Those are just regular staffers and interns, boomers have been holding actual power since the late 1980s. I'll Repost a post a made on a different section of the forum here now because I'm illustrating how Xers and Millies see boomers: Picture this mental cartoon image: A ravenous Three headed tiger with a deep hunger for flesh, so much so that it is literally drooling. However it is shacked by giant shackles on its legs. Behind the beast is a grinning man who is holding the chains leading to the shackles with the words "baby boomer establishment" slapped on him. On the tiger is the words "GenX and GenY" are labeled, on the shackles are labeled the words "human rights", "globalism", "pacifism", "individualism" and "Debt Slavery". Boomers are shackling the young by forcing policy to conform to "human rights" and "globalism". The disasters this has wrought I have mentioned several times before, like when the beltway leadership refused to carry out the nuclear bombardment of Military and Civilian targets in the Mideast and North Africa in the aftermath of 9/11. Government by new optimum leaders would bring true freedom and true human endeavors and passion. The rebuilding of the military to surpass cold war levels would occur to deter peer competitor states like Russia, China and India. The reform of American society could begin in earnest; the vassalization of Latin America and the pacification of the middle east would be carried out. Particularly in the latter campaign it would be like in the days of Genghis Khan, the troops would be given free reign, Large numbers of Young men and even women would be volunteering to go in order to participate in these pacification operations. It would be glorious and be regarded as such by the participants, the troops and the leaders. The Three-headed tiger must be unshackled and express its nature and potential unencumbered by the barriers imposed by silent, boomer and other establishment ideologues.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

> Those are just regular staffers and interns, boomers have been
> holding actual power since the late 1980s. I'll Repost a post a
> made on a different section of the forum here now because I'm
> illustrating how Xers and Millies see boomers: Picture this mental
> cartoon image: A ravenous Three headed tiger with a deep hunger
> for flesh, so much so that it is literally drooling. However it is
> shacked by giant shackles on its legs. Behind the beast is a
> grinning man who is holding the chains leading to the shackles
> with the words "baby boomer establishment" slapped on him. On the
> tiger is the words "GenX and GenY" are labeled, on the shackles
> are labeled the words "human rights", "globalism", "pacifism",
> "individualism" and "Debt Slavery". Boomers are shackling the
> young by forcing policy to conform to "human rights" and
> "globalism". The disasters this has wrought I have mentioned
> several times before, like when the beltway leadership refused to
> carry out the nuclear bombardment of Military and Civilian targets
> in the Mideast and North Africa in the aftermath of
> 9/11. Government by new optimum leaders would bring true freedom
> and true human endeavors and passion. The rebuilding of the
> military to surpass cold war levels would occur to deter peer
> competitor states like Russia, China and India. The reform of
> American society could begin in earnest; the vassalization of
> Latin America and the pacification of the middle east would be
> carried out. Particularly in the latter campaign it would be like
> in the days of Genghis Khan, the troops would be given free reign,
> Large numbers of Young men and even women would be volunteering to
> go in order to participate in these pacification operations. It
> would be glorious and be regarded as such by the participants, the
> troops and the leaders. The Three-headed tiger must be unshackled
> and express its nature and potential unencumbered by the barriers
> imposed by silent, boomer and other establishment
> ideologues.

I'm very well aware what Gen-Xers think of Boomers. I've written many
articles about it. In the past couple of days, I've had Ragnarök_62's
W.A.S.P. videos and your "drooling three-headed tiger"
characterization.

So let me return the favor by telling you what I think of a lot of
Gen-Xers.

I had dinner with my son last night. He's the lead consultant at a
small medical services consulting firm, and one of the things that
clients ask him to do is evaluate the data from drug trials for new
drugs. He told me that there have been several situations when
mid-level managers (presumably Gen-Xers) from big Pharma firms were so
infuriated by his report that they went to his company's CEO to get
him fired. For example, one company developed a new Alheizers drug
and performed limited trials. They submitted the data to my son's
company, and my son's evaluation was -- bottom line -- that the drug
was essentially worthless. The client went to his boss and demanded
that they falsify the report.

This is what we're dealing with these days -- crooks and sleaze
merchants from Gen-Xers and Millennials with no apparent ethics or
morals, willing to screw anyone, even kill people, for their own gain.
(My son, incidentally, is very definitely not among those with this
characterization.)

Crooks and sleaze merchants in your generation have done the
following:

• Created the financial crisis by creating and selling fraudulent
  sub-prime mortgage backed synthetic securities and selling them to
  Boomers. You thought you were screwing the drooling Boomers, but you
  screwed millions of people who lost their jobs and their homes.
  
  If you have any friends who lost their homes, then go tell them
  that you're the crook that put them out on the street, because you
  are.
  
• Gen-Xer Obama, driven by his hatred of Bush and other Boomers, has
  brought about one foreign policy disaster after another. His
  decision-making process is to ask what Bush would do and then do the
  opposite, which is typical of the sheer, unadulterated stupidity of
  Gen-Xer decision-makers, with disastrous results.
  
• From what my son told me, Gen-Xer crooks are even willing to risk
  killing people by falsifying drug trial reports for their own gain,
  which is typical of their total lack of morals and ethics.
  
• I've seen, with my own eyes, Gen-X programmers commit fraud in the
  software development world, even maliciously deleting working code
  because it was written by a Boomer that they hated.
  
• In my three months of research on Obamacare and Healthcare.gov,
  Gen-X managers committed massive fraud at all levels. It's almost
  beyond belief how sleazy these people were/are, taking hundreds of
  millions of dollars to do things that they knew they weren't qualified
  to do, and then setting up phony system tests to make it appear that
  their code was working, and firing anyone who complained.

So that's sleazy activities from Gen-Xers in many industries --
finance, real estate, IT, health care. I'm pretty sure that there's
sleaze in all industries, whenever Gen-Xers are involved.

You glorify Genghis Khan, but a better example would be Nomad Mao
during the Great Leap Forward. Mao dismantled the Central Statistical
Bureau because it was producing statistics that he didn't want to hear
-- that food production was falling. By the time he was willing to
accept the results, tens of millions of people had starved to death.
That's what Gen-Xers, and Nomads in general, do.

You use your "drooling three-headed tiger" characterization as a badge
of honor, as if you were saying something clever, some kind of eternal
truth.

Actually this type of characterization is no badge of honor. You
Gen-Xers nothing but cheap crooks, glorifying stupidity and
criminality.

Instead of bragging about your moronic "drooling three-headed tiger"
characterization, you should be ashamed of yourself, and you should
begin by apologizing to all the Boomers that you've screwed.

Yeah, John X, and Pbrower2a, B Butler and other boomers posting here are providing wisdom, oh dear. Yeah, "human rights is the way" even though precludes any possibility of the establishment of strong government. Strong government throughout history have always been willing to crack open heads in order to achieve greatness. Think of Rome and its system of military organization and the system of agricultural labor, Later on the system of the coliseums and the methods ensuring the masses were content. Think of the mongols and their methods which were routinely applied. As for the notion of boomers being screwed over, this is a laughable notion when boomers have their massive assets in net worth and home equity yet when a millie wants to buy a house or even an apartment they are forced to pay an obscene amount of cash while boomers have favorable tax rates. Millies having to pay huge percentages of their income (in many cases over 50%) to pay for the "needs" of boomers who tend to be sitting on multi-million dollar assets. It is boomers who support obamacare and refuse to allow budget cuts to touch Medicare or SS. Xers and millies want political and Military reform but at every turn are confronted by a selfish boomer blocking the "doors" only leaving the "democracy" and "human rights" doors unobstructed.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

> Yeah, John X, and Pbrower2a, B Butler and other boomers posting
> here are providing wisdom, oh dear. Yeah, "human rights is the
> way" even though precludes any possibility of the establishment of
> strong government. Strong government throughout history have
> always been willing to crack open heads in order to achieve
> greatness. Think of Rome and its system of military organization
> and the system of agricultural labor, Later on the system of the
> coliseums and the methods ensuring the masses were content. Think
> of the mongols and their methods which were routinely applied. As
> for the notion of boomers being screwed over, this is a laughable
> notion when boomers have their massive assets in net worth and
> home equity yet when a millie wants to buy a house or even an
> apartment they are forced to pay an obscene amount of cash while
> boomers have favorable tax rates. Millies having to pay huge
> percentages of their income (in many cases over 50%) to pay for
> the "needs" of boomers who tend to be sitting on multi-million
> dollar assets. It is boomers who support obamacare and refuse to
> allow budget cuts to touch Medicare or SS. Xers and millies want
> political and Military reform but at every turn are confronted by
> a selfish boomer blocking the "doors" only leaving the "democracy"
> and "human rights" doors unobstructed.

I realize that you're very young, and that you probably majored in
sociology or women's studies or something like that in college, so you
never learned what "insurance" is.

Over the years, I've paid huge amounts of money into Social Security,
which is an "insurance" plan, and that money was matched by my
employers on my behalf. So yes, that's my money, and I expect to get
some of it back in my retirement. And no, I'm not going to tolerate
"budget cuts," which means stealing my money that I've paid into the
insurance program.

But hey, you may get your wish, just not right away. There's talk of
raising the retirement age, so by the time you reach retirement age,
assuming you survive that long (which I doubt), then you'll receive
less social security. That's what you want, isn't it?

Now I see that you're whining about buying a house. I've owned a
couple of houses over the years, and I've had to make substantial down
payments and mortgage payments, so I don't see why you think you're so
special or entitled that you shouldn't have to do the same.

Today you can get a house for 5% down at low interest rates, so if
you're whining about not being able to buy a house, then I assume you
haven't bothered to save any money.

Or, maybe you're in debt because of the financial crisis that your
Gen-X peers caused by trying to screw Boomers. Isn't it amazing that
all Gen-Xers wanted to do was to screw Boomers, but they ended up
screwing themselves and each other? Isn't that amazing?

If you're in debt because you got caught in the the financial crisis,
then maybe it's because you bought a house in 2006, which is when you
joined the FT forum. I sold my condo late in 2005 at the height of
the real estate bubble, because I knew that there was a real estate
bubble, and in 2006 I was talking about the real estate bubble quite a
bit in this very forum. I don't know if you saw what I was writing at
the time, but perhaps if you had taken my advice, rather than assume
that because I'm a Boomer that I must be full of crap, then you might
be a lot better off today.

As I've said before, Boomers are right more than 50% of the time.
Gen-Xers make decisions by doing the opposite of what a Boomer would
do, which makes Gen-Xers wrong more than 50% of the time, which is why
Gen-Xers are in such a mess.

Boomers keep shoving human rights down our throats. Now boomers have stooped to comparing the syrian refugees to Anne Frank. The US pursued the correct policies back then building up its industry and trading with all sides, we only joined the war when we absolutely had to. Now compare this to Britain which lost its empire and would have been destroyed if it had it not been for the fact that the English channel separated the british isles from Europe and the fact that Germany didn't have a navy. This was even more ironic given that Germany wanted to ally with Britain against Russia. However the boomer equivalent generation that existed back then shoved Human rights down the British peoples throats in 1936. King Edward didn't abdicate because he "loved his wife so much". As for today's social security system nobody born after the early 1960s can reasonably expect to ever receive social security benefits, financial constraints and sheer economic common sense dictates that without restructuring the system. The only good candidates seem for 2016 seem to be Trump, Carson and Cruz.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I'm very well aware what Gen-Xers think of Boomers. I've written many
articles about it. In the past couple of days, I've had Ragnarök_62's
W.A.S.P. videos and your "drooling three-headed tiger"
characterization.

You rang?

So let me return the favor by telling you what I think of a lot of
Gen-Xers.


This is what we're dealing with these days -- crooks and sleaze
merchants from Gen-Xers and Millennials with no apparent ethics or
morals, willing to screw anyone, even kill people, for their own gain.
(My son, incidentally, is very definitely not among those with this
characterization.)

Crooks and Sleaze, Inc. is a multi generational enterprise.
Here's my rogues gallery of non GenX/Millies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo 1938 , Silent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Dimon 1956
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Prince 1950 , doing the debt disco
"As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance," he said. "We're still dancing. Man, what a dumbfuck.
-> http://www.nydailynews.com/news/mone...ticle-1.165694 Bwaahahahahahahahahahah yeah, if ya gotta do it, do it big. Typical Boomer mentality.

I don't think we have too many Xer's and Millies here either.
http://www.alternet.org/story/146819...pt_capitalists

Crooks and sleaze merchants in your generation have done the
following:

• Created the financial crisis by creating and selling fraudulent
  sub-prime mortgage backed synthetic securities and selling them to
  Boomers. You thought you were screwing the drooling Boomers, but you
  screwed millions of people who lost their jobs and their homes.
  
  If you have any friends who lost their homes, then go tell them
  that you're the crook that put them out on the street, because you
  are.
• Gen-Xer Obama, driven by his hatred of Bush and other Boomers, has
  brought about one foreign policy disaster after another. His
  decision-making process is to ask what Bush would do and then do the
  opposite, which is typical of the sheer, unadulterated stupidity of
  Gen-Xer decision-makers, with disastrous results.
• From what my son told me, Gen-Xer crooks are even willing to risk
  killing people by falsifying drug trial reports for their own gain,
  which is typical of their total lack of morals and ethics.
• I've seen, with my own eyes, Gen-X programmers commit fraud in the
  software development world, even maliciously deleting working code
  because it was written by a Boomer that they hated.
• In my three months of research on Obamacare and Healthcare.gov,
  Gen-X managers committed massive fraud at all levels. It's almost
  beyond belief how sleazy these people were/are, taking hundreds of
  millions of dollars to do things that they knew they weren't qualified
  to do, and then setting up phony system tests to make it appear that
  their code was working, and firing anyone who complained.

So that's sleazy activities from Gen-Xers in many industries --
finance, real estate, IT, health care. I'm pretty sure that there's
sleaze in all industries, whenever Gen-Xers are involved.

See above for list of non GenX/Millies.

You glorify Genghis Khan, but a better example would be Nomad Mao
during the Great Leap Forward. Mao dismantled the Central Statistical
Bureau because it was producing statistics that he didn't want to hear
-- that food production was falling. By the time he was willing to
accept the results, tens of millions of people had starved to death.
That's what Gen-Xers, and Nomads in general, do.

You forgot. Nomads found great enterprises. Cf. Amazon, Google, Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel.

You use your "drooling three-headed tiger" characterization as a badge
of honor, as if you were saying something clever, some kind of eternal
truth.

Rags is born in a Chinese Zodiac tiger year.

Actually this type of characterization is no badge of honor. You
Gen-Xers nothing but cheap crooks, glorifying stupidity and
criminality.

Cynic Hero is a Millie.

Instead of bragging about your moronic "drooling three-headed tiger"
characterization, you should be ashamed of yourself, and you should
begin by apologizing to all the Boomers that you've screwed.

I compiled a list of Boomers who $screw people as well. The bust of 2008 was a product of multi-generational greed from top to bottom.

P.S.
Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P is a Boomer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackie_Lawless

I just happen to like lots of Boomer produced music, like W.A.S.P

Since we're talking about money and screw jobs here's a video just for that.

*** 20-Nov-15 World View -- Obamacare in death spiral as UnitedHealth announces pullout

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• UnitedHealth warns of end to its Obamacare business
• Obamacare versus Nixon's price controls
• New York Times: Obamacare's high deductibles make insurance all but useless

****
**** UnitedHealth warns of end to its Obamacare business
****


An Obamacare promotional banner from happier days (Teneshia LaFaye)

UnitedHealth Group, the country's largest health insurer, announced on
Thursday that it was expecting to lose $600 million on Obamacare
policies in 2016 from the health insurance exchange websites, and may
terminate its Obamacare business by 2017.

This was a sudden turnabout for the company. It was just a month ago
that the company had said in an earnings call that they expected to
expand their Obamacare coverage in 2017. According to Dave Wichmann,
president and CFO, on October 15:

<QUOTE>"The annual care ratio is being modestly affected by
the performance of our new [Obamacare] public exchange benefit
programs which now served nearly 550,000 people. Like others we
observe market-wide data this past spring that suggested the risk
pool served by public exchanges would require more medical
services than original expectations. Rather than wait for our own
experience with our new members to fully developed, we increased
rates and repositioned certain products market by market for 2016,
and we expect improved performance next year. We will expand to 11
new markets in 2016, and we continue to expect exchanges to
develop and mature over time into a strong viable growth market
for us."<END QUOTE>

He went on to repeat his view that the increased rates meant increased
profits: "[I]n the first half year, this year, we got industry data
that suggested that the underlying use of medical services in that
population was high and higher than we thought, and the good news is
we use that information as the foundation for our 2016 pricing. So we
put in strong price increases. Average increases across the country
are in the double-digits. ... So as we look at our exchange business
for 2016, ... we expect to see very nice improvement year-over-year."

However, despite the double-digit price increases for 2016, it now
appears that UnitedHealth is going to lose a great deal of money in
2016, and this only became apparent in the last month. According to
CEO Stephen J. Hemsley on Thursday:

<QUOTE>"In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual
[Obamacare] exchange participation have tempered industrywide,
co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher
risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has
deteriorated, so we are taking this proactive step. We continue
to be pleased with the growth and overall performance of our
Company outside of the individual exchange products and look
forward to strong, positive and broad based earnings growth across
our enterprise in 2016."<END QUOTE>

Across the board, Obamacare premium prices are increasing 20.3% for
2016, but apparently that's not enough. Hemsley wanted to emphasize
that the recent change in market data was across the industry, not
just for UnitedHealth, suggesting that other insurance companies may
wish to follow suit.

Obamacare appears to have entered an insurance industry "death
spiral." Basically, too many sick people are signing up, and too few
healthy people are doing so. This causes prices to surge, and that
causes fewer healthy people to sign up. The death spiral continues
until the insurance program collapse completely. The 20.3% price
increase for 2016 is probably the cause of the current round of the
Obamacare death spiral.

Obamacare's fate may now depend on whether other insurance companies
follow UnitedHealth. According to analysts, insurers lost about $2.5
billion through Obamacare exchanges in 2014. But the other two large
insurers, Aetna and Anthem, have made no comment on today's
announcements, but in the past they've said they're willing to
continue losing money on Obamacare for a few years. Minneapolis Star Tribune and Business Wire and Seeking Alpha (October 15) and Bloomberg

****
**** Obamacare versus Nixon's price controls
****

As long time readers are well aware (because I've repeated it many
times), in July, 2009, when Obamacare was first announced, I wrote
that Obama's health plan is a proposal of economic insanity.
I compared it to President Richard
Nixon's wage-price controls, and I predicted that it would just as
much an economic disaster as Nixon's price controls.

In fact, since Obamacare was launched in October 2013, it's followed
almost exactly the same trajectory as Nixon's price controls, in a
similar time frame. Nixon's price controls were launched on August
15, 1971, with the objective of lowering the inflation rate from 4% to
2%.

When they were first launched, Nixon's price controls were extremely
popular. The rules were initially simple, in that no prices could
rise except for raw agricultural products. As one politician said,
"Remember, Virginia, when it’s a cucumber you can raise the price, but
when it becomes a pickle, it’s frozen." Otherwise, a business could
only raise a price by filling out a form and getting Washington
approval.

Two years later, prices of virtually all commodities -- foodstuffs,
minerals and petroleum -- exploded, reaching historic highs. The
inflation rate was 11% in 1973, two years after the price controls
were launched. Nixon doubled down on his bad policy, and on June 13,
1973, he decreed a new price freeze. The administration said that the
inflationary bubble of 1973 was expected to be a "temporary
aberration" which would dissipate.

They didn't dissipate. The rules kept changing in the hope of bring
inflation down, but it kept surging. The shortages of gasoline,
heating oil, red meat, soybeans and numerous other products, together
with ruinous price increases, finally discredited price controls in
the eyes of the American people, and they were allowed to expire on
April 30, 1974, just less than three years after they began.

As I predicted in 2009, Obamacare followed almost exactly the same
trajectory of the Nixon price controls after it was launched on
October 1, 2013. Actually the Obamacare launch was much worse than
the Nixon price control launch, because Nixon didn't have any
management disaster similar to the Healthcare.gov web site. (See my
August article, "Healthcare.gov -- The greatest software development disaster in history",
which I posted after months of extensive research.)

However, once the Healthcare.gov problems were relieved, it appeared
to the general public in 2014 and early 2015 that Obamacare was
working. In 1973, two years after launch, Nixon's price controls
began to be in serious trouble, with severe shortages of commodities
and skyrocketing prices.

Today, two years after its launch, Obamacare is in serious trouble.
Most new patients are on Medicaid which is just as bad as being
uninsured, and prices are exploding by 20.3% in 2016. Obamacare is in
a death spiral, and if it continues to follow the same trajectory as
Nixon price controls, then it will be so unpopular in 2016 that it
will collapse completely.

At any rate, it's actually pretty amazing how closely the two parallel
each other. Maybe there's some undiscovered law of economics that
says that all hare-brained economic policies never last more than
three years. Nixon's wage-price controls - Forty Years After The Freeze

****
**** New York Times: Obamacare's high deductibles make insurance all but useless
****

The Administration has been claiming the success of Obamacare because
millions of previously uninsured people are now insured. As I've
pointed out many times, this figure is a fraud, because the
deductibles are so high that for most people Obamacare insurance is
more expensive than no insurance at all, and so these people are
effectively still uninsured.

The New York Times, whose reporters have been fawning lapdogs for
President Obama and Obamacare, came out with an article this week
saying that the high deductibles make Obamacare all but useless. The
median deductible is about $5,000, meaning that the policy pays
nothing unless the medical bills exceed $5,000. This means that the
insurance is mainly for protection against a serious illness that
could cause financial ruin.

The NYT article quotes several people saying things like, "The
deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the
doctor. We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it." These
are the sorts of stories that one could formerly only hear
on Fox News.

It appears that Obamacare has lost the NY Times. Can it survive for
long after that? Bloomberg and NY Times


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Obamacare, UnitedHealth Group,
Dave Wichmann, Stephen J. Hemsley, Aetna, Anthem,
Nixon price controls

Permanent web link to this article
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Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

> Rags is born in a Chinese Zodiac tiger year.

Were you born in China? I don't recall knowing that. That makes you
a Boomer on China's timeline.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

> Cynic Hero is a Millie.

Yeah, but he's a CUSPY Millie.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

> I compiled a list of Boomers who $screw people as well. The bust
> of 2008 was a product of multi-generational greed from top to
> bottom.

Of course there are criminals in every generation. That's nothing
new.

I don't accept any such equivalence. There are HUGE differences, as
big as the Grand Canyon.

First off is simply (to use Hannah Arendt's phrase) the banality of
evil. What I've seen with my own eyes in software development was
UNTHINKABLE in the 90s - and it's done almost thoughtlessly in the
course of a day. When I researched Obamacare, I found enormous fraud,
being perpetrated as a simply matter of course, like eating lunch.
This would NEVER have happened in the 90s.

Second, Gen-Xers refuse to punish criminals. The savings and loan
scandal of the 1980s was tiny compared to the 2000s financial crisis,
and yet several thousand people were given criminal referrals, and
many were criminally tried and sent to jail. Incredibly, NO ONE has
gone to jail for the 2000s financial crisis. There have been NO
criminal referrals. That's because people in the Justice Department
and Obama Administration are equally criminal. To quote Hannah Arendt
again, as in Nazi Germany, respectable people are actually gangsters,
and gangsters are treated as respectable people.

Here's a little puzzle for you.

You've listed several criminal Boomers. Now, I would be very happy to
see them criminally charged, brought to trial, and, if convicted, be
forced to spend the rest of their lives in jail. That would please me
very much.

So here's my question for you: Can you name any similar Gen-X
criminals that YOU would be very happy to see criminally charged, that
YOU would like to see brought to trial, and that if convicted YOU
would be very happy to see spend the rest of their lives in jail? Can
you?

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Were you born in China? I don't recall knowing that. That makes you
a Boomer on China's timeline.

Of course I wasn't born in China. Now, since China is a country on planet earth and given 1962 is a "cuspy" year, feel free to designate me as a Boomer. I'm not the one over here railing against Boomers, OK?

Yeah, but he's a CUSPY Millie.

Fair enough.

Of course there are criminals in every generation. That's nothing
new.

I don't accept any such equivalence. There are HUGE differences, as
big as the Grand Canyon.

First off is simply (to use Hannah Arendt's phrase) the banality of
evil. What I've seen with my own eyes in software development was
UNTHINKABLE in the 90s - and it's done almost thoughtlessly in the
course of a day. When I researched Obamacare, I found enormous fraud,
being perpetrated as a simply matter of course, like eating lunch.
This would NEVER have happened in the 90s.

John, please don't go off shooting randomly. I KNOW there's a lot of shitty software and insecure websites, healthcare.gov, yes is a horrible piece of work. You will get no arguments from me on that one. Yeah, I sent a nag email to my brokerage company because of their terrible password restrictions. You can't possibly make a secure password that's limited to 6 characters, upper/lower case letters and numbers only. They did change the restrictions to a much more sane policy recently so I could make a long password with upper/lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. I also know of a website I go to that spews out its database structure because I block google-analytics.com and there's something in their javascript that blows up when whatever the hell Google's script fails to run. IOW, you'll get no arguments from me about lame software either.

Second, Gen-Xers refuse to punish criminals. The savings and loan
scandal of the 1980s was tiny compared to the 2000s financial crisis,
and yet several thousand people were given criminal referrals, and
many were criminally tried and sent to jail. Incredibly, NO ONE has
gone to jail for the 2000s financial crisis. There have been NO
criminal referrals. That's because people in the Justice Department
and Obama Administration are equally criminal. To quote Hannah Arendt
again, as in Nazi Germany, respectable people are actually gangsters,
and gangsters are treated as respectable people.

Yes, I lived in Houston during the S&L mess. People went to jail . And... yes nobody , yes nobody got a perp walk now.
I don't like that any more than you do.

Here's a little puzzle for you.

You've listed several criminal Boomers. Now, I would be very happy to
see them criminally charged, brought to trial, and, if convicted, be
forced to spend the rest of their lives in jail. That would please me
very much.

It would please me as well. I'd also strip their assets and use those to repay taxpayers if convicted. Let's see, there's securities fraud charges, conspiracy to defraud assorted parties, damages for forged mortgage documents, damages for illegally foreclosed homes. Usually, you need proof of ownership of the mortgage note to foreclose. If you attempt to foreclose without clear ownership, that is fraud! Period! If these notes were robosigned and yes a lot were, those all should have been voided.

From the wiki article:

Attorneys estimate that the documents belonging to as many as 50% of the mortgages made between 2001-2008 have been lost or destroyed, leading to demands by borrowers that the foreclosing party produce the note as evidence of the debt.^[5]
Consumer advocates^[who?] claim that almost all entities attempting to foreclose on homeowners are not the Real Lender, but rather a Servicer collecting monthly payments for a mortgage backed security (MBS) Trust. Therefore, courts have determined that Servicers are not the Real Party in Interest and possess no legal standing to seek relief from the courts.

I'd say if proof of not being the true lender can't be established, again, the note shall be voided. The underlying deed would then be cleared of the compromised note.

So here's my question for you: Can you name any similar Gen-X
criminals that YOU would be very happy to see criminally charged, that
YOU would like to see brought to trial, and that if convicted YOU
would be very happy to see spend the rest of their lives in jail? Can
you?

That's the easiest question I've gotten in a long time. Fuck yeah any and all. I'd also asset strip them if it's doable.

GO TRUMP! GO CARSON!, keep educating us on what needs to be done to combat this scourge. If the majority of government officials were like this, we wouldn't be having these problems today.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016...tabase-n466716

http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/...to-rabid-dogs/

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

> John, please don't go off shooting randomly. I KNOW there's a lot
> of shitty software and insecure websites, healthcare.gov, yes is a
> horrible piece of work.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about shitty software, though that's
part of it. I'm talking about criminal activity.

In the 1990s, I was a consultant that worked for many companies doing
software development. In addition, I was Technology Editor for CFO
Magazine, for which I wrote hundreds of article and interviewed
hundreds of IT people from programmer to CFO to CEO. So I was VERY
knowledgeable about the entire IT industry in the 90s.

That's how I can be certain today about the criminality that's going
on today with the rise of Generation-X. It is absolutely appalling
that things that are being done today as a matter of course were
UNTHINKABLE in the 1990s. There have certainly been Boomer criminals,
but based on what I've seen, and continue to see, the amount of
criminality in Generation-X is thousands of times greater. Gen-Xers
commit crimes every day as a matter of course, with no remorse and no
shame, and the crimes are excused by other Gen-Xers. It's absolutely
appalling.

One particularly bizarre aspect of all this is that Gen-Xers portray
Y2K remediation as trivial because all you had to do was change a
couple of dates. I wrote many articles on Y2K remediation projects,
and I know how huge and difficult and complex they were. But Gen-X
programmers are incredibly incompetent because colleges aren't
teaching software engineering any more. One reason for all the
shitty software is that Gen-Xer programmers have no understanding
of software engineering.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

> That's the easiest question I've gotten in a long time.

You should be aware that you're pretty much unique among Gen-Xers that
I've asked this question. The usual response is a litany of reasons
why Gen-Xers are not guilty of anything. First, I'm told that the
Boomers committed the crimes, but it's easy to prove that the Gen-Xers
committed the crimes without the Boomers even knowing what they were
doing. Well OK, so the Gen-Xers committed the crimes, and the Boomers
didn't know what they were doing, but it's still not their fault
because the Boomers created the environment that made criminality
activity possible. After we get past that bullshit, the claim is made
there's no proof that any crimes were committed, but that's easy to
shoot down.

For more information about the above, see:

** For academics: Dysfunction, subversion, sabotage and fraud in software development projects
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/...emic150823.htm

We need trump! We need carson! TRUMP/CARSON 2016.

*** 21-Nov-15 World View -- Mali hotel terror attack highlights al-Qaeda's strength in Africa

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Terror groups compete for credit for Mali hotel attack
• Mali hotel terror attack highlights al-Qaeda's strength in Africa

****
**** Terror groups compete for credit for Mali hotel attack
****


Mali security officers show a jihadist flag that belonged to the hotel attackers (Reuters)

A group of terrorist gunmen assaulted the Raddison Blu Hotel, a luxury
hotel in Mali's capital city Bamako, on Friday morning, taking
hundreds of hostages were taken. The hotel was hosting a Mali "peace
process" conference, and so a number of diplomats were including among
the hostages, along with numerous other guests and employees.

Malian troops swept through the hotel room by room, floor by floor,
freeing hostages and pursuing the gunmen. They found the floors
littered with the bodies of Malians and foreign visitors, including a
Belgian government official. At least 20 people were killed.

At least two different terror groups have claimed responsibility on
social media for the attack, Al Murabitoon and Ansar al-Din. Both of
them are splinter groups associated with Al-Qaeda on the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM).

The fact that different groups are claiming credit on social media
shows that, like many acts of terrorism including those in Paris this
year, the terrorism has no strategic purpose other than as publicity
and recruiting tools. CNN
and Washington Post and Time

****
**** Mali hotel terror attack highlights al-Qaeda's strength in Africa
****

Despite claims by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or
Daesh) to be a worldwide caliphate, Friday's attack in Mali shows that
not only is al-Qaeda far from dead, but in fact may be getting
energized by the recent successes of ISIS.

According to a US military assessment, ISIS has little or no influence
in West Africa, as compared to al-Qaeda. According to Army Gen. David
Rodriguez, chief of U.S. Africa Command:

<QUOTE>"The Islamic State does not have that kind of impact
down in that area. [The Mali attackers are] probably someone
associated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb because, again,
that is where they have the reach."<END QUOTE>

According to Rodriguez, ISIS's influence in Africa is largely limited
to Libya. However, ISIS is “creeping” into Egypt, primarily in the
Sinai Peninsula, according to Rodriguez.

The ISIS-linked terror group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM - Ansar
Jerusalem - Champions of Jerusalem), which has changed its name to Al
Wilayat Sinai (Province of Sinai), is believed to be responsible for
the downing of Russia's Metrojet Flight 9268 passenger plane over
Sinai in Egypt.

Apart from that, al-Qaeda linked terror groups are surging in Africa.
In East Africa, the primary terror group is al-Qaeda linked
al-Shabaab, headquartered in Somalia, but recently reaching out into
Kenya and Ethiopia.

But the "most deadly terrorist group in the world," is neither ISIS
nor al-Qaeda. According to the Global Terrorism Index from the
Institute for Economics and Peace it's Boko Haram, which has exceeded
ISIS and all other groups in "murder, torture and rape," and in the
number of terror-related deaths.

Boko Haram has waged an insurgency in Nigeria since 2009 in its bid to
create a mini-state under Islamic law. It has forced at least 2.6
million people from their homes, killing at least 17,000 people and
abducting hundreds, including the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped in Chibok
village in April last year that prompted an international outcry. As
of April, a year after their kidnap, 219 of the Chibok schoolgirls
remained missing. A group of around 50 managed to escape. Military Times and Sun News Online (Lagos) and Washington Post


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Mali, Bamako, Raddison Blu Hotel,
Al Murabitoon, Ansar al-Din, Al-Qaeda on the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
David Rodriguez, Egypt, Sinai,
Ansar Jerusalem, Ansar Bayt al Maqdis, ABM, Champions of Jerusalem,
Sinai Province, Al Wilayat Sinai, Metrojet Flight 9268,
Al-Shabaab, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Boko Haram, Nigeria

Permanent web link to this article
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Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

We need trump! We need carson! TRUMP/CARSON 2016.

The blind leading the blind.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The blind leading the blind.

Why do you say that? By the way did you even bother to look at the links I posted regarding the policies of Trump and Carson?

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

> Why do you say that? By the way did you even bother to look at the
> links I posted regarding the policies of Trump and Carson?

Are you referring to the comparison of Syrian refugees to rabid dogs,
or to the planned Muslim database? Both are totally hilarious. They
should do a joint comedy skit on SNL.

Selfish mainstream boomers hate Trump because he advocates aspects of human nature that the boomer mainstream wants to deny. Xers and Millies want America to be a Sparta, Not an Athens.

*** 22-Nov-15 World View -- European Union considers gun control after Paris attack

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Brussels Belgium on lockdown in search for Paris bomber
• European Union considers gun control after Paris attack

****
**** Brussels Belgium on lockdown in search for Paris bomber
****


Closed metro entrance in Brussels on Saturday (EU Observer)

On Saturday, the city of Brussels, which is both the capital city of
Belgium and the capital of the European Union, was essentially shut
down completely, after Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel warned
that the threat of one or more terror attacks in the city was "serious
and imminent." The terror alert system was raised to its highest
level over reports of an "imminent threat" of a gun and bomb attack
similar to the one seen in Paris. The metro system was shut down, and
all restaurants and cafés were closed by 6 pm. Citizens were warned
to avoid large gathers, such as concerts, train stations and shopping
malls.

Belgium-based jihadists are increasingly at the heart of the
investigation of last week's Paris attacks, since it's been learned
that three of the attackers have roots in Brussels' Molenbeek district
which, as we described earlier this week,
has a large ethnic Moroccan population and is a hotbed for
radical Islamists.

Brussels police have intensified raids in Molenbeek and other
immigrant districts, hoping to prevent a repeat of the Paris attacks.
Belgium's interior minister is calling for house-to-house checks for
all home in Molenbeek.

In particular, there is a big manhunt under way for Salah Abdeslam, a
26 year old French citizen, who is believed to be one of the
attackers, and is hiding out in Brussels. Abdeslam traveled from
Paris to Belgium on the morning after the Paris attacked and was
stopped by police officers for identity checks, but was permitted to
continue to Belgium because he was not suspected at that time.

Police have issued an international arrest warrant for Abdeslam, who
is described as armed and dangerous. Friends of Abdeslam told ABC
News they had spoken to him on Skype and said he was hiding in
Brussels and desperately trying to get to Syria, to link up with the
so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Expatica Belgium and EU Observer and BBC and ABC News

****
**** European Union considers gun control after Paris attack
****

I've often suggested that the National Rifle Association in the U.S.
should give an award to President Barack Obama. Every time Obama
proposes gun control legislation, gun sales surge. Obama has brought
about the sales of more guns than the NRA ever could.

So now there's talk of gun control in the European Union.

There's a black market for firearms in all major European cities.
However, Belgium is a particularly important player because of its
geographical location and history. For centuries Belgium has been a
major producer and exporter of firearms. Sixty miles east of
Brussels, FN Herstal, the largest small-arms factory in Europe, has
been making weapons since 1889. Today, three thousand employees
manufacture some fifty models of handguns, submachine guns, rifles
(both assault and bolt-action), machine guns, shotguns, and aircraft
weapons systems.

Handguns are the preferred firearm for criminals, but lately Belgian
police have noticed an increase in the possession and use of
military-style weapons such as Kalashnikovs. After the Balkan wars of
the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of military weapons stayed in the
hands of citizens, and found their way to Western Europe, including
Belgium. A typical price for a weapon is $1,000 to $2,500.

It's estimated that there are 81 million illicit firearms across the
European Union, but that's just a guess
because the EU has no system for keeping track
of weapons, even illegal weapons that have been seized.

The EU this week proposed new gun-control rules. But experts say
implementing them across the 28 member counties would be difficult.

Some of the rules have to do with the restoration of deactivated or
neutralized or decommissioned weapons, a problem not raised much in
the United States. An otherwise illegal weapon can be kept legally if
it can be deactivated and made into a purely decorative item. Key
components can be removed or welded together, for example, but
in some cases deactivated weapons can be restored.

The new proposed rules will deal with deactivated weapons, and will
propose a ban on semi-automatic weapons. However, none of the
proposals offer immediate solutions to the problem of improving
coordination and information sharing among law enforcement so guns can
be more easily tracked.

Nonetheless, the proposed rules face strong resistance from hunters
and sportsmen, who fear it will seriously restrict legal owners. "It
seems to be that the Commission now wants to show quick activism after
these terrible attacks, but they are going too far," said Hans
Schollen, a lawyer and president of a German sporting association, the
VDS. BBC
and Politico EU and New Yorker

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Belgium, Charles Michel, Brussels, Molenbeek,
Salah Abdeslam, FN Herstal, Hans Schollen, National Rifle Association

Permanent web link to this article
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*** 23-Nov-15 World View -- ASEAN leaders harshly criticize China over South China Sea actions

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China blocks Miss World Canada from attending Miss World pageant
• ASEAN leaders harshly criticize China over South China Sea actions
• Occupied Crimea declares state of emergency after electricity is cut

****
**** China blocks Miss World Canada from attending Miss World pageant
****


Anastasia Lin, 25, Miss World Canada

China is apparently blocking Anastasia Lin, 25, the winner of Miss
World Canada, from attending the Miss World pageant. Born in China,
Lin has been an outspoken critic of China's human rights abuses.

Lin is apparently not going to receive the letter from China inviting
her to the pageant, which means that she cannot apply for a visa. The
opening ceremony takes place on Monday, but she still hopes to receive
the letter in time to attend the competition a few days later.

After she won the competition earlier this year, Lin's father was
contacted by Chinese security forces. They threatened that there would
be consequences if Lin continued to speak out. As her father still
lives in China, Lin is concerned. "Dad's really scared. He doesn't
really dare to talk to me as he worries his phone is tapped. He
doesn't speak his mind anymore." The Shanghaiist and BBC

****
**** ASEAN leaders harshly criticize China over South China Sea actions
****

While the Western world's eyes have been riveted on the European
terror news, tensions over China's actions in the South China Sea have
been surging at the annual summit meeting of the Association of South
East Asian Nations (ASEAN), currently being held in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia. In fact, week's terrorist attack in a hotel in Bamako, the
capital city of Mali, resulted in the deaths of three Chinese
businessmen. The ASEAN summit meeting had been expected to discuss
global terrorism, but the South China Sea pushed those matters into
the background.

China received criticism from almost everyone. The harshest critic of
China was outgoing Philippines President Benigno Aquino, who revealed
that China had repeatedly been fishing in Philippine waters, and even
worse, targeting endangered marine life covered by the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species. According to Aquino:

<QUOTE>"We had been asked not to make these incidents public,
and we agreed in an effort to de-escalate the situation. However,
the incidents did not cease."<END QUOTE>

In addition to going public about these and other incidents of
aggression by China, Aquino said that the region’s stability and
prosperity were under threat “by unilateral actions such as the
massive reclamation and building of structures on features in the
Spratly islands.” He said such alarming developments have urgent and
far-reaching implications in the region and the international
community, and that ASEAN must not allow any country – “no matter how
powerful” – to claim an entire sea as its own and use force and
intimidation to send its message across.

Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe also criticized China's land
reclamation and suggested that Japan might send its Navy to the South
China Sea:

<QUOTE>"With regard to activity by the Self-Defense Forces in
the South China Sea, I will consider it while focusing on what
effect the situation has on Japan’s security."<END QUOTE>

However, a Japanese government spokesman said later that there were no
plans to change policy at the present time.

According to president Barack Obama, also attending the meeting:

<QUOTE>"Many leaders spoke about the need to uphold
international principles, including the freedom of navigation, and
overflight and the peaceful resolution of disputes.

My fellow leaders from Japan, Australia and the Philippines have
reaffirmed that our treaty alliances remained the foundation of
regional security. The United States is boosting our support for
the Philippines maritime capabilities and those of our regional
partners. ...

For the sake of regional stability, claimants should halt
reclamation, new construction, and militarization of disputed
areas."<END QUOTE>

During the meeting, Indonesia's president Joko Widodo and South
Korea's president Park Geun-hye and other ASEAN leaders all criticized
China's actions in the South China Sea.

China's Premier Li Keqiang evaded answering questions related to the
subject, but has previously blamed the United States for
"provocations" and "meddling." In a statement reported by China's
media, Li said:

<QUOTE>"In recent years, the South China Sea disputes, which
should have been addressed by directly concerned countries through
negotiation and talks, have been played up to become a problem
concerning the South China Sea’s peace and stability and the
freedom of navigation."<END QUOTE>

Nikkei and Philippine Star and Bloomberg

****
**** Occupied Crimea declares state of emergency after electricity is cut
****

Occupied Crimea has declared a state of emergency after the entire
peninsula was plunged into darkness because the transmission towers
(pylons) carrying electricity lines from Ukraine were sabotaged on
Friday and Sunday.

It's believed that the pylons were blown up by Ukrainian nationalists
and Crimean Tatars opposed to Russia's annexation of Crimea. In 2014,
Russian army troops invaded Crimea and annexed the peninsula to
Russia. Crimea is the homeland to ethnic Tatars who have been
marginalized by the Russian occupation.

Generators are supplying power for vital services like hospitals and
communications. Most of the nearly 2 million people living in Crimea
remain without electricity. Ukraine's Ministry of Energy and Coal
Industry promised a restoration within four days. Euro News and Ukraine Today


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Anastasia Lin, Miss World Canada, China,
Association of South East Asian Nations, ASEAN,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Mali, Bamako,
South China Sea, Philippines, Benigno Aquino,
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species,
Japan, Shinzo Abe, Indonesia, Joko Widodo,
South Korea, Park Geun-hye, Li Keqiang,
Ukraine, Crimea, Tatars

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

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

*** 22-Nov-15 World View -- European Union considers gun control after Paris attack

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Brussels Belgium on lockdown in search for Paris bomber
• European Union considers gun control after Paris attack

****
**** Brussels Belgium on lockdown in search for Paris bomber
****


Closed metro entrance in Brussels on Saturday (EU Observer)

On Saturday, the city of Brussels, which is both the capital city of
Belgium and the capital of the European Union, was essentially shut
down completely, after Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel warned
that the threat of one or more terror attacks in the city was "serious
and imminent." The terror alert system was raised to its highest
level over reports of an "imminent threat" of a gun and bomb attack
similar to the one seen in Paris. The metro system was shut down, and
all restaurants and cafés were closed by 6 pm. Citizens were warned
to avoid large gathers, such as concerts, train stations and shopping
malls.

Belgium-based jihadists are increasingly at the heart of the
investigation of last week's Paris attacks, since it's been learned
that three of the attackers have roots in Brussels' Molenbeek district
which, as we described earlier this week,
has a large ethnic Moroccan population and is a hotbed for
radical Islamists.

Brussels police have intensified raids in Molenbeek and other
immigrant districts, hoping to prevent a repeat of the Paris attacks.
Belgium's interior minister is calling for house-to-house checks for
all home in Molenbeek.

In particular, there is a big manhunt under way for Salah Abdeslam, a
26 year old French citizen, who is believed to be one of the
attackers, and is hiding out in Brussels. Abdeslam traveled from
Paris to Belgium on the morning after the Paris attacked and was
stopped by police officers for identity checks, but was permitted to
continue to Belgium because he was not suspected at that time.

Police have issued an international arrest warrant for Abdeslam, who
is described as armed and dangerous. Friends of Abdeslam told ABC
News they had spoken to him on Skype and said he was hiding in
Brussels and desperately trying to get to Syria, to link up with the
so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Expatica Belgium and EU Observer and BBC and ABC News

****
**** European Union considers gun control after Paris attack
****

I've often suggested that the National Rifle Association in the U.S.
should give an award to President Barack Obama. Every time Obama
proposes gun control legislation, gun sales surge. Obama has brought
about the sales of more guns than the NRA ever could.

So now there's talk of gun control in the European Union.

There's a black market for firearms in all major European cities.
However, Belgium is a particularly important player because of its
geographical location and history. For centuries Belgium has been a
major producer and exporter of firearms. Sixty miles east of
Brussels, FN Herstal, the largest small-arms factory in Europe, has
been making weapons since 1889. Today, three thousand employees
manufacture some fifty models of handguns, submachine guns, rifles
(both assault and bolt-action), machine guns, shotguns, and aircraft
weapons systems.

Handguns are the preferred firearm for criminals, but lately Belgian
police have noticed an increase in the possession and use of
military-style weapons such as Kalashnikovs. After the Balkan wars of
the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of military weapons stayed in the
hands of citizens, and found their way to Western Europe, including
Belgium. A typical price for a weapon is $1,000 to $2,500.

It's estimated that there are 81 million illicit firearms across the
European Union, but that's just a guess
because the EU has no system for keeping track
of weapons, even illegal weapons that have been seized.

The EU this week proposed new gun-control rules. But experts say
implementing them across the 28 member counties would be difficult.

Some of the rules have to do with the restoration of deactivated or
neutralized or decommissioned weapons, a problem not raised much in
the United States. An otherwise illegal weapon can be kept legally if
it can be deactivated and made into a purely decorative item. Key
components can be removed or welded together, for example, but
in some cases deactivated weapons can be restored.

The new proposed rules will deal with deactivated weapons, and will
propose a ban on semi-automatic weapons. However, none of the
proposals offer immediate solutions to the problem of improving
coordination and information sharing among law enforcement so guns can
be more easily tracked.

Nonetheless, the proposed rules face strong resistance from hunters
and sportsmen, who fear it will seriously restrict legal owners. "It
seems to be that the Commission now wants to show quick activism after
these terrible attacks, but they are going too far," said Hans
Schollen, a lawyer and president of a German sporting association, the
VDS. BBC
and Politico EU and New Yorker

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Belgium, Charles Michel, Brussels, Molenbeek,
Salah Abdeslam, FN Herstal, Hans Schollen, National Rifle Association

Permanent web link to this article
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They can make all the new laws they want but since the arms used in these attacks are illegal to begin with and are of Russian origin the laws will do no good. The Russian Mafiyas and actual Kremlin operatives will continue to supply terrorists and irregular Anti Western forces with them. Such forces don't care about no stinkin' laws.

*** 24-Nov-15 World View -- Ukraine suspends all commercial trade with occupied Crimea

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Migrants blocked at Macedonian border sew their mouths shut
• Ukraine suspends all commercial trade with occupied Crimea
• Ukraine and Russia in tit-for-tat escalating sanctions
• Steel and other commodity prices continue to plummet

****
**** Migrants blocked at Macedonian border sew their mouths shut
****


An Iranian refugee with his mouth sewn shut protests the blockade of Greece's border into Macedonia (AFP)

Seven men have sewed their mouths shut and more than a thousand
Iranians, Moroccans and Pakistanis have blocked a train line on the
Greek-Macedonian border, in protest against a recent decision by some
Balkan countries to block certain nationalities from heading towards
northern Europe.

Following on from last week's terrorist attack in Paris, countries
along the Balkan migration trail -- Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia --
have begun refusing to admit people of certain nationalities. In
particular, they are screening all the migrants, and admitting only
refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. People from Africa, Iran,
Pakistan and Bangladesh -- who collectively amount to less than 10% of
the flow through the Balkans -- are being called "economic migrants,"
and are being trapped in limbo at the borders of Croatia, Serbia, and
Macedonia.

An average of 4,750 people a day have arrived on its shores from
Turkey this month, down from the October average of 6,800 but above
the August daily rate of 3,500.

Macedonia is building a barrier along its southern border with Greece.
Macedonia’s prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, said: “The status quo is
untenable and short-term recommendations do nothing to solve the
problem. Macedonia knows that the only solution is European-wide
expanded cooperation, real-time exchange of information and additional
support so that we may ensure appropriate security and humanitarian
outcomes for all involved.” Guardian (London) and Kathimerini (Athens) and Washington Post and Guardian (19-Nov)

****
**** Ukraine suspends all commercial trade with occupied Crimea
****

As we reported yesterday,

transmission towers (pylons) carrying electricity lines from Ukraine
to occupied Crimea were sabotaged and blown up over the weekend, most
likely by Ukrainian nationalists from the far-right party Right Sector
or Crimean Tatars opposed to Russia's invasion, occupation and
annexation of Crimea. The result is that most of the 2 million people
living in Crimea are now living in darkness.

Ukraine's Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry had promised a
restoration within four days, but Tatars and nationalists are
preventing construction workers from approaching the pylons to repair
them.

On Monday, Ukraine's government in Kiev said that it was suspending
all commercial trade with occupied Crimea. This is being described as
a major concession to the nationalists, since nationalists have been
since September blockading the roads between Ukraine and Crimea,
attempting to prevent any commercial trade.

Since September, prices for food have been rising sharply because of
the blockade, and are now expected to rise much higher. It is now not
known how long it will be before electricity will be restored.
BBC and
Tass (Moscow)

****
**** Ukraine and Russia in tit-for-tat escalating sanctions
****

Monday's announcement by Ukraine's announcement that it's
suspending all cargo traffic to and from occupied Crimea is
part of a lengthy sequence of tit-for-tat sanctions.

• After Russia's army invaded, occupied and annexed Crimea, the
  West imposed economic and financial sanctions on Russia, making it
  almost impossible for Russia's banks to borrow money.
  
• Russia retaliated its own sanctions -- a sweeping ban on food
  imports from numerous Western countries, including the U.S., the
  European Union, Australia and Norway.
  
• Ukraine announced that it would implement a free trade agreement
  with European Union, beginning in January 2016.
  
• Russia accused Ukraine of undermining Russia's sanctions on
  Europe. If Ukraine and the EU have a free trade agreement, then EU
  food producers would sell Ukrainian distributors, who would then sell
  into Russia, completely voiding the sanctions imposed by Russia.
  
• Therefore, Russia announced an embargo on food imports from
  Ukraine, also to begin in January.
  
• This brings us to the latest announcement: Ukraine is suspending
  all commercial trade with occupied Crimea, in retaliation for Russia's
  announced food embargo.

According to Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk:

<QUOTE>"Speaking about the embargo, I would like to make it
clear that Russian threats to introduce an embargo on Ukrainian
goods will face the same response from the Ukrainian authorities.

"There will be an analogous Ukrainian decision to launch an
embargo against Russia to every Russian decision to launch an
embargo against Ukraine."<END QUOTE>

However, Yatsenyuk says that he's ordered that the sabotaged
electricity transmission lines be repaired, and that electricity
supplies to Crimea be restored. Russia Today and Zik (Ukraine)

****
**** Steel and other commodity prices continue to plummet
****

Commodity prices in general have been plummet, mainly thanks
to a slowdown in China, but steel prices have been particularly
hard hit, falling more than a third so far this year.

China 800 million tons of steel a year -- four times more than any
other country has ever produced. But the sector is in severe
overcapacity of some 400 million tons as construction has been
slowing. Steel consumption in China hs fallen 5.7% in the
first ten months this year. Iron ore is also trading at
an all time low. There is little upside on the horizon.

According to one analyst:

<QUOTE>"A lot of [steel production] growth is completely
artificially, supported by government policies and subsidies so
it's natural to see that sector shrink."<END QUOTE>

According to another analyst, China is pushing production up to create
jobs. They "look more at employment and stability in the social
environment," and don't worry about the long term effects. CNBC


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia,
Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Nikola Gruevski, Arseny Yatsenyuk,
Ukraine, Crimea, Right Sector, European Union, Australia, Norway,
China

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*** 25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Putin calls Turkey's downing of Russian plane a 'stab in the back'
• Turkmen in Syria versus Russians in occupied Crimea
• Russia - Turkey crisis evokes memories of centuries of Crimean wars

****
**** Putin calls Turkey's downing of Russian plane a 'stab in the back'
****


Florence Nightingale, the world's first nurse, tending to wounded soldiers during the Crimean War in 1854

On Tuesday, two Turkish F-16s were involved in the shooting down of a
Russian warplane in Syria near the border with Turkey. According to
Turkey's military, the Russian aircraft was warned 10 times in five
minutes that it was violating Turkish airspace.

In addition, one of the Russian pilots was shot dead from the ground
by ethnic Turkmens as he was parachuting to earth. A Russian marine
was also shot down during the rescue operation.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin called Turkey's downing of the
fighter jet "a stab in the back" carried out by the accomplices of
terrorists, alluding to previous accusations that Turkey's government
were accomplices of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or
Daesh). Putin said that the incident would have serious consequences
for the two countries' relations.

Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey had the right
to respond if its airspace is violated despite repeated warnings.

Russia claims that the Russian plan was shot down over Syria, but that
even if it had invaded Turkey's air space, then shooting it down was
illegal. According to Anatoly Kapustin, President of the Russian
Association of International Law: "Even if the Russian plane flew into
Turkish airspace and returned to Syria, it needs to be taken into
account that the Russian air force is taking part in an armed conflict
in Syrian territory, on the side of the central government."

Other analysts have also suggested that shooting down the warplane was
an overreaction, since it was not a danger to Turkey even if it
invaded Turkey's airspace.

Russia's Defense Ministry said that it was working on a package of
measures to respond to the incident. A Russian warship will be
deployed to waters off Syria's western Latakia province, and Russian
fighters will accompany bombing missions in the future. Russia's
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov advised Russians not to visit Turkey,
saying that the threat of terrorism was as bad in Turkey as in Egypt,
where a Russian passenger plane was recently blown out of the sky.
Sputnik News (Moscow) and Hurriyet Daily News (Ankara)

****
**** Turkmen in Syria versus Russians in occupied Crimea
****

When Russian troops last year invaded, occupied, and annexed Ukraine's
Crimea peninsula, and also invaded and occupied eastern Ukraine, the
excuse given by Vladimir Putin was that Russia has the right to
protect ethnic Russians wherever they may be.

So now it's possible that this same argument is being used against
Russia. As has been widely reported, Russian warplanes have not been
bombing ISIS targets. Instead, they've been bombing so-called
"moderate" rebels fighting against Syria's president Bashar al-Assad,
including some groups being supported by the United States.

Some of those moderate rebels are in ethnic Turkmen villages that the
Russians have bombed. Turkey last week summoned the Russian
ambassador to protest the bombing of Turkmens in Syria. Turkmens
were originally from Turkmenistan in Central Asia.

On Tuesday, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said:

<QUOTE>"Everyone should respect Turkey’s right to defend its
own borders. ... We strongly condemn attacks focusing on the
places where Bayirbucak Turkmens live. We have relatives and
cognates living there."<END QUOTE>

Erdogan pointed out that the area there were no ISIS militants in the
Turkmen region.

In fact, Crimea is the homeland of the ethnic Tatars, who are also
(distant) relatives of the Turks, with the same Muslim religion, and
Tatars are being brutally treated by the Russians in occupied Crimea.
So, from Turkey's point of view, Turkey has as much right to protect
the Tatars in occupied Crimea as Russia has to protect the Russians.

It's possible, though unstated, that Erdogan felt that Turkey had the
right to shoot down the Russian warplane in defense of the Turkmens in
Syria. Today's Zaman (Istanbul) and CNN

****
**** Russia - Turkey crisis evokes memories of centuries of Crimean wars
****

There's been a lot of talk in the media about how Turkey and Russia
are such potentially great allies, and that if they could only get
past a minor issue or two, then together they could take down ISIS.
Such fatuous statements miss the point that the Turkish and Russian
people deeply hate each other, based on centuries of extremely bloody
wars, often centered on the Crimean peninsula which has been so much
in the news for the last two years.

If you want to list the most important wars of the last millennium,
one might mention the cataclysmic Mongol conquest of the Han Chinese
in 1206, the War of the Spanish Succession that climaxed in 1709, the
American Revolution that climaxed in 1782, the cataclysmic Zulu
conquest of tribes of southern Africa in the 1820s.

However, the top of the list is arguably the cataclysmic conquest of
Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire, by the Muslim
Ottoman Turks in 1453, renaming the city to Istanbul.

In 1472, Russia's Grand Prince Ivan III ("Ivan the Great") married
Sophia, the orphan niece of the last Greek Emperor of Constantinople.
At that time, with the destruction of Rome by the Visigoths, and the
destruction of Constantinople by the Ottomans, Ivan the Great decided
that Moscow was going to become "the third Rome," the home of the true
(or "orthodox") Christian faith, and the defender of Jerusalem from
the Ottomans. He gave himself the title "Czar" or "Tsar," derived
from the name of the Roman Emperor Caesar (as is the German word
"Kaiser").

The Tatars were a tribe of Mongols that, under the leadership of
Genghis Kahn, probably the greatest conqueror in the history of the
world, had defeated China in 1217, and then turned westward and
conquered much of southern Russia by 1227, where they adopted Crimea
as their homeland. The Crimean Tatars had intermingled with the
central Asian Turks, and spoke a Turkish language. By the 1400s, they
adopted Islam as their religion.

So here's a brief summary of what happened since then:

• In 1571, the Crimean Tatars attacked and sacked Moscow, while
  Russia was fighting the Livonian war against Poland, Sweden and
  Denmark, and had to be driven back by Ivan the Great's grandson, Ivan
  the Terrible, who had become Tsar in 1547.
  
• In 1783, Russia under Catherine the Great annexed Crimea in a war
  in which the Ottomans were defeated. The peace treaty (at Kuchuk
  Kaynarja) was extremely humiliating to the Ottomans, as it gave Russia
  the right to build an Orthodox Christian church in Istanbul and to
  protect Orthodox Christians in Istanbul. This right to protect "the
  church to be built in Constantinople and those who service it" was
  used by the Russians to become the protector of all Orthodox
  Christians living under Ottoman control. This proved to be a blank
  check for Russian interference in Ottoman affairs.
  
• The Crimean War (1853-55) was a disaster for both the Russians and
  the Turks, though more so for the Russians, who lost Crimea and other
  territories on the Black Sea. England and France were on the side of
  the Ottomans. ("Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred" is the
  well-known line from Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem, The Charge of the
  Light Brigade, describing the results of one particularly gruesome
  battle of the war, where 600 English soldiers were massacred.) After
  the war, the English and France remained heavily involved in Turkey's
  affairs.
  
• World War I saw the destruction of Russia's Tsarist empire and
  Turkey's Ottoman Empire. WW I was the generational crisis war for
  both countries, not WW II.
  
• Special mention should be made of Russia's recent history with
  Ukraine and Crimea: First, 7 million peasants died in Joseph Stalin's
  man-made famine in the 1930s. Next, when World War II began, Hitler
  invaded and occupied Ukraine, killing 5 million more people. Hitler
  withdrew from Ukraine in 1944, but then Stalin deported 200,000
  Crimean Tatars to Siberia. In recent years, descendants of the
  deported Crimeans have been demanding the right to reclaim their
  grandparents' land in Crimea, which is one of the reasons why Russia
  is treating Tatars harshly today.

Western politicians and journalists are pretty much oblivious to all
of this. But you can be sure that both Erdogan and Putin are fully
aware of it. And with all this history between them, and with Russia
now having occupied and annexed Crimea, there is no possibility Russia
and Turkey are going to become allies in any meaningful sense.

Long-time readers are aware that I've been writing for ten years that
Generational Dynamics predicts the world is headed for a Clash of
Civilizations world war, where the allies of the U.S. will including
India, Russia and Iran, while the enemies, led by China, will include
Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries.

The Turkish downing of a Russian warplane to provide protection of
Turkmen villages in Syria will certainly be an important milestone in
bringing that prediction to actualization. Russia is certain to
retaliate in some way, although it's not expected that Russia and
Turkey will go to war at this time, since there are diplomatic efforts
going on around the world.

Because of this crisis and the Syrian refugee crisis, in a move
described by Turkish journalists as "panicked," the European Union has
called an EU-Turkey summit meeting in Brussels on Sunday. This will
be the first such summit meeting since the EU and Turkey began their
tumultuous relationship in 1959.

According to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, the
summit will be held between the 28 member countries and Turkey, and
the topics to be discussed will certainly include the Turkey-Russia
crisis, as well as new discussions of Turkey joining the EU, and how
to stem the flow of refugees from Turkey into Greece. Today's Zaman (Istanbul) and Generational Dynamics: History of Islam versus Orthodox Christianity (2003)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Florence Nightingale, Ukraine, Crimea,
Russia, Vladimir Putin, Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ahmet Davutoglu,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Anatoly Kapustin, Russian Association of International Law,
Sergei Lavrov, Syria, Bayirbucak Turkmens, Turkmenistan,
Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, Istanbul, Ottomans,
Ivan the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Orthodox Christianity,
Genghis Kahn, Mongols, Genghis Kahn, Catherine the Great, Kuchuk Kaynarja,
Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade,
European Union, Donald Tusk, European Council

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Uh, referring to the Turkmen of the Near East as being from Turkmenistan is a bit of stretch. They (the Oghuz, the parent branch of the West Turkic groups) moved through it on their way from Kazakhstan. They're (the Turkmen of Turmenistan and the Turkmen of the Levant) not really the same ethnicity at all, at this point, and I would hesitate to use modern political boundaries to classify their roots like that. You could just as easily refer to them as being Turkish, Azerbaijani, Persian, or Kazakhstani in origin.

Is interesting that both Russia and Turkey are entering into 2Ts around this time/near future. By some counts, they were in a similar generational alignment when the Crimean War occurred. Do you have that down in your books as a Crisis War for them, or something else?

EDITED because it is important to be exactly right when being nitpicky. Also for grammar.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

> Uh, referring to the Turkmen of the Near East as being from
> Turkmenistan is a bit of stretch. They (the Oghuz, the parent
> branch of the West Turkic groups) moved through it on their way
> from Kazakhstan. They're (the Turkmen of Turmenistan and the
> Turkmen of the Levant) not really the same ethnicity at all, at
> this point, and I would hesitate to use modern political
> boundaries to classify their roots like that. You could just as
> easily refer to them as being Turkish, Azerbaijani, Persian, or
> Kazakhstani in origin.

> Is interesting that both Russia and Turkey are entering into 2Ts
> around this time/near future. By some counts, they were in a
> similar generational alignment when the Crimean War occurred. Do
> you have that down in your books as a Crisis War for them, or
> something else?

> EDITED because it is important to be exactly right when being
> nitpicky. Also for grammar.

I have the Crimean War and WW I as crisis wars for them, and both of
them in a 5T at the present time. Same for Saudi Arabia, Morocco and
Mexico.