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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Jan-2013
7-Jan-13 World View -- Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff

Web Log - January, 2013

7-Jan-13 World View -- Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff

India and Pakistan armies clash in Kashmir

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Syria's Assad promises new violence in public speech
Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff
India and Pakistan armies clash in Kashmir

Syria's Assad promises new violence in public speech

Bashar al-Assad on TV on Sunday

Bashar al-Assad on TV on Sunday

When it was announced that Syria's president Bashar al-Assad would give a nationwide speech on Sunday, some people dared to hope that he would announce an end to his program of massive bloody slaughter of innocent women and children in his own country. Unsurprisingly, nothing of the sort happened. Here are some excerpts from his speech:

"Today we meet and suffering permeates Syrian land and there is no place for joy in any corner of the country while security and safety are absent from its streets and alley ways.
We meet today and there are mothers who have lost their finest children and families who have lost their providers, children who have been orphaned and brothers divided among the martyrs, the refugees, and the missing. ...
Terrorists holding the views of al Qaeda who call themselves jihadists are the ones running the terrorist operations here and we are fighting them. It is not impossible to destroy them if we have the courage. ...
Whoever talks solely of a political solution only is turning a blind eye to the facts and he is either ignorant or has been fooled into selling his people and the blood of martyrs for free and we will not allow this.
We are now in a state of war in every sense of the word. This war targets Syria using a handful of Syrians and many foreigners. Thus, this is a war of defending the nation."

There have been 60,000 deaths since the war began in March, 2011, the vast majority of them women and children. In saying that his opponents are foreigners and terrorists, controlled by foreign powers, he's indicating that he plans to continue massacring innocent women and children.

Assad's speech is another embarrassment for Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy who replaced Kofi Annan, and who has been meeting frequently with al-Assad in an attempt to convince him to agree to some kind of political solution. Like Annan, Brahimi has been a total failure. Reuters and Guardian (London)

Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff

First, by way of introduction, let me reprise the following:

In 2006-2007, the Brookings Institute was dead wrong about the war in Iraq. (See "Brookings Institution does a full reversal on Iraq war" from 2009.) Not only was the Brookings Institute wrong, but they were disastrously wrong, and if President Bush had followed their advice, it might well have been a disaster for Iraq. Basically, Brookings Institute made up "facts" known only to themselves.

As I've written many, many times, economists have no clue about what's going on. They didn't predict, and can't explain, the tech bubble of the 1990s, the real estate bubble, the credit bubble, the credit crunch of 2007, the collapse of 2008, they had no idea what was going to happen in 2012, and they have no idea what will happen in 2013. Alan Greenspan has said that every macroeconomic model has failed since 2007.

So with repeated failures by economists and by the Brookings Institute itself, you'd think they'd develop a little humility. Instead, here are some excerpts from an interview on CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, or Thomas Mann of Brookings Institute and Norman Ornstein of American Enterprise Institute on the subject of the fiscal cliff:

Thomas Mann: "The Republican Party is very much together like a Tea Party now. Their ideological commitments have moved far to the Right and they really have deep skepticism of the whole notion of facts, of evidence, of science. And they're willing to engage in behavior that a generation ago we would have said is just beyond the pale, that is take the country's public credit and risk a default to get their way."
Thomas Mann: "It's just stunning what Republicans have said and been willing to do that's simply aren't true, not in a little fact-checking way, but in broad arguments about what America's about, where we've come from, why we have deficit problems now, what government spending does to jobs, and the like."
Norm Ornstein: "And, you know, part of our concern is -- again, it's not ideological. But if voters don't have a sense of who's to blame, in a system -- you know, it's not a parliamentary system. If you have a party acting as a parliamentary minority, you're going to have to find ways to hold them accountable and it's up to the press to report the truth, not the balance."

It's absolutely incredible. Instead of recognizing their repeated record of failures, and saying something like, "Maybe we're wrong, but we believe that the Republicans are making some errors," they claim that they have the "facts," they're right about everything, and anyone who disagrees is an extremist.

And then they say "it's not ideological!!"

How stupid do Mann and Ornstein have to be to claim they know everything, despite repeated past failures by their colleagues? Note that I'm not saying that they're wrong and the Republicans are right. I'm saying that Mann and Ornstein don't have the vaguest clue what they're talking about, and that they're simply making stuff up to support their ideology.

But this is the way people are these days. If you disagree with them, then you're an "extremist." If you disagree with an Obama policy, then you're a "racist." If you're a member of the Tea Party, then you're a "teabagger," according to CNN's David Gergen and Anderson Cooper, who giggled as they uttered the epithet. (See "Vile 'teabagging' jokes signal the deterioration of CNN and NBC news")

At least Mann and Ornstein didn't threaten any Republicans with violence. That task regularly falls to Teamsters president James Hoffa, who said of the Tea Party in his introduction to the next speaker president Obama, "We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong." And his union thugs have followed his advice.

As far as who's right and who's wrong, I would remind readers that in 2005 I issued a challenge to anyone to find a web site, an analyst, a journalist or a politician anywhere in the world with a better predictive record than my web site, GenerationalDynamics.com, and no one has produced one. I set up my web ten years ago, and I've posted thousands of articles containing hundreds of predictions that have all turned out to be right or are trending right. None has turned out to be wrong. That's not because I'm particularly clever or prescient, but because in ten years the Generational Dynamics methodology has been proven to be valid. Unlike the ideological rantings of morons like Mann and Ornstein. CNN

India and Pakistan armies clash in Kashmir

Kashmir was the epicenter of the extremely bloody 1947 war between Hindus and Muslims that followed Partition, the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. The "Line of Control (LoC)" in Kashmir, separating the Indian-held territory from the Pakistan-held territory is the site of continuing violence. The LoC was established by the United Nations, following the Partition war, to "settle" the Kashmir problem by partitioning the region and giving part of it to each. The U.N. mandated that an election be held in Kashmir within five years to decide which country they wanted to belong to, but India has always blocked any such election, knowing that it would lose in the majority Muslim population.

On Sunday, India and Pakistan armies clashed near the LoC. According to a Pakistani report:

"The Pakistani military said Indian troops had crossed the Line of Control (LoC) and raided their Sawan Patra checkpost in Kashmir. ... "Pakistan Army troops effectively responded to the attack successfully." Two Pakistani soldiers were critically injured in the attack, one of whom later embraced martyrdom."

Here's the report from India:

"Denying Pakistan army's allegations that Indian soldiers crossed the Line of Control (LoC) near north Kashmir's Uri area, the army on Sunday said Pakistan army resorted to unprovoked mortar shelling on two-three posts in the morning.
There was a breach of ceasefire as Pakistan resorted to mortar shelling in the morning. Our troops retaliated with small arms," said an army spokesman."

The clash ended with no further casualties. Dawn (Islamabad) and Hindustan Times

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Jan-13 World View -- Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (7-Jan-2013) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Jan-2013 7-Jan-13 World View -- Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff

Syria's Assad promises new violence in public speech

Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff

India and Pakistan armies clash in Kashmir

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Jan-2013
7-Jan-13 World View -- Brookings Institute freaks out over 'extremism' and fiscal cliff