Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 24-Jan-2020 World View: Spread of China's Wuhan coronavirus

It's now expected that millions of people will be infected by the
coronavirus that originated in the city of Wuhan, but has already
spread to multiple cities in China. China has been trying to contain
the spread, by canceling many Lunar New Year celebrations, in Beijing
and elsewhere, even closing Shanghai Disneyland and part of the Great
Wall of China. There are confirmed cases in nearly every province of
China.

Wuhan is the provincial capital of Hubei province. 14 cities across
Hubei province have been "locked down," meaning that roads have been
closed and buses, trains and planes are no longer running.

• Fourteen cities across the Hubei province in China are
  restricting the movement of people – by reducing or cancelling public
  transport and closing roads. (Daily Mail)

Worldwide, there are confirmed cases in 11 countries.

• Nepal today became the 11th country to declare a confirmed
  case, as the US and Japan confirmed their second cases, Thailand its
  fifth, and the global toll rose above 900 (Daily Mail)

Officially, at least 900 people around the world have been infected with coronavirus and 26 have died



---- Source:

-- Coronavirus 'will infect 350,000 people in Wuhan ALONE': Scientists
dramatically increase estimate as China locks down FOURTEEN cities
and races to build 1,000-bed hospital in FIVE DAYS to deal with th
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic...virus.html
(DailyMail, 24-Jan-2019)

[John J. Xenakis]

** 24-Jan-2020 World View: The best Democratic candidate

(01-21-2020, 07:49 PM)Marypoza Wrote: > not as much as l enjoyed watching her [Pocahontas's] #s tank. And
> she is now 1 of the country's most disliked Senators, right up
> there with Moscow Mitch [McConnell]. Bernie, of course, remains
> the most liked senator. AT&T owns CNN. Bernie wants 2 break up the
> telecoms. Do the math

> Bernie/Tulsi 2020

I saw Tulsi Gabbard being interviewed on Fox News yesterday, and I
thought that she was quite impressive. Sanders is an idiot, but
Gabbard is a Democratic party candidate who actually makes sense, in
addition to being the hottest.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-19-2020, 07:11 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-18-2020, 11:42 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: The confessional form of government has worked fairly
well in both Iraq and Lebanon, because it's prevented the kind of
massive violence that's been occurring in Iran and Syria.

I wouldn't say this:  sectarian issues were responsible for the rise of the Islamic State, which was nothing if not violent.  Iraq just happened to be able to con the US into taking care of that issue for them.

We had some ISIS related attacks that occurred here and there was several larger ISIS related attacks that occurred in Europe. Iraq (the Iraqi army) proved to be incompetent and incapable of defending itself and unable to do much about stopping it with the exception of the Kurdish region. ISIS was a threat to us here, so ISIS had to be eliminated with the use of our military vs relying on their military. We need two types of military these days. We need a rapid response military apparatus like we have over there now and a regular military apparatus that we are rebuilding/ recruiting/ beefing up and reequipping/modernizing right now and then we need the national guard to fill in the gaps and help out at home during major crisis's that occur here.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 25-Jan-20 World View -- China's coronavirus threatens Xi Jinping's Mandate from Heaven

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China's coronavirus spreads across China and around the world
  
• Xi Jinping may lose the Mandate from Heaven
  

****
**** China's coronavirus spreads across China and around the world
****


Number of confirmed coronavirus cases continued to grow on Friday (Daily Mail)

The number of confirmed cases of China's coronavirus has been
increasing every hour. It started weeks ago in the city of Wuhan in
China's Hubei province, apparently in a meat market where the virus
jumped from animals to humans. Since then, the virus has demonstrated
the ability to pass from human to human.

It's not yet really known how dangerous the virus is, or whether it's
more dangerous than the ordinary flu. It's in the class of diseases
known as "coronavirus." The common cold is a coronavirus. SARS, the
extremely dangerous disease that came from China, is also a
coronavirus.

At this time (Friday evening ET), there are currently 1,320 confirmed
cases worldwide, including 41 fatalities. It has spread to every
province of China, and there are small numbers of cases in Thailand,
Singapore, France, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Nepal and the United
States.

This is the worst possible time for a pandemic of this kind to occur
in China. This is the time of the Lunar New Year celebrations, where
millions of people take planes, trains and buses to return home to see
the families for the first time in a year.

China has been trying to contain the spread, by canceling many Lunar
New Year celebrations, in Beijing and elsewhere, even closing Shanghai
Disneyland and part of the Great Wall of China. There are confirmed
cases in nearly every province of China. 14 cities across Hubei
province have been "locked down," meaning that roads have been closed
and buses, trains and planes are no longer running.

When SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) broke out in 2002 in
mainland China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) kept it secret for
months, and the world only found out about it when it spread to Hong
Kong, and from there to other countries. The CCP claims to have
learned its lesson from that disaster, and has been more open about
providing DNA sequences and virus samples to researchers in other
countries. However, the CCP is still censoring most information about
it, including details of its incubation period, how quickly it
spreads, and how long it takes to recover. As usual, the CCP harshly
censors anything that criticizes the government.

****
**** Xi Jinping may lose the Mandate from Heaven
****

As I wrote my book "War between China and Japan - Why America must be
prepared," it was clear that China has a highly racist view of
themselves and the world that goes back millennia. We American
people do not view ourselves as unique, as America itself is a
"melting pot" of many nations and cultures. Instead, Americans view
themselves as ordinary people who were lucky enough to be born in the
greatest country in history.

That's not how the Chinese have viewed themselves for millennia. In
the highly racist Chinese view, the universe is in three layers. The
highest layer is the Kingdom of Heaven, where the gods live. The
middle layer is the Middle Kingdom, where all the Chinese people live
-- the Master Race, yellow race, black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin.
The bottom layer is where you and I live -- the Barbarians, who must
always be subservient vassals to the Chinese, must pay tributed and
acknowledge the superiority of the Chinese.

This highly racist and arbitrary view results in a society which is
ruled by corruption, bribery, torture, and execution. And the leader
of this society is said to be have the Mandate of Heaven. If he does
not follow Confucian principles, if he does not meet the needs of his
people, then he can lose the Mandate of Heaven. After that, the
leader can only continue to lead by means of beatings, torture, rape,
and murder, and that's what's been happening in China to an increasing
degree for the last 20 years.

But now Xi Jinping has suffered so many recent setbacks that he may
actually be in danger of being thrown out. Here are some of them:

• In Hong Kong elections on November 24, pro-democracy activists
  won a massive victory in electing members for local district
  counciles. ( "25-Nov-19 World View -- Historic Hong Kong elections throw relations with China mainland into disarray"
  )
  
  
• In Taiwan on January 11, Tsai Ing-wen and the pro-independence
  Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won an enormous victory. ( "11-Jan-20 World View -- Taiwan's pro-independence party expected to win Saturday presidential elections"
  )
  
  
• The CCP for years have been trying to keep secret its genocide and
  enslavement of millions of Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs in East
  Turkestan (Xinjiang), but it's turning more and more into a public
  relations disaster for the CCP. ( "18-Nov-19 World View -- Trove of leaked China documents detail jailing of Xinjiang's Muslim Uighurs"
  )
  
  
• And now the new coronavirus is apparently spreading quickly. Xi
  Jinping can blame the above three problems on American interference,
  but if this virus isn't handled properly then it will clearly be a
  message from the gods in the Kingdom of Heaven, and a sign that Xi has
  lost the Mandate from Heaven.

It's becoming increasingly clear that Xi Jinping is failing, and has
had one failed policy after another.

However, I did hear a brief report on TV that some Chinese social
media are saying that the coronavirus was planted by the United States
as biological warfare.

As I've said many times, the CCP thugs have a record of doing one
incredibly stupid thing after another. I don't know what the CCP
thugs will do about the coronavirus crisis or the situations in
Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but I can say with certainty that
whatever they do, it will make the situation worse.

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/World-View-Betwee...732738637/

Sources:

• Tracking coronavirus: Map, data and timeline (BNOnews, 24-Jan-2020)
  
• 'We're all trapped now': Wuhan residents say they have ALL been left to catch China's deadly coronavirus as city orders total lockdown – as country reports 41 people have died and more than 1,200 infected (Daily Mail, London, 24-Jan-2020)
  
• Wuhan is the latest crisis to face China's Xi, and it's exposing major flaws in his model of control (CNN, 24-Jan-2020)
  
• Deadly coronavirus outbreak brings China to a standstill (Daily Sabah, Ankara, 24-Jan-2020)
  
• Hong Kong protests, Taiwan problem, Wuhan virus: Xi Jinping’s woes just keep mounting (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 22-Jan-2020)
  
• An effortless Chinese rise to dominance is far from certain (Arab News, 24-Jan-2020)
  
• China Loses the Mandate of Heaven in Hong Kong (American Thinker, 7-Dec-2019)

Related Articles:

• Xi Jinping invokes the 1840s Opium Wars to justify military action for China's 'rejuvenation' (21-Mar-2018)
  
  
• China's president Xi Jinping given dictatorial powers (29-Oct-2016)
  
  
• Xi Jinping's 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics' is identical to Hitler's National Socialism (24-Oct-2017)
  
  
• China defends million-prisoner 'reeducation camps' and Sinicization of Islam in Xinjiang (14-Oct-2018)
  
  
• George Soros speech at Davos marks significant global shift against China (27-Jan-2019)
  
  
• Xi Jinping envisions 'China's Dream' - world economic and military domination (14-Mar-2013)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, Wuhan, Hubei, Coronavirus,
Lunar New Year, SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome,
Kingdom of Heaven, Mandate from Heaven, Xi Jinping,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, Xinjiang, East Turkestan,
Uighurs, Kazakhs

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

[Warren Dew]

Hong Kong and Taiwan are not mandate of heaven issues since they are different systems. The Uighers probably aren't either. The coronavirus definitely is.

We already know what stupid thing the CCP is going to do with the coronavirus: they are quarantining whole cities. This will intensify epidemics within those cities due to interference with supplies needed for food, water, and medicine. This will be at least as bad for the Chinese government as the plane shootdown was for the Iranian government.

The other major mandate of heaven issue, even bigger than the coronavirus, is more limited supplies of chicken and pork and imports in general, due to the currency decline. If the Chinese are smart, they will get cracking on importing more from the US, for China's own good and not (just) for the trade deal.

[David Horn]

(01-25-2020, 01:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Hong Kong and Taiwan are not mandate of heaven issues since they are different systems.  The Uighers probably aren't either.  The coronavirus definitely is.

We already know what stupid thing the CCP is going to do with the coronavirus:  they are quarantining whole cities.  This will intensify epidemics within those cities due to interference with supplies needed for food, water, and medicine.  This will be at least as bad for the Chinese government as the plane shootdown was for the Iranian government.

The other major mandate of heaven issue, even bigger than the coronavirus, is more limited supplies of chicken and pork and imports in general, due to the currency decline.  If the Chinese are smart, they will get cracking on importing more from the US, for China's own good and not (just) for the trade deal.

I don't see any other choices, in a country as populated and concentrated as China.  Yes, the affected cities will have additional cases, and would have in any case.  Keeping the disease confined (if that's even possible at this point) is a net plus.  Ebola is addressed in a similar manner every time it arises.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 26-Jan-2020 World View: Spread of Wuhan coronavirus

gfmucci1 Wrote:> The complete report, with photos and links for the text below is
> here:
> http://muccings.blogspot.com/2020/01/how...about.html

> How forthcoming has China been about the mystery virus?

> One can be expected to not get the straight poop from a closed,
> Communist nation like China. And that is likely the situation
> concerning the Wuhan virus. As one source pointed out, more
> accurate information is likely provided by the rumor mill (people
> on the ground) than from “official China outlets.”

> As of today [January 26], we are told by official China outlets of
> 56 deaths from the virus. HERE is one report from other sources
> of 10,000 dead in Wuhan alone.

> CORONAVIRUS: Reports of 10,000 DEAD in Wuhan, China Further, the
> Daily Mail reports that …

> “China built a lab to study SARS and Ebola in Wuhan - and US
> biosafety experts warned in 2017 that a virus could 'escape' the
> facility that's become key in fighting the outbreak".”

> Little snippets of info are beginning to paint a more troublesome
> story than has be reported so far.

> As you recall over the last few days it has been reported that the
> source of the virus was from a bat delicacy at a market. And then
> we heard it may be from a snake.

> Here is a post from an individual familiar with Asian cuisine, and
> particularly with the types of foods Chinese official outlets
> attributed to the outbreak:

> Poster 1:

> I don't buy into this bat/snake folderol. I've eaten fruit bat
> upon many occasions. Cooked in coconut milk, it's absolutely
> delicious and considered a delicacy throughout Micronesia. On the
> snake story, I had some wealthy acquaintances, long ago, that had
> quail hunting leases outside of Del Rio. The number of times that
> I ate rattlesnake … I lost count of. Point of fact, someone told
> me that chicken tastes quite a bit like rattlesnake.

> Poster 2:

> Knock yourself out, … though I suspect your post is an attempt at
> weird humor….I'll stick to beef, pork, fresh fish, etc. and a
> multitude of fresh vegetables and fruits prepared under sanitary
> conditions. The big problem is that China, most of Asia, India,
> Africa and various 3rd world countries are unsanitary dungholes.

> Poster 1:

> …When I lived, in the Marianas…fruit bat is an absolute
> delicacy. It's cooked in coconut milk. There's actually a
> hunting/trapping season. And, when hunting quail, outside of Del
> Rio, we often shot rattlesnakes. One of the reasons that hunting
> with bird dogs isn't recommended. And, wearing of chaps is highly
> encouraged. I've eaten a lot of rattlesnake. I challenge you to
> find one city, any city, in the PRC that is one-tenth as filthy as
> Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, Chicago … and the list goes
> on and on and on. Filth is piled over two stories in many areas of
> Baltimore, Detroit, etc.

> Me:

> So, do you believe the virus lab breakout story has more
> credibility [than the animal market story]?

> Poster 1:

> Yes

> Here is a photo that has been in the national news over the past
> couple of days. Several dozen pieces of heavy earth moving
> equipment are preparing the ground for the 10-day, super fast
> track, construction of a large hospital in Wuhan to help treat the
> infected population, where “only 25 have died.”

> Huge efforts are being made by construction workers in Wuhan to
> erect a new hospital in less than a week on the government's
> orders. Officials said the medical facility must be built to cope
> with overwhelming numbers of coronavirus patients

> Question for those familiar with the planning and construction of
> large hospitals: When is the last time you’ve seen this level of
> construction activity for construction of a hospital with less
> than three weeks of advance planning? Survey work alone would take
> a week or more. Drawing up plans longer still. What is the
> likelihood that a “fully transparent” Chinese government has given
> us the full story behind this mystery virus outbreak? How many
> months do you think the Chinese government has been aware of this
> outbreak? And is it a breakout of a weaponized strain from their
> less than stellar Level 4 lab?

> Update January 24:

> Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding‏ @DrEricDing, a public health scientist on the
> faculty at Harvard.

> “I’ll be honest - as an epidemiologist, I’m really deeply worried
> about this new coronavirus outbreak. 1) the virus has an upward
> infection trajectory curve much steeper than SARS. 2) it can be
> transmitted person to person before symptoms appear — I.e. it is
> silently contagious!”

> “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD - the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!! [multiplier
> of new infections from one infected person] How bad is that
> reproductive R0 value? It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad -
> never seen an actual virality coefficient outside of Twitter in my
> entire career. I’m not exaggerating… #WuhanCoronovirus
> #CoronavirusOutbreak”

> What does this mean for those who were on a plane or in a crowd
> with people who showed NO symptoms yet, but who came down with
> this virus days or a week later? You probably received
> it.

I have a couple of comments on this.

• The idea that coronavirus could jump from animals to humans is
  not farfetched. The same happened with Ebola. As I understand it,
  hundreds of different forms of coronaviruses live in bats, and any one
  of those could mutate at any time to jump to humans.
  
  
• The idea that coronavirus was developed in a Chinese biological
  warfare lab and escaped is highly alarmist without some sort of
  confirmation. On the other hand, let's face it, the Japanese used
  biological warfare against the Chinese during WW II, and there's
  little doubt that the Chinese are planning something like that in
  their planned revenge war against Japan. However, the animal
  connection is still more likely for today's coronavirus, and the
  warfare lab hypothesis is extremely alarmist.
  
  
• The Wuhan airport is the biggest airport in China with flights to
  and from dozens of cities in China, as well cities in other countries
  in the region, as well as several countries in Europe, and Los Angeles
  and New York in the United States. Wuhan airport has been partially
  shut down, with no flights allowed to leave, and few flights
  allowed to enter.
  
  
• It's now emerging that it takes 14 days for symptoms can appear,
  and that someone can spread the virus before symptoms appear. This
  make the virus extremely dangerous.
  
  
• Putting the last two items together, if they're true and if what
  they imply is true, then there will be large outbreaks of Wuhan
  coronavirus in many cities around the world within a couple more
  weeks. Whether the mainstream media will consider that more important
  than impeachment remains to be seen.

(01-25-2020, 01:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > Hong Kong and Taiwan are not mandate of heaven issues since they
> are different systems. The Uighers probably aren't either. The
> coronavirus definitely is.

> We already know what stupid thing the CCP is going to do with the
> coronavirus: they are quarantining whole cities. This will
> intensify epidemics within those cities due to interference with
> supplies needed for food, water, and medicine. This will be at
> least as bad for the Chinese government as the plane shootdown was
> for the Iranian government.

> The other major mandate of heaven issue, even bigger than the
> coronavirus, is more limited supplies of chicken and pork and
> imports in general, due to the currency decline. If the Chinese
> are smart, they will get cracking on importing more from the US,
> for China's own good and not (just) for the trade deal.

Thanks for pointing this out. I was listing Xi Jinping's policy
failures that might mean that he's lost the Mandate from Heaven, and I
forgot about last year's swine fever that forced China to cull
hundreds of millions of pigs.

• Chinese New Year and Coronavirus
  (https://www.cagle.com/stephane-peray/202...oronavirus)

[Warren Dew]

(01-25-2020, 09:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-25-2020, 01:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We already know what stupid thing the CCP is going to do with the coronavirus:  they are quarantining whole cities.  This will intensify epidemics within those cities due to interference with supplies needed for food, water, and medicine.  This will be at least as bad for the Chinese government as the plane shootdown was for the Iranian government....

I don't see any other choices, in a country as populated and concentrated as China.  Yes, the affected cities will have additional cases, and would have in any case.  Keeping the disease confined (if that's even possible at this point) is a net plus.  Ebola is addressed in a similar manner every time it arises.

Flu - just regular old flu - kills tens of thousands of people in the US every year.  The coronavirus has killed only 26 people in China, a country with much larger population and worse public health infrastructure.  There's no indication that coronavirus is a bigger problem than the normal annual global flu pandemic, let alone such a big problem that it justifies disruption of the lives of tens of millions of people.  The Chinese quarantine is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, and the Chinese people are not going to thank their government for it.

[Warren Dew]

(01-14-2020, 07:48 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: And then there's the continuing mystery of Alan Greenspan.  I followed
all his speeches in the early 2000s.  All the mainstream economic
reporters were whining, "Whaaa, whaaa, whaaa, Greenspan uses big
words, and even though I'm supposed to be an expert, I'm actually too
stupid to understand what he's saying."

I didn't understand Greenspan's speeches at first either, but I would
go the Federal Reserve web site and read it over a few times, and then
I always understood.  But that was beyond the mental capacity of all
the "experts" at WSJ, CNBC, and elsewhere.

So as I wrote at the time, Greenspan knew in 2004 that there was a
housing bubble, but he thought it was a good thing, because it gave
people more money.  In Dec 2004, he told the WSJ that he knew in the
late 90s that a bubble was growing, but that he decided to take care
of it later.  It wasn't until 2005 that he became alarmed.

Milton Friedman had "proved" that the Great Depression had occurred
because the Fed kept interest rates too high, and could have been
prevented completely by lowering interest rates a bit.  He said that
any depression could be ended quickly by using a helicopter to drop
money and spread it around.

I'd note that the "helicopter" speech was Bernanke's, not Greenspan's.  Greenspan gave the "irrational exuberance" speech in 1996, at the beginning of the dot com bubble.  It should be noted that when the dot com bubble burst, the recession was shallow and short, partly thanks to Greenspan's management.

Unfortunately Greenspan was no longer in charge when the housing bubble burst.

[David Horn]

(01-26-2020, 02:33 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-25-2020, 09:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-25-2020, 01:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We already know what stupid thing the CCP is going to do with the coronavirus:  they are quarantining whole cities.  This will intensify epidemics within those cities due to interference with supplies needed for food, water, and medicine.  This will be at least as bad for the Chinese government as the plane shootdown was for the Iranian government....

I don't see any other choices, in a country as populated and concentrated as China.  Yes, the affected cities will have additional cases, and would have in any case.  Keeping the disease confined (if that's even possible at this point) is a net plus.  Ebola is addressed in a similar manner every time it arises.

Flu - just regular old flu - kills tens of thousands of people in the US every year.  The coronavirus has killed only 26 people in China, a country with much larger population and worse public health infrastructure.  There's no indication that coronavirus is a bigger problem than the normal annual global flu pandemic, let alone such a big problem that it justifies disruption of the lives of tens of millions of people.  The Chinese quarantine is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, and the Chinese people are not going to thank their government for it.

The coronavirus has already escaped Wuhan, and is now present in several countries.  Unlike the conventional influenza outbreaks, we know very little about this disease vector.  We do know that it is passed by indirect contact, mostly by aerosol.  And unlike influenza in general, it is still reasonably well contained.  We could never contain Influenza strains -- even with Herculean effort.  So the real issue is this: is the "right" of people to move about freely more important than the potential loss of life they may cause if they do?  Sorry, but that one answers itself. Allowing a pandemic to explode is idiotic in the extreme.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 27-Jan-2020 World View: Wuhan coronavirus by the numbers

Various analysts have been providing some numbers.

Every person who has the disease will transmit to 2-3 other people,
which is about the same level as the flu. In order for the disease to
die out, that number would have to be less than 1.

Lethality: 3% of infected people die, according to official figures
from China -- about 10 times higher than the flu, but with SARS, 10%
of infected people died (about 800 deaths out of 8000 people
infected).

The Chinese say that 81 people have died out of 3,000 people infected.
A lot of people believe that the Chinese are lying, and that the
numbers are far higher.

Before this is over, it's possible that millions of people will be
infected, which will result in a huge number of deaths, far higher
than with SARS.

There is one huge question that hasn't been fully answered: To what
extent can a person spread the disease before having symptoms. The
standard tools for containing the spread of a disease all require
testing people for symptoms and isolating the ones with symptoms. If
there's no way to determine infections by testing for symptoms, then
the situation will be much worse.

---- Source:

-- Coronavirus death toll jumps above 80, five US cases confirmed:
Everything we know
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/coronavirus-...g-we-know/
(Cnet, 27-Jan-2020)

[Warren Dew]

(01-27-2020, 01:05 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Lethality: 3% of infected people die, according to official figures
from China -- about 10 times higher than the flu, but with SARS, 10%
of infected people died (about 800 deaths out of 8000 people
infected).

3% of confirmed cases.  However, there are likely lots of cases that have not been confirmed, especially since they've actually managed to identify several asymptomatic cases.  The incubation period is between 2 and 14 days, so the average isn't far from the 6 days of other coronaviruses.

The mayor of Wuhan says 5 million of the 11 million population has already left, many for travel associated with the Chinese New Year's holiday.  The quarantine is going to be ineffective and counterproductive.

[David Horn]

(01-27-2020, 10:03 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-27-2020, 01:05 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Lethality: 3% of infected people die, according to official figures
from China -- about 10 times higher than the flu, but with SARS, 10%
of infected people died (about 800 deaths out of 8000 people
infected).

3% of confirmed cases.  However, there are likely lots of cases that have not been confirmed, especially since they've actually managed to identify several asymptomatic cases.  The incubation period is between 2 and 14 days, so the average isn't far from the 6 days of other coronaviruses.

The mayor of Wuhan says 5 million of the 11 million population has already left, many for travel associated with the Chinese New Year's holiday.  The quarantine is going to be ineffective and counterproductive.

Yes, the people fled when they could, and will again if they can.  The adjacent river is narrow and impossible to police, so things can get very bad all over the country.  Will that translate into widespread disease elsewhere?  If so, and the diseased are not apparently ill until after they have had the chance to spread the virus, a pandemic is very possible.  A lot of unknowns there, to be sure.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 28-Jan-2020 World View: Bird Flu Memories

In 2004 the world was panicking over bird flu the way it's
panicking over Wuhan coronavirus today.

The following news item was going around: Did you hear the news? Bird
flu has reached Disneyland. I'm sorry to have to inform you that
Donald Duck is dead. Daisy requests no flowers.

And I posted the following cartoon:

• Bird flu cartoon from 2004. Text translation: BIRD FLU - The
  panic is spreading! -- Better safe than sorry!

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 29-Jan-20 World View -- Trump announces fantasy 'Peace to Prosperity' Mideast peace plan

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Donald Trump offers his 'Peace to Prosperity' Mideast peace plan
  
• The Mideast peace process fantasy
  

****
**** Donald Trump offers his 'Peace to Prosperity' Mideast peace plan
****


Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to discuss the new Mideast peace plan (AFP)

Here we go again.

President Donald Trump, in a joint White House celebration with
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced a new Mideast
peace plan.

I've seen how this works too many times. International politicians
pressure the United States president to come up with a peace plan,
saying that there will never be peace in the Mideast without White
House "leadership." But as soon as the president offers a peace plan,
those same international politicians slam the plan to make sure it's
never implemented.

So Trump's 181 page Mideast peace plan has the following features:

• It's a two-state plan, with Israel and a Palestinian
  state.
  
  
• The Palestinian territories will be combined into a Palestinian
  state. Since Gaza is separated from the West Bank, the two regions
  will be connected with roads, bridges and tunnels.
  
  
• Israel will control a united Jerusalem. However, the Palestinian
  state capital will be in East Jerusalem, and America will build an
  embassy there.
  
  
• Israel will agree to a four-year freeze on new West Bank
  settlements.
  
  
• The amount of territory controlled by the Palestinians will be
  doubled.
  
  
• Trump promised $60 billion dollars to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt so
  that they can resolve the problem of Palestinian refugees.

In May 2017, Trump met with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud
Abbas, and they agreed to work together to reach a historic peace deal
between Israelis and Palestinians. ( "4-May-17 World View -- Channeling Sisyphus, Trump and Abbas say Mideast peace not as hard as it looks"
)

At the time, Trump said, "I look forward to welcoming [Abbas] back as
a great marker of progress and, ultimately, toward the signing of a
document with the Israelis and with Israel toward peace. We want to
create peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We will get it
done."

Abbas responded as follows: "Mr. President, we believe that we are
capable and able to bring about success to our efforts because,
Mr. President, you have the determination and you have the desire to
see it become to fruition and to become successful. And we,
Mr. President, inshallah, God willing, we are coming into a new
opportunity, a new horizon that would enable us to bring about peace
in that regard. ... Mr. President, it’s about time for Israel to end
its occupation of our people and of our land after 50 years. We are
the only remaining people in the world that still live under
occupation."

It was pretty clear from just those two statements that it was never
going to work. Now that Trump's peace agreement was being announced,
Abbas refused to attend the ceremony.

His statement this time was far more colorful: "Trump is a dog and the
son of a dog. They called me from Washington, and I did not pick up
the phone. ... I said no, and I will continue to say no."

However, ambassadors from three Arab countries -- Oman, Bahrain, and
United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- did show up at the meeting.

The UAE ambassador tweeted that the UAE believes Palestinians and
Israelis can achieve lasting peace and genuine coexistence with the
support of the international community.

Britain's Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said,"This is clearly a
serious proposal, reflecting extensive time and effort. Only the
leaders of Israel and the Palestinian territories can determine
whether these proposals can meet the needs and aspirations of the
people they represent.

However, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhr said, "Trump's statement about
Jerusalem is nonsense and Jerusalem will always be a land for the
Palestinians ... The Palestinians will confront this deal and
Jerusalem will remain a Palestinian land."

Israel's Security Minister Naftali Bennett said in response to the
plan, "We will not allow for Israel, under any circumstances, to
recognize a Palestinian state."

I heard several Palestinian protests complain particularly about the
tunnels and bridges that are supposed to connect the two Palestinian
territories, saying that these were extremely offensive.

Later, Mahmoud Abbas said, "After the nonsense that we heard today we
say a thousand no’s to the Deal of The Century."

There's no way that this Rube Goldberg peace proposal is going to
survive.

****
**** The Mideast peace process fantasy
****

As I wrote in my very first Generational Dynamics analysis on May 1,
2003, when president George Bush published his "Mideast Roadmap to
Peace," which described the details of a two-state solution, that will
never happen. Generational Dynamics predicts that the plan would fail because the Jews and the Arabs
would be refighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of
Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the average age of the population
in Gaza is 18, and in the West Bank is 21. Most of the population in
the Palestinian territories are children -- often children with guns.
They call themselves the "Oslo Generation," because they were born
after the 1993 Oslo accords that were supposed to bring peace to the
Mideast, but have accomplished nothing.

Now think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who is 29 years old, who
says one incredibly idiotic thing every day, and yet is effectively
running the Democratic Party.

The point is that even if Mahmoud Abbas and other regional Arab
leaders wanted to agree to Trump's peace plan, they wouldn't be
supported by Oslo Generation Palestinians on the street.

This is the fallacy the media and politicians all make. They assume
that the leader of a country can make a decision, and everyone will
follow.

As I've written many times, it's a core principle of Generational
Dynamics that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by
masses of people, by generations of people. The attitudes of
politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they represent the
attitudes of the people. So in this case, the even if Abbas signed
this peace deal, it would be meaningless.

The whole idea of a "Mideast peace process" and a "two-state solution"
is a complete fantasy. It's never going to happen.

As long-time readers know, the Generational Dynamics prediction is
that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Jews vs
Arabs, Sunnis vs Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other.
The exact scenario can't be predicted, but tensions across the Mideast
continue to grow.

Sources:

• Live Updates Trump's Peace Plan Calls for Two States, Settlement Freeze (Haaretz, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Palestinian leader rejects Trump's Middle East peace plan: 'A thousand no's' (The Hill, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Trump's Mideast Peace Plan (White House, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Trump offers two-state peace plan for Israeli-Palestinian conflict amid skepticism (The Hill, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Trump unveils Middle East peace plan with two-state solution, tunnel connecting West Bank and Gaza (Fox News, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• What's in Trump's Middle East peace plan? (Fox News, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Trump Middle East peace plan expands Israeli territory, offers path to Palestinian statehood (NBC News, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Cut out of the process, Palestinians reject Trump's economic plan for Mideast peace (NBC News, 28-Jun-2019)
  
• Abbas: 1,000 ‘no’s to the Trump plan (Jerusalem Post, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Palestinians angrily reject Trump Mideast peace plan (AP, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Trump peace plan delights Israelis, enrages Palestinians (AP, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Progressive Jewish Groups Dismiss Trump's Middle East Peace Plan As 'Utterly Bankrupt' and a 'Sham' (Newsweek, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Trump leaps into Middle East fray with plan that favors Israel and angers Palestinians (Reuters, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Former U.S. diplomat thinks Trump's Middle East peace plan will 'deepen' Israel-Palestine conflict (TheWeek-uk, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• Russia urges coordination on Mideast peace plan (Ynet, 28-Jan-2020)
  
• The Latest: Chief: UN committed to Israel-Palestinian peace (AP, 28-Jan-2020)

Related Articles

• Channeling Sisyphus, Trump and Abbas say Mideast peace not as hard as it looks (04-May-2017)
  
  
• Palestinian leader Abbas expected to deliver ultimatum to Israel at UN (28-Sep-2015)
  
  
• Mahmoud Abbas's United Nations 'bombshell' something of a dud (01-Oct-2015)
  
  
• Palestinian 'Oslo Generation' relationship with Israel extremely toxic and explosive (18-Oct-2015)
  
  
• Obama and Netanyahu in sharp disagreement after speech (20-May-2011)
  
  
• Obama administration ends effort to pressure Israel on settlements (08-Dec-2010)
  
  
• Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace? (1-May-2003)

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Mideast, Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt,
Oman, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, UAE,
Dominic Raab, Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhr,
Naftali Bennett, Mahmoud Abbas

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

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Jan-2020 World View: Some notes on Wuhan coronavirus

Guest Wrote:> I live in Asia, but not China.

> Okay, here goes. Every single conference, business meeting, and
> seminar scheduled to be held in China I know of has been
> cancelled--not rescheduled--cancelled.

> Clients who have factories operating in China that they are
> dependent on are really screwed. Everyone is looking for
> alternatives, but you can't build new factories in Vietnam
> overnight. People are facing complete ruin.

> Where is this virus really taking us? This one feels creepy. I've
> been these before. This one seems different, completely so. I hope
> this burns out quickly, otherwise Asian economies are going to
> crash.

I'm a lot less anxious about this situation than most people are.

• Is this the "big one"? The "big one" would be a major panic
  and worldwide financial crisis.
  
  I don't think so. If you look back at previous panics -- the 1929
  panic, the 1987 false panic, and the flash crash of a few years ago --
  they were all completely unexpected.
  
  In other words, you can't "expect" a panic. A panic is, almost by
  definition, "unexpectable." Therefore, if a panic is now "expected,"
  then it can't occur now.
  
  So there might be a 20% correction, but not a full-scale financial
  panic.
  
  
• According to a BBC report that I heard this morning, the South
  Koreans are in total panic over coronavirus, and there's a widespread
  belief that the virus was created in China's biological warfare
  lab. Some people claim that there is such a lab near Wuhan. However,
  as I've said before, this is extremely alarmist, and to my knowledge,
  no credible source considers it to be even likely.
  
  
• You say: "Okay, here goes. Every single conference, business
  meeting, and seminar scheduled to be held in China I know of has been
  cancelled--not rescheduled--cancelled."
  
  Of all the problems that the virus pandemic is causing, this is the
  easiest to fix. After a temporary pause, all of these conferences,
  meetings and seminars will be rescheduled to take place online over
  the internet. I would expect this problem to be almost completely
  solved by March 1.
  
  
• Factories and other places where people are needed onsite will
  also have their issues mitigated. People who don't need to be onsite
  are already being asked to work at home. People actually needed
  onsite will be educated, told to wear face masks, watch for symptoms,
  and so forth. It's still a very serious problem, and some factories
  may close, but it won't result in the ghost cities that some people
  are predicting. Some Chinese factories have already been relocating
  to Vietnam and other Asian countries because of the US-China trade
  war, and the coronavirus problem may accelerate that.
  
  
• There are various estimates about how long this will last. The
  number of new confirmed cases is increasing every day. When the
  number of new cases starts to decrease, that will signal the
  beginning of the end of the pandemic. That's likely to occur as
  winter ends, around May or June in the northern hemisphere. It
  may strike the southern hemisphere after that.

A further note on financial crisis: A number of laws were passed in
the 1930s with the objective of preventing a repeat of the 1929 stock
market crash. The years have gone by, and older generations who lived
through the 1930s have retired and died, leaving behind generations of
younger people with no personal memory of the 1930s. So these laws
have been repealed, mostly in the 1990s. Young people today see any
talk of a stock market crash as an evil plot by Boomers, inasmuch as
they already blame the 2001 Nasdaq crash on Boomers. If the
coronavirus problem leads to a 20% stock market correction, and then
there's a recovery, then young people will be further deluded into
believing that a stock market crash is impossible.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Jan-2020 World View: End of impeachment battle will not mean end of tribal war

Those who are foolish enough to hope that the Democrats who have been
spending years trying to impeach Trump will now return to anything
resembling sanity are deluding themselves. The Democrats are bitter,
angry and desperate, and the House is now planning to move from an
impeachment process to a re-impeachment process by issuing subpoenas
for Bolton and others. The Democrats announced from the day that he
was elected that they would be impeaching Trump, and they started with
phony white supremacist charges, continued with phony Russian
collusion charges, and when the Mueller report collapsed, went on to
phony Ukraine charges.

I've written several times about loathing and hatred that Democrats
have had for years for Tea Partiers, now the Trump supporters,
repeatedly threatening and inciting violence against them, using the
epithet "teabaggers," which is as bad as the n-word. I still recall
Anderson Cooper and David Gergen on CNN giggling and laughing with
each other over calling them "teabaggers."

As if we needed any reminding, a similar event occurred last
week when CNN hate-monger Don Lemon started laughing hysterically
as his guests started mocking Trump supporters as "credulous
boomer rubes." Hate-monger Lemon was literally laughing so hard he
was crying.

Lemon's guests were total morons, but they're what pass for mainstream
journalists these days. One of them, named Rick Wilson, said
the following:

Quote: "[Mike Pompeo] also knows deep within his heart that
Donald Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter
U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows
that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of
the world. And so that's partly him playing to the base and
playing to their audience. You know, the credulous boomer rube
demo that backs Donald Trump."

The exchange continued as follows, according to Fox News:

Quote: As Lemon began crying with tears of laughter, Wilson
went on to depict what he thought a typical Trump supporter
sounded like.

"'Donald Trump's the smart one — and y'all elitists are dumb!'"
Wilson said with a heavy southern accent.

"'You elitists with your geography and your maps- and your
spelling!'" Ali chimed in during the mockery.

"'Your math and your reading!'" Wilson added. "'All those lines on
the map!'"

The CNN anchor almost lost his breath from laughing, wiping tears
from his eyes with a tissue.

"That was good," Lemon reacted. "That was a good one. I needed
that."

If you want to see a youtube video, I found one on the "Rick
and Bubba" show at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsEE57PGSE8

This is quite similar to the exchange between Anderson Cooper and
David Gergen on CNN giggling and laughing with each other over calling
the Tea Partiers "teabaggers."

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 David Gergen 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 lunatic 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 completely
indistinguishable from Hutu hatred for Tutsis, 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.

As I've written in the past, I'm probably the only person reading this
who actually watched all five days of the intelligence committee
impeachment hearings, and what I saw was almost beyond belief in
America. The witnesses were all called by the Democrats, since the
Republicans were forbidden from calling witnesses. Each one of the
Democrats' witnesses was sure that Trump had required Ukraine to
investigate Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for receiving military
aid. Each witness was forced to back down under Republican
cross-examination. So in the end there was no evidence whatsoever.
None.

Violence and threats of violence played a major role in impeachment
hearings. The Democrats' star witness Gordon Sondland was forced to
change his testimony. That occurred because Oregon Democratic
Rep. Earl Blumenauer and other Democrats called on anti-Trump
activists to attack Sondland's businesses. Sondland was forced to
change his testimony to support the Democrats because 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.

But even so, Sondland was forced to back down under Republican
cross-examination. So at the end, not a single witness supported
the Democrats' charges. Not a single one.

If anyone disagrees with me, you can do your own research. Find the
hearings videos on cspan.org and watch them yourself. Of course I
know that nobody will do that, since it requires actual work. It's
easier to believe what you're told to believe.

You can also just read the transcript of the July 25 phone call:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/up...9.2019.pdf

Another witness was Jonathan Turley. He said that impeachment couldn't
be justified on the current record, and anti-Trump activists
threatened Turley's family with violence.

As I said, this is tribal warfare, and the violence and threatened
violence by the Democrats is far from over, as the Democrats are
repeatedly humiliated and desperate.

After each day's testimony, I would turn on the BBC, and I would
hear the following:

Quote: "Today, Ambassador X gave explosive testimony that
Trump withheld aid from Ukraine until Ukraine started
investigating Joe and Hunter Biden."

This is what really shocked me, since this is the opposite of what
happened. Instead of reporting on what actually happened, the BBC
"reported" Democratic press releases. This happened every day.

Why is the BBC simply quoting Democratic press releases? It's
possible that the Democrats are paying the BBC to do so. We know that
the BBC has a deal with NPR, and it's possible that the deal with NPR
requires them to simply use Democratic talking points from Democratic
press releases, rather than the actual news.

You have to wonder. Is the BBC also "reporting" talking points from
political activists in other countries? When the BBC reports on
France's political conflicts between Macron and the labor unions,
which side is paying off the BBC? The same is true of BBC reporting
in other countries.

So the BBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, ABC and other mainstream new sources all
reported the same thing from Democratic party press releases: "The
Democrats have proven that Trump is guilty of trying to manipulate the
2020 election by demanding that Ukraine investigate his political
opposition, Joe Biden, in return for military aid that would protect
not only Ukraine, but also the United States, and Trump is covering it
up." It doesn't make sense, but that's what all the mainstream news
sources are "reporting."

Question: Why did Nancy Pelosi hold on to the articles of
impeachment for a month? Answer: Because there was zero evidence
supporting them, and she was hoping for some kind of bombshell.

The "bombshell" finally came when the NY Times claimed, without any
confirmation, that Bolton's unpublished book supported the Democrats.

That led to the demand for more witnesses in the Senate, and the vote
on Friday (1/31) not to call witnesses.

So now the Democratic / mainstream media message is as follows: "Trump
is guilty of wrongdoing, but will not be convicted because the
Republicans refused to allow a fair trial."

So, the final vote on acquittal in the Senate is now scheduled for
Wednesday. But that won't be the end of it.

This is a tribal war based on the Democrat's loathing and hatred of
the 63 million Tea Partiers / Trump supporters, the smelly Walmart
shoppers, the "teabaggers," the "credulous boomer rubes," and all the
other names that make Democrats laugh so hard that they have tears in
their eyes.

The lunatic hag Maxine Waters already announced two weeks ago:

Quote: "We will not stop. Whether or not that leads to
another impeachment activity, I don’t know. But I know we must
continue with the work that our constituents have elected us to
come to Congress to do."

So after impeachment, the Democrats will begin re-impeachment, since
that's what Maxine Waters' constituents elected her to do. The
impeachment event is just one battle in the tribal warfare against the
63 million Tea Partiers / Trump supporters, and the tribal war will
continue. The Democrats are going to be increasingly desperate as the
election approaches, and they'll try anything, including violence, to
defeat Trump and his supporters. The most unbearable thought of all
is four more years of smelly Trump supporters.

I want to make special mention of the lead Democrat impeachment
manager, Adam Schiff. This guy has lied constantly and openly, but it
doesn't matter, because the Democrats love him because he hates and
loathes Trump's supporters as much as they do.

Schiff reminds me of Bill Clinton in that both of them can talk for
hours in front of an audience. But Clinton was generally honest as a
speaker, even though he was a violent serial rapist. Schiff is not a
rapist, as far as we know, but whatever he says is complete garbage.

Today, the leaders of the Democratic party are Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who makes one moronic, pathetic statement after
another, and Adam Schiff, who lies in one statement after another.
This is what the Democrat party has come to.



---- 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

*** 14-Dec-2019 World View: Impeachment and violence
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...827#p48827

[John J. Xenakis]

** 01-Feb-2020 World View: Civil war

Trevor Wrote:> Seeing all this is beginning to convince me that our crisis war is
> going to be a civil war. I know it's been dismissed many
> times. Even two years ago, I would have laughed at the very idea
> of things getting to that point. Now. . . I'm not so sure
> anymore. There are people I know who are willing to justify
> Antifa's actions, because, after all, their targets are white
> supremacists. I've had people throw me out of their lives because
> I'm not on the "impeach Trump" bandwagon. Not liking him isn't
> enough. I've read article after article and blog post where people
> proudly proclaim they have cut all ties with their former
> Republican friends and family.

> I haven't watched the entire thing the way John has, but I've seen
> enough to where these people scare me. Trump might have thrown
> gasoline onto the fire, but I don't think the response would be
> very different if Rubio or Cruz had gotten elected. The media
> ignores or justifies Antifa's actions in Portland and other
> cities. Far as they're concerned, all Trump supporters deserve the
> same treatment.

> They've already declared the 2020 election illegitimate even
> though it's 10 months away. Trump's likely to win in a landslide,
> though the Democrats will do their best to cheat. Sometimes I
> wonder if the GOP will vote to remove him just to try and appease
> their anger, even if it wouldn't work.

> Things got real crazy after the 2008 recession and we've still got
> one coming. I don't think it's been this terrible since
> immediately before the Civil War. You wear a Trump hat in the
> cities, you're likely to be beaten or at least harassed. I've been
> watching events in Virginia, and they were begging for a violent
> incident so they could spin it. Governor Northam was all but
> provoking one, but nothing happened, much to their
> disappointment. They want to disarm their political opponents,
> which sends chills up my spine.

> When it comes to confiscation, Virginia is the canary in the coal
> mine. I don't think they understand just how important gun rights
> are to conservative, else you wouldn't hear calls to send in the
> National Guard to disarm them. No, the Governor hasn't actually
> ordered this, but some lawmakers have suggested it. Some will do
> anything for total submission, and I don't think they realize what
> they could unleash.

> It wouldn't be red state versus blue state. It'd be rural versus
> urban, with numerous factions fighting for control of the
> country. I'm still not convinced we're really going to have a
> civil war, but the trend line is going in that
> direction. Everything is considered justified, so long as the Tea
> Partiers are crushed.

Could you give me some links to the articles and blog posts that
you're referencing?

I still reject the concept of a "civil war" in any meaningful sense.

As I've mentioned in the past, my father, a Greek immigrant, once told
me that the violence in America in the 1930s was so bad that he
thought America would not survive. Furthermore, FDR was just as hated
and divisive then as Trump is today. Nonetheless, nobody describes
the 1930s as a time of civil war, as far as I know.

It's true that I am afraid of what the Democrats will unleash if Trump
wins again in November and the Democrats are facing the unbearable
horror of four more years of Trump supporters, but I expect the
violence to be sporadic.

The bitterness and fury of the Democrats is plainly visible on tv
among the politicians and mainstream media "reporters." And there's
no doubt that this is reflected in the Democrats in the general
public, as you said: "I've read article after article and blog post
where people proudly proclaim they have cut all ties with their former
Republican friends and family."

However, here's where the civil war concept breaks down. Crisis civil
wars are along fault lines based on things like ethnicity, skin color,
religion, and so forth. But I assume that the articles and blog posts
you're reading don't go farther and say something like, "I've cut all
ties with my former Republican friends and family, and now I'm making
plans to go back and kill them."

If you start reading articles and blog posts of that sort, beyond
sporadic stuff from Antifa nutjobs, then we can re-assess the
possibility of civil war.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 01-Feb-2020 World View: The way the world works

richard5za Wrote:> As an outsider one of the things I have noticed about America is
> the division between Republican and Democrat; it seems to define
> you as a person, both in your own attitudes and how others regard
> you. Almost like Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland. Most
> Americans I have met are big hearted, well meaning, well mannered
> people, and a division of this nature is a great pity.

Unfortunately, that's the way the world works.

Twelve years ago, you were kind enough to educate me about the history
of the Mfecane, the Zulu Empire, and the Great Trek, and you can see
the divisions from that history reflected in South Africa today.

We forget that America has its own history. The American Civil War
was extremely bloody and brutal, as every generational crisis war
always is, and the divisions from that history are reflected in
today's society. A lot of the bitterness and anger between Democrats
and Tea Partiers today is a consequence of the Democrats losing the
Civil War and losing the economic benefits of slavery.

The same is true in pretty much all countries. The "troubles" in
Northern Ireland are not really between Catholics and Protestants, as
you suggest. The divisions are between the indigenous Gaelics and the
descendants of the invading Scots and English, and date back at least
as far as the the Nine Years War (1594-1603) and the Ulster
Plantation, which Gaelics today refer to as "ethnic cleansing,"
because the British drove the Gaelics from their land, took it over as
landlords, and used the Gaelics as servants.

And Brexit is reopening the bloody fault line between English and
Scots that dates back at least as far as the Battle of Bannockburn, on
June 24, 1314. The War of the Spanish Succession may have unified
Britain, but it didn't make the Scots and the English love each other,
and that's becoming increasingly apparent.

So what you say is true. Americans are big hearted, well meaning,
well mannered people, but the current divisiveness is unfortunately
just the way the world works.

[pbrower2a]

(02-01-2020, 09:43 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 01-Feb-2020 World View: Civil war

Trevor Wrote:>   Seeing all this is beginning to convince me that our crisis war is
>   going to be a civil war. I know it's been dismissed many
>   times. Even two years ago, I would have laughed at the very idea
>   of things getting to that point. Now. . . I'm not so sure
>   anymore. There are people I know who are willing to justify
>   Antifa's actions, because, after all, their targets are white
>   supremacists. I've had people throw me out of their lives because
>   I'm not on the "impeach Trump" bandwagon. Not liking him isn't
>   enough. I've read article after article and blog post where people
>   proudly proclaim they have cut all ties with their former
>   Republican friends and family.

>   I haven't watched the entire thing the way John has, but I've seen
>   enough to where these people scare me. Trump might have thrown
>   gasoline onto the fire, but I don't think the response would be
>   very different if Rubio or Cruz had gotten elected. The media
>   ignores or justifies Antifa's actions in Portland and other
>   cities. Far as they're concerned, all Trump supporters deserve the
>   same treatment.

>   They've already declared the 2020 election illegitimate even
>   though it's 10 months away. Trump's likely to win in a landslide,
>   though the Democrats will do their best to cheat. Sometimes I
>   wonder if the GOP will vote to remove him just to try and appease
>   their anger, even if it wouldn't work.

>   Things got real crazy after the 2008 recession and we've still got
>   one coming. I don't think it's been this terrible since
>   immediately before the Civil War. You wear a Trump hat in the
>   cities, you're likely to be beaten or at least harassed. I've been
>   watching events in Virginia, and they were begging for a violent
>   incident so they could spin it. Governor Northam was all but
>   provoking one, but nothing happened, much to their
>   disappointment. They want to disarm their political opponents,
>   which sends chills up my spine.

>   When it comes to confiscation, Virginia is the canary in the coal
>   mine. I don't think they understand just how important gun rights
>   are to conservative, else you wouldn't hear calls to send in the
>   National Guard to disarm them. No, the Governor hasn't actually
>   ordered this, but some lawmakers have suggested it. Some will do
>   anything for total submission, and I don't think they realize what
>   they could unleash.

>   It wouldn't be red state versus blue state. It'd be rural versus
>   urban, with numerous factions fighting for control of the
>   country. I'm still not convinced we're really going to have a
>   civil war, but the trend line is going in that
>   direction. Everything is considered justified, so long as the Tea
>   Partiers are crushed.

Could you give me some links to the articles and blog posts that
you're referencing?

I still reject the concept of a "civil war" in any meaningful sense.

As I've mentioned in the past, my father, a Greek immigrant, once told
me that the violence in America in the 1930s was so bad that he
thought America would not survive.  Furthermore, FDR was just as hated
and divisive then as Trump is today.  Nonetheless, nobody describes
the 1930s as a time of civil war, as far as I know.

If you are talking about gangland activity in America's giant cities, nomadic marauders such as John Dillinger and the Barrow-Parker gang, and racist violence in "Kukluxistan"... America solved those. The Klan disintegrated outside of the post-Confederate cesspool even before the Great Depression started (not a moment too soon). Such police technologies as police radio made it easier to catch criminals on the move; criminals could outrun police rumors, but they could not outrun radio signals. The FBI had much of its focus on criminals crossing state lines to commit crimes or evade prosecution, making prey of nomadic marauders. Dillinger, like many others, were mowed down by law enforcement. The FBI developed one of the finest scientific laboratories in the world dedicated to connecting criminals to their crimes and a technique of interrogation that winnows out the innocent from the culpable. It hired accountants to follow the money behind criminal syndicates flush with cash. By 1940, crusading prosecutors such as Thomas E. Dewey were using FBI techniques against gangsters who had been riding high -- but those high-level criminals and their hitmen in Murder, Incorporated ended up riding the lightning in an electric chair.  To be sure, the FBI didn't need to beat confessions out of offenders as did the Gestapo and the OGPU... but when the criminal lied about innocence but evidence and the credible self-exculpation and accusations by victims proved more valid than a criminal's lies, the FBI had a criminal in much the same position as a victim of a Stalinist troika.  

Comparing FDR to Trump is a sick joke. Trump is for the Master Class of asset owners and executives at the expense of everyone else; he has taken the baby steps of Reagan toward pure plutocracy as far as may be possible.  FDR recognized that saving the political and economic order depended upon relieving Americans then poor through no fault of their own of distress that they did nothing to create. By 1939 Americans other than the pre-Crash elite were on the whole better off materially -- more likely to own cars, furniture, refrigerators,  stoves, and radios or phonographs (those two then high-ticket items). Old people finally were collecting Social Security instead of being pressed to work until they die in industrial plants (and elderly workers were especially prone to industrial accidents that killed and crippled others with them).  It makes more sense to compare Obama, who intended to bring about major reforms of the political order to the first two terms of the FDR Presidency. The difference: FDR jump-started the economic recovery after three years of an economic meltdown that ensured that Big Business would be concerned more with survival than with buying the political process, and the Obama recovery began about halfway into an economic meltdown that after a year and a half, after which the economic elites from before the meltdown were still flush with cash and were able to spend lavishly on buying the political process. The favored politicians of those plutocrats were those who firmly believed that no human suffering could ever be in excess so long as it creates, protects, enhances, or enforces a profit. As a consequence we ended up with the most reactionary politics since those of those slave-owning planters who expected people other than them to believe that slavery was the best thing possible for "their" (in a literal sense of formal possession as property) people.

We have a cold civil war. It is easy to attach an ugly stereotype to the leadership of one side, people who believe their class privilege the definitive good. Such is so with narcissistic types (the economic elite among Boomers) who wield or seek to wield absolute power (even if such power is effectively collective). That elite appealed to mass superstition and stupidity, as shown with Donald Trump proudly saying "I love low-information voters!" You tell me -- what good has ignorance ever achieved for Humanity? Has ignorance brought about technical innovations and medical advances? Has it ever made a coherent argument for reform? Has it ever offered imaginative culture? Has it ever brought about moral improvement? Has it fostered academic discovery or even competent teaching at the elementary level? About all that I see is that it has made people suitable objects for exploitation, whether as cannon fodder in destructive war, as passive consumers of cultural schlock as on low-brow fare on the Idiot Screen, and as the people who respond to the advertising for material trash even to the extent of buying food that will put them into early graves.

I will need to import this to this thread, but the Skowronek cycle (which partly fits the Howe-Strauss theory of generational change as a mechanism involving two Skowronek cycles), suggests that Donald Trump is a dead end for an Individualist era that began with Ronald Reagan at the end of the Boom Awakening era and is now spent. Think of Jimmy Carter as the last gasp of the most collectivist era of American history (beginning with FDR)... even if Carter was an upright and intelligent person clean of scandal as an ideological antithesis of Donald Trump.  
         

Quote:It's true that I am afraid of what the Democrats will unleash if Trump
wins again in November and the Democrats are facing the unbearable
horror of four more years of Trump supporters, but I expect the
violence to be sporadic.

In my best hope, I see Donald Trump being defeated in the 2020 election and serving as an example of how not to lead a nation except into fear, rancor, and despair. I expect the next President and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress to initiate major reforms of economic life, replacing economic fear in an absolute plutocracy with (best choice) a social-market economy. The politicians that Corporate America bought will have disgraced themselves in whitewashing Trump. Given a choice between prosecuting Trump and ignoring him we might be wiser to ignore him. Trump acts more like a typical once-competent person now incarcerated in a nursing home due to his senility, someone who has lost all inhibitions against bigoted expressions and vindictive statements. I saw that in my father, and from that I may have never fully recovered in four years. 

But what if Trump wins? I see a mirror image of a tyranny as appeared in central and Balkan Europe behind the Iron Curtain and which came close to happening in your beloved Greece. But this will be plutocratic instead of 'socialist' in the Marxist sense. Trump's ideology is mirror-image Marxism, an ideology that accepts the Marxist depiction of capitalism as an inhuman plutocracy but differs solely in endorsing the cruelty of capitalism at its worst. I can imagine a world in which people are helplessly in debt through their lives as terms of survival. I can imagine an economic order that demands more of the common man yet offers less. 

That is the sort of society in which liberal reform becomes impossible, and in which such types as Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro become the last (and of course, severely-flawed) hope for the common man.  If you love capitalism, then at least attach some humanistic virtues to it.     

Quote:The bitterness and fury of the Democrats is plainly visible on tv
among the politicians and mainstream media "reporters."  And there's
no doubt that this is reflected in the Democrats in the general
public, as you said: "I've read article after article and blog post
where people proudly proclaim they have cut all ties with their former
Republican friends and family."

People who have split with family members over a transitory reality over politics have gone too far -- not that they haven't had such splits over property (inheritances that make life easy for recipients) or religion/ethnicity. I would be troubled if I had to share a family inheritance with someone who would certainly put it up his nose (cocaine) or inject it into his veins (heroin). Wouldn't you? 
 

Quote:However, here's where the civil war concept breaks down.  Crisis civil
wars are along fault lines based on things like ethnicity, skin color,
religion, and so forth.  But I assume that the articles and blog posts
you're reading don't go farther and say something like, "I've cut all
ties with my former Republican friends and family, and now I'm making
plans to go back and kill them."

The rancor already exists, and some of the tendencies existed in Spain in the 1930's and Yugoslavia in the early 1990's, when societies started to democratize. But can democracy die in America? I used to think that it would take a David DuKKKe... but now we have Donald Trump, who as President has violated norms extant over more than 200 years. Our Constitution was designed to establish norms that preclude a despotic President. Such norms may have thwarted the vision of Obama, but Trump does not let those stand in his way. 
 

Quote:If you start reading articles and blog posts of that sort, beyond
sporadic stuff from Antifa nutjobs, then we can re-assess the
possibility of civil war.

Antifa "nutjobs" are about as relevant to American politics as the beer-drunk, pool-playing, tobacco-spitting members of a Klavern. All democrats are anti-fascist. Donald Trump fits the warning signs of fascism whether the list of Lawrence Britt or Umberto  Eco very well. To be sure, those largely fit Commies and Ba'athists as well, but all of those warning signs  are pathology.