Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 24-Nov-18 World View -- Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China
  
• Constitutional crisis continues in Sri Lanka over China-India competition
  

****
**** Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China
****


Map showing strategic location of Maldives and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean

Shortly after Ibrahim Mohamed Solih shocked the Maldives by winning
the presidential election on September 23 decisively by 58-41% of the
vote, he met with the Chinese ambassador to the Maldives, Zhang
Lizhong, to ask how much money the Maldives owed to China. According
to Solih, Zhang handed him an invoice for $3.2 billion. This was
money owed for Chinese-funded infrastructure projects for China's Belt
and Road Initiative (BRI).

Solih's election victory was a surprise because it had been expected
that the election would go to he incumbent president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who had never hesitated to use vote-rigging or jailings
or violence to win elections, had been expected to win. However,
Solih's election margin of victory was so large that Yameen was forced
to concede. Solih's victory is also major victory for India and a
major loss for China, since Yameen had close relations with China and
Solih promised to balance Indian and Chinese influence.

So then there was another shock, when Solih received the "invoice"
from ambassador Zhang saying that Maldives owed China $3.2 billion.
With annual revenues of $1.5 billion and an annual gross domestic
product of around $3.9 billion, Maldives would be unable to service
the debt, and it appeared that Maldives had been the victim of a huge
Chinese debt trap.

Solih took office a week ago, and said that the country's finances are
worse than expected, and that it will take weeks or months to untangle
details of all the deals struck with Chinese firms. According
to his assistant, Mohamed Nasheed:

<QUOTE>"We are at a loss to understand how much we really owe
to China. Direct debt, or direct bilateral
government-to-government debt is one thing, but there is on top of
that sovereign guarantees for the private sector. And there is
also on top of that our state owned enterprises who have gone into
debt."<END QUOTE>

However, the Maldives central bank contradicts the $3.2 billion
figure, estimating the country’s liabilities to China at $1.5 billion.

And now China is denying that the Zhang ever gave Solih a $3.2
billion figure, also saying that the correct figure is
closer to $1.5 billion.

So the Maldives is sending its foreign minister Abdulla Shahid to
China next month, to renegotiate deals and to finally figure out how
much Maldives owes to China.

China has negotiated many infrastructure debt deals with numerous
countries. These deals are all secret, and are usually considered to
be Chinese "debt traps" imposed on small countries. The situation
with the Maldives is that, for the first time, one of these top secret
deals may become public, and we'll be able to see what the terms are
and whether there was corruption involved on the part of the Yameen
administration.

What we've seen so far in the Maldives case is that the financial
relationship with China is a total mess. If and when deals with
other countries become public, we can expect a similar mess.

The Maldives envoy Abdulla Shahid will be discussing another subject
when he visits China next month -- the joint Free Trade Agreement
(FTA) that the two countries signed a year ago. According to the
Maldives government, the FTA was rushed through parliament by the
Yameen administration, but the Solih administration plans to cancel
it, because it's too one sided.

Between January to August this year, the Maldives’ imports from China
were $342 million, while its exports to China were just $265,270. The
FTA specifies that there would be no tariffs on imports by either side
from the other, but since China imports almost nothing from Maldives,
the FTA is of benefit only to China. Canceling the FTA would be one
more setback to China, which is facing an increasing chorus of
accusations of "debt trap diplomacy" in many countries across the
Pacific and Indian oceans. Avas (Maldives) and Reuters and Maldives Independent (30-Nov-2017) and Reuters (19-Nov) and Xinhua

****
**** Constitutional crisis continues in Sri Lanka over China-India competition
****

Sri Lanka is another country that has been harshly victimized by
China's debt trap diplomacy. Sri Lanka, under former president
Mahinda Rajapaksa, signed a huge finance deal with China to build the
Hambantota seaport. But Sri Lanka was unable to service the
debt, and Rajapaksa's successor was forced to hand control
of the seaport over to China. So now China has control of an
important strategic seaport on the Indian Ocean, and an enclave
of thousands of Chinese workers and their families on Sri Lanka
soil.

So it was a great shock on October 26 when Mahinda Rajapaksa, the
mastermind of the Hambantota project, was appointed prime minister by
the current president, Maithripala Sirisena, after firing the existing
prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Sirisena has never explained the
reason for his decision, but it's believed that Wickremesinghe is
close to India, while Rajapaksa is close to China.
Wickremesinghe has refused to leave the prime minister's residence,
so for the last month Sri Lanka has had two prime ministers.

Sirisena also dissolved the parliament, but the parliament refused to
be dissolved and remained in session. Last week, a vote was held to
select the actual prime minister from the two choices, pandemonium
broke out in the assembly when Rajapaksa's supporters threw books,
chairs and chili paste at Wickremesinghe's supporters, in an attempt
to keep from losing the vote.

On Friday, the parliament held another vote, this time to decide
control of a crucial committee that sets the parliamentary agenda.
When Wickremesinghe's supporters won the vote, Rajapaksa's supporters
staged a walkout. Wickremesinghe argues that he still commands
majority support within parliament and, despite being fired, he
continues to occupy his official residence. On the other hand,
Rajapaksa has lost two no-confidence votes in the parliament but has
refused to stand down.

Despite having been forced to give up its Hambantota seaport
to China, Sri Lanka still owes more than $50 billion to foreign
lenders. Next year it has to pay more than $4 billion in
debt servicing. The current constitutional crisis is causing
the value of the Sri Lanka rupee to plummet, which means that
the $4 billion will be much harder to pay.

Both Sri Lanka and the Maldives are very important strategic locations
in the India Ocean, and seaports in those countries would be among
China's "String of Pearls" seaports in the Indian Ocean, giving China
a major strategic advantage. However, pro-Indian governments in both
island countries would hand significant setbacks to China. Al Jazeera and Reuters and Al Jazeera and South China Morning Post (29-Oct)

Related Articles:

• China and India compete for influence in Sri Lanka and Maldives constitutional crises (10-Nov-2018)
  
  
• Sri Lanka constitutional crisis represents opportunity for China (31-Oct-2018)
  
  
• China takes control of strategic Hambantota seaport in Sri Lanka, raising concerns in India (11-Dec-2017)
  
  
• Report: Sri Lankan government repeatedly torturing and raping Tamils (14-Jan-2016)
  
  
• Maldives crisis pits India vs China in the Indian Ocean (07-Feb-2018)
  
  
• Maldives in crisis as China-backed incumbent president Yameen loses election (24-Sep-2018)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena,
Ranil Wickremesinghe, Mahinda Rajapaksa, India, Hambantota port,
China, Zhang Lizhong, Belt and Road Initiative, BRI,
Maldives, Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih,
Mohamed Nasheed, Abdulla Shahid

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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]

*** 25-Nov-18 World View -- Socialist Venezuela oil production in 'free fall' as infrastructure collapses

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Socialist Venezuela oil production in 'free fall' as infrastructure collapses
  
• Russia rebukes Venezuela for non-payment
  

****
**** Socialist Venezuela oil production in 'free fall' as infrastructure collapses
****


Oil tanker labeled 'PDVSA - Homeland, Socialism or Death' (PanamPost)

With over one million refugees from Venezuela having fled to other
countries, with dozens of people dying violently in Venezuela every
day, Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro's Socialist policies seem to
drive the country further into disaster every week.

In 2017, Venezuela was producing two million barrels of oil per day
(bpd). But by September of this year, output had fallen to just 1.4
bpd. According to Fatih Birol, the executive director of the
International Energy Agency:

<QUOTE>"Venezuela production is in a free-fall and we expect
that soon it may go to even below 1 million barrels per
day."<END QUOTE>

Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, and
Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) was one of the biggest oil
producers in the world.

But Socialist dictator Hugo Chávez nationalized ExxonMobil's
Venezuelan assets in 2007, and turned them over to his crooked cronies
who didn't know anything about running an oil company. Venezuela's
oil production has been steadily declining for years. Average oil
production declined dramatically over the past two years, by 12% in
2016 and again by 13% in 2017. Production in December 2017 was 27%
lower than a year earlier. And this year it's fallen even farther.

Late last year, Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás Maduro
appointed a military man, Major General Manuel Quevedo, head of PDVSA,
with a mandate to increase production and rid the company of
corruption. Quevedo treated the engineers and other professions contemptuously,
even calling them
"thieves and saboteurs." Tens of thousands of employees left the
company, and Quevedo replaced them with soldiers who knew nothing
about the oil industry.

The result has been a collapse in infrastructure, as engineers who
were needed to maintain the busted valves, ripped gaskets, cracked
pipes and so forth were forced to leave. Contractors who were experts
in cleaning up oil spills have gone out of business because PDVSA
wasn't paying them.

The means that oil production is decreasing, and oil spills and
leaks are increasing. PDVSA is unable to clean up spills
after years of neglect, scant investment, and corruption scandals.
Pools of oil are polluting waterways and farmland, causing
a pungent odor.

Urban areas have been hit, too. Early this year, the contents of a
ruptured transport line blackened the Guarapiche River in Monagas
state. A water-purification plant on the river was compromised, and
the authorities shut it down for more than a month. Local schools
canceled classes, and government offices reduced office hours because
water was so scarce.

Socialist Venezuela is in a major economic collapse, following years
of mismanagement and underinvestment in the oil industry, an enormous
humanitarian crisis, and a leader who is addicted to Socialist
policies that enrich himself and his cronies, but destroy the
population, with a hyperinflation rate expected to reach one million
percent by the end of the year, according to the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). Reuters and Bloomberg and Reuters and Bloomberg

****
**** Russia rebukes Venezuela for non-payment
****

Socialist Venezuela would have gone into full-blown default years ago
if not for bailouts by Russia and China. Russia has been bailing out
Venezuela for decades, and in recent years Russia and China have
extended large loans to Venezuela, with the agreement that Venezuela
can service the debt by making payments in shipments of oil.

One of the reasons for the fall in oil production has been that PDVSA
has been forced to starve its own oil refineries of crude oil, so that
crude oil can be shipped to Russia and China as loan repayments.
However, as PDVSA's infrastructure collapses, it's becoming
more difficult to make debt servicing payments even with oil.

It's now emerged that PDVSA has been unable to provide all the oil
shipments that it's promised to Russia. Igor Sechin, a close adviser
to Vladimir Putin and head of Russia's state-owned oil company
Rosneft, flew from Moscow to Caracas over the weekend to rebuke
Venezuela's Socialist leader Nicolás Maduro for being behind schedule
in oils-for-loans payments to Russia.

Possibly even more significant is that, according to reports, Sechin
brought information (I would guess satellite tracking data) showing
that Venezuela was meeting its obligations with China, but not with
Russia.

The problems delaying payments include operational mishaps, such as
refining outages and delayed cleaning of tanker hulls, and financial
disputes with service providers owed money by PDVSA. Reuters and Reuters

Related articles:

• Socialist Venezuela's state-owned PDVSA oil company near total collapse (21-Apr-2018)
  
  
• Cuba's new president Miguel Díaz-Canel makes delusional promise to continue Socialist revolution (20-Apr-2018)
  
  
• Russia considers taking on a huge financial burden - Venezuela (05-Oct-2017)
  
  
• Venezuela's economic crisis is hitting Cuba hard (06-Aug-2016)
  
  
• Hugo Chávez dismantled Venezuela's businesses on purpose to create Socialist Paradise (29-May-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro,
International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol,
International Monetary Fund, IMF,
Manuel Quevedo, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., PDVSA,
Russia, Rosneft, Igor Sechin, China

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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]

*** 26-Nov-18 World View -- Russia attacks Ukraine's navy and blockades Ukraine's ports at Kerch Strait

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Russia attacks Ukraine's navy and blockades Ukraine's ports at Kerch Strait
  
• Russia confirms the attack on the Ukrainian ships
  

****
**** Russia attacks Ukraine's navy and blockades Ukraine's ports at Kerch Strait
****


Ukraine. In 2014, Russia invaded and occupied Donbas, and invaded and annexed Crimea. In 2018, Russia completed a bridge over the Kerch Strait, controlling access to the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of resuming their war today,
after a major naval escalation where Russia's military fired on
Ukrainian navy ships in the Black Sea, boarding and seizing the ships,
and blockading Ukraine's ports at the Kerch Strait.

The sequence of events, according to Ukrainian media and mostly
confirmed by Russian media, is as follows:

• Three ships, two gunboats and a tugboat, left Ukraine's Odessa
  seaport, with a destination of the seaport of Mariupol in the Sea of
  Azov. Ukraine had informed the Russians of the plan.
  
  
• The boats approached the Kerch Strait bridge, which Russia only
  opened a few months ago. In the past, Russian tugs escorted Ukrainian
  boats under the bridge without incident.
  
  
• This time, the boats were monitored by two Russian
  helicopters.
  
  
• A Russian coast guard vessel rammed the tugboat, damaging the
  ships engines and hull.
  
  
• Russia's coast guard opened live fire on the Ukrainian vessels,
  leaving six Ukrainian sailors wounded. Russians boarded the Ukrainian
  vessels and seized them.
  
  
• Russia has moved an oil tanker into a position under the Kerch
  Strait bridge, where all traffic in and out of the Sea of Azov is
  blocked. There are reportedly dozens of cargo ships awaiting
  passage.

There is no word about how long the blockade will be in place.

Russia's attack on Ukraine's ships appears to be a continuation of the
war between Russia and Ukraine that began in 2014. Russia invaded
Donbas (eastern Ukraine) and is still occupying it, and then Russia
invaded, occupied and annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.

In the past three years, Russia has built a bridge over the Kerch
Strait between Russia and Occupied Crimea, and has constantly harassed
and blocked hundreds of commercial ships trying to reack Ukrainian
ports.

Many observers believe that these steps are all in preparation for a
naval assault on Mariupol, Berdyansk, and other Ukrainian ports along
the Sea of Azov, with the objective of creating a land bridge between
Russia and occupied Crimea, and to taking full military control of the
entire Sea of Azov.

The three seized ships are in Kerch seaport. There are no reports on
the locations and health of the captured sailors.

Ukraine has called an emergency meeting of its national security and
defense council, and Ukraine's parliament may vote on declaring
martial law on Monday.

Last month, Orthodox Christian Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the
Constantinople Patriarchate and "first among equals" leader of all
Orthodox Christian churches and of the world's 300 million Orthodox
Christians, announced that the Orthodox Christian Church of Ukraine in Kiev is now independent
of
the Orthodox Christian Church of Moscow. This move has infuriated
Russia, causing them to threaten retaliation. Sunday's naval crisis
may be one step in that retaliation. News.com (Australia) and BBC and
Ukrinform (Ukraine) and Daily Mail (London)

****
**** Russia confirms the attack on the Ukrainian ships
****


Russia on Sunday blockaded the Sea of Azov with a tanker underneath the Kerch Strait bridge (AP)

Before we quote the Russian statement about Sunday's incident, we have
to remind readers that Russia has repeatedly lied about everything,
including the following:

• Russian troops invaded eastern Ukraine (Donbas), and claimed
  that they weren't Russian troops.
  
  
• Russia lied about invading east Ukraine when it had Russian
  troops in east Ukraine.
  
  
• Russia lied about invading Crimea, and Putin said Russia had no
  intention of annexing Crimea, but then annexed Crimea a few days later
  and gave medals to the military officers who had invaded Crimea.
  Later, in a televised interview, Putin bragged that he had ordered the
  invasion and annexation of Crimea weeks before it occurred, and then
  lied about it.
  
  
• Russians shot down a Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 passenger plane
  using a Russian Buk 9M38 missile, killing hundreds of innocent mostly
  Dutch passengers, and then claimed that the US had shot it down to
  embarrass Russia.
  
  
• On March 4 of this year, Russia used the Russia-developed nerve
  agent Novichok to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK,
  and then claimed that the pertrators were tourists. They've
  been identified as top-level Kremlin spies.

There are many additional examples, especially in Syria. Any
statement by a Russian official has to be assumed to be a lie unless
it's confirmed by a Western politician or Western media. Russia's
press is tightly controlled by Russia's government. If Russians ever
tell the truth, it's only be accident.

On the other hand, Ukraine has a free press, and statements by
Ukrainian sources during the last four years have generally proved out
to be consistently true.

So with that introduction, here's the Russian statement as published
in Tass:

<QUOTE>"MOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. All three vessels of the
Ukrainian Navy, which violated the Russian state border, have been
detained in the Black Sea, weapons were used to force them to
stop, the Public Relations Center of the Russian Federal Security
Service (FSB) reported.

"The Ukrainian Navy’s vessels the Berdyansk, the Nikopol and the
Yany Kapu, which violated Russia’s state border this morning, made
another attempt of committing illegal activities in Russia’s
territorial sea at 19:00 Moscow time on November 25," the FSB
said. "They did not respond to legitimate demands by the ships and
boats of Russia’s FSB Border Guard Service escorting them to stop
immediately and performed dangerous maneuvers."

According to the FSB, "weapons were used to force the Ukrainian
warships to stop." As a result, all three vessels of the Ukrainian
Navy were detained in Russia’s territorial waters in the Black
Sea. "Three wounded military servicemen of the Ukrainian armed
forces received medical assistance," the FSB said, adding that
there was no threat to their lives.

A criminal case has been initiated over violation of Russia’s
state border.

The FSB stressed that Ukraine was aware of the procedure for
warships’ passage through Russia’s territorial sea and
Kerch-Yenikale Canal. "They have already used that procedure for
innocent passage," it said.

The FSB’s border directorate for Crimea earlier reported that
three Ukrainian warships had illegally crossed Russia’s state
border in the Black Sea and entered Russia’s territorial waters
performing dangerous maneuvers. Later on, the FSB said that two
more Ukrainian warships had sailed off from Berdyansk to join the
three vessels. However, they later turned back.

The FSB stressed that "before making such dangerous and
irresponsible decisions, the Kiev leadership should have thought
about possible consequences of its actions."

Russia’s Federal Security Service said it had irrefutable evidence
of Kiev’s using the Ukrainian Navy to stage a provocation in the
Black Sea and promised it would be made public soon.

Three Ukrainian Navy vessels, which violated Russia’s state border
and were detained in the Black Sea are being delivered to the port
of Kerch (a city in eastern Crimea), Anton Lozovoy, an officer of
the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) State Border
Directorate for Crimea, said in a video commentary on Monday.

"All three vessels have been detained and are being delivered to
the port of Kerch," he said.

According to Lozovoy, three Ukrainian military servicemen who
sustained minor wounds have received medical care."<END QUOTE>

Russia claims that they have "irrefutable evidence" of a provocation,
but until that "irrefutable evidence" is released and evaluated by
Western analysts, we have to assume that most of the above statement
is a lie.

The Russian statement does not mention ramming the tugboat.

The Russian statement says that the Ukrainian ships were in Russian
territorial waters. Until this is confirmed by Western sources, we
have to assume that this is a lie.

The Ukraine war has been ongoing for four years, and people are still
being killed on both sides. Sunday's incident is a major escalation,
and it could mean that Russia is planning invade and annex the region
of Ukraine along the Sea of Azov. Tass (Moscow) and Aesop's Fable: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Related Articles:

• Ukraine counters Russia's military buildup in the Sea of Azov (18-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Constantinople grants Ukrainian Orthodox Church independence, causing historic split with Russia (12-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Dutch report confirms that Russian missile shot down airliner over Ukraine (14-Oct-2015)
  
  
• BBC reporters attacked by Russian thugs after finding evidence of new Ukraine invasion (19-Sep-2014)
  
  
• Russia's sophisticated disinformation campaign over Ukraine (15-Aug-2014)
  
  
• UK honors the journalist who documented Stalin's man-made 1932-33 Holodomor famine in Ukraine (22-Nov-2009)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Ukraine, Sea of Azov, Russia, Kerch Strait,
Crimea, Mariupol, Berdyansk, Patriarch Bartholomew I,
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Buk 9M38 missile,
Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal, Novichok,
Anton Lozovoy, Russian Federal Security Service, FSB

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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]

*** 27-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan fails to get agreement from IMF for a bailout

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Pakistan fails to get agreement from IMF for a bailout
  
• Pakistan's link to the FATF financial blacklist
  
• Pakistan turns to its 'friends' for aid
  

****
**** Pakistan fails to get agreement from IMF for a bailout
****


Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan and China's Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing earlier this month, with Khan begging for aid. (Getty)

After two weeks of discussions early this month between Pakistan and
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan failed to get
agreement on securing a bailout package that would save the country
from its balance of payments crisis. The talks ended inconclusively,
with agreement to meet again in January.

China has strongly encouraged the IMF to make a bailout loan available
to Pakistan. Last month, China's foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang
said, "As a member of the IMF, China supports the organization in
making an objective evaluation of Pakistan based on professionalism
and earnestly helping it properly address the current difficulty."

However, the main area of disagreement with Pakistan stemmed from the
IMF's insistence that Pakistan fully disclose the terms of the loans
made by China to Pakistan for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC), which is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This
is a very sensitive subject for China. China's has made loans to
numerous countries across Asia and Africa, and China has insisted that
the terms of these loans be kept top secret. Outside observers
believe that China is engaging in "debt trap diplomacy," and exposing
the terms of these loans would reveal the amount of leverage that
China has on all these countries. In the case of Pakistan, even the
central bank doesn't know the terms of the loan.

As we recently reported, the terms of China's loan to the Maldives is
becoming public, thanks to a surprise election victory and change of
administrations. The new president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, asked
China's ambassador Zhang Lizhong how much the Maldives owed to China,
and he was handed an invoice for the shocking amount of $3.2 billion,
many times more than Maldives could afford. This figure was so
embarrassing to China that later denied that they denied that Zhang
ever gave that figure. ( "24-Nov-18 World View -- Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China"
)

However, the IMF is demanding to know all the details of China's loans
to Pakistan before it will approve a bailout package. That's because
a lot of the bailout money would end up going to China to pay off the
CPEC investment. That's why China is so supportive of an IMF loan to
Pakistan. And since most of the IMF money comes from US taxpayers,
American taxpayers would be paying for China's infrastructure projects
in Pakistan.
Nikkei and Market Watch


****
**** Pakistan's link to the FATF financial blacklist
****

This week is the tenth anniversary of the horrific 3-day terrorist attack on Mumbai, India,
killing
126 people, injuring hundreds more, and gutting the Taj Mahal Palace
Hotel, a major landmark for all of India.

It later turned out that the perpetrators were Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT),
a Pakistan-based terrorist group that was funded by Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. LeT's leader in the
operation was Hafiz Saeed. Pakistan refused to condemn him or LeT,
but kept him under house arrest for several years, under international
pressure. Then in November 2017, Pakistan freed him with no trial and all charges dropped.
As he
left the court a free man, he was greeted by chanting crowds and rose
petals.

The relevance of this story to Pakistan's relationship with the IMF is
that the IMF will not provide funding to a country on the blacklist of
the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF is a 30 year old
international policy-making body concerned with money laundering and
financing of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.

There are currently 11 countries on the FATF blacklist, including
Pakistan. According to the October 2018 update, Pakistan has
committed "to address its strategic counter-terrorist
financing-related deficiencies," and take numerous steps including
the following:

<QUOTE>"(1) demonstrating that TF [terror financing] risks
are properly identified, assessed, and that supervision is applied
on a risk-sensitive basis; ...

(4) demonstrating that authorities are identifying cash couriers
and enforcing controls on illicit movement of currency and
understanding the risk of cash couriers being used for TF; ...

(8) demonstrating effective implementation of targeted financial
sanctions (supported by a comprehensive legal obligation) against
all 1267 and 1373 designated terrorists and those acting for or on
their behalf, including preventing the raising and moving of
funds, identifying and freezing assets (movable and immovable),
and prohibiting access to funds and financial
services."<END QUOTE>

In June, Pakistan agreed to tighten its compliance with anti-money
laundering laws and counter-terror funding. In view of Pakistan's
previous sponsoring of terrorist organizations targeting India and
Afghanistan, it's not surprising that Pakistan has no particular
desire to fulfill that commitment, even though the IMF will not
provide funding for a country on the FATF blacklist.

Finance Minister Asad Umar specifically addressed this question last
week and responded:

<QUOTE>"The government is neither in a hurry to sign a deal
with the IMF nor will it come under any pressure to take any
decision which burdens the country’s economy and its
people."<END QUOTE>

The IMF has other requirements as well: raise taxes, raise electricity
prices, tighten monetary policies and allow a further depreciation in
the value of the rupee currency. Asia Times and Pakistan Today and The News (Pakistan) and Financial Action Task Force (FATF)

****
**** Pakistan turns to its 'friends' for aid
****

Last month, Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan leveraged the bizarre
death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi
Arabian embassy in Istanbul to obtain $6 billion in aid from Saudi
Arabia. ( "25-Oct-18 World View -- Pakistan's 'desperate' Imran Khan attends Saudi investment summit amid Khashoggi crisis"
)

However, even with that aid, Pakistan still needs an additional $12-15
billion in aid to survive the next year. Imran Khan has paid visits
to both United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, but apparently returned
empty-handed from both visits.

So Pakistan has turned to its "all-weather friend," China, whose
friendship is "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger
than steel, sweeter than honey, and dearer than eyesight."

Khan visited China early this month, expecting a generous bailout
package from China. But to everyone's surprise, China flatly refused.
Perhaps China feels that its refusal will force the IMF to provide a
bailout, and then, as described earlier, the US taxpayer will be
paying China for CPEC, something that would delight the Chinese who
would be getting sweet revenge for unfair deals forced on China after
the Opium Wars in the 1800s.

So that brings us back to the IMF demands -- make the details of
China's loans to Pakistan public, and put procedures in place to end
terror financing. It remains to be seen whether Pakistan is even
capable of meeting these demands, or if it even wants to. Dawn (Pakistan) and Lowy Institute (Australia) and Pakistan Today and and Bloomberg (24-Oct)

Related Articles

• Pakistan's 'desperate' Imran Khan attends Saudi investment summit amid Khashoggi crisis (25-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Pakistan faces imminent financial crisis threatening China's CPEC (07-Aug-2018)
  
  
• Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China (24-Nov-2018)
  
  
• After Mumbai's '26/11' nightmare finally ends, India - Pakistan relations face crisis (30-Nov-2008)
  
  
• Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is (15-Aug-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Pakistan, Imran Khan,
International Monetary Fund, IMF, China, Lu Kang,
China Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC,
Belt and Road Initiative, BRI,
Maldives Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, Zhang Lizhong,
India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, LeT, Hafiz Saeed,
Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI, Asad Umar,
Financial Action Task Force, FATF,
Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi, Qatar,
United Arab Emirates, UAE

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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
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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]

*** 28-Nov-18 World View -- Bitcoin bubble and China's Belt and Road bubble both appear to be crashing

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Bitcoin super-bubble implodes and crashes below $4,000
  
• China's 'Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Bubble' may be in trouble
  

****
**** Bitcoin super-bubble implodes and crashes below $4,000
****


Bitcoin price at $3,750 on 27-Nov-2018 (CoinMarketCap.com)

The price of a Bitcoin fell to $3,700 on Tuesday, down from
a peak close to $20,000 in December of last year.

A little over a year ago, in response to people asking my advice about
investing in Bitcoin, I wrote about Bitcoin
just after its price surged past $5,000. In the article I
wrote, "Investing in Bitcoin is the road to disaster. I literally
cannot think of a worse investment today than Bitcoin, or the various
copycat newcomers, such as Ethereum. Bitcoin is almost literally a
Ponzi scheme backed by nothing but air."

So Dear Reader, I hope you took my advice, because if you didn't then
you've lost money. Many people lost a great deal of money investing
as the price increased parabolically all the way up to $20,000, and
those people have lost a LOT of money.

What are analysts saying today? Some are saying that Bitcoin
has bottomed, and now will go up. One says that Bitcoin will
fall further to about $3,000, and then will go up. Another says
that it will remain about where it is now for several months,
and then will go up. These are the same people who have always
said it would go up, even while it was crashing.

This reminds me of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s decade. I was
writing as early as 2004 that there was a housing bubble, as did a few
others. It was perfectly obvious. But the "experts" on CNBC and in
the Wall Street Journal kept saying that "Housing prices can't go down
-- people have to live somewhere," and "Banks won't foreclose -- it's
not in their interest to do so" and "These housing construction firms
know what they're doing, and they wouldn't be building houses if it
were just a bubble."

It wasn't until around 2009 or 2010 that these "experts" even admitted
that there had been a housing bubble, and then they pretended that
they had known it all along. It was the same with the Iraq war,
which everyone was in favor of in 2003, but then years later
pretended that they had been against it all along.

So now we have experts making predictions about the future price
of Bitcoin. How is any prediction of any kind even possible?

If you want to predict the future price of stock shares, you can look
at a company's earnings history. If you want to predict future
corporate bond prices, you can look at a company's assets. If you
want to predict the future price of corn, you can look at yield
estimates that you get from the Department of Agriculture.

But for Bitcoin, there's nothing, absolutely nothing on which to base
any prediction. These analysts on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal
who predict that Bitcoin will go up should be prosecuted for criminal
fraud, because they don't have a clue. Betting on Bitcoin is worse
than betting on the Las Vegas roulette wheel. Maybe you'll win, maybe
you'll lose but the analysts who make predictions are nothing but
criminals. If you invest in Bitcoin, you should be prepared to lose
100% of your investment. Bloomberg and CNBC and NewsBTC and MarketWatch and Coin Market Cap

Related Articles

• Bitcoin super-bubble surges through $5,000 and blasts even higher (16-Oct-2017)
  
  
• Fed Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen says 'no financial crisis in our lifetimes' (02-Jul-2017)
  
  
• Updating the 'real value' of the stock market (03-Aug-2010)
  
  
• A primer on financial engineering and structured finance (23-Jan-2008)

****
**** China's 'Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Bubble' may be in trouble
****


China - prices for iron and steel has crashed in the last month (FT)

The above graph shows that the prices of iron and steel in China have
crashed in the last month, with the right part of the graph looking
very similar to the Bitcoin graph above. Maybe the two are linked in
some way, or maybe it's just a coincidence that they're both crashing
at the same time, but either way the fall in iron and steel prices in
China is the latest sign that the economy has been weakening for about
six months.

It's my personal opinion that China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
is in a massive bubble of its own.

The BRI is a breathtaking project as much as $1.3 trillion on
railways, roads, seaports, and power grids, now extending into a least
76 countries, mostly developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America, together with a handful of countries on the eastern edge of
Europe.

My feeling, based on many, many things that I've read in the last
year, is that China's BRI is a humongous financial disaster in the
making. The other side of "debt trap diplomacy" is that all these
debt traps will be sprung at roughly the same time, as each debt trap
default creates a level of panic that triggers defaults in other debt
traps.

What most people don't understand is any bank or company can "create"
money by issuing debt. People think that only the federal government
can create money, but the money created by issuing debt is 100%
identical to the money created money created by the federal
government. And in a debt bubble, money created by issuing debt
vanishes when the bubble bursts.

There are a few things about the BRI that I find troubling
and indicative of a financial crisis.

First, the utter secrecy of the terms of the BRI deals, in
particular the amount of debt being created, and the terms of
repayment. I don't see any reason why that information can't
be made public for each country, even if other deals still
have to be kept secret. By keeping the debt secret, China
evokes a great deal of suspicion of bribery, corruption,
and debt-trap diplomacy.

Second, as we recently reported, the terms of China's loan to the
Maldives is becoming public, thanks to a surprise election victory and
change of administrations. The new president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih,
asked China's ambassador Zhang Lizhong how much the Maldives owed to
China, and he was handed an invoice for the shocking amount of $3.2
billion, many times more than Maldives could afford. This figure was
so embarrassing to China that later denied that Zhang ever gave that
figure. The whole situation raises suspiicion of a great deal of
corruption. ( "24-Nov-18 World View -- Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China"
)

So you have the huge amounts of money sloshing around 76 countries,
with no public information about the terms. In this top secret
environment, there must be many situations involving bribery
and kickbacks, as well as country leaders lining the pockets of
their family and cronies.

The third issue is what's happening in Pakistan. Pakistan is about to
go into bankruptcy, but it's "all-weather friend" China very
surprising has refused to come to Pakistan's aid. Is this because
China's slowing economy requires keeping expenses in check? China has
asked Pakistan to go to the IMF, but the IMF is going to demand full
details of all the Pakistan-China contracts, and also require Pakistan
to stop funding terrorists.

So this is what I call the "BRI Bubble." China is funding projects in
76 countries, and most of those countries are ever going to be able to
pay that money back. A crisis could occur at any time.

This is a bubble that's going to burst, with catastrophic results,
especially in Asia.

We keep speculating about what will trigger the next world war --
South China Sea, North Korea, Mideast, Kashmir, etc. But another
possibility has always been a global financial crisis triggering the
world war. The Bitcoin crash may have cascading effects leading to a
broader crisis but, if not, it might be the BRI bubble. Bloomberg and Sputnik News (Moscow) and Financial Times and Global Times (Beijing)

Related Articles

• Pakistan fails to get agreement from IMF for a bailout (27-Nov-2018)
  
  
• Maldives can't determine how much money it owes to China (24-Nov-2018)
  
  
• Myanmar signs 'debt trap' agreement with China in response to Rohingya genocide censure (21-Sep-2018)
  
  
• Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is (15-Aug-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Bitcoin,
China, Belt and Road Initiative, BRI,
Maldives, Pakistan, International Monetary Fund, IMF,
BRI Bubble

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John J. Xenakis
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Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
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[John J. Xenakis]

*** 29-Nov-18 World View -- New climate change report shows countries are failing to meet commitments

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• New climate change report shows countries are failing to meet commitments
  
• China building a 'tsunami' of coal-powered plants across Asia
  

****
**** New climate change report shows countries are failing to meet commitments
****


Satellite image of coal-fired power plant in Guangdong province, China. The two cooling towers are clearly visible. (Planet Labs)

A new United Nations report on climate change shows that countries
that had been vocal about supporting the 2015 treaty on climate change
have been failing miserably at meeting the goals of that treaty.

According to the Paris treaty, the world had to reduce carbon
emissions sufficiently to prevent the world temperatures from rising
more than 2 degrees Centigrade by 2100. In order to meet that target,
global greenhouse gas emissions would have to fall by 55% by 2030.

Then recently a new report by scientists said that 2 degrees wasn't good enough to avoid global catastrophe,
and so we'd have to cut carbon emissions enough
to prevent world temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees
Centigrade.

Unfortunately, the countries of the world haven't been doing what they
promised, and global greenhouse gas emissions actually increased in
2017. If things continue as they are, then global temperatures will
increase by 3.2 degrees Centigrade by 2100.

The report describes different countries:

• Argentina, Australia, Canada, the EU (including the UK), South
  Korea, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are falling significantly short
  of their commitments.
  
  
• Greenhouse emissions are surging in China. Even so, China made
  almost no commitments in 2015, so it's meeting its non-existent
  commitments.
  
  
• Other countries, Brazil, Japan, India, Russia and Turkey are
  either on track or slightly ahead. But these "third world" countries
  made very small commitments in 2015.
  
  
• The United States reached peak emissions in 2007, and the amount
  of emissions has been falling since then. However, in 2015, President
  Barack Obama made substantially greater commitments that are not now
  being met.

According to the report, the countries that failed to meet their
emission commitments did so because their economies had been growing.
The report implies that emissions of greenhouse gases are correlated
to economic growth. This is an eminently obvious conclusion, and is
certainly true.

But it also implies that greenhouse gas emissions will not be sharply
cut unless economic growth is sharply cut, and that's not going to
happen in any country.

There is nothing in the Paris treaty that describes any technology for
reducing carbon emissions except by cutting economic activity. As for
other technologies, they only provide a minuscule part of the
solution, and anyway environmentalists are opposed to those too.
These include nuclear power plants, huge windmill farms, and huge
solar panel farms.

As usual, every time I write one of these articles on climate change,
I make the point that I accept the conclusions of the climate
"scientists": That there has been and is global warming, that the
global warming is caused by increased emissions of carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases, and that the increased emissions are caused by
human activity.

However, climate "scientists" have been getting climate change
predictions completely wrong for thirty years, and so I do not accept
that these scientists have any idea what the temperature will be in
2100, any more than then know what the temperature will be a month
from now.

Even if you accept the scientific conclusion that human activity is
causing global warming, the climate change movement is still scam.
It's nothing but a movement to take money from developed countries
(the US, the EU, etc.) and give it to developing countries, and also
give it to the cronies of the climate change activists by funding
them.

Every scientific organization in the world understands that if they
can "solve" the emissions problem with new technology, then they'll be
billionaires. No further encouragement is needed, and no climate
change treaty is need.

Furthermore, it's almost 100% certain that there will be one or two
world wars prior to 2100, killing 30-50% of the world's population.
That reduction in the population will reduce the amount of human
activity by a proportional amount, which will completely solve the
global warming problem. BBC and
CNN and Washington Post and France 24 and United Nations

****
**** China building a 'tsunami' of coal-powered plants across Asia
****

"Like an approaching tsunami triggered by a distant earthquake, a
massive cohort of hundreds of new coal-fired power plants is on course
to be added to the already overbuilt Chinese coal plant fleet," is how
a September report from CoalSwarm’s Global Coal Plant Tracker begins.

In 2016 and 2017, authorities in Beijing tried to reduce the number of
coal-fired plants being built, and they issued a series of suspension
orders for many of the plants scheduled for construction.

However, satellite imagery shows that many of the suspended plants
were not suspended at all, or at most were delayed. Apparently,
regional and provincial authorities ignored the suspension orders from
Beijing, and allowed construction to continue anyway.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this illustrates how
major decisions are made large populations or large generations of
people, even in a dictatorship. Someone commented on my recent article on China's Belt and Road Initiative,
and said that all the projects would be completed
because China is a "command economy." But China has a population of
1.4 billion people, and a population that size cannot be controlled,
even in a "command economy." China is far too big a country, long
overdue for a major internal rebellion with the right triggering
event.

However, China's activities with coal-fired plants go far beyond their
borders.

China is taking a leading role in financing a wave of now coal plants
in countries across Asia. Export credit agencies such as the Japan
Bank for International Cooperation, China Development Bank Corp. and
Korea Trade Insurance Corp. are among the biggest supporters. The
three biggest destinations for those funds are Indonesia, Bangladesh
and Vietnam.

China alone emits 27% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but that's
just within China's own borders. Thanks to China, greenhouse gas
emissions are increasing in countries across Asia as well. Guardian (London) and BBC and
China Dialogue and EndCoal and Bloomberg

Related Articles

• Climate change conference collapses as China backs down from emission commitments (12-May-2018)
  
  
• UN Climate Change conference appears to be ending in farce (14-Dec-2007)
  
  
• African leaders once again furious that they won't get a climate change bonanza (18-Nov-2017)
  
  
• 175 countries sign farcical climate change agreement (23-Apr-2016)
  
  
• Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change (29-Dec-2015)
  
  
• Horse manure and climate change (23-Sep-2014)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Climate change, China, Paris treaty

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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
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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]

*** 30-Nov-18 World View -- Pakistan and India agree to support Sikhs, as separatist violence surges in Kashmir

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Kashmir experiences bloodiest year since 2009
  
• India and Pakistan approve the Kartarpur Corridor, connecting Sikh shrines
  
• Corridor raises concerns about activating the Sikh separatist Khalistan movement
  

****
**** Kashmir experiences bloodiest year since 2009
****


Sikh radical pro-Khalistan supporters in Trafalgar Square, London, in August (AFP)

November was the bloodiest month of the year for separatist militants
in Indian-controlled Kashmir. According to official figures from
Indian security forces, 37 separatist militants were killed in
November, and 227 militants have been killed in Kashmir this year.

The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), which
supports the separatist militants, does not dispute those figures, but
goes farther and says that 2018 was the bloodiest year for everyone in
Kashmir since 2009. JKCCS says that 528 people were killed in Kashmir
in 2018, of which 145 were civilians, 234 were separatist rebels, and
142 were Indian security personnel.

As I've written in the past,
there
are three major Pakistan-sponsored jihadist groups operating in
Kashmir. Hizbul Mujahedeen (HM) is an indigenous, home-grown jihadist
group that became considerably more violent after the July 8 2016 death of HM leader Burhan Wani in a gunfight with the Indian army.
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) is a
relatively new indigenous jihadist group. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) is a
Pakistan-based terrorist group that was formed in the 1990s by
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to fight India in
the disputed regions of Kashmir and Jammu. Hindustan Times and Al Jazeera


****
**** India and Pakistan approve the Kartarpur Corridor, connecting Sikh shrines
****

With India and Pakistan almost always apparently close to a state of
war, with Kashmir at the epicenter, it's surprising that they can
agree to anything significant. But that seems to have happened,
although ulterior motives abound on both sides.

India and Pakistan have both endorsed the Kartarpur Corridor, a
visa-free path that permits Indian Sikh pilgrims to visit the gurdwara
(Sikh shrine) known as the Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, associated with
the founder of Sikhism, Sri Guru Nanak Sahib Ji, or just Guru Nanak.

Politicians in both India and Pakistan have been effusive in their
praise for this agreement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India drew
parallels with the fall of the Berlin wall, declaring, "Who thought
the Berlin Wall would fall. May be, with the blessings of Guru Nanak
Dev ji, Kartarpur corridor will not only be a corridor but can be a
reason to bring people together." In a similar vein, Prime Minister
Imran Khan of Pakistan, at the ground-breaking ceremony at Kartarpur
Sahib, expressed the sentiment that, "If France and Germany who fought
several wars can live in peace, why can't India and Pakistan?" A
number of other statements are in the same vein of intemperance,
including Indian Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu's statement, "The
corridor will become a symbol of love and peace between both
countries."

Going beyond the ebullient promises of "love and peace," Modi has in
the past refused to approve the Corridor, saying that Pakistan could
use it to radicalize Sikh separatists in the Khalistan movement.

However, the Modi's change of heart was rather sudden, and probably
driven by domestic considerations. April 15, 2019, will be the 550th
birthday of Sikh found Guru Nanak, and general elections will be held
in May, 2019. Refusing to open the Corridor would alienate millions
of Sikhs living in India, and motivate them to vote for the
opposition. South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP - India) and The Diplomat

****
**** Corridor raises concerns about activating the Sikh separatist Khalistan movement
****

Guru Nanak Dev (1469-1539) founded Sikhism in the 16th century with
the goal of bringing peace to India at a time when the environment
heavily permeated with conflicts between the Hindu and Muslim
religions. His most famous saying is: "There is no Hindu, there is no
Muslim, so whose path shall I follow? I shall follow the path of God."
He was extremely charismatic. Today, there are 23 million Sikhs
worldwide, making Sikhism the 5th largest religion in the world, with
19 million Sikhs living in India, primarily in the state of Punjab.

However, Sikhism did not bring peace between Hindus and Muslims in
India. To the contrary, Sikh leaders began to militarize the Sikh
community, and Sikh military leaders captured more and more territory,
and in 1799 declared Punjab as an independent Sikh state. This was
the beginning of the "Khalistan" separatist movement. At that time
India was a British colony, and British troops defeated the Sikh
armies in the 1800s, decisively beating the Sikhs in 1849.

The seminal event for Sikhs in the 20th century was the April 10-12,
1919, with the Jalianvala Bagh Massacre (Amritsar Massacre), Some
10,000 Sikhs were holding a meeting protesting British colonial
policies in India, when British troops opened fire, killing hundreds.
This event convinced everyone -- the British, the Sikhs, the Hindus
and the Muslims -- that Britain had to give up control of India. This
led to the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent that created
India and Pakistan, and to the Partition War, one of the bloodiest
wars of the 20th century.

Sixty-four years after the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, in 1983, some
Sikh activists took refuge in the Golden Temple Complex at Amritsar,
the most revered place in the Sikh world. In June 1984 Indian troops
launched 'Operation Blue Star'. They attacked the Golden Temple
Complex, killing many of those inside, and seriously damaging the
buildings.

This infuriated the Sikhs, and revived the Khalistan separatist
movement. In October 1984, the world was shocked when India's prime
minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
Four days of anti-Sikh rioting followed in India. The government said
that more than 2,700 people, mostly Sikhs, were killed, while
newspapers and human rights groups put the death toll between 10,000
and 17,000.

The opening of the Kartarpur Corridor, which permits visa-free travel
between Sikh shrines in Pakistan and India, raises concerns that the
corridor will encourage activism among hardline Khalistan activists in
India, giving rise to yet another separatist movement to add to the
one by Muslims in Kashmir.

Sikh activists have already been holding rallies in London. In
August, a rally for "Punjab Referendum 2020," which calls for a Sikh
referendum to encourage separatism, was attended by 2,500 expatriate
Sikh hardliners, mostly from Britain. Indian officials say that the
Khalistan movement may be popular in London, but it's not catching on
in London.

India makes no effort to hide its irritation over allowing “a
separatist activity which impinged on India’s territorial integrity
and seeks to propagate violence, secessionism and hatred." Indian
intelligence agencies are wary of Khalistan radicals in London, as
London was the epicenter of a pro-Khalistan movement in the 1980s.
Discover Sikhism and Dawn (Pakistan, 12-July-2015) and Hindustan Times and HuffPost and Pluralism.org

Related Articles:

• India's Punjab state is 'on the boil' over violent Sikh protests (21-Oct-2015)
  
  
• Concerns raised for safety of Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus in America (06-Aug-2012)
  
  
• Number of Kashmir militants surges as India's 'Operation All-Out' fails (28-Sep-2018)
  
  
• India's Kashmir locked down after 3 civilians killed by police (09-Jul-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, Pakistan, Kashmir,
The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, JKCCS,
Operation All-Out, Lashkar-e-Toiba, LeT,
Hizbul Mujahedeen, HM, Burhan Wani, Jaish-e-Mohammad, JeM,
Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, Sri Guru Nanak Sahib Ji, Guru Nanak,
Kartarpur Corridor, Narendra Modi, Imran Khan,
Jalianvala Bagh Massacre, Amritsar Massacre,
Golden Temple Complex at Amritsar, Indira Gandhi,
Punjab Referendum 2020

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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]

*** 1-Dec-18 World View -- Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria
  
• Al-Assad issues citizenship cards to Iranian and Hezbollah Shias
  
• Al-Assad and Russia ally with ISIS against Arab Sunnis
  
• The future of Idlib
  

****
**** Evidence grows of Assad's 'final solution', extermination of Arab Sunnis in Syria
****


Hezbollah and Syrian flags flutter in August 28, 2017 (Reuters)

I've written thousands of articles on Syria since the war began in
2011. There were little bits and pieces of the story that didn't
always make sense, but now they're all beginning to fit together, like
a collection of jigsaw puzzle pieces fitting together to form a big
picture.

The big picture now is that Christian Russia and Shia Iran have joined
with the Syria's president Bashar al-Assad to bring about the
extermination of Sunni Arabs and Turkmens, and repopulation of their
former homes with Shias from Iran and Hezbollah, and their families.

Al-Assad has been moving through different regions of Syria. He
begins by bombing peaceful protesters, particularly women and
children. As soon as someone become violent in revenge, he declares
the whole community or ethnic group to be "terrorists," and uses that
as an excuse for full-scale genocide and ethnic cleansing. The
genocide is performed with missiles, barrel bombs, chlorine gas and
Sarin gas, all particularly targeting women and children, as well as
schools, markets, and hospitals.

Al-Assad's ethnic cleansing policy as applied locally to different
regions -- Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa -- has been well-documented by
thousands of media reports, as I've been reporting for years. It's
been suspected that there's a larger picture that al-Assad was
plotting to completely exterminate or cleanse Sunnis across the
country. This has been denied by the Syrians and their trolls.
However, evidence has been growing in the last six months that show
exactly how al-Assad plans to implement his "final solution,"
eliminating all Sunnis in Syria.

As I reported in May, the ethnic cleansing is accomplished by making
it impossible for refugees to return to their homes. Last month,
Syria's government passed 'Law #10',
which makes it almost impossible for refugees to return to
their former homes. There are millions of Syrian refugees who have
fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe and other countries who will
not be able to return home, and are effectively stranded in the
country they fled to.

On April 2, the Syrian government of the Bashar al-Assad regime passed
"Law #10," a complex new property law that requires property holders
in Syria to produce documentation to formally prove ownership of their
private property within a period of 30 days, or face confiscation.
Since millions of Arab Sunnis have fled to other countries, there is
no possibility that they would be able to provide the documentation
and proof of ownership. There are also reports that Arab Sunnis who
do have proof of ownership are beaten and tortured when they apply to
Syrian authorities to have their property restored.

This means that there are large regions of Syria that have been
completely cleansed of Arab Sunnis. The only question that remained
was: Who was going to occupy the regions that al-Assad had cleansed?
Asharq Al-Awsat (Saudi Arabia) and Al Ahram (Egypt, 14-Dec-2016) and Mideast Forum (15-Mar-2017) and Washington Institute

****
**** Al-Assad issues citizenship cards to Iranian and Hezbollah Shias
****

Since late 2016, there have been reports of Iranians moving into the
areas that al-Assad cleansed of Arab Sunnis. As reported at the time,
a senior leader in Lebanon said, "Iran and the regime don’t want any
Sunnis between Damascus and Homs and the Lebanese border. This
represents a historic shift in populations."

Recent reports in the last few months describe how al-Assad is
arranging for a massive influx of Iranian and Hezbollah Shias to move
into the regions from which the Sunni Arabs have been cleansed.

Early this year, Syria announced a plan to issue new ID cards to
Syrian citizens as well a new passports, invalidating the old
documents.

In recent months, several web sites, mostly opposed to the al-Assad
regime, have been posting documents and reporting that the region is
naturalizing members of Iranian and Hezbollah militias as Syrian
citizens. In combination with "Law #10," previous described, this
provides for the repopulation of regions that have been cleanse of
Sunni Arabs who are in foreign refugee camps with no chance of
reclaiming their property.

One web site posted a Syrian government document granting citizenship
to several dozen members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
According to the web site:

<QUOTE>"These official documents indicate that the Syrian
regime is systematically settling Iranians in different parts of
Syria in order to change the demographics [of these areas] by
granting citizenship to Shi'ite Iranians and settling them in
Sunni areas whose original inhabitants have been expelled... The
document presented [here] is not the only one; hundreds of
thousands [of Shi'ite] have been granted [Syrian] citizenship and
settled in various areas, most of them members and operatives in
the Iranian IRGC... These Iranians have begun to receive Syrian
citizenship, as preparation for bringing in their families and
settling in the areas to which they have been
assigned."<END QUOTE>

In April, a Syrian opposition web site reported that "the Passports
and Immigration Department in Damascus recently issued 200,000
passports to Iranians." A Lebanon newspaper, Al-Nahar, reports that
the Syrian president "has issued [Syrian] identity cards to some two
million Iranians and operatives of militias belonging to the Iranian
IRGC Qods Force, and to their families, as well to Hezbollah
[operatives]. The [regime] does not just issue them Syrian identity
cards, but helps them to settle in parts of Damascus's Ghouta and in
the rural areas of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo that have been
emptied of their original inhabitants." The report adds that "many
members of the Iranian regime have obtained Syrian identity cards in
order to evade the American sanctions." MEMRI (26-Nov-2018) and Guardian (London, 13-Jan-2017) and Syrian Observer (4-May-2018)


****
**** Al-Assad and Russia ally with ISIS against Arab Sunnis
****

As I said earlier, the little bits and pieces of the war in Syria are
beginning to fit together, like a collection of jigsaw puzzle pieces
fitting together to form a big picture.

Most Westerners assume that once the war ends, Syria will return to
some sort of balance such as existed prior to 2011. In particular,
the 12 million or so Syrians who have been displaced from their homes,
including the millions that have fled to neighboring countries,
including Europe, would return to their homes when the war ended,
according to the common.

However, we now know that this will never happen, and that this was
never the intention. The millions of Syrian refugees that fled to
other countries, many in refugee camps, are stranded there, and will
never be permitted to return to their homes.

Many observers are comparing al-Assad's actions to those of Israel in
the 1947-48 war between Jews and Arabs. Hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were forced to flee from their homes in what is now
Israel, and forced to live in Palestinian refugee camps, with
descendants who will never be permitted to return to their
grandparents' homes. Al-Assad expects the same thing: that Syrian
refugees will be forced to remain in refugee camps, and they and their
children will never be permitted to return.

One of those Palestinian refugee camps was on the outskirts of Latakia
in western Syria. In August 2011, al-Assad launched a violent ethnic
cleansing attack, causing tens of thousands of residents to flee.
Today, that region is being repopulated by Iranian and Hezbollah
Shias.

I wrote about this attack in 2011, before I understood what was really
going on. Here's what
I wrote at the time:

<QUOTE>"Assad's forces have avoided the neighborhoods of
Assad's Alawite sect, and instead have been targeting Sunni Muslim
neighborhoods, including a large Palestinian refugee camp in
Latakia's al-Ramel district. Five to ten thousand refugees were
forced to flee, and their whereabouts are unknown, according to
the BBC. Newspapers in the region have expressed anger about Arab
states' failure to respond to events in Syria.

Another report indicates that Assad's security forces began
ordering residents of the Ramleh region, which includes a refugee
camp housing more than 10,000 Palestinians, to go to a soccer
stadium ahead of what they described as a huge military operation.
After the people were herded into the stadium, security forces
took away their identification cards and cellphones. At least
five people were confirmed dead, according to the LA Times"<END QUOTE>

We now know that in fact this was the beginning of al-Assad's policy
of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Al-Assad used an ethnic cleansing / genocide methodology that he's
repeated many times after that. He would begin by bombing peaceful
protesters, or any civilians whether protesting or not. Once there
was any kind of violent counter-reaction, al-Assad would declare the
entire population to be terrorists. He would then go into a
full-scale extermination, using missile barrages, barrel bombs,
chlorine gas and Sarin gas.

An analogy in America would be if someone from Black Lives Matter
killed a white policeman, and the Trump administration retaliated by
exterminating an entire population of blacks, using missiles, bombs
and other weapons.

Al-Assad's use of chlorine gas was particularly effective. Al-Assad
used Vladimir Putin's "Grozny strategy," where warplanes attack
hospitals, schools and markets with the objective of creating millions
of refugees, who can then be attacked while they're out in the open.
A refinement developed by al-Assad's forces is to drop barrel bombs
filled with metals, explosives, and chlorine gas. The metals would
kill as many people as possible, and the chlorine gas, which is
heavier than air, would fall into basements and bunkers where women
and children were hiding. Once they were forced out into the open,
additional barrel bombs and missiles or Sarin gas could kill the women
and children en masse.

It was never entirely clear why al-Assad attacked the Latakia
Palestinian refugee camp, but it's now clear that he meant to
exterminate or remove all the residents so that the area could be
repopulated by Iranian and Hezbollah Shias.

The attack on the Latakia camp had another consequence. The attack
was widely reported in Islamic media around the world as an attack by
al-Assad's Shia army and Russia's Christian warplanes on innocent
Sunni women and children. The result was that tens of thousands of
young Sunni jihadists from over 80 countries came to Syria to fight
against al-Assad. These were foreign fighters who, in 2014, formed
the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

The relationship between al-Assad and ISIS has always been puzzling,
because al-Assad and the Russians never attacked ISIS, but always
seemed willing to allow them to grow and prosper as if they were
al-Assad's ally. As it turned out, ISIS was al-Assad's ally. The
foreign fighters in ISIS were fighting for control of territory in
eastern Syria and Iraq, and they were fighting Syrian Sunni Arabs to
gain that territory. In other words, al-Assad and ISIS were allies,
killing the same enemy -- indigenous Sunni Arabs.

ISIS was launching terrorist attacks in Europe, which al-Assad and
Vladimir Putin were apparently very pleased about. This justified,
and continues to justify, an American military presence in Syria,
whether Bashar al-Assad likes it or not. It was only the Americans
that were determined to eliminate ISIS. The mainly Kurdish YPG
forces, backed by American warplanes and logistics, finally defeated
ISIS in their Caliphate capital city, Raqqa.


****
**** The future of Idlib
****

Idlib is the province in northwest Syria, along the border with
Turkey.

As the Syrian regime, along with the Christian Russians and Shia
Iranians, conducted ethnic cleansing and genocide in one region after
another, Bashar al-Assad always agreed to a "humanitarian" solution,
as requested by a series of credulous United Nations envoys, who were all useful idiots.
The solution
was that any Sunni Arabs that hadn't been killed would be permitted to
leave the region and flee to Idlib province.

It now turns out that this was just another part of the jigsaw puzzle
that forms the entire picture. Al-Assad has arranged for much of
Syria to be demographically changed, with Iranian and Hezbollah Shias
and their families to live in areas that have been cleansed of Arab
Sunnis. The Arab Sunnis and Turkmens have been gathered into Idlib
province in the northwest, where their security is supposedly
guaranteed by Turkey, although Turkey seems to be overwhelmed.

So now al-Assad and Iran are in control of western and southern Syria,
where they present a continuing threat to Israel. But what's the
future of Idlib?

There are three million people in Idlib, and half of them are
displaced people who fled al-Assad's violence in other regions. Of
the three million civilians, there are an estimated 60,000 or so
anti-Assad rebels in Idlib. No one doubts that al-Assad would be
happy to kill all three million people in Idlib, using the anti-Assad
rebels as an excuse.

Some observers believe that al-Assad will just let Idlib be, even
though those anti-Assad rebels could launch attacks at any time on the
regime.

Bashar al-Assad is a psychopathic monster, the worst war criminal so
far this century. Al-Assad has gotten this far in ethnic cleansing
large areas and repopulating the cleansed areas with Iranian and
Hezbollah Shias. He is not going to stop at Idlib, even if attacking
Idlib creates millions more refugees and the greatest humanitarian
disaster so far this century.

For Iran, the goal would be completion of the "Shia Crescent": Support
the Houthis to defeat the Saudis in Yemen; continue taking control of
the government in Baghdad; repopulate the Arab Sunni areas of Syria
with Iranian and Hezbollah Shias; continue to support Hezbollah in
Lebanon to attack Israel, and wipe it off the map.

For Christian Russia and Shia Iran, this would be the greatest
genocidal victory so far this century.

As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics predicts that the
Mideast is headed for a major regional war refighting the 1948 war
between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine and
the creation of the state of Israel. The war will also pit Sunnis
versus Shias, and various ethnic groups against each other.
Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of
Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni
Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India,
Russia and Iran. AFP (25-May-2018) and Orient News (Syria/UAE, 4-Sep-2016)

Related Articles:

• 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, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Law #10,
Russia, Iran, Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa, Idlib, Latakia, El-Ramel,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel

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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]

*** 2-Dec-18 World View -- Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agree to a 90 day moratorium in trade war

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• G-20 Summit meeting in Buenos Aires ends with multiple compromises
  
• The G-20 Final Communiqué -- the 'breakthrough'
  
• Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agree to a 90 day moratorium in trade war
  

****
**** G-20 Summit meeting in Buenos Aires ends with multiple compromises
****


G-20 Group picture

The G-20 is a group of member nations that represent two-thirds of the
world's people and 85% of its economy. The G7 member countries are
the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Canada.
Russia was a member (of the G-8), but when expelled in 2013 when it
invaded Crimea. The G-20 was formed in 1997 by adding developing
nations such as Brazil, China, India, and Russia.

The G-20's primary mandate is to prevent future international
financial crises. It seeks to shape the global economic agenda, by
combining the perspectives of the major economies with the growing
economies in Latin America and Asia. The finance ministers and
central bank governors of the G-20 countries meet twice a year. They
meet at the same time as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank.

This year's G-20 summit meeting was a masterpiece of mulitiple
compromises designed to keep the summit meeting from blowing up.

A big part of the meeting was to avoid being seen with someone that
you didn't want to be seen with. So start with the group picture at
the beginning of this article. It was important not to stand next to
the wrong person, but it was also important not to smile at the wrong
person while people were going to their assigned spots:

• Notice that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
  (MBS) is positioned in the far upper right corner. Because of the
  gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Embassy in Instanbul
  several weeks ago, nobody wanted to risk being seen with him.
  
  
• However, a big exception was Russia's Vladimir Putin. As they
  were gathering before the photo was taken, Putin and MBS met, smiled,
  performed some big handshake as if they were both boys in the same
  fraternity, and then spoke for a while with broad grins on both their
  faces. Putin wants to be everyone's friend in the Mideast.
  
  
• Donald Trump and Putin had originally scheduled a bilateral
  meeting with each other, "on the sidelines," but Trump canceled it
  because of Russia's brutal violation of international laws, seizing
  Ukrainian ships outside the Kerch Strait, and torturing the seamen and
  forcing them to admit to crimes they did not commit, and then sending
  them off to jail in Moscow. When Trump and Putin passed each other,
  they had very choreographed head positions so that they would not even
  glance at each other.
  
  
• There are only two women in the picture, Christine Lagarde from
  the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Britain's prime minister
  Theresa May. The final communiqué contained the usual boilerplate
  nonsense about gender equality, but these people obviously don't
  practice what they preach.
  
  
• Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel would have been the third woman
  in the picture. But her flight was delayed, and she wasn't even in
  the picture at all.
  
  
• And of course, the star of the show was Donald Trump, who was
  positioned in the middle of front row.

G-20 Web Site and The Balance


****
**** The G-20 Final Communiqué -- the 'breakthrough'
****


Donald Trump's Saturday evening dinner with Xi Jinping

Last year's G-20 meeting didn't have a final joint communiqué from all
the members because Donald Trump as advocating a protectionist trade
policy and also because he had just pulled out of the Paris treaty on
climate change. Trump opposed the views of the other 19 countries, so
no communiqué could be drafted that they all agreed on.

So this year, they were bound and determined to get out a joint
communiqué that everyone would sign onto. Apparently they negotiated
all night Friday night, sometimes spending an hour on the wording of
one sentence. But they finally had "a breakthrough."

Previous G-20 communiqués had contained text discouraging
protectionism, but any such text this year would be clearly aimed at
Trump, so would not be agreed. So they agreed to this language:

<QUOTE>"27. International trade and investment are important
engines of growth, productivity, innovation, job creation and
development. We recognize the contribution that the multilateral
trading system has made to that end. The system is currently
falling short of its objectives and there is room for
improvement. We therefore support the necessary reform of the WTO
[World Trade Organization] to improve its functioning. We will
review progress at our next Summit."<END QUOTE>

So the breakthrough was that the communiqué specified that the WTO had
to be reformed, but did not specify what the reform would be.

That's because different groups wanted different, contradictory
reforms. Trump particularly wanted a reform that change China's
status from a "developing nation" to a "developed nation," so that it
would be bound by the WTO rules, but China of course disagreed with
that. China wanted a "win-win" situation where the WTO continues
exactly as it has.

When the US helped China join the WTO in 2000, it was with the
expectation that China would become an honest member of the
international trading community. But the United States position
during the last three administrations is that China has repeated
cheated and lied, and not followed the WTO rules. Even when the WTO
rules against China, China just ignores the ruling (as it has ignored
the Hague Tribunal ruling that China's activities in the South China
Sea are illegal), and continues to lie and cheat. So the Trump
administration would not agree to continue trade rules as they have
been.

So the wording of the communiqué, as shown above, will not make any
difference in trade, but it did allow the communiqué to be adopted.

The other major problem area is the Paris climate change treaty. All
the other 19 countries supported the treaty and wanted to say so in
the communiqué, so they compromised on this text:

<QUOTE>"20. Signatories to the Paris Agreement, who have also
joined the Hamburg Action Plan, reaffirm that the Paris Agreement
is irreversible and commit to its full implementation, reflecting
common but differentiated responsibilities and respective
capabilities, in light of different national circumstances. We
will continue to tackle climate change, while promoting
sustainable development and economic growth.

21. The United States reiterates its decision to withdraw from the
Paris Agreement, and affirms its strong commitment to economic
growth and energy access and security, utilizing all energy
sources and technologies, while protecting the
environment."<END QUOTE>

So that solved the Paris agreement problem.

Other issues were resolved in similar ways. Vladimir Putin vetoed any
reference to the seizure near the Kerch Strait, and any mention of the
murder of Jamal Khashoggi was omitted. G-20 Final Communiqué (PDF) and Bloomberg and AP

****
**** Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agree to a 90 day moratorium in trade war
****

Investors around the world are breathing a sigh of relief today, as
Donald Trump and China's president Xi Jinping agreed to a 90-day
moratorium on further tariffs in the so-called "trade war." The US
has already imposed 10% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, and
threatened to raise that rate to 25% on January 1. That change will
be delayed for 90 days.

In exchange, the US will get the following:

• Immediate start on negotiations about China's problematic
  trade practices: intellectual property theft, non-tariff barriers and
  cyber theft.
  
  
• China also agreed to boost its purchases of agricultural and
  industrial goods to reduce its trade imbalance with the U.S., she
  said.
  
  
• There will also be negotiations on restricting opioid shipments
  from China to America, including fentanyl.
  
  
• China is "open to approving" the purchase of Dutch semiconductor
  manufacturer NXP by American chipmaker Qualcomm, which China had
  previously rejected on antitrust grounds.

The trade conflict, which has rattled financial markets and upended
global supply chains, began this year when Trump imposed tariffs on a
total of $253 billion of imported Chinese steel, industrial products
and consumer goods, including handbags, furniture and appliances.
Chinese officials, caught off guard by the aggressive U.S. moves,
retaliated with import taxes on such American products as soybeans,
automobiles and liquefied natural gas. Washington Post and Russia Today
and Reuters

Related Articles

• Mike Pence's China 'containment' speech signals more contentious US-China relations (26-Oct-2018)
  
  
• China, facing Trump's trade challenge, appears to mend ties with Japan (27-Oct-2018)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, G-20, Brazil, China, India, and Russia,
G-7, United States, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada,
Vladimir Putin, Kerch Strait, Ukraine, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS,
International Monetary Fund, IMF, Christine Lagarde, Theresa May,
Angela Merkel, Xi Jinping, World Trade Organization, WTO

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John J. Xenakis
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Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 3-Dec-18 World View -- Measles outbreaks in New York, Israel blamed on 'anti-vax' movement

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Dozens of reported measles cases in Israel, New York and New Jersey, as disease spreads
  
• New global surge in measles cases blamed on 'anti-vax' movement
  

****
**** Dozens of reported measles cases in Israel, New York and New Jersey, as disease spreads
****


Measles virus

Jewish worshippers at a Friday evening service in a temple near
Jerusalem were exposed to a patient suffering from measles. Israel's
government has directed those attending the service to see a doctor
immediately and receive the necessary vaccinations. An outbreak of
measles has been spreading in Israel since October, and it's being
blamed on the failure of thousands of parents to vaccinate their
children, particularly among the ultra-Orthodox communities in
Jerusalem.

On average, about half of the population in these communities are not
immunized. Israel's Health Ministry is considering new legislation
that would penalize parents of children who are not vaccinated for
measles and other contagious diseases by the age of one year.

There are 83 known cases of measles in Rockland County, New York,
about 25 miles north of New York City. They were spread, among other
places, at the Best Buy store in the Palisades shopping center.

There are 18 confirmed cases of measles in Ocean and Passaic counties
in New Jersey. More cases are expected, since there's a 5-21 day
incubation period after exposure, and a person is contagious four days
before and four days after showing signs of a rash.

It's believed that the outbreak started from a man who visited Israel
in late October. Asbury Park Press (NJ) and Jerusalem Post and Asbury Park Press

****
**** New global surge in measles cases blamed on 'anti-vax' movement
****

The number of measles-related deaths fell 80% between 2000 and 2017,
and it had been hoped that measles might eventually be entirely
eliminated.

But the number of reported cases of measles surged by more than 30%
from 2016 to 2017. Since not all cases are reported in a timely
manner, there may be many more cases -- estimated to be 6.7 million.

According to an official from the World Health Organization (WHO),
"[W]e risk losing decades of progress in protecting children and
communities against this devastating, but entirely preventable
disease."

According to a report issued on Thursday by the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC):

<QUOTE>"Despite this progress, however, the 2015 global
milestones have not been achieved; global [first dose vaccination]
coverage has stagnated for nearly a decade; global [second dose]
coverage is only at 67% despite steady increases; and
[supplementary immunization activities] quality was inadequate to
achieve >=95% coverage in several countries. Since 2016, measles
incidence has increased globally and in five of the six WHO
regions. Furthermore, as of July 2018, endemic measles has been
reestablished in Venezuela because of the sustained transmission
of measles virus for >12 months; the remaining 34 AMR [North/South
America] countries continue to maintain their measles elimination
status, but the ongoing outbreak in Venezuela has led to measles
virus importations and outbreaks in bordering AMR countries. In
addition, the measles resurgence in Europe has likely led to
reestablished endemic measles in some EUR countries. These
outbreaks highlight the fragility of gains made toward global and
regional measles elimination goals."<END QUOTE>

The statement mentions that Venezuela has had its measles elimination
certificate withdrawn. This means that measles is now considered to
be endemic in Venezuela, where previously it was thought to be on the
path to elimination. Socialist Venezuela's inflation rate is
approaching one million percent, many people are no longer able to get
food, medicines or medical services, allowing contagious diseases like
measles to spread freely.

Measles in other Latin American countries is still on the path to
elimination, but over one million refugees have fled from Venezuela to
neighboring countries, and it's feared that they will rapidly spread
measles in these other countries as well.

Other countries that have lost their measles elimination certificates
in the last year include Germany and Russia, meaning that measles is
spreading in these countries.

The surge in measles is being caused by a stalled rate of vaccination
in the last few years.

World health officials are blaming the surge in measles cases on
complacency, as measle rates have declines, and on misinformation
being spread by the so-called "anti-vax movement," or "anti-vaxxers"
-- people who are refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated.

The misinformation comes from a 1995 theory that the measles vaccine
causes bowel disease and autism. This theory has long been completely
discredited. The measles vaccine has been proven to be both effective
and safe.

Measles is highly contagious. In one in 15 cases, measles can cause
life-threatening complications including pneumonia, convulsions and
encephalitis. Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain, and can
result in death or disability.

Measles can be prevented by receiving two vaccinations, the first at
13 months old and the second at three years and four months to five
years old. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and NPR and WebMD and Daily Mail (London)

Related Articles:

• Measles outbreak being blamed on the 'anti-vaccine movement' (25-Jan-2015)
  
  
• Health workers boycott Pakistan's polio vaccination campaign after shooting (27-Nov-2014)
  
  
• Bill Gates calls for worldwide vaccination program (18-May-2011)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, measles, Israel, New York, New Jersey,
World Health Organization, WHO,
Centers for Disease Control, CDC,
Venezuela, Germany, Russia

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

[pbrower2a]

There's much cranky stuff out there, including anti-vaccination junk.

The experts can be wrong, but who else are you to believe?

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 4-Dec-18 World View -- Qatar withdraws from Saudi Arabia-led OPEC

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Qatar withdraws from Saudi Arabia-led OPEC
  
• The split deepens between Saudi Arabia and Qatar
  

****
**** Qatar withdraws from Saudi Arabia-led OPEC
****


Qatar will pull out of OPEC and concentrate on liquefied natural gas (LNG)

Qatar announced that on January 1 it would withdraw from the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

OPEC was founded in September 1960 with five founding members: Iran,
Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Qatar joined in 1961. It
consisted of the countries of the world that produced most of the oil,
and so it was a cartel that, to some extent, was able to control total
global oil supplies, and thereby control prices. As of 2016, the
additional members are: Indonesia, Libya, the United Arab Emirates,
Algeria, Nigeria, Ecuador, Gabon and Angola.

Most Americans had never heard of OPEC and weren't aware of its
existence until October, 1973, when they were shocked by OPEC's
announcement of an international oil embargo, triggered by US support
for Israel in the Yom Kippur war against Egypt. This caused the
gasoline (petrol) shortages in the United States, resulting in long
lines at gas stations, and a surge in gas prices from about 30 cents
per gallon to (horrors!) a dollar a gallon or more.

Qatar is the first Gulf country to withdraw from OPEC. It won't have
much effect on the cartel, since Qatar provides only 2% of the
cartel's oil. This meant that Qatar really had little influence of
OPEC anyway. In fact, the cartel has evolved over the years, to the
point where the decision makers are Saudi Arabia and Russia, the
latter not even being a member of OPEC. Furthermore, it retains just
a fraction of its previous ability to set oil prices, since the United
States has for years been flooding the market with oil obtained from
fracking.

So the withdrawal of Qatar from OPEC has little more than symbolic
value. However, it is an embarrassment, since a major OPEC meeting is
scheduled to be held next week.

The reason that Qatar gave for its withdrawal from OPEC is that it
wants to concentrate more on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Although
Qatar is a relatively small supplier of oil, it's the world's biggest
LNG supplier, producing almost 30% of the world's total.

According to Qatar's energy minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi,

<QUOTE>"The withdrawal decision reflects Qatar's desire to
focus its efforts on plans to develop and increase its natural gas
production from 77 million tonnes per year to 110 million tonnes
in the coming years. ...

We are a small player in OPEC, and I'm a businessman, it doesn't
make sense for me to focus on things that are not our strength,
and gas is our strength so that is why we've made this
decision."<END QUOTE>

However, many observers believe that the reasons are deeper than just
pure business. Reuters and Investopedia and History.com and Gulf Times (Qatar) and The National (UAE)

****
**** The split deepens between Saudi Arabia and Qatar
****

Although Qatar's al-Kaabi says that the withdrawal is purely a
business decision, it's certainly tied into the increasingly toxic
geopolitical situation in the Gulf.

Recall that in June of last year, several Arab states, including Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE), broke relations
with Qatar and imposed an air, sea and land blockade on Qatar.
Amazingly enough, that blockade is
still in place. The core of the disagreement is apparently related to
Arab tribal differences that go back to World War I and the collapse
of the Ottoman Empire.

Shortly after imposing the blockade, Saudi Arabia produced a list of 13 demands
that would
have to be met to end the blockade. Included were demands to stop
supporting terrorism, to sever ties with Iran, Turkey and the Muslim
Brotherhood, and to shut down Al-Jazeera.

Today it seems that all the Saudi demands have backfired, especially
after the October 2 gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey.

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees the Khashoggi murder as
an opportunity to turn the screws on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman (MBS) by gradually leaking out pieces of evidence about the
murder a bit at a time. MBS was probably responsible for ordering the
murder, but wants to claim that he knew nothing. Erdogan keeps
pulling MBS in by releasing evidence that points to him.

Qatar-based al-Jazeera is also playing a major part in this. While
other international news organizations have reduced their coverage of
the Khashoggi murder as time has passed, al-Jazeera continues to
devote a significant portion of each newscast to the latest on the
murder, inviting one expert after another to opine on MBS's
relationship to the crime.

Qatar shares the world's largest LNG field with Iran, so the two
countries have to cooperate. Furthermore, in a 60 Minutes interview
last year, Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said the
following:

<QUOTE>"Iran is our neighbor. And by the way, us as a
country, we have lots of differences and foreign policies with
Iran, more than them. But let me tell you one thing Charlie; When
those countries, our brothers, blocked everything. Blocked
medicine, blocked food, the only way for us to provide food and
medicine for our people was through Iran. And when they talk about
terrorism, absolutely not. We do not support
terrorism."<END QUOTE>

Turkey also helped Qatar get through the blockade. So if MBS's
intention with the blockade was to force Qatar to sever relations with
Iran and Turkey, it seems to have accomplished the opposite.

Qatar, Iran and Turkey have been forced into a fellowship by the Saudi
blockade. However those three countries are strange bedfellows, with
not a lot in common and significant historical differences, so the
fellowship may not survive once the blockade ends. Washington Post and Al-Jazeera (Qatar) and CBS News



Related Articles

• Saudi Arabia tries to recover from Khashoggi disappearance disaster (15-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Al-Jazeera may be at the center of the Gulf crisis with Qatar (25-Jun-2017)
  
  
• Qatar-Arab crisis is unlikely to be resolved soon (13-Jun-2017)
  
  
• Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations cut ties with Qatar in new Mideast crisis (06-Jun-2017)
  
  
• Gulf Arab states have major split over Egypt and Iran (06-Mar-2014)
  
  
• Arab League holds annual meeting among bitter splits (26-Mar-2014)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC,
Israel, Egypt, Russia, Bahrain, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, UAE,
Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, al-Jazeera, Jamal Khashoggi,
Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani

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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]

*** 5-Dec-18 World View -- Ukraine and Turkey develop closer relationship amid Russia's aggression

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Russia 'partially unblocks' Ukraine's ports
  
• Turkey and Ukraine may establish strategic military partnership against Russia
  

****
**** Russia 'partially unblocks' Ukraine's ports
****


Russia on November 25 blockaded the Sea of Azov with a tanker underneath the Kerch Strait bridge (AP)

Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russia had "partially unblocked" access
to its blockaded Berdyanks and Mariupol ports on the Sea of Azov. As
of Monday, ships were allowed to move in both directions through the
Kerch Strai separating the Azov and Black Seas, although Russia stops
all ships and inspects them.

Russia blockaded access to the Ukrainian ports on November 25, when
Russia rammed, fired on, boarded and seized three Ukrainian navy
vessels, accusing them of traveling through territorial waters of
occupied Crimea, which Russia had invaded and annexed in 2015.

Legal experts point out that under international law, the "innocent
passage" of the three ships should have been permitted, even if they
were within Crimean or Russian territorial waters.

Analysis of photos of the Ukrainian ships after the incident shows
that they were rammed four times by the Russian warship, and that the
Russian live fire was aimed to injure or kill the Ukrainian sailors,
rather than to disable their ships.

Russia seized 24 crew members in the incident, and charged them with
illegal border crossing. The Russians released videos of confessions
by two of the Ukrainians. The confessions appear to have been
coerced. The 24 crew members have been incarcerated in Moscow.

Observers fear that Russia intends a further invasion of Ukraine after
completely blockading the Sea of Azov. Russia denies this, but Russia
denied invading east Ukraine when it was invading east Ukraine, Russia
denied invading Crimea when it was invading Crimea, Russia denied that
it would annex Crimea days before it annexed Crimea, so the denial of
further invasion plans is part of the same pattern. Bloomberg and Defense News and Bellingcat and RFE/RL

****
**** Turkey and Ukraine may establish strategic military partnership against Russia
****

Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea struck at both Ukraine and
Turkey. Crimea is part of Ukraine's sovereign territory, and the
population of Crimea prior to the Russian invasion is most Tatars, a
Turkic race ethnically related to the population of Turkey. In fact,
Russia and Turkey have fought centuries of Crimean Wars.

Last month on November 3-4, prior to the Kerch Strait seizures,
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko visited Turkey to meet with
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They discussed issues
falling into three main “baskets”: the military, economics, and
Turkish arbitration in Ukraine’s relations with Russia -- in
particular, concerning the situation of the Tatars in occupied Crimea.
This was the latest in Ukrainian-Turkish initiatives to cooperate in
the military sphere, including joint development of weapons systems.

The growing military cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine is, at the
very least, an annoyance to Russia. Beyond that, particularly with
Turkey as a member of Nato, the cooperation limits Russia's hand in
the Black Sea.

Since the Kerch Strait incident on November 25, Turkey has offered to
play a "mediator" role between Ukraine and Russia to resolve the
crisis. Ukraine has made two requests for protection from further
aggression by Russia.

First, Ukraine has asked Nato to conduct "Freedom of Navigation
Operations" (FONOPS) through the Kerch Strait, just as the US Navy
warships conduct FONOPS through the South China Sea. It's unlikely
that Nato will grant this request.

Second, Ukraine has asked Turkey to invoke the Montreux Convention, to
shut down the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, in order to block passage
of Russia's ships between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Once
again, it's unlikely that this request will be granted. Jamestown and Anadolu and AFP and UNIAN (Ukraine)

Related Articles:

• Russia attacks Ukraine's navy and blockades Ukraine's ports at Kerch Strait (26-Nov-2018)
  
  
• Constantinople grants Ukrainian Orthodox Church independence, causing historic split with Russia (12-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Crimean Tatars and Ukraine seek help from Sunni Muslim countries (25-Apr-2014)
  
  
• Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars (25-Nov-2015)
  
  
• Russia's sophisticated disinformation campaign over Ukraine (15-Aug-2014)
  
  
• UK honors the journalist who documented Stalin's man-made 1932-33 Holodomor famine in Ukraine (22-Nov-2009)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Ukraine, Sea of Azov, Russia, Kerch Strait,
Crimea, Mariupol, Berdyansk, Turkey, China, South China Sea,
Petro Poroshenko, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Montreux Convention, Bosphorus, Dardanelles

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

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 6-Dec-18 World View -- New head of US Central Command says Afghanistan war is unsustainable

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• New head of US Central Command says Afghanistan war is unsustainable
  
• Political opposition to Afghan strategy grows
  
• DJIA plunges 800 points on Tuesday
  

****
**** New head of US Central Command says Afghanistan war is unsustainable
****


An Afghan command and a US Special Forces soldier scan the horizon for enemy movement in Afghanistan, on May 24, 2018. (Military Times)

According to Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the incoming head of the US
Central Command, the death rate among Afghan government security
forces is unsustainable. He said he doesn’t know how long it will
take to develop an Afghan force capable of defending its own country.

Speaking at a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday,
McKenzie said that the war is currently stalemated:

<QUOTE>"They’re not there yet. If we left precipitously
right now, they would not be able to successfully defend their
country.

Their losses have been very high. They are fighting hard, but
their losses are not going to be sustainable unless we correct
this problem."<END QUOTE>

However, he did not spell out what changes are necessary to correct
this problem. Also, he said he doesn't know know how long it will
take to develop an Afghan force capable of defending its own country.

Long-time readers will not be surprised by this at all. In 2009, when
president Barack Obama announced a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan,
mimicking president George Bush's successful troop surge into Iraq, I
wrote that the Afghanistan troop surge would not be as successful as
the Iraq troop surge. The Iraq troop surge was to eject foreign
jihadists from Iraq, and it was successful because the Iraq Sunnis
also wanted to eject foreign jihadists from Iraq. ("Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq (01-Apr-2007)")

But the Taliban are not foreign fighters. As I've explained many
times, Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was the extremely
bloody Afghan crisis civil war, 1991-96, which mostly pitted the
ethnic Pashtuns, who are Sunni Muslims and later formed the Taliban,
versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern
Afghanistan. Now, twenty years later, Afghanistan is in a
generational Awakening era, and a new young generation of Pashtuns is
coming of age, raised on stories their parents told them about the
atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance, and they're looking for
revenge.

But you don't have to know anything about generational history to
understand what's going on. You just have to understand that there
was an extremely bloody, violent civil war in 1991-96, pitting the
Pashtuns versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in
northern Afghanistan. And you have to know that the Taliban are
Pashtuns, and that young Pashtuns are looking for revenge for
atrocities committed in the 1990s.

That's why the government cannot possibly control the Taliban, and why
trying "peace talks" with the Taliban doesn't even make sense. Even
if the Taliban leaders agreed to some settlement, it would not satisfy
their sons and daughters, who are not going to be deterred in their
search for revenge. That's the way the world works.

The Taliban have repeatedly and consistently said that they will not
agree to any peace deal until after the Nato troops have withdrawn.

There are some 16,000 American and Nato troops in Afghanistan, acting
in a support role to the Afghan army. McKenzie said the U.S. and its
allies need to keep helping the Afghans recruit and train forces to
fight the Taliban’s estimated 60,000 troops. The 60,000 figure is
considerably higher than previous estimates, which were around 20,000.
Military Times and AP

****
**** Political opposition to Afghan strategy grows
****

At the Senate hearing, an angry Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich, said:

<QUOTE>"We’ve been at it 17 years, 17 years is a long time.
What are we doing differently when it comes to the Afghan security
forces that we haven’t done for 17 years while being focused on
this?"<END QUOTE>

McKenzie said that it's different this time because we have a key, new
strategy in Afghanistan: peace talks with the Taliban. I guess he's
forgotten numerous attempts at peace talks in the past, all of which
have failed for the reasons that I just gave. McKenzie said:

<QUOTE>"I don’t know how long it will take. I do know that
we’re working it very hard. I do know that they are making
improvements. I do know that today it would be very difficult for
them to survive without our and our coalition partners’
assistance. And we should remember that NATO and other nations are
with us on the ground in Afghanistan."<END QUOTE>

That last point is true. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says
that the Nato countries have reaffirmed their commitment to
Afghanistan's "long-term security and stability" despite mounting
Afghan casualties.

<QUOTE>"Sometimes there is an uptick, an increase in violence
because different parties try to gain the best possible position
at the negotiating table. So it may actually become worse before
it becomes better."<END QUOTE>

What this obscure statement apparently means is that the "uptick" in
violence is a GOOD thing because it means that the Taliban want to
gain an advantage before they negotiate peace.

As I've written in the past, there may be a dynamic going on.
President Donald Trump's foreign policy is totally baffling to the
mainstream media and most politicians, but as a I keep pointing out,
everything makes perfect sense once you understand that he believes
(correctly) that the US is headed for a world war against China and
Pakistan. So there's undoubtedly a larger purpose in not withdrawing
from Afghanistan. As war with China and Pakistan approaches,
president Trump wants to keep American troops active in Afghanistan,
and to continue to maintain several American military bases in
Afghanistan, including two air bases in Bagram and Kandahar
International Airport. These bases will be valuable in any future war
with China. Under these circumstances, having troops in Afghanistan
is what matters, whether the Taliban are defeated or not. Stars and Stripes and RFE/RL and Foreign Policy

Related Articles:

• Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq (01-Apr-2007)
  
• Afghanistan's president Ghani announces ceasefire with Taliban (20-Aug-2018)
  
  
• Obama's Nobel Prize speech defends a 'just war' in Afghanistan (12-Dec-2009)
  
  
• Afghan Taliban launches multiple terror attacks, then declares farcical ceasefire (10-Jun-2018)
  
  
• Brief recent generational history of Afghanistan (25-Jul-2017)
  

****
**** DJIA plunges 800 points on Tuesday
****


Tweet from someone who lost everything in the 800 point plunge on Tuesday (ZeroHedge)

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunged 800 points on Tuesday.
The S&P and Nasdaq indexes fell by equivalent amounts. Undoubtedly
many people are like the person whose tweet is shown above who lost
his own life savings, but also the life savings of his parents in a
single day.

As I'm writing this on Wednesday evening, the Dow Futures Index are
down -250 points. Although it may recover in time for the market
opening on Thursday morning, this once again reminds us that a
full-scale stock market crash is not just possible -- it's absolutely
certain. It may happen this week, next month, next year, or
thereafter, but it's going to happen.

The S&P 500 price/earnings ratio is around 20, down from 25 a year
ago. The historical average for the P/E ratio is 14, meaning that the
stock market is in a huge bubble, and this huge bubble will have to
pop. The P/E ratio fell to the range of 5-6 three times in the last
century, in 1919, 1949 and 1982, and it's overdue to do so again.
When that happens, the DJIA will fall to around the 3000 range.

And let's not forget Bitcoin, which was the darling, trendy, highly
stylish investment of about a year ago. Bitcoin is an asset with
nothing backing it but hot air, and it could well become totally
worthless in the next few months.

In the time it's taken me to write that last two paragraphs, the Dow
Futures index has fallen further to -360. That's not to say that it
won't pop up again, and may even go positive by morning. But what
happened on Tuesday is very real, and it could happen to you or to
anyone. ZeroHedge

Related Articles

• Bitcoin bubble and China's Belt and Road bubble both appear to be crashing (28-Nov-2018)
  
  
• Wells Fargo receives laughable 'punishment' for massive criminal fraud (29-Sep-2016)
  
  
• 'The Big Short' - an infuriating movie about the financial crisis (26-Dec-2015)
  
  
• Reader comments on 'The Big Short' and the financial crisis (27-Dec-2015)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Afghanistan, Taliban,
Kenneth McKenzie, Gary Peters, NATO, Jens Stoltenberg,
China, Pakistan, Bagram, Kandahar International Airport,
Dow Jones Industrial Average, DJIA

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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
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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

[pbrower2a]

On the stock market: downward volatility is good cause to get out of it. Af first there is a little more upward volatility than downward volatility, but the warning sings are often there. People do stupid things in the stock market, basically gambling to recover losses, much as Pete Rose did as a really-dumb gambler. Nobody should ever bet what he can't stand to lose.

Futures trading is basically gambling. If one can't afford to lose your investment, then find some better use for one's investment fund. Buy high-grade corporate bonds, dammit! (Bonds are vulnerable to inflation, though -- but in deflation bonds are wonderful). Stocks do not have anywhere the risk of futures betting unless the company is either dying (no way would I invest in JC Penney) or has a perverse culture (I would have stayed clear of 'Enrob').

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 7-Dec-18 World View -- Canada arrests the chief financial officer of China powerhouse Huawei

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Canada arrests the chief financial officer of China powerhouse Huawei
  
• China reacts with fury at the arrest of Meng
  
• English-speaking 'Five Eyes' countries are banning Huawei products
  

****
**** Canada arrests the chief financial officer of China powerhouse Huawei
****


Meng Wanzhou

At the request of the United States, Canadian police arrested Ms. Meng
Wanzhou (Sabrina Meng), the chief financial officer (CFO) China's
telecom powerhouse Huawei (WHA way) Technologies, which was founded by
her father Ren Zhengfei. Before founding Huawei, Ren was an officer
and engineer in China's People's Liberation Army (PLA).

According to the US Justice Department:

<QUOTE>"She is sought for extradition by the United States,
and a bail hearing has been set for Friday. As there is a
publication ban in effect, we cannot provide any further detail at
this time. The ban was sought by Ms. Meng."<END QUOTE>

Reports indicate that Huawei is alleged to have used the global
banking system to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran. In particular,
it's believed that Huawei used HSBC Holdings Plc to conduct illegal
transactions involving Iran. As CFO, Meng would be intimately
familiar with any such illegal transactions.

HSBC Bank plc is a London-based international banking and financial
services company. In 2012, HSBC paid a $1.92 billion fine for
violating US sanctions and money-laundering laws. HSBC is apparently
not under investigation in the Huawei allegations.

Meng was arrested on Saturday in Vancouver airport, as she was
changing planes. The arrest occurred at the same time that president
Donald Trump and China's president Xi Jinping were having a dinner
meeting that led to an agreement for a 90-day "ceasefire" in the
"trade war" between the two countries.

Since the arrest occurred shortly before the dinner meeting, there is
speculation that Trump timed the arrest to send a message to China and
to Xi. However, the dinner meeting was planned well in advance of the
arrest, and there would have been no way of predicting that Meng would
be changing planes in Vancouver at exactly that time. National
security advisor John Bolton says that he knew before the dinner that
Meng was being arrested, but said that he didn't brief Trump. Meng
may have been put onto a list of people subject to arrest at Canadian
airports months ago, but the fact that she happened to change planes
in Vancouver on Saturday appears to be purely happenstance.

ZTE is another Chinese company that has been severely sanctioned for
making illegal sales to Iran. The Trump administration heavily
sanctioned ZTE, to the extent that ZTE would have gone out of
business, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs in China, but Trump
relented after a personal plea from Xi.

Mainstream media and other politicians are almost universally baffled
by Trump's foreign policy actions, as I've pointed out many times.
But the policies all make complete sense when you understand that
Trump believes (correctly) that the US and China are headed for a
world war, and he's adopting policies that he believes will prevent
that outcome, even though Generational Dynamics predicts that a world
war will happen with 100% certainty, no matter what Trump does.

In the case of the "trade war" policy, Trump has described its purpose
as saving American jobs, which is true, but it also has the purpose of
throwing China off its game of relentless militarization and
preparation for war. However, it's an extremely risky policy because
it may actually trigger war if the Chinese panic. The 90-day freeze
gives the Chinese some breathing room, and keeps them from panicking.

For that reason, the happenstance arrest of Meng is actually a risk to
the ceasefire, since it could infuriate the Chinese to the point of
triggering an unwanted reaction, including the arrest of American
executives in China. It's possible that the Trump administration will
decide to de-escalate this situation quickly by returning Meng to
China as soon as possible. Globe and Mail (Toronto) and Reuters and Wired

****
**** China reacts with fury at the arrest of Meng
****

China's foreign ministry has demanded the Canadians and Americans
"immediately clarify the reason for the detention and release the
detainee, and earnestly protect the legal and legitimate rights and
interests of the person involved."

China's embassy in Canada posted the following:

<QUOTE>"At the request of the US side, the Canadian side
arrested a Chinese citizen not violating any American or Canadian
law. The Chinese side firmly opposes and strongly protests over
such kind of actions which seriously harmed the human rights of
the victim. The Chinese side has lodged stern representations with
the US and Canadian side, and urged them to immediately correct
the wrongdoing and restore the personal freedom of Ms. Meng
Wanzhou. We will closely follow the development of the issue and
take all measures to resolutely protect the legitimate rights and
interests of Chinese citizens."<END QUOTE>

It's always laughable when China talks about international law or
human rights, two things that the Chinese believe don't apply to them,
since they consider themselves superior to everyone else. My guess is
that Ms. Meng is being held in the equivalent of a suite in a five
star hotel. On the other hand, China is a country that kidnaps
children, harvests the organs of political prisoners, and has a
million ethnic Uighurs locked up in forced reeducation prisons, where
they can be tortured raped and killed for saying the wrong thing. I
doubt that Ms. Meng is in danger of suffering any of those "human
rights" violations. China Foreign Ministry and China's Canadian Embassy

****
**** English-speaking 'Five Eyes' countries are banning Huawei products
****

Huawei Technologies is the world’s largest telecommunications
equipment provider, and it is the second largest mobile phone
manufacturer. It is a pillar of the Chinese economy. Its founder Ren
Zhengfei is a former military officer in the People Liberation Army
(PLA). Meng Wanzhou is his daughter.

Huawei has been promoting itself worldwide to sell routers and other
equipment for the latest technology advance, 5G networks, in countries
around the world. Back in August, Australia banned Huawei from
supplying equipment for its 5G networks. The United States has done
the same, and last week New Zealand did the same.

The United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are
members of the "Five Eyes" alliance that shares intelligence to combat
espionage, terrorism and global crime. Three of these countries have
been Huawei because of a security threat.

As I've said in the past, I've spent a part of my career as a senior
software engineer developing chip-level operating system software for
embedded systems, so I know exactly how any chip or any electronic
device can be turned into a tool for espionage. Furthermore, I can
tell you that not only is it doable, it's not even particularly
difficult for someone with the right skills.

Huawei could develop a chipset that works exactly as described in the
public specifications. The chipset could be subjected to thousands of
tests, and they would all work perfectly.

But what Huawei could do is install a "backdoor" into the chipset.
When the chip receives, say, a secret 1024-bit code, then it will
execute commands sent to it by Chinese engineers. Thus, the Chinese
are then in control of any devices with Huawei chips.

As I said, this is not only doable, it's easy to do. The "backdoor"
could not be detected until an attack had been launched, and then it
would be too late. And since it CAN be done, it's certain that it HAS
been done. China has been preparing for war with the West in every
possible way, and has conducted cybercrime and espionage on a massive
scale. Installing a secret backdoor in its chips would be one of the
easiest ways to prepare for war, so there's no doubt that they've done
it.

Huawei has been aggressively selling routers and other infrastructure
equipment to companies and governments around the world. China could
spy on transmissions over these networks or, in the worst case
scenario, completely shut down all commercial and government networks
during a war. For that reason, Huawei devices are considered to be a
security threat. Globe and Mail (Toronto) and AFP and Wired and Guardian (London)

Related Articles:

• Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agree to a 90 day moratorium in trade war (02-Dec-2018)
  
  
• APEC meeting ends in disarray after harsh US-China disagreements (19-Nov-2018)
  
  
• Mike Pence's China 'containment' speech signals more contentious US-China relations (26-Oct-2018)
  
  
• China's spy chip attacks shock the computer industry (06-Oct-2018)
  
  
• China defends million-prisoner 'reeducation camps' and Sinicization of Islam in Xinjiang (14-Oct-2018)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Meng Wanzhou, Sabrina Meng, China,
Huawei Technologies, Ren Zhengfei, People's Liberation Army, PLA,
HSBC Bank, Vancouver, Xi Jinping, John Bolton, Iran, ZTE,
Five Eyes, United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand

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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]

*** 8-Dec-18 World View -- Arrest of Meng Wanzhou of China's Huawei has increasingly serious implications

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Huawei's Meng Wanzhou faces possible 30 year jail term
  
• Japan blocks Huawei products from public infrastructure projects
  
• The story of Stern Hu, an employee of Australian mining company Rio Tinto
  
• Arrest of Meng Wanzhou of China's Huawei has increasingly serious implications
  

****
**** Huawei's Meng Wanzhou faces possible 30 year jail term
****


Meng Wanzhou (fensifuwu.com)

As we described yesterday, Huawei Technologies chief financial officer
(CFO) Ms. Meng Wanzhou was arrested by Canadian police on Saturday,
while changing planes in Vancouver. Meng is the daughter of of Huawei
founder Ren Zhengfei, who was previously an officer and engineer in
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA). ( "7-Dec-18 World View -- Canada arrests the chief financial officer of China powerhouse Huawei"
)

Meng appeared in a Vancouver court on Friday, where the allegations
were laid out:

• Meng is accused of overseeing a complex scheme to allow Huawei
  to sell networking infrastructure equipment to Iran in violation of US
  sanctions.
  
  
• Meng is alleged to have created a Hong Kong based shell company
  called Skycom, to be used in her fraud scheme.
  
  
• Meng committed fraud in 2013 by telling banks and financial
  institutions that Huawei had no connection to Skycom, when in fact
  Skycom was a subsidiary of Huawei. An investigation by Reuters in
  2013, for example, revealed that on linkedin.com several workers
  listed "Huawei-skycom" as an employer.
  
  
• These banks then cleared financial transactions for Huawei,
  inadvertently doing business with SkyCom and becoming “victim
  institutions” of fraud.

If convicted on all these charges, Meng faces up to 30 years in jail
in the United States.

The Chinese government has called for Meng’s immediate release, saying
that arresting her violates her "human rights."

Meng's lawyers are requesting bail, saying that she's not a flight
risk because she would not risk embarrassing her father or her country
by fleeing before her extradition hearing. However, Canadian
prosecuters say that Meng is the daughter of the company’s billionaire
founder, Ren Zhengfei, is a flight risk because of her wealth and the
fact that she could face three decades in prison. Washington Post and Reuters (31-Jan-2013)

****
**** Japan blocks Huawei products from public infrastructure projects
****

For reasons that I described in detail
in yesterday's article, we have to assume that it is
absolutely certain that any Huawei networking device can be controlled
remotely by China's military and used for espionage, and that it's
impossible to detect this.

On Friday, Japan's government said that it will exclude Chinese
telecommunication equipment-makers Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE
Corp. from public procurement because of security concerns.

Japan joins the United States, Australia and New Zealand in
implementing such a ban. Canada, Britain and the European Union are
investigating security issues, although Germany's interior ministry
opposes banning Huawei. Japan Times and BBC

****
**** The story of Stern Hu, an employee of Australian mining company Rio Tinto
****

An example of how Meng Wanzhou might be treated is the tale of Stern
Hu, an executive in Australian firm Rio Tinto who was jailed in 2009
and only freed four months ago.

Hu was apparently one of the millions of peaceful student protesters
in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that Chinese authorities ended
on June 4, 1989, with a bloody massacre that killed thousands of
students.

Hu used to work for China International Trust and Investment Co, until
a photo surfaced in a magazine showing him participating in the
Tiananmen Square protests, at which time he was fired. He traveled to
Australia, became an Australian citizen, and in 1996 joined a company
that went on to become the international mining giant Rio Tinto. Hu
becamse head of Rio Tinto's iron ore business in China.

In 2010, Hu and three other Rio Tinto executives were given hefty jail
sentences on charges of corruption and bribery for bribing executives
from Chinese steel companies to sign contracts with Rio Tinto. Hu was
given a ten-year jail sentence, but he was released in July of this
year for good behavior.

The incarceration of Hu Stern can provide precedents for how the case
of Meng Wanzhou should be resolved. Telegraph (London, 28-Jul-2009) and Australian Broadcasting (5-Aug-2010) and Mining.com and Washington Post


****
**** Arrest of Meng Wanzhou of China's Huawei has increasingly serious implications
****

In yesterday's article,
I
speculated that the Trump administration will decide to de-escalate
this situation quickly by returning Meng to China as soon as possible,
in order to avoid risking the current "ceasefire" in the trade war
between the US and China.

However, some analysts point out that the opposite may be true,
because otherwise our allies may not continue to support us. ZTE is
another Chinese company that was severely sanctioned for making
illegal sales to Iran. The Trump administration heavily sanctioned
ZTE, but the sanctions were reversed as the result of a personal plea
by Xi Jinping to Donald Trump. This reversal, according to analysts,
confused our allies, who wonder how serious the Trump administration
is about enforcing the sanctions against Iran.

This reasoning indicates that the Trump administration is going to
have to follow a hard line in the case of Meng, including giving her a
jail sentence, as in the case of the Rio Tinto executive.

At the same time, the Chinese are becoming increasingly infuriated by
Meng's arrest. Huawei is perhaps the most respected company in China,
and many Chinese people are viewing the arrest of Meng and the banning
of Huawei products as part of a policy to contain China.

Chinese people, including Xi Jinping, claim that China has been
repeatedly humiliated by countries of the West, starting with the
Opium Wars in the 1840s. ( "21-Mar-18 World View -- Xi Jinping invokes the 1840s Opium Wars to justify military action for China's 'rejuvenation'"
)

Some Chinese are saying that the campaign against Huawei is a
continuation of the West's policy of humiliating China and containing
China.

I've been writing for years how, as the world goes deeper into a
generational Crisis era, countries of the world are becoming
increasingly xenophobic and nationalistic, and that eventually this
leads to a new generational crisis war. Generational Dynamics
predicts that China and the US are headed for a new world war. The
Huawei situation has resulted an increase in xenophobia and
nationalism in both countries, bringing us one step closer to that
world war. Al Jazeera

Related Articles:

• Canada arrests the chief financial officer of China powerhouse Huawei (07-Dec-2018)
  
  
• Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agree to a 90 day moratorium in trade war (02-Dec-2018)
  
  
• Mike Pence's China 'containment' speech signals more contentious US-China relations (26-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Australia passes foreign influence laws, targeting China (29-Jun-2018)
  
  
• Xi Jinping invokes the 1840s Opium Wars to justify military action for China's 'rejuvenation' (21-Mar-2018)
  
  
• Huawei scandal exposes potential 'Cyberwar Pearl Harbor' from China (14-Oct-2012)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Meng Wanzhou, China,
Huawei Technologies, Ren Zhengfei, People's Liberation Army, PLA,
Xi Jinping, John Iran, ZTE, Skycom,
United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan,
Hu Stern, Tiananmen Square, Rio Tinto, Opium Wars

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John J. Xenakis
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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]

*** 9-Dec-18 World View -- Latest South Sudan peace agreement appears close to collapse

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Latest South Sudan peace agreement appears close to collapse
  
• Brief generational history of South Sudan and Dinka-Nuer clashes
  

****
**** Latest South Sudan peace agreement appears close to collapse
****


Signs separating the Nuer and Dinka tribes in a UN refugee camp in South Sudan (Nyamilepedia)

There's an old saying, "Peace is that brief, glorious moment in
history when everybody stands around reloading." That saying may
apply to South Sudan, after a peace agreement was signed in September.

The peace agreement was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on September
12. It was signed by Salva Kiir, the leader of Dinka tribe, and
president of South Sudan. The other signer was Riek Machar, the
leader of the Nuer tribe, and vice president of South Sudan until
2013, when he was sacked by Kiir.

The sacking led to extremely bloody and violent clashes between Dinka
and Nuer militias. The conflict killed hundreds of thousands of
civilians, displaced an estimated one-quarter of the population of 12
million, and ruined the economy, which depends heavily on crude oil
production.

This was the second or third peace agreement signed since 2013. It
calls for an immediate ceasefire. It calls for an end to recruitment
of soldiers on both sides, it calls for an end to the trafficking of
young girls, and it calls for a power-sharing agreement with the
return of Machar to be vice president again in May.

Although low-level violence has been a constant since South Sudan
became independent of Sudan in 2011, there were major clashes that
began in December 2013. ( "29-Dec-2013 World View -- Conflicts grow in South Sudan and Central African Republic"
) There followed 21 months of
atrocities, until they were supposedly ended by a peace treaty that
was signed by both sides in August 2015. By mid-2016, the fight was
fully engaged again.

There are concerns that this peace agreement won't last either.

There's news emerging that in the last ten days of November, 150 girls
and women were raped near the town of Bentiu. The situation is still
being investigated.

And a new report by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in
South Sudan says that both sides are continuing to recruit fighters,
many of them just boys.

The problem with the peace agreement is that it was signed by
politicians. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's
the people rather than the politicians who make this kind of decision.
The people who are doing the fighting are the members of the Dinka and
Nuer tribes, and they hate each other, irrespective of any peace
agreement between the politicians.

There has been a letup in the violence since the peace agreement was
signed in September, but it remains to be seen whether it will last,
or whether it was just a brief, glorious moment when both the Dinkas
and the Nuers spent the time reloading. Al Jazeera (12-Sep) and Reuters (12-Sep) and Council on Foreign Relations (26-Sep) and Sudan Tribune and
AFP

****
**** Brief generational history of South Sudan and Dinka-Nuer clashes
****

The Dinka and the Nuer tribes have had conflicts over land for
centuries. In numerous other countries, I've described how ethnic
wars grow over farmers versus herders. But in South Sudan, both the
Dinkas and Nuers are herder communities. The conflict over land is
the same, however. Clashes begin during dry periods, when both sides
compete for the same land.

Sudan was ruled by the Ottoman empire, and later by an arrangement by
an arrangement of Egyptian and British control. When Sudan became
independent of Britain in 1956, the north was largely Muslim, Arabic
speaking, while the southern population mostly followed tribal
religions. The Khartoum government in the north launched a program to
"Arabize and Islamize the South." This triggered a reaction from
Christian evangelists, mostly from the US, to come to Sudan and
convert the South to Christianity.

There was immediately a north-south war of independence, but there was
also a generational crisis civil war between the Nuer and Dinka
tribes. This was climaxed on November 15, 1991, when the "Bor
Massacre" began. Over the next three months, 2,000 civilians were
killed, thousands more wounded, at least 100,000 people fled the area.
Famine followed the massacre, as looters burnt villages and raided
cattle, resulting in the deaths of 25,000 more from starvation.

The nightmare scenario is that the new clashes will spiral into a
repeat of the 1991 Bor Massacre. But from the point of view of
Generational Dynamics, South Sudan is in a generational Awakening era,
so a historic massacre of this type will not occur, despite the
enormous ethnic hatred between the Nuers and the Dinkas. Sudan Tribune (24-Nov-2018) and National Geographic (30-Sep-2014) and Vox (9-Jan-2017) and Nyamile (31-Mar-2016)

Related Articles:

• Fears that renewed South Sudan tribal fighting could spiral into larger war (11-Jul-2016)
  
  
• Sudan / South Sudan border clashes affect Israel's and China's interests (27-Mar-2012)
  
  
• Conflicts grow in South Sudan and Central African Republic (29-Dec-2013)
  
  
• Uganda and China intervene in South Sudan conflict (10-Jan-2014)
  
  
• Japan's troops in South Sudan become first test of new 'collective self-defense' policy (19-Nov-2016)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Sudan, South Sudan, Salva Kiir, Riek Machar,
Dinkas, Nuers, Bor Massacre, Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Britain, Bentiu

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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
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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]

*** 10-Dec-18 World View -- Japan invites hundreds of thousands of foreigners to work in Japan

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Japan invites hundreds of thousands of foreigners to work in Japan
  
• Analyzing the generational history of an insular Japan
  

****
**** Japan invites hundreds of thousands of foreigners to work in Japan
****


Workers from Thailand work at Green Leaf farm, in Showa Village, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, June 6, 2018. (Reuters)

In the predawn hours on Saturday, Japan enacted controversial new
legislation that will permit 345,000 low-skilled foreign workers to
receive labor shortages, especially in such areas as farming, nursing
care and construction.

From April 1, a new residency permit category will allow foreigners
who have completed some skills training and passed a Japanese-language
test to work in Japan for up to five years in 14 industries.

The passage of the new law is almost an act of desperation, as Japan
has a low birth rate and an aging population, and needs workers who
can build build buildings, and support the elderly and the factories.

However, there is a great deal of opposition to the measure for
several reasons.

Foreign workers in Japan have been forced to work at almost slave
wages in jobs where they can be abused and exploited.

Labor leaders object to a program that brings in low-wage workers that
will take the jobs of Japanese workers.

But most of the objections refer to the Japanese culture. Throughout
its history, Japan has been an island shut off from the rest of the
world, with its unique shared customs and shared culture, and foreign
workers would not fit into that. Furthermore, Japan has a history
that a small number of Japanese treat any foreigners as subhuman.

For that reason, the new legislation is including a package of
measures to provide skills training, language training, and to ensure
decent working conditions. Japan Today and Nikkei and Washington Post and Japan Times

****
**** Analyzing the generational history of an insular Japan
****

The insular, isolated culture of Japan has presented unique problems
in trying to understand its history from the point of view of
Generational Dynamics theory.

For the past few centuries, we can divide Japanese history into four
distinct periods:

• The "Warring States" period (1467-1573), a lawless era of
  civil war, in which the feudal lords of Japan fought one another in
  endless plays for land and power. Japan was unified by a generational
  crisis war climaxing in the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600.
  
  
• The Tokugawa Peace era (1603-1868). This is described by the
  Japanese as a 250-year period of peace -- an enforced "Period of
  Seclusion" with almost no wars. The seclusion ended in 1853, when the
  American Commodore Matthew Perry and his four "black ships" appeared
  in Edo Bay, and demanded that Japan open up its markets to the West.
  The sudden influx of foreign people, ideas, and money severely
  disrupted Japan's secluded lifestyle and economy in the 1850s and
  1860s, resulting in a crisis war climaxing in 1858 with Meiji
  Restoration, which restored government by an emperor after the
  Tokugawa government was removed.
  
  
• The Meiji Era (1868-1911) and the Imperial Era (1911-1945). Japan
  fought and won a series of wars (Sino-Japanese war, Russo-Japanese
  war), eventually leading to the World War II disaster.
  
  
• The Post-War Era (1945-present). Deeply horrified by their own
  actions during the Imperial Era, the Japanese tried to recapture their
  peaceful society of the Tokugawa era, including a self-forced return
  to insularity by adopting a constitution that permits military action
  only for self-defense.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics theory, the problem
occurs in the analyzing the 250 year Tokugawa era. Going 250 years
without a major war is not possible. Populations grow exponentially
and use up land and water resources, and after a few decades there
isn't enough food for everyone, so there has to be a war to restore
the balance. So if there were generational crisis wars during that
250 year period, then how come we aren't seeing them?

To put it another way, let's assume that Japan had crisis wars in the
1600-1868 period like every other country. How would those wars be
different from crisis wars in other countries?

Xenophobia and nationalism are often defined in terms of things like
race, skin color, appearance, language, geography and religion, things
that are set at birth and cannot be easily changed. What makes Japan
unique is because of its insularity and homogeneity, there is little
difference among groups of Japanese in terms of of race, skin color,
appearance, language, geography and religion. The only thing that
separates one group of Japanese from another would be political
beliefs, things that can be easily fudged or even changed.

When historians write about wars during a period, how do they describe
the wars? Usually it's "North vs South" or "dark-skinned vs
light-skinned" or "Protestants vs Catholics" or "English-speaking vs
French-speaking," or something like that. How would a historian
describe a war in Japan? In the "Warring Period," it was one warlord
versus another.

But in the Tokugawa period, there's apparently no obvious way. There
must have been wars, because the population growth would have exceeded
the demand for food, land, water and other resources, but how these
wars manifested themselves is little understood in the West. This is
an area that requires additional research. Japan Times and Columbia University and History.com

Related Articles

• Japan finds 'semi-infinite supply' of rare earth minerals in its territorial waters (13-Apr-2018)
  
  
• Japan's PM visits Yasukuni shrine, infuriating Chinese and Koreans (27-Dec-2013)
  
  
• Japan's Shinzo Abe blames WW II on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act (15-Aug-2015)
  
  
• China makes four demands of Japan to improve relations (01-May-2016)
  
  
• China and Japan continue to prepare for war over Senkaku/Diaoyu islands (29-Oct-2012)
  
  
• The bubble that broke the world (09-Oct-2007)

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Japan, Warring States Period,
Tokugawa Era, Commodore Matthew Perry, Meiji Era,
Imperial Era, Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War

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John J. Xenakis
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Phone: 617-864-0010
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Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 11-Dec-18 World View -- Ebola in DR Congo spreads southward to large cities

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Ebola in DR Congo spreads southward to large cities
  
• Uganda and South Sudan vaccinate health workers against Ebola
  

****
**** Ebola in DR Congo spreads southward to large cities
****


The city of Goma in DR Congo remains Ebola-free so far (AFP)

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is now
the second-largest in history. The current outbreak, that was
declared on August 1, has 471 identified cases, of which 423 are
confirmed, including 225 confirmed deaths. However, that's nowhere
near the size of the 2014-2016 outbreak that killed more than 11,300
people.

The big difference between the current outbreak and the 2014 outbreak
is that an experimental vaccine is available this time, and it seems
to be working. Teams of health workers from Doctors Without Borders
(Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) have vaccinated more than 41,000
people so far. It's estimated that without the vaccine, there would
already be more than 10,000 Ebola cases in the current outbreak.

The vaccine is used in conjunction with contact tracing. When an
Ebola case is suspected, health workers identify the patient's
contacts and their contacts, and all those people are given the
vaccine, in case they've been infected.

The current epidemic is centered around the city of Beni in North Kivu
province, which is in the middle of a war zone with a population of
400,000. Militias have attacked health workers, making it almost
impossible to do the contact tracing necessary to stop the progress of
the disease, so it may be 6-12 more months before the current epidemic
can be stopped completely.

More worrisome is that the outbreak has been spreading southward, and
there are now identified cases in the city of Butembo, which has one
million residents. Furthermore, new cases are increasing quickly in
the eastern suburbs and outlying, isolated districts. In some cases,
not all residents of hard-to-reach communities have received the
vaccines. Public and private health centers with inadequate infection
prevention and control (IPC) practices continue to be major source of
amplification of the outbreak.

The greatest concern now is that it will spread further south to the
city of Goma, a major population center and regional hub for
transportation -- air, road, truck -- with a population of two
million, including the suburbs. No cases of Ebola have been
identified in Goma yet.

There may not be enough of the experimental vaccine to service the
huge populations in Beni, Butembo and Goma. The current stockpile is
300,000 doses. Merck has a supply of the vaccine, but Merck says that
it takes about a year, start to finish, to produce a batch of the
vaccine. World Health Organization (WHO) and Australian AP and STAT News

****
**** Uganda and South Sudan vaccinate health workers against Ebola
****

As the Ebola epidemic spreads southward, it has so far remained with
DRC. But North Kivu province is on the border with Uganda and South
Sudan, and tens of thousands of people cross these borders in both
directions every day, so it's possible that the disease will spread
into those two countries. If it spreads into a transportation hub
like Goma, then it may spread even farther into other countries.

Uganda last month announced plans to roll out vaccinations to 3,000
frontline health workers. According to Uganda's health minister, "We
have not waited for the first case to arrive. The vaccination is
continuing."

About 2,160 doses of the Ebola vaccine have been allocated to South
Sudan and will be administered to healthcare and frontline workers.
The country is on high alert and no confirmed case has been detected
as of December 8.
World Health Organization (WHO)
and New Vision (Uganda)

Related Articles:

• WHO considers declaring Ebola outbreak as an international emergency (16-Oct-2018)
  
  
• World Health Organization fears 'perfect storm' could spread Ebola rapidly in DR Congo (26-Sep-2018)
  
  
• In dreaded scenario, Ebola spreads to densely populated war zone in Congo (25-Aug-2018)
  
  
• Central African Republic violence threatens new spread of Ebola from Congo (17-May-2017)
  
  
• West Africa at significant economic risk as Ebola panic intensifies (16-Aug-2014)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Ebola,
Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC,
North Kivu, Beni, Butembo, Goma, Uganda, South Sudan,
World Health Organization, WHO, Merck,
Doctors Without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF

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Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe