get marriage documents related to his planned marriage to his fiancé, a Turkish citizen, Hatice (Khadija) Cengiz. On Tuesday of last week, October 2, he returned to the consulate. Before entering the consulate, he told his fiancé, who was going to wait in the car, that if he wasn't out within 20 minutes, she should alert the Turkish authorities.
He didn't come out, and she raised the alarm. The situation reached the top diplomatic levels between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia claimed that Khashoggi had left the embassy without anyone noticing. Turkey's forensic analysis examined all the CCTV footage for the consulate entrances and exits, for the area around the consulate, and at the airport, and could find no sign of Khashoggi.
On Sunday, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Khashoggi a "journalist and a friend," and said,
"God willing, we will not be faced with an undesirable situation we do not want. His fiancé hopes the same. Whatever comes of this, we will be the ones to declare it to the world. It is very, very upsetting for us that it happened in our country."
However, according to media reports, Turkish officials are increasingly convinced that the Saudis killed Khashoggi. Investigation revealed that on Tuesday morning, the day when Khashoggi was scheduled to return to the consulate, 12 Saudi officials arrived in Istanbul in two private jets, and went to the consulate. Shortly after Khashoggi entered the consulate, never to be seen again, the 12 Saudi officials returned to the airport and flew back to Saudi Arabia.
Turkish officials reportedly believe that those 12 Saudi officials killed Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and then transported his dead body back to Saudi Arabia.
The president of Turk-Arab Media Association, Turan Kislakci, said on Sunday that his organization has confirmed through multiple sources that Khashoggi was murdered:
"There is evidence that he was murdered. We initially thought Jamal Khashoggi was kept at the guest house [at the consulate] and that he was taken out afterwards. However, we have confirmed through multiple sources that he was killed. The details will be explained."
However, a Saudi official is saying that the Turkish accusations are "baseless," and that a team of Saudi investigators will take part in the investigation.
In addition, Saudi media are claiming that the woman named "Khadijah" is "promoting herself as Jamal’s fiancé," but is not known to Jamal's family and she is not his fiancé. Hurriyet (Turkey) and Globe Post (Turkey) and Washington Post and Saudi Gazette
The Turks are furious at this, and if it's true that the Saudis performed an assassination of a journalist on Turkish soil, then they expect to treat it as a major international incident.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia relations are already at a deep low.
Recall that in June of last year, several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE), broke relations with Qatar and imposed an air, sea and land blockade on Qatar. Amazingly enough, that blockade is still in place. International attempts at mediation have failed, and the rhetoric has, if anything, gotten worse.
From the beginning, Turkey has been highly critical of the blockade, and has helped Qatar by sending troops to Qatar in support, and by increasing trade with Qatar, circumventing the blockade.
Saudi Arabia has made a number of demands on Qatar to end the crisis. These include ending all relationships with Iran and Turkey, ending support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and shutting down al-Jazeera, which has been highly critical of Saudi Arabia -- things that are never going to happen.
In the current febrile atmosphere in the Mideast, the Khashoggi incident could have larger implications. It could cause the US and Europe to reevaluate their relationships with Saudi Arabia, and with Turkish officials so enraged by this, it could trigger a more serious response. Al-Jazeera and France 24 and Al Monitor and AFP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Oct-18 World View -- Suspicious disappearance of Saudi journalist in Turkey threatens to upset Mideast relations thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Oct-2018)
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Bond note currently on the path to inflation or hyperinflation
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Shops in Zimbabwe have bare shelves as people, fearing a new round of hyperinflation like the one in the 2000s decade, are panic buying beer, bread, cooking oil, and other essentials.
Pharmacies have run out of medication for diabetic patients, high blood pressure patients. There are long queues of cars at petrol stations, with drivers hoping to get petrol before the station runs out.
The panic was triggered when Zimbabwe's "bond note" currency crashed to 2.5 bond notes to the dollar, at the end of a week when the government imposed a new 2% tax on all electronic transactions. The result all week was protests and panic over the price increases and shortages of goods.
Zimbabwe's central bank governor on Saturday John Mangudya blamed himself for the panic:
"The problem is that we did not explain things. This economy is a sentiment driven economy so we need to communicate more with the society."
Mangudya, told reporters that people should not be worried and that he expected an improvement in the next 48 hours.
At the same time, there is a new cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, and 49 people have died so far. Independent Online (South Africa) and Reuters and Eyewitness News (South Africa
Readers may recall that in 2016 then-president Robert Mugabe introduced a new currency called the "bond note." Each bond note would be worth exactly one US dollar. This was necessary because Zimbabwe's banks were running out of US dollars with with to purchase imports.
In the 1990s, Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa, growing much more food than the country needed and exporting the rest. Then in 1999 Robert Mugabe instituted a "land reform" plan just like the one that South Africa and Namibia are planning are now planning confiscating white-owned farms and giving them to his cronies in the Shona tribe who knew nothing about farming. Within ten years, Zimbabwe was an economic disaster, with mass starvation, a worthless currency, and massive million percent inflation.
By 2009 the Zimbabwe currency was more worthless than toilet paper, and so the US dollar became the official currency. But Mugabe continued with his destructive racist policies, and by December 2016, Zimbabwe was running out of US dollars. So Mugabe introduced the bond note, with each bond note worth $1.00.
This cause large street demonstrations by Zimbabwe's public, because they knew that the bond notes would suffer the same inflation or hyperinflation that Zimbabwe's original currency did. But Mugabe promised that wouldn't happen, since no more than $200 million in bond notes would ever be printed, so hyperinflation was impossible.
During 2017, Zimbabwe's central bank printed more and more bond notes, and by August 2017, the value of the bond note fell 50% compared to the US dollar. The central bank announced that it would print another $300 million in bond notes, bringing the bond note total up to $500 million, or half a billion.
Since then, Robert Mugabe has been ousted, and has been sent to his palatial farm, where he has plenty of money at his disposal. Zimbabwe now has a new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is left to clean up the 40-year mess that Mugabe left behind. So far, things have only gotten worse. Maybe the Chinese will give him some money if he sells them a part of the country. Daily News (Zimbabwe) and Bulawayo24 (Zimbabwe) and News24 (South Africa, 3-Aug-2017) and eNews Channel Africa
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Oct-18 World View -- Zimbabweans on panic buying spree as 'bond notes' crash thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Oct-2018)
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Google is repeating the mistakes that IBM made in helping the Nazis
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The announcement this week by Bloomberg News that an investigation has found that China is installing backdoor chips on server motherboards is making the public aware of a major security issue that will affect a wide variety of electronic products, from iPhones to televisions to automobile components.
The attack worked as follows:
Apple and Amazon initially denied they were victims of this attack, but apparently later confirmed that they were.
China's foreign ministry denied that they would ever do such a thing, but said that they were victims of such attacks themselves.
These revelations have exposed only a tiny part of the problem, which is being described as the "supply chain problem." These days, any electronic device contains chips and components from many sources, and those components themselves may be made up of chips from many sources. A complex electronic device might contain over 100 chips, sourced from different locations. If just one of those chips has been infected by China's military, then the entire device could be compromised. As soon as the device is turned on, then the malware chip "calls home" to the Chinese military, which then has access to the entire device, whether it's an iPhone or a helicopter. Bloomberg and Bloomberg and Krebs on Security and Mashable
For months, American intelligence agencies have been advising Americans not to do business with Chinese chip manufacturers Huawei Technologies Co. or ZTE Corp.
China goes out of its way to tempt Americans to buy their products, by offering a lot of features and setting very low prices. The Chinese undoubtedly lose money on these sales, but the sales support a national effort for China to control as many American electronic devices as possible, for future warfare.
As a Senior Software Development, I've developed embedded operating systems for chips, and I personally know how easy it would be for the Chinese to implement this policy. Huawei could develop a chipset that works fine during tests, but Huawei could install a "backdoor" into the chipset. When the chip receives, say, a secret 1024-bit code, then it will execute commands sent to it by China's military. Thus, the Chinese are then in control of any devices with Huawei or ZTE chips. This is not only doable, it's easy to do. The "backdoor" could not be detected until an attack had been launched, and then it would be too late. So there's never been any doubt in my mind that China COULD do this, and if China CAN do it, then they WILL do it, because they've engaged every part of the nation to prepare for war with the United States.
That's a different kind of situation than the one that's been revealed this week. In this week's case, the hacking was done not by "invisible" software, but by a visible but tiny piece of hardware.
SecurityWeek took a survey of reactions by security experts to the announcement of China's spy chips, and what was remarkable is that no one was the least surprised.
Sanjay Beri, CEO, Netskope, said: "Chinese cyber infiltration is nothing new, as proven by ongoing recent attacks from élite Chinese institutions diligently working to gain access to assets from the west."
Itzik Kotler, CTO and Co-Founder, SafeBreach, said: "Like many recent attacks, this is low-level, stealthy, and widespread. The combination of these three makes it especially frightening at first, and it certainly is rare to see such an attack in the wild."
Rick Moy, Chief Marketing Officer at Acalvio said: "While there’s a lot of denial about the attacks, it’s completely plausible that China did in fact seed certain hardware with these backdoor chips. One can imagine the liabilities that firms would rather not take on by admitting this kind of a breach. However, it is entirely within the capabilities and mission scope of nation state intel armies to infiltrate supply chains in this way."
Joseph Carson, chief security scientist at Thycotic said: "We are one step away from a major cyber conflict or retaliation that could result in serious implications. This could be one of the biggest hacks in history. What is clear is that it is a government behind this cyber espionage and I believe it is compromised employees with privileged access that are acting as malicious insiders selecting specific targets so the supply chain has been victim of being compromised."
Malcolm Harkins, Chief Security and Trust Officer, Cylance: Unfortunately the only surprising element about this attack is that it’s taken so long to be uncovered in a report." Security Week
In the late 1930s, Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM Corp. had to decide whether to sell Hollerith card tabulating equipment to the German Nazis, at a time when they were persecuting Jews and even dropping bombs on London. Nominally, the equipment was to be used to count things like cars and cows, but it was obvious that it could also be used to count Jews. Watson did business with the Nazis even during the war, and helped the Nazis with the Holocaust.
Now Google appears to be making the same mistake with China.
Google recently announced it would not help the Department of Defense with AI technology, even for purely defensive purposes. (Paragraph corrected, 13-Oct)
At the same time, Google announced a major new Google AI research center in China. “I believe AI and its benefits have no borders” said Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Chief Scientist at Google Cloud. Well that's a lie. Google's AI technology will only be used outside the United States border, and inside China's border.
China is preparing for war with the United States, and has developed numerous weapons systems with no other purpose than to attack American cities, bases and aircraft carriers. Google is willing to provide AI technology to China that can be used in these weapons to attack the United States, but refuses to allow the U.S. to use its AI technology to defend itself from China's weapons. That's verging on treason.
A separate issue is Google's Dragonfly project. Google is using AI technology to develop a search engine for the Chinese government that will automatically track Chinese citizens who make unapproved searches, and then report those individuals to the government. Vice President Mike Pence this week called on Google this week to stop development of Dragonfly, because it would "strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers."
China's persecution of the Uighurs and Tibetans in China is worse than the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Recent reports indicate that over a million Uighurs are imprisoned in reeducation camps. AI software provides facial recognition capabilities that permit China to track the movements of all Uighurs in Xinjiang province (or other Chinese citizens) for arrest or persecution.
My guess is that during the 1930s it was young German-Americans who promoted selling IBM technology to the Nazis. Today, with Google located in Silicon Valley, it's probably young Chinese who are promoting selling AI technology to the Chinese military, but opposing its sale to the U.S. military. These Chinese workers will certainly come to grief for this betrayal of America. Guardian (London, 29-Mar-2002) and Atlantic (April 2001) and Task and Purpose (19-Jun) and The Verge
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Oct-18 World View --China's spy chip attacks shock the computer industry thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Oct-2018)
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The inevitable clash of the protagonists
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For months, international observers have been fearing a massive humanitarian disaster in Syria, as the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad prepares to launch an attack on Idlib province, the last stronghold of the opposition rebels, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
The al-Assad regime has already recaptured Aleppo, Ghouta and Daara, using Vladimir Putin's "Grozny Model," which forces all the women and children out into the open so that they be slaughtered en masse. Al-Assad enhanced and upgraded the technique into what we might call "Grozny Model 2.0," using chlorine gas to force women and children out of their basement hiding places, and then use Sarin gas and barrel bombs as needed to slaughter as many as possible.
Many of the civilians and opposition forces in Aleppo, Ghouta and Daara fled with their families to Idlib province, as possibly the only safe place left in Syria, with the result that the population of Idlib province doubled to about 3 million people. Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees, and an assault on Idlib would create a massive humanitarian problem, with perhaps a million people flooding across the border into Turkey, and from there into Europe, creating an international crisis.
Turkey was desperate to stop al-Assad's Idlib assault because it would be a disaster for Turkey, so Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan lobbied Putin to cancel the assault. Turkey, Russia and Iran held a meeting in Tehran on September 7, but Turkey's proposal was rejected by the other two parties. ( "8-Sep-18 World View -- Turkey fails to prevent Russia and Iran from mass slaughter in Idlib, Syria") Reuters and Irin News and Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
However, on September 17, Erdogan and Putin met in Sochi, and they reached an agreement:
"The Republic of Turkey and the Russian Federation, as guarantors of the observance of the ceasefire regime in the Syrian Arab Republic, ... in order to stabilize the situation in the Idlib de-escalation area as soon as possible, have agreed on the following:1. The Idlib de-escalation area will be preserved and Turkish observation posts will be fortified and continue to function.
2. The Russian Federation will take all necessary measures to ensure that military operations and attacks on Idlib will be avoided and the existing status quo will be maintained.
3. A demilitarized zone, 15-20 kms deep in the de-escalation area will be established.
4. The delineation of exact lines of the demilitarised zone will be determined through further consultations.
5. All radical terrorist groups will be removed from the demilitarised zone by October 15.
6. All tanks, MLRS, artillery and mortars belonging to conflicting parties will be withdrawn from the demilitarised zone by October 10, 2018.
7. Turkish Armed Forces and the military police of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will conduct coordinated patrols and monitoring with UAVs along the boundaries of the demilitarised zone. ...
8. Transit traffic on the routes M4 (Aleppo-Latakia) and M5 (Aleppo-Hama) will be restored by the end of 2018.
9. Effective measures will be taken for ensuring sustainable ceasefire regime within the Idlib de-escalation area. In this regard, the functions of the Joint Iranian-Russian-Turkish Coordination Center will be enhanced.
10. The two sides reiterated their determination to combat terrorism in Syria in all forms and manifestations."
Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government were not part of this agreement, but it has become Russia's responsibility to hold al-Assad back from launching the assault.
The heart of this agreement is that it places an enormous responsibility on Turkey. All rebels in the demilitarised zone must withdraw heavy arms by October 10, and radical groups must leave by October 15, and Turkey is reponsible for making that happen. Unfortunately, with only 5 days left until the first deadline, little has changed on the ground since the September 17 agreement except for contentious negotiations among the groups in Idlib. There's been almost no handover of weapons or territory.
Of the 3 million people in Idlib, it's estimated that about 60,000 are in anti-Assad militias controlling different cities and villages. Some of the moderate rebel groups have begun withdrawing their forces and heavy weapons from parts of the buffer zone. But the biggest jihadi group, the al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which controls 60% of Idlib, has not yet agreed to withdraw, although it's still negotiating with Turkey. The National (UAE) and Sputnik News (Moscow)
The Greeks invented tragedy, and three of four great tragic artists of all time were Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides of ancient Greece, with the fourth being Shakespeare. As a Greek, I understand tragedy very well. The essence of Greek tragedy is that the tragic event it not random, but is inevitable, because of the nature, the personality, the character of the protagonists. A true tragedy cannot be prevented, even by those who foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy are too powerful for anyone to stop.
We can see those powerful forces in Syria today.
First we have Bashar al-Assad, a psychopathic monster and a member of the Shia/Alawite community in Syria, a group that has had many wars with Sunni Arabs, including Turks. Al-Assad has repeatedly made it clear that he considers all Sunni's in Idlib, even the women and children, to be terrorists who much be exterminated like cockroaches. Al-Assad is the most Shakespearean of the protagonists in that he's driven to commit a bigger genocide than his father, Hafez al-Assad.
Reports indicate that the al-Assad regime has been massing its army on the border with Idlib. Putin has been holding al-Assad back from assaulting Idlib, and al-Assad is looking for any excuse to attack. If the agreement deadlines pass and Turkey has not completed its tasks, then al-Assad will have the excuse he needs.
Second, we have Russia's president Vladimir Putin. I don't get the feeling that Putin has any particular animus against either side in Syria. He seems to view the war in Syria the same way that Henry David Thoreau watched in astonishment the war between the two armies, one army of red ants and another army of black ants.
Instead of ethnic animus, Putin seems to be have an entirely different kind of motive for supporint al-Assad. Russia was completely shut out of the Mideast in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, for the first time in decades, Russia has two military bases in the Mideast -- the Tartus naval base, and the Hmeimim airbase, both of them in Syria, in return for supporting al-Assad.
So Russia is holding al-Assad back for now, but when the dam breaks and the Syrian army pours into Idlib, Russia will support al-Assad in order to continue to control the two military bases.
And the third major protagonist is Turkey's president Erdogan. Al-Assad and Erdogan share a deep vitriolic hatred of each other, as do their respective populations. Erdogan truly wants to prevent al-Assad's assault on Idlib because it will be a disaster for Turkey.
Iran is like Russia, having little vitriolic hatred for either side in Syria, but wanting to establish an overland route from Iran through Baghdad through Damascus to the Mediterranean Sea. For that, Iran is supporting al-Assad.
Hezbollah is like a mindless puppet, where Iran is the puppetmaster. Hezbollah will do whatever Iran tells it to do.
There are also lesser forces in Syria, including the United States and Saudi Arabia. They play their parts in support of one group or another, but they're subordinate to Syria, Russia and Turkey.
One day soon, all of these forces will clash and the inevitable final act of the Greek tragedy will begin. Al Jazeera and Digital Journal and Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Oct-18 World View -- As October 25 deadline approaches, Syria's Idlib is set up for a classic Greek tragedy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Oct-2018)
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Iran blamed on the foiled June 30 attack on anti-Iran MEK group
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Monday, a German court agreed to extradite Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomatic, who is accused accused of handing a bomb to the attackers who were planning a June 30 bombing of a meeting near Paris of an anti-Iran regime group, the MEK. Although Assadi is based in Vienna Austria, his actions took place while he was on vacation in Germany, so the German court stripped him of his diplomatic immunity, and allowed him to be extradited to Belgium.
Assadi is an Iranian diplomat and intelligence agent. He is accused of meeting a Belgian husband and wife sleeper cell in Luxembourg, where he handed them the explosives. The explosives were discovered in Beligum by Belgian police when they stopped a Mercedes car driven by the Antwerp-based Iranian couple and found the explosives hidden inside a toiletries bag. The police took the husband and wife team into custody, and requested extradition of Assadi from Germany.
The planned target of the June 30 attack was in Villepinte, northeast of Paris, and another man, accused of being an accomplice, was arrested in Paris on Monday.
France also seized assets in Paris belonging to Tehran's intelligence services and the Iranian husband and wife arrested in Belgium.
A French official said that Iran's deputy minister and director general of intelligence, Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, had ordered the attack and Assadollah Asadi, who is still in Germany to be extradicted to Belgium, had masterminded the plot. According to the official:
"Behind all this was a long, meticulous and detailed investigation by our (intelligence) services that enabled us to reach the conclusion, without any doubt, that responsibility fell on the Iranian intelligence ministry."
However, after Belgium announced on June 30 that they had foiled the Iranian bombing operation, Iran's foreign minister Javad Zarif tweeted the following:
"How convenient. Just as we embark on a presidential visit to Europe, an alleged Iranian operation and its "plotters" arrested. Iran unequivocally condemns all violence & terror anywhere, and is ready to work with all concerned to uncover what is a sinister false flag ploy. 3:57 PM, Jul 2 2018"
Zarav and the Iranians have continued to deny any connection to the June 30 plot, but Monday's arrests indicate that police in France, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg now believe that they've connected the dots to prove the Iranian terror plot.
On Tuesday, the French government issued the following statement:
"An attack attempt was foiled in Villepinte [near Paris] on June 30. This act of extreme severity planned on our soil could not remain without response. By an October 2, 2018 order from the Minister of State, the Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of Economy and Finance... France has taken ... preventative measures by freezing the assets of Iranian nationals Assadollah Asadi and [Iranian deputy minister of Intelligence in charge of operations] Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, as well as of the Directorate of Internal Security of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. In taking this decision, France reiterates its determination to fight terrorism, especially on its own soil."
On Tuesday, French police raided the al-Zhara mosque in the small town of Grande-Synthe near Dunkirk in northern France. Police had been monitoring the activities of the mosque, especially its leader, Yahia Gouasmi, who is known for anti-Zionist views and ties to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. However, it's not clear whether this arrest is also related to the June 30 bombing attempt.
This series of arrests across Europe is going to bring Iran-EU relations, especially Iran-France relations, to a new low. This is highly significant at a time when Iran is begging the Europeans to find a way around the US sanctions on Iran that the Trump administration imposed after withdrawing from the nuclear agreement. BBC and The National (UAE) and Deutsche Welle and Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
The foiled June 30 attack was targeting a meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is the political arm of the dissident group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / Mujahideen-el-Khalq, MEK), which Iran says is a terrorist organization -- as did the US State Department from 1997 to 2012.
The MEK was formed in the 1960s to overthrow the Shah of Iran. As I described in my new book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East, the MEK helped Ruhollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but then turned against Khomeini because he was worse than the Shah.
In July 1988, Khomeini's ordered the massacre of tens of thousands of political prisoners and political enemies, especially those in the MEK. He issued this decree:
"Whoever at any stage continues to belong to the PMOI must be executed. Annihilate the enemies of Islam immediately! ...Those who are in prisons throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for PMOI are waging war on God and are condemned to execution. ... It is naive to show mercy to those who wage war on God."
It's laughable for Khomeini to compare himself to God. I described in my book how he did this -- modifying Shia Islam theology by naming himself to the be modern version of Shia Islam's infallible Imams. However, the infallible Imam Khomeini used his power to conduct torture, rape, multilation and slaughter of his political enemies, including members of the MEK.
In my article on the December protests in Iran, I listed about 20 of the protests that were being chanted, many of them quite vicious. These chants were collected and publicized by MEK activists.
The MEK has remained an anti-government protest organization, and it's not at all surprising that Iran would sponsor explosions and other terror attacks on the MEK in Paris and elsewhere. The MEK has been extremely effect in exposing the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime, and in encouraging anti-government protests within Iran. Al-Jazeera and AFP and Washington Examiner and Euro News
John J. Xenakis is author of the book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East, available on Amazon for $5 for the digital version or $7 for the paperback version.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Oct-18 World View -- Iran diplomats and sleeper cells arrested in France and across Europe thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Oct-2018)
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Brief generational history of Namibia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Namibia's president Hage Geingob announced on Monday that he would push ahead with "land distribution," following the example of the announcement by its close neighbor, South Africa.
According to Geingob, the practice of expropriating land with "fair compensation" will be revisited, since it hasn't delivered results, and that 43% of farmland will be transferred from white farmers to "disadvantaged blacks" by 2020. In making the announcement, Geingob said:
"Many Namibians were driven off their productive land. The fundamental issue is the inequality. We also share a burning land issue and a racialized distribution of land resources with South Africa.This comes from a common history of colonial dispossession. What we also agree to is that the status quo will not be allowed to continue."
The phrase "colonial dispossession" refers to genocide and ethnic cleansing by German colonists of tens of thousands of ethnic Herero and Nama people from roughly 1895 to 1907. According to published statistics, white Namibians today own 70% of agricultural land and blacks 16%. The rest, about 250 farms, are under foreign ownership, mostly by Germans.
Geingob added that by redistributing land from white farmers to blacks, it will reduce inequality, and will be "an investment in peace":
"We need to revisit constitutional provisions which allow for the expropriation of land with just compensation, as opposed to fair compensation, and look at foreign ownership of land, especially absentee land owners.It is in all our interest, particularly the 'haves,' to ensure a drastic reduction in inequality, by supporting the redistributive model required to alter our skewed economic structure. We should all be cognizant of the fact that this is ultimately an investment in peace."
According to Geingob, the "willing-buyer, willing-seller" approach has not worked to redistribute the land, and now a more aggressive approach must be used. Deutsche Welle and The South African and Al Jazeera
The proposal for land confiscation without compensation is being made at the Second National Land Conference, held in the capital city Windhoek. Opposition figures have called for a boycott of the conference because documents leaked prior to the conference indicated that the outcomes were predetermined, and because opposition parties, including representatives of white farmers, were not even invited. Prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila denied that the outcomes were predetermined, because all delegates coming to conference will "share their honest views towards the debate to help our country make progress towards the land reform program."
None of the news reports that I read about this proposal even mention the Zimbabwe experience, so apparently that experience has been forgotten. In the 1990s, Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa, growing much more food than the country needed and exporting the rest. Then in 1999 Robert Mugabe instituted a "land reform" plan just like the one that South Africa and Namibia are planneg. Within ten years, Zimbabwe was an economic disaster, with mass starvation, a worthless currency, and massive million percent inflation.
The lack of transparency, and shutting out of the opposition are signs that Zimbabwe's experience will be copied in another way. When Mugabe confiscated the white farmers' farms, they were supposed to go to poor blacks, but instead went to Mugabe's wealthy political cronies, people who didn't even know how to farm. That's why Zimbabwe faced such a financial disaster.
Namibia's new land reform program is supposed to confiscate white farmers' farms and give them to "disadvantaged blacks," but the lack of transparency and shutting out of the opposition indicates that Geingob will do what Mugabe did -- give the farms to his élite wealthy political cronies, who know nothing about farming. Why would anyone expect anything else? Those cronies worked hard to get Geingob elected, so shouldn't they be rewarded with all the farmland? It's only fair.
So that's what happened to Zimbabwe when it was a relatively wealthy country in the 1990s. But Namibia is not a wealthy country. As of the second quarter of 2018, Namibia's economy had shrunk for nine consecutive quarters. Earlier this year, the government had to stop feeding the army, or paying the water and electricity bills for its military bases.
Namibia is a mineral-rich country, and was considered to be stable and democratic. But when president Hage Geingob took office in 2015, he borrowed money and went on a spending spree, greatly expanding the public sector, with a huge wage bill for 100,000 civil servants. Geingob has also taken on billions of dollars in debt from China, where the terms of the deal are being kept secret, raising fears of yet one more Chinese debt trap.
Namibia has been hit with other problems. A drought across southern Africa has been disastrous for the Namibian economy. The fishing industry has suffered due to overfishing and depletion of fish stocks. The mining industry suffered because of the fall in the prices of minerals, particular uranium, which Namibia relies on.
So Geingob is going to solve all of Namibia's economic problems by confiscating the farmland from productive people who produce food for people to eat, and give the farms to his cronies who don't have a clue. Sounds like a great plan. Namibian (21-Sep) and The Villager (Namibia, 24-Sep) and Deutsche Welle (1-Feb) and Namibian (14-Sep)
Archeological evidence shows that people inhabited Namibia for at least 25,000 years. Little was known about life there until the colonists arrived and started writing things down. The first known European to visit Namibia was the Portuguese Diogo Cao in 1485.
The most valuable real estate in Namibia to the colonists was Walvis Bay, a large deep water port on the Atlantic Ocean. The Dutch Authority took control of Walvis, and Britain took control of it in 1797.
The Europeans in Namibia lived in relative peace with the dominant tribe, the Herero, until the "Scramble for Africa" among the European colonists occurred in the late 1800s. In 1886, Germany and Portugal negotiated the border between Angola and German South West Africa. By 1890, the German colonists had been a military fort in Windhoek, which became Namibia's capital city.
Things changed in 1897 when the rinderpest, an ancient plague dating back to at least Roman times, arrived in South West Africa and devastated the flocks of cattle owned by the Herero, who depended on cattle for their livelihood. Many Herero sold their land to the Germans for a very low price. This situation backfired in 1904, when there was a Herero uprising against the German colonists, killing over 100 Germans. This triggered a generational crisis war, and genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Herero.
Another tribe, the Nama, rose up in support of the Herero, but the Germans rounded them up and sent them to labor camps to work on the railways. All in all, about 80% of the Herero were killed, and 50% of the Nama. It's sometimes call the first genocide of the 20th century. Germany only lost control of South West Africa at the end of World War I, when the Treaty of Versailles gave control to South Africa.
The Herero have filed a lawsuit in the US against Germany over the genocide and demanded reparations. Germany acknowledges that a genocide occurred, but the government denies that it is under any legal obligation to reparations. Deutsche Welle (28-Jul) and RhinoAfrica and SAHistory and HistoryWorld
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Oct-18 World View -- Namibia may follow South Africa with land confiscation without compensation thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Oct-2018)
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Cameroon Anglophone separatists act to block 86 yo Paul Biya's reelection
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Cameroon’s Francophone (French-speaking) President Paul Biya is the favorite to win reelection as president on Sunday. A poll reveals that none of the nine opposition candidates would be able to defeat Biya, even though the economy is tanking, and most voters are opposed to Biya's war and atrocities on the Anglophone (English-speaking) population in the Southern Cameroons region of the county.
The atrocities began in November 2016, when the Francophone (French-speaking) Cameroon government security forces began beating and killing peaceful anti-government demonstrators in the South Cameroons, the Anglophone (English-speaking) regions of Cameroon. The demonstrators were protesting systematic bias, discrimination and marginalization towards Anglophones by the Francophone government. For example, schoolteachers in the Anglophone regions were forbidden from teaching any courses in English. Court cases had to be held in French, and it was against the law to provide English translations of the laws.
The level of atrocities ticked up considerably in October 2017, when the Anglophone separatists demanded independence for the Southern Cameroons, calling it Ambazonia. A video emerged purporting to show Francophone soldiers forcing Anglophone teenage girls to crawl through mud in front of the Cameroon Protestant College, as the men jeer at the girls and refer to them as Ambazonians.
The Anglophones began forming their own army called the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF), with about 1,500 people spread around 20 camps in the Anglophone regions. In most cases, the people are farmers who had been forced to leave their villages, armed with hunting rifles that are made in Nigeria. In September of last year, activist separatists began using small bombs to target local security forces.
In December of last year, Biya declared full scale war on the separatists, with this announcement:
"I learned with emotion of the murder of four Cameroonian soldiers and two policemen in the south-west of our country. I think that things are now clear to everyone. Cameroon is the victim of repeated attacks by a band of terrorists claiming to be part of a secessionist movement.Faced with these attacks of aggression, I assure the Cameroonian people that all measures are being taken to end these criminals’ ability to do harm."
Human Rights Watch issued a report in July saying that the violence in Cameroon has reached a crisis level, and could still get much worse. The report Abuses by Government and Separatist Groups in Cameroon’s Anglophone Regions":
"found that both government forces and armed separatists have abused civilians in the western part of the country, displacing over 180,000 people since December 2017. Anglophone separatists have extorted, kidnapped and killed civilians, and prevented children from going to school. In response to protests and violence by armed separatists, government forces have killed civilians, used excessive force against demonstrators, tortured and mistreated suspected separatists and detainees, and burned hundreds of homes in several villages."
According to claims by the separatists, within the last month the Francophone army has been burning down villages, and killing anyone from 13 years to 50 years old.
Cameroon's last generational crisis war was the "UPC Revolt," 1956-1960, which was a bloody civil war by communists attacking the French government in the Cameroun colony. It has now been exactly 58 years since the ending climax of the UPC Revolt. Generational Dynamics research shows that 58 years is the point where the generations of survivors of the previous crisis war have retired or died in sufficient number that they no longer hold enough power to stop the excesses of the younger generations. Cameroon is spiraling into a full-scale generational crisis war, and there is nothing to stop it. Journal du Cameroun and Africa News and Human Rights Watch and Vice News
Paul Biya has been campaigning in Francophone Cameroon for a seventh term in office, which he has held since 1982.
Cameroon's Francophone government has declared a 48-hour curfew in the Southern Cameroons region, occupied by the Anglophones. October 1 is the first anniversary of the day when tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, triggering an army massacre that killed hundreds of people.
Separatist activists have vowed to block the presidential election in any of the Anglophone regions. On Thursday, separatist militants raided a prison and freed about 100 inmates, claiming that the prisoners were innocent people that the army arrested at random on the street.
Separatists have set up check points blocking traffic on major roads, helping to paralyse activity across the region. According to Cho Ayaba, a separatist leader, "There will be no election in Ambazonia. We want to make sure there is no movement from Cameroon into Ambazonia, including election materials." The Nation (Kenya) and AFP and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Oct-18 World View -- Cameroon's Paul Biya continues ethnic cleansing of Anglophones in Southern Cameroons thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Oct-2018)
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Russia says that UK violates its commitment to the Arctic Council
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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At a time when tensions between the UK and Russia are extremely high because of the poisoning of the March 4 poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, using a Russia-developed nerve agent Novichok, UK's defense secretary Gavin Williamson on Sunday announced that British armed forces will confront Russia in the Arctic.
Williamson said that Russia was reopening Soviet-era bases in the arctic and he warned that Britain's military must assert itself in the newly navigable region.
According to Williamson:
"We see Russian submarine activity very close to the level that it was at the Cold War, and it's right that we start responding to that.If we could turn back the clock 10 years many people thought that the era of submarine activity in the High North, in the North Atlantic, and the threat that it posed did disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall. This threat has really come back to the fore. If we want to be protecting our interests in what is effectively our own back yard, this is something we need to be doing."
Well, the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago, not ten years, but who's counting?
Williamson indicated that global warming was exposing Britain to new military threats from Russia:
"As the ice melts and new shipping routes emerge, the significance of the High North and Arctic region increases.Russia, with more submarines operating under the ice and ambitions to build over 100 facilities in the Arctic, are staking a claim and militarising the region. We must be ready to deal with all threats as they emerge."
Britain is planning to open a new military base in the northern part of Norway and deploy 800 Royal Marine and Army troops to the country every winter for 10 years from 2019. They are to operate with the US and Dutch troops there. Together with 3,000 commandos, sent to take part in the NATO drills, the total number of the deployed troops will top 40,000. In addition, four Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter planes will patrol Icelandic Skies.
"Our Poseidon aircraft submarine hunters, based in Lossiemouth, will track Russian submarines. They will keep us safe at home and assist our NATO allies," said Williamson. That should be reassuring. Daily Mail (London) and UK Government and Sputnik News (Russia)
Russia's embassy in London criticized Britain's announcement, promoting the idea of a threat from Russia. In fact, Russia claims that Britain is violating its own policy statement as an observer at the Arctic Council. According to a spokesman:
"These speculations are yet another attempt to promote the idea of military build-up in the Arctic under imaginary pretexts. They run counter to the existing international legal framework and completely undermine huge efforts undertaken in the Arctic Council, where the UK is an observer state.We hope the British media notices the impressive prospects for trade, economic and infrastructural cooperation in the Arctic and stops echoing those who can’t wait to engage in saber-rattling in this part of the globe."
According to the US State Department:
"Established by the Ottawa Declaration in 1996, the Arctic Council is the preeminent intergovernmental forum for addressing issues related to the Arctic Region. The members of the Arctic Council include the eight countries with territory above the Arctic Circle (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Russian Federation, and the United States) plus six Permanent Participants (PP) groups representing the indigenous people of the Arctic, which include Aleut International Association, Arctic Athabaskan Council, Gwich’in Council International, Inuit Circumpolar Council, Russian Arctic Indigenous Peoples of the North, and Saami Council. The Arctic Council is not a treaty-based international organization but rather an international forum that operates on the basis of consensus, echoing the peaceful and cooperative nature of the Arctic Region. The Council focuses its work on matters related to sustainable development, the environment, and scientific cooperation; its mandate explicitly excludes military security. Traditionally, the Council is chaired by the foreign minister of the country holding the chairmanship. Its day-to-day work is carried out by the eight Senior Arctic Officials (SAO) and six PP representatives, with input from working groups, expert groups, and task forces."
Although the mandate of the Arctic Council specifically excludes military security, Russia claims that an observer state like the UK must "recognize Arctic States’ sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the Arctic," and that the UK Foreign Office specifically committed to doing so in 2013.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Russia and Britain are not headed for war. Historically, the Russians love the British, and the British have no particular ill feelings towards any Russians except Putin and his cadre of officials who are going around poisoning people on British soil with the nerve agent Novichok. However, eastern Europe is extremely volatile, and it's possible at some point that Russia will be involved in a war with Ukraine or other east European countries, as has happened many times in the past few centuries. For that reason, Britain's decision to set up a new military base in northern Norway could be quite significant. Russia Today and US State Dept. and Arctic Council and Sputnik News (Russia) and Daily Express (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Oct-18 World View -- UK to challenge Russia in Arctic, at time of tensions over Skripal poisoning thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Oct-2018)
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The Sayings and Aphorisms of Confucius
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The University of North Florida announced that it will cut ties with the China-funded Confucius Institute on its campus. Others of the approximately 100 colleges and universities hosting Confucius Institutes are considering doing so as well, or have already done so.
Ostensibly, Confucius Institutes are apolitical partnerships between American and Chinese universities, giving American students opportunities to learn to speak Chinese or study abroad. But the Chinese themselves say that they serve as "an important part of China's overseas propaganda," and they also serve as outposts of China’s intelligence and surveillance operations, as FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to the US Senate in February.
In addition to the 100-plus Confucius Institutes in the US, China runs about 500 "Confucius Classrooms" at American K-12 schools. In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and other countries, China runs 1,500 Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, with 40% of them in the US, more than any other country.
The Confucian Institutes are one of the programs of Beijing's international coercive propaganda agency, the United Front Work Department (UFWD). Every aspect of the Confucian Institutes is tightly controlled by the Hanban agency, the Chinese Communist Party agency that oversees all Confucius Institutes. Teachers and teaching materials are all supplied by China. Taiwan and Tibet are portrayed as undisputed territories of China, with no alternate views permitted. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the one million Uighurs in re-education camps, the human rights abuses in China are all forbidden subjects.
The Pentagon has been working with Confucius Institutes in some colleges, and even co-funding some programs, in order to develop Chinese-speaking students. However, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in August, contains provisions barring any U.S. university from using Pentagon resources for any program involving Confucius Institutes. In many cases, this will force universities to choose between receiving funding the Pentagon and funding from Hanban. Folio Weekly and Washington Post (14-Aug) and Washington Examiner (29-Apr)
The Confucian Institutes really have nothing to do with Confucius, but if they were called the "Chinese Communist Propaganda Institutes," then they would be rejected. However, most Americans associate Confucius with wisdom, or cutesy aphorisms, so the use of the name Confucius Institutes has been a great success for China.
In recent weeks, I've been doing my own research on China's ancient philosophers, including Confucius, and this is a tentative summary of what I've learned so far.
Confucius lived around 500 BC, and was a contemporary of Sun Tzu, who wrote the Art of War, a book that is so popular that it's probably the closest thing that the Chinese have to the Bible.
Sun Tzu was a brilliant war strategist and tactician. From deception to beheadings, every tactic is on the table for winning wars. Compromise or mercy are never possible.
If Sun Tzu's work was the recipe for imperialist warfare, Confucius' work was the theology of imperialist warfare. Confucius lived at the time of the Zhou Dynasty, about five centuries after it had beaten the Shang Dynasty. How were the Zhou able to defeat the Shang? Much of Confucius' work is devoted to answer that question in a theological framework.
The Shang worshiped a heavenly ancestor called Shangdi ("the Lord on high"), and kings were permitted to rule under the power of this god. When the Zhou defeated the Shang, they replaced (or merged) Shang Di with their own god, Tian, a sky god, a "deity above who rules the Heavens."
Under the Zhou doctrine, a king is the Son of Heaven, and is allowed to rule under a Mandate from Heaven, provided that he rules reverently and virtuously. Thus, if the Zhou defeated the Shang, then the Shang king must have lost his Mandate from Heaven. An excerpt from an ancient history classic is the Zhou explanation of what happened:
"We do not presume to know and to say that the lords of Yin (Shang) received Heaven's Mandate for so many years. ... But they did not reverently attend to their virtue and so prematurely threw away the Mandate. ... Now our king has succeeded and received the Mandate. ... Being king, his position will be that of a leader of virtue. ... The Son of Heaven could not properly fulfill his functions unless his moral nature was pure and his conduct above reproach. Heaven could not be served by a tyrant or a debauchee, the sacrifices of such a ruler would be of no avail, the divine harmony would be upset, prodigies and catastrophes would manifest the wrath of Heaven."
Confucius formalized and strengthened this doctrine of Tian and the Mandate from Heaven. He wrestled with the same "theodicy" contradiction that every religion faces: If God created everything, the God created Good and Evil, so how could God be good if God created evil?
For Confucius, this contradiction and its apparent manifestation in the Zhou conquests, applies to Tian. He finds that Tian is an absolute power in the universe, and he accepts three assumptions:
Since Tian depends on human actors to implement its will, Confucius insists on moral, political, social, and even religious activism. Only through this activism will a society maintain a harmonious order.
When you look at the work of Sun Tzu and Confucius, and use their work to analyze modern events, you see that both philosophers lack any idea of a "peace conference" or a "United Nations." Since the Chinese king was the Son of Heaven and received its Mandate from Heaven to rule, it would not make sense to sue for peace with anyone else, because no one else had the Mandate from Heaven.
But if there's no peace, it's still possible to take advantage of a "peace process." Sun Tzu said that "All warfare is based on deception," and he advocated the use of deception first, and actual war as a last resort.
So for China today, the United Nations is not a tool to bring about peace, but a tool to be used with deception to win the war. For example, China treats international law with contempt, saying that its own law supercedes international law as in the South China Sea, where China is criminally violating international law, but still references international law when it favors China. This is a perfect example of deception and manipulation. China is contemptuous of international law, but still uses it as a tool of deception.
We might assume that the North Koreans are following the same kind of strategy, with the child dictator Kim Jong-un having received his own Mandate from Heaven. Kim will never denuclearize, and treats the peace talks with South Korea and Trump with contempt, but will still use them as tools to provide political pressure to get the sanctions lifted, and make fools of and humiliate the US, as his father did ten years ago. New World Encyclopedia and University of Tennesee and Wolfram Eberhard, History of China
Many people know nothing about Confucius except his sayings, whether or not he actually said them.
"Confucius say" sayings are often meant to be funny, and can often be found as sayings in fortune cookies served after meals in a Chinese restaurant. Here are some examples: "Confucius say: Man with one chopstick go hungry." or "Confucius say: Man who cut self while shaving, lose face. " or "Confucius say: Man who jump off cliff, jump to conclusion! " or "Confucius say: Man should not sleep with woman with more troubles than he have."
Those sayings are meant to be funny, but he probably never said them.
However, there is a large body of real Confucius sayings that carry a great deal of wisdom, even though they were written down 15 centuries ago. In fact, many of them have become common sayings. Here are some examples:
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Sep-18 World View -- University of N. Florida and Pentagon cut ties with China's Confucius Institutes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Sep-2018)
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North Korea denuclearization negotiations appear headed for another crisis
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia and China are starting to demand that the sanctions on North Korea be reduced.
As I've said for many months, the objective of North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un has been to get the sanctions removed, without having to denuclearize. His father was very successful at that, having resumed nuclear development when the sanctions were lifted, based on his promise to end nuclear development. The child dictator wants to prove that he's as good as his father at tricking and humiliating the West.
As I've said in the past, after they starved and viciously abused their own people for decades, based on a promise to make North Korea a great country, a world peer to the United States, it's my personal opinion that if Kim actually did denuclearize, then he would be shot dead by his own generals.
Since the beginning of the year, Kim has adopted a "charm offensive" strategy, working with the Russians, Chinese and South Koreans to put international pressure on the US administration to agree to reduce sanctions. He's taken easily reversible "confidence building steps," including destroying a nuclear test facility that could easily be rebuilt, and returning the remains of American Korean War soldiers, when he has thousands more. He's also suspended open testing for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, but he's continued development of these weapons and, even worse, is selling them to other countries.
At the UN Security Council meeting on Thursday, America's secretary of state Mike Pompeo repeated previous criticisms of Russia and China for violating the internationally agreed sanctions on North Korea, and said that the sanctions must be continued to maintain pressure:
"It is imperative for members of the United Nations to take that to heart. Enforcement of UN Security Council sanctions must continue vigorously and without fail until we realize the fully, final, verified denuclearization. The members of this council must set the example on that effort, and we must all hold each other accountable."
However, Wang Yi, China's foreign affairs minister, responded by saying the sanction measures could be "modified":
"A provision in the Security Council resolutions that the council is prepared to modify the sanction measures in light of the DPRK’s [North Korea’s] compliance. Now given the positive developments in the inter-Korean and DPRK- US relations, and the DPRK’s important pledges and actions on denuclearization, China believes that the Security Council needs to consider invoking in due course this provision to encourage the DPRK and other relevant parties to move denuclearization further ahead."
Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov added to Wang Yi's remarks by criticizing Western nations for "stubbornly" refusing to agree to reduce sanctions. He said that, "Any negotiation is a two-way street. Steps by the DPRK (North Korea) toward gradual disarmament should be followed by the easing of sanctions," and that the continued imposition of sanctions must not become “a hindrance” to dialogue between the two Koreas. CBS News and Sputnik News and Guardian (London) and Reuters (17-Sep)
The North Koreans have made some easily reversible "confidence building" concessions, as described above.
The US has also made an easily revisible concession: The US has suspended all joint military drills with the South Koreans.
Mike Pompeo is supposed to have another meeting with Kim Jong-un in the near future.
The major demand that the US will make is for Kim to provide a list of all nuclear weapon and ballistic missile development sites, and then to allow UN IAEA inspectors to visit the sites and verify that denuclearization is in progress. I would be shocked and surprised if Kim agreed to that.
The major demand that the North Koreans will make will be to sign a peace treaty formally ending the 1950s Korean War, and then to withdraw thousands of American troops from South Vietnam. I would be shocked and surprised if Trump agreed to that.
However, if both Kim and Trump shock and surprise me, then undoubtedly some agreement would be reached to ease some sanctions.
Trump claims, in the spirit of The Art of the Deal, that he expects North Korea to fully denuclearize by the end of 2019. I would be VERY shocked and surprised if that happened.
This situation has seemed so benign for months that almost nobody has been paying attention, especially with the distraction of people being thrown to the lions in the great Washington Colosseum.
However, my expectations haven't changed. At some point, there will be a renewal of the "North Korea" crisis, and the choice will be either war, or else allowing North Korea to build an arsenal of nuclear ballistic missiles pointed at the United States. AP and Asia Times
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Sep-18 World View -- China, Russia demand that that some North Korea sanctions be lifted thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Sep-2018)
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Clashes in Kashmir after Indian police brutally kill innocent shepherd
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Details are scarce, but Mohammad Saleem Malik, a 26 year old shepherd boy, was found dead in a courtyard by his family on Thursday morning, near his home in Srinigar, the capital city of Indian-controlled Kashmir. Two hours earlier, he had left his room and entered the cattle shed to check his sheeps and goats. Indian government security forces had been conducting a "cordon-and-search operation" (CASO), and allegedly fired indiscriminately at the neighborhood houses before dawn.
According to his father Muhammad Yaqoob Malik:
"My son was fond of rearing sheep and pigeons and never in his life he had picked up a stone in his hand [to fling at police]. Why was he killed when he was not a militant, with clean police record? Why was he killed when no militant was present in the area and there was no encounter at all?"
Clashes erupted soon after the news of the killing spread in the area with the locals alleging that Malik was killed in forces’ firing. In the ensuing exchange of fire, a militant was killed and three soldiers were wounded, one of whom died.
A Kashmir separatist group, the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), is calling for a shutdown of Kashmir on Friday. First Post (India) and Kashmir Watch and Rising Kashmir
In May of last year, with tit-for-tat violence between Kashmir separatist insurgents and Indian security forces escalating, Indian security forces launched a massive house-to-house sweep in Kashmir, using 3,000 security forces to root out terrorists.
Then in June Indian security forces launched "Operation All-Out." According to India said that this would "deliver a lethal blow to terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir with a long-term plan for a lasting peace in the trouble-torn Valley."
At the time that Operation All-Out was announced, Indian security forces had identified 128 militants in Kashmir who would be targeted.
However, that was then. Earlier this month, the list of militants kept by the Indian security forces had more than 300 names on it. According to a senior police officer:
"There has been a significant increase in the number of militants. The main reason for the high number of militants has been local recruitment since 2017. Last year 126 Valley youths picked up guns- which was the highest number since 2010 and this year over 130 have been inducted into militancy."
The significance of this statement is that it indicates a major change. In the past, militants came from Pakistan. In most cases, they were in Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based terrorist group that was formed in the 1990s by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to fight India in the disputed regions of Kashmir and Jammu. LeT was the perpetrator of the horrific "26/11" three-day attack on Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people and wounding hundreds more. ( "After Mumbai's '26/11' nightmare finally ends, India - Pakistan relations face crisis" from 2008)
The major change, as the police officer's statement indicates, is that militants are now being recruited indigenously. Most of them join Hizbul Mujahedeen (HM), a Kashmir-based terrorist group that has been leading the anti-Indian stone-throwing riots, triggered by the July 8 2016 death of HM leader Burhan Wani in a gunfight with the Indian army. Since then, thousands of Kashmiris have been blinded in one or both eyes by pellet guns used by Indian security forces, and thousands of youths have been arrested.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Kashmir is replaying previous generations of violence according to a fairly standard template. India's previous two generational crisis wars were India's 1857 Rebellion, which pitted Hindu nationalists against British colonists, and then the 1947 Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century, pitting Hindus versus Muslims, following the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan.
Now, as the survivors of the 1947 Partition War have almost all died off, leaving behind younger generations with no fear of repeating past disasters, Kashmir is repeating the violence of 1857 and 1947. Generational Dynamics predicts that Kashmir is returning to full-scale war, re-fighting the extremely bloody partition war of 1947. Tribune India and DailyO (India)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Sep-18 World View -- Number of Kashmir militants surges as India's 'Operation All-Out' fails thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Sep-2018)
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Today's major news from Europe: Meghan Markle closes a car door
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, may be ideologically on the left, but it's hard to criticize someone who is taking a global view for the good of mankind, and is spending his own money to try to solve world problems like poverty and HIV aids.
I met Bill Gates a few times during my past as a Senior Technology Editor and technology journalist. I found him to be a brilliant man at both marketing and technology. I recall digging into the code and functionality of Windows 95 when it came out in 1995 and being extremely impressed that so complex a product could work so well and in so many diverse environments.
So when Melinda Gates was interviewed at length on CNBC on Tuesday, I was curious to hear some specifics of her plans for how she and Bill were going to save the world, and to analyze what she said from the point of view of Generational Dynamics.
Like many people, she is completely oblivious to the growing nationalism and xenophobia in the world, to the growing military threats around the world, to the growing global financial crisis in countries around the world, and how these things completely negate her Pollyannaish view of the world, and how they make the investments she's proposals either impossible or else completely worthless if they occur, in this generational Crisis era.
I'll start with something she said near the end of the interview that really caught my attention: (my transcription):
As I traveled the world, I asked myself: is there anywhere in the world where we have true equality for women, and the answer is no, not even in the United States. ...One of the places that have 40% women parliamentarians is Rwanda. It's because President [Paul] Kagame said we will have 40% of parliamentarians. They're way over that now."
In fact it is true that over 50% of the members of parliament in Rwanda. Ms. Gates' point was that Paul Kagame is a great pro-woman humanitarian who has bravely taken the political step to make sure that there's gender equality in parliament.
But even someone without knowledge of generational theory can see that's not what's going on here. Rwanda is in a region riven by centuries of tribal war, particularly between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis. In a three month period in 1994, Hutus massacred close to a million Tutsis in the most brutal way.
I've described many times what happens in country after country in the decades following a crisis ethnic civil war. Whoever comes to power after the war uses brutal police power to suppress the opposition, using the excuse that a new civil war must be prevented. This has happened in DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroon, Thailand, Cambodia, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, and other places.
Paul Kagame was a Tutsi military leader who was killing Hutus in the 1980s, and continued doing so both before and after the 1994 genocide. This is a person who has perpetrated some of the most horrific things that one human being can do to another. Like many leaders in such countries, he's refusing to give up power, and he's using violence to suppress the opposition. Even today, there are reports that he's using terror attacks to subvert the Hutu government in Burundi. So he's no humanitarian, and if he supposedly supported gender equality. There must be something else going on.
An NPR article in 2016 described what happened:
"Following 100 days of slaughter in 1994, Rwandan society was left in chaos. The death toll was between 800,000 and 1 million. Many suspected perpetrators were arrested or fled the country. Records show that immediately following the genocide, Rwanda's population of 5.5 million to 6 million was 60 to 70 percent female. Most of these women had never been educated or raised with the expectations of a career. In pre-genocide Rwanda, it was almost unheard of for women to own land or take a job outside the home.The genocide changed all that. The war led to Rwanda's "Rosie the Riveter" moment: It opened the workplace to Rwandan women just as World War II had opened it to American women. ...
The call for equality was led not by thousands of women but by one man — President Paul Kagame, who has led the country since his army stopped the genocide. Kagame decided that Rwanda was so demolished, so broken, it simply could not rebuild with men's labor alone. So the country's new constitution, passed in 2003, decreed that 30 percent of parliamentary seats be reserved for women. The government also pledged that girls' education would be encouraged. That women would be appointed to leadership roles, like government ministers and police chiefs. Kagame vowed to not merely play catch-up to the West but leapfrog ahead of it."
So in a country whose population is 60-70% female, Paul Kagame sought to appoint women to high positions. So when Ms. Gates uses Rwanda as a model country to be emulated by other countries, you have to wonder what she's thinking, or whether she knows anything about Rwanda before the last six months.
I would assume the latter. I don't know anything personal about Ms. Gates, but I would assume that she's like most Americans, and thinks that "history always begins this morning."
The next question to ask is whether Rwanda is fundamentally different from other countries, besides having a lot of women in parliament. The same NPR article provides some answers:
"But even though the change was dramatic and swift, how deep was its impact? Can a country truly transform its core culture from the outside in?Justine Uvuza wondered that, and decided to find out. A Rwandan herself who had grown up in a refugee camp in Uganda and then moved back to Rwanda in 1994, after the genocide, she worked for a while for the Kagame government promoting Rwanda's pro-women policies. She was curious how much progress had been made. So when she was getting her Ph.D. at Newcastle University, she returned to Rwanda to interview female politicians about their lives — not just their public positions but their private lives, with their husbands and children. She found with rare exception that no matter how powerful these women were in public, that power didn't extend into their own homes.
"One told me how her husband expected her to make sure that his shoes were polished, the water was put in the bathroom for him, his clothes were ironed," Justine says. And this husband wanted not only his shoes laid out in the morning, but his socks placed on top of the shoes. And he wanted it done by his wife, the parliamentarian."
So really, having women in parliament is great for show, but it makes little difference in people's lives.
There are basic Generational Dynamics principles at work here. As I've written many times, it's a core principle of Generational Dynamics that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people. The attitudes of politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they represent the attitudes of the people.
It's certainly commendable that Bill and Melinda Gates want to spend their own money to promote gender equality. But I think that it's unfortunate that they're wasting their money, time and effort on programs that have a zero percent chance of succeeding.
Generational theory is not easy to understand, but Bill Gates is capable of doing so. Gates and his wife should focus their attention on programs that might actually work. NPR (29-Jul-2016) and Newcastle University (PDF,2014)
I'll give one more example from Ms. Gates' interview:
"There's a youth boom in Africa - 60% of the population is under the age of 25. If we invest in their health and their education, they'll lift up their economies. They have huge potential. They'll lift up the continent.But the converse could also happen. If we don't make those investments, you're going to see more HIV Aids, more deaths. So we need to keep our eye on the ball and make these investments, as a world. ...
I met women all over the world, and when I sit down and talk to them, in their homes, in their villages, in a township, and really listen to them ... they would say to me, "What about that tool, what about that [contraceptive] shot. Why can't I get it?" They would say, "I have five children, it's not fair to my youngest child for me to have another women."
Somebody has to answer those cries, and somebody has to rise above the politics, and say that this is important, has to be on the global agenda.
I'm Catholic, I had many discussions with my family, my parents, my siblings, with former priests and nums, and at the end of the day I decided, I use these tools, I counsel all three of my children, my sons, my daughter, to use these tools and know about them, and I thought I have to follow my conscience. Women's babies are dying because they're coming too quickly, and women's bodies can't sustain what's going on. So at the end of the day, I had to wrestle my conscience and my conscience says, this is the right thing to do."
These are great objectives. And perhaps making contraceptive shots available to women will will reduce population growth, especially if the husband also thinks it's unfair to his five children to have a sixth.
My personal opinion is that this kind of program will not work under any circumstances, because the rate of population growth is deeply embedded in the culture. Consider that in America there was a reduction in fertility before WW II, and then a Baby Boom after WW II. This had nothing to do with availability of contraceptives. There are other examples of this type as well.
But even if the program worked, the effort would be totally wasted. With nationalism and xenophobia increasing around the world in this generational Crisis era, the world is headed for a world war, and these contraceptive programs will simply fall off a cliff and be totally irrelevant.
This should not be too difficult for Bill and Melinda Gates to understand. Instead of wasting their effort on programs that a 100% probability of failure, they should devote their efforts to preparing for the world to come, after a world that has to be rebuilt by the 4-5 billion people who survive the world war, and then have to find their way when the Singularity occurs. CNBC
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In the last four or five years, I've noticed a major change in the commentary of financial experts and analysts on television. It used to be that the only view that was expressed was that the financial system had recovered nicely from the financial crisis of ten years ago, and that the worst that could happen is a mild recession, from which the economy would recover quickly.
Ironically, even that hasn't happened. There has been a bull market on Wall Street for years, much longer than history tells us is possible.
So now what I'm hearing more and more is that analysts are strongly hinting that a major financial crisis is coming.
In an interview on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday morning, JPMorgan's Mary Erdoes was asked whether there are things in the global economy that are too good to be true. She replied (my transcription):
Oh lots of things. I mean everything from housing prices in certain parts of the world, to currency prices in certain parts of the world.You can't possibly think we're in a normal world, when you have an $11 dollars that was thrown at the market to buy whatever, to keep things propped up.
Add to that a nice little tax reform in the United States of America to help that, and you have negative yields in 40% of europe. This is just not normal. You have not normal things, and not normal things don't end well.
The problem is all of this stress testing in the world isn't telling us what's going to manifest itself. next, because everything - it seems too benign, everyone is so comfortable, and that's exactly when you need to be the most uncomfortable."
Other panelists concurred, mentioned other issues: inflexibility of euro currency to meet crises, and closing of open borders.
I'm hearing this kind of thing a lot more these days. They clearly are expecting a major global financial crash, triggered by something completely unexpected - not a surprise to my readers. The S&P 500 Price/Earnings ratio is at 24.55, which is astronomical by historic standards, where the historic average is 14, and it was around 5-6 as recently as 1982, indicating that the stock market is in a huge bubble.
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Former "Suits" star Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, the new wife of Prince Harry, made big news on Wednesday when she closed a car door.
She was driven to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the opening of an exhibition of works from the Oceania region.
She stepped out of the car, and closed the door. She's supposed to wait for someone else to close the door for her.
This is now a major "moment" in the UK. The big question is: Will she close her own car door again the next time she's driven to an event? BBC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Sep-18 World View -- Bill and Melinda Gates take Pollyannaish view of Rwanda and rest of world thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Sep-2018)
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Violence escalates in North Kivu, DRC, along with Ebola
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The latest outbreak of Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was identified on August 1 in North Kivu province of DRC, near the borders with Rwanda and Uganda. Since then, Ebola has been spreading fairly rapidly. As of Tuesday, there are 119 confirmed cases, and 69 confirmed deaths from Ebola.
This outbreak has already become the seventh largest Ebola outbreak in history.
As we reported a month ago ( "25-Aug-18 World View -- In dreaded scenario, Ebola spreads to densely populated war zone in Congo"), Dr. Peter Salama, from the World Health Organization (WHO), said that WHO was extremely concerned because the disease was already spreading, and had reached an "area of very high insecurity," because it was in densely populated tribal war zone.
Now Salama's level of concern appears to have grown considerably. At a news conference on Tuesday he said:
"We are now extremely concerned that several factors may be coming together over the next weeks and months to create a potential perfect storm: A perfect storm of active conflict, limiting our ability to access civilians, distress by segments of the community, already traumatized by decades of conflict and of murder."
Salama is particularly concerned about attacks on ordinary civilians and on WHO personnel in and around the territory of Beni, which is the base of WHO's operation. “We’ve seen attacks now on August 24, September 3, 9, 11, 16, 21 and most recently and most dramatically September 22 in the city itself of Beni. The ADF in particular has enormous capabilities. They’ve been able to overrun entire FARDC-bases in and around Beni, they’ve been able to ambush (UN) forces." United Nations and Times Live (South Africa) and Reuters and AFP
The militia that Salama named as having "enormous capabilities" is the ADF, which is the Alliance of Democratic Forces, a group of Islamists formed in the late 1990s in western Uganda to fight the government of Uganda. Since then they've taken their mayhem and murder to North Kivu province in DRC, and joined with other militia groups, as well as elements of Congo's own army. The UN was particularly stunned in December of last year, when the ADF attacked UN blue helmet peacekeepers, killing 15 and wounding 54 in one evening.
The fighting in North Kivu has been escalating in all six territories of North Kivu, according to the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR. Thousands of civilians have fled their burned out villages, bringing reports of brutal attacks. It is estimated that more than a million people are displaced in North Kivu. An estimated half a million people have been forced from their homes this year alone.
The WHO's Dr. Salama mentioned a "perfect storm" of multiple risks. One of those risks is attacks by the ADP and other armed militias. A second risk is that politicians are attempting to exploit the situation, with elections scheduled for December.
A third risk is "pockets of reluctance, refusal and resistance" by civilians contacted by WHO workers. Many of the new cases of Ebola are being generated by people who are refusing to accept an Ebola vaccination. On Monday 80 percent of Ebola contacts — people at risk of developing the disease and so requiring monitoring — and three suspected cases in and around Beni could not be reached for disease monitoring. This kind of contact is the only way to stop the further spread of Ebola. If WHO workers cannot perform vaccinations or contact tracing, and cannot isolate people who have already contracted the disease, there is nothing to stop it from spreading rapidly.
Salama says that neighboring Uganda is now facing an “imminent threat”, and social media posts were conflating Ebola with criticism of the DRC government and the United Nations and “a range of conspiracy theories”, which could put health workers at risk.
WHO currently has no plans to evacuate its health workers, but that could change if the danger to them increases. "If WHO and its partners had to leave North Kivu ... we would have grave concerns that this outbreak would not be able to be well controlled in the coming weeks or months." UNHCR and WHO Situation Reports for DRC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Sep-18 World View -- World Health Organization fears 'perfect storm' could spread Ebola rapidly in DR Congo thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Sep-2018)
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Russia blames Israel when Syria shoots down Russian plan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Israeli security cabinet will meet in urgent session on Tuesday over the crisis in relations between Israel and Russia, a day after Russia officially blamed Israel because Syrian surface to air missiles shot down a Russian reconnaissance plane on September 17, killing all 15 Russians onboard.
On September 17, Israeli F-16 warplanes were carrying out airstrikes in Syria to prevent Iran from deploying advanced weapons that the Syrian regime or Lebanon's Hezbollah could use to strike Israel. Earlier this month, an Israeli official admitted that Israel had carried out more than 200 attacks against Iranian targets in Syria in the last two years.
The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad attempted to use an an S-200 anti-aircraft missile battery, previously supplied by the Russians, to shoot down the Israeli warplanes, but instead shot down a Russian Ilyushin Il-20 (IL-20) reconnaissance plane, killing all 15 Russian service members onboard.
Shortly after the incident occurred, Russia's president Vladimir Putin said that the shootdown was caused by a "series of tragic mistakes."
But on Sunday, Russia's Defense Ministry said:
"Objective data says that the actions of Israeli pilots, which led to the death of 15 Russian military personnel, point to either lack of professionalism or criminal negligence. This is why we believe that the Russian Il-20 aircraft tragedy is solely the fault of the Israeli Air Force and those who made decisions concerning such actions. ...This is an extremely ungrateful response to all that Russia has done for Israel and the Israeli people recently."
The Russians describe how extremely clever and tricky Israeli pilots flew into the region and out again, tricking the hapless Syrians into shooting the Russian reconnaissance plane before they even knew what they were doing. The Foreign Ministry continued:
"The Israeli pilot could not but understand that since the Il-20 aircraft has a far larger radar cross-section compared to an F-16 jet, it would be a preferred target for air defenses. [Israel is aware that] Russian and Syrian militaries use different friend or foe identification systems so Syrian radars could have identified the Il-20 as a group of Israeli fighter jets."
So, in other words, the Syrians couldn't identify Russian planes using friend or foe identification systems, and Syrian radar operators couldn't tell the difference between a Russian IL-20 reconnaissance plane and an Israeli F-16 warplane, even though the F-16 is one-third as big as the IL-20. So the Syrians shot down the Russian plane, and therefore, the shootdown was "solely the fault of the Israeli Air Force." Those Israeli pilots were pretty clever, weren't they?
Even some Russian commentators are saying that the Russian explanation is ridiculous, and that the fault is with the total incompetence of the Syrians. According to sarcastic commentaries in the the liberal Russian media Echo Moskvy:
"How could the Syrian air defense, upon seeing on their radars a large IL-20 coming to a low speed landing, release the S-200 on a small Israeli Air Force fighter, who was in same air space sector?! Are there brainless ‘dummies’ sitting behind the radars?""We always blame someone else. Anyone but us. [The Boeing MH17 passenger plane] was hit by Ukraine, the British themselves poisoned the Skripals, White Helmets poured chlorine on the Syrian insurgents, sanctions were imposed by Russophobes, doping was planted by other Russophobes. ...
With whom have we not yet quarreled? Who else is still not to blame for all our troubles? Israel - it is now on the line. Let's go after the Jews! Moreover, our people have long suspected that the true culprits of all misfortunes are the Jews and the Masons who joined them."
A growing number of Russians are opposing Russia's involvement in the war in Syria, and so Putin cannot afford to admit that it was the incompetence of the Syrian military and the Russian military that led to the deaths of the 15 Russian soldiers. Tass (Moscow, 23-Sep) and Reuters (4-Sep) and The Hill and Echo Moskvy (Trans)
After saying that Syria shooting down a Russian plane was "solely the fault of the Israeli Air Force", Russia's defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Mondayk that advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems will be supplied to Syria within two weeks. According to Shoigu:
"The S-300 is capable of intercepting air threats at a range of more than 250 kilometers and simultaneously hitting several aerial targets. Russia will also jam satellite navigation, on-board radars and communication systems of combat aircraft, which attack targets in the Syrian territory, in the regions over the waters of the Mediterranean Sea bordering with Syria."
This announcement has alarmed Israel's government. Israel's president Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday initiated a phone conversation with Putin to attempt to reverse the decision. However, Putin rejected the plea, saying that "Russia’s decisions to strengthen combat capacities of Syrian air defense meet the current situation and are geared, first of all, to avert any potential threat to the lives of Russian servicemen who are fighting against international terrorism."
National Security Advisor John Bolton called the decision “a significant escalation” of the seven-year war, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday he expected to meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss the matter.
The S-300 systems could potentially be a game-changer in the potential conflict between Iran and Israel. Israel has sought for years to convince the Russians not to supply S-300s to the Syrians or the Iranians, and Russia has cooperated with the Israelis to the extent of permitting them to conduct airstrikes against Iranian assets in Syria which could threaten Israel.
But right now it looks like that cooperation may be changing. The S-300 missiles, combined with jamming of electronic communications, will make it easier for Iran to deploy weapons in Syria or Lebanon that could be used by the Iranians or Hezbollah to attack Israel.
Israel does not have the capability to defeat Russia's electronic jamming technology, but some reports indicate that the US does, and Israel may request aid from the US. Reuters and Debka (Israel) and Tass (Moscow) and Al-Jazeera
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John J. Xenakis is author of the book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East, available on Amazon for $5 for the digital version or $7 for the paperback version.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Sep-18 World View -- Russia will supply S-300 systems to Syria, and jam Israeli communications thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Sep-2018)
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Yameen's defeat is also a defeat for China's 'debt trap diplomacy'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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People in the Maldives islands today are in something of a shock, as the results of Sunday's presidential elections appear to indicate that the incumbent president Abdulla Yameen has decisively lost to his opponent, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.
With more than 80% of the ballots counted on Sunday night, Solih was winning by 58-41% of the vote. The results will be announced officially on Friday, but this lead 17% lead is thought to be insurmountable.
The Maldives is a 1,200 island archipelago in the India Ocean at the southern tip of India. More than 260,000 of the Maldives' 400,000 people were eligible to vote at about 400 polling stations across the islands. Voters also stood in long lines in Malaysia, the U.K., India and Sri Lanka, where the opposition had encouraged overseas Maldivians to participate.
The reason that everyone was expecting Yameen to win easily is because he's used violence, human rights abuse, and suppression to guarantee his victory. He jailed many of his political opponents on phony "terrorism" charges, and rolled back press freedom.
Some political opponents have been in jail since 2015, including Yameen's own half-brother. In February of this year, the Supreme Court ruled that they should be set free. Yameen first announced that he would honor the court's decision, but then changed his mind. He declared a national state of emergency, and then sent the police to arrest two of judges. The other three judges then decided that they would reverse their decision and leave the political opponents in jail.
On Saturday evening, the night before the election, police raided the main campaign office of the opposition presidential candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih on Saturday, saying they had acted to prevent "illegal activities."
Even so, Sunday's election went a lot better than anyone expected, without a lot of obvious election-rigging, because the United States and the European Union had threatened sanctions. The European Union said in July it was ready to impose travel bans and asset freezes on individuals if the situation did not improve. The US State Department this month warned it would "consider appropriate measures" if the election was not free and fair.
Solih declared victory on Sunday evening:
"This is a moment of happiness, a moment of hope, a moment of history. For many of us this has been a difficult journey, a journey that has led to a prison cells or years of exile.It's been a journey of a breakdown of government institutions. But it's also been a journey that has ended at the ballot box. I must thank all those people who have struggled for this cause."
However, Yameen has not made any statement. There's a great deal of tension and a sense of crisis in Malé, the capital city, because many people are afraid that Yameen will do something violent in the next couple of days to reverse the election results. Mihaaru.com (Maldives) and Washington Post and Al Jazeera and CNN
Both Sri Lanka and the Maldives, both in the Indian Ocean just south of the tip of India, have long had close relationships with India. However, both countries have become closer to China in the last ten years, alarming India.
The debt trap story of Sri Lanka has been told many times. China funded the development of Sri Lanka's Hambantota seaport, and when Sri Lanka couldn't pay its debt, China took control of the seaport and substantial land in the region, creating a large enclave of Chinese workers and their families.
Many in the Maldives are acutely aware of what happened to Sri Lanka, of course, and they're afraid that Abdulla Yameen has already put their country on the same course, with a debt trap of its own. Already, China has loaned $830 million for an upgrade to the airport. The Chinese are also building a 25-story apartment complex and a hospital. These Chinese projects account for some 70% of the country's total debt, and $92 million a year in payments to China, roughly 10% of the entire budget.
Then there's the question of corruption. In 2014-15, Yameen's tourism minister leased out more than 50 islands and lagoons to developers without public bidding. There are signs that members of Yameen's own family are heavily involved in China's infrastructure projects.
We've written about many countries where the leaders refuse to step down, and corruption is often the reason. Typically, the leader's family and cronies benefit from fat kickbacks and bribes, but those are never revealed as long as the leader is in power, and can use violence and human rights abuses to suppress that information. But once somebody else takes power, the corruption can be revealed, and the cronies become eligible to be jailed or executed.
So that's another reason why some people fear a major crisis in the Maldives in the next few days. If Yameen has followed this corruption path, and there are signs that he has, then turning power over to Solih puts himself, his family and his cronies at risk of losing their freedom or their lives. Guardian (London) and BBC and Foreign Policy (21-Mar) and AFP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Sep-18 World View -- Maldives in crisis as China-backed incumbent president Yameen loses election thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Sep-2018)
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Attack blamed on a local Arab terrorist group, al-Ahvazi separatist movement
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Dozens of people, including women and children, were killed in a terrorist attack on a military parade in Iran, in the city of Ahvaz, the capital city of Khuzestan province, which is in southwest corner of Iran, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf.
The attack occurred during a military parade marking the beginning of the Sacred Defense Week, a nationwide ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the start of the Iran/Iraq war that began with an invasion by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and continued from 1980-88. Some 1.5 million people were killed in the Iran/Iraq war, and it ended in 1988 with Saddam Hussein using the WMD mustard gas on Kurds and Iranians.
The attack targeted members of the Iran's powerful paramilitary group, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and their families. Four gunmen dressed in fake IRGC uniforms sprayed random gunfire into a crowd of marching soldiers, bystanders and government officials. The military parade was being televised live, saw Iranians saw marching soldiers suddenly scramble to flee, or fall to the ground to escape gunfire, many of them shielding children.
Ahvaz is the capital city of Khuzestan province, which has the country's largest oil reserves. With its proximity to Iraq and the presence of a large Arab minority, the area has seen ethnic violence in the past. It was also a frontline in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, as Saddam Hussein was trying to gain control of Khuzestan province and its oil wealth. Mehr News (Tehran) and AP and Press TV (Tehran)
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei immediately said "This crime is a continuation of the plots of the regional states that are puppets of the United States, and their goal is to create insecurity in our dear country."
The "regional states" that Khamenei alluded to are Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made a similar claim in a tweet:
"Terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime have attacked Ahvaz. Children and journos among casualties. Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable for such attacks. Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of Iranian lives."
At some level, these accusations are justified. Ministers from Saudi Arabia and UAE have at times incendiary statements targeting Iran, just as Iran has threatened Saudi Arabia and UAE.
A year ago, John R. Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, made a proposal to President Trump get out of the nuclear deal with Iran, which was a subject still under discussion at that time. Bolton recommended going beyond simple abrogation of the agreement to take steps "to limit Iran’s malicious activities and global adventurism." These actions included:
Bolton's plan, which he says is for discussion purposes only, is extremely belligerent and threatening, and specifically recommends providing assistance to groups that have had terrorist elements, including Khuzestan Arabs, Pakistan's Balochis, and Iraq's Kurds.
Furthermore, although is not generally believed that the US funded any such groups, some analysts believe that Saudi Arabia has funded Khuzestan Arabs.
Iran's accusations against Israel and the United States are made entirely without evidence. However, Iranian officials reflexively blame everything on Israel and the United States, and in today's febrile international environment, it's not surprising that Iranian officials make those claims. Times of Israel and National Review (28-Aug-2017)
Two groups claimed credit for the attack.
The first to claim credit was ISIS. But ISIS claims credit for many attacks in which it played no part, in order to puff up its own brand name. So the ISIS claim is not generally believed.
An Arab nationalist separatist group, the Patriotic Arab Democratic Movement in Ahwaz (al-Ahwaz or al-Ahvaziya or al-Ahvazi) also claimed responsibility for the assault, and their claim is generally believed. A statesman issued by a spokesman said that the attack on Saturday "was in response to the repression of Ahvazi Arabs. We do not have a choice but to carry out a resistance."
Little is known about the al-Ahvazi, except that it's an Arab separatist group based in the city of Ahvaz, the site of Saturday's attack. It's believed to be funded by Saudi Arabia.
In the past, the group has attacked only unguarded pipelines, so this is a major escalation by the group.
However, the IRGC made its own escalation last week, attacking Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq with missiles. Saturday's attack is almost a mirror image of last week's missile attack on the Kurds, so this may be a tit-for-tat escalation.
Some analysts are suggesting that Saturday's attack was the Saudis laying a trap for Iran. According to this conspiracy theory, the Saudis would like Iran to retaliate militarily in some way, to create a wider war, forcing the United States military to get involved. My response to this suggestion is the usual one: Be careful what you wish for. Times of Israel and Guardian (London)
John J. Xenakis is author of the book, Iran's Struggle for Supremacy: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East, available on Amazon for $5 for the digital version or $7 for the paperback version.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Sep-18 World View -- Gunmen massacre IRGC soldiers and their families during military parade in Ahvaz, Iran thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Sep-2018)
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China's claims to the South China Sea are amazingly vacuous
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Two weeks ago, the HMS Albion, a British Royal Navy flagship amphibious assault ship, was traveling through the South China Sea, en route from Tokyo to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam. On August 31, the ship exercised its "freedom of navigation" rights as it passed near the Paracel Islands. The Paracel Islands have been ruled by the courts to be in international waters, but China has used military force to annex them, in clear violation of international law. China immediately launched a military challenge in the form of a frigate and two helicopters, although both sides remained calm.
However, the Albion's freedom of navigation operation continues to trigger hysterical, irrational threats by the Chinese. In the aftermath of the incident, China made the usual threats, and these statements have been growing more hysterical and threatening as time goes on.
China's embassy in London issued this statement:
"The [Paracel Islands are] an inherent part of the Chinese territory. In accordance with the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, the Chinese government promulgated the baseline of the territorial sea of the [Paracel Islands] in May, 1996. The relevant behavior of the British warship violated Chinese law and relevant international law and infringed upon China's sovereignty. China is firmly opposed to this. We have lodged stern representations with the British side and expressed our strong dissatisfaction.The Chinese side strongly urges Britain to stop this kind of provocation lest it should undermine the overall picture of bilateral ties as well as regional peace and stability. China will continue to take all necessary measures to safeguard its sovereignty and security."
The claim that the Paracel Islands are an inherent part of Chinese territory is really laughable, as I'll explain below. China has NO sovereignty there.
China's Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming has said that the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea has never been a problem, warning that no one should underestimate China's determination to uphold "peace and stability" in the region:
"Yet to everyone’s confusion, some big countries outside the region did not seem to appreciate the peace and tranquility in the South China Sea. They sent warships and aircraft all the way to the South China Sea to create trouble. ...This was a serious infringement [of China's sovereignty]. It threatened China's security and put regional peace and stability in jeopardy.
"Freedom of navigation is not a license to do whatever one wishes. ...
"Such 'freedom' must be stopped. Otherwise the South China Sea will never be tranquil."
This is a military threat. The ambassador claims that it's about warships making trouble, but it's also about fishing boats and oil. China has repeatedly used military force to prevent Vietnam and the Philippines from fishing in international waters, and as we recently reported, China threatened war with the Philippines if the latter drills for oil in its own territorial waters.
In the last five years, islands near the Philippines have turned into Chinese military bases, bristling with radar domes, shelters for missiles, and warplane runways.
In 2015, Xi stood in the Rose Garden at the White House and promised, "there is no intention to militarize" the South China Sea, which is exactly what happened. Xi's lie is standard Chinese policy, as advised by 1980s Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping: "Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."
But since 2015, China has completely abandoned Deng's advice, and is now openly militaristic and threatening, and preparing to launch a war.
According to a Pentagon assessment, China's military bases in the Spratly Islands will be completed by the end of the year, and presumably ready for full-scale war. The only question is what will China do next -- take immediate military action, or else start building military bases in Scarborough, in Philippines territorial waters, an act of war in itself.
In May, U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. Philip Davidson said, "In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States."
China does not recognize international law except when it favors China. China believes that its own law supersedes international law. China has been pursuing the Nazi Lebensraum objective, at least since the time of Chiang Kai-shek after World War II. The Chinese Communist Party view of Han Racial Superiority is no different than the Nazi view of the Aryan Master Race.
The "freedom of navigation operations" (FONOPs) are being conducted by the US, Britain, Australian, and Japan. There's a temptation just to abandon them, and just let China have its way. But then China would just declare victory, and make further demands, prohibiting any other country's vessels of any kind to pass through the South China Sea without explicit permission of the Chinese.
So the Chinese make their hysterical statements and military threats to "prove" their claims. The FONOPs are necessary to refute China's hysterical statements and military threats. This is exactly the kind of tit-for-tat escalation that leads to war during a generational Crisis era.
The same thing is happening with trade policy between the US and China. Neither the Trump administration nor Xi Jinping is going to back down. Perhaps some intermediary can work for a truce of some kind, but it's more likely that the tit-for-tat trade escalations will also continue.
As I've written in the past, Generational Dynamics predicts that we're headed for full-scale war with China with 100% certainty, and Donald Trump is well aware of this. Many of his policies, which are totally inscrutable and incomprehensible to the media, make perfect sense when you realize that they're intended to try to prevent a world war. Preventing a world war is impossible, but I'm not going to criticize Trump for trying. Chinese Embassy in UK and Xinhua and NY Times and South China Morning Post
As we all know, in 2016 the Philippines won a historic case in the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague thoroughly humiliating China by ruling that all of China's activities in the South China Sea are illegal and in violation of international law.
The Chinese ambassador's statement quoted above says that "the British warship violated Chinese law and relevant international law and infringed upon China's sovereignty." China has no sovereignty in the South China Sea. China's use of the phrase "relevant international law" is laughable, since China believes itself superior to international law.
In recent weeks, I've been doing my own research on China's claims to the South China Sea.
First, let's address the name, "South China Sea." This does not mean that China owns it, any more than India owns the Indian Ocean. The name South China Sea was invented by Westerners, around 1900. Prior to that, different countries used various names, including Cham sea, Luzon sea, Clove sea, South sea, East sea, and West Philippine sea. According to historian Philip Bowring:
"Do not imagine that the term “South China Sea” ever implied Chinese ownership. It is a Western construction that dates to about 1900. Previously, European maps referred to it as the China Sea, and before that as part of the Indian Sea. When the Portuguese arrived there in the early sixteenth century they called it the Cham Sea, after the maritime kingdom of coastal Vietnam. Other names at various times include Luzon Sea and (by early Arab traders) the Clove Sea. To China it has long been the South Sea and to Vietnamese the East Sea. The Philippines now refers to it as the West Philippine Sea.“Malay seas” is another term that has been applied to it and its immediate neighbors, the Java, Sulu, and Banda seas. The South China Sea itself is predominantly a Malay sea, as defined by the culture and language group of the majority of people living along its shores. Until European imperialism from the sixteenth century onward gradually snuffed out these trade-based kingdoms and sultanates, they were the region’s principal traders."
The Chinese claim sovereignty going all the way to the Han Dynasty in the 2nd century BC. Once again, this is laughable.
Starting from the beginning of the first millennium BC, there were Malay-Polynesian people settling in all the Pacific islands from Madagascar to Taiwan, conducting trade. This continued through most of the 1st and 2nd millennium AD.
Ironically, China had no interest in these islands throughout this period, and in fact discouraged its own traders from venturing out, preferring to wait for foreign traders to come to China.
China was busy looking westward, conquering Central Asian lands, including the Tibetans and the Uighur Turks. Today, these ethnic groups the ones that China is treating as violently as possible. It's even now emerging that China has locked up a million Uighurs in reeducation camps, and has separated Uighur children from their parents and locked them up in indoctrination camps.
This is standard Chinese practice. During Mao's Great Leap Forward, 500 million peasants were taken out of their homes and put into communes, with children, wives and husbands all living separately. Husbands and wives were allowed to be alone only at certain times of the month and only for brief periods. All workers took part in ideological training sessions. The purpose was to turn the population into a giant machine, proving that Communism was better than anything else. It was a disaster, resulting in tens of millions of deaths. Now the Chinese are using the same techniques on the Uighurs, though with different objectives, but just as likely to end in disaster.
Significantly, China's historical conquests were all to the west, but never to the east. China tried to conquer Korea, but failed. China apparently made no attempt to conquer the Philippines the way they conquered the Uighurs. If they had, then the Chinese claim to the South China Sea might actually have some validity.
So the historical evidence indicates that China wanted absolutely nothing to do with the South China Sea until recently. It was only after WW II that they decided that they had gotten enough Lebensraum to the west, and now wanted Lebensraum to the east. They backed up their claims by dredging up old maps and documents that were supposedly created centuries ago, but those are meaningless. If having a map of something means you own it, then the British Geological Survey owns the whole world. National Geographic (18-Jun-2014) and New York Review of Books (13-Sep-2017) and Ancient History Encyclopedia
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Sep-18 World View -- China threatens multiple Western nations militarily over South China Sea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(22-Sep-2018)
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Myanmar (Burma) and China agree to build China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC)
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Earlier this month, Myanmar (Burma) signed a series of memos of understanding (MOUs) for joint construction with China to build the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The CMEC will focus on 12 areas including basic infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, finance, human resource development and telecommunications.
According to the CMEC proposal, construction will begin with 24 projects costing $2 billion at the beginning, increasing later. The corridor will start from Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan Province. It will continue for 1,700-kilometers, through Myanmar’s major economic hubs, ending at Myanmar's deep sea port in Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State on the Bay of Bengal, leading to the Indian Ocean.
The project will create thousands of jobs for Burmese workers, but it will provide far larger benefits for Chinese companies and workers. The proposal claims that the CMEC would allow a direct flow of Chinese goods into the southern and western regions of Myanmar and that Chinese industries could transfer into Myanmar in order to abate the rising labor cost and overcapacity of China’s industries. It said that Myanmar would become a major trade hub for Chinese goods, between China, Southeast Asia and South Asia.
Thus, the proposal indicates that this will be a huge boon for China's industries. China is already developing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), connecting Xinjiang province in northwest China through Pakistan to the Gwadar port and the Indian ocean. CMEC would provide a second corridor for transporting Chinese goods to the Indian Ocean, this time from Yunnan province in southwest China.
CPEC and CMEC provide two routes to the Indian Ocean, thus reducing China's reliance on the Malacca straits — the narrow passage that links the Indian Ocean with the Pacific, and which is dominated by the United States. Global Times (China) and The Diplomat and The Irrawaddy (6-Jul)
Since November 2017, when China announced the proposal to build CMEC, Myanmar's public and media have raised a number of concerns.
First, the CMEC project runs through ethnic conflict zones in Shan and Kachin states near the border with China, and and in Rakhine State, near the border with Bangladesh, where ethnic Rohingyas have been subjected to genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Burmese army. The project could provoke further conflicts in these ethnic areas, and even subject the project and the Chinese workers to terrorist attacks. This is already happening in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, affecting the CPEC project.
Second, the Burmese public is very aware of the "debt trap" issue, where China funds the infrastructure project with billions of dollars that have to be paid back, or else forfeit land and infrastructure that has been put up as collateral for the loans. The Burmese are very well aware Sri Lanka lost its $1 billion Hambantota seaport in exactly that way, and now the seaport and a substantial amount of land around the seaport are occupied by the Chinese and thousands of Chinese workers.
As I've described in the past, China structures the aid agreements without concern for whether the loan can be repaid, since China then has the option of taking control of the country's infrastructure in case of default.
As I explained, it's actually worse than that. China loans the money to the country, and requires that it only be used to pay the salaries of Chinese workers, and to purchase parts and equipment from Chinese factories. So the money is immediately returned to China, but still has to be repaid, so the country is effectively forced to repay the loan twice. After default, and the Chinese take control of the infrastructure project, there is an enclave of Chinese workers and their families who will be there forever.
Myanmar's Kyaukphyu seaport is not the only project facing debt-trap concerns. For the CMEC agreement, there are industrial zones, railways, roads and other infrastructure projects to be built along the corridor for which Myanmar cannot find financing.
In a bit of black humor, Ning Jizhe, head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) claimed that China's BRI projects are not a debt trap. He said the countries with debt problems have long-standing high debt levels which shouldn’t be blamed on the BRI. But of course it's exactly people with debt problems that loan sharks and payday loan operators prey on by offering extortionary loans and then sending thugs out to collect the loans in whatever way they can.
Myanmar's government in fact dropped a couple of projects related to the Kyaukphyu seaport in July, in order to reduce the amount of debt. However, the initial loan will still be $2 billion.
However, there are several reasons why Myanmar felt forced to go ahead with CMEC proposal, even though it's almost impossible that the debt will be repaid.
First, Myanmar is an economically weak country which, even in the best of times, is unable to borrow money due to lack of transparency in its government expenses and its relationship with China. According ton one analyst, "Raising capital overseas will also likely be challenging given that foreign investors will likely find it difficult to determine Myanmar’s creditworthiness due to the lack of information."
Second, the United States is imposing sanctions on Myanmar, and Australia is considering doing the same, because of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas in the last seven years. Myanmar has been extremely successful in its genocide and ethnic cleansing efforts. Genocide and ethnic cleansing efforts by Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Joseph Kabila in DR Congo have not yet been successful, and are still ongoing. But Myanmar appears to have pretty much completed the job.
The sanctions mean that whatever Myanmar's chances of borrowing money internationally in the past, it will be almost impossible after the sanctions are imposed. The threat of sanctions is isolating Myanmar even further, so that its closest friend in China, where government officials really don't care about such things as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
So if the word "trapped" applies to any country, then it certainly applies to Burma. China will certainly use its leverage to control policies and developments in Burma in whatever way it feels necessary, and will apparently receive full cooperation. The Irrawaddy (Burma) and Myanmar Times (7-Jul) and The Hindu
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Sep-18 World View -- Myanmar signs 'debt trap' agreement with China in response to Rohingya genocide censure thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(21-Sep-2018)
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The international #MeToo movement continues to harm women
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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We're told that the #MeToo movement is becoming an increasingly global phenomenon.
In May, the International Labor Organization held a conference to debate whether or not to legislate for a global convention on sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. Thousands of women in many countries have signed a letter urging international legislation, and saying that a job should never ever include sexual harassment, exploitation, coercion or abuse.
When I wrote about the #MeToo movement late last year, I described how much it was hurting women, just as women in the workplace were enormously harmed by the 1991 hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, where Anita Hill accused Thomas of asking her out when they were both single and of telling her a couple of dirty jokes. ( "7-Dec-17 World View -- International #MeToo movement generates backlash against women from 'Mike Pence rule'")
Just as the Anita Hill accusations damaged women in the workplace for a decade, because many men didn't want to work with women, the #MeToo movement is having a similar effect today.
According to a recent survey, 63% of women are "How concerned ... about men being falsely accused of sexual assault and harassment." The same survey showed that 60% of women are "concerned ... about the #MeToo movement causing women to be denied professional opportunities because men are reluctant to work with them."
This corresponds to what I found talking to men in the 1990s, and talking to men today. Earlier this year, after several MeToo scandals broke, one man told me that "working with a woman is like working with an unexploded land mine -- you never know when you'll say the wrong thing a trigger an explosion."
Women need experienced men to be mentors, but today you can't turn on the television without hearing some feminist saying that all older men are automatically guilty, and all should be punished. Hatred of older men is rampant today.
And men know this. Researcher Sylvia Ann Hewlett at the Center for Talent Innovation found that men aren’t comfortable taking female protégés under their wings. "Our research shows that some 64% of senior men avoid solo interactions with junior women because they fear rumors about their motives." And as I said, fearing rumors about the men's motives isn't the half of it, as the quote above about the land mine illustrates.
In my lifetime, I've seen feminist politicians do enormous damage to women. It's OK with them that Bill Clinton allegedly violently raped seven women, but Clarence Thomas committed a crime by telling a dirty joke. That's completely screwed up, and it's feminists who are screwed up, and it's women that they're damaging. Guardian (London) and Law.com and Vox and World Economic Forum
If the #MeToo movement in general is a circus, then the circus act going on in Washington today is disgusting and pathetic beyond belief.
There's a woman, Christine Blasey Ford accusing a Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, of having attempted a failed sexual assault when they were in high school thirty years ago. This is the kind of pathetic situation that makes so many Americans completely disgusted with politicians and the media, and makes one wonder how the country will ever survive.
There are some statistics about rape that can clarify this situation, but which feminists don't talk about. I'll get to these statistics below.
I spent much of the 1990s decade doing research for a book on gender issues called Fraternizing with the Enemy - A book on gender issues for men and for women who care about men. I researched the whole range of gender issues - divorce, domestic violence, rape, teen motherhood, sexual harassment, child abuse, incest, including detailed discussions of the discussions of Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton, and the "victims," including Anita Hill and Juanita Broaddrick. The book was based on thousands of interviews and online conversations, as well as extensive research into such things as "feminist legal theory" and "feminist social theory."
The book is available as a free PDF, on my download page, http://generationaldynamics.com/download/.
So here are the most important facts about the Kavanaugh situation, as I understand them:
Most people think that either Ford or Kavanaugh must be lying, but that's not true. There's a perfectly reasonable scenario in which both are telling the truth. NBC News
So here are the statistics about rape that feminists don't talk about:
It's this last statistic that may be relevant here. 25% is a very high number, and it's plausible that Ford was assaulted in the way she described, but not by Kavanaugh.
Based on all I've heard about the sincere statements from both Ford and Kavanaugh, a misidentification by Ford seems extremely likely to have happened. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation, and it would mean that both Ford and Kavanaugh are telling the truth, as they know it.
The above statistics about rape were not pulled out of the air. We know these figures because of a remarkable development that occurred in the 1990s -- the use of DNA evidence to identify rapists. In many cases in the 1980s, a man was convicted of rape simply because some woman accused him, and feminists would pipe up and say, "Women are never wrong about rape."
In the 1990s, Barry Scheck's Innocence Project was able to go back and perform DNA tests on the rape kits that had been preserved. Of the first 18,000 DNA tests, 5,000 accused suspects were eliminated -- 27.8%.
Here's a quote from my book, describing a story that was widely publicized in the 1990s:
"One disturbing story was presented on PBS's Frontline. In 1985, Ronald Cotton, a black man with a record, was convicted of raping two women, based on an identification by one of the victims, Jennifer Thomson, who was a very convincing and compelling witness during the trial.In 1995, DNA tests were performed, and Cotton was exonerated and set free. Who was the real rapist? DNA tests showed it was Bobby Poole, someone whom Jennifer had actually watched testify in court, but who was excluded based on her eyewitness testimony.
According to Jennifer, "I remember feeling just an overwhelming sense of just guilt that if, indeed, we had made a mistake and I had contributed to taking away 11 years of this man's life.... I felt so bad. I fell apart."
But amazingly, she still doesn't recognize Poole as the man who actually raped her. She adds, "I have to accept the answer that's been given to me and put faith in our system that the DNA tests, the science, tells me we had the wrong guy. I just wish I had some answers. I still see Ronald Cotton. And I'm not saying that to point a finger. I'm just saying that's who I see. And I would love to erase that face out of my mind. I would do anything to erase that face out of my mind, but I can't. It's just .. it's in my head. Sometimes it's more fuzzy than others because my mind now says, 'Well, it's Bobby Poole.' But it's still the face I see."
When Bill Clinton was credibly charged by seven women as being a violent serial rapist, the feminists threw the women under the bus. Then Hillary Clinton raped them all again (to use the feminist phrase), along with Monica Lewinsky, by trashing all the women.
Now the feminists are throwing Ford under the bus as well. Senator Dianne Feinstein handled this whole situation in such a way as to inflict maximum damage on Ford. I cannot think of any way she could have harmed Ford more.
She received Ford's letter in July, and sat on it. Then she revealed it at the last minute, and is now refusing to release an unredacted version to the Republicans. This is disastrous for Ford because it suggests that when the letter is finally revealed, it will make Ford look bad, and maybe even exonerate Kavanaugh.
There's another comparison that had to be made. Anita Hill was hated by half of America in the 1990s. Bill Clinton's rape accusers, the ones who were publicly known, were hated by half the country and trashed by Democrats. And now, Ford is saying that she's receiving death threats and have to hide out. Once again, I blame the feminists for this. They're using her as a pawn, and they don't care how much she's hurt. Book: Fraternizing with the Enemy (PDF) and University of Florida and PBS Frontline and Fox News and Chicago Tribune
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Sep-18 World View -- Is Christine Blasey Ford accusing the wrong person? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(20-Sep-2018)
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Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East
by
John J. Xenakis
Announcing a new book on Iran and Islam by John J. Xenakis
Book Announcement: World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy
Subtitle: Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East
|
$7 -- Buy the paperback on Amazon
I've kept the price low - $5 or $7. If you buy it, please write a 5-star amazon review. Thanks.
Iran wants to be the master of the Mideast. It's threatening war with Saudi Arabia. It's supporting wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. It's supporting the Lebanon terror army Hezbollah to wage war in Syria and to attack and eliminate Israel, and to attack the United States. This book describes how a former United States ally has turned into a radical, corrupt, theological regime threatening the entire region.
This book also addresses the controversies in Islam itself, including the Sunni-Shia split, the authenticity of the Koran and Sharia Law, polygamy and pedophilia in Islam, and whether the Koran commands all Muslims to kill all non-Muslims.
About the author: John J. Xenakis is a historian, journalist and analyst and a developer of generational theory, who has written prolifically on geopolitical events, historical analysis, and technology.
Thousands of people start each day by reading the latest Generational Dynamics World View article, which is provided each day free of cost and ads.
This service has been provided, without income or funding, for 15 years as a public service. But this service will not be able to continue much longer unless it receives a source of funding or income to keep it alive.
This is a great book, and you can help support Generational Dynamics by buying this book from Amazon and then writing a 5-star review so that other people will buy it as well.
Most people in the West have little understanding of Islam and Iran, even though both of these subjects are part of major news stories almost every day.
The author, John J. Xenakis, has written thousands of articles on Iran and Islam over two decades, and has written a book that provides, for the serious reader, a serious, balanced, respectful history of Islam and Iran.
Here are some of the topics covered in this book:
Furthermore, this book was written in a respectful, balanced, non-ideological way that will be accessible to all points of view.
Some people may wonder whether it's possible or "appropriate" for a non-Muslim to write a book on Islam and Iran. The opposite may be true. A Muslim author might be able to write a balanced treatment of Islam, but will suffer from the handicap that people within his own religion or sect may criticize him if he's totally non-ideological, and particularly if he discusses the very real controversies within Islam itself, such as the validity of the Koran and Hadith, polygamy and pedophilia in Islam, and whether the Koran commands all Muslims to kill all non-Muslims.
The author is able to describe Islam and Iran in a respectful, balanced, non-ideological way, but also describing the controversies within Islam that Muslims themselves feel obligated to avoid mentioning.
The author admits that he is biased against the current leadership in Iran. An American cannot be indifferent to a leadership whose security forces massacre, jail, rape and torture peacefully protesting college students. And of course the book is also biased against al-Qaeda, ISIS and other jihadist groups committing terror acts.
The ordering of the sections of this book is like "peeling an onion," starting with the most accessible political news about Iran over the last 20 years, and then proceeding step by step to the core of Iran's Shia Islam theology. A summary is as follows:
By the time we reach the end, we'll have circled back to the beginning, with what is hopefully a complete understanding of Iran today.
This book also draws on the methodologies provided by advanced generational theory as developed for 15 years on the GenerationalDynamics.com web site. These methodologies explain, for example, why there's a big generational split today between Iran's old government leaders versus young people, and they explain such things as the transition from Iran's Constitutional Revolution in 1905-09 to Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Sep-18 World View -- Book Announcement: World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(19-Sep-2018)
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The delusional terms of the Turkey-Russian Idlib agreement
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia's president Vladimir Putin held a summit meeting on Monday at Russia's Sochi Black Sea resort. After the meeting, the two leaders held a press conference and announced that there would be no attack on Idlib province in Syria, at least for the time being.
This would have to be viewed as a diplomatic victory for Erdogan, after a recent summit meeting in Tehran on September 7 with Russia and Iran where Turkey's attempt to avert the Idlib operation was rejected by the other two parties. ( "8-Sep-18 World View -- Turkey fails to prevent Russia and Iran from mass slaughter in Idlib, Syria")
Turkey has been desperate to stop the Syria-Russia offensive, because it would be a humanitarian disaster in Idlib, and because it would be a humanitarian disaster for Turkey. Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees, and there are potentially 3 million more in Idlib who would try to flee across the the border into Turkey, and possibly further on into Europe.
It's believed that Russia backed down from an immediate assault on Idlib because of international pressure. After the Tehran meeting two weeks ago, Erdogan said:
"If the world turns a blind eye to the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people to further the regime's interests, we will neither watch from the sidelines nor participate in such a game."
Since then, Turkey has been supplying additional weapons to "moderate" rebels in Idlib, to prepare them for the assault. Separately, the US and other Nato countries have repeatedly warned Russia and Syria. President Donald Trump said that the assault would be a "grave humanitarian error," while Nikki Haley said that it would provoke "dire consequences."
And Russia's decision may have been swayed by the prospect of the enormity of the humanitarian disaster, when al-Assad starts perpetrating Putin's own "Grozny Strategy," exterminating women and children in Idlib with attacks on hospitals, markets and schools, with barrel bombs loaded with explosives, metals and chlorine gas, and with Sarin gas, causing massive slaughter and massive crowds of fleeing refugees.
There's one more reason why Putin might be reluctant to go ahead with the mass slaughter in Idlib. Putin has said at least 9,000 people from the republics of the former Soviet Union have gone to Syria to fight for al-Qaeda or ISIS or other extremist groups. It's possible that many of them are still in Idlib, and the Syrian-Russian assault would allow them to join refugees pouring into Turkey, and from there continue on to return home to their native countries to continue the jihad there. Russia Today and AP and Daily Sabah (Ankara)
The agreement between Erdogan and Putin is a big relief to a lot of people, especially the people in Idlib, because it buys time. But it buys little more than that, because the terms are delusional.
According to the agreement, Russia and Turkey will set up a 10-15 km wide demilitarized buffer zone in Idlib province, to be policed by Russia and Turkey.
All the anti-Assad "rebels" in this buffer zone are required to lay down their arms, leave behind heavy artillery, and depart for other enclaves. These include both "moderate" rebels, and also those in al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the al-Nusra Front.
It will be Turkey's responsibility to separate the 60,000 or so rebels from the other three million civilians in Idlib. It would be nearly impossible anyway, but these are people who will not want to be found, and are willing to die rather than surrender.
But main objection to this temporary peace agreement is the same as all the others in Putin's "Astana process." You have a ceasefire agreement between Turkey, Russia and Iran. These are supposed to be Syrian peace agreements, but there are never Syrians involved in the agreement -- either al-Assad or the opposition.
The whole Astana process has been nothing more than a farcical cover for al-Assad's genocidal actions. The Astana process identified four "de-escalation zones," or "ceasefire zones," but Russia never had any intention of meeting his own commitments. The ceasefire zones were set up so that there would be a ceasefire until al-Assad was ready for his extermination assaults, as we've seen in Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa.
The last de-escalation zone is Idlib, and it's different from the others in that Turkey has been responsible for enforcing the ceasefire. Al-Assad and Russia could attack at will in the other de-escalation zones, because there was nobody opposed. But in Idlib Turkey is opposed, and wants to enforce the ceasefire.
Russia and al-Assad never had any intention that Idlib would remain a ceasefire zone, but now they've been forced by international pressure to wait a while before going in for the kill. And when they do, whether they will have to face Turkey's military is an unknown.
Perhaps the biggest delusion of all, shared by many politicians and journalists, is that the Syrian war is almost over. Al-Assad said that the war would end after Aleppo was assaulted. Then he said that the war was over after Daraa was assaulted.
As I've written many times, al-Assad is a psychopathic monster, the worst genocidal war criminal so far this century, comparable to Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot from the last century. For al-Assad, the extermination of the women and children in Idlib would be the climax of his life, proving that he was better than his father Hafez al-Assad was at committing mass slaughter and atrocities. Thanks to Monday's agreement between Russia and Turkey, al-Assad is going to have to wait a little longer to prove how much more of a man he is than his father. BBC and Al Jazeera and Asia Times and Hurriyet (Ankara)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Sep-18 World View -- Turkey scores diplomatic victory, as Russia backs down from Idlib assault in Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(18-Sep-2018)
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Kurds' anti-Iran Komala party denies involvement with Paris attack
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Pro-Kurdish protesters attacked Iran's embassy in Paris on Friday. Iran says that 15 Kurdish activists burned the Iranian flag in front of the embassy. They threw stones, fire extinguishers and computers at the embassy gate in an attempt to enter the premises, but were unable to do so.
It's thought that the protests were triggered by last week's major escalation by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) when it launched a missile attack on anti-Iran opposition groups in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. The IRGC used seven missiles in the attack, killing 11 people and wounding dozens more.
The IRGC attack occurred at the same time there had been several days of violent anti-Iran protests in Basra in southern Iraq. However, the IRGC attack apparently took several weeks to prepare, and so the two events are not directly connected.
Iran confirmed that its embassy had been attacked, but Iran's foreign ministry blamed the France's police for not acting quickly enough to stop the attack:
"It is necessary for France to take serious and necessary measures and preparations to protect all Iranian diplomatic missions in that country."
Iran is complaining that some French police refused to protect the embassy and were not present at the time of the attack despite the fact that it was aware of the assault.
Iran has to walk a fine line in not going too far to criticize France. Iran has been demanding help from France and other European countries in mitigating the damage to Iran's economy of President Trump's action in pulling out of the nuclear deal and re-imposing sanctions. Press TV (Iran) and AP and Reuters
Iran accused the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan of being behind the attack on Iran's embassy in Paris. The statement issued by the Komala party alluded to Iran's missile attack on Kurdistan last weekend:
"Komala rejects the accusations of being behind the attack on Iran’s embassy in Paris.[Our members in France took part] in a peaceful gathering outside the Iranian embassy to protest Iran’s despicable actions against the Kurdish nation [on September 8].
Unfortunately, some individuals from the gathering started to violate the embassy, and even if we understand people’s anger, we completely condemn this type of uncivilized acts."
The Komala party has an armed wing known as the Peshmerga. The Peshmerga became internationally cheered in 2014-16 because it provided many of the militias fighting ISIS after the latter overran Mosul.
Once ISIS was defeated, last year the Peshmerga resumed, for the first time in 25 years, being stationed just a few miles from Iran's border, to threaten terror attacks on Iranian soil.
Komala is a Marxist-Leninist pro-Communist party that was originally formed to oppose the government of the Shah of Iran, and in 1983 joined other Communist groups to form the Communist Party of Iran.
Over the years, there have been frequent clashes between the Komala and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), which was one of the targets of last week's missile attack by Iran. Trend News (Azerbaijan) and Kurdistan 24 and Rudaw (Kurdistan, 30-Apr-2017) and Middle East Research and Information Project
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Sep-18 World View -- Kurdish protesters attack Iran's embassy in Paris thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(17-Sep-2018)
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Consequences of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has taken the first steps in what is being described as a "historic schism" in the Orthodox Christian Church.
The ROC announced on Friday:
"We have decided to suspend joint performance of church services with the hierarchs of the Constantinople Patriarchate, to suspend our membership in all structures, which are headed or co-chaired by the representatives of Constantinople."
An ROC spokesman said that this was only a "warning," and that the ROC would break all relations with Constantinople if it grants independence to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is currently subordinate to the Russian Church.
The Constantinople Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate are two of several dozen Orthodox Patriarchates in the world, but they're the two most influential.
The city of Constantinople was renamed Istanbul when it was conquered by the Ottoman Muslims in 1453, bringing an end to the Byzantine Empire. However, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians is still considered to be the Constantinople Patriarchate. All Patriarchates are considered to be equal, but Constantinople is "first among equals."
Orthodox Christians in Ukraine are officially part of the Russian Orthodox Church. There is a Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kiev that was formed in the 1990s, but it's not recognized by other Orthodox churches.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, and then invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, there was a movement in Ukraine to make the Ukrainian Orthodox Church an "autocephalous church" or independent church. Instead of being subordinate to the Russian Church, the Ukrainian church would then be a peer to the Russian and Constantinople churches.
Right now, Patriarch Bartholomew I in Constantinople is leading a debate about whether he should issue what is called a "Tomos of autocephaly" (charter of independence), which would give the Ukraine church the independence that it wants. It's believed that Bartholomew favors doing so, and that a decision will be reached by the end of the year. At that time, Patriarch Kirill in Moscow is expected to completely sever all relations with Constantinople. Russia Today and Moscow Times and BBC Russian (Trans) and Telegraph (London)
Although the current split was triggered by the Ukrainian church's request for independence, following Russia's invasion, occupation and annexation of Crimea, the chances of a split between Russia and Constantinople have been growing for years, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was officially atheist. Nonetheless, during the time of the Soviet Union, there was one Russian Orthodox Church, and all Orthodox Christians in the Soviet Empire belonged to it. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, independent Orthodox churches were formed in Estonia and other former Soviet republics. Constantinople recognized the Estonian church as independent, resulting in enormous friction between Moscow and Constantinople.
Those disputes became even more prominent when Russia's president Vladimir Putin came to power. Putin's dream is that the Russian Patriarchate should replace the Constantinople Patriarchate as the "first among equals." Furthermore, Putin dreamed of creating an "Orthodox Vatican" in the ancient city of Sergiev Posad, northeast of Moscow.
In line with this dream, Putin has been enticing, bribing and threatening various Orthodox churches to pledge loyalty to the Russian church, rather than the Constantinople church.
Putin's dream sounds reasonable when you consider that the Russian church is the largest Orthodox Church in the world, in terms of numbers of members and parishes. However, if Ukraine becomes an independent church, then the Russian church will lose almost half its parishes, and that will be the end of Putin's dream. It will also cost the Russian Patriarchate a great deal of money. It will also encourage other former Soviet republics, like Belarus and Georgia, to follow the same path.
So this pending decision by Bartholomew is far more than symbolic. It has major religious and geopolitical implications. Putin would certainly retaliate. He might retaliate in Ukraine with a renewed invasion. He might retaliate by trying to convince his new pal, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to take some action in the Phanar, the portion of Istanbul still occupied by the Constantinople Patriarchate. So Bartholomew's decision, expected by the end of the year, should have major consequences. Jamestown and Moscow Times and BBC Russian (Trans) and Window on Eurasia
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Sep-18 World View -- Russian Orthodox Church in historic split with Constantinople over Ukraine issue thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Sep-2018)
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Zambia faces long term corruption concerns
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Several days ago, we reported that Zambia is negotiating with China over a possible takeover of the country's electricity company, ZEWASCO, after defaulting on loan repayment from a previous loan. That report was based on a news story from Kenya.
There have actually been numerous news stories in the last couple of weeks claiming that Zambia has fallen victim a China "debt trap," and is being required to give not only ZEWASCO, but also Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda International Airport [KKIA].
In addition, a subscriber-only newsletter called Africa Confidential has published reports detailing embezzlement by Zambian officials, led by President Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
Zambia officials are claiming that the news stories, including those in Africa Confidential, are "fake news," that there is no debt trap, and Zambia will have no problem making payments to China.
Zambia's finance minister, Margaret Mwanakatwe, issued a statement on Friday:
The problem with Mwanakatwe's protestations is that she's unable to provide any evidence to support them, because the entire relationship between Zambia and China, including all contracts, is completely secret. So if there's corruption and embezzlement going on, as Africa Confidential claims, then Mwanakatwe is unable to deny those claims.
In situations like this, there's a test that I always like to apply, namely to ask what the politician would say if all the accusations are true. For example, if a politician is charged with murder, and he says, "I didn't do it," then you could ask what he would say if he did, and he would say "I didn't do it." In other words, the politician would say the same thing whether he committed murder or not. That doesn't mean he did it, but it does show that everything that comes out of the politician's mouth is 100% worthless, because he'd say exactly the same thing under all circumstands.
So let's apply this test to Margaret Mwanakatwe. Suppose all the charges of debt trap and embezzlement are true. What would Mwanakatwe say? The answer is that she would issue a statement exactly like the one that she did issue. In fact, the statement is filled with statements that are empty claims because the details are secret, giving me the (unprovable) feeling that the statement is an act of desperation.
This has now become a major international scandal -- not in the West, but in Africa. Many African governments are now facing embarrassing questions about revealing the terms of their contracts with China, and about why interest rates are so high, and why default terms are so harsh. Officials will also be asked a lot more questions about whether they're skimming China's loan money off the top -- something they could easily do since all the terms of the contracts are kept secret. Lusaka Times (Zambia) and Zambia Reports and Lusaka Times and VOA
In June, the Geneva-based NGO, Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, suspended $300 million in health funding to Zambia because of alleged corruption in Zambia's health ministry. Previously, Sweden and the Netherlands stopped health aid and the EU halted road-building funds.
Zambia's story is a familiar one. Zambia made huge amounts of money from copper mining in the 2000s decade, due to high prices for copper, which makes up 80% of exports. When copper prices fell in 2011, instead of decreasing government spending to match reduced income, the new government, led by the Patriotic Front (PF) went on a spending binge. According to the Economist, the PF funded new roads, hospitals and airports, doubled civil-service wage expenses in the process, and also expanded the number of districts from 72 to 115 so as to dole out more patronage.
Furthermore, the borrowed money was not well spent. In building roads, for example, the World Bank in 2017 found that Zambia paid $360,000 per kilometre, which is more than twice the African average. And since upkeep has been neglected, many new roads are already potholed.
Today, nearly a quarter of government spending goes to make debt payments. The government is broke. The government is delaying salary payments to civil servants, as well as to contractors. Apparently the government is forced to make debt payments to China, even if it means not paying its own civil servants.
Furthermore, president Edgar Chagwa Lungu is following the same corrupt path that occurs in country after country in Africa -- jailing opposition leaders, shutting down newspapers that criticize him, packing the courts with his supporters, and demanding that he stay in power indefinitely, in violation of the constitution.
So even though the country is broke and the government is corrupt, officials say that reports of debt default are "fake news." Unfortunately, government officials have little credibility and, as in the case of the statement by Margaret Mwanakatwe, there is absolutely no reason to believe anything they say. Economist and BBC and Economist
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Sep-18 World View -- Zambia denies defaulting on infrastructure loans from China thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Sep-2018)
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Turkey, desperate to stop Syrian Idlib offensive, is supplying weapons to rebels
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Saudi Arabia-led military coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen are claiming that they've cut off the main supply routes connecting al-Hodeidah seaport and city to to Sanaa, Yemen's capital city under control of the Houthis.
The Saudis and their coalition partner United Arab Emirates (UAE) were the targets of intense international criticism after their warplanes killed at least 26 children and four women in al-Hodeidah seaport, and after another airstrike two weeks earlier killed dozens of children traveling in a school bus.
The international criticism led the Saudis to enter peace talks with the Houthis and reduce the airstrikes. However, the peace talks failed, and Saudi Arabia resumed the airstrikes on Wednesday.
Al-Hodeidah is home to Yemen’s largest seaport and the main gateway for food, fuel and humanitarian aid to the rest of the country. An estimated 80 percent of Yemen’s commercial supplies go through al-Hodeidah. The Saudi-led coalition have been trying to retake the al-Hodeidah city from the Houthis for the past few months, displacing 470,000 people since June. But it is still home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, half of them children.
Taking control of roads linking al-Hodeidah to Sanaa will mean that supplied needed by the Houthi fighters will be less available, but it will also cut off food, fuel, medicines and humanitarian supplies to much of Yemen.
Ms. Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, said in a statement:
"Hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance in Hodeidah. The situation has deteriorated dramatically in the past few days. Families are absolutely terrified by the bombardment, shelling and airstrikes.People are struggling to survive, More than 25 percent of children are malnourished; 900,000 people in the governorate are desperate for food and 90,000 pregnant women are at enormous risk. Families need everything--food, cash, health care, water, sanitation, emergency supplies, specialized support and many need shelter. It’s heart-breaking to see so many people who need so much."
The Saudis have said that taking control of al-Hodeidah and the main supply routes would force the Houthis to the negotiating table. Reuters and Save the Children and Relief Web and Al Jazeera
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There are reports that Turkey is sending more military aid to anti-Assad rebels in Idlib, after a summit meeting last week with Russia and Iran failed to agree to a deal to avert a Syria-Russia assault into Idlib. ( "8-Sep-18 World View -- Turkey fails to prevent Russia and Iran from mass slaughter in Idlib, Syria")
Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has vowed to take control of every inch of Syria, with no compromise. In previous battles, in Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, his regime joined with Russia to use missiles, barrel bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas to kill the "terrorists" in each territory, following Vladimir Putin's "Grozny Model." Entire neighborhoods are flattened, and schools, markets and hospitals are particularly targeted in order to kill as many women and children as possible, as part of Bashar al-Assad's genocidal campaign.
However, Idlib is different. It has over 3 million people, many of whom fled there from the violence in other locations. They will have nowhere to flee from Idlib, except across the border into Turkey, which Turkey has closed. Turkey is already host to 3.5 million Syrian refugees.
Turkey is desperate to stop the Syria-Russia offensive, because it would be a humanitarian disaster in Idlib, and because it would be a humanitarian disaster for Turkey. Turkey would be faced with the choice of keeping the border closed and allow al-Assad to slaughter the civilians like trapped animals, or to open the border and permit a million more refugees enter Turkey, and possibly go on from there to Europe, posing a security risk in both places.
This is Turkey's justification for providing more weapons to anti-Assad rebels in the Free Syrian Army (FSA). According to FSA commanders who have been in talks with senior Turkish officials, said:
"“They pledged complete Turkish military support for a long, protracted battle. These arms supplies and munitions will allow the battle to extend and ensure our supplies are not drained in a war of attrition."
The weapons, already spotted in convoys crossing the border from Turkey into Idlib, include large quantities of ammunition and GRAD rockets. Hurriyet/AFP and Reuters and AP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Sep-18 World View -- Saudis in Yemen cut the supply routes from Hodeidah seaport to Sanaa thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Sep-2018)
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EU proposes a new free trade agreement with Africa
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In what some analysts are considering a historic action in the development of the European Union, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to pursue disciplinary action against Hungary over alleged breaches of the EU's core values. The phrase "core values" refers to values on which the EU was founded.
More than two-thirds of MEPs voted for the censure motion, the first in EU's history. A similar motion to censure Poland has not yet reached the European Parliament.
There were numerous charges leveled against Hungary's president Viktor Orbán, including the following:
However, the most divisive charge was Orbán's extremely hardline attitude toward migrants. Germany MEP Manfred Weber, who has announced his bid to become the next president of the European Commission, accused Orbán of running a hate campaign against Muslim migrants:
"One thing must be clear - if we say generally that you have to be afraid about Muslims, and attack a religion, then we do the job of jihadis, who want to create a clash in our societies. We have invented human rights and not Christian rights on this continent."
On Tuesday, Orbán spoke to the Parliament, and condemned the expected vote:
"I know that you have already made up your minds. I know that a majority will approve the report and I know that my speech here today will not manage to change your opinion.But still I have come here today because you are not going to condemn a government but a country as well as a nation. You are going to denounce Hungary that has been a member of the family of Christian nations for a thousand years."
After the vote, Hungary's foreign minister called the vote fraudulent and vowed to challenge it.
As I've been writing for over ten years, almost every nation in the world is becoming increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic as the world goes deeper into a generational Crisis era. This is happening because the survivors of the horrors of World War II vowed never to allow anything so horrible to happen again, and they've spent their lives doing everything they could to prevent it. But those survivors continue to disappear, and people in younger generations, with no personal knowledge of the horrors of World War II, adopt increasingly xenophobic and nationalistic behaviors that will lead to a new world war.
Orbán's remark saying that Hungary "has been a member of the family of Christian nations for a thousand years" is interesting. Xenophobia, which is derived from a Greek word meaning "fear of strangers," really has nothing to do with religion, although for Orbán the issue is Christians versus Muslims.
But a big part of Britain's campaign has been xenophobia directed at Christians from countries like Poland and Hungary in Eastern Europe, and xenophobia in America has been directed at Christians from Mexico. The xenophobic "fear of strangers" can apply anyone, such as the mutual xenophobia between China and each of Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the way the world works is that population grows exponentially, growing faster than the resources such as food and water, resulting in mass migrations. Today we're seeing huge human migrations around the world, in the Mideast, Africa, South America, and Asia. These huge human migrants cause problems that can be resolved in only one way -- a new world war. A new world war will reduce the population 30%, 40%, 50% -- through nuclear war, ground war, starvation and disease. That will reduce the need for mass migrations, will solve the problem of insufficient food for everyone, and will even reduce the amount of "human activity," making climate change activists happy. European Commission and EU Observer and BBC and EU Observer and Daily Mail (London)
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Jean-Claude Jüncker, the outgoing president of the European Commission, announced in his State of the Union speech on Wednesday a proposal for a new "Africa – Europe Alliance for Sustainable Investment and Jobs."
The intent is to create "a comprehensive continent-to-continent free trade agreement between the EU and Africa." During the period 2021-27, overall funding will increase by €123 billion, creating 10 million new jobs in Africa.
The major motivation for this proposal is to try to slow the flow of migrants from Africa to Europe, by providing jobs in Africa that will reduce the motivation to migrate. According to press release:
"The joint efforts on jobs and growth under the Alliance, by African and European partners, will also contribute to address challenges and opportunities linked to mobility and migration. The efforts will address the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement, building resilience, providing jobs and enabling the integration and reintegration of some of the most vulnerable parts of the population. The proposal therefore supports and contributes to the implementation of the EU Agenda for Migration."
This proposal appears to be highly delusional. EU member states would object to the proposal, particularly in the area of opening agricultural markets, where Africa would have a price advantage.
Furthermore, Africa does not appear ready to negotiate as a 54 member bloc. There are existing negotiations for an African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) where the countries are unable to agree on ending tariffs among African nations. Reuters and European Commission and RFI
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Sep-18 World View -- EU Parliament censures Hungary for breaching 'core EU values' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Sep-2018)
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Russia's Vostok-2018 war games send a message to China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Russia on Tuesday launched Vostok-2018 ("East-2018"), its biggest military exercise in decades, involving 300,000 personnel, 36,000 armored vehicles, 1,000 aircraft, and 80 naval vessels from two Russian fleets. Three brigades of Russian paratroops will play a key role. The war games will last until September 17.
An important symbolic change this year is that 3,200 Chinese troops will participate alongside the Russian troops. Mongolia is also sending an undisclosed number of units.
One message being sent to the West is that Russia will be prepared to respond to US military action in Asia, if such every occurs. A key aim of the exercise is to practice the rapid deployment of thousands of troops, as well as aircraft and vehicles, from western Russia to eastern regions, across thousands of miles, including in-flight refuelling of fighter jets.
A second message being sent to the West is that Russia and China are "forming deep bonds," to counter America's international influence. Jamestown and Tass and Reuters and South China Morning Post
There massive Vostok-2018 war games, the largest since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, are also sending a message to China that Russia is prepared to defend its Far East region from a Chinese military incursion. This in fact was the original purpose of the Vostok war games during the days of the Soviet Union.
This is the first time that any nation outside of the former Soviet Union has been included in the Vostok exercises. Many analysts believe that Russia decided that including a small number of Chinese and Mongolian troops in the war games is the best way to send the message that Russia is STILL prepared to defend the Far East, as well as to reassure both countries that the war games are not the precursor to an imminent invasion of either country.
Russia has been openly concerned about Russia's intentions at least since 2012, when Russia's prime minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that a huge influx of immigrants from China threatened Russia's control of Siberia and Far East. ( "31-Mar-18 World View -- Russia's Far East, Siberia and Vladivostok under threat from China")
In particular, Russia's Lake Baikal in Siberia, the deepest lake in the world, is being buried in huge mountains of garbage from Chinese tourists. Chinese guides tell Chinese tourists that Baikal is China’s northern sea, that their ancestors used to live there, and that the territory only belongs to Russia for the time being. These guides also reportedly encourage Chinese visitors to buy property and businesses in order to make money over the next decade. Many are doing so.
Also, many Chinese on social media are suggesting that China should reclaim Vladivostok, the home of Russia's Pacific Fleet, from Russia, just as China reclaimed Hong Kong from Britain. That's not going to happen without a war, and that's why Russia is sending China a message.
When Russia holds war games in the west, they are obviously aimed at Nato. But the Vostok games are held in the east, and there's no clear enemy in sight, so naturally the media assume that they're aimed at the United States. But in fact, Russia has a far more immediate enemy in the region, and that's China. So even though China is participating in the war games, it's most likely that the war games are aimed at China. Moscow Times and Asia Times
Much of what President Trump does is extremely perplexing because of his stated intention to not reveal what he plans to do. So many questions are left unanswered.
Why does Trump keep complimenting Kim Jong-un, when he must know that North Korea will never denuclearize? Does Trump really want to fire Jeff Sessions, or does he keep threatening to fire Sessions to protect Sessions, and allow him to implement Trump's programs without criticism from the Left? When Trump met with Putin privately in July, did they discuss China's plans for war with both the US and Russia?
The reality of today's international politics is that a lot of people are playing "The Art of the Deal," and one can't be sure that anyone says what he means.
The Russians have hated the Chinese ever since the Mongols defeated the Chinese in 1206, and then went on to attack and conquer almost all the Russian principalities, and made them bitter vassals of the Mongol Empire, in a relationship called the "Mongol Yoke." This hated period, two centuries long, has defined the relationship between the Russian and Chinese people forever. There is no possibility that China and Russia will remain "strategic partners" for long. In fact, Soviet Russia and China almost went to full-scale war as recently as the 1960s.
If Trump and Putin really did discuss plans for mutual defense after China's military attack, then Putin must also be aware that China is planning war with Russia, and so this mutual "strategic alliance" between Russia and China is all a charade.
Probably the biggest diplomatic blunder in Russia's history was Josef Stalin believing that Adolf Hitler would honor the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which the two had signed on August 23, 1939.
That pact was a mutual non-aggression treaty that obligated the two countries "to desist from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other Powers." Stalin was completely shocked and totally unprepared when Hitler violated the pact and invaded Russia to get some Lebensraum ("living space").
We know that China has also been pursuing the same Lebensraum objective, at least since the time of Chiang Ki-shek after World War II. The Chinese Communist Party view of Han Racial Superiority is no different than the Nazi view of the Aryan Master Race. So it's absolutely certain that Xi Jinping will double-cross Vladimir Putin, just as Adolf Hitler double-crossed Josef Stalin.
So has Putin learned the lessons of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact? If so, then Putin and Trump certainly did discuss China's plans for war in their private meeting, and Vostok-2018 is much less a message to the US than it is a message to China that Putin won't be a sucker like Stalin was. Jewish Virtual Library and Breitbart National Security
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Sep-18 World View -- Russia's 'strategic alliance' with China evokes memories of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Sep-2018)
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Zambia becomes the next nation to fall victim to China's 'debt trap'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Philippines president Rodrigo R. Duterte was taking office in 2016 at just about the time that the Philippines won a historic case in the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague thoroughly humiliating China by ruling that all of China's activities in the South China Sea are illegal and in violation of international law.
Duterte's first acts in office were to cut off relations with the United States, and to take a trip to Beijing, where he was given the red carpet treatment by China's president Xi Jinping. Duterte indicated that he would not enforce the Tribunal ruling, and in fact appeared to be giving Scarborough Shoal away to the Chinese.
The international headlines at the time were things like "Duterte's flip-flop into bed with China is a disaster for the United States." ( "23-Oct-16 World View -- Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte in comic dance with China")
As I wrote at the time, the "flip-flop" couldn't possibly last, for several reasons: Among the Philippine people, 54% have a favorable view of China, while 92% have a favorable view of the United States. Also, the Philippine people historically hate the Chinese, while the Chinese people historically hate the Philippine people. In 2012, a Chinese television anchor 'accidentally' claimed that the Philippines "is China's inherent territory and the Philippines belongs to Chinese sovereignty, this is an indisputable fact."
So the leaders of China and the Philippines can make deals if they like, but we know from generational theory that major decisions like that are made by the people, entire generations, not by the politicians. So there was never any chance that the "flip-flop" would last.
Duterte's decision on China was never really popular, and generated immediate backlash at home, but it was reluctantly accepted by the Philippine people because the alternative appeared to be war with China if the Philippines tried to enforce the Tribunal's ruling in the South China Sea.
In fact, in May of last year, Duterte explained his decision by recounting a conversation he had with Xi Jinping a year earlier, in which Xi threatened war:
"Duterte: Mr. Xi Jinping, I will insist that it is ours and we will drill oil. [T]hat is ours and we intend to drill oil there. My view is I can drill the oil.Xi: Well we are friends. We don’t want to quarrel with you. We want to maintain warm relationship, but if you force the issue we will go to war.
Duterte: I’ll drill the oil.
Xi: Please do not do that because that is ours.
Duterte: That is according to you. But I have the arbitral [referring to the Hague tribunal ruling].
Xi: Yes, but ours is historical and yours is legal of recent memory.
Duterte: But that’s too far away. It’s almost alien to us to hear those words because we were never under Chinese jurisdiction.
Xi: Well, if you force the issue, we’ll be forced to tell you the truth.
Duterte: So what is the truth?
Xi: We will go to war. We will fight you."
After recounting the conversation, Duterte added:
"Are they willing to fight? Because if they are willing to fight, we are. But why would I do that? It will result in a massacre and it will just destroy everything."
So Duterte decided that he had to accede to China's threats.
As part of Duterte's agreement with China, China promised to deliver $24 billion investments in 27 different projects. Duterte repeatedly touted China’s financial help as a key reason for pivoting away from the U.S. and Europe, which he said haven’t produced material gains for the Philippines.
But by 2018, it turns out that the $24 billion investment promise was an empty promise. A $1 billion, 300-megawatt hydropower plant was never begun. A $700 million stainless steel plant was put on hold. A project to raise three islands from a waterlogged area was canceled. ABS-CBN (19-May-2017) and Bloomberg (25-Jul-2018)
Since 2016, Duterte has tried with some success to use bilateral negotiations to resolve the South China Sea disputes. However, a series of belligerent Chinese actions in 2018 had caused Duterte to be increasingly critical of China in public statements:
Duterte's honeymoon with China, if it ever existed, appears to be over. Duterte now says that he plans to talk to US President Donald Trump about the possible purchase of military equipment for the military and the police. Philippine Star
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Zambia is one of 50 African nations whose leaders visited Beijing last week to hear Xi Jinping promise $60 billion in aid to Africa for infrastructure projects. This aid is in the form of loans that must be repaid.
Now Zambia is in talks with China over a possible takeover of the country's electricity company, ZEWASCO, after defaulting on loan repayment from a previous loan.
As I described in my article last week, China structures the aid agreements without concern for whether the loan can be repaid, since China then has the option of taking control of the country's infrastructure in case of default.
As I explained, it's actually worse than that. China loans the money to the country, and requires that it only be used to pay the salaries of Chinese workers, and to purchase parts and equipment from Chinese factories. So the money is immediately returned to China, but still has to be repaid, so the country is effectively forced to repay the loan twice. After default, and the Chinese take control of the infrastructure project, there is an enclave of Chinese workers and their families who will be there forever. Pulse Live (Kenya)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Sep-18 World View -- Tensions grow in Philippines as Duterte turns against China in South China Sea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(11-Sep-2018)
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Iran's missile attack displays the rising power of the IRGC in Iran
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took credit on Sunday for Saturday's sophisticated missile attack on the bases of two military anti-Iran opposition groups in Koya near Erbil in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. The two groups are fighting for greater autonomy for Iran’s Kurdish community.
The two groups are the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-I). Referring to the dissidents as "criminal groups," the IRGC statement said:
"In a successful operation, the Guards’ aerospace unit, along with the army’s drone unit ... targeted a criminal group’s meeting and a terrorist training centre with seven short-range surface-to-surface missiles.[The group's leaders decided] to ignore serious warnings by officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government about Iran’s determination to dismantle their bases ... and the need for an end to terrorist and aggressive actions against Iran."
The missile attacks were apparently very well planned for several weeks in advance. The attack on the meeting room was very precise, and occurred when the meeting was in progress. Seven missiles were used in the attacks, killing 11 people and wounding dozens more.
As we reported yesterday, anti-Iran rioters in the southern Iraqi city Basra stormed and burned down Iran's consulate in Basra. This act infuriated the Iranian officials in Tehran, who summoned the Iraqi ambassador to Tehran to protest the attack, and issued this statement:
"The Persian Gulf Director General of Iranian Foreign Ministry [Mohammad Farazmand] voiced surprise over immobility of Basra police and said that despite the promises given by the Iraqi officials through diplomatic channels reassuring about the safety of Iran’s consulate general which was threatened by the provocation of some suspicious elements, the Iraqi government did not deliver on its promises."
Even though Iran's missile attack on Erbil occurred a day after the Basra rioters' attack on the Iranian consulate, it's not believed that the two incidents are directly related, since the missile attack had apparently been in preparation for weeks. Nonetheless, anti-Iran protests have been simmering for a long time in Basra, and Iran may have wanted to send a message that the anti-Iran protests will not be tolerated.
On Sunday, Iraqi officials issued a statement condemning Iran's missile strike -- not because the strike occurred, but but because it occurred without first warning Iraq's government and coordinating with the Iraqi military:
"The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs stresses its rejection of the artillery shelling that targeted Koy Sanjaq district in Erbil on Saturday, leaving scores dead and wounded.The ministry strongly refuses the breaching of Iraqi sovereignty without prior coordination with Iraqi military authorities to avoid the fall of civilian victims."
So, the second message that Iran is sending is that it can strike deep into Iraqi territory any time it wants, without notifying the Iraqi military in advance.
The two countries fought an extremely bloody war, the Iran-Iraq war, killing 1.5 million people, and climaxing in 1988 with Saddam Hussein and Iraq using chemical weapons against both the Kurds and the Iranians. Iran's missile attack on Erbil is a major escalation in the tensions between the two countries, and a further evocation of memories of the Iran-Iraq war.
Iraq's government is in complete disarray, with a parliament that has had only two sessions since the inconclusive elections in May, and is unable even to elect a speaker.
As I described yesterday, even though it's mostly Shia Muslim government, Iraqi Shiism has a different theology than Iran's Shiism, and there are political splits over aligning with the United States or with Iran.
So the second message that Iran sent along with its missiles is that siding with the US against Iran id going to have a cost.
The third message being sent by the missile strike is to Israel. The missiles used on Saturday were extremely precise and coordinated with the drone surveillance. These missiles are considerably more sophisticated than Iran has used in the past, and they may have been distributed to Syria or Hezbollah, to be used against Israel. Iraqi News and Mehr News (Tehran) and Reuters and Jerusalem Post
Saturday's missile attack was launched by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which has become increasingly powerful.
As I described yesterday, at the time of the 1979 revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini reinterpreted Shia theology to make himself equivalent to an infallible Imam, and therefore essentially a dictator. He created the IRGC to prevent any outside coups, and to give himself absolute power.
The death of Khomeini in 1989, and the succession as supreme leader by Ali Khamenei, allowed the IRGC to expand its power. The IRGC led the extremely bloody and violent crackdown against peaceful protesters after the fraudulent 2009 presidential election, and then again in the widespread anti-government demonstrations that erupted in late 2017 and early 2018.
Since January, the IRGC has become even more belligerent, particularly in the face of the Trump administrations plans to re-implement sanctions on Iran that were removed following the 2015 nuclear deal.
Recently General Alireza Tangsiri, the head of the IRGC Navy, said that Iran had full control of the Gulf of Hormuz, and that it could take military action to block other countries' oil exports in retaliation for U.S. sanctions intended to halt its sales of crude. According to Tangsiri:
"We can ensure the security of the Persian Gulf and there is no need for the presence of aliens like the U.S. and the countries whose home is not in here.All the carriers and military and non-military ships will be controlled and there is full supervision over the Persian Gulf. Our presence in the region is physical and constant and night and day."
The IRGC was originally created to protect the regime from a coup. Although there have been no overt signs of it, there are some fears that the IRGC will itself launch a coup and create a military dictatorship. Asharq Al-Awsat (Saudi Arabia) and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Sep-18 World View -- In major escalation, Iran's missiles strike Kurdish targets in northern Iraq thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(10-Sep-2018)
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Dozens killed in five days of riots in southern Iraq's Basra
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Riots have continued for five days in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, in southern Iraq. Protesters have attacked or set fire to nearly every government building, including the headquarters of the Iran-linked ruling Dawa Party and the offices of the state-run Iraqiya TV station — as well as the Iranian consulate. They also attacked almost every office belonging to the Iran-backed Shia militias known as the "Popular Mobilization Forces" or "Hasheed." At least 15 people have been killed in the riots in the last week. On Saturday, assailants fired Katyusha rockets at Basra airport.
There have been occasional anti-government protests in Basra for years. The latest protests were triggered by brownish water coming out of the water taps, making people sick who try to drink it, and by a crippling electricity shortage at a time when temperatures are reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit during the day.
By Saturday afternoon, Iraqi security forces and troops began deploying in the center of Basra and on street intersections. Dozens of gun-mounted black pick-up trucks belonging to the Interior Ministry and carrying masked security forces in combat fatigues were seen. Iraqi News and AP and Vox and CNN
Basra is home to some of the largest oil fields in Iraq. These oil fields are contributing enormously to Iraq's economy, but none of the money seems to help Basra. Basra used to be called the "Venice of the East" because of its network of waterways and canals, which should be providing it with plenty of fresh water. But the canals were bombed by Iran during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, and have not been repaired since then.
Most Iraqis are Shia Muslims, with Sunni Muslims in the minority. After the war, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, neglected and marginalized the mostly Shia Basra population, causing considerable dissent. When Saddam was deposed by the 2003 American invasion, an Iran-linked Shia government came to power, and they have also largely neglected and marginalized the Basra population. The Basra Shias have returned the favor by forcing the few Sunnis living in Basra to leave.
Although the split between Sunni and Shia Muslims is a defining feature of the Mideast, there are also ethnic alliances that override the sectarian fault lines. Iraq had two generational crisis wars during the last century, the 1920 Iraqi Revolution and the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. In both of those wars, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shias united behind the war effort against the enemy -- the British colonists in 1920 and the Iranians in the 1980s. So even though the Muslims in Basra are Shia Muslims, they have bitter memories of the atrocities committed by the Iranians in the 1980s. Those bitter memories are revived every time someone is killed by a land mine planted by Iran during the 1980s war.
So the current riots in Basra are about more than drinking water and electricity. There is a great deal of fury directed at Iran's "meddling" in the current government, which is in a state of chaos anyway.
Politicians in Baghdad have not agreed on a government following inconclusive elections in May. The new parliament met for the first time on Monday, but failed to elect a speaker, much less name a prime minister, so the former prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, continues in power. Parliament convened an emergency session on Saturday to discuss the crisis in Basra, but no action was taken.
Another interesting fact is that there are differences between Shia theology in Basra and Shia theology in Iran.
When Ruhollah Khomeini set up his Islamic Revolutionary government after Iran's 1979 civil war, he reinterpreted centuries of Shia theology to include a doctrine called Wilayat al-Faqih, which means Guardianship of the Jurist. The effect of this doctrine was that the Supreme Leader was considered to be as infallible as the 12 infallible Imams that had led Shia Islam over a millennium ago. This meant, of course, that Khomeini was the infallible leader of all Shia Muslims.
Needless to say, Shia Muslims in Iraq do not accept Khomeini or the current Supreme Leader, Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, as infallible leaders. So the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) is rejected by Iraq's Shias in Basra, and so Iran's Shiism and Iraq's Shiism are effectively two different sects.
This difference goes to the core of the protests, as the government in Baghdad is linked with Iran and Iranian Shiism. This will have to be settled as part of the resolution to the current riots. Reuters and Al Monitor and Middle East Eye (16-July)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Sep-18 World View -- Riots in Iraq's Basra evoke fault lines of 1980s Iran-Iraq war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(9-Sep-2018)
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The Greek Tragedy in Syria
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The leaders of the three countries in the so-called "Astana Group" met in Tehran on Friday with to decide the fate of Syria's Idlib province. No Syrians participated in the meeting. Representatives of the three countries, Russia, Turkey and Iran, have met several times in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan.
Russia, Syria and Iran have been preparing for weeks, massing troops and tanks, for an assault that will create a massive humanitarian disaster among the 3.5 million civilians in Idlib. ( "5-Sep-18 World View -- Syria and Russia prepare to inflict massive bloodbath on Idlib")
At the summit meeting, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan argued for a ceasefire, and no invasion at all. At the press conference following the meeting, he said, "We don’t want Idlib to turn into a bloodbath," and said:
"Idlib is not only about the future of Syria, it is also about the peace of the whole region. Any attack launched or to be launched on Idlib will result in a disaster, massacre and a very big humanitarian tragedy."If we can declare a cease-fire here, it will be one of the most important steps of the summit, and it will relieve the civilians."
Iran's president Hassan Rouhani rejected Erdogan's plea, saying that the fighting in Syria must continue until all "terrorists" are "uprooted," especially in Idlib. He added, "fighting terrorism in Idlib is an unavoidable part of the mission of restoring peace and stability to Syria."
Russia's president Vladimir Putin also rejected the plea, saying that "the legitimate Syrian government has a right and must eventually take control of its entire national territory". Daily Sabah (Turkey) and BBC and Vox
Idlib has a population of about 3.5 million people, including several tens of thousands of jihadists belonging to al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), or less than 2% of the population. Many of the jihadists are hiding out in the same homes as the civilians. There are reports that many civilians are demanding that the jihadists leave the homes and go elsewhere, though that's unlikely to happen.
Bashar al-Assad intends to kill all "terrorists," but he's made it clear in the past that he considers the entire population of Idlib to be "terrorists," meaning that he will be targeting the entire population.
In a sense, Turkey has the most at stake in the Astana Group decision about Idlib. In the press conference on Friday, Erdogan said that there are already 3.5 million Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey, and: "Idlib's population is now 3.5 million. We do not have power and facilities to host another 3.5 million."
Bashar al-Assad's regime, along with Russia, will be using missiles, barrel bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas to kill the "terrorists" in Idlib following Vladimir Putin's "Grozny Model." Entire neighborhoods will be flattened, and schools, markets and hospitals will be particularly targeted in order to kill as many women and children as possible, as part of Bashar al-Assad's genocidal campaign.
This means that hundreds of thousands or even millions of civilians will be abandoning their homes, trying to flee the violence. When al-Assad was conducting a similar slaughter on Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, many thousands of civilians fled to Idlib. Now, there's no Idlib for Idlib, meaning that people who want to flee have no place to go.
Idlib borders Turkey, and undoubtedly many of them will try to flee across the border into Turkey. It's possible that millions of refugees will succeed in reaching Turkey, and a few hundred thousand of them may then travel to Europe. According to Turkey's Red Crescent, this would be the beginning of a "new immigration wave" into both Turkey and Europe.
One thing that's clear is that Russia and Vladimir Putin are in charge now. Putin can delay the assault, or launch it immediately. He can also use the threat of an assault to get leverage. For example, Putin has been demanding that the US and EU pay billions to rebuild Syria, after Russia played the biggest part in destroying Syria. Russia could use the Idlib assault in a negotiation that says, "Pay up or else!" Anadolu (Turkey) and Yeni Safak (Turkey)
There have been reports that Syria and Russia have been launching a new disinformation campaign, to hide al-Assad's use of chemical weapons and other atrocities. My personal experience is that the article that I wrote three days ago generated a much higher level of troll attacks than I've been seeing recently. So it may well be that Russia's troll factory, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, is on the march again.
The trolls generally try to paint Bashar al-Assad as a sweet, gentle opthamologist (his college major), a sensitive guy who now runs a country and is trying to bring peace, justice and stability to Syria and the world.
So for trolls and for those readers with short memories, here's an article from last year from the London Guardian, summarizing a report by Amnesty International:
"[In Bashar al-Assad's Saydnaya prison in Damascus,] thousands of civilians considered opponents of the regime are systematically starved, deliberately dehumanised, mercilessly tortured and finally hanged in the utmost secrecy in the dead of night, 20 to 50 at a time. These witnesses have described executions and the conditions in the prison before December 2015 but they could be continuing.It’s like something from a grindingly bleak horror film – a grotesque series of depraved acts that almost defies description. ... Amnesty has gathered testimony from 31 former Saydnaya detainees as well as former guards, and we calculate that between 5,000 to 13,000 people have been hanged at Saydnaya since the uprising against Assad began, possibly many more.
On top of that witnesses have described deaths through sadistic beatings, starvation and disease. They have said that food and water are regularly cut off for prisoners at Saydnaya. When food is delivered, it’s often dumped in the blood, puss and dirt of the cell floors. The prison also has its own set of “special rules”. Prisoners are not allowed to make any sounds, speak or even whisper, even when being brutally beaten. They’re forced to assume certain positions when the guards come into the cells and merely looking at the guards is punishable by death.
Here’s how one former detainee described the terrifying beatings that those about to be hanged are made to endure: “We would hear a huge sound. From 10pm until 12, or from 11pm until 1am, we would hear screaming and yelling come from below us ... This is a very important point. If you keep silent, you will get less beating at Saydnaya. But these people were screaming like they had lost their minds ... It wasn’t a normal sound – it was not ordinary. It sounded like they were skinning them alive.”
As for the hangings themselves, witnesses have described how they are carried out in the basement of a place called the White Building. After hours of beatings, groups of up to 50 blindfolded men at a time are taken to the execution site by white delivery trucks (called “meat fridges” by other prisoners) and made to stand on a metre-high platform. Here a noose is placed over their heads and they’re bundled to their deaths.
Not all the hangings result in quick deaths. Some of the lighter men are still alive several minutes into the hangings, and two prison officials have the job of pulling on the bodies of those still alive to break their necks. One former detainee, Hamid (not his real name), told me how he could hear the sounds of the hangings as he and other prisoners slept on the floor of the rooms above: “There was a sound of something being pulled out – like a piece of wood, I’m not sure – and then you would hear the sound of them being strangled ... If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of the gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes ... We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then.”"
Bashar al-Assad is not a sweet opthamologist. He's a perverted, depraved, sociopathic monster who is running a country with the intention of inflicting the same depraved, sociopathic acts on millions of people. Guardian (London, 7-Feb-2017)
It's pretty obvious now that the massive impending Idlib disaster is completely preordained and unavoidable, and nothing can be done by anyone to prevent it. It's like a mile high tsunami that's headed for land. Nothing can stop it. But for how long has it been unavoidable? Six months? Six years? Could it have been prevented seven years ago?
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, an argument can be made that the coming humanitarian disaster has been unavoidable since the 1980s.
Syria's last generational crisis war was the civil war that climaxed in 1982 with the massacre at Hama. There was a massive uprising of the 400,000 mostly Sunni citizens of Hama against Syria's president Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father. In February, 1982, al-Assad turned the town to rubble, 40,000 deaths and 100,000 expelled. Hama stands as a defining moment in the Middle East. It is regarded as perhaps the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East. But once Hama was destroyed, the anti-government movement against Hafaz al-Assad pretty much ended. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this was a generational crisis war climax, like the nuking of Hiroshima at the climax of World War II, bringing the war to an end.
Since then 36 years have passed, and new generations have grown up. I've described what happens in country after country in the decades following a crisis ethnic civil war. Whoever comes to power after the war uses brutal police power to suppress the opposition, using the excuse that a new civil war must be prevented. I've described this in DR Congo, Burundi, Cameroon, Thailand, Cambodia, Iran, and other places.
What makes the Syria situation exceptional is the level of violence. There are various levels of oppression that can be used, but Bashar al-Assad is conducting full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing. By comparison with other countries in similar situations, that level of violence is not necessary.
In Iran for example, since the 1979 revolution, which was really just another civil war, the two Supreme Leaders have felt free to punish political opponents with gunfire, torture, rapes, jailings, and other atrocities.
The two Supreme Leaders, Ruhollah Khomeini and Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, are psychotic monsters, but those punishments just described -- torture, rape, etc. -- have only been used against tens of thousands of people, mostly young college students. There's been no attempt to exterminate entire cities. Of course tens of thousands is a horrific number, but I say "only" in comparison to Bashar al-Assad. Al-Assad has perpetrated the same genocidal atrocities, but has gone much farther with barrel bombs and chemical weapons targeting millions of women and children, something that Khomeini and Khamenei did not do.
Particularly after those 50,000 prison photos came out of years of gruesome, depraved, systematic torture of political opponents on an "industrial scale," I see Bashar al-Assad as a sociopathic monster, as I've described him many times.
So, given what happened in Hama in 1982, followed by the sociopathic nature of Bashar al-Assad, sooner or later there would have been anti-government protests, and al-Assad would have launched his genocidal attacks on peaceful protesters, focusing on women and children to exterminate the next generation. This is something that was triggered by the "Arab Spring" in 2011, but it had to happen sooner or later, and it would have led the same way to the same kind of genocide that al-Assad has been performing for the last eight years.
So that's why, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it could be argued that the Idlib massacre was preordained since the 1980s. It could have been stopped at any time in the last 30 years if al-Assad had been removed from power at any time, and replaced with someone less sociopathic. Even then, there would have been some violence, as in the case of Iran, but probably not to the extent pursued by al-Assad.
The Greeks invented tragedy, and as a Greek, I understand tragedy very well. It's in my bones. Tragedy is not some random event, like a child being hit by a car. The essence of Greek tragedy is that the tragic event is not random. The tragic event is inevitable: it MUST occur, and the reason it must occur is because of the nature, the personality, the character of the protagonists. A true tragedy cannot be prevented, even by those who foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy are too powerful for anyone to stop. That's what's happening in Syria today.
My heart breaks every day, when I see what's happening in the world.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Sep-18 World View -- Turkey fails to prevent Russia and Iran from mass slaughter in Idlib, Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(8-Sep-2018)
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China's 'nine-dash line map' makes absurd claims to South China Sea
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Late last month, the HMS Albion, a British Royal Navy flagship amphibious assault ship, was traveling through the South China Sea, en route from Tokyo to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam. The 22,000 ton amphibious warship was carrying a contingent of Royal Marines.
On August 31, the ship exercised its "freedom of navigation" rights as it passed near the Paracel Islands. The Paracel Islands have been ruled by the courts to be in international waters, but China has used military force to annex them, in clear violation of international law.
China immediately launched a military challenge of the British ship by dispatching a frigate and two helicopters. However, both sides remained calm during the encounter.
In 2016, China claimed "ironclad proof" of the sovereignty of the Paracel Islands. The proof consisted of a 600 year old handwritten book by fisherman Su Chengfen, who uses the book as a guide to the various routes between the islands.
The BBC decided to investigate, and tracked down the fisherman. As I reported at the time, the BBC found that the book did not exist, and China's claim to the Paracel Islands is a hoax.
This didn't stop China's foreign ministry spokesman on Thursday from saying, "The relevant behavior of the British warship violated Chinese law and relevant international law and infringed upon China's sovereignty. China is firmly opposed to this."
This is a lie on several levels. The Chinese think that their laws are the laws of the world, and they specifically repudiate international law when it goes against them. The invoke international law as a kind of word game when they believe it favors them.
In 2016, China was thoroughly humiliated when all of their activities in the South China Sea were declared illegal by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, which ruled that all of China's activities in the South China Sea are illegal and in violation of international law.
China's response to the court ruling at the time was that it was "completely a political farce staged under legal pretext," and it was "plotted and manipulated by certain forces outside the region," which could mean either the Europeans or the Americans or both. The spokesman at the time continued, "Its purpose is clearly not to seek proper settlement of disputes with China, but to violate China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests and put peace and stability in the South China Sea in jeopardy."
The logic of the Chinese statement is that China's "territorial sovereignty" over the region are a given, and any challenge puts "peace and stability in the South China Sea in jeopardy."
That of course is a threat: Any challenge will be met with a military response. Reuters and China Foreign Ministry (6-Sep-2018) and China Foreign Ministry (13-Jul-2016)
 |
China's "historic" claims to the South China Sea are either hoaxes, like the claim to the Paracel Islands described above, or worthless, or challenged by equally valid historic claims from other countries, including Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia.
The arbitrariness of China's claims is shown by its claim to Indonesia's Natuna Island. In 2016, China sent its coast guard warships to ram Indonesian vessels in the Natuna Sea. What's going on here is that the Natuna Sea is extremely rich in fishing grounds. The Natuna Sea is clearly Indonesia's territory, since it's very far from China, but that makes no difference to China. It's amazing in the 21st century that a country feels it's perfectly OK to steal another country's assets, and even feels entitled to them.
China's "historic claims" to the South China Sea really go no farther back than to 1947. According to one historical analysis:
"And finally, China’s so-called “historic claims” to the South China Sea are actually not “centuries old.” They only go back to 1947, when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government drew the so-called “eleven-dash line” on Chinese maps of the South China Sea, enclosing the Spratly Islands and other chains that the ruling Kuomintang party declared were now under Chinese sovereignty. Chiang himself, saying he saw German fascism as a model for China, was fascinated by the Nazi concept of an expanded Lebensraum (“living space”) for the Chinese nation. He did not have the opportunity to be expansionist himself because the Japanese put him on the defensive, but cartographers of the nationalist regime drew the U-shape of eleven dashes in an attempt to enlarge China’s “living space” in the South China Sea. Following the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in the civil war in 1949, the People’s Republic of China adopted this cartographic coup, revising Chiang’s notion into a “nine-dash line” after erasing two dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1953."
What's interesting about this analysis is the relationship of Chiang to Hitler's "Lebensraum" concept, where Hitler felt entitled to invade and annex larger regions of Russia for German expansion. In other words, Chiang felt that the Chinese were the Master Race, just as Hitler's Nazis felt they were the Master Race, entitled to take anything they wanted.
I've written in the past that Xi Jinping is following in the footsteps of Hitler, adopting a government similar to Hitler's National Socialism, and feeling entitled to annex regions that have historically belonged to other countries. ( "24-Oct-17 World View -- Xi Jinping's 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics' is identical to Hitler's National Socialism")
This analysis makes it clear that this attitude is not recent, and didn't start with Xi Jinping. Apparently the Chinese were quite impressed with Hitler in World War II, and the 1947 map was meant to copy Hitler.
Today, China is following exactly the same path that the Nazis followed. Xi Jinping's "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is the same as Hitler's National Socialism. Like the Nazis, the Chinese believe that they're a Master Race that will conquer the world. They'd have to be crazy to believe that they could succeed at that, but the Chinese are crazy. And they'll do exactly what the Nazis did -- bring destruction and catastrophe to themselves and the entire world. World Affairs Journal (June 2013) and CSIS (12-Jun-2015) and Diplomat (21-Jun-2016) and BBC (20-Oct-2014)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Sep-18 World View -- Britain 'provokes' China by sending warship into South China Sea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(7-Sep-2018)
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Venezuela's Socialist president Maduro refuses humanitarian aid
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As the flood of 2.3 million refugees have fled Socialist Venezuela, with no end in sight, much of central and south America is becoming destabilized, and neighboring countries are looking for ways to mitigate the disaster.
Migration officials representing eleven Latin American and Caribbean countries, attending a two-day meeting in Quito, Ecuador, have signed a joint declaration to make it much easier for refugees fleeing from Venezuela to enter their countries.
Last month, Ecuador began refusing entry to Venezuelas who didn't have valid passports, after receiving a stream of 4,000 new migrants every day. However, that decision was later overturned by a court because it contravened a regional agreement on free travel.
The decision to require a valid passport would have shut out the vast majority of Venezuelan refugees, since getting a valid passport in Venezuela can cost from $1,000 to $5,000 in bribes demanded by Venezuelan government officials. Under the rules specified by the Quito declaration, refugees will be allowed to enter the eleven countries even if their travel documents have expired.
According to the Quito declaration:
"5. Urge to the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to give priority to make the necessary measures for the timely provision of identity and travel documents of its citizens. Providing priority to identity cards, passports, birth certificates, marriage certificates and certificates of criminal records, as well as apostilles and legalization of documents required by its citizens. In view of the fact that the lack of such documents has generated: limitations on the right to free movement and mobility, difficulties in immigration procedures, impediments to extra-regional circulation, effects on social and economic integration in the host countries and, on the contrary, it has encouraged irregular migration.6. In accordance with the national legislation of each country, to receive expired travel documents as identity documents of Venezuelan citizens for immigration purposes."
The eleven countries that signed the joint declaration are: Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
There were thirteen countries meeting in Quito, but two of them didn't sign the declaration. Venezuela's left-wing ally Bolivia refused to sign, while the Dominican Republic was unable to do so immediately for administrative reasons. BBC and Reuters and Quito Declaration (PDF)
The same group of 11 Latin American countries are urging Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro to "accept the cooperation of the governments of the region and international organizations," who are expressing a willingness to provide humanitarian aid, in order to help alleviate the migration crisis.
According to the signed Quito Declaration:
"13. They reiterate their concern about the serious deterioration of the internal situation caused by the massive migration of Venezuelans, addressed during this meeting, and call for the opening of a humanitarian assistance mechanism that will allow decompressing the critical situation, providing immediate attention to the origin of the citizens affected.14. The States agree to cooperate with each other to assist their fellow citizens and urge the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to accept the cooperation of the governments of the region and international organizations, in order to address the situation of their respective communities established in Venezuela."
However, Maduro's close associate Diosdado Cabello, president of the Constituent National Assembly, called the offer "disgusting" and "shameful," suggesting that the offer of humanitarian aid is unlikely to be accepted.
Maduro is calling the entire refugee crisis a hoax, claims that the videos of Venezuelan's fleeing on foot are a Hollywood style campaign designed by Americans to embarrass him. He says that most of the refugees that have left now want to come back
"More than 90 percent are regretting it, of this group that isn’t more than 600,000 Venezuelans who have left the country in the last two years, according to confirmed, certified serious figures. ...I sometimes feel pain for the Venezuelans who left. We will hug you again, come to Venezuela, come back to the homeland. We Venezuelans are here, with our big, big Bolivian hearts."
Actually, the real confirmed, certified serious figures are well into the millions.
Maduro has urged departed refugees to "stop cleaning toilets abroad" and return home. In August, he sent a plane to Peru to pick up around migrants who had been duped into abandoning Venezuela, but only 100 returned. More airlifts are being scheduled. Channel News Asia and Reuters and LA Times and VOA
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Sep-18 World View -- Latin American countries open their borders to migrants from Socialist Venezuela thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Sep-2018)
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Syria and Russian forces prepare to 'clean out' the 'terrorists' in Idlib
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ever since Syria's army took control of Daraa in southern Syria, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and Russia's president Vladimir Putin have been declaring the war almost over and won. ( "22-Jul-18 World View -- Bashar al-Assad declares victory in southern Syria as opponents are bused out")
There's just one more quick battle to be fought, they've been suggesting, the battle to take control of Idlib province.
Airstrikes by Russian warplanes struck targets in Idlib on Tuesday, after a lull of several weeks, although Syrian warplane airstrikes had been ongoing. According to reports, the warplanes bombarded the countryside around Jisr al-Shughour on the western edge of Idlib, killing 13 civilians but no fighters.
Syria was losing the war in 2016, but Russia saved al-Assad by actively joining the fight. Russia's military had been completely shut out of the Mideast after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. But now, for the first time in decades, Russia has two military bases in the Mideast -- the Tartus naval base, and the Hmeimim airbase, both of them in Syria, in return for supporting al-Assad.
In the last month, Russia has launched a large naval deployment in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Syria. The naval force has more than a dozen vessels including destroyers, frigates and submarines, some armed with Kalibr cruise missiles. It's expected that the naval force will participate in the assault on Idlib, and remain at the Tartus naval port indefinitely.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday:
"It goes without saying that this problem (terrorists in Idlib) must be straightened out. We do know that the Syrian armed forces are getting ready for tackling this problem."
Iran's forces have also supported al-Assad in the war. Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Monday that all the "terrorists" in Idlib must be "cleaned out":
"All of Syrian territory must be preserved and all the sects and groups should start the round of reconstruction as one collective and the displaced should return to their families.And the remaining terrorists in the remaining parts of Idlib must be cleaned out and the region should be placed back under the control of the Syrian people."
Al-Assad has made it clear that he considers the entire population of Idlib to be "terrorists." Moscow Times and Tass (Moscow) and National Interest and Daily Sabah (Ankara)
With Syrian army forces massing on the border with Syria, a full-scale assault is expected to start at any time.
There are 3.5 million people in Idlib. About half of them arrived there after fleeing from the violence in earlier battles in Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa. There are probably around several tens of thousands of "rebels," including some belonging to al-Qaeda based Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and others belonging to ISIS.
In Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, al-Assad has been using Vladimir Putin's "Grozny strategy," where warplanes attack hospitals, schools and markets with the objective of creating millions of refugees, who can then be attacked while they're out in the open. A refinement developed by al-Assad's forces is to drop barrel bombs filled with metals, explosives, and chlorine gas. The metals would kill as many people as possible, and the chlorine gas, which is heavier than air, would fall into basements and bunkers where women and children were hiding. Once they were forced out into the open, additional barrel bombs and missiles or Sarin gas could kill the women and children en masse.
In the case of earlier targets, international pressure caused Russia and Syria to agree to allow many people to flee the violence, and take refuge in Idlib. But there is no Idlib for Idlib, which means that there is no place in Idlib for people to go to flee. So there are 3.5 million people, including about one million children, all trapped in Idlib.
Russia and Syria claim that they're only going to be targeting "terrorists" in Idlib, but al-Assad considers everyone in Idlib to be a terroris, and so many people are expecting a massive bloodbath. Possibly over a million people will try to cross the border into Turkey, a country that already hosts about three million refugees from Syria. That may result in a new surge of refugees into Europe.
A big unknown is what role Turkey's military will play.
Idlib is supposed to be one of the four de-escalation ceasefire zones, set up by agreement of Russia, Turkey and Iran in meetings in Astana, Kazakhstan last year. However, the de-escalation process turned out to be a hoax, to provide cover for al-Assad's attacks.
Idlib is the one of the de-escalation zones that Turkey is responsible for. Turkey has a string of observation posts around Idlib, and has been fortifying them with tanks and personnel in recent days. It's not known whether Turkey would take any military action to block Syria's ground forces.
The United State has warned Syria that there will be a military reprisal if al-Assad uses chemical weapons in Idlib. According to reports, US intelligence and military targeting experts have created a list of Syrian chemical weapons facilities that could be struck if Trump decided to order a new round of airstrikes in the country. BBC and Daily Sabah (Ankara) and CNN and Jerusalem Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Sep-18 World View -- Syria and Russia prepare to inflict massive bloodbath on Idlib thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Sep-2018)
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Why China's mothers are refusing to have a second child
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China's president Xi Jinping is hosting, on Monday and Tuesday, the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), attended by leaders of more than 50 African countries. At the meeting, he announced that China will offer a huge $60 billion in aid for African nations, mostly to develop infrastructure projects for China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Xi was eager to refute the growing concerns that China's BRI investments are a form of "neo-colonialism," using the aid money as a "debt trap" as leverage to exert control over the internal affairs of the countries involved and, when the debt money can't be paid back, to gain control of valuable assets, as has already happened when Sri Lanka was unable to repay its debt for the building of the valuable strategic Hambantota seaport.
So Xi may a point of saying the following:
"China’s investment in Africa comes with no political strings attached. China does not interfere in Africa’s internal affairs and does not impose its own will on Africa."
The claim was laughable, as proven by this very conference. Every African nation but one was invited. The one that was excluded was Swaziland, which just happens to be the only African nation left that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than China.
China refuses to have diplomatic relations with any country that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan. China has been using every tool available to it, including bribes, threats and extortion, to force countries to end relations with Taiwan. The most recent success was Burkino Faso. But Swaziland, recently renamed eSwatini, is the last remaining holdout in Africa. According to government spokesman Percy Simelane:
"The people of eSwatini have been benefiting from the cordial relations existing between Taiwan since independence 50 years ago. The nation is benefiting and by extension as expected the leader benefits.Taiwanese doctors continue to be pillars of our health system. To say it is the king alone who benefits is a projection of political bankruptcy on the part of the accuser.
Everywhere in the world, culture is the soul of a nation, only a political imbecile would put a regional meeting above the soul of the nation."
According to one senior Chinese diplomat recently, China has been upping the pressure on the country, and they expect the eSwaziland to change policies soon.
So Xi's claim that aid comes "with no political strings attached," and "China does not interfere in Africa’s internal affairs and does not impose its own will on Africa" is really an insult to everyone's intelligence. AP and AFP and Reuters
Xi Jinping also sought to reassure African leaders that he is not leading them into a "debt trap," where the objective of China's policy is to put a country into a position where it's forced to give up valuable asset in lieu of paying off its debt to China.
Many Kenyans in particular are concerned that they are going to be forced to give up the Mombasa seaport, just as Sri Lanka was forced to give up the Hambantota seaport. And indeed, I doubt that few people would be surprised if that were China's actual unstated policy. As I described last month in "14-Jul-18 World View -- China's railway contractor in Kenya accused of 'neo-colonialism, racism and blatant discrimination'", China's infrastructure projects are set up contractually to make this kind of default as likely as possible.
Chinese officials have been bragging that China is charging low interest rates on its latest loans, but interest rates are actually a small part of the problem.
Researcher Anne Stevenson-Yang describes the problem succinctly as follows: China's loans are quoted in dollar terms, "but in reality they're lending in terms of tractors, shipments of coal, engineering services and things like that, and they ask for repayment in hard currency."
This one-sentence description is highly significant, as becomes apparent with the lengthier explanation I've given in the past:
According to one analyst:
"This debt acquired from China comes with huge business for Chinese companies, particularly construction companies that have turned the whole of Africa into a construction site for rails, roads, electricity dams, stadia, commercial buildings and so on."
So China provides aid for its own companies and workers to build infrastructure projects, but since the countries have to pay for the loans twice, the countries pay substantially more for the infrastructure projects themselves. So why don't they do that? Because they can't afford it, just as they can't afford to pay back China's loans.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Chad, Eritrea, Mozambique, Congo Republic, South Sudan and Zimbabwe were considered to be in debt distress at the end of 2017 while Zambia and Ethiopia were downgraded to "high risk of debt distress."
When America loans money to a country, either directly or through the IMF, it's a small enough amount that one can be certain that it can be repaid. One thing that's clear from China's policies is that they're making loans without any guarantee that they will be repaid and, in fact, where it's all but certain that they WON'T be repaid. It appears to be China's policy to make loans that can't be repaid, and then take control of infrastructure and land in the target country. That's why China has control, or will soon have control, of seaports across the Indian Ocean, in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Djibouti and Kenya. BBC and The Nation (Kenya) and Standard Media (Kenya) and Sputnik News (Moscow)
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Last week, I wrote "29-Aug-18 World View -- China ends two-child policy, but considers a 'wacky' three-child policy", about why mothers weren't having a second child, even when the one-child policy ended. It seems that there are a lot of reasons why China's mothers don't want more than one child, according to a web site reader who sent me the following:
My Chinese wife was an elementary school teacher in Xi'an, China. She says that the biggest reasons why the two-child policy would fail were mostly economic. Consider the following:
In short, even one child is too expensive for a couple in China.
Then comes the fact that now, a married couple also has to support *two* sets of parents. My wife has four sisters and a brother, so they have no problems taking care of her parents. But her son, and her nieces and nephews, will have to support *two* sets of parents because of the one-child policy in place for their generation. Add to that the costs of bribing their children through the education system, and you have a completely broken economic system at the family level.
That is why an increasingly large number of Chinese children are delaying marriage, and often forsaking the entire concept.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Sep-18 World View -- China courts African nations as charges of 'neo-colonialism' grow thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Sep-2018)
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The deterioration of Libya since the 2011 'Arab Spring'
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Libya's government in Tripoli, the country's capital city, announced a state of emergency in Tripoli and closed the Mitaga airport, the only remaining airport in operation in Libya, since the Tripoli International Airport was destroyed by militia warfare in 2014.
The announcement follows several days of fierce fighting between various militias and armed groups from within and around Tripoli. Rockets appear to be falling at random into densely populated areas, fired by one or more of the militias. At least 39 people, including civilians, have been killed in the violence and nearly 100 others wounded.
Libya today has two completely separate governments. The western government, based in Tripoli, is the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is internationally recognized by the United Nations. However, the real power in Tripoli lies with the warlords and militias inside and outside the city.
The second government is the eastern government, based in Tobruk, is the House of Representatives, led by a renegade General Khalifa Haftar.
The Libyan state in Tripoli has been almost totally "captured" by a cartel of militias in central Tripoli, the main ones being the Tripoli Revolutionaries' Brigades and the Nawasi Battalion. They use violence, fraud and embezzlement to control state institutions, banks, businesses, and the only functioning airport. A major source of funding has been kidnapping victims from wealthy families, who provide substantial rewards to free the victims.
The militias inside and outside Tripoli also formed an "alternative economy" -- receive payment from Italy in return for preventing migrants from crossing the Mediterranean to Italy by locking them up in horrific refugee camps.
Because of the excessive violence and corruption, the cartel controlling central Tripoli has angered many of the tribes on the outskirts of Tripoli. The battles last week were the Seventh Brigade, or Kaniyat, from Tarhouna, a town 40 miles southeast of Tripoli.
There are also al-Qaeda militias in Misrata, a city 125 miles east of Tripoli, who are threatening to attack central Tripoli as well. But they've lately been occupied with fighting ISIS-linked militias in Sirte, which is east of Misrata.
Finally, renegade General Haftar has been staying out of Tripoli, but it's thought that he's making plans to conduct his own attack. Libyan Express and Al Jazeera and Reuters and Times of Malta
The "Arab Spring" in 2011 was triggered by the death of a Tunisian food vendor, followed by massive protests and gun battles in Tunisia, forcing the president to flee the country. There were violent protests in Egypt, and there were anti-government demonstrations in Yemen. There were fears that instability would continue to spread. Lebanon's government collapsed.
A major refugee crisis had already began in Tunisia and Libya, with hundreds of thousands of people pouring into neighboring countries, and thousands crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. Libya's dictator Muammar Gaddafi declared war on the protesters and was threatening genocide, especially in Benghazi. It was this refugee crisis that caused Libyans to demand a no-fly zone, and for the Arab League to do the same, after which the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone. As fighting continued, this turned into the 2011 military intervention, and the assassination of Gaddafi. ( "5-Mar-16 World View -- A look back at Libya in 2011 as the West debates another military intervention")
Gaddafi came to power in Libya in 1969 in a generational Awakening era. As we've described in Syria, Cambodia, Burundi and a number of other countries in the decades following a generational crisis civil war, Gaddafi kept an iron grip on power by committing human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions and revenge attacks. However, even with these methods, he lost control of the population in a new civil war triggered by the Arab Spring, and was threatening the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Benghazi.
Since the fall of Gaddafi, the deterioration of Libya's government that was originally triggered by the Arab Spring has continued. According to a June analysis by the Small Arms Survey:
"Since state institutions split in two in mid-2014, the armed groups in Tripoli have undergone far-reaching changes in their financing patterns. Protection rackets and large-scale fraud, which are both contributing to a deepening economic crisis, have replaced state salaries as their principal source of income.Over the past two years, the large Tripolitanian militias have transformed into criminal networks straddling politics, big business, and the administration. They have infiltrated the bureaucracy and are increasingly able to coordinate their actions across different state institutions. The government is powerless in the face of militia influence.
For the average citizen, security in Tripoli has improved substantially, as clashes between rival forces have receded and the cartel has focused on controlling the administration and the economy. But this state of affairs is fuelling resentment among powerful forces in the capital and beyond. It could provoke a new war over the capital."
That analysis was published in June, and it predicted that the Tripoli cartel would provoke sufficient anger that it could lead to a new war in Tripoli. The first signs of that have begun to appear in the last week. Small Arms Survey and Libyan Express and BBC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Sep-18 World View -- Libya declares state of emergency, closes Tripoli airport thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Sep-2018)
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US military cancels $300 million in aid to Pakistan
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
International governments are expressing alarm that the decision to end all US aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) could destabilize the Mideast and create increased radicalism.
UNRWA provides services to Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank. There are 1.5 million registered Palestinians living in 58 recognized Palestinian refugee camps. An additional 3-4 million Palestinian refugees and descendants live in "unofficial camps where Palestine refugees are concentrated, such as Yarmouk, near Damascus," according to UNWRA.
UNRWA's services include education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance and emergency assistance, and support in times of armed conflict. UNRWA provides these services to all Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
UNRWA is dependent on funding from UN Member nations, with the United States having been the biggest donor. In 2017, the US provided $364 million to the agency, with other member states donated $650 million. The US on Friday announced that it would cut all aid, giving as a reason that UNRWA programs are "irredeemably flawed."
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness expressed "deep regret and disappointment" at the U.S. decision:
"We reject in the strongest possible terms the criticism that UNRWA's schools, health centers, and emergency assistance programs are 'irredeemably flawed.'It is the failure of the political parties to resolve the refugee situation which perpetuates the continued existence of UNRWA.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the decision as "a flagrant assault against the Palestinian people and a defiance of UN resolutions." He added, "Such a punishment will not succeed to change the fact that the United States no longer has a role in the region and that it is not a part of the solution."
PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said that the US decision would backfire and draw strong reactions from several countries that oppose the “American policy of thuggery.” He said that the Palestinians, together with Jordan and EU countries, will launch a diplomatic campaign to urge many countries to fund UNRWA.
In fact, the German government on Friday said that it will significantly increase its support for UNRWA, although it would not be enough to make up the agency's current shortfall of $217 million.
Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said:
"It is therefore all the more important that we, as the European Union, jointly undertake further efforts. ... The loss of this organization could unleash an uncontrollable chain reaction."
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the US decision violates international law and the UN resolution that established UNRWA. He added:
"[The US is] not entitled to support or bless the theft of Palestinian lands and illegal Israeli colonialism. It has no right to act at the whim of [American business magnate, investor and philanthropist] [Sheldon Adelson and [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. ... The US decisions regarding Jerusalem, the settlements and the refugees destroy the international law and undermine security and stability in the region. They are a gift to the forces of extremism and terrorism in the region."
Other Palestinian officials made several angry accusations directed at the Trump administration:
So as it turns out, these three accusations are pretty much true. UNRWA and Deutsche Welle and Haaretz and Jerusalem Post
On Friday, the US State Department issued this statement:
"The Administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA. When we made a U.S. contribution of $60 million in January, we made it clear that the United States was no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA’s costs that we had assumed for many years. Several countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Sweden, Qatar, and the UAE have shown leadership in addressing this problem, but the overall international response has not been sufficient.Beyond the budget gap itself and failure to mobilize adequate and appropriate burden sharing, the fundamental business model and fiscal practices that have marked UNRWA for years – tied to UNRWA’s endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries – is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years. The United States will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation. We are very mindful of and deeply concerned regarding the impact upon innocent Palestinians, especially school children, of the failure of UNRWA and key members of the regional and international donor community to reform and reset the UNRWA way of doing business. These children are part of the future of the Middle East. Palestinians, wherever they live, deserve better than an endlessly crisis-driven service provision model. They deserve to be able to plan for the future.
Accordingly, the United States will intensify dialogue with the United Nations, host governments, and international stakeholders about new models and new approaches, which may include direct bilateral assistance from the United States and other partners, that can provide today’s Palestinian children with a more durable and dependable path towards a brighter tomorrow."
The reference to "UNRWA’s endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries" refers to the fact that UNRWA is providing services to all descendants of the original 1948 refugees. UNRWA was set up to provide services to about 750,000 refugees of the bloody war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. These refugees were moved into camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
It was thought at the time that these refugees would move out of these camps and become citizens of the various countries in the region. Instead, UNRWA's services have made it possible for the refugees to stay in the camps, and for their children and grandchildren to stay there as well. And so there's an exponentially growing population of descendants of the original refugees, and the entire population now totals 5.1 million, and is continuing to grow exponentially. The means that the amount of aid that's required is also growing exponentially at the same rate. The State Department announcement says that this "business model," which depends on exponentially growing donations, is unsustainable, and that's true.
For the same reason, the "right of return" is delusional. When UNRWA was first formed, providing services to 750,000 refugees, perhaps it might have been possible for Israel to absorb a signficant number of them. But now the number of "refugees" is at 5.1 million, and is growing exponentially, and it's not reasonable to expect Israel to absorb the exponentially growing population.
Early in August, leaked January e-mail messages emerged from Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, indicating that the Trump administration does indeed want to do away with UNRWA. According to published excerpts:
"It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA. ... This [agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace."
The logic behind this statement is that the existence of UNRWA, which is dependent on exponentially growing donations to service an exponentially growing population of refugee descendants, is giving this population a false hope that they might one day leave their refugee camp and go home again to their grandparents' houses in Israel. This is obviously never going to happen, and so the best way to get to a new peace agreement is to begin by removing the agency that makes a peace agreement impossible.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. The Trump administration is generally aware of all this, having been educated by Steve Bannon, whom I worked with off and on for many years.
Trump believes that he can get a peace deal in the Mideast. Every president for decades has tried to do the same, with no success. Trump's approach is to create political chaos, to destroy the status quo, so it will be necessary to renegotiate everything to bring peace. That's why the US Embassy was moved to Jerusalem and why now aid to UNRWA is ending. This is the approach he's taken with China, North Korea, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. As I've said many times, I'm not going to criticize Trump for taking steps to prevent a world war -- or a Mideast war -- even if preventing such a war is impossible. US State Dept. and Al Jazeera and Fox News and Jerusalem Post
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The U.S. military said it has made a final decision to cancel $300 million in aid to Pakistan that had been suspended over Islamabad's perceived failure to take decisive action against militants. In the past, Trump has accused Pakistan of rewarding past assistance with "nothing but lies and deceit." Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Sep-18 World View -- Worldwide alarm as the US ends aid to UNRWA Palestinian refugee agency thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Sep-2018)
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Alexander Zakharchenko was increasingly annoying to his masters in Moscow
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the Russian troops in eastern Ukraine and prime minister of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), was killed on Friday in a terrorist bomb blast at a local restaurant. The bomb had been deliberately planted in the restaurant, the Separ in central Donetsk, which was frequented often by Zakharchenko.
Russia's defense ministry initially blamed the bombing directly on Ukraine, but this accusation was not repeated as a DPR official announced that the suspects had already been detained within Donetsk itself. However, Ukraine Security Services and the United States were still blamed for organizing the attack. In view of the attack, a state of emergency was declared, and the borders were closed.
It's worthwhile providing a brief catalog of Russian statements about the war in Ukraine, almost all of which have been provable lies. The war in Ukraine began in 2014 when Russian troops invaded eastern Ukraine. Russia always denied that there were Russian army troops in Ukraine, and when it was proven there were, the Russians claimed that they were just "volunteers." That also turned out to be disinformation, as 80% of Russia's army is a volunteer army. America has an all-volunteer army. So saying that Russian troops in Ukraine are "volunteers" is like saying that America's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are "volunteers."
In July 2014, the Russians in eastern Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 passenger plane with a Russian Buk 9M38 missile that was transported by a Volvo truck from Russia, as was confirmed in 2015 by a Dutch report following a lengthy investigation. Russia made one moronic claim after another, everything from the claim that MH17 fell out of the sky by itself to a claim that the US shot down MH17 to embarrass Putin.
After Putin's Russian forces invaded Crimea, Putin denied that there were Russian troops in Crimea, but later he awarded a medal to the leaders of the successful invasion. Putin said there were no plans to annex Crimea, but then Russia annexed Crimea soon after.
So he war in east Ukraine is being fought by Russian troops -- "volunteers" -- supplied with heavy Russian weapons, including tanks. Alexander Zakharchenko web site and Sputnik News (Moscow) and BBC and Sputnik News
Although the Russian government reflexively blamed Ukraine and the United States for the explosion, there are plenty of reasons to look elsewhere for a culprit, especially Moscow.
Zakharchenko was said to have as many lives as a cat, because he survived numerous assassination attempts. Friday's successful attack was believed to be the ninth assassination attempt, which meant that on Friday he used up the last of his nine lives.
According to numerous analysts, Zakharchenko was a major annoyance to his masters in Moscow, and was also facing dissension within his officers in Donetsk, people who would like to replace him. He repeatedly declared that he would attack Kiev, and the DPR would replace the government of Ukraine, but he received no backing from Moscow. In January 2015, he announced a large-scale offensive aimed at capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol. But after receiving a phone call from Moscow, he gave a rushed press conference canceling the operation.
According to Igor Girkin, a former commander in eastern Ukraine, Zakharchenko had many enemies: "He could have been taken out because of criminal schemes or maybe his Kremlin curators grew tired of him or the Ukrainians may have done it. He was a problem for everyone."
Another analyst, Michael Bociurkiw, a global affairs analyst and former spokesman for the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said: "This looks like an internal operation because for the past few weeks and months, Zakharchenko has been critical of some of his colleagues and deputies in the so-called DPR parliament. So, I think the writing was on the wall for him."
In February 2015 in Minsk, Belarus, negotiators reached a ceasefire agreement. The negotiators were Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine's leader Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President François Hollande.
It was noteworthy that the negotiations did not include Zakharchenko or any east Ukraine Russian leader, whereas Putin's presence made it clear that he was in charge of the Russians in east Ukraine.
The so-called "Minsk Agreement" did not bring about a ceasefire. Since then, there has low-level violence almost every day, and people are being killed almost every day. Analysts are expressing concern that the assassination of Zakharchenko will destablize the region, and be the final end of the Minsk agreement. Al Jazeera and RFE/RL and Washington Examiner
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Sep-18 World View -- Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, is assassinated thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Sep-2018)
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Argentina's peso collapses after central bank raises interest rate to 60%
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A US court has awarded Citgo, the Houston Texas based subsidiary of Venezuela's nationalized state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), to a Canadian mining firm Crystallex.
Allowing Crystallex to seize Citgo gives the mining company a kind of revenge against the Socialist government of Venezuela. In 2008, when Hugo Chávez was running Venezuela, Chávez ordered the seizure and nationalization of Las Cristales, the local mining operation run by Crystallex.
In 2016, a World Bank arbitration tribunal awarded Crystallex $1.2 billion plus $200 in interest, totaling $1.4 billion, which is the amount that a US court judge is ordering Venezuela to pay to Crystallex. In lieu of that payment, the judge has awarded Citgo to Crystallex.
Citgo is valued at $8 billion, a lot more than the amount owed to Crystallex. However another nationalized state-owned oil company, Russia's Rosneft, claims that it owns 49.9% of Citgo. Rosneft received the stake in Citgo in 2016 as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan to Venezuela. Rosneft is asking the judge to split up Citgo into pieces, rather award the whole thing to Crystallex. Venezuelanalysis and OilPrice.com and Mining.com and Reuters and Boston Globe
As we reported in June, Argentina forced to beg the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $50 billion loan to prevent the country from going bankrupt. The IMF is extremely unpopular in Argentina, since the people blame the IMF for causing a major economic crisis in 2000, when the IMF pulled the plug on another load because Argentina was failing to live up to the austerity commitments it made as a condition for receiving the loan.
Argentina is heavily in debt, having gone on a spending spree the last decade. Since it's now impossible for Argentina to pay its debts, the value of the peso has been falling continually against the dollar all year. When the IMF agreed to loan the $50 billion in June, it was hoped that the value of the peso would stabilize, but it hasn't. People have been selling their Argentina bonds, denominated in pesos, for US dollars to prevent personal losses, which has caused the peso to fall.
On Thursday, the government increased its astronomical 45% interest rate to an even more astronomical 60% interest rate, in the hope that investors would stop selling bonds, since they could get 60% interest. Furthermore, president Mauricio Macri announced that he was going to ask the IMF to provide the $60 billion loan earlier than had been previously agreed. Macri had hoped that these two announcements would stabilize the peso.
Instead, investors seemed to have decided that the government was desperate and panicking, so the peso ended the day down an additional 12% against the dollar.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde says that revisions to the timeline for the loan are being considered favorably, because of "the more adverse international market conditions, which had not been fully anticipated in the original program."
She added: "I am confident that the strong commitment and determination of the Argentine authorities will be critical in steering Argentina through the current difficult circumstances, and will ultimately strengthen the economy for the benefit of all Argentines." CNBC and NPR and Forbes
Turkey's lira currency fell another 4% against the dollar on Thursday, totalling 40% since the beginning of the year. Thursday's loss was triggered by reports that a Turkish central bank deputy governor is about to resign.
Like many countries, Turkey is deeply in dollar-denominated debt that it can't repay, and investors holding Turkish lira are exchanging them for dollars to preserve value. However, as we reported earlier this month, Turkey's economic problems are exacerbated by president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who says that interest rates are "evil," and who believes that lower interest rates cause lower inflation, which is the opposite of the case, and who is imposing his delusional economic theories on the central bank. No wonder a central bank government may resign.
When we say that Turkey's lira currency has fallen 40% against the dollar, we can say it a different way: that the value of the dollar has been rising against Turkey's currency, as well as other national currencies.
Developing country currencies have been particularly hard hit by the strengthening dollar. Many of them have borrowed heavily in dollar-denominated loans, which they can't repay with their weaker currencies.
The following table shows the amount that different emerging country currencies have fallen against the dollar this year:
Argentine peso -53.9%
Turkish lira -43.5%
Brazilian real -20.2%
South African rand -16.1%
Russian ruble -15.6%
Indian rupee -9.7%
Chilean peso -9.3%
Hungarian forint -7.7%
Indonesian rupiah -7.6%
Philippine peso -6.6%
Polish zloty -5.6%
The United States has one of the worst borrowing and spending records in the world, but so far investors haven't punished us for this. When investors decide to do that, it won't be pretty. CNBC and Bloomberg and Daily Express (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Aug-18 World View -- US court seizes Venezuela's Citgo, as Argentina's peso crashes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Aug-2018)
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Former Balkan diplomats say that land swap proposal ignores 1,000 years of bloodshed
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The breakup of Yugoslavia led to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, which were the bloodiest European wars since the end of World War II, and have not been completely settled. In particular, there is still a border dispute between Kosovo and Serbia, and there are still Nato peacekeepers in the region.
Neither Serbia nor Kosovo is a member of the European Union, although Serbia is going through the accession process. Kosovo claimed its independence in 2008 and is recognized by the EU, Nato and the US, but five countries -- Russia, Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Spain, and Azerbaijan -- consider it to be a "fake country," and do not recognize its independence.
But now the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia have say that they have reached a peace agreement between the two countries.
Serbia president Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo president Hashim Thaci announced an agreement on Saturday to swap some territories and reach a permanent peace agreement. Part of the deal would involve unspecified "border corrections" or "territory swaps" between the two countries. It's believed that the proposal is that four municipalities in the north of Kosovo which host a majority Serbian population could be given to Serbia while Bujanovac and Presevo, municipalities in Serbia with mainly ethnic Albanian populations, might be divided and given to Kosovo.
This proposal has caused something of a panic among the people living in the areas involved. For example, a Serb living in a mostly Albanian region of Serbia would suddenly find that suddenly he's a citizen of Kosovo, and no longer in Serbia.
Another issue is that the deal could set a precedent that other countries might try to follow, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro.
Kosovo's president Thaci said on Saturday:
"Kosovo is determined to reach a binding legal agreement with Serbia. The time to do this is now. We have a short window of opportunity. It is not easy at all; it is very, very difficult. That’s why everybody has to be behind it."
Despite the widespread opposition to the idea, it may be adopted anyway because it would allow both Serbia and Kosovo to join the European Union. The (laughable) theory is that once both countries are in the EU, then the border adjustment won't make any difference because borders will no longer matter. Euro News and B92 (Serbia) and Bloomberg
There are certainly plenty of historical examples to show that setting borders to separate different ethnic groups doesn't always work, and may never work. An example that comes to mind is the 1947 agreement to partition the Indian subcontinent, supposedly putting all the Hindus into India and all the Muslims into Pakistan. The result was the Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth centuries, when Muslims in India traveled to Pakistan, and Hindus in Pakistan traveled to India, with any property disputes settled by murder. That war has not been settled to this day, with the threat of a new war in Kashmir and Jammu.
Another example is the United Nations partitioning of Palestine in 1948, creating the state of Israel. That led to the extremely bloody war between Arabs and Jews. That war also has not been settled to this day, with the threat of a new war between Arabs and Jews.
So it's not surprising that three former High Representative’s for Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Carl Bildt, Paddy Ashdown, and Christian Schwarz-Schilling -- are expressing strong objections to the land swap proposal. In the letter they wrote jointly, they said:
"We know Bosnia and Herzegovina well enough to know that this will give comfort and support to those who would break up the country, who are already calling for a return to the status quo ante in Dayton, unravelling all we and our Bosnian partners have worked for over more than two decades.We know the EU and Europe well enough to know that our principles and our bloody history teach us that sustainable peace can only come when we learn to live in multi-ethnic communities, rather than re-drawing borders to create mono-ethnic ones;
We can in short, think of no policy more likely to lead us back to division and conflict in the Balkans than the one which some are apparently now supporting."
Paddy Ashdown, interviewed on the BBC, added the following about the border adjustments (my transcription):
"But in reality, I think it will set in train a series of events that will certainly add to those who want to destabilize Bosnia Herzegovina, certainly undermine the possibility of the solution in Macedonia, and if it should happen, it will certainly institute a movement of population of minorities from all of those areas back to their home territory, and by the way it will be hugely comforting to Vladimir Putin who is trying to do exactly the same thing in Ukraine. It's a very, very very bad thing, and a very dangerous one.I've been the high representative in Bosnia for four years in this matter, and I could have always, in a heartbeat, in a murmer, have got all of the national leaders, the ethnic leaders of their populations, to divide the country up into little ethnic pockets to preserve their ability to exercise control over their people. But the founding principle of Europe, one that we have learned for over a thousand years of bloodshed, is that we do not redraw borders to make nationally or ethnically homogeneous areas. We can make peace in a multi-ethnic spaces that are already there. And this is going exactly against what the practice in the Balkans have so far been, it will institute a round of border changes and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will destabilize states, it will move towards more ethnically pure states that are bound to come into conflicts with each other, and will offend the European principle that we do not redraw borders.
The positive suggestion is that we continue to try to make sure that the borders that have been drawn in Kosovo are ones in which everybody across the whole of Kosovo can join the European Union, and if they achieve standards to do so, then borders won't matter."
It's interesting that those who support territory swaps and those who oppose territory swaps predict the same outcomes -- that borders will no longer matter. I know of no historical precedent to support that assumption, and it's hard to believe that Ashdown or anyone who is familiar with the history of the Balkans could possibly believe that.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, The Balkans region, which has been the site of repeated crisis wars throughout history between the Christian civilization and the Muslim civilization, may well provide the start of the next major European war. Balkan Insight and Paddy Ashdown and N1 (Balkans) and Map Universal
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Aug-18 World View -- Diplomats fear that proposed Serbia-Kosovo peace deal will lead to Balkans war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Aug-2018)
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China evaluates the failure of the two-child policy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For four decades, China has been attempting to control family planning decisions for individual families through the "one-child policy," announced in 1979, which called for forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and harsh fines to prevent families from having more than one child, and which was revised to a "two-child policy" in March 2016, allowing two children instead of just one.
Early in August, China's government announced new postage stamps to be used starting in the Year of the Pig, next year. One of the stamps displays a happy family of five pigs, a mama pig, a papa pig, and three little baby pigs.
To many Chinese, these Year of the Pig stamps appeared to confirm long-rumored plans to eliminate even the two-child restriction. This claim was reinforced by the memory that in 2016, the Year of the Monkey, China had released a similar stamp showing two baby monkeys.
However, Chinese officials denied this claim about the 3-piglet stamps when they were announced three weeks ago. In particular, the designer of the stamps, 81-year-old Chinese folk artist Han Meilin denied this claim through his spokesman, who said that Han decided to draw three piglets because they made the composition of the painting more balanced. Moreover, the five pigs on the stamp echo an auspicious Chinese proverb "five blessings gathering together" and the design is set to bring good luck to the public in the coming year, according to the spokesman.
Well those denials are now turning out to be false. China announced in a Weibo social media post on Monday that all family planning matter has been removed from the new draft civil code that is scheduled for enactment in March 2020.
This means that all family planning controls should end. There will be no more one-child policy, no more two-child policy, no more forced abortions, no more forced sterilizations, and no more harsh fines.
According to Zhang Juwei, director of the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Population and Labor Economics, "It has become an irresistible trend to allow people to make their own decisions on fertility, which will be the direction for the adjustment of population policy in the future." Daily Mail (8-Aug) and Reuters and South China Morning Post
The one-child policy was arguably a disaster for China's society. Women who had unapproved pregnancies could be violently dragged from their homes and forced to abort and be sterilized. If an unapproved child was born, then the child could not be registered, and essentially did not exist, so could not get schooling or other social benefits.
The negative consequences of the one-child policy were apparent almost as soon as it was adopted in 1979. The policy accelerated the aging of the population, and a decline in the working-age population, which threatened economic growth. Furthermore, with fewer children, fewer elderly people could be cared for by their children.
The one-child policy did have an effect on the demographics of China's population. The most well-known is that many parents aborted their unborn babies when ultrasounds showed that the babies were girls, because many parents wanted a boy who would take care of his parents when they got old, something that girls rarely did. The sex ratio peaked at 121/100 (121 boys for each 100 girls) in 2005, with recent estimates at 116/100, and as high as 140/100 in parts of rural central China.
Aborting girl babies creates a vicious cycle. The number of births in a population grows exponentially based not on the total size of the population, but rather on the number of females in the population. So if there are fewer girls, then there will be fewer females, and fewer births. This vicious cycle is in fact occurring, as statisticians are predicting a sharp fall in China's population in the next decade for exactly this reason.
The two-child policy did little to improve these figures. Many couples chose not to have a second child simply because they don't trust the authorities, and feared reprisals. For those who do have a second child, the birth ratio problem is exacerbated. Those with a daughter, knowing that they could have only one more child, almost universally aborted a female baby.
The population growth rate is below what was promised, and is far from satisfactory. In fact, in some regions the number of births is decreasing. In the first six months of this year, the number of births in many provinces in mainland China fell by 15-20% from the year before. East Asia Forum and US National Institutes of Health
With the failure of the one-child policy and the two-child policy, one of the proposals being considered, sometimes called the three-child policy because of the three piglets, is receiving massive outrage in China.
The proposal is to impose a brand new tax on all working adults under age 40, and put the money into a "reproduction fund." The money would go to subsidize families with more than one child.
Although it's only a proposal, many women fear that it's a return to forced family planning by China's government. Whereas the Chinese government used fines, forced abortions and sterilizations to prevent unapproved births under the one-child policy, under the new policy the Chinese government would use heavy taxes to effectively force women to have a second child, whether she wants it or not. So the government would be back in the family planning business as soon as it got out.
According to one female journalist commenting on the new Year of the Pig stamps, "However, we are not pigs. And when it comes to having babies, we should have free will, and the freedom to choose." South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and Global Times (Beijing) and South China Morning Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Aug-18 World View -- China ends two-child policy, but considers a 'wacky' three-child policy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Aug-2018)
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US Military under pressure to end support of Saudis in Yemen
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The war in Yemen between a Saudi Arabia backed coalition and Iran-backed ethnic Houthis has been going on since 2015, with no end in sight. The Saudis and their coalition partner United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been under increasing international pressure to avoid civilian casualties.
Now the United Nations says that airstrikes launched by Saudi Arabia on Friday killed at least 26 children and four women in al-Hodeidah seaport, which is controlled by the Houthis. Two weeks earlier, another airstrike killed dozens of children traveling in a school bus.
UN official Mark Lowcock wrote:
"I echo the recent statement by the Secretary-General on Yemen, condemning such attacks on civilians and calling for an impartial, independent and prompt investigation into these most recent incidents. I am also deeply concerned by the proximity of attacks to humanitarian sites, including health facilities and water and sanitation infrastructure. The UN and partners are doing all they can to reach people with assistance. Access for humanitarian aid workers to reach people in need is critical to respond to the massive humanitarian crisis in Yemen. People need to be able to voluntarily flee the fighting to access humanitarian assistance too."
On Monday, Lise Grande, another UN official, called for an “independent and impartial investigation” into the attacks on civilians. Grande stated that “what is happening in Yemen is unimaginable” and added that “the time has come to wake up to the terrible reality of the war and its human cost and the need to work together to end hostilities.”
According to unnamed "informed sources," Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) ordered his coalition military generals to ignore the international pressure:
"Do not care about international criticism. We want to leave a big impact on the consciousness of Yemeni generations. We want their children, women and even their men to shiver whenever the name of Saudi Arabia is mentioned."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, whether MBS actually uttered this statement or not, it's quite likely that it reflects his attitude. MBS is young, 32 years old, and has been extremely aggressive and belligerent since taking power two years ago. Furthermore, the world was shocked in years past when video emerged of atrocities, such as the beheading of a civilian by a jihadist, or by the abduction of numerous girls to serve as sex slaves. Today, as we've gone deeper and deeper into a generational Crisis era, these kinds of atrocities are the new normal, and do not shock people anymore.
One thing that characterizes a generational Crisis era is that the value of an individual human life goes down continually, while increasingly the only thing that matters is the survival of the entire nation and its way of life. So, for example, in 1944 Americans were willing to send tens of thousands of their soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy, despite knowing that thousands would be immediately killed.
Both the Saudis and the Houthis have been increasingly willing to use civilians, including women and children, s cannon fodder in the cause of fighting the Yemen war. The Houthis use children as human shields to protect military installations, and the Saudis kill the children in order to strike at the military installations. That's what always happens in a generational crisis war. Relief Web and NY Magazine and Bellingcat (9-Aug)
Although the US military is not part of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the US military does provide help in the form of air refueling for Saudi aircraft and intelligence support. In addition, the US sells weapons to the Saudis.
The recent spate of news stories about civilian deaths in Yemen has caused international pressure on the US to reduce or end military support to the Saudis. In addition, there are claims that the weapons that have killed civilians in recent weeks are American made, but this claim has been challenged, as the Saudis also obtain weapons from other sources.
Reports indicate that the Pentagon is warning the Saudis that the US will reduce military and intelligence support if the Saudis don't demonstrate they are attempting to limit civilian deaths in airstrikes. And Democrats in Congress want to amend the defense appropriations bill to make American support contingent on the U.S. defense secretary certifying that the coalition air campaign is not violating international law and U.S. policy related to the protection of civilians.
However, reducing American support to Saudi Arabia would probably just hand a victory over to Iran and the Houthis. In fact, the Saudis have provided evidence to the UN Security Council that Iran is sponsoring Hezbollah militants in the Yemen war, so that a Houthi victory in Yemen would give Iran almost complete effective control of the country -- insofar as it's possible for anyone to control Yemen.
It seems unlikely that President Donald Trump, who views the Saudis as an essential ally, would agree to a reduction of military support. In fact, because of the strategic importance of the al-Hodeidah seaport, whose recapture is the current objective of the Saudi coalition's current military operation, Trump is said to be considering increasing U.S. military support for that operation.
The UN has repeatedly described Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The al-Hodeidah seaport is crucial to whatever humanitarian efforts are possible in Yemen. NGOs use this seaport to import badly need humanitarian aid, including food, water and medicines, for 8 million Yeminis, out of a total population of 22 million. Many Yemenis are already on the verge of starvation, and the closure of the port for even a few days could be disastrous. Defense News and CNN and The National (UAE) and Gulf News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Aug-18 World View -- Saudis target women and children in Yemen to make them 'shiver' for generations thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Aug-2018)
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Syria, Cameroon, Sudan Darfur genocides follow the same pattern
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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If a government wants to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing against an ethnic or religious population, then the old ways that our grandfathers' generations used are no longer practical. Sending people to concentration camps and setting up an elaborate extermination system is way too expensive these days. And starving an entire population, as Stalin did to the Ukrainians in the 1930s and Mao did to the Chinese in the Great Leap Forward, could not be kept hidden from the global media, as it was in those days.
Today's generations of genocidal leaders have new, modern ways for a government to commit genocide now, and we've seen them practiced in Syria, Chechnya, Cameroon, and elsewhere. The basic technique is to make up some excuse to selectively target members of the group to be exterminated with bombs, missiles, jailings, rape, torture and slaughter, saying that the people being targeted are ordinary criminals. Then when activists in the target group do something in retaliation, then the government can declare the entire target ethnic group to be terrorists, including women and children, and use massive force to kill as many of them as possible, and force the rest to flee to other countries.
These new techniques appear to be spectacularly successful in Myanmar (Burma).
Since 2011, Burma's mostly Buddhist security forces have been committing mass atrocities on mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, in what the United Nations says is "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing," and which some Western governments are calling genocide. The atrocities by Buddhist security forces include gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign.
In August of last year, the Buddhist security forces got the excuse that they wanted, when a group of activists calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and armed with machetes killed several Burmese security forces in attacks against 30 Burmese police outputs. Using this attack as an excuse, the Burmese army began conducting massive slaughter and atrocities against the Rohingyas, causing hundreds of thousands to flee across the border into Bangladesh.
Today, there are about 700,000 Rohingyas living in refugee camps in Bangladesh -- the world's largest population of stateless people, not citizens of Burma, not citizens of Bangladesh.
The Buddhist army in Burma burned down Rohingya villages as part of the atrocities, and after the population left, the army bulldozed the villages. This was a purposeful act to make it impossible for the Rohingyas to return.
So you have these farcical situations where Burmese authorities claim that the Rohingyas burned down their own villages, or even bulldozed them.
However, in September of last year, BBC reporter Jonathan Head was on a trip through Rakhine state sponsored by Burma's government. The reporters were closely monitored by Burmese minders, but he happened to see smoke rising through the trees and was able to escape his minder and arrive at the village. He actually interviewed the Buddhists who were burning down the village, who said that they were helped by the Burmese police. He was able to see one house after another go up in flames, as the Buddhists burned them down.
It was really a pathetic sight. And yet we hear from Burmese officials that the Rohingyas burned down their own villages, and mainstream media reports dutifully report this as if it were some kind of reality. That's how far the farce of fake news has gone today.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel prize winner, has played an important role, a kind of 21st century Hitler. She sweetly tells reporters, "Oh, it's not so bad" or "No that's wrong, it isn't ethnic cleansing," and so Adolf Aung San Suu Kyi Hitler is just part of the genocide farce. She previously spent several decades under arrest by the army, but today it seems that the reason they let her go is because she promised to support the genocide.
Bangladesh and the international community are demanding that the Rohingyas be permitted to return to their homes in Burma. But of course that's impossible, since the homes have been burned down and bulldozed.
In fact, Human Rights Watch has been interviewing Rohingyas who are newly arrived in Bangladesh. They report that the Buddhist security forces in Burma are still raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing Rohingyas.
So the Burmese genocide and ethnic cleansing has been wildly successful. They "cleansed" the area of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, who will no longer be around to ignore them. It's the modern way of doing things, and the results speak for themselves. Reuters and United News of Bangladesh and Dhaka Tribune and Economist
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Over the past few years, we've reported Generational Dynamics analyses of countries following exactly the same kind of pattern. The government targets an ethnic or religious population with rape, torture, jailings or other violence, in order to provoke some kind of violent reponse, even an extremely minor one. Once that happens, the government declares the entire population to be terrorists, and launches full scale genocide and ethnic cleansing.
After peaceful protests began in Syria in 2011, the country's president Bashar al-Assad launched air attacks on women and children in schools and markets. Once there was a violent reaction, al-Assad could do what he wanted. He began by massacring thousands of innocent women and children in a Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia in August 2011. He used missiles and barrel bombs, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas, to kill his hated Sunni enemies, and to destroy their homes, markets, hospitals and schools. In 2015, Russia's president Vladimir Putin joined in with his "Grozny strategy," where warplanes attack hospitals, schools and markets with the objective of creating millions of refugees, who can then be attacked while they're out in the open. Between the two of them, al-Assad and Putin have destroyed and flattened villages and cities, and has forced millions of innocent Syrian civilians to flee the violence into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Europe. There are six million internally displaced refugees in Syria, and five million that have fled to other countries, with 3.5 million in Turkey, almost one million in Lebanon, another million in Iraq and Jordan, and over a million in Europe.
Then, to complete the ethnic cleansing, al-Assad in April passed "Law #10," which requires anyone wishing to return to Syria to provide paperwork immediately proving ownership of his or her property. The obvious intent is to make it impossible for these millions of people to return to their homes.
In Cameroon, the Francophone (French-speaking) government has used extremely repressive measures to marginalize the Anglophone (English-speaking) population in the region known as the Southern Cameroons. These government atrocities began in November 2016, when the Francophone (French-speaking) Cameroon government security forces began beating and killing peaceful anti-government demonstrators in the South Cameroons, the Anglophone (English-speaking) regions of Cameroon. The demonstrators were protesting systematic bias, discrimination and marginalization towards Anglophones by the Francophone government.
The government got what it wanted in November 2016, when Anglophone Cameroonians began peaceful protests. The Francophone security forces began violently attacking Anglophone protesters. In September of last year, activist separatists began using small bombs to target local security forces.
The government announced that "President Paul Biya has declared war on these terrorists who seek secession." In the increasingly violent Francophone government crackdown that followed, hundreds of people were arrested, and helicopter gunships were used to fire on innocent civilians and kill them. At least 5,000 people have fled across the border to neighboring Nigeria to escape the violence.
Back in 2006, I wrote a generational analysis of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, following the statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, that the Darfur genocide was caused by global warming, and therefore by America and Europe.
That fatuous reasoning led me to write an extensive generational analysis of what happened in Darfur, starting in the 1970s and continuing forward. That analysis is still correct, but I now realize that a part of it is in exactly the same pattern we've been talking about in Burma, Syria and Cameroon.
In April 2002, a Darfurian farmer complained to the local authorities that they were being harassed by a local herder militia group. Instead of listening, the farmers were jailed. This had the effect desired by Sudan's government. The farmers were infuriated, activists attacked a police station. The response from Sudan's government was to unleash the Janjaweed militias for a full scale genocide of the Darfurians.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Aug-18 World View -- Genocide of Rohingyas in Burma (Myanmar) appears to be almost complete thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Aug-2018)
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Trump pursues risky strategy, trying to avoid a greater risk
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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President Donald Trump announced on Friday morning that he was canceling the planned meeting of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with North Korea's president Kim Jong-un in three tweets:
"I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula......Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place)...
...Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!"
This is the first time that I'm aware of that Trump has tied together these two major issues -- denuclearization of North Korea and the trading dispute with China. Significantly, he seems to imply that negotiations with North Korea will be put on hold until some resolution is reached on the trading issue.
Finally, the tweets imply that China is at fault, and that Kim is just doing what China is telling him to do.
By ending negotiations with North Korea, these tweets undercut repeated demands by the North Koreans for the US, North Korea, South Korea and China to sign a peace treaty officially ending the 1950s war in Korea, which ended in 1953 with a ceasefire armistice agreement.
The Chinese would very much like to get an agreement officially ending the Korean war, since such an agreement would then be followed by demands to remove American troops from South Korea, and particularly to remove the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) currently deployed in South Korea. Nominally, THAAD is an anti-missile system deployed to protect South Korea from North Korean missiles, but the Chinese particularly object to the THAAD's powerful radar capabilities that see far into Chinese territory and could provide an early warning of a Chinese missile attack.
China's foreign ministry issued a statement saying the following:
"China's position on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is consistent and clear. We are committed to achieving denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and resolving this issue through dialogue and consultation. For all these years, China has been making unremitting efforts for this issue's proper settlement. We have been playing an important and constructive role and comprehensively and strictly implementing the DPRK-related resolutions of the Security Council. All these efforts are witnessed by the international community."
South Korea's foreign ministry issued a statement saying the following:
"It’s most important to maintain a long-term view while maintaining a momentum for dialogue and concentrate diplomatic efforts to faithfully implement the agreements from the summits between South Korea and North Korea and between North Korea and the United States, instead of attaching meaning to each change in the situation.While we consider the delay of the visit to North Korea as unfortunate, we believe it’s most important for the North Korea-U.S. dialogue including Secretary Pompeo’s visits to North Korea to contribute to substantial progress in complete denuclearization and the establishment of a permanent peace regime in the Korean Peninsula."
Regular readers know that Generational Dynamics predicts that China and the US are headed for a major world war with 100% certainty. Furthermore, North Korea will never agree to denuclearization, after decades of having starved, tortured and brutalized the North Korean people, promising that it was all worth it because one day North Korea would be nuclear power and would be a great nation, a peer to the United States. The Hill and Foreign Ministry of China and AP and South China Morning Post (28-Jul) and VOA
The media is filled with the usual statements about Trump's unhinged policies borne out of personal frustration, or about how State Department personnel were blindsided by the announcement. So it's pretty clear that the mainstream media don't have even the slightest clue what's actually going on.
On the other hand, Dear Reader, if you're one of the ones who believe that Trump is the grandmaster at "The Art of the Deal" and you want to learn something, the best way to proceed is from the assumption that there's an actual rational strategy behind the tweets.
If you want to try to make sense of what Trump is doing, then you have to start with the Generational Dynamics predictions that we're headed for a world war with China, and that under no circumstances will North Korea agree to denuclearize, and that their only objective is to get the sanctions lifted while continuning development of nuclear missiles targeting the United States. Donald Trump is aware of these predictions, because he was educated by Steve Bannon, who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics, since I worked with him off and on for a number of years.
What's been obvious from the day that Trump took office is that everything he's done in foreign policy is based on being aware of these predictions and on his determination to keep them from actually coming to pass. And as I've said many times, I'm not going to criticize Trump for taking actions to try to prevent a world war, even if preventing a world war is impossible.
Trump's aggressive tariffs and trade policy toward China makes sense if you understand it as a strategy of trying to throw China's entire entire political strategy off-balance, in order to derail continued preparations for war. China keeps insisting that it wants nothing but stability, in North Korea and in trade, and that's true, because they don't want to be distracted in war preparations. Trump's imposed tariffs are causing significant economic disruptions to China's economy -- which is already in a great deal of trouble -- while North Korea's threats to the United States are keeping US military forces deployed in the region, and THAAD anti-missile and radar systems deployed in South Korea.
Trump's strategy makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's going to work. It's highly risky in the sense that it could trigger an earlier war. I've mentioned on several occasions that we're already in a tit-for-tat escalation pattern with China, and so is Taiwan. This is exactly the pattern that leads to a major war in a generational Crisis era. But the "soft diplomacy" strategy employed by the Obama administration was certain to lead to war as well. Every strategy today leads to unavoidable war.
The negotiations have been completely stalled for weeks. North Korea has shown no sign of denuclearization. According to some reports, Mike Pompeo was demanding that the North Koreans should produce a list of all its secret nuclear and missile development sites, so that inspections can begin. According to another report, Pompeo is asking that North Korea hand over 60-70% of its nuclear warheads, so that another country can remove them from North Korea. Intelligence officials say that North Korea is unwilling to agree to either of these steps, even under considerable concessions from the American side, and furthermore that North Korea has been continuing nuclear and missile development all year.
Furthermore, the US has found that shipping and trading firms based in China, Russia and Singapore have been using clandestine methods to cheat on the United Nations sanctions.
So there was really no point to the Pompeo-Kim meeting anyway, so cancelling the meeting makes sense just from that point of view alone. But it also shows that -- take your pick -- Trump is completely unhinged or a hardheaded negotiator. Whichever one the politicians in Pyongyang, Beijing and Seoul believe, they still have to deal with Trump, and maybe North Korea will be willing to get rid of at a least 10% of its nuclear arsenal. It's possible that's what Trump is hoping for. South China Morning Post and Vox and Politico and Vox (8-Aug)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Aug-18 World View -- China, North and South Korea confounded by cancellation of Kim Jong-un meeting thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(26-Aug-2018)
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The dreaded tribal war zone scenario
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Dr. Peter Salama, from the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Friday:
"For the first time really we have a confirmed case and contacts in an area of very high insecurity. It really was the problem we were anticipating and the problem at same time that we were dreading."
The reason for the statement of concern is that several simultaneous conditions in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have given rise to a situation where an explosion of new infections is likely, in a densely populated tribal war zone.
The new outbreak of Ebola was identified on August 1, just one week after the previous outbreak of Ebola officially ended on July 24.
The earlier outbreak had occurred in far western DRC province of Equateur, centered on a port city on the Congo River. Applying lessons learned from the huge Ebola pandemic of 2014-16 in West Africa, the WHO moved very quickly contain and eliminate that outbreak. WHO medical personnel barely had time to relax when they received word of the new outbreak in the far eastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. Both the previous and current outbreaks were caused by the "Zaire strain" of the Ebola virus. However, scientific evidence shows the two outbreaks are unrelated. This means that the virus has again made a jump from the environment (through bats or animals) to people. Daily Mail and BBC and AFP
The earlier outbreak occurred in one large city, but mostly in small villages, where doctors could easily and aggressively use "contact tracing" to prevent the virus from spreading. When an Ebola patient is identified, then all that person's contacts and contacts of contacts are tracked down, and are warned to remain indoors for an incubation period of 21 days. A newly developed vaccine can be given to suspected victims to prevent illness.
So far, 63 people are believed to have died in the outbreak that began on August 1. There are about 103 confirmed and probably cases.
The biggest cause for concern is that one of the confirmed cases is that of an unidentified WHO physician who has been identifying and diagnosing Ebola patients. However, he wasn't infected by one of his patients. He was infected by his own wife when she returned from a nearby city.
The doctor had been in contact with over 100 people in the town of Oicha, about 50 km from DRC's border with Uganda. About 97 of these people have been identified, and WHO officials have been using contact tracing and vaccinations to stop the spread. The problem is that the spreading could go out of control.
North Kivu province is rich in mineral sources, including gold. In August 2007, DRC government forces attacked civilians in order to obtain these mineral sources, creating an enormous refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing intorefugee camps in Uganda. In 2017, the number of refugees has been surging, because of tribal violence between DRC government forces and a rebel coalition known as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Currently, the city of Oicha itself is not under ADF control, but the entire region surrounding Oicha is under ADF control, where aid workers, priests and government officials are being held hostage. North Kivu is the most densely populated province in DRC, so there are many scenarios where the virus could spread explosively -- into a region controlled by the AFD, or into a refugee camp in Uganda.
The situation is even further complicated by the fact that the ADF has used violence against US peacekeepers in the region. United Nations officials were stunned in December by the worst attack on United Nations peacekeepers in recent history, when 15 people were killed and 54 wounded in Kivu state, near the border with Rwanda and Uganda. World Health Organization and International SOS
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Aug-18 World View -- In dreaded scenario, Ebola spreads to densely populated war zone in Congo thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(25-Aug-2018)
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Cyril Ramaphosa defends land expropriation policy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday reconfirmed that the country plans to go ahead with a land reform constitutional amendment that would explicitly permit confiscation of farms without compensation. The amendment is believed to be targeted at farms owned by white farmers, but some in the government dispute that.
Ramaphosa's government was thrown into turmoil on Thursday after president Donald Trump issued a tweet condemning the land reform plan:
"I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews"
Trump's tweet is based on a Wednesday evening segment by Fox News analyst Tucker Carlson, which was highly inflammatory and misstated some facts.
The South African government responded with an inflammatory tweet of its own rejecting this claim:
"South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past. #landexpropriation @realDonaldTrump @PresidencyZA"
I've written a few articles about South Africa's land expropriation issue in the past, so I'm aware of the frequent claims that there's a mass killing or even a genocide of white farmers going on, but I never mentioned that in my articles because the claim is so outlandish, with no basis in fact.
According to published figures, 47 white farmers were killed in 2017, and that was a 20-year low, with a peak in 1998 of 153. Now 47 murdered white farmers might seem like a lot, and indeed it is a lot, but other published figures indicate that 30-40 people in South Africa are murdered every day.
So say what you want about South Africa -- that it's a very dangerous country with a very racist population and a very high murder rate, and even mass killings across the country -- but 47 in one year is a minuscule number compared to the total number of murders, and is nowhere near the level of mass killings or genocide of white farmers.
This controversy has provoked the usual hysterical name-calling on the right and the left. The left claims that Trump's tweet is racist and white supremacist, and the right claims that it proves that South Africa is racist and black supremacist.
Julius Malema, the popular young politician that heads the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), advocating land seizures without compensation, responded to Trump's tweet on Thursday: "They will kill us for that. There’s a group of white right-wingers who are being trained by Jews in Pretoria to be snipers." Times Live (South Africa) and CBS News and Guardian (London, 27-Jun) and The Citizen (South Africa)
While Malema was his usual hysterical and incoherent self, other South Africa politicians said that Trump's tweet raised valid concerns.
Government official Lindiwe Sisulu issued a statement saying that she "has noted the unfortunate comments on Twitter by [Trump]."
The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) issued a statement pointing out that the policy of land confiscation without compensation would create enormous problems for South Africa, particularly in trying to attract investment funds:
"Seen alongside South Africa’s decision to terminate its bilateral investment treaties‚ expropriation without compensation has prompted a great deal of concern about the security of their assets‚ particularly among the European investors most directly impacted.Even President [Cyril] Ramaphosa’s investment envoys have referred to the difficulties that expropriation without compensation has created for them in attempting to attract desperately needed funds to South Africa."
Indeed, after Trump's tweet the rand currency weakened against the dollar by 1.7%, and some officials raised concerns that Trump would impose sanctions on South Africa, as he's done with Turkey. Many outside investors are concerned that South Africa will go the way of Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe confiscated white-owned farms and turned them over to his tribal cronies who knew nothing about farming, with the result that a country that was exporting food in the late 1990s was facing almost total starvation ten years later.
Ramaphosa has been dealing with very explosive land reform issue in South Africa, which is divided not only by race but by tribe. Black South Africans account for 91% of the population, but they own just 1.2% of the land. Since independence in 1994, attempts to acquire white-owned farms with fair compensation and distribute them to black farmers has been an almost total failure.
Ramaphosa has insisted that South Africa has learned from the experience in Zimbabwe, and it would not be repeated. On Wednesday, he told parliament that increasing access to land for the poor would happen in an orderly fashion and would initially focus on making state property available.
Ramaphosa outlined some instances where expropriation without compensation might be justified:
"unused land‚ derelict buildings‚ purely speculative land holdings‚ or circumstances where occupiers have strong historical rights and title holders do not occupy or use their land‚ such as labour tenancy‚ informal settlements and abandoned inner-city buildings."
Ramaphosa insists that the proposed amendment to the constitution would prohibit "the arbitrary deprivation of property."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's highly unlikely that South Africa will ever reach the point where it's confiscating farms. South Africa is in a generational Crisis era, and an explosive racial issue like land reform is more likely to trigger a tribal war. Times Live (South Africa) and Bloomberg and Times Live
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Aug-18 World View -- South Africa politics roiled by Trump tweet on killing white farmers thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(24-Aug-2018)
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Bolton says that Iran must withdraw from Syria
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ever since the "Arab Spring" began in 2011, Bashar al-Assad, the Shia/Alawite president of Syria, has used peaceful demonstrations as an excuse to use missiles and barrel bombs, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas, to kill his hated Sunni enemies, and to destroy their homes, markets and schools. In 2015, Russia's president Vladimir Putin joined in with his "Grozny strategy," where warplanes attack hospitals, schools and markets with the objective of creating millions of refugees, who can then be attacked while they're out in the open. Between the two of them, al-Assad and Putin have destroyed and flattened villages and cities, and has forced millions of innocent Syrian civilians to flee the violence into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Europe.
Now Vladimir Putin is demanding that Europe and the US should pay billions of dollars to rebuild Syria, and to repair all the destruction that Putin and al-Assad caused. Putin combines his demand with a threat: If you don't pay to rebuild Syria, then those millions of refugees that fled to Europe will never go home.
There are six million internally displaced refugees in Syria, and five million that have fled to other countries, with 3.5 million in Turkey, almost one million in Lebanon, another million in Iraq and Jordan, and over a million in Europe. Estimates are that it will cost $250 billion to rebuild Syria.
Lebanon is strongly in favor of the policy of allowing the West to pay for rebuilding Syria, so that the million or so refugees in Lebanon will leave Lebanon and return home.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil on Monday thanked Russia “for putting forward an initiative aimed at resolving the refugee issue,” and said Lebanon wants "quick, gradual, safe return of displaced Syrians that is in no way linked to a political solution."
Bassil just wants the EU and US to pour the money in, without demanding a "political solution" in return. The "political solution" would be a process that removes Bashar al-Assad from power. What's the point in rebuilding Syria, if some group is just going to start peacefully protesting, and that will cause al-Assad to destroy Syria all over again?
In fact, Russia is accusing the United States of holding up the process of rebuilding Syria. Russia would get agreement from the US. According to the US State Department, the United States and other countries would not contribute to Syria’s full reconstruction until there was a “credible and irreversible” political process underway to end the conflict.
However, the State Department has also said that it has reached agreement that other countries would provide $300 million to begin rebuilding Syria, including a $100 million commitment from Saudi Arabia. The National (UAE) and Reuters and Washington Post
Vladimir Putin has been particularly applying pressure to Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel has suffered considerable backlash from her 2015 decision to allow over a million Syria refugees to arrive in Germany. Merkel's political position would presumably be helped if many of these refugees could return to Syria.
Last weekend, Vladimir Putin met with Angela Merkel in her elegant retreat at Meseberg Palace north of Berlin.
Saying that the population of refugees is "potentially a huge burden for Europe," he said:
"We need to strengthen the humanitarian effort in the Syrian conflict. By that, I mean above all humanitarian aid to the Syrian people, and help the regions where refugees living abroad can return to. I think it’s in everyone’s interests, including Europe’s."
Unsurprisingly, Merkel made no commitment to aid, but reiterated the need for constitutional reforms that would be opposed by al-Assad and elections in Syria. Merkel said the priority in Syria was "to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe," particularly in the Idlib region, which is held by rebel groups and militants. AFP and iNews (UK) and Middle East Eye
US national security advisor John Bolton is demanding that Iran be compelled to withdraw from Syria before any negotiations on rebuilding Syria can take place, but that Putin on Wednesday said that Russia cannot compel Iran to leave.
Bolton also said that Putin is "stuck" in Syria, and wants to get out:
"But he also told us that his interest and Iran’s were not exactly the same. So we’re obviously going to talk to him about what role they can play.We’re going see what we and others can agree in terms of resolving the conflict in Syria. But the one prerequisite there is the withdrawal of all Iranian forces back in Iran.
[The] Russians are stuck there at the moment. And I don’t think they want to be stuck there. I think their frenetic diplomatic activity in Europe indicates that they’d like to find somebody else, for example, to bear the cost of reconstructing Syria - which they may or may not succeed in doing."
Russia and al-Assad have been announcing, and sending out their trolls to say that the war in Syria is now pretty much over, after the reconquest of Daraa in southern Syria. However, nobody serious believes that, since Idlib province still has some 2.5 million civilians, and is still controlled by thousands of anti-Assad rebels, including both "moderate" rebels and militants in al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
In each of al-Assad's previous targets, including Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, Putin's "Grozny strategy" was used. One particularly effective technique was to drop barrel bombs filled with metals, explosives, and chlorine gas. The metals would kill as many people as possible, and the chlorine gas, which is heavier than air, would fall into basements and bunkers where women and children were hiding. Once they were forced out into the open, additional barrel bombs and missiles or Sarin gas could kill the women an children en masse.
In each of these regions, al-Assad and Putin were forced by international pressure to permit civilians and rebels to leave the region on buses and travel to Idlib. In this way, the horrific slaughter in those regions was brought to an end though a kind of negotiated settlement.
Hundreds of thousands of people who fled to Idlib are trapped there, just south of the border with Turkey. Al-Assad has vowed to recapture Idlib in the same way as Aleppo and the others, and this certainly means the same kinds of attacks with barrel bombs, missiles, chlorine gas and Sarin gas.
But as analysts have been saying, "There is no Idlib for Idlib." This means that the al-Assad will have to kill most of the 2.5 million people living there, since they'll have nowhere to go. This would be a major new humanitarian crisis of gargantuan proportions. In some scenarios, Turkey might open the border and allow the refugees to flow through Turkey into Europe, creating a new European refugee crisis. This is what Angela Merkel, quoted above, meant when she said that the priority in Syria was "to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe."
It's well to remember, as we've been reporting for years, that Bashar al-Assad is a sociopathic monster, the worst war criminal so far this century, comparable to Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot from the last century. Whatever fantasy Vladimir Putin is having to end the war and rebuild Syria, al-Assad will not end the war until either he's forced to or until he's slaughtered most of the millions of people in Idlib. Reuters and Washington Examiner and The National (UAE)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Aug-18 World View -- Russia demands that US and EU pay to rebuild Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(23-Aug-2018)
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El Salvador receives harsh criticism for switching allegiance from Taiwan to China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
El Salvador's president Salvador Sanchez Ceren announced Monday night in a televised address that his country would end diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and will establish diplomatic relations with China. China refuses to have diplomatic relations with any nation that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and force countries to choose.
China has been using a variety of economic incentives, threats and sanctions on numerous countries to force them to switch diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China. Since the beginning of 2016, when Taiwan's current president Tsai Ing-wen took office, four other countries previously switched -- Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Sao Tome and Principe and Panama.
The Pacific Ocean island of Palau, which has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, is under tremendous pressure from China to switch. In order to pressure Palau, China banned tour groups from China from using Palau as a destination. The ban has devastated the tourist industry in Palau, cutting the number of tourists in half.
China's foreign ministry defended their practice of using economic pressure with a statement saying, "The one China principle is the pre-condition and political foundation for China to maintain and develop friendly cooperative relations with all countries around the world."
This wording is similar to statements by Chinese officials with regard to China's illegal activities in the South China Sea. China has militarily threatened other nations and has prevented other nations from exploiting fishing and drilling for oil in their own territorial waters. China says that there's no problem as long as each country maintains friendly, cooperative relations, which is China's way of saying, "Do as I say or we'll kill you."
The announcement by El Salvador's president was particularly contentious, since Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said El Salvador repeatedly asked for a “large amount of funding” to develop its La Unión port, but Taipei declined since it decided it was an unrealistic project and could generate high debts for the two states.
El Salvador's presidential spokesman said that Taiwan's allegations were totally false, but then seemed to confirm the allegations by saying, "We cannot turn our back on the world, ignore that China is the second largest power in the world and the leading export economy on the planet. It is key for our country."
Opposition lawmaker Margarita Escobar said: "The position from Taiwan is that [the El Salvador governing party] asked it for money to finance the campaign in 2019. That is called selling sovereignty and allowing another state to intervene in the internal affairs of El Salvador."
The United States ambassador to El Salvador, Jean Manes, is expressing concern that China plans to use the new relationship with El Salvador to build a Chinese military base there. "Without a doubt, this will impact our relationship with the government. We continue supporting the Salvadoran people." Senator Marco Rubio is planning a bill to end foreign aid to El Salvador. AP and Hong Kong Free Press and Reuters and South China Morning Post
Since 1992, China, Taiwan and the US have adopted the "One China Consensus," which says that there is just one China, be leaves ambiguous what that means. However, since winning the presidential election early in 2016, Tsai Ing-wen has refused to endorse the 1992 consensus, instead saying that she "respected ... the common understanding" between China and Taiwan, without saying what that means.
This refusal has infuriated China, which has mounted a series of increasingly belligerent measures to threaten Taiwan. These measure include staging naval and warplane military drills around Taiwan, and also waging economic warfare by blocking Taiwan from attending a growing list of international events, and by using economic threats to force countries to switch diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China.
In July, China forced the East Asian Olympic Committees (EAOC) to cancel Taiwan as host of the 2019 East Asian Youth Games. The EAOC made the announcement with no prior notice and no explanation.
Last week, the 85C Bakery, a Taiwan coffee chain with stores in America and China, was dropped from all Chinese meal-ordering platforms, after Tsai Ing-wen visited one of its stores in Los Angeles. The firm earns more than 60 percent of its revenue in China, and losing its presence on food delivery apps would be devastating.
In 2005, China passed the Anti-Secession Law, which orders the army to invade Taiwan if any Taiwanese official makes any move toward independence, whether by word or by deed. So Taiwan authorities have been careful since then not to say anything that might trigger the Anti-Secession law although, in fact, over the years of things have been said which could arguable trigger it.
So Tsai's words following El Salvador's announcement were considerably harsher than we usually hear from Taiwanese officials. She vowed to fight China’s "increasingly out of control" behavior:
"China nowadays is not only a threat to cross-strait peace. What China has been doing now globally – interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and destroying the order of the international market – have caused high levels of global instability....We have to remind the international community once again – that this is not only a matter for Taiwan. The situation is so dire that we cannot tolerate it anymore."
The question here is whether Tsai's remarks fit the requirements to trigger a Chinese invasion under the anti-secession law. The statement that China is interfering in "other countries' internal affairs" could refer to Taiwan.
At any rate, it's significant that the level of harshness is increasing. Taiwan is now discussing taking retaliatory measures against China. The particular issue is that China has suddenly begun demanding that any international airline that lists "Taiwan" as a destination must change it to "China Taiwan" or be blocked from landing in China.
This has infuriated the Taiwanese, and has led Taiwan to consider counter-measures against airlines that comply with China's demands. According to Taiwanese media:
"The Civil Aviation Administration of China recently sent a letter to 44 foreign airlines requesting that Taiwan not be reclassified as a "state" and must be named "China Taiwan". 44 foreign airlines have all changed on the July 25 deadline. The Ministry of Communications recently studied the countermeasures against the airlines that added the name of "China" to Taiwan's title, and considered punishing the practice of not allowing bridges and adjusting time zones [forcing airline passengers to board and deplane farther from the terminal, and at less convenient times]....Officials from the Ministry of Communications said that foreign airlines have ignored reality and succumbed to China's political pressure, which has seriously hurt Taiwan's dignity and national sentiments. There are many counter-measures that we can take, and various schemes will be evaluated by the Ministry of Communications....
[Taiwan official] Wu Hongmou said in an interview today that Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country, but it has been renamed by foreign airlines. "We can't accept it, and it is necessary to counter it."
The statement that "Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country" is accepted as truth by many Taiwanese, but saying it represents a major hardening of positions on the Taiwan side, just as China is becoming increasingly arrogant and contemptuous, and taking increasingly offensive and belligerent actions. This is a typical tit-for-tat pattern that leads to a major war in a generational Crisis era, when xenophobia and nationalism are at a peak in all countries.
By the way, I hope that there's nobody left who believes that China will never invade Taiwan because it's bad for business. History has shown that a business relationship makes a war MORE likely, since the business relationship can be used as an additional weapon of war, through such things as tariffs, blockades and boycotts. I doubt that a business relationship has ever prevented any war in history. Hong Kong Free Press and Focus Taiwan and AFP and Hong Kong Free Press and United Daily News (Taiwan) (Trans)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Aug-18 World View -- Taiwan says that China is 'out of control' after El Salvador switches allegiance thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(22-Aug-2018)
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Brief generational history of Chechnya
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
ISIS is taking credit for a series of coordinated terror attacks on security forces in several suburbs of Grozny, the capital city of Russia's autonomous republic of Chechnya.
In one incident, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a police station, injuring several policemen. The attacker survived and was hospitalized.
In another incident, two men with knives entered a district police department and wounded two policemen and a female bystander with knives. The two assailants were shot dead.
In another incident, two assailants tried to blow up a truck loaded with gas canisters in a suicide mission, but the vehicle failed to explode. The two were shot dead by police.
In yet another incident, an attacker was allegedly shot dead after hitting a traffic policeman with his car. There were also reports of a shoot-out between police officers and attackers in the street, killing one officer.
All of the assailants were teenagers, aged 11-17. Five were shot dead.
Amaq, the public relations agency for the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) claimed credit for the coordinated attack. ISIS frequently claims credit for terror attacks in which it didn't participate, and that appears to be true in this case. However, executing several coordinated attacks at separate locations requires a moderate amount of sophistication, and since the terrorists were all teens, they might have had help from someone.
Chechnya is one of Russia's provinces in the North Caucasus region, which is largely populated by Muslims. Xenophobic tensions between the Christian Orthodox ethnic Russians and the Muslim Caucasians have been growing in recent years.
Ramzan Kadyrov is president of Chechnya. He's bloody and brutal, and will use any means necessary to keep the region stable, and he is also extremely loyal to Russia's president Vladimir Putin. International human rights groups, however, have accused Kadyrov of rampant rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings by his feared security forces.
Kadyrov played down the importance of the terror attacks on Monday, said that extremist propaganda that "confuses the young men" was to blame for the assaults. He said the attacks were staged to "darken" the festivities as Muslims celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday. Tass (Moscow) and RFE/RL and Al Jazeera and AP
The fact that Monday's coordinated terror attacks were perpetrated by teenagers aged 11-17 is a lot more significant than Chechnya's president Ramzan Kadyrov is saying.
But first, let's briefly look at the terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were ethnic Chechens (from Chechnya), but they were born in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. What were ethnic Chechens doing in Kyrgyzstan?
Chechnya and Russia had fought numerous wars for centuries, but Russia's dictator Josef Stalin finally decided to adopt a "final solution." In 1944, there was a mass deportation of ethnic Chechens, forced to move from Chechnya to Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan. It was apparently this forced deportation that radicalized the Tsarnaev brothers, and caused them to carry out the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
In August 1957, six years ago this month, ethnic Russians living in Chechnya revolted against the authorities when Moscow allowed the Chechens who had been deported from there in 1944 to return and take back property and power that had passed from that ethnic community to Russians the authorities had moved in to occupy the territory. Of course, the returning Chechens found that their former homes were occupied by ethnic Russians.
Going back to the 1990s, there were two major "Chechen wars" between Russian forces and Chechen separatists. In December 1994, the Russian army was sent into the capital city Grozny to take care of some protesters. They expected the operation to take no more than a day or two. Instead, the Russian army forces were ambushed by Chechen separatist forces. A bloody battle ensued that lasted into February, and although the Russian forces finally won, it was extremely humiliating for the Russians, since tens of thousands of combatants and civilians were killed before it ended.
Russian troops got their revenge in 1999, when they had to respond to a new insurgency of pro-separatist activists. In Russia's 1990s war Chechnya, Russian warplanes bombed schools and hospitals in order to create a refugee crisis, and to empty the urban residential areas. Once that was achieved, heavy weapons could be deployed to eradicate opposing forces, entailing widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure.
This is the same strategy, known as the "Grozny Model," that Putin and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad have been using in Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa and other Syrian battlegrounds, although al-Assad is speeding up the creation and slaughter of refugees by using chemical weapons, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas.
So Monday's terrorist attackers are all teenagers, aged 11-17. Ramzan Kadyrov played down the attack, saying that the attackers were "confused young men," but that's far from the truth. This is a new up-and-coming generation of kids growing up after the Grozny mass slaughter in 1999.
In fact, authorities reportedly identified the 17-year-old attacker as Ali Akhmatkhanov -- a younger brother of Khizir Akhmatkhanov, who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for his involvement in a terrorist attack in the Chechen city of Gudermes in 2001.
So this is not a generation of confused kids. This is a generation of kids is looking for revenge. It would not be surprising to see more terrorist acts by Chechens in the months to come. Eurasia Review and Global Security and Rand Corp.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Aug-18 World View -- ISIS claims credit for coordinated attacks across Russia's Chechnya region thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(21-Aug-2018)
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Taliban says no peace in Afghanistan until foreign 'occupation' withdraws
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, gave an Independence Day speech on Sunday announcing a ceasefire with the Taliban, on the condition that the Taliban also announce a ceasefire.
The ceasefire is to begin on Monday, the first day of the Eid holiday, and is to end on November 19, which is Mohammed's birthday.
"As we approach Eid-ul-Adha, and to respect the wishes of different segments of Afghan society including religious scholars, political parties, politicians, women and civil society leaders, youth and members of high peace council in all 34 provinces, and to respect the wishes of the religious scholars of the Islamic world that were gathered in the holy mosques and to respect the wishes of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) and the custodians of the two-holy mosques, the King of Saudi Arabia, we announce a ceasefire that would take effect from tomorrow, Monday, the day of Arafa, till the day of the birth of the prophet (PBUH) i.e., Milad-un-Nabi, provided that the Taliban reciprocate."
President Ghani further added that peace is one of the main demands of the nation. He said it would not be acceptable that there would be ceasefire in part of the country while that conflict would continue in its other parts.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement approving of the ceasefire, and saying "It is time for peace":
"The United States welcomes the announcement by the Afghan government of a ceasefire conditioned on Taliban participation. This plan responds to the clear and continued call of the Afghan people for peace....There are no obstacles to talks. It is time for peace."
Pakistan's Foreign Office issued a statement saying: "Pakistan fully supports all such efforts that contribute to achieving durable stability and lasting peace in Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan deserve it."
It sounds like peace for our time. I hope everyone in Afghanistan can now go home and get a nice quiet sleep. Khaama News (Afghanistan) and Reuters and Dawn (Pakistan)
This was the week that the Taliban surprised government forces and captured the strategic town of Ghazni long before the Afghan army could react. It took almost a whole week to recapture the town, and that was possible only because they were supported by US warplanes that conducted dozens of airstrikes.
Even today, Ghazni is still unsafe, with the roads peppered with unexploded IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and mines.
The Taliban conducted numerous other operations across the country in the last week alone. This is the middle of the annual Taliban fighting season, and the Taliban are in the ascendant, and so it's very unlikely that the Taliban will agree to a three month ceasefire.
The Taliban have said for years that they will never negotiate with the "corrupt regime" -- the Afghan government. They are demanding negotiations with the American military, with the objective of the negotiations to be the full withdrawal of the "occupying forces" -- the US and Nato forces.
On Saturday, just hours before Ghani announced the supposed ceasefire with the Taliban, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a statement repeating all their demands:
"Afghan Mujahid Nation! This year's [Eid holiday] approaches us as our Jihadi struggle against the American occupation is on the threshold of victory due to the help of Allah Almighty. The infidel invading forces have lost all will of combat, their strategy has failed, advanced technology and military equipment rendered useless, sedition and corruption-sowing group defeated and the arrogant American generals have been compelled to bow to the Jihadic greatness of the Afghan nation...Bringing peace and security is from among the highest priorities of the Islamic Emirate, but peace will remain elusive during an occupation and neither is salvation possible without the establishment of an Islamic authority....
This war that is has been called the longest, costliest and most futile war in American history, plunged the entire region and the world including Afghanistan into insecurity and chaos.
A war that has cost Americans loss of security, prestige and mental wellbeing globally and even inside America itself...
But the Islamic Emirate continues to call America towards understanding and sound logic instead of force and points them towards options that can guarantee the secession and end of this long war, and that lone option is to end the occupation of Afghanistan and nothing more....
The regime based in Kabul and forced upon the Afghan people at the expense of huge American military, financial and human loss has disappointed American officials and they have lost all trust in the regime due to corruption, incompetency, impotence and failure.
The leadership of this corrupt regime has been given to a figure who has spent all his time in power squabbling with officials of his government, battling his chief executive, battling his deputies, battling his cabinet and even battling his governors....
Even now if they show readiness for direct dialogue with the Islamic Emirate by accepting the ground realities of Afghanistan, we will view it as a sound step by America.
Sincere, transparent and result-oriented negotiations are an important part of our policy, But negotiations must be sincere and productive free from any fraud and deception and must revolve around the core issue and not be used for propaganda or misleading the common thinking."
The statement goes on to give additional demands for negotiations with the Americans, and for American withdrawal.
Each time I write an article about the Afghan war, it seems more and more like a Gothic fantasy. Ghani's statement and Akhundzada's are so completely out of touch with one another, that it seems clear that they can only be play-acting. Pompeo's statement that "It's time for peace" seems even more surreal. And the statement from Pakistan's foreign office seems to be mocking and making fun of all of them. Ghani and Pompeo are not stupid men, so there's no chance that they believe anything they're saying.
And we haven't even mentioned ISIS-K, the Afghanistan branch of ISIS, which is not included in the supposed ceasefire.
As I've said, the only thing that makes sense is the larger strategy for the region. If America withdraws, it would destabilize the region, and would be a political disaster for the American administration. The larger picture is that Donald Trump and the military understand that this war cannot be won, but they also understand that war with China and Pakistan is approaching. As war with China and Pakistan approaches, president Trump wants to keep American troops active in Afghanistan, and to continue to maintain several American military bases in Afghanistan, including two air bases in Bagram and Kandahar International Airport. These bases will be valuable in any future war with China. Under these circumstances, having troops in Afghanistan is what matters, whether the Taliban are defeated or not. Tolo News (Afghanistan) and Long War Journal and Long War Journal
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Aug-18 World View -- Afghanistan's president Ghani announces ceasefire with Taliban thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(20-Aug-2018)
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Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that capitalism has not always existed
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás Maduro announced a bizarre set of new economic regulations to try to reverse the economic destruction he's inflicted for years. In his Friday night speech he said:
"I want the country to recover and I have the formula. Trust me."
The first part of his "trust me" formula was to devalue the bolivar currency by 96%, and then introduce a new currency, the Bolivar Soberano ("sovereign bolivar") which is pegged to a pseudo-bitcoin-like crypto-currency called the "petro," which is pegged to the price of oil, where oil is produced by Venezuela's collapsing oil industry.
The second part of the formula is that the minimum wage will be increased by 3000%. This means that many business owners will have to lay off employees, substantially increasing unemployment in the country.
The third part of the formula is to increase the corporate tax rate. Businesses that survive the minimum wage increase many not survive higher taxes.
The fourth part of the formula is to remove the subsidy on gasoline. Businesses that depend on transportation costs to receive or deliver goods will be hit hard. Millions of workers who have been buying gasoline at subsidized rates will be hit hard as well. But this is necessary, says Maduro, to prevent fuel smuggling. There will also be new taxes on luxury goods.
Socialist Venezuela's inflation rate is above 40,000%, and the IMF predicts that it will reach one million percent this near. The only way to stop inflation is to produce more goods. If the people need two million loaves of bread to avoid starvation, and if the country's bakeries only produce one million loaves, then one million people will go without bread, irrespective of what currency is being used. Furthermore the price of bread will soar, irrespective of what currency is being used. That's not rocket science. That Economics 1.01. The fact that Maduro and other Socialist politicians in other countries are unable to grasp that simple fact shows how incredibly stupid they are. And the results speak for themselves.
Venezuela's Socialist economy is destroying not only Venezuela, but the entire region, as more than a million migrants have fled starvation and violence in Venezuela and crossed the border into Colombia.
From there, many have continued on, planning to live in Ecuador or Peru. But Ecuador, which has been receiving 4,000 new migrants every day, crossing the border from Colombia, has closed the border, and says that no more Venezuelans will be admitted unless they have a passport. Peru has announced a similar measure to take effect next week.
Socialist Venezuela is becoming one of the top three economic hyperinflation disasters of the last century, along with Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, and 1920s Germany under the Weimar Republic. CNBC and Independent (London) and Reuters
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Wonder girl Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new face of the left, apparently thinks that capitalism has just been invented. Here's what she said in an interview:
"Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world."
So let's be clear. Tens of thousands of years ago, when the first cavemen formed a community and started bartering with each other for products and services -- "You make me a wheel, and I'll kill a deer in exchange" -- that was a free capitalist market. So Ocasio-Cortez is an idiot.
There's also a lot of nonsense these days about Sweden and Norway being Socialist countries. No they aren't. They're capitalist countries. Maybe the government pays for some services, like doctors and education, but that's also partially true in the United States, with Medicaid and school scholarships.
Let's review. As I've written many times in the past, Socialism is mathematically impossible as population grows. Socialism may work OK when you have a feudal society of a few hundred people, but the number of regulators grows exponentially faster than the population grows, so by the time you get to, say, a million people, everyone would have to be a regulator. So the Socialist system collapses.
Furthermore, Socialism is much worse than Nazism. Nazism killed tens of millions of people in the last century, but Socialism killed hundreds of millions. There is literally nothing worse than Socialism.
Somebody should tell Ocasio-Cortez that it's Socialism that hasn't been around forever. It was invented in 1848 by Karl Marx, and it's been a disastrous failure every time it's been tried, for the reasons I just gave. Whether Ocasio-Cortez likes it or not (and I'm sure she doesn't), it's mathematically provable that Socialism will always fail.
That's why countries like Cuba, Russia, China, East Germany, Norway, Sweden and others that have tried Socialism have been forced to end it and return to free markets, and a great deal of capitalism.
The only two mostly Socialist countries that I'm aware of in the world today are Venezuela and North Korea. All others are mostly capitalistic. I keep wondering how stupid you have to be to support Socialism, which has a 100% failure record, but we only have to look at Socialist politicians like Kim Jong-un, Nicolás Maduro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Jeremy Corbyn for the answers. Daily Caller
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Aug-18 World View -- Socialist Venezuela introduces new fantasy currency and new Socialist changes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(19-Aug-2018)
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The growing military threat from China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
The new edition of the Pentagon's annual report on China documents major advances in a number of areas where China's military is aggressively preparing for war against the United States and its allies.
As we've been reporting for years, China has been developing numerous intercontinental ballistic missile systems that have no military purpose other than to target American cities, American bases, and American aircraft carriers.
According to the new report, these capabilities are now being extended to bombers:
"The PLA (China's "People's Liberation Army") has long been developing air strike capabilities to engage targets as far away from China as possible. Over the last three years, the PLA has rapidly expanded its overwater bomber operating areas, gaining experience in critical maritime regions and likely training for strikes against U.S. and allied targets. The PLA may continue to extend its operations beyond the first island chain, demonstrating the capability to strike U.S. and allied forces and military bases in the western Pacific Ocean, including Guam. Such flights could potentially be used as a strategic signal to regional states, although the PLA has thus far has not been clear what messages such flights communicate beyond a demonstration of improved capabilities."
Whereas a fleet of bombers is of great concern to Americans, China's neighbors are probably more concerned about China's activities in the South China Sea. The report says that China has largely completed its operation to create artificial islands, but continues to build infrastructure on the islands it's created, in order to support possible military operations in the future.
According to the report, China plans "floating nuclear power stations":
"China’s plans to power these islands may add a nuclear element to the territorial dispute. In 2017, China indicated development plans may be underway to power islands and reefs in the typhoon-prone South China Sea with floating nuclear power stations; development reportedly is to begin prior to 2020."
It's well-known that China's activities in the South China Sea were declared illegal in 2016 by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, which ruled that all of China's activities in the South China Sea are illegal and in violation of international law. China claims it has the right to violate international law any time, although it laughably invokes international law when it's on their side. AFP and Dept. of Defense (PDF)
The report documents the means by which China uses military threats to enforce its claims to the South China Sea, referring to the techniques as "low-intensity coercion." According to the report:
"China continues to exercise low-intensity coercion to advance its claims in the East and South China Seas. During periods of tension, official statements and state media seek to portray China as reactive. China uses an opportunistically timed progression of incremental but intensifying steps to attempt to increase effective control over disputed areas and avoid escalation to military conflict. China also uses economic incentives and punitive trade policies to deter opposition to China’s actions in the region. In 2017, China extended economic cooperation to the Philippines in exchange for taking steps to shelve territorial and maritime disputes. Conversely, a Chinese survey ship lingered around Benham Rise in the spring after the Philippines refused several requests from China to survey the area. Later in the spring, CCG boats reportedly fired warning shots over Philippine fishing boats near Union Bank. In August 2017, China used PLAN, CCG, and PAFMM ships to patrol around Thitu Island and planted a flag on Sandy Cay, a sandbar within 12 nm of Subi Reef and Thitu Island, possibly in response to Manila’s reported plans to upgrade its runway on Thitu Island. China probably used coercion to pressure Vietnam to suspend joint Vietnam-Spain drilling operations in a disputed oil block in the South China Sea over the summer of 2017."
The South China Sea is international waters according to international law. When American Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOs) are performed by American warships passing through the SCS, they're invariably met with harsh threats and demands to leave.
Ever since Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2006, he's sided with China in the South China Sea, saying essentially that he has no choice since China could crush the Philippines militarily. However, this position has always been contentious domestically. When Duterte first announced this position, I pointed out at the time that polls showed that polls showed an approval rating around 90% for Americans, but only around 50% for Chinese.
Duterte's policy is wearing thin. In the last week, there was an incident where a Philippines plane was flying in the South China Sea, and received a radio warning from the Chinese:
"Philippine military aircraft, I’m warning you again. Leave immediately or you will bear responsibility for all the consequences!"
This implied threat of an attack by China's military is an example of "low-intensity coercion." In response, Duterte on Friday criticized China for using "nasty words" to its pilots:
"You know very well that we will not attack.... We’re not prepared to go to war with you so why do you have to say those nasty words?"
I think it's safe to say that this whiny pleading by Duterte will not have any effect on the Chinese. ABS-CBN (Philippines)
An important part of China's coercion technique is the use of the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM).
The PAFMM is the only government-sanctioned maritime militia in the world. In the past, the vessels in the PAFMM were from companies or ordinary fishermen. What's changed now, according to the report, is that China is building a large state-owned fishing fleet. These are like vigilante boats that harass and block fishing boats from other nations, and perform other functions in conjunction with the PLA. According to the report:
"In the South China Sea, the PAFMM plays a major role in coercive activities to achieve China’s political goals without fighting, part of broader PRC military doctrine stating confrontational operations short of war can be an effective means of accomplishing political objectives. The militia has played significant roles in a number of military campaigns and coercive incidents over the years, including the 2009 harassment of the USNS IMPECCABLE conducting normal operations, the 2012 Scarborough Reef standoff, the 2014 Haiyang Shiyou-981 oil rig standoff, and a large surge of ships in waters near the Senkakus in 2016."
The PAFMM unit operating in the South China Sea is paid salaries independent of any clear commercial fishing responsibilities, and recruited from recently separated veterans.
This appears to be similar to China's practice of establishing large communities of Chinese students or workers in other countries, keeping them under the control of Beijing's international coercive propaganda agency, the "United Front Work Department" (UFWD). As I've described in the past, there is almost a form of mind control involved in these communities, which the Chinese describe as "Magic Weapons." On command from the UFWD, these students and workers demonstrate, complain or riot to implement Chinese policy. China Defense Blog (30-Jun-2016)
The report says that "One of the overarching goals of the structural reforms now reshaping the PLA is to construct a military capable of conducting complex joint operations, including those that would be involved in a Taiwan contingency."
The report lists several "courses of action" that China's military could take to invade Taiwan:
If the United States should intervene in the takeover of Taiwan, China would try to delay effective intervention and seek victory in a high-intensity, limited war of short duration.
In a sense there's nothing particularly new in this report, since it's just the next annual iteration of China's preparations for a pre-emptive attack on the United States at a place and time of its choosing, which I've been writing about for well over a decade.
As I've mentioned before, people my age have never understood how it was possible for Adolf Hitler to so thoroughly fooled the British government in 1938. The Nazis were spending enormous amounts of money building an army, navy and air force whose only real purpose was to attack the British Isles, but it was completely ignored by the British public except, famously, for Sir Winston Churchill, who warned of the approaching attack, but was scorned and ridiculed for doing so.
Today, few people want to contemplate the possibility of a pre-emptive attack by China, even though it's just as certain as the Nazi attacks that started World War II. But there are differences today. The Pentagon has been aware for years of the military buildup by the Chinese, and has been producing the annual reports for years as well.
China's activities in the South China Sea have repeated Nazi activities by annexing regions belonging to other nations. These activities have been so blatant and obvious that anyone with even the slightest knowledge of what's going on in the world is aware of it.
But even before the South China Sea became an issue, Taiwan was an issue. China has been preparing for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan at least since the 1990s, and the US has been preparing to defend Taiwan militarily for at least as long.
So the Pentagon and the United States military have been preparing militarily for war with China at least since the 1990s.
The presidency of Donald Trump has brought a new urgency to the danger from China.
As I've written many times, everything that the Trump administration has done in foreign policy since Donald Trump took office makes complete sense to me, because everything he does is consistent with the Generational Dynamics analyses that I've been posting for years. Trump understands these analyses because he was educated by his former principal advisor Steve Bannon, whom I've worked with for years, and who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics. The mainstream press and mainstream analysts are always completely and totally baffled by the administration's foreign policy, which is one of the reasons that few analysts and journalists have any idea of the danger from China.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. The Trump administration is generally aware of all this, even if the mainstream media are not.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Aug-18 World View -- New Pentagon military assessment details China's preparations for war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(18-Aug-2018)
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Profound connection between the sanctions on Turkey and North Korea
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As the weeks and months go by with no progress on North Korean denuclearization, harsh sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the United States continue to be imposed on North Korea. These sanctions were imposed months and years ago, and remain in effect because of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. However, these sanctions have been weakened in the last couple of months because China, Russia and other countries have clandestine ways to conduct trade with North Korea in violation of the sanctions.
The US on Thursday announced new sanctions targeting shipping and trading firms based in China, Russia and Singapore. These firms have been active in violating the sanctions. According to the announcement issued by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC):
"OFAC designated China-based Dalian Sun Moon Star International Logistics Trading Co., Ltd. and its Singapore-based affiliate, SINSMS Pte. Ltd. These companies worked together to facilitate illicit shipments to North Korea using falsified shipping documents, including exports of alcohol, tobacco, and cigarette-related products. The illicit cigarette trade in North Korea reportedly has netted over $1 billion per year for the regime. SINSMS Pte. Ltd. is responsible for exports to North Korea and general trading of items from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Employees at SINSMS Pte. Ltd. also provided information on how to evade shipping restrictions by sending cargo SINSMS Pte. Ltd. to Nampo, North Korea, via Dalian, China.OFAC also designated Russia-based Profinet Pte Ltd. (Profinet) and its Director General, Russian national Vasili Aleksandrovich Kolchanov. Profinet is a Russian port service agency that provides loading, bunkering, supplying, and departure arrangements for vessels calling at the Russian ports of Nakhodka, Vostochny, Vladivostok, and Slavyanka. Profinet has provided port services on at least six separate occasions to DPRK-flagged vessels, including the sanctioned vessels CHON MYONG 1 and RYE SONG GANG 1, which have carried thousands of metric tons of refined oil products. Profinet continued to offer its bunkering services to DPRK-flagged vessels even after its employees knew of oil-related sanctions on North Korea. Kolchanov was personally involved in North Korea-related deals and interacted directly with North Korean representatives in Russia."
Russia's foreign ministry said that fresh sanctions could undermine the peace process in North Korea. The ministry also said that Washington "is not aware" of how the "utmost pressure" on North Korea is "fraught with danger," without specifying what danger they had in mind. According to the statement:
"The destructive U.S. tactics, pursued beyond the framework of the U.N. Security Council and its 1718 Sanctions Committee (related to North Korea), is only able to undermine the progress, which has been made recently toward the settlement."
Nobody seriously believes that North Korea has discontinued development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, short of testing them. And indeed, why should they stop development?
As we recently reported, a United Nations report says that during the last six months, not only has North Korea not stopped development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles but, even worse, North Korea is stepping up plans to sell weapons to other countries, including to the Houthis in Yemen.
As I've been writing for many months, based on Generational Dynamics analyses, is that there is no chance whatsoever that North Korea will give up its nuclear development program now or in the future, after having tortured, starved and brutalized their own population for three decades, under the promise that one day North Korea would be a nuclear power on a peer with the United States.
North Korea has one and only one objective in the charm offensive since the beginning of the year and in Kim's summit meetings with Trump and South Korean leaders: To get the US-led sanctions lifted without having to give up its development of nuclear missiles targeting the United States.
Statements from the North Koreans have expressed increasing hostility toward the United States for not agreeing to lift the sanctions. Last week, North Korea's foreign ministry issued a statement saying that the North has worked to improve relations between the two countries and "make active contributions to peace, security, and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and over the world." The statement added:
"[U.S. officials] are making baseless allegations against us and making desperate attempts at intensifying the international sanctions....As long as the U.S. denies even the basic decorum for its dialogue partner and clings to the outdated acting script which the previous administrations have all tried and failed, one cannot expect any progress in the implementation of the DPRK-U.S. joint statement including the denuclearization."
The North Koreans have used the phrase "step by step" to describe how they would like the process to go, meaning that they take some step, and then the US takes some step -- removing some of the sanctions.
The North Koreans have demolished two test sites, but it's widely believed that they were no longer needed anyway. Nonetheless, the North Koreans have expressed anger that these meaningless steps were not reciprocated by reducing sanctions.
What the US negotiators have requested from North Korea is a complete list of all their nuclear and missile development and test sites, and to permit the process of United Nations inspections of all these facilities. The North Koreans have flatly refused.
So really nothing has changed since the beginning of the year except that the North Koreans have advanced the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development by another eight months.
The Kim Jong-un administration has said in the past that nothing will stop them from developing an arsenal of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. The Trump administration has said repeatedly that would not be allowed. This is similar to the ancient theological puzzle of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. At some point there will be an explosion. AP and US Treasury and Reuters
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On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doubled down on sanctions against Turkish officials for their refusal to free Christian pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in 2016 on what the US claims are trumped up charges.
"We put sanctions on several of the Cabinet members. We have more that we’re planning to do if they don’t release him quickly."
It's been somewhat startling to see the harsh reaction by the Trump administration over this one particular issue -- the release of pastor Brunson -- when there are so many other disagreements, including other Americans being held hostage, that are not causing a similar reaction.
The reason, as we explained last week, is that in the particular case of Brunson, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a friendly meeting with Donald Trump early in June, and after Trump left that meeting believing that they had made a deal: Trump would convince Israel to release a Turkish citizen, and in return Turkey would release Brunson. The Turkish citizen, Ebru Ozkan, was in fact released, but Brunson was not.
So from the point of view of the Trump administration, this is not an ordinary disagreement. They had a deal, Trump kept his part, Erdogan reneged.
At its core, this is similar to the situation with North Korea. Trump met with North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un in Singapore, and they had a written agreement for North Korea to denuclearize on a step-by-step basis. Trump did in fact take an important step on the US side by canceling military drills with the South Koreans. So from Trump's point of view, he is performing his part of the deal, and Kim is reneging.
This is a serious matter because these two situations are in lockstep. If Erdogan can renege on a promise, then Kim can do the same, and vice-versa. From Trump's point of view, this is certainly an important factor in the Art of the Deal.
Turkey is in the middle of a currency crisis that began long before the Brunson issue was raised and the sanctions were imposed. Erdogan says that interest rates are evil, and insists on personal control of Turkey's central bank. The result is double-digit inflation, and that the value of the lira has been crashing against the dollar and other currencies, and this has had a knock-on effect on other developing country currencies, as investors rush to the safety of US Treasuries.
Last year, Turkey rushed to support Qatar when it was blockaded by Saudi Arabia, and now Qatar is returning the favor by pledging $15 billion dollars. The lira rallied briefly on the announcement, then began to fall again. Qatar's money will help Turkey buy time, but the core problems with the central bank will have to be fixed quickly. Bloomberg
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Aug-18 World View -- US imposes new North Korea sanctions on Chinese and Russian shipping companies thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(17-Aug-2018)
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China's military aid and infrastructure investments bring debt trap to Cambodia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Nobody is surprised that the Cambodia People's Party (CPP), led by Cambodia's dictator Hun Sen, won the recent national parliamentary election. Still, it's breathtaking that the National Election Committee (NEC) announced on Wednesday that the CPP had a clean sweep, and had won all 125 parliamentary seats up for election.
65 year old Hun Sen came to power in 1985, in the midst of an invasion by Communist Vietnam (1979-89), which followed the "Killing Fields" civil war, where Communist leader Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge to kill some two million civilians.
Cambodia used to have reasonably fair elections. It was an ally of the United States, the European Union and the West in general, helping it on the road to a democracy with fair and free elections. Everything was swell, as long as Hun Sen was the overwhelming victor in elections.
All that changed with 2013 election, when the opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue party (CNRP) came close to winning, with 44% of the vote compared to 48% for the CPP. Rather than risk losing an election, Hun Sen became increasingly authoritarian. Political opponents were jailed or assassinated, and Hun Sen took control of all the media, making the once independent newspapers nothing more than government CPP party organs, and closing all radio stations critical of the government, including Voice of America.
The coup de grâce came last year when the leader of the CNRP, Kem Sokha, was jailed on trumped-up charges of "treason." Then the court, under Hun Sen's control, ordered the complete dissolution of the CNRP, the only viable opposition party. So that explains how Hun Sen's party was able to win all 125 parliamentary seats.
These actions by Hun Sen in the last few years have come under increasing international criticism by human rights organizations, and by pressure from the West, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. The United States has already sanctioned the commander of Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit, for carrying out “serious acts of human rights abuse against the people of Cambodia.”
The European Union is threatening to go farther, by threatening trade sanctions against Cambodia, particularly by withdrawing the "Everything But Arms" (EBA) trade preferences that Cambodia enjoys with the EU. The EBA grants developing countries such as Cambodia quota free and duty free access to the EU market. In 2017, Cambodia had $6.2 billion in revenue from exports to the EU, and avoided paying $676 million in duties because of the EBA.
That money would have to be paid if the EBA were withdrawn, resulting in high unemployment among Cambodia's 700,000 garment workers, many of whom are heavily indebted. Because withdrawing the EBA would hurt the Cambodian people, rather than Hun Sen and the Cambodian leaders, there is a big reluctance to do it. Reuters and The Conversation and VOA and Al-Jazeera
As the West has been increasingly critical of human rights abuses in Cambodia, Cambodia has gotten closer and closer to China, where human rights abuses, including torture, rape, jailings and assassinations are perfectly OK.
In March of this year, hundreds of Cambodian and Chinese soldiers held "Golden Dragon," a 15-day joint military exercise in central Cambodia, involving live-fire rocket launches from helicopters, mock tank battles, and anti-terrorism and emergency relief training.
Last year, Cambodia suspended a planned joint military exercise with the U.S. Army, called Angkor Sentinel, that was to have been held for the eighth year straight. Also canceled was a long-running U.S. Navy program that provided humanitarian assistance in the country. Cambodia said its forces were too busy to join the annual exercise.
Then in June, China pledged $100 million in military grants for training and equipment for the Cambodian military. These grants are, of course, made with no concern for human rights, as would be the case with Western grants.
China is also providing funding for major infrastructure projects, including dams along the Mekong River and hydroelectric plants. In June 2018, a leaked environmental impact assessment report on the proposed Sambor Hydropower Dam project in Cambodia revealed that constructing a dam at the proposed site could "literally kill the [Mekong] River."
Developing hydropower dams is the Cambodian government’s highest energy priority. Currently, the government is aggressively pursuing this goal with the help of Chinese companies, for which a series of dam projects have been granted approvals.
So far, all of Cambodia’s hydropower plants have been developed under 50-year build–operate–transfer contracts. Under these contracts, all revenue accrued will flow to the Chinese companies operating the dams. Only at the conclusion of the contracts will each plant’s ownership and revenue be transferred to the Cambodian government. Before this time, the current hydropower plants are creating very little income for Cambodia.
In fact, this is turning into yet one more example of a China "debt trap" situation, in many ways similar to the situation in Pakistan that I described yesterday, and in other countries as well. China has made huge infrastructure developments in the capital city Phnom Penh, and more so in the Sihanoukville seaport. One resident is quoted as saying:
"Everything has changed in Sihanoukville in just two years. Before it was really quiet here, but not any more with all the Chinese construction. I am worried that it’s very destructive to the environment, all this building.... And what will happen when all the construction is finished and thousands more people come? There will be no Cambodia left in Sihanoukville."
Sihanoukville has given itself over entirely to Chinese investment, with a $1.1 billion investment from China in just the past year. Chinese casino owners have also taken advantage of the nonexistent gambling regulation and lax money-laundering laws to set up an empire that is accessible only to foreigners – because gambling is still illegal for Cambodian locals.
The key complaint for many in Sihanoukville is that even though Chinese investment brings wealth, it is mainly kept within their own community. Chinese residents and visitors buy from Chinese businesses and visit Chinese restaurants and hotels, ensuring the trickle-down effect is minimal.
However, Cambodia has the fastest growing debt in all of Southeast Asia. The debt trap will occur when Cambodia is unable to make the payments on its debt. At that point, China will do as it's done before: Take control of the infrastructure assets it funded, and leave the country with a large enclave of Chinese workers and their families, and enclave that will be there forever. VOA and The Diplomat and East Asia Forum and Asia Nikkei and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Aug-18 World View -- China-Cambodia grow closer militarily, as Hun Sen steals parliamentary election thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Aug-2018)
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War of words grows over IMF funding for Pakistan's debt
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has claimed credit for a suicide bombing attack that injured three Chinese workers in Pakistan's Balochistan province, as they were working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It appears that the Chinese workers were specifically targeted. The suicide attack targeted a bus transporting Chinese workers from their work place in the mines to the city of Quetta.
The Chinese workers were working on the Saindak Copper-Gold project in a mountainous area near the border with Iran. This is a joint venture between Pakistan and China to extract gold, copper and silver from the area. The project is managed by a Chinese firm, the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC).
Since the 1990s, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has been waging an armed struggle against the government of Pakistan for equal rights and self-determination for the people of the Baloch ethnic group in Pakistan. It has conducted dozens of terror attacks against government installations, security personnel, military targets, and Pakistani laborers. In May 2017 it began attacking CPEC and Chinese targets, particularly the port at Gwadar. The BLA opposes CPEC, saying that it exploits Balochistan resources that they believe belong to the Baloch people.
Although the exact contractual agreement between Pakistan and China is a secret, it's believed that profits are distributed according to ownership. MCC owns 50% of the mine, Balochistan province owns 35%, and Pakistan's government owns 15%. The BLA claim that CPEC is allowing China and Pakistan to exploit resources that should belong to the Baloch people.
CPEC is a $55-60 billion 20-year project that will supposedly build a network of roads, railways and energy pipelines aiming to connect western Chinese cities, starting from China's easternmost city Kashgar in Xinjiang province, to the sea port in Gwadar on the Indian Ocean in Balochistan province in southern Pakistan. It will have both economic and military components. Power generation, transport, commerce, R&D and the defense of Pakistan all will be increasingly tied to Chinese investment, supplies and interests.
The security of Chinese workers in Pakistan is a big issue. China and Pakistan signed the CPEC agreement in March of last year, making CPEC a target of terror groups including BLA.
Chinese officials say that a major benefit of CPEC to Pakistan is that it employs about 2,000 local Balochistan workers. But Pakistan's ambassador to China Masood Khalid has estimated that there are some 30,000 Chinese working on Pakistan development projects, including CPEC, and that Pakistan's army has deployed 15,000 soldiers to provide security for the Chinese workers.
So China has loaned Pakistan tens of billions of dollars for CPEC, and the salaries of 30,000 Chinese workers and 15,000 soldiers are paid out of that money. But only 2,000 local workers receive any of that money. The BLA objects to these kinds of terms.
Despite all that money being paid for Pakistani army soldiers, the bus carrying Chinese workers was still attacked by a suicide bomber on Saturday.
This has alarmed Chinese officials. A Chinese police delegation arrived in Pakistan's capital city Islamabad on Monday to discuss the matter. Pakistan's interior minister said that Pakistan had left no stone unturned in providing fool proof security to Chinese citizens in Pakistan. “We are committed to fight against terrorism in all of its manifestations." There has not yet been any announcement of what additional steps will be taken to protect Chinese citizens working in Pakistan.
Li Wei, a Chinese counter-intelligence expert, said:
"The province of Balochistan is a region in Pakistan where terrorist activities are relatively intense. Separatist forces there believe that any development activity in their 'territories' violates their interests, and that is the reason why they launch terror attacks."
The solution is to hire more security personnel. One Chinese company has six security personnel escorting a single Chinese employee to ensure his daily safety. The Nation (Pakistan) and Express Tribune (Pakistan) and Global Times (Beijing) and The Nation (24-Aug-2017) and Dawn (Pakistan, 27-Oct-2017)
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As we reported last week, Pakistan is deeply in debt, and has only enough foreign reserves to cover payments for imports until the end of August. Much of Pakistan's financial problems are caused by a Chinese "debt trap," where Pakistan does not have the foreign reserves to make payments on the money that China has loaned to Pakistan for CPEC. ( "7-Aug-18 World View -- Pakistan faces imminent financial crisis threatening China's CPEC")
On Monday, it emerged that China has agreed to guarantee Pakistan's financial backing. This means that China will loan Pakistan additional billions of dollars, making Pakistan even more deeply indebted to China.
The only other possible source of money for Pakistan to stave off financial disaster is a new loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), although Pakistan has not fully repaid its last loan, made in 2013.
Imran Khan, Pakistan's incoming anti-American prime minister, used to criticize Pakistan's government for borrowing from the Washington-based IMF, but now that he's in the government with a pending financial crisis, he's suggested that his attitude may have changed.
However, attitudes in Washington have also changed. It's becoming apparent that China is setting debt traps in one nation after another as it loans tens of billions of dollars to each nation for infrastructure projects in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It's now being recognized that many of these countries are going to come to the IMF for loans when they're unable to pay their debts to China, which means that money from the IMF, which is largely funded by American taxpayers, would be paid to China in the case of each country.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of US senators expressed concern over potential bailout requests to the IMF by countries who have accepted "predatory Chinese infrastructure financing."
This has angered the Chinese, who of course would like to have the IMF bail out their debt trap countries, so that in effect the IMF would be funding China's BRI projects in all the countries.
According to a lengthy analysis in the South China Morning Post:
"Unexpectedly, just five days after Pakistan’s elections, [US Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo opposed an IMF bailout package to Pakistan. He argued that American taxpayer dollars are part of IMF funding and therefore the US government would not allow a bailout package for Pakistan that could be used to repay Chinese creditors or the government of China. This is the first time the US government has openly made a move that is tantamount to attacking Pakistan-China economic cooperation. ...Against this backdrop, Pompeo’s recent statement is a major blow to US-Pakistan relations. This does not bode well for peace and stability in Afghanistan because now Pakistan will not be motivated to cooperate with the US government anymore on the Afghan front.
Given that the US is a major power broker in the IMF, its opposition will effectively thwart a bailout package for Pakistan. The country will have to explore other options to secure the funds needed to stimulate its economy. Unfortunately, there are not many countries or funding organisations that can offer Pakistan a generous financial bailout. Thus, Pakistan would be left with no choice but to ask for help from its all-weather friend – China. ...
After the probable refusal of IMF bailout package, Pakistan will be seeking additional loans of US$12 billion from China. ...
Hence, Pakistan will further be pushed towards economic dependence on China. If it is unable to repay Chinese loans, it could end up leasing its assets, such as Gwadar Port, to China. This model has already worked with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port.
The US decision to block the IMF bailout has effectively put Pakistan on the path to becoming a Chinese economic colony. This will certainly not help the US in increasing its influence in South Asia and Indochina, but will rather immensely increase the influence of China in South Asia."
The analysis refers to the Sri Lanka example, where Sri Lanka was unable to make payments on money loaned by China for the Hambantota Seaport. As a result, Sri Lanka was forced to give control of Hambantota to China for 99 years. In addition, there is now a large Chinese enclave surrounding the seaport of thousands of Chinese workers and families that will be there forever.
So the above analysis worries that all of Pakistan is on the path to becoming a "Chinese economic colony." The implied solution is that the US and the IMF should rush to Pakistan's rescue and give them the money to repay their all-weather friend China.
It's actually still possible that the IMF will lend Pakistan the money. Theoretically, the IMF is an indpendent organization, located in Washington, but not controlled in any way by Washington political policy. Theoretically, the IMF should not be swayed in its decision by the way the money will be used -- to repay China.
As I've been writing for the last ten years, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
Whether the IMF lends money to Pakistan or not, it is not possible for the US and Pakistan to become "friends" in anything like the sense that China and Pakistan are "all-weather friends." Express Tribune (Pakistan) and Xinhua and South China Morning Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Aug-18 World View -- Chinese workers in Pakistan injured in terrorist bombing thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(15-Aug-2018)
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Afghan army, backed by US, struggles to regain Ghazni after four days
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Afghan army forces have still not fully regained control of Ghazni Proving, four days after they were surprised by an unexpected attack by Taliban militants on Friday. The sophistication and force of this attack has once again brought into question the Nato and American strategy in Afghanistan.
On Friday, Taliban militants conducted a multipronged attack on Ghazni, a city of 270,000 people, and a trading and transit hub strategically located along a major highway in eastern Afghanistan. Afghan government officials say that Taliban militants were hiding in mosques and homes in Ghazni, and were using residents as human shields. They would slip out at night and attack Afghan forces.
As is often the case in Afghanistan, there are suspicions that the Taliban militants had support and help from sympathetic civilian residents of the city. Some Afghans said the assault was not a surprise, and followed months of build-up by militants near checkpoints around the city.
It would not be surprising if a substantial number of civilians supported the Taliban. Many in the civilian population are ethnic Pashtuns, and the Taliban itself consists of radicalized Pashtuns.
The US military was actively involved in supporting the Afghan army. US warplanes delivered two dozen airstrikes, killing more than 140 Taliban fighters, according to the military. U.S. military spokesman Lt. COL Martin O'Donnell downplayed the significance of the situation and summarized it on Monday:
"Ghazni City remains under Afghan government control, and the isolated and disparate Taliban forces remaining in the city do not pose a threat to its collapse as some have claimed. That said, the Taliban's attempts to hide themselves amongst the Afghan populace does pose a threat to the civilian population, who were terrorized and harassed by this ineffective attack and the subsequent execution of innocents, destruction of homes and burning of a market."
However, video released by local TV broadcaster Tolo News showed black smoke rising in the air as buildings burn and Taliban fighters roam freely around the city. As of Tuesday morning, the situation in Ghazni is not yet clear. Military Times and ABC News and AP and Tolo News (Afghanistan)
The assault on Ghazni City comes after another assault on Farah City in the western part of the country in May. ( "16-May-18 World View -- Taliban launches major military operation in Farah province in Afghanistan")
Taliban activists and the American military have dueling narratives about how to interpret these repeated attacks by Taliban militants.
Over the past months, the Taliban have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on afghan security forces. This proves, according to the Taliban, that they can attack and take control of districts at any time of their choosing.
However, Afghan officials are claiming that this proves that the Taliban are being defeated because, even though they can attack at will, they are unable to hold group the way they used to as recently as 2016.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. COL Martin O'Donnell said:
"Tactically, operationally and strategically, the Taliban achieved nothing with this failed attack except another eye-catching, but inconsequential headline. The fact remains that the Taliban are unable to seize terrain and unable to match the Afghan security forces or our enablement, retreating once directly and decisively engaged."
Arguably, both sides make good points: The Taliban can attack as often as they want, but they can't hold against the Afghan forces.
The problem is that the second part of that statement is true only if the Afghan forces are backed by Nato military logistics and airpower. The brutal attack on Ghazni suggests that without the Nato military, the Afghan forces apparently cannot defeat the Taliban.
The Nato and Afghan government strategy is to use military force to compel the Taliban to negotiate a peace. As I've described in detail many times in the past, a Generational Dynamics analysis proves that's wrong. The Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns that have been radicalized, and they include new generations of young Pashtuns that have come of age since the bloody Afghan civil war in the early 1990s. These young people are seeking revenge against their former enemies in the Northern Alliance, and even if the Taliban leadership tries to negotiate peace, the younger Pashtuns would not be interested.
That's a summary of the analysis that I've been posting for years, but in the last year the situation has become even worse. As ISIS militants in Syria have lost their caliphate in Raqqa and have continued to lose ground, many ISIS militants have been returning to their home countries, whether in Europe, in Russia or in Afghanistan. They're forming a new terrorist network, ISIS-K, or "ISIS Khorasan" ("Wilayah Khorasan") or ISKP, the South Asian branch of ISIS.
ISIS-K has been conducting its own terror attacks in Afghanistan, sometimes cooperating with the Taliban, and at other times fighting against the Taliban. The Taliban, especially the younger generation militants, have no desire for a negotiated peace with the government, but even if they did, the militants in ISIS-K would not. So the Nato plan for Afghanistan has no chance of succeeding.
As I've written in the past, there seems to be another strategy for the American military in Afghanistan. Donald Trump and the military understand that this war cannot be won, but they also understand that war with China and Pakistan is approaching. As war with China and Pakistan approaches, president Trump wants to keep American troops active in Afghanistan, and to continue to maintain several American military bases in Afghanistan, including two air bases in Bagram and Kandahar International Airport. These bases will be valuable in any future war with China. Under these circumstances, having troops in Afghanistan is what matters, whether the Taliban are defeated or not. Asia Times and Long War Journal and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Aug-18 World View -- Taliban attack on Ghazni brings America's Afghanistan strategy into question thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(14-Aug-2018)
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Major issues about commercial exploitation remain unresolved
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The presidents of five major countries -- the countries bordering the Caspian Sea -- all arrived in the Kazakhstan port city of Aktau on Sunday for a summit meeting to sign what is being called a "historic" agreement on settling the status of the Caspian Sea. The five countries are Russia, Iran, and three former Soviet states, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
The five leaders signed agreements on trade and economic cooperation, cooperation in the transport sector. The leaders also agreed that the surface of the Caspian Sea would be freely available to everyone for activities like travel and fishing.
According to Russia's president Vladimir Putin, the agreement "creates conditions for bringing cooperation between the countries to a qualitatively new level of partnership, for the development of close cooperation on different trajectories." Whatever that means. BBC and Tass (Moscow) and Press TV (Tehran) and Al Jazeera and Deutsche Welle
There are some 50 billion barrels of oil and nearly 9 trillion cubic meters of gas in proven or probable reserves in the Caspian seabed. At today's prices, that's worth several trillion dollars. The problem is how to divide those reserves, and Sunday's "historic" agreement leaves those issues unsettled.
Prior to 1991, there were only two littoral states bordering the Caspian Sea -- the Soviet Union and Iran. When the Soviet Union split up, suddenly there were five littoral states. Starting in 1996, these five countries attempted to reach agreement on how to split up the seabed among themselves. However, they were never able to reach agreement, and apparently that's still true despite Sunday's "historic" agreement.
The problem is that the Caspian Sea is a unique body of water in the world, and so there are no examples to provide guidance. The Caspian Sea in Central Asia is the largest inland body of water in the world. From the point of view of international law, it's neither a sea nor a lake. It can't be a lake because it's too large, and it can't be a sea because it's not connected to any of the world's oceans.
International law provides formulas for dividing up the seabeds of lakes and seas. If the Caspian Sea is a sea, then the size of the region that each country gets depends on the length of the coastline bordering the sea. Under this formula, Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan would get the largest shares of the seabed, and so these countries favor it.
But if the Caspian Sea is a lake, then there are five littoral states, and so the seabed would be split up equally among them, giving them each 20% of the seabed. Iran and Turkmenistan favor this formula, because they have the shortest shorelines.
According to news reports, the agreement avoids calling either a sea or a lake, but gives it a special legal status, with an agreement in principle to a special formula for dividing up the seabed among the five countries. However, the formula is apparently close to the "sea" formula. In their closing statements, the leaders of Iran and Turkmenistan said that these issues remained unsettled, and that another summit meeting would be required within a few months.
The agreement apparently permits something that Russia had been opposing -- allowing Turkmenistan to build a "Trans-Caspian Pipeline" (TCP) to permit delivery of its gas to Azerbaijan, where it would be pumped into pipelines leading west to Turkey and Europe. For 20 years, Russia has opposed the TCP, claiming that it poses a potential environmental hazard to the Caspian's unique biosphere. However, this objection is laughable, since Russia's Gazprom has laid several pipelines in the Black Sea, which also has a "unique biosphere." It's believed that Russia simply wants to block competition.
However, Russia and Iran did get their way in one more area. The agreement specifically forbids any but the five Caspian countries from deploying military forces on the Caspian Sea.
Recall that in April I wrote "28-Apr-18 World View -- Kazakhstan to permit America to use Caspian ports to supply military in Afghanistan." Russia and Iran objected to this, claiming that the Nato would use the transit of supplies to Afghanistan as an excuse to deploy American forces in the ports in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and that the ports might turn into American military bases.
However, Kazakhstan committed that only nonmilitary supplies will be permitted to pass through the ports, and Sunday's agreement seals that commitment. According to Kazakhstan's foreign minister:
"Some representatives of Russian media and expert communities do not have a firm grasp of facts on the real situation regarding the transit of US non-military cargo via Kazakhstan.... It is about commercial railway transportation of non-lethal cargo via Kazakhstan to continue the operations to support the Afghan government, which is necessary for the whole international community.... Naturally, any military bases on the Caspian Sea are out of question."
He added that this is not a change to any existing agreements. RFE/RL and Reuters and Bloomberg and SBS (Australia) and Sputnik (Moscow)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Aug-18 World View -- A 'historic' Caspian Sea agreement leaves major issues unresolved thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Aug-2018)
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Brief generational history of Colombia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A new president took office in Colombia on Tuesday of last week. Right-wing Ivan Duque took office, replacing left-wing Juan Manuel Santos. The inauguration occurred in the midst of a major diplomatic clash between Colombia and Venezuela.
Last weekend on Saturday evening, a live drama unfolded on nationwide TV in Venezuela. Socialist President Nicolás Maduro, was giving a televised speech when suddenly he stopped speaking and looked up at the sky. Two drones armed with explosives detonated near Maduro, who, however, was not hurt. Three hours later, he was on nationwide tv again, saying:
"I am fine, I am alive, and after this attack I'm more determined than ever to follow the path of the revolution. ... I have no doubt that the name Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack."
According to Maduro, Santos acted in coordination with the former president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Julio Borges, who had been in the political opposition to Maduro.
Last year, the Socialist Maduro dissolved the democratically elected parliament and replaced with a "Constituent Assembly" consisting of Maduro's political cronies. Last week, the Constituent Assembly revoked the immunity that Borges had as an opposition lawmaker, and the Supreme Court called for his arrest. However, Borges has apparently fled Venezuela. According to Maduro, Borges had fled to Colombia.
Now Maduro is demanding that Colombia and the United States extradite Borges and other opposition lawmakers that have fled to those countries. These extradition requests have been refused.
On Thursday, the European Union in Brussels issued a statement on the drone attack:
"The latest events have further inflated the tensions in Venezuela. The European Union rejects any form of violence and expects that a comprehensive and transparent investigation of Saturday´s drone attack is conducted to establish the facts, in full respect for the rule of law and for human rights.In this regard, the EU expects the recognition of the National Assembly's constitutional powers, including the full respect of its prerogatives concerning the parliamentary immunity of its members, in line with established constitutional rights, legislation and procedures.
The EU reiterates its support for a negotiated, democratic and peaceful solution for the multiple crises affecting the country as the only way forward. This needs to encompass a return to constitutional normality restoring democratic process and the rule of law, respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, release of all political prisoners, and addressing the pressing humanitarian needs of the population."
This statement infuriated Maduro. According to Maduro, Santos acted in coordination with Borges, "who receives the order, the resources, the logistics, the support and the plan [and] is the one who takes responsibility for the history of assassinating the president."
Maduro condemned the statement by the EU:
"It is truly deplorable the communique of the European Union, they go out to protect the terrorists, in their communiqué they protect the terrorists, in their communique they are not capable of condemning the attack that had as objective to assassinate the president of this country."
Thanks to Socialist policies, Venezuela is suffering the worst economic depression ever recorded in Latin America. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 16.5 percent in 2016 and 12 percent in 2017, and forecasts a 15 percent contraction for 2018. Inflation reached more than 2,600 percent in 2017, the highest in the world by a wide margin, and the IMF forecasts 13,000 percent for 2018.
Thanks to the Socialist policies, Venezuelans are starving, and are unable to feed their kids or obtain medicines to care for them when they're sick. The Socialist government of Venezuela has created a massive refugee problem that's destabilizing the entire region. By some estimates, 35,000 Venezuelan refugees flee across the border into Colombia every day, although many return after acquiring basic items, like food. Some one million are staying in Colombia. About 4,000 migrants enter Ecuador every day, fleeing violence in Venezuela. Brazil has taken in over 41,000 Venezuelans.
Every Socialist government in history has failed, either peacefully or disastrously. Even Cuba has given up Socialism. The only two Socialist governments left are Venezuela and North Korea. However, Venezuela destabilizing the entire region, and with Maduro making threatening accusations like the one last week, it's possible that Venezuela's Socialist government will end with war. AFP and Europa (EU) and Diario Las Americas (Trans) and Al Jazeera
The Trump administration has high hopes for Ivan Duque, because Duque has promised to tackle the drug problem. Last year, president Trump suggested stopping aid to countries that are "pouring" drugs into the US. In Colombia, some 209,000 hectares (516,500 acres) of land are used to grow coca, the principal ingredient used to manufacture cocaine. Colombia is the largest cocaine producer in the world.
Colombia's last generational crisis war was shared with Venezuela. It was called "La Violencia," or the Colombian Revolt, 1948-1959. More than 200,000 persons lost their lives and more than a billion dollars of property damage was done.
As we've written many times in the past, when a generational crisis war is an ethnic or tribal civil war, it really never ends. One side may force the other into submission, but the people on both sides are traumatized by the murders, mutilations, rapes, and torturing that they performed on people who lived in the same cities and even on the same streets, where the mothers exchanged recipes and the children played together. All the survivors continue to feel the lingering horror of the atrocities that were committed on both sides. After the war ends, there is continuing sporadic violence as we've described in many countries, including Syria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Burundi, Congo, and others.
In post-war Colombia, the government confiscated small farms in order to create large farms, but in doing so left large pools of unemployed people.
By the mid-1960s. two Marxist-Leninist guerrilla terrorist groups had formed: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN). Both groups have massive criminal histories, using drug trafficking, violence, bombings, murders, kidnappings for ransom, and extortion as sources of leverage and income. Billions of dollars of income have been derived from the sale of narcotics each year. In the last 50 years, as many as 220,000 people are dead, 25,000 are disappeared, and 5.7 million are displaced.
In December 2016, the government signed a peace agreement with the FARC. The agreement ended much of the violence, but it was highly controversial because it specified that all FARC members would walk free with no punishment for the 50 years of horrific crimes, which infuriated the relatives of the violence by the FARC. Duque made a campaign promise to revise and renegotiate the peacekeeping deal to provide for the relatives of the victims.
Duque has also promised to fix the drug problem:
"We will be effective in the eradication and substitution of illegal crops, accompanied by productive opportunities [for farmers]."
That remains to be seen. Other attempts to reduce coca production have failed. Coca production surged to historically high levels in 2017, and among the reasons is a crop-substitution program tied to Colombia’s peace deal that offered incentives to coca farmers to switch to legal crops. Those incentives were so lucrative that some rural dwellers planted more coca to earn more cash. In addition, Colombia in 2015 banned aerial spraying of coca crops after a determination that the herbicide being used could cause cancer in humans. Duque is committed to be much more aggressive, including a return to using the banned herbicide. Stanford Univ and Insight Crime and Council on Foreign Relations (11-Jan-2017) and Washington Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Aug-18 World View -- Colombia's president Ivan Duque takes office amidst accusations from Venezuela thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Aug-2018)
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How Erdogan apparently double-crossed Trump
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey's lira currency has been falling steadily for the last year because of a clearly stated view by Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan that interest rates are "evil," and because he has been controlling Turkey's central bank consistent with that belief.
The lira has already lost 40% of its value in the past month. On Friday, the currency fell another 20%, before settling at being down 14% from Thursday's level.
The result is that any imported item now cost two or three times as many liras as they did a few months ago. The inflation rate is above 15%.
Many economists had been predicting for months that Erdogan's actions would lead to a currency crisis, which is what's happening now. There are concerns that unless Erdogan adopts sensible policies, the result will be a full-scale national economic crisis.
During the campaign for the June 24 elections, Erdogan said the following:
"If my people say continue on this path in the elections, I say I will emerge with victory in the fight against this curse of interest rates. Because my belief is: interest rates are the mother and father of all evil."
In July he appointed his son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, to run the central bank, and said, "We will see inflation and interest rates decline in the coming period."
These statements caused concern among investors for two reasons. First, an interest rate decline will cause higher inflation, not lower inflation, and combined with his statement that interest rates are "the mother and father of all evil," it's reasonable to conclude that Erdogan does not have the vaguest clue how economics works.
We've seen this kind of thing in other countries. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro followed and are following policies which have meant economic destruction for their country. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's policy of throwing white farmers off farms and giving the farms to political cronies who know nothing about farms ended up destroying Zimbabwe's economy, and it's unclear whether this policy is still continuing. I've written about many other examples where a clueless idiot leader politician destroys a country's economy and the country itself.
That hasn't happened to Turkey yet, but Erdogan has become so fanatical that it will if he continues the path he's on.
The second reason that investors are concerned is that Erdogan seems determined to control the central bank even though it should be an independent institution, like America's Federal Reserve. So now you have delusional politician, Erdogan, who says that "interest rates are the mother and father of all evil," and is also running the central bank. What could go wrong?
So that's why the lira currency has been falling steadily for a year, and then started falling even more rapidly after the June 24 election, when he was reelected president, along with a constitutional change that gave him almost dictatorial powers. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Business Insider and Deutsche Welle
So there have been an interesting series of statements from both Erdogan and US president Donald Trump in the last couple of days.
On Thursday evening, Erdogan that there was nothing to fear if the lira was falling against the US dollar:
"If they have their dollars, we have our people and God."
However, on Friday morning, Trump tweeted the following:
"I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!"
This caused the lira to start plummeting, ending up the day having lost 14% of its value.
Erdogan apparently went into a panic, because he gave one of his televised national rants where he screams every sentence furiously at the top of his lungs. He said the following:
"If there is anyone who has dollars or gold under their pillows, they should go exchange it for liras at our banks. This is a national, domestic battle.Some countries have engaged in behavior that protects coup plotters and knows no laws or justice. Relations with countries who behave like this have reached a point beyond salvaging."
Erdogan also warned of “economic war.”
However, there is a greater concern that the falling lira will lead to contagion. A number of banks, especially in Spain and Italy, are holding Turkish government bonds, and they are going down in value with the lira. A bigger concern is that many companies in Turkey have borrowed money in international markets, and the debts are denominated in dollars. A typical company's income would be in lira, while debt payments must be made in dollars. A weakening lira means that companies may default on their loans. CNBC and Hurriyet News (Ankara) and Bloomberg
A lot of people were shocked on Friday morning at the harshness of Trump's tweet when he said that he was doubling Turkey's tariffs on steel and aluminum, and at the same time he apparently mocked Turkey's falling lira currency.
It appears that this highly confrontational statement was retaliation for what Trump saw as a double-cross by Erdogan.
Trump met Erdogan at a Nato meeting early in June. Their discussions were very friendly, and after they ended, Trump thought they had made a deal: Trump would ask Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release a Turkish citizen, Ebru Ozkan, arrested because of alleged terrorist links to Hamas, and then Turkey would release pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in Turkey on October 2016 on charges of espionage, which the US considers are bogus charges.
So on July 14, Trump called Netanyahu and requested that Ozkan be released, and she was released the next day. But Brunson was not released, and Turkish officials said that no such deal had ever been made. Instead, they began piling more demands that would have to be met in exchange for the release of Brunson, including the extradition of Fethullah Gülen, whom Erdogan blames for the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016, but without any evidence.
Needless to say, Trump was infuriated, and this led to a first round of sanctions in July, and then Friday's announcement of more sanctions. The Trump administration is now saying that Brunson must be released, to resolve this situation. Furthermore, reports indicate that because Trump believes he was double-crossed, the administration is also requiring that all further conditions and demands from Turkey be put into writing, to avoid future misunderstandings.
Trump is now involved in highly contentious sanctions disputes with Turkey, Russia, Iran and China. Any one of these situations could spiral into something much larger, including an actual war. Also, since the global financial system is currently one huge Ponzi scheme, one of these situations could also trigger a chain reaction leading to a global financial crisis. Washington Post and Hurriyet News (Ankara) and Ynet News (Israel) and Middle East eye
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Aug-18 World View -- Turkey's lira currency crumbles as Trump turns the screws after Erdogan double-cross thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Aug-2018)
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China uses increasing violence to suppress criticism
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Although Xi Jinping's power and credibility as president of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not seem to be threatened, there are signs of growing discontent, especially under pressure from the trade war initiated by the Trump administration.
Since coming to power in 2013, Xi Jinping has claimed to be champion of the fight against corruption in the CCP. In line with that fight, Xi has purged many government officials whom he accused of corruption, but it always turned out that the purged officials were not his strongest supporters, and the people who replaced them were all indebted to Xi in some way. Thus the first against corruption for the last five years has appeared more and more to be a purge of Xi's political enemies -- which would itself be the ultimate form of corruption.
Public or online criticism of Xi is de facto a crime in China. A few months ago I told the story of how I repeatedly challenged a Chinese troll to make even the tiniest criticism of Xi, or even to reference an article in Chinese media that has any criticism of Xi. He kept changing the subject, and finally I pointed out that if he did criticize Xi, then he would be thrown into a pit, hung by his thumbs, and have his tongue removed with a pair of pliers. Well, I was being overly dramatic, but he would certainly have risked going to jail.
So it certainly was remarkable in February of this year when a leading commentator and a prominent businessman openly criticized Xi for his plan to amend the constitution so that he could run independent. Li Datong, a former editor for the state-run China Youth Daily, wrote: "If there are no term limits on a country's highest leader, then we are returning to an imperial regime. My generation has lived through Mao. That era is over. How can we possibly go back to it?"
Indeed, I've written about country after country to describe what happens when a leader refuses to relinquish power. We've seen this in Cambodia, Syria, Iran, Cameroon, Congo, and Burundi, among others. In each case, the leader becomes increasing authoritarian and oppressive, ordering peaceful opposition protesters to be slaughtered, tortured, raped or jailed, and shutting down media outlets including newspapers and the internet.
Xi's claim to be the hero in fighting corruption has been badly tarnished by various scandals. The piece of bad news this summer was the discovery that a pharmaceutical company with deep connections to Xi has been responsible for producing substandard vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, and had faked data for its rabies vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese children nationwide have been given the faulty vaccines. Many in China are blaming Xi for this. Japan Times and CBS News and South China Morning Post (6-Mar)
The greatest damage to Xi's reputation is the "trade war" initiated by the Trump administration. The US announced tariffs on Chinese products, and China retaliated with tariffs on American products. The tit for tat war has shocked many Chinese, and has triggered a major debate in China over Xi's foreign and domestic policy leadership.
Many in China are questioning Xi's absolute refusal to negotiate with the Americans to get the trade dispute resolved. Many fear that China will indeed be much worse off from a full-blown trade war. There's a deeper criticism that Xi is violating the advice of 1980s leader Deng Xiaoping: "Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership." Since taking power, instead of taking this advice, Xi has been increasingly arrogant foreign policy, and his policies are seen as costly, ambitious, risky and confrontational.
Many Chinese also fear that China has become too dependent on stealing American intellectual property, and can't develop it on their own.
Xi has reacted by ordering an extensive campaign to "enhance patriotism" among intellectuals. A key aspect is to strengthen the “political guidance” of intellectuals and bring their “ideological and political identification” in line with goals set out by the party and the nation.
There are even demands that CCP members get back to basics and study Karl Marx's 1848 Communist Manifesto, the tract that predicted the triumph of Socialism. Socialism has a 100% failure rate, and China abandoned any pretense of following the dictates of Communist Manifesto decades ago. Even Cuba in the last few years has almost completely abandoned the Marx's tenets, since it was becoming clear that Socialism was destroying Cuba, as it has destroyed every other place it's been tried. Most CCP members, it turns out, have never read the Communist Manifesto, so ordering them to read it now appears to be a true move of desperation. South China Morning Post and Inside Story (Australia) and Radio Free Asia and South China Morning Post
As in the other countries I've listed, Cambodia, Syria, Cameroon, and so forth, the CCP in China is using violence increasingly to control groups that don't adhere closely to the party line. Whether it's violent reprisals in Tibet, or violent education camps in Xinjiang, or the threat of a massive military invasion of Taiwan, the CCP have shown themselves increasingly willing to use jailings, torture, rape and murder to force the public into the CCP line.
Two major events occurred about 25 years ago that are the driving forces in CCP policy today. One was the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989, where Chinese security thugs killed thousands of peacefully demonstrating college students. The other event was the collapse, in 1991, of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party. These events put the members of the Chinese Communist Party into a high state of anxiety, from which they've never come down. They use massive violence by police thugs to suppress any protests before they can get out of hand and threaten the existence of the CCP. Self-preservation of the CCP is more important the China itself.
China's government used to report the number of "mass incidents that occurred each year. These are incidents where dozens of Chinese citizens protest or get into fistfights with one another. There were hundreds of these protests each year in the 1990s. The number of mass incidents kept growing exponentially, reaching 100,000 in the year 2008. If even one of these "mass incidents" occurred in the United States, it would be international news, but China has hundreds of them every day.
After 2008, China stopped reporting them. However, there was one activist named Lu Yuyu who compiled the data himself from news reports, and published it online. He was arrested and is currently serving time in jail.
China's CCP is frightened of social instability that could lead to a revolution that would threaten the CCP. China's history is filled with huge, massive internal rebellions (civil wars), the most recent of which were the White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1805), the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) and Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49). China is now overdue for a new massive civil war, and CCP officials fear that any small anti-government protest could spiral into a new rebellion and revolution. Guardian (London) and China Change (6-Jul-2016) and Foreign Affairs (3-Oct-2016) and Hong Kong Free Press
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Aug-18 World View -- Discontent with China's president Xi Jinping continues during 'trade war' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Aug-2018)
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Spain becomes the major destination for migrants from Africa
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Readers may recall that when Italy held nationwide elections in March, the elections failed to produce a majority party. Two particularly bitter rivals were the left-wing Five Star Movement (M5S) that got 32% of the vote, and the right-wing La Lega (The League) that got 17% of the vote.
Incredibly, these two parties got together and formed a governing coalition. They're far apart on many issues, but they do share similar attitudes on three issues: a nationalistic anti-euro attitude, a xenophobic anti-immigrant attitude, and a complete lack of fiscal discipline. Much to everyone's surprise, they formed a governing coalition based on these three principles.
This new governing coalition announced a list of policy proposals, including a completely delusional list of economic proposals.
Italian debt stands at around €2.3 trillion ($2.7 trillion), or 133% of gross domestic product (GDP), the worst in Europe. The new government does have a way of reducing the debt: spend a lot more money, and drastically reduce taxes. (As I wrote at the time, I wish I could tell you that this is a joke, but it isn't.)
Specifically, the government would like to do the following right away:
As wonderful as these proposals are, they have a serious problem: Implementing them would violate EU rules by pushing Italy's annual deficit above 3% of GDP.
Italy's deputy prime minister and M5S leader Luigi Di Maio has a solution: The EU should change the rules, so that Italy can spend as much as it wants on these social problems. According to Di Maio:
"It is possible to introduce both this measure and a flat tax and to respect European Union deficit limits, because this is a structural reform for Italy. The European Union must listen to us in this phase when we want to protect citizens facing a social emergency."
He added that his request to change the EU deficit limit rules comes with a threat:
"We want to discuss these reforms with the European Union to obtain the margin for maneuver that will allow us to implement those measures. That means doing the same as we did on immigration. There shouldn’t be a clash with the EU, but a frank discussion."
In the case of immigration, the "frank discussion" was accompanied by an order closing all Italian ports to immigrant rescue ships. This forced the EU government in Brussels to adopt new rules for immigrants, giving Italy at least a portion of what it was demanding. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of La Lega, claimed that his government had gotten 70% of what it wanted from the EU.
So Di Maio is demanding that the EU change its deficit rules, or Italy will "do the same as we did on immigration." What that means remains to be seen.
It should be noted that Di Maio's delusional plans and demands are not being met with unanimous agreement even within Italy's government. Prime minister Giuseppe Conte is insisting on a "realistic" budget, and that the new measures will be introduced gradually. Bloomberg and Reuters and Bloomberg and Guardian (London)
At first, the major route for migrants into Europe was through Turkey into Greece. When the EU closed the so-called "Balkan route" for migrants, and then signed the EU-Turkey migrant deal in 2016, the number of migrants reaching Greece fell sharply.
Then the major route moved westward, with migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Africa. However, in 2017 Italy paid money to Libyan warlords and the Libyan government to prevent migrants from crossing.
So the preferred route to Europe has moved westward again. The number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe has fallen drastically from previous years, but now the major route is to cross the strait between Morocco and Spain.
So far in 2018, 27,614 migrants arrived in Spain, 18,475 arrived in Italy, and 16,142 arrived in Greece. Der Spiegel and El País and Euro News and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Aug-18 World View -- Italy threatens EU with immigration fight to get budget concessions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Aug-2018)
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The international demand for regime change in Iran
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued an executive order reimposing economic sanctions that had been eased by the 2015 nuclear deal. The sanctions target Iran's automotive industry, the purchase of commercial aircraft and metals including gold, and the selling of Persian carpets.
Trump tweeted:
"Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!"
The action appears to have thrown the European Union into a new level of chaos.
The sanctions bar any company which does business in Iran from doing business in the US - under far reaching secondary sanctions - and they also forbid any company that does business in the US from doing business with any company that does any business with Iran. This means, for example, that under certain circumstances a bank may have to deny a company doing business with Iran access to its own dollar-based bank accounts. But in that case, the bank could be sued by its own customers.
Trying to cope, the EU has passed so-called "blocking laws" that would make it illegal for banks to withdraw services to companies doing business with Iran or even with other companies that do business with Iran. The laws are designed to limit the potential damage to European companies conducting legitimate business with Iran directly or indirectly.
However, these laws have not been particularly effective. Germany's carmaker Daimler immediately announced a halt to its business activities in Iran. France's oil and gas giant Total has already indicated it intends to shelve a multi-billion dollar investment in Iran. France's automaker Renault, which had an 8% share of Iran's automotive market, announced last week it would comply with the sanctions. Peugeot withdrew in June. More than 100 international companies have also said they would comply.
However, China's auto companies are rushing to fill the gap left by departing European companies. Chinese cars already have a nearly 10% share of Iran's auto market, and a 50% share of auto parts imported into Iran. Iran Khodro, Iran's largest car manufacturer and assembler of foreign cars, recently told its salesmen to promote to customers China’s H30 Cross, made by Dongfeng Fengshen, as a replacement for Renault’s Tondar 90.
Other Chinese car manufacturers present in Iran include Chery and Brilliance, whose H330, assembled in Iran by Saipa, is among the top 10 best-selling cars in the country. China has also lifted monthly oil imports from Iran by 26%. China is the world’s top crude oil buyer and Iran’s biggest customer. RFE/RL and BBC and VOA and Deutsche Welle
Iran's economy is in serious trouble. The rial currency has been plummeting against the dollar since May, when the US announced that sanctions would be imposed on August 7.
Since that time there have been growing street protests in cities across the country. However, they're not anti-American protests, which is something we as Americans have come to expect for decades. Instead, the protests are blaming their own government.
Here's a list of street protesters chants collected by RFE/RL in the last few days:
“Death to high prices and inflation.”
“We don’t want incompetent officials.”
“Not to Gaza, not to Lebanon. May my life be sacrificed for Iran.”
“Death to the dictator.”
“Our enemy is right here. They lie when they say it’s America.”
"Reza Shah, bless your soul.”
“Iranians, shout out your demands.”
"Police forces, support [us], support [us].”
“Death to Hizballah.”
“Iranians die, [but] they don’t accept abjection.”
“Death to Khamenei.”
“Mullahs must get lost.”
“Don’t be scared, we’re all together.”
If you want to understand what's going on, the easiest model to keep in mind is the street protests in America in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the several things were protested, they were mainly anti-war protests against the war in Vietnam.
Logic might indicate that since the North Vietnamese in Hanoi were the enemy, Americans should be on the side of the Americans, not the North Vietnamese. It's true that few Americans were openly on the side of the North Vietnamese (Jane Fonda and John Kerry come to mind), but few Americans were on the side of America either.
It made no difference what the Nixon administration did. The young protesters were opposed to everything. And it made no difference what Hanoi did either. There was nothing that Hanoi could have done to make the young protesters say, "Gee, maybe Nixon is right. I'm going to support him now." Violent street protests in Los Angeles and Detroit, and the 1968 riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago, and the shootings of students at Kent State College in 1970 were blamed on Johnson and Nixon. (Paragraph corrected, 10-Aug)
This is what always happens in a generational Awakening, starting around 20 years after the end of a generational crisis war, in this case World War II. The survivors of the war traumatized by its horrors, and vow to keep it from happening again. The generation that grows up after the war have no personal memory of it, and they turn against the generations of survivors in what's called a "generation gap"
Exactly the same thing is happening in Iran today. The first major anti-government protest began in 1999, about 20 years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Some 10,000 students rioted in Tehran University, chanting anti-government slogans. The police reacted violently, leaving at least 20 people hospitalized and 125 students jailed.
There were sporadic protests every few months after that. The next round of major protests, large enouch to threaten the government occurred after the 2009 presidential election. The violence that followed was bloody and massive. Largely peaceful street protests by hundreds of thousands of mostly young people occurred in Iran’s main cities and provincial capitals, including Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz. They were met with unrestrained violence by the police and security forces. Dozens were killed, and 4,000 people were jailed. The police particularly targeted journalists and other government critics with widespread torture, beatings, and threats against family members.
A new round of protests began in December 2017, and they've been continuing intermittently since then.
Just as there's almost nothing that Hanoi could have done in 1960s America to cause young people to support Richard Nixon, there is nothing that the US can do today that would cause Iran's young people to support the Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei. Every problem will be interpreted through the filter of opposing the current government.
And there are plenty of things to protest against, as you can see from the anti-government chants listed above.
There's a big antiwar factor. Young people want Iran out of Syria. Young people want Iran out of Gaza. Young people want Iran to stop funding Hezbollah. Young people want Israel to be left alone. Young people blame the poor economy on massive military spending abroad. In fact, Iran received tens of billions of dollars when sanctions were lifted in 2015, but ordinary people saw little of it. It mostly benefitted government cronies, and the rest was spent on foreign wars.
That leads to the second major factor: Corruption. According to Transparency International, Iran's government is among the most corrupt in the world. According to its transparency index, Iran has an extremely low score of 30 out of 100. By comparison, the worst performing region in the world is sub-Saharan Africa, with a score of 32, which is a better score than Iran's.
Corruption has become so endemic and so bad in Iran's government that even government officials have been expressing alarm. The reason that Iran is so steeped in corruption can be found in its constitution, which was written by Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution. Khomeini wrote the constitution to give himself and any future Supreme Leader with almost unlimited powers.
Khomeini's constitution is almost completely lacking in the kinds of checks and balances that the US Constitution is full of -- three branches of government, with each branch given specific powers that can be curtailed by other branches of government. Iran has an Assembly of Experts that is supposed to provide oversight to the Supreme Leader, but it never has seriously performed that function. The way the constitution is set up, with no real checks and balances, the only way to succeed in government is to be more corrupt than anyone else. Radio Farda (24-Feb) and Bloomberg and Fox News
There is a great desire in the West for something called "regime change" in Iran, although it's rarely specified what that means.
Regime change did occur in America in 1974, with the forced resignation of Richard Nixon. The current Supreme Leader is Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, 79 years old, born 1939. Many people are hoping that he'll be replaced soon, although he might live for another 10-15 years. But would that qualify as "regime change"?
Corruption is thoroughly embedded in Iran because corruption is almost demanded by the constitution for survival in government. Real regime change would require a new constitution. Perhaps the Assembly of Experts might form a "Constitutional Convention," like the one in America in 1787, and lock the participants in a room and not let them up until they come up with a new constitution for Iran, filled with checks and balances. However, there's little hope for that. In fact, any real regime change may not come for many years.
For almost 15 years, I've been saying, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that that Iran will be America's ally in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war.
This can be seen by connecting the dots. China is very closely allied with Pakistan, which is very closely allied with the Sunni states, including Saudi Arabia. China and India are bitter enemies, as are Pakistan and India. Russia and India are very closely allied, and India is very closely allied with Iran, as Hindus have been allied with Shia Muslims going back to the Battle of Karbala in 680. So the US is going to be allied with India, Russia and Iran, versus China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim states. Just remember that Russia was our bitter enemy before WW II, was our ally during WW II, and was our bitter enemy after WW II. You can't make judgments from today's fatuous political alignments to how nations will act when they're forced to make hard choices in the context of a generational crisis war. These major decisions are made by the populations, large generations of people, not by a few politicians when a nation and its way of life are threatened.
So that's a brief summary of the geopolitical linkages. But there's another way we know that Iran will be an American ally. Iran's college students have been holding pro-American and pro-Western protests for almost 20 years, starting with the first major protest in 1999. The Iranian regime brutally and violently ended those protests, but they didn't change minds. Today, those college students are 30-40 years old, moving into positions of power. When the time comes and Iranians are forced to choose, they'll decide that they'll have no choice but to side with America and the West. CNBC and Fox News and Slate
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Aug-18 World View -- Iran's protesters blame bad economy on Supreme Leader, not on US sanctions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Aug-2018)
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Pakistan elects anti-American far right religious Imran Khan
to be prime minister
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Imran Khan, who will be taking the oath of office as prime minister of Pakistan in a few days, as his political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) (Movement for Justice), seems poised to form a governing coalition, following the July 25 national elections.
Khan, a Pashtun born in 1952, is extremely popular and charismatic. He was one of Pakistan's greatest cricket players of all time. In the 1990s, he was voted as the "Sexiest Man of The Year" by the Australia Magazine Oz.
Khan's views are strongly Islamist, closely associated with Pakistan's religious far right, even to the point of supporting Pakistan's draconian blasphemy law which allows any Pakistani citizen to kill another person with impunity, provided that he first accuses the person he's going to kill of blasphemy. He's anti-American, has promised to distance Pakistan from the United States, has condemned NATO airstrikes on terrorists in Pakistan, and has promised to resolve the Kashmir issue with India in Pakistan's favor. This could be important when the army and intelligence services ask for a favor in return for helping to get him elected. The News (Pakistan) and Washington Post
Like all politicians, Khan made plenty of campaign promises that he won't be able to fulfill. He promised to create an "Islamic welfare state," with big public spending on health and education. In fact, his campaign speeches were totally delusional.
Imran Khan will not have much time to celebrate his victory, as Pakistan is so short of foreign reserves that it could be forced into bankruptcy within a month, and his "Islamic welfare state" is just a distant dream.
Pakistan and China like to say that they're "all-weather friends," but the reason for Pakistan's enormous mountain of debt is the $52 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which China has been using to force a number of countries into a debt trap.
The goal of the CPEC is to connect China's western Xinjiang province to the Gwadar port in southern Pakistan by means of a collection of highways and railways. The project is to be completed by 2030.
We've described a number of these projects in the past, and they have common elements. China lends tens of billions of dollars to a country to build an infrastructure project. China supplies thousands of workers and their families to do the building. Chinese companies are used to provide equipment and supplies. The country must pay for all these Chinese workers and equipment with money from the loan, which means that most of the money gets sent back to China. The country must still repay the loan, which means that it's paying China twice for the same loan. And the country is left for decades with a large Chinese community of workers and families controlled by Beijing's international coercive propaganda agency, the "United Front Work Department" (UFWD).
Pakistan has been borrowing money "like crazy" for the last five years. Imports for energy, machinery, transport equipment and metals have skyrocketed because of CPEC and because of rising oil prices. Meanwhile exports, mainly textiles, have increased only slightly. As a result, the country's foreign currency reserves have declined to about $10.3 billion, enough to cover less than two months of imports. If Pakistan cannot pay for imports, then the entire CPEC project would be in danger.
In June, China granted an emergency loan to Pakistan for $1 billion to cover payments for imports till the end of August.
According to one analyst, Pakistan was unable to turn to Saudi Arabia for a loan because Pakistan had refused in 2016 to join the Saudi-led coalition waging a war in Yemen.
So Pakistan has been forced to turn to its all-weather friend China for one loan after another. This has alarmed even some Pakistani officials, because the country has become so dependent on China.
In the past, Pakistan has borrowed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for emergency funds, and wants to do so again. But there are several issues:
As a private citizen, Imran Khan has criticized the IMF in the past, and has criticized Pakistan's government for borrowing from the IMF. Now that he's going to be prime minister, he may have to change his tune. Dawn (Pakistan) and AFP and Dawn and South China Morning Post and Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Aug-18 World View -- Pakistan faces imminent financial crisis threatening China's CPEC thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Aug-2018)
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UN report: North Korea nuclear and missile development continues
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
A confidential report to the United Nations Security Council says that during the last six months, not only has North Korea not stopped development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles but, even worse, North Korea is stepping up plans to sell weapons to other countries, including to the Houthis in Yemen. Now when we talk about the war in Yemen, instead of the "Iran-backed Houthis," we can refer to the "Iran-backed and North Korea backed Houthis."
According to the report:
"[North Korea] has not stopped its nuclear and missile programs and continued to defy Security Council resolutions through a massive increase in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products, as well as through transfers of coal at sea during 2018."
North Korea also violated a textile ban by exporting more than $100 million in goods to China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay within the same time period.
North Korea has also offered "a range of conventional arms, and in some cases ballistic missiles to armed groups in Yemen and Libya," and particularly to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. There is no report on whether the sales were actually made.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the ASEAN conference, said in response to the reports:
"If these reports prove accurate, and we have every reason to believe that they are, that would be in violation. I want to remind every nation that has supported these resolutions that this is a serious issue and something we will discuss with Moscow.[The US expects] all countries to abide to the UN Security Council resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea. Any violation that detracts from the world's goal of finally, fully denuclearizing North Korea would be something that America would take very seriously."
Pompeo did not specify what action or retaliation the US would take against every country violating the sanctions, but there have been widespread reports of violations by several countries, and no action has been taken. In particular, Russia has been accused of bringing in thousands of North Korean "guest workers," who act as virtual slaves, and whose salaries are sent back to the North Korean regime.
However, Pompeo's remarks were met with sharp rebukes by the representative of North Korea, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, who said that Washington was "raising its voice louder" in anger, despite goodwill measures by North Korea.
North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong Ho slammed the United States for insisting on sanctions, and prioritizing them higher than "confidence-building," which apparently refers to removing sanctions:
"Confidence is not a sentiment to be cultivated overnight. In order to build full confidence between the DPRK [North Korea] and the US, it is essential for both sides to take simultaneous actions and phased steps to do what is possible one after another."
He said that North Korea had done its part with goodwill measures such as the moratorium on nuclear testing and the dismantling of a nuclear site. But instead of reciprocating these goodwill measures, he accused the US of "raising its voice louder" for maintaining sanctions against North Korea, and was "showing the attitude to retreat even from declaring the end of war, a very basic and primary step for providing peace on the Korean peninsula." Declaring an end to the Korean War, which is still theoretically in progress, though under a ceasefire, would require removing American troops from South Korea, a key objective of North Korea. It would also require removing the THAAD missile defense system, a key objective of China. Reuters and Deutsche Welle and Straits Times
As I've written many times, everything that the Trump administration has done in foreign policy since Donald Trump took office makes complete sense to me, which is in contrast to Obama's foreign policy, which never made sense. The reason that Trump's foreign policy makes sense is because everything he does is consistent with the Generational Dynamics analyses that I've been posting for years. Trump understands these analyses because he was educated by his former principal advisor Steve Bannon, whom I've worked with for years, and who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics. It's worth mentioning this because the mainstream press and mainstream analysts are always completely and totally baffled by the administration's foreign policy, even though it is consistent and makes complete sense, provided you focus on actions, not PR tweets.
On Sunday, responding to questions about the UN report, national security adviser John Bolton and Senator Marco Rubio described the administration strategy toward North Korea at the present time.
As I've been writing for many months, based on Generational Dynamics analyses, is that there is no chance whatsoever that North Korea will give up its nuclear development program now or in the future, after having tortured, starved and brutalized their own population for three decades, under the promise that one day North Korea would be a nuclear power on a peer with the United States.
North Korea has one and only one objective in the charm offensive since the beginning of the year and in Kim's summit meetings with Trump and South Korean leaders: To get the US-led sanctions lifted without having to give up its development of nuclear missiles targeting the United States.
Saturday's statements by North Korea's foreign minister harshly criticizing the US for not reciprocating North Korea's "goodwill measures" and instead demanding that sanctions be continued is in line with this objective.
During John Bolton's interview on Sunday, he said the following:
"As I've said to you and others before, there's nobody in his administration starry eyed about the prospects of North Korea actually denuclearizing.But I think what's going on now is that the president is giving Kim Jong-un on a master class on how to hold a door open for somebody. And if the North Koreans can't figure out how to walk through it, even the president's fiercest critics will not be able to say it's because he didn't open it wide enough.
We are going to have to see a performance from the North Koreans. There's no question about it."
This is a very interesting statement, and reflects a strategy that I haven't heard previously from the administration. As I've suggested in the past, North Korea will continue nuclear missile development no matter what the Trump administration does, and since it doesn't make any different what action is taken, the administration should choose actions that when the inevitable nuclear confrontation happens, the North Koreans and the Chinese will be blamed for it, not the United States. This is crucial from the point of view of historians ten or twenty years from now, looking back and saying that it was North Korea, not the United States, that was to blame for what happened. Bolton's remarks on Trump giving "a master class on how to hold a door open for somebody" are exactly in line with that objective.
Senator Marco Rubio, who is on the Senate and Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees, was also interviewed on Fox News, and gave additional strategic information:
"Well, I'm about to tell you I hope I'm wrong about, but I do not believe that he is ever going to give up his nuclear arsenal. What I do believe he will do is a series of unilateral concessions that do not undermine his capabilities in the long term. For example, I think he's more than willing to tear apart facilities that are no longer necessary for old missiles because he's got newer ones that work better. I believe he has undisclosed sites that he thinks he can shield from the world. I believe that he believes that even if he gets rid of some of the new enrichment capabilities, he already has existing weapons and existing enriched capabilities that he can hide from the from the world.And every single time that he does one of these productions he is engendering goodwill internationally, which is ultimately his goal, to undermine international support for sanctions by arguing, "Look at all these things I'm doing, the Americans are not reciprocating," and undermining sanctions at the U.N. and internationally. That's his goal in my opinion."
The interviewer Chris Wallace said: "Isn't Kim succeeding in lowering the temperature, breaking apart the alliance of sanctions, and isn't president Trump being played?"
Rubio responded, "I don't know if the president is being played. I think he's hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. The sanctions remained in place. We haven't changed a single sanction on North Korea."
Once again, this makes complete sense because it's consistent with the Generational Dynamics analyses that I've been posting for months. As I've said in the past, Trump can't prevent a world war, but I'm not going to criticize Trump for taking steps to try to prevent a world war, even if doing so is impossible.
One more related subject that the mainstream media is completely baffled about is the issue of Russia. I must hear reporters ask the same question a dozen times a day: Why is Trump so "nice" to Vladimir Putin and Russia, when he's not so "nice" to China and in fact is conducting a trade war?
Once again, this makes perfect sense, as I've been describing for years. Russia will be our ally in the coming world war, just as the Soviet Union was our ally in World War II, even though it was a bitter enemy before and after World War II. Generational Dynamics predicts that this bit of history will repeat itself, so of course it makes sense for Trump to be "nice" to Russia. This will be of help later.
As for the trade war against China, this is a dangerous game. An American oil embargo against Japan in 1941 led to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor several months later, and this trade war might trigger a similar response from China today. In a sense it doesn't make any difference, since China has been arming itself militarily to pre-emptively attack the United States at a time of its choosing, so the trade war might force China to move up the attack to a time when it will not be as well prepared. However, there's no question that this is a dangerous move.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. Fox News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Aug-18 World View -- John Bolton and Marco Rubio describe North Korea strategy, as sanctions are violated thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Aug-2018)
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Concerns grow over China's debt strategy for Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Neither China nor the United States is a member of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN), but both had representatives present, and their competing strategies were the main subjects of discussion. ASEAN has ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
For lexicographers and cartographers, the main news is that Western nations, including Australia and the US, have given a new name to their strategies, referring to the "Indo-Pacific strategy" instead of the old name, "Asia-Pacific strategy."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had earlier discussed a plan to invest $113 million in technology, energy and infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region. On Saturday he added:
"As part of our commitment to advancing regional security in the Indo-Pacific, the United States is excited to announce nearly $300 million in new funding to reinforce security cooperation throughout the entire region."
The reason for the change in terminology is to emphasize that the Pacific Ocean and the India Ocean form a combined strategic region. However, the terminology change is annoying to the Chinese, who prefer the China-centric name "Asia-Pacific," while the name "Indo-Pacific" gives more emphasis to China's historic enemy, India.
Chinese media were bitterly scathing in their response to Pompeo's announcements:
"What is the Indo-Pacific strategy? Many complain about its vagueness. Its most innovative part may be the name itself. Washington probably hopes the rest of the world would stop asking questions, tacitly understand Washington's intentions and firmly gather around the US after a few exchanges of glances and together begin to counter China's rising influence....ASEAN members are not sure what the US Indo-Pacific strategy entails. The US announced only an investment of $113 million, which also includes India. The amount seems only sufficient to build an overpass perhaps in the center of Mumbai. Washington is using a strategic gimmick. It is insincere about pushing forward economic prosperity of Indo-Pacific region....
As a concept, Indo-Pacific strategy generated some media and psychological impact. But this is perhaps the only points it can score. If the US wants more, this strategy will be the abyss that consumes much US resources and its output can hardly match its input.
What's more important, this is not the era where geopolitics rules all. The US has treated China's Belt and Road initiative, which focuses on mutually beneficial cooperation, as strategic expansion, and is trying to prohibit Asia from marching forward through connectivity. Washington's move is against historic tide. Even if it plans to invest 100 times its current amount, the investment will be devoured by the historic trend."
The commentary mentions China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where China has committed $900 billion (with a "b") to Asian countries, in contrast to America's "paltry" commitment of $133 million (with an "m"). Reuters and Global Times (Beijing) and Asia Times and ASEAN
Many ASEAN countries were disappointed at the lack of specifics in Pompeo's promise that "The United States will continue to create the conditions for mutual prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific."
However, many of these countries are quite concerned about the numerous problems associated with BRI, including corruption scandals and concerns about opaque financing, delays and mounting debt problems linked to the loans Beijing has provided to its partner countries.
In the past couple of years, we've seen how these projects work, in countries like Sri Lanka, Kenya, Djibouti, Malaysia and Pakistan:
Malaysia has suspended a $14 billion rail line because of graft and corruption. Pakistan cancelled a $14 billion dam project last year because of excessive debts. Kenya accused China of "neo-colonialism, racism and blatant discrimination." Other countries are extremely anxious about Chinese investments.
The US offer of $113 million plus $300 million is paltry compared to China's offer, but the US offer is aid, not a loan, and it's the local workers who will build the infrastructure project.
That's why, when announcing these aid packages, Pompeo emphasized "partnership, not domination" in Asia, and promised to "create the conditions for mutual prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific." Nikkei and Malay Mail and Washington Examiner
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Aug-18 World View -- China mocks America's 'Indo-Pacific' strategy at ASEAN meeting thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Aug-2018)
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Zimbabwe's post-election violence raises concerns about economy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Early Friday morning the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) declared incumbent Emmerson Mnangagwa the winner of Sunday's presidential election with 50.8% of the vote -- just enough to avoid a run-off against Chamisa, who received 44.3% of the vote.
Chamisa declared the result fraudulent, and urged his supporters to hold peaceful protests, avoiding violence. However, a Chamisa press conference was broken up by government riot police. On Wednesday, the army opened live fire on protesters in the capital city Harare, killing six people.
Whether or not the election was fraudulent, these and other acts of post-election violence by government security and military forces against protesters are raising concerns in the international community that Zimbabwe is not a stable country, and that therefore commercial investments in Zimbabwe are too risky.
Mnangagwa repeatedly made it clear during the campaign that he wanted the election to be fair and free of controversy, specifically so that international investors would help boost Zimbabwe's collapsing economy.
Zimbabwe's disastrous economy is blamed on tribal and racial violence by Mnangagwa's predecessor Robert Mugabe. Mugabe's Shona tribe conducted genocide against the hated Ndebele tribe, killing tens of thousands, and marginalizing them ever since. Then he conducted racial warfare starting in 2000 by confiscating hundreds of farms owned by white farmers, and turning them over to his Shona cronies who didn't know how to run a farm. A lot of the racist confiscation was performed through "land invasions," where a group of Shona tribesmen would invade a white-owned farm, throw the white farmers off the farm, and confiscate it through force.
The result was an economic disaster that changed Zimbabwe from the breadbasket of southern Africa into a basket case. The currency collapsed with an inflation rate over 231 million percent, as people were forced into starvation. Mugabe continued his "indigenization" program by confiscating commercial businesses and turning them over to Shona cronies who didn't know how to run businesses.
During this year's election campaign, Mnangagwa actually acknowledged Mugabe's disastrous policies by attempting to woo white farmers with promises to return some of their land.
Mnangagwa conceded that much of the land stolen from white farmers had been given to powerful politicians, soldiers or tribal leaders who knew little or nothing about farming:
"I know of some chiefs who have moved from one farm to another. Then they run it down. Then he leaves that farm and he is issued another one. He runs it down. That time is gone."
However, that speech was given by a politician to wealthy Zimbabweans during election campaign. Why would anyone believe anything that a politician says during an election campaign? At his core, Mnangagwa is a Shona tribesman still at war with Ndebele tribesmen and whites.
Now that Mnangagwa has been declared winner of the presidential election, he has to find a way to get international investors to invest in Zimbabwe. And this will have to be done with actions, not promises. Whether he can do that remains to be seen. Zimbabwe Mail and Deutsche Welle (7-Jul)
South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa, leader of the governing African National Congress (ANC) political party, made a surprise announcement on Tuesday that the ANC would go ahead with aggressive plans to confiscate white-owned farms without compensation:
"The ANC reaffirms its position that the Constitution is a mandate for radical transformation both of society and the economy.A proper reading of the Constitution on the property clause enables the state to effect expropriation of land with just and equitable compensation and also expropriation without compensation in the public interest.
It has become patently clear that our people want the Constitution to be more explicit about expropriation of land without compensation, as demonstrated in the public hearings. ...
Accordingly, the ANC will, through the parliamentary process, finalize a proposed amendment to the Constitution that outlines more clearly the conditions under which expropriation of land without compensation can be effected.
The intention of this proposed amendment is to promote redress, advance economic development, increase agricultural production and food security."
Blacks claim that farmland was owned by whites during the apartheid era, but since South Africa achieved independence in 1994, blacks own very little farmland, while whites own massively more. In 1994, the ANC promised to expropriate 30% of the white-owned farms "with just and equitable compensation," as provided for in the constitution, and redistribute that land to black farmers.
However, 25 years later, the government has acquired only 7.9% of the white-owned farms, and even those have mostly not been redistributed to blacks. Therefore, there have increasingly belligerent demands within the ANC to take action to confiscate white-owned farms. Furthermore, rather than have the ANC provide "just and equitable compensations," the new constitutional amendment will permit confiscation with no compensation whatsoever.
This is exactly the policy that Zimbabwe followed, and in fact confiscation with no compensation opens the way to the same kinds of "land invasions," where blacks invade a white-owned farm and throw the white farmer out. The result that the value of the South African rand currency has been falling sharply since Ramaphosa's announcement.
Ramaphosa, of course, is just another ordinary politician making a campaign promise in advance of next year's election. Ramaphosa made the completely empty promise to "advance economic development, increase agricultural production and food security," even though he has absolutely no clue how to do that and, in fact, the Zimbabwe experiences indicates that the outcome will be disastrous.
The ANC have been forming committees and holding meetings for over a year on the question of land confiscation without compensation, but they still haven't even come up with a description of how the land confiscation would work. Questions that they've been unable or unwilling to answer include the following:
Even under the most benign circumstances, why would a black farmer with no experience as a farmer do anywhere near as well as a white farmer who has been farming for decades? He won't.
Zimbabwe used to produce enough food to feed itself, and export the rest. After Robert Mugabe's farm confiscation program, Zimbabwe was forced to import food, and Zimbabwe was saved by food from South African farms. After South Africa's farm confiscation program is put into effect, who's going to save South Africa? News24 (South Africa) and CNBC and News24 and Eyewitness News (South Africa) and The South African and News24
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Aug-18 World View -- South Africa announces plans for unpaid confiscation of white-owned farms thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Aug-2018)
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Reasons for quick containment of last Ebola outbreak
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As we reported in May, there was a potentially explosive outbreak of Ebola in the city of Mbandaka, a large heavily populated urban city of about 1.2 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where an outbreak could spread rapidly. Furthermore, Mbandaka is a port city on the Congo River, creating the potential of transmission along the Congo River to other cities and other countries.
On July 24, the World Health Organization (WHO) was proud to announce that the outbreak had officially ended. The doctors who had been sent to the region had been extremely vigilant, and had been aggressively using "contact tracing" to prevent the virus from spreading. When an Ebola patient is identified, then all that person's contacts and contacts of contacts are tracked down, and are warned to remain indoors for an incubation period of 21 days.
A vaccine had been developed, and suspected victims were treated with the vaccine, to prevent development of the full virus. Teams went to remote villages to vaccinate some 3300 people likely to have been exposed to Ebola. However, it's still not known whether the vaccine actually protected against infection, although it clearly boosted morale.
On July 24, all known contacts had completed their 21 day isolation period, and there were no new cases. There had been 53 cases of Ebola, and 29 deaths.
This was a striking contrast to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, sickening over 28,000 and killing over 11,310. Guardian (24-Jul) and Science Magazine (18-Jul) and World Health Organization (24-Jul)
The last outbreak of Ebola occurred in the far western region of Equateur province which is in in far western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Now the World Health Organization (WHO) is declaring a new outbreak. This one is in North Kivu province, in far eastern DRC, 2,500 km (1,500 miles) from the previous outbreak.
The new outbreak has been spreading rapidly. Already, 20 people have been killed, including four health workers, and four other people have tested positive for the virus.
There are three known strains of the Ebola virus -- the Zaire strain, the Sudan strain, and the Bundibugyo strain. The last outbreak was the Zaire strain, and the vaccine that had been developed was specific to that strain. Which of the three strains is in the new outbreak has not been identified, but the vaccine can be used only with the Zaire strain.
A more dangerous problem, beyond the possible unavailability of a vaccine, is that that that North Kivu province is a war zone for a tribal civil war. Armed groups backed by government forces have been burning down and pillaging villages, torching houses, shutting down schools, hospitals and churches, forcefully recruiting young men, abducting and kidnapping innocent citizens, raping women and girls. This has already driven hundreds of thousands of refugees from North Kivu province of DRC into refugee camps in Uganda. ( "13-Feb-18 World View -- Thousands of DR Congo refugees pour into Uganda to escape tribal violence")
The WHO has been rapidly transferring its people and assets from Equateur province, the site of the previous Ebola outbreak, to the site of current outbreak in North Kivu province. However, it remains to be seen how effective they'll be in this midst of an extremely violent tribal war situation. Guardian (London) and Reuters and World Health Organization
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The Ebola outbreak that began in May and ended on July 24 was defeated by the WHO extremely quickly, much more quickly than in the past. There are several reasons for this:
The new outbreak, which takes place in the midst of a tribal civil war, may not be as easy to contain. And if it is, then the next big disease outbreak may be from an unknown pathogen that can't be contained with existing strategies. Vox
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Aug-18 World View -- DR Congo has new outbreak of Ebola just as the previous outbreak ends thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Aug-2018)
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Opposition grows to the 'fudge' proposal
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Brexit has been a pending disaster ever since the referendum passed on June 23, 2016, and many people in the UK and EU continue to look for ways to make the disaster as small as possible. So now the news is full of talk of a "fudge."
As I explained a few weeks ago, "fudge" is being increasingly used as a stylish, fashionable word for what used to be called "kicking the can down the road."
So in the last couple of days, there are reports that the EU negotiators are ready to agree to a "fudge" based on the so-called "Chequers plan" proposal by UK prime minister Theresa May a month ago.
May was able to twist a lot of arms to get the plan approved by her Tory cabinet at a meeting at Chequers, the prime minister's country residence. But the euphoria didn't last long, as two of her ministers resigned four days later, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Boris Johnson, the foreign minister.
The endless chaos in the UK government caught the attention of the EU negotiators, as officials in both governments increasingly realize the following:
It's become increasingly clear among EU officials in Brussels that May will be unable to navigate an agreement between the "Remainers" and the "Brexiteers," and there is no majority in Commons for any proposal. This would mean that the likelihood of a hard "no deal" Brexit is increasing by the day.
For that reason, EU officials are increasingly willing to "fudge" the negotiations. The plan for future EU-UK ties will not be a formal agreement, but will be an aspirational statement to say as little as possible, to get past the March 29 deadline.
The main condition would be a watertight backstop arrangement to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The backstop would require setting up a customs border in the Irish Sea, which separates the Irish Isles from the British Isles. Such measures would in practice keep much of Northern Ireland’s economy under EU legal control, something that Theresa May has said is intolerable.
One senior EU official said:
"The political declaration cannot violate our principles. But with the rest, whatever helps pass a withdrawal bill is fine. You can talk about many things because the backstop is the insurance if all these nice perspectives don't work out."
Besides the backstop, the UK will have to pay the "divorce bill," estimated to be around 39 billion pounds ($50 billion).
Other things, like the complex trading rules, the "common EU-UK rulebook," and court jurisdiction would be left as vague as possible, to be negotiated in the transition period following formal Brexit.
And that's what we used to call "kicking the can down the road." Evening Standard (UK) and Politics (UK) and FT and UK Government Brexit White Paper (PDF, 13-July)
Almost as soon as the report emerged that EU officials might accept a "fudge" of Theresa May's Chequers proposal, opposition grew in both the UK and the EU.
Foreign minister Boris Johnson, a strong Brexiteer, considered the Chequers proposal to be the worst of all worlds. In his resignation letter to Theresa May last month, Johnson wrote the following:
"The British government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law, without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health - and when we no longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made."
Although Johnson is a strong member of the Brexit Leave camp, people in the Remain camp, who never wanted Brexit in the first place, agree with Johnson's opinion of the Chequers proposals.
The Remain camp is now calling it the "blind Brexit." According to Chris Leslie, an MP in the Remain camp:
"A blind Brexit would take the UK to the same place as a no-deal Brexit, but without the clarity. The idea that the fundamental contradictions of the government’s Brexit policy can be more easily resolved after the UK has left the EU is simply ludicrous.A blind Brexit is being talked about because some see it as a short-term face-saving deal for both the British government and the European Union, both of which are now terrified that concluding with a failure to agree a deal will result in a humiliating no-deal Brexit.
With the EU27 governments and the EU commission wanting to spare Theresa May’s blushes, there is a risk we end up with a fake deal to save face."
Leslie's statement is that it's ludicrous to think that issues that can't be resolved before Brexit, will be more easily resolved after Brexit is true, but he misses the point. The whole point of a "fudge" is to "kick the can down the road," and if that can keep happening over and over, then the issues will never be resolved, and will never have to be resolved.
Readers may recall what happened with Greece's financial crisis. The EU and Greece would have a major crisis meeting every few months, usually running all night, and they would announce a "fudge," a way to postpone the crisis till the next meeting. The problems with Greece's unsustainable debt were never resolved -- it's still unsustainable. But they've found a way to kick the can down the road indefinitely.
So that's the idea behind the Brexit fudge. Leslie is right that there will be no agreement during the transition period, but if the politicians are clever enough, no agreement will every have to be reached, and every problem will be postponed. As the Peanuts character Charlie Brown used to say, no problem is so big that it can't be run away from.
The Remain camp is now calling itself "The People's Vote" because it's focused on a second Brexit referendum on leaving the EU. People in the Leave camp would never agree to that, but as I understand it, even if everyone did agree, a referendum takes a long time to set up, and so it's impossible before the March 29 Brexit deadline.
For that reason, the Remain camp is seeking out its own fudge. They're trying to convince EU leaders, especially from Germany and France, to agree to a postponement of the March 29 day to give enough time for a second referendum. Guardian (London) and Daily Mail (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Aug-18 World View -- Report: EU and UK ready to accept 'fudge' to get through Brexit thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Aug-2018)
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The Grand Bazaar and the prospects for regime change
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Massive demonstrations that began in December 2017 have been continuing intermittently in cities across Iran since then. On Tuesday, the protests spread to the history central city of Isfahan.
The protests a month ago were triggered by the collapse in the value of Iran's currency, the rial. At the end of 2017, the exchange rate was 42,000 rials to the US dollar. A month ago, the exchange rate had fallen to 90,000 rials to the dollars. One of the chants that protesters used in last months demonstrations was "We don't want the dollar at 100,000 rials!"
Well, on July 29 the exchange rate crossed the 100,000 milestone, and by Monday, the exchange rate was 110,000 rials to the dollar. The rate has been falling since May, when the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal, and announced that US sanctions would be imposed on August 7.
The plunge in the value of the rial means that goods imported into Iran from other countries now cost two times or even three times as much as they used to.
As Americans, we're so used to being blamed for everything in the world, it's startling that the protesters are not blaming America for this increase in prices. Instead, they're blaming their own government.
Protesters blame the government for wasting the tens of billions of dollars that Iran received when sanctions were lifted after the nuclear deal was signed in 2015. From the point of view of protesters, that money simply vanished into thin air, and they blame that on the Iranian government, not the Americans. The protesters blame Iran's massive corruption, especially among the clergy, and the money that's being spent on foreign wars in Syria and Lebanon.
Marchers on Tuesday were seen in video clips chanting "Leave Syria and think about us," and "No to Gaza, No to Lebanon — I give my life to Iran." The latter refers to billions of dollars being given to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to Hamas in Gaza.
Other slogans were much more personal: "Death to the dictator," referring to the Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei. VOA and AP and Arab News
The frequency of protests in Iran since the beginning of the year has raised hopes in the West that regime change was close at hand.
Earlier this month, there were protests for a very different reason -- water shortages and pollution, and lack of water management. A vast agricultural area in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran lacks irrigation water. This is a region that was devastated by the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s, and has a largely Arab population, which suffers official discrimination, as opposed to the majority Persian population. About 40% of Iran has been suffering from a serious drought since last year.
There is a great desire in the West for something called "regime change" in Iran, although it's rarely specified what that means. It could mean that Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, gets replaced, but his replacement may be worse. In terms of violent repression, Khamenei actually isn't very different from the Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi) who was deposed by the 1979 revolution.
As we described last month in "Brief generational history of Iran's protests," Tehran's Grand Bazaar has played a pivotal role in protests and regime changes in the past.
Tehran's Grand Bazaar is one of the oldest shopping malls in the world, with origins that go back as far as 1660 BC. It occupies over 8 square miles, and has hundreds of shops. So when there's a widespread protest and strike supported by the shop owners, and suddenly all the shops are closed, it is a significant event.
The Tobacco Revolt of 1890-92 was led by tobacco merchants in the Grand Bazaar, but quickly spread to other merchants. The revolt fizzled because of violence from the Shah. But in 1905, there were new protests, led this time by the sugar merchants in the Grand Bazaar. These protests led to a generational crisis civil war, the Constitutional Revolution, which was a major "regime change" for Iran in that the Shah was then bound by laws defined in the new constitution.
The White Revolution protests in 1962 were begun by a different set of élites -- the clergy, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This was too soon after the Constitutional Revolution to spread widely, and it fizzled quickly.
However, it led to the Great Islamic Revolution in 1979. Once again, the merchants in the Grand Bazaar were among the leaders that brought about a major regime change -- overthrowing the Shah and replacing him with Khomeini.
So now there are new protests by the merchants in the Grand Bazaar, thanks to the plunge in the value of the rial, something that affects them directly. Does that mean that regime change is at hand?
No, it doesn't. If there's some kind of widespread revolt, it will almost certainly fizzle, like the Tobacco Revolt and the White Revolution protests.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there is a different kind of change at hand, an Awakening era climax similar to the one that forced president Richard Nixon to step down in America in 1974. This will be the climax of the political confrontation between the generations of old geezer survivors of the revolution and the people in the younger generations growing up after the revolution -- the same young people who have been protesting in cities across Iran.
Depending on who is in charge after this change, it's possible that Iran will once again be the ally of the United States, just as it was prior to 1979. Reuters and Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya and OrigIran and The Conversation (3-Jul)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Aug-18 World View -- Iran's anti-government protests expand as rial currency plummets thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Aug-2018)
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