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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Oct-06
Questions and answers from readers

Web Log - October, 2006

Questions and answers from readers

Iraq civil war, feeding Africa, Israel's survival, and answering user comments.

It's been a couple of years since my last question and answer column, so I thought that it might be time.

Iraq civil war?

Q:
How can you keep saying that there's no civil war in Iraq, when dozens of people are being killed every day in sectarian violence?

A:
There's something horrible going on in Iraq, and I admit that I don't completely understand it. But there's one thing I'm sure of: It's absolutely NOT a civil war.
Those of you who were around in the late 1960s will remember that many people thought that the U.S. was in or close to civil war at that time. There were large riots and demonstrations in the ghettos and on college campuses and the Black Panthers and Weather Underground were calling for violence and insurrection and were setting off bombs around the country. That violence wasn't as bad as we're now seeing in Iraq, but those groups didn't have millions of dollars of funding from al-Qaeda or Iran or organized crime to spend on weapons and hire recruits either.
The fact is that there's no fixed definition of the term "civil war," and you can call anything you want a "civil war."
But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a "crisis civil war" means something specific: A burst of genocidal energy that causes groups in an entire population to try to exterminate each other through massive bloodshed. This is what's happening today in Darfur, it happened in the 1990s in Bosnia and Rwanda, in the 1980s in Lebanon, and in the 1970s in the Cambodian killing fields. Nothing even close to those situations is what's happening today in Iraq.
It's important to make these distinctions, because we're seeing real civil wars building in other regions today, regions that are in a "generational crisis" period. Regions in this category that I've mentioned on this web site Palestine/Israel, Sri Lanka, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and the entire nation of China. As the "clash of civilizations" world war approaches, there will be more.
Most of the debate over the term "civil war" is purely political jabber. If you have such a need to call Iraq a "civil war" then by all means do what you have to do. But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it isn't a civil war, and isn't even close.

H5N1 bird flu in Ohio

Q:
There was a news report last week of H5N1 bird flu found in birds in Ohio. Should we be concerned?

A:
The report was for "low pathenogenic avian influenza (LPAI) H5N1 virus, which is different from the "highly pathogenic" H5N1 that spread like wildfire last winter in birds across Asia, into Europe, the Mideast and Africa. As far as we know, it still hasn't reached North American shores, but there's a good chance it will in the fall.
So far there's no sign of a human pandemic. In the last few months, the virus has mutated in Indonesia enough to permit human to human transmission through skin contact, but the mutations that would permit easy transmission through the air, thus causing a pandemic, have not yet occurred.
In the meantime, it's not too early to start planning. You should stock up on enough dried or canned food, medicines, water, batteries and other supplies so that you and your family can survive for a month or two without leaving home.
By the way, Harvard researchers are studying stay-at-home quarantine plans as one of the methods for buying time in a bird flu pandemic.

Feeding Africa

Q:
I think it was great to make people aware of the physical hugeness of Africa; however it's not correct that there isn't enough money in the world to cure hunger in Africa. It's the population size that represents the actual cost of feeding. Africa is 13.8% of the world population, under one billion people, and not all of them need to be fed. Food aid costs at most $1 per person per day, or at most $365 billion per year to feed everyone in Africa, and so it wouldn't take very many of the G-8's pennies at all to feed every single African.

A:

Africa is larger than Europe, America, Alaska, China, and New Zealand (not shown) combined. <font size=-2>(Source: Boston Univ)</font>

Africa is larger than Europe, America, Alaska, China, and New Zealand (not shown) combined. (Source: Boston Univ)

The size of Africa absolutely does matter. It may cost only $1.00 per day to deliver food aid to Johannesburg, but distribution costs are many times greater the bare cost of the food. The larger the region, the higher the distribution costs and the costs to transport food from country to country to city to city to town to tribe, through the savanna and the rain forest, would be extremely expensive, but it's actually much worse than that.
In America we have government agencies like FEMA to distribute food aid in emergencies, but nothing like that exists almost anywhere in Africa. So we'd have to use local governments and organizations to distribute the food. And every person in every one of those organizations would SELL the food rather than giving it away. (In America, this would be called "corruption.")
The elite and and bourgeoisie would make tons of money from the food aid, and none of the food would reach the poor peasants and workers.
Actually, it would be even more disastrous than that. The food aid wouldn't reach the peasants, but the influx of food would depress food prices, bankrupting farmers and turning them into paupers. So disaster would pile upon disaster.
Incidentally, this problem isn't unique to Africa. Around the world there are "megacities," each containing tens of millions of people with no access to farmland. Families in poverty in those cities often survive by foraging in large garbage dumps for scraps of food left over by people who can afford to buy food. As population continues to grow faster than the food supply, this problem of megacities will multiply. These problems have occurred in cycles throughout human history, and have gotten many times worse in the last two centuries because medical discoveries have lowered the infant mortality rate from 40-50% to 1-2%. After the "clash of civilizations" world war, the world population will be thinned enough so that everyone will be properly fed for a few decades.

Israel in ten years

Q:
Comment - You asked whether Israel will exist in ten years. I absolutely think Israel will exist in ten years, but I'm not so sure about the Pals. They are destroying themselves.

A:
Well, Israel might exist in ten years, but it depends on what comes out of the war. There are millions of Arabs and Persians who want Israel gone, so even if you're right about the Palestinians, that wouldn't be the end of it. On the other hand, when there's a grand peace conference after it's all over, they may decide to put Israel back together again in some way. So, who knows?

User comments on articles

Q:
Why don't you allow user comments on each of your articles, as other blogs do? Are you afraid?

A:
All my web site software was developed by me in Perl. I've started writing software that would allow these user comments, but I want to do it right, and that means allowing users some options, distinguishing between users who need to be moderated and those who don't, protection from hackers, and so forth. I've started writing the code, and I may even get it done some day, but it's not done now.
In the meantime, you have other options. You can send me an e-mail message (or use the comment boxes). It sometimes takes me a few days to get back, but so far I've kept up with all the e-mail messages.
If you want to get into a public argument with me, I take on all comers in the "Objections to Generational Dynamics" thread of the First Turning forum.
If your interest is the Singularity and super-intelligent computers, then go to the the "Singularity" thread. However, that thread's been fairly inactive for a few months.

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