Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 23-Feb-17 World View -- China preparing to install long-range missiles in South China Sea

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China preparing to install long-range missiles in South China Sea
  
• China's ASEAN neighbors express increasing anxiety over China's illegal militarization
  

****
**** China preparing to install long-range missiles in South China Sea
****


Chinese military activity around Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, May 21, 2015 (US Navy)

China has built artificial islands and military bases, annexing
regions belonging to other countries, all in violation of
international law, and specifically declared illegal by the United
Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague last year,
but that isn't stopping China from continuing its massive illegal and
dangerous military buildup in the South China Sea.

On Wednesday, reports emerged from unnamed US intelligence officials
that China has built on its artificial islands more than twenty
buildings designed to hold long-range surface-to-air missiles. The
buildings are concrete structures with retractable roofs. The
structures appear to be 20 meters (66 feet) long and 10 meters (33
feet) high.

When asked, China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang evaded the
issue by saying, "China carrying out normal construction activities on
its own territory, including deploying necessary and appropriate
territorial defense facilities, is a normal right under international
law for sovereign nations."

It's always so depressing to have to write these stories where China
claims protection under international law when it's wildly violating
international law and repeating the acts of the Nazis by annexing
other countries' territories. This could only have led to a world war
then, and it's going to lead to a world war now.

This week, China also announced that it will revise its 1984 Maritime
Safety Law, with the purpose of barring selected foreign ships from
passing through the South China Sea, which China claims. It's
believed that the changes are intended to target the United States.

Foreign ships that enter without approval will be fined
300,000-500,000 yuan ($43,706-72,844) and those violating Chinese laws
will be expelled, presumably by means of military force. "China's
waters are open to foreign ships as long as they do not damage the
waters' safety, order, or China's sovereignty," according to a Chinese
official.

These actions come as an American aircraft-carrier strike group led by
USS Carl Vinson conducting "routine" naval and air operations in the
South China Sea this week similar to activities that have been
performed for years to protect freedom of navigation in the South
China Sea, through which about $5 trillion worth of trade passes each
year. However, China calls these operations a "threat to China."

The two Chinese actions this week -- installing long-range
surface-to-air missiles and planning to military action targeting
foreign ships in the South China Sea -- bring the region and the world
closer to war.

Reuters and VOA and Global Times (Beijing) and Lawfare and Asia Times

****
**** China's ASEAN neighbors express increasing anxiety over China's illegal militarization
****

Chas Freeman, a former assistant secretary of defense, said that
China's apparent installation of long-range surface-to-air missiels is
an "unfortunate, but not (an) unpredictable development," and said
that the purpose of these buildings is not to signal President Trump,
as some journalists are suggesting:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"There is a tendency here in Washington to imagine
> that it's all about us, but we are not a claimant in the South
> China Sea. We are not going to challenge China's possession of
> any of these land features in my judgment. If that's going to
> happen, it's going to be done by the Vietnamese, or ... the
> Filipinos ... or the Malaysians, who are the three
> counter-claimants of note."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Indeed, China's neighbors in ASEAN (the Association of South East
Asian Nations) are increasingly expressing concerns about China's
military activities. Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto
Yasay Jr. said on Tuesday:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The ASEAN ministers have been unanimous in their
> expression of concern about what they see as the militarization of
> the region. In so far as certain reclamation of certain features
> built on the South China Sea that had been completed, they (ASEAN
> ministers) have noticed, very unsettlingly, that China has
> installed weapons systems in these facilities that they have
> established."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The complaints by the Philippines are particularly telling, because
president Rodrigo R. Duterte last year made a very public spectacle of
"throwing the United States" out of the Philippines, and seeking to
replace the US with China. As it's turned out, Duterte has been
unable to eject the US because of opposition within his own
government, and because of anxiety over China's increasingly hostile
activities in the South China Sea.

The Philippine government is becoming particularly anxious over
Scarborough Shoal, which has been a Philippine fishing ground for
centuries. China has taken military control of the region around
Scarborough Shoal, but has not yet built an artificial island or
military base there, as it has in the Spratly Islands. An attempt by
China to build a military base in that region could generate a strong
nationalist backlash in the Philippines, with unpredictable political
results.

A military base on Scarborough Shoal would effectively sit on the
doorstep of Subic, where US and Philippine forces are based. China
could extend its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
capabilities into the eastern reaches of the South China Sea by
placing an over-the-horizon radar system at Scarborough as it has done
on some of its possessions in the Spratlys. The shoal also commands
the northeast exit of the sea, so a Chinese military outpost there
could stop other countries' navies from traveling through the South
China Sea.

Vietnam is well aware that its military stands little or no chance in
a naval battle versus China, having already lost a naval battle to
China in 1988. Vietnam has been adopting an asymmetric strategy of
sea-denial. This strategy uses missiles and submarines to deny China
access to the same South China Sea regions where China is denying
access to the Vietnamese.

Vietnam has just received a fleet or Russian-build diesel-electric
submarines, equipped for sea denial in the traditional sense with
torpedoes and mines, as well as Russian-made Klub-S sea-launched
land-attack cruise missiles (SLCM) that can hit targets as far away as
three hundred kilometers.

India is in talks with Vietnam to sell them short range surface-to-air
missiles. Nearly half of India's trade passes through the South China
Sea, and its government is taking steps to maintain freedom of
navigation and overflight.

Increasingly, we've been seeing an alliance among several countries --
India, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, and Russia -- to take steps to
guarantee that the South China Sea remains open to everyone.

The populations of China and all of these countries today are in a
highly emotional, nationalistic state, and this military buildup on
all sides cannot end up in any way but a major war.

Asia One (Singapore) and CNN and The Diplomat (2-Feb) and Reuters and New Indian Express

Related Articles

• China-Philippines détente unravels over Scarborough Shoal (19-Feb-2017)
  
  
• Philippines to reject US use of its bases for South China Sea patrols (09-Dec-2016)
  
  
• Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte in comic dance with China (23-Oct-2016)
  
  
• Philippines humiliates China in harsh Hague Tribunal ruling over South China Sea (13-Jul-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, South China Sea,
United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration, PCA,
Geng Shuang, USS Carl Vinson, Chas Freeman, Perfecto Yasay Jr.,
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN,
Rodrigo R. Duterte, Scarborough Shoal, Vietnam, India

Permanent web link to this article
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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 24-Feb-17 World View -- Malaysia - N. Korea relations turn toxic over assassination of Kim Jong-un's half brother

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Malaysia continues investigation of Kim Jong-nam's death, despite N. Korea objections
  
• North Korea blames the assassination of Kim Jong-nam on South Korea
  
• Relations between Malaysia and North Korea become vitriolic
  
• BBC reporter Mike Embley is completely full of crap
  

****
**** Malaysia continues investigation of Kim Jong-nam's death, despite N. Korea objections
****


North Korea's ambassador Kang Chol tells the press on Monday that Malaysia is 'colluding with hostile forces,' referring to South Korea. (Reuters)

Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un,
died last week in Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia. Malaysian
investigators have determined that two women used a handkerchief to
apply poison to Jong-nam in the middle of the airport, and he died
several minutes later from the poison on the way to the hospital. The
two women are in custody.

Malaysia's police have identified either North Koreans in connection
with the assassination, two of whom are in custody, while two others
have fled the country.

Two other North Koreans wanted for questioning are hiding out in the
North Korean embassy. One is a senior diplomat, Hyon Kwang Song. The
other works for the state-owned Air Koryo airline. Malaysia has asked
North Korean officials to make both of them available for questioning,
a request that has not been granted and may never be granted.
Straits Times (Singapore) and NBC News

****
**** North Korea blames the assassination of Kim Jong-nam on South Korea
****

North Korea's state-run news agency KCNA published its own version of
"a citizen of the DPRK [North Korea]" died. The KCNA report does not
give his name (Kim Jong-nam), and does not say that he's related to
the president. Here are some excerpts from the KCNA report:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Pyongyang: A citizen of the DPRK bearing a diplomatic
> passport suddenly fell into a state of shock before boarding an
> airliner and died on the way to a hospital in Malaysia on February
> 13.
>
> At that time the Foreign Ministry of Malaysia and the hospital
> side informed the DPRK embassy in Kuala Lumpur exercising the
> right to consular protection of DPRK citizens that they confirmed
> he died of heart stroke and decided to transfer his body to the
> embassy and get it cremated.
>
> So the DPRK embassy confirmed his identity and asked the Malaysian
> side to transfer his body.
>
> However, no sooner had south Korean conservative media published a
> false report that he was “poisoned to death”, citing it as “source
> from the government” that night, then the Malaysian secret police
> got involved in the case and recklessly made it an established
> fact, only to make matters complicated.
>
> The DPRK embassy made it clear that autopsy is not necessary as
> his death had already been confirmed as the one due to heart
> stroke and autopsy should never be done as he enjoyed
> extraterritorial right according to the Vienna Convention as a
> carrier of diplomatic passport.
>
> Nevertheless, the Malaysian side, in disregard of the DPRK’s just
> demand and international law, made an autopsy of the body without
> any prior agreement with the DPRK side and its presence. Moreover,
> the Malaysian side clamored for the second autopsy without
> publishing the results of the first autopsy."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

The KCNA goes on to say that the whole thing was a plot of the South
Korean government:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"What merits more serious attention is the fact that
> the unjust acts of the Malaysian side are timed to coincide with
> the anti-DPRK conspiratorial racket launched by the south Korean
> authorities. ...
>
> On February 14, a day after his death, Chongwadae of south Korea
> kicked up a fuss over it and the south Korean authorities were
> busy holding a ministerial meeting on February 16, showing an
> excessive response. Moreover, they openly discussed the issue of
> THAAD deployment though it has nothing to do with the death of a
> DPRK citizen.
>
> This proves that the south Korean authorities has long expected
> the case since it worked out a scenario for it."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

So, if I understand the KCNA report, it's accusing South Korea of
having planned the entire scenario for this "citizen's" death via
"heart stroke."

The report concludes, "The DPRK will never allow any attempt to
tarnish the image of the dignified power of independence and nuclear
weapons state but make a thorough probe into the truth behind the
case." Free Malaysia Today / KCNA (Pyongyang)

****
**** Relations between Malaysia and North Korea become vitriolic
****

It appears that Malaysia and North Korea have had close relationships
in the past. Citizens of Malaysia are able to travel to North Korea
and visit without a visa. However, relations have been on a downward
trajectory for some time, particularly as North Korea has been testing
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, in violation of UN Security
Council resolutions.

A major turning point in relations occurred in March 2016, with the
unanimous adoption by the Security Council of resolution, which
imposed stringent international sanctions on North Korea following a
nuclear hydrogen bomb test. Malaysia seriously implemented the
sanctions requirements, as did many other nations, serious souring
relations between the two countries.

The assassination of Kim Jong-nam has added a new level of vitriol.
North Korea's Ambassador Kang Chol demanded that Malaysia immediately
turn the body to the North Korean embassy without conducting an
autopsy. When Malaysia refused, Kang denied that Jong-nam is related
to Kim Jong-un, and said Malaysia is "colluding with hostile forces,"
referring to South Korea.

Kang's accusations are a major insult to Malaysia. Malaysia recalled
its ambassador to North Korea "for consultation," and foreign minister
Anifah Aman said Kang's allegations "are culled from delusions, lies
and half-truths."

Malaysian officials are refusing to release the body except in
accordance with international law and Malaysian law. This means fully
investigating "the cause of death together with its motive as it
happened in our country."

The investigation is turning into a Shakespearean drama, with royal
family members bumping each other off. Malaysian officials are
demanding that a family member of the dead man come to Malaysia to
identify the body and to undergo a DNA test, in order to that it's
really Kim Jong-nam. Malaysian media are saying that some family
member is expected to arrive on Saturday. Speculation is that it will
be his son Kim Han-sol, though police are denying that report.
The Diplomat and Straits Times (Singapore) and Sin Chew (Malaysia)

Related Articles

• Assassination of Kim Jong-un's half-brother in Malaysia threatens relations with China and North Korea (19-Feb-2017)
  
  
• Was North Korea's Kim Jong-un's uncle eaten by ravenous dogs? (04-Jan-2014)
  
  
• N. Korea's Kim Jong-un struggles for stability, purging 'factionalist elements' (02-Jan-2014)
  

****
**** BBC reporter Mike Embley is completely full of crap
****

As I'm writing this, I just heard BBC reporter Mike Embley state as a
fact that Steve Bannon "is a white supremacist, anti-Semitic, and ran
a news web site specializing in fake news."

I've worked with Steve Bannon, and I've been cross-posting on
Breitbart since 2010, and none of this is even remotely true.

Mike Embley, if you're reading this: You're completely full of crap.
It's hard for me to believe that anyone as stupid as you is on the
air.

In 2005, the BBC suffered huge budget cuts after the Hutton Report
found that they purposely lied all the time. The BBC calling anyone
else "fake news" is laughable.

(Generational Dynamics articles are provided as a public service, for
those who wish to prepare for what's coming. Neither Breitbart nor
anyone else pays me for Generational Dynamics.)

Related Articles

• Mainstream media frets over Steve Bannon, the Fourth Turning, and Donald Trump (09-Feb-2017)
  
  
• President Trump's inauguration speech links today's America to the 1930s (21-Jan-2017)
  
  
• Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump's campaign (19-Aug-2016)
  
  
• BBC has big budget cuts after Hutton Report finds that BBC reporters purposely lie (31-Mar-2005)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Malaysia, North Korea, Kim Jong-nam,
Kim Jong-un, Hyon Kwang Song, Air Koryo, Kang Chol,
Anifah Aman, Steve Bannon, BBC, Mike Embley, Hutton Report

Permanent web link to this article
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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[SomeGuy]

Quote:But would you at least admit that since Andrew died, and others took it over, Breitbart has become a de facto "ministry of propaganda" for the Alt-Right loons?

You DO realize he posts articles to Breitbart, right?  Says he knows Bannon personally?  Why would he do such a thing?

[John J. Xenakis]

(02-24-2017, 01:24 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: > But would you at least admit that since Andrew died, and others
> took it over, Breitbart has become a de facto "ministry of
> propaganda" for the Alt-Right loons?

(02-24-2017, 01:36 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: > You DO realize he posts articles to Breitbart, right? Says he
> knows Bannon personally? Why would he do such a thing?

(02-24-2017, 03:57 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: > I realize it. However, he has claimed when I challenged him
> earlier to not be an Alt-Right moonbat. So if he's not an
> Alt-Right moonbat, he should actually care about the fact that
> Breitbart has been ruined by the Alt-Right moonbats.

When I started cross-posting on Breitbart in 2010, I quickly became
extremely upset about the hate-filled comments targeting Muslims that
my articles received, and I got into some pretty depressing arguments
with some of these people. I wrote an article about it at the time:

** American xenophobia on the Left and on the Right
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e101107

In addition, I decided that I really had to know if Andrew Breitbart,
who was still alive at the time, felt the same way, because I felt I
couldn't have anything to do with the Breitbart site if so. So I
requested an interview with Breitbart to ask him some general
questions about the web site and news, but my real hidden purpose was
to find out his attitude towards Muslims. Long story short, I was
completely reassured. My article on that interview is still available
on my web site:

** 1-Jan-11 News -- Andrew Breitbart: Even Muslims are afraid to stand up to Islamists
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e110101

So when the mainstream media criticizes Breitbart, they fail to
distinguish between the articles and comments. I don't read many of
the articles on Breitbart, but I'm not aware of any that are "white
supremacist" or that target hate messages at Muslims. In fact, most
of the articles are straight news stories; I'm one of the few
analysts.

However, now I want to distinguish between hate comments directed at
Muslims and blacks. Although there have been hundreds of comments to
my articles directed against Muslims, I don't believe that there have
been even a dozen that could be described as racist towards blacks.
Even when the commenters are describing Obama, they'll frequent use
words like Obummer or Ozero, but only a couple of times have I seen
anything that refers to race.

So I would have to reject the claim that the Breitbart site is "white
supremacist," even in the comments. And of course, I've never heard
from Steve Bannon any sign of white supremacy or hate directed at
blacks or Muslims.

You asked about "since Andrew died," with the implication that things
changed after he died. From my point of view, there was no change at
all. The reason that I asked to interview Andrew was a reaction to
all the hate-filled comments directed at Muslims. After he died,
things continued in the same way.

In fact, I think the volume of such comments has actually been going
down over time, and I can't prove this, but I believe that I've had a
significant effect on the commenters. As you know, I tend to take on
critics fairly aggressively, depending on my available time and my
mood on a given day. On such days when my mood is right, I make it
clear that these people are idiots, and I provide facts and links to
back that up. These people really have absolutely no clue what's
going on in the world anyway, so it's really not that hard.

I know that I've changed the minds of some of these commenters, and
I've seen many others come and go, so I know that I've had some
effect, and that at least they know that if they're going to be stupid
bigots, then they should pick on someone else.

[John J. Xenakis]

Thank you.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 25-Feb-17 World View -- Border Adjustment Tax versus the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Law

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Washington tax reform plans may include a 'Border Adjustment Tax'
  
• Historical comparison with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill
  

****
**** Washington tax reform plans may include a 'Border Adjustment Tax'
****


NY Times, May 5, 1930 - over a thousand economists opposed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill (History Hub)

News reports indicate that Congressional Republicans, led by House
Speaker Paul Ryan, are considering a "border adjustment tax" as one of
the proposals for the tax reforms plans this year.

The details are vague, but it appears that the proposal is essentially
an indirect tariff, using taxes charged to certain companies to raise
prices of imported products, and tax reductions to other companies to
encourage exports. It's especially targeted to American companies
that close factories in the U.S. and open factories in Mexico or other
countries, and then import the products manufactured in those
factories back into the United States.

There appear to be two major objectives. One is to generate revenue
to pay for other parts of the tax reform package. And the second is
to discourage companies from moving factories and jobs to
other countries.

President Trump has not endorsed the idea, but on Thursday seemed
to favor it:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"It could lead to a lot more jobs in the United
> States. ... I certainly support a form of tax on the border. What
> is going to happen is companies are going to come back here,
> they're going to build their factories and they're going to create
> a lot of jobs and there's no tax."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

VOA and Reuters and CNN

****
**** Historical comparison with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill
****

In 1930, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill was passed, increasing import
tariffs on some 900 products. The 1929 stock market panic, and the
subsequent loss of many families' life savings, was blamed by the
public on foreign banks and companies, and it was widely believed
that the tariffs would save American jobs. Except for a few details,
the public mood then is similar to the public mood today.

In my 2003 book, "Generational Dynamics - Forecasting America's
Destiny," which is available as a free PDF from my download page,
http://generationaldynamics.com/download, I wrote
the following about the Smoot-Hawley bill:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Perfectly reasonable acts by one country can be
> interpreted as hostile acts by another country. Guns and bombs
> are not needed to create an impression of war.
>
> And if one country's innocent act is a shock to another country
> and is viewed as hostile by that country, and if the people of
> that country are in a mood for retribution rather than compromise,
> than they may well look for a way to retaliate.
>
> In that sense, the enactment of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in
> June 1930, can be viewed as the first of the shocking, provocative
> acts that led to World War II.
>
> The Act was opposed by an enormous number of economists as being
> harmful to everyone, but it was very popular with the public,
> because of the perception that it would save American jobs. ...
>
> Interestingly, the Smoot-Hawley Act is still debated by
> politicians today, with regard to whether it caused or aggravated
> the Great Depression or had no effect. ...
>
> Those discussions are entirely America-centric because, for the
> purposes of this book, it makes no difference whatsoever whether
> or not the Act aggravated the American depression. We're
> interested in the effect it had on foreign nations.
>
> And the effects were enormous. The bill erected large trade
> barriers for numerous products, with the intention of saving
> American jobs. How many American jobs it saved, if any, is
> unknown, but it virtually shut down product exports to the United
> States. Both Germany and Japan were going through the same
> financial crisis America was going through, and they were furious
> that America as a market was closed to them.
>
> Japan was the hardest hit. The Great Depression was hurting Japan
> just as much as it was hurting America but, in addition, Japan's
> exports of its biggest cash crop, silk, to America were almost
> completely cut off by the Smoot-Hawley Act. Furthermore, Japan
> would have been going through a generational change: The country
> had undergone a historic revolution some 70+ years earlier,
> culminating in a major change of government (the Meiji
> Restoration) in 1868, and the people who had lived through that
> revolution would be dead or retiring by the early 1930s.
>
> So one thing led to another, and in September 1931, almost exactly
> a year after Smoot-Hawley, Japan invaded Manchuria and later
> northern China. Britain and American strongly protested this
> aggression, and Roosevelt finally responded with an oil embargo
> against Japan.
>
> This is the usual pattern of provocative acts on both sides.
> America saw Smoot-Hawley as its own business, but to Japan it was
> a hostile shock. Japan saw the Manchuria invasion as "Asian
> business," while Britain and America saw it as attacking their own
> Asian interests. Roosevelt saw an oil embargo as a measured
> response of containment, while energy-dependent Japan saw it
> almost as an act of war, eventually triggering Japan's attack on
> Pearl Harbor in 1941.
>
> Japan wasn't the only country affected, of course. England,
> Germany, Italy, and many other countries were hit hard by the
> sudden trade barriers with America. Just like in Japan,
> nationalistic and militaristic feelings were aroused in many
> countries.
>
> Germany was especially frustrated. The map of Central Europe had
> been redrawn some 70 years earlier during a series of wars in the
> 1860s, culminating in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and the
> unification of Germany in 1871. The Great War (WW I) had been a
> mid-cycle war for Germany, and had been a humiliating defeat,
> especially because the American and British led Allies had imposed
> harsh conditions -- the loss of some German-speaking territories,
> and the payment of reparations. The loss of territories was
> especially provocative, since it partially reversed the German
> unification of 1871.
>
> Germany was reaching the point where it was going to explode
> anyway, when the Smoot-Hawley Act was passed. On top of the
> reparations, the Act was seen as enormously hostile by the
> Germans. As in Japan, it gave rise to militaristic nationalism in
> the form of the rise of the Nazis. Germany remilitarized its
> border with France in 1936, and then annexed German-speaking parts
> of Eastern Europe in 1938.
>
> So when did World War II start? It depends on what the word
> "start" means, but an argument can be made that America had
> started the war, and that the first act of war was the
> Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

I wrote the above in 2003, so it should not surprise anyone that today
I consider the proposed "border adjustment tax" to be a very dangerous
idea.

A recent blog post by economists at the New York Fed claims that the
proposed tax will have little effect on either imports or exports,
which means little effect on revenue or jobs. But whether or not
that's true is irrelevant to this discussion.

As in the case of the Smoot-Hawley bill, the main issue is not the
effect on the US, but the effect on other nations. Any such border
tax would quickly raise nationalist feelings in other nations. There
would be retaliatory tariffs enacted in other countries. Some
countries might be severely damaged economically, and even if they're
not, they would blame any economic problems they have on the American
tariffs, and might look for even more far-reaching forms of
retaliation.

Some people might argue that the proposed "border adjustment tax" is
so small and so limited that it couldn't possibly have such a negative
effect. Once again we can look to history to see whether that's true.
According to an article in the June 21, 1930, issue of The Economist:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"The signature by President Hoover of the Hawley-Smoot
> Tariff Bill at Washington is the tragi-comic finale to one of the
> most amazing chapters in world tariff history, and it is one that
> protectionist enthusiasts the world over would do well to
> study. The reason for tariff revision was a desire to restore a
> balance of protection which had been tilted to the disadvantage of
> the agriculturalist. But so soon as ever the tariff schedules were
> cast into the melting-pot of revision, log-rollers and politicians
> set to work stirring with all their might, and a measure which
> started with the single object of giving satisfaction to the
> farmer emerges as a full-fledged high tariff act in which nearly
> 900 duties have been raised, some extravagantly. Such is the
> inevitable result of vested interests working through political
> influence, ending in signature by a president, antagonistic to the
> bill, under compulsion of political necessities."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

So the original Smoot-Hawley bill was to be very small, just providing
a little protection to farmers, but once the door was opened, the bill
exploded.

The same thing would happen today. Congress would be inundated with
high-paid lobbyists from all sorts of industries demanding that their
products be "protected" by the border adjustment tax. History tells
us that that the final bill would be a hodge-podge of special
interests and industries, with few winners but lots of losers, and a
great deal of nationalistic fury in many other countries.

The proposal for even a "small" border adjustment tax starts us down a
path that can lead to the same kind of disaster that the 1930
Smoot-Hawley Act caused. New York Fed Blog and Economist (18-Dec-2008) and
Economist (21-Jun-1930) and History Hub and Generational Dynamics - Forecasting America's Destiny (PDF)

Related Articles

• Japan's Shinzo Abe blames WW II on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act (15-Aug-2015)
  
  
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KEYS: Generational Dynamics, border adjustment tax, Paul Ryan,
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill, Herbert Hoover, Germany, Japan

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[Ragnarök_62]

(02-24-2017, 10:42 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: *** 25-Feb-17 World View -- Border Adjustment Tax versus the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Law

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Washington tax reform plans may include a 'Border Adjustment Tax'
  
• Historical comparison with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill
  

****
**** Washington tax reform plans may include a 'Border Adjustment Tax'
****


NY Times, May 5, 1930 - over a thousand economists opposed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill (History Hub)

News reports indicate that Congressional Republicans, led by House
Speaker Paul Ryan, are considering a "border adjustment tax" as one of
the proposals for the tax reforms plans this year.

The details are vague, but it appears that the proposal is essentially
an indirect tariff, using taxes charged to certain companies to raise
prices of imported products, and tax reductions to other companies to
encourage exports.  It's especially targeted to American companies
that close factories in the U.S. and open factories in Mexico or other
countries, and then import the products manufactured in those
factories back into the United States.

There appear to be two major objectives.  One is to generate revenue
to pay for other parts of the tax reform package.  And the second is
to discourage companies from moving factories and jobs to
other countries.

President Trump has not endorsed the idea, but on Thursday seemed
to favor it:

>        [indent]<QUOTE>"It could lead to a lot more jobs in the United
>        States. ... I certainly support a form of tax on the border.  What
>        is going to happen is companies are going to come back here,
>        they're going to build their factories and they're going to create
>        a lot of jobs and there's no tax."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

VOA and Reuters and CNN

****
**** Historical comparison with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill
****

In 1930, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill was passed, increasing import
tariffs on some 900 products.  The 1929 stock market panic, and the
subsequent loss of many families' life savings, was blamed by the
public on American banks and companies, and it was widely believed
that the tariffs would save American jobs.  Except for a few details,
the public mood then is similar to the public mood today.

In my 2003 book, "Generational Dynamics - Forecasting America's
Destiny," which is available as a free PDF from my download page,
http://generationaldynamics.com/download, I wrote
the following about the Smoot-Hawley bill:

>        [indent]<QUOTE>"Perfectly reasonable acts by one country can be
>        interpreted as hostile acts by another country.  Guns and bombs
>        are not needed to create an impression of war.
>    
>        And if one country's innocent act is a shock to another country
>        and is viewed as hostile by that country, and if the people of
>        that country are in a mood for retribution rather than compromise,
>        than they may well look for a way to retaliate.
>    
>        In that sense, the enactment of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in
>        June 1930, can be viewed as the first of the shocking, provocative
>        acts that led to World War II.
>    
>        The Act was opposed by an enormous number of economists as being
>        harmful to everyone, but it was very popular with the public,
>        because of the perception that it would save American jobs. ...
>    
>        Interestingly, the Smoot-Hawley Act is still debated by
>        politicians today, with regard to whether it caused or aggravated
>        the Great Depression or had no effect. ...
>    
>        Those discussions are entirely America-centric because, for the
>        purposes of this book, it makes no difference whatsoever whether
>        or not the Act aggravated the American depression.  We're
>        interested in the effect it had on foreign nations.
>    
>        And the effects were enormous. The bill erected large trade
>        barriers for numerous products, with the intention of saving
>        American jobs.  How many American jobs it saved, if any, is
>        unknown, but it virtually shut down product exports to the United
>        States.  Both Germany and Japan were going through the same
>        financial crisis America was going through, and they were furious
>        that America as a market was closed to them.
>    
>        Japan was the hardest hit. The Great Depression was hurting Japan
>        just as much as it was hurting America but, in addition, Japan's
>        exports of its biggest cash crop, silk, to America were almost
>        completely cut off by the Smoot-Hawley Act. Furthermore, Japan
>        would have been going through a generational change: The country
>        had undergone a historic revolution some 70+ years earlier,
>        culminating in a major change of government (the Meiji
>        Restoration) in 1868, and the people who had lived through that
>        revolution would be dead or retiring by the early 1930s.
>    
>        So one thing led to another, and in September 1931, almost exactly
>        a year after Smoot-Hawley, Japan invaded Manchuria and later
>        northern China. Britain and American strongly protested this
>        aggression, and Roosevelt finally responded with an oil embargo
>        against Japan.
>    
>        This is the usual pattern of provocative acts on both sides.
>        America saw Smoot-Hawley as its own business, but to Japan it was
>        a hostile shock.  Japan saw the Manchuria invasion as "Asian
>        business," while Britain and America saw it as attacking their own
>        Asian interests.  Roosevelt saw an oil embargo as a measured
>        response of containment, while energy-dependent Japan saw it
>        almost as an act of war, eventually triggering Japan's attack on
>        Pearl Harbor in 1941.
>    
>        Japan wasn't the only country affected, of course. England,
>        Germany, Italy, and many other countries were hit hard by the
>        sudden trade barriers with America.  Just like in Japan,
>        nationalistic and militaristic feelings were aroused in many
>        countries.
>    
>        Germany was especially frustrated. The map of Central Europe had
>        been redrawn some 70 years earlier during a series of wars in the
>        1860s, culminating in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and the
>        unification of Germany in 1871. The Great War (WW I) had been a
>        mid-cycle war for Germany, and had been a humiliating defeat,
>        especially because the American and British led Allies had imposed
>        harsh conditions -- the loss of some German-speaking territories,
>        and the payment of reparations.  The loss of territories was
>        especially provocative, since it partially reversed the German
>        unification of 1871.
>    
>        Germany was reaching the point where it was going to explode
>        anyway, when the Smoot-Hawley Act was passed.  On top of the
>        reparations, the Act was seen as enormously hostile by the
>        Germans.  As in Japan, it gave rise to militaristic nationalism in
>        the form of the rise of the Nazis.  Germany remilitarized its
>        border with France in 1936, and then annexed German-speaking parts
>        of Eastern Europe in 1938.
>    
>        So when did World War II start?  It depends on what the word
>        "start" means, but an argument can be made that America had
>        started the war, and that the first act of war was the
>        Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

I wrote the above in 2003, so it should not surprise anyone that today
I consider the proposed "border adjustment tax" to be a very dangerous
idea.

A recent blog post by economists at the New York Fed will have
little effect on either imports or exports, which means little
effect on revenue or jobs.  But whether or not that's true is
irrelevant to this discussion.

As in the case of the Smoot-Hawley bill, the main issue is not the
effect on the US, but the effect on other nations.  Any such border
tax would quickly raise nationalist feelings in other nations.  There
would be retaliatory tariffs enacted in other countries.  Some
countries might be severely damaged economically, and even if they're
not, they would blame any economic problems they have on the American
tariffs, and might look for even more far-reaching forms of
retaliation.

Some people might argue that the proposed "border adjustment tax" is
so small and so limited that it couldn't possibly have such a negative
effect.  Once again we can look to history to see whether that's true.
According to an article in the June 21, 1930, issue of The Economist:

>        [indent]<QUOTE>"The signature by President Hoover of the Hawley-Smoot
>        Tariff Bill at Washington is the tragi-comic finale to one of the
>        most amazing chapters in world tariff history, and it is one that
>        protectionist enthusiasts the world over would do well to
>        study. The reason for tariff revision was a desire to restore a
>        balance of protection which had been tilted to the disadvantage of
>        the agriculturalist. But so soon as ever the tariff schedules were
>        cast into the melting-pot of revision, log-rollers and politicians
>        set to work stirring with all their might, and a measure which
>        started with the single object of giving satisfaction to the
>        farmer emerges as a full-fledged high tariff act in which nearly
>        900 duties have been raised, some extravagantly. Such is the
>        inevitable result of vested interests working through political
>        influence, ending in signature by a president, antagonistic to the
>        bill, under compulsion of political necessities."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

So the original Smoot-Hawley bill was to be very small, just providing
a little protection to farmers, but once the door was opened, the bill
exploded.

The same thing would happen today.  Congress would be inundated with
high-paid lobbyists from all sorts of industries demanding that their
products be "protected" by the border adjustment tax.  History tells
us that that the final bill would be a hodge-podge of special
interests and industries, with few winners but lots of losers, and a
great deal of nationalistic fury in many other countries.

The proposal for even a "small" border adjustment tax starts us down a
path that can lead to the same kind of disaster that the 1930
Smoot-Hawley Act caused.  New York Fed Blog and Economist (18-Dec-2008) and
Economist (21-Jun-1930) and History Hub and Generational Dynamics - Forecasting America's Destiny (PDF)

Related Articles

• Japan's Shinzo Abe blames WW II on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act (15-Aug-2015)
  
  
• The bubble that broke the world (09-Oct-2007)
  
• Explanation of Price/Earnings ratio and Stock Valuations (28-Aug-2015)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, border adjustment tax, Paul Ryan,
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill, Herbert Hoover, Germany, Japan

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum:    http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

OK, let's just use the WTO allowed VAT tax to pay for Medicare John. OK?  I'm just fucking sick and tired of "free trade shit".  Like you know almost every country has the VAT, right?  Fuck free trade, fuck globalism, fuck being a sucker.  US out of NATO, US out of UN, US out of the fucked up Middle East.  You know something John?  I'm OK with the Mideast going up in the atomic fire.   Nationalism uber Alles!!!!!!!

[Warren Dew]

(02-07-2017, 08:12 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(02-05-2017, 09:24 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   I don't know what your definition of "planning war" is; that's why
>   I'm asking for a clarification. You say that the only use for
>   China having "thousands of missiles targeting the US and Russia"
>   is that they're "planning war"; by that logic, it seems to me that
>   the US and Russia are also "planning war", since we both have
>   thousands of missiles targeting each other and China as well.

>   I feel reasonably confident that I understand what the US is
>   planning. We have contingency plans for all sorts of scenarios in
>   which war could occur; in that sense we are "planning war".  We
>   may well be planning conventional strikes in Syrian territory, and
>   keeping our nukes in reserve as a deterrent against unwanted
>   escalation; in that sense also we may be "planning war", or at
>   least we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.  On the other hand, we
>   aren't likely to attack China or Russia in an unprovoked war of
>   aggression; in that sense, we are not "planning war".

>   I'm trying to get a feel for which of these senses you are using
>   when you say China is "planning war". If it's in the contingency
>   plan sense, I'd agree; I think all nations with significant
>   military power "plan war" in that sense.  If you're talking about
>   use as a deterrent against escalation while they wage a limited
>   conventional war, I'd be interested in what limited conventional
>   war you think is planned.  If you think they are planning an
>   unprovoked war of aggression against the US in the sense that we
>   are not planning an unprovoked war of aggression against China,
>   I'd want to know why you think the situation is not symmetric. And
>   if you think the US is planning an unprovoked war of aggression
>   against China, I'd be interested in that too.

>   So, can you clarify in which of those senses you are using
>   "planning war", and in particular, do you see the US and Russia
>   fitting that sense as well?

Well, you're right, I suppose every country is always "planning
war" in the sense of preparing to defend itself in case of war.

In the case of China, it's a lot more than just building one weapons
system after another whose only purpose is to destroy American cities,
military bases, and aircraft carriers.  It's the series of aggressive
actions that China is taking on all its borders, similar to Hitler's
actions in the late 1930s.  I think that with some thought, one could
distinguish between defensively or offensively "planning for war."

So we're agreed that the systems "whose only purpose is to destroy American cities" are irrelevant here, cognate only to American systems "whose only purpose is to destroy Chinese and Russian cities"?

I have a very difficult time seeing any similarity 1930s Germany here.  Germany actually seized populated territory in the late 1930s - Austria, the Sudeten, the rest of Czechoslovakia.  Then they went too far with Poland.  If I look for a modern parallel to 1930s Germany, what I see is seizure of South Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine.  That's by Russia, not China.

This is not to say there isn't any adventurism on the part of China.  They most definitely made moves in the South China Sea once the US stopped naval presence patrols in 2013.  However, those moves are targeted at natural resources, not at populated territory.  They were also opportunistic, taking advantage of a regional power vacuum left by the Obama administration.

I do think that China was hoping to become a regional power, given that the Obama administration was charting a course toward a multipolar world.  In a multipolar world, it makes sense for China to be one of the poles.  They'd be constrained by the US pole to the east, India to the southwest, and Russia to their northwest - why not fully occupy that sphere?

Of course, it doesn't make any sense for the US to accede to a multipolar world.  The US ought to be working on consolidating its position as global commercial hegemon.  There are signs that the Trump administration recognizes that, with a laudable push towards a nuclear balance with the rest of the world combined, rather than just with Russia, and a resumption of naval presence patrols, notably in the South China Sea.

China's reaction will be interesting to watch.  They might foolishly challenge the US for full control over the South China Sea, which seems to be what you expect - correct me if I'm wrong there.  Or, they might acquiesce in US strategic superiority as long as they can continue to exploit the resources they are now exploiting there.  Right now, the latter seems more likely to me, given their willingness to help Trump by "taking care of" North Korea through their coal embargo, which is likely to topple the Kim Jong Un regime unless North Korea alters its policies.

Quote:

(02-05-2017, 09:24 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   Except in the deterministic sense that what happened is obviously
>   what happened, yes, I think there are scenarios where the US could
>   have sided with Nazi Germany in WWII. If the Great Depression had
>   hit France harder, causing the centrist French government to be
>   replaced by a militant Communist government strongly allied with
>   the Soviet Union, for example, I can see Churchill and the US
>   intervening to help Nazi Germany survive to prevent Communist
>   hegemony over the continent.  I can think of other scenarios too,
>   up until 1938 or 1939.  I'm not sure what relevance that has,
>   though.

That's an interesting answer, not one that I was expecting.  You're
saying that if a communist Hitler had risen in France who was
worse than Germany's Hitler, then we would have sided with France.

That's not what I'm saying - sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

What I'm saying is that a weak communist government could have come to power in France, which would then have acted as a Soviet puppet.  Coordination between France and the Soviet Union would then have given the Soviets the strategic advantage, allowing them to limit Germany's gains in the slavic states and start building an eastern European empire a decade earlier.  For example, when Germany took the Sudeten, the rest of Czechoslovakia might have been occupied by the Soviets instead of by Germany.

In this case, the same balance of power concerns that drove Churchill to intervene against Germany would instead have driven him to intervene against the Soviet Union and France.  Culturally, France was more of a traditional enemy of Great Britain than Germany was, anyway.  And the US, which  considered Stalin at least as bad as Hitler in the first place, would have followed.

So what I'm saying is that we would have sided with the weaker of Hitler and Stalin, and it was far from predetermined which one was weaker.

Quote:The reason that I asked the question was to show that the choice
of sides in a generational crisis war is pretty much
predetermined.  If we assume that there was no such French
communist Hitler, then I would say that the choice of France
our ally was predetermined.

But if you're going to make that kind of assumption, then you
could also have assumed that America's leader could have become
another Hitler, and sided with the Nazis.

So I would say two things.  I think that if you look back in history
and analyze the 100 years war, the 30 years war, the war of the
Spanish succession, the French Revolution, the American Civil war, WW
I -- then Hitler could not have arisen in America, Britain or France,
and only Germany has the history and geography that would have
permitted the rise of Hitler.  And second, under those circumstances,
we could never have sided with the Nazis.

So maybe I asked the question the wrong way.  I should have asked: Is
there any scenario where we would have sided with Britain's enemy,
whether Germany or France, assuming that Britain maintained it's
historic government (and that there was no British Hitler).  I would
argue that we would have chosen whatever side Britain was on, and that
there were no circumstances where we would be joining some other
country in bombing London.

The same kind of reasoning could be used today.  Could we side with
China and Pakistan against India?  I don't believe so.  Could Russia
join China and Pakistan in war against India and Iran?  Once again, I
don't see any reasonable scenario where that's possible.  I believe
that the alignments that I've been describing for ten years -- the US,
India, Russia and Iran versus China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim
countries -- are pre-determined and will not change.

Hopefully I've now made my answer clear enough that you'll see I really don't think the sides were predetermined.  I do agree that the US and the British were going to be on the same side:  we were the same nation, in the cultural and linguistic sense, even if distributed across two states.  But no, there was no guarantee the nation would have sided with Stalin against Hitler.  Under only slightly different circumstances, we could have sided with Hitler against Stalin instead.

Neither we nor the Russians are the same nation as India.  In the matchups you posit, the sides would be dictated by strategic interest.  Yes, the US could side with China and Pakistan against India, if India were the greater threat.  More sensibly, the US could stay out of a Pakistan versus India fight, and China could limit themselves to indirect support.  I see the same thing with Russia - they have no reason to join a war between India and Iran and Pakistan directly.

The way the US gets dragged into the crisis war is culturally by siding with western Europe against Russia, or against China if they are stupid enough to sink one of our aircraft carriers like Japan was stupid enough to bomb Pearl Harbor.  But there's a good chance we could stay out of it, the way Victorian England stayed out of the 1860 crises, providing only indirect support to prevent the establishment of spheres of interest conflicting with ours, and to prevent the establishment of a dominant Eurasian hegemon.  Then we can pick up the pieces afterwards.

[Warren Dew]

(02-24-2017, 10:42 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: I wrote the above in 2003, so it should not surprise anyone that today
I consider the proposed "border adjustment tax" to be a very dangerous
idea.

I'm glad you feel this way, and I agree.

I do want to note that there is an underlying trade issue that the border adjustment tax attempts to address.  Specifically, the EU provides a VAT rebate on exports, and imposes a VAT on imports.  This has the effect of subsidizing exports and putting a tariff on imports.

However, the border adjustment tax is the wrong way to respond, for the reasons you mention, and also for reasons having to do flaws in its basic structure.  Because it isn't based on the actual tax content of exports, it would distort economic incentives to manufacturers.  For example, companies will have an incentive internally to subsidize exports by charging lower prices for exported goods than they charge to Americans for the same goods.  It is also likely to run afoul of WTO rules.

Edit: and let's not forget the increase in the value of the dollar, estimated by some at 25%, relative to other currencies. This is said to 'cancel out' the effects of the border adjustments, but it also provides a huge windfall for overseas holders of dollars like China and Japan, with no benefit to Americans.

The right way to address this issue is to attack the VAT based subsidies and tariffs.  This might be possible to do under existing WTO rules.  If not, the US should pressure the WTO to change the rules to prevent the abuse of VAT rebates and tariffs.  In addition, the US should probably negotiate aggressively with the EU; the EU has become a de facto protectionist region, which runs strongly counter to US interests.

We could also shift the US federal government from being income tax supported to being VAT supported, but that would be a much heavier political lift, likely requiring repeal of the 16th amendment.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 26-Feb-17 World View -- Syria's so-called ceasefire collapses after terrorist bombings in Homs

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Terrorist bombings in Homs Syria trigger retaliation by al-Assad regime
  
• Once again, so-called Syria 'peace talks' are near collapse
  

****
**** Terrorist bombings in Homs Syria trigger retaliation by al-Assad regime
****


A recent picture of Homs, where the Syrian government claims that it has restored peace, security and stability (Der Spiegel)

Six suicide bombers infiltrated heavily guarded security centers in
Homs, Syria, on Saturday, killing 32 people and injuring 24 others.
Each of the two security centers was infiltrated in coordinated
attacks by three suicide bombers, where they began killing people with
gunfire before detonating their bombs.

In particular, Major-General Hassan Daaboul, head of Syrian regime's
Military Security Department, was killed during the attacks.

This was a very complex, well-planned major attack on some of the
regime's most highly secure military installations. At the very
least, this is a major embarrassment to Syria's president Bashar
al-Assad, and the attack was likely partially an inside job.

Syrian opposition leaders condemned the terrorist attack, and
suggested that only people with security clearances could get close to
the areas where the attacks took place.

Syrian state media is blaming the attack on Tahrir al-Sham, an
alliance of al-Qaeda linked terrorists, including Jabhat al-Nusra
(al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS). According to
Syrian regime media, "the victories of the Syrian Army made the
terrorists frenzied and pushed them to commit this coward terrorist
atrocity in a hopeless attempt to undermine the capability of the
security services, which managed to establish security and stability
in Homs city."

The Syrian air force retaliated for the suicide bombings. The air
force had previously stopped bombing rebel-held positions around
Damascus because of an agreed ceasefire. The ceasefire was not really
being held anyway, but after today's suicide bombings, the Syrian
airforce resumed bombing Sunni enclaves around the city.

In a separate attack blamed on the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS
or ISIL or Daesh), terrorists shot mortar rocket shells into the
targeting several sites at a gas factory, including its main natural
gas pipeline, starting a fire.

Early in 2011, all Bashar al-Assad had to put up with in Homs was
peaceful protests. He responded to the peaceful protests with tanks,
gunfire, bombs and missiles. The picture at the top of this article
shows why there are no more peaceful protests. Now that al-Assad has
established "security and stability" in Homs, he no longer has to put
up with peaceful protesters. Instead, he has to deal with suicide
bombers from al-Nusra, and mortar rocket shells from ISIS. Sputnik News (Moscow) and SANA (Damascus) and AP and SANA (Damascus)
and Xinhua (Beijing)

Related Articles

• Syrian forces massively assaulting city of Homs (22-Jul-2011)
  
  
• Syria's regime launches 'sickening' assault on Homs (22-Feb-2012)
  

****
**** Once again, so-called Syria 'peace talks' are near collapse
****

A new Syria peace conference is just beginning in Geneva. There
have been so many of these conferences, each one ending in farce,
so no one was expecting much from the one either. The multiple
coordinated attacks in Homs on Saturday seems to indicate that
this peace conference will end like the others.

Last year, Bashar al-Assad predicted that the destruction of
Aleppo was "history in the making," and would end the war:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"[The liberation of Aleppo was] history in the making
> and worthy of more than the word congratulations.
>
> History is being written in these moments. Every Syrian citizen is
> taking part in the writing. It started not today, but years ago
> when the crisis and the war on Syria began.
>
> I think that after the liberation of Aleppo we’ll talk about the
> situation as ... before the liberation of Aleppo and after the
> liberation of Aleppo."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

This was pure fantasy by al-Assad who, as I've written many times in
the past, is a delusional psychopath and genocidal war criminal.

Al-Assad was thought to believe that as soon as Aleppo was
destroyed, the jihadists groups would go home, as they had no
reason to go on fighting. As I've written many times, this
is a generational Awakening era in Syria, which means that
young people would never simply give up and go home.

In fact, this gives rise to a question I've raised many times.
Al-Assad started his massive exterminations of Sunni civilians,
including many women and children, simply because they were peacefully
protesting. Suppose, hypothetically, al-Assad "won" the war in some
sense. What would he do if young people started protesting again --
which would certainly happen in a generational Awakening era? Would
he start barrel-bombing innocent women and children again? And in a
generational Awakening era, you can be certain the protests would
continue.

So the obvious questions is - what happens now? Al-Nusra and ISIS
aren't even party to the so-called peace talks, so they're going to
continue fighting -- as long as al-Assad is in power. There is
no hope whatsoever of an end to this war in Syria as long as
al-Assad is in power.

Russia is widely believed to want to stop fighting in Syria.
Al-Assad's army was close to collapse, by al-Assad's own admission, in
2015, forcing Russia to enter the war to keep al-Assad's army from
collapsing completely. I've heard several analysts point out that
Russia's economic situation is so bad that the government has to cut
expenses, and withdrawing most Russian forces from Syria is one way to
do that.

It may at some point occur to Russia's president Vladimir Putin
that if he wants the war in Syria to end, then he has to stop
supporting Bashar al-Assad, and allow someone else to replace him.
There's no sign of anything like that yet, especially because
Iran is bitterly opposed to allowing al-Assad to step down,
but Putin at some point may realize that it's the best choice
for Russia.

Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major
regional war, pitting Jews against Arabs, Sunnis against Shias, and
various ethnic groups against each other. Reuters (24-Feb) and AFP and Reuters and RTE (Ireland)

Related Articles

• Investigation reveals depraved new atrocities by Syria's Bashar al-Assad (08-Feb-2017)
  
  
• Russia, Iran, Turkey sign farcical Syria peace agreement (25-Jan-2017)
  
  
• UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura predicts total destruction of Aleppo by Christmas (07-Oct-2016)
  
  
• From 2013: The history of how Syria's Bashar al-Assad created ISIS (07-Sep-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Homs, Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Daaboul,
Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front, Tahrir al-Sham,
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS, Front for the Conquest of Syria,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Aleppo, Russia, Iran

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[Warren Dew]

(02-25-2017, 11:14 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: It may at some point occur to Russia's president Vladimir Putin
that if he wants the war in Syria to end, then he has to stop
supporting Bashar al-Assad, and allow someone else to replace him.
There's no sign of anything like that yet, especially because
Iran is bitterly opposed to allowing al-Assad to step down,
but Putin at some point may realize that it's the best choice
for Russia.

The sources I read say it has already occurred to him.  His problem is that he can't maintain his Mediterranean port without help from either the US or Iran.  Iran insists on keeping Assad in power.  For this arrangement to work, he has to jettison Iran as his partner in the area in favor of the US.  TASS is already running headlines touting cooperation with the US:

http://tass.com/world/932204

Russia is in a much weaker bargaining position than the US.  Russia cannot maintain its current level of military support forever, and if it drops its support, Sunni factions are likely to overthrow Syria entirely.  The US can, in contrast, maintain current levels of activity indefinitely.

The question is what the US will want in return.  Strictly speaking, US geopolitical imperatives as the global maritime hegemon would dictate that the US would prefer that Russia not have the port.  However, as a political thing, Trump has pledged the defeat of the Islamic State.  One minor Russian port might be a reasonable price to pay for for help that would actually allow him to fulfill his pledge.  That would probably require that Russia accede to large sections of what is now Syria being turned over to Turkish administration, requiring the ouster of Assad in favor of someone willing to govern a rump Syria.  he US would still have to deal with the southeastern third of Syria and the western third of Iraq, but it would no longer be Russia's problem.

So if Russia abandons Iran for cooperation with Turkey and other Sunni states, what does that do to your alignment theory?

[John J. Xenakis]

(02-25-2017, 07:16 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > So we're agreed that the systems "whose only purpose is to destroy
> American cities" are irrelevant here, cognate only to American
> systems "whose only purpose is to destroy Chinese and Russian
> cities"?

LOL! No, I definitely don't agree with anything like that.

You took my statement that "every country is always "planning war" in
the sense of preparing to defend itself in case of war," and you
morphed it into, "every country is ONLY planning to defend itself in
case of war," and then you drew conclusions from your morphed
statement.

When Hitler went on an agressive program to increase the size of his
air force, it was not because he was afraid of an invasion by Britain
or France. It was because he planned to invade Britain and France
preemptively.

Here's an interesting page that describes how Churchill saw
this coming:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/euro...259-4.html

Today, China is developing multiple weapons systems whose only
purpose is to attack American cities, military bases and aircraft
carriers. This is not because China fears a preemptive attack
by the US. It's because China is planning a preemptive attack
on the US.

Furthermore, China is not building artificial islands and military
bases in the South China Sea because China fears a preemptive
attack by Vietnam and the Philippines. It's because China is
planning a preemptive attack on Vietnam and the Philippines --
as well as Japan, Taiwan and India. These attacks would all take
place at the time and place of China's choosing.

Amusingly, the thing that's really screwing up China's plans is
ballistic missiles development by the North Koreans. First, a random
attack by NK could screw up China's timetable. Second, and more
important, NK's actions are giving the US an excuse to implement
missile defense systems, which China hates. A THAAD system in South
Korea would not be able to defend against ICBMs from China targeting
the US, but THAAD's sophisticated radar systems would give the US
early warning to defend against them. China really hates that.

(02-25-2017, 07:16 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > What I'm saying is that a weak communist government could have
> come to power in France, which would then have acted as a Soviet
> puppet.

That view is contradicted by the page linked above. Churchill's view
was that historically, in the case of a European war, Britain always
aligned itself with the second-strongest power. So Britain could have
aligned itself with Germany only if Germany were weaker than France.

The scenario where Russia and France align themselves with the
intention of invading Germany strikes me as very far-fetched. I'm not
saying it's impossible, but I don't see how Russia would align itself
with a weak France. I don't believe Russia would have aligned itself
with France unless France were strong -- stronger than Germany.

(02-26-2017, 09:00 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > So if Russia abandons Iran for cooperation with Turkey and other
> Sunni states, what does that do to your alignment theory?

Currently, Russia is supposedly allied with Syria, Turkey, Iran,
Israel, Egypt, and others to a greater or lesser extent. These
political alignments can change on a day to day basis, and have
little influence on the decisions to be made when Russia
is "forced to choose" sides when faced with an existential crisis
in the form of a generational crisis war that threatens the
country and its way of life.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Your entire argument Regarding the Alignments of Russia and China are based on the alignments of the late 1960s when Maoist China was considered an aggressive rogue state and the USSR was a generally respected rival and when there was even hope for a long-term condominium between the US and USSR. Nowadays Russia is far more of a "rogue" power than China currently is. And as warren dew has already mentioned, Russia has already invaded and annexed populated territories. Also regarding the size of Russian, US and Chinese Nuclear arsenals. I have yet to see an article from you that shows the actual accepted size of the arsenals regarding known sources. Almost all sources say that Russia and the US have the largest nuclear arsenals. Yet John X's articles on the military balance keep implying that China has taken the No.1 spot in nuclear arsenal size, when a simple google search on the subject shows Russia and the US having the largest Nuclear arsenals in the world with everyone else's arsenals being much smaller than either of the two. Also the hostility Both of aforementioned countries have toward the US is due to the ideological Gulf and clash between the governments of China and Russia on one end and the democratic globalist ideology of the US on the other, not due to any ethnic hostility.

Also Regarding US diplomacy, you keep implying that neocon orthodoxy in which US policy should be based on regime change and on keeping international trade routes open as a fundamental precept of policy should be continued and expanded, yet you conveniently omit the fact that policy along these lines is ALREADY in place and has been for the past 20 years. If these concepts are so good, then why has the world geopolitical situation been gradually declining during the 20 to 25 years that this policy has been in place? Also you recommend that the US support free trade mentioning that the smoot-hawley tariff set the stage for the collapse of democracy in germany and Japan, leaded ultimately to WW2. Yet the policy currently in place IS a "no more smoot-hawleys" policy yet the international situation has been slowly drifting to a global war for several decades now. Therefore a solution could be a return to a global tariff regime that characterized the last 4T and 1T, thus stabilizing the geopolitical order since the current "free trade" era has shown a manifest deterioration with regards to global peace.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Also if China wanted war, then it would NOT want peace or a continuing status quo in the Korean peninsula for several reasons, the main one being that a North Korean attack would "soften up" South Korea, Japan and the US for China's own offensive. Secondly a North Korean Buildup, offensive and attack could be coordinated with China's own forces. China's own policy however seems to be for a disarmed Korea which is contrary to the options I listed above. Therefore if China wanted war with lets say the US, why is it cooperating with the US in regards to North Korea? Also why would the US and South Korea accept a Chinese offer to "deal with" NK if War is China's long-term goal?

Also Just to post here since you mentioned it before: Hitler wanted war with RUSSIA/USSR during the lead up to WW2, The Nazis actually did not want the western war, their entire movement was based on the goal of destroying "Jewish-Bolshevism" which eventually resulted in Barbarossa and the Holocaust. The war with Britain and France was actually considered by the Nazi Leaders to be a distraction from the planned "real war" that was to be fought against the USSR and which Hitler undertook beginning in June 1941.

[Warren Dew]

Quote:Today, China is developing multiple weapons systems whose only
purpose is to attack American cities, military bases and aircraft
carriers.  This is not because China fears a preemptive attack
by the US.  It's because China is planning a preemptive attack
on the US.

China is playing catch up to the American and Russian weapon systems whose only purpose is to attack Chinese cities, military bases, and installations.  It's only paranoia that could lead one believe that has to be preparation for a preemptive attack.  Far more likely is that they want parity with the US - and with Russia - in order to establish an approximately equal balance of power between the three.

Now, it may well be that the US should not accept that parity.  But then we should be discussing what the US should accept and what the US would be able to enforce, rather than discussing outlandish scenarios that can only distort our analysis of what appropriate US actions might be.

Quote:Furthermore, China is not building artificial islands and military
bases in the South China Sea because China fears a preemptive
attack by Vietnam and the Philippines.  It's because China is
planning a preemptive attack on Vietnam and the Philippines --
as well as Japan, Taiwan and India.  These attacks would all take
place at the time and place of China's choosing.

China is building artificial islands and military bases in the South China Sea because they want to control the resources of the South China Sea, namely fish and oil, and because the US for half a decade left a power vacuum permitting them to do so.  The islands are extremely poorly placed if China wants to use them against Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, or India, evidence that they have nothing to do with plans for preemptive attack.

Quote:Amusingly, the thing that's really screwing up China's plans is
ballistic missiles development by the North Koreans.  First, a random
attack by NK could screw up China's timetable.  Second, and more
important, NK's actions are giving the US an excuse to implement
missile defense systems, which China hates.  A THAAD system in South
Korea would not be able to defend against ICBMs from China targeting
the US, but THAAD's sophisticated radar systems would give the US
early warning to defend against them.  China really hates that.

China hates the idea of American ABM systems in South Korea for the same reason Russia hates the idea of American ABM systems in Poland - the ABM systems reduce the effectiveness of their nuclear deterrent, even if the direct intent of those systems is against North Korea and Iran, respectively.

To China's credit, they are at least, finally, putting real pressure on North Korea in the form of the coal embargo.  It would be nice if Russia did something similar with Iran.

Quote:

(02-25-2017, 07:16 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   What I'm saying is that a weak communist government could have
>   come to power in France, which would then have acted as a Soviet
>   puppet.

That view is contradicted by the page linked above.  Churchill's view
was that historically, in the case of a European war, Britain always
aligned itself with the second-strongest power.  So Britain could have
aligned itself with Germany only if Germany were weaker than France.

The scenario where Russia and France align themselves with the
intention of invading Germany strikes me as very far-fetched.  I'm not
saying it's impossible, but I don't see how Russia would align itself
with a weak France.  I don't believe Russia would have aligned itself
with France unless France were strong -- stronger than Germany.

Churchill's view backs up my scenario, since in my scenario Germany would have been the second strongest continental power behind Russia.  I don't see how Russia would have refused an alliance with France if that put the alliance ahead of Germany in power, but we can agree to differ on that.

Quote:

(02-26-2017, 09:00 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   So if Russia abandons Iran for cooperation with Turkey and other
>   Sunni states, what does that do to your alignment theory?

Currently, Russia is supposedly allied with Syria, Turkey, Iran,
Israel, Egypt, and others to a greater or lesser extent.  These
political alignments can change on a day to day basis, and have
little influence on the decisions to be made when Russia
is "forced to choose" sides when faced with an existential crisis
in the form of a generational crisis war that threatens the
country and its way of life.

Fair point, though I question whether the point at which the choice will need to be made will be as clear cut as you seem to be implying.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 27-Feb-17 World View -- Xenophobic violence against migrants returns to South Africa

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Xenophobic violence against migrants returns to South Africa
  
• South Africa threatens to crack down on businesses hiring illegal immigrants
  

****
**** Xenophobic violence against migrants returns to South Africa
****


Xenophobic violence targeting migrant-owned business last week (GhanaWeb)

Police in Pretoria, one of South Africa's three capital cities, used
rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades on Friday to break up
clashes between local anti-immigrant protesters and migrants living
and working in the area. Police arrested 136 people, many of them
protesters and looters armed with clubs, sticks, pipes and rocks. In
retaliation, migrants armed themselves with sticks and clubs too. The
migrants are from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Pakistan and other
countries.

Earlier this week, migrants were targeted in the suburbs of Pretoria
and Johannesburg, where shops and businesses were burned or destroyed.

Officials fear a repeat of massive xenophobic violence that occurred
in 2008, when at least 60 people were killed. Atrocities including
dragging migrants through the streets and burning them alive. In
2015, xenophobic violence resulted in six deaths in Durban.

As one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, South Africa draws
migrants from poor countries who come to work or to escape violence.
Nonetheless, the unemployment rate is over 25%, and migrants are
blamed for taking jobs. Xenophobic violence frequently targets small
shops and businesses run by migrants, claiming that they're drug dens
and brothels.

South African politicians encourage businesses to hire citizens rather
than migrants, but many businesses hire migrants because they can be
paid less, and because they can be exploited in the sense of not being
paid at all. LA Times and EyeWitnessNews (South Africa) and Mail and Guardian (South Africa) and The Nation (Kenya)

****
**** South Africa threatens to crack down on businesses hiring illegal immigrants
****

South Africa's home affairs minister, Malusi Gigaba, announced that
officials will inspect workplaces to see if firms are employing
illegal immigrants.

If implemented, this would be a different strategy than is employed in
America and other countries to deal with illegal immigrants, where law
enforcement targets the migrants, often resulting in deportation. In
this case, the businesses that hires the migrants will be targeted.

According to Gigaba:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"Companies, businesses: Be warned. We are coming for
> you. We will charge them, there’s no doubt. The manager will be
> charged. Often times, we focus on the undocumented employee and
> not the company.
>
> This is the message we are taking to the rest of business and it
> will feature strongly in our upcoming meetings. There will be
> workplace inspections, and penalties for employing undocumented
> foreigners will be imposed. ...
>
> The dynamics of migration, crime, drugs, prostitution, fraud and
> unfair labor practices are too serious to be turned into
> populists politicking."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

Even businesses that hire legal immigrants may be targeted. Gigaba
has particularly been targeting hotels, restaurants, and other
businesses where migrants are often employed. According to Gigaba,
"We have a commitment of the hospitality sector on the need to comply
with South Africa's labor and immigration laws, especially the
requirement to employ a minimum 60 percent of local people."

Gigaba also called for effective policing to target illegal
immigrants, but added, "Not all immigrants are criminals."

Whether any of this will be implemented remains to be seen. It's more
likely that nothing will be done, and there will be recurring rounds
of xenophobic violence. Africa's history is one of tribal wars, and
many of today's xenophobic attacks are based on tribal hatreds that
exist to this day following the Mfecane, the huge war that engulfed
southern Africa in the 1820s. The principal combatants in the Mfecane
were the Ndebele, Zulu and Xhosa tribes, and they still experience
violent tribal and xenophobic clashes to this day News 24 (South Africa) and BBC and Daily Post (Nigeria)

Related Articles

• Xenophobic violence - Generational history of South Africa (31-May-2008)
  
  
• South African xenophobic violence echoes 1820s Mfecane Zulu massacre (17-Apr-2015)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, South Africa, Pretoria, Johannesburg,
Malusi Gigaba, Mfecane, Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa

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Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

(02-26-2017, 03:03 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > Also Just to post here since you mentioned it before: Hitler
> wanted war with RUSSIA/USSR during the lead up to WW2, The Nazis
> actually did not want the western war, their entire movement was
> based on the goal of destroying "Jewish-Bolshevism" which
> eventually resulted in Barbarossa and the Holocaust. The war with
> Britain and France was actually considered by the Nazi Leaders to
> be a distraction from the planned "real war" that was to be fought
> against the USSR and which Hitler undertook beginning in June
> 1941.

Sooooo, the Nazis had no intention of invading Britain, even though
Hitler met with Mussolini in 1938 to plan the invasion.

(02-26-2017, 04:30 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > China is playing catch up to the American and Russian weapon
> systems whose only purpose is to attack Chinese cities, military
> bases, and installations. It's only paranoia that could lead one
> believe that has to be preparation for a preemptive attack. Far
> more likely is that they want parity with the US - and with Russia
> - in order to establish an approximately equal balance of power
> between the three.

Paranoia, huh? If missiles were the only thing, that might be
believable. But China is preparing for war on multiple fronts, and is
illegally building artificial islands and military bases in the South
China Sea, and is now installing launchers for long-range missiles.
China is also preparing for war with India in several places along
their common border.

You two guys make my head spin. It's obvious that you can think up a
benign excuse for even the most aggressively militaristic actions.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, I heard the same narrative from my
parents and from my teachers: It was amazing and incomprehensible that
so many people were fooled by Hitler, when it was so obvious in
retrospect. The British were duped by Hitler. Neville Chamberlain
was villified as the biggest dupe of all. Churchill saw it coming,
but was mocked and ridiculed at the time. Later, Churchill saved
Britain from the Nazis.

People my age have been puzzled our whole lives how it was possible
for so many people to be so completely fooled by Hitler, when it was
so obvious in retrospect that the signs were there all the time.
Listening to people like the two of you, these days I completely
understand what happened in the late 1930s, and why so many people
were fooled.

People like me fit a historical template. The mythical Cassandra was
ridiculed when she predicted the fall of Troy, and then was assaulted
and raped when her predictions came true. The Biblical Jeremiah was
thrown into a pit for predicting the fall of Jerusalem. Winston
Churchill was mocked and ridiculed, and then was thrown out of
office as soon as he won the war.

I've already gone through this process in another way. Ten years ago
it was perfectly obvious that there as a real estate bubble. I wrote
about it frequently. I owned a condo and sold it at the height of the
bubble. I told my friends not to buy real estate, but I was
ridiculed, and many of them did anyway, and lost a great deal of
money. One of them blamed me for losing his money, as if it were my
fault.

I have a record now of getting everything right for over ten years.
So what I'm saying is that China is preparing for preemptive war, and
that it's 100% certain. You two Nevilles are invited to believe
anything you want.

[Cynic Hero '86]

(02-27-2017, 03:12 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(02-26-2017, 03:03 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: >   Also Just to post here since you mentioned it before: Hitler
>   wanted war with RUSSIA/USSR during the lead up to WW2, The Nazis
>   actually did not want the western war, their entire movement was
>   based on the goal of destroying "Jewish-Bolshevism" which
>   eventually resulted in Barbarossa and the Holocaust. The war with
>   Britain and France was actually considered by the Nazi Leaders to
>   be a distraction from the planned "real war" that was to be fought
>   against the USSR and which Hitler undertook beginning in June
>   1941.

Sooooo, the Nazis had no intention of invading Britain, even though
Hitler met with Mussolini in 1938 to plan the invasion.

(02-26-2017, 04:30 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   China is playing catch up to the American and Russian weapon
>   systems whose only purpose is to attack Chinese cities, military
>   bases, and installations.  It's only paranoia that could lead one
>   believe that has to be preparation for a preemptive attack.  Far
>   more likely is that they want parity with the US - and with Russia
>   - in order to establish an approximately equal balance of power
>   between the three.

Paranoia, huh?  If missiles were the only thing, that might be
believable.  But China is preparing for war on multiple fronts, and is
illegally building artificial islands and military bases in the South
China Sea, and is now installing launchers for long-range missiles.
China is also preparing for war with India in several places along
their common border.

You two guys make my head spin.  It's obvious that you can think up a
benign excuse for even the most aggressively militaristic actions.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, I heard the same narrative from my
parents and from my teachers: It was amazing and incomprehensible that
so many people were fooled by Hitler, when it was so obvious in
retrospect.  The British were duped by Hitler.  Neville Chamberlain
was villified as the biggest dupe of all.  Churchill saw it coming,
but was mocked and ridiculed at the time.  Later, Churchill saved
Britain from the Nazis.

People my age have been puzzled our whole lives how it was possible
for so many people to be so completely fooled by Hitler, when it was
so obvious in retrospect that the signs were there all the time.
Listening to people like the two of you, these days I completely
understand what happened in the late 1930s, and why so many people
were fooled.

People like me fit a historical template.  The mythical Cassandra was
ridiculed when she predicted the fall of Troy, and then was assaulted
and raped when her predictions came true.  The Biblical Jeremiah was
thrown into a pit for predicting the fall of Jerusalem.  Winston
Churchill was mocked and ridiculed, and then was thrown out of
office as soon as he won the war.

I've already gone through this process in another way.  Ten years ago
it was perfectly obvious that there as a real estate bubble.  I wrote
about it frequently.  I owned a condo and sold it at the height of the
bubble.  I told my friends not to buy real estate, but I was
ridiculed, and many of them did anyway, and lost a great deal of
money.  One of them blamed me for losing his money, as if it were my
fault.

I have a record now of getting everything right for over ten years.
So what I'm saying is that China is preparing for preemptive war, and
that it's 100% certain.  You two Nevilles are invited to believe
anything you want.

Except the actual US government hasn't been following my proposed foreign policy at any point in the last few decades John X. The actual government has for the most part been following ideas similar to yours. You neocons were wrong in 2003 and have no real credibility in maintaining US National Security  given that you guys had complete power from 2001 to 2008 and during that time the US Nuclear Arsenal was slashed by more than half and heavy weapons built to fight a large scale war was replaced by pathetic Bradley fighting vehicles. Also I Remember your posts from 10 years ago on this subject: you said that China would attack as soon as the 2008 Beijing Olympics were finished, and I said that there was no possibility of war until around 2020 at the earliest. I was right then you were wrong back then.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Also the eastern war was always hitler''s main goal. It was in Russia that Germany was to obtain it's lebensraum. Also the nazis saw communism as a "Jewish" creation, which is why the holocaust kicked into high gear once Germany invaded russia.

Also by 1938 the British prophets Had obtained complete power within the British government. Churchill and chamberlain only disagreed on the method of how to contain Germany (chamberlain believe diplomacy was possible while Churchill argued that Britain had to go to war before Germany got too strong. When war finally did break out chamberlain was replaced by churchill.) But both belonged to the same establishment policy. When the British nomads tried to enact their own foreign and military policy in 1935 through 1936 under Edward VIII; the prophets basically rammed their preferences down the younger generation's throats. The prophets did so by engineering using various pretext's, the forced abdication of edward.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Also on several of your posts you've speculated on the causes of right-wing and left-wing support for Assad. In these post you suggest that a naive ignorance of the fact that Assad is massacring thousands of people is the cause. In fact we are well aware that Assad has killed thousands in fact he is efficiently slaughtering islamists and noncombatant's, maybe even hundreds of thousands of civilians. We root for Assad because we don't care that he is killing tens of thousands, in fact that is the main reason we like him. Because as far as we are concerned the people Assad is killing are people who "needed killin" because otherwise they would have lived on to become islamists or give birth to more islamists.