Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

OK

Once again, very impressive!

*** 23-Feb-14 World View -- Freed Yulia Tymoshenko gives passionate speech to Ukraine's opposition crowds

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Freed Yulia Tymoshenko gives passionate speech to Ukraine's opposition crowds
• Ukraine protesters storm Yanukovych's secret palace
• President Obama draws another line, and tells Ukraine not to cross it

****
**** Freed Yulia Tymoshenko gives passionate speech to Ukraine's opposition crowds
****


Yulia Tymoshenko on Saturday (BBC)

On a day of fast-moving events in Ukraine, the parliament voted to
dismiss president Viktor Yanukovych from office, and to free Yulia
Tymoshenko immediately. Once freed, Tymoshenko gave a riveting,
passionate speech to the huge crowd in the Maidan (Independence
Square) in Kiev:

<QUOTE>"There is a new Ukraine. The heroes of the Maidan are
saviors and the saviors of Ukraine. I wanted to come to the
barricades on Grushevskogo and I want to feel how our brave men
and women were defending us and were willing to give their lives
to protect this sacred place that will always be in our hearts.

I was blaming myself that I wasn’t able to be here. Every time I
saw a man fall down the bars of the prison were holding me
back. They died to give us the opportunity to change what we had
before. Each politician who might betray you should remember the
faces of the dead heroes.

In any case you should not leave the Maidan until everything you
strive for is achieved. You should go on to the end. No one has
the right to step back from here. There is no way back.

It was not politicians or diplomats or world leaders who made this
happen. It is you, the people who stood on Maidan, who changed the
situation.

It was never a fair fight. How can it be a fair fight when you
have a wooden shields against sniper rifles and kalashnikovs. But
the people knew it was not fair and they continued. ...

We must bring Yanukovych and the scum that surrounds him to
Maidan. ...

The snipers who put their bullets through the hearts of our heroes
but a bullet in all our hearts. And it will never be removed until
every one of them is punished. Everyone will be punished for what
they do wrong.

This nation will never again fall to its knees. No one will ever
again do this to us because we will never let them."<END QUOTE>

The call to bring Yanukovych back to Kiev to be punished will be
significant. The whereabouts of Yanukovych are unknown, but it's
thought that he's in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian
border, after being prevented from taking a plane to Moscow.

There have been some reports that officials in Moscow are very
contemptuous of Yanukovych because he was took weak during the crisis.
The people in Moscow prefer someone like Syria's psychopathic
president Bashar al-Assad who conducted "industrial strength" torture
and extermination on his own civilians, using sarin gas against his
own people. Yanukovych was apparently unwilling to do stuff
like that, or he was prevented from doing so by parts of his
army, and so he's worthless to the folks in Moscow.

Yulia Tymoshenko received wild cheers during her speech on Saturday,
but she's apparently not all that popular. The presidential elections
have been rescheduled to May 25, and she said on Saturday that she's
going to run for president, but she may not be able to win. She's
extremely unpopular with the eastern 1/3 of Ukraine, which consists
mostly of Russian-speaking ethnic Russians. The western 2/3 are
mostly Ukrainian-speaking ethnic Ukrainians, but not everyone there
loves her either. She's 53 years old, making her part of that old,
corrupt generation, in the view of many activists. She was prime
minister twice in the past, and there were a lot of problems both
times. As one Ukrainian activist said, "She's good at leading a
revolution, but not so good at leading the government." Telegraph (London) and Europe Online

****
**** Ukraine protesters storm Yanukovych's secret palace
****


An ornamental horse stands outside Yanukovych's residence in his secret Kiev compound

President Viktor Yanukovych is disliked even among his supporters in
eastern Ukraine because of his opulent lifestyle and alleged
corruption. Even in the issue of aligning with the European Union or
Russia, the issue that triggered the series of demonstrations in
December, many people believe that Yanukovych's flip-flop was made not
because it would benefit Ukraine, but because it would benefit his
bank account.

The president's walled-off compound has been well-guarded and
completely off-limits to the public, and on Saturday it became clear
why, as the guards were removed, and thousands of Ukrainians streamed
into the compound to see what was going on. Yanukovych had always
refused to talk about his residence, admitting only to living in a
modest house on a small plot inside the compound.

But what they saw was quite different. There were posh mansions
standing amid manicured lawns. There were parks dotted with statues,
ponds with fountains and wild ducks, a tennis court, a golf course and
a colonnaded pavilion. There was a hovercraft and an entire Spanish
galleon. There was a guest house with marble floors, crystal
chandeliers, a massive stairway with what looked like gold-covered
railings, and a giant piano in a reception hall with luxurious beige
armchairs. Live animals included ostriches and deer, apparently for
Yanukovych's eating pleasure. According to one activist, "It’s like
we entered Berlin and seized the Reichstag."

Yanukovych released a video saying he had been forced to leave Kiev
because of "vandalism, crime and a coup." He called his opponents
"Nazis" and said:

<QUOTE>"I don't plan to leave the country. I don't plan to
resign. I am the legitimate president. ...

What I am going to do next is to protect my country from the
split, to stop the bloodshed. I don't know how to do it yet. I am
in Kharkiv and I don't know what I am going to do
next."<END QUOTE>

One thing is fairly certain: He's not going to return to his palatial
resident in Kiev. AP and CNN

****
**** President Obama draws another line, and tells Ukraine not to cross it
****

Before Saturday's events, President Barack Obama warned the
government of Ukraine not to use violence against its own people:

<QUOTE>"[W]e’ll be monitoring very closely the situation,
recognizing that with our European partners and the international
community there will be consequences if people step over the
line."<END QUOTE>

The statement is reminiscent of last year's speech when Obama set a
"red line" in Syria about chemical weapons, and then flip-flopped when
the Bashar al-Assad used sarin gas against his own people. It's
unclear what "consequences" Obama had in mind in Ukraine. National Post


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Ukraine, Kiev, Viktor Yanukovych,
Yulia Tymoshenko, Kharkiv,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad

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****
**** Ukraine protesters storm Yanukovych's secret palace,find high living on the hog in Ukraine
****



Among the items plundered from Yanukovych's compound (after he fled to Kharkov)... [lots of gold]

More than a handful wanted in...





A bird's eye view of his "humble" abode


Here's the gold! Bye bye, it's in the peoples' hands now.





All of the elected officials in DC, and the 50 states, banksters, and high flying CEOS [Hey Waltons!] had better take notice. What happened in the Ukraine and what is happening in Venezuala can happen here. They also better notice that the people are sick of their corrupt ways. That is utopia for the priveleged few, and misery for the masses. So? How long will it be before molotov coctails are flung at the towers of high finance at Wall $treet and the scum villas in Bentonville? After all, the Walmarts in New Orleans were stripped bare [looted] after the aftermath of Katrina.

For which such events in foreign lands may well come to pass soon here. A prophecy from our nation's founders.

Forthwith:

"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate.
What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life.
Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves.
Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. *God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1]
The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent for 11 years.
There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?
And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted."
--Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787[2]

*Perhaps the 20 years means 2T's alternating with 4T's. Such would be another prophecy , much fullfilled.

***
*** As Facebook's $19 Billion Whatsapp Purchase Crashes (And May Be Hacked),
*** Its Competitor Is Exploding
***
ln a rerun of the year 2000 tech bubble, we're doing it again. This time it's fueled by QE. It's stunning how the same mistake can be made with different methods. :
The only status update released by Whatsapp was the following tweet:

sorry we currently experiencing server issues. we hope to be back up and recovered shortly.— WhatsApp Status (@wa_status) February 22, 2014


So while Facebook's newly acquired subs are scrambling to figure out why they cant send a text message halfway around the world for free, and are considering using the iMessenger service, which would also achieve the same result, also for free, one well known hacking group, Anonymous, has implied it may be involved in the crash.

#Tangodown Whats App :P lol
— Anonymous Own3r (@AnonymousOwn3r) February 22, 2014

Needless to say, adding insult to corporate sellout inury for Whatsapp's users would be a Snapchat like hacking which exposes millions of crotchshots for all to see. Which perhaps explains why while Whatsapp is scrambling to get back up, one clear winner has already emerged: Telegram (based in Berlin, Germany) is getting 100 new registrations…PER second!

This is crazy. We'are getting 100 new registrations every second. Trying hard to prevent connection issues in Europe.
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) February 22, 2014

We're experiencing connection issues in Europe caused by the avalanche of new users. We're getting it fixed asap.
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) February 22, 2014

So yes, the tech bubble is back in full force, not to mention the US stock market is levitated at insane levels courtesy of QE. Bear in mind, approximately the top 10% wealth level owns stocks to a great degree, the party isn't really benefitting very many US residents. However, once this bubble pops [like they all do] , everyone will feel the pain. The above Facebook buy of a questionable nature just how insane things have become. The only winner seems to be Telegram Messenger in this mess. Besides why would anyone want to even bother with Whatsapp when Telegram Messenger seems the superior option. Cf. This latest incident seems to be another indicator that this 4T shall be of a "ratcheting nature" wrt economic woes. First the 2008 meltdown, second, municipal bankrupcies, and now another blatant stock market bubble which does nothing but increase systemic risk. This systemic risk will hurt big time down the road.

http://www.freenew.net/iphone/telegr...ger/847962.htm

Keywords: Ukraine, Venezuela, Kiev, Viktor Yanukovych, Gold, plundering, corrupt US elected officials, banksters, high flying CEO's, looting, Wall $treet, molotov cocktails, Katrina aftermath, Thomas Jefferson, William Stevens Smith, John Adams, founding fathers' prophecies, Tree of Liberty, Facebook, tech bubble II, QE, Anonymous[hacking group], Whatsapp, Telegram Messenger, systemic risk.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

****
**** Ukraine protesters storm Yanukovych's secret palace,find high living on the hog in Ukraine
****



Among the items plundered from Yanukovych's compound (after he fled to Kharkov)... [lots of gold]

More than a handful wanted in...





A bird's eye view of his "humble" abode


Here's the gold! Bye bye, it's in the peoples' hands now.





All of the elected officials in DC, and the 50 states, banksters, and high flying CEOS [Hey Waltons!] had better take notice. What happened in the Ukraine and what is happening in Venezuala can happen here. They also better notice that the people are sick of their corrupt ways. That is utopia for the priveleged few, and misery for the masses. So? How long will it be before molotov coctails are flung at the towers of high finance at Wall $treet and the scum villas in Bentonville? After all, the Walmarts in New Orleans were stripped bare [looted] after the aftermath of Katrina.

For which such events in foreign lands may well come to pass soon here. A prophecy from our nation's founders.
i

Sounds like Bastille revisited in Ukraine. Most Americans are still skeptical as to whether anything of the sort could happen here despite increased tensions.

*** 24-Feb-14 World View -- Mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has 90th birthday

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Protests in Caracas threaten both Venezuela and Cuba
• Mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has 90th birthday
• Russia on top of the world as Sochi Olympics games end

****
**** Protests in Caracas threaten both Venezuela and Cuba
****


Nicolás Maduro cartoon (Gulf News)

Hundreds of pro-government demonstrators, most of them older people,
marched through Caracas on Sunday, for the "March of Seniors."
However, it's the anti-government demonstrators that are threatening
the government of Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro. And the
reason that Venezuela is unraveling is because crime and the economy
continue to worsen. The inflation rate at 56% is the highest in the
world. he murder rate is 25,000 annually, one of the world's highest
per capita rates, and 97% of the murders go unpunished. The
supermarket shelves are bare, with shortages of almost every basic
product needed for day to day living.

Maduro has reacted to these problems ordering supermarkets to slash
prices, jailing business owners as "speculators," and sending troops
to stores to liberate washing machines "for the people." He's closed
down independent television stations, deported CNN reporters, and
jailed opponents.

Maduro doesn't have anything close to the charisma of his predecessor,
Hugo Chávez, who died last year and left behind an economy close to
disaster. According to one Maduro opponent, Chavez’s gift for
showmanship enabled him to create distractions and defuse frustration,
but Maduro, stiff and wooden in comparison, relies more on thuggery.
So although the "March of Seniors" is demonstrating in favor of the
current government, Maduro's tin ear, combined with the worsening
economy and crime situation, is putting the entire Socialist
government in danger.

And the end of Venezuela's Socialist government would have a profound
impact on Cuba's Socialist government, because it would mean the end
of Venezuela's subsidies. Venezuela ships around 100,000 barrels per
day of subsidized oil to Cuba, and gives employment to thousands of
Cuban doctors, sports instructors and military advisors in Venezuela.
Venezuelan opposition activists have been demanding for an end to
these subsidies, at a time when Venezuela's economy is so poor.
CNN and Gulf News and Miami Herald

****
**** Mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has 90th birthday
****

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who has been president
since 1980, celebrated his 90th birthday on Sunday.
Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), operate as de facto enforcers of
government policies and commit assault, torture, rape, extralegal
evictions and executions without fear of punishment.

Mugabe's actions are mostly based on the historical enmity of
two tribes -- Mugabe's Shona tribe, and his enemies, the Ndebele
tribe. Genocidal warfare occurred between these two tribes in
previous generational crisis wars -- the Mfecane war that climaxed in
1828, the Matabele Wars that climaxed in 1897, and the Rhodesia civil
war, climaxing in 1979. It was the last war that gave Zimbabwe
independence, making Mugabe the President.

In 1983, to consolidate his hold on power, Mugabe launched
"Operation Gukurahundi" (The rain that washes away the chaff before
the spring rain). 20,000 people, almost all of them from the Ndebele
tribe, were tortured, raped and slaughtered.

As recently as the 1999, Zimbabwe was a breadbasket of Africa,
exporting up to 500,000 metric tons of surplus food. By 2003,
Zimbabwe was starving. What happened during those three years was a
Marxist socialist "land reform" program by Robert Mugabe that
confiscated 4,500 white-owned commercial farms and redistributed the
property to his own Shona ethnic group.

After 2003, more and more Zimbabweans have been dying of starvation,
because Mugabe has destroyed the farm infrastructure. By 2008, the
official rate of inflation was 231 million percent. Today, Zimbabwe's
official currencies are the U.S. dollar and the South African rand.
Zimbabwe was a wealthy country until 2000, until Mugabe almost
literally destroyed it single-handedly.

There is no obvious successor to Mugabe, and it's believed that if he
left the scene, then there would be new violence between the Shona and
Ndebele tribes. Independent (Ireland)

****
**** Russia on top of the world as Sochi Olympics games end
****


Joss Christensen, American gold medal winner in freestyle skiing

There were doping scandals and gay rights controversies, but overall
Russia seems to done pretty well as host of the Winter Olympics in
Sochi. Russia's athletes came out way ahead of everyone else, with 13
gold medals out of 33 total, ahead of Norway (11 gold out of 26
total), Canada (10 out of 25), and the United States (9 out of 28).

Russia conducted the biggest security operation in Olympic history,
with a flotilla of naval vessels in the Black Sea, around 50,000
police and security personnel on the ground, the interception of data
and emails, and surface to air missiles deployed in strategic
positions. It worked, because there were no reported terrorist
incidents in Russia during the Olympics games. According to
IOC President Thomas Bach in the closing ceremony:

<QUOTE>"Tonight we can say: Russia delivered all what it had
promised. What took decades in other parts of the world was
achieved here in Sochi in just seven years.

Through you [the Russian people], everybody with an open mind
could see the face of a new Russia: efficient and friendly,
patriotic and open to the world. We arrived with great respect for
the rich and varied history of Russia. We leave as friends of the
Russian people."<END QUOTE>

Off-topic, I found the following chart to be interesting:


Prize Money for Sochi Olympic Medalists, by country (Ria Novosti)

It looks like the Kazakhstan really wants to encourage their people to
participate. Reuters and Ria Novosti


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez,
Cuba, Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Shona tribe, Ndebele tribe,
Mfecane, Metabele Wars, Rhodesia civil war, Operation Gukurahundi,
Russia, Sochi, Joss Christensen, Thomas Bach, Kazakhstan

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*** 25-Feb-14 World View -- U.S., IMF, EU facing bailout requests from Ukraine and Greece

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Russia says Ukraine chaos is a 'real threat' to its interests
• Ukraine says that it needs a $35 billion bailout
• Bitter dispute with troika over Greece's bailout needs

****
**** Russia says Ukraine chaos is a 'real threat' to its interests
****


Festive chaos in Kiev (NBC)

Government has essentially disappeared in Kiev, the capital of
Ukraine, with such functions as are available being performed by
activists who participated in the overthrow of president Viktor
Yanukovych, with the support of the parliament. These activists
mostly represent ethnic Ukrainians, and are mostly pro-European and
often bitterly anti-Russian, blaming Russia and Ukraine's ethnic
Russians for Yanukovych's brutal violence that killed dozens of young
activists. The activists have issued an arrest warrant for
Yanukovych, accusing him of "mass killings" of civilians.

There are reports that the parliament is considering a law that would
remove Russian as one of Ukraine's official languages, and some even
want to go so far as to remove citizenship status from ethnic Russians
in Ukraine. This has sparked anti-Ukraine nationalism in Russia,
where there are discussions of granting citizenship to ethnic Russians
from Ukraine.

On Monday, Russia's prime minister Dmitry Medvedev said
that what is going on is a "real threat" to Russia:

<QUOTE>"We do not understand what is going on there, there is
a real threat to our interests and to the lives and health of our
citizens.

Strictly speaking, today there is no one there to communicate
with. The legitimacy of a number of power bodies is in huge doubt.
If you consider people in black masks strolling through Kiev with
Kalashnikov rifles a government, then it will be difficult for us
to work with such a government.

Some our foreign, western partners hold the opposite opinion, they
think these people to be legitimate power bodies. I do not know
what constitution and what laws they have been reading, but I hold
that it is some sort of conscience aberration when you call
something legitimate while in reality it is a result of an armed
uprising."<END QUOTE>

Yanukovych has disappeared, and his whereabouts are unknown.
According to some reports, he was last spotted in Balaclava, a town
near Russia's Sevastopol naval base in Crimea on the Black Sea.
According to the reports, he drove off with a 3-car convoy late on
Saturday night, and hasn't been seen since. Ria Novosti and Russia Today and Reuters

****
**** Ukraine says that it needs a $35 billion bailout
****

Ukraine is on the brink of default, following years of massive
government corruption and government overspending. In
December, Russia promised a bailout loan of $15 billion, but
that was before president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown.

There are some reports that Russia is considering sending
troops into Kiev, but almost everyone considers that highly
unlikely, inasmuch as Russia can make Ukraine suffer
financially. Ukraine's economy depends heavily on natural
gas from Russia's Gazprom. Ukraine owes Gazprom $3 billion,
and Russia could cut off all gas transmissions at any time.
Russia could also cut off Ukrainian exports to Russia.

Ukraine says that it's going to need a $35 billion bailout for 2014
and 2015. It seems likely that the U.S., the IMF and the European
Union are going to be asked to provide that bailout. Bloomberg

****
**** Bitter dispute with troika over Greece's bailout needs
****

History is repeating itself as the "Troika" of organizations bailing
out Greece -- the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank
(ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- are in a bitter
dispute with Greece's government over the amount of bailout money
needed by Greece. Greece claims that it needs only 5.5 billion euros,
while the Troika has done an analysis and comes up with a figure close
to 20 billion euros.

One reason that Greece needs more money than anticipated is because
one of its austerity measures -- the reduction of lump sum pension
payments to civil servants -- has been declared unconstitutional by a
Greek court. The Troika will demand that Greece take other measures
to reduce its debts. The disagreement between Greece and the Troika
is mostly internal right now, but if it's now resolved quickly, then
it will become a very big, public fight. Greek Reporter and Kathimerini


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Ukraine, Kiev, Viktor Yanukovych,
Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, Balaclava, Crimea, Sevastopol,
Troika, European Commission, European Central Bank,
International Monetary Fund, Greece

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Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

*** 21-Feb-14 World View -- U.S. naval intelligence chief confirms worst fears of China's military buildup

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China is training for a 'short, sharp war' with Japan
• How a world war with China would unfold
• Intelligence chief Fanell confirms worst fears of China's military buildup

****
**** China is training for a 'short, sharp war' with Japan
****


The Senkaku Islands are thought to be in the midst of vast gas and oil resources (Reuters)

China has long trained for an amphibious invasion of Taiwan during
military exercises but has now expanded its training to include a
similar attack on the Senkaku Islands and other Japanese holdings in
the East China Sea. All branches of China's People's Liberation
Army (PLA) participated in a massive exercise last year for
taking these islands.

According to James Fanell, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence and
Information Operations, U.S. Pacific Fleet:

<QUOTE>"We witnessed the massive amphibious and cross
military region enterprise — Mission Action 2013. [We] concluded
that the PLA has been given the new task to be able to conduct a
short sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea
following with what can only be expected a seizure of the Senkakus
or even a southern Ryukyu [islands] — as some of their academics
say. ...

Tensions in the South and East China Seas have deteriorated with
the Chinese Coast Guard playing the role of antagonist, harassing
China’s neighbors while PLA Navy ships, their protectors, (make)
port calls throughout the region promising friendship and
cooperation."<END QUOTE>

This concept of a "short, sharp attack" is quite credible, as the
Chinese people widely believe that America has become weak because of
the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and that, particularly under President
Barack Obama, Americans have little will to oppose China. Thus, they
could quickly overwhelm Japan's forces, America would do nothing, and
Chinese ownership of the Japanese islands would be part of the new
status quo.

History has shown that this is a disastrous assumption.

In April, 1861, the army of America's southern Confederacy captured
Fort Sumter in a "short, sharp attack." Undoubtedly, many Southern
officials believed that the North wouldn't even care, since the Fort
was isolated in Southern territory. And yet the North did care,
triggering the extremely bloody American Civil War.

In 1939, the Nazis launched a "short, sharp attack" on Poland. They
thought that Britain was weak and uninterested, since they'd already
ignored an earlier short, sharp attacks on Austria and Czechoslovakia.
The attack on Poland triggered World War II.

So, one can imagine that the Chinese believe that a short, sharp
attack on these Japanese islands would bring no American response,
like the Nazi attack on Czechoslovakia. Even if that turns out to be
true, history shows that American nationalism would surge so high that
any further military action by China would trigger a response,
spiraling into a new world war.

The Pentagon has issued a statement saying that they expect to have
peace in our time, responding to Fanell's assessment as follows:

<QUOTE>"What I can tell you about what Secretary Hagel
believes is that we all continue to believe that the peaceful
prosperous rise of China is a good thing for the region, for the
world. We continue to want to improve our bilateral military
relations with China and that we also think that a major component
of that is increased transparency on their part about the
investments they're making and the operations they're conducting,
and that's where I leave it."<END QUOTE>

United States Naval Institute and Voice of America

****
**** How a world war with China would unfold
****

People ask me this question all the time: If a war with China
ever happens, how and when would it start?

Of course, answering that question would require a mind-reading
capability, but history tells us a lot about how such a war
would start and unfold.

Looking at World War II, we have two different examples to examine.
The war in Europe began with Germany's "short, sharp attack" on
Czechoslovakia, and so China's attack on the Senkakus may trigger a
war. Or, we can look at the Pacific war that began with an
all-out attack by the Japanese, and so the war may begin with
a massive missile attack by the Chinese on America's aircraft
carriers, cities, and military installations.

No matter what the scenario, history tells us that the Chinese
population would greet such a war with jubilation.

Here's how historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes how war begins in
his 2001 book, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning,
and Recovery:

<QUOTE>"The passions excited in the national psyche by the
onset of war show how deeply invested the masses now were in its
potential outcome. Propaganda had reinforced their conviction that
"everything was at stake," and the threat of death and defeat
functioned like a tightly coiled spring, further heightening the
tension. The almost festive jubilation that accompanied the
declarations of war in Charleston in 1861, Paris in 1870, and the
capitals of the major European powers in 1914 [American Civil War,
Paris Commune, and World War I, respectively] were anticipatory
celebrations of victory -- since nations are as incapable of
imagining their own defeat as individuals are of conceiving their
own death. The new desire to humiliate the enemy, noted by
Burckhardt, was merely a reaction to the unprecedented posturing
in which nations now engaged when declaring war.

The deployment of armies on the battlefield is the classic
manifestation of collective self-confidence. If both sides are not
convinced of their military superiority, there will be no
confrontation; rather, those who lack confidence will simply flee
the field. Accordingly, the battle is decided the moment the
confidence of one side fails. The will to fight ("morale")
evaporates, the military formation collapses, and the army seeks
salvation in flight or, if it is lucky, in organized retreat. The
Greek term for this point in space (on the battlefield) and time
(the course of the battle) was trope. The victors demarcated the
spot with the weapons of the vanquished and later with monuments,
yielding the term tropaion, from which we get our word trophy."
(p. 6-7)<END QUOTE>

The euphoria goes on until something goes wrong, as has happened to
Americans since 2003, even though we've never had any really major
military disasters in Iraq.

The panicked reaction can be much greater when a military disaster
occurs. In his 1832 book, On War, General Carl von Clausewitz
describes what happens:

<QUOTE>"The effect of defeat outside the army -- on the
people and on the government -- is a sudden collapse of the
wildest expectations, and total destruction of self-confidence.
The destruction of these feelings creates a vacuum, and that
vacuum gets filled by a fear that grows corrosively, leading to
total paralysis. It's a blow to the whole nervous system of the
losing side, as if caused by an electric charge. This effect may
appear to a greater or lesser degree, but it's never completely
missing. Then, instead of rushing to repair the misfortune with a
spirit of determination, everyone fears that his efforts will be
futile; or he does nothing, leaving everything to
Fate."<END QUOTE>

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the events that cause
this "sudden collapse" and "total destruction" of self-confidence
are called "regeneracy events," because they regenerate civic unity
for the first time since the end of the preceding crisis war.

In other words, once the euphoria of war with China is destroyed (and
this will be true of both the American and Chinese side), the conflict
begins to turn into an all-out generational crisis war, where no the
life of no individual human being will have any value at all, and the
only thing that matters is survival of the nation and its way of life.

Once again, we can look to World War II for examples. The Allies
allowed tens of thousands of young American soldiers to be shot down
like fish in a barrel on the beaches of Normandy, they firebombed
Dresden and Tokyo, and they used nuclear weapons on two Japanese
cities. This is what ALWAYS happens at the climax of a crisis war,
even by the most benevolent of belligerents. General Carl von Clausewitz, On War

****
**** Intelligence chief Fanell confirms worst fears of China's military buildup
****

For years I've been referring to China's media reports bragging about
new missile systems of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) specifically
designed -- with no other purpose -- than to overwhelm American
missile defenses and strike American aircraft carriers, American
military installations, and American cities. America's vulnerability
has been substantially weakened in recent years by defense cutbacks,
and by the massive release of secret information by Edward Snowden,
which may have left America's defenses completely exposed.

In a separate presentation, in addition to the one described above,
intelligence chief James Fanell describes China's actions in the South
China Sea by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN):

<QUOTE>"Suffice it to say that my assessment is that the PLA
Navy has become a very capable fighting force. Much of the
intelligence record is classified beyond what we can discuss in
this forum, but just to give you one example, in 2012, the PLA
Navy sent seven surface actions groups and the largest number of
its submarines on deployment into the Philippine Sea in its
history – and a significant increase in some areas from the years
before, or just the year before.

Make no mistake, the PLA Navy is focused on war at sea and about
sinking an opposing fleet.

The PLA Navy’s civil proxy, an organization called “China Marine
Surveillance,” has escalated a focused campaign since 2008 to gain
Chinese control of the near seas, and they now regularly challenge
the exclusive economic zone resource rights that South Korea,
Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and Vietnam
once thought were guaranteed to them by the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea. ... China is negotiating for
control of other nations’ resources off their coasts. “What’s mine
is mine, and we’ll negotiate what’s yours.” ...

Incidentally, unlike U.S. coast guard cutters, Chinese marine
surveillance cutters have no other mission but to harass other
nations into submitting to China’s expansive claims. Mundane
maritime government tasks like search-and-rescue, regulating
fisheries, ice breaking and criminal law enforcement are handled
by other agencies. ...

In my opinion, China is knowingly, operationally and incrementally
seizing maritime rights of its neighbors under the rubric of a
maritime history that is not only contested in the international
community, but has largely been fabricated by Chinese government
propaganda bureaus in order to quote-unquote “educate” the
populace about China’s “rich maritime history” clearly as a tool
to help sustain the Party’s control.

Last year’s Scarborough Shoals seizure typifies the confrontations
that China is having with its neighbors. It’s one that exhibited
all the common characteristics of China’s aggression. First, they
are initiated by the egregious conduct of China’s actors –
sometimes the Chinese government, sometimes private entities. At
Scarborough Reef, Chinese fishermen were excavating live coral and
harvesting endangered species, including giant clams.

Second, Chinese official spokesmen will issue fabricated stories
to explain the incidents; in the case of Scarborough, the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs spokesman said the “Chinese fishermen were
seeking refuge from storms.”

Simply not true. You can Google the weather that day: winds 5-10
knots, seas less than two feet, sunny, there were no
thunderstorms."<END QUOTE>

Fanell is confirming the Chinese strategy that we've been describing
for years. China's seizure of the Scarborough Shoal from the
Philippines in 2012 is similar to reports of plans for China's
military to seize one island after another in the South China Sea.
( "16-Jan-14 World View -- China threatens military seizure of South China Sea island from Philippines"
) China is counting on the fact that any
"short, sharp attack" on any one island won't bring an American
response.

As we've said before, it's impossible to predict the timing of
all this, but there's no possible way to interpret China's
actions except as massive preparations for preemptory war
with the United States, and the analysis by intelligence chief
Fanell confirms that.

OK, Dear Readers, please resume your regular activities of spending
all your time arguing with one another about whether the world will
end in 2100 because of Global Warming. China Business Intelligence


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, Japan, Taiwan, Sankaku Islands,
James Fanell, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Carl von Clausewitz,
Philippines, Scarborough Shoal

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China also has an overland strategy few are aware of. Massive investment has resulted in an expansion of superhighways and rail links. These have initially joined the Chinese heartland with the formerly far flung areas such as Yunnan. As a second wave (well under way) the borders are now being crossed. As a "measure of improving international communication and commerce" these spokes now reach into the near abroad - Vietnam, Laos, Burma. The PRC needs a near abroad it controls and it needs to be a near abroad with warm water ports. Furthermore, as much as they use the Japanese acts of WW2 to stir their own people into a frenzy, they also secretly admire aspects of "the Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere." However Japan's failure at the time was a complete lack of overland logistics (compare and contrast with the European Theatre at the time). China will not repeat that mistake. When Chinese troops take territory in SE Asia it will follow the example of Nazi Germany, marching out of the Rhineland into BeNeLux then France.

If I were in Australia I would be nervous. For that matter, if I were in India I would be nervous, and, planning for the worst. It will be interesting to see if the old Anglospheric group can reassemble when the SHTF.

Erm, stop mixing and matching Russian geopolitical concerns and Chinese ones. China doesn't refer to a "near abroad", nor are they obsessed with developing warm water ports (into the open ocean, as opposed to seas that can be closed off), because they already have them. China's "overland strategy" has been investing in infrastructure in Central Asia, Siberia, Pakistan, and SE Asia IOT secure overland supply routes for natural resources, in the event of a confrontation with the US that cuts their maritime supply routes. Their "string of pearls" strategy is connected with this, in the sense of being their primary plan (assuming their competition with the US doesn't become a full on battle for hegemony), with the overland stuff being secondary.

*** 26-Feb-14 World View -- Ukraine's 'separatist' talk threatens ethnic Tatars

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Ukraine's 'separatist' talk threatens ethnic Tatars
• U.S. expels three Venezuela diplomats in tit-for-tat reprisal
• Nigeria's Boko Haram kills 39 school students after army mysteriously withdraws
• China considers two new anti-Japanese national holidays

****
**** Ukraine's 'separatist' talk threatens ethnic Tatars
****


Ukraine - Crimea is the peninsula at the bottom, jutting into the Black Sea

As we've discussed several times, western Ukraine is mostly populated
by Ukrainian-speaking ethnic Ukrainians, while eastern Ukraine is
mostly populated by Russian-speaking ethnic Russians. However, even
eastern Ukraine isn't entirely Russian, and although the Russian
language is spoken there, it's spoken with a Ukrainian accent.

The exception is the Crimea, the body of land at the bottom of
Ukraine, jutting into the Black Sea, and connected to mainland Ukraine
by a narrow strip of land. This is the most Russian part of Ukraine,
and the most Russian part of Crimea is the port of Sevastopol, a
strategically important naval port hosting Russia's Black Sea fleet.
This is the place to which deposed Ukrainian president Viktor
Yanukovych fled over the weekend, and he has not been seen publicly
since then. It's impossible to predict what will happen to Ukraine
from the current crisis, but one thing is certain: Russia will not let
go of Sevastopol.

Talk of "separatism" is high in Sevastopol. And we're not talking
about separatism of east Ukraine from west Ukraine. We're talking
about separation of Crimea from the rest of Ukraine. Sevastopol's
city council on Monday already demanded a referendum on rejoining what
they call "The Motherland."

The situation has become sufficiently alarming that even Moscow is
backing down a bit. Two days ago, Russia's prime minister Dmitry
Medvedev referred to the situation as "an armed uprising" by "people
with black masks strolling through Kiev with Kalashnikov rifles."

But on Tuesday, Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was
considerably more subdued:

<QUOTE>"We are using our contacts with the various political
forces at play in Ukraine in order to calm the situation down.

[It is] dangerous and counter-productive to try to force upon
Ukraine a choice on the principle of 'you are either with us or
against us'. We want Ukraine to be part of the European family in
every sense of the word."<END QUOTE>

Whether this reference to the "European family" represents a change in
policy remains to be seen, but it's certainly a change in rhetoric.

The possibility of Crimea rejoining Russia is of greatest concern to
the Tatars, a mostly Turkic language speaking Sunni Muslim ethnic
group, currently numbering around 300,000. Russia's dictator Josef
Stalin, who had already engineering the massive famine in Ukraine in
the 1930s, in 1944 deported 200,000 Tatars from Crimea, where they had
lived for millennia, to central Asia, accusing them of collaborating
with the Nazis. It was only in the 1980s and 1990s that the Tatars
returned in large numbers to Crimea, particularly after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence.

Tatars are concerned that a return to Russia rule would mean "the end
of the Crimean Tatars," according to one activist:

<QUOTE>"If the violence in Ukraine were to spread to Crimea,
300,000 Crimean Tatars would come face to face with approximately
2 million Russians living there. Soldiers in Russia's Black Sea
Fleet in the port of Sevastopol are ready to invade Crimea. The
parliament of the Autonomous Region of Crimea is under the control
of Russia, is predominantly of Russian ethnicity and is against
the Crimean Tatar National Assembly and Crimean
Tatars."<END QUOTE>

CS Monitor and Telegraph (London) and Zaman (Istanbul)

****
**** U.S. expels three Venezuela diplomats in tit-for-tat reprisal
****

The U.S. State Department said that two first secretaries and a second
secretary at Venezuela's embassy in Washington had been declared
personae non gratae, and have been given 48 hours to leave the
country. The expulsion is tit-for-tat reprisal for Venezuela's
expulsion of three American diplomats last week. Venezuela's
president Nicolás Maduro expelled three U.S. diplomats last week on
accusations of recruiting students to hold violent, rock-throwing
protests against him. The U.S. Washington has rejected the claims as
baseless. Reuters

****
**** Nigeria's Boko Haram kills 39 school students after army mysteriously withdraws
****

Gunmen from Nigeria's Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram ("Western
education is forbidden") stormed at 2 am Tuesday, and killed 29
pupils, all boys, many of whom were burnt to death by a fire. The
girls were spared, and were told to go home, get married, and abandon
Western education. The school was secular, and students were both
Christian and Muslim.

Outrage is growing in Nigeria because Boko Haram has killed thousands
of civilians, but the armed forces are failing to protect them, or
even respond to raids. In this case, there had been soldiers guarding
a checkpoint near the government school, but they were mysteriously
withdrawn hours before the attack. And then the terrorists were able
to continue their massacre for five hours, no troops or security
agents intervening. It's believed that the soldiers knew the attack
was coming, and then withdrew either because they wanted to support
the terrorists, or because they were afraid of being killed
themselves. BBC and CBS News

****
**** China considers two new anti-Japanese national holidays
****

Laws have been submitted to China's National People's Congress to add
two new holidays to the list of China's national holidays:

• September 3 would be "Victory Day of the Chinese People's War
  of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression," marking the end of World
  War II for China.
  
• December 13 would be a "national memorial day to commemorate those
  killed by Japanese aggressors during the Nanjing massacre," which took
  place on December 13, 1937.

The proposed law is expected to pass. BBC and Bloomberg


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Ukraine, Crimea, Sevastopol,
Viktor Yanukovych, Black Sea, Russia, Sergei Lavrov,
Josef Stalin, Tatars, Soviet Union, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro,
Nigeria, Boko Haram, China, Japan

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Facebook Fraud exposes Fucked Farcial Friending business model.
From SF Gate
Raaj Kapur Brar runs a small but successful empire of online fashion magazines from his base just outside Toronto. Some of his titles are huge online brands, such as Fashion & Style Magazine, which has 1.6 million Facebook fans.
That's more fans than Elle magazine has.
Even his niche brands, such as South Asian Fashion, are huge — it has 1.7 million fans. A typical Fashion & Style post will get 2,000 likes.
His umbrella company, Fetopolis, is exactly the kind of marketer-publisher that Facebook has encouraged to take advantage of its 1.2 billion-strong audience. Fetopolis' titles post a constant stream of new pictures and fashion ideas, his followers love them, and he gets money from clothing labels to push content.
Recently, however, Brar has fallen out of love with Facebook. He discovered — as Business Insider reported recently — that his Facebook fanbase was becoming polluted with thousands of fake likes from bogus accounts. He can no longer tell the difference between his real fans and the fake ones. Many appear fake because the users have so few friends, are based in developing countries, or have generic profile pictures.
At one point, he had a budget of more than $600,000 for Facebook ad campaigns, he tells us. Now he believes those ads were a waste of time.
Facebook declined multiple requests for comment on this story.
Brar's take is a cautionary one because Facebook has 25 million small businesses using its platform for one marketing purpose or another. Many of them are not sophisticated advertisers — they are simply plugging a credit card number into the system and hoping for the best. This is what can happen if you don't pay careful attention to contract language, or the live, real-time results your campaigns on Facebook are having.
An unpaid bill of $379,000.

A review of emails from Facebook, ad campaign dashboard screengrabs, and billing records show a confusing, acrimonious dispute in which both sides believe the other acted badly. It's not even entirely clear what Brar's total spending was: Campaign budget data seen by Business Insider appear to show that Brar ran at least $489,000 in ads on Facebook. One email from Facebook demands payment of an unpaid bill for $370,000. Brar himself believes he ran up to $640,000 in ads.
To be fair to Facebook, this is the advertising business — the company can guarantee exposure but not results. Advertise the wrong thing in the wrong way, and you'll lose your money. Clearly, the vast majority of businesses that use Facebook for marketing are pleased with the experience. Facebook's growing revenues, up 63% last quarter, indicate it is only getting more successful at selling advertising, not less.
And, of course, Brar is a disgruntled former customer with a bone to pick. There is a fair amount of he-said, she-said in the retelling of what happened between Brar and Facebook. Obviously, both sides dispute what the other is saying.
Here's how Brar believes it went down: He became interested in advertising on Facebook in 2012, and he took it seriously. He went to Facebook's local Toronto office where he was trained to use the advertising interface. They set up the campaign, and ran a small "beta" test. Then, in late October Brar pulled the trigger on a massive push through Facebook's Ads Manager. He used Bitly and Google Analytics to measure the number of clicks his campaign was generating.
The results were disastrous, Brar says.
$100,000 a day on Facebook ads.

Facebook's analytics said the campaign sent him five times the number of clicks he was seeing arrive on his sites, which Brar was monitoring with Bitly, Google Analytics, and his own web site's Wordpress dashboard. There was a reasonable discrepancy between the Bitly and Google numbers, Brar says, but not the five-fold margin between Google's and Facebook's click counts.
At one point, data from Facebook indicated his ads had delivered 606,000 clicks, but the site itself registered only 160,000 incoming clicks from Facebook, according to data supplied by Brar. (160,000 clicks is a not insignificant return. After all, these are not clicks on a mere Facebook page, these are users who clicked through to an off-Facebook site.)
Worse, after just a few days of running the campaign — at a spend rate of up to $100,000 a day, the kind of budget that Macy's or Walmart might devote — it became clear that the revenue being generated by the campaign would never pay for the ads. Brar was hoping that the small sum he was paying for Facebook ads would be profitably eclipsed by the much more expensive Google ads he was running on his websites. He was arbitraging the traffic, essentially — which is a routine practice in online marketing.
Brar's tests had suggested that the return on his investment in ads might by two or three times their cost. But when the full flight of ads ran, it was a tiny fraction of that.
"I don't know what to say, right? This is a huge loss. This ran for four days, then we just stopped the campaign," Brar says.
Then the fake clicks arrived.

Then, things got worse. Even though Fetopolis wasn't advertising, the likes and new followers kept on piling up. Normally, an advertiser would be pleased at such a result, but every time Brar checked a sample of the new fans he found people with dubious names; a picture of a flower as a profile shot; and fewer than 10 friends — classic signs of a fake profile.
Facebook advertising has a little-discussed problem: When you run an ad, people operating fake profiles will click on the ad and like your page simply to make their own fake profile look more genuine, as if it is being operated by a real person. These fake clicks come from click farms, which are an entirely separate illegitimate underworld within social media marketing. Often based in Asia, click farms exist to defraud legitimate advertisers by delivering vast numbers of cheap clicks that would otherwise not occur. Genuine advertisers attract fake clicks in two ways: Directly, through fraudulent clicks on their ads; and indirectly, when click farms try to camoflage their fake user profiles by clicking randomly on whatever ads are targeted at them.
Facebook works hard to get rid of fake accounts. In its annual report, the company said that only about 0.4% - 1.2% of all active users are abusive accounts that create fake likes.
Nonetheless, a badly targeted campaign can generate huge numbers of fake fans and bogus likes. This appears to be what happened to Brar.
"We spent over $600,000-plus to get these fans. And we haven’t run any campaigns for over two years, but still our pages are growing at 100,000-plus new likes every week. And I bet that most of them are fake likes with fake profiles," Brar says. "How many did we pay for that are fake?"
Facebook does not allow audits.

Naturally, Brar began disputing his bill with Facebook. He wanted his clicks audited by a third party, to see how many were genuine. Then he discovered that Facebook's terms of service forbid third-party verification of its clicks. That's something all advertisers should be aware of before they spend a penny on Facebook: Facebook has operated this way for a long time, and has a page for advertisers explaining in more depth why third-party click reporting may not match Facebook's click counts. Essentially, Facebook suggests, if clicks are not measured in exactly the same way over the same time intervals then there will always be discrepancies.
Facebook is different from the rest of the online ad industry, which follows a standard of allowing click audits by third parties like the IAB, the Media Ratings Council or Ernst & Young.

"I asked Facebook, can you provide any third-party evidence besides your own server analytics? Because we're losing money here right now. They said no, we've checked our systems and no one else reported any issues."
"I have to take your word for it?" Brar said. "It was 'thank you for your money, no we're not wrong, all the other third parties are wrong.'"
Brar declined to pay the bill. He told Business Insider that his magazine titles did not generate enough revenue to cover $600,000. His credit with Facebook was ruined. He offered to pay cash in advance for future campaigns but Facebook demurred. Facebook did not sue Brar or pursue him further for the money, however.
In the year or more since the campaign, Brar says. He has tried to figure out what portion of his fanbase is fake. "But Facebook doesn't have a tool for that," he says.

---------------------------------------------------*************************------------------------------------

I truly find it amazing that anyone would use Facebook for anything but a gaming platform. I myself have 2 fake accounts from which I play Mafia Wars. There is no way I'd trust Facebook with my real address, name, phone number etc. In one account I live in Leadville, Co, and the other, I live in Fort Collins, Co. My phone number is 1-800-EAT-SHIT on both accounts, and the like. I'm sure others make trash accounts like this as well. That means if I like an ad [which I don't because I don't want more like it] , the like would come from basically a bot with no valid credentials. It also means that any Facebook aggregated data is polluted by my stuff. As for Bitly and Google Analytics, I've trashed those as well. Bother get either nothing or garbage because I don't like being tracked. I would deign to say more blowback on being tracked is forthcoming. It's simple, I expect to be PAID for the provision of personal information and none is forthcoming, I'm in my right to use Privoxy, Noscript, Better Privacy, and Abine to destroy / modify cookies, etc.

***
*** California Nightmaring on Housing AGAIN
***

Just when you think the stock market in the only place of lunacy, this pops up. In the space of 10 years, we get the same old shit all over again. A popping bubble in California real estate. I wonder what happens when the drought starts to really bite...

From Dr. Housing Bubble.
It is common knowledge that banks have metered troubled real estate inventory out into the market in a slow drip fashion. This practice over the years has caused an artificially low supply to be present in the market. Add into the mix a low rate environment and years of investors buying up properties and you get our current stalemate of a market. Virtually no one in the press with a voice is even expressing a possibility that prices may sway lower. The only options making the rounds involve a couple of scenarios where prices will go up slowly in 2014 or prices will move sideways. No option for a decrease. This lack of perspective is odd given the resurgence of interest only loans and the fact that a well known bank is dipping back into the subprime market. One surprising statistic that I did see was the resurgence of foreclosure starts in California.
Why the sudden jump in foreclosure starts?
I fully agree with readers that we are dealing with a pseudo-market here. How is it feasible to have double-digit price increases, low supply, and then last month a surge in foreclosure starts of 57 percent? You would expect that in a market with rising prices that this would be a sign of underlying economic health. This isn’t exactly the case given that a large portion of purchases are coming from hot money rather than individual families signing on to purchase with conventional 30-year fixed rate mortgage. This isn’t only the case in California but nationwide. The latest monthly sales figures show that 32 percent of purchases came from buyers using no traditional mortgage product (aka investors).
Many readers sent this chart over from RealtyTrac and even mentioned it in a previous post but it is worth analyzing here:

After 17 months of consecutive annual decreases we see foreclosure starts up by 57 percent in January. It is interesting that banks suddenly decided to move on the foreclosure process this year. Given the timeline of foreclosures this is perfect timing to unload homes late in spring or early in summer:

A foreclosure start merely means the bank is starting the process with a notice of default. As you can see from the timeline above, the process can take four months if the bank is really motivated to unload. This hasn’t been the case in California so it makes you wonder why the sudden surge in foreclosure starts. In fact the average time to foreclose in California is 322 days:

What is interesting is that you will see that banks are getting quicker at selling distressed inventory. This makes sense given the massive jump in prices in 2013. This jump does highlight that yes, banks do have some shadow inventory available but probably not as much as you would expect from back in 2008 and 2009. It also reflects that you still have a good number of California homeowners in trouble with their mortgages.
Underwater in California
It is hard to believe but we still have a large number of Californians underwater in spite of the massive jump in prices in 2013:

16 percent of California homeowners are underwater. Throw in those with less than 10 percent equity and you have over 20 percent of the market at or near negative equity. That is a large pool of the market. Given the jump in foreclosure starts, you still have a good number of delinquent homeowners. Banks are now moving probably because they are acting rationally and want to lock in some gains by selling to investors or highly leveraged buyers. 2013 was a damn good year. A smart gambler knows when to walk away.
I know some think income is irrelevant in the current housing market but long-term this does matter. For example, let us look at a couple of zip codes in Burbank:
Zip: 91506
Median Price: $625,000 (up 42% year-over-year)

Zip: 91505
Median Price: $566,000 (up 25% year-over-year)

Zip: 91501
Median Price: $788,000 (up 35.8% year-over-year)

Or take a look at Compton for example:
Zip: 90222
Median Price: $230,000 (up 24.3% year-over-year)

Does any of this seem rational or more like a mania? I also believe that foreclosure starts are up because millions of Californians are living precariously close to the financial edge. Leased cars, massive mortgages, big student debt, and living high on the hog.
People seem to get frustrated especially when six-figures doesn’t do much when starring at a $600,000 fixer-upper to move into. They may have $120,000 saved up ready to bounce yet don’t pull the trigger because logic tugs at their practical side. Because a 10 or 20 percent move down is very possible (we saw prices in California move up 20 to 30 percent in some markets last year!). Well there goes that down payment if this happens. So it does pay to run the numbers and of course incomes matter. The doctor making $1 million a year is probably not sweating buying that beach front condo. Yet this is a small portion of the market. And even in this case, income does matter in the sense that overall monthly outlays are tiny in proportion to what is coming in. The reason this is a tough decision is because housing is so expensive in California, even in non-prime areas.
Middle class in California
Ultimately the middle class is being squeezed out. This isn’t to start some insane conspiracy debate, it is merely facts and is not only happening in California but nationwide. People change definitions all the time. If we mean “middle class” as is dictated by the English language, we mean the middle of where half of the families make more and half make less. This figure is easy to find for California:

Source: US Census
The median income in California is $58,000. We don’t get many comments from people going into bidding wars for homes in Compton, Pacomia, or Lynwood – this wasn’t the case in 2005, 2006, or 2007 either yet prices are up everywhere. The same target markets are on the list once again yet someone is bidding these areas up. It certainly isn’t the income of local households. 27 percent of households make more than $100,000 which is the absolute minimum to start bidding in select areas. I would actually say you would need $150,000 or more for the more prime areas that blog readers seemed to be focused on. When we go this far, we have 13 percent of California households. Then you throw in the 30 percent of money coming in from investors, low supply, and you can see why we go from boom to bust. Many are now using ARMs to stretch their budgets to the absolute max to get into a home. Yet volume is extremely low because of the few households that can actually compete at this price point and the fact that investors are having a tougher time making out with good buys.
People want a definite answer as to when to buy. It is hard to give an answer to this given the multiple factors to consider. Throw into the mix that this is no free market and that only makes it tougher. Yet those thinking that prices will never drop (again) fail to understand history. Heck, in California we had a few bubbles within our lifetimes yet the sun seems to cause some kind of financial amnesia. People also buy for emotional reasons. Unfortunately the current market has made everyone into a speculator. No one is going to care as much about your financial situation as you do. Do you think the market cares if you take on a $3,000 or $4,000 monthly mortgage for 30 years? I think one good rule of thumb is to try to keep housing costs to one-third or less of your gross income. That is, if you make $10,000 per month (gross) $3,333 should be the higher end of what you spend on housing. Given the Census data, that is speaking to 13 to 20 percent of all California households. Given that every other car on the freeway is a BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, Acura, or Infiniti something tells me people are up to their eyeballs in debt once again.
One thing is certain and that is the California homeownership has taken a big hit since the bust hit:

To highlight the full circle here, take a look at this:

“(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, is tiptoeing back into subprime home loans again.
The bank is looking for opportunities to stem its revenue decline as overall mortgage lending volume plunges. It believes it has worked through enough of its crisis-era mortgage problems, particularly with U.S. home loan agencies, to be comfortable extending credit to some borrowers with higher credit risks.”

I had to do deletia on quite a few images so here's the original link:
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/c...-middle-class/

Keys Targeted Advertising, Privoxy, Abine, Facebook,Noscript,Better Privacy,ARMs, interest only loans, jumbo loans, massive investor buying, low inventory, stagnant prices, a surge in foreclosure starts, and now subprime loans.

What if the Intermarum was reformed and meanwhile, a Dual Pole Grand Khanate spanned from Sevastapol to Hong Kong. The Intermarum's allies would include the Anglosphere / NATO, Japan plus a few select others. What if ...

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

What if the Intermarum was reformed and meanwhile, a Dual Pole Grand Khanate spanned from Sevastapol to Hong Kong. The Intermarum's allies would include the Anglosphere / NATO, Japan plus a few select others. What if ...

Basically you're retreading the old Mackinder/Spyker notion of Rimland vs Heartland.

Adjust borders as you find appropriate.

We'll see, it's a possibility. Grand Khanate might be a bit much, though. It has a perfectly serviceable name, ​of which you are already well aware. We'll see what happens with the observers states, and how the organization evolves.

*** 27-Feb-14 World View -- Russia masses troops on Ukraine border, as ethnic Russians and Tatars clash

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Ukraine's ethnic Russians and Tatars clash in Crimea
• Russia masses 150,000 troops on border with Ukraine
• Hezbollah vows retaliation for Israel's air strike in Lebanon
• Nigeria asks France for help in dealing with Boko Haram terrorists

****
**** Ukraine's ethnic Russians and Tatars clash in Crimea
****


Pro-Russian protesters (left) clash with Crimean Tatars (right) on Wednesday (AP)

Long-dormant World War II hatreds came alive again on Wednesday, when
ethnic Russians clashed with ethnic Tatars outside of Crimea's
parliament building in Simferopol in southern Ukraine. Thousands of
Tatars demonstrated in front of the Crimean parliament on Wednesday to
block deputies from passing any legislation that would support the
separation of Crimea from Ukraine. According to one Tatar activist:

<QUOTE>"We warned them not to arrange a [parliamentary]
session. Do not explode the situation in the Crimea. We know they
need that session to tear Crimea from Ukraine. We warned that the
Crimean Tatars will not allow this to happen."<END QUOTE>

As the Tatars chanted "Ukraine" and "Motherland! Crimea! People!",
pro-Russia demonstrators gathered, shouting "Crimea is Russia!"
According to one pro-Russia activist:

<QUOTE>"We are here to defend ourselves from those western
Ukrainians, who think they can decide our future here in
Crimea. They never asked us what we wanted. We've spoken Russian
for 200 years here, and we're not going to start speaking that
Ukrainian. It's not even a real language, it's a
dialect."<END QUOTE>

Russia's dictator Josef Stalin, who had already engineered the massive
famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, in 1944 deported 200,000 Tatars from
Crimea, where they had lived for millennia, to central Asia, accusing
them of collaborating with the Nazis. It was only in the 1980s and
1990s that the Tatars returned in large numbers to Crimea,
particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's
independence. However, the bitter feelings between the Russians and
the Tatars still remains, and could spiral into a bloody
confrontation. Ria Novosti and CS Monitor

****
**** Russia masses 150,000 troops on border with Ukraine
****

Russia's president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered war games
involving 150,000 troops along the border with Ukraine. This followed
several days of activities, as trucks full of armed Russian troops
arrived at the Black Sea port of Yalta, and armored personnel carriers
arrived at Sevastopol. Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said
Moscow was "carefully watching what is happening in Crimea." He
claimed that no invasion of Ukraine was planned, but also said:

<QUOTE>"The commander-in-chief [Vladimir Putin] has set the
task of checking the capability of the armed forces to deal with
crisis situations posing a threat to the military security of the
country,"<END QUOTE>

The United States warned Russia against interference in the crisis,
saying military intervention by Moscow would be a "grave mistake".
Ria Novosti and Washington Times and Telegraph (London)

****
**** Hezbollah vows retaliation for Israel's air strike in Lebanon
****

Lebanon's Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah vowed to "choose the
appropriate time, place and method of response" to retaliate against
Israel for an air strike on Monday. The target of the air strike is
unknown, though Hezbollah claimed that "no one was martyred or
wounded," and there was only "material damage." However, some
security sources say that the strike hit two trucks transporting
missiles and a missile launcher into Lebanon, and that four Hezbollah
members were killed. Israeli defense officials are expecting
Hezbollah to target senior Israeli figures in the future, in
retaliation for Monday’s air strike. Daily Star (Beirut)

****
**** Nigeria asks France for help in dealing with Boko Haram terrorists
****

France, which already has thousands of peacekeeping troops in former
colonies Mali and Central African Republic, is now being asked to help
a former British colony, Nigeria, to deal with the growing threat by the
jihadist terror group Boko Haram ("Western education is forbidden").
The request was triggered by a horrific terror attack on a school in
northeastern Nigeria on Tuesday where 29 boys were killed, and the
girls were told to go home, get married, and abandon Western
education. There had been soldiers guarding a checkpoint near the
government school, but they were mysteriously withdrawn hours before
the attack, leaving the terrorists to continue their massacre for five
hours, with no troops or security agents intervening. Nigeria's
government also asked for help from neighboring Cameroon, saying that
the terrorists hide out in Cameroon. Nigeria Bulletin and Oman Observer



KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Ukraine, Crimea, Simferopol,
Tatars, Josef Stalin, Russia, Sergei Shoigu,
Vladimir Putin, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, Syria,
France, Mali, Central African Republic,
Nigeria, Boko Haram, Macaroon

Permanent web link to this article
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France, which already has thousands of peacekeeping troops in former
colonies Mali and Central African Republic, is now being asked to help
another former colony, Nigeria

Nigeria was a British colony, not a French one. Sentence is either inaccurate or misleading.

Also, since I saw it a few posts ago, and as I have stated before; Boko Haram, in so far as it is an ethnic militia, is comprised of Kanuris, not Hausa.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Nigeria was a British colony, not a French one. Sentence is either inaccurate or misleading.

Also, since I saw it a few posts ago, and as I have stated before; Boko Haram, in so far as it is an ethnic militia, is comprised of Kanuris, not Hausa.

Thanks for the corrections.

John

***
*** John Kerry isn't happy with Defence cuts, decries "New Isolationism"
***


Top News
Kerry decries 'new isolationism', says U.S. acts like poor nation
Wed, Feb 26 22:39 PM EST

By Arshad Mohammed and Lesley Wroughton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry decried what he called a "new isolationism" in the United States on Wednesday and suggested that the country was beginning to behave like a poor nation.
Speaking to reporters, Kerry inveighed against what he sees as a tendency within the United States to retreat from the world even as he defended the Obama administration's diplomatic efforts from Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In comments tied to the budget that U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to present on Tuesday, Kerry suggested that tighter spending, in part at the behest of congressional Republicans, may limit U.S. clout around the world.
"There's a new isolationism," Kerry said during a nearly one-hour discussion with a small group of reporters.
"We are beginning to behave like a poor nation," he added, saying some Americans do not perceive the connection between U.S. engagement abroad and the U.S. economy, their own jobs and wider U.S. interests.
Kerry made the case as Obama prepares to release a budget that will adhere to spending levels agreed to in a two-year bipartisan budget deal struck late last year, entailing some spending cuts the administration would have preferred to avoid.
The U.S. State Department budget will decline slightly in the president's budget submission, Kerry said, saying this was a direct result of the bipartisan budget deal that cut funding further than Obama wanted.
"This is not a budget we want. It's not a budget that does what we need," he said, saying the budget deal entailed cuts demanded by the Republican-led House of Representatives. "It was the best the president could get. It's not what he wanted."
In speaking of what he called the "new isolationism," Kerry cited the limited support in the U.S. Congress to back Obama's plan to launch an air strike against Syria last year because of its suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.
Obama, in a decision criticized by some U.S. allies in the Gulf and elsewhere, asked Congress to vote on a strike. With limited congressional backing, he ultimately abandoned a strike and pursued a deal to get Syria to give up its chemical weapons.
"Look at our budget. Look at our efforts to get the president's military force decision on Syria backed up on (Capitol Hill). Look at the House of Representatives with respect to the military and the budget," Kerry said.
"All of those things diminish our ability to do things," he added.
Kerry took particular aim at critics of his efforts to get the Syrian government and the opposition that has sought to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for nearly a year to reach a peace agreement that would entail Assad's departure.
A second round of peace talks in Geneva broke up on Saturday, with chief mediator Lakhdar Brahimi lamenting a failure to achieve much beyond agreement on an agenda for a third round.
"These people who say that it's failed or that it's a waste of time ... Where is their sense of history?" Kerry said.
"How many years did the Vietnam talks take? How many years did Dayton take in Bosnia-Herzegovina?" he added. "These things don't happen in one month. I mean it's just asinine, frankly, to be making an argument that after three weeks it's failed."
Kerry blamed the lack of a diplomatic resolution on the marked shift in momentum on the ground to Assad's forces, backed by Iran and by the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, as well as on what he called "the opposition's machinations."
"The dynamics on the ground shifted and with that shift, I believe, came an additional ingredient ... which was the infighting of the opposition began to divert from the focus on Assad," he said.
(Editing by Ken Wills)

As Jimi Hendrix once said, "you're living in the past". This applies to John Kerry because the US IS A POOR COUNTRY NOW.

To be precise, the US is a Banana Republic The export of course is consumer demand [which is a failing export] since debt levels can only go so high. Basically , since it's all "amen to this", here's the rest of the entry from Zerohedge.

Originally Posted by Zerohedge

Perhaps some other Americans are tired of America acting as Globocop, and as the world's hypocritical superpower dispensing "justice" when it fits its national interests, and ignoring all other conflicts, specifically when Mid-East oil, or the growing Russian sphere of influence is not concerned?

Kerry made the case as Obama prepares to release a budget that will adhere to spending levels agreed to in a two-year bipartisan budget deal struck late last year, entailing some spending cuts the administration would have preferred to avoid.

The U.S. State Department budget will decline slightly in the president's budget submission, Kerry said, saying this was a direct result of the bipartisan budget deal that cut funding further than Obama wanted.

"This is not a budget we want. It's not a budget that does what we need," he said, saying the budget deal entailed cuts demanded by the Republican-led House of Representatives. "It was the best the president could get. It's not what he wanted."

But hold on: wasn't it Kerry's own party that has been urging the defunding of the US defense budget at the expense of overfunding welfare and benefits? The people are confused.
Next, Kerry deflects his own personal failings as SecState, having had to be pulled from his yacht last summer, just as the Syrian conflict was reaching its climax:

In speaking of what he called the "new isolationism," Kerry cited the limited support in the U.S. Congress to back Obama's plan to launch an air strike against Syria last year because of its suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Obama, in a decision criticized by some U.S. allies in the Gulf and elsewhere, asked Congress to vote on a strike. With limited congressional backing, he ultimately abandoned a strike and pursued a deal to get Syria to give up its chemical weapons.

"Look at our budget. Look at our efforts to get the president's military force decision on Syria backed up on (Capitol Hill). Look at the House of Representatives with respect to the military and the budget," Kerry said.

"All of those things diminish our ability to do things," he added.

Those... and the people who are in charge. Hence: defensive mode - activate:

Kerry took particular aim at critics of his efforts to get the Syrian government and the opposition that has sought to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for nearly a year to reach a peace agreement that would entail Assad's departure.

A second round of peace talks in Geneva broke up on Saturday, with chief mediator Lakhdar Brahimi lamenting a failure to achieve much beyond agreement on an agenda for a third round.

"These people who say that it's failed or that it's a waste of time ... Where is their sense of history?" Kerry said.

"How many years did the Vietnam talks take? How many years did Dayton take in Bosnia-Herzegovina?" he added. "These things don't happen in one month. I mean it's just asinine, frankly, to be making an argument that after three weeks it's failed."

What is most ironic about all of the above, is that hypocrisy aside, Kerry is absolutely correct: the US is starting to act like a poor nation... because it is, and Americans indeed "do not perceive the connection between U.S. engagement abroad and the U.S. economy, their own jobs and wider U.S. interests" because all US foreign policy reflects is the interest of a select group of uber-wealthy oligrachs whose sole interests the US congress represents... and nobody else's. As for everything else, we can't wait to see how Kerry handles the current Ukrainian crisis. The popcorn is prepared.

John Kerry looks perterbed. Oh well, fuck you Kerry and the rest of the MIC.

Keys, Jehn Kerry, MIC, Banana Republic, Oligarchs, Obama, Defence cuts, Zerohedge, Jimi Hendrix.

***
*** Generation X and the "New Frugality"
***
Generation X And The New Frugality

By NEIL HOWE
Kiplinger recently reported that December’s poor job growth will be offset as the economy slowly starts to recover in the months ahead. And the newest Labor Department report shows that the unemployment rate, now at 6.7%, has dropped steadily since peaking three years ago. But be warned: these numbers don’t tell the whole story.
What the media fail to emphasize is the steep drop in the labor force participation rate during this time. From October 2010, when our official jobless numbers peaked, to January 2014, the participation rank sank from 64.4% to 62.8%. Over the same period, the share of all Americans ages 16 and over who are employed has hardly budged, moving from 56.5% to only 56.6%. While bulls tout a jobs “acceleration,” the sad fact is that total U.S. jobs have shrunk by 2 million and full-time jobs by 5 million since just before the Great Recession, even while our population has grown by 14 million.
(Photo credit: Tax Credits)


Explaining The Steep Decline In Labor Force
To explain this steep decline in labor force participation, analysts in the national media blame population aging. But aging can’t be the culprit since Boomers are now enlarging the ranks of the only age bracket (age 55 and older) in which participation is actually rising and jobs have continued to grow. By delaying their retirement, Boomers are the countertrend in this story of declining labor force attachment—which is being driven almost entirely by Americans under age 55.
Let me suggest another explanation: the emergence of a new social mood, an enduring “New Frugality” that has Americans of prime working age, mainly 25 to 55, spending less, working less, and buying cheaper. Yes, the Great Recession incited tighter wallets and fewer working hours, and the continued economic stagnation has certainly sustained it. But something deeper is also driving this behavior: a Generation X-led shift in Americans’ attitudes towards time and money. This massive generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, now dominating the ranks of prime-age householders, helps explain Deloitte’s recent finding that a full 94% of consumers plan to keep spending at current levels even if the economy improves.
The Generation X Mentality
Why this generation? Individualistic, undersocialized Xers never subscribed to the “Keeping Up With the Joneses” mentality. Even when they do care about what others think, they prefer to appear thrifty, rather than flashy. Today’s most influential young entrepreneurs, like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, show they’ve made it without donning Tom Ford suits.
Xers also prefer to do things for themselves. They don’t trust others to get the job done right and consider paying others for services they could perform themselves inefficient. Why buy something new when you could employ crafty DIY tactics for half the price? Why pay nannies to look after your kids while you work to be able to afford their services? And why work law firm hours at today’s high marginal tax rates, when you’ll just have to give more of your money back?
Cutting costs extends beyond the home into business. The depths of the Great Recession coincided with the elevation of many Xers into senior management positions at Fortune 500 companies. Most of these companies have since recovered their profit margins more by relentless cost-cutting than by increases in employment and production. In most industries, even capital spending remains beneath its pre-recession peak. Pragmatic Xers focus on what they can control, and while they can’t control sales, they can control expenses.
Generation X And The Workforce
As the generation hardest-hit by the Great Recession, Xers are finding ways to derive satisfaction from working less. Today’s young moms and dads—by and large Xers—are prioritizing time with their children. Some workers are ditching Wall Street jobs for more fulfilling careers with shorter hours, whether at a tech startup or as a playwright. Because these Xers are content with spending less, their career changes aren’t as taxing. Others are choosing to relocate to lower-cost areas like Texas, which welcomed 106,000 migrants from other states just last year, and leaving behind high-stress, higher-earning lifestyles.
Pundits keep offering theories about when America will return to pre-recession spending, GDP growth, and employment rates. But if Xers continue to work and spend according to a New Frugality ethos, these milestones will remain elusive. LFP could easily remain plateaued at today’s low rate until late-wave Xers begin to retire and a new generation—the Millennials—energize the workforce with confidence, optimism, and fresh ambition.

So, this my dear reader is yet another reason QE if falling on its ass. GenX has no interest in running up credit cards. Perhaps once bitten, twice shy or just a general, "fuck the ratrace" mentality. However Neil hasn't captured the whole story here. The "new frugality" is actually "demand destruction.". As such.
1. As Xer's drop brand name goods for store brands, the revenue for advertising drops. Memo to Faceplant and other web sites desiring ad revenue, "ain't gonna happen".
2. Xer's trapsing off to thrift stores [like I do] also destroys tax revenue [along with Xer's down shifting on jobs]. My guess is we'll see Xer's being the catalyst for more public sector pension destruction. [No money, pensions go bye-bye].
3. Xer's downshifting by "working less". Again, less tax revenue. My guess this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back on underfunded pensions and cities already tottering on the edge of bankrupcy.
So essentially, the "New Frugality" will be the catalyst , via demand destruction for the ultimate bankrupcies of tottering businesses, cities, pension funds, and perhaps states.

Keys: Neil Howe, GenX, New Frugality, Creative Destruction, bankrupcties, labor force participation.

Yes, the USA has begun to feel like a poor country. As well as being jaded by war.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

***
*** John Kerry isn't happy with Defence cuts, decries "New Isolationism"
***

Good work.
When I said that you should do it every day, I was joking.
But now I'm beginning to think that you're serious.

John

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Good work.
When I said that you should do it every day, I was joking.
But now I'm beginning to think that you're serious.

John

I did think you were serious. Apologies for the misinterpretation on my part.

*** 28-Feb-14 World View -- Pakistan reverses itself, plans large-scale military attack on Taliban

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Pakistan reverses itself, plans large-scale military attack on Taliban
• Pakistan protesters end their blockade of the Nato supply route
• Russian fighter jets patrolling the Ukraine border
• Large pension company will leave an independent Scotland for UK

****
**** Pakistan reverses itself, plans large-scale military attack on Taliban
****


Protesters blockading Nato traffic last month (Dawn)

In a major policy reversal, the government of Pakistan's prime
minister Nawaz Sharif is planning to launch a full-scale military
offensive against the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban - TTP). The
attack will be focused in the Taliban strongholds in the tribal area
that borders Afghanistan.

This is a reversal of a bizarre policy of trying to end terrorist
attacks by "negotiating" and "peace talks" with the TTP. When Sharif
was elected as prime minister in May of last year, he said that he
would fulfill campaign promises by opening negotiations. But as soon
as the peace talks were proposed, the TTP immediately started to
impose conditions: TTP prisoners must be released from jail, the army
must be withdrawn from the tribal areas where it has been fighting the
Taliban, and the government must agree to impose Sharia law on the
country. Furthermore, the TTP promised that they would continue
terrorist attacks while the "peace talks" were proceeding. Finally,
the Sharif administration is becoming tired of allowing the TTP to
humiliate him over and over.

There's been no official announcement of when the military operation
will begin, but an unnamed Pakistani official says that that Pakistan
already has 150,000 troops in the tribal region ready to "begin a
full-fledged clearing operation."

Pakistan's new policy is focused on restricting attacks within its
borders. That means that militants who use Pakistan for a staging
base to attack U.S. and Afghan forces in neighboring Afghanistan will
still be allowed to operate, as long as they observe a cease-fire in
Pakistan. The News (Pakistan) and McClatchy and Dawn (Pakistan)

****
**** Pakistan protesters end their blockade of the Nato supply route
****

The Movement for Justice party, which governs Pakistan's northwest
province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) announced on Thursday that it was ending
its blockade of the "Khyber pass," a major route into Afghanistan.
This route was heavily used by Nato forces to truck equipment between
the port of Karachi and Nato bases in Afghanistan. Nato was still
able to use other, less convenient, routes, but reopening this route
solves a major headache for Nato, as it tries to move equipment out in
anticipation of the end of Nato's military actions in Afghanistan.

The blockade was announced in November by the party's leader, Imran
Khan, who is a former cricket superstar who has turned into a very
anti-American politician. He claimed that the terrorist attacks in
Pakistan were caused by American drone strikes on Taliban terrorists,
and he announced that the blockade would continue until the American
drone strikes ended. The American drone strikes did end in December,
at least for the time being, and that was given as a reason on
Thursday for ending the blockade.

This is a significant change of policy, because it's the end of the
"hope and change" fantasies that were fostered by both Sharif and Khan
in telling the Pakistani people that America was to blame for the
Taliban's terrorist attacks in Pakistan. That was always pretty
obvious anyway, since the vast majority of the attacks were on Shias
and Sufis, whose extermination was completely unrelated to either
American drone strikes or Nato's activities in Afghanistan.

The change is significant also for the reason that it could lead to a
conflict that could spiral into a larger war within Pakistan, which
could then spiral into a wider war in the region. The bloodiest
refugee crisis in the 20th century was the war between Hindus and
Muslims that followed Partition, the 1947 partitioning of the Indian
subcontinent into Pakistan and India. Generational Dynamics predicts
that the partition war will be re-fought. It's now been over 60 years
since that war ended, and all the generations of survivors of that war
are gone. The time is ripe, and a new war could begin at any time.
Daily Times (Pakistan) and AP and SATP (India)

****
**** Russian fighter jets patrolling the Ukraine border
****

A day after it was revealed that 150,000 Russian troops were massed on
the border with Ukraine, Russian fighter jets began patrolling the
border. Concerns are rising that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is
about to begin, possibly with the objective of annexing Crimea to
Russia, in the same way that Russia annexed two provinces of Georgia
by means of an invasion in 2008.

However, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry allayed all those concerns
on Thursday by announcing that he had just spoken to Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov, who assured him that large-scale Russian
military exercises near the Ukrainian border were previously scheduled
and not connected in any way to the unrest in Ukraine. Voice of America

****
**** Large pension company will leave an independent Scotland for UK
****

With a referendum on scheduled for September 18 for Scotland to decide
whether it wants to separate from Britain and become an independent
country, a large pension firm that employs 5,000 people in Scotland
out of a total head count of 8,500 says that it's already making
preparations to move some of its operations out of Scotland if the
vote on the referendum is "yes." The company, Standard Life, is based
in Edinburgh and has been based in Scotland for 189 years, so the loss
would be significant. The announcement strikes a symbol blow against
the referendum, which polls already indicate will be voted "no" in
September. BBC


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Nawaz Sharif, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Tehrik-e-Taliban, TTP, Pakistan Taliban,
Movement for Justice party, Imran Khan, Partition,
Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, John Kerry, Sergei Lavrov,
Scotland, Standard Life, Britain

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Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

I did think you were serious. Apologies for the misinterpretation on my part.

Don't apologize. Just keep it up.

John

Things are really heating up in Crimea.

Meanwhile, completely missed by Western Media was a recent exercise over the Sea of Japan. A Russian Tu-95 and Chinese A-50 flew in formation directly toward Tokyo, turning away at the last minute as they approached the West Coast of Japan.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

> Things are really heating up in Crimea.

> Meanwhile, completely missed by Western Media was a recent
> exercise over the Sea of Japan. A Russian Tu-95 and Chinese A-50
> flew in formation directly toward Tokyo, turning away at the last
> minute as they approached the West Coast of Japan.

Russia and China both have territorial disputes with Japan left over
from World War II, which was probably the reason for the exercise.
But Russia and Japan are resolving their differences, and becoming
allies, while China and Japan are increasing their differences, and
becoming increasingly inimical.

John

And both Russia and Japan have reason to fear a rising China.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

And both Russia and China have reason to fear a rising China.

Possible misprint. Consider revising.