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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)
Related Articles:
(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)
Related Articles:
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
 |
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)
Related Articles:
(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
Related Articles
(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
 |
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)
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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
 |
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
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(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
 |
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
posted anonymously.)
(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
 |
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 elite.
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 elite 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
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(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
 |
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
 |
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
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(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
 |
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 accuse 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
posted anonymously.)
(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
posted anonymously.)
(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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