Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 13-Dec-2019 World View: Carlos Gutierrez says that China is not an enemy

As I've written in the past, people my age have wondered our whole
lives how it was possible for Hitler to so thoroughly fool the British
people and politicians that they were not a threat, with Winston
Churchill being the major exception. Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain met with Hitler and famously announced that there would be
"Peace in our time."

This morning, George Bush's Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was on
CNBC to talk about the China trade deal, and he used the opportunity
to criticize administration officials who are worried about war
with China. Here's what he said (my transcription):

Quote: I don't believe, as some people in this administration
believe, that war with China is inevitable, and I think that's a
very dangerous assumption, very dangerous to believe that is the
future, because we can just make it happen by insisting on it. ...

There's [Peter] Navarro, [Steve] Bannon -- they believe that a
military war eventually is inevitable. By calling China a
strategic rival -- I mean they're a rival, there's no question,
they're a competitor -- but if they're strategic that means that
we believe they're an existential threat. And if you call someone
an enemy, they will become your enemy. So we need to be careful,
and I hope that at this point, we keep the war in the confines of
economics and the confines of trade.

But this could get out of hand so easily, and yes, there are
people who I believe just see that in the future it is inevitable
that we're headed toward conflict. I think that's a dangerous
assumption.

I wanted to quote this because the reasoning is so totally
harebrained, but is typical of the reasoning among media and
politicians today, many of whom majored in women's studies and
sociology in college and have no clue what's going on in the world.
Gutierrez is old enough to know better, but apparently he doesn't.

Notice that Gutierrez is going a lot farther than even Neville
Chamberlain did. Gutierrez made these points:

• China is not a strategic enemy.
  
  
• You must not call China an enemy because doing so is
  dangerous.
  
  
• Therefore, if there is a war, then it's your fault because you
  said that China is a strategic enemy.

In other words, if China launches a military attack on the United
States, then it's not China's fault. It's the fault of Navarro
and Bannon and people in the Trump administration.

And yet, for almost a century, the Soviet Union / Russia was called a
strategic enemy by people like Gutierrez, and are still doing so
today. And yet, we haven't had a war with Russia during that entire
century.

People like Gutierrez might say that we should simply shut down the
US military, because we should never view anyone as an enemy, so there
should never be another war, so who needs a military?

Here's a memory from 1938:

• 1938: English girls giving Nazi salute returning from a field
  trip to Berlin - 'We had the time of our lives!' (Der
  Spiegel)

-- 1930s / British Girls in the Third Reich - 'We Had the Time of
Our Lives'
http://www.spiegel.de/international/euro...05617.html
(Der Spiegel, 13-Jun-2013)

[John J. Xenakis]

** 14-Dec-2019 World View: Impeachment and violence

richard5za Wrote:> Changing the subject to Impeachment

> The serious determination from the Democrats to impeach Trump
> would suggest that they think they have a good chance of getting
> it through both the House and the Senate.

> If it gets turned down in the Senate which seems to be the
> probability then that surely would be to the Democrats political
> disadvantage versus not having gone the impeachment route in the
> first place?

> Is someone able to explain the Democrats political strategy
> here?

The Democrats haven't provided any credible reason for the impeachment
saga, except that they claim that it's the only way to prevent
Donald Trump from being reelected. The plan, insofar as there is
an actual plan, is to use impeachment to weaken Trump support so
that the Democrats will win. Whether that will work remains to be
seen, but so far it appears to be backfiring.

The situation is becoming increasingly dangerous for tribal reasons.
You may not understand what the Democrats are doing, but since you
live in South Africa, the tribal issues are something that you'll
understand well.

The Tea Party is the "tribe" that turned into the 63 million Trump
supporters, and now the Democrats and the media have the same loathing
and hatred for the Trump supporters that they've had for years for the
Tea Partiers.

For years, the Democrats and the mainstream media have expressed
enormous loathing and hatred for the Tea Partiers, repeatedly inciting
violence against them and using the epithet "teabaggers," which is as
bad as the n-word. I still recall Anderson Cooper and Peter Bergen on
CNN giggling and laughing with each other over calling them
"teabaggers." The loathing and hatred was evident, as it was for many
people on CNN and other mainstream media and Democrats.

More recently, we have examples like Peter Strzok referring to "smelly
Walmart Trump supporters," and we have the hag Maxine Waters inciting
violence against Trump supporters by screaming that they should be
confronted in restaurants and gas stations. The Democrats are
encouraging the Fascist group Antifa to attack pro-Trump speakers with
violence.

This Democrats vs Tea Party loathing and hatred is competely
indistinguishable from Shona vs Nbdele, Burmese vs Rohingya, Nazi vs
Jew, English vs Scot, Han vs Uighur, Sunni vs Shia, and so forth. The
only real question is how far the violence will be carried in America,
and whether it will go as far as some of these other similar examples.

Violence and threats of violence played a major role in impeachment
hearings. The Democrats' star witness Gordon Sondland was forced to
change his testimony after his businesses and family were being
threatened with violence, riots and demonstrations, after Democrats
led by Adam Schiff called on the rioters to threaten Sondland.
Jonathan Turley's family was threatened with violence after he said
that impeachment couldn't be justified on the current record.

The mainstream media is fully on board with this incitement to
violence. I wrote a few days ago how shocked I was. I'm probably the
only person reading this post who actually watched all five days of
the intelligence committee impeachment hearings, and what I saw was
almost beyond belief in America. After hearing each day's testimony,
I'd listen to the BBC, al-Jazeera, MS-NBC, and so forth, and their
report on the day's testimony bore no resemblance to what actually
happened. Every single witness was forced to admit under Republican
cross-examination that they had no evidence whatsoever to support Adam
Schiff's charges. Every single one of Schiff's witnesses was forced
to back down. It was all made up.

But then every single news report lied about it, saying something like
"Today, Ambassador X gave explosive testimony that Trump withheld aid
from Ukraine until Ukraine started investigating Joe and Hunter
Biden." In fact, all the news reports used the same words, indicating
that they were all reading the same press releases from Adam Schiff
and the Democrats.

By the way, for those who want to hear the other side about what's
going on in the impeachment circus, I strongly recommend Hannity on
Fox News Channel. This is the best source for understanding what's
actually going on.

It's now expected that there will be a trial in the Senate in January,
and Trump will be acquitted, since there isn't even an accusation that
he committed a crime. The question is: What will the Democrats
do after that?

This is a serious question. One Democrat senator, Al Green, said that
the Democrats should just impeach Trump again and again, until he's
convicted.

The Democrats have experienced one extremely humiliating setback after
another, after the Russia hoax, the Ukraine hoax, and the impeachment
hoax. What will they do after Trump is acquitted? The Democrats have
a great deal of pent-up hatred, and it might explode into violence, as
it has in the other tribal examples I gave above. My father, who was
a Greek immigrant, once told me that the violence in the US was so
great in the 1930s that he thought that the country wouldn't survive.
That could happen again.

Even worse, what will the Democrats do if Trump is re-elected? They
will be looking at four more years of Trump, and government control by
the 63 million smelly, loathsome, hated Tea Partiers / Trump
supporters.

The Democrats have shown themselves to be angry, hysterical, and
hormonal men and women, totally irrational and a completely out of
control mob for the last three years. What will they do in the next
four years? It's not pleasant to contemplate.

However, let's remember that we're still headed for war with China.
When a "regeneracy event" occurs, such as a major military setback or
a major attack on American soil, then the entire country, both
Democrats and Republicans, will put aside their political differences
and unite behind the president, just as they did after the attack on
Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March.


---- Related posts:

*** 03-Dec-2019 World View: Civil war and impeachment hearings
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...678#p48678

*** 05-Dec-2019 World View: Second American Civil War
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...711#p48711

*** 05-Dec-2019 World View: Corey Booker turns on Democrats' racism
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...712#p48712

*** 06-Dec-2019 World View: Jonathan Turley on impeachment
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...725#p48725

[John J. Xenakis]

** 14-Dec-2019 World View: North Korea makes new test as 12/31 deadline looms

North Korea announced that it conducted another "crucial test" which
"will be applied to further bolstering up the reliable strategic
nuclear deterrent of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea."

They didn't announce what was tested, but it's believed that it
was an advanced rocket engine of a type that can be used in ballistic
missiles.

For the past two years, since the talks between Kim Jong-un and Donald
Trump began with a "charm offensive," North Korea has not tested
any nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles. However, it has made
numerous tests of things like cruise missiles, which are a threat
to South Korea and Japan.

North Korea originally promised that it would denuclearize, in return
for agreement by the US to end the UN and US sanctions. Kim Jong-un
has used a variety of artifices to trick Trump into removing the
sanctions unilaterally, but has not succeeded. These tricks worked
with president George Bush in 2008, which was a major humiliation
to the US. But Trump has refused to fall for them.

Now, North Korea has set a deadline of the end of this year for the
sanctions to be lifted. They have not said how they will retaliate,
but it's believed that it would be a resumption of nuclear weapon and
ballistic missile tests.

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/

---- Sources:

-- North Korea says it conducted test to bolster its “strategic
nuclear deterrent”
https://www.nknews.org/2019/12/north-kor...deterrent/
(NK News, 14-Dec-2019)

-- U.S. envoy to visit Seoul as deadline looms for stalled North Korea
talks
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-north...SKBN1YH0QI
(Reuters, 13-Dec-2019)

---- Related posts:

*** 07-Dec-2019 World View: North Korea missile test
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...736#p48736

*** 07-Dec-2019 World View: North Korea ICBM test
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...733#p48733

*** 07-Dec-2019 World View: China - North Korea vassal relationship
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...735#p48735

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 15-Dec-19 World View -- US envoy visits S. Korea to prepare for North Korea 12/31 threat

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• North Korea announces new 'crucial test' to bolster its 'nuclear deterrent'
  
• US envoy Stephen Biegun arrives in South Korea on Sunday
  
• China's confused response to the North Korean threat
  

****
**** North Korea announces new 'crucial test' to bolster its 'nuclear deterrent'
****


A public TV screen Monday in Tokyo shows North Korea's Sohae long-range rocket launch site (AP)

North Korea on Saturday announced that it conducted another "crucial
test" which "will be applied to further bolstering up the reliable
strategic nuclear deterrent of the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea." This was the second test in the space of a week. The North
Koreans didn't announce the nature of the tests, but it's believed
that they were tests of an advanced rocket engine of a type that can
be used in ballistic missiles.

North Korea has in recent weeks become increasingly belligerent,
conducting a series of short-range missile tests and using increasingly
belligerent language. The North Koreans have set a deadline of the
end of the year for the US to agree to the removal of some or all
of the US or UN sanctions unilaterally, without any serious
denuclearization steps by the North Koreans.

Not surprisingly, North Korea's rhetoric toward Japan has been
especially hostile. Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe responded to a
recent missile test by saying, "North Korea’s repeated launches of
ballistic missiles are a serious defiance to not only our country but
also the international community." North Korea's state media
responded by denouncing Japan's prime minister Abe as "an underwit,"
"the most stupid man ever known in history," and a "perfect imbecile."

On the other hand, Donald Trump last week once again referred to Kim
Jong-un as "rocket man," saying that "he likes sending rockets up,"
but "in the meantime, we still have peace." A North Korean official
said, "This naturally indicates that Trump is an old man bereft of
patience. As he is such a heedless and erratic old man, the time when
we can not but call him a 'dotard' again may come."

****
**** US envoy Stephen Biegun arrives in South Korea on Sunday
****

U.S. special envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun will arrive in
Seoul on Sunday to meet with South Korean officials and devise
a joint US-South Korea strategy for responding to North Korea's
end of year threat.

For the past two years, since the talks between North Korea's child
dictator Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump began with a "charm offensive,"
North Korea has not tested any nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic
missiles. However, it has made numerous tests of things like
short-range missiles, which are a threat to South Korea and Japan.

North Korea originally promised that it would denuclearize, in return
for agreement by the US to end the UN and US sanctions. Kim Jong-un
has used a variety of artifices to trick Trump into removing the
sanctions unilaterally, but has not succeeded. These tricks worked
with president George Bush in 2008, which was a major humiliation to
the US. But Trump has refused to fall for them.

Now, North Korea has set a deadline of the end of this year for the
sanctions to be lifted. After two years of charm offensive, but being
unable to get the sanctions lifted, the North Koreans now say that
they have "nothing to lose" in taking "a new path." They have not
said what the new path is, but it's believed that it would be a
resumption of nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests.

It seems likely that the "new path" will be devised to take advantage
of scheduled elections in America and South Korea, in November and
April respectively, to apply maximum political pressure on Donald
Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. For example, the North
Koreans might simply threaten to begin nuclear weapons testing again
unless some or all of the sanctions are lifted.

According to reports, US envoy Stephen Biegun will discuss with South
Korean officials a strategy to get the US-North Korea talks started
again, in order to avoid a new regional crisis. According to one
South Korean official, "In any case, Biegun would try to give an
impression that they won’t be manipulated by the North Koreans, while
making clear that they want to keep talking."

****
**** China's confused response to the North Korean threat
****

Normally, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) takes a highly
contemptuous anti-American position on almost any subject, but
that's not the case with the current situation. The Chinese
are as unhappy with the North Koreans as they are with
the Americans.

For centuries, Korea has had a vassal or tributary relationship with
China. This means that Korea paid China a great deal of money,
usually gold and slaves, in return for guarantees of defense from
outsiders (i.e., Japan). Although China does not directly govern the
vassal, China expects the vassal to do as it's told, and will not
hesitate to punish a vassal that disobeys.

North Korea today pays tribute to China not in the form of gold and
slaves, but in the form of massive amounts of coal and "workers," both
of which are also used to provide financial aid to North Korea.

Relations between China and North Korea took a hostile turn in October
2006, when North Korea began testing nuclear weapons. The vassal
North Korea did not do as it was told, and China punished its vassal
by agreeing to United Nations sanctions targeting North Korea.

However, China cannot punish North Korea too severely. If China tries
to starve North Korea, the result could be a massive refugee flow from
North Korea, across the Yalu River, into northeast China, which would
be an economic disaster for China.

The reason that China does not want North Korea testing nuclear
weapons is simply because such tests provide the US with an excuse to
increase its military presence in the area.

The Chinese were particularly infuriated in 2016 when North Korean
tests provoked South Korea to reverse a previous policy and agree to
deploy the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), supplied by the
United States military, to protect itself from North Korean missile
attacks. The THAAD does not do a very good job at protecting South
Korea from North Korean short-range missiles. But what the THAAD
system does, through its sophisticated long-range "over the horizon"
radar capabilities, is provide early warning to the American military
of a missile attack from China.

What China would like is for America to reduce its military presence
in the region, which a North Korean missile test would certainly
make less likely. Therefore, the Chinese are very unhappy with
North Korea's threats.

What the Chinese say they would like is for the North Koreans, the
South Koreans and the US to talk, and for everything to settle down,
so that American forces can start withdrawing from the region. That's
a nice Chinese dream, but it's very unlikely to occur.

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, with over 200 source references,
$13.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738637/

Sources:

• North Korea says it conducted test to bolster its “strategic nuclear deterrent” (NKNews, 14-Dec-2019)
  
• U.S. envoy to visit Seoul as deadline looms for stalled North Korea talks (Reuters, 13-Dec-2019)
  
• U.S. warns North Korea against 'ill-advised behavior' as deadline looms (Reuters, 12-Dec-2019)
  
• As its deadline for ‘bold decision’ from US looms, North Korea is ramping up the rhetoric again (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 8-Dec-2019)
  
• North Korea fires two ‘unidentified projectiles’ on Thanksgiving as end-of-year deadline looms (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 28-Nov-2019)
  
• U.S. and North Korea trade barbs, but both keeping options open as deadline looms (Japan Times, 10-Dec-2019)
  
• North Korea / The looming deadline in nuclear talks: Kim’s three options before the year’s end (NK News, 29-Nov-2019)
  
• US, North Korea on collision course as New Year deadline looms (Business Times Singapore, AFP, 10-Dec-2019)
  
• Action needed as North Korea deadline looms (Global Times, 10-Dec-2019)
  
• US envoy for DPRK to visit ROK, Japan amid tension (China Daily, 14-Dec-2019)
  
• North Korea has “nothing to lose,” top official warns Trump as tensions mount (NK News, 9-Dec-2019)
  
• South Korea to 'speak out' on NK test at UNSC (Korea Times, 11-Dec-2019)
  
• Firms withdraw from China on worsening business conditions (Korea Times, 9-Dec-2019)

Related Articles:

• South Korea's weapons industry boosted by end of North's 'Charm Offensive' (29-Apr-2019)
  
  
• North Korea 'Charm Offensive' appears to have run its course (17-Nov-2018)
  
  
• North Korea plays hardball to get sanctions lifted (12-Nov-2018)
  
  
• China, Russia demand that that some North Korea sanctions be lifted (29-Sep-2018)
  
  
• US imposes new North Korea sanctions on Chinese and Russian shipping companies (17-Aug-2018)
  
  
• NY Times publishes a generational analysis of South Korea (30-Jan-2018)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, North Korea, Kim Jong-un,
South Korea, Moon Jae-in, Japan, Shinzo Abe,
Stephen Biegun, China, Chinese Communist Party, CCP,
Terminal High Altitude Air Defense, THAAD

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[John J. Xenakis]

** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Uniting the country

Quote:> The Democrats have shown themselves to be angry, hysterical, and
> hormonal men and women, totally irrational and a completely out of
> control mob for the last three years. What will they do in the
> next four years? It's not pleasant to contemplate.

> However, let's remember that we're still headed for war with
> China. When a "regeneracy event" occurs, such as a major military
> setback or a major attack on American soil, then the entire
> country, both Democrats and Republicans, will put aside their
> political differences and unite behind the president, just as they
> did after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death
> March.

Guest Wrote:> What if the 2020 election goes ahead and there is no war with
> China or Iran? Couldn't a civil war erupt? Your premise seems to
> rest on war uniting the country, but what if war doesn't happen
> until, let's say, 2023, then what?

First off, we're not going to war with Iran. Iran is becoming more
and more pro-Western and pro-American every day, as the old geezers
who survived the 1979 civil war die off, and the younger generations
embrace the West.

As I said in the article, for the last ten years the Democrats have
been increasingly willing to incite violence against the 63 million
smelly, loathsome, hated Tea Partiers / Trump supporters. I expect
this use of violence to increase, especially if Democrats have to face
the horror of another four years with the same 63 million smelly,
loathsome, hated Tea Partiers / Trump supporters in control.

So I expect the incidents and intensity of violence to continue to
increase. The violence won't go too far for an ironic reason: The
people with the guns are Tea Partiers, who are Second Amendment
supporters.

However, as I've said many times, there is absolutely no sign
whatsoever that this is leading to a civil war. Maybe if the Tea
Partiers managed to control the presidency for another 20 years we
might get to that point, but we're nowhere near it now. A Democratic
presidential victory in 2024 would bring the worst of the violence to
an end at that time.

Most of all, a "regeneracy event," such as a Chinese missile attack on
the United States or even on Taiwan or Japan, would cause the
population, both Republicans and Democrats, to put aside their
political differences and unite behind the president.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Chaos Theory and World War

FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> Apparently, the US and USSR actually WEREN'T truly existential
> threats to one another!

> ..how wacky is that to discover after all this time,.. and
> expense!? <chuckle, chuckle, chuckle!>

I agree, but that didn't stop the two sides from THINKING that they
were mutual existential threats.

FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> As you've said, the REALLY REAL existential threat to China is
> CHINA! China is most worried about the internal threat of their
> own population who seem addicted to regular-ish rebellion.

> ..but they try to maintain their "stability" through demonizing
> "outside powers".

> I suppose that one could surmise that we should have known that
> Russia and the US weren't really existential threats to one
> another long long ago simple by the fact that we hadn't
> "exponentially heightened" our mutual antagonisms into war
> somewhere in the 1970's or 1980's,.. or more likely the
> 1960's.

That's an interesting way of looking at, and it seems to be valid.

FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> So, how do we decide that there will be war between antagonists,
> if not by their mutual level of antagonism?

> ..we "know" there will be war because their generational
> condition(s) "matches" the "gotta have a WAR!" template for (one
> or both of) the belligerents.

> BUT,.. it is possible to speed up or slow down the commencement of
> a war by being "naughty or nice" to "the enemy", while the
> inevitability of said war is not effected at all.

Now you've REALLY hit on something extremely complicated that I've
been writing on the edges of, but never fully developed. I love
dangling prepositions. Don't you?

Anyway, I'll start with one of my favorite examples, that I mention
frequently: The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Arguably, everybody already "knew" that a war between Israel and
Lebanon would be coming some day, but didn't know when. Various
diplomatic steps were being taken all the time -- by the Lebanese, the
Israelis, the United Nations, the United States, Russia, and other
interested parties to prevent such a war, or at least to postpone it
as long as possible.

However, as it turned out, all those massive diplomatic steps were
100% USELESS. Here's what happened on or around July 12, 2006:

• Two Israeli soldiers just happened to be patrolling near the
  border with Lebanon.
  
  
• Some members of the Hezbollah militia just happened to see them,
  and decided to cross the border and abduct them.
  
  
• Israel's government went into a state of total panic.
  
  
• Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called this "an act of war,"
  and within a few hours, Israel was mobilized for war.
  
  
• Israel launched the war with no plan and no objective. Each day,
  Israel lurched from one plan and objective to the next, as the
  previous one failed. In the end, the war was a disaster for both
  Israel and Lebanon, and accomplished nothing except the destruction of
  a lot of Lebanon's infrastructure. The war fizzled quickly because
  Lebanon and Hezbollah were in a generational Awakening era.

So all that multi-national diplomacy was for nothing, because of a
chaotic event that could not be predicted: That Israel's government
went into a state of total panic.

So, that brings us back to your question: Can you speed up or delay an
inevitable war? If it's a war triggered by a chaotic event during a
generational Crisis era, then the answer is NO. There's no action
that you can take that will either cause or prevent such a war, or
that will speed up or delay such a war.

This takes us to the concepts of Chaos Theory. You cannot predict,
cause, delay or speed up a chaotic event.

The iconic example is that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China,
then it will trigger a chain of events that could cause a hurricane in
North America.

So you might say, "Gee, it would be fun to take a trip to Beijing, and
while I'm there I'll get a butterfly to flap its wings and cause a
hurricane in North America."

Obviously that won't work, because there's more to the iconic example.
A butterfly flapping its wings in China will almost certainly have no
effect at all, but it MIGHT cause a hurricane in North America, or it
MIGHT prevent a hurricane from occurring that otherwise would have
occurred, or it MIGHT speed up or delay such a hurricane. It's
impossible to predict.

So all those diplomatic efforts to prevent a war between Israel and
Hezbollah might actually have CAUSED the war. For example, maybe it
was because of all those diplomatic efforts that both Israel's
military and Hezbollah's militia were patrolling on opposite sides of
the border on July 12, 2006, resulting in the abduction and the war.
Maybe if there hadn't been any diplomatic efforts, there wouldn't have
been a war at all. It's impossible to say, one way or the other.

However, there's another important side to all this: Preparation.

You can't take steps to cause, prevent, speed up or delay a chaotic
event that triggers a war, but if you know that the war is inevitable,
then you can prepare for the war, and you can try to prevent your
enemy from preparing.

So China's military is preparing for war by heavily subsidizing Huawei
and TikTok, and both are wildly successful at collecting massive
amounts of information to be stored in China's massive big data social
database. This will give China the information it needs to bribe or
threaten any Western politician or soldier at any time, or to take
complete control of foreign networks at time of war.

Trump is preparing for war by increasing the defense budget.

Trump is using the trade dispute as a means to cripple the Chinese
military's supply chain, in order to weaken it. Trump is also
blocking use of Huawei in the networks of America and its allies.

None of these steps will prevent a war. In fact, as I've pointed out
many times, the US established an embargo on oil and gasoline exports
to Japan on August 1, 1941, and on December 7, Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor. A lot of people have said (and I've said) that the US embargo
resulted in the Pearl Harbor bombing, but in fact it's far from clear
whether the Pearl Harbor bombing would have occurred anyway.

So will Trump's US-China trade sanctions cause a war with China? I
happen to believe not. I still expect the war to be triggered by some
trivial event, the equivalent of the abduction of two soldiers,
occurring in Kashmir, the Mideast, the South China Sea, Central Asia,
or anywhere else.

This brings us back to the statement by Carlos Gutierrez that I was
criticizing on Friday, the implication that by merely calling China a
strategic threat, then you will cause a war with China. As I've said,
there is no way to cause, prevent, speed up or delay an inevitable war
with China, least of all by calling China a strategic threat.

[Warren Dew]

The Israel-Hezbollah war wasn't triggered by a chaotic event, though. Abduction of two Israeli soldiers could certainly trigger a war, but there isn't any credible circumstance where abduction of the two Israeli soldiers would prevent the war, when it would otherwise be triggered by lack of an abduction.

To take an historical example, the policy of Appeasement by Chamberlain before WWII most certainly delayed the Europe wide portion of WWII. Some argue that the delay was critical to rearmament efforts.

Actions to delay or accelerate a crisis war are just as possible as efforts to prepare for them. However, insofar as crisis wars are not entirely predictable, these efforts may be ineffective. For example, if the crisis war involving China ends up being a civil war, any preparations for war with the US will be largely useless.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Israel-Hezbollah war

(12-15-2019, 12:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > The Israel-Hezbollah war wasn't triggered by a chaotic event,
> though. Abduction of two Israeli soldiers could certainly trigger
> a war, but there isn't any credible circumstance where abduction
> of the two Israeli soldiers would prevent the war, when it would
> otherwise be triggered by lack of an abduction.

The abduction wasn't the chaotic event. The panic was the chaotic
event. It's similar to the 1929 stock market panic, which was also
a chaotic event.

[Warren Dew]

So now you're saying the abduction was unconnected to the war?

[John J. Xenakis]

** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Chaotic panic

(12-15-2019, 03:58 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > So now you're saying the abduction was unconnected to the
> war?

Everything is connected to everything else, but that's not the point.

I always like to point to the example that no one knows what caused
the 1929 stock market panic to occur on October 28, instead of a few
months earlier or later. It was unexpected. It just happened on
October 28.

The Israeli government panic and invasion of Lebanon on July 12, 2006,
was also unexpected. Why did it occur on that day? Was it because of
the abduction? It's certainly reasonable to assume so.

But here are some questions that are left unanswered:

• If there had been an abduction a month earlier or later, would
  the same panic and invasion have occurred?
  
  
• Could the panic have been triggered by something else -- perhaps a
  belligerent speech by Nasrallah?
  
  
• Did the panic and invasion have to occur at all?

Did the 1929 panic have to occur at all? I believe so. Did the 2006
Israeli panic have to occur at all? I think so, but I can't prove it.
Some things are just "in the air," and are going to happen one way or
another.

(12-15-2019, 12:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > To take an historical example, the policy of Appeasement by
> Chamberlain before WWII most certainly delayed the Europe wide
> portion of WWII. Some argue that the delay was critical to
> rearmament efforts.

Germany's invasion of Poland was not a panic event like Israel's
invasion of Lebanon, so the same reasoning doesn't apply.

Or maybe it was a panic event, in which case Chamberlain's achievement
may have had no effect at all.

Whether something is a chaotic event has to be proven. Sometimes this
can be done with computer models, by running the model with different
inputs, and finding whether tiny changes to the inputs produce huge
changes in the results. It's hard to do such a test with things like
a military invasion.

The invasion of Poland was not the start of WW II. At that time, WW
II had already been going on for several years. I count the beginning
of WW II as 1937, when a Japanese soldier had to pee and got lost in
the woods, and his commander assumed that he had been abducted by the
Chinese, triggering the China-Japan war and quickly leading to the
rape of Nanking. That's a good example of a chaotic event triggering
a war.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Karma

Tom Mazanec Wrote:> John, I refer you to a great technothriller writer I follow and
> his latest book Veracity.

> It is about the invention of a perfect lie detector that works
> over video or otherwise surreptitiously.

> China wants to get it and keep America from getting it.

> In the Afterword, the author tells how he had really had his eyes
> opened researching the book. He had thought that China was
> moderating and would not be a threat to America, but totally
> revised this opinion to hold that China is a peril to the United
> States and the world.

> https://www.amazon.com/Veracity-Douglas-...B07NKP8XH7

China is unique in world history in that they've never done a good
thing for any other country except to exploit good deeds by other
countries. Whether it's the United Nations, WTO, the climate
conference, the law of the sea, the BRI, or anything else, the world
reaches out to China to help them and to make them a welcome part of
the world community, and they take advantage of that help and kindness
to exploit others and harm others. They even continue to claim that
they're an "underdeveloped nation," which makes me want to vomit.
They constantly demand that everyone else obey international law, but
they claim that no international law or international contract that
they've signed applies to them.

The United States and other Western countries -- and in fact all other
countries -- do lots of good deeds to help people in other countries.
But not China. I've studied China, and I've written a book on China.

I'm not aware of any good that China has ever done for someone else
except to exploit them. Even Putin sometimes tries to help other
people. But not China. Not ever.

This is because of the Chinese view that they're the Master Race and
everyone else is a barbarian. America is kinder to rattlesnakes and
desert rats than China is to people of any other nation. The American
population is diverse ethnically, religiously and nationally. The
American people see themselves as the same as people anywhere else in
the world, except that we're lucky enough to live in the greatest and
most exceptional country of the world. But the CCP don't see any
point in being kind or helpful to anyone else because all other people
are barbarians and worth less than desert rats.

More and more, China appears to me to be pure evil. I'm not a
religious person, but I do believe in Karma or Karuma (the Japanese
word for Karma) or Kismet or comeuppance. China is headed for its own
self-destruction, and will take as much of the rest of the world with
it as it can.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 16-Dec-19 World View -- Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• 'Afghan Papers' reveal we sent 175,000 soldiers into Afghanistan without 'foggiest notion' what we were doing
  
• Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan
  

****
**** 'Afghan Papers' reveal we sent 175,000 soldiers into Afghanistan without 'foggiest notion' what we were doing
****


Arlington National Cemetary’s Section 60 is where most of the casualties from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are buried. (Getty)

The Washington Post has published a trove of thousands of "Afghanistan
papers" that it has obtained from the Dept. of Defense under the
Freedom of Information Act. The paper is declaring these to be of
historic importance, and is comparing them to the "Pentagon Papers"
that roiled federal politics in the 1970s.

Starting in 2014, the Office of the Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) undertook a project to interview
hundreds of people, including politicians, analysts, and soldiers,
who are Americans, Europeans and Afghans, in a "Lessons Learned" project
in order to figure out why nothing has worked in Afghanistan.

Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump have all
promised to bring the Afghan war to a satisfactory conclusion,
defeating the Taliban, and making the country into a free market
democracy. Even today, there are still truly idiotic "peace
negotiations" going on in Doha, of all places, between US and Taliban
negotiators, but not including Afghan government officials because the
Taliban only want to negotiate with the US, but not with the Afghan
government. Can you believe this?

The project found that Bush, Obama and Trump have all done the
same things. They tried to win the war by not repeating earlier
mistakes, or the mistakes of their predecessors, but all this meant
was that they made new mistakes. And then, we're all shocked, shocked,
shocked to learn from the Afghanistan Papers that the three presidents
lied to the American people, always hiding the setbacks, always
claiming that progress was being made, always saying that the
end is in sight.

This is exasperating to me because I've written many times in the
last ten years that the war in Afghanistan CANNOT be won, or even
resolved in any meaningful way. And by that I didn't mean that
the Nato forces just had to be a little more clever. I meant that
it was literally impossible. Mathematically impossible.

I've given the reasoning many times, and I'll repeat it again below.
The reasoning is not that difficult, but the problem is that the
so-called experts in Washington really don't have a clue. Long-time
readers are aware that I learned this in 2006, when the Congressional
Quarterly and the London Times conducted surveys of supposed Mideast
experts and found that they were idiots. (See "Guess what? British politicians and journalists are just as ignorant as Americans"
from January 2007)

I was really shocked at that time to realize that I knew a lot more
than the so-called Mideast experts in Washington knew. In a sense it
isn't surprising, since I'm a Boomer and went to college at a time
when colleges actually taught something. Since then, SAT scores have
been falling, and college professors are left-wing idiots who teach
the equivalent of women's studies and sociology.

So it's not surprising that I know a lot more about analyzing
Afghanistan than the Washington experts do. As I said, the reasoning
in the analysis isn't that difficult, but it does contain some logical
subleties that are beyond the mental capabilities of the so-called
experts who graduated from Harvard or Princeton, where they leave with
no clue about the real world.

This "shocking" discovery from the Afghanistan Papers of the total
ignorance and stupidity of the so-called experts in Washington
is really amazing, when you think that there might be one or two
people in the State Dept. or DoD that can figure out what's really
going on. But my guess is that such people would be too threatening
to the élite "experts" from Harvard or Princeton, and so the people
who really know what's going on are given offices in the basement
in the boiler room, where they won't bother the élites.

Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to
Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589
were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.

The Washington Post article quotes Douglas Lute, a three-star Army
general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the
Bush and Obama administrations. He says the following in 2015:

<QUOTE>"We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of
Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing. What are we
trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we
were undertaking.

If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction
... 2,400 lives lost. Who will say this was in
vain?"<END QUOTE>

See, this is what I mean. What the hell is going on here???
We're in Afghanistan fighting a war with hundreds of thousands of
troops, and the Afghanistan "czar" for Bush and Obama says that
"We didn't have the foggiest notion" of what we were doing?

Do you understand the magnitude of this, Dear Reader? We send hundreds
of thousands of troops do a war where the don't have the foggiest notion
of what we're doing. It's so hideously unbelievable that it's almost
hysterically funny.

And if this is happening in Afghanistan, then it's also happening with
American policy in the Mideast, in Africa, in Asia, and so forth.

I realize that the regular readers of my Generational Dynamics
articles are a lot more intelligent than the so-called experts in
Washington. But if you happen to know one of the "experts" on
Afghanistan, then please send him a copy of this article. He'll
either learn about what's really going on in Afghanistan, or else
he'll change his spam filter so that all future e-mail messages from
you go into his spam folder.

****
**** Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan
****

The Iraq war was a political disaster for Bush until he adopted the
"surge" strategy in 2007. Obama and the Democrats ridiculed this
strategy until it worked, and successfully ejected AQI (al-Qaeda in
Iraq) from Iraq.

In 2009, Obama was faced with a potential political disaster in
Afghanistan. He looked at the success of the "surge" strategy in
Iraq, and decided that his surge strategy would be better than Bush's.
So he adopted a surge strategy in Afghanistan. He would be even more
successful in getting rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan than Bush was
in getting rid of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

As I wrote at the time, and have written many times since then, the
"surge" strategy was 100% guaranteed to fail in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda
in Iraq (AQI) was a foreign militia led by Jordanian terrorist Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, and al-Zarqawi had to import fighters from Jordan
and Saudi Arabia because the Iraqis refused to fight. (See "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq" from April, 2007)

So the "surge" in Iraq worked because it had to eject a FOREIGN
militia. But that's not true in Afghanistan. The Taliban
are NOT foreign. They're radicalized Pashtuns, and Pashtuns are
the dominant ethnic group IN AFGHANISTAN. So the "surge" can't
eject the Taliban.

And so, Dear Reader, you understand that, don't you? As a reader
of Generational Dynamics articles, you're more intelligent than the
experts in Washington for whom this concept that AQI was foreign
while the Taliban are domestic is much too subtle for the
Washington experts to understand.

But that's only one of the reasons why the surge strategy would fail
in Afghanistan with 100% certainty.

Iraq's last generational crisis war was the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s,
where the major groups (Sunnis and Shias) were UNITED in fighting
against Iran. So the Sunnis and Shias were also UNITED in
ejecting al-Qaeda in Iraq. That's why the "surge" strategy worked
in Iraq.

Afghanistan is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. The last generational crisis war
was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was
a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan
versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern
Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need
to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the
Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.

Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan
are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have
scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the
Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have
fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings,
dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side
performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they
have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill
each other.

In recent months, there's apparently been a new development. You
still have the Pashtuns, who have been aligned with al-Qaeda, and
other ethnic groups that loathe the Pashtuns are aligning with ISIS.
This is the very early stages of a new civil war.

Now go back and review what General Douglas Lute said in the
quote above: That we sent 175,000 troops into Afghanistan without
having "the foggiest notion" of what we were doing.

It's this stuff about the Pashtuns and the civil war that the so-called
Afghanistan experts don't have "the foggiest notion" about. And it's
really not that complicated. You don't even have to know anything
about generational theory to understand it.

You understand it, don't you Dear Reader? That's because you're
intelligent and well-informed. You can take satisfaction in the fact
that you understand why there's been one failure after another in
Afghanistan, but that the so-called experts in Washington are too
stupid to understand. This is what Lute was talking about.

So now we just have to sit back and watch these farcical peace
talks take place in Doha between the US and the Taliban -- because
the Taliban refuse to negotiate with the Afghan government!!!!!
Hahahahahahahahaha.

Sources:

• The Afghanistan Papers A secret history of the war - At war with the truth (Washington Post, 9-Dec-2019)
  
• I helped write the official lies to sell the Afghanistan war (Washington Post, 13-Dec-2019)
  
• In Trump We Trust: Why Donald Will End the War in Afghanistan (National Interest, 15-Dec-2019)
  
• Where Is the Outrage Over the War in Afghanistan? (The Nation, 13-Dec-2019)
  
• Why the Media Is Ignoring the Afghanistan Papers (New Republic, 15-Dec-2019)
  
• 'Nobody wants to talk about it': Senate remains idle as Afghan war lurches on (Politico, 11-Dec-2019)
  
• Why the ‘Afghanistan Papers’ Matter (Foreign Policy, 10-Dec-2019)
  
• Top US officials repeatedly misled public about Afghanistan War – Report (CNN, 11-Dec-2019)
  
• Timeline - The U.S. War in Afghanistan (Council on Foreign Relations, 15-Dec-2019)

Related Articles:

• Trump considers new troop surge and strategy change in Afghanistan war (10-May-2017)
  
  
• Guess what? British politicians and journalists are just as ignorant as Americans (14-Jan-2007)
  
  
• Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq (01-Apr-2007)
  
• American army general warns of imminent defeat in Afghanistan war (26-Sep-2009)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Afghanistan, Afghanistan Papers,
Douglas Lute,
Pashtuns, Taliban, Afghan civil war,
Northern Alliance, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks,
Iraq, Iran/Iraq war, Great Iraqi Revolution,
Jordan, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda in Iraq, AQI,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh

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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]

** 16-Dec-2019 World View: Kismet

FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> Quibble: If you believe in "Kismet/et al", then you're
> religious.

Totally disagree. Being religious has nothing to do with it.

Here's an anecdote I heard a motivational speaker tell several
decades ago:

Quote: A man bought a plot of land that was really a mess.
It was covered with weeds and all kinds of crap. There was even a
sickening smell.

But the guy got to work. He worked every day, six days a week,
from 6 am to 8 pm. He cleaned out all the crap. He cleaned out
all the weeds. He ploughed the land. He planted seeds. He
watered the seeds every day, making sure to clean up any new
weeds.

Within a few months, he had the most beautiful plot of land in the
region, with lovely flowers and plants.

One day, while the man was working on his land, someone walked by
and said: "That's a beautiful plot of land that God has given to
you."

The man thought for a second and said, "Yeah, God did give me a
beautiful plot of land. But you should have seen what kind of
shape it was in when God was taking care of it."

The point of this little anecdote is that it doesn't matter whether
you're religious or not. You're still responsible for your own
fate. You plant the seeds. If you plant weeds, you'll get weeds
back. If you plant flowers, you'll get flowers. Plant a turnip,
get a turnip, never any doubt. But if you go around screwing
people, then one day someone will screw you back, and everyone
else will be cheering him on.

This is related to some things about Greek tragedy that I've written
in the past.

I've found that few non-Greeks really understand what tragedy is
about. As a Greek I know that a sense of tragedy is in my
bones. Tragedy as an art form was invented in ancient Greece, and
three of four great tragic artists of all time were Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides of ancient Greece, with the fourth being
Shakespeare.

What tragedy does is to bring order out of seemingly random events.
Many people misunderstand the deepest meanings of tragedy. If a child
is killed in a random traffic accident, then it's a terrible event but
it's not a tragedy in the classical sense, because of that randomness.

The essence of classical tragedy is that the tragic event is not
random. The tragic event is inevitable: it MUST occur, and the reason
it must occur is because of the nature, the personality, the character
of the protagonists. A true tragedy cannot be prevented, even by
those who foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy
are too powerful for anyone to stop.

Like the child killed in a random traffic accident, the protagonists
of a true tragedy have a great future before them, and in the Greek
view, perhaps even a heroic future. But the heroic future turns into
disaster because the players in the true tragedy move step by step
towards that disaster; and all of us on the outside can see it coming,
because these particular players are uniquely capable of inflicting
this disaster on one another.

Today we're witnessing a tragedy in progress, where the protagonists
are China, Japan and the US. We can see the play moving toward
disaster, but we can't do anything to stop it (or delay it, or speed
it up). It's a true tragedy that cannot be prevented, even though we
can foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy are too
powerful for anyone to stop.

The same is true of the individual and Kismet. A person creates his
own fate, and the ending is inevitable. Whether you're religious or
not is irrelevant. In the end, we all get what we deserve.

[Warren Dew]

(12-15-2019, 06:23 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Did the 1929 panic have to occur at all?  I believe so.  Did the 2006
Israeli panic have to occur at all?  I think so, but I can't prove it.
Some things are just "in the air," and are going to happen one way or
another.

Sure.  The exact timing is random.  That doesn't mean you can't do things that can speed it up or slow it down, like kidnap Israeli soldiers or sell off large blocks of stock.  It's just that it's probabilistic, rather than deterministic, so you can't be sure that what you do will work; it probably won't, so it's hard to plan for.

Quote:The invasion of Poland was not the start of WW II.  At that time, WW
II had already been going on for several years.  I count the beginning
of WW II as 1937, when a Japanese soldier had to pee and got lost in
the woods, and his commander assumed that he had been abducted by the
Chinese, triggering the China-Japan war and quickly leading to the
rape of Nanking.  That's a good example of a chaotic event triggering
a war.

Sure.  That's why I said, "the Europe wide portion" of WWII.

[Warren Dew]

(12-15-2019, 06:27 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: I'm not aware of any good that China has ever done for someone else
except to exploit them.  Even Putin sometimes tries to help other
people.  But not China.  Not ever.

I'm pretty sure Putin's Russia has not done anything to help other people beyond what China did to help North Korea in the Korean War.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 17-Dec-19 World View -- India's Citizenship Bill riots evoke memories of the 1947 Partition War

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Riots spread across India along Hindu-Muslim fault line
  
• India's Citizenship Bill riots evoke memories of the 1947 Partition War
  

****
**** Riots spread across India along Hindu-Muslim fault line
****


Students and police face off at Nadwa College in Lucknow (ANI)

A proposed bill that appears to discriminate against Muslims has
triggered demonstrations and riots in multiple cities across India,
including college campuses in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal,
Lucknow, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata (Calcutta) and Mumbai (Bombay).
The protests have been mostly peaceful, but there has been some
violence, and there is viral video of people attacking peacefully
protesting students and beating them. Six people have died in Delhi,
about 200 were injured.

The proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) is complex. It allows
refugees from three neighboring countries -- Bangladesh, Pakistan and
Afghanistan -- to seek citizenship in India.

But there's a requirement: The refugee seeking citizenship must not be
Muslim. He or she may be Hindu, Christian, Jain, Parsi, Sikh or
Buddhist, but not Muslim.

The reason given for this restriction is that all three of these
neighboring countries are "Muslim countries," with majority Muslim
populations and Muslim governments. So the CAB is said to provide
citizenship to harassed or persecuted religious minorities in the
three Muslim countries. The explanation ignores the issue of the
Sufis and Ahmadis in Pakistan, who are Muslim, but are still targeted
and persecuted.

According to prime minister Narendra Modi, Muslims from Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Afghanistan are not covered because they have no need
of India's protection. He tweeted that the new law "does not affect
any citizen of India of any religion."

However, Modi is leader of the Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata
Party), and activists are accusing Modi of discriminating against
Muslims, and violating India's secular constitution.

This is the second major Indian government decision this year that has
triggered protests and complaints of discrimination against Muslims.

In August, India revoked Article 370 of India's constitution. That
article made Kashmir, which is a Muslim majority province, a
semi-autonomous state of India, allowing some level of
self-government. Revoking Article 370 means that Kashmir no longer
has a special status, and is now just another state in India, under
full control of Delhi. To prevent riots, Kashmir has been on virtual
lockdown for several months, with strick curfews and with limited
phone and internet service.

These two changes have something in common, at least in the eyes
of the demonstrators. Revoking Article 370 means that, for the
first time, Hindus will be able to buy property in Kashmir, and
Muslims in Kashmir fears that in time Hindus will be in the majority.
In the case of the new citizenship bill, some protesters have expressed
the fear that an influx of Hindus from neighboring countries will
cause some border area, especially in Assam in the northeast, to
become Hindu majority in time.

Actually, residents of Assam are protesting the citizenship bill for
entirely different reasons. Assam is populated by some 70 different
ethnic groups, and they fear that any influx of refugees, whether
Hindu or Muslim, will mean that they will lose their ethnic character.
Indigenous people in Assam speak Assamese and Bengali, and both groups
for years have competed over jobs and resources.

****
**** India's Citizenship Bill riots evoke memories of the 1947 Partition War
****

India's previous two generational crisis wars were India's
1857 Rebellion, which pitted Hindu nationalists against British
colonists, and then the 1947 Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars
of the 20th century, pitting Hindus against Muslims, following the
partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan.

Today, the survivors of the 1947 Partition War have almost all died
off, leaving behind younger generations with no fear of repeating past
disasters. Generational Dynamics predicts that there will be
a new civil war between Muslims and Indians, or an external
war with Pakistan, or both.

The number and belligerence of riots and demonstrations in India have
been growing and spreading across the country for several weeks. It
remains to be seen whether these demonstrations will fizzle out, or
whether they will continue to grow into a much large anti-government
rebellion.

Sources:

• India citizenship law protests: All the latest updates (Al-Jazeera, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• India: Massive protests against citizenship law (Deutsche Welle, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• India citizenship law protests spread across campuses (Reuters, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• India Protests Spread as Anger Against Citizenship Law Grows (Bloomberg, 15-Dec-2019)
  
• India’s new Citizenship Act and national register of citizens are both inspired by (Quartz, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• India protests rage over 'anti-Muslim' law (AFP, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• Police storm campuses, crack down on protests against Indian citizenship law (France24, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• CAA protests in Lucknow: Students face off with police, stones pelted (India Today, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• Citizenship Amendment Act: India PM Modi appeals for calm as protests grow (BBC, 16-Dec-2019)
  
• Why has India's Assam erupted over an 'anti-Muslim' law? (BBC, 13-Dec-2019)
  
• Citizenship Amendment Bill: India's new 'anti-Muslim' law explained (BBC, 11-Dec-2019)
  
• Citizenship Amendment Bill: Are India's claims about minorities in other countries true? (BBC, 12-Dec-2019)

Related Articles:

• Pakistan-India relations downgraded as Kashmir is locked down (10-Aug-2019)
  
  
• Kashmir locked down after Indian security forces kill seven civilians (18-Dec-2018)
  
  
• Number of Kashmir militants surges as India's 'Operation All-Out' fails (28-Sep-2018)
  
  
• Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is (15-Aug-2017)
  
  
• India's Narendra Modi finally hits out at Cow Protectors ('Gau Rakshaks') (07-Aug-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, India, Citizenship Amendment Bill, CAB,
Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal,
Lucknow, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Calcutta, Mumbai, Bombay,
Hindu, Christian, Jain, Parsi, Sikh, Buddhist, Muslim,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ahmadis, Sufis,
Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Kashmir, Article 370,
Partition War

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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
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[John J. Xenakis]

** 17-Dec-2019 World View: Trend Events vs Chaotic Events

(12-16-2019, 09:59 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > Sure. The exact timing is random. That doesn't mean you can't do
> things that can speed it up or slow it down, like kidnap Israeli
> soldiers or sell off large blocks of stock. It's just that it's
> probabilistic, rather than deterministic, so you can't be sure
> that what you do will work; it probably won't, so it's hard to
> plan for.

FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> A "war" is indeed a chaotic "event", in that "event" here means:
> "underway but not finished as of the present" way (aka: the
> continuous/progressive grammatical aspect kinda
> way),.. essentially making it a system and not a "point
> event",.. where "point event" is the "perfected form/aspect" ("it
> happened and it's state is forever static" as in "the cat died")
> of "event".

You're both right that I haven't been rigorous in using the Chaos
Theory terminology. In fact, I've tried several times in the past to
give a rigorous definition of the relationship between Generational
Dynamics and Chaos Theory, and although I have an intuitive
understanding of the relationship, I've failed to explain it
rigorously. So here's where I'll try again.

For years, I've been using the phrase "chaotic event," and it's worked
very well for me, even if it's not an official term of Chaos Theory.
When I use the term, it means something that Generational Dynamics
can't predict. When something can be predicted, it's called a "trend
event," meaning that it must happen at some time. ("If something
(some trend) can't go on forever, then it won't.") So we have trend
events and chaotic events.

To put it another way, in the last 15 years I've made thousands of
Generational Dynamics predictions about hundreds of countries and
regions throughout history. Those predictions have all come true or
are trending true. None has been wrong. That's because I've avoided
predicting things that can't be predicted, and that's what Chaos
Theory tells me. There are some things that Chaos Theory tells me
cannot be predicted by Generational Dynamics, and those are "chaotic
events" or "chaotic timings."

So how does Chaos Theory "tell me" that some major event cannot be
predicted? The answer is to do an informal mental test of whether a
"small event" or a "random event" can affect whether or not the event
will occur.

For example, I always describe election results as chaotic, and can't
be predicted. There are a couple of informal mental tests that prove
this. For example, a butterfly could flap its wings in China and
cause a rainstorm in North America that affects election turnout, and
therefore the outcome. Another example is that some girl could come
forward at the last minute and make some sexual accusation of one of
the candidates, and that could affect the election outcome. In fact,
any random last-minute scandal of any kind could affect the election
results.

Another common mental test is whether the event is controlled by one
person or a small group of people. The Israeli-Hezbollah war could be
an example of this. The war was triggered by actions of a small group
of people - the abduction, the decision to declare war.

It's really a remarkable example. On July 11, 2006, there was no
thought of war. On July 13, 2006, they were at war. So what happened
on July 12, 2006? Could the same thing have happened a few days
earlier? That's far from certain. Maybe on July 12 some Israeli
politician was sick at home, and if he'd been in his office, then he
would have stopped the war, so there wouldn't have been a war on some
other day.

On the other hand, we can safely predict that there will be a new
Mideast war between Jews and Arabs, although we can't predict the
exact time or the exact scenario. This prediction is driven powerful
generational forces, and can't be derailed by a person being sick at
home or a change in the weather.

However, then there's a related concept called "the trigger." A new
Mideast war may be 100% certain, and when it occurs we may be able to
identify a trigger, and the trigger may be a random event that itself
cannot be predicted. So the war is a trend event, but the trigger
would be a chaotic event.

The 1929 panic was a trend event -- it had to happen. But there's
never been an identifiable trigger, so the panic itself is a chaotic
event. Or perhaps I would say that the timing of the event is
chaotic.

In fact, a "panic" is, almost by definition, a chaotic event.

One more thing: I disagree that a war can be predictably sped up or
slowed down if the war is triggered by a panic. In fact, if you take
some action with the intention of slowing down the rush to war, then
it may backfire by causing a panic to occur earlier than otherwise.
Of course, politicians and historians later may say that such an
action slowed down the war, but that's only because the events already
happened. If it had gone the other way, the historians may say, "That
action was supposed to delay the war, but actually it sped it up
because the action made the opponent panic."

So I guess the above still isn't very rigorous. It's more a "stream
of consciousness" kind of description. However, I want to emphasize
again that my intuitive understanding of a "chaotic event" and "trend
event" has served me very well for 15 years, even if I can't explain
it rigorously.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 17-Dec-2019 World View: BBC interview with Taiwan's Foreign Minister

In the last few hours, the BBC interviewed Joseph Wu, Taiwan's Foreign
Minister.

Wu said that the "one country, two systems" concept would never be
acceptable to Taiwan because it's been a failure in Hong Kong.

He said that the CCP is trapped by what's happening in Hong Kong.

• If the mainland army intervenes in Hong Kong, it will be the
  end of "one country, two systems."
  
  
• If the CCP does not intervene, then the situation in Hong Kong
  will continue to deteriorate, which will prove that "one country, two
  systems" doesn't work.

When asked about the CCP's stated plans to invade Taiwan and annex it,
Wu said that they're trying to maintain the status quo, and keep the
peace.

In response to a question related to America's "desertion" of the
Kurds in Syria, Wu said that Taiwan still considers America to be a
reliable ally.

Wu said that Taiwan needs more help from the United States:

"What we are asking for actually, is quite simple. It's for the United
States to provide defense articles for Taiwan, so that Taiwan is able
to defend itself, and also to engage with Taiwan in military training
or military co-operation so that Taiwan is much better equipped."

[pbrower2a]

I'd like to see the Republic of China vanish... from the world's pariah list. It doesn't have a WMD program, and it isn't committing genocide. It has a functioning democracy; Freedom House rates it 1.0, which is far better than the 6.5 for China and Russia , let alone the 7.0 of North Korea, Syria, and Turkmenistan. (The USA has slipped from 1.0 to 1.5... thank you, President Trump!)

If there is to be any unification of China, then let the norms of the Republic (not the People's Republic) be the model.

Dictatorships foster stupidity - bad economic policies and contempt for the people. I can't understand what trouble the Falun Gang is.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 19-Dec-19 World View -- Escalated bombing by Syria, Russia in Idlib sends tens of thousands to Turkey border

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Escalated bombing by Syria, Russia in Idlib sends tens of thousands to Turkey border
  
• The complex ménage à trois relationship - Syria, Russia, Turkey - under stress
  
• Assad threatens Turkey
  

****
**** Escalated bombing by Syria, Russia in Idlib sends tens of thousands to Turkey border
****


Map of Syria showing areas of control by Syria, Turkey and Kurds (New Humanitarian)

The United Nations is condemning the escalated bombing by Syrian and
Russian warplanes of civilian targets in Syria's northwest province,
Idlib.

The bombing has substantially intensified since the beginning of
November. Bashar al-Assad's warplanes are specially targeting
hospitals, schools, residential neighborhoods and marketplaces in
order to kill as many women and children as possible, whom he
considers to be cockroaches to be exterminated. Al-Assad is using
barrel bombs, which are large barrels filled with explosives, metal,
and sometimes chlorine gas, ammonia and phosphorous.

According to Turkey's media, about 110,000 civilians have been
forced to leave their homes, as 12,000 of them are headed for
Turkey's border, presumably with the intention of crossing.

The numbers are staggering. A million Syrian refugees have come to
Europe, mostly by crossing through Turkey. Turkey itself hosts 3.7
million Syrians who fled al-Assad's violence in the past. Idlib is
home to 2.4 million residents, but they've been augmented by 1.1
million additional Syrians who arrived in Idlib to escape al-Assad's
violence in earlier target sites like Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa. Of
the 3.5 million civilians in Idlib, it's estimated that about 70,000
of them are members of al-Qaeda linked al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra
(al-Nusra Front) later renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS, and then
renamed again to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

For two years, al-Assad has repeatedly said that he considers all 3.5
million residents of Idlib to be terrorists, and that he plans to take
control of Idlib, presumably exterminating many or all of those 3.5
million "terrorists." This would create a huge humanitarian crisis,
with hundreds of thousands more refugees pouring across the border
into Turkey. Many of them would then go on to attempt to cross into
Europe.

With the sharp escalation in bombing of Idlib by Syrian and Russian
warplanes since the beginning of November, it appears that a full
scale assault is likely to begin soon.

****
**** The complex ménage à trois relationship - Syria, Russia, Turkey - under stress
****

Syria's Idlib province has been out of the news for several months
now, since the world has been focused on the REALLY important stuff
like Brexit and impeachment.

But Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and his Russian puppetmaster
Vladimir Putin have been using the time and their respective warplanes
for increasing attacks on civilians in Idlib province, including
missile attacks on markets, hospitals and schools.

A full-scale attack on Idlib has been expected for a couple of years,
but apparently al-Assad has been held back by Russia as part of the
complex ménage à trois relationship connecting Syria, Russia
and Turkey.

Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the objective of
Shia/Alawite Bashar al-Assad is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of
all his Sunni Arab political enemies. His father Hafez al-Assad,
fought an extremely vicious and bloody ethnic civil war with that
ethnic group in the 1980s, and now al-Assad wants to finish the job
with his own "final solution." (See "1-Dec-18 World View -- Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria"
)

So al-Assad's objective in Idlib is to do the same kinds of things
that he's previously done in in other regions like Aleppo, Ghouta and
Daraa, where he used barrel bombs on hospitals, schools, marketplaces
and residential neighborhoods, along with chlorine gas and Sarin gas,
in order to clean out and exterminate the three million Sunni Arabs in
Idlib, whom he considers worse than cockroaches.

Russia's objective is to keep control of its two military bases in
Syria -- the Tartus naval base and Hmeimim airbase. Russia lost all
its Mediterranean military bases in the 1990s when the Soviet Union
collapsed, and now Russia desperately want to keep these two in Syria.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin obtained control of these two
military bases in 2015 in return for saving al-Assad from defeat
in 2015, when his army was close to collapse.

Russia also wants to remain friendly with Turkey, because Putin wants
to pull Turkey away from Europe and Nato. So Putin has held al-Assad
back from an all-out attack on Idlib, because that would send millions
of refugees across the border into Turkey.

Turkey's objective is to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Idlib that
would send those millions of refugees across the border. Turkey is
already hosting 3.6 million refugees that fled al-Assad's previous
violence in other regions. Furthermore, in eastern Syria,
Turkey is well on its way to setting up a buffer zone in northern
Syria along the border with Turkey. Turkey would like to expel
all Kurds from that buffer zone, and replace them with some two
million Syrian refugees that Turkey is currently hosting.

****
**** Assad threatens Turkey
****

So now, getting back to al-Assad, he has frequently stated the
intention of exterminating what he views are three million cockroaches
in Idlib province, and doesn't care about any humanitarian disaster.

In August, al-Assad visited the Syrian army troops in Idlib, and
accused Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being a thief,
backed by his American master, who steals wheat, petroleum, factories
and land from Syria. He again made clear his intention of winning
"the Battle of Idlib":

<QUOTE>"What Syria has gone through during these nine years
can be likened to the chapters of a play prepared and directed and
executed by one side, but in each chapter it would have a
different main character or actor, and the main actor of the
current stage is Erdogan, who was the most successful in being a
pawn in the hands of his American master and in being a thief who
steals wheat, petroleum, and factories, and now he is trying to
steal land. ...

The Idlib front is very important, particularly since it was an
advanced outpost for them, while the battle was in the east, which
aimed at scattering the army, which is why we have always said
that the conclusion of the battle in Idlib is the basis for ending
chaos and terrorism across Syria."<END QUOTE>

This suggests that al-Assad's planned assault on Idlib could
end up being a conflict between Syria and Turkey.

Vladimir Putin, the third member of the ménage à trois, will have to
figure out how to prevent a war from breaking out if Russia is to
maintain its influence with both.

Sources:

• Idlib / Turkey / Russia / UNSC / Diplomats battle over key Syria aid resolution (New Humanitarian, 17-Dec-2019)
  
• As Turkey and Russia pull the strings in Syria’s Idlib, civilians pay the price (New Humanitarian, 21-May-2019)
  
• Armed groups planning new attack against Syrian Army: Russia (Al-Masdar News, Damascus, 17-Dec-2019)
  
• Idlib / How long will Turkey remain in northeast Syria? (Al-Jazeera, 19-Oct-2019)
  
• President al-Assad meets army personnel on frontlines in Idleb and Hama countryside (Sana, Damascus, 22-Oct-2019)
  
• Calling Erdogan a 'thief', Syria's Assad tours Idlib frontline near rebels (Reuters, 22-Oct-2019)
  
• Idlib / Turkey thief / The Latest: Pence says 5-day cease-fire in Syria has held (AP, 23-Oct-2019)
  
• Syria Prepares for Massive Offensive as U.S. Votes for New Sanctions on Assad, Russia and Iran (Time, 17-Dec-2019)
  
• Syria war: Air strikes and shelling kill 14 civilians in Idlib (BBC, 17-Dec-2019)
  
• Syrian regime pushed Idlib offensive under cover of other crises (JPost, 12-Dec-2019)
  
• Apparent Russian airstrikes on rebel-held northwest Syria's Idlib kill three, including two kids (Japan Times, 17-Dec-2019)
  
• Child killed, 7 injured in Assad regime strikes in Idlib, Syria (Anadolu, Ankara, 17-Dec-2019)
  
• UN / Najat Rochd / Escalation of Violence in the Idlib Area (United Nations, 18-Dec-2019)
  
• Turkey / Syria / 12,000 people flee Idlib amid regime, Russian attacks (Anadolu, Ankara, 18-Dec-2019)
  
• Regime attacks in Idlib force 12,000 civilians to flee toward Turkish border (Daily Sabah, Ankara, 18-Dec-2019)
  
• History of Alawites / Alawites and the Fate of Syria (Ohio State University, 2014)

Related Articles:

• Generational analysis of Turkey-Syria war and ceasefire agreement (18-Oct-2019)
  
  
• Turkey defends Syria invasion, despite almost universal condemnation (11-Oct-2019)
  
  
• Turkey poised to invade Syria to set up 'safe zone' (08-Oct-2019)
  
  
• Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria (01-Dec-2018)
  
  
• Syria peace summit issues delusional call for political solution in Idlib (28-Oct-2018)
  
  
• As October 25 deadline approaches, Syria's Idlib is set up for a classic Greek tragedy (05-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Russia demands that US and EU pay to rebuild Syria (23-Aug-2018)
  
  
• US increasingly expresses total disgust with Syria regime for Bashar al-Assad's atrocities (21-Sep-2016)
  
  
• Turkey threatens Syria, as military attacks Palestinian refugee camp (16-Aug-2011)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Syria, Kurds, Bashar al-Assad, Alawites, Russia, Vladimir Putin,
Tartus naval base, Hmeimim airbase,
Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa, Idlib,
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, Liberation of the Levant Organization,
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS, Front for the Conquest of Syria,
Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front

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John J. Xenakis
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