Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

(03-05-2020, 11:08 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]...

****
**** Putin's objectives in Syria
****

Vladimir Putin is the most dishonest of the participants in that
everything he says is a lie.  So we can only infer his objectives:

• In exchange for supporting al-Assad, Russia now has two
  military bases in Syria, the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim
  airbase.  When al-Assad begged Putin for military help in 2015, Putin
  agreed to help, and received control of the two military bases in
  return.
  
  
• Putin would like to split Turkey away from Nato.  This is the only
  reason that Putin is even talking to Erdogan.
  
  
• This is more speculative, but I believe that Putin would take
  great pleasure in seeing those four million civilians in Idlib cross
  over into Turkey, and then cross over into Europe.
  

-Putin also would have liked to occupy the Deir Al-ZoorAl oil wells so that Assad can pay him back.

(03-09-2020, 02:11 PM)JDG 66 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-05-2020, 11:08 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]...

****
**** Putin's objectives in Syria
****

Vladimir Putin is the most dishonest of the participants in that
everything he says is a lie.  So we can only infer his objectives:

• In exchange for supporting al-Assad, Russia now has two
  military bases in Syria, the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim
  airbase.  When al-Assad begged Putin for military help in 2015, Putin
  agreed to help, and received control of the two military bases in
  return.
  
  
• Putin would like to split Turkey away from Nato.  This is the only
  reason that Putin is even talking to Erdogan.
  
  
• This is more speculative, but I believe that Putin would take
  great pleasure in seeing those four million civilians in Idlib cross
  over into Turkey, and then cross over into Europe.
  

-Putin also would have liked to occupy the Deir Al-ZoorAl oil wells so that Assad can pay him back.

Good point!

** 09-Mar-2020 World View: Seasonal flu vs Covid-19

Guest Wrote:> I’m certainly not an expert, but here’s the things I’ve noticed:

> 1. Our current flu shot’s efficiency is about 30 to 60%. These are
> the best vaccines they have; the same ones are given to movie
> stars, nobility, politicians and middle class alike. None of them
> are 100% efficient. This means that out of every 100 people who
> gets a flu shot, 40 to 70 of them will still get the flu. The most
> logical explanation as to why vaccines are so inefficient is virus
> mutation. By the time the vaccine is developed and tested and sent
> out to be manufactured, the virus has mutated. That does not mean
> the vaccine won’t protect you; it means the potency is less
> effective against a virus that is fighting back. The un-mutated
> virus is a heavy bag and the mutated virus is a boxing match.

> 2. There are usually 2 to 4 strains every year covered by the flu
> shot. Each strain in it may have more or less efficiency than
> another strain in it. Depending on the strain that’s going around,
> you may have strong efficiency protection or just a little. All in
> all, and simply put, they work together to help keep you from
> contracting one strain when you might have contracted another
> strain. And also simply put, if you are one of the 40 to 70 who
> contract a strain in the flu shot, the vaccine can help you fight
> off the strain you contracted, so the severity is not as bad as it
> could be. I’m a pro boxer and the virus is an amateur. You are not
> totally out of luck if you contract a strain not covered by your
> flu shot. There is evidence that your body develops defenses to
> help you fight against them too. However, there is no reporting
> that I’m aware of that this is the case or not the case with
> Covid-19. Since older and/or people with preexisting conditions
> are more likely to get flu shots, I suspect this is not the case
> for Covid-19. I’ve heard many health reporters saying wash your
> hands, stay 6 feet away from people, don’t touch your face,
> etc. I’ve not heard one of them say, oh and by the way, get a flu
> shot. I don’t know, maybe they did but I didn’t hear it. But who
> knows, the flu shot might be the reason Covid-19 is not killing
> 25% of us. This could be an even match.

> 3. So to put this in context, I had my flu shot this year. I have
> a 30 to 60% chance of catching that nasty flu that has been going
> around my city since November and still is.. So far, I’ve been
> lucky or protected or both to not get it. I attribute some of my
> luck to my vigilance. If I do catch one of those viruses, my body
> has defenses to help me from getting very ill from them and I have
> less than a 0.1% chance I will die. On the other hand, I have a
> 100% chance that I will get Covid-19 when I am exposed to it and
> vigilance may not be enough. If I get it, there is a 20% chance it
> will be severe and a 3 to 4% chance I will die. By the time there
> is a vaccine for it, it might mutate. I am fighting a boxer who is
> way better than me.

> 4. A mask won’t protect you but it will protect health care
> workers on the front line. You don’t need one because they don’t
> have enough. My boxing opponent cheats.

> 5. What happened to 24 days for exposure to symptoms? It got a lot
> of press for a while. Could it be because 24 days is VERY hard and
> costly to quarantine? My trainer just bet against me.

> 6. They are telling us that it is unlikely that a person without
> symptoms is contagious. Well, tell that to all those people on the
> cruise ships who were exposed before anyone had symptoms and then
> they died. How many people did we allow into this country because
> they didn’t have a fever? Shadow boxers, everywhere.

> 7. Excuse me, but my opponent just pulled my boxers down. Dirty
> fighter.

This is very interesting information and analysis. Thank you for
posting it.

I've never had a flu shot. I had some really bad cases of the flu
when I was a kid, but by my 20s, they were never serious. I would
get a very severe stomachache, so I would go to bed with a heating
pad on my stomach, and within a couple of hours I would be OK except
possibly for a head cold -- and I took care of that with Vitamin C as
I've previously described.

So every year the doctor asks me whether I want a flu shot, and he
lectures me on why it's important, and I say that I've never had a
flu shot, and don't really want to get started now, since I believe
that multiple illnesses have helped me build up immunity to the
seasonal flu. I sometimes wonder if they should take some of my
blood and use it to develop a "universal flu vaccine."

So this has made me personally very blasé about Covid-19. I don't
take any particular precautions, except that I do wash my hands
more often than I used to. And when something on my face itches,
I scratch the itch, even though I'm not supposed to.

So you say, "On the other hand, I have a 100% chance that I will get
Covid-19 when I am exposed to it," and I feel the same way. I suppose
that I could wash my hands more often, or that I could just suffer
with the itch and let it drive me crazy, but basically I don't believe
that it would make any difference except, perhaps, to postpone getting
Covid-19 for a few extra days. But like you, I expect to get it. And
since I'm an "elderly" person, there's a good chance that I'm going to
die from it. A doctor once told me, in answer to a question: "John,
you have to die of something." So why not Covid-19?

** 10-Mar-2020 World View: Wuhan Coronavirus Covid-19 transmission

On CNBC this morning, there was an interview with Michael Osterholm,
Director of University Of Minnesota Center For Infectious Disease
Research and Policy, in which he was critical of people who were
underestimating the potency of the Wuhan Coronavirus. Excerpts (my
transcription):

Quote:> "This virus is a highly infectious virus. There was a
> study released yesterday that showed people are highly infectious
> before they ever get sick, the virus level is over 1000 times
> higher in their throats than it is with SARS. And in a sense,
> this is just gonna keep spreading. We have to stop fooling people
> into thinking that this only by close contact or I have to be
> within two or three feet. We're gonna see much more transmission,
> and our job I think is to get the country through this -- is make
> sure that they understand is that there will be widespread
> transmission of this virus around the country and that what we
> have to do is keep people who are at high risk of having bad
> outcomes -- older, underlying health conditions -- from being
> exposed. ...

> We've really not set the agenda for the American public in a
> realistic way. Right now we're approaching this like it's a
> Washington DC blizzard -- for a couple of days we're shut down.
> This is actually a coronavirus winter, and we're in the first
> week. We're gonna see transmission for many, many more weeks to
> come. We have to prepare for that."

As usual these days, there's always something to laugh at. I live
near Kendall Square in Cambridge, where there are thousands of young
MIT students mixed in with old people, many of whom have lived there
for decades. I can hardly wait to see how the Cambridge police are
going to keep people like me from being exposed to the virus.

Nonetheless, Osterholm's highly pessimistic analysis is consistent
with the most pessimistic of all the hundreds of thousands or reports
that I've heard and read in the last few months.

As I'm typing this, I'm listening some financial analyst idiot saying
that the virus epidemic has already been resolved in China, and so all
we have to do is follow "the Chinese playbook," and the whole problem
will be resolved in America in a few weeks. This is what passes
for intelligent analysis on tv these days.

A lot of people on tv are saying the crisis should end in a few weeks
because of warmer spring and summer weather. I've been saying for
weeks that the experience in Singapore, which is right on the equator,
does not support that view. Here are some articles that discuss that
view:

-- Coronavirus ‘highly sensitive’ to high temperatures,
but don’t bank on summer killing it off, studies say
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/...ank-summer
(SCMP, 8-Mar-2020)

-- WHO urges countries to make containing coronavirus 'highest
priority'
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-healt...SKBN20T2BH
(Reuters, 6-Mar-2020)

According to these studies, the best we can hope for is that transmission
will slow down in the summer, but not stop. And anyway, the weather
will be cold again in the fall.

According to the World Health Organization:

Quote:> "We do not know yet what the activity or the behaviour
> of this virus will be in different climatic conditions. We have to
> assume that the virus will continue to have the capacity to
> spread.

> It is a false hope to say yes it will just disappear in
> summertime, like influenza virus. ... There is no evidence right
> now to suggest that that will happen."

The corollary is that there is no reason to believe that stock prices
have reached a bottom. A lot of investors are obviously living in a
dreamland, and at some point the truth will sink in that this crisis
will not be over until next year at the earliest, and that realization
will be an enormous shock to them, and may result in a full-scale
financial panic at that time.

P.S.: For those of you who enjoy thinking about apocalyptic scenarios
(and you know who you are), how about this one: Donald Trump and Joe
Biden are campaigning for president, and both of them die from Wuhan
Coronavirus this summer.

(03-10-2020, 09:33 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]P.S.: For those of you who enjoy thinking about apocalyptic scenarios
(and you know who you are), how about this one: Donald Trump and Joe
Biden are campaigning for president, and both of them die from Wuhan
Coronavirus this summer.

You caught me. A part of me really doesn't want that to happen (it would be messed up if I did)... but it would speed up the Fourth Turning, and we just gotta rip that band-aid at some point, y'know? Whoever becomes president after would determine both Biden and Trump's legacy, and maybe we'd enter the 2nd stage of the 4T.

** 10-Mar-2020 World View: Zimbabwe life expectancy

Guest Wrote:> A doctor speaking of the current novel virus mentioned that 20% of
> the adults under 50 in Kenya had AIDS. FFS. He mentioned that TB
> was out of conrol and largely incurable strains were circulating
> there and in other parts of black Africa (ahem, I mean
> 'sub-Saharan Africa) and that if the novel virus hot it it would
> be catastrophic. Ah, yeah. Well, at least their imperialist white
> masters won't be there to oppress them, but the whites will be the
> first ones they shout for when they are in trouble.

> In 2003 Zimbabwe was going through hyperinflation and mass
> starvation. With skyrocketing AIDS rates, TB, cholera, and
> everything else, life expectancy fell to 36. That's right,
> 36. Well, that is until the black government threw 'racist'
> international the agency in charge if determining life expectancy
> out of the country. Now the Zimbabwean government claims life
> expectancy is 72 or something like that.

Zimbabwe's life expectancy crashed in the early 2000s because of the
democidal policies of Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, from the Shona tribe,
freely tortured, slaughtered, raped and jailed members of his hated
political opponents, the Nbdele tribe. This included Operation
Gukurahundi, the genocidal war crime that brought in North Korean
soldiers to help exterminate tens of thousands of civilians in the
hated Ndebele tribe in the early 1980s.

In the late 1990s, Mugabe started his indigenization program, where he
confiscated farms run by whites and gave them to his corrupt Shona
political cronies who didn't know how to run a farm. Thus, Zimbabwe
went from being the breadbasket of southern Africa to being an almost
total basket case. Unfortunately, this indigenization program is
still continuing, which is why Zimbabwe continues to be an ongoing
disaster.

Here's an article published in 2006:

-- Life expectancy / Zimbabweans have 'shortest lives'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4890508.stm
(BBC, 8-Apr-2006)

It gives the life expectancy for women at 34, and men at 37.

Since that time, the life expectancy has gradually increased
(presumably because Mugabe's corrupt Shona cronies may have learned a
little bit about farming), and it's now around 60.

** Zimbabwe Life Expectancy 1950-2020
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ZW...expectancy

---- Related article:

** 18-Jan-19 World View -- Zimbabwe returns to violence of Mugabe era with police beatings and abductions
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e190118

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: Wuhan coronavirus outlook becomes more serious

News coverage of the coronavirus emergency is becoming a lot more
serious. I've even heard one analyst warn that within a few months US
hospitals will be overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of seriously
ill Covid-19 patients.

Here are some news items:

• The number of US cases exceeds 1,000, eight times more than a
  week earlier, with 31 deaths.
  
  
• Seattle Washington is banning events with more than 250
  people.
  
  
• The number of cases in Massachusetts is 92, doubling in one
  day.
  
  
• Chancellor Angela Merkel said 60%-70% of Germans, 58 million
  people, will eventually become infected.
  
  
• More and more schools and businesses are closing, or asking people
  to work from home.
  
  
• The number of layoffs is growing.
  
  
• Iran is waking up to the disaster the country is facing.

Covid-19 is spreading rapidly across Europe and North America, with
the number of cases growing exponentially with a high coefficient, and
people are beginning to understand that this emergency is extremely
serious.

The stock market is going to keep falling. However, we haven't yet
seen a full scale disorderly panic with forced selling. The way
things are going, that could happen any time.

The point is that the public mood is rapidly changing in numerous
countries. When the public mood starts changing rapidly, anything can
happen, including a panic and even a war.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the doubling of confirmed cases in the past week. The first commercial Covid-19 test went on the market exactly a week ago, last Wednesday, and three are now available. I think the rapidity of the increase may be more a function of test availability than anything else.

I agree that irrational panic has the potential to do a lot of economic, and potentially societal, harm.

I was looking at an article about the Marburg virus. It has been discovered in bats in west Africa.

How do you quarantine bats?

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: Bats

(03-11-2020, 12:56 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: [ -> ]> I was looking at an article about the Marburg virus. It has been
> discovered in bats in west Africa.

> How do you quarantine bats?

What’s the first thing bats learn at school?
The alpha-bat.

What do you get if you cross a computer with a vampire bat?
Love at first byte.

What do you call a bat in a belfry?
A dingbat.

Why do vampire bats drink blood?
Because coffee keeps them awake at night.

How does a girl vampire flirt?
She bats her eyes.

What did the bat say to the vampire?
“You suck”.

• The Bat Mobile

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: Growing crisis between Greece and Turkey

DaKardii Wrote:> John, in addition to China, there are two other regions that I
> think could explode this year because of coronavirus: The Balkans
> and the Middle East.

> In the Balkans, Greece and Turkey are moving dangerously close to
> war because of the migrant crisis at their border. Greece has
> deployed its military to all Turkish border outposts, and there
> have been reports of live ammunition being fired. Meanwhile, the
> Turkish military is assisting the migrants across the border and
> even arming them with tear gas canisters to use against Greek
> soldiers. It has also deployed drones to the border and is pushing
> back migrants trying to cross back into Turkey. Erdogan's
> government has been engaging in increasingly belligerent rhetoric
> towards not only Greece, but the entire continent of Europe, in
> response to this crisis. It could only be a matter of time before
> tensions escalate into a full-blown border conflict.

> Right now, there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in
> Turkey. But the border crisis has already escalated to this point
> without it. If/when the virus strikes Turkey, it likely
> will make the crisis much worse, as Turkey would then have a much
> greater incentive to remove the migrants from its
> territory.

I've written about this a number of times in relation to the crisis in
Idlib, Syria, but as you point out, then tension between Turkey and
Greece, which is millennia old, is getting worse.

Just today, Turkey's Erdogan referred to the Greeks as Nazis:

Quote:> "There is no difference with what the Nazis did and
> the images from the border with Greece. To open fire, fire tear
> gas and use boiling water on innocent people whose only aim is to
> save their lives and build a better future for their children is
> barbaric in the true meaning of the word."

Erdogan is really pissed off that the EU has repeatedly refused to
honor its commitments to Turkey, and so Turkey is now abandoning its
commitments to Greece and the EU.

• Thousands of migrants in Turkey have crowded along the border
  with Greece since the end of February.

-- With Nazi reference, Turkey's Erdogan escalates dispute with Greece
over migrants
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/eu-greece-...-1.5493516
(AP, 11-Mar-2020)

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: Growing between Russia and Saudi Arabia

DaKardii Wrote:> As for the Middle East, the coronavirus played a central role in
> the breakdown in negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Russia over
> oil production. Saudi Arabia has responded by dramatically
> increasing its production, causing oil prices to plummet. This has
> created a lose-lose situation for Saudi Arabia. With the virus
> having crippled the global travel industry, global demand for oil
> will fall over the next few months. Saudi Arabia will then be
> stuck with an extremely large oil supply that's not being bought,
> which will drive prices down further. There is zero doubt that
> Saudi Arabia will suffer severe economic losses as a consequence
> of this decision. But that's not the end of it. Saudi Arabia's
> economy was already fragile to begin with, due to the previous oil
> price collapses of 2014-15, and massive debts incurred by its
> proxy wars against Iran. I've already mentioned on multiple
> occasions that the IMF has projected a Saudi bankruptcy by this
> year. And look where we are. The coronavirus may well be the event
> that sparks this bankruptcy.

> A Saudi bankruptcy would cause a severe disruption of the balance
> of power in the Middle East, likely severe enough to spark a major
> war.

I've heard numerous analysts discuss this situation between Russia
and Saudi Arabia. Some of them say that Russia has the advantage,
others say that the Saudis have the advantage. The only thing that
everyone seems to agree with is that both Russia and Saudi Arabia
want to screw the US shale oil producers, and they seem to be doing
that successfully.

The news today is that both Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates
(UAE) are going to substantially produce oil production, in order to
force Russia to come back to the bargaining table, and rejoin the
OPEC+ (= OPEC + Russia). Many people doubt that will work.

Oil prices have been crashing since the beginning of March,
as shown by the following chart:

• Oil prices have been crashing since the beginning of March

-- Oil War Escalates Again After Saudi and U.A.E. Promise Flood of
Crude
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-war-e...25389.html
(BB, 11-Mar-2020)

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: Buying oil

FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> Isn't the obvious thing for the US to do being to pay the shale
> oil companies a "stay alive" rate, while buying up a shitload of
> this "cheap overseas oil" and stashing it into the strategic
> reserve, until one (or both) of the "race to the bottom" oil
> producers can't sustain their production rates any longer?

> Why would we NOT save our production and reserve capability?

> Why would we buy expensive oil ("ours") when we could buy cheap
> oil ("theirs")?

> I'm sure I'm missing something, but it's probably just
> bureaucratic nonsense and BS.

> So, what am I missing?

Well, here are some things that you're missing:

• We have a free market economy. We sometimes bail out
  specific companies (like GM), but generally we don't bail out all
  companies in an entire industry.
  
  
• Many of the fracking companies are "malinvestments," and bailing
  them out would be throwing good money after bad. Remember
  Solyndra?
  
  
• In the US-China trade wars, one of the Chinese practices that
  we're saying must end is the government subsidizing entire industries,
  in order to undercut American manufacturers and producers. So we
  don't want to do what we're criticizing China for.

On the other hand, this is an emergency situation, and it may be
necessary to take emergency actions.

However, don't be surprised if China retaliates.

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: NBA Season

The remainder of the NBA season has been suspended / canceled, because
one player tested positive for coronavirus.

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: Investor sentiment swings from complacency to panic

Quote:> “The ferocity of the sell-off reflects a massive swing
> in investor sentiment from complacency to panic,” said Paul
> O’Connor, head of multi-asset at Janus Henderson
> Investors. “Whereas just a few weeks ago, investors were
> anticipating a v-shaped recovery in global growth, they are now
> pricing in a high probability of a global recession.”

> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...rkets-wrap

This is the change in mood that I was referring to when I wrote
earlier today: "The point is that the public mood is rapidly changing
in numerous countries. When the public mood starts changing rapidly,
anything can happen, including a panic and even a war."

** 11-Mar-2020 World View: Coronavirus in Massachusetts

I usually don't watch the local (Boston) news, but I'm watching it
this evening. There's one story after another of schools closing,
businesses closing, etc. In one case, a student tested positive for
coronavirus, so they're closing the school for a couple of days, but
the story added that he was on the school bus with a lot of other
kids. So it looks like the virus is expanding rapidly in
Massachusetts. Things should look pretty different by next week.

** 12-Mar-2020 World View: Gold falls

According to one financial analyst, the reason that gold has fallen
$57 today is because investors are being forced to sell gold to meet
margin calls.

** 12-Mar-2020 World View: Skepticism continues about China's coronavirus figures

• Is China telling the truth?

In America and the West, businesses are scrambling to do what it takes
to stay in business. If required, they're canceling events or closing
business locations to prevent spread of the virus. They're reworking
supply chains, implementing technology, dispersing employees or having
them work from home, and so forth. This is standard behavior in a
country like the US with free markets, where each business wants to
maximize profits and keep employees busy and happy. There are similar
motivations for governments and governmental organizations, who are
primarily motivated to maintain stability in their constituents.

The same sorts of motivations apply to businesses and organizations in
China, but they have an additional motivation: Meet the demands of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have no more Wuhan Coronavirus
infections.

I'm reminded of what happened in Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in
1958-59, where each region was required to meet quotas for crop
harvests. Here's how I described what happened in my book, "War
Between China and Japan":

Quote: "Early in 1959, and again in July 1959, officials in
Mao's government had begun to see that the program was failing.
Their objections were rewarded with punishment. Mao was
determined to follow his ideological course, no matter what else
happened. The result was disaster.

The individual peasants and managers were required to report the
size of the crop harvests up the line to the central government,
but there was no way to guarantee that the reports were accurate.

On the one hand, there was no economic incentive for the farmers
and managers to provide accurate reports, since everyone in a
socialist society is paid the same ("according to his need").

On the other hand, there was no independent check of the crop
harvest estimates. If the population had been much smaller, then
the central government might have been able to send out enough
bureaucrats to check the reports, or at least do spot checks. But
with a billion peasants, no such meaningful checks were possible.

For the farmers and managers themselves, there was plenty of
political incentive to overreport the crop harvest results.

As a result, even though actual crop yield in 1959 was a little
smaller than it had been in 1958, the crop reports added up to an
enormous increase in production, more than a doubling of output.

By the time that Chairman Mao was finally ready to accept the
situation, it was too late. There was too little food to feed
everyone, and tens of millions died of starvation."

So my feeling is that the current situation with coronavirus
infections is similar to Mao's Great Leap Forward. Individual
villages, towns and provinces are required to report the number of
virus infections up the line to the central government. But they
have no motivation to tell the truth, same as in Mao's day.

We know that the CCP is still censoring media, and punishing anyone
who dares to describe what's actually going on. It's quite likely
that any regional manager who reports an outbreak would be fired, or
even punished. So it seems quite likely that infections and outbreaks
are being hidden, or reported as other kinds of illnesses.

Here's one analysis from Thailand:

Quote: "China Continues To Lie? China Says No New Coronavirus
Cases Nationwide Outside Of Hubei!

Source: Coronavirus News Mar 10, 2020 2 days ago

Coronavirus Updates: China government authorities today announced
that there was no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases
outside of Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, for the
third straight day, while major Chinese cities remained on alert
for imported infections.

Seriously? Out of a population of 1.4 billion Chinese, where in
the rural sites, people are filthy with no proper regards for
hygiene standards or social behavior.

Doctors in provinces like Helionjang, Xinjiang, Henan and Shanxi
are telling a different story. According to a stringer,there is an
ever increasing amount of patients coming in with respiratory
symptoms but doctors have been given guidelines as to what
medications to prescribe and to admit them if serious but not to
conduct any diagnostic tests directly involved with Covid-19! A
check with hospitals in 4 provinces also showed that Covid-19 test
kits are not available in any of these hospitals.

Health authorities and medical entities have been given strict
warnings not to talk to the media and foreign entities while local
media have been prohibited from reporting on any local health
issues except official releases sent out to them.

Acording to the stringer, the Chinese government in its cover ups
has also started a massive PR programme including paying an
American writer who has been residing in Shanghai for years with
his Chinese wife and adopted children to write a few fake
conspiracy theory articles claiming that the new coronavirus
originated from the US. The Chinese government is also spending a
lot in buying sponsored content and ads on various newspapers
worldwide including one despicable English media in Thailand to
promote China discreetly.

The Chinese authorities reported that there 19 new cases of
coronavirus infections on Monday (March 9), the National Health
Commission said on Tuesday, down from 40 cases a day earlier.

Of the new cases, 17 were in Wuhan, the provincial capital of
Hubei which is under lockdown, while one was in Beijing and one
other in Guangdong due to people arriving from abroad, according
to the health authority.

Besides that, there was no new cases nationwide besides Hubei for
the last 3 days and that all new cases were basically foreigners
bringing the virus into China!"

https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/ch...from-china-

This describes exactly what I would expect from China. The Chinese
lie about everything. They've hidden the size of this epidemic for
months, and they censor any negative information. There have been
several reports that factories are re-opening as ghosts, with no
production but using electricity to give the appearance of being
normal. Furthermore, the CCP officials are afraid that they're going
to be blamed for what's happening. The full story has yet to be told.

John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan:
Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book
2), June 2019. Paperback: 331 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/

(03-11-2020, 08:59 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 11-Mar-2020 World View: NBA Season

The remainder of the NBA season has been suspended / canceled, because
one player tested positive for coronavirus.

this is not accurate - the reason the league has suspended games is because it's believed that the infected player has been infected for up to five previous games, leading to those five teams going into self-isolation (as well as the team the infected player is on); so now six teams are in self-isolation.

** 12-Mar-2020 World View: Learning from history

Burner Prime Wrote:> Though initially, holding back, news orgs have opened up with both
> barrels, criticizing every move made by Trump and his
> administration in connection with the Cornonavirus, and how it
> could make or break his Presidency. At the same time, they give
> high praise to the senile pedophile Biden and his more
> "Presidential" response (Did he even write his statement?).

> The attitude of the press (or the puppet masters who give them
> their script) can signal one of two things: 1. They don't think
> Coronavirus is a serious threat and are now simply weaponizing it
> to gain political power 2. Coronavirus is serious and John is
> wrong about the behavior of modern populations in time of crisis

> I and others here have argued that if the US enters some
> existential crisis or WWIII begins, the US population will shred
> into pieces with left and right factions going into open conflict
> (as law enforcement is drained of resources or preoccupied), with
> Mexicans either A. Opting out of the fighting and heading south
> and/or B. Mexico annexes southern parts of the US as part of the
> Aztlan plan while the US is exhausted and otherwise unable to
> control the South. Any other smaller ethic immigrant populations
> will bail out or join one of the two major factions, or get mowed
> down.

> John has argued that in time of crisis, the US will all unite
> behind Trump (or whoever is President) regardless of race or creed
> or national origin as they have in the past.

> I don't think the past serves as any kind of predictor as to how
> the US population will behave because the demographics are nothing
> like they were in WWI or WWII. Foreign recent-immigrant
> populations have no stake in the outcome or existence of America,
> only in what they can extract from her. Few to none will fight and
> die to defend it, but many will gleefully pick over her corpse
> when the dust settles.

> So either Coronavirus is seen as no big deal by the puppet masters
> and it's back to normal, using every weapon at their disposal to
> discredit Trump and his team in order to take power, or the
> Coronavirus threat is real, the economic devastation is real - but
> none of that really matters, the value of life has approached
> zero, they scorch the Earth - and end up the party in
> power.

The past always serves as a predictor of how the population will
behave. That's the core of Generational Dynamics.

The country will unite behind Trump or whoever is president, if the
country is facing an existential crisis.

Something you're completely missing is that Democrats and Republicans
are already showing signs of uniting behind Trump. A couple of months
ago, the Democrats were impeaching Trump. Today, they're working with
Trump to come up with bill to deal with coronavirus. The trend is
already evident.