Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I guess you could call Boko Haram "ultra-reactionary right" if you
want, but then you'd really have to call the French Revolution
revolutionaries "ultra-reactionary right" as well.

Nah, the French Revolution revolutionaries were ultra left. They were trying to create a utopia that wasn't based on anything in the past. Ditto with the Bolsheviks. Now when it came to Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Andropov, etc... (i.e. the Commies that we grew up with), the label "radical left" probably no longer applies.

See my later post.

Anyway, that's just my opinion.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

> Nah, the French Revolution revolutionaries were ultra left. They
> were trying to create a utopia that wasn't based on anything in
> the past. Ditto with the Bolsheviks. Now when it came to
> Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Andropov, etc... (i.e. the Commies
> that we grew up with), the label "radical left" probably no longer
> applies.

Oh c'mon, you're really romanticizing these things.

You say, "They were trying to create a utopia that wasn't based on
anything in the past." That's literally true, but if you reword
it slightly, then you get "They were trying to create a utopia that
hadn't been tried in the past," which is most definitely false.

The utopia concept is as old as time, or at least as old as Plato's
Republic, and has been tried many, many times. Marx's Communist
Manifesto has been used as a model several times. The French
Revolution tried a utopia, and ended with Napoleon's bloodbath. Then
the French tried a Marxist utopia, and ended up with the Paris
Commune bloodbath. Then the Bolsheviks tried a Marxist utopia, and
ended up with a massively bloody civil war. Then Mao tried a Marxist
utopia, and ended up with the Great Leap Forward bloodbath. In every
case, a left-wing utopia ends up not with a utopia, but with a
bloodbath. In no cases did one of these attempts at utopia end up as
an actual utopia.

Now, one man's utopia is another man's dictatorship.

You say (or imply) that Boko Haram is not trying to create a utopia.
What grounds do you have to say that? They live in a totally
different culture than we do, and may well see Sharia law as a utopia.
You could say, "But, but, but they're killing people," and I would
say, "Yes, but what's new about that? That's what always happens in a
utopia."

*** 10-Mar-15 World View -- Vladimir Putin brags about how he lied about Russia's invasion of Crimea

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Vladimir Putin brags about how he lied about Russia's invasion of Crimea
• Europe to Greece: Stop wasting time and get serious about reforms

****
**** Vladimir Putin brags about how he lied about Russia's invasion of Crimea
****


Vladimir Putin during interview in documentary to be aired on Russian TV

Russia's president Vladimir Putin said in an interview in a
forthcoming TV documentary that he ordered the invasion and annexation
of Crimea weeks before it occurred, during a period of time when he
repeatedly lied about the presence of Russian troops and about his
intentions. He gives as a reason for his decision that Ukraine's
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had been ousted and his life was in
danger, but he doesn't explain why that justifies invading another
country and annexing its territory.

This whole situation has almost been a laugh factory. Based on news
reports it was perfectly obvious to me and Nato officials and other
that Putin was lying, but in the United Nations and other official
forums it was necessary to play the game that Nato says this but
Russia says that. And then there was Putin's army of paid Russian trolls,
whose job was to harass
people like me who were describing what was really going on. I had
the honor of being targeted by no less than three of the trolls on
different web sites, and one of them visited me just last week to say
that it wasn't anti-government Ukraine Russians who shot down
Malaysian Airlines MH17.

Putin's constant lying, and contempt for everyone else, has at least
taken a toll. Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials have
called Putin a liar. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who originally
tried to remain neutral, has become the unlikely leader of the
pro-Ukrainian cause, though still restricted to diplomatic means.

There is an increasing realization among European officials that the
European experiment is failing, and not just because the euro currency
is in trouble. The two world wars were a huge bloodbath across the
entire continent, and the purpose of the European experiment was to
make sure it didn't happen. One cornerstone of that experiment was to
prevent any dictator from unilaterally redrawing country borders
again, as Hitler had done. And if the EU cannot stop Russia from
redrawing its borders with Ukraine, then the European Union will,
literally, be a failure. BBC and AFP and Reuters

****
**** Europe to Greece: Stop wasting time and get serious about reforms
****

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the Eurogroup of
eurozone financial ministers is telling Greece to "stop wasting time."
Greece's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on Friday provided the
Eurogroup with a list of reforms, but the list was vague, without any
real reforms.

Greece's new radical left-wing government, headed by prime minister
Alexis Tsipras, won a four-month reprieve two weeks ago, when the
Eurogroup agreed to continue funding the Greek bailout until July,
provided that Tsipras submits a detailed implementation plan for
meeting the austerity commitments.

So far, Greece has made vague promises with no specifics. The
Eurogroup met on Monday in Brussels and reviewed Tsipras's vague list.
According to Dijsselbloem:

<QUOTE>"We agreed there is no further time to lose. ... We
have to stop wasting time and really start talks seriously. We’ve
lost over two weeks — in which very little progress has been
made. The real talks haven’t started yet. There has been no
implementation."<END QUOTE>

So on Wednesday, the "institutions" will go to Athens to hammer out an
implementation. The "institutions" are the organizations bailing out
Greece -- the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank
(ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These three
organizations used to be called "the troika," but Tsipras hates the
word "troika" and made a campaign promise that there would be "No more
troika!". So, there's no longer a troika. Now there are "three
institutions."

That's just about the only campaign promise he's kept. He promised
other things, particularly that he would convince the Europeans to cut
Greece's outstanding debt in half, and to allow a "significant
moratorium" on debt repayments. Those and other promises have been
completely abandoned. As a result, Tsipras is facing pressure from
Greece's far left. Anarchist riots started again recently, and
Syriza's political office was overrun by protesters over the weekend.

In fact, not only is Greece not meeting its commitments, it's slipping
backwards, in an attempt to appease the hard left. Over the weekend,
Tsipras said that he would be submitting legislation to provide free
food and electricity to 300,000 poor households, stretching repayment
terms for those behind on their taxes (with up to 100 installments!)
and freezing home foreclosures.

There is a great deal of nervousness about the upcoming meeting in
Athens on Wednesday. History tells us that they'll "kick the can down
the road" again, but positions have been hardening, and it's possible
they'll end up with blood on the floor.

If no agreement is reached, then Greece will be bankrupt in about
three weeks. Kathimerini and Business Insider and Financial Post and Reuters


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Vladimir Putin,
Ukraine, Crimea, Viktor Yanukovych, Germany, Angela Merkel,
Malaysian Airlines flight 17, MH17, John Kerry,
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Eurogroup, Greece, Yanis Varoufakis,
Alexis Tsipras, Syriza

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

That's a very interesting list, but it also applies to the socialist
governments in China, Russia and North Korea, so it's not clear to me
why this is being called a list of "fascist" properties. It pretty
much applies to every dictatorship.

Britt holds that fascism is the antithesis of secular (liberal) humanism, and as such it is pure pathology by the ethical standards of secular (liberal) humanism. Even Communists can have points of agreement with secular humanists. First, both are essentially internationalist. Commies see the Socialist revolution as the solution to international strife, that Communist parties invariably excuse nations for the crimes of plutocratic elites and their hangers-on. Liberals see liberalism as much the same solution, if for different reasons. Liberals saw the pathologies in fascist Axis regimes not so much in a national heritage but in the (a)moral choices of illiberal leadership. A liberal Japan was not going to do the Bataan Death March again, and a liberal Germany was never going to commit another Holocaust. But contrast the lack of solidarity that can exist between fascistic regimes: the Third Reich turned murderously upon Poland even though Poland had a dictatorial right-wing regime... and did so also against the right-wing Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Metaxas dictatorship in Greece.

Communism is typically pro-feminist in rhetoric (contradicting #5) and anti-religious (contradicting #8); it treats the capitalist class as a class enemy (contradicting #9) and presents workers as a heroic proletariat (contradicting #10) and occasionally offers considerable leeway to artists and scientists (#11). It thus disagrees with plutocratic oligarchies which insist that women are to be "baby factories" (#5) and that homosexuality is an anathema, that religious fundamentalism is to trump intellectual curiosity (#8 and #11), and sees the duty of workers to work longer and harder under harsher conditions for less for an economic order that first enriches extant elites (#9 and #10). A coalition between the Religious Right (American Protestant fundamentalism is as authoritarian as any religious heritage) and the Corporate Right that Britt saw in the George W. Bush administration, at least in the formative stage, implies much of the pathology of fascism.

That is not to fault Commie regimes. The literal red flags of Commie iconography can be intertwined with rabid nationalism (1); Communists typically have as poor records on human rights as fascists (2); Commies have their scapegoats (religion, aristocratic elites, foreign capitalists, dissidents -- 3); Red regimes are often extremely militaristic in style and substance (4); they generally tolerate no mass media other than those controlled ultimately by the Communist Party (6); they are extremely obsessed with 'national' security and (thought) crime (11, 12); Commie states invariably become extremely corrupt (13); Communists may have elections, but those are rigged to the extreme. So if you want to see how Stalin's Soviet Union, China under Mao, North Korea at any time, and Romania under the Ceausescu family compare to fascism -- they don't look good. Like Ba'athism, which has much of the repression and economic regimentation of Commie states without the pervasive opposition to religion. The racist Apartheid regime of South Africa fit many of the criteria.

However, the reason that Boko Haram cannot be called a fascist state
is because it's not a state. If the government of Nigeria were doing
all those things, then Nigeria would be a fascist state.

So when does Boko Haram start issuing coinage and license plates? When does it take over schools, prisons, post offices, and state enterprises? When does it establish courts of (lynch) law? When does it have a formal army and air force? When it does that... ask me about Boko Haram. ISIS is clearly fascist; it does much that a State does. I could also make the case that failed fascist movements such as the Ku Klux Klan and Golden Dawn hold most of the pathologies of thought of fascist regimes that got started.

But Boko Haram is an anti-government revolutionary movement conducting
a "Reign of Terror." As I said, I don't think a left-right
designation makes any sense at all, but if you had to pick one, it
would have to be left.

It is dangerous to call something "Left" because you dislike it and it is not widely accepted as fascist. If anything, Commie regimes typically become reactionary over time.

*** 11-Mar-15 World View -- Europe, America, China economies all continue in deflationary spiral

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Iran elects hardliner to head Assembly of Experts
• Greece's deflationary spiral continues with consumer prices down 2.2%
• European Central Bank tries desperate measure to fight deflation

****
**** Iran elects hardliner to head Assembly of Experts
****


84 year old Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi

Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, born 1931, was elected on Tuesday to be
chairman of Iran's Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that will
choose Iran's next Supreme Leader, when the 76-year-old current
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei dies.

The election was a surprise, because Yazdi is considered to be an
extreme hardliner, and it's assumed that if Khamenei dies, then he'll
be replaced by another hardliner.

Last week, I described significant possible policy changes in Iran
that his death could trigger due to
generational differences between the survivors of the 1979 Great
Islamic Revolution and the generations that grew up after the
revolution. Those policy changes can only take place if a
representative of the views of the younger generation is chosen as the
next Supreme Leader. It doesn't matter how old the selectee is. It
only matters whether he holds the hardline views of the Great
Revolution survivors or the views of the generations that grew up
after the war. AEI Iran Tracker and BBC

****
**** Greece's deflationary spiral continues with consumer prices down 2.2%
****

Greece's consumer prices fell 2.2% in February, compared with a year
earlier. On a monthly basis, prices fell 0.6% compared with January.

Housing prices led the plunge, falling 7.1%. The only product
categories to show a rise were food, up 0.9%, and alcohol and tobacco
goods, where prices rose 2.0%.

In the eurozone as a whole, consumer prices fell 0.3% in February,
after falling 0.6% in January. In the US, the CPI fell 0.7% in
January. In China, the economy is not yet deflationary, but the
inflation rate is much lower than Beijing's target. In other words,
much of the world is spiraling into deflation.

As long-time readers know, Generational Dynamics has been predicting a
deflationary spiral for years, despite the insistence by almost every
mainstream economist that, because of near-zero interest rates and
quantitative easing, the economy would become inflationary or even
hyperinflationary. It's worth taking a moment to review what's going
on here, in case any mainstream economist is reading and wants to
learn something (which, based on experience, is very unlikely).

In the 70s, 80s and 90s, the Fed could reasonably control inflation by
setting appropriate interest rates. Generally speaking, lowering
interest rates means that people can borrow more, and they use the
money to buy things or to hire employees. This creates a demand for
things and employees, which, by the law of supply and demand, means
that prices and wages should go up, causing inflation. Quantitative
easing, where the Fed "prints money" and pours it into the banking
system, should create even more inflation. That's why mainstream
economists keep talking about inflation.

I always like to make fun of the fact that mainstream economists
cannot explain the tech bubble of the late 1990s -- why it occurred at
all, and why it occurred then, instead of a decade earlier during the
PC technology explosion, or a decade later. The answer is that the
1990s is exactly the time when the risk-averse survivors of the Great
Depression all disappeared -- retired or died -- all at the same time,
leaving behind younger generations having no clue what could go wrong
with the economist. Mainstream economists are from these younger
generations with no clue.

Mainstream economists (including those in the so-called "Austrian
school") think that inflation is determined by the amount of money in
circulation as set by monetary policy -- interest rates and
quantitative easing. And you can find thousands of articles in the
past decade explaining why continued low interest rates would cause
inflation.

But anyone who's taken Economics 1.01 knows that inflation is caused
by two factors: the amount of money in circulation times the velocity
of money. You can google "velocity of money" for a full explanation,
but it represents how frequently money is actually used to buy things
or pay wages. The velocity of money has been plummeting in the last
decade, meaning that all that money that the Fed has been spewing out
in the form of low interest rates and quantitative easing has just
been sitting in bank accounts, and not used for purchases and wages.
Actually, it's been used by hedge funds and already-wealthy investors
to invest in the stock market, pushing up the Wall Street stock
bubble. With the velocity of money plummeting, inflation has been
plummeting as well, defying the mainstream economists.

The size of the money supply is set by monetary policy, but it turns
out that the velocity of money is set by generational changes. In a
generational crisis era, like the 1930s and today, once a crisis
occurs, like the 1929 crash or the 2008 housing crash, people's moods
change dramatically. They pinch pennies, for fear of a new financial
crisis, and they refuse to buy things, causing the velocity of money
to plunge. After the 1929 crash, the mood didn't begin to lift until
the 1950s. In Japan, there was a stock market crash in 1990, and
Japan remains in a deflationary spiral to this day, 25 years later.
So this generational mood is very deep and long-lasting.

So when you hear a financial "expert" on TV say that such and such and
change in policy will encourage people to spend more money next year,
you can be sure you're listening to a clueless mainstream economist.
This deflationary spiral is going to continue and deepen for a long
time, and will trigger a new stock market crash. Bloomberg and Market Watch and Dow Jones

****
**** European Central Bank tries desperate measure to fight deflation
****


S&P 500 Price/Earnings ratio at astronomically high 20.50 on March 6 (WSJ)

The European Central Bank (ECB) is taking desperate measures to end
deflation by starting a massive quantitative easing program. On
Monday, the ECB "printed" three billion euros and used them to
purchase bonds issued by individual eurozone nations.

This huge purchase of bonds caused the prices of these bonds to up (by
the law of supply and demand). In the case of bonds, when the price
goes up, the corresponding bond yield (interest rate) goes down. So
the result of the ECB's actions on Monday was to push many bond yields
into negative territory. This means, in effect, that the ECB is
lending money to individual governments, and paying those governments
to take the money. I wish I could get that deal.

The second effect of the of the ECB's actions was to drive the value
of the euro down relative to the dollar. Or, to put it another way,
to strengthen the dollar relative to the euro.

This highlights another mistake that mainstream economists make when
they're talking about inflation. There are two completely separate
ways of looking at inflation: the internal inflation, as measured by
consumer prices, and the international inflation, as measured by the
value of the currency against other currencies. In this case, the
euro is in a deflationary spiral internally, but it's losing value
internationally. So it appears that the euro is going in two opposite
directions at the same time, one of the many dysfunctions in today's
global finance.

All this bad news in Europe affected Wall Street stocks on Tuesday,
with a 333 point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock
valuations index) on Friday morning (March 6) was astronomically high
at 20.50. This is far above the historical average of 14, indicating
that the stock market is in a huge bubble that could burst at any
time. Generational Dynamics predicts that the P/E ratio will fall to
the 5-6 range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982,
resulting in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower.
Tuesday's stock market plunge has probably already pushed the P/E
ratio down to the 18-19 range. Telegraph (London) and Reuters and Bloomberg


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Iran, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi,
Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,
eurozone, consumer price index, European Central Bank

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

*** 11-Mar-15 World View -- Europe, America, China economies all continue in deflationary spiral

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Iran elects hardliner to head Assembly of Experts
• Greece's deflationary spiral continues with consumer prices down 2.2%
• European Central Bank tries desperate measure to fight deflation

****
**** Iran elects hardliner to head Assembly of Experts
****


84 year old Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi

Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, born 1931, was elected on Tuesday to be
chairman of Iran's Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that will
choose Iran's next Supreme Leader, when the 76-year-old current
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei dies.

The election was a surprise, because Yazdi is considered to be an
extreme hardliner, and it's assumed that if Khamenei dies, then he'll
be replaced by another hardliner.

Last week, I described significant possible policy changes in Iran
that his death could trigger due to
generational differences between the survivors of the 1979 Great
Islamic Revolution and the generations that grew up after the
revolution. Those policy changes can only take place if a
representative of the views of the younger generation is chosen as the
next Supreme Leader. It doesn't matter how old the selectee is. It
only matters whether he holds the hardline views of the Great
Revolution survivors or the views of the generations that grew up
after the war. AEI Iran Tracker and BBC

****
**** Greece's deflationary spiral continues with consumer prices down 2.2%
****

Greece's consumer prices fell 2.2% in February, compared with a year
earlier. On a monthly basis, prices fell 0.6% compared with January.

Housing prices led the plunge, falling 7.1%. The only product
categories to show a rise were food, up 0.9%, and alcohol and tobacco
goods, where prices rose 2.0%.

In the eurozone as a whole, consumer prices fell 0.3% in February,
after falling 0.6% in January. In the US, the CPI fell 0.7% in
January. In China, the economy is not yet deflationary, but the
inflation rate is much lower than Beijing's target. In other words,
much of the world is spiraling into deflation.

As long-time readers know, Generational Dynamics has been predicting a
deflationary spiral for years, despite the insistence by almost every
mainstream economist that, because of near-zero interest rates and
quantitative easing, the economy would become inflationary or even
hyperinflationary. It's worth taking a moment to review what's going
on here, in case any mainstream economist is reading and wants to
learn something (which, based on experience, is very unlikely).

In the 70s, 80s and 90s, the Fed could reasonably control inflation by
setting appropriate interest rates. Generally speaking, lowering
interest rates means that people can borrow more, and they use the
money to buy things or to hire employees. This creates a demand for
things and employees, which, by the law of supply and demand, means
that prices and wages should go up, causing inflation. Quantitative
easing, where the Fed "prints money" and pours it into the banking
system, should create even more inflation. That's why mainstream
economists keep talking about inflation.

I always like to make fun of the fact that mainstream economists
cannot explain the tech bubble of the late 1990s -- why it occurred at
all, and why it occurred then, instead of a decade earlier during the
PC technology explosion, or a decade later. The answer is that the
1990s is exactly the time when the risk-averse survivors of the Great
Depression all disappeared -- retired or died -- all at the same time,
leaving behind younger generations having no clue what could go wrong
with the economist. Mainstream economists are from these younger
generations with no clue.

Mainstream economists (including those in the so-called "Austrian
school") think that inflation is determined by the amount of money in
circulation as set by monetary policy -- interest rates and
quantitative easing. And you can find thousands of articles in the
past decade explaining why continued low interest rates would cause
inflation.

But anyone who's taken Economics 1.01 knows that inflation is caused
by two factors: the amount of money in circulation times the velocity
of money. You can google "velocity of money" for a full explanation,
but it represents how frequently money is actually used to buy things
or pay wages. The velocity of money has been plummeting in the last
decade, meaning that all that money that the Fed has been spewing out
in the form of low interest rates and quantitative easing has just
been sitting in bank accounts, and not used for purchases and wages.
Actually, it's been used by hedge funds and already-wealthy investors
to invest in the stock market, pushing up the Wall Street stock
bubble. With the velocity of money plummeting, inflation has been
plummeting as well, defying the mainstream economists.

The size of the money supply is set by monetary policy, but it turns
out that the velocity of money is set by generational changes. In a
generational crisis era, like the 1930s and today, once a crisis
occurs, like the 1929 crash or the 2008 housing crash, people's moods
change dramatically. They pinch pennies, for fear of a new financial
crisis, and they refuse to buy things, causing the velocity of money
to plunge. After the 1929 crash, the mood didn't begin to lift until
the 1950s. In Japan, there was a stock market crash in 1990, and
Japan remains in a deflationary spiral to this day, 25 years later.
So this generational mood is very deep and long-lasting.

So when you hear a financial "expert" on TV say that such and such and
change in policy will encourage people to spend more money next year,
you can be sure you're listening to a clueless mainstream economist.
This deflationary spiral is going to continue and deepen for a long
time, and will trigger a new stock market crash. Bloomberg and Market Watch and Dow Jones

****
**** European Central Bank tries desperate measure to fight deflation
****


S&P 500 Price/Earnings ratio at astronomically high 20.50 on March 6 (WSJ)

The European Central Bank (ECB) is taking desperate measures to end
deflation by starting a massive quantitative easing program. On
Monday, the ECB "printed" three billion euros and used them to
purchase bonds issued by individual eurozone nations.

This huge purchase of bonds caused the prices of these bonds to up (by
the law of supply and demand). In the case of bonds, when the price
goes up, the corresponding bond yield (interest rate) goes down. So
the result of the ECB's actions on Monday was to push many bond yields
into negative territory. This means, in effect, that the ECB is
lending money to individual governments, and paying those governments
to take the money. I wish I could get that deal.

The second effect of the of the ECB's actions was to drive the value
of the euro down relative to the dollar. Or, to put it another way,
to strengthen the dollar relative to the euro.

This highlights another mistake that mainstream economists make when
they're talking about inflation. There are two completely separate
ways of looking at inflation: the internal inflation, as measured by
consumer prices, and the international inflation, as measured by the
value of the currency against other currencies. In this case, the
euro is in a deflationary spiral internally, but it's losing value
internationally. So it appears that the euro is going in two opposite
directions at the same time, one of the many dysfunctions in today's
global finance.

All this bad news in Europe affected Wall Street stocks on Tuesday,
with a 333 point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock
valuations index) on Friday morning (March 6) was astronomically high
at 20.50. This is far above the historical average of 14, indicating
that the stock market is in a huge bubble that could burst at any
time. Generational Dynamics predicts that the P/E ratio will fall to
the 5-6 range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982,
resulting in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower.
Tuesday's stock market plunge has probably already pushed the P/E
ratio down to the 18-19 range. Telegraph (London) and Reuters and Bloomberg


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Iran, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi,
Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,
eurozone, consumer price index, European Central Bank

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail

The post-1945 good times are truly over now. The coming events will bring forth phenomena the nature of which have never been previously experienced by Humanity. As I have noted previously, Humanity can now self-inflict a historical discontinuity that will far surpass all previous self inflicted ones. While not rising to the level of the truly traumatic discontinuities inflicted now and again by Mother Nature, the coming discontinuity will at least present a substantial fraction of that sort of trauma level. Be prepared for the untimely deaths of millions or perhaps over one billion people. The pyres will be easily visible from outer space. That is the only effective way to deal with so many who've perished over such as short period of time.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

> The coming events will bring forth phenomena the nature of which
> have never been previously experienced by Humanity.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the
sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains
forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to
where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the
north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the
place the streams come from, there they return again. All things
are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of
seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No
one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come
will not be remembered by those who follow them.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

The post-1945 good times are truly over now. The coming events will bring forth phenomena the nature of which have never been previously experienced by Humanity. As I have noted previously, Humanity can now self-inflict a historical discontinuity that will far surpass all previous self inflicted ones. While not rising to the level of the truly traumatic discontinuities inflicted now and again by Mother Nature, the coming discontinuity will at least present a substantial fraction of that sort of trauma level. Be prepared for the untimely deaths of millions or perhaps over one billion people. The pyres will be easily visible from outer space. That is the only effective way to deal with so many who've perished over such as short period of time.

We may be seeing the crisis of late-stage capitalism. Industrial productivity has been the key to prosperity, but that may be over. We cannot prosper by making stuff that we cannot use. We can use only so much stuff. The Soviet Union failed because it could not recognize that what it was manufacturing was already obsolete (except for weapons systems).

Ironically, much of the stuff that we have works better with lesser inputs of material and labor. Contrast the 50" cable-ready, flat screen, high-definition, LCD, multi-source television of today to the console color TV of the time when NBC had a program called "The Wonderful World of Color"... the color television of the 1950s cost $600 in 1950's dollars (although it might have had a 'fine French Provincial cabinet') and the current TV costs about $600 in dollars of our time. It is not that the material is cheaper; anyone building TVs like those of the 1950s with the bulky cathode-ray tubes would be able to get those onto the market for about $600 without the 'fine French Provincial cabinet') -- in the equivalent of 1950s dollars. The current 50" screen TV has far lesser inputs of material and labor -- and more than twice the screen size. You can detect the smaller amount of material in the newer one easily because you can move it around. (Indeed the 'fine French Provincial cabinet would set you back a huge amount of money today).

Look at some tablets. I bought one as a reader in September of last year. I found that I could get music with it, some of it music that I love. I bought a second one for about $50 to use as a sound source for my stereo. (about $10 more for a cord to connect the device to a receiver input). But how many tablets do you need? At some point they become so cheap that people give them away so that they can give content to people. (If I had kids or grandchildren I would give those as gifts -- with books loaded onto them. The complete works of William Shakespeare will be there, of course; so will Plato's Republic and some necessary Kafka.

So how about it: you can buy Encyclopedia Brittanica's 54-book (dead tree edition) Great Books of the Western World for about $1000... or you can get a Kindle or Nook and download the books for free (they are public domain) from Project Gutenberg.

One can now be a very literate person without owning a library of physical books.

The money that people now spend is heavily on services. Medicine is obvious enough. Formal education is still very costly. A few months ago I heard someone bragging about spending $125 a month on satellite or cable TV... may I suggest alternatives?

But people can give up services, except perhaps bare-bones cable TV and Internet.. and of course medicine. So maybe an economic downturn causes even more drastic reductions in spending (if not material consumption).

A change of the economic order in a short time is a Crisis in itself.

*** 12-Mar-15 World View -- Fears grow of Shia revenge killings in Iraq

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Fears grow of Shia revenge killings in Iraq
• Russia plans military development, including nuclear weapons, in Crimea

****
**** Fears grow of Shia revenge killings in Iraq
****


Iraqi forces fighting in Tikrit on Wednesday

Iraqi government forces entered Tikrit on Wednesday, driving out
fighters from the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or
ISIL or Daesh), who fled the city, leaving behind hundreds of roadside
bombs, according to Iraqi officials.

The Iraqi forces are not, for the most part, from the Iraqi army.
Only a single Iraqi army brigade, about 3,000 soldiers, are involved.
The bulk of the force are 20,000 fighters from Shia tribal militias,
known as Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilization) forces. There are also
about 1,000 Sunni tribesmen in the force.

This entire force is under the command of a Ghasem Soleimani, a top
general in Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), supported by
dozens of Iranian military advisers.

Tikrit is the home town of Saddam Hussein, and when he was in power,
Saddam Hussein was violent and brutal to the Shias. I recall numerous
stories of atrocities being committed by Saddam as one of the
justifications of the 2003 Iraq war.

So today a massive Shia army, under Iranian command, is entering
Saddam Hussein's home town, to expel ISIS and take control. As one
analyst asked, will the Sunni people of Tikrit treat the Shia army to
be liberators or invaders?

According to US Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, testifying before Congress
on Wednesday:

<QUOTE>"We are all concerned about what happens after the
drums stop beating and ISIL is defeated, and whether the
government of Iraq will remain on a path to provide an inclusive
government for all of the various groups within it. ...

There's no doubt that the combination of the Popular Mobilization
forces and the Iraqi security forces, they're going to run ISIL
out of Tikrit.

The question is what comes after, in terms of their willingness to
let Sunni families move back into their neighborhoods, whether
they work to restore the basic services that are going to be
necessary, or whether it results in atrocities and
retribution."<END QUOTE>

Fears of Shia on Sunni atrocities and retribution will not be
unexpected. According to an Amnesty International report published
last year in October:

<QUOTE>"In recent months, Shi’a militias have been abducting
and killing Sunni civilian men in Baghdad and around the
country. These militias, often armed and backed by the government
of Iraq, continue to operate with varying degrees of cooperation
from government forces – ranging from tacit consent to
coordinated, or even joint, operations. For these reasons, Amnesty
International holds the government of Iraq largely responsible for
the serious human rights abuses, including war crimes, committed
by these militias.

The victims were abducted from their homes, workplace or from
checkpoints. Many were later found dead, usually handcuffed and
shot in the back of the head. Reports by families of the victims
and witnesses have been corroborated by Ministry of Health
workers, who told Amnesty International that in recent months they
have received scores of bodies of unidentified men with gunshot
wounds to the head and often with their hands bound together with
metal or plastic handcuffs, rope or cloth. Photographs of several
bodies shown to Amnesty International by victims’ relatives and
others viewed at Baghdad’s morgue, reveal a consistent pattern of
deliberate, execution-style killings.

Some of the victims were killed even after their families had paid
hefty ransoms. Several families told Amnesty International how
they had received the dreaded call from the kidnappers, had
searched frantically for the ransom money and had managed to pay
it, only to discover that their loved one had still been
killed. “I begged friends and acquaintances to lend me the ransom
money to save my son, but after I paid they killed him and now I
have no way to pay back the money I borrowed, as my son was the
only one working in the family”, a grieving mother told Amnesty
International.

Scores of other victims are still missing, their fate and
whereabouts unknown, weeks and months after they were
abducted."<END QUOTE>

These kinds of atrocities, Sunni on Shia, were the norm when Saddam
Hussein was power. Once the US ended the war with the "surge," most
of these atrocities ended. But once the US forces withdrew, the
atrocities returned, this time Shia on Sunni.

During Wednesday's testimony before Congress, American officials
spelled out six concerns that U.S. officials have about Iran:

• a proliferation of surrogate and proxy groups in the region’s
  conflicts
• arms trafficking
• development of ballistic missile technology
• the creation of heavy mines that could be used to close the Strait
  of Hormuz
• the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions
• cyberattacks.

The US is not taking part in the invasion or liberation of Tikrit,
even with air strikes. But the US is expected to play an important
role later, when the Iraqi forces move on to recapture Mosul from
ISIS. USA Today and McClatchy and Amnesty International (Oct 2014) and Al Arabiya

****
**** Russia plans military development, including nuclear weapons, in Crimea
****

In January, Russian officials said that they will be reinforcing the
military on Crimea in 2015:

<QUOTE>"In 2015, the Defense Ministry’s main efforts will
focus on an increase of combat capabilities of the armed forces
and increasing the military staff in accordance with military
construction plans. Much attention will be given to the groupings
in Crimea, Kaliningrad and the Arctic."<END QUOTE>

This week, Russia's Foreign Ministry added to the information by
saying that nuclear weapons are on the table. According to Mikhail
Ulyanov, head of the Department for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and
Weapons Control, referring to Crimea:

<QUOTE>"I don’t know if there are any nuclear weapons there
at the moment and I am not aware of such plans, but in principle
Russia can do this.

Naturally Russia has the right to put nuclear weapons in any
region on its territory if it deems it necessary. We hold that we
have such a right, though Kiev has a different opinion on this
matter."<END QUOTE>

This is typical of the kind of garbage that comes out of the mouths of
Russian officials almost every day.

Ulyanov is head of Russia's Department for Nuclear Non-Proliferation,
but he has no idea whether Russia has put nuclear weapons into Crimea?
That's certainly credible, isn't it.

But Crimea is not Russian territory. It's a part of Ukraine that
Russia's army has invaded and is occupying. It was just a couple of
days ago that Russia's president Vladimir Putin admitted that he had lied last year
about Russia's
invasion of Crimea. It appears that Russia is planning a major
military buildup in occupied Crimea in order to threaten all the
nations bordering the Black Sea, including Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria
and Romania. Russia Today


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Iraq, Tikrit, Mosul, Martin Dempsey,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Iran, Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, IRGC,
Ghasem Soleimani, Saddam Hussein, Amnesty International
Russia, Vladimir Putin, Ukraine, Crimea, Black Sea, Turkey,
Mikhail Ulyanov

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Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the
sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains
forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to
where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the
north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the
place the streams come from, there they return again. All things
are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of
seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No
one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come
will not be remembered by those who follow them.

Biblical reference (I assume from Ecclesiastes)?

We are dwarfs in the presence of the Universe, and after we are gone we are ciphers. But because we are human we cannot see our lives as trivial and expendable because such contradicts our nature as humans.

It is our lives, and not some Great Cosmic Plan. If it is some Great Cosmic Plan, then it has had its evident faults:

Atlantic slave ship

Wounded Knee

The Devil's Reich

consequences of Khmer Rouge rule

The arrow of time is not inevitably benign in such details as enslavement, massacres and genocide, let alone in the predictable end of the Earth as a haven of life -- the sun slowly becoming a more powerful furnace emitting more radiation until it finally bloats into a red giant.

*** 13-Mar-15 World View -- Karachi Pakistan fears 'nuclear nightmare' over planned nuclear reactors

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Greece threatens to confiscate German property as war reparations
• South Ossetia discourages trips to Georgia for medical care
• Karachi Pakistan fears 'nuclear nightmare' over planned nuclear reactors

****
**** Greece threatens to confiscate German property as war reparations
****


Nazi soldiers raising the swastika flag on the Acropolis

Greece's government has threatened to seize German property in Greece
as compensation for a World War II Nazi atrocity, the massacre of 218
civilians in the central Greek village of Distomo on June 10, 1944.
In 2000, Greece's Supreme Court ruled that Germany owed the relatives
of the victims of the Distomo massacre 28 million euros. The
decision was not enforced at the time, and the Greek government
is attempting to enforce it now.

Among possible assets that could be seized are property belonging to
Germany's archaeological school and the Goethe Institute, a cultural
association.

Germany rejects the claims, saying that the 1990 "Two Plus Four
Treaty" settled the matter. One German political threatened reprisals
if Greece seized German property: "The subject has been closed since
the 1950s. If it came to Greek violations of German property, Germany
would know how to defend itself."

Then there was a new development on Thursday.

Greece has lodged a formal complaint against Germany for an insult by
Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. According to press
reports, Schäuble called Greece's Yanis Varoufakis "foolishly naïve"
in his dealings with the media following EU discussions in Brussels on
Wednesday.

According to Greece's Foreign Ministry, "As a minister of a country
that is our friend and our ally, he cannot personally insult a
colleague." Greece is demanding an apology. Guardian (London) and EurActiv and Deutsche Welle (Berlin) and Kathimerini (Athens)

****
**** South Ossetia discourages trips to Georgia for medical care
****

An embarrassment to officials in both occupied South Ossetia and
Russia is that many South Ossetians travel to Georgia for medical
care.

It's not an easy trip, either. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and
occupied and retained control of two of Georgia's provinces, South
Ossetia and Abkhazia. However, Russia has closed the border between
South Ossetia and Georgia, and so the only way for a South Ossetia to
reach Georgia is to go north into Russia, and then travel back into
Georgia. Thus, they have to cross the Main Caucasus Ridge twice, a
particularly difficult journey in winter.

Leonid Tibilov, South Ossettia's Russian-appointed leader, says that
"in the overwhelming majority of cases there is no need whatsoever for
patients to go to the neighboring country. We have to develop our own
medical centers and attract specialists. We are already doing it
actively – we are launching construction of a modern medical center
with relevant equipment." However, no modern clinic has appeared in
South Ossetia since the 2008 invasion.

According to South Ossetia's healthcare minister, Grigory Kulidzhanov,
most patients "are ignoring" the government decree:

<QUOTE>"Often people appeal [to the healthcare ministry]
insisting on sending them to hospitals in Georgia, ignoring
offered alternative to receive medical treatment on the territory
of Russia. Of course we can help a person when it is a
life-and-death issue and we are doing it, turning a blind eye on
political aspects, but in most of the cases requests for sending
them to Georgia have no clear justification, meaning that similar
treatment can also be provided on the territory of Russia,
including in North Ossetia."<END QUOTE>

Kulidzhanov makes the point that if patients really want to leave
South Ossetia for medical care, they could easily go to a hospital in
Russia.

However, a Georgian official points out that Georgia has "a
high-quality and non-corrupt healthcare system." Referring to
Tskhinvali, capital city of South Ossetia, and to Tbilisi, the capital
city of Georgia, he said, "in order to receive the same level of
medical assistance, residents of Tskhinvali would have to go to Moscow
or St. Petersburg, but that is very far away, while Tbilisi is only a
40-minute drive from Tskhinvali."

There is late news that Vladimir Putin has on Thursday canceled a
long-scheduled ceremony to sign a treaty annexing South Ossetia into
Russia. There are rumors that Putin is in ill health, but those
rumors are being denied by a Kremlin spokesman. EurasiaNet and Jamestown and Civil (Georgia) and
International Business Times

****
**** Karachi Pakistan fears 'nuclear nightmare' over planned nuclear reactors
****

China will be building two of the most technologically advanced
nuclear reactors in the world less than 20 miles from downtown
Karachi, which has about 20 million residents. The port city of
Karachi is considered to be the economic capital of Pakistan.
According to one activist trying to get the project halted:

<QUOTE>"You are talking about a city one-third the population
of the United Kingdom. If there would be an accident, this would
cripple Karachi, and if you cripple Karachi, you cripple
Pakistan."<END QUOTE>

The world has already experienced three major nuclear accidents — at
Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, at Chernobyl in the
former Soviet Union in 1986, and the Fukushima disaster in Japan in
2011. A disaster that these new nuclear plants could kill millions of
people in Karachi. In addition, Pakistan suffers almost daily acts of
terrorism from the Taliban, and so a terrorist attack would be of
major concern. Dawn (Pakistan)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Greece, Germany, Distomo Massacre,
Wolfgang Schäuble, Yanis Varoufakis,
Russia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Georgia,
Leonid Tibilov, Grigory Kulidzhanov, Vladimir Putin,
Pakistan, Karachi, China, Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl, Fukushima

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*** 14-Mar-15 World View -- Putin's disappearance may be part of a major Moscow political crisis

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Putin's disappearance may be part of a major Moscow political crisis
• Fears grow of violence between Kadyrov's security forces and Putin's FSB

****
**** Putin's disappearance may be part of a major Moscow political crisis
****


Public shrine to Boris Nemtsov in Moscow (Moscow Times)

As we briefly reported yesterday,

Russia's president Vladimir Putin on Thursday canceled a
long-scheduled ceremony to sign a treaty annexing South Ossetia into
Russia, amid rumors that he was seriously ill. Putin's health is
apparently OK (though questions remain), but the fact still remains
that Putin has not been seen in public for several days, with no
satisfactory explanation.

Putin's next scheduled public appearance is on Monday, when he's
scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg.
Perhaps we'll get some answers then.

It's increasingly believed that his disappearance is related to a
growing political crisis in Moscow following the February 27
assassination of Putin's political opponent, a liberal, Boris Nemtsov.
Nemtsov was out on a stroll with his girlfriend in a very high
security area almost on the doorstep of the Kremlin in Moscow.
Nemtsov was killed by gunmen who meticulously planned every detail.
They knew where he would be, they knew how to evade security forces
reaching him, and they knew exactly how to escape after the
assassination.

There are two important facts related to Nemtsov's killing. First, it
was not random. It was perpetrated by people who must have had a
great deal of inside information about people and security around the
Kremlin. And second, this is the highest profile assassination in
Moscow in decades. It's fairly common for the Kremlin to order the
assassination of unfriendly reporters or the massacre of any number of
anti-government protesters, including women and children, but Nemtsov
was very high profile. He was at one time the putative successor of
Boris Yeltsin to be President. Nemtsov's high profile means that
killing him does not benefit Putin, because Putin is immediately
suspected of ordering the killing. In fact, many in Putin's
opposition have been accusing Putin of exactly that.

Putin condemned the killing, and immediately took "personal control"
of the investigation, insinuating that Americans or "foreign agents"
had perpetrated the killing to make him look back. The FSB, the
successor to the old Soviet KGB, took charge of the investigation, and
soon identified the culprits as five Chechens, led by Zaur Dadayev.
Dadayev is a close associate of Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin's hand-picked
governor of Chechnya, suggesting that Kadyrov himself had ordered the
assassination in order to embarrass Putin and the Kremlin.

Chechnya is, of course, a major Muslim republic in Russia's North
Caucasus. In the 1990s, Kadyrov was a separatist rebel fighting
against the Kremlin, but who later switched sides and pledged loyalty
to Putin. Today, Kadyrov has his own army, known as the Kadyrovtsy,
and last year he was filmed giving a long speech to thousands of armed
Chechen police and special forces saying his men had pledged loyalty
to Russia, and to Putin personally, and ended by shouting:

<QUOTE>"Long live our great motherland Russia! Long live our
national leader Vladimir Putin! Allahu Akbar!"<END QUOTE>

Moscow Times and Guardian (London) and Telegraph (London)

****
**** Fears grow of violence between Kadyrov's security forces and Putin's FSB
****

So what does all this have to do with the disappearance of Putin?
According to an analyst Friday on the BBC world service, Putin has
retreated because he has to find a way to deal with a potential
conflict between two armies: the FSB, which is personally loyal to
Russia, versus the Kadyrovtsy, Kadyrov's army of police and security
forces, which is personally loyal to him. The word "personally" in
each case is significant, because neither of these armies is loyal to
Russia.

Zaur Dadayev and his four alleged Chechen accomplices were brought
into court last Sunday (7-Mar), and there have been some political
theatrics since then. Dadayev confessed to the assassination, and
blamed it on Nemtsov's criticism of the terrorists who attacked the
Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, saying that he (Dadayev) was
personally very offended by the Mohammed cartoons that had been
published.

Kadyrov confirmed Dadayev's claims by saying:

<QUOTE>"Anyone who knows Zaur can confirm that he is a deep
believer, and that he — like all Muslims — was shocked by the
activities of Charlie Hebdo [newspaper] and by comments made in
support of reprinting the cartoons. I knew Zaur as a true Russian
patriot."<END QUOTE>

The political theatrics continued on Monday, when a Kremlin statement
announced that Kadyrov had been awarded the Order of Honor for his
"professional accomplishments, social activities and many years of
diligent work."

The great fear is that Kadyrov is only paying lip service pledging
loyalty to Putin, and that he's building up his Kadyrovtsy army in
preparation for a new separatist battle with Moscow. Chechnya was ill
prepared for the Chechen wars of the 1990s, and Russian forces put
them down rather easily. Kadyrov is going to be much better
prepared this time.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a major war between
Chechnya and Russia is coming with certainty. Chechnya's last crisis
war was World War II, climaxing with the wholesale deportation of the
Chechen people by Russian army forces in 1944. It was not until 1957
when Nikita Khrushchev permitted the Chechens to return to their
homeland, but this act was considered to be a Russian genocide of the
Chechen people, and young Chechens today, many of whom are in
Kadyrov's Kadyrovtsy army, are looking forward to the day when the get
revenge, and Nemtsov's murder might have been the first step in
getting revenge. Moscow Times
and RFE/RL(19-Jan) and BBC Podcast (MP3)



KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Boris Nemtsov,
Chechnya, Ramzan Kaadyrov, Kadyrovtsy, Zaur Dadayev,
Charlie Hebdo, Paris

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*** 15-Mar-15 World View -- Report: Iran's Supreme Leader has already vetoed any nuclear deal

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Is Vladimir Putin spending time with his girlfriend and love child?
• Fighting heats up on Myanmar (Burma) border with China
• Report: Iran's Supreme Leader has already vetoed any nuclear deal

****
**** Is Vladimir Putin spending time with his girlfriend and love child?
****


Rhythmical gymnast Alina Kabaeva, Putin's alleged long-time mistress (pravda.ru)

Speculation continues to swirl over the reason for the complete
disappearance since March 5 of Russia's president Vladimir Putin from
public view, including the cancellation of several long-scheduled
meetings and ceremonies.

Now the New York Post is claiming with some certainty that
Putin, 62, is in Switzerland for the birth of a new daughter by his
long-time mistress Alina Kabaeva, 31.

Putin has angrily denied having Kabaeva as a mistress. In 2008, I
wrote "Putin angrily denies divorce rumors and shuts down newspaper reporting them"
, and
described how Russia's president Vladimir Putin terrorized a female
reporter at a joint press conference with Silvio Berlusconi when she
asked a question about a rumored affair with Alina Kabaeva, while
Berlusconi helped out by gesturing with his hand pretending to shoot
the reporter. Finally, in 2013, Putin divorced his wife, with whom he
has two children, and continued to deny that Kabaeva is his mistress.

As I reported yesterday,
many
analysts are convinced that Putin's disappearance has a much deeper
explanation, a Moscow political crisis related to the assassination of
political opponent Boris Nemtsov. Putin's next scheduled public
appearance is on Monday, when he's scheduled to meet with the
president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg. New York Post

****
**** Fighting heats up on Myanmar (Burma) border with China
****

China is threatening "decisive action" against Burma (Myanmar), after
a bomb from a Burmese warplane fell into Chinese territory and killed
four Chinese people. This comes days after a stray shell from Burma
flattened a house in Chinese territory. Beijing has summoned Burma's
ambassador, and has launched warplanes to patrol the border between
the two countries.

The ethnic fighting in Burma (Myanmar) that began in early February is
growing in intensity, and causing a confrontation between Burma and
China. The fighting is taking place in Burma's Kokang Special Region,
on the border with China, and it's between Burma's army and the Kokang
people, who are ethnically Chinese.

Some 30,000 Kokang have fled across the border into China, where they
live in refugee camps. Burmese officials claim Kokang attacks are
being launched from Chinese territory, and that Chinese mercenaries
are fighting in support of the Kokang. Burmese officials are
demanding that China prevent this, but Chinese officials are denying
that it's happening at all.

It's occurred to a lot of people that this situation is similar to the
situation with Russia and Ukraine. Russia has justified its invasion
and occupation of portions of Ukraine by the need to "protect" the
Russian people living in Ukraine. Similarly, many people are
wondering when China is going to send troops into Burma for the
"protection" of the Kokang-Chinese people.

However, this presents a public relations problem for China. China
likes to claim that no one should interfere with the "internal
affairs" of another country. They say this particularly at times when
Chinese security officials are butchering Tibetans and Uighurs in
China, and they want to shut out the international community.

In the last year, they've already had to carve out several exceptions
to this holier-than-thou rule. They've intervened in the internal
affairs of Sudan when their own investments were threatened. And of
course they've supported their partner in crime, Russia, as it
interfered with the internal affairs of Ukraine.

The Chinese have already stated that the fighting in Burma is an
internal affair of Burma, but they're under increasing pressure from
their own Chinese people to do something. There have now been two
incidents in the last couple of weeks of Burmese rockets and shells
landing on Chinese territory, killing four people in one case. More
such incidents would provide an excuse for China to invade Burma, with
two possible outcomes -- a resolution of the conflict, or a spiraling
into a larger war. Reuters and LA Times and Xinhua

****
**** Report: Iran's Supreme Leader has already vetoed any nuclear deal
****

A report in Debka's subscriber-only newsletter (sent to me by a
subscriber) says that its intelligence sources have learned that
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, after vacillating
over the nuclear negotiations with the United States for months, has
now come down firmly against any deal. Secretary of State John Kerry
and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif have been working to
complete a deal by the March 31 deadline, but Khamenei has now
rejected the entire framework that they were developing. The
intelligence sources say that Iran may shut down nuclear negotiations
completely, unless the West first removes all sanctions, a request
that will not be satisfied.

A major reason given is that dissent within Iran itself has been
increasing. The dissent is spilling over from government critics to
broad sections of Iranian society, such as academics and op-ed
writers.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, none of this is
surprising. As I've said many times, it's a core principle of
generational theory that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are
made by masses of people, by generations of people, and that
politicians are irrelevant except insofar as they're implementing the
wishes of the masses of people.

This is a good time to review Iran's strategy with regard to the
nuclear issue, which I've stated many times in the last few years,
based on a relatively straightforward analysis of Iran's history
in the last century.

First, Iran will not be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran has already been victimized by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction in the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, and is now surrounded
by potential enemies -- Pakistan, Russia, Israel -- that have nuclear
weapons, with Saudi Arabia planning to obtain nuclear technology from
Pakistan. The Iranian people overwhelmingly feel that they need
nuclear technology for self-defense.

Secondly, however, Iran has no intention at all of using a nuclear
weapon on Israel. If you look at Iran's major wars in the last
century -- the Constitutional Revolution of 1908-09, the Great Islamic
Revolution of 1979, and the Iran/Iraq war that climaxed in 1989 --
Iran did not attack any other nation, and takes pride in not having
done so.

Another reason why Iran could not use a nuclear weapon on Israel
is that doing so would kill millions of Palestinians, and Iran
knows that the Arab backlash would be enormous, irrespective of
what happened to Israel.

Furthermore, the younger generations of Iranians, the ones that grew
up after the war, do not hate Israel, and do not wish Israel harm, and
they would be particularly opposed to any Iranian nuclear attack on
Israel.

The collapse of the Iran nuclear negotiations would be a major blow
for the Barack Obama administration. The foreign policy of Obama and
his clownish Secretary of State John Kerry has been one blunder and
reversal after another, and they were hoping for a nuclear deal to
burnish their legacies, and possibly to get Nobel Peace Prizes as a
result. Look for them to blame it on the Republicans, but preventing
Iran from developing a nuclear weapon was never a possibility.

By the way, Debka is also predicting that Benjamin Netanyahu's defeat
in Tuesday's election is a foregone conclusion, and that unless
something spectacular happens, Israel's next prime minister will be
Yitzhak Herzog. Debka


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Alina Kabaeva,
Boris Nemtsov,
Myanmar, Burma, China, Kokang, Kokang, Ukraine,
Iran, Javad Zarif, John Kerry, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,
Israel, Pakistan, Constitutional Revolution, Iran/Iraq war

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*** 16-Mar-15 World View -- Violent Christian riots follow bombing of two churches in Lahore, Pakistan

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Violent Christian riots follow bombing of two churches in Lahore, Pakistan
• Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claims credit for Lahore bombings, rejoins TTP
• Rumors abound in Russia on the disappearance of Vladimir Putin

****
**** Violent Christian riots follow bombing of two churches in Lahore, Pakistan
****


Pakistani Christians block a street during a protest in Karachi on Sunday, following attacks on churches in Lahore. (AFP)

Violent riots by Christians followed the suicide bombing of two
churches, one Catholic and one Protestant, in the predominantly
Christian Youhanabad district of Lahore, the capital of Punjab
province in eastern Pakistan.

The bombings themselves killed 15 people, including two policemen,
injuring at least 70 others. At one church, a guard prevented the
suicide bomber from entering the church, and was killed when the
bomber detonated the explosive. The other explosion took place inside
the church, causing most of the casualties.

Some 4,000 Christians later took to the streets in Lahore, many armed
with clubs as they smashed vehicles and attacked a city bus. Two
people were accused by the mob of being behind the explosions, and
were attacked and killed by the mob. There was also rioting in other
Pakistan cities, including Islamabad and Karachi.

Christians make up around 2 per cent of Pakistan’s mainly Muslim
population of 180 million. They have been targeted in attacks and
riots in recent years, often over allegations of blasphemy regarding
the Koran or Mohamed. Sunday's attacks on Christians were the worst
since September 2013, when a double suicide-bombing in Peshawar killed
82 people. That came months after more than 3,000 Muslim protesters
torched some 100 houses as they rampaged through Joseph Colony,
another Christian neighborhood of Lahore, following blasphemy
allegations against a Christian man.

According to an editorial in the widely read Dawn news site:

<QUOTE>"THE suicide attacks against two churches in Lahore
yesterday could have been just another gruesome incident in the
long list of horrors that has been inflicted on this country in
recent years.

The reaction by sections of the Christian community in Lahore and
other cities of the country — with protesters taking to the
streets and some turning to violence that resulted in two deaths —
though suggests that the state’s halting response to the terrorism
threat is leading to dangerous ruptures in society.

When non-Muslim and sectarian communities take to the streets in
protest and turn to mob violence, it surely reflects the acute
stress and intolerable strain that they are under. While all mob
violence is deplorable, perhaps the lesson for the state here is
that endless violence and horrors visited on a population lead to
fear taking over and ugliness manifesting itself."<END QUOTE>

AFP and Express Tribune (Pakistan) and Dawn (Pakistan)

****
**** Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claims credit for Lahore bombings, rejoins TTP
****

The terror group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for
the attack in Lahore, and promised that there would be more
attacks.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar was formed last year in September, when several terror
groups splintered off from the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban -
TTP) because of a major leadership dispute within the TTP. At that
time, a group of TTP commanders formed Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, taking with
them several Taliban factions from Pakistan's tribal areas.

In November, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed credit for 45 Pakistani deaths
and 120 injuries when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a border
crossing with India, near Lahore, at a time of day when there were
crowds of people on the Pakistan side to watch a colorful
flag-lowering ceremony. ( "3-Nov-14 World View -- Multiple Taliban groups claim credit for suicide bombing in Pakistan"
)

Last week, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and two other major terrorist groups
rejoined the TTP, after a meeting in which the leadership issues were
presumably resolved, although a new leader of the combined group has
not yet been chosen. The spokesman for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar issued this
statement:

<QUOTE>"We congratulate the Ummat-e-Muslima [the Muslim
community] in common and especially the Mujahideen of Pakistan for
the coalition of strong Jihadi groups, Tehrik-e-Taliban [Movement
of the Taliban] Pakistan, Jamaat ul Ahrar,
Tehrik-e-Lashkar-e-Islam and Tehrik-e-Taliban on one name
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP] against the Taghooti [satanic],
Infidel, Democratic, unIslamic system and the Na-Pak Murtad [a
Muslim who rejects Islam] Army."<END QUOTE>

Dawn (Pakistan) and Long War Journal and Geo TV (Pakistan)

****
**** Rumors abound in Russia on the disappearance of Vladimir Putin
****

Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who has not been seen in public
since March 5, is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan
in St. Petersburg on Monday (today). Moscow has been a-buzz with
rumors about Putin has disappeared, and a Monday appearance should
bring some resolution.

Until then, here are some of the rumors going around:

• He has the flu, and doesn't want to be seen with the
  flu because that would spoil his macho image with the public.
• He died.
• He's seriously ill, and unable to attend public events. Kremlin
  spokesman Dmitry Peskov vigorously denies this, saying that Putin's
  health "is perfect."
• He gets regular Botox injections, and one of them went wrong last
  week, badly disfiguring him.
• He's in Vienna being treated for back problems.
• He's in Switzerland with his girlfriend, who just gave birth to a
  love child, as I reported yesterday.
  According to Peskov, "The information on a baby born to
  Vladimir Putin is false. I am going to ask people who have money to
  organize a contest on the best media rumor."

The main speculation is that his disappearance is related to a major political crisis that I described days ago
triggered by the assassination of Putin's very high
profile political opponent Boris Nemtsov, possibly under the orders of
Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya. The most extreme version of
this rumor is that Kadyrov's Chechen men are planning to kill other
Putin opponents, and Putin is hiding for fear of retribution. Even if
Putin makes an appearance in St. Petersburg on Monday, the rumors
about a political crisis over the Nemtsov assassination will continue.
Guardian (London) and Daily Mail (London)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Pakistan, Lahore, Youhanabad,
Tehrik-e-Taliban, TTP, Pakistan Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar,
Peshawar, Joseph Colony,
Russia, Vladimir Putin, Boris Nemtsov, Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya

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*** 17-Mar-15 World View -- Putin's return leaves more questions than answers for Russia

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Putin's return leaves more questions than answers for Russia
• The talking points of the Russian and Chinese internet trolls
• Oil prices continue to crash

****
**** Putin's return leaves more questions than answers for Russia
****


Vladimir Putin

Russia's president Vladimir Putin ended his 10-day disappearance on
Monday by attending his scheduled appearance with the president of
Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg. He was one hour late for the meeting,
and different observers described Putin as looking "healthy," "fit,"
"puffy," "sweaty," and "pale," respectively, suggesting that he may
have been ill. Putin himself offered no explanation for his absence,
except to say that "Life would be dull without rumors."

No matter what the reason for Putin's absence, the disappearance has
highlighted the potential leadership crisis in the fallout over the
assassination of Putin's very high profile political opponent Boris
Nemtsov, possibly under the orders of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of
Chechnya. According to one Moscow commentator, the problem
is that only Putin should be able to violate any Russian law
with impunity, and the assassination seems to mean that Kadyrov
can do the same:

<QUOTE>"The law of power is very simple. Power is the right
to use force with impunity. Whoever is able to use force with
impunity is therefore the ruler. The murder of Boris Nemtsov
forces one to suspect that Putin is no longer the strongest man in
Russia."<END QUOTE>

If a dictator is no longer able to maintain total control over the
government, then it's a potential disaster for him.

Kadyrov's boldness may be a consequence of increasingly widespread
questions about Putin's leadership, especially regarding the economy.
Although his poll numbers remain high, the economy is crashing,
largely because oil and gas prices have been crashing.

This brings the Ukraine situation into play. It's the first
anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Crimea, and Putin has
been bragging about how he fooled the West by lying about it.
The occupation of Crimea is widely admired
within Russia, but the war in east Ukraine is raising many questions,
because there's no end in sight and it's costing Russia a fortune at a
time of a plunging economy.

The combination of Putin's loss of control over Kadyrov and Chechnya,
loss of control over the economy, and loss of control over east
Ukraine are combining to make Putin appear increasingly weak, a
problem that could only have been exacerbated by his mysterious,
unexplained 10-day disappearance.

So Putin may be ripe for a coup or other ouster by his growing list of
enemies, but that's not necessarily good news. Putin's successor
would most likely be from the authoritarian regime that ran the
Kremlin prior to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Furthermore,
any such successor regime could not risk showing weakness, so he's
have to be even more aggressive in many ways, including in Ukraine,
where the attack on Mariupol and all of southern Ukraine would be
launched. Such a regime would also almost certainly tighten the
screws even further on the Russian people. So, to anyone pleased with
the prospect of the departure of Vladimir Putin: Be careful what you
wish for. Irish Times and Interpreter/Paul Goble and Jamestown and Interpreter/Paul Goble

****
**** The talking points of the Russian and Chinese internet trolls
****

Anyone who, like myself, writes about Russia or China is likely to run
into internet trolls who are paid by the respective nations to harass
the writer and post favorable comments on forums, blogs, and news
articles. The comments range from lies and disinformation to abuse
and profanity.

Each of these trolls is given a list of talking points by the
trollmaster who hires him. A study of these internet trolls reveals
some interesting information, including their talking points.

Chinese trolls are nicknamed the "50-cent party," because it's
believed that they earn 50 cents for each posted comment. Chinese
trolls were first launched in 2004, and a 2013 estimate by researchers
at Harvard University puts the total number at 250,000 to 300,000. A
2014 email leak included a list of the trollmasters' instructions and
talking points:

• To the extent possible make America the target of
  criticism. Play down the existence of Taiwan
  
• Do not directly confront [the idea of] democracy; rather, frame
  the argument in terms of “what kind of system can truly implement
  democracy.”
  
• To the extent possible, choose various examples in Western
  countries of violence and unreasonable circumstances to explain how
  democracy is not well-suited to capitalism.
  
• Use America’s and other countries’ interference in international
  affairs to explain how Western democracy is actually an invasion of
  other countries and [how the West] is forcibly pushing [on other
  countries] Western values.
  
• Use the bloody and tear-stained history of a [once] weak people
  [i.e., China] to stir up pro-Party and patriotic emotions.
  
• Increase the exposure that positive developments inside China
  receive; further accommodate the work of maintaining [social]
  stability.

As an aside, my web site has been attacked a number of times by
Chinese hackers.

Few details are known about Russia's internet troll program, but an
undercover operation in St. Petersburg revealed that trolls are paid
about $36.50 for an 8-hour work day. According to information that
we posted last year
in "Russia
uses an army of trolls on social media," each troll is expected to
maintain six Facebook accounts, posting three times a day in each. On
Twitter, they're expected to manage 10 accounts and tweet 50 times a
day.

Russia has an extremely aggressive troll organization known as the
"G-Team." They are anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-liberal, and
go further than simply trolling in some cases by threats of physical
harm and even murder. The trollmasters' instructions and talking
points include the following:

• Whitewashing Stalinism.
• A sensitivity to casting the KGB/FSB in a negative light.
• Loyalty to the Putin regime.
• Support of the Chechen War.
• Anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism.
• Nostalgia for the USSR.
• Hatred of intelligentsia, particularly emigrants.
• Hatred of dissidents and human rights advocates.

In the last year, a new talking point has been added: "labeling the
Ukrainian government fascist." Geopolitical Monitor

****
**** Oil prices continue to crash
****


North Dakota daily oil production and price

The above graph shows dramatically what's been happening with
oil prices, which are now approaching $40 per barrel.

The green line shows Barrels of Oil Produced Daily (BOPD) in North
Dakota, where there are many fracking rigs. The black line shows
the price variations (dollars per barrel of oil = $/BO) since 1970.

New oil fracking technology has caused an explosion in output from US
rigs, starting around 2010 when oil was at $120 per barrel, and oil
production has been increasing hyperbolically since then. Oil prices
have crashed in the last year, and it would not be surprising to see
them fall to $30 per barrel or even $15 per barrel, a price last seen
in 2000.

As oil prices have been crashing, the number of rigs has been falling
steadily. But oil production has been continuing to increase because
the best producing of the existing rigs have low marginal costs, and
can make money even when oil is well below $40 per barrel. In fact,
despite the tumbling number of active rigs, the U.S. is pumping more
oil than any time since 1972.

This is a huge economic dislocation that's affecting not only Russia
but many other countries as well. It's expected to go on for another
one or two years. Some people will be winners and some will be
losers, and there are certain to be unintended consequences. North Dakota Drilling and Production Statistics and Bloomberg


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov,
Boris Nemtsov, Ukraine, Crimea, Soviet Union,
China, internet trolls, trollmasters, G-Team,
oil prices, fracking, North Dakota

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*** 18-Mar-15 World View -- India and China battle for strategic influence in the Indian Ocean

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• India and China battle for strategic influence in the Indian Ocean
• Questions continue to swirl in Russia over assassination of Putin's opponent

****
**** India and China battle for strategic influence in the Indian Ocean
****


Infrastructure development project in Sri Lanka (Reuters)

India's prime minister Narendra Modi has just completed a major
tour of Indian Ocean nations with considerable strategic
significance.

The event that triggered the trip was a trip by China's president Xi
Jinping to the Maldives Islands, a group of islands in the Indian
Ocean, just southwest of the southern tip of India. Xi was the first
Chinese leader ever to visit the Maldives, and the key outcome was
agreements on a number of infrastructure projects, including bridges,
roads and a new airport. There is a palpable fear in India that China
will dominate the foreign investment sector in the Maldives, and turn
the infrastructure projects into military installations that could put
India itself in danger.

Modi was also scheduled to visit the Maldives during his travels
beginning March 11, but political turmoil forced a cancellation.
However, Modi is still traveling to Sri Lanka, Seychelles and
Mauritius.

The Seychelles is a 115-island nation located off the eastern coast of
Africa, just northeast of Madagascar. India was alarmed in 2011 at
reports that Seychelles was offering China maritime bases for military
purposes, once again because of the possibility of a military base.
This is why Modi will be looking to increase its security cooperation
with Seychelles.

Modi will also be traveling to Mauritius, an island nation just east
of Madagascar. The country has been looking to attract investments
from China, but India is providing a 1,300-tonne Indian-built patrol
vessel to help it protect its coastline.

Sri Lanka, a large island located just south of the tip of India, has
close historical and cultural linkages with India, but China has been
strengthening ties.

The previous government, headed by Mahinda Rajapaksa, was developing
closer and closer relations with China. In particular, China
supported the governing Sinhalese during the recent civil war with the
Tamils, while India has a large Tamil population. Rajapaksa awarded
China with numerous infrastructure projects, and allowed the frequent
docking of Chinese submarines in the port of Colombo, the capital
city.

However, the new government, headed by Maithripala Sirisena, has
pledged to "correct" Sri Lanka's perceived tilt towards China in the
months to come. Lowy Institute (Australia) and The Diplomat

****
**** Questions continue to swirl in Russia over assassination of Putin's opponent
****

Anyone who's been reading World View for the last few days is
aware that Boris Nemtsov, a high-profile political opponent of
Russia's president Vladimir Putin, was assassinated right at
the Kremlin's front door, and that five Chechens were charged
with the crime, presumably under orders from Chechnya's
strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Now, with Putin back from his 10-day vanishing, that whole theory
has been thrown into question. The suspects are credibly claiming
that they were tortured into making a confession, and other holes
have been appearing in the argument.

It's clear from the nature of the assassination that it was done by
Kremlin insiders, so now the public is beginning to speculate that if
Kadyrov wasn't responsible, then Putin himself was responsible. There
will be more to come. PRI


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, India, Narendra Modi, China, Xi Jinping,
Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius,
Mahinda Rajapaksa, Maithripala Sirisena,
Russia, Vladimir Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, Boris Nemtsov

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RE: East Bloc Trolls .... a few additional things (from my own experiences)

Red Chinese ones:
Portray a modern "East Asian Co-prospertity Sphere" notion
Are quick to label any Taiwanese / Chinese / Singaporean / Hong Kongese / etc who disagrees with the Mainland Chinese POV, a so called "Taidu" or "splitist."
Portray the average American as a gap toothed hillbilly living in a double wide who is a serial racist (meanwhile, look at Han racism, which is 100X worse than the KKK).
Portray Chinese history as being even more heroic than Classical-European history - e.g. China discovered the Americas, invented everything, etc, etc.
Utterly hate everything Japanese.

Ruski ones:
Hate gays.
Portray the West as beholden to effete EU-Atlanticist supposed bastardizations of what they claim to be "European" civilization (part of this harkens to the Great Schism, but some of this is Duganist Eurasianist Neo Naziism).
Constantly claim the US / NATO / EU are out to destroy Russia in its entirety (this in spite of massive flows of Western capital and IP into Russia since 1990 and unofficially even longer, due to traitors and Kremlin symps).
While not overtly expressing Goebelism, express similar notions of a Jewish conspiracy.
Try to portray themselves as some sort of 21st century REO holier-than-thou crusaders (even though the Russian church, at least the part actually in Russia, as opposed to ones in overseas Russian communities, is completely in bed with the Kremlin, and was infiltrated for years by the Checka and the KGB).

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

****
**** India and China battle for strategic influence in the Indian Ocean
****


Infrastructure development project in Sri Lanka (Reuters)

India's prime minister Narendra Modi has just completed a major
tour of Indian Ocean nations with considerable strategic
significance.

The event that triggered the trip was a trip by China's president Xi
Jinping to the Maldives Islands, a group of islands in the Indian
Ocean, just southwest of the southern tip of India. Xi was the first
Chinese leader ever to visit the Maldives, and the key outcome was
agreements on a number of infrastructure projects, including bridges,
roads and a new airport. There is a palpable fear in India that China
will dominate the foreign investment sector in the Maldives, and turn
the infrastructure projects into military installations that could put
India itself in danger.

Modi was also scheduled to visit the Maldives during his travels
beginning March 11, but political turmoil forced a cancellation.
However, Modi is still traveling to Sri Lanka, Seychelles and
Mauritius.

The Seychelles is a 115-island nation located off the eastern coast of
Africa, just northeast of Madagascar. India was alarmed in 2011 at
reports that Seychelles was offering China maritime bases for military
purposes, once again because of the possibility of a military base.
This is why Modi will be looking to increase its security cooperation
with Seychelles.

Modi will also be traveling to Mauritius, an island nation just east
of Madagascar. The country has been looking to attract investments
from China, but India is providing a 1,300-tonne Indian-built patrol
vessel to help it protect its coastline.

Sri Lanka, a large island located just south of the tip of India, has
close historical and cultural linkages with India, but China has been
strengthening ties.

The previous government, headed by Mahinda Rajapaksa, was developing
closer and closer relations with China. In particular, China
supported the governing Sinhalese during the recent civil war with the
Tamils, while India has a large Tamil population. Rajapaksa awarded
China with numerous infrastructure projects, and allowed the frequent
docking of Chinese submarines in the port of Colombo, the capital
city.

However, the new government, headed by Maithripala Sirisena, has
pledged to "correct" Sri Lanka's perceived tilt towards China in the
months to come. Lowy Institute (Australia) and The Diplomat

At 0400 hours local time, on the first day of the War of the 3/5ths Death, the Tu-95s and Tu-16s departed from their respective bases, laden with the nuclear armed cruise missiles. The Tu-95s ground their way across the safe passage via Baluchistan, agreed to earlier by the new Revolutionary People's Government of Pakistan. The Tu-16s issued forth from the newly completed PLAAF air fields in Myanmar. Staying over international waters, hundreds of miles from any shore, and yet, within easy strike distance of Diego Garcia, they set the war into motion. A fusilade of warheads rained down on Diego Garcia. There was no way to avoid it, since the missiles were launched well outside the range of the DG based interceptors. Plus, the idiotic US and UK military leadership had continued to believe war between great powers was a thing of the past. Within 5 minutes, Diego Garcia was in ruins, all military capability was destroyed, all personnel were dead.

Similar scenarios played out at Guam, Okinawa, Oahu, San Diego, Malta ... every single significant US and UK base that was within range of this type of attack. Not a single ICBM was launched. They were being saved for later.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

> At 0400 hours local time, on the first day of the War of the
> 3/5ths Death, the Tu-95s and Tu-16s departed from their respective
> bases, laden with the nuclear armed cruise missiles. The Tu-95s
> ground their way across the safe passage via Baluchistan, agreed
> to earlier by the new Revolutionary People's Government of
> Pakistan. The Tu-16s issued forth from the newly completed PLAAF
> air fields in Myanmar. Staying over international waters, hundreds
> of miles from any shore, and yet, within easy strike distance of
> Diego Garcia, they set the war into motion. A fusilade of warheads
> rained down on Diego Garcia. There was no way to avoid it, since
> the missiles were launched well outside the range of the DG based
> interceptors. Plus, the idiotic US and UK military leadership had
> continued to believe war between great powers was a thing of the
> past. Within 5 minutes, Diego Garcia was in ruins, all military
> capability was destroyed, all personnel were dead.

> Similar scenarios played out at Guam, Okinawa, Oahu, San Diego,
> Malta ... every single significant US and UK base that was within
> range of this type of attack. Not a single ICBM was launched. They
> were being saved for later.

If anything could ever be called a "Regeneracy event," that would be
it.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

RE: East Bloc Trolls .... a few additional things (from my own experiences)

Red Chinese ones:
Portray a modern "East Asian Co-prospertity Sphere" notion
Are quick to label any Taiwanese / Chinese / Singaporean / Hong Kongese / etc who disagrees with the Mainland Chinese POV, a so called "Taidu" or "splitist."
Portray the average American as a gap toothed hillbilly living in a double wide who is a serial racist (meanwhile, look at Han racism, which is 100X worse than the KKK).
Portray Chinese history as being even more heroic than Classical-European history - e.g. China discovered the Americas, invented everything, etc, etc.
Utterly hate everything Japanese.

When the New York Times had Forums, there were two areas to avoid. One was sports, which attracts its know-it-all know-nothings who think that if you are a Red Sox fan you are horrible. The other was Chinese Politics. The insults were just incredible. Speak well of the Falun Gang (I can't see what is wrong with them) or claim that the Tienanmen crackdown was anything other than a necessary restoration of order and you will be called every imaginable name except your own.

Ruski ones:
Hate gays.
Portray the West as beholden to effete EU-Atlanticist supposed bastardizations of what they claim to be "European" civilization (part of this harkens to the Great Schism, but some of this is Duganist Eurasianist Neo Naziism).
Constantly claim the US / NATO / EU are out to destroy Russia in its entirety (this in spite of massive flows of Western capital and IP into Russia since 1990 and unofficially even longer, due to traitors and Kremlin symps).
While not overtly expressing Goebelism, express similar notions of a Jewish conspiracy.
Try to portray themselves as some sort of 21st century REO holier-than-thou crusaders (even though the Russian church, at least the part actually in Russia, as opposed to ones in overseas Russian communities, is completely in bed with the Kremlin, and was infiltrated for years by the Cheka and the KGB).

Russia really is different. After forty years of Commie rule, peoples of central and east-European rule could start over politically. Even after fifty in the Baltic states such was so. Seventy-four years? Oh-oh. That is after centuries of monarchical absolutism.

In any troubled country, Jews are invariably seen as "rootless cosmopolitans"... and if things go bad in America, Jews will so be seen.

*** 19-Mar-15 World View -- Beneath the surface, Tunisia is a terrorist breeding ground

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Tunisia in shock after terror attack on museum in Tunis
• Beneath the surface, Tunisia is a terrorist breeding ground

****
**** Tunisia in shock after terror attack on museum in Tunis
****


Police take up position behind a car near the museum on Wednesday

Terrorist acts are occurring every day around the Muslim world, so you
would think that no terrorist act in a Muslim country would be a
surprise to anyone. But Tunisians thought that they had escaped the
worst of the "Arab Spring" terror. The "Arab Spring" began in Tunisia
on January 4, 2011, when a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor named
Mohamed Bouazizi doused himself in gasoline, and lit a match, and
burnt himself to death, in protest for government policies. Since
then, Tunisia has been mostly non-violent, unlike Egypt, Syria, and
Yemen, for example, and currently has a secular government.

So Tunisians were shocked on Wednesday by the first terrorist attack
in Tunisia in over ten years. It was the worst attack in the country
since an al-Qaida militant detonated a truck bomb in front of a
historic synagogue on the Tunisia's island of Djerba in 2002, killing
21, mostly German tourists.

Two gunmen infiltrated security at the well-known Bardo Museum in
Tunis, right next door to the parliament building. They took and
killed 22 hostages, with 50 people injured. Almost all of the
casualties were foreign tourists, suggesting that the terrorists are
trying to cripple tourism in Tunisia, which is the country's biggest
industry. The casualties were Tunisian, French, Italian, Polish, and
Japanese.

Tunisia's president, Bej Caid Essebsi sayd:

<QUOTE>"This is catastrophic for Tunisia. We need to stop
those kind of people [referring to terrorists] for good. ...

I want the people of Tunisia to understand firstly and lastly that
we are in a war with terror, and these savage minority groups will
not frighten us. The fight against them will continue until they
are exterminated."<END QUOTE>

Twitter accounts associated with the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria
(IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) were described as overjoyed at the
attack. Tunis Times and AP

****
**** Beneath the surface, Tunisia is a terrorist breeding ground
****

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack in Tunis. It
might have been Ansar al-Sharia, the Libya-based terror group that was
responsible for the murder of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians last
month, and for the murder of American ambassador J. Christopher
Stevens in Benghazi in 2012. Or it might have been a terror group
linked to Al-Qaeda on the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Tunisia has been the Arab Spring's number one success story, with a
secular, democratic government, but beneath the surface there are
problems. Tunisia has been the number one supplier of foreign
fighters to ISIS: some 3,000 Tunisians have traveled to Iraq and Syria
to join ISIS, more than any other country in the world. For years,
the vast Tunisian desert has been home to training camps for various
jihadist groups. And Tunisia has been awash with weapons, ever since
vast weapons storehouses became available following the fall of
Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

According to a family member of an ISIS member, Tunisian preachers
are skillful at convincing young men to join ISIS:

<QUOTE>"At Friday prayers, when a good number of Muslims get
together in the mosques, after the prayers, the imams start to
give them some advice to follow. They say, for example, 'You have
to go to Syria to kill Bashar’s army. Even if you die, you’ll go
to paradise after.' And in this way, Daesh [ISIS] got a large
number of soldiers."<END QUOTE>

That's exactly the point. As I've been saying for several months,
there is a large and growing war going on, and it's a war of Muslims
versus Muslims. All across North Africa, the Mideast, and South Asia,
Muslims are killing Muslims at the rate of 5000-10000 per month. By
comparison, only a minuscule number of Westerners are killed by
jihadists, usually a few dozen per month. And the few attacks on
Westerners, such as the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris and Wednesday's
attack in Tunis, are publicity stunts that are sensationally
successful because they get a great deal of free publicity from
Western media, which then attracts many more discontented young men
and women to join ISIS. International Business Times (20-Feb) and Bloomberg


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Tunisia, Tunis, Bardo Museum,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Arab Spring, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Bej Caid Essebsi,
Al-Qaeda on the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM, Mohamed Bouazizi,
Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, J. Christopher Stevens

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Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

> At 0400 hours local time, on the first day of the War of the
> 3/5ths Death, the Tu-95s and Tu-16s departed from their respective
> bases, laden with the nuclear armed cruise missiles. The Tu-95s
> ground their way across the safe passage via Baluchistan, agreed
> to earlier by the new Revolutionary People's Government of
> Pakistan. The Tu-16s issued forth from the newly completed PLAAF
> air fields in Myanmar. Staying over international waters, hundreds
> of miles from any shore, and yet, within easy strike distance of
> Diego Garcia, they set the war into motion. A fusilade of warheads
> rained down on Diego Garcia. There was no way to avoid it, since
> the missiles were launched well outside the range of the DG based
> interceptors. Plus, the idiotic US and UK military leadership had
> continued to believe war between great powers was a thing of the
> past. Within 5 minutes, Diego Garcia was in ruins, all military
> capability was destroyed, all personnel were dead.

> Similar scenarios played out at Guam, Okinawa, Oahu, San Diego,
> Malta ... every single significant US and UK base that was within
> range of this type of attack. Not a single ICBM was launched. They
> were being saved for later.

Some questions and comments:

• The Tu-95 and Tu-16 are decades-old bombers. Hasn't the US
  developed numerous defenses to this old technology by this time?
  
• Why would the ICBMs be saved for later? Wouldn't the best
  strategy be to accomplish as much as possible in a first strike, which
  would mean launching the ICBMs at the same time as the bombers?
  
• With Myanmar and China involved in a border conflict that's only
  going to get worse, I don't believe that Myanmar would ever approve a
  Chinese air base on its soil. I think Cambodia would. I'm not sure
  about Bangladesh.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Some questions and comments:

• The Tu-95 and Tu-16 are decades-old bombers. Hasn't the US
  developed numerous defenses to this old technology by this time?

Tu-95 is overall no better or worse than B-52. A few specific performance differences but it all comes out in the wash. Like B-52, Tu-95 has undergone waves of upgrades especially vis a vis avionics and fire control systems. In terms of defenses, it is a key concern. How can one defend against a cruise missile attack launched from international air space? One cannot shoot down a launch platform simply because it is there, that would be an act of war in and of itself. Tu-95s are constantly exploring the edges of the air spaces of Western and Western allied nations. When they are within interceptor range we escort, when they are outside interceptor range we don't. Tu-16 (which actually now goes by a PLAAF designator) have gone through a similar upgrade path as Tu-95.

• Why would the ICBMs be saved for later? Wouldn't the best
  strategy be to accomplish as much as possible in a first strike, which
  would mean launching the ICBMs at the same time as the bombers?

ICBMs may be of utility to attempt destruction of siloed ICBMs, other than that, they are mainly in the realm of psy ops (e.g. for terrorizing civilians). As the saying goes, keep your powder dry.

• With Myanmar and China involved in a border conflict that's only
  going to get worse, I don't believe that Myanmar would ever approve a
  Chinese air base on its soil. I think Cambodia would. I'm not sure
  about Bangladesh.

The PLAAF have already built airfields in Myanmar. They have been doing so for years. Myanmar's military is at the beck and call of the PLA. The current supposed skirmish is nothing (and my be nothing more than an orchestrated drama). And ultimately, the PLA would have no problem with simply taking over Myanmar. It would take them about a week, maybe less, given nuclear blackmail.

*** 20-Mar-15 World View -- Houthi airstrikes bomb Aden as Yemen war widens

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Greece's Alexis Tsipras threatens Europe with 'jihadists and terrorists'
• Eurogroup chairman suggests capital controls in Greece
• Houthi airstrikes bomb Aden as Yemen war widens
• Kerry: US is 'deeply disturbed' by Syrian regime's chemical weapons

****
**** Greece's Alexis Tsipras threatens Europe with 'jihadists and terrorists'
****


Alexis Tsipras speaking to Greek parliament (Kathimerini)

Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras called on European leaders to
take "bold initiatives" save Greece on Thursday, after EU leaders
continued to demand that Tsipras meet the commitments that he's
already made. Last month, the Europeans gave Tsipras a four-month
reprieve, on condition that he come up with a list of reforms to
explain how it's going to meet the existing terms of its bailout
agreement. The list of reforms would have to address a number of
economic issues, including the bloated public sector, curbing tax
evasion and corruption, privatizing public businesses, and adjusting
generous pension and minimum wage policies. The list was due almost a
month ago, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Tsipras is not
going to provide any such list.

In fact, he's going in the opposite direction, sponsoring a
"humanitarian bill" in the Athens parliament to spend additional
government money to help Greeks in poverty.

In fact, Tsipras actually threatened EU leaders in recent comments by
saying that an influx of "jihadists and terrorists" into Europe from
Greece could be imminent, if bailout negotiations weren’t completed.

Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny responded harshly:

<QUOTE>"People are very encouraged to give Greece support and
to give it its time and space to come forward with sustainable
solutions, but there’s a difference between political argument and
disagreement and threats of releasing jihadists and terrorists in
Europe. That’s not acceptable."<END QUOTE>

Greece's situation is increasingly desperate. There's a bank run
going on, and 350 million euros were withdrawn from Greek banks on
Wednesday alone. Next week, pensions and public sector salaries have
to be paid, and Greece has no money to pay them. The yields (interest
rates) on Greece's 3-year bonds rose to 20.44% on Thursday.

So when Tsipras asks for "bold initiatives," what he means is that he
wants bailout money without have to make any reforms. In fact, he
actually begged EU leaders to meet with him on Thursday evening, in
the hope that they would approve more bailout money. Leaders of
France and Germany did meet with him, but without making any decision.

So the atmosphere between Tsipras and the EU is extremely poisonous,
with no compromise in sight at the present time.

As I've been saying for years, ever since Greece's financial crisis
began, no solution exists for the Greek financial crisis. And by that
I don't mean that no one has been clever enough to figure out a
solution. I mean that no solution exists. Furthermore, the longer
the situation is prolonged by "kicking the can down the road" time
after time, the worse the crisis becomes, because Greece's debt burden
keeps worsening. It's hard to avoid the feeling that a dénouement is
very close. BBC and Irish Times and Telegraph (London)

****
**** Eurogroup chairman suggests capital controls in Greece
****

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is also the
chairman of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers,
is raising the possibility of imposing capital controls on Greece
to stop the bank run that's currently in progress. According
to Dijsselbloem:

<QUOTE>"It’s been explored what should happen if a country
gets into deep trouble -- that doesn’t immediately have to be an
exit scenario. [For Cyprus], we had to take radical measures,
banks were closed for a while and capital flows within and out of
the country were tied to all kinds of conditions, but you can
think of all kinds of scenarios."<END QUOTE>

A Greek government spokesman reacted angrily:

<QUOTE>"It would be useful for everyone and for Mr
Dijsselbloem to respect his institutional role in the eurozone.
We cannot easily understand the reasons that pushed him to make
statements that are not fitting to the role he has been entrusted
with. Everything else is a fantasy scenario. We find it
superfluous to remind him that Greece will not be
blackmailed."<END QUOTE>

With Dijsselbloem's remarks about capital controls, and Tsipras's
comments about "jihadists and terrorists," it seems that there's a lot
of blackmail in the air. Bloomberg and Kathimerini

****
**** Houthi airstrikes bomb Aden as Yemen war widens
****

Explosions were heard across Aden in the south of Yemen on Thursday,
as Warplanes attacked the presidential palace in Aden, forcing Abdu
Rabu Mansour Hadi, the internationally recognized president of Yemen,
to go into hiding. Last year, the Iran-backed Shia Houthi tribes from
northern Yemen invaded and took control of the northern city of Sanaa,
the nation's capital city, forcing Hadi to flee south to Aden last
month, where he's been supported by some Sunni Muslim tribes.

The Houthis have now allied with the former president Ali Abdullah
Saleh, taken control of Yemen's air force, and are now in all out
fighting in Yemen. Iran has started regular flights between Tehran
and Sanaa, and is shipping weapons to the Houthis.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is headquartered in
Yemen, is said to be taking advantage of the situation by attack both
sides.

Yemen is on Saudi Arabia's southern border, and it's not expected that
the Saudis will indefinitely tolerate an Iran-backed Shia kingdom on
its border. In 2009, Saudi Arabia bombed the Houthis in their home
governorate of Saada. The possibility exists of a proxy war between
Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

There are hundreds of thousands of Yemenis working in Saudi Arabia.
As the war in Yemen worsens, they fear being deported back to Yemen.
In 1990, Saudi Arabia deported 850,000 Yemenis.

As we've been reporting for months, there is a large and growing
Muslim versus Muslim war throughout the Mideast, northern Africa and
south Asia, killing 5,000-10,000 Muslims every month. These wars are
both tribal and sectarian. Sooner or later, the West is going to be
dragged into one of these wars, and it will be a full-scale war
consuming the entire region. Yemen Post and AP and Reuters and Yemen Times

****
**** Kerry: US is 'deeply disturbed' by Syrian regime's chemical weapons
****

According to Secretary of State John Kerry, the United States is
"deeply disturbed" by reports that forces from the regime of Syria's
president Bashar al-Assad attacked the town of Sarmin as a weapon on
Tuesday. According to Kerry:

<QUOTE>"We are looking very closely into this matter and
considering next steps. While we cannot yet confirm details, if
true, this would be only the latest tragic example of the Assad
regime's atrocities against the Syrian people, which the entire
international community must condemn."<END QUOTE>

I just have to wonder what the point of this is. The al-Assad regime
has been dropping barrel bombs laced with chlorine for years, killing
entire neighborhoods filled with women and children, and killed
hundreds of people using Sarin gas, which triggered the
Administration's disastrous flip-flop on its "red line" policy, and
let al-Assad continue with chemical weapons with impunity. Now,
suddenly, Kerry is "deeply disturbed." I never have the feeling that
this administration has any idea what's going on in the world.
Reuters

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Greece, Alexis Tsipras,
Ireland, Enda Kenny, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Eurogroup,
Yemen, Houthis, Sanaa, Aden, Ali Abdullah Saleh,
Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, Saudi Arabia, Saada,
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP,
Syria, John Kerry, Bashar al-Assad, Sarmin

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*** 21-Mar-15 World View -- Benjamin Netanyahu's 'no Palestinian state' scandal exposes political fantasies

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Yemen suicide bombings bring sectarian civil war closer
• Benjamin Netanyahu's 'no Palestinian state' scandal exposes political fantasies

****
**** Yemen suicide bombings bring sectarian civil war closer
****


Aftermath of suicide bombing of Shia mosque in Sanaa during Friday prayers (SABA)

Suicide bombers on Friday in Yemen blew up two busy Shia mosques in
the capital city Sanaa, during Friday prayers when the mosques were
packed with people. At least 137 died, with 357 injured.

As I reported yesterday,
the war
in Yemen widened when Iran-backed Houthis, who took control last year
of the capital city Sanaa, expanded the Yemen war by attacking targets
in Aden in the south of Yemen, where Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, the Sunni
internationally recognized president, had fled.

The Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh)
has taken credit for the attack. However, it's believed that the
actual perpetrators were a local anti-Houthi terrorist group that has
linked itself with ISIS. ISIS has become a brand name, and any terror
group rebranding itself as ISIS gets them attention, money and
recruits.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is headquartered in
Yemen, condemned the attack because it targeted mosques. However,
that al-Qaeda linked Taliban in Afghanistan regularly bomb Shia
mosques.

Yemen is currently in total chaos, with two governments, two capitals,
and with the army split between the two. Friday's bombings were the
worst violence that Yemen has seen in years, and has raised sectarian
tensions to an alarming level. AQAP is taking advantage of the chaos
by targeting both sides. Yemen's Shia former president Ali Abdullah
Saleh has allied with the Houthis and is fighting against Hadi and his
Sunni tribe supporters. Iran is actively supporting the Houthis with
weapons and forces, while Saudi Arabia is considering whether to
support Hadi. As I've predicted many times, the Mideast is headed for
war, and now Yemen may be close to a sectarian proxy war. Saba News (Yemen) and
Toronto Star and BBC

****
**** Benjamin Netanyahu's 'no Palestinian state' scandal exposes political fantasies
****

I've been watching the political circus these last few weeks with a
great deal of bemusement. I take no position on whether it was a good
idea or bad idea for Republicans to invite Israel's prime minister to
speak to Congress, and the same for Congress to send a letter to
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

What's been astonishing is to watch the almost hysterical overreaction
by the Administration. If they'd simply issued a statement like, "The
Republicans have a right to do these things, but they're not helpful,"
then they would have scored points without embarrassing themselves and
making themselves look like petulant teenagers.

The latest such incident occurred during the last minute campaigning
in Israel's election, when Netanyahu said that there would be no
Palestinian state on his watch:

<QUOTE>"I think that anyone who is going to establish a
Palestinian state and open up territory is giving radical Islam a
space to attack the State of Israel. Whoever ignores this is
burying his head in the sand."<END QUOTE>

This is actually a perfectly reasonable statement, based on Israel's
experience since Gaza was evacuated in 2005. But, once again, the
reaction from Washington was close to hysterical, with hints that the
Administration might turn against Israel in the United Nations, or
even cut off aid to Israel.

In fact, this is exactly what I've been saying time and again for 12
years. The very first Generational Dynamics analysis that I posted, in May 2003, was that President
George Bush's brand new "Mideast Roadmap to Peace," which advocated a
two-state solution by 2005, would fail, because the young generation
of Palestinian militants would never allow it. That's been proven
true time and time again, and today it's so evidently true that it's
hard to believe that anyone could possibly believe that a two-state
solution is possible. When I wrote it in 2003 it was a novel
prediction, but today you'd have to be crazy to believe that a
two-state solution is possible.

So now Netanyahu is saying what I've been saying for 12 years, and the
reaction from the Administration is threats and hysteria.

This is highly personal for me, as I've discovered that as one
Generational Dynamics prediction after another comes true, I become
the target of scorn and abuse, usually by people who absolutely no
idea what's going on in the world. Being right means nothing to these
people.

So one might ask why Generational Dynamics is right in one analysis
and prediction after another, while mainstream politicians, analysts
and journalists are wrong at least half the time.

I've identified two major reasons why mainstream politicians, analysts
and journalists continually get things wrong:

• They don't do their homework. Back in 2006,
  the Congressional Quarterly did a survey of Mideast 'experts'
  in Washington, and discovered that they
  didn't know the correct answers to simple questions like the
  difference between Sunni and Shia, or whether al-Qaeda was a Sunni or
  Shia organization. The London Times followed up with a similar survey
  in London, with similar results.
  
  I see this all the time in mainstream articles. The author is too
  lazy to do the research necessary to support his article. I typically
  look at and save copies of 20-40 articles from multiple sources for
  each World View column. Also, I try to find articles that talk about
  whether the PEOPLE are saying, not what the politicians are saying.
  So if I'm writing about an event in Pakistan, I'll read as many
  articles as I can find FROM PAKISTAN, as well as articles from other
  sources that I trust. It's particularly helpful to listen to on-site
  reports from reporters on BBC or al-Jazeera, because they often
  provide analyses that don't make their way into print. I don't want
  to risk the humiliation of getting anything wrong. And if I do make a
  mistake, I apologize and correct it immediately. Mainstream
  politicians, analysts and journalists do little research, and when
  they make mistakes they become defensive and abusive to anyone who
  points them out. I doubt that any of them could tell you anything
  about the Battle of Karbala, or about Iran's Constitutional
  Revolution. If you know nothing about these things, then you're going
  to make one stupid mistake after another, just as you would if you
  were writing about US politics, but know nothing about the Civil or
  Revolutionary wars. You will be incredibly stupid about the present
  if you know nothing about the past.
  
• They only listen to politicians and each other. This
  is related to the previous point. If you're too lazy to do research,
  then the easiest thing to do is to just quote a liberal politician (if
  you're liberal) or a conservative politician (if you're conservative)
  or another journalist who thinks like you. That's the stupid leading
  the stupid. As I've pointed out many times, it's a core principle of
  generational theory that even in a dictatorship, major policies and
  events are determined by masses of people, entire generations of
  people, and not by politicians. So, for example, Hitler was not the
  cause of WW II. So, for example, Iran's Supreme Leader is not going
  to make the final decision on whether Iran develops a nuclear weapon.
  If you want to understand what's going on, you have to understand what
  the people think, not what the politicians or your friends think.
  
  The reason that mainstream politicians, journalists and analysts are
  so frequently wrong is because they're too lazy to do research, so
  they listen to each other. I would tell these people (for all the
  good it will do) is that you have to do all the research, and you've
  got to stop listening to politicians and to each other.

I've seen this same behavior from Gen-X managers in the computer
industry. As a software engineer, I know that the worst person to
work for is a manager who's taken a couple of computer courses in
college and thinks he's smarter than another else. These are the
people who cause the disasters that are characteristic of
Generation-X, and many Boomers as well.
I've personally seen these disasters occur when I was
working at General Dynamics, Digimarc, and Ability Networks. And
the greatest IT disaster in history, Healthcare.gov, was filled with
managers who pocketed almost a billion dollars on a $25 million
project that still doesn't work right, for the same reason. I've
written several stories about these and other disasters, and there are
more stories that will come at the appropriate times.

Now with that background, I'll repeat a couple of Generational
Dynamics that I've been making for years:

• The Mideast is headed for a new war between Jews and Arabs,
  refighting the genocidal 1948 war that followed the partitioning of
  Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
  
• Irrespective of what agreement, if any, the West makes with Iran,
  Iran will not be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon, though it
  will not be used on Israel. ( "15-Mar-15 World View -- Report: Iran's Supreme Leader has already vetoed any nuclear deal"
  )

Now let's apply all of the above to understand the Administration's
hysterical and abusive reaction to Netanyahu's statement that there
will be no Palestinian state on his watch.

• President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are
  abysmally ignorant about what's going on in the world. They only
  listen to each other, and they're abusive towards anyone who disagrees
  with them.
  
• They think that all they have to do is get a deal with Palestinian
  Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, and the two-state solution will be
  immediately solved. They have no concept about the fact that younger
  generations of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where the median age
  is 17, will never accept any such deal, which means that such a deal
  is impossible.
  
• They think that all they have to do is get a deal with Iran's
  Supreme Leader, and Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon. They
  completely oblivious to the effect of Saddam Hussein's recent WMD
  attack on Iran, and they have no clue the vast majority of young
  Iranians demand a nuclear weapon for self-defense.
  
• Since their opinions are patently absurd, they're constantly
  facing the fact that none of their policies works. The Obama-Kerry
  team have had one foreign policy disaster after another. And when
  something goes wrong, it creates a severe case of cognitive dissonance
  in their minds, and they resolve it by identifying someone who's "the
  problem," and become abusive and even vindictive toward that
  person.
  
• Neither of these policies -- the Palestinian policy or the Iran
  policy -- can possibly ever work, and they've identified "the problem"
  as being the Republicans and Benjamin Netanyahu.

The ancient Greeks understood how all of this works, which is why they
created the story of Cassandra and the Trojan Horse. When the
citizens of Troy not only ignored Cassandra but treated her abusively,
they paid the price by being nearly exterminated. Today, I'm the
modern day embodiment of Cassandra, and on this one issue, apparently
Netanyahu is Cassandra as well.

Whether it's in the computer industry, or on Wall Street, or in
politics, these policies of glorifying stupidity never end well, and
produce the world's greatest disasters and the world's worst wars.
Israel National News and CNN

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Yemen, Sanaa, Aden,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Yemen, Houthis, Sanaa, Aden, Ali Abdullah Saleh,
Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, Saudi Arabia,
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP,
Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,
George Bush, Mideast Roadmap to Peace, Mahmoud Abbas, Gaza,
Congressional Quarterly, Cassandra, Trojan Horse

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